So, after taking a somewhat neutral-to-negative stance in last night's Great Debate of the Playability of Patch 1.02, I must say I'm firmly in the camp of folks who believe this patch is a step in the right direction. And, in the hopes of further dispelling people's misconceptions about the changes to the economy, I present the following mini-AAR (of sorts) of the first five years of an ongoing game as France. Now, I'm sure you're thinking, "Oh, come on! Anyone can do well with France, even in this ridiculously difficult patch!" Well, several people who expressed disillusionment with 1.02 last night flatly stated that they found it impossible to turn a profit with France. Never being one to shy away from what others perceive as being impossible, I chose France, and set the game on Very Hard / Furious to boot.
First, budgetary matters. The slashing of army maintenance costs is a godsend, as you really don't want soldiers deserting because you had to cut their salaries just to stay in the black. By setting all taxes to 50% (can't go any higher with the Orleaniste party), and eliminating education and crime fighting expenses from the budget, I was able to muster a modest income of 30£ per day. Doesn't sound like much? Well, do the math and you'll find that it amounts to more than 10,000£ per year, which was all I thought I would need to get going. (Hell, that's enough for five level 1 railroads, or a couple middling factories, or two missions / trading posts ... you catch my drift. In retrospect, I wish I'd optimized things to make about 50£ a day, but hindsight is 20/20, as they say.
Now, I played a few abortive games as Prussia last night, so I was able to profit from the foresight that, for some strange reason, the AI simply does not want to make paper for quite some time. So my first factory choice was clear: paper. Well, OK ... that wasn't my first factory. First came the expansion of both the steel factory and lumber mill in Alsace-Lorraine. Then came the order for the Paper Mill in Provence. Now, in addition to Paper, I knew I would need Reg. Clothes and Furniture. I already had a RC factory, but no Fabric (next factory ordered), and no Furniture factory (no sooner envisioned then ordered). Any factory I couldn't support with raw materials was closed. This included the clipper factory, all but one of the wine / liquor factories (only had glass to support one - I left the most profitable one open), and the RC factory (to be reopened in a year's time).
By that time I'd exhausted most if not all of my supply of machine parts, but still had about 7,000£ to spend (and more coming each day). So, what to do next? RR didn't seem like a great investment, seeing as they only improve province infrastructure by 10% in these latter days. They'd have to wait until I had more money to burn. On the other hand, there's Russia, happily colonizing the hell out of the West African coast. Surely, they couldn't be left unchallenged for long, and the Brits were too busy putting down rebellions in India and Ireland (apparently due to their wildly unpopular war against Panjab) to give a farthing about Africa. So, I colonized. I targetted the Cameroon and Namibia area, right in the armpit of Africa, as that area has a fair amount of Timber, which France was short on at the time, and is one of the Big Three Resources Every Nation Needs.
As for the other two, Iron and Coal, France was a bit short on those two. Fortunately, Aldjazair has some nice Iron deposits, and I already owned three of their provinces, and there was already an army on the border ... it was too tempting, really. Despite initially slow progress, the tiny nation was eventually overrun and annexed in about a year. Thus ended France's iron shortage, that's one less good on the import lists. As for coal, Morocco has some coal ...
But I digress. By this time, all the factories ordered at the beginning of the year had been completed. Producing only .2 fabric per day with a fully staffed factory is disappointing, to say the least. Upgrading the RR in that province helped, but only a little. Nevertheless, .24 fabric was enough to supply the RC factory, provided it was staffed with only 2 POPs and the auto-assign feature was turned off (no real overwhelming need for it now that there are messages for factory completion). By this point I was making small amounts of paper, RC, and furniture, and growing my own tobacco. The production of none of these goods was enough to make me rich, but that's not why they were built - they were built to allow me to promote craftsmen, which I began doing, first in Alsace-Lorraine, in order to fully staff that expanded steel factory. As a result, a daily production of 1.13 steel, with a usage of .2 (small arms factory). The resultant surplus proved to be more than enough to fund construction projects in the near future. The lumber surplus, though, left much to be desired, so the mill in A-L was expanded again.
