The Victoria 2 Realism & Rebalance Project (2.01 out now!))

[KonradRichtmark]

The Victoria 2 Realism & Rebalance Project

Realism and game functionality are compatible until proven otherwise

The following is by no means an exhaustive description of what VRRP does, but should give an overview of its general state and planned future.

The Victoria 2 Realism & Rebalance Project (VRRP) is an effort by the undersigned to rework Victoria 2 from the bottom up along realistic and consistent principles. The ultimate objective is to create a world which is completely dynamic and self-regulating to the extent that the world economy will always be able to reach a long-term equilibrium regardless of its current condition. Each aspect of the game interacts with the others to achieve that aim. Economic rebalancing is the original heart of VRRP, but over time, it has expanded to cover many more aspects of the game, and intends to expand further. VRRP is simulationist in outlook, avoiding arbitrary, unrealistic balance limitations. If something would not have been possible in real history, it should be impossible in VRRP too through proper simulation of the underlying causes that made it so, not via a hard rule saying you can't do so.

A few highlights of what VRRP has to offer:

-A productive economy reworked from the bottom up, starting from initial assumptions about profitability in market equilibrium
-An economy using a new line-up of goods, with supply-side substitution included by allowing for multiple, alternative ways of producing a certain final good
-An economic development paradigm where capital accumulation is the main inhibitor of factory growth, and profitability highly dependent on clerks and output tech, rather than getting craftsmen (which is easy for most countries, but only having craftsmen means you'll be producing cheap junk in bulk at low profit margins)
-A new tech system favouring economic specialization
-POP promotion/demotion mechanics designed to make the ratio of different poptypes be in a condition-dependent dynamic equilibrium, where poor pops tend to drift towards the best-paying poor POP job, while the ratio of middle POPs to poor POPs depends on literacy and slider spending
-Completely reworked migration mechanics so that economic factors are the main drivers of migration - poverty and unemployment pushes people to move, high living standards pulls those immigrants in, and consequently imbalances in the world market are smoothed out as people abandon overproducing RGOs and move into ones whose goods are in high demand
-A semi-invisible, event-driven regulatory system ensuring that the size of the global money supply keeps pace with the productive capacity of the world, making sure that money is scarce enough to remain relevant but abundant enough to keep the world market from croaking due to universal lack of demand


More info to come, including a manual. Version 2.0 just got released, be patient...

Hall of Fame

Editor-in-Chief

Konrad Richtmark

Team Members
People who commit to taking care of a particular part of the game, or otherwise made consistent contribution to it.

Phi - Minister of Demographics and Migration

Modular Contributors
People whose mods or specific fixes have been integrated into the Project

Xcapos - CanalMod
Keder - Intelligentsia Tiny Mod
Shauf - Rebel & Reform Tweak
mate0815 - German translations
adj_boy - Aesthetics rework
zenjr - Brazilian RGO setup
TekcoR - World Fairs Mod (incorporated by Phi)
Trovador - New Nations Mod (partly incorporated into VRRP)
JoneshSwe - union tag event/decision carryover, and help with incorporating NNM
GAGA Extrem - lots of political events, and reworked election events
Gabryel Karolin - most of the new goods icons

Honourable Playtesters
Players whose feedback has been invaluable for development

mike8472
Stonewall
DoctorPlague
von Sachsen
wertu234
Innocent Beard

Other Honourable Mentions
People who have significantly contributed in other ways

way2co0l - for writing the original POP promotion & ideology scripts
Naselus - inter-mod R&D efforts, and many things filched from PDM
Xcapos & Masakary - for answering a bugslaying call to arms
Andrelvis - intrepid brainstorming
seattle - writAAR
Kinniken - for his POP editor tools
SashaM - intrepid experimenter

FAQ

I have this great idea of what the mod would need, and would like to help! Can I join the team?
-Well, tell us about your idea. The modus operandi is to allocate each team member responsibility over a specific part of the game, as you can see in the team member list. For each aspect, we agree together on a general design philosophy, ideas, goals and outline. Then, the team member responsible for that part has operational freedom to realize those goals as s/he sees fit. If you have a vision regarding a part of the game yet untouched by VRRP, tell it to us. If your vision matches ours, and we can come to an agreement on a general outline as described above, you're welcome aboard. If you have a vision regarding some part of the game that already has been thoroughly reworked by VRRP, however, the situation becomes more complicated and will have to be considered on a case-to-case basis. In any case, drop us a line.

