Did it happen this way? Austria or the Turkey didn’t suffer anything resembling Infamy in RL. Even Germany didnt. Of course they gave them all the fault for it, but not sure that’s what Infamy should represent.
Proposal(s) for Victoria 3
- Thread starter Pellaken
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Did it happen this way? Austria or the Turkey didn’t suffer anything resembling Infamy in RL. Even Germany didnt. Of course they gave them all the fault for it, but not sure that’s what Infamy should represent.
Turkey didn't start the war, and consequently didn't suffer much in the way of infamy. Austria took a little bit of heat for escalating a terrorist incident into a war (both it and Hungary were partially dismantled after the war, to seriously weaken them for any future confrontations: Austria went from the 5th most powerful navy in the world to not even owning a port), but Germany got most of the blame historically for turning a local conflict into a world war. France built a massive set of fortifications along the German border after the war, the UK guaranteed the borders of Belgium and the Netherlands, and the military preparations of France and the UK were geared almost entirely around another war with Germany throughout the 1920s and '30s. If that's not an effect of infamy, I don't know what is. There's still a lingering sense of resentment over Germany's actions in WWI, although that was mostly eclipsed by the events of WWII.
No, they did. Massively. WW1 involved a great deal of propaganda portraying the enemy as an unholy demon or animal that deserved no less than to be wiped off the earth for the safety of decent folk everywhere.
"Dismantle empire" happened to Russia after it imploded, then to Germany, Austria, and the Ottoman Empire. Had the USA not intervened and Germany was able to win in the West, then I have no doubt that England, France, and Italy would be the ones being dismantled instead of the Central Powers.
Without USW, Germany might have been able to keep the Americans out of the war... at the cost of being unable to impose terms on the UK, even if they imposed terms on Italy and France.
Economics:
This was one of the biggest draws for me. It should be possible to make a system that’s richer and still simple enough for the player to use to make decisions.
This was one of the biggest draws for me. It should be possible to make a system that’s richer and still simple enough for the player to use to make decisions.
- Add up the production capacity of the provinces of the world to make a supply curve for each good, and the demand of all the populations in the world to make a demand curve.
- Split demand into an amount that a population needs and would pay as much as they can afford for, then an amount that they want and would pay a little less for, then let them spend what they have left over on whatever would be nice. Use these to flesh out the right-hand side of the demand curve and make the people’s behavior more realistic.
- The idea of saving in a national bank (or the domestic banking sector in general) is a good one. You don’t need to complicate the loanable-funds model much. A simple model to govern saving might be: populations try to keep a certain multiple of their wages (such as a month’s wages) saved up for a rainy day, and various modifiers can make them try to save more or less than that. If their savings fall below that, they’ll prioritize savings over their wants, and then they’ll prioritize investing a certain percentage of their income above luxuries. If their desired level of savings drops, they spend the balance down.
- Monetary policy was a big issue in some places. In, for example, the 1896 US Presidential election, the big issue was whether the country should stay on the gold standard or switch to free coinage of silver, where the farmers (then a large voting bloc) favored inflation because they were constantly in debt. (It might be a good illustration of Scott Alexander’s essay on Conflict Theory and Mistake Theory: the Goldbugs thought the Free Silverites were making a stupid mistake, and the Free Silverites thought that the gold standard was a conspiracy against The People.) From a modern perspective, both of those approaches missed a different part of the big picture, but if you’re simulating the politics of the time, you’d end up picking hard money or devaluing, with a lot more consequences for the country than most of the issues in Vicky 2.
- Relatedly, allow populations to go into debt and need to de-leverage, affecting whether they support economic policies that help creditors or debtors.
- Also relatedly, allow currency devaluations, which could be a prudent policy if the population is in too much debt or to improve its balance of trade. Also, currency crises and hyperinflationary spirals, which got really nasty.
- Mercantilism versus classical-liberalism should be a choice with real trade-offs. For example, Great Britain during the period passed its Corn Laws. That went into the economics textbooks as a great example of boosting national wealth by focusing on their comparative advantage and importing their food—but then Britain would almost get knocked out of both World Wars because it made them totally dependent on imported food. If Germany had ever cut those shipments from the US off, they would have starved Great Britain into surrender.
