(Far too many words on) Victoria 3's Gameplay Loop

[Panagean]

Quick aside: naturally all of this is just my opinion, and I am not an expert in gameplay-systems-design (as many of the people who built Victoria 3 undeniably are). This post may be fairly critical in places, but I do genuinely mean it as a discursive jumping-off point rather than a simple "V3 good" or "V3 bad" shouting match. I tend to write long posts when I can't get them out of my head, so thanks to you for taking the time to read my insomnia-scrawl.

Preamble

I took a bit of a break between 1.0 and checking back into V3 1.2 recently. A lot has I think undeniably been modified and improved for the better, but after about 30 years or so in game I had lost interest. I was trying to interrogate myself as to why that was, and I think it comes down to Victoria 3's core gameplay loop. I'm fully prepared that, as not a V3 expert, I could well have been playing the game "wrong" (though if I am, I think I might consider that as a separate issue with the game's communication).

To nontechnically summarise, a gameplay loop is a set of activities in a game, the completion of which resets to a new version of the same loop - so the set of actions taken to complete a level might be considered a gameplay loop, because that then unlocks the next level, and that level will be completed using a similar bunch of actions. Loops sit inside larger loops, and the "core gameplay loop" I think is best considered as the smallest, frequent gameplay loop which can still be expressed in non-mechanistic language: after all, at some level all games involve the same loop of receiving audio-visual output, responding through a mechanical input (e.g. a keystroke), and then responding to the new audio-visual output. At some level, the core gameplay loop os what players of a game spend most of their time actually doing. Some examples of core gameplay loops might be:

• Running and jumping to overcome an obstacle in a classic Mario game, which sits inside the larger loop of completing levels
• Positioning each block in Tetris, within the larger loop of clearing rows

There is a school of thought which argues that good games are those with enjoyable core gameplay loops, which I agree with up to a point. Strategy games are usually slightly harder to evaluate in terms of core gameplay loops. For example, I would argue that Civilisation has two core loops, which both sit inside the turn cycle loop:

• Choosing what your cities should build
• Moving and fighting with your units

PDX games in particular are known for having lots of different intersecting systems with it being rare for one to have total primacy: in this sense, they have lots of "subgames" with their own core loops, and resources traded between these subgames influence the starting conditions of other subgames' loops. There can sometimes be an issue where these subgames are too disconnected to meaningfully "narratively" - that is, in the subjective experience of the player in understanding their actions as connected with the represented reality of the game, i.e. running a fictional historical country - connect into a larger gameplay experience (I've sometimes seen EU4's Estates criticised for this reason).

Victoria 3's Gameplay Loops

I would strongly argue that construction is Victoria's core gameplay loop, and that it enjoys primacy in that over the other subgames that exist in Victoria 3, as most of these exist to serve the resource-deficit-construction loop. I found most of my time in the game was structured around the following cycle:

1. The game would whine at me that I had a deficit of something, through one of a number of notifications (e.g. shortages, expensive government goods, expensive military goods). The game takes pains to make this same point in a number of different ways, which reinforces to me that this is designed to be a core system.
2. If the good was a raw resource, I would find a place to build more of that resource and add it to the construction queue, potentially jumping it to the top.
3. If the good was a developed resource, I would find a factory that made that resource, and build more of that factory as well as repeat this entire loop for any expensive inputs for that factory
4. This would usually eventually create new deficits, so the process repeats (typically before the entire construction queue has run through).

A modification of this is when I have surplus, typically of money - in that case, I would invest in accelerating the construction cycle or, less commonly, the military, tax-bureaucratic or research sectors.

What about when I couldn't solve a resource-deficit problem through the construction sector? I would say this defines how the game's core loop interacts with its other activities:

• The next loop "up" is probably the technology-PM loop, which was the one I found most frequently engaging with after construction. I would unlock a tech (sometimes directedly, sometimes undirectedly), modify my production methods all at once or gradually, releasing and creating new production bottlenecks, and reengage with either the construction or the technology loop as a result. I'll also point out that unlike many other games, the technology system doesn't introduce fundamentally new modes of play - new subgames or loops - or radically alter existing ones beyond what buildings you are building where, with possible exceptions being technologies that introduce new organisations of political parties (which I think does meaningfully complicate the political game) and how multilateral alliances can in principle completely reshape war and diplomacy to generate alliance chains and webs.
• Trade is fairly obviously aimed at fulfilling this deficit-construction cycle where resources are not available domestically, and at least in my experience is not terribly engaging as a system in an of itself.
• War and colonisation seem to mainly exist to gain access to resources that can be used to fill up holes in your deficit-construction cycle (e.g. getting access to rubber or oil). These processes are both taken so far out of the player's hands that they a) don't hold much ludonarrative heft in themselves (I never feel proud or satisfied when my soldiers make a breakthrough because I have so little connection with what they are doing) and b) have no gameplay loops inside themselves, so I would argue broadly should be considered in terms of the service they do to the deficit-construction gameplay loop rather than fully independent subgames in themselves - some people would be happy playing V3's construction game without any warfare, but no-one would want to play its warfare game without any national economy.
• Diplomacy is fairly bare bones - I would say that it can be considered under trade systems (national markets), warfare and conquest, and domestic resource-construction capability in national unifications.
• Politics is frequently (though, to be fair, not always), a mechanism for freeing up more productive capacity through either labour, trade or capital for your resource-construction capability. Political changes tend to occur as the result of economic movements, further tying the system fundamentally back to the resource-construction cycle.

In this light, Victoria 3 is primarily (and fairly-narrowly) an economic game, rather than a political, diplomatic or military one. This is disturbing to me, as I just don't terribly enjoy the construction loop system - people have criticised it as a cookie-clicker experience, and while I think that is somewhat unfair as it does sit on top of a pretty sophisticated economic simulation, I can see where they are coming from. It's a pretty abstracted system with limited agency for either pops or the player ("to build or not to build, that is the question you must answer repeatedly in a very particular order"), characterised by the game moaning at me when I'm not doing it well. But this framing of the game around the construction cycle at its core helps explain the decision the devs have repeatedly hewed to about never wishing to entirely remove player agency from construction, as well as somewhat vindicates the players who have argued (sometimes against me in other threads!) that without it, this would be a game that largely played itself.

