"Mana" and Capacities Discussion Thread

[Spartakusbund]

I get that. Still it seems rather odd on how wide the decrees are. Mostly I’m just sceptical that the points are given based on a fixed value for each law and not something that scales somewhat with size (such as national focuses did in Vicky2). This will make every small nation have much more well maintained roads compared to large nations . Even if that historically wouldn’t be the case

It won’t though! You don’t have to use the decree to maintain your roads. You can also just pay people to do it instead of forcing them, and larger countries should be able to afford to do that much more easily.

National Focuses scaled to a degree with tech, but it was still the case that a smaller country would have a much easier job using them to, for instance, increase bureaucrats across their country.

 

[Badesumofu]

Capacities in V3 don’t resemble Monarch Points from EU4 or Imperator at release at all.

It‘s also not correct to say that the player has no control over EU4 MP generation in the current game. The defining characteristics at this point are that mana is a pool of highly abstracted points that you spend on mostly instant-effect abilities that are only loosely conceptually related to each other. Mana-generation also doesn’t scale, or doesn’t scale well with country size (which differentiates it from money). Capacities don‘t really fit that.

The more relevant question/discussion is whether capacities are too much of a gamist-abstraction for a game that should be as simulationist as possible.

 

[Spartakusbund]

That isn't correct. If you believe that, I would challenge you to play a Vicky 2 game as the Qing dynasty and attempt to increase the admin efficiency in a non-Manchu non-Beifaren province. Literacy, population culture, and population wealth all played a role.

Okay, true. They did have to be from your accepted or primary culture. But still, the system was much less complex.

A fair point, but it doesn't really have anything to do with capacities. All of these criticism could be addressed by increasing the required bureaucrat ratio or increasing the requirements to maintain a high admin efficiency.

This is essentially what Bureaucratic Capacity does. It also makes it easier for the player to take into account technology changes’ impacts on how many bureaucrats you need, as I’m fairly confident tech will end up boosting output for them.

These are my primary concerns as well. While I hope you are correct in that the developers will regionalize bureaucrats and admin efficiency to some degree, we don't have any information indicating that this is the case.

Other things they have said about how infrastructure works on a state level (and the hints they’ve dropped about Services) makes me pretty confident I am.

 

[Helmic____]

Freedom of the Press does not give you Road Maintenance. Having restrictive political freedoms gives you a higher Authority Capacity, not a lower one. There was some confusion because of the way this was displayed in one of the tooltips in the most recent Dev Diary, but the Devs clarified what’s going on under the hood. You get smaller and smaller bonuses to authority capacity the further along you go along the political reform path. Freedom of the Press is probably one of the highest levels and thus probably gives you no boost to Authority.

It appears that you can enforce state decrees EU4 style that drain your Authority Capacity. The Road Maintenance Decree referenced in the diary takes the form of corvee labor, ie forcing peasants to spend time working on the roads for free. This is an alternative to doing things in a more liberal way (actually paying POPs).

You’re correct in saying that using decrees doesn’t scale well when you have many different states vs having just a few, but I would say that makes perfect sense. Bigger countries should have to either go really hard on authoritarianism (Tsarist Russia) or develop more modern institutions that don’t derive from the will of the sovereign.

I get it is a system that counts down the more free you become. I just think that a decree should have negative effects rather than being purchased with a score you get from your press freedom law. You should be able to coerce, but get more or less negative modifiers depending on how free the press is instead imho. But I don’t know how the feature will look when it’s done. The problem with scaling is that you are hardcapped at say 1000 points from laws regardless of size. Thus authoritarian Russia can force the peasants to maintain roads in 3 provinces, the same amount of provinces an authoritarian Bavaria can force its peasants to improve. The difference being that Bavaria is only 3 states while Russia is 70. Now it shouldn’t perfectly scale with size since it should be harder to excert direct control over a large empire compared to a small one, but fixed points from laws don’t scale at all that is my problem. National focuses in Vicky2 struck a good balance in my opinion. They did scale with tech as you got more control later on, but also with amount of accepted pops which was a good size limiter in my opinion. That way Bavaria might have had 1 or 2 but Russia 5-7 focuses later on meaning that while the Russian player has less relative control, the drawbacks of going wide isn’t as huge.

