Beta of 1.3 - 17th March 2011 - Discussion Thread

[quetzilla]

Definitely overstating the problem. If it weren't for the forums, I wouldn't even know this "bug" exists.

It's a definitelty a major problem, even if you don't see the direct population effects in the country you choose to play. It mostly affects high literacy European nations, as well as American Democracies, and China/Japan as well. If you're not playing those countries then you probably won't notice it, but it does unbalance the game regardless, because of the drastic boosts to certain countries and population loss to others (China/Japan are the most affected in that aspect).

 

[Rylock]

This probably isn't the chance. I remember that this was explained somewhere. The game takes the strength of the rebels and compares it to the number of your brigades multiplied by this factor. I can't give you a quote, though, and it's possible that I'm mistaken.

That's my understanding. The lower the "will_rise" factor goes, the more favorable the comparison to the country's military and thus the better the chance of them rising.

To a point, I agree with ZomgK3tchup. The entries in the defines.lua file are misleading, since "joining a general uprising" and "auto-rise" levels of militancy don't seem to actually do anything... or, if they do, their effect is so delayed that it may as well be the same thing. Even if that weren't an issue (as it's invisible to the player, anyhow), the interface with its "100% chance of rising" is misleading. You can have pops at maximum militancy (10) that show 100% chance of rising and it's entirely possible (and indeed common) that they will do nothing.

In fact, with the increased mobility in the 1.3 Beta it's a bit more likely they will simply emigrate in the meantime (as many of the factors that result in increased militancy also add to the chance of emigration).

 

[Rylock]

It's a definitelty a major problem, even if you don't see the direct population effects in the country you choose to play. It mostly affects high literacy European nations, as well as American Democracies, and China/Japan as well. If you're not playing those countries then you probably won't notice it, but it does unbalance the game regardless, because of the drastic boosts to certain countries and population loss to others (China/Japan are the most affected in that aspect).

My suggestion for a solution would be to add a "mobility factor"-- something that indicates how able/willing a pop is to move around in the first place. It could provide a threshold that must be exceeded in order for the pop to leave.

The threshold could be lowered by having infrastructure and/or transportation techs, and the pop possessing wealth. It could be raised by the pop belonging to a rebel group or living in a repressive society. Thus if things are bad enough (say if there's a war or anything that provides sufficient "push") even the poorest pop living in a backwards part of China will try to leave for elsewhere... but otherwise they stay where they are and become unhappy. Pops living in wealthy European countries that have lots of infrastructure, however, will be much more mobile.

That is probably beyond the scope of a patch, however-- though the extremely fluid pops introduced in the current beta do seem to introduce an entirely new problem.

 

[artfox]

INTRODUCTION & GENERAL GAME DESCRIPTION

Hello world,
The game was played using the March 17 1.3 beta.
The country chosen was Haiti.
The game style was to avoid diplomatic moves but do everything else.
I encouraged clergymen early. At about 1.5-2% I switched to clerks.
I paid my soldiers next to nothing for the first 50 years or so. Then full payment.
I had difficulty attaining clerk/beurocrat/clergy levels till immigration solved all.
Immigration started instantly & heavily once I turned to a democracy.
Immigration was mostly British, German, French and later Chinese subjects.
Immigration allowed me to boost my population from ~100K to 1.16M by 1925.
I ended the game upon encountering a CTD sometime past 1925.
From what I can tell of the logs, the CTD is possibly texture related.

Thanks again for your thorough analysis. It is very helpfull.

I also like your suggestions, specially:

- Show unemployed farmers in summary production tab (had 29% unemployed farmers yet I was completely unaware of it!
- Allow option to keep (ie not over-write) all auto-saves, named by date (ie 01_01_1836 vs autosave1)

But I wrote down all of your suggestions anyway. It's not really time to fix them at the moment, but when time comes (and it WILL come) we will try to evaluate them all (I try to do that to all suggestions from all users btw).

I did not have time to take a look at all bugs yet, but it is high on my todo list. Especially your 1925 CTD. For obvious reasons this kind of bugs use to get priority 1.

 

[artfox]

BTW. I have read several posts here and there that there seams to be some kind of problem with migration. Does anybody encountered anything fishy about it? Could you please describe what happens?

I don't want to be to specific about it. If you have noticed some kind of problem please write it here. Do not search for it though as searching could trigger some kind of nocebo effect. We want to fix the problem but don't want any misleading clues.