Goals-setting

Gameplay loops tend to exist in service of an overall motivating goal (exceptions are sometimes gameplay loops that are designed to be in-themselves satisfying, like jumping around in Mario 64 or shooting enemies in Doom 2016). This is often a narrative goal, though strategy games in general and PDX games in particular usually have players set their own goals to some degree (even if that's just "how hard is the AI going to cheat in my game of Civilisation this time?"). For me, getting "this", and getting into a mindset where I understood the systems and the history well enough to generate interesting goals for myself was when I fell in love with Paradox games (I cannot express how boring I found my first game of EU4 all those years ago). However, PDX games tend to also have little nudges towards interesting things to try out, which ideally use the gameplay loops (not just the core one) to acheive a "narrative" objective the player might find satisfying to pull off (e.g. a historical underdog becoming a globe-spanning empire), and I think these are pretty critical in helping to create that pseudo-Pavlovian response where the game works with the player to help cooperate in the interesting story they are trying to tell together. I would argue that the game has the following systems to nudge players towards interesting outcomes:

• The "tutorial" campaigns - I know implementation is a bit funky, but I think these are unreservedly a great idea, not just in conditioning players towards interesting play, but giving them tools to identify interesting play in future campaigns.
• Achievements - I'm not terribly motivated by this, but they all look like pretty fun things to do. I would, though, point out, that most of these refer to diplomatic/military/political objectives that are broadly disconnected from the underlying economic meat of the game - this has some relevance to the next section on "player impact".
• "Number go up" - the numbers in the top left of the screen are a huge part of the game, and reinforce the underlying economic nature of the game. I have seen many posts with people cheering their absolutely ludicrous GDP, but it's the SoL system that gets me. It's a clear "narrative" goal - few people *want* to go into a game making their citizens poor (and if they do, it's a great visual indicator that they are - this is some real jackboot oppression right here!), and it ties neatly into "why" you're building all these factories and making sure everyone can have their beef and potatoes for Sunday roasts. I think a lot of the specific implementation is a bit visually muddy (I don't immediately click that capitalists with their unbuttoned, ill-fitting shirts are fabulously wealthy, and I have an ill-sense of how rich someone needs to be before they think it worth buying a parasol), but it's also fun in principle to see your different citizens physically look different as your economy develops (when I was a kid, I really wanted Civ 3 to show you the average person's living room rather than the presidential palace). The whole needs system reacts dynamically to what you're doing without being a micromanagement hellhole and works in concert with the player to tell a compelling story. A+! A side point here is that some very smart person whose name I can't remember suggested that perhaps factory PMs could work in the same way as pop needs to efficient transmute needs (e.g. fuel for the furnace, regardless of whether that's coal or electricity) into outputs, rather than this being a player diktat, and I think that's a fantastic idea (even if the AI and linear algebra computational costs might be prohibitive in reality). But! Back onto the "SoL goal's" relationship to gameplay - the SoL system is fundamentally one kind of goal (make people well off - the information readily available is too high-level to really prioritise making one kind of person, bar an economic class, better off than others), pursued largely through this one core resource-construction loop. There are to my knowledge few other ways of making your citizens happier than building more factories.
• History and historical counterfactuals - "what if this but different" is often a big motivator for me as it allows me to use real-world information to help build out the story the game is trying to tell me. The game's simulation of history is frequently wonky (c.f. the 1.0 CSA), which makes it harder to connect what is alt-historically happening in the game with a counterfactual of real-history if what is happening in the game is so obviously "untrue". To be fair, the devs are working on fixing this so the modal V3 universe looks more like our own, but annoyingly for me, the focus on economics and relatively abstract politics and warfare systems takes the focus off areas of history I know and care about, and can think of interesting counterfactuals for, to ones I don't know enough about to care, except in gameplay terms. I would wager more players are engaged with the alt-history of "what if the USA had fully annexed Mexico?" or "What if the 1848 revolutions had been radically more successful?" than "What if Peru had become the number one exporter of automobiles?"
• Journal entries - in principle, I really like the way that journal entries guide you towards interesting narrative objectives, like industrialising quickly or maintaining autocracy. Events and decisions are a big motivating factor for me in other PDX games because they often present at least slightly-OP rewards ("Slightly-OP" is a big reason why I prefer the railroading in base-game EU4 and Vic2 HPM to that of HOI4, as it feels like a powerful reward that isn't game-breaking) and sometimes whole new game mechanics to play with. But the journal entries in Vic3 generally feel like they confirm what I was doing anyway (which is largely this construction loop) rather than reward me for playing exceptionally, as the rewards are typically frequent, small and grounded in either the construction or research loops (choose between marginally higher output or a small tech discount is a very common outcome). Even events that feel like they should be enormously catalytic, like the game's representation of Russia's Manifesto on Unshakeable Autocracy ("Religion, Autocracy and Nationality") or the 1848 Revolutions are relatively small (like...temporary buffs to ruler popularity or assimilation rates rather than, say, your entire elite buying into the system) or grounded in systems that, partly to emphasise to supremacy of the economic system, feel misrepresented: elites representing economic interest groups who you can potentially invite into government skewing to democratic 21st century multiculturalism is not, I'm afraid, a good representation of the centrifugal property-holder-democratic nationalism and non-elite urban unrest that swept Europe in 1848 and 1849. Frankly, seeing Religion, Autocracy and Nationality time out and to get basically nothing for it was what had me quit after my 30 years.

So overall here, we have a game which places an economic-construction cycle at its core, but which struggles (I would argue) to use motivational systems like journal entries or historical connection to connect that economic gameplay to narratively meaningful objectives to the player.

Player impact

What effect does all this have on a player? I can only speak for myself (and, at this point, I really do want re-emphasise what I said about this being my opinion and this post being meant discursively rather than argumentatively), but the goals-setting issue means that I struggle to buy into any higher fantasy of the game beyond what I am mechanically doing in it for most of the time I spend playing it. Which...is acting as a building magnate. I tell my workers to build stuff, and sometimes we find out new techniques for building better stuff, so we build that stuff instead or modify existing stuff, and I can sometimes scroll around other systems (or the beautiful but pointless visual map) and see the stuff I've built. And that is a fine narrative fantasy to have (c.f. every city building game ever), but it neither makes me feel like a Victorian imperialist sitting at the highest seat of government, nor the inimitable "spirit of the nation" that whispers into Garibaldi's or Gladstone's ear as they plan out their next campaign. As someone who is centrally interested in the Victoria series as a society, politics and diplomacy sim, that presents some issues - to the point, where, not even terribly enjoying my construction loop, I am irritated at my country for even having domestic politics that restrict me from building more effectively, where in Victoria 2, I would both groan and grin when the "wrong" party won power.

I guess I am increasingly worried, as someone who has cheered the existence of Victoria 3 from when it was first announced, that despite all the tweaks and improvements that are being worked on by the developers (who, fair play, engage gracefully with most post-release criticism online and seem personally committed to getting the game "up to speed" in its first few patches after a rocky launch), that this game might just not be for me.

Comparison to Victoria 2 (HPM)

I don't want to focus at length on how this compares to Victoria 2, not least because it isn't totally fair to the separate creative intention the developers have for this game as distinct from that one, and also because I know some people will disqualify my criticism on the grounds that my point of reference here is the "vanilla+" Historical Project Mod. To that latter point, I would argue that people are now more familiar with modded V2 than base V2, that HPM doesn't radically change the underlying gameplay loop and that it is reasonable for the sights to be set "higher" in some sense for a larger team developing a game in 2023 than a volunteer mod developed in a decade-plus old game by a small team. Having gone through this experience with Victoria 3, I was interested in what the core gameplay loop in Victoria 2 that I had presumably enjoyed so much was.