I know of, or have made myself, an awesome mod that I think VRRP would benefit from integrating. Would you consider it?
-We're certainly open to that, and have already integrated a few, as you can see in the Hall of Fame. Feel free to suggest it. The most important issue is whether we think the mod fits within the stated design goals of the mod. Changes that are both potentially controversial and clearly beyond the stated goals will be avoided. And speaking of changes, a final thing worth mentioning on this issue is that we might have to make slight changes to the mod in question simply to make it work in synch with the rest of VRRP. But regardless of whether we do, the authors of the original work will be credited fully in the Hall of Fame.

Can I integrate VRRP or part of it into my mod?
-Yes, certainly, as long as our work is acknowledged, preferably via a link to this post.

CURRENT VERSION

DOWNLOAD VRRP v2.01

The current version is 2.01, installed by extracting the compressed archive into the mod/ folder under the main Victoria 2 folder. When running the game via the launcher, a tickbox should appear for VRRP in the lower-left window.

Correct checksum is TXUZ, together with A House Divided, patch 2.31

[KonradRichtmark]

CHANGELOG POST VERSION 2.0

2.01

-National Unification and Assert Hegemony CB now only become available after having researched Nationalism (the 3rd Political Thought tech in VRRP, on the place where State & Government is in vanilla)
-Changed the dynamics of Slesvig-Holstein: The entire state is owned by Denmark at game start, i.e. no satellite Holstein. This is simply to force Prussia to fight for it (previously it could simply sphere it and form the NGF without war). However, since National Unification now requires the Nationalism tech, Denmark won't get war declared on it first thing in the game
-Added the possibility for artisans to make machine parts out of iron directly (rather than steel), but at lower profitability
-Removed steel from the cost of railroads, increasing coal and hardware required instead (since market volatility for steel hurt industries that rely on steel as an input too much)
-In the same vein, changed steel cost of forts to artillery and (more) hardware, and steel cost of naval bases to hardware
-Decreased POP consumption of hardware slightly
-Increased base profitability of steel factories slightly to compensate for less upward price movement due to the above
-Made it impossible to manufacture a casus belli against UNIT
-Added missing localizations for naval tech tree branches
-Rebalanced public healthcare to give a lower population growth per level, and at diminishing marginal returns per additional level. Higher levels of healthcare still reduce luxury demand as previously
-Increased the effects of school reforms. They now give a slight bonus to research, as well as help with upward POP promotion, compensating for lack of everyday need fulfilment (POPs that get at least 80% everyday needs can afford to pay for education and don't get any additional bonus from school reforms).
-Made possible to select any level of school reform at once, as with other reforms in VRRP (i.e. not only one level at a time)
-Contempt (formerly Residency) now gives a direct militancy increase to POPs of non-accepted nationality
-Made Proletarian Dictatorships unable to legalize servitude (which they otherwise could, since it is a political reform and they favour revocation of such)
-Removed next_step_only from trade unions and political parties reforms
-Increased size of pension handouts
-Removed some misplaced state_scope brackets from promotion to intellectuals (since their effect is on province rather than state level)
-Made craftsmen demote to farmers/labourers faster if they don't get at least 80% life needs, and make up at least 1% of province population. Thus, temporary starvation won't stop initial industrial growth, but sustaining industry becomes harder if it's too unprofitable to pay craftsmen a living wage
-Reinstated the Bank of UNIT as the world's lender, as it turned out saving behaviour by POPs can't be relied on to provide available funds without breaking other parts of the game
-Added steamer shipyards and accompanying craftsmen to New York, London and Brest to help the steamer industry get going
-Fiddled with the starting factory setup slightly, removing empty factory levels from places and added craftsmen to fill them up. Prussia, particularly, was given more craftsmen at start to increase its competitivity.
-Made the CSA unable to abolish slavery
-Made all levels of maximum workhours social reforms require the same amount of bureaucrats
-Removed Practical Steam Engine from Austria and Agricultural Tools from Russia at game start to slow down their growth
-Changed all countries that start with State Press to instead have Censored Press
-Made low-consciousness serfs much less supportive of abolition of servitude. The first support of abolition kicks in at CON 2, and only becomes significant after CON 4. This should prevent Russia from abolishing serfdom too easily. Abolition of serfdom should now not be trivially easy for Russia
-Decreased POP consumption of glass in order to leave more for factories requiring it as an input
-Intellectuals and bureaucrats now require printed goods and paper, respectively, to function, represented by a tiny life need of that. It's small enough that lack of it won't cause actual starvation, but it will cause a significant increase in decay rate
-Changed the descriptions of the different levels of the School System reform
-Fixed the description of the "Citizenship Law" election event to fit new definitions of party citizenship policies
-Changed the effects of the Medicine inventions. Moved the population growth effects of genetics and stethoscopes to vaccination, and gave the two instead 5 shared prestige each
-Increased starting prestige of each great power by 50 to make it harder for others to catch up

