My wishlist for Vic 2

[hideko]

I forgot to mention something

It would be cool if a "education level" is included for the pops. You know, poor countries, with no schools nor universities will have a research handicap and some problems getting qualified workers; aristocratic systems will have a reduced number of bored nobles who could entertain themselves making scientific breakthroughs at their manors... whatever, it´s just an idea.
And YES, I know there´s an education spending layer, but I think those matters should we looked closely in order to give the player another thing to do while the country is not at war (it will reduce the time we spend staring at the cement stock waiting until we can build more factories)

 

[Impi]

I would like to see subsidies as a game concept.

industrial subsidies for those countries who want to develop a certain sector of the economy or at least prevent it from collapsing (maybe under free market parties unprofitable factories can shut down which will make pops more militant). laissez-faire parties would obviously grey out the subsidy slider, but liberal and socialist parties should be able to subsidise sectors of the economy, to a lesser and greater extent.

railroad/infra subsidies for those who want to provide government assistance in developing infrastructure but find that capitalists don't build where the player wants them to, or at all because they are tight bastards who sleep with their money in their mattresses. can open up strategies where subsidies can assist in the development of infrastructure in strategic areas.

colonial subsidies, which would provide an incentive for immigrant pops to move to a certain area. think of this as the government footing the bill for passage/land if an immigrant settles in a certain area. can help in settling places that are strategic but underutilised. each immigrant pop to an area would incur a cost to the treasury.

this could also open the door to taxation of industry by sector, which would assist state revenues. rather than factory profits coming to the states, a proportion of these would come to the state in line with tax/subsidy policy and the rest would go to the capitalists who, presumably, are the shareholder class.

it's a pipe dream, but i would like to see more then one resource available in a province, but a set limit on each provincial RGO size, so that if, say, one can grow sugar and fruit in a province, but it is a small island, only, say, 3 slots would be available, and so you could have 1 fruit and 2 sugar slots on the island. this would stop things like st helena having 100,000 people, all working on extensive tracts of farmland on polders reclaimed from the atlantic ocean.

perhaps as a province becomes more crowded, it's attribute could become more urban, with more urban developments unlocked (or always available but increasingly necessary) which would increase the life rating of that province. abstract things like administration, hospital and transport infrastructure, which perhaps would have one or two slots each to employ a pop (of a certain type perhaps, like a clerk) as well, if only to simulate the use of manpower in non-economic support and public roles. the efficiency of these facilities could be tied to the size of the one or two pops employed by them, as would the running costs of these facilities, which could be set at a level where only really prosperous and affluent societies could afford comprehensive public facilities.

population density could also be tied to life rating, which would provide an incentive to those who want population growth to build facilities to alleviate the effects of urban crowding. overcrowded or poorly developed and desolate provinces or with poor facilities would see emigration effects whereas well developed or relatively uncrowded provinces would see immigration effects. classic push and pull factors.

of course, warfare in a province should present a chance for infrastructure, factories or even public facilities being destroyed. the more prolonged the warfare, the greater the chance of expensive destruction and the attendant depopulation effects.

 

[unmerged(57903)]

Supply lines for military forces.

This should combine with efforts that see war and the economy impact upon one another in a more significant fashion. I'm particularly thinking of the fact that the military should have needs, ammunition, food and the like. It will produce more accurate pricing and a more accurate economy. This shouldn't lead to much more micro-management than there is now - if you're starting to run low, you've probably lost the war.

If you can't produce these and all the other goods needed for your economy on your own, you'll have to buy them in, as you do now. My next proposal, then, is supply lines to the "world market". Thoroughly cut off from the sea lanes and surrounded by enemies in Central Europe, buying timber from the USA should not really be an option.

Work needs to be done on countries supplying their enemies via the market. That's not to say it shouldn't ever happen, but the area needs to be given consideration. Great War Britain shipping Oil over to Bremen for German tanks doesn't seem appropriate, somehow... But there could be peace time measures, more to the point.