First off, there is supposedly a construction "meta" in Victoria 2 of selecting a reactionary or communist party, and using that to constantly build factories, dealing with rebel problems as they come. I have almost never done this, largely because the game offers more centrality to its political simulation (c.f. vast rebel stacks, all the time, usually requiring some intervention from the player to resolve) over its economic one and using my heft to force a party into power just felt "wrong" except in periods of massive turbulent unemployment, or if I was an out-and-out dictatorship anyway. In this way, the game seems to connect its abstract goal-setting behaviour much better to its moment to moment gameplay (I have no qualms in Victoria 3 about inviting an unpopular IG into power if it will help me pass a good law without tanking my stability), and I have never felt like I have been frustrated in my V2 goals for not having babysat my economy throughout a whole campaign.

There is obviously the warfare loop which is much like any other PDX strategy game - move units, or try to get enemy units to move into you, rinse and repeat. I've talked elsewhere about how I enjoy how the changing nature of units (particularly favouring defence in the late game) and conscription makes the warfare feel different over the course of a campaign in a way Victoria 3 lacks, and how the tedium builds a sense of weight to the decisions (and mistakes) I make with my units, but it is undeniably tedious. That said, I wouldn't consider warfare micro to be the "core" Victoria 2 loop because it revolves around a temporary subgame (that is, being at war) and the opportunity for gains while at war are usually fairly limited (i.e. a couple of states at most, before WWI).

I found that my typical gameplay loop in Victoria 2 was actually defined around the technology system, in the following manner:

• I would pick a general mid-term goal to achieve (e.g. go to war and conquer some territory, improve my great power ranking), problem to address (e.g. a tax deficit, general economic weakness) or a decision or invention I wanted to achieve (some of which unlock whole new mechanics, like the scramble for Africa)
• I would work out a tech that I needed to work towards that objective (e.g. improving my military, getting a pre-requisite for a decision or an invention), usually from a small selection without a totally clear front-runner (as some other techs might help with other overall objectives I was considering, or something might have multiple pre-requisites)
• Random stuff would happen, like other inventions, other nation's play or a crisis, over the course of researching that tech, which would affect my goal selection process
• The tech would complete and I would either have completed my goal, or need to re-evaluate and potentially select a new one

The economic (build/expand/subsidise more factories and railways) and political (selecting reforms) loops generally bounced off that goal setting loop-start and loop-end process.

***

If I had to give any closing thoughts (apart from thanks to you for reading this overlong scrawl), it would be that this buffet-system of different microgames which more impactfully connect to my top-level narrative fantasies of the period than the construction-centrality of Victoria 3 better supports my ludonarrative experience of playing/running/ruling a Victorian-era nation, though I will be the first to admit that, in my own analysis, it is also a weird experience that the central activity of Victoria 2 could be described as directing the government's non-existent research division to fix whatever problems the ruler was currently facing.

 

[Gawquon3]

First off, love a good ramble so thank you for the quality read. I'm someone who's loved Vic 3 since 1.1 warts and all. I had fun in 1.0 but uh my goodness the bugs really piled up. I think it's improved a lot since and looks like it will improve more before 1st dlc. I'm also the kind of guy who'd be more interested in what if Peru was the world leading exporter of automobiles, than what if the US Annex all of Mexico.

I hope as Vicky improves, it becomes more interesting and engaging for everyone (within reason, people who want moveable stacks combat, no). That journal entries properly showcase their effects. (In 30 years an event triggers! Ok what are the implications of that?. Idk it... triggers?). And that we get little more nuance in pop-IG relationships (The Muslim minority in my Catholic Italian nation are all part of the radical movement for... State Religion? what).

The one part where my preferences strongly differ from yours is that I detest slightly-OP+ rewards and love the current journal philosophy. I'm a little nervous about the first flavor pack, but as long as they don't hand out arbitrary modifiers like candy (which they probably wouldn't I'm just traumatized by EU4) I'll probably be fine.

Sidenote: I've played a couple hundred hours of Vic2 but none of HPM.

 

[Panagean]

First off, love a good ramble so thank you for the quality read.

Thank you for reading it!

I'm also the kind of guy who'd be more interested in what if Peru was the world leading exporter of automobiles, than what if the US Annex all of Mexico.

I am not this, but I love this energy.

Agree on all points, though, deviant that I am, I still probably marginally prefer the unit-micro tedium to V3's hands-off approach. My feelings on unit-micro versus the V3 abstract implementation reminds of me of teenagers arguing about communism, in that it (or the hands-off system) would be great in its idealised form, and terrible in anything less than that.

The one part where my preferences strongly differ from yours is that I detest slightly-OP+ rewards and love the current journal philosophy. I'm a little nervous about the first flavor pack, but as long as they don't hand out arbitrary modifiers like candy (which they probably wouldn't I'm just traumatized by EU4) I'll probably be fine.

Yes, I agree. I am also a little traumatised by some of those EU4 mission trees and really, really concerned when people suggest that Vic3 needs EU4 or lord-forbid HOI4 style trees to achieve national flavour. I guess what I meant is abilities that feel overpowered to the player (and trigger that psychologically nice reward factor), without actually be overpowered. For example, I think modern XCOM does a really good job with its weapon tier upgrades, as each feels far more powerful than the last through a mixture of higher damage output and cooler sounds and graphics, but in reality, the weapon you have is almost always commensurate with the threat you are facing.

Sidenote: I've played a couple hundred hours of Vic2 but none of HPM.

I mean, I would strongly recommend you give it a go! I am not being snarky when I say I prefer V2 HPM to V3 at the moment (I mean, I have a game of V2 I'm dipping into when I have time, and have abandoned my most recent V3 campaign), though I suspect it will still not scratch your Peruvian automotive industrial itch quite as well as V3 can. You might find it slightly more railroaded compared to base V2, and slightly more OP in its distribution of rewards (in part just because it has more events and decisions to give out rewards in general), and a little more dependent on the inventions system (which I love, but I know some people don't), but I'd be hard-pressed to find any other element where its a straight downgrade on the base-game experience, and so many systems, particularly the scramble for Africa, feel so much more impactful and well-considered/researched than in the base game.

And finally - thanks for being part of the converter team. You lot are the best!

 

[maxirage]

Yes, construction is V3's primary gameplay mechanic, and yes, it's not fun. This is a fundamental flaw with the game that is likely impossible to fix.

 

[Froonk]

Very nice read and I agree broadly with what you have said about Victoria 3 and 2 both but I disagree with conclusions. I will add that I don't care about the war system in either game, in fact I much prefer as a baseline system in 3 especially now that battles are more proper size. However that is irrelevant as I played neither game for warfare primarily but with caveat that warfare is important and I will get to that.

What I found in Victoria 2 and what I find lacking in Victoria 3 isn't about whether player is playing as the building magnate instead of research division. In fact with 1.2 I would say that beyond first few years you can build a rather self-sufficient investment pool and mostly just build government buildings or kickstart new production methods or resources. Since private sector will use "government-side" construction when available you can very much stop worrying about building altogether towards late game too. Rather, the difference in my view which I have realized after a while is that Victoria 2 was primarily a game about demographics and structuralism while Victoria 3 feels as it is a game about government and resources.