 

[Lord Canterbury]

I understand you dislike the term, so allow me to phrase my argument without using it.

At its core, my position is that the capacities system appears to simplify existing mechanics and abstract them to the detriment of the simulation. Victoria 2 is a masterpiece largely in part because of the complexity of its world-simulation, and to decrease that complexity in favour of "bureaucracy tokens" which you can allocate at will serves to simplify what shouldn't be simplified.

Thank you. That helps clarify.

So on that mechanical discussion, considering abstraction...

Of the capacities, Bureaucracy and Influence seem okay to me? Neither seem to be spent, rather they seem to represent the power of the government to organise and manage internal and external affairs respectively. So in the DD example, Sweden's bureaucratic capacity is 'okay'... but presumably as its empire grew, its bureaucratic capacity would become stretched, and its taxation become inefficient as a result.

Influence to me seems similarly obvious, and not overly abstract.

However, authority is not so obvious to me... the examples seems to show high authority allowing the player to build more roads at once... which does seem rather abstracted. I don't have a problem with this... but I can understand how those who don't like abstract might not like it.

IIRC (which I might not), Vicky2 didn't have any of these measures of government efficiency. So adding them in actually making the game more complex, even if each of these mechanics is relatively simply on their own.

I do wonder if your concern about the abstraction/simplicity of say, bureaucracy capacity would be resolved by simply labelling it as bureaucratic efficiency and making it a percentage? That way it would be more clear that it isn't 'spent', but instead is a limit on the throughput of action... and might(?) make it less abstract?

Personally, my biggest potential concern with capacities is that they seem to be primarily increased by building buildings. I'm assuming this is a directly response to people's concerns about not being able to influence in game resources, and also done to make the gain of capacity more tangible (less abstract). I'm somewhat concerned that this will make it a bit too 'gamey'. In my opinion, improving Bureaucratic capacity should be done via investment in 'government administration' (in the abstract) rather than a literal 'government administration building'... but given how these forums behave, I can understand why the devs have chosen specific buildings.

 

[Word_Smith]

The defining characteristics at this point are that mana is a pool of highly abstracted points that you spend on mostly instant-effect abilities that are only loosely conceptually related to each other. Mana-generation also doesn’t scale, or doesn’t scale well with country size (which differentiates it from money). Capacities don‘t really fit that.

The more relevant question/discussion is whether capacities are too much of a gamist-abstraction for a game that should be as simulationist as possible.

I agree with you completely. It really is the million-dollar question. Unfortunately, given the information we have I personally believe that capacities are something typically found in a 4X Stellaris-style system, rather than the simulation-style system that Victoria is known and celebrated for.

 

[Spartakusbund]

I get it is a system that counts down the more free you become. I just think that a decree should have negative effects rather than being purchased with a score you get from your press freedom law. You should be able to coerce, but get more or less negative modifiers depending on how free the press is instead imho. But I don’t know how the feature will look when it’s done. The problem with scaling is that you are hardcapped at say 1000 points from laws regardless of size. Thus authoritarian Russia can force the peasants to maintain roads in 3 provinces, the same amount of provinces an authoritarian Bavaria can force its peasants to improve. The difference being that Bavaria is only 3 states while Russia is 70. Now it shouldn’t perfectly scale with size since it should be harder to excert direct control over a large empire compared to a small one, but fixed points from laws don’t scale at all that is my problem. National focuses in Vicky2 struck a good balance in my opinion. They did scale with tech as you got more control later on, but also with amount of accepted pops which was a good size limiter in my opinion. That way Bavaria might have had 1 or 2 but Russia 5-7 focuses later on meaning that while the Russian player has less relative control, the drawbacks of going wide isn’t as huge.

So Bavaria is better able to develop than Russia? Again, that sounds totally appropriate.

 

[ggsimmonds]

I think the only one that fits the term mana is diplomatic influence.
The other capacities are abstractions, influence is mana.

That by itself isn't necessarily a bad thing, thought it easily can be.

 

[Mr. Wiggles]

I think the only one that fits the term mana is diplomatic influence.
The other capacities are abstractions, influence is mana.

That by itself isn't necessarily a bad thing, thought it easily can be.