Money should come from somewhere. I was reading that export of capital thread which seemed interesting. Where do countries get their money from? Your Capitalists could receive Russia's interest payments.

Capitalists should look to procure the actual goods used to build RR and factories. The current system of the Gods delivering the necessaries in exchange for cash undermines the whole principle of Victoria's economic system. If some Greek businessmen aren't able to source machine parts in 1838, that's their problem. If that's unrealistic, then sort out the supply side.

A pre-war statement of aims. Whether in the position of attack or defence, a party should state their intentions in the coming war, be it to take a specific area, to repel an advance and peaceably leave all borders unchanged or what have you. These would impact upon your prestige and BB, but would also be taken into consideration by other parties at the conclusion of the war. The more open-ended the stated intent, the wider the interpretation by third parties. The further away the result is from your stated intent, the stronger the conclusions drawn by third parties. The aggressor who simply wished to take back their traditional border province of suchandsuch and had their argument received sympathetically would be seen in a different light if they, to their own surprise, smashed the opposition to pieces and subsequently decided to cut them in half in a spirit of opportunism. If a side failed in their objectives, they would be much less respected fashion, meanwhile.

As with all Paradox games, the Naval system needs a massive sort out, which relates to the aforementioned supply system, of course.

The game is a game, and the following offers it's own challenges and interests in it's way, but nonetheless, the state giving 40,000 Trawlermen cash and goods to turn them into Clerks, and then immediately giving them even more to turn them into fully fledged capitalists, all in a day, is just wrong. Pop conversion, generally, should be abstracted in some appropriate fashion - conditions effecting decisions and such.

Factories should shut as well as open... or convert.

 

[unmerged(57903)]

it's a pipe dream, but i would like to see more then one resource available in a province, but a set limit on each provincial RGO size, so that if, say, one can grow sugar and fruit in a province, but it is a small island, only, say, 3 slots would be available, and so you could have 1 fruit and 2 sugar slots on the island. this would stop things like st helena having 100,000 people, all working on extensive tracts of farmland on polders reclaimed from the atlantic ocean.

And would prevent Milan producing most of the world's iron, yes. Some kind of production limit for each province at any one time would be nice.

 

[Impi]

And would prevent Milan producing most of the world's iron, yes. Some kind of production limit for each province at any one time would be nice.

for mines, mining and metallurgic tech should increase the efficiency at which the minerals are extracted, making them more productive and profitable with the same number of workers, as happens to an extent now. but really, getting the tech should be half the story. the mines themselves should be upgraded to take advantage of new technologies. capitalists should do it, ideally, if they have the cash. if you're some kind of crazy state capitalist command economy, you can do that yourself. or you can subsidise investment and upgrading of mine infrastructure.

the same would hold true for fishing and agriculture. and aristocrats should operate in the same way as capitalists, by expanding capacity if the demand is there, and even switching production if the market conditions are right. however, with set limits due to the availability of land, the prices paid for capacity increases or for new RGO's close to the absolute limit should increase as the supply of land, which is finite, decreases.

 

[sirsri]

I would do away with RGO's as separate entities entirely. A province could build so many points of labour, be them farming, resource extraction etc..., and those can be limited in the object definition files for each province (landlocked provinces cannot for example produce fish, desert provinces cannot necessarily produce cattle or wheat etc..., but a province could potentially produce both iron and wheat). Aristocates and capitalists would function the same way, but only be allowed to automatically upgrade different types of places or start new places of a particular type. Aristocrates would be for traditional farming crops, low level metal and some limited factories perhaps, whereas captialists would be low level cash crops (like cotton) high level metal and advanced factories. Yes I'm intentionally suggesting some overlap between the two.

Provinces should also track the maximum size for any given point of labour, so the iron mine can only get so big (I wouldn't bother with resources running out except by special events), only so much tea harvested etc... or even have more advanced rules like the sum of cattle + wheat + .... <=10, after all, there is only so much arable land, and a limit on total factory sizes etc....

 

[lizardo]

Where's da Money?

One of the reasons the Victoria economies don't work well is that money is treated inconsistantly in the game.

