Developing resources in a protectorate/puppet?

[Ethan_Smythe]

I've reached 1925 in my first playthrough of Vic3, playing as Scandinavia. My economy is doing very well BUT I'm now facing shortages of oil as a main limiting factor to further growth. I have been able to overcome earlier issues I had with other powers buying up my oil simply by increasing my own use of it. Oil has stayed very expensive but I have been able to meet my nation's needs. Now, I have completely developed all available oil producing potential both at home and in my colonies. There are no substantial trade routes for oil available. I've been looking around for other sources, and have discovered one of the members of my own customs union, Venezuela, has A LOT of untapped oil. They have developed exactly ONE of some thirty available oil wells. I have an alliance and a trade agreement and all that good stuff with them, they love me, but they are very far from wanting to enter into a protectorate with me. And even if they did, my understanding is I still wouldn't be able to control or develop those oil resources. When I started the game as Sweden I noticed I couldn't do anything with Norway's buildings even though we were in a personal union, so I'm guessing that would be the same for other relationships like a protectorate.

The thing is, I feel like there SHOULD be a be a way, short of actually conquering a country, where you can develop their resources and take some or most of the profit or product for yourself. The ability of private investors, corporations and national governments to do this was a fairly key element of the growth of capitalism in the latter part of the era this game portrays (think, for example, of "Chiquita Banana" and the United Fruit Company's activities in Central America during the early 20th century). The game already suggests this kind of cooperative (or exploitative) relationship with Egypt and Panama through the 'survey canal' Decisions, but Decisions are special cases rather than something that could apply to relations between any two countries.

There may already be a way to do this that I'm simply not aware of, and there may also be difficulties from a game mechanics perspective that I am not considering. That said, I think it would add to the realism of the game if countries were able to develop the resources of another country that are in some way tributary to them.

 

[Fawr]

I feel that if the AI realised that oil was very profitable in their market and they should build more wells then this wouldn't feel so bad.

That said some kind of foreign investment was on the list of things they wanted to build into the game.

 

[Oktobermensch]

Both foreign investment into your own subjects as well as ability to invest into nations you have trade agreements/customs union (potentially an intermediate tier between the two in a form of investment agreement) is sorely missing from the game at the moment.

I envision using your own investment pool for payments and target nation's construction industry (potentially building that too for them to spur construction, as AI is known to underdevelop severely), with ownership of the business being your capitalist/aristocrat pops whose money got invested. You could then have a ability to either sell shares (essentially mixing ownership of the business between yours and local, with potential to sell it off entirely) or nationalising it, which would impact relations and give you a CB to reinstate ownership of the business.
You could have bilateral investment agreements as well between countries of equal standing or one-sided ones in favour of the greater power.

I should really drop this in suggestions, but the fact that this is not in already in a form of a mod makes me think there are some obstacles in the code.

 

[Aquae Sulis]

I feel that if the AI realised that oil was very profitable in their market and they should build more wells then this wouldn't feel so bad.

That said some kind of foreign investment was on the list of things they wanted to build into the game.

Oil I can understand, as they don't have the need or the techs etc.

But I can't understand why they never see Gold as profitable enough to justify filling it out to the point where you invade countries with 100k peasants with 1/10 gold mines. I'd love to know what the calculation is.

 

[Oktobermensch]

Oil I can understand, as they don't have the need or the techs etc.

But I can't understand why they never see Gold as profitable enough to justify filling it out to the point where you invade countries with 100k peasants with 1/10 gold mines. I'd love to know what the calculation is.

Try switching countries to the target one and see what their construction industry is and what they are prioritizing.
A lot of the time AI is strangely averse to building up their construction capacity if they are not a great power and they stay consistently underdeveloped for the duration of the game.

 

[Darth_Siddius]

Is Venezuela in someone's market or in their own?
If they are in their own, they are probably priorizing building up the rest of the economy to fulfill their pop's needs - to which Oil does not belong.
So maybe add them to your market, and bankroll them to boost their economy a bit? You can supply them with necessary goods through your market and money by bankrolling, and they will suddenly see a big deficit in oil and might start building that up in return.

No idea if it will work but I could imagine that, given the possibility that they aren't in someone's market.

Edit: They definitely are not in your market if you have a trade agreement, that's why they have no reason to increase Oil production. So try adding them, shouldn't be too hard if you have an alliance, trade agreement and a strong economy.

 

[Roy1012]

Please this. Don't make me annex Burma just because I need to build opium plantations there! In real life you would simply build them. And re-introducing the foreign investment feature to build influence in foreign markets was a hallmark of vicky 2, and I don't see why it shouldn't be back here!

 

[doubleskulls]

Oil I can understand, as they don't have the need or the techs etc.

Even when it has the required tech the AI won't develop resources even when there is massive demand in the same customs union and the buildings would be immensely profitable. Even when they do put a few buildings in, the AI is so bad at developing its economy it won't produce much even when this would be very profitable.

 

[_karl_]

The thing is, I feel like there SHOULD be a be a way, short of actually conquering a country, where you can develop their resources and take some or most of the profit or product for yourself.

Yeah, there should. And I think Paradox acknowledged that already, in some roadmap they officially published. It's just left as a project for later.

But also Venezuela should be able to build oil rigs. Assuming they have the techs, which seems to be the case since they already have one oil rig.
I understand that countries out-of-you-market do not get price signals encouraging them to build oil rigs, as the prices in their markets are just ill-defined. So getting oil through trade is difficult, I can understand that fixing the AI for that can be difficult. But in your case Venezuela should see that owners of the oil rig they have are already swimming in cash. The fact that they can't react properly to that is something I just don't understand.

By "exactly ONE of some thirty available oil wells" you mean one level 1 oil rig, right? It's not that they have expanded it max level but don't want to build a second one, is it? Or that it's expanding slowly.
Did you check whether their oil rig have reached max cash reserve? Because the AI might take the expansion decisions by just turning on auto-expansion. If max cash reserve isn't reached you can then try to understand why, it is then it's even weirder.
In the same spirit, maybe they already have too much in their building queue? It's worth having a look with a tag switch.