Goods.csv

[Incompetent]

At the moment, Aberration uses the default values for goods. But these aren't sacrosanct, and I'd like to suggest some changes. For reference, here is the default goods.csv:

Goods;Base Resource Value;Mine;TradePost;NumOfSlaves
CLO;15;0;0;0
COT;10;0;0;1
FISH;10;0;0;0
FURS;10;0;1;0
GOLD;0;1;0;0
GRAI;5;0;0;0
IVOR;10;0;1;0
METAL;15;1;0;0
NAVS;5;0;0;0
MINERAL;15;1;0;0
ORIENT;15;0;1;0
SALT;15;1;0;0
SLAV;5;0;1;0
SPIC;15;0;1;0
SUG;15;0;0;1
TOB;10;0;0;1
WINE;15;0;0;0
WOOL;5;0;0;0
COFFEE;10;0;0;0
TEA;10;0;0;0
NOTHING;0;0;0;0


1. Slaves: Slaves were NOT a 'low' value resource, and the slave trade became extremely lucrative - in fact, it was worth a lot of money even before the colonisation of the New World. ATM demand is near nil early on, and even much later when it reaches 200%, slave prices only typically reach 15 or so. I suggest we change the base price of slaves to 10 to make the slave trade something players will tend to get involved in, rather than leaving slave provinces till last.

2. Grain: Grain might be abundant today, but back in 1419, relatively few areas of the world could produce large amounts of surplus crops for export. (This is what 'grain' means as a commodity.) The places which did could get quite rich off it, but we can't simulate that by tax value alone, as the profits from farming increased dramatically with technological (Infra) innovations. I'd put the price of grain at 7 or 8 so people can make decent money from it, and also possibly reduce the supply of grain somewhat.

3. Nothing: In the poorest parts of the world, the few inhabitants eked out a difficult existence as goat herders, hunter-gatherers etc, producing just enough food to feed themselves. These places had no significant exports. In these cases, we shouldn't be afraid to make the province resource nothing at all.

 

[G-Klav]

My two cents:

I like the proposed changes, but wouldn't wool be at least a 'medium' value resource?
Spain and England fought wars over who should be the wool supplyer to Antwerp, but right now in EU2 it's more likely wars are started to avoid wool provinces...

 

[Incompetent]

My two cents:

I like the proposed changes, but wouldn't wool be at least a 'medium' value resource?
Spain and England fought wars over who should be the wool supplyer to Antwerp, but right now in EU2 it's more likely wars are started to avoid wool provinces...

Yes indeed - wool should be worth a lot more than 5, seeing as it made England one of the richest countries in Europe in the Middle Ages. My one reservation was that sheep seem to be used in vanilla EUII as decoration for worthless Central Asian provinces, but we can just change those to 'nothing'.

 

[Rythin]

I think 'Nothing' provinces should have at least 1 income, because currently they would have almost no advantages, while in real history every little piece of land was important.

 

[Incompetent]

I think 'Nothing' provinces should have at least 1 income, because currently they would have almost no advantages, while in real history every little piece of land was important.

They will still have tax value and manpower, they can still be fortified, and they might be useful for getting from one place to another. Historically there were some areas of land which were inhabited, but where their nominal rulers made no real effort to enforce their authority because it wasn't worth it, such as sparsely populated deserts or mountains (except for the strategically important passes). You're going to want to have these provinces as part of a vassal rather than trying to administer them directly.

I don't think giving 'nothing' some value will help anyway, as there is no demand for it.

 

[Rythin]

OK, but how many nothing provinces do you plan to have?

 

[MattyG]

At the moment, Aberration uses the default values for goods. But these aren't sacrosanct, and I'd like to suggest some changes. For reference, here is the default goods.csv:

Goods;Base Resource Value;Mine;TradePost;NumOfSlaves
CLO;15;0;0;0
COT;10;0;0;1
FISH;10;0;0;0
FURS;10;0;1;0
GOLD;0;1;0;0
GRAI;5;0;0;0
IVOR;10;0;1;0
METAL;15;1;0;0
NAVS;5;0;0;0
MINERAL;15;1;0;0
ORIENT;15;0;1;0
SALT;15;1;0;0
SLAV;5;0;1;0
SPIC;15;0;1;0
SUG;15;0;0;1
TOB;10;0;0;1
WINE;15;0;0;0
WOOL;5;0;0;0
COFFEE;10;0;0;0
TEA;10;0;0;0
NOTHING;0;0;0;0


1. Slaves: Slaves were NOT a 'low' value resource, and the slave trade became extremely lucrative - in fact, it was worth a lot of money even before the colonisation of the New World. ATM demand is near nil early on, and even much later when it reaches 200%, slave prices only typically reach 15 or so. I suggest we change the base price of slaves to 10 to make the slave trade something players will tend to get involved in, rather than leaving slave provinces till last.

