Make construction a regular industry and make its products demanded by all industries and pops

[yurcick]

Elaborating on my post from a neighbouring thread (while the idea originally isn't mine anyway).

What are the problems with the current construction system?
Most of all is that it snowballs infinitely, transforming a country into a gigantic construction site in the late game. This is not very realistic, but a bigger problem is that an efficient player runs out of profitable things to construct in late game.
Second is that there are almost no drawbacks in expanding it if you currently have the money.

• It's cheap
• Not many things in a current economy rely on the running construction industry, and those that do (iron and wood production) by mid game are in slight deficit because of other demand anyway, so switching some of construction off or downsizing isn't a major problem for the whole economy

This is in fact a part of a broader issue that is the lack of proper gamble in the V3: all decisions are either sure things or too easy to roll back.

I believe that an elegant solution to various problems with construction would be adding additional constant demand for construction, proportional to the current level of industry. Basically, all buildings should have a construction input (to represent renovations and reconstruction of buildings, expanding mines to new deposits etc). Pops should have a housing needs that can be fulfilled by construction (although in late game most of the need should be fulfilled by "housing" produced by urban centres from construction and possibly transportation). The housing should be local, completely non-tradable even between states (acting like there is 0% market access).

The urban centres themselves should become major independent consumers of construction. At the moment they expand automatically with industrialization. This isn't natural and should be reversed: their expansion should become a costly soft requirement to industrialization, because otherwise, without massive housing improvement and expansion, the SoL would drop to unacceptable levels (which was totally the case historically).

I believe, there should be the following sources of demand for construction (in a balanced mid-game capitalist economy, these five parts should be roughly equal in volume):

1. Profitable urban centers should place "expansion" orders from their own cash reserves
2. Rich pops should place "industry expansion/creation orders" (current investment pool mechanics)
3. The player should place orders for industry or government building expansion/creation (current player-run construction mechanics)
4. Pops, mostly those outside of urban employment and unable to utilize the "housing" good produced by cities, should utilize construction for their "housing" need
5. Existing industries and urban centers should have a construction input for renovations and small-scale expansions to keep the current level of activity

The supply for the construction should mostly come from the construction centers, although subsistence farms should give a minimum construction surplus, in addition to covering the housing needs of the peasants.

When supply roughly corresponds with the demand, the only thing affected by excess or insufficient construction should be prices.
When supply is significanly lower (that maximum price just isn't enough to represent the shortage), there should be throughput and mortality penalties to represent things falling into disrepair.

The need to expand the urban centers (and democratic governments' limited ability to do so fast) should be a major obstacle that the player will have to overcome.
This all would also create interesting mechanics, where a long-term abundance of construction would lead to oversupply of housing, which would be then hard to break because the SoL drops would cause massive discontent.
Additionally, a possible abundance of construction coming from the overlord's market would lead to cheaper late-game subject development, allowing them to expand for a quarter of the price, easing the resource problem.

 

[Nuklearius]

I believe that an elegant solution to various problems with construction would be adding additional constant demand for construction, proportional to the current level of industry.

This would break the game unfortunately. There is a reason why so many players end up with 10k+ construction points, and that is that it's simply necessary to even catch up with population growth and unemployment. Adding in a permanent construction consumption would make it exponentially harder to catch up with your population and result in gameplay that's focussed, no dedicated, solely around construction sectors.
I stand by my point in the other thread, the entire system is so borked, convoluted and unfun that they should just return to money based construction and get rid of construction industry entirely. Or have them recruit workers on the spot for every single construction site that end up filling construction.

 

[yurcick]

Adding in a permanent construction consumption would make it exponentially harder to catch up with your population

But it won't be necessary. It's not like this was a real challenge for countries and governments IRL.
Current unemployment problem stems from two major sources:
1) services being unprofitable and cities having like 5% employment, so city service providers make up a tiny fraction of the population. IRL by game end date in developed countries they should make up like 10-30%. That's millions of jobs
2) resources outside the majors' territory being unexploited (because the minors are dumb and poor)

The former simply needs a bugfix. The latter will be partially alleviated by my proposal, as excess cheap construction will make it easier for minors to build up.

 

[Oktobermensch]

Construction industry should be supplying "maintenance" to existing buildings, which would both offset the spiral and would moderate growth to the natural limit of the economy, since the industry would be soaking up construction materials to deliver that maintenance, and the larger the economy overall the larger the construction demand and that would stabilise it.
It's elegant, and would only need tweaking to adjust the maximum speed of growth.

