Victoria 3 - Dev Diary #66 - Patch 1.1 (part 2)

[Saraste]

I wish there was a way to substitute Opium in the game.
The amount I need is always way higher than the one I get.

Perhaps synthetic drugs in Chemical plants? The Chemical plants are rather limited as it is now.
Nitrous oxide was first used in anaesthesia in 1844.

Diethyl ether in 1846. Ether and nitrous oxide, the so called ”laughing gas” or chloroform in 1847 are what I think about when people speak about anaesthesia of the Victorian Era. They are very important for medicinal chemistry, and compared to them, opium is almost medieval. (ok, 1600’s)

What I like about using opium in this game is that it can be used as a drug as well, doesn’t require knowledge of chemical synthesis and is readily available in large parts of the world. However at least events of first successful anaesthesia in 1846 could be done? Or after the tech? Some mention of the anaesthetics must be in the game and there also needs to be a way to synthesize them, as war hospitals absolutely didn’t smell like opium, they smelled like ether.

Victorian Era was the century of chemistry. Alchemy transformed into chemistry in 1783 with Lavoisier’s discovery of oxygen, and chemistry evolved rapidly with.. ehm.. explosive.. discoveries. New elements were discovered all the time, and our knowledge of the world improved — turned out that synthesis of natural products was possible without some sort of God-given ”life essence”. Anaesthesia, together with explosives and fertilizers, however, is something that was visible in a normal person’s life.

The History of Anaesthesia

From plants to the anaesthetics machinery of today

www.rcoa.ac.uk

History of anaesthesia - ASA

Origins The modern anaesthetic era is only just over a hundred and sixty years old. Successful anaesthesia for surgery was first demonstrated in 1846. Before that, the few operations that were ...

asa.org.au

 

[Sighfer]

It could perhaps be more expensive than simply harvesting from Rubber Plantations, perhaps a PM in a Chemical Plant turning oil into rubber? (As it happened IRL and still does, even the medicines you eat are generally ultimately made from oil)

Which is a problem, because the first large scale factory making synthetic rubber was built by the Soviet Union as part of the first Five year Plan, and used Lebedev's process from ethyl alcohol. They used potatoes and limestone. Butadiene can be made from natural gas, petroleum or ethyl alcohol.

There's also Kondakov's process of making "methyl rubber", which was worse, but Germany still did it, because WW1.

 

[Fawr]

Realism and gameplay/fun don't always go hand in hand. This is a prime example for such a case.

I think it would aid both if done right. More detail on the proposal and how it makes gameplay better are in this thread in the suggestion forum - https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/threads/economy-of-scale-formula-changes.1557096/

 

[Tenderkaj]

Randomly doubling the oil fields is the laziest way ever to solve the problem. Why not introduce a mechanic for countries to exploit foreign resources by investing there?
Like, if the USA collapses, maybe the UK or Germany could set up a company to extract American oil, with perhaps bureaucratic or military drawbacks. Lame.

 

[jaredstanko]

I just had a brilliant idea

State modifiers for oil. Can state modifiers be added by event? There could be a +10-25% throughput bonus in places like Texas, romania, parts of the middle east, and the Russian oil fields.

This solves the "these states could have 150 levels of oil but there would never be enough population to work them" problem. It also partially solves the "we couldn't just buff the PM because oil drilling would be too lucrative for pops" problem.

Not gonna happen in 1.2 but needs to happen ASAP is definitely foreign investment. And fixing how lucrative getting colonized is for the discriminated pops.

 

[adil3tr]

Not true, as export revenue is the driving motive of many nations to export their surplus. And as trade is conducted by private entities in most economies (except for, maybe, Command Economy), tariffs are the only way for a state to profit from trade. It is a vital information and if the game would not give that information, I'd never have learned that the state ingame could also profit from imports, which is a mechanic most economy simulators do not have.

While I'd quite agree on the UI opening potential for improvement, I'd disagree on market access and convoys. You can always build railroads to develop infrastructure and generate market access countryside (which, correctly, is a demanded good on the market), while a nation's support for a trade fleet can be limited by the amount and development of supporting ports. I find the mechanics in the game quite accurate. The only thing I'd improve here is landside market access to foreign countries, which also could be improved or impaired by diplomatic contracts.