What I would reccomend is the adaption of standard double entry bookeeping into the game and events. That is, all pounds moving to one pocket must have come from another.

Lets look at government spending, the biggest problem. Money here is treated as a penalty and inhibitor of action rather than an actual expense. It is placed in a black hole called Bureacracy and never seen again. What is should do is go to a "factory" like government industry, one for each bureacracy, and pay clercs, buy paper, and disburse what ever is should disburse.

The second economic problem are the events. There is no easy way to take money from one entity and give it to another, especially in other nations. What there should be is a event command that forces all mones paid to be exactly distributed. The worst example that comes to mind is the purchase of Mexican Territories events. The US "pays" mexico 500k Lbs and Mexico recieves 5k Lbs, 495k Lbs just evaporated out of the game.

I'm sure there have been many complaints about the "world" market, which is really a popularity contest rather than a true market. There is no way to pay more for something to improve the chance to buy it, the primary incentive of any market. Prices are simply assigned more or less as to scarcity, which is a faint socialist node to reality, but still given to the more "socially deserving".

It would be desirable to have multiple markets based upon price or preference. Access to markest could be by economic leaders (capitalists). Markest would require Clerks to run and have their own need to sell.

This is a serious issue, it makes the game economy senseless and demands unnecessay kludges to keep things running.
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Some nice features that would add something interesting to the simulation:

Really have a "Gold" and "Fiat" monitary structure. That is if a nation is on the gold standard, its cash is direcly related to the amont of "Gold" it posseses. Changing to a "Fiat" (we decree how much money there is based loosly upon the value of all goods and labor potential). Changing to a "Fiat" system would rename the currency to dollars, which would be measured as how many to the Lb. This would take a fairly sophisticated algorithm to get right.

Real Banks, run by capitalists, that collect savings and loan money, charging interest based upon risk and money scarcety.

Abolish the capitalist populations, create capitalist leaders who invest in factories, farms and banks, and run them for profit.

Replace the capitalist populations with commisars. They would only appear under communist governments and which would act as a combination priest/capitalst/military unit. Priests would become ineffective or convert to clerks, migrate or die.

 

[lizardo]

RGOs

Place a value in each province for climate, moisture and fertility, and a special factor.

Instead of having only one possible type of RGO, have as many as the conditions will permit. If a crop or animal is not native a seed or breeding pair must be available to begin production. Obviously minerals will be constantly at one location unless more are discovered. The "special" factor could be used to designate some unique RGO possibility, with logical operators.

Change Sulfur to Guano. Potassium Nitrate was what everyone was scrambling for and birds did it best until chemistry advanced. Add a new factory for Guano production when chemistry allows.

RGOs that can beneift from furtilizer should have that as an optional input, as well as coal, oil and cars when farming is industrialized.

Add Horses. Need to have these for cavalry and farming. Edible too.

Sheep are edible.

 

[lizardo]

Roads, Rails, Ports and Planes

Rail and road transportation are demonstratably different modes of travel. They should be tracked seperately. A province should have a road value and a rail value.

The road value should be from 0 to what ever a paved higway (autobahn) is. In a zero value province all units and commerce move at the terrain penalties. A road, or even a path, is a substantial improvement. The real difference between roads and rails is that all units on a road move at an intrinisic rate, and are unlimbered.

Rails should operate more like how shipping is handled in the game. The factors should be how many stock cars, per how many engines and track infrastructure. All move movement of units would be at the rail speed and they would have to board and debark as per transport. An additional factor is that this doesn't come free but troop transport will compete with goods transport. A cost related to stock should be assesed. It soon becomes apparant that rail transport is not only faster but more economical.

Purchase of rails should be as per latest technology available, minus sunk costs (if any) in right of ways. That is if you already have a rail there you don't have to rebuy the land. The way the game currently works, buying early rails first in series up to the latest is insane. No one builds like that. Imagine building a house like that, you would first start wih a grass hut, tear it down and build w wood shack.... Doing it the right way gives you the proper paradygn of innovation. The early innovators get ahead but invest in increasingly obsolete structures which they have to continnually pay to replace. Later adopters just build the latest generation artifacts.