 

[Ir0nSlug]

But wouldn't you just need even more construction sector or equivalent? Don't player countries already look like giant construction managment companies more than anything?

 

[Messy]

Construction sectors are mana, they produce nothing tangible. Prove me wrong.

 

[BeauNiddle]

Construction sectors are mana, they produce nothing tangible. Prove me wrong.

Mana can be stored, construction can't. It's a capacity (exactly as intended)

 

[Rabid]

Mana can be stored, construction can't. It's a capacity (exactly as intended)

Sorry, some people have already decided that capacities are also bad for some unexplained reason and because bad number I don't like on the top of the screen = mana, that makes capacities mana now.

Some of the "mana" arguments were ludicrous before but they've got much more so in V3.

 

[Samolub]

Much simpler

• create with POP a demand for building materials such as wood, hardwood, cement, brick, steel, tools, glass, machines corresponding to construction need

- depending on the level of wealth or class, the needs can vary significantly, the poor will choose ordinary wood, the average wealthy will need more hardwood, bricks, little cement, glass the very wealthy will need more steel, cement or machinery​

​

- the same applies to infrastructure and buildings built by the player or the computer, they have different requirements for building materials. Consideration also of factors such as renovations/reconstruction/maintenance of already built plants or railway lines where a small amount of steel is needed but in return the old/replaced traction is returned in the form of iron, farms dont need to much glass or cement, railways needs a lot of streel, port/dockyard needs a lot of cement, art academies/skyscrapers more glass. As a result, for a poorly developed economy, the costs of building a port, art academies, railways in relation to a farm will be much more visible than in an industrialized country​

• create at POP, for buildings and infrastructure, a demand for the construction sector that will be subtracted from the available national pool, this reflects the demand for construction services of everything that is not included in the game, mainly dependent on the size of the population and its wealth (housing stock, small business, roads) For example, China may have a construction sector similar to Great Britain, but its population size means that the huge demand from POP consumes most of the construction industry, not allowing for huge state or industrial projects. Countries don't turn into big sectors and construction queues in the late game, development phases and employment in the construction services sector is better embedded in the era

• for the construction sector, create only the demand that is generated by workers and construction companies, without taking into account the building materials used for specific constructions, because it has already been taken into account above. For example, the construction sector, regardless of what and how it builds, needs, tools etc. more machines, trucks/automobiles and oil/electicity with improvements

- very rarely, but there may be a situation when the demand for construction in a country is temporarily greater, e.g. after losing a province, than the capacity of the construction sector, add some negative modifiers depending on the %​

• self-supply farms with an appropriate form of production can generate a small amount of construction points, remove the basic base value for countries (small city-country in Indonesia could have 5 lvl ports in 1840. City of Kraków couldn't have half the free points for new construction compared to eg Greece, Saxony or Bavaria) Of course, keep the proportions in which small and undeveloped countries are not able to achieve even a few % of the level of construction as Great Britain, France, Prussia, Austria, USA, but the large ones such as Russia, China, India have a representatively large demand for building materials and large employment in the construction services sector, although they are not able to create new projects so quickly

• Increase the construction efficiency bonus slightly in the administration area, e.g. +2/3% from each level in the administration area, add the construction efficiency bonus to the sum of all building sectors in adjacent areas, e.g. +1%, increase the total limit. This will better reflect the local potential of the construction sector, affecting only the costs and efficiency of construction, it will not affect the amount of materials needed.

 

[GrafKeks]

Elaborating on my post from a neighbouring thread (while the idea originally isn't mine anyway).

What are the problems with the current construction system?
Most of all is that it snowballs infinitely, transforming a country into a gigantic construction site in the late game. This is not very realistic, but a bigger problem is that an efficient player runs out of profitable things to construct in late game.
Second is that there are almost no drawbacks in expanding it if you currently have the money.

• It's cheap
• Not many things in a current economy rely on the running construction industry, and those that do (iron and wood production) by mid game are in slight deficit because of other demand anyway, so switching some of construction off or downsizing isn't a major problem for the whole economy

This is in fact a part of a broader issue that is the lack of proper gamble in the V3: all decisions are either sure things or too easy to roll back.

There will always be a best policy in Victoria3. It certainly is far too easy to predict outcomes though, absolutely ttue.