- The concept of an overvalued currency might tie into some kind of representation of the resource curse. (Perhaps, counterintuitively, exacerbated by the fact that an economy rich in natural resources or through conquest can afford not to reform its institutions.)
- There were a lot of major inventions that transformed industries and should probably affect gameplay. A patch to Vicky 2 belatedly made railroads move troops around faster, which makes sense. This also saw the invention of fertilizer, pesticides, trains, planes and automobiles, the telegraph, radio, and mass production.
- There should be more kinds of things populations should do. One obvious example: construction should require construction workers. Populations should provide professional, domestic and retail services. People should be more motivated to get an education when it would let them apply for open jobs. It should be possible to start a virtuous cycle of rising literacy and standards of living. This is what PDM tried to accomplish by adding the finance industry as a way to let there be more clerks.
- Worker shortages should motivate immigration, which should affect politics.
- The distinction between tenants and homeowners might be a good way of representing a kind of economic security that affects how people vote, whether pops save or borrow, and drive a sort of business cycle by populations borrowing to start new households and businesses. It also ties into public policy, like for example how the United States had so much land it was giving away homesteads.
- The idea of political platforms determining what kind of economic policies the country has available to it is a good one, but the Vicky 2 implementation of “free market” makes decisions that are too stupid relative to a human player, gives the player too little agency, and doesn’t make a lot of in-game sense: when did classical liberal principles ever make industrialists pressure the government not to give them any subsidies?
- More types of public infrastructure?
- I wouldn’t mind seeing some more complicated supply chains.
- This was a period of major, almost constant innovation in both the Army and the Navy. Currently, you can upgrade Infantry to Guards and add a few new unit types, but wouldn’t it make sense to upgrade your regiments to rifle muskets and then repeaters during a war in the 1860s?
- Unit types should really be distinguished by something other than, “better across the board, but more expensive and restricted to certain ethnicities.”
- The Ironclad, Dreadnought, Airplane and Tank were in the game, but these were all arms races where nations constantly competed to design better military technology.
- The HoI4 front-line and battle-plan system is a big improvement on EU4-style tactics, especially once we see mass conscription, larger populations and continuous fronts.
- Its division-template system, though, is poor, opaque and has a lot of badly-documented trap options. Although a EU-style unit ladder for infantry, artillery and cavalry regiments could make sense, you could also try to streamline the system so that you upgrade to a technology level, a type of main weapon, perhaps unit composition. (Should a quarter of the manpower be cavalry? Maybe artillery?) In a system like HoI4, it would also make sense to pick from a few standard sizes (perhaps “group,” “division” and “battalion” or “brigade” to replace the current optimal widths), but if the battlesystem stays more like EU4, you might keep everything as regiments the same size.
- Another HoI4 feature worth considering is attachments, such as field hospitals, communications, reconnaissance (cavalry, balloon, aircraft) and armor.
- Vicky 2 already makes some steps in the direction of modeling factions as parties that form coalitions. (Many historical political parties consist of several factions.) Expand on this.
- Parties therefore should not only have a list of positions in different areas (most of which have no effect on gameplay), but also rank which issues are the most important to them, and which ones they’re more willing to give in on.
- Playing an absolute monarchy, a parliamentary democracy, a presidential democracy and an authoritarian semi-democracy like Prussia should feel different, but all of them should be forced to keep the approval of people with the power to overthrow them.
- If no one faction/party has a majority, the government should be a coalition. The party with a plurality gets the first shot at forming a coalition government. This should agree on a compromise platform that parties comprising a majority in the legislature can accept.
- If the ruling coalition cannot agree on some issue, it should not be possible to change the status quo. It should be especially hard to get a large enough majority to agree on Emancipation.
- In a presidential system, it might be similar except that the President must form the government.
- Some kind of nod to identity politics might be a good idea: cultural and religious minorities might consistently be drawn to more-cosmopolitan parties, and populations that feel more accepted to more nationalistic ones.
- Similarly, things like religion, education and economic security should determine how conservative, liberal, revolutionary or reactionary populations become. The less secure people feel, the more radical the changes they should want, and their demographics should affect whether they lean left or right.
