Developer Diary 5 – POPs, Bureaucrats and the Clergy

[semihippie]

From what I remember reading about Late Qing Dynasty China, in some parts of the country, one magistrate could be responsible for over 300,000 people. In the Ming Dynasty, the ratio was 1 managing about 40,000 people.

The manpower necessary to run his area was to be paid by the magistrate, not by the state. This led to the institutionalization of corruption, as magistrates etc., had to be corrupt in order to hire the manpower necessary to run their areas.

 

[unmerged(28220)]

There are two types of bureaucracy. One is the good kind that greases the wheels to keep the state running smoothly... and then there is bureaucracy for it's own sake which is when the managers outnumber the workers and become the kind of bloat you see on the news today... Too bad you can never have one without the other...

 

[unmerged(91061)]

^ False Dichotomy?

 

[HMAS-Nameless]

i must say that the naval models look very nice! much better than the vicky ones haha do u think that in the next dd in the screen shot we could see some of the interface expanded?

 

[SA_Avenger]

Sounds very well thought out, grats. Seems very promising to have each pop having it's own thing (litteracy, crime fighting etc...) can't wait to discover it all ^^

 

[Maznar]

Now I did say we would talk a bit more about the economic system of Victoria 2 in this developer dairy, and here we have it. Money does not just magically disappear in Victoria 2; like the Spice it must flow. Governments collect money from POPs and then while doing its thing they give money to POPs. We feel that this adds depth to the economy by a very simple change.

I really REALLY like this change!

 

[King]

A couple of things here. First up Bureaucrats functions as a percentage of POP size. Onto the total size of the bureaucracy. If you were to go all out to creat a good bureaucracy from day one in a GC you should be able to have a pretty good one by the end of the game regardless of who you play. Thus we have an absolute cap on effectiveness, this partly logical you can only collect so much taxes before you have collected your taxes and partly gameplay a good bureaucracy is a good thing but it should not be unlimitedly useful.

Now people talk about POP setup, this is a subject for testing and balancing. China, how many bureaucrats do we need to make China playable and fun without being a total animal? Do we want to be a bit nastier here? Should we make a chunk of the Confucion Bureaucracy Aristocrats? Thus they seve Chinese Emporer, with his mandate from heaven, but they aren't going to serve any old clown with a mandate from the people.

 

[Andrelvis]

Will we be able to add in custom POP types?

 

[King]

Will we be able to add in custom POP types?

POPs themselves are in plain text files and are easy to add. What I cannot comment about at the moment is how much of the game effects of POPs will be out into plain text files.

 

[unmerged(75409)]

Should not bureaucrats make the system less effective? I mean look at the USSR with their infamous massive bureaucracy, it took forever to get anything done.

The USSR of the 1920s and 1930s was pretty good at getting things done real fast actually.

 

[unmerged(73368)]

So if the money is circulative in the game, will there be monetairy policy, or will the money base in the worldeconomy just increase by the output? The effects of MP would ofcourse be minimal (because there are no regional markets) but you could allways slow down currency ratio corrections, this would make your products cheaper/more expensive in comparison to others. Monetairy policy could also effect investments, real debt, etc.

 

[jpd]

The USSR of the 1920s and 1930s was pretty good at getting things done real fast actually.

That's probably because of the carrot and stick approach. Fall in line with whatever policies the Party dictates, and you are rewarded.

Fall out of line, and the NKVD pays you a visit. Possibly resulting in you visting Siberia for a couple of years.

 

[unmerged(71032)]

The USSR of the 1920s and 1930s was pretty good at getting things done real fast actually.

Exactly.

Proletariat dictatoriships should simply have much higher set cap where red tape starts to be a problem - resulting in player/AI actively working to expand it (because its effective at the start, especially considering that cappies and other, traditionally useful classes should migrate away often unless under the barrel of the gun). In such system where cappies/clergy/clerks run away or die, it's quite neccessary to replace them with party admitted administrators - so you want to have lots of them.

Later on, player might fall into a trap of huge administration, but it's out of the scope of the game period really - if neccessary, it can be simulated with the events.

 

[ashandresash]

About socialism and bureaucrats...

IMO you don't need to implement special penalties if there're too much bureaucrats, as threre'll be a cap to tax collection, and bureacrats already cost money, so over some proportion, they're more a problem than a solution. It's autorregulated.

By the other hand, I think the main question is how socialism will be implemented. I stated some time ago than Vicky's way (a continuum where laissez faire and communism are the extremes) is not the best, as different features for 'capitalist' and 'socialist' economies should be better, things like implementing credit for capis, and 'barter' (just using people and resources) for socialists in industrialization, or different effects on research (free spread of discoveries for capis, more theoretical-centered for socialists...), and so on.

In this timeframe, we should have trade-offs between socialism and capitalism: both should be attractive to play. And the bureaucrat thing should be nearly a no-brainer in the period (except because the cost of raising POPs literacy to promote to bureaucrats, low tax base making not affordable in short terms having more bureaucrats...). Discussion about over-regulation and those things should be reserved to a game covering the 1970s and following... and nowadays this is argueable also

 

[unmerged(77251)]

King, do you plan any crime/corruption negative effect on overall bureaucrats efficiency ?

As of the custom pops, IHMO, this would be one of the biggest improvement for modders...

 

[King]

King, do you plan any crime/corruption negative effect on overall bureaucrats efficiency ?

As of the custom pops, IHMO, this would be one of the biggest improvement for modders...

No that will set up a negative spiral that will be virtually impossible to escape from, basically if you don't max out your admin slider from day one your are screwed. In that scenario why bother with the slider?

 

[jpd]

No that will set up a negative spiral that will be virtually impossible to escape from, basically if you don't max out your admin slider from day one your are screwed. In that scenario why bother with the slider?

Yup. A slider for which only one setting is the good setting is generally not a good idea ....

.... unless you use it as a sort of scenario setup starting tool to determine how early each nation reaches that point.

But that's about the only use I can think of.

 

[Snaggleooo]

That's probably because of the carrot and stick approach. Fall in line with whatever policies the Party dictates, and you are rewarded.

Fall out of line, and the NKVD pays you a visit. Possibly resulting in you visting Siberia for a couple of years.

...or a shallow ditch for eternity.

On topic though, this DD has got me much more excited about Vicky 2. The new development of money not dissapearing into a black hole will be a massive improvement over the original. If they government gives the country a minimum wage, they should at least see some of that cash coming back to them in income or goods taxes, not vaporising into thin air.

The bureaucrats idea is brilliant. It should result in so much better game balance (hopefully with this change, Russia won't steamroll the world this time around). I like the other idea too. Shhh, don't mention the war.

 

[unmerged(148774)]

This sounds really good. Victoria 2 is looking better and better.

I do wish we could see some of Canada in a map though.

 

[bbasgen]

Money does not just magically disappear in Victoria 2; like the Spice it must flow. Governments collect money from POPs and then while doing its thing they give money to POPs. We feel that this adds depth to the economy by a very simple change.

Will POPs send money to each other or is the government the nexus of all economic activity? E.g. does the RGO sell grain to the government, the government theoretically stores it, transports it, and markets it to POPs, who buy directly from the government. That money, in turn, is used to buy grain from the RGO, etc. I'm not sure how the world market fits into this equation -- it can't set prices if it isn't engaged in buying/selling.

On the other hand, do POPs interact directly with the world market instead? E.g. does the RGO sell to the "world market", and a POP would then buy the grain they need from that world market?