AAR Thread

[pheonicia]

The issue isn't really getting a treaty port on a major power, there are very valid reasons to want to crack open the british or american markets and you shouldnt be stopped from doing that, but rather that mexico already shares a continent spanning land border, and shouldn't need a random port to force an unequal trading relationship on the USA.

 

[shoebird]

No no no please no. That is a horrible idea. I certainly hope Paradox won't go the way of making every small exclave a treaty port. The fact that Gibraltar is apparently represented as a treaty port is bad enough. The purpose of Gibraltar was not for the British to bypass Spanish tariffs and gain free access to their market, and neither was the purpose of Heligoland to enter the German market. They should just be represented as normal territories held by Britain.

Yes. The same issue is present for Melilla (Ceuta is not even in the game, apparently). They were not a way to bypass Moroccan tariffs, just Spanish cities.

Actually the same happens with Hong Kong. My understanding is that Hong Kong was just a logistical base. There were trade restrictions between Hong Kong and China, because there was a border I think. Actual treaty ports were located in Chinese cities like Shanghai and others. The problem is that both concepts have been mixed, maybe because there’s no logistical bases in the game so they need a reason for the British to take Hong Kong. And then this was generalized to other enclaves.

 

[Skales]

Yes. The same issue is present for Melilla (Ceuta is not even in the game, apparently). They were not a way to bypass Moroccan tariffs, just Spanish cities.

Actually the same happens with Hong Kong. My understanding is that Hong Kong was just a logistical base. There were trade restrictions between Hong Kong and China, because there was a border I think. Actual treaty ports were located in Chinese cities like Shanghai and others. The problem is that both concepts have been mixed, maybe because there’s no logistical bases in the game so they need a reason for the British to take Hong Kong. And then this was generalized to other enclaves.

Yeah. I've heard the same argument from people who specialise in this are of the world. Hong Kong shouldn't be a treaty port either, just a normal piece of territory. Though arguably its purpose *was* to help the trade with China, so it is a bit more justifiable. But I don't like the idea of "every small exclave is a treaty port!" Because treaty ports are a very peculiar mechanic that does very specific things.

 

[pheonicia]

Just split up forcing unequal trading, and seizing a coastal province (1 per nation) into separate war goals.

 

[Millefleurs]

My thoughts on the France pseudo-AAR:

• In the second image, Alex mentioned the devout wanted him to stop producing weapons. I don't recall seeing IGs provide this sort of feedback about the economy before. I like it!
• Also in the second image, annual population growth was shown to be 0.57%. This seems surprisingly low compared to historical data.
• Also in the second image, Alex said that he didn't know how the Austro-Prussian war had ended because he hadn't been paying attention to it. I think there should be some way to look up historical diplomatic information to avoid this sort of lack of knowledge.
• The third image showed some rather dramatic bordergore in North and South America - Argentina had a bunch of exclaves in Chilean Patagonia, and the US had claimed a rambling sprawl of central Canada. Not encouraging.
• In the seventh image, we can see France's map color change slightly when it becomes a republic. I didn't know that could happen, and I'm not sure what to make of it.
• In the eighth image, Alex showed that the Ottomans had become an unrecognized country. This is presumably the Dead Man of Europe outcome - had it previously been show that this could happen?

The last screenshot shows France at over 80M population so pop growth is either more than just fine or easily overcompensated by immigration.

 

[Tomray94]

one thing that confuses me is the link between meritocracy and elected bureaucrats ? Maybe the word "elected" is confusing me, or the world bureacucrats...
As shouldnt a meritocratic bureaucracy be more in the line of an open competitive exam ?

I mean... i know all the discussions between upsides and downsides of electing judges like in the USA, having a very strict open competitive exam like in Italy, or a mixture of exam and free recruitement like in UK (simplifing all of them).

Still, i wouldnt think that electing would be appreciated by "meritocratic" value, more in line of maybe representation, democracy or accountability ?

Or I am just missing some vocabulary (english beeing a secondary language) ?

elections imply neither merit nor accountability necessarily. Many people can get elected and be completely inadequate for their roles, or barely competent. On that note, you can also have the opposite, where a candidate truly got the position though hard work (merit) but the position requires of them some skill they are subpar at (like communication for example).

 

[Lord Tataraus]

So votes are also weighed by wealth? I thought that votes reduced the effect of wealth in the clout, as you expanded the vote franchise, because each citizen had a vote. It’s a bit strange that votes work like that IMO.

More democratic laws reduce the impact of wealth, but don't actually get rid of it completely. This is a pretty good representation of real world democracies, especially in the time period. Wealthy pops can donate more to campaigns, sway the media to their side, or just outright buy the votes of poor citizens. Votes in Vicky 3 are representation of political power (hence why it's 20x the actual voting population) not just the actual number of ballots.

 

[Baikal]

No no no please no. That is a horrible idea. I certainly hope Paradox won't go the way of making every small exclave a treaty port. The fact that Gibraltar is apparently represented as a treaty port is bad enough. The purpose of Gibraltar was not for the British to bypass Spanish tariffs and gain free access to their market, and neither was the purpose of Heligoland to enter the German market. They should just be represented as normal territories held by Britain.