Now what do I mean by that? After all resources and RGOs are very important in Victoria 2 and you can't have an industry without them, having the right type of RGOs in your borders or in your sphere was crucial and in fact many of the most important technologies and discoveries are the ones which increase RGO output. What I mean is that while that is true, Victoria 2 was mainly about directing your demographic structure to be able to make use of the RGOs available to you through output which was limited by your demographic capability. Policies/Laws were mostly relevant insofar how they aided realization of this, mainly through education. Victoria 3 on the other hand is rather about setting up the right laws to have access to higher research rate and better composition of investment pool then making use of technologies to use better PMs to utilize your resources, rest being mostly roleplay about what type of society & government you want.

So what is the issue here? After all both games have pops and demographics is meant to be central in Victoria 3 too. I think main issue that I identified is that demographic limitations don't exist in Victoria 3. In Victoria 2 technologies, discoveries were crucial insofar they allowed your demographics to have capability to shift into a more developed and industrial society. Everyone who played Victoria 2 knows that beyond very specific circumstances you researched Empiricism (research rate), Medicine (pop growth rate and also reducing amount casualties in battles) and Positivism/Functionalism (education efficiency) first. So you could build up your society to have sufficient population density and education to work in more developed method of production (factories).

There is no such limitation in Victoria 3, your population is able to straight up work in engine industries if you had them day one. There is no literacy requirement practically, qualifications don't matter, literacy matters only insofar your research rate to unlocking new PMs. Only limitation is whether you have access to resources that would be needed and in sufficient amounts, both are generally about PMs which are gained from research. Moreover not only do your demographics don't matter insofar if you can give them gainful employment, the opposite you will generally run out of resources to develop before you run out of people and have widespread unemployment late game if you have high level healthcare institutions. On top of this, every employee is replaceable because you have many peasants to turn into whichever profession, even if they are serfs they can still become clerks or clergy which can become any other thing after. Which means you also don't care if they die in wars either in land battles or naval battles. In Victoria 2 if I had to fight a war that required me to mobilize, if I took many casualties it would cripple my industries since they would lack qualified personnel. In fact I often demobilized any laborers immediately as to not lose any unless I was really desperate for manpower (equivalent being mechanics in Victoria 3, which are easily attainable).

Here lies how to make the game not about "construction loop" only and construction itself (with addition of private construction in 1.2) is not the issue. It is about making other things a factor. How to make them a factor? Well make qualifications count. Make it so serfs can't become clerks and clergymen. Make it so that you can't easily replace losses in wars whether in regiments or in factories. Make civilian industries matter in warfare. Make it so that literacy actually matters and you are lacking people to put to work. Make it so technology isn't just unlocking new PMs but has multipliers to input, output and throughput. Make it so I need universities to have qualifications for anything that requires higher education. If that happens then game won't feel like a "cookie clicker" because you will be limited by your demographics and social structure not by how fast you can queue buildings.

I remember first time I played Victoria 2, I played as Russia and seeing coal and iron in a province I smartly made steel mill there. After that I was puzzled why it remained empty. There is no such a case in Victoria 3. In fact in my recent game I conquered Benin as Germany and found engine industries in there. In Victoria 2 my first order of business playing as Russia isn't starting to queue up factories in all provinces, it is to make so my demographics shift sufficiently enough to have capabilities to meet up the requirements of a rapidly industrializing society.

 

[Panagean]

Very nice read and I agree broadly with what you have said about Victoria 3 and 2 both but I disagree with conclusions. I will add that I don't care about the war system in either game, in fact I much prefer as a baseline system in 3 especially now that battles are more proper size. However that is irrelevant as I played neither game for warfare primarily but with caveat that warfare is important and I will get to that.

Thank you! I agree with you that warfare in Paradox games is a bit like that famous quote about plot in pornography: people would miss it if it wasn't there, but it's not what brings anyone to the show.

Rather, the difference in my view which I have realized after a while is that Victoria 2 was primarily a game about demographics and structuralism while Victoria 3 feels as it is a game about government and resources.

I think this is a very astute (and perhaps clearer than my own!) observation.

I agree with your subsequent points about qualifications and so on, but I think that those systems need engaging subgames so that players can have a meaningful interaction with them, as well as just raising the overall difficulty temperature, to move the focus over to demography - you mention technology and conscription, and I would put national foci (i.e. encouraging intellectuals/clergy early on) in that camp too. These systems all do exist in V3 as well (e.g. decrees), but I think the construction centrality might remain even if they were made more challenging. If the game pops up with a notification every five minutes saying "Not enough literate workers, build more schools", and I check, and I've already slapped on my education access decree, then we are back into a place where construction remains the only loop I can engage with to help mitigate those (admittedly more interesting) demographic problems.

 

[Delterius]

These systems all do exist in V3 as well (e.g. decrees), but I think the construction centrality might remain even if they were made more challenging. If the game pops up with a notification every five minutes saying "Not enough literate workers, build more schools", and I check, and I've already slapped on my education access decree, then we are back into a place where construction remains the only loop I can engage with to help mitigate those (admittedly more interesting) demographic problems.

The centrality of construction remains at play but how exactly depends on how far you are willing to adjust the numbers. Because you have to do that. My friends and I have experimented with modding attempts to improve the in-game qualification systems. We found that whatever exists at the moment feels like placeholders. Everyone everywhere can fulfill every social function as long as there's a job opening.

It is no wonder that standards of living and GDP can boom so hard, the game runs on the logic that your serf illiterate great great grandpa went to the motor industry belt and shook someone's hand for 7 days and 7 nights until they made him owner and CEO. What I mean is that the literacy and wealth requirements are neutered, and only outright slaves are barred from social mobility. The whole thing changes completely once it takes actual wealth to become a Capitalist, actual skills to become an Engineer, and serfs might not be able to flee the farm and become clerks. Suddenly it doesn't matter how many artisanal manufactories your small underdeveloped nation tries to create, without institutions in place the whole economy stagnates and that investment goes nowhere.

The new dynamic is similar to what we had in Vicky2. Then we'd spam clergy for literacy, because we needed literacy for capitalists, clerks and craftsmen. We also needed it for tech development, without which there wasn't enough RGO output to do anything. But Victoria 3 formulates things differently, so the dynamic is also a bit more interesting.

Education is no longer a factor of how many clergy you have, so instead of national foci for cleric promotion the player is under a strong pressure to create school systems and to maximize them by abolishing child labour as soon as possible. Likewise spreading Universities around rather than centralizing them in one place for throughtput bonuses becomes an imperative.

On the same vein of education access, like you mentioned social mobility decrees are important and fill a similar role to how national foci worked in Vicky 3. However, while the number of national foci are ever increasing in Vicky 2 with population and technology, in Vicky 3 the government's ability unilaterally implement policy is a factor of how authoritarian it is combined with technology. So there's a back and forth there between the player and a population that might demand more rights and greater liberalization.

The real key point here is that in Vicky 2 you always used the same decrees. Clergy, into some Capitalists, into Craftsmen, into Clerks maybe, depending on the mods you're playing and if you really need more research points. Encouraging party loyalty was circumstancial (though I did use it some times) and encouraging industries was pointless. By comparison Vicky 3 introduces other demands, you might need to encourage resource production (because scarcity is real and a cruel mistress), manufactory throughtput (more dividends, more investments), road maintainance (damn you mountain provinces!), and so on, all competing with social mobility.

One interesting dynamic we have retained from Vicky 2 is that it is in the player's interest to have a handful of densely populated states, as opposed to many sparsely populated ones. Just as it was easier to get enough clergy in densely populated Germany as opposed to the sparsely populated Ottoman Empire, it's easier to develop the more densely populated provinces of the US, Russia, and Brazil, as opposed to many small interior states in all countries. This leads to a strenghtening of geographic inequalities, even within nation states as opposed to colonies.

The most important change from Vicky 2 is that you cannot simply hire a large mass of craftsmen into huge factories. You need owners and managers to actually hire people. Meaning that you gotta ration the few capitalists you have. In our tests it was often no longer desirable to spam glassworks and clothes factories forever, instead we found ourselves focusing on the agrarian industrialization in tandem, with hopes that a cash crop export oriented economy can mint some capitalists out of landlords.

In the same sense of trying to get our pops to open businesses, Progressive taxation methods also entered the play. Rather than as a means to finangle more money out of our pops, they became a desperate attempt to foster a more prosperous middle class early on. Furthermore, when in vanilla we found ourselves rushing Mutual Funds to create new capitalist job openings in our farms, we actually preferred to keep most things privately owned and entire industries consolidated, continuing the theme of rationing capitalists. I was left wondering that, if I played a country that failed to create a school system early on and by late game needed to industrialize as soon as possible, abolishing capitalism becomes an attractive option for reasons other than to simply parse labor profits through a larger population.

That is not all. There's a lot of potential with what we already have, but there's even more on the horizon.

The developers have mentioned they intend to implement social discrimination, which would further complicate the employment situation I'd imagine as pops which are discriminated by the main culture might have worse education and job access than everyone else. This is extremely important. As it is actually a dynamic we lost from Vicky2: it was, of course, much easier to get enough clergy in homogeneous Japan than an ethnic minority rule state like the Ottoman Empire.

Urban Centers, in my opinion, are due to an overhaul and represent an opportunity. The overproduction of services means they don't actually manage to employ anyone. I can see a future development where your laws create greater and greater demand for services - schools and health care namely but also perhaps police - and where the employment make up of Urban Centers is changed accordingly.

Perhaps a new social class could be made for the sort of 'liberal professional' that represents doctors and nurses (health care institutions), teachers (education institutions), lawyers (civil codes, police, guaranteed liberties), and so on. That demand can then come from the pops themselves or from the government, depending on wether the institutions are privatized or not.

Further changes in flavor can add to the game's themes of nation gardening. For an instance, public schools in a theocracy could hire clergymen instead of teachers.

The center-periphery relations between imperial metropoles and their colonies too are due to important changes, as right now colonies are the richest most prosperous parts of the world, which plays into the aforementioned social discrimination. Currently when you conquer Aceh or Benin they might have one of every urban building. Their PMs probably suck, signalling their technological gap with you, but they almost invariably constitute urbanized societies. But if instead you find a bunch of buildings unable to fill their positions, and if social discrimination and market imbalances further keeps the imperialized populations from being able to industrialize as well as any province in the empire, then suddenly you have a much more realistic dynamic than before.

I am now spitballing here but the devs could also implement a sort of 'arable land fall back' system for urbanized populations in the form of a gig economy and perhaps crime. Your unemployed pops can fall through the cracks, losing access to education and public services while trying to eke out a living as criminals, prostitutes, and dispossessed proles of all kinds. This is double for colonial provinces, bereft of education and where the only occupations available are 'resource building fodder'.

And one last note on the theme of 'good lord I need more capitalists', the devs have also signalled that they wish to implement financial speculation in some capacity. Boom and bust cycles could become particularly prosperous or destructive if industries start firing people because the people who own them went bankrupt and must liquidate their own assets to survive.

All in all, what I mean to say is that we should not underestimate just how deeper the construction gameplay loop can be made.

 

[Panagean]

That is all fascinating, and I can totally see how some of the systems you mention could overhaul the game feel.

The centrality of construction remains at play but how exactly depends on how far you are willing to adjust the numbers. Because you have to do that. My friends and I have experimented with modding attempts to improve the in-game qualification systems. We found that whatever exists at the moment feels like placeholders. Everyone everywhere can fulfill every social function as long as there's a job opening.

Please do put a link up once you have something you'd be happy to share!

 

[Lazy Sorcerer]

as long as they don't hand out arbitrary modifiers like candy (which they probably wouldn't

What makes you think they won't? So far nothing in Paradox's DLC policy has indicated restraint in this area.

 

[Delterius]

That is all fascinating, and I can totally see how some of the systems you mention could overhaul the game feel.



Please do put a link up once you have something you'd be happy to share!

Ours is just a small homebrew amongst friends, which focuses entirely on making qualifications more demanding. We are always tweaking numbers here and there. But you can always check Vorondil's mod, which is more comprehensive and touches on other things related to education and starting literacy rates as well.

 

[shoebird]

I found most of my time in the game was structured around the following cycle:

1. The game would whine at me that I had a deficit of something, through one of a number of notifications (e.g. shortages, expensive government goods, expensive military goods). The game takes pains to make this same point in a number of different ways, which reinforces to me that this is designed to be a core system.
2. If the good was a raw resource, I would find a place to build more of that resource and add it to the construction queue, potentially jumping it to the top.
3. If the good was a developed resource, I would find a factory that made that resource, and build more of that factory as well as repeat this entire loop for any expensive inputs for that factory
4. This would usually eventually create new deficits, so the process repeats (typically before the entire construction queue has run through).

A modification of this is when I have surplus, typically of money - in that case, I would invest in accelerating the construction cycle or, less commonly, the military, tax-bureaucratic or research sectors.

When I read this I have the impression that you play without setting yourself an objective, and instead play fulfilling the “game’s wishes”. Which doesn’t sound very fun and is different for what you seem to do when playing Vic 2.

I definitely don’t play solving notifications. I take notifications as an info to evaluate. Is for me to judge whether they are a problem in need to be tackled or not. While construction is the main way of interacting with the game, what you do with it depends on your goals. You would build different stuff depending on whether you want to conquer some territory, establish a certain political system, catch up on research, become an economic powerhouse, etc.. Just as you would focus more on some technologies in Vic 2 depending on your goals.

In this light, Victoria 3 is primarily (and fairly-narrowly) an economic game, rather than a political, diplomatic or military one.

That Vic 3 is mainly an economic game makes sense given the historical period it covers. Industrialization and economic development are the main characteristics of this period IMO. It also goes in line with the franchise.