Meanwhile, back in Africa, I continued building claim buildings in timber provinces (and generally tried to block out the insatiable Russians wherever I could). Namibia would soon be ready to claim. But France's reliance on imported coal was still annoying me. (I am annoyed easily.) Time to declare war on Morocco. No sooner dreamed than done, and in little more than a month, Morocco caves, handing over Marrakesh, Tafilelt, Oujda, and El Rarbi to France. (That Pierpont fellow is pretty effective, as far as Old School Bigots go.) They didn't need that coal, anyway. And that fruit will taste better in my wine than in any bilge Morocco could've produced.
For the next year or so I continue to promote POPs to fully staff factories and build claim buildings in Africa as money and resource stocks allow. By 1839, one year after the Morocco war, my gross income was 220£, double what it was at the start of the game, but my net income remained at about 30£, due to my investing the rest of the gain in education. Which paid off in September of that year with the development of Stock Exchange, further increasing tax revenue. Shortly thereafter, my trade post in Saburo was completed, allowing me to claim Namibia, netting me 50 Prestige.
In 1840 the Jacquard Power Loom was invented, increasing my fabric output and allowing me to put another POP in the RC factory. I continued to spend nearly all my money on colonizing: industrialization can be done later, but once you get shut out of Africa, your colonizing days are over. In addition to Cameroon, I built some claims in the Gold Coast, in which I started the game with two buildings. Couldn't let the UK block me out of there - they've got enough land already.
The Orleaniste won the 1840 election and remained in power, and Annam chose to be rather belligerent and anti-Christian. Perhaps France will elect to punish her in the future, or perhaps a colonial war against Russia is in order. After all, they have illictly set up claim buildings in Cameroon, which is legally mine. So is the Congo - another memo the tsar didn't get.
Anyhoo, let's just take a step back an analyze what I did in but five years:
- I more than doubled my gross income.
- I colonized and claimed Namibia.
- I fought and won two colonial wars against primitive nations, annexing one and taking valuable resources from the other.
- I built enough factories to provide with enough building materials and other goods to ensure that industrialization can continue regardless of the presence / absence of those goods and materials on the WM.
- I optimally staffed said factories to produce as much of those necessary goods as possible without outpacing the production of the intermediate goods they are dependent upon.
- Finally, and most importantly, I had quite a lot of fun, and found myself having to make some tough decisions. Colonize, or Industrialize? was the biggest one. I chose to colonize, and while my industrial rating suffered for it (7th place by Jan. 1841), my Prestige took a boost (5th place), and I cut down my importing expenses nicely.
And just for the hell of it, here's what I didn't do:
- I didn't move my entire workforce into factories. (i.e., didn't fully industrialize)
- I didn't lay RR on every province. (In fact, I only laid track in two provinces.)
- I didn't get into a war with a European nation. (I'm simply not strong enough yet.)
- I didn't build any military units. (No need. But I did increase mobilization by 15 divisions.)
- I didn't sit around and wait for money to accrue. While waiting I busied myself with the aforementioned wars, picking out good colony spots, and promoting / assigning POPs.
- I didn't take any loans. Not one. Running up a debt simply didn't make sense, as the gains from doing so are far, far less than they used to be.
- I didn't run the nation with a budgetary deficit. I made a profit every single day for 1,825 consecutive days.
- I didn't levy tariffs. In retrospect, I wish I had. The AI certainly seems to do just that. Tariffs are quite lucrative in 1.02 - had I levied full tariffs I could've had another 200£ per day. *Mental note filed*
- I didn't go bankrupt, obviously.
- I didn't run the game at any speed beyond Below Normal. In fact, I had to pause to think several times. Far too much to do to speed things up, really.
So the following myths have been shattered:
- Victoria 1.02 is unplayable - Clearly not the case. If it were, I sure as hell wouldn't be in 5th place overall after five years.
