Victoria 3 - Dev Diary #2 - Capacities

[EntropyAvatar]

Why does it cost authority to mantain roads? Does the government send the police and yell to ground to keep it being a road? I would make sense to have a money pay to keep the roads, for the workers and the concrete, or steel for the railroads.

If you are building railroads, you need to pay the workers and provide the steel etc. If you issue a decree that landowners must maintain the dirt and gravel roads to a certain standard or face arrest and imprisonment, then the landowners get the peasants to do the needed shovel work and you maintain a minimally-functioning road network.

 

[alanschu]

There was some mana element in Vicky 2, but this feels like relatively arbitrary point generation (aka mana) will now be much more central to the game. If you look at the DD most of the points seem to come from ruler traits, buildings, ideas, rather than pops.

I think it's a bit too early to say, especially given that even in Victoria 2 there was an explicit relationship between buildings and pops.

Most goods in Victoria 2 end up coming from Factories. But the output of those factories is determined by the pops that work them. If you have bureaucrat type jobs working in the government buildings, then the points "coming from buildings" are still directly influenced by pops.

 

[aono]

Nah, it's the Tsar demanding that the serfs repair the roads withouth the state having to pay any money. Extra forced labour basically.

...and this people would die, and roads would still unfinished.
That's Tsar's government demanding his ministry to ensure that Vladivostok's roads would be maintainted well, and "overpressure" every other concern of local administration. Like, they are thinking "ok, we need roads, farms, trade relationships with China, more support to local fortifications, education policies, medicine..." and emissar from SPb is, like, "ROADS. TZAR WANTS ROADS."

 

[Paul-Alain Léger]

I'm more interested in the Swedish flag than that.

The first thing that crossed my mind as well

 

[BrytonJSwan]

Mana is when the developers implement a gameplay abstraction I don't like and the less I like it the more mana-er it is.

 

[wilcoxchar]

Is bureaucracy capacity equals to how much money you invest? Sounds like that if you has enough money to afford administration building and bureaucrats' salary, you can have as many bureaucracy capacity as you want. I'm worry about that when you get everything on track in the mid-game and have stable income, bureaucracy capacity will never be a problem.

You can't pay more people than are employed, so no, even if you have the money you won't be able to have as much bureaucracy capacity as you want. And increasing the number of people employed in the bureaucracy will move them out of other areas like resource production or factories, so it becomes a balancing act.

 

[GalaXion24]

Oh gosh no. The money is shown in the top bar next to the Capacities but works like you'd expect a treasury to work. The bar being red means you're halfway towards your credit limit, the positive balance means you're slowly paying your loans off.

The fact that they're rendered exactly the same right now is admittedly confusing and will definitely be fixed!

Credit limits and paying off loans? It sounds like debt will be far more normalised and money won't be something you stockpile in Scrooge McDuck's pool like you did in Vicky 2 (which sounds like a good and realistic change to me). Can you tell us more about how money works on Victoria 3?

 

[EUnderhill]

I'm not sure what do you want to say. The question was "how democratic government can assert its authority to maintain infrastructure", as a policy. That's examples how they do it.

The way you phrased it implied that there must be a post office, which is not the case. That is all.

 

[Wizzington]

Is bureaucracy capacity equals to how much money you invest? Sounds like that if you has enough money to afford administration building and bureaucrats' salary, you can have as many bureaucracy capacity as you want. I'm worry about that when you get everything on track in the mid-game and have stable income, bureaucracy capacity will never be a problem.

The need for bureaucracy scales upwards with a higher incorporated population, especially if you want to run social programs. You're essentially paying for every pop you want to educate, provide healthcare for, etc. As the example given, it's extremely expensive just to govern China, providing it with solid infrastructure and social programs is meant to be a herculean undertaking.

 

[aono]

The way you phrased it implied that there must be a post office, which is not the case. That is all.

Ah, no. I meant it's the way of democratic government to enforce road maintenance (historically used one). One of them.

 

[Meanmanturbo]

The first thing that crossed my mind as well

It's the herring salad, sitting in the corner of the Swedish-Norwegian union flag

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Union_mark_of_Norway_and_Sweden

 

[aslothehunter]

If you are building railroads, you need to pay the workers and provide the steel etc. If you issue a decree that landowners must maintain the dirt and gravel roads to a certain standard or face arrest and imprisonment, then the landowners get the peasants to do the needed shovel work and you maintain a minimally-functioning road network.

So you will pay money to the landowner in a way of corruption, or you will pay the bureucrats/police to keep the revolts neutralized, still no need to have an "authority coin". Maybe i want it to be "realistic" because our governments don´t have authority capacity, they pay police military and antirioters to keep the country paying the taxes, and when they pay little corruption grows in public service. And corruption is not a coin, is literal money stolen from the goverment or the people or both.

 

[Enkvi]

Realy cool background picture !