I think the issue here is that these tiny one-city territories wouldn't really be viable population-wise as split states without access to neighbouring markets, especially since they are also oversea territories.

Gibraltar had less than 20k population in the early game period, Heligoland had less than 2000. Don't think Ceuta and Melilla fare much better. If you substract dependands, you wouldn't even have enough workforce left to staff a single building, which incidentally would have to be a port to even be able to supply these places and connect them to your market.

With the way the game is currently set up mechanics-wise, I'm not sure there's much that could be done different here. Except for merging Gibraltar into a mainland British state and Ceuta and Melilla to a mainland Spanish one. Of course this would cause problems all on its own if a player would want to conquer these cities specifically.

 

[shoebird]

More democratic laws reduce the impact of wealth, but don't actually get rid of it completely. This is a pretty good representation of real world democracies, especially in the time period. Wealthy pops can donate more to campaigns, sway the media to their side, or just outright buy the votes of poor citizens. Votes in Vicky 3 are representation of political power (hence why it's 20x the actual voting population) not just the actual number of ballots.

Yes I know but I thought it was a different thing. You get clout from wealth and population under any system as I understand, so making votes to be weighed by wealth also is not taking into account the effect of wealth to clout two times?

 

[JesterInYellow]

Yes I know but I thought it was a different thing. You get clout from wealth and population under any system as I understand, so making votes to be weighed by wealth also is not taking into account the effect of wealth to clout two times?

It's almost as if the election results are completely nonsensical and pointless.

 

[Avock7]

I'm not sure it does take them into account twice? Some laws limit suffrage to only those of a certain minimum wealth, but I think everyone who meets that requirement has equal say. The number listed, I believe, is just to represent the share of clout vs. other sources. Someone asked the dev about a "one man one vote" system, but I think that was referring more towards the ideal of such a system rather then literally asking if there was a law that gave votes that were equal to each other.

In response, the dev showed us the most egalitarian law, anarchism, which has, as two separate effects, the establishment of a voting franchise that creates clout, and a penalty on clout from wealth sources.

I'm not sure what other sources of clout there will be aside from Wealth and Votes, but I think some events and laws can effect it.

 

[dwarf40]

Yes I know but I thought it was a different thing. You get clout from wealth and population under any system as I understand, so making votes to be weighed by wealth also is not taking into account the effect of wealth to clout two times?

Where are you getting the idea that votes are weighted by wealth from? The only time that's true is under the Wealth Voting law, for obvious reasons (Oh, and apparently the Census Suffrage law has a wealth threshold that determines a pop’s eligibility to vote).

If you look at the second to last France ARR spoiler, the tooltip shows that votes under the universal suffrage law are a flat 20 times the number of voters. The votes are then added to the political strength contributed by wealth to get the total political strength of a pop.

Actually, considering interest group clout is based on the total political strength of its supporters, I wonder if maybe votes are double dipping somehow...

 

[TheBeautifulVoid]

No no no please no. That is a horrible idea. I certainly hope Paradox won't go the way of making every small exclave a treaty port. The fact that Gibraltar is apparently represented as a treaty port is bad enough. The purpose of Gibraltar was not for the British to bypass Spanish tariffs and gain free access to their market, and neither was the purpose of Heligoland to enter the German market. They should just be represented as normal territories held by Britain.

I've got a lot of respect for you, you've said a lot of smart things here, but I think we disagree on this.

A treaty port in this game does multiple things. One of those is to allow tariffs to be bypassed. Another one is to allow the engine to represent one country holding a single province in a state that is otherwise held by a different country, in a way that doesn't require it to be a different state. To me, the latter is more important from an engine point of view, and therefore it allows us to represent enclaves like Heligoland and Gibraltar better than having them be their own state.

EDIT: One might try to resolve this by asking for the engine to be modified by allowing enclaves that don't also have tariff-bypassing properties, and that might be an interesting way that it might have happened in an alternate history (it could also be used to represent the Vatican, Luxembourg and Krakow, for example) but that seems to be a choice that wasn't made in development, so we're going to have to work with the tools that we have.

 

[shoebird]

Where are you getting the idea that votes are weighted by wealth from? The only time that's true is under the Wealth Voting law, for obvious reasons (Oh, and apparently the Census Suffrage law has a wealth threshold that determines a pop’s eligibility to vote).

If you look at the second to last France ARR spoiler, the tooltip shows that votes under the universal suffrage law are a flat 20 times the number of voters. The votes are then added to the political strength contributed by wealth to get the total political strength of a pop.

Actually, considering interest group clout is based on the total political strength of its supporters, I wonder if maybe votes are double dipping somehow...

I haven't checked the tooltip, I was reading it in the phone. I just read Alex saying that it was around 20 times and thought it was due to something like wealth as I understood the it was around 20 in that specific case, not always. But I think you're right and votes are always multiply by 20, I guess to adjust it for clout calculation. Still I think it would be better to have 1 voter 1 vote, so election doesn't have a number of votes bigger than the population, which feels weird IMO, and then multiply votes by 20 when calculating clout.