I agree with this, it can not be anything else. Diplomatic relations do not need a hard cap, especially coming from "this king smart, here is 100 influence, use it to get a defensive pact".
In reality: No hard cap, diplomatic corps needed, attachés, embassies needed (envoys in ancient times), geopolitical reasons to strike a deal needed, economic reasons needed.
The hardest part would be modelling the quality of the politicians involved, their ability to scheme to get things done, even though these are notable exceptions rather than the norm, given how many people and how many interests were usually involved in these things.

Maybe they need something like influence as it is for gameplay balance and to keep the AI from doing the dumbest things.

 

[Mr. Wiggles]

So Bavaria is better able to develop than Russia? Again, that sounds totally appropriate.

Did Bavaria send the first man into space?

 

[qer]

Did Bavaria send the first man into space?

It did develop faster during the 19th century no doubt about it. It also develops faster on the first years of Vic2 due to how national focuses works. Of course the idea of big nations developing more slowly is good for a game perspective but in game I would say that big nations would always be preferable due to having more pops. In this aspect we would need to see how the united states is represented, as it was a big fast growing nation during most of the period.

 

[Spartakusbund]

Did Bavaria send the first man into space?

No. Neither did Tsarist Russia.

A Space Program seems like it would be an Institution though, and would come out of Bureaucratic Capacity.

 

[Helmic____]

Did Bavaria send the first man into space?

Ok but consider Moldavia, a poor country in Eastern Europe. But thanks to their laws banning free assembly they have perfect roads, much better ones than Prussia, that while authoritarian can only maintain roads in Berlin and the Rheinland

 

[Lord Lambert]

One of the reasons fans wanted Vicky 3 to have Victoria 2-style pops instead of Stellaris or Imperator-style pops is because of the importance of simulation to the Vicky experience. Reducing complex interlacing systems of population interaction (militancy, political awareness, and government factionalism) to simply "I have enough authority tokens" or "I have enough bureaucracy tokens" is a worrying move because it's a step in the direction of simplification. EU4's governing capacity and Stellaris' empire sprawl/admin capacity should not be the model for Victoria 3.

I would agree with this if and only if the things we have seen these capacities control were in Victoria 2 in a complex way. Influence capacity from every angle seems a more complex system than having 9 diplomatic points that you can spend and accumulate over time from nebulous places. Beurocracy is replacing a single slider. Authority is completely new and doesn't even have a Vicky 2 equivalent to compare to. None of these, imo, are more abstracted or any reduction in complexity, and thus I don't believe you have a point here.

 

[Mr. Wiggles]

It did develop faster during the 19th century no doubt about it. It also develops faster on the first years of Vic2 due to how national focuses works. Of course the idea of big nations developing more slowly is good for a game perspective but in game I would say that big nations would always be preferable due to having more pops. In this aspect we would need to see how the united states is represented, as it was a big fast growing nation during most of the period.

It developed faster because the geographical, social, institutional and historical situations were completely different, not because russia was big and bavaria was small.
The Russia vs Bavaria example shows small countries are more homogeneous for obvious reasons. Nothing prevents a bigger nation to create a scientific-industrial hub and greatly surpass the scientific and industrial throughput and output of a smaller country.

 

[~DD~]

The Road Maintenance Decree referenced in the diary takes the form of corvee labor, ie forcing peasants to spend time working on the roads for free. This is an alternative to doing things in a more liberal way (actually paying POPs).

Corvee labour sounds very interesting, however one problem is that maintaining roads with Authority is apparently going to be quite abstract.

The reason why Road Maintenance uses Authority is because it's a decree (one of many different types) issued in a state to its population, and doesn't cost the government anything other than the Authority to ensure its people are following its directives

This quote is extremely important: "[Road Maintenance] doesn't cost the government anything other than the Authority"

Wiz also posted on twitter: "There is a whole, separate infrastructure system that does not use Authority, this is just one of the 'pet projects' that Authority allows."

Now we don't know what exactly this infrastructure system is or how it's going to work. But I assume and I hope that since the developers already mentioned that buildings such as ports and railroads will use pops, the infrastructure system will also use a combination of pops, material goods and wages.

