Developer Diary 23 – Gold

[PhilUK]

Hello, (first time poster)

Is the value of all gold between nations set at a fixed rate or is there a currency value that indicates the buying power of my nations gold coins?

 

[morganja]

With the rather tenuous grasp of economics on display here, it would be better if this game stayed as far away as possible from modeling the money supply.

 

[Kaiserschmarrn]

Maybe our hyphen is just really short and thus our dash looks like a hyphen? Although to be honest I really don't care about this. I would rather spend my time doing what I am doing at the moment and playing around with the POP issue scripts to improve that.

So it seems that we are left without a hope of dash!

 

[King]

Let me make a final suggestion, not even close to rewriting the whole system. As others in this thread also have indicated the possesion of precious metal provinces might just be to beneficial and therefore somewhat unbalance the game and distort incentives.

Therefore, I propose to let the administrative elite try to exploit they gold wealth for their own best. For example the bureaucracy could demand and realize higher wages depending on the share of gold income in relation to the budget. As you cannot model inflation given the general economic model this might be the next best thing to do. I think it is easy to implement and balance, makes sense gameplay-wise and is perfectly plausible (just look at the ressource rich countries of the world: oil oligarchies, diamond warlords...). I would appreciate it King if you could consider this!

Edit: if you decide not to do anything about it after all, I'm wondering if it will be possible to have a parameter that measures the share of gold income in relation to the state budget. The same would be nice for debt as I've mentioned before. However, given that Vicy II has a closed money system it won't be enough to just let certain amounts of money go to waste. They would have to be redistributed in a meaningful way. Will it be possible to transfer certain amounts of money from the state to certain POPs or even abroad?

Bureaucracy wages are not fixed in the game. bureaucracy costs more as you increase the level of social refrom, because they have more to do. Social reforms also require that you have a higher bureaucracy percentage to get full effciecny because your state employees are administering your social refroms as well. This may be not be quite what you are looking for in direct linkage but the game has these sorts of concepts.

 

[King]

No PLANS for an expansion, but like all paradox games it will probably be a barely playable but highly promising disaster on launch, which will then get patched into "playable" and then later an expansion pack will turn "playable with potential..." to "totally awesome". Maybe with the added testing the "paradox cycle" can be broken I love you guys but seriously, EVERY GAME seems to follow this cycle. Regardless, I'm buying this damn this on release. Actually Victoria was my first paradox game I bought. Gave up after a week, then about a year later got revolutions, did some extensive reading, and fell in love.

Let me me explain something to you. Patches cost money, the more time and resources we devote to patching a game the less money it makes. We do not want to patch this game at all. However, I accept that no matter what we do there will always be something that needs fixing. So let me make it clear to you that we do not want a game that is barely playable on release. As you have read in this thread, we made a number of pretty ruthless decisions in the design stage to cut features then so we have more time to devote to making this game better than barely playable.

As for Victoria 1, if you ask me, the biggest reason that game was barely playable on release was due to an economic system that simply did not work. Meaning your first 10 years of game play were spent averting global economic collapse. In Victoria 2, right now, when we are not 'gold' and thus technically not finished, we are already devoting time to making the economic system more balance by trying to get a better balance between global supply and demand of goods in 1836 (our dummed down interface makes this oh so much easier by the way). We are doing our damndest to make Victoria 2 fun and playable on release.

 

[King]

Are all the costs of a railways in the goods required to build it, or is there money-only aspect to it as well? If so, where does that money end up then?

There is no money in to keep money in the system. This isn't because we don't release that railways cost money to pay people to build them, it was more a problem of who ended up with the money. In the magical world of victoria 2 the people who made the goods also build the railway.

 

[King]

Hello, (first time poster)

Is the value of all gold between nations set at a fixed rate or is there a currency value that indicates the buying power of my nations gold coins?

Everyone uses the almighty pound sterling, as it should be.

 

[JoeGiavani]

As supply of money increases constantly throughout the game, will government costs increase with it? I know it'll increase with social reforms and presumably tech, but vicky 1 had these and they were offset by industrialisation.
Buearocrats have to buy pens and paper, offices need furnishing etc.

 

[King]

As supply of money increases constantly throughout the game, will government costs increase with it? I know it'll increase with social reforms and presumably tech, but vicky 1 had these and they were offset by industrialisation.

Yes and no, at the game start no country has enough bureaucrats to administer at 100% efficiency, so from that point of view you want to expand your bureaucracy and this will increase the cost of government. You may also want to colonise africa and put a bureaucracy in there. Although there is nothing explicitly forcing you to do this.

 

[JoeGiavani]

Thanks for the quick reply it's much appreciated.
I think ideally i'd like to see an "inflation" variable that could affect lots of little things rather than only on things dependant on the value of goods.
In Vicky 1 you could be an industrial powerhouse with a 7 figure bank balance but you'd pay the same to rebuild a factory by event, educate your POPs and pay your soldiers as an equivilent much poorer nation.