2. Grain: Grain might be abundant today, but back in 1419, relatively few areas of the world could produce large amounts of surplus crops for export. (This is what 'grain' means as a commodity.) The places which did could get quite rich off it, but we can't simulate that by tax value alone, as the profits from farming increased dramatically with technological (Infra) innovations. I'd put the price of grain at 7 or 8 so people can make decent money from it, and also possibly reduce the supply of grain somewhat.

3. Nothing: In the poorest parts of the world, the few inhabitants eked out a difficult existence as goat herders, hunter-gatherers etc, producing just enough food to feed themselves. These places had no significant exports. In these cases, we shouldn't be afraid to make the province resource nothing at all.

I love it, at lest in principle.

But be careful what you first tinker with, for there may be cascading effects.

One of the problems with reducing some provinces to having no basic value is that the hard-coded elements of the game still recognise them as fully-fledged provinces. If worthless province X (let's call it Volgograd) has so few people because of its lack of natural wealth that it has no produce, then it should likewise have the Stability cost that is incurred by owning it reduced. So few people would be a breeze to rule, compared with richer and more populous lands. But the game still ascribes them the same additions to Stab cost, up to 120 per province if its wrong-religion/wrong-culture. At least the income they used to produce partly offset their defecits to Stab cost.

On the other hand, maybe this is accurate? But if Volgograd is now going to cost me as much to rule as Danzig, but now is worth 0 instead of 10 and there is no way to get rid of it, then you really are screwed if rebels there happen to donate themselves to your country.

Could you province some examples to genuinely worthless countries?

 

[unmerged(16159)]

1. Slaves: Slaves were NOT a 'low' value resource, and the slave trade became extremely lucrative - in fact, it was worth a lot of money even before the colonisation of the New World. ATM demand is near nil early on, and even much later when it reaches 200%, slave prices only typically reach 15 or so. I suggest we change the base price of slaves to 10 to make the slave trade something players will tend to get involved in, rather than leaving slave provinces till last..

I don't want to be labelled as sqeamish here, but actually I'd like us to look at aberrated the slave trade generally. While I am happy to invade a sovereign nation and sack it's cities, I have trouble with slavery as an intrument of wealth. Is it possible to have a General event file which aberrates the history of the anti-slavery movement, empowering it earlier, which starts in at 1600 or so and starts to devalue it from "10" through to "0" in 1800?

3. Nothing: In the poorest parts of the world, the few inhabitants eked out a difficult existence as goat herders, hunter-gatherers etc, producing just enough food to feed themselves. These places had no significant exports. In these cases, we shouldn't be afraid to make the province resource nothing at all.

Does the province earn nothing at all? Again, as agricultural technologies improve, can the relative value of a Good change?

 

[Incompetent]

@G-Klav: I think your sig's leaking

@Rythin: Not many - I just want to avoid making those Central Asian wool provinces suddenly as valuable as English wool provinces, as they don't deserve to be. Another alternative would be to lose one of the default resources and change it to 'not a lot', with base resource value 3 or 5 or something (depending on demand, which is mostly hard-coded). But there were parts of the world that generated next to no income for whatever king ruled them, just as there were places which made their rulers enormously wealthy.

@MattyG: You make a good point regarding stability. Where there are really poor provinces, we may want to encourage the player to have them as vassals, rather than ruling them directly, as in most cases direct central control isn't all that realistic. Here we can help human players at least by having enough releasable countries to go round.

It's hard to tell exactly how poor some of these places were, as they were generally minimally governed, so there were few censuses and the like, but I'd say much of Afghanistan would be getting on for exporting nothing in the Early Modern era. It's also an example of a place that's famously hard to rule, and its poverty plays no small part in that. We can give it decent MP though, as many of the Afghan tribes made and still make good warriors.