Most of your response is like this. When you're doing trade in this game, the real reason to do it is to get your economy the resources it needs to grow and deal with bottlenecks. You can just raise taxes to get money. I'm not sure why you wouldn't know about tariffs when tariffs are mentioned in a dozen interfaces. What's actually not immediately intuitive is that it's also telling you the cost of the workers at trade centers. I'm not saying it shouldn't tell you, I'm saying it should have the price improvement put front and center.

As for market access and convoys, I think you're wrong. Trade volumes are too low with the current system for convoys and there's no reason that a country like the dutch or the germans shouldn't be able to build larger docks with more convoys than this, and there's no in game system to actually steer how much individual trade routes grow, so your small wheat export could become level 5 while your essential oil imports could get crowded out. As for railways, the current system is very blunt in terms of how you can subsidize your railways and what they consume, since infrastructure for market access isn't paid for. If you're not subsidizing them, they won't have enough market access even late in the game, places like the american west are even worse even if there's a huge number of people there, but the cost of subsides can reach the millions. This is inside the core loop of the game so they need to take it seriously.

Also the game has a real issue where the british economy doesn't expand nearly enough and the player's economy will outstrip other nations quickly. I reach 1 billion by around 1885, while the AI barely cracks 450 million (and only for france).

 

[Testeria]

...

Polish (Galician) industry was the first in the world and it was quite big in comparison to demand in the beginning.

I wonder if anything of this translated into the game?

Ignacy Łukasiewicz - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Borysławsko-Drohobyckie Zagłębie Naftowe – Wikipedia, wolna encyklopedia

pl-m-wikipedia-org.translate.goog

Forgotten Galicia - Black Gold In Galicia: Oil Boom & Bust In Austria-Hungary

By Chris Wilkinson Oil, that vital resource the modern world needs to exist, does not immediately come to mind when one thinks of Eastern Europe. Oil reserves are most frequently associated with the Middle East, United States, Canada, the North Sea, Mexico and Venezuela among others. Of course...

forgottengalicia.com

Oil Empire: Visions of Prosperity in Austrian Galicia (Harvard Historical Studies): Frank, Alison Fleig: 9780674025417: Amazon.com: Books

Oil Empire: Visions of Prosperity in Austrian Galicia (Harvard Historical Studies) [Frank, Alison Fleig] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. Oil Empire: Visions of Prosperity in Austrian Galicia (Harvard Historical Studies)

www.amazon.com

Bóbrka, first oil wells by Łukasiewicz:

Borysław:

 

[ZacmanTheDamned]

Australia also has (very small) amounts of Oil within the later part of the Vic3 time period as well - notably, offshore drilling down near Albany & the Gippsland Basin:

History of petroleum exploration in Victoria

Discover the history of exploration for petroleum in Victoria throughout the 18th and 19th centuries.

earthresources.vic.gov.au

As also mentioned in the source, there's Kero in the Blue Mountains as well - since Vic3 defines "Oil" very broadly, from Petroleum to Whale Oil, but I assume that's what the reserves in NSW already on the map represent. The offshore parts of the Gippsland Basin are still producing oil to this day, but got its start in 1924. Roma, Queensland, is also a substantial source of Natural Gas - though I'm unsure how Vic3 models that, since iirc the "Gas Lighting" consumes coal? I believe a large oilfield was also developed in Exmouth (Western Australia) in the 50s, but can't find much info on that one.

Quick Edit: New Zealand also produces some oil quite early on, though not a lot, at New Plymouth: https://teara.govt.nz/en/oil-and-gas/page-4

 

[Arbus]

Things I am looking into for the future includes

• Gating some oil reserve potential behind tech to make it where deposits that were not found until more modern days are harder for the player to get to, but still possible.
• If Oil Supply is still too short - looking into adding more variation of production methods of balancing of input/output of those factories.
• Giving the Whale Oil Industry a bit more of a kick into gear in the early stages of the game.

@PDJR_Alastorn While you're at it, please add a whaling industry to The Azores Islands. It was one of the most important industries on the archipelago during the XIX century. Thanks!