 

[Skales]

I've got a lot of respect for you, you've said a lot of smart things here, but I think we disagree on this.

A treaty port in this game does multiple things. One of those is to allow tariffs to be bypassed. Another one is to allow the engine to represent one country holding a single province in a state that is otherwise held by a different country, in a way that doesn't require it to be a different state. To me, the latter is more important from an engine point of view, and therefore it allows us to represent enclaves like Heligoland and Gibraltar better than having them be their own state.

EDIT: One might try to resolve this by asking for the engine to be modified by allowing enclaves that don't also have tariff-bypassing properties, and that might be an interesting way that it might have happened in an alternate history (it could also be used to represent the Vatican, Luxembourg and Krakow, for example) but that seems to be a choice that wasn't made in development, so we're going to have to work with the tools that we have.

I think the game already does allow for split states, and even very small split states (see Krakow). If I'm not wrong that's what Treaty ports are, they are just normal split states which also have an additional property which allows unlimited access into the target country's market, that is their purpose and that is the sole reason for their existence. Either way, I think that's how single province exclaves should be represented - as single province exclaves. To treaty every such exclave as a treaty port has massive ramifications for how the game works, it means that in 1836 the entire Spanish economy is being exploited by Britain, and it would mean that Heligoland would make Britain be exploiting the entire German economy from Prussia to Bavaria.

To reiterate, treaty ports in the game are essentially meant to represent the so-called "unequal treaties." Having one inside your country is a huge deal and they shouldn't be distributed willy-nilly, especially where they haven't historically existed. The game already has mechanics to represent smaller exclaves. Making Heligoland a British treaty port in Germany is almost akin to making Germany a sort of vassal state.


As for Vatican, Luxembourg and Krakow, the first named isn't in the game, the second named has a full state for itself, and the last name is a split state already without having a special mechanic or a treaty port.

 

[Vinnie1402]

It's almost as if the election results are completely nonsensical and pointless.

It's almost as if the entire political system of Vicky3 is nonsensical and broken.
Oreleanists being the free trade party?
Catholic Church being vehemously segregationists whilst in many nations like Belgium and Imperial Germany they advocated for minority emancipation?
Feminism being a movement only dependent on RNG-decided leaders?
RNG deciding your chance to pass a law?
Revolutions being the only way for IGs to push back laws they dislike?
Very realistic indeed!

 

[Nitan17]

I think the game already does allow for split states, and even very small split states (see Krakow). If I'm not wrong that's what Treaty ports are, they are just normal split states which also have an additional property which allows unlimited access into the target country's market, that is their purpose and that is the sole reason for their existence.

This is precisely how things work.

As for Vatican, Luxembourg and Krakow, the first named isn't in the game, the second named has a full state for itself, and the last name is a split state already without having a special mechanic or a treaty port.

Luxembourg is a split state, it's a small part of the Wallonia state. Same with Krakow, part of West Galicia. There are tons of other tiny split states that aren't Treaty Ports, like Montenegro, Parma-Modena-Lucca trio and the Piedmiontian Provence is just the city of Nice while France holds the rest of the state. And let's not forget about all the German minors: states in Germany are regular-sized, every minor just holds a tiny slice of them.

 

[TheBeautifulVoid]

Ah, if the game includes split states (including the ability to create split states in play) then I'm wrong. Thanks for the correction, I learned something.

 

[Arbus]

Ah, if the game includes split states (including the ability to create split states in play) then I'm wrong. Thanks for the correction, I learned something.

AFAIK it does not include the ability to create split states. A conquest war goal applies to the entire state, you can’t just demand half of it. The only exception are treaty ports, where you get a single (random) coastal province.

 

[Baikal]

Catholic Church being vehemously segregationists whilst in many nations like Belgium and Imperial Germany they advocated for minority emancipation?

They only supported minority emancipation in Germany because said minorities "happened to be" largely Catholics. This was more about emancipating fellow Catholics than about emancipating ethnic minorities in general. The German bishops wouldn't have cared much about the disenfranchisement of Poles had they been Russian Orthodox, Jews or Muslims.

Feminism being a movement only dependent on RNG-decided leaders?

This isn't true, though? Feminism as a movement is unlocked via the societal mid-game tech called "Feminism". However, IG's can push for feminist reforms prior to the unlocking of this tech, in early game for example, if they have a leader with the appropriate trait.

RNG deciding your chance to pass a law?
Revolutions being the only way for IGs to push back laws they dislike?

They can push back via forming movements to preserve laws. The player, however, can choose to ignore those movements which can lead to a civil war. As it should. If you push through a law that a significant amount of people didn't like or even got disenfranchised by, they should rebell if you don't roll it back. Ultimately the decision of pushing ahead with massively unpopular laws should be with the player.

The alternative would be for movements to be able to push through law changes/roll back laws against the players will. This would cause all kinds of problems with ping-ponging laws back and forth between the player and movements. And that sounds like a rather frustrating mechanic.