- The early years of the game are boring - Nope. The early years of the game are what you make of them. Sure, you won't be able to disembowel Austria en route to dominating the Continent (at least, not for a few decades), but there's more to the game then naked aggression and warmongering. Mind you, that might not be for everyone - those who like the game for its military aspects will surely be disappointed by this patch. But I would contend that they might enjoy HoI more than Victoria.
- There is no way to promote craftsmen for the first 25 years of the game - I did it in the second year of the game. Mind you, doing so takes finesse and an assumption that the WM simply will not provide enough paper, clothes, or furniture to do the job.
- All countries (even France) will be forced to spiral into debt and bankruptcy - Obviously not. I doubled my gross income in five years, never took a loan nor ran a deficit, got education spending up to fifty percent, built a dozen or so claim buildings, claimed a colony, and fought two wars against primitives. Had I levied tariffs, I could have done much, much more. Seems like there's plenty of money to be had, though clearly not the ridiculous amounts of money as were had by all in 1.01.
Now I will admit that the following is true: Victoria just got a whole lot harder. The increase in difficulty is an order of magnitude. I have serious doubts as to my ability to take any nation other than the UK to the top of the GP standings while playing at Very Hard. The same cannot be said for any previous Paradox game - the VP standings in EU2 are such a joke that players must come up with goals to accomplish by game's end, just to gauge victory. And don't get me started on HoI. The seemingly impossible has happened: a Paradox game has become challenging. I fully expect hell to freeze over and the Blackhawks to win the Stanley Cup very, very soon.
But the best part is, it's not challenging because the AI is given all sorts of nasty cheats. It's challenging because the player is forced to make tough decisions about how to spend his money. He is, in short, forced to think, as opposed to simply following some optimized strategy that he read in a Peter Ebbesen AAR. (No offense, Peter ... I couldn't think of a more prolific source of gamey strategy.)
Mind you, there are still some iniquities to be ironed out, such as the unwillingness of highly demanded, underproduced resources and goods to raise in price the way the readme claims they will. And there is the uber-ness of the colonial AI, which snatches up everything in less than ten years. You pretty much have to decide right up front whether or not you want to colonize, unless you're the UK, in which case you pretty much have to.
Questions, comments, requests for the savegame or screenies of the situation in 1841 (just in case you think this is all a product of my diseased imagination) are all most welcome.
First, budgetary matters. The slashing of army maintenance costs is a godsend, as you really don't want soldiers deserting because you had to cut their salaries just to stay in the black. By setting all taxes to 50% (can't go any higher with the Orleaniste party), and eliminating education and crime fighting expenses from the budget, I was able to muster a modest income of 30£ per day. Doesn't sound like much? Well, do the math and you'll find that it amounts to more than 10,000£ per year, which was all I thought I would need to get going. (Hell, that's enough for five level 1 railroads, or a couple middling factories, or two missions / trading posts ... you catch my drift. In retrospect, I wish I'd optimized things to make about 50£ a day, but hindsight is 20/20, as they say.
Now, I played a few abortive games as Prussia last night, so I was able to profit from the foresight that, for some strange reason, the AI simply does not want to make paper for quite some time. So my first factory choice was clear: paper. Well, OK ... that wasn't my first factory. First came the expansion of both the steel factory and lumber mill in Alsace-Lorraine. Then came the order for the Paper Mill in Provence. Now, in addition to Paper, I knew I would need Reg. Clothes and Furniture. I already had a RC factory, but no Fabric (next factory ordered), and no Furniture factory (no sooner envisioned then ordered). Any factory I couldn't support with raw materials was closed. This included the clipper factory, all but one of the wine / liquor factories (only had glass to support one - I left the most profitable one open), and the RC factory (to be reopened in a year's time).