 

[Chilango2]

Its been thought about - but making a state trait for that is kinda screaming "here be oil" when the resource has not yet been discovered.

Would it be possible to have state traits be themselves unlocked or "discovered" by advances in technology?

 

[ecpgieicg]

When playing Qing, oil can be easily managed. Rubber not so much. Lead not so much.

Yes, lead. I basically had to conquer the middle strip of US to avoid severe shortage of lead, while having to field thousands of Glass Factories using tier 1 production method.

The overall resource potential definitely needs to be looked at and the consumption/demand need to referenced against that.

Still, AI not developing those resource fields is the primary cause of resource bottleneck in my games.

 

[Leoreth]

This is probably too complex for a 1.1 patch but the mention of labour force issues for rubber made me think:

Major rubber producers like Belgian Congo did not exactly use colonists to extract rubber. They used forced labour. Does it make sense to have a parallel system to what the game currently uses for African American chattel slavery but geared towards forced labour of native populations on the African continent? A pop type analogous to slaves (i.e. no wages) enabled by the colonial exploitation law + a corresponding production method would address the labour problem in the most historical way I think, at least when it comes to Congo.

 

[Balesir]

If you want it to be historically credible, then minimizing the loss of major oil producers to the world economy does not do that. All it does is add credence to the criticism that this game is a minimal consequence sandbox.

If you are playing in the knowledge of where and roughly when iol is to be found, then historical credibility is a bust anyway. Ahistorical actions will be guided by thet knowledge before it was available.

 

[Voodoo Lilium]

Its been thought about - but making a state trait for that is kinda screaming "here be oil" when the resource has not yet been discovered.

Would it be possible to make the trait only appear after the resource is discovered?

 

[DominusNovus]

If you are playing in the knowledge of where and roughly when iol is to be found, then historical credibility is a bust anyway. Ahistorical actions will be guided by thet knowledge before it was available.

Thats a problem with allowing the player to be an omnipotent micromanager of all economic activities within the nation.

 

[grommile]

Thats a problem with allowing the player to be an omnipotent micromanager of all economic activities within the nation.

It's a problem with sandbox games that use a historical starting scenario, and even if we had no control over what Gosplan/the capitalists choose to build, it would still be a problem because it affects our choice of diplomatic and military targets.

 

[PDJR_Alastorn]

I personally really like the increase in oil availability as I've usually been avoid oil consuming PMs except for the army and navy due to scarcity.

Have you considered adding coal liquefaction to the late game, as a way to produce oil from coal?

What about coal liquefaction? It was heavily used at the beginning of the 20th century so create oil from coal.

Its been considered and is in the arsenal of "future ideas." I want to see how coal balances out with more Oil avaiability since right now its being used more than expected since economies don't make that much of an Oil Transfer.

 

[PDJR_Alastorn]

Thank you all for those who have sent me sources, I've set time aside this week to go over them and see what changes to the map I can make. For those of you who have suggested more detailed suggestions like new PMs, Buildings, Methods, Traits, etc - this feedback has gone with my notes on the matter for the future.


I would like to remind those who disapprove of these changes that I am also reading their advice and I would love to faster implement things like FDI and various other suggestions - but the complexity of those solutions to not beget a quick turnaround for 1.1. This game's balance is a living and breathing thing and while I can wait for perfection with some of the suggestions mentioned, I prefer to continually iterate through things. Let us remain civil in our feedback as we have had for the most part and remember that when one change is mentioned - its not at the cost of looking into the other proposed methods as well.

 

[DominusNovus]

It's a problem with sandbox games that use a historical starting scenario, and even if we had no control over what Gosplan/the capitalists choose to build, it would still be a problem because it affects our choice of diplomatic and military targets.

Much less of a problem, since there’d still be a layer of RNG between you and all that delicious oil.

 

[Balesir]

Thats a problem with allowing the player to be an omnipotent micromanager of all economic activities within the nation.

I don't see that it's unique to micromanagement of industry or such like - EU has the same issue with the location and form of the New World, for example, and CK with the possibility of supernatural events. The only way you can get away from it altogether is to have every country, including the players', acting on a set historical script - which would be little fun as a game at all.