- There are some nods in the game to civil society beyond the electoral laws, and maybe this could be fleshed out a bit beyond a “plurality” score. For instance, migration to cities broke up a lot of the strong ties people used to have in their villages, and different places addressed this disruption in different ways.
- The Anarcho-Liberals in particular need to go, and be replaced by something more historical. (Anarchists probably sit outside the political system, and Vicky 2 already has Reactionaries/Fascists and Socialists/Communists for angry pops to join.)
- I get that Paradox has good reasons not to want to allow atrocities against specific ethnic groups, even by modding, but it is unfortunate that some religious movements and migrations that were historically founded during this period and had a significant impact cannot be represented in the game.
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Budget should be more complicated. For example Austria paid a third of its budget on military and another third on interests some years later. There should be more reasons to go in debt. Also there needs to be some sort of inflation mechanic. Just look at what happened to Germany after WWI.
Capitalists should be the main factory building force in the state. Unless they keep on building Artillery factories in some frozen end of the world.
This has been posted to death, but blockades must be more important. There should be some mechanic where you can see how much of your trade is going through sea and land, and how much wealth is going through which port.
If your ports get blockaded, and you don't organise massive smuggling, you shouldnt get any goods in your realm whatsoever. I mean 400 000 Germans starved to death because of the British blockade in WW1
Capitalists should be the main factory building force in the state. Unless they keep on building Artillery factories in some frozen end of the world.
This has been posted to death, but blockades must be more important. There should be some mechanic where you can see how much of your trade is going through sea and land, and how much wealth is going through which port.
If your ports get blockaded, and you don't organise massive smuggling, you shouldnt get any goods in your realm whatsoever. I mean 400 000 Germans starved to death because of the British blockade in WW1
It’s easy to see that, if the British Isles get completely blockaded, or Switzerland is entirely surrounded by enemies, it should not be possible to import. It’s tougher to decide how many goods Germany ought to be able to import through a neutral port in the Netherlands.
Here is a possible implementation of local currencies. It’s oversimplified, but, I think, playable.
Each sovereign nation has its own currency. (Puppets might or might not use their liege’s—perhaps a decision to introduce their own.) That currency has an value relative to gold (more precisely, the ratio of the price of gold in that currency at the start of the game to the current date, so the Pound Sterling having a value of 1.1 means that £1 is worth 10% more gold now than at the starting date). If the exchange rate is below 1.0, the currency is undervalued, or “weak,” although I think it’s more informative to call it cheap, and if the exchange rate is above 1.0, the currency is overvalued, “strong” or expensive.
All commodity prices are set on the global market, in gold, but paid in local currency. Purchases are converted to local currency by dividing them by the currency value. Sales are converted to local currency by multiplying by the currency value. This means that, when the value of the currency is low, imports are more expensive but exports are less expensive, and when the value of the currency is high, the reverse is true.
Domestic debts, including loans from a country’s own pops to its government, are payable in the local currency, so inflation is good for debtors but bad for domestic lenders. Money borrowed from foreigners is payable in gold. War reparations are paid in gold. Taxes are paid in local currency; reserves are denominated in gold.
The game tracks the balance of payments in foreign transactions, including exports, imports, loans, debt payments, war reparations and remittances from unassimilated immigrants to their families in the Old Country. A country can be on or off the gold standard. If it is on the gold standard, the government makes a percentage of its current-account surplus if it has one (from seigneuriage) but, if it has a current-account deficit, has to spend a certain percentage of it to purchase its currency back and maintain the exchange rate.
If a country is off the gold standard, its value increases if net demand for it is positive and decreases if net demand is negative. The main consequence of this is that your balance of trade usually stays in equilibrium: a trade surplus causes the value of your currency to rise, so your people can afford to import more goods, while a trade deficit increases your exports and decreases your imports. Either way, your trade gets back into balance. If you make a lot of money from selling natural resources, your currency becomes more valuable, so your factories’ costs (such as debts and wages) go up, and therefore your exports are less competitive—which could stunt the rest of your economy.