It should be necessary to build and upgrade Ports. Port capacity can be an important bottleneck in developement and it is fairly expensive. Which is why not everyone has one.

There should be a manpower cost and operating cost (purchase of materials and wages) for transport fleets (rail and ship). Now the game has clippers and steam ships but no cost associated with them. Clippers would consume wood and linen, and have a high number of population to cargo ratio. It may be difficult to simulat the differences in transport time so that could be fudged by reduced capacity.

Blockcading ports and huntng merchants would be nice to have, two ways to do that. Placing warships in the port sea province to reduce the port capacty and assigning ships to abstractly hunt in sea lanes. The result should be captured or sunk shipping.

Planes could be added to the nations transport capacity as ships and rail stock.

Planes could be added to Armies and ships as brigades to allow enhanced attacks agains and detection abilites. Theoretically an army, or fortress with planes could attack ships. Ships with planes would spot and attack submarines more easily. The visual range of military units should only be the occupied province without a plane.

 

[lizardo]

Populations

Some new possibilities:

Breeders - those populations that actually produce children, formerly known (in less politically correct times) as women. They could be assigned to a propagation "factory" or some other enterprise. Breeders could uniquely "own" a conventional population and absorbe a portion of its income.

Youth - Those populations who don't do much except grow bigger and who are open to new ideas. Youth populations may "own" a conventional population and absorbe a portion of its income.

Pensioners - Absorbe pension monies from the state or an "owned" population.

Commisars - Appear only under communism, reduce consiousness, exploit workers, reduce plurality.

Remove capitalists as a population, install as leaders. This requires that RGOs, Factories, and Banks have "ownership". All these can be owned by the state, province, a capitalist, or a population segment.

Criminals - Criminals occupy crimminal enterprises and produce crime effects. Criminal buildings could have owners/leaders.

ALL buildings should require population to function. Currently criminal enterprises do not.

 

[lizardo]

Climate

Could we have climate? I mean, really, it does have a significan effect. In EU we had at least four seasons, and HOI was really interesting that we had daily weather. But for some reason this was dropped from Victoria.

Please, at least seasons and expected effects. Please. Otherwise why should Napoleon want to retreat from Moscow?

 

[lizardo]

Factories, RGOs and Armies.

Factories, RGOs and Armies should begin to function more similarly.

Armies should have ammunition, fuel (for mechanized units), medicin, food and other materials as inputs. This should be a constant draw against national stores and be factored against the national transport capacity. Armies that run out of ammuntion drop moral and compat effectiveness to "hand", mechanized units lose their mechanism brigade if they are froced to move without fuel. Optionally such brigades could be captured.

Factories should have power inputs. The first American textil factories were built in Massichusis(sp) because of the powerful water streams. Power inputs could be water, steam(coal/oil), and electricity. Electricity should require an electrical factory which would use water, coal or oil.

RGOs (instead of the farmers) should have a fertilizer input, horse input, and a mechanization input possibility that affects quantity of output.

RGOs and Factories could have an experience level as per Armies, so that regional differeces may arrise.

In a market economy, the whole (national)socialistic model of managing the worker pops should be dropped as inane. Each factory/RGO should have an optimal labor/workman/clerk ration and attempt to meet that. Employees should be distributed as the Army pools are, and populations move to the province where the factories are located.

The algorithim for placing factories should do so where it is most economically optimal to do so.

Wage and transport costs should be added to the cost of goods.

 

[OHgamer]

Could we have climate? I mean, really, it does have a significan effect. In EU we had at least four seasons, and HOI was really interesting that we had daily weather. But for some reason this was dropped from Victoria.

Please, at least seasons and expected effects. Please. Otherwise why should Napoleon want to retreat from Moscow?

The reason it was dropped from victoria was most likely because climate computations would be a huge new set of day-to-day calculations for the game engine to make, for a game that is NOT a war game. Since you have so many more economic calculations day-to-day between the world market, POP demands, daily production, stockpile levels and the like, at Victoria's very low base requirements, including more military detail information like climate would have resulted in higher base system requirements, and removed a sector of the market from being able to play the game back when it was released in 2003.

For a victoria 2, now that computers are much more powerful, anything is possible. Personally I'd prefer to keep the title more focused on the economic management side of things and keep the dull minutiae of fighting wars left simplified - Paradox already has that kind of game filled with HoI2 and its expansions - and keep the 19th C focused on what was truly the major transformation of the era, the transformation of internal societies from primarily agricultural to primarily industiral with all the political, social, cultural and geopolitical fallout that resulted.

but with a second-generation game set in the Victoria timeperiod, anything is possible.

 

[OHgamer]

Factories, RGOs and Armies should begin to function more similarly.

Armies should have ammunition, fuel (for mechanized units), medicin, food and other materials as inputs. This should be a constant draw against national stores and be factored against the national transport capacity. Armies that run out of ammuntion drop moral and compat effectiveness to "hand", mechanized units lose their mechanism brigade if they are froced to move without fuel. Optionally such brigades could be captured.

Factories should have power inputs. The first American textil factories were built in Massichusis(sp) because of the powerful water streams. Power inputs could be water, steam(coal/oil), and electricity. Electricity should require an electrical factory which would use water, coal or oil.

RGOs (instead of the farmers) should have a fertilizer input, horse input, and a mechanization input possibility that affects quantity of output.

RGOs and Factories could have an experience level as per Armies, so that regional differeces may arrise.

In a market economy, the whole (national)socialistic model of managing the worker pops should be dropped as inane. Each factory/RGO should have an optimal labor/workman/clerk ration and attempt to meet that. Employees should be distributed as the Army pools are, and populations move to the province where the factories are located.

The algorithim for placing factories should do so where it is most economically optimal to do so.

Wage and transport costs should be added to the cost of goods.

So you want to have to have a computer with the RAM capacity of an IBM chess champion system to run the game?

Keep in mind, every sort of day-to-day calculation you add for the game to compute when determining actions, costs, changes in relative value, stockpiles and the like is going to require more and more processor power to be able to keep the game going. At some point there does need to be some simplification, if for no other reason than to ensure more than a tiny fraction of computers on the market today can operate the game.

Though of course with the new graphics system of the EU3 engine shifting all graphics computing power to the graphics card, there is an ability to have the main processor do more of the number crunching as you suggest. but even with the computers of today in 2007, there are still limits on what can be replicated in minute detail so that the game can operate on the majority of home computers produced in the past 2 years.

 

[lizardo]

The reason it was ...

I'm not asking for HOI level day to day rain forcasts, just a basic Summer, Autum, Winter, Fall. Seasons DO have an significant economic impact as well as a military one.

 

[unmerged(57903)]

The reason it was dropped from victoria was most likely because climate computations would be a huge new set of day-to-day calculations for the game engine to make, for a game that is NOT a war game. Since you have so many more economic calculations day-to-day between the world market, POP demands, daily production, stockpile levels and the like, at Victoria's very low base requirements, including more military detail information like climate would have resulted in higher base system requirements, and removed a sector of the market from being able to play the game back when it was released in 2003.

For a victoria 2, now that computers are much more powerful, anything is possible. Personally I'd prefer to keep the title more focused on the economic management side of things and keep the dull minutiae of fighting wars left simplified - Paradox already has that kind of game filled with HoI2 and its expansions - and keep the 19th C focused on what was truly the major transformation of the era, the transformation of internal societies from primarily agricultural to primarily industiral with all the political, social, cultural and geopolitical fallout that resulted.

but with a second-generation game set in the Victoria timeperiod, anything is possible.

Ah, yes, I'd forgotten about wanting weather in. Personally, I'm not too bothered about it being that complex. Simply having Winter set in would satisfy me. It's always a shame to see trench warfare taking place outside Moscow at Christmas without too much difficulty involved.

 

[OHgamer]

I'm not asking for HOI level day to day rain forcasts, just a basic Summer, Autum, Winter, Fall. Seasons DO have an significant economic impact as well as a military one.

sure, but as I said in my second post in reply to you, all the ideas you are suggesting, while of course adding a huge amount of reality to the game and likely making it even better, would likely result in a game that only very, very top end computers would be able to run, given the sheer massive amount of data that would have to be processed for each day of the game. considering that Victoria:Revolutions as is runs slow on my 740 Mb RAM/1.19 Ghz processor machines already in the later half of the game, I can only imaging what the minimum RAM and processor requirements would have to be to include all the additional number-crunching data needed to integrate even part of the ideas you have.

Realism in game also has to be balanced with the reality that most gamers do not own the latest high end systems, and many will balk at having to upgrade their system just to play a computer game, even if it is a great title.

but then again, a second-generation Victoria will be in many ways a blank slate with a new game engine, so who knows what would be possible, especially if some of the current number crunching functions that come from having all the POPs in game being separate entities as they are now were transformed into simply a data list about a province whose details would change as you change policies and government priorities rather than manipulate individually.

 

[lizardo]

So you want to have to have a computer with the RAM capacity of an IBM chess champion system to run the game?

Keep in mind, every sort of day-to-day calculation .... produced in the past 2 years.

By making the Army/RGO/Factory units more standardized that would cut down on the different types of algoritms and you alreay have inputs and outputs that have to be tracked anyway. Having a manpower pool for military and economit use is much simpler than having distinct pops in the buildings.

I do understand, we kind of have to pick and chose the reality we can afford. But it isn't always a zero sum choice. A lot depends upon how we arrange the data and write the algorithms. I'm making my advocacy for some issues I think are important to be considered.

I upgraded to 1gb and now I can run more than the operating system. Memory is cheap.

 

[lizardo]

Personally I'd prefer to keep the title more focused on the economic management side of things and keep the dull minutiae of fighting wars left simplified - Paradox already has that kind of game filled with HoI2 and its expansions - and keep the 19th C focused on what was truly the major transformation of the era, the transformation of internal societies from primarily agricultural to primarily industiral with all the political, social, cultural and geopolitical fallout that resulted.

Still need climate as a factor. Drives the need for coal and oil to heat northern cities and power development. If you don't have a heat source in winter you get population attrition.

The game significanly ignores the impact of power, be it wind, water, steam or electricity on manufacturing and agriculture. Water power, because of its early adaption significantly inpacted the location and output of factories in the US and Europe. That and canals was why the northeast developed so rapidly.

Climate and power sources were significant factors in economic/social development.

 

[Sid Meier]

I think the singlemost important leap is away from the cruddy and clunky EU3 UI/Graphics, which I think we can all admit is an utter failure at mainstream graphics and isntead use an underused, but surprisingly versetile and intrigueing system for Victoria: Google Earth/Superpower 2, 3D globe with dymaic zome, and a removal of province/seazone demarcation lines.

Instead a system of "areas" should be introduced for the economic/political/people teir of the game, but on the military tier, the map should be like any other RTS with the freedom to go anywhere but with massive restrictions/attritions trying to pass through areas of extrmely poor life ratings and infastructure.

Also, scaling units to their espective sizes should be introduced to that based on tech a division takes up its realistic amount of space on the map, and attrition as such should be harsher for those tyring to jam together divisions within say a X amount of square miles.

the world market system is awesome, but there is room for improvment, and refinementadditional items could be added and a more comprensive model of 19th century supply and demand implemented, possibly the introduction of "corperations" as a wealth multiplier and a abstract means of setting supply and demand, so that even if by some stretch of imagination a large number of countries were exporting prices wouldnt drop as fast as corperations and POP demand can keep supply down and prices up, and theyure taxation serving as a additional source of revenue.

The next generation of PDOX UI should not only be "moddable" but adjustable inmenu, not a clunky monochromatic thing, but a movable (ingame) and colour adjutable transparent thingy and should not take up mor ethen 1/4 of the screen.

More soonish.