 

[RedRalphWiggum]

BTW. I have read several posts here and there that there seams to be some kind of problem with migration. Does anybody encountered anything fishy about it? Could you please describe what happens?

I don't want to be to specific about it. If you have noticed some kind of problem please write it here. Do not search for it though as searching could trigger some kind of nocebo effect. We want to fix the problem but don't want any misleading clues.

For the record, I'm playing as a very industrialised Austria and by the 1850s have noticed absolutely no mass emigration, so maybe it's specifically affecting countries where there are no industrial jobs for unemployed farmers and labourers.

 

[safferli]

BTW. I have read several posts here and there that there seams to be some kind of problem with migration. Does anybody encountered anything fishy about it? Could you please describe what happens?

There is a nice video by Zarine posted here in this thread:

So the video about population probleme :

video is here

This is 1 year fast foward play of France using Victoria 2 v.1.3 beta.
All action done in the game are in the video.

Major elements :
Starting population : 8.95M
Lowest population : 7.94M (5th december)
End population : 8.41M
Huge increase : 0.5M between 5th and 6th of december

 

[Veantur]

BTW. I have read several posts here and there that there seams to be some kind of problem with migration. Does anybody encountered anything fishy about it? Could you please describe what happens?

I don't want to be to specific about it. If you have noticed some kind of problem please write it here. Do not search for it though as searching could trigger some kind of nocebo effect. We want to fix the problem but don't want any misleading clues.

playing as russia i loose nearly 500 k males every year to north and south america

 

[bill2505]

playing as russia i loose nearly 500 k males every year to north and south america

one silly question .how do you know they are male?

 

[No idea]

one silly question .how do you know they are male?

Because in the population number we get in the main screen ONLY male adult population is taken into account.

 

[DesertSnow]

one silly question .how do you know they are male?

Since most of the professions in vic2 were dominated by men during the time period, I guess he means 500k workforce (2M "total" population)

 

[Swuboo]

BTW. I have read several posts here and there that there seams to be some kind of problem with migration. Does anybody encountered anything fishy about it? Could you please describe what happens?

I don't want to be to specific about it. If you have noticed some kind of problem please write it here. Do not search for it though as searching could trigger some kind of nocebo effect. We want to fix the problem but don't want any misleading clues.

I've run two campaigns to '36 and one to '98 so far. As Belgium, Chile, and Texas.

As Belgium, even with Medicine, Good Health Care, and 100% Luxury Needs on all strata, population slowly declines—to the point that I had a million fewer households in 1936 than I'd had in 1836.

As both Chile and Texas, the immigration rate is staggering. The effect was particularly noticeable playing as Texas. While waiting for the Civil War to start so that I could shiv the Confederacy for some land, Texan Texas (my only territory, and only half a state) went from ~100k to 1.5 million by 1863.

With both Chile and Texas, the migration patterns were quite noticeable—my population was usually around 14-18% French at any given moment until the 20th century. British, North and South German, and Flemish were the next largest contingents, weighing in usually at a few points each. After that were Ashkenazis and Bengalis, I think.

It's hard to overstate the impact this has; as Texas, I became a GP in 1880 with just Texas and Louisiana, despite the best attempts of my Laissez Faire capis to sabotage me. As Belgium, nothing I could do stopped my pops from hemorrhaging. At any given moment, half of my units would be from pops no longer able to support themselves.

As a further example of scale, I happened to click on New Orleans at one point and notice that it was receiving 78k immigrants that month. Contrast that with Old Joe's experience of having China decline from 100m to 67m.

Personally, I favor quetzilla's theory that the new RGO hiring system is creating rafts of unemployed who are bolting en masse to New World democracies. As it stands, any New World country that either starts as or converts to a democracy is virtually guaranteed to shoot up to GP status.

There's no question that something, anyway, is definitely up with emigration/immigration. Innocent Beard's Haiti; Zarine's France; Talq and Old Joe's Chinas; my Belgium, Chile, and Texas...

EDIT: He's a screenshot of Texas' population screen in 1899: http://i.imgur.com/IiN9s.jpg

 

[quetzilla]

- Allow option to keep (ie not over-write) all auto-saves, named by date (ie 01_01_1836 vs autosave1)

One thing I would like is if auto-saves had the country name somewhere in them, so that if I decide to switch countries it doesn't overwrite the auto-saves for whichever country I was playing previously.