Every so often, speculators cause a currency crisis, and you’re forced either to spend a lot of gold to defend your currency, or to devalue it. This is more likely to happen if you have a big trade deficit.
Around the time of the Great Depression, you get a choice between austerity and devaluation. If you pick devaluation, you could get hit with hyperinflation if you have a lot of foreign debt, and if you pick austerity, you could get hit with ruinous deflation if your pops are in a lot of debt.
Each sovereign nation has its own currency. (Puppets might or might not use their liege’s—perhaps a decision to introduce their own.) That currency has an value relative to gold (more precisely, the ratio of the price of gold in that currency at the start of the game to the current date, so the Pound Sterling having a value of 1.1 means that £1 is worth 10% more gold now than at the starting date). If the exchange rate is below 1.0, the currency is undervalued, or “weak,” although I think it’s more informative to call it cheap, and if the exchange rate is above 1.0, the currency is overvalued, “strong” or expensive.
All commodity prices are set on the global market, in gold, but paid in local currency. Purchases are converted to local currency by dividing them by the currency value. Sales are converted to local currency by multiplying by the currency value. This means that, when the value of the currency is low, imports are more expensive but exports are less expensive, and when the value of the currency is high, the reverse is true.
Domestic debts, including loans from a country’s own pops to its government, are payable in the local currency, so inflation is good for debtors but bad for domestic lenders. Money borrowed from foreigners is payable in gold. War reparations are paid in gold. Taxes are paid in local currency; reserves are denominated in gold.
The game tracks the balance of payments in foreign transactions, including exports, imports, loans, debt payments, war reparations and remittances from unassimilated immigrants to their families in the Old Country. A country can be on or off the gold standard. If it is on the gold standard, the government makes a percentage of its current-account surplus if it has one (from seigneuriage) but, if it has a current-account deficit, has to spend a certain percentage of it to purchase its currency back and maintain the exchange rate.
If a country is off the gold standard, its value increases if net demand for it is positive and decreases if net demand is negative. The main consequence of this is that your balance of trade usually stays in equilibrium: a trade surplus causes the value of your currency to rise, so your people can afford to import more goods, while a trade deficit increases your exports and decreases your imports. Either way, your trade gets back into balance. If you make a lot of money from selling natural resources, your currency becomes more valuable, so your factories’ costs (such as debts and wages) go up, and therefore your exports are less competitive—which could stunt the rest of your economy.
Every so often, speculators cause a currency crisis, and you’re forced either to spend a lot of gold to defend your currency, or to devalue it. This is more likely to happen if you have a big trade deficit.
Around the time of the Great Depression, you get a choice between austerity and devaluation. If you pick devaluation, you could get hit with hyperinflation if you have a lot of foreign debt, and if you pick austerity, you could get hit with ruinous deflation if your pops are in a lot of debt.
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If ports had a maximum amount of goods that can go through them, then it could be decideable. Of course, that is assuming there won't be teleporting trade goods in Vicky 3
That could work. Represent the provinces in the world as a directed, weighted graph, where the weights represent the capacity of goods to move through those areas, determined by port capacity, infrastructure and naval blockades. Then add edges from the abstract “source” node to each supplier whose weight is their production, and edges from each purchaser to the “sink” node whose weight is their demand.
Then, calcuate a max-flow. That was in fact the original application of max-flow: Ford and Fulkerson were looking for the most efficient way to sever the Eastern European rail network and put the Soviet Army out of supply when they proved that their “min-cut” algorithm also calculated a “max-flow” through the network.
Another random thought: the time period of the game saw many countries make the transition from a corrupt, patronage-based civil service to a professional, meritocratic one. That should definitely be a political reform that Progressive/Liberal activists try to push through.
Progressives might make a lot of sense as a new faction. Many countries had a Progressive Party during the period, and their platforms (to take an American example, Teddy Roosevelt’s reforms) were distinct from either classical liberalism or socialism.
Progressives might make a lot of sense as a new faction. Many countries had a Progressive Party during the period, and their platforms (to take an American example, Teddy Roosevelt’s reforms) were distinct from either classical liberalism or socialism.
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Enhancement to the economic system: product quality.