 

[Butter For Less]

Is road maintenance a constant thing (ie. infrastructure always costs authority) or is it more akin to a focus used to increase infrastructure?

 

[Meanmanturbo]

Now for the really important question, has Sweden expanded in the screenshot or has Sweden got 5 states now rather then the 3 in Vicky 2?

I wonder how they are split. Svealand being one. Norrland is probably still one huge state since it is so sparsley populated. Skåneland, Västergötland and Småland-Östergötland-Gotland?

 

[Stein14]

So you will pay money to the landowner in a way of corruption, or you will pay the bureucrats/police to keep the revolts neutralized, still no need to have an "authority coin". Maybe i want it to be "realistic" because our governments don´t have authority capacity, they pay police military and antirioters to keep the country paying the taxes, and when they pay little corruption grows in public service. And corruption is not a coin, is literal money stolen from the goverment or the people or both.

Authority is an important resource. An unpopular command is being carried out. 100 not.

 

[EntropyAvatar]

So you will pay money to the landowner in a way of corruption, or you will pay the bureucrats/police to keep the revolts neutralized, still no need to have an "authority coin". Maybe i want it to be "realistic" because our governments don´t have authority capacity, they pay police military and antirioters to keep the country paying the taxes, and when they pay little corruption grows in public service. And corruption is not a coin, is literal money stolen from the goverment or the people or both.

I think it's there to model societies where the landowners do what the king says because they don't want to face the king's punishment, and the peasants do what the landowners say because they don't want to face the local lord's punishment. The more you have actual rights under the laws, the less this approach works.

It's also worth noting that the king's authority doesn't scale over large areas. You get a fixed amount based on your law set up, and you pay an amount per state where you try to enforce your decrees. A government of laws can't just force that labour, so they have to pay for the infrastructure maintenance, or let the customers do that if the infrastructure is private.

 

[mikhail321]

Will bureaucracy usage grow lineary with the number of states and pops or will there be an upward curve? I.e. will large states like China and Russia need to allocate a larger share of resources to bureaucracy than say Serbia everything else being equal? Will it make blobing beyond certain point prohibitively expensive? And will the mechanic apply to colonial states?

 

[Alfred Dreyfus]

Voting rights don't directly increase the wealth of pops, but they do give them the ability to push for social reforms that benefit them, which in turn may mean the player is able to get those reforms passed.

Authoritarian non-democratic governments should be able to give social rights to their population. It shouldn't be something that only democratic governments can do.

The game should let you be an authoritarian non-democratic government that cares about their citizens and treats them well, and it should also let you be a democratic government that doesn't care about their citizens and treats them badly.

The difference between non-democratic vs democratic governments should be:
- Non-democratic: you can easily squeeze and disrespect your population (you have "absolute" power and you can try to do anything) BUT if you do the population's riots and revolts will be very violent and aggressive (coups, regions declare independence, civil wars, guillotine, etc).
- Democratic: you cannot easily squeeze and disrespect your population (as there are legal limitations against your actions, like the Constitution, the Parliament, etc) BUT if you do the population's riots and revolts won't be very violent and aggressive and instead they will express their anger voting radical parties that will forbid what you are doing as a player (the new elected parliament by angry voters will not let you continue what your doing: no more wars, lower taxes, more social rights, etc).

TL;DR: non-democratic systems should let you do as a player whatever you want but if POPs get angry they will burn your country, democratic systems should limit more what actions you can do as a player but if POPs get angry they won't burn your country that much and will just elect a new parliament that limits even more your actions so you don't continue the path you are taking (capitalism vs socialism, militarism vs pacifism, unitarism vs confederalism, etc).

This could lead to interesting strategies, for example if you want your POPs to vote for something, you could do exactly the opposite for some time to provoke their votes.

 

[ctl3]

You can't pay more people than are employed, so no, even if you have the money you won't be able to have as much bureaucracy capacity as you want. And increasing the number of people employed in the bureaucracy will move them out of other areas like resource production or factories, so it becomes a balancing act.

In my experience in VIC2, usually 80% of people works in farms and factories. Even if I grow my bureaucrat pop from 1% to 5%, the impact to economy is not significant.

The need for bureaucracy scales upwards with a higher incorporated population, especially if you want to run social programs. You're essentially paying for every pop you want to educate, provide healthcare for, etc. As the example given, it's extremely expensive just to govern China, providing it with solid infrastructure and social programs is meant to be a herculean undertaking.

My concern is that I don't want to mindlessly squeeze money from my people to get my social programs done. I wish there would be more choices to run an efficient bureaucracy such as high literacy, low corruption, cultural unity etc. The influence capacity is determined by rank, which is determined by prestige, GDP and military ( assume that it's similar to VIC2 ) so you have three different way to increase your diplomatic influence. The other two types of capacity probably need the same.