By that time I'd exhausted most if not all of my supply of machine parts, but still had about 7,000£ to spend (and more coming each day). So, what to do next? RR didn't seem like a great investment, seeing as they only improve province infrastructure by 10% in these latter days. They'd have to wait until I had more money to burn. On the other hand, there's Russia, happily colonizing the hell out of the West African coast. Surely, they couldn't be left unchallenged for long, and the Brits were too busy putting down rebellions in India and Ireland (apparently due to their wildly unpopular war against Panjab) to give a farthing about Africa. So, I colonized. I targetted the Cameroon and Namibia area, right in the armpit of Africa, as that area has a fair amount of Timber, which France was short on at the time, and is one of the Big Three Resources Every Nation Needs.
As for the other two, Iron and Coal, France was a bit short on those two. Fortunately, Aldjazair has some nice Iron deposits, and I already owned three of their provinces, and there was already an army on the border ... it was too tempting, really. Despite initially slow progress, the tiny nation was eventually overrun and annexed in about a year. Thus ended France's iron shortage, that's one less good on the import lists. As for coal, Morocco has some coal ...
But I digress. By this time, all the factories ordered at the beginning of the year had been completed. Producing only .2 fabric per day with a fully staffed factory is disappointing, to say the least. Upgrading the RR in that province helped, but only a little. Nevertheless, .24 fabric was enough to supply the RC factory, provided it was staffed with only 2 POPs and the auto-assign feature was turned off (no real overwhelming need for it now that there are messages for factory completion). By this point I was making small amounts of paper, RC, and furniture, and growing my own tobacco. The production of none of these goods was enough to make me rich, but that's not why they were built - they were built to allow me to promote craftsmen, which I began doing, first in Alsace-Lorraine, in order to fully staff that expanded steel factory. As a result, a daily production of 1.13 steel, with a usage of .2 (small arms factory). The resultant surplus proved to be more than enough to fund construction projects in the near future. The lumber surplus, though, left much to be desired, so the mill in A-L was expanded again.
Meanwhile, back in Africa, I continued building claim buildings in timber provinces (and generally tried to block out the insatiable Russians wherever I could). Namibia would soon be ready to claim. But France's reliance on imported coal was still annoying me. (I am annoyed easily.) Time to declare war on Morocco. No sooner dreamed than done, and in little more than a month, Morocco caves, handing over Marrakesh, Tafilelt, Oujda, and El Rarbi to France. (That Pierpont fellow is pretty effective, as far as Old School Bigots go.) They didn't need that coal, anyway. And that fruit will taste better in my wine than in any bilge Morocco could've produced.
For the next year or so I continue to promote POPs to fully staff factories and build claim buildings in Africa as money and resource stocks allow. By 1839, one year after the Morocco war, my gross income was 220£, double what it was at the start of the game, but my net income remained at about 30£, due to my investing the rest of the gain in education. Which paid off in September of that year with the development of Stock Exchange, further increasing tax revenue. Shortly thereafter, my trade post in Saburo was completed, allowing me to claim Namibia, netting me 50 Prestige.
In 1840 the Jacquard Power Loom was invented, increasing my fabric output and allowing me to put another POP in the RC factory. I continued to spend nearly all my money on colonizing: industrialization can be done later, but once you get shut out of Africa, your colonizing days are over. In addition to Cameroon, I built some claims in the Gold Coast, in which I started the game with two buildings. Couldn't let the UK block me out of there - they've got enough land already.
The Orleaniste won the 1840 election and remained in power, and Annam chose to be rather belligerent and anti-Christian. Perhaps France will elect to punish her in the future, or perhaps a colonial war against Russia is in order. After all, they have illictly set up claim buildings in Cameroon, which is legally mine. So is the Congo - another memo the tsar didn't get.
Anyhoo, let's just take a step back an analyze what I did in but five years:
- I more than doubled my gross income.
- I colonized and claimed Namibia.
- I fought and won two colonial wars against primitive nations, annexing one and taking valuable resources from the other.
- I built enough factories to provide with enough building materials and other goods to ensure that industrialization can continue regardless of the presence / absence of those goods and materials on the WM.
- I optimally staffed said factories to produce as much of those necessary goods as possible without outpacing the production of the intermediate goods they are dependent upon.
