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

[realCuervo]

Maybe the Oil Problem can be solved in the consumption end too? Coal still counts ~50% of the world's current electricity supply, so it would be simply untrue if any state back in ~1900 were to have 100% electricity generated from oil!

Replace the oil turbine PM with "backup diesel generators" that use 75%-ish coal and 25%-ish oil can greatly reduce late game oil intake. In my game run, if I turn on all oil PMs, electricity will be the most oil-demanding industry.

 

[Owen123]

I was actually mistaken by my Bolshevik revolution assertion. The US overtook Russia as the world's leading crude oil producer in 1902, long before the strife, turmoil, and economic upset of the commies taking power. Russia did seem to have a retraction in oil production later in the decade, and during the revolution, but it wasn't as disastrous as I thought. It came primarily from the US having a massive +10% growth to oil production as other oil fields were discovered.

So prior to the 20th century, yeah, from what I can tell primarily from the Baku oil fields (there might be more, but that one in a source was atributed for being the primary reason why the Russians briefly overtook the USA in production around ~1900). So the Russians had one REALLY good oil field in Persia. But the US had several, and eventually left Russia in the dust as much of its petrochemical reserves are harder to reach due to terrain, remoteness, etc.

According to a paper I read from the European Journal of Economic History, The Russian oil industry of this time period peaked the same year it became the leading oil producing nation, producing around 700 million poods(a Russians weight based measurement) of oil, with 670 million poods coming from Baku. After peaking, oil production would decline until reaching its lowest in 1905, with around 450 million poods of oil being produced that year. However, non Baku oil production grew slightly during this time, and would continue to grow until 1916, when around 600 poods of oil was produced, with 270 coming from non Baku fields, this was actually the second best year for Russian oil after 1901. In 1917 non Baku oil surpassed Baku oil production, but only due to the decline of the latter's oil production. But then the Russian revolution hit and everything came tumbling down. And it wasn't due to a lack of oil that prevented extraction in Baku, while the soviets wouldnt have been around at this time, Russia still had a revolution in 1905 and it was overall just a worse place to do buisness compared to the united states, making oil production less profitable. There was plenty of oil in Russia to be exploited, but it was far less advanced and stable than the also oil abbundant US, so naturally they would out compete them.

 

[Herzmut]

There's so much that needs fixing. The trade route screen tells you the tariff revenue, which is the least important information.

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.

You never have enough market access even in dense urban areas, it's pointless. You never have enough convoys and are stopped from building enough ports. Almost every part of the UI doesn't give enough information or gives the wrong information.

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.

The AI doesn't colonize the whole map and colonies don't exploit their resources fully. There's effectively no way to do most things diplomatically, even making a protectorate which logically should be something you can do to countries you have a lot of influence over.

This almost never happened in the game's era. Protectorates almost always have been established violently, as this was an era of pride in sovereignty and competition in conquer.

Command economy requires you to have forced subsidies on all buildings, which is nonsense; it should just make buildings operate at some capacity or pay wages, not 100% operation. And under command economy the government doesn't even get the profits!

I wrote a whole own thread on how to improve Command Economy, based on the experience Germany had with it in the past. It focuses more on general improvements on the whole economy mechanic, with a focus on Command Economy, but also in general.

There should be a way to replace interest group leaders, even at some cost, since their personal traits (not their personal ideology, but they traits like cruel or bandit) can cause modifiers like -100% votes for the interest group in elections.

Replacing interest group leaders is indeed a policy which could be unlocked on "Secret Agency" policy in the internal affairs law. Can't say it was not a custom in the Russian Command Economy or in Germany's Fascism to remove politically inconvenient people. The justification for that could be different, though. A democracy might want to remove violent people, terrorists or people who lead groups opposed to the constitution. (Seceding and rebellious movements are almost never connected with leading characters which could be incarcerated or even perished, which is indeed a weakness of the game mechanics.) A dictatorship, however, might remove people for political inconvenience and using a fabricated reason for that, like certain connections to foreign powers or espionage, or remove people for ideological reasons, like them being discriminated.

At this point, game designers, who would not be ashamed of making child labor a game decision, would also need to decide if they would want to make the player decide how excessive the persecution of undesired people should be in the game. I myself never played Germany as autocracy, so I would not know how far this already goes.

When you have a monarchy, puppeting often just makes a personal union that dissolves if you become a republic (not a civil war, just if you don't have a monarch anymore).

Maybe continuing puppetry on a transitioning motherland should be connected to the support of the people in the puppet state (loyalists / radicals balance). I imagine that a union would dissolve much easier if the support wasn't so great (UK / Ireland), rather if the relationships between the puppet state and the motherland was amicable. (Greenland / Denmark) However, seceding movements should get a temporary boost factor when a transition occurs.