@mikl: That's not really possible AFAIK; demand for slaves can only go up. A radical alternative would be to ditch slaves altogether, and replace them with something else. But this would be a major deviation from history, given how important slavery was as an aspect of world trade.

 

[MattyG]

Incompetent,

I agree with you on the slavery issue. As much as it is repulsive, so too is war, which we all engage in willy-nilly as part of the game.

The concept that these poor provinces become vassals is OK, except that we would need to create a LOT of new tags and countries and detail them all.

I prefer the idea that we could create a new good. Maybe we could make it Turnips or Rye or Beets, some archetypal eastern-Russian thing that has not much value and represents what they actually produced out there. As you say, with a base value of 3-4.

Matty

 

[unmerged(16159)]

Make it Root Vegetables. This covers potatoes, and a possible Potato blight. Means also it can occur everywhere in the New World, and Scottish monarchs can have a "Child Monarch refuses to eat local produce - -1 Stability" event. :rofl:

Or as Incompetent suggested, Hunter/Gatherer. This works for Australia, and most places above the arctic circle without Furs.

Is there a tool or event command which can convert goods during the game? For example Hunter/Gatherer to Grain once a higher technology society moves in, or an early discovery of gold in Yarra, instead of Wool?

And I defer to your wisdoms about slavery. We as players have the option of pursuing diplomatic policies not warlike, just as we have the choice to avoid colonising provinces with slaves.

 

[unmerged(33565)]

Make it Root Vegetables. This covers potatoes, and a possible Potato blight. Means also it can occur everywhere in the New World, and Scottish monarchs can have a "Child Monarch refuses to eat local produce - -1 Stability" event. :rofl:

Or as Incompetent suggested, Hunter/Gatherer. This works for Australia, and most places above the arctic circle without Furs.

Is there a tool or event command which can convert goods during the game? For example Hunter/Gatherer to Grain once a higher technology society moves in, or an early discovery of gold in Yarra, instead of Wool?

And I defer to your wisdoms about slavery. We as players have the option of pursuing diplomatic policies not warlike, just as we have the choice to avoid colonising provinces with slaves.

I think that most of the areas that had no exports or no population can be best showen with almost no tax income. Production income is based on population, so at least a location in England is going to have more income from prodution then a mongal colony if they have the same good.

Just so you know there is no way to change the good once you set it in the begining. So what you start with is what you get.

About slaves, I think you should leave them in. Slaves have been around since the beginning of civilization, even the "enlightend" greeks and romans has slaves. Sure, there was not as great of a trade but to get rid of them you would have to change human nature.

 

[Incompetent]

I think that most of the areas that had no exports or no population can be best showen with almost no tax income. Production income is based on population, so at least a location in England is going to have more income from prodution then a mongal colony if they have the same good.

The thing is, we want production income from goods to depend somewhat on Infra levels; also we want trade in these goods to be important. While production income does depend on population, it's not linear, and 1000 or 5000 people will give you a pretty decent percentage.


I've had another idea: we want some city provinces to be quite wealthy, but this is not reflected in the current range of goods, since goods for the most part represent primary production, ie that which can be farmed, hunted, gathered or mined, and cities don't produce much of that. Of course sometimes the wealth of cities came from trade, but we can't give every such city a COT! Tax value is also only part of the equation, as cities got a lot richer over time.

So how about we have more provinces which produce manufactured or service goods? At the moment there are only two manufactured goods: Cloth and Chinaware, but clearly not all manufacturing or services are covered by these. How about we give these goods more generic names, and put them in places like London and Venice, which ATM are of little value?

 

[Incompetent]

I've uploaded a modified province.csv and goods.csv with drastic changes to goods, which you can download here. It's just a rough outline, and I'll fill in the details if people think I'm on the right lines. Here are the main points:

- 'Coffee' represents both Tea and Coffee. They weren't particularly important resources in vanilla, and they have the same sources of demand, so I merged them to make way for more types of goods.

- 'Sheep' now represent marginal production. I've put them mostly in deserts and other very poor parts of the world.