My proposal for the world market was to literally implement the supply and demand curves from Econ 101, That is, you’ve got the royal court of Bourbon France who’d pay a hundred pounds for some citrus fruit if that meant they were the only ones who got to have it (citrus should really be in the game, since it grows in particular climates and navies needed it specifically to prevent scurvy) and then at the other end some hunter-gatherers in their Central African colony who’ll try a lemon if you say so and trade you some nuts for them. You sort that list of demands for the product in descending order, then the list of suppliers by ascending order of production cost, and the market-clearing price is the one where supply equals demand.
It’s an oversimplification, but it’s not a bad model of how markets work, and it’s certainly true to the period for your economic advisors to describe things to you as working that way.
So, goods can have improved quality. (Reduced quality doesn’t make sense in this system; it wouldn’t ever be useful.) If the best-quality furniture in the game has quality +25%, then that furniture sells on the global market first, and—if there’s enough demand for it at that price—sells at 25% of the market-clearing price.
This keeps artisans relevant after factories appear: you can invest in your artisanal production, and not just your factories.
Another way you can manipulate the system (and a good motive for colonization if this removes the dibs system on resources) is that, if you can monopolize supply of a good, you can corner the market and charge textbook monopoly profits.
My proposal for the world market was to literally implement the supply and demand curves from Econ 101, That is, you’ve got the royal court of Bourbon France who’d pay a hundred pounds for some citrus fruit if that meant they were the only ones who got to have it (citrus should really be in the game, since it grows in particular climates and navies needed it specifically to prevent scurvy) and then at the other end some hunter-gatherers in their Central African colony who’ll try a lemon if you say so and trade you some nuts for them. You sort that list of demands for the product in descending order, then the list of suppliers by ascending order of production cost, and the market-clearing price is the one where supply equals demand.
It’s an oversimplification, but it’s not a bad model of how markets work, and it’s certainly true to the period for your economic advisors to describe things to you as working that way.
So, goods can have improved quality. (Reduced quality doesn’t make sense in this system; it wouldn’t ever be useful.) If the best-quality furniture in the game has quality +25%, then that furniture sells on the global market first, and—if there’s enough demand for it at that price—sells at 25% of the market-clearing price.
This keeps artisans relevant after factories appear: you can invest in your artisanal production, and not just your factories.
Another way you can manipulate the system (and a good motive for colonization if this removes the dibs system on resources) is that, if you can monopolize supply of a good, you can corner the market and charge textbook monopoly profits.
Speaking of goods, I decided to think of some new factories and raw materials:
Raw materialy
Saltpeter - needed for ammunition and fertilizers -
Salt - needed for tanneries, soldier building and POPs
Sugarcane - needed for sugar refineries
Hops - needed for breweries
Exotic fruits - luxury need like tea or coffee. Also sailors need it, if there will be a sailor pop (to avoid scurvy, atleast early in the game)
Cocoa - needed for chocolate
Clay (can someone figure out a better name, please?) - for bricks
Silicon/sand/something - for glass. Because only needing coal to produce it is ridiculous.
Guano (?) - possibly an alternative input material to fertilisers?
Factories
Tannery - turns cattle and salt into leather (CaOH2 isnt represented because it is relatively easy to get). Is important for civils and extremely important to military.
Shoes factory - turns leather into shoes. Also important for both civils and military.
Brewery - turns grain and hops into beer. Would be a life need and/or everyday need
Sugar refinery - turns sugarcane into sugar, a luxury need
Pharmaceutics factory - needs coal, possibly dye and some new resource (I dont know how to name it yet) and turns them into drugs
Cigarettes factory - turns tobacco into cigarettes
Chocolate factory - needs cocoa and sugar, produces chocolate
Luxury glass factory - needs glass and precious metal and turns it into... luxury glass (duh)
Sulphure acid factory - turns coal and sulphur into Sulphure acid, which replaces sulphur for most purposes.
Brickyard - turns clay and coal into bricks. Needed for buildings
I will post some more tomorrow
Raw materialy
Saltpeter - needed for ammunition and fertilizers -
Salt - needed for tanneries, soldier building and POPs
Sugarcane - needed for sugar refineries
Hops - needed for breweries
Exotic fruits - luