Victoria 3 - Dev Diary #10 - Infrastructure

[davidmarshburn]

In the example of the Minsk railway, you say
This early Railway has rapidly become one of Minsk’s best employers, at least for Pops with the qualifications to become Machinists. Unfortunately few people do, so the Infrastructure production is not currently as high as it might be if the railway was fully staffed. Ticket prices, however, are sky high.

a) what in that image tells you that it's one of the best employers?
b) how do you know few people are qualified?
c) what tells you that the Infrastructure production is not as high as it could be?
d) how do you know the ticket prices are sky-high?

(some of these things may just be numbers that you're used to seeing, rather than what's displayed in the dialog)

 

[lowdias]

I don't understand the ticket mechanic for railroads, is it a fixed expense of pops? Or is it related to goods transport? And if it is related to goods transport, will my siberian lumber cost the same in Novosibirsk and in Moscow?

 

[LiChwing]

Will foreign investment be in Victoria 3? For example, if i have a foreign nation in my market that produces very important good(s) for my nation, but that nation has a very low infrastructure and insufficient market access, can i build and(or) subsidize a railroad for them?

 

[Darsara]

Canals will for sure be a thing, at least the major ones like Suez/Panama.

What about important, but not so famous canals like the Manchester Ship Canal, or things that didn't happen during the time but might have, like the Danube-Black Sea Canal?

Having good infrastructure bonuses from the Nile and Congo rivers will certainly make those areas more appealing.

 

[Spartakusbund]

I don't understand the ticket mechanic for railroads, is it a fixed expense of pops? Or is it related to goods transport? And if it is related to goods transport, will my siberian lumber cost the same in Novosibirsk and in Moscow?

It seems like some buildings can use tickets as an input under certain Production Methods. Someone reposted a screenshot earlier showing it. Otherwise, I think it’s just demanded by POPs.

 

[BeauNiddle]

In the example of the Minsk railway, you say
This early Railway has rapidly become one of Minsk’s best employers, at least for Pops with the qualifications to become Machinists. Unfortunately few people do, so the Infrastructure production is not currently as high as it might be if the railway was fully staffed. Ticket prices, however, are sky high.

a) what in that image tells you that it's one of the best employers?
b) how do you know few people are qualified?
c) what tells you that the Infrastructure production is not as high as it could be?
d) how do you know the ticket prices are sky-high?

(some of these things may just be numbers that you're used to seeing, rather than what's displayed in the dialog)

My guesses:

a) maybe the green arrows at top (not sure about this one)
b) not full employment (and there is a red person at the end of the bar
c) the infra it gives is 67 - usually it's a round number so I guess that [also he knows it's a level 4 building so probably knows the correct full output]
d) the prices are shown with gold coins (above base price indicator)

 

[KaiserJohan]

In the example of the Minsk railway, you say
This early Railway has rapidly become one of Minsk’s best employers, at least for Pops with the qualifications to become Machinists. Unfortunately few people do, so the Infrastructure production is not currently as high as it might be if the railway was fully staffed. Ticket prices, however, are sky high.

a) what in that image tells you that it's one of the best employers?
b) how do you know few people are qualified?
c) what tells you that the Infrastructure production is not as high as it could be?
d) how do you know the ticket prices are sky-high?

(some of these things may just be numbers that you're used to seeing, rather than what's displayed in the dialog)

a) The Green Arrows, Copper/Silver vs Gold Coins & Weekly Revenue tells you this building is doing great.
b) The little red pop icon at the end of the employment bar says this building has a hard time hiring people. Tooltipping over it tells you why (in this case, not enough qualified pops)
c) The input/output is scaled by current employed/max employed.
d) The gold coins in outputs

 

[Coouragee]

Looking at the building information for the Railway, that there are different production methods and that Transportation is it's own resource, is there going to be the option to spec railways into primarily handling resources, passengers or somewhere inbetween?

 

[Spartakusbund]

Looking at the building information for the Railway, that there are different production methods and that Transportation is it's own resource, is there going to be the option to spec railways into primarily handling resources, passengers or somewhere inbetween?

Given that the example we've seen of a Building using railroads in its production method (from the first Monthly Update, someone reposted it in the thread) also used tickets as an input, I'd say probably not.

 

[Jamaican Castle]

I’d still want it to be feasible to place a small production facility in an isolated state if it can get inputs and customers locally.

Is this not how it works in the DD? The penalty for low market access isn't (necessarily) that buildings shut down, it's that supply and demand are weighted more by the local market rather than the national market. If the local market can supply inputs and consume outputs for the industry it should be in business, though perhaps not as optimal as it would be with better access.

 

[Lorehead]

Hi, I might have misunderstood, so correct me if I'm wrong, but I can see a potential massive flaw in this system. Say I'm getting added to someone else's market, for example say I'm Belgium getting added to the French market. My infrastructure may have allowed me to transfer goods perfectly between my own states previously, but imagine France has destroyed all infrastructure on my border. Surely that would mean that my states are now completely disconnected from each other as they cannot reach the market capital and so have no market access, despite the fact that they could transfer between themselves perfectly well before.

I hope we get a good answer to this. The robust solution would be something like all-pairs-shortest-paths, which only needs to update when an infrastructure level changes, but maybe that’s still too slow.

In practice, is there ever going to be a Great Power without a port, or a human player who doesn’t run a railroad to a trade port? So maybe it’s not a real problem in actual gameplay.

 

[Varus90]

It's not that I exactly don't want minor canals in the game, it's just that if we're to have them I don't want them to fill the exact same role as railroads. They should either be a precursor in an earlier start date, or to for instance be a cheaper alternative that is only available in certain places. We'll likely not have them for release though.

They should definitely be a precursor, as that's exactly what happened with the US system (in the East). I would know, my family got modestly wealthy running one...only for that to dry up, ha ha, when the railroads moved in. Easy come, easy go, and all that.

 

[Axe99]

Cheers for the DD Wizzington, and the extra info from you and KaiserJohan . It’s great to see infrastructure’s implementation improve substantially in Vicky 3 relative to Vicky 2 – however, there’s still substantial evidence of Paradox’s “sea-blindness” (here more river, coast and canal-blindness, but the term is generally used to indicate a lack of understanding of the importance of waterborne economic and military activity).

While infrastructure was important for the movement of goods over land, one of the key features of the period was the explosion in maritime trade, increased use of canals, and so on. It’s great to see rivers are represented in the game, but it is a little sad to see them ‘tacked on’ as modifiers to individual states, whereas representing them similar to railways (ie, the rivers should need to connect back to the market capital, or to a port that connects to the market capital – noting that the port may be on the river rather than on a coastline). The rise of the steam engine, for example, also facilitated greater/more efficient riverine trade, but this doesn’t look to be covered off mechanically.

But as well as rivers (which, even if they seem somewhat ‘tacked on’, are at least in the game), there’s also no mention of coastlines. A big question is do the upcoming “sea transport” mechanics adequately cover off the importance of coastal traffic – which was hugely important in pretty much anywhere with a coast even through the Second World War period (on the eve of WW2, the value of Australian coastal traffic was a dash more than its international trade). To-date, Paradox seems to have missed the importance of coastal traffic on trade, economies and logistics, and while it’s not critical to most games, for the Vicky and HoI4 periods, where greater trade and logistics chains become far more important, omitting them warps the way the world works relative to its historical patterns, making the game less intuitive. For example, will the UK, Japan and Italy (amongst many others) benefit from being able to make use of their long coastlines to cheaply and efficiently ship goods around the country?

The big benefits of riverine and coastal trade is that it was much, much cheaper (it still is) than moving non-time critical goods by rail and road (although in the early Vicky period it's also one of, if not in many situations, the quickest way to move things too). The downside is that it's limited geographically. I haven't looked into it, but I'd be very surprised if the rivers, canals, coasts, roads and rails formed complimentary networks, with bulk goods transported by water to road/rail hubs, and then transported on to their final destination (and, in the other direction). By just focussing on rail, it looks as if the Vicky "infrastructure/economics model" is missing a significant (for the start of the game, and for many regions at the end of the game, by far the largest) part of the picture. Note that I'm not an expert here - I'd need to read a whole lot more to have more insight - but I've seen enough to know that Vicky 3 is currently a bit 'dry' when it comes to its infrastructure modelling.

I appreciate that these things move forward iteratively – compared with Vicky 2, Vicky 3 is a huge step forward. This post is intended as encouragement to continue breaking down Paradox’s remaining partial “sea-blindness” (not just a thing for Paradox, but for most people in modern, industrialised economies - and PDS is much, much better than it was back in the day) and improve the quality of the underlying mechanics of the game ).

Canals will for sure be a thing, at least the major ones like Suez/Panama.

This comment seems to show a certain degree of blindness to canals as a form of important economic infrastructure in the period. For sure, the Suez, Panama and Kiel canal were important, but they were largely important for international economics (Kiel a little less so), rather than for domestic transportation of goods. The canal and river systems, however, were domestic infrastructure built to transport goods within, rather than between markets. Both canals and rivers continued to be important until after the end of the Vicky timeframe (indeed, there are still new canals being proposed, and existing canals used, for substantial transportation of goods in Europe - for example, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seine–Nord_Europe_Canal ).

Our aim is for all major rivers to provide infrastructure in varying amounts, the Rhine and Danube for sure count.

It wasn’t just “big rivers” though – it was any river that connected to other markets that could support rafts or boats. Some of the rivers in the era that were important to their regions’ trade weren’t even navigable year-round. And, of course, just having a “state modifier” without any directional impact of the river could lead to some relatively unintuitive results (for example, a state with part of a river that doesn’t connect to anywhere else in its state gets a big bonus to domestic market access, even though the river is far more likely to be facilitating international trade). I'm also not sure of the ability of a static state modifier to reflect the relative change in the importance of rivers (from very high at the start of the game, to much less at the end).

Infrastructure can indirectly impact international trade, but more on that in a later dev diary.

Infrastructure was arguably more important for international trade than domestic – domestic trade may have to travel between regions – international trade starts outside every region within a market. Ports, and the degree to which they were connected by rail, river, canal or road to the rest of the country were the lifeblood for overseas trade. You may well have this all covered off, but just piping up, in case useful.

The intent is for infrastructure to play a role in warfare but I can't say more than that for now.

I’m a long way from an expert on warfare in the period, but I’d expect logistics to increase in importance as the period increases, such that the “infrastructure chain” it travels along by the end of the game is vital to an effective campaign (but, at the start, far less important).

As per everything else in this post, rivers and coasts were very important parts of these logistics chains - with railroads becoming increasingly important as they expanded, with their role being hugely important to the mobilisations at the start of WW1 and WW2.

It's not that I exactly don't want minor canals in the game, it's just that if we're to have them I don't want them to fill the exact same role as railroads. They should either be a precursor in an earlier start date, or to for instance be a cheaper alternative that is only available in certain places. We'll likely not have them for release though.

They shouldn't necessarily be discrete (ie canals then railroads) - as per this map, at least at some stages in the period, canals and railways were part of an integrated system: https://www.nationalgeographic.org/photo/early-transportation/

For example, Britain should start the game with an established system of canals that is soon to go into decline: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_British_canal_system#Railway_competition_and_decline

Without those canals in place, it's going to be difficult to effectively model the capacity in the UK to move products around before the railway networks are built up - and the only way to do it is by giving undue importance to other means of transport, or by arbitrarily reducing the integration (and size/effectiveness) of the UK economy. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_British_canal_system

Further while in Britain canals largely declined in the face of the railroad and no longer provide much economic use, greater investment in canals in Europe means they still have an important economic role to this day - see: britannica.com/technology/canal-waterway/Economic-significance

In case useful, there's a particularly good site on French canals here (the individual canal pages at least sometimes have a history section): https://www.french-waterways.com/waterways/canals-rivers-france/

For an on-theme naval(-ish) pic, here are some gunboats on the Loire, from the Franco-Prussian war:

 

[Helios Ra]

Yes

I understand the reasoning behind not allowing “minor” canals (ie not Panama, Suez, Kiel, Kra(?!)) to be built as infrastructure from this start date, but what about those “minor” canals already in existence? I’m from upstate New York, and vividly remember learning about the importance of the Erie Canal to commerce in elementary school. Hell, today it still gets used commercially from time to time. Would it be possible to place a “river” following its route on the map with infrastructure bonuses? I’m unfamiliar with other long canals in use at the time but know that particular canal was very important where it was, and also geographically large.

 

[Hegh Chen]

“Just about all States in the game have at least a little bit of Infrastructure based on the technology level of the country”,
so does it mean if a state is handed over to another country, the infrastructure of this state would change immediately according to the technology level of that one? That can be weird.
devs make the coming VIC3 so charming!

 

[Qwerlancer]

Is railways state-owned only? Or there are similar system like factories which have various ownership?
If private railway companies are allowed, imagine you are the director of PRR (Pennsylvania Railroad) or NYC (New York Central Railroad), racing your routes to the mid-west, the Pacific, across the US... I can't wait for playing as a railroad tycoon in Vic and building up my railroad empire!

 

[Varus90]

Is railways state-owned only? Or there are similar system like factories which have various ownership?
If private railway companies are allowed, imagine you are the director of PRR (Pennsylvania Railroad) or NYC (New York Central Railroad), racing your routes to the mid-west, the Pacific, across the US... I can't wait for playing as a railroad tycoon in Vic and building up my railroad empire!

I mean, if they're privately owned then presumably the Capitalist pops will be the ones funding the construction of it, but it's still going to be fun to watch them expand from major centers of production to where they're used or transported!

 

[ScottyWired]

There is currently no such effect as we don't track exactly where individual units of goods go (see Market dev diary on that topic), though we could potentially apply some sort of a discount based on how much of a building's needed goods can be locally sourced. I'll give it some thought.

That's a very important factor for complex goods.

Despite similar wealth levels, Japanese and Korean cars are so much cheaper than American and European cars because they have very strong local supply chains. They don't have to deal with sending parts between different plants spread out over a whole continent.
Picture unrelated.

Edit: And of course, American and European conglomerates know what they're doing. They take the hit in efficiency by spreading out their plants, because giving jobs to as many different locations as possible is good for maintaining their political influence.

 

[Tovarits]

Just woke up and saw a dream that Victoria 3 was already released while I was sleeping. Cost 100€ but I thought whatever and bought it. Really woke up when the loading screen was gone.

 

[pttaylor]

There is currently no such effect as we don't track exactly where individual units of goods go (see Market dev diary on that topic), though we could potentially apply some sort of a discount based on how much of a building's needed goods can be locally sourced. I'll give it some thought.

It seems to me that the logical way to implement that bonus, assuming the coding is doable, would be to reduce the infrastructure costs of the buildings in proportion to how much of their inputs and outputs are local - eg. a state with Lumber Yards and a Luxury Furniture factory desperately wants to export the furniture, but doesn't need to import anything and doesn't need to export anything else, so it should be able to be serviced by a relatively small railroad - potentially even a smaller one than it would need if it had the same number of lumber yards alone, and no furniture factory, since less total stuff needs to be transported out of the state.
The country would save on the upfront cost of railroads, and the industries might save on the Tickets for transporting goods? (it isn't clear to me whether Tickets represent all travel or only passenger travel)