Disapointed by economic system ... again

[NosgothKingdom]

Actually Vicky2 economic system has still much to improve to make it more real (and not just flavour, but important things). Like transport costs, real effect of tariffs on trade and some actual competition (different prices, but not only), economies of scale (static and dynamic). These things are essencial (and sometimes not so hard do implement) and it annoys me that Vicky2 lacks them, but I do get by. These things are kinda ok to abstract in Vicky2.
Those times were far from being a free market or having 0 transport costs, but anyway they were much closer than during EU timeframe. So in EU that system would feel much much more odd and I personally would hate it.

But I agree that some more economic development would make a lot of difference and it doesn't even have to be so complicated and complete as a Vicky2 system.

Edit: the main problem is always (i) balacing it properly; (ii) making the AI be able to proper use it.
So that's why I guess they won't be making some huge changes that would result in awesomeness. Sad but true.

 

[Tufto]

I do know that this is way too late now for any design change or that this can only be a useless protest but still I do need to talk about it.

The poor and unflavorish economic system has allways been the reason I did not played EU long and got bored quite quickly. I wage wars with some neighbors, explore and colonize a litttle and then get bored and go back to another game. It therefore surprises me that the Victoria 2 economic system, which is huge, balanced, and strong had not been used in EU. Except from some clear changes (no "factories", differents pop classes, trade...) the all experience of balancing vic2 economy should IMHO be used to improve really EU. I would love to see medieval and renaissance goods, production and production chains as well as religious factor affecting emmigration or miscontentement... and all else that would so much benefit from a system that allready exists.

I am for the moment waiting for a real reason to buy EU4 instead of trying once again EU3 but cannot find it. I do hope it is coming soon.

Therefore why is none of the great design advances of Victoria 2 appears in EU ? What is the opinion of people who know (which I am absolutly not) and love EU (which I a not really)? Do you think this would ruin the game and you prefer the current design? I am just curious, once again I know I won't change anything now in the game design.

I'll have to say no here. That would make it less EU-y and more Vicky-y. It would change the game to much: it's not about economic developments as colonialism, religious changes and the formation of the nation-state. Its appeal partially comes from the fact that it's simpler than Vicky.

An economic-orientated EU wouldn't be EU, to be frank. It's more popular and generally more well-regarded than Vicky because of its simplicity. They're two different games trying to do different things, and if it ain't broke, don't fix it.

 

[EUnderhill]

This one is a very good point. I agree that research to create the scenarios might be really hard or impossible.

Well you all made very good points. I would absolutly not advocate a complete start from the victoria system (and especially not the world market which to be honest doesnt even seems right in Vic2 ... ) but I am sad that for example there is no notion of quantitive good output of anykind. All economic production and trade (corrrect me if I am wrong) will pretty much sum up to money flowing around trade nodes and going directly to the budget screen. For me it is not an historical representation issue it is simply a flavour question. The game would be more enjoyable for me with silk produced in the east end moving west, gold & silver mined in the spanish colonies and sent back to europe or French wine of exquisite taste(of course ) produced in south of France and traded over europe.

Well I seem to be kind of alone on this anyway so I guess I will have to go back playing vic2, pride of nations or even imperialism 2 (which I still enjoy so much because it had some economic flavor while simulating pretty much the same historical timeframe). Umm I guess I must be some kind of "economy maniac" .

I think the trade routes will capture the flavor of this period's economics than previous iterations did. Certainly I would prefer a game with more economic depth, but with a limited number of coding (and playing) hours available a degree of abstraction is required - and this is, after all, a game; I'm not sure how many others out there would want to be distracted with provincial weather reports trying to anticipate this year's grain harvest.

 

[deezee]

The other problem is that the pop system, which is at the core of the Vicky economy, requires a huge amount of resources. Even a simplified version for the time period, in which the population is not divided into pops but there are still province-by-province calculations of supply and demand (which would be necessary to get individual resource markets to work) would require large amounts of computing power. While I would like improvements in the economy in principle, in practice an improvement on this sort of magnitude would likely require sacrifices elsewhere in order to run at a reasonable pace.

 

[Richard Dolder]

Actually Vicky2 economic system has still much to improve to make it more real (and not just flavour, but important things). Like transport costs, real effect of tariffs on trade and some actual competition (different prices, but not only), economies of scale (static and dynamic). These things are essencial (and sometimes not so hard do implement) and it annoys me that Vicky2 lacks them, but I do get by. These things are kinda ok to abstract in Vicky2.
Those times were far from being a free market or having 0 transport costs, but anyway they were much closer than during EU timeframe. So in EU that system would feel much much more odd and I personally would hate it.

But I agree that some more economic development would make a lot of difference and it doesn't even have to be so complicated and complete as a Vicky2 system.

Edit: the main problem is always (i) balacing it properly; (ii) making the AI be able to proper use it.
So that's why I guess they won't be making some huge changes that would result in awesomeness. Sad but true.

The main problem of Vickys economy is making it stuff the player interacts with rather than the computer playing with itself. It doesn't matter how realistic your free market simulation is if your player is a realistic laissez faire government. Why should the player care, it's a huge amount of resources dedicated to what is at the end of the day a random event system to them.