I disagree on it being narrowly an economic game. For instance I engage more with politics than I did in Vic2, because now there’s some political gameplay. That being said, I think you are right in a sense. The economic part is not more fleshed out (and probably the one it took more work to implement) than other aspects of the game. But I think the other parts will be more developed (and are being right now) in the future. Still, the economy will and should be central.

Rather, the difference in my view which I have realized after a while is that Victoria 2 was primarily a game about demographics and structuralism while Victoria 3 feels as it is a game about government and resources.

I know this won’t be shared by many, but I think that’s how it should be. When it comes to economic development, generally you shouldn’t be limited by demographics. Resources, investment, laws and the existence of customers and profitability of business should be the limiting factor, not literacy.

Literacy should impact research, should be a social issue, should affect prestige maybe, and should have en economic impact in late game economy if you neglect it too much. But should not be the absolute limit like in Vic 2 IMO.

I remember first time I played Victoria 2, I played as Russia and seeing coal and iron in a province I smartly made steel mill there. After that I was puzzled why it remained empty. There is no such a case in Victoria 3.

Which shouldn’t be generally the cause of that business failure. That steel mill could fail, for instance, because there’s no one to sell the steel to, because moving it to the customers is too expensive, which makes the business to fail to the competence (either external or internal). If the business is profitable, it should be possible to hire workers, most of the time.

There is no such a case in Victoria 3. In fact in my recent game I conquered Benin as Germany and found engine industries in there.

The problem is that the steel and tools used in that factory are being teleported from Germany, and the engines are teleported back to Germany, all without any cost to the factory itself. Working on that, the transportation costs and fleshing out more the effects of infrastructure should be the devs focus, IMO.

 

[Delterius]

Which shouldn’t be generally the cause of that business failure.

That is not a story of business failure. A new factory built in a low literacy Victoria 2 country is likely to not hire anybody because the population lacks the skills required to promote into capitalists, craftsmen and clerks. Wether the factory is viable generally stems from other things, like low demand, lack of inputs, low early game tech, and so on. Those cause the factory to downgrade or close. What we are talking about is when the factory stays open with maybe 50 people working in it. Which is not a possibility in Victoria 3.

The problem is that the steel and tools used in that factory are being teleported from Germany, and the engines are teleported back to Germany, all without any cost to the factory itself.

That doesn't matter either. The fact is that every single building is viable regardless of wether the population is actually skilled. Literacy rates influencing qualifications is a fiction right now. You could move the numbers around and have factories pay for convoys rather than the State, but those factories would likely still be viable as they'd fulfill local demand. At most you'd have a local steel and tools factory with perfect qualifications even if nobody can read and everybody is a serf.

 

[shoebird]

That is not a story of business failure. A new factory built in a low literacy Victoria 2 country is likely to not hire anybody because the population lacks the skills required to promote into capitalists, craftsmen and clerks. Wether the factory is viable generally stems from other things, like low demand, lack of inputs, low early game tech, and so on. Those cause the factory to downgrade or close. What we are talking about is when the factory stays open with maybe 50 people working in it. Which is not a possibility in Victoria 3.

Not being able to get workers sound like a business failure to me.

That doesn't matter either. The fact is that every single building is viable regardless of wether the population is actually skilled. Literacy rates influencing qualifications is a fiction right now. You could move the numbers around and have factories pay for convoys rather than the State, but those factories would likely still be viable as they'd fulfill local demand. At most you'd have a local steel and tools factory with perfect qualifications even if nobody can read and everybody is a serf.

That’s what I’m saying. That literacy rates shouldn’t be the limiting factor. That if a business is profitable it should generally being able to hire workers. This is the time of the first and second industrialization. Qualifications were not only unimportant in the first (which likely had the effect of reducing literacy rates), but probably not too important on the second either. Surely not as important as of today, when it’s importance can be argued as limited, as many wealthy countries that lack qualified workers just bring them from abroad. This is not to say that education is not important to the economy, but more because how it affects innovation. And of course it is also a sign of progress, because wealthy countries invest on education.

In any case, I think it could be right if literacy has some more impact on the economy late game. Not keeping factories empty, but leading to some wages rising because it takes more effort to get some qualified workers. This could have an important effect on business with marginal profitability, limiting growth a bit.

Regarding serfs, they should not be employed on factories, not because of literacy, but because they are not free to go in search of a job.

 

[Delterius]

Not being able to get workers sound like a business failure to me.

The business is expanding as much it can and making a profit. The labour shortage doesn't mean the business itself is failing, as it almost never is.

That literacy rates shouldn’t be the limiting factor.

Not only they should, they are supposed to. Hence the concept of qualifications.

That if a business is profitable it should generally being able to hire workers.

Not if there aren't workers to hire.

This is the time of the first and second industrialization.

Yes, this is the age of trade schools and unified education systems created for centralized economic output. This is the era in which even landowners are discussing the implementation of basic education systems for their agrarian needs. We are not hiring illiterate engineers and clerks with our advanced PMs. Well, actually we kind of are. Which is the problem.

Regarding serfs, they should not be employed on factories, not because of literacy, but because they are not free to go in search of a job.

That's part of the point, yes.

 

[Panagean]

When I read this I have the impression that you play without setting yourself an objective, and instead play fulfilling the “game’s wishes”. Which doesn’t sound very fun and is different for what you seem to do when playing Vic 2.

That is broadly true, though I've tried to explain why I struggle to set myself satisfying objectives - and why I feel the game doesn't "cooperate" with me in helping those objectives feel satisfying - in the "goals-setting" part of my original post.

That Vic 3 is mainly an economic game makes sense given the historical period it covers. Industrialization and economic development are the main characteristics of this period IMO. It also goes in line with the franchise.

I don't disagree that industrialisation is a major element of the "long 19th century" Victoria 3 depicts, but I think the developers themselves put it better as generally a "century of change" - this is a century that reshaped how people spent their leisure time, the states they lived in, how they conceived of themselves and their participation in government, war and civil society as much as it changed the structure and function of their labour. Industrialisation is just one - admittedly important! - facet of that, and engaging with industrialisation through an unchanging construction cycle hardly represents that dynamic change in either material of sociopolitical circumstances.

From a Doylist perspective as well...well, there are already loads of games that have you take a bare plot of whatever and turn its raw resources into a thriving industrial megapolis. Paradox themselves maintain forums for at least five of them, by my count. Victoria (and I suppose the Democracy series, even if it's not much to my taste) is the only one that meaningfully strings that together with the original SimCity promise of a whole world of independent computer people living their lives in response to your actions. That strongly indicates to me that that is the USP of the franchise to focus on.

That’s what I’m saying. That literacy rates shouldn’t be the limiting factor.

Not only they should, they are supposed to. Hence the concept of qualifications.

I am not enough of a historian to weigh definitively in on this, but it does strike me that, from our modern perspective, it is probably easy to underestimate the impact of a basic primary education in a national language (c.f. French, Scandinavian and East Asian linguistic reforms) on getting a train ticket to an urban hub, finding a job, having that job change every few seasons in response to market conditions and emerging technologies (and learning it quickly in a room with many other workers and few instructors), renting a tenement, engaging in basic financial services like remittances, postal orders and payday loans, etc. etc. etc. compared to learning an (admittedly, likely more complicated) set of replicable tasks on a smallholding farm, likely taught by a family member.

 

[shoebird]

That is broadly true, though I've tried to explain why I struggle to set myself satisfying objectives - and why I feel the game doesn't "cooperate" with me in helping those objectives feel satisfying - in the "goals-setting" part of my original post.

Yes, I saw it. And it’s fair enough. The same thing has happened to me with other games. Even games I have played a lot like Stellaris, I have found myself repeating the same goals and doing the same in each game. Funnily, Vic 3 is the pdx game that has made me play with more different objectives.

a "century of change" - this is a century that reshaped how people spent their leisure time, the states they lived in, how they conceived of themselves and their participation in government, war and civil society as much as it changed the structure and function of their labour.

Largely due to the industrialization process.

hardly represents that dynamic change in either material of sociopolitical circumstances.

What do you mean with this? There’s plenty of social change in Vic 3.

I am not enough of a historian to weigh definitively in on this, but it does strike me that, from our modern perspective, it is probably easy to underestimate the impact of a basic primary education in a national language (c.f. French, Scandinavian and East Asian linguistic reforms) on getting a train ticket to an urban hub, finding a job, having that job change every few seasons in response to market conditions and emerging technologies (and learning it quickly in a room with many other workers and few instructors), renting a tenement, engaging in basic financial services like remittances, postal orders and payday loans, etc. etc. etc. compared to learning an (admittedly, likely more complicated) set of replicable tasks on a smallholding farm, likely taught by a family member.

I really doubt that industrial workers of early industrialization needed that much knowledge or education. There’s two things to bear in mind about this period, one children were employed in many industrial jobs (reducing school attendance and thus literacy btw), and that mechanization was precisely used to ease labor requirements, not increase them. With the new technologies you could put anyone to craft stuff, while before you needed artisans that learned the trade for years. This seem to imply that modern technologies led to a reduced need of qualifications. The economic equivalence of what happened in warfare in the previous centuries with the generalization of firearms.

It is possible that education was more important during the second industrialization. But at that point any country that was capable to participate on it had the required educational level due to previous economic development.

And one could say that the game sets a very low bar for the jobs of the second industrialization that needed some qualifications. On the other hand the game makes these jobs way too common. For example, nearly half of the workforce of chemical industries with the more advanced PMs are engineers, which seem too many IMO. So one could say that one thing compensates the other.

 

[Froonk]

Yes, I saw it. And it’s fair enough. The same thing has happened to me with other games. Even games I have played a lot like Stellaris, I have found myself repeating the same goals and doing the same in each game. Funnily, Vic 3 is the pdx game that has made me play with more different objectives.

Largely due to the industrialization process.

What do you mean with this? There’s plenty of social change in Vic 3.


I really doubt that industrial workers of early industrialization needed that much knowledge or education. There’s two things to bear in mind about this period, one children were employed in many industrial jobs (reducing school attendance and thus literacy btw), and that mechanization was precisely used to ease labor requirements, not increase them. With the new technologies you could put anyone to craft stuff, while before you needed artisans that learned the trade for years. This seem to imply that modern technologies led to a reduced need of qualifications. The economic equivalence of what happened in warfare in the previous centuries with the generalization of firearms.

It is possible that education was more important during the second industrialization. But at that point any country that was capable to participate on it had the required educational level due to previous economic development.

And one could say that the game sets a very low bar for the jobs of the second industrialization that needed some qualifications. On the other hand the game makes these jobs way too common. For example, nearly half of the workforce of chemical industries with the more advanced PMs are engineers, which seem too many IMO. So one could say that one thing compensates the other.

There were limiting factors on why some countries could industrialize and others couldn't, this was more complex than central governments choosing to build factories. One way or another you couldn't open and operate engine industries in most of the world during this period. There is a lot to talk about this, where core-periphery relations, qualifications, infrastructure, education and discrimination plays into. However the game represents none of this either way.

Also remember that many of the state-funded universities were established to educate officers, doctors and engineers. So countries being able to find clerks and engineers to staff massive industrial sectors feels implausible and wrong. I also have much more knowledge about Ottomans in particular and I know that lack of qualified literate officers, bureaucrats and engineers were a huge issue for them.

 

[shoebird]

There were limiting factors on why some countries could industrialize and others couldn't, this was more complex than central governments choosing to build factories.

Of course.

One way or another you couldn't open and operate engine industries in most of the world during this period.

Yes. But I don’t think that low literacy rates causing factories unable to hire was the cause of it.

There is a lot to talk about this, where core-periphery relations, qualifications, infrastructure, education and discrimination plays into. However the game represents none of this either way.

Yes, and the game should aspire to represent that, instead of a “your literacy is above xx% you industrialize, otherwise you don’t” implementation. Chances are they go again with the literacy thing, as it’s simpler to implement and people see to be ok with it. But if offers less interesting gameplay IMO.

Also remember that many of the state-funded universities were established to educate officers, doctors and engineers. So countries being able to find clerks and engineers to staff massive industrial sectors feels implausible and wrong.

Those were very few people. Not your average industrial worker. Even (European) countries with low literacy had plenty of them, or could just hire them from other countries.

And again early industrialization (specially textiles) had the effect of reducing literacy rates. As Richard Rubinger states on “Literacy West and East: Europe and Japan in the Nineteenth Century”

 

[Panagean]

Largely due to the industrialization process.

I have to say that I find this an almost overwhelmingly depressingly materialist position. Did JS Mill crawl out of a textile mill? Did the fascists? Did human compassion and political thought play no part in the international abolition movement? The suffrage movement? Did Empire exist purely as an economic instrument (surely not, given parliamentary complaints of underdevelopment in India towards the end of the period, scientific racism and the enduring effect of Rudyard Kipling on popular English literature)? Did the emergence of popular culture, the Olympics, the banana, the settlement of the West, the popularisation of ukiyo-e, the Meiji restoration and recentralisation of Shintoism, the rediscovery of Mycenean Greece, the excavation of Tutankhamun, Wagner, Debussy, Ibsen, George Melies, all the dissidents and revolutionaries hidden in the basements of wine cellars in Fleet Street, Panslavism, the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and Papal supremacy really have no cause or effect on the way people lived their lives that can't be shackled back to the means of production?

What do you mean with this? There’s plenty of social change in Vic 3.

I can't see it. At the beginning of a game, I build. At the end of the game, I build things with different icons on. Politics is a shell game with the same factions drawing on the same kinds of people believing the same things in 1836 as 1936: painting half the red tiles black as I play longer doesn't change the social nature of roulette. I appreciate this is a tad extreme - people wear different clothes, fill differently-named jobs and to do a limited extent cohere into different parties under different government structures as the game evolves - but from a rigidly gameplay perspective, very little of this matters to the loop of build, build, build beyond changing the name on the bottle.

