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Victoria 3 - Dev Diary #4 - Goods

Happy Thursday and welcome back to yet another Victoria 3 dev diary, this time on the subject of Goods! Goods are a core economic feature of Victoria 3, just as they were in previous Victoria games, and come in a wide variety of types. Also, as in previous Victoria games, the manufacturing of Goods (by Pops in Buildings) is how the vast majority of the wealth in Victoria 3 is created.

Fundamentally, a unit of Goods represent a quantity of a certain type of natural resource, manufactured good or intangible service and come attached with a price tag. This price varies both in base (a single unit of Tanks is pricier than a single unit of Fabric) and in actual market value, as the prices of Goods change depending on supply and demand.

A selection of goods that are bought and sold in the British Market.

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There are four broad categories of Goods: Staple Goods, Luxury Goods, Industrial Goods and Military Goods. Of these, Staple/Luxury Goods are mainly consumed by Pops, and Industrial/Military Goods are mainly consumed by buildings, but there are no hard rules here - you will find Buildings using Luxury Goods and Pops purchasing Industrial Goods when and where it makes sense for them to do so.

Staple Goods are everyday goods that Pops need to live, such as food to eat, wood to heat their homes, and clothes to wear. Staple Goods tend to be purchased in vast quantities by poor and middle class pops, with richer pops generally eschewing them for luxury variants.

Grain - possibly the most Staple of all Staple Goods!
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Luxury Goods are the things that Pops do not necessarily need but definitely want, such as fine foods, luxury drinks like Tea and Coffee, or fine clothes made from chinese silk. Luxuries tend to be more profitable to produce than Staple Goods, but depend on having a customer base with money - a poor factory worker isn’t going to be buying a whole lot of mahogany cabinets.

You can never have too many painted Ming vases, I always say.
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Industrial Goods are goods such as Iron, Coal, Rubber and Lead whose main purpose is often to be converted into other, more profitable goods. Securing a steady supply of vital Industrial Goods is crucial to Industrialization and growing the GDP of your country.

Tools are essential to the operation of many industries.
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Military Goods are goods such as Small Arms, Ammunition and Warships that are used by military buildings to arm and supply the armies and navies of the 19th century nations. The more technologically advanced the army or navy, the more complex (and expensive!) Military Goods they will need.

I’m told that soldiers tend to perform better if they’re given ammunition for their guns.
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We’ll be returning to the topic of Goods in later dev diaries when discussing related mechanics such as Markets, Pop Needs, Goods Substitution and Cultural Obsessions... but for now, I bid you adieu for a while, as next week Mikael will provide you with a dev diary about something we’ve been teasing for some time now - Production Methods!
 
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Has the idea of more than one good per province ever been explored? Past or present...
There are no such limits in Victoria 3. A state can contain potentials for every single building in the game if you were inclined to create such a super-state. There is no such state in the game, but it would be technically possible under the systems we have.
 
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You can do this by importing cheap foreign grain or subsidizing your agriculture, we did discuss having a direct way to subsidize goods but we felt the mechanics we have did the same thing in more interesting ways.
So foreign goods are bought at the (potentially cheaper) foreign market price (which could probably bankrupt your industry)?
 
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Is there a limit to the number of goods that mods can add? It is painful working with the 64 limit on my regional market mod for Victoria 2.
Nope.
 
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There are no such limits in Victoria 3. A state can contain potentials for every single building in the game if you were inclined to create such a super-state. There is no such state in the game, but it would be technically possible under the systems we have.
Create such a super-state? Am I able to change state boundaries?
 
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To give an example, we have a variety of different farms (rice, grain, millet etc) which all produce the 'grain' good (but might vary in efficiency and have different secondary production methods, more on this next week). It wouldn't be hard at all for a modder to actually break these up into different goods which can all be used to fulfill pop food needs according to what's locally available in a market.
Oh. I somehow thought all those different farms would produce different goods. Though I guess it makes sense to keep things simple.
 
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I anxiously want to know, Whether there are different types of firearms and artillery based on technological differences, the weapon technology of the 19th century has been updated very quickly, so a large number of weapons of different technical levels have appeared. I hope that the flintlock, percussion gun, and breech loader rifle can become different" Goods" and can appear in the hands of soldiers as different weapons, not simply "Small Arms"...
In VIC2, this is a pity...
If so, I expect to be more detailed~
If not, it would be a proposal~
 
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There are no such limits in Victoria 3. A state can contain potentials for every single building in the game if you were inclined to create such a super-state. There is no such state in the game, but it would be technically possible under the systems we have.
How will that work when you split a state? How will the game handle a state where it's entire coal (or whatever good) production comes geographically speaking form a single province, then that province is taken away, say for a treaty port? Will the new state have all the coal production? Will the old one lose it all?
 
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The more technologically advanced the army or navy, the more complex (and expensive!) Military Goods they will need.
Does it mean that the game has several technological tiers of, for example, rifles and artillery (similar to HoI4), or it simply refers to the need for tanks, planes etc. by the late game?
 
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Oh. I somehow thought all those different farms would produce different goods. Though I guess it makes sense to keep things simple.
The farms do differ in their potential production, it's just that they all produce some grain as their main good.
 
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I anxiously want to know, Whether there are different types of firearms and artillery based on technological differences, the weapon technology of the 19th century has been updated very quickly, so a large number of weapons of different technical levels have appeared. I hope that the flintlock, percussion gun, and breech loader rifle can become different" Goods" and can appear in the hands of soldiers as different weapons, not simply "Small Arms"...
In VIC2, this is a pity...
Seeing how there's only 50 types of goods as opposed to Vicky2's 40, I kinda doubt it.
 
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Reminds me of the weird things that happen to markets when you load a Vicky 2 save.
At the current version of the game the economy isn't fully initialized with all values until a few weeks in (very much like in Victoria 2), though this is something we're working on and absolutely plan to have fixed for the eventual release version. It has to do with how many circular and interconnected effects there are in the game (for example, a drop in grain price due can lead to pops increasing their wealth level, which results in them buying more grain, which raises the price of grain again) which all needs to be properly accounted for during game initialization.
 
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