I believe that an elegant solution to various problems with construction would be adding additional constant demand for construction, proportional to the current level of industry. Basically, all buildings should have a construction input (to represent renovations and reconstruction of buildings, expanding mines to new deposits etc). Pops should have a housing needs that can be fulfilled by construction (although in late game most of the need should be fulfilled by "housing" produced by urban centres from construction and possibly transportation). The housing should be local, completely non-tradable even between states (acting like there is 0% market access).

There's some mods that do it, it's usually very unbalanced, if only urban centres can ptoduce housing it also introduces a problem regarding urban centre substitution.

When supply roughly corresponds with the demand, the only thing affected by excess or insufficient construction should be prices.
When supply is significanly lower (that maximum price just isn't enough to represent the shortage), there should be throughput and mortality penalties to represent things falling into disrepair.

So shortage should kick in earlier?

The need to expand the urban centers (and democratic governments' limited ability to do so fast) should be a major obstacle that the player will have to overcome.
This all would also create interesting mechanics, where a long-term abundance of construction would lead to oversupply of housing, which would be then hard to break because the SoL drops would cause massive discontent.

That's not a mechanic rather a situation isn't it? What other goods would housing substitute though, it certainly can be a luxury good as well.

 

[yurcick]

What other goods would housing substitute though, it certainly can be a luxury good as well.

It's crucial in this idea that housing is a separate need, substitutable only by construction (and this is mostlly intended for rural areas and emerging cities).
Its natural share in the "consumer basket" should be huge, about 10-20%, to represent that the acute shortages of housing (that drive the price +75%) have a radical effect on SoL.

 

[Sbrubbles]

Although I'm not particularly awed by the proposed solution, I'm in favor of anything that makes construction more expensive. As it stands, construction is too cheap making economic growth too fast by 19th century historical standards.

 

[SilenceBrand]

I've always felt a bit strange that playing a country often feels more like playing a giant construction site. In truth, how many 19th and early 20th century states had wildly fluctuating national budgets to the point their spending could shoot up several dozen percent because the price of wood has gone up this month?

 

[yurcick]

I've always felt a bit strange that playing a country often feels more like playing a giant construction site. In truth, how many 19th and early 20th century states had wildly fluctuating national budgets to the point their spending could shoot up several dozen percent because the price of wood has gone up this month?

IRL a significantly smaller part of a country's construction was done with state budget than the minimum 25% we have in the game (with LF). I'm no expert, but I think the actual number was closer to 2.5% (upd: actually after several recounts I stopped being so sure about this. If anyone knows of a relevant research, that'd be cool to see).
Same is likely true for state budget's share assigned to construction: the construction that the state did (mostly infrastructure, defense and some urban development) amounted for several percent of the state budget. From what I was able to infer from Google and Wiki, the megaproject that was the Transsiberian railway cost about 5% of the Russian budget between 1891 and 1916, and the total volume of the "special budget" (containing all state-level construction projects, but also a ton of other things not going through regular ministry-level budgetization, like war or emergency expenditures) fluctuated between 5% of total budget (1910) and 30% of it (1904). So likely the construction share of the state budget was about 5-10% for Russia on average, and probably much less for more advanced capitalist economies.

The current game design revolves around the player deciding for the economy, and not only for the government, what is built and how, despite paying for this from the government coffers in a disproportionately large part (I'm not talking about the investment pool now). The industries built with state money are then immediately gifted to the capitalists.
There are understandable game design reasons for this, whether we agree with them or not, but it unarguably skews some of the realism, including introducing the effect you mention.

I believe that with my proposed system, a somewhat smaller share of state budget would go to construction and a much smaller share of construction would be a result of state actions (as there are other major sources of demand), so the issue would be a bit better.

 

[Don_Quigleone]

I think the problem isn't that construction is too cheap, it's that taxation is too easy. Currently in game it's not difficult to tax ~30% of national income. In real life, such numbers were only possible after ww1 or in states like the Soviet union. Most states could only manage ~10%.

In general, levying taxes should be way harder.

With lower taxes, growth rates will be far lower.

 

[Rabid]

I think the problem isn't that construction is too cheap, it's that taxation is too easy. Currently in game it's not difficult to tax ~30% of national income. In real life, such numbers were only possible after ww1 or in states like the Soviet union. Most states could only manage ~10%.

In general, levying taxes should be way harder.