***

I appreciate, on reading the above, I am slightly pretentiously blowing smoke out of my arse, though I do hold true to the general points (i.e. total materialism is both historically lacking and gameplay-boring, and that I really don't feel that any of the social change the game is telling me about is meaningfully happening). Thanks for engaging with all this as constructively as you do, and for offering your views and knowledge - I particularly enjoyed the Rubinger citation!

I really doubt that industrial workers of early industrialization needed that much knowledge or education. There’s two things to bear in mind about this period, one children were employed in many industrial jobs (reducing school attendance and thus literacy btw), and that mechanization was precisely used to ease labor requirements, not increase them. With the new technologies you could put anyone to craft stuff, while before you needed artisans that learned the trade for years. This seem to imply that modern technologies led to a reduced need of qualifications. The economic equivalence of what happened in warfare in the previous centuries with the generalization of firearms.

It is possible that education was more important during the second industrialization. But at that point any country that was capable to participate on it had the required educational level due to previous economic development.

And one could say that the game sets a very low bar for the jobs of the second industrialization that needed some qualifications. On the other hand the game makes these jobs way too common. For example, nearly half of the workforce of chemical industries with the more advanced PMs are engineers, which seem too many IMO. So one could say that one thing compensates the other.

These are very all fair points. In a way that could be represented in game, what would you say broadly speaking were the factors that allowed for industrialisation in the places that participated in industrialisation earlier-on? I was reading a popular article a couple of months ago on a historical review that I think argued that in, non-equal thirds, attributed British textile industrialisation to labour shortages, capital acquired through the empire and particularly the slave trade, and a broadly supportive political, intellectual and regulatory environment - all of which seem to teeter on the edge of being generalisable in a way that is difficult to model satisfyingly.

 

[shoebird]

I have to say that I find this an almost overwhelmingly depressingly materialist position. Did JS Mill crawl out of a textile mill? Did the fascists? Did human compassion and political thought play no part in the international abolition movement? The suffrage movement? Did Empire exist purely as an economic instrument (surely not, given parliamentary complaints of underdevelopment in India towards the end of the period, scientific racism and the enduring effect of Rudyard Kipling on popular English literature)? Did the emergence of popular culture, the Olympics, the banana, the settlement of the West, the popularisation of ukiyo-e, the Meiji restoration and recentralisation of Shintoism, the rediscovery of Mycenean Greece, the excavation of Tutankhamun, Wagner, Debussy, Ibsen, George Melies, all the dissidents and revolutionaries hidden in the basements of wine cellars in Fleet Street, Panslavism, the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and Papal supremacy really have no cause or effect on the way people lived their lives that can't be shackled back to the means of production?

I’m not saying that everything is tied to the means of production, or that all that happened through the world was motivated to serve the interests of industry. Even though one could say that people changed God by gold during that age (that still last until today) I don’t thing every human motivation was purely materialistic. But I think that industrialization enabled many of the changes and events happening back then. For instance, would the settlement of the west have happened similarly without railways? Didn’t the great divergence and the rise of the western countries as indisputable global powers had some influence in the Meji restoration? Would have WWI been the same without the industrial capabilities of the countries involved? Could those countries have mobilized their population the way they did if they had been non-industrial societies? How that affected the rise of fascism? And I don’t thing it was only a technical matter. The change from rural to urban society caused mainly due to industrialization, surely had a big impact on other human facets. As the growth of international trade surely had. And all this also affected the rest of the world that didn’t industrialized. As I mentioned before, the great divergence probably helped the penetration of western culture and ideas in the places where this had not happened during the age of discovery.

I can't see it. At the beginning of a game, I build. At the end of the game, I build things with different icons on. Politics is a shell game with the same factions drawing on the same kinds of people believing the same things in 1836 as 1936: painting half the red tiles black as I play longer doesn't change the social nature of roulette. I appreciate this is a tad extreme - people wear different clothes, fill differently-named jobs and to do a limited extent cohere into different parties under different government structures as the game evolves - but from a rigidly gameplay perspective, very little of this matters to the loop of build, build, build beyond changing the name on the bottle.

Well, I do see change in politics. Yes, all the IG exist at game start, but the IGs that are relevant at game start are different that the ones that are relevant at the end of the game. Different political parties appear and laws get unlocked as technology progresses. The population make up also changes depending on how your economy develops and your laws set up. Countries colonize lands, the importance of trade increases… I do see some changes. With the same logic that you used in your argumentation it could be said that nothing changed in Vic 2 either, because at the beginning I set NFs with some icons on it, and later I set NFs with different icons on it.

These are very all fair points. In a way that could be represented in game, what would you say broadly speaking were the factors that allowed for industrialisation in the places that participated in industrialisation earlier-on? I was reading a popular article a couple of months ago on a historical review that I think argued that in, non-equal thirds, attributed British textile industrialisation to labour shortages, capital acquired through the empire and particularly the slave trade, and a broadly supportive political, intellectual and regulatory environment - all of which seem to teeter on the edge of being generalisable in a way that is difficult to model satisfyingly.

Well don’t let the Rubinger quote deceive you, I’m not an expert on this stuff. Actually, I learn a lot by participating on this forum, either because of the knowledge of others or because some historical discussion gives me an excuse to research a little bit on the Internet (The later is how I found some time ago the Rubinger article I have quoted). So, take anything I say with a pinch of salt. But If I had to go with something, I would say labour shortages. For instance, I read an article some time ago about the process of industrialization in Catalonia, that was relatively early (during the second half of the 18th century). They argued that although Spain was not a high salaries economy (unlike England), the Catalan textile sector had difficulties to find enough workers, and thus had to pay relatively high salaries. This led to the introduction of machines in the productive sector. Nevertheless, they stayed with the use of manual or water powered machines until the 30s of the 19th century, where the use of steam was introduced. This was another important thing in the industrialization process. England had a remarkable coal producing sector since the late middle age, I think, that even produced to export to other European countries. This made devices like the Newcomen engine to be an economic success, as they began to be used in the coal mines. Then it was straightforward to see that device working and come up with the idea of use it in the textile industry. Which didn’t happen in Catalonia, until Josep Bonaplata travelled to England to see the textile industries there.

Nevertheless, the game doesn’t need to model the emergence of industry, because that had already happened in England. What the game needs to model is why some countries where more successful to industrialize than others. While in some cases, it was due to countries not focusing their economic policy on industrializing, developing instead into raw materials suppliers of industrial countries (which was economically successful for a while, see Argentina), in other cases countries that tried to industrialize to a certain degree got mixed results. This was probably due to different circumstances in each case, but generally things like market conditions, access to raw resources and the quality of those, infrastructure, competence of similar industries on other countries or regions, the existence of a developed financial system, laws... Some of them are already modelled in game, such as market conditions and laws. Infrastructure effects are only modelled to a very limited degree.

And of course, there were countries in the world that barely had an idea of what industrialization was about, which is something the game should model better.