Beta of 1.3 - 23rd February 2011 - Discussion Thread

[Naveed]

Wow guys really nice patch, I'm very pleased with how this patch has really polished the game. I think you guys are coming close to surpassing the original with this patch. The economy is looking A LOT better. *pat on back* to everyone at paradox. Wish you would have released it in this shape but I know how you guys work and it takes a while for your games to become great.

Still some balancing issues, I would like to echo some other players concerns about resource shortages. Cement production is definitely way way way way too low. I noticed that the demand for cement was consistently 10 times the supply and it is a real limiting factor. I also noticed that liquor supplies were somewhat low but it could just be the drunkard in me. Please please adjust the world cement production before you finish this patch.

 

[gamer42_au]

I haven't played the beta yet, but I have some comments based on the change log and the dev comments so far.

1) Price setting when all production sold
King notes that when all production is sold, the price setting formula in 1.3b treats this as 120% demand, so price rises to set level above base price.
I suggest a more elegant solution would be to have the game remember yesterday's price. If all production is sold, then price should increase slightly above yesterday's price (say 105%). This would continue until either higher price reduces demand below production or additional production increases supply above demand.

2) Excess factory production
There is no mention in the change log of fixing the process where factories create maximum possible output, then throw away any unsold production.
IRL a factory manager who continued to produce at capacity when only selling a small proportion of production would be sacked in short order.
It would nice if the system could adjust production below capacity when sales significantly below production. Then falls in end demand would lead to falls in both price and production of those goods and hence in falls for the input goods as well (at the moment, only leads to falls in price of end good, not of input goods until factories start to be closed for lack of profit). You could even get major depressions as falls in demand drove falls in production hence falls in employment which contributed to falls in demand!
The net effect for factory based production is that falls in demand would be shared across fall in price and fall in production (and hence to falls for input goods). Whereas RGO goods would still produce to capacity (no input costs) and impact would be all on price.
I do note that fixing this might greatly increase the profitability of higher end factories compared to input factories, and it might be necessary to re-calibrate the factory efficiency techs if this change was made - realistically it is probably an expansion rather than patch level issue. But I don't think it should fall off the agenda.

3) Literacy trap
In v1.3b, it appears that pop promotion is more heavily dependent on literacy.
Already in v1.2, countries starting with low literacy often were in a trap where literacy was so low that promotion to clergy was virtually nil, and yet literacy could only be increased very very slowly because clergy % was low.
I had case with OE where my national clergy % was decreasing despite 100% education funding and both available NF set on clergy. The changes will apparently make this even more likely to occur.
IRL some countries did make very substantial gains in literacy during the period - mainly by implementing compulsory public education, which shifted literacy rates dramatically within a generation.
I think there should be some mechanism (a decision that increases education efficiency at some ongoing cost?) to reflect the RL ability to raise literacy rates (in game terms it will also widen the scope of countries it is interesting to play).

 

[unmerged(153048)]

I'd like to comment that I'm relatively unhappy about the decision to remove the troop presence factor from the colonization rate. I understand the AI cannot do it and it might seem gamey, but without it, is there any way to catch up to a power who started colonizing beforehand? It just seems removing the ability of the player to influence this (other then being the first one to assign the NF) seems like a pretty simplistic approach.

 

[Ethan194]

It would be realy good if 1.3 had Northern Rhodesia

 

[unmerged(247071)]

I'd like to comment that I'm relatively unhappy about the decision to remove the troop presence factor from the colonization rate. I understand the AI cannot do it and it might seem gamey, but without it, is there any way to catch up to a power who started colonizing beforehand? It just seems removing the ability of the player to influence this (other then being the first one to assign the NF) seems like a pretty simplistic approach.

Hmm. How about techs as factors that improve colonisation speed? I'm in favour of using troops to hurry colonisation, but techs are something that the AI can already deal with.

 

[heliostellar]

Honestly flabbergasted by the improvement in speed. Don't care how much is broken (not much as far as I've seen, maybe a few events), the difference is enormous. Can we get some technowizard explanation for what changes were made there?

Wasn't their talk of them adding multi-threading capability somewhere? I might be completely wrong on this...

 

[Risa]

Hmm. How about techs as factors that improve colonisation speed? I'm in favour of using troops to hurry colonisation, but techs are something that the AI can already deal with.

That's a good suggestion.
I'd suggest a more generalized solution, that is, to link up state colonization speed with difference between average life rating of that state and allowed minimum colonization life rating. The bigger the difference is, the faster colonization proceed. Then we don't need to invent a new type of modifier command, just giving some post 1870 techs "-x life rating requirement" effect and it's done.