[KonradRichtmark]

edit: this post got obsolete along with version 2.0. Stay tuned for the VRRP manual!

[Sentinal 6]

Thanks - I'll give a go tonight.

[KonradRichtmark]

Did you notice the "USEFUL THINGS TO KNOW FOR PLAYERS" I added? Forgot to do that at first, and those are quite important things to remember.

[barrabas]

Very interesting project!

Let me recommend the Canal Mod, I think it would fit in here (I am not the author, simply recommending it).

Some other aspects that you might want to look at:

-The cost of war.
IMO, war is simply not costly enough, neither in loss of population (civilians as well as military) nor in terms of money. What can be done?

-Combat balance. Some mods have tried to make late game conflict more lethal. I find the usual approach, to give very high bonuses to for example machine guns unbalancing. Hopefully it can be made more gradual.

Best of luck, I will be following your progress!

[Ignatich]

I see negative literacy increase in early game as Mexico with 100% education and administration sliders. WAD?

[KonradRichtmark]

Very interesting project!

Let me recommend the Canal Mod, I think it would fit in here (I am not the author, simply recommending it).

Thank you, I will take a look at it.

Some other aspects that you might want to look at:

-The cost of war.
IMO, war is simply not costly enough, neither in loss of population (civilians as well as military) nor in terms of money. What can be done?

-Combat balance. Some mods have tried to make late game conflict more lethal. I find the usual approach, to give very high bonuses to for example machine guns unbalancing. Hopefully it can be made more gradual.

Best of luck, I will be following your progress!

When it comes to the cost of war, it's very much my aim that war should be expensive, and that long wars should be significant financial undertakings. A balance issue is, however, that countries must be able to afford maintaining the militaries they have at game start. Those militaries seem to correspond pretty well to actual standing army sizes at the time, so if the economy is to be realistic, it must be able to maintain those forces.

For example, in an earlier version (which wasn't good enough for me to dare to release it to the public), countries were being ruined by having to maintain their wooden navies. Hence I halved the upkeep cost in clippers of all wooden ships. Steamships remain as expensive as intended.

If despite the war-economy being balanced at game start doesn't make war properly expensive late-game, I'll have to look at increasing the modifiers to supply consumption caused by military inventions. Now that canned food isn't a military upkeep, increasing supply consumption works without weirdness like soldiers 1900 eating 3 times as much as soldiers 1836.

The lethality of war is definitely on the to-do list, the economy has just had higher priority. This is why I'd like to build on what others have already achieved.

[KonradRichtmark]

I see negative literacy increase in early game as Mexico with 100% education and administration sliders. WAD?

Can't tell whether it's WAD, but it might be. Afaik, the slider position itself doesn't affect literacy. The ratio of clergy to other people is what affects literacy gain. The slider has a long-term effect on how many clerics there will be and thus indirectly increases literacy gain, but it shouldn't follow the slider directly.

Of course, there might be a bug somewhere causing literacy gain to be less than it should, I'll look into it.

[KonradRichtmark]

Nevermind. Found out that removing the flag "can_reduce_consciousness = yes" from clerics did not only remove their consciousness-reducing effect, but also prevented them from working as educators at all.

I'll be making a 1.01 where this is fixed, just a minute.

Edit: 1.01 is up now, education is confirmed to work.

[Toppins]

It's important to know for clergy balance that, at least in vanilla, the education slider itself is a modifier on your literacy gain. So if you use a system where you can slow clergy growth by reducing the slider, you can actually cut your literacy gain in half just by moving the slider down.

The three modifiers on your literacy gain are:

Clergy (base)
x Education Slider postion
x Education efficiency (from tech)

[KonradRichtmark]

It's important to know for clergy balance that, at least in vanilla, the education slider itself is a modifier on your literacy gain. So if you use a system where you can slow clergy growth by reducing the slider, you can actually cut your literacy gain in half just by moving the slider down.