So many production methods/factories just shouldn't be combined and only feel complicated by being combined, like glass and porcelain, or clothes and fancy clothes,

However, it is accurate. In the game's era, luxury goods were produced by factories to generate additional revenue when their market was saturated with their main product. The production methods of glass and porcelaine, or clothes and fancy clothes, are similar or even close to equal. It is not complicated at all. Just don't activate luxury production for all the plants at once.

and the bizarre ratios of fertilizer/explosives, it just makes the game more confusing to play and adds a ton of micro.

While I see the problem with fixed production ratios on plants which produce two products of which none is a luxury, instead of adjusting the rate to what is more profitable to produce, while the demand for explosives and fertilizer variates pretty much depending on armament or agricultural production, I do not see the point in criticizing micro-management on a game like Victoria 3.

The UI elements are often self defeating. For example silver coins could mean a good is 40% above its base price, or 30% beneath it,

Hence there is also a distinctable amount on the coins symbol: the pile of coins would indicate how much above or below the price really is. The color easily indicates the price range.

They wrote in dev diaries that having a large deficit of a resource isn't a bad thing necessarily, which in the actual game isn't true at all since trade volumes are often too low and and these can bottleneck your economy very easily.

Trade volumes are of course based on a good's scarcity and are supposed to bottleneck your economy. You can't expect an exuberance of goods only because you trade. Alternative production methods are available, and having a large deficit on a resource is truly not a bad thing. I recently finished playing a Command Economy Germany without importing oil or rubber - the goods were scarce, but not completely absent. The solution to have a "black market" sort of thing in the game is actually pretty clever.

 

[RhoxOS]

Some more suggestions on the oil.

1. There is a good database in Harvard database called 'Giant oil and gas field discoveries 2018' (link) it includes size and when it was discovered with the exact location. Furthermore, the data itself is also provided in excel format. If you filter the discovery year prior to 1939, there are only about 100 records, so I think you guys can use this.

2. However, one from Harvard only includes GIANT records, and petty ones like Japan's Niitsu Oil Field are omitted. For that, here is a good table from 'National official statistics. U.S. Bureau of Mines: Mineral Resources of the U.S.' (link) * means it's an estimate or provisional figure. (Note that I rotated some pieces of the table to show information only in the English language)

I'm not going to tell which one to exclude since devs already said they won't do it. However, I do think Brunei, Myanmar (Burma), and maybe Estonia need an oil field in the game to represent it.

 

[Amorenkaire]

According to a paper I read from the European Journal of Economic History, The Russian oil industry of this time period peaked the same year it became the leading oil producing nation, producing around 700 million poods(a Russians weight based measurement) of oil, with 670 million poods coming from Baku. After peaking, oil production would decline until reaching its lowest in 1905, with around 450 million poods of oil being produced that year. However, non Baku oil production grew slightly during this time, and would continue to grow until 1916, when around 600 poods of oil was produced, with 270 coming from non Baku fields, this was actually the second best year for Russian oil after 1901. In 1917 non Baku oil surpassed Baku oil production, but only due to the decline of the latter's oil production. But then the Russian revolution hit and everything came tumbling down. And it wasn't due to a lack of oil that prevented extraction in Baku, while the soviets wouldnt have been around at this time, Russia still had a revolution in 1905 and it was overall just a worse place to do buisness compared to the united states, making oil production less profitable. There was plenty of oil in Russia to be exploited, but it was far less advanced and stable than the also oil abbundant US, so naturally they would out compete them.

Probably more than they historically did at that point if they avoided those issues, certainly, much like the USA would have more if the Great Depression likewise didn't nuke its industry. Although its hard to tell just by how much without a painfully obtuse pouring over of data that would be befitting of a Master's thesis I'd imagine.

Ideal world it would be great to have more dynamic oil discovery chances. Something like 1% chance to discover a source of oil based off of that state's GDP, which can then create an Oil Boom to dramatically increase the chances to find more in that state, then technologies which boost the chance further (based off of greater understanding of geography and what not), and then knowing how much oil wells could be made in each state by well depth technologies, chance for wells to deplete, etc, etc.

I doubt even a full DLC dedicated to just oil would be able to accurately model all of those factors, but one can dream eh?

 

[Hehehu]

The cap for oil should be significantly higher than 50/60. Places like Texas and Arabia could go up to 100.

Agree, the world has seen major wars for control of the oil fields in the middle east, and the caucuses in russia as well as the american fields shoild be targets worth going total war for

 

[lolada]

There is that mod that improves AI a bit. But even with the mod - AI countries are pretty pathetic - they just don't like to build staff even 70 years into the game. AI really needs to be forced to build more things.

