For those of you who are not familiar with Victoria, let’s start with a brief run down of how things were in the original game. Victoria had the concept of a world market, which acted as a central clearinghouse for goods. RGOs and factories sold there, and countries and POPs bought from it. Countries bought and sold internally first and then the remainder were dumped onto the market for others to buy and sell. Now, an interesting abstraction was that the world market bought everything regardless of there being any demand in the game and then sold whatever people wanted. This had the side effect of making the world market a huge source of input money into the system.
We have kept the core concept of a world market and internal buying. This gives us a nice familiar foundation to work from. However, we felt this was not going to be enough. We have made several additions to how the world market worked to ensure that it ran better. Economic change is the second key theme of the Victoria era (on top of political change) so it forms the second pillar of the game.
The first change we made had nothing to do with the world market directly; however it was central to how the market functioned. We had made the decision to keep the identical trade goods from Victoria, so we went through and looked at supply and demand for each one. We then changed the demand model to ensure that every good had some sort of constant demand. For example, we have removed rubber from the start of the game (no one wants it) and added it back in later, when people will start to want it. We have added the Artisan to help create that demand. These two things in conjunction will allow the world market to function better as a pricing mechanism.
This feeds into our second change; the world market no longer buys everything. If only 90% of the production could be bought then only 90% is bought. The remaining 10% is lost to the system and all the producers only receive 90% of the money they would have got. What this means is that when supply is greater than demand, less efficient producers will be forced out of that market for good. This makes for a more realistically functioning economy. The market then looks at total produced and total bought. If less is bought than produced then the price of the good falls, if as much of the good is bought as sold the price rises. Now, this does mean that there is no steady price for a good, but it should lead to a more realistic price model. Finally, we don’t have lots of money being pumped into the system from nowhere, because the market does not buy goods on its own, it simply acts as a clearing house for goods (as it should do).
On to blockades! I am not going to go into too much detail here about how blockades are calculated, but I will tell you how it will effect the world market. We calculate a blockade percentage; this then affects the prices of goods inside your country. The more you are blockaded the less money you receive for selling goods and the more you have to pay to buy goods (it is assumed that evil middle men are taking profits.) Thus as a blockade tightens your POPs earn less and less money (leaving less for you to tax) and have to spend more and more money. Not getting goods is bad for POPs; it increases their militancy and their desire for reform. Thus blockade becomes a weapon of war.
Finally, let’s talk a bit about the internal market. In Victoria it was simply your own country, but now Great Powers have an expanded internal market. It is not just their country, but countries inside their sphere of influence as well. Thus, you can use warfare (or diplomacy) to carve out commercial advantages for your country. You have these captive markets that buy from you first and then the rest of the world and will sell to you first and then the rest of the world. This allows the creation of an informal empire. As Britain you have no need to go conquering in South America; bring these countries into your sphere of influence and they will automatically orientate their economies towards you. Similarly, the USA may want to intervene in Central America to make sure the United Fruit Company maintains its favoured position.
We are looking to give the player realistic alternatives to simply painting the map their colour. Commercial influence can be just as useful, sometimes better. Our diplomatic model allows you to continually compete with other Great Powers for other countries to get preferential trade rights
We have kept the core concept of a world market and internal buying. This gives us a nice familiar foundation to work from. However, we felt this was not going to be enough. We have made several additions to how the world market worked to ensure that it ran better. Economic change is the second key theme of the Victoria era (on top of political change) so it forms the second pillar of the game.
The first change we made had nothing to do with the world market directly; however it was central to how the market functioned. We had made the decision to keep the identical trade goods from Victoria, so we went through and looked at supply and demand for each one. We then changed the demand model to ensure that every good had some sort of constant demand. For example, we have removed rubber from the start of the game (no one wants it) and added it back in later, when people will start to want it. We have added the Artisan to help create that demand. These two things in conjunction will allow the world market to function better as a pricing mechanism.
This feeds into our second change; the world market no longer buys everything. If only 90% of the production could be bought then only 90% is bought. The remaining 10% is lost to the system and all the producers only receive 90% of the money they would have got. What this means is that when supply is greater than demand, less efficient producers will be forced out of that market for good. This makes for a more realistically functioning economy. The market then looks at total produced and total bought. If less is bought than produced then the price of the good falls, if as much of the good is bought as sold the price rises. Now, this does mean that there is no steady price for a good, but it should lead to a more realistic price model. Finally, we don’t have lots of money being pumped into the system from nowhere, because the market does not buy goods on its own, it simply acts as a clearing house for goods (as it should do).
On to blockades! I am not going to go into too much detail here about how blockades are calculated, but I will tell you how it will effect the world market. We calculate a blockade percentage; this then affects the prices of goods inside your country. The more you are blockaded the less money you receive for selling goods and the more you have to pay to buy goods (it is assumed that evil middle men are taking profits.) Thus as a blockade tightens your POPs earn less and less money (leaving less for you to tax) and have to spend more and more money. Not getting goods is bad for POPs; it increases their militancy and their desire for reform. Thus blockade becomes a weapon of war.
Finally, let’s talk a bit about the internal market. In Victoria it was simply your own country, but now Great Powers have an expanded internal market. It is not just their country, but countries inside their sphere of influence as well. Thus, you can use warfare (or diplomacy) to carve out commercial advantages for your country. You have these captive markets that buy from you first and then the rest of the world and will sell to you first and then the rest of the world. This allows the creation of an informal empire. As Britain you have no need to go conquering in South America; bring these countries into your sphere of influence and they will automatically orientate their economies towards you. Similarly, the USA may want to intervene in Central America to make sure the United Fruit Company maintains its favoured position.
We are looking to give the player realistic alternatives to simply painting the map their colour. Commercial influence can be just as useful, sometimes better. Our diplomatic model allows you to continually compete with other Great Powers for other countries to get preferential trade rights
