- Dec 14, 1999
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Dev Diary 4 - The Economic System and why it may seem a little similar
- Thread starter King
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Victoria will be released much later than HTTT, it is normal that the dev. diaries are more dilute than. I Think.
So like an entirely seperate screen? That would be great for V2 cause you do need lots of info...
Ah, that's it. 
The only thing i was hoping for - more realistic economy - is not gonna happen. The world market nonsense is staying in the game. Sad I am...
The only thing i was hoping for - more realistic economy - is not gonna happen. The world market nonsense is staying in the game. Sad I am...
Excellent! I'm glad you're concerned about this as well, and greatly look forward to future DD's.
Ah, that's it.
Well other than a world economy, what do you want then?
I guess you're going to up the fish production or push down the POP usage, but I hope you'll not make RGO production too high. One thing I miss in V:R compared to older versions (like perhaps 1.03b) was raw material shortages and the dynamic that gave to the game. One important factor in the growth of imperialism and/or the large-scale colonialism of the 19th century was the rush for raw materials for the rapidly industrializing great powers - something that finally lead up to the great war.
In V:R, you never really need to worry about not being able to buy the stuff you need from the WM, wheras in 1.03b (or was it 1.04?) you'd really go out of your way to grab for instance some iron provinces from China, Persia, colonize cameroon and so on and so forth.
I came to think about this when I read through an old MP AAR, a game we called Europe Ablaze. Lots of big wars there, and I remember how iron provinces in particular were very valuable and worth a lot of investment to get, in order to keep industrializing and getting ahead in the score board.
In my mind, the gameplay of Victoria is about creating and building an industrialized economy. Perhaps that is not a common view, hence some area for disagreement. In 1836 very few nations had any serious form of industry.
As to the notion of a world market as the center of all 19th century economies. This is problematic on two accounts: 1. the bulk of any nations economic activity was internal, not external; 2. where international trade was common, it was between a handful of western nations.
The practice of using manufactured goods from all over the world to produce a more sophisticated product is relatively new, and has only recently become a fundamental component in manufactory. The 19th century saw the begining of a similar process, on a relatively large scale, with raw materials.
This does not, however, imply a world market. On the contrary, raw materials were extracted primarily as a function of colonialization. No one would suggest that British colonies were happy to sell their goods freely to any nation who is the highest bidder that particular day or month.
As to the notion of a world market as the center of all 19th century economies. This is problematic on two accounts: 1. the bulk of any nations economic activity was internal, not external; 2. where international trade was common, it was between a handful of western nations.
The practice of using manufactured goods from all over the world to produce a more sophisticated product is relatively new, and has only recently become a fundamental component in manufactory. The 19th century saw the begining of a similar process, on a relatively large scale, with raw materials.
This does not, however, imply a world market. On the contrary, raw materials were extracted primarily as a function of colonialization. No one would suggest that British colonies were happy to sell their goods freely to any nation who is the highest bidder that particular day or month.
Hey! I've been an advocate of fun since before you were born!
It's just that my rheumatism acts up and I get cranky now and then.
Internal economic activity is well and good, but the world market is not a marketplace with merchants and stalls. It is a price-determining mechanism. Internal economic activity took its prices from external factors. That is why the world market is necessary. The thing about Western countries just isn't true; most of the detractors of the world market have said that they think the game is fatally flawed without the Anglo-Chinese Opium Wars.
You can do this in Victoria by not supplying the goods you produce to the world market.
Actually, according to the VickyWiki, your own POPs can't buy it if you do that, they have to get it via the WM.
Using the world market from Victoria isn't a good way to deal with prices, as it assumes all goods are immediately transported from the point of production to the place of use, free of charge. Prices don't fluctuate the way they should from region to region, and because of that, one would need modifiers to cope with it. As I understand what has been said, trade-lines defenitely aren't going to get simulated, so some sort of internal economic activity would be needed to check the prices more properly. A bit further up is my proposal of an "internal market" to cope with that.
I wish I could remember who exactly said it and how exactly it was said, but there was a famous description of an Englishman of the Edwardian period written by an economist or historian of some renown, describing how he could order things from the farthest reaches of the globe, read news from places both foreign and obscure, and thought this condition quite natural. Which system best models this man's condition? Why, the world market of course!
Niall Ferguson, "War of the World"?