With lower taxes, growth rates will be far lower.

This is a good suggestion that I haven't seen raised before, it also neatly helps to address the "AI never builds enough construction and ends up stockpiling huge amount of money" issue.

 

[Blackpony]

Taking some notes from my shelfed construction mod:
How to limit exponential construction?

Limit input:
Make a new, costly construction materials good (cements back!) or use existing goods with conflicting demand

Limit throughput:
Basically new state level penalties reworked to factor in urbanization, labor availability, etc.

Limit output (to build pool) :
Maintenance of buildings, private construction of housing uses up points.
Create new demand for build points by making a new private consumer (private contractors outputting the housing.

Replace system (most problematic):
Generate build points by other sources
Most potential:
implement a "construction contracts" good, produced by private construction (for materials and wages) and consumed by (reworked/reduced) government construction sectors for build points, to represent government based contracts.
Bonus: implement pop demand for contracts to represent housing getting build
Bonus 2 :
New construction sector pm allows for fine tuning of throughout (like a slider)

The restart of the modproject will most likely use the new contractors concept.
In feedback loop rn is the idea of using services as an new input instead of laborer employment to simulate localy available workforce from urban centers instead of stable pop employment. This will generate some more tension and demand around services, it might need a extra urban center pm.

Sorry for the long post, just wanna share the partly developed ideas.

 

[yurcick]

Taking some notes from my shelfed construction mod:
How to limit exponential construction?

Limit input:
Make a new, costly construction materials good (cements back!) or use existing goods with conflicting demand

Limit throughput:
Basically new state level penalties reworked to factor in urbanization, labor availability, etc.

Limit output (to build pool) :
Maintenance of buildings, private construction of housing uses up points.
Create new demand for build points by making a new private consumer (private contractors outputting the housing.

Replace system (most problematic):
Generate build points by other sources
Most potential:
implement a "construction contracts" good, produced by private construction (for materials and wages) and consumed by (reworked/reduced) government construction sectors for build points, to represent government based contracts.
Bonus: implement pop demand for contracts to represent housing getting build
Bonus 2 :
New construction sector pm allows for fine tuning of throughout (like a slider)

The restart of the modproject will most likely use the new contractors concept.
In feedback loop rn is the idea of using services as an new input instead of laborer employment to simulate localy available workforce from urban centers instead of stable pop employment. This will generate some more tension and demand around services, it might need a extra urban center pm.

Sorry for the long post, just wanna share the partly developed ideas.

This is surprisingly close to the ideas I put in the original post. If you posted yours here on this forum, I might have read them and subconsciously reworked (very slightly, as mine are almost exactly the same, only the names are changed and housing is mandated to be a local good, more like infrastructure than transportation)

Using services as the majority input (while reducing the workforce need of the construction sectors) is an interesting idea that would allow to differentiate between states, but that will only work if the services are also local (as proposed housing) or if common market access levels drop significantly (that 50-80% is the norm, and not 100%). I'm also not sure if this really fits the idea of services. But still this sounds very interesting.

 

[Woifee]

Construction sectors are mana, they produce nothing tangible. Prove me wrong.

Construction can't be stored and are made by goods and pops to build buildings. The most "mana" aspect of it is, that it can be spent everywhere. But in every other aspect it ain't mana.

But maybe you should define your meaning of "mana" first, because it is kinda weird to argue about some concept without clearly defining it.

Edit: If anything you can't get more concrete with a Ressource than with concrete
Okay, I'll show myself out.

 

[Blackpony]

Using services as the majority input (while reducing the workforce need of the construction sectors) is an interesting idea that would allow to differentiate between states, but that will only work if the services are also local

The mod got shelfed partly finished because the implementation of local workers for construction went really bad and frustrating (tried to tie it to a mobilization mechanic for construction).
Services are close to represent unskilled and skilled workforce in temporary hire from the poor and hurdled masses.
Giving a new pm to urban centers can balance things out in an immersive way.
It's a compromise, giving decent immersion and effectively making urbanization an limiter to building capacity, toning down the growth curve.

If u want truly local construction, it might be best done by giving each state a heavy construction limiting modifier, that moves up with expanded/growing sectors, urban centers, infrastructure ir whatever the chosen enabler is.
EDIT:
Alternativ might be an option to enable/disable Sektors in states with local triggers, so they only build, when having an "active" state.
Sry, I am close to getting technical now