 

[King]

Thanks for the quick reply it's much appreciated.
I think ideally i'd like to see an "inflation" variable that could affect lots of little things rather than only on things dependant on the value of goods.
In Vicky 1 you could be an industrial powerhouse with a 7 figure bank balance but you'd pay the same to rebuild a factory by event, educate your POPs and pay your soldiers as an equivilent much poorer nation.

Although I don't disagree with what you are saying about the value of money in different countries. Look today when people talk about third world workers earning a dollar day, but forget that your dollar buys you a lot more in a third world country (although the wage is still probably pretty crap). It is all about the art of the possible. The system we developed, with all its flaws, is one we believe we can get to work by the time of release.

 

[unmerged(28220)]

Gold looks pretty golden here... people seem to be worried it will be unbalancing but honestly how many gold provinces will there be? My bet is not many and those that are there won't have very high efficiency (it's not like there is anywhere near the amount of precious metal in any lode compared to iron or coal deposits)... and as King said... you can't eat gold... it serves no purpose other than being cash... so if you are sitting on a mountain of gold/cash but have no steel and there is only one producer who is putting out steel on the WM well... expect them to go "All your gold are belong to us!"

The only thing I will probably subscribe to is depleting gold deposits since the California gold rush didn't last from 1849 to 1936

 

[JoeGiavani]

The only thing I will probably subscribe to is depleting gold deposits since the California gold rush didn't last from 1849 to 1936

That's very easy to do with events though. Nothing worth the devs wasting their time on.

 

[newtype0083]

Yes and no, at the game start no country has enough bureaucrats to administer at 100% efficiency, so from that point of view you want to expand your bureaucracy and this will increase the cost of government. You may also want to colonise africa and put a bureaucracy in there. Although there is nothing explicitly forcing you to do this.

Slightly off topic minor question: Will we be able to see the efficiency of our government? Will we have to guess how many more bureaucrats we need in a particular state or will there be some guidelines provided to the player?

 

[King]

Slightly off topic minor question: Will we be able to see the efficiency of our government? Will we have to guess how many more bureaucrats we need in a particular state or will there be some guidelines provided to the player?

Of course you can. There is an average value in the budget interface and the state value displayed in the province interface. So do you generally need more bureaucray or do you want to target specific states with national focus?

 

[unmerged(63310)]

With the rather tenuous grasp of economics on display here, it would be better if this game stayed as far away as possible from modeling the money supply.

Especially since nobel laureates with access to super computers running sophisticated programs still haven't pinned down all the ramifications of increases in money supply though of course real world is much more complicated than the model in this game could ever be, it would not add much value to the game to add something which makes things complicated when they don't need to be. The more important focus of building industry and influencing politics is where the meat of the game is... trying to make monetary policy interact with those things would be an easy way to screw everything up.

 

[vertinox]

If you are going to have the Gold Standard included (which is logical, are you also going to include deflationary pitfalls related to such systems that resulted in such economic panics such as the following:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Deflation (otherwise known as the great stag)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panic_of_1873
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panic_of_1893

And other mini-panics where the simple limitation on monetary supply because of the tie to gold led to bank runs and deflation crisis where no one had money to do anything.

I suppose this would be in the interest of governments to get as many gold mines as possible, but could far thinking more modern governments (or those who need it for emergencies) print their own money without gold backing?

 

[unmerged(81228)]

It is a good idea with huge potential for MDS modding - instead of gold we can have other factors which determine nations wealth in modern economy.

I like it.

Everyone uses the almighty pound sterling, as it should be.

Aren't you changing it for US version of the game? I'm pretty sure most of Americans don't realize there were and are other widely used international currencies rather than US dollar :rofl:

 

[telesien]

Let me me explain something to you. Patches cost money, the more time and resources we devote to patching a game the less money it makes. We do not want to patch this game at all. However, I accept that no matter what we do there will always be something that needs fixing. So let me make it clear to you that we do not want a game that is barely playable on release. As you have read in this thread, we made a number of pretty ruthless decisions in the design stage to cut features then so we have more time to devote to making this game better than barely playable.

Although this question has nothing in common with gold issue, I think most players will be interested in an answer.

Will this design philosophy mean that eventual expansion won't have to focus so much on polishing and we could possibly look forward to more new features then it is usual?

 

[Ignudo]

Bureaucracy wages are not fixed in the game. bureaucracy costs more as you increase the level of social refrom, because they have more to do. Social reforms also require that you have a higher bureaucracy percentage to get full effciecny because your state employees are administering your social refroms as well. This may be not be quite what you are looking for in direct linkage but the game has these sorts of concepts.

I knew about this already from a previous DD. But does this mean that it will be possible to at least mod in a mechanism along the lines I've suggested?

I guess the minimum requirements for modding it in would be:
- a variable measuring the share of the budget coming from precious metals
- the salaries for the different POPs, including bureaucrats would have to be text-based and manipulable during the game.