- Finally, and most importantly, I had quite a lot of fun, and found myself having to make some tough decisions. Colonize, or Industrialize? was the biggest one. I chose to colonize, and while my industrial rating suffered for it (7th place by Jan. 1841), my Prestige took a boost (5th place), and I cut down my importing expenses nicely.
And just for the hell of it, here's what I didn't do:
- I didn't move my entire workforce into factories. (i.e., didn't fully industrialize)
- I didn't lay RR on every province. (In fact, I only laid track in two provinces.)
- I didn't get into a war with a European nation. (I'm simply not strong enough yet.)
- I didn't build any military units. (No need. But I did increase mobilization by 15 divisions.)
- I didn't sit around and wait for money to accrue. While waiting I busied myself with the aforementioned wars, picking out good colony spots, and promoting / assigning POPs.
- I didn't take any loans. Not one. Running up a debt simply didn't make sense, as the gains from doing so are far, far less than they used to be.
- I didn't run the nation with a budgetary deficit. I made a profit every single day for 1,825 consecutive days.
- I didn't levy tariffs. In retrospect, I wish I had. The AI certainly seems to do just that. Tariffs are quite lucrative in 1.02 - had I levied full tariffs I could've had another 200£ per day. *Mental note filed*
- I didn't go bankrupt, obviously.
- I didn't run the game at any speed beyond Below Normal. In fact, I had to pause to think several times. Far too much to do to speed things up, really.
So the following myths have been shattered:
- Victoria 1.02 is unplayable - Clearly not the case. If it were, I sure as hell wouldn't be in 5th place overall after five years.
- The early years of the game are boring - Nope. The early years of the game are what you make of them. Sure, you won't be able to disembowel Austria en route to dominating the Continent (at least, not for a few decades), but there's more to the game then naked aggression and warmongering. Mind you, that might not be for everyone - those who like the game for its military aspects will surely be disappointed by this patch. But I would contend that they might enjoy HoI more than Victoria.
- There is no way to promote craftsmen for the first 25 years of the game - I did it in the second year of the game. Mind you, doing so takes finesse and an assumption that the WM simply will not provide enough paper, clothes, or furniture to do the job.
- All countries (even France) will be forced to spiral into debt and bankruptcy - Obviously not. I doubled my gross income in five years, never took a loan nor ran a deficit, got education spending up to fifty percent, built a dozen or so claim buildings, claimed a colony, and fought two wars against primitives. Had I levied tariffs, I could have done much, much more. Seems like there's plenty of money to be had, though clearly not the ridiculous amounts of money as were had by all in 1.01.
Now I will admit that the following is true: Victoria just got a whole lot harder. The increase in difficulty is an order of magnitude. I have serious doubts as to my ability to take any nation other than the UK to the top of the GP standings while playing at Very Hard. The same cannot be said for any previous Paradox game - the VP standings in EU2 are such a joke that players must come up with goals to accomplish by game's end, just to gauge victory. And don't get me started on HoI. The seemingly impossible has happened: a Paradox game has become challenging. I fully expect hell to freeze over and the Blackhawks to win the Stanley Cup very, very soon.
But the best part is, it's not challenging because the AI is given all sorts of nasty cheats. It's challenging because the player is forced to make tough decisions about how to spend his money. He is, in short, forced to think, as opposed to simply following some optimized strategy that he read in a Peter Ebbesen AAR. (No offense, Peter ... I couldn't think of a more prolific source of gamey strategy.
)Mind you, there are still some iniquities to be ironed out, such as the unwillingness of highly demanded, underproduced resources and goods to raise in price the way the readme claims they will. And there is the uber-ness of the colonial AI, which snatches up everything in less than ten years. You pretty much have to decide right up front whether or not you want to colonize, unless you're the UK, in which case you pretty much have to.
Questions, comments, requests for the savegame or screenies of the situation in 1841 (just in case you think this is all a product of my diseased imagination) are all most welcome.