Well, for the first part, Britain had domains all over the world, it's no wonder they could import all over the place. It's not an argument over the ability to import stuff from far away, it's an argument over why it doesn't cost anything. As far as I know, the world market of Vicky didn't simulate shipping costs at all.
So World Market survived. Will Omani start so-called Opium war on Chinese, or gain casusbelli on China, and relation between two countries fall down because China banned all Opium trade? I hope not.
There appears to be this natural tendency for players to get notions in their head and present them as if they would be the simplest thing to simulate in the world, while, in fact, those ideas tend to complicate the game quite a bit. So far, just about every player idea presented, including my own, have been that way.
Let's make the combat system more detailed. Let's introduce military supply lines and upkeep. Let's get rid of the world market idea and totally and accurately (?) simulate country to country trade, factoring in transport costs along the way. Let's have every province provide a generic food good in addition to the standard RGO (my silly-butt idea). Everybody has their own favorite idea for making the game better.
From what I've been reading of developer's comments, especially Johan's, they tried going hog-wild with their and player's ideas in HOI3, as somebody else has already pointed out; but I'm pointing it out again. Well, I know for a fact that a few of you have witnessed the maelstrom that is the HOI3 forum, just as I have. It ain't pretty, and I do not want to see the Victoria forums become as ill-humored and nasty as the HOI forums are. So I want King and Johan to follow their game plan that they currently have in-place. They've had months and years of suggestions from the Victoria forum players already, so they should have a plan in place and I expect that they will be working with that plan throughout, with only minor modifications to take care of problems that arise from testing.
Ok. I'm done lecturing. What other silly-butt ideas can we come up with now? I like the one where we can't have direct control of our military. I'm sure everybody will love that idea.
Let's make the combat system more detailed. Let's introduce military supply lines and upkeep. Let's get rid of the world market idea and totally and accurately (?) simulate country to country trade, factoring in transport costs along the way. Let's have every province provide a generic food good in addition to the standard RGO (my silly-butt idea). Everybody has their own favorite idea for making the game better.
From what I've been reading of developer's comments, especially Johan's, they tried going hog-wild with their and player's ideas in HOI3, as somebody else has already pointed out; but I'm pointing it out again.
Well, I know for a fact that a few of you have witnessed the maelstrom that is the HOI3 forum, just as I have. It ain't pretty, and I do not want to see the Victoria forums become as ill-humored and nasty as the HOI forums are. So I want King and Johan to follow their game plan that they currently have in-place. They've had months and years of suggestions from the Victoria forum players already, so they should have a plan in place and I expect that they will be working with that plan throughout, with only minor modifications to take care of problems that arise from testing. Ok. I'm done lecturing. What other silly-butt ideas can we come up with now? I like the one where we can't have direct control of our military. I'm sure everybody will love that idea.
That's good, now I don't have to worry about that.
The menus should either cover the whole screen and be able to show lots of information or only a small part on the edge of the screen but show only the most important information. Not right between them.
@ RELee
I agree with the core of what you're saying. A fun game should be strived for, not a "correct" game.
The thing is, that Paradox's current philosophy is to simulate the reasons why stuff happened, not forcing stuff to happen because they did historically. The main protagonist in the Victorian age were scarcity. Scarcity of jobs, and subsequently scarcity of resources to refine, and markets to sell the refined goods. Improving upon politics, ideologies, colonization, warfare and diplomacy is all very fine, but the bottom-line is that the different ideologies presented different solutions to cope with the scarcity of jobs, whilst warfare, colonies and diplomacy was different means to cope with the same issues.
Victoria turned that upside down. You had a scarcity of people, not jobs. Because of that, you wanted to maximize the profit you could make from each person, securing jobs for them was the least of your issues. You had no real incentive to protect your industry, you colonized for prestige rather than resources, you fought wars because an event told you so or you were bored.
I don't see how the Opium war or the guano struggles could happen if you don't have stuff like TA and embargoes. I don't see why you should actually bother to colonize if there's no real advantage in controlling the resources your industry refines. If you remove the event's that made historic wars happen without adding the reasons to the engine, I'm afraid I have to agree with the opponents of generic events. You get an entertaining game, but the start positions might as well be random.
