Victoria 3 - Dev Diary #1 - Pops

[MrNewVegas]

One argument for this (just my thoughts not a dev) is realism. In v2 each province had a single RGO - this system more accurately simulates that it's more complex than that.

Another is (I presume) performance, dramatically decreasing the number of populations that need to be uniquely tracked sounds like it would be a performance gold mine.

For a third - it's basically not ever the case in v2 that you interact with all your provinces, they are simply to small and many fall beneath your notice - this system allows for units of people (states) that you are more plausibly going to be able to actually care about, track, and see your impact on.

You can simulate multiple RGO's per state easily. In fact, if they include multiple RGO's per state then they absolutely have to track where those are for the division of a possible state in a peace agreement.
Actually, I would not even mind if populations could move freely in a state to work on whatever RGO they like (so if you have a whole state then there is no need to track pops on an individual level) but if a state is partially conquered then it makes literally zero sense to not track pops on a per-province level. Of course, for particularly large states this would be somewhat strange but you could easily have a system where pops can work on any RGO in some sub-area around their province. (Counterpoint I can see coming: this is what a state is, but perhaps states will be large and in any event I don't think this is a problem: having pops be able to work on anything in a state is fine as long as you simulate pops on a province level for population)

So Pops are tracked on a per-province level but only for the purposes of determining how a state is divided and not for the purposes of economics (although there is no reason not to do both, this is a *compromise* I am offering) although obviously if a state was divided partially between two or more hostile powers then one would have to make the pops not work on the other side of the border.
Of course, if only a major city is taken and there is some kind of market-agreement, pops may be allowed to cross the border but I do not think this is a very relevant distincton: where a pop lives is much less important than where a pop works, and who the pop buys things from. If Shanghai has a huge base of peasants who live outside of Shanghai but work each day in Shanghai, then clearly Shanghai is the place you want to own, not where they live.

 

[stratigo]

Totally accurate - or, at least, to my knowledge it is accurate for many European cultures, at least for specific professions! This is one of the reasons why we've differentiated between Workforce and Dependents, rather than Men, Women, Children, Seniors etc. There are too many idiosyncratic cultural variations - and cultures changing over the eras - to model gender norms correctly in every context.

The gameplay effect we're after here is that in the early game, a large number of Pops (whoever they may be) aren't able to contribute to the country's industrialized workforce, can't vote, can't become soldiers, etcetera. Their meager income is considered to be earned outside the dominant industries and cannot be tracked and taxed by the state, and is affected by laws like Child Labor and Pension institutions. If the country reforms its views on women they gain (among other things) greater access to workforce that can work these formal, taxed, often urban professions. But there will always be a lot of Dependents in every Pop.

If you were wearing clothes in the 19th century, a women most likely made that. And, uh, women working in textile mills certainly got taxed.

My fear here is that dependents don't produce anything tangible, meaning the primary producers of clothes no longer actually produce clothes. And textiles were one of the driving forces of the industrial revolution. So, who is going to be producing all the clothes that were historically being produced mostly by women?

 

[Gabriano]

Hyped just to see how different portraits for different pops would look like. This would be so immersive while running my mega campaign of the Empire of Nubia from CK2

 

[Axe99]

If you were wearing clothes in the 19th century, a women most likely made that. And, uh, women working in textile mills certainly got taxed.

My fear here is that dependents don't produce anything tangible, meaning the primary producers of clothes no longer actually produce clothes. And textiles were one of the driving forces of the industrial revolution. So, who is going to be producing all the clothes that were historically being produced mostly by women?

Very much agree - although I'd also argue that the non-market part of economic (ie socially productive) activity deserves more than "it's what dependents do, and they get dribs and drabs of money for it" - both because including all of the economy makes for a far better simulation (particularly for a game like Vicky 3, where social conditions matter - I'm not suggesting I'd propose modelling domestic work in HoI4) but also because, as you well point out, women did plenty of stuff that straddled the two (for example, and as best I understand it, women's work on a peasant farm was very much work, and essential to the functioning of the farm, even if it had domestic elements as well that were less farm-centric).