- 'Tea' now represents Wool. I've done this because Tea seems to generate a decent amount of demand. Now wool is worth something!

- 'Cloth' now represents manufactured goods of all kinds. In particular, most places which used to produce Chinaware now produce 'Cloth'.

- 'Chinaware' now represents miscellaneous non-production based sources of income, from donations to the Church (Rome) to financial services (London). There aren't many provinces of this at the moment, but I'll probably put a decent number in, particularly in trading/financial hubs that don't quite deserve a COT.

- Slaves now have a BRP of 10, Grain 8, Cotton 6 (to offset increased demand), 'Sheep' 3.


I also plan to cut down the number of Grain provinces a bit (currently over 100, creating a grain glut and giving it almost no trade value), but I'm not sure how. Remember that 'grain' means 'surplus grain' - I'm quite aware that large parts of the world produced wheat, rice etc, but did they sell it in large quanitities, or was it just subsistence?

 

[MattyG]

So how about we have more provinces which produce manufactured or service goods? At the moment there are only two manufactured goods: Cloth and Chinaware, but clearly not all manufacturing or services are covered by these. How about we give these goods more generic names, and put them in places like London and Venice, which ATM are of little value?

Incompetent,

More excellent work while you ought to be studying.



However, we are talking about 1419 and London had no financial services at that time and it grew around Londons trade position (needing a CoT there) and its strength as a trader and coloniser in the 1600s onwards. To start Anglia as anything but Sheep or Grain at the start does not to me make sense. That was what it produced, outside of its trade-and-capital-city related fortunes. In 1419 in Aberration it is neither a capital nor a does it have a CoT. Anglia should remain grain, and its reall wealth comes from its population.

Accordingly, I am not taken by your concept of other manufactured and service-related productivity. I find this too modern in feel. It would make more sense as the 1700s come on, but not in 1419 for most provinces. Yes, the Italian Banks are an exception.

I think that these kinds of changes to the province.csv should be delayed a long time, because the economic ramifications are very very far reaching. I would rather not be building events based on a production model that may soon prove to be very out of whack and then have to review everything once again.

I support strongly your concept of the 'non-producing' province. Could we stick to this change for six months and then slowly bring in other chages as watch their effects?

 

[Incompetent]

Incompetent,

More excellent work while you ought to be studying.



However, we are talking about 1419 and London had no financial services at that time and it grew around Londons trade position (needing a CoT there) and its strength as a trader and coloniser in the 1600s onwards. To start Anglia as anything but Sheep or Grain at the start does not to me make sense. That was what it produced, outside of its trade-and-capital-city related fortunes. In 1419 in Aberration it is neither a capital nor a does it have a CoT. Anglia should remain grain, and its reall wealth comes from its population.

Accordingly, I am not taken by your concept of other manufactured and service-related productivity. I find this too modern in feel. It would make more sense as the 1700s come on, but not in 1419 for most provinces. Yes, the Italian Banks are an exception.

I think that these kinds of changes to the province.csv should be delayed a long time, because the economic ramifications are very very far reaching. I would rather not be building events based on a production model that may soon prove to be very out of whack and then have to review everything once again.

I support strongly your concept of the 'non-producing' province. Could we stick to this change for six months and then slowly bring in other chages as watch their effects?

OK, saying London is a big financial centre doesn't quite tie in with the mod, though it is meant to be the Hansa's fourth great Kontor after Lubeck, Antwerp and Novgorod. Maybe talking about services isn't such a good idea, though there were a few places which did have an economy that isn't really reflected in the current goods. I would like to have money pouring into Rome, for example, to reflect the wealth of the Catholic Church. Perhaps some of these ideas are better suited to parts of Asia, where the economy in 1419 was more developed.

It's not true to say that manufacturing was insignificant in 1419. Clothes, glassware, furniture etc were still made, and were still worth significant amounts of money, even if manufacturing didn't dominate a country's economy like it would 500 years later. In fact, 'Chinaware' in vanilla is meant to simulate a whole range of high-value manufactured goods, from porcelain to carpets, which happened to be made in the more high-tech parts of the world (ie Asia) in 1419. It's a bit silly, though, that Chinaware doesn't get the extra bonus from goods manufactories.