The three modifiers on your literacy gain are:

Clergy (base)
x Education Slider postion
x Education efficiency (from tech)

Are you sure those are multiplicative effects? If they're additive effects the 25% shortfall from setting the "equilibrium point" to 25% rather than 50% could simply be offset by a +25% modifier included in some tech that everyone has (like Malthusian Thought for education and No Standard for admin).

[barrabas]

Thank you, I will take a look at it.



When it comes to the cost of war, it's very much my aim that war should be expensive, and that long wars should be significant financial undertakings. A balance issue is, however, that countries must be able to afford maintaining the militaries they have at game start. Those militaries seem to correspond pretty well to actual standing army sizes at the time, so if the economy is to be realistic, it must be able to maintain those forces.

For example, in an earlier version (which wasn't good enough for me to dare to release it to the public), countries were being ruined by having to maintain their wooden navies. Hence I halved the upkeep cost in clippers of all wooden ships. Steamships remain as expensive as intended.

If despite the war-economy being balanced at game start doesn't make war properly expensive late-game, I'll have to look at increasing the modifiers to supply consumption caused by military inventions. Now that canned food isn't a military upkeep, increasing supply consumption works without weirdness like soldiers 1900 eating 3 times as much as soldiers 1836.

I was rather thinking of how to increase costs when at war. Keeping a decent sized standing army during peace is one thing, having it out fighting a war in foreign territory or even on a different continent is another thing. I'm not sure whether upkeep/costs increase when at war already, but if it does it needs to become more expensive than now.

[KonradRichtmark]

Changed the variable LITERACY_CHANGE_SPEED in defines.lua from 0.1 to 0.2. I tested it, it compensates perfectly. Now 25% education spending gives the same effect as 50% education spending gave previously. The change will be in 1.02, which will be uploaded in a while.

[KonradRichtmark]

Was able to make 25% the balance point of admin spending by tweaking defines.lua. Halved AI weight for admin and education to make it able to cope with the changes. Version 1.02 will be up shortly.

[SimbaIT]

I think you should take a look at this guy idea: http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/...d.php?t=494568

It's brilliant ...

[Belegurt]

are u intrested in making a realistic mod from an econimic, military and diplomatic aspect or also a mod that it will lead to a more historical plausible outcome?

i ask 'cause of the "other aspects" u mentioned

[Xcapos]

Certainly some interesting ideas. Have you done any tests so far?

Adding coal to factory maintenance is definately the right thing to do but have you thought of the bug that occurs when a factory maintenance good is the same as input? Problem would occur for steel factories.

Some ideas I'm expereminting myself with atm:
- Increased consumer needs with each political reform
- Removed the ability from all countries to build small arms/artillery/machine parts from the start. China is no longer building machine parts for factories in England.
- Removed factory subsidies for all parties (had the feeling too many factories where dependant on subsidies which causes overproduction and its own set of problems)

[KonradRichtmark]

Certainly some interesting ideas. Have you done any tests so far?

Of course. The version 1.00 was arrived at after extensive testing. It was the first version that was functional enough to be revealed to the public. It has lots of history, including screwball attempts like allowing capitalists to "own" artisan "factories" and get money that way

Adding coal to factory maintenance is definately the right thing to do but have you thought of the bug that occurs when a factory maintenance good is the same as input? Problem would occur for steel factories.

Already accounted for!

I have three separate factory templates: 1) All 3 input goods, 2) Cement and machine parts, 3) Cement and coal. In that way I avoid duplicating the same good as a maintenance good and as an input. In templates 2) and 3), the two other goods are increased to compensate and make factory maintenance equally expensive.

- Removed the ability from all countries to build small arms/artillery/machine parts from the start. China is no longer building machine parts for factories in England.

This is certainly something I would like to implement, I didn't know it was possible. If you can make it work I'd like to know how you did.

[KonradRichtmark]

I think you should take a look at this guy idea: http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/...d.php?t=494568

It's brilliant ...

Definitely goes to the to-do list if I can implement it in part. Replacing clergy with intelligentsia is a big yes, but I'm not going to have both, add a 13th POP type. That'd require too much fiddling with initial setup files, and when it comes to those, I have other priorities (like, for example, getting more artisans into the developed world at game start).