And then as technology and patterns of work change, how this affects domestic workers (primarily women, children and older people) is an important pillar of the social, political and economic changes through the period (even if the game didn't go to the 1930s).

Noting that it's great that women and children are represented in the game at all - it's huge strides forwards from Vicky 2/1 - but I reckon there's scope to make bigger strides, if the devs were interested

 

[Gogote54]

As for CK3, not very fan of this whole "3D portraits" stuff, but if it stays fluid without requiring a beefy setup, I'm cool with it.

Other than that, it sounds like a nice mix of Stellaris and Vicky2 systems with some original approach too.

 

[sprites]

for now this is pretty similar to vicky 2

 

[Deathknight15]

I think that POPs won't be explicitly modelled as residing in this or that province, but rather implicitly modelled.

For example, think about the San Francisco issue people have been discussing. Who lives in San Francisco? Farmers? Probably not. Factory workers and other urban residents.

So, if you conquer San Francisco only from California, the state will divide population based on the pops occupations, and the amount of land you took ,and what types of buildings are there. You took urban provinces only, so the pops you get in the new split state are heavily weighted towards urban occupations. Based on the workers in those buildings in the province you can know alot about how many people were living in that city.

This would all be proportional to the amount of urban areas in California, so if LA is a huge city too, you wont get ALL of the urban pops, just a hefty chunk.

If instead you take rural areas, the reverse is true. I am sure Terrain also would be a weight factor. Extreme desert areas in southern california will likely decrease the weight of how many rural pops are thought to exist there quite a bit. But if you have a city like Las Vegas, this would be overridden.

I am not sure how this ties in with cultural and religious map modes though, that is actually a more interesting problem.

 

[wilcoxchar]

I think that POPs won't be explicitly modelled as residing in this or that province, but rather implicitly modelled.

For example, think about the San Francisco issue people have been discussing. Who lives in San Francisco? Farmers? Probably not. Factory workers and other urban residents.

So, if you conquer San Francisco only from California, the state will divide population based on the pops occupations, and the amount of land you took ,and what types of buildings are there. You took urban provinces only, so the pops you get in the new split state are heavily weighted towards urban occupations. Based on the workers in those buildings in the province you can know alot about how many people were living in that city.

This would all be proportional to the amount of urban areas in California, so if LA is a huge city too, you wont get ALL of the urban pops, just a hefty chunk.

If instead you take rural areas, the reverse is true. I am sure Terrain also would be a weight factor. Extreme desert areas in southern california will likely decrease the weight of how many rural pops are thought to exist there quite a bit. But if you have a city like Las Vegas, this would be overridden.

I am not sure how this ties in with cultural and religious map modes though, that is actually a more interesting problem.

Yeah, the economic part of this really isn't a problem. The cultural and religious aspect is the more pressing concern, but I'm sure there's a way for Paradox to figure that out so it works well enough.

 

[atomicsoda]

Uhhh... what? If a province with some workplaces is captured, then those workplaces are captured. The POPs who work there are out of luck for a while or perhaps forced to work for the occupying power. It doesn't do anything to the workplaces in other provinces of the state. The bigger problem if everything is modeled at the state level is that occupying individual provinces means you need some algorithm to define how a fraction of all the workplaces are affected.

in V2 factories were done at state level

 

[Nostalgium]

Every Pop is visualized so you can see which demographic sports the best moustache.

It is settled, then. When I unite Germany, rights will be assigned to demographics based on the might of their moustaches. A mustacheocracy.

 

[Hertzila]

If you were wearing clothes in the 19th century, a women most likely made that. And, uh, women working in textile mills certainly got taxed.

My fear here is that dependents don't produce anything tangible, meaning the primary producers of clothes no longer actually produce clothes. And textiles were one of the driving forces of the industrial revolution. So, who is going to be producing all the clothes that were historically being produced mostly by women?