You say 'needing a COT', but the problem is that a COT is a HUGE economic boon, giving its owner 60 ducats/year in trade tariffs alone - even for the Hansa, 4 COTs would be an extravagance. There are some places where we want a kind of 'mini COT' in that the province is quite wealthy (supposedly due to trade) but not to the tune of 5 ducats a month. The trouble is that a grain province, even a high population one, just isn't very valuable economy-wise - however much I do with grain, it's not going to make much money until late on in the game when demand for it is higher. High tax value doesn't really cut it for these places either, as it tends to get less important as the game progresses, whereas cities got more important.

The economic implications are far-reaching - I did the changes mostly to illustrate some ideas, rather than to say that's the way it should be. But we need to be thinking about these things now as well as later, because they will affect later decisions.

Still, it is best to deal with one thing at a time. I'll put chinaware and cloth back to how they were, and focus on putting in marginal provinces, and we can see what effect that has on the economy.

 

[unmerged(16159)]

I don't think we need a specialised "Manufactured Goods" Good. Manufacturing found itself close to population centres, and citysize is it's own wealth generator in this game. And certainly London should NOT be a wealthy city, or Hansa CoT, since London was wealthy because England was strong. In Aberration we have no England, and London is likely to pale in comparison with Edinburgh and Dublin.

 

[MattyG]

You say 'needing a COT', but the problem is that a COT is a HUGE economic boon, giving its owner 60 ducats/year in trade tariffs alone - even for the Hansa, 4 COTs would be an extravagance. There are some places where we want a kind of 'mini COT' in that the province is quite wealthy (supposedly due to trade) but not to the tune of 5 ducats a month.
.

I don't think any province/city could become a finacial centre without being a centre of trade. So, not having a CoT in Aberration, Anglia would not become a financial centre and would remain a populous agrarian region with many fine inns nd cricket clubs.

 

[G-Klav]

@G-Klav: I think your sig's leaking

Sorry? I don't follow you there...?

Anyway, what I wanted to say was that I strongly support your idea of giving 'nothing' to the poorest provinces, concidering that the province goods represents what the provinces did export, not just produce.
Most provinces didn't actually export anything, I can name a lot of them: The interior of Central Asia including Mongolia and the Khanates, most of the Balkans and northern Scandinavia, as well as inner European Russia.

I e.g. can't (even as a Swede ) understand why Lappland has iron, when
a) Laponica wasn't fully colonized at the end of the game
b) The iron ore from the Laponican mines is so full with phosphorus that it was impossible to do anything with it until the late 19th century
c) The ore wasn't even found until the beginning of the 19th century (I think, but I'm totally sure it wasn't discovered before the 18th century)
I even concider it as an exploit for anyone owning it...

It would increase the value of both wool and grain, since the supply would be much lower.
The fact the province goods can't be changed during the game is a shame, but we've to live with that

 

[Incompetent]

Sorry? I don't follow you there...?

Before you posted in this thread, all the writing was normal-sized; but after your post, the writing is now the same size as in your signature. This suggests to me that you've got an HTML tag missing on the end: if your sig has [*SIZE=?*] somewhere in it, in needs to have [*/SIZE*] at the end (without the stars, obviously). Either that or it's some strange problem with my browser

Anyway, what I wanted to say was that I strongly support your idea of giving 'nothing' to the poorest provinces, concidering that the province goods represents what the provinces did export, not just produce.
Most provinces didn't actually export anything, I can name a lot of them: The interior of Central Asia including Mongolia and the Khanates, most of the Balkans and northern Scandinavia, as well as inner European Russia.

I e.g. can't (even as a Swede ) understand why Lappland has iron, when
a) Laponica wasn't fully colonized at the end of the game
b) The iron ore from the Laponican mines is so full with phosphorus that it was impossible to do anything with it until the late 19th century
c) The ore wasn't even found until the beginning of the 19th century (I think, but I'm totally sure it wasn't discovered before the 18th century)
I even concider it as an exploit for anyone owning it...

It would increase the value of both wool and grain, since the supply would be much lower.
The fact the province goods can't be changed during the game is a shame, but we've to live with that

I've started implementing this, though I'll need to find out which provinces should produce nothing. At the moment I'm using a resource to indicate marginal production, but if we do decide to make it nothing at all, that'll free up another resource slot.