Fake edit: This came out as a real depressive rant, more so than I had intended. It's just that I sincerely hope that the world market doesn't end up like a true world market. E.G. a place where you sell resources to the world market and buy it from it, not the seller. That would remove the possibilities of embargoes and trade agreement, and a lot of the depth with it. That being said, I'm still looking forward to vIIcky.
I agree with the core of what you're saying. A fun game should be strived for, not a "correct" game.
The thing is, that Paradox's current philosophy is to simulate the reasons why stuff happened, not forcing stuff to happen because they did historically. The main protagonist in the Victorian age were scarcity. Scarcity of jobs, and subsequently scarcity of resources to refine, and markets to sell the refined goods. Improving upon politics, ideologies, colonization, warfare and diplomacy is all very fine, but the bottom-line is that the different ideologies presented different solutions to cope with the scarcity of jobs, whilst warfare, colonies and diplomacy was different means to cope with the same issues.
Victoria turned that upside down. You had a scarcity of people, not jobs. Because of that, you wanted to maximize the profit you could make from each person, securing jobs for them was the least of your issues. You had no real incentive to protect your industry, you colonized for prestige rather than resources, you fought wars because an event told you so or you were bored.
I don't see how the Opium war or the guano struggles could happen if you don't have stuff like TA and embargoes. I don't see why you should actually bother to colonize if there's no real advantage in controlling the resources your industry refines. If you remove the event's that made historic wars happen without adding the reasons to the engine, I'm afraid I have to agree with the opponents of generic events. You get an entertaining game, but the start positions might as well be random.
Fake edit: This came out as a real depressive rant, more so than I had intended. It's just that I sincerely hope that the world market doesn't end up like a true world market. E.G. a place where you sell resources to the world market and buy it from it, not the seller. That would remove the possibilities of embargoes and trade agreement, and a lot of the depth with it. That being said, I'm still looking forward to vIIcky.
@ RELee
I agree with the core of what you're saying. A fun game should be strived for, not a "correct" game.
The thing is, that Paradox's current philosophy is to simulate the reasons why stuff happened, not forcing stuff to happen because they did historically. The main protagonist in the Victorian age were scarcity. Scarcity of jobs, and subsequently scarcity of resources to refine, and markets to sell the refined goods. Improving upon politics, ideologies, colonization, warfare and diplomacy is all very fine, but the bottom-line is that the different ideologies presented different solutions to cope with the scarcity of jobs, whilst warfare, colonies and diplomacy was different means to cope with the same issues.
Victoria turned that upside down. You had a scarcity of people, not jobs. Because of that, you wanted to maximize the profit you could make from each person, securing jobs for them was the least of your issues. You had no real incentive to protect your industry, you colonized for prestige rather than resources, you fought wars because an event told you so or you were bored.
I don't see how the Opium war or the guano struggles could happen if you don't have stuff like TA and embargoes. I don't see why you should actually bother to colonize if there's no real advantage in controlling the resources your industry refines. If you remove the event's that made historic wars happen without adding the reasons to the engine, I'm afraid I have to agree with the opponents of generic events. You get an entertaining game, but the start positions might as well be random.
Fake edit: This came out as a real depressive rant, more so than I had intended. It's just that I sincerely hope that the world market doesn't end up like a true world market. E.G. a place where you sell resources to the world market and buy it from it, not the seller. That would remove the possibilities of embargoes and trade agreement, and a lot of the depth with it. That being said, I'm still looking forward to vIIcky.
This is a 19th centuary historical game not a World War II game, that's why even if there were to be region markets there wouldn't be embargos and trade agreements. It just didn't happen.
I think that economy was the main attraction of Victoria, yet completely unrealistic way to handle it, made other aspects of the game a lot less interesting.
Most of the wars you fought is because you had nothing else to do, since getting resources was never a problem. You could fight with GB, who controlled 90% of world supply of dye and never feel a need to build a single dye factory, just buy some dye from the world market and you are good to go. Opium wars were complete farce. etc.
Colonization made no sense other than for prestige gain and lumber mill in Finland was as effective as lumber mill in Portugal. All these because of flaws in economic system.
The only thing which made different countries feel different were country specific events. And now when they are more or less gone I am a bit worried. yes.
Whit that in mind, it would be nice to have a more detailed tariff/subsidy slider, where one could subsidize food but impose high tariff on luxury goods. Or the other way around