While I do think that it's important to note potential issues and share relevant historical facts about game systems to better them, have the developers not already mostly addressed this? By my read, dependants aren't by default women, and the exact cultural and societal situations affect who can work where, which is then modeled in the numbers one way or another. Which to me sounds like, if you compared textile and non-textile industries, the textile industry would have substantially bigger workforce and smaller dependant numbers, because far more women are part of the workforce there than in other industries.

The dependants do not produce much of substance for the society at large, but nothing says that pops working at textile industries would include women among the dependants. For the relevant cultures, they would be part of the workforce, since they, well, work.

 

[tksolway]

Is this still using the same engine? Because Stellaris has major issues handling it's pops.

 

[pingupower]

Huh? Women and children existing are "modern political issues"????

Not what I mean. There are some themes that can be uncomfortable today when you look back. For example there are no internment camps in HOI IV and I guess Vicky will not let you genocide people.

In the case of children labor, well the sad truth in my opinion is that abolishing it outright (assassin creed comes to mind) would be impossible. Children were working because their income was needed. It could only be abolished as part of larger social reforms in the second half of the 19th century. So the game would need to reward you for keeping kids working.
Regarding women working, the situation was super diverse: would you consider a peasant's wife as working or a dependent? In industry women did work in some cases like textile but not in heavy industry for obvious reasons. I could go on for every class of pop. However a blanket equality in the 19th or even 20th century is unrealistic. While most of us (I hope) consider men and women equal, in the 19th century this was a radical and immoral belief.

In short these are real themes but they are very hard to handle in a historically respectfull way and especially without bringing modern morality into it.

 

[Mr. Wiggles]

If you were wearing clothes in the 19th century, a women most likely made that. And, uh, women working in textile mills certainly got taxed.

My fear here is that dependents don't produce anything tangible, meaning the primary producers of clothes no longer actually produce clothes. And textiles were one of the driving forces of the industrial revolution. So, who is going to be producing all the clothes that were historically being produced mostly by women?

If they are making clothes they are not classified as dependents, then

 

[stratigo]

If they are making clothes they are not classified as dependents, then

Okay. So, is the game going to model the actual reality that women made most of the textiles world wide

 

[Nostalgium]

Okay. So, is the game going to model the actual reality that women made most of the textiles world wide

I doubt it's going to be specific about it. If the pops work in a textile mill, you can assume they are women, just like you can assume they are men if they work in a machine parts factory. They are literally just called Workforce and Dependents. It doesn't need more specification than that TBH.

 

[stratigo]

I doubt it's going to be specific about it. If the pops work in a textile mill, you can assume they are women, just like you can assume they are men if they work in a machine parts factory. They are literally just called Workforce and Dependents. It doesn't need more specification than that TBH.

It is looking like they are defining pops by gender as well

 

[Nostalgium]

It is looking like they are defining pops by gender as well

Not seen that mentioned anywhere. The closest you get are women's rights adjusting how much of a Pop is in the Workforce, but that doesn't mean the pops themselves are defined by it. Likewise for children - there are no "adult" pops and "child" pops. Only working pops and dependant pops.

 

[Mel19]

Looks amazing. But I have never seen a silver ribbon on a fez like shown on the 2nd pic. Maybe it would be more accurate to remove it from the hat.

 

[karstenengelman]

Can I just say, thank you! I owned two versions of the game...one was lost. So, in the 2000+ hours I have in it I can truly say it is my favorite game of all times!!!!!

One thing, I would love if you could direct your production to go to your government first. For example, if I am the Ottomans and have Liquor factories, and wanting guards, I find I cannot get the Guard units because I lack Liquor. And at the same time my factories are selling it on the open market. This would not happen in the real world.

One other minor thing - many of the benefits, such as machineguns apply to all units, and I think it should apply differently to different types. For example, a CAV unit should not get the benefit of machineguns when attacking, only on defence.

Just a couple of thoughts.

LOVE THE GAME! And so happy V3 is coming out.

I am available for play-testing if you desire.

v/r
Karsten