On the topic of suggestions, someone suggsted earlier in the thread to have pop promotion numbers show in the main window pop tooltip (the same numbers that show up on the green arrow for you country in the pop screen, but visible from the main screen). A related suggestion is for the rebel flag icon in the main screen to tell you which rebels are organizing and how large/organized they are in the main window tooltip.

 

[Jawa]

BTW. I have read several posts here and there that there seams to be some kind of problem with migration. Does anybody encountered anything fishy about it? Could you please describe what happens?

I don't want to be to specific about it. If you have noticed some kind of problem please write it here. Do not search for it though as searching could trigger some kind of nocebo effect. We want to fix the problem but don't want any misleading clues.

The problem is by far worst with uncivilized nations. You start a game, farmers/labourers become unemployed - and then they just disappear. For China it's 40% of the population in 30 years!!! I'm guessing, that because uncivilized nations don't experience emigration, that is migration abroad, the pops migrate but never get to their destination. I'm guessing, that when they have nowhere to go they just migrate anyways, but have nowhere to go as there i unemployment everywhere. Start up a game with China, let it run hans off for some time and watch 1/4 of the world's population disappear. It always happens.

 

[Talq]

BTW. I have read several posts here and there that there seams to be some kind of problem with migration. Does anybody encountered anything fishy about it? Could you please describe what happens?

I don't want to be to specific about it. If you have noticed some kind of problem please write it here. Do not search for it though as searching could trigger some kind of nocebo effect. We want to fix the problem but don't want any misleading clues.

Two migration issues I have noticed (Netherlands to about 1890):

1) It seems that only New World democracies get immigrants. I have neither recieved any immigrants nor are yet to ever see a country other than USA, Mexico, USCA, Columbia, Venezuala, Equador, or Chile get my emigrants. Interestingly Mexico is providing a negative example - they have switched to HM Government and havent gotten an immigrant since.

2) Unciv China crashed from 402M at start of game to 282M by 1867 before stabilising, without being at war (except for a couple of stabs at Kokand). Given its not clear how this could happen this suggests a bug somewhere.

Outside of that, the external migration conditions mean that there will be a surge of people from the old to the new world at the start of the game (due to the starting unemployment). Additionally if a pop hits con 10, then 0.2% of it will emigrate, even with full luxuries - in practice this means old world industry tends to stagnate until health care is passed as I have found it hard to stop craftsmen from getting full luxuries (and Age of Liberalism tends to drive up con early as well). While this is WAD it may be worth looking at specifically.

 

[Aine]

In my USA game Chinas pop dropped to 68 mil by 1856

Havent seen any problems with any European countries, except austria there holding at around 9 mil
EDIT: upon further inspection into chinas pops, they are losing 50,000 pops a day....

 

[Sir Garnet]

I've been noticing this, too. Generally only one or two stacks per uprising, but I've had small uprisings that subsided without my firing a shot, and after only three or four days.

Just don't have any determination, the slackers! Why, in my day we revolted and meandered around until we either took over the country or died of gunfire or old age, and we liked it htat way!

 

[unmerged(88249)]

Has the bug whereby primary culture bureaucrats would never appear in colonies (thus meaning some colonies could never be promoted to states) been fixed? I'm aware that there was a Bureaucrat Assimilator Tool made some time ago, but I'm unsure as to whether or not it'll be necessary after the forthcoming patch. For what it's worth, I'd be very grateful if somebody could explain how to remedy the bug in 1.2 saved games (I know you can edit demote_migrants to no in bureaucrats.txt, but that only works for new games, and the aforementioned tool doesn't work for 1.2).

 

[Avindian]

Has the bug whereby primary culture bureaucrats would never appear in colonies (thus meaning some colonies could never be promoted to states) been fixed? I'm aware that there was a Bureaucrat Assimilator Tool made some time ago, but I'm unsure as to whether or not it'll be necessary after the forthcoming patch. For what it's worth, I'd be very grateful if somebody could explain how to remedy the bug in 1.2 saved games (I know you can edit demote_migrants to no in bureaucrats.txt, but that only works for new games, and the aforementioned tool doesn't work for 1.2).

In my US game, I could never make Puerto Rico into a state for the reason you described. I had it as long as Cuba (got it in the 1880s), but while Cuba didn't take long with encouraging bureaucrats, PR never happened.

 

[gibbel]

Bureaucrat promotion is heavily dependant on literacy. This could be the reason for the difference in bureaucrat promotion. I can confirm that you can definately make colonies become states using a few national foci. In my US game all of Korea has become states.