But remember: "[Road Maintenance] doesn't cost the government anything other than the Authority". To my understanding this means that if you maintain the roads with the use of Authority then the materials and the manpower required will not be taken into consideration.

That looks to me as something quite abstract. An authoritarian government can maintain the roads by simply being authoritarian.

 

[--Yigito123--]

Corvee labour sounds very interesting, however one problem is that maintaining roads with Authority is apparently going to be quite abstract.

This quote is extremely important: "[Road Maintenance] doesn't cost the government anything other than the Authority"

Wiz also posted on twitter: "There is a whole, separate infrastructure system that does not use Authority, this is just one of the 'pet projects' that Authority allows."

Now we don't know what exactly this infrastructure system is or how it's going to work. But I assume and I hope that since the developers already mentioned that buildings such as ports and railroads will use pops, the infrastructure system will also use a combination of pops, material goods and wages.

But remember: "[Road Maintenance] doesn't cost the government anything other than the Authority". To my understanding this means that if you maintain the roads with the use of Authority then the materials and the manpower required will not be taken into consideration.

That looks to me as something quite abstract. An authoritarian government can maintain the roads by simply being authoritarian.

I mean, that looks like that mostly because... that's all we know. We don't know how decrees work, we don't know what the precise effects of this "Road Maintenance" edict is, and we don't know by what sort of mechanics Infrastructure is handled in the game normally. All we know is "You can use Authority to avoid paying for infrastructure maintenance in a state", and while in a vacuum that does look abstract, I think we should wait for the surrounding mechanics to be explained in the dev diaries yet to come before coming to conclusions.

I mean, for starters, the "Road Maintenance" edict could be actually putting the burden on the pops in that state instead of simply removing the cost. Considering that this is the game where constructing buildings will apparently require hiring pops as construction workers on the project, that is just as valid an interpretation of what we know so far as "An authoritarian government can maintain the roads by simply being authoritarian" until further information.

 

[Spartakusbund]

Ok but consider Moldavia, a poor country in Eastern Europe. But thanks to their laws banning free assembly they have perfect roads, much better ones than Prussia, that while authoritarian can only maintain roads in Berlin and the Rheinland

Maintaining roads is not the same thing as building roads, and authoritarian states can still choose to pay road maintenance the normal way. You aren’t forced to use the decree.

 

[Torredebelem]

In the knowledge this is way too early in the dev diaries to post more than a hunch and I am not even a Victoria fan but generally speaking, I believe Paradox will be seeking to increase significantly the playerbase of Victoria, which was the smallest (albeit extremely vocal!) of all Paradox titles. This attempt to bring many more players to the title doesn't bid well for those who favor comparable complexity to Vic2, which was probably the hardest game from Paradox to get into. I think more realistically, one should expect a streamlined version of Vic2 and "mana" (or simplification in the word of the OP), in one form or another will be present, even if certainly not with the catastrophic results it imposed on Imperator.

So, for the hardcore fans, don't get your hopes too high as the game will be developed for a much larger audience with the consequences of such.
Just my (probably not very popular) opinion at this stage.

 

[Helmic____]

In the knowledge this is way too early in the dev diaries to post more than a hunch and I am not even a Victoria fan but generally speaking, I believe Paradox will be seeking to increase significantly the playerbase of Victoria, which was the smallest (albeit extremely vocal!) of all Paradox titles. This attempt to bring many more players to the title doesn't bid well for those who favor comparable complexity to Vic2, which was probably the hardest game from Paradox to get into. I think more realistically, one should expect a streamlined version of Vic2 and "mana" (or simplification in the word of the OP), in one form or another will be present, even if certainly not with the catastrophic results it imposed on Imperator.

So, for the hardcore fans, don't get your hopes too high as the game will be developed for a much larger audience with the consequences of such.
Just my (probably not very popular) opinion at this stage.

Tbh I would be fine with the capacities if they were gained via the pops and not flat amounts from the laws. Repressing the press should lower pop consciousness, making them more loyal and giving you authority. Government systems like oligarchy should only gain authority if the oligarchs are powerful, and loyal (in the government). amounts tied to international status should be gained according to the amount of prestige (or percentage of world average like being a GP) instead of flat amounts for the different tiers. With those changes I think most people would like them.