 

[heliostellar]

That's a good suggestion.
I'd suggest a more generalized solution, that is, to link up state colonization speed with difference between average life rating of that state and allowed minimum colonization life rating. The bigger the difference is, the faster colonization proceed. Then we don't need to invent a new type of modifier command, just giving some post 1870 techs "-x life rating requirement" effect and it's done.

+1 -- might I recommend some of the oft forgotten Commerce techs for this?

 

[unmerged(256875)]

I like the idea of sending troops to speed up colonization because of the strategic elements it adds to the game. When you have to decide whether to send the military to help colonize, you have to think about any current wars and prospective wars, and whether you can sacrifice the soldiers, if it's more beneficial to use them for colonization instead of the front, etc. It's also fun to be forced to rethink that strategy if another country unexpectedly attacks you.

Instead of workaround methods for speeding colonization up (which is more slider/research work instead of action), I think the focus should be on how to get the AI to be at least semi-competitive in sending troops to colonies.

 

[Van Diemen]

Italy 1870

Well, first thing I notice is that the UK military score has not run away with its self, only just going over 100. This is a drastic improvment. It's also industrialised less, so much so that it is in fact olnly third in industrialisation and second in total. The top spot? Russia. Russia still industrialises much too quickly. It has twice the industry points as the UK.The UK's been nerfed to a suitible level; now hit Russia with the nerf bat too!

Actually, I've noticed that all countries have industrialised less this time around. Normally I'd ecpect to see the top four or five countries with ind score of well over 1000 at this point, however the only countries that do are Russia and France. The USA is only on 600, and the NGF is at 800. This is a big improvment IMO, aside from the afformentioned Russia problem.

Europe has held together much more nicely; the borders are very tidy indeed! Asia too, with the inclusion of Burma in the UK's SoI, is no longer a disjointed mess of red and green, which was a pleasant surprise.

POP's i've noticed are much more balanced now. No longer do the poor somehow get enough money to buy three castles despite full taxation. The rich seem to be struggling mind you, and there seems to be a shortage in key goods, namely liquor, and a huge surplus in others, such as steel. For the first time I have ever seen, steel is decisivley unprofitable! Everything else on the other hand does turn a profit. My only qualm is that the prices remain fixed; they will either peak at max or minimum price and then don't move for the rest of the game, which is irritating because I have to mouse over to check whether its stuck in over or under supply.

All in all I'd say 1.3 is shaping up to be a big improvment, but it does need a bit of fine tuning here and there (i.e. Russia )

From what I know about v1.2 playtesting and the industrialization of russia, this is mostly due to idiotic management by applying subsidies to every factory, allowing them to expand beyond believe as long as they can keep investing money. If Russia is taken over by anarcho-liberals (which run laissez faire) they usually drop their industrial score to only 100-500.

 

[Ethan194]

I think the best way to colonise in 1.3 would be to put a priority level or something for example if you were colonising 2 places at once you could choose witch one is more important.

 

[quetzilla]

From what I understand with the goods pricing, there are 4 related numbers:

1) Supply - This is the total amount of a good produced by all nations.
2) Actual Bought - This is the amount of a good consumers are able to buy with the money they have
3) Fantasy Demand - This is the amount of a good consumers wish they could buy if their money was unlimited
4) Actual Demand - This is the total amount of a good that consumers would buy if supply was unlimited.

The problem is that Actual Bought and Fantasy Demand should not be used in place of Actual Demand. If we use Actual Demand then the price calculation would work like this:

* If supply = actual demand, then the price will equal the base price of the item.
* If supply is less than actual demand, then the price of the good should rise incrementally each day. As the item gets more expensive, consumers who previously would have been able to afford that good no longer will be able to, so the actual demand will drop until it equals supply, thus arriving at a new stable price.
* If supply is more than demand, then the price of the good should fall incrementally each day. As the item gets cheaper, consumers who previously were unable to afford the item will now be able to, increasing actual demand until it equals supply, arriving at a new stable price.

The other side of the coin is how this affects factories. Assuming no subsidies, if the price of a good falls, then workers will get paid less, which should result in them demoting and thus lowering supply, which ultimately will cause supply to meet with actual demand again and vice versa if the price rises. With subsidies, what *should* happen is that if supply is higher than actual demand, supply the price will drop. Since the factory is subsidized it will keep making the same amount, and price will continue dropping. The trick is that this should then make unsubsidized factories start losing money to the point that people get demoted, lowering supply in *those* factories, which should then ultimately cause supply to lower until it meets actual demand and thus result in a new stable price.

(Real World Note: this is why subsidies can be such a big political issue. When one country subsidizes an industry that can cause huge problems in other countries reliant on that industry)

So that's how everything *should* work in an ideal world. I don't know how things are actually coded (or realistically able to be coded) in V2 itself, but the main point is that using Actual Bought or Fantasy Demand as defined above, instead of Actual Demand, will end up with economic weirdness of some kind.