 

[PDJR_Alastorn]

@PDJR_Alastorn was struggling with resources and it was great to see this problem solved so quickly.
But the problem with resources in the game goes beyond that, and I think there are a lot of resources that are scarce when both the player and the ai nation can use them properly, such as coal, hardwood, etc. I have a bold but justified idea. Can we make more kinds of resources, like coal and iron, be discovered with the game, just like oil and rubber? For example, in 1836 an area with 50 units of coal could grow to 80 or more by the end of the game.In fact, the world didn't explore all of its resources in 1836, so if this feature can make up for late game resource shortages without affecting the balance of resources early in the game, and make the technology of "increasing resource discovery" more useful.
In addition, I think the productivity will increase too fast when I build steel structures in the middle of the game. If I use a country like Spain, I can frantically build factories after steel structures and make the gdp reach 1 billion in the 1880s,building points(is that true in English?) are more than 1500, while ai's gdp is still in the same place. Their gdp adds up to mine. There is a reason why the ai is not smart enough, but I also think there is too many building points in the middle of the game

I have... ideas abot where to go with this
No promises on when though.

 

[PDJR_Alastorn]

Don't be shy about buffing oil throughput AND output of American oil fields. They were producing 70% of the world's supply of oil for a reason.

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.

 

[Amorenkaire]

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.

New York has a Niagara modifier for Electricity production, a good which also doesn't exist until the late game though. Also I imagine most people wouldn't be too surprised that California, Oklahoma, and Texas are major oil producers considering the maximum discovered is pretty set.

Also, are state modifiers not able to be dynamically added or removed during the game? They could be used to replicate when certain oil fields became productive from technological developments (e.g., California crude being able to be refined to useful state), with a throughput penalty which gets removed with the right technological development.

Edit: Actually, it might not be that surprising for areas like Baku and California notable for their surface oil and tar deposits being a loud beacon of 'here there be a lot o' oil'.

 

[Sighfer]

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.

Keeping a trait('s icon) hidden or adding one some time after resource discovery (and maybe building one level) can't be difficult, unless you hard-coded the entire map. Not a modder, though.

 

[King Anund]

I am from Navarra and I have literally never seen nor known about being any oil here.

 

[Sighfer]

I am from Navarra and I have literally never seen nor known about being any oil here.

Ayoluengo oil field - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[anarkist]

For me one of the bottlenecks is Opium. I don't think it's necessary to have more ressources available, but it would be nice if we were available to enhance the opium we import into something new like Morphine and later on Diamorphine (Heroin).

"Morphine was discovered as the first active alkaloid extracted from the opium poppy plant in December 1804 in Paderborn by German pharmacist Friedrich Sertürner.[11][121] In 1817," (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morphine#History).

Diamorphine became popular [...] by chemist Felix Hoffmann.[89] Hoffmann was working at Bayer pharmaceutical company in Elberfeld, Germany, and his supervisor Heinrich Dreser instructed him to acetylate morphine with the objective of producing codeine, a constituent of the opium poppy that is pharmacologically similar to morphine but less potent and less addictive. [...] In 1895, Bayer marketed diacetylmorphine as an over-the-counter drug under the trademark name Heroin.(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heroin#History)

So, both were available in the 19th century. Morphine was heavily used in the American civil war also btw. I understand that implementing just Opium in the game is the easy workaound to have those all covered. But it'll be nice to have an advanced medical tree in the research tree to be able to develop the usage of Opium even further. Maybe this comes with another Pharmaceutical factory for our cities, who knows.

 

[KVPMD]

I am a bit late to the party and so I read everything but nobody made my point so...

"The gating of Oil Fields to only historically extracted areas is always tricky, if Russia and the United States collapse in game, 50%+ of the world's oil supply is locked behind their regression and the world suffers. We want to have historical credibility but also give players multiple avenues to pursue." (From the Dev Diary)

I think this is not only tricky (for the balance). It is also plain wrong for the way it worked and works in reality. Oil production (like others) needs two things: The tech (& resources (machines etc)) to get the oil flowing and the knowledge it exists. Taking historic production is a big problem for both:
Knowledge was mostly generated where either the oil was really obvious (dig a meter and it's there) or in the most advanced countries because the were able and willing to search (hence the big production values in Austria, Germany, UK, USA, Russia).
The tech and money / competence to build up the drilling site also was coupled to this things which stopped Russia or Persia to become oil powerhouses much earlier.

But now when I play let's say Brazil and my Brazil is not mostly a bunch of slave abusing plantation owners but a industial powerhouse with universities and infrastructure everwhere... why wouldn't I use my oil fields at least as strong as North Germany, Galizia (Austria), Baku (Russia) etc.? Oil is nearly everywhere available (on a bigger scale), it's all about knowledge and costs. Oil sparked the big industrial growth of the time because it was so cheap and easy to use compared to coal. But in all my games it's far cheaper to use coal trains, coal power, no plastic... because oil is so scarce.