 

[Premu]

Several observations:

- The AI seems to be more aggressive and more opportunistic - I've seen France conquering Catalania and the Bavarian Pfalz, afterwards it tried to take my Rhineland. The French progress was stopped, as an alliance with three GPs used the opportunity to also declare war against France while the war with Prussia was going on. Still it was quite a challenge to beat back the French troops.

- The AI is more likely to accept a call to arms.

- Without troops, it takes a lot longe to colonise provinces. The needed time is OK for me - it makes it much harder to "blitz"-colonise all of Africa. But it would be nice if there was a way to catch up with someone already colonising a state. A little bug: If you move your mouse over the progress bar for the colonisation and you have troops in this states, there is still the message that you get a boon of +2% although the troops don't have any effect.

- LF economy is much stronger now. The only problem is that some goods (cement, liquor) are lacking in large numbers. I haven't tried to use NF to promote such factories yet, though - perhaps this works fine too without switching to a state capitalist party.

- No blockades in the UH anymore (like 30% liberals, 30% socialists, 30% conservatives, 10% reactionaries, commies and anarcholiberals) which would make it impossible to do any important reform.

- Less rebellions, and these rebellions aren't repeated every five years.

Overall a very nice patch. The only serious problem I had was the lack of cement and liquor.

 

[Darkrenown]

I like the idea of sending troops to speed up colonization because of the strategic elements it adds to the game. When you have to decide whether to send the military to help colonize, you have to think about any current wars and prospective wars, and whether you can sacrifice the soldiers, if it's more beneficial to use them for colonization instead of the front, etc. It's also fun to be forced to rethink that strategy if another country unexpectedly attacks you.

Not really, all you need is 1 brigade per state being colonised. It was a no-brainer to send some troops out and vastly out-colonise the AI.

Yes, an ideal solution would be to make the AI do it, but that's not practical at this time.

 

[unmerged(252359)]

Had something seemingly unintended happen as New Zealand. I imagine it would work the same and easier as Hawaii. When I finished colonizing the rest of my starting states, it turned each state into a colony so that I had no states. Since I had no states, I had 0.0% literacy. Then my gov't became 100% Reactionary since I now had no voters and had the reactionary gov't in place. Which I promptly "abused" to remove the reforms I didn't want from breaking off of UK. Presumably I could've then switched to Liberal and enacted any reforms I might've wanted but didn't have. Is it intentional to be able to have NO states as a country? Obviously only a couple nations can even ever do this, but still. Gives a new meaning to the term "colonial power."

 

[Macs]

I think the best way to colonise in 1.3 would be to put a priority level or something for example if you were colonising 2 places at once you could choose witch one is more important.

Hm, something like the political influence on other nations. Say, you get a certain amount of colonization points based on your colonization supporting techs and can divide them like your influence points.
Maybe make the AI either only colonize one state at a time of let it split its points evenly, to make it simple. Otherwise, like influencing nations, let it decide depending on the amount of points other nations invest on the state.

But I could imagine that such a mechanism would probably decrease performance as there is another influence system to be evaluated every day, even though on a smaller scale.

 

[Darkrenown]

Had something seemingly unintended happen as New Zealand. I imagine it would work the same and easier as Hawaii. When I finished colonizing the rest of my starting states, it turned each state into a colony so that I had no states. Since I had no states, I had 0.0% literacy. Then my gov't became 100% Reactionary since I now had no voters and had the reactionary gov't in place. Which I promptly "abused" to remove the reforms I didn't want from breaking off of UK. Presumably I could've then switched to Liberal and enacted any reforms I might've wanted but didn't have. Is it intentional to be able to have NO states as a country? Obviously only a couple nations can even ever do this, but still. Gives a new meaning to the term "colonial power."

No, states are not meant to be able to turn back to colonies when you colonise empty parts.

 

[Vieras]

Is there a file i could change to get base colonialisation speed to match troop supported colonialisation speed? I'm not very good at modding games.

 

[unmerged(145488)]

No, states are not meant to be able to turn back to colonies when you colonise empty parts.

I had this happen to me in 1.2, playing as Russia, I thought it was a known bug. The same happened when I conquered the remaining part of a state from one of my uncivilized neighbours, my original state reverted to a colony.

 

[FelixCress]

No, states are not meant to be able to turn back to colonies when you colonise empty parts.

It is something I wanted to bring a while ago. Is there any way to mod in option to convert states into colonies? If not, could you consider adding it?
When I play, let's say Germany and I conquer Ukraine I would like it to have colony rather than state status. It may remove industry of course, I don't mind .