I think we don't only need more places where oil is available (in low amounts) but also a big boost of production to the easy oil fields so they can produce the cheap oil while closed markets (politics, embargos, war) might have to use the more expensive options (whaling, coal liquifying, coal power plant, coal trains...).

 

[KVPMD]

And speaking of train power sources:
Trains also ran on wood a lot where it was available (even up to the 90s in Eastern Germany) so maybe that's a good use for excess wood? Could also be done indirectly via charcoal plants

 

[KVPMD]

I am a bit late to the party and so I read everything but nobody made my point so...

"The gating of Oil Fields to only historically extracted areas is always tricky, if Russia and the United States collapse in game, 50%+ of the world's oil supply is locked behind their regression and the world suffers. We want to have historical credibility but also give players multiple avenues to pursue." (From the Dev Diary)

I think this is not only tricky (for the balance). It is also plain wrong for the way it worked and works in reality. Oil production (like others) needs two things: The tech (& resources (machines etc)) to get the oil flowing and the knowledge it exists. Taking historic production is a big problem for both:
Knowledge was mostly generated where either the oil was really obvious (dig a meter and it's there) or in the most advanced countries because the were able and willing to search (hence the big production values in Austria, Germany, UK, USA, Russia).
The tech and money / competence to build up the drilling site also was coupled to this things which stopped Russia or Persia to become oil powerhouses much earlier.

But now when I play let's say Brazil and my Brazil is not mostly a bunch of slave abusing plantation owners but a industial powerhouse with universities and infrastructure everwhere... why wouldn't I use my oil fields at least as strong as North Germany, Galizia (Austria), Baku (Russia) etc.? Oil is nearly everywhere available (on a bigger scale), it's all about knowledge and costs. Oil sparked the big industrial growth of the time because it was so cheap and easy to use compared to coal. But in all my games it's far cheaper to use coal trains, coal power, no plastic... because oil is so scarce.

I think we don't only need more places where oil is available (in low amounts) but also a big boost of production to the easy oil fields so they can produce the cheap oil while closed markets (politics, embargos, war) might have to use the more expensive options (whaling, coal liquifying, coal power plant, coal trains...).

Adding: This is most true for oil but is a general thing I would LOVE to see in the game. Ressources having an efficiency multiplier in every region which goes down the more you build it up. You can get more oil, coal, rice, wood from a region but then you don't use the most efficient parts anymore. This might be interesting for arable land for sure but also for oil.

This gives us a reason to trade and make decisions because coal from my own mine might give GDP and give people a job but importing the coal from the Ruhr area is a lot cheaper so maybe I do that and power my glassworks with that and make my profit there? But then I get dependend on German / Prussian coal and bang... there is a lot more depth (and realism) to the games flow.

 

[Torakka]

I know some of you might be asking, why did we not just increase the production of oil methods and leave the historical oil fields in place? Why have you included [specific] oil fields that were not tapped until ~1950! etc. Those fields represent a usage of either Oil Sands, or some various substrate that would have not been accessible at the time.​

These are all some valid questions and I will no doubt go into more detail in the thread about choices made, but some quick answers.

• Oil production methods are already incredibly profitable and buffing them further would help but probably not fully solve the problem.
• The gating of Oil Fields to only historically extracted areas is always tricky, if Russia and the United States collapse in game, 50%+ of the world's oil supply is locked behind their regression and the world suffers. We want to have historical credibility but also give players multiple avenues to pursue.
• We don’t exactly leave a track record of “this field would have been accessible in 1880" etc in our history books when we discover new resources, so best guesstimates have to be used and a balance between historical and semi-balanced gameplay has to be found.

Is there some particular reason why you couldn't just increase the levels of deposits? I mean, like for example upping Texas from 50 to 100, California from 60 to 120 and so on for every deposit. That way productivity of oil rigs wouldn't increase and resource distribution would still remain historically plausible. Or alternatively, if those numbers just look too big for some reason, increase oil production methods, but also increase their input goods and workforce requirements to maintain their current productivity.

 

[amocpower]

I finished my Ottoman/Turkey run. I had after around 1900 big problem with factories who have double output on goods.

Textile : 9K surplus cloth, 6k shortage Luxury.
Furniture : 11k surplus Furnite, 7k shortage Luxury Furnite.
Chemical Plants : 13k surplus Fertilize, 5k shortage Explosives
Shipyards : 9k surpluse steamers, 5k shortage on Ironclads

And big problem is you can´t always sell or buy from AI, because they have same problem. Biggest issue is Shipyards. Shipyards was nearly to collaps because steamers are so cheap and expensive ironclads can´t fix it.

Is there any plan to make there a change? Or build a slider for this buildings?

 

[Rabid]

Is there any plan to make there a change? Or build a slider for this buildings?

I believe that adding a slider has been proposed by the devs but I'm not sure if that was a "we are definitely doing this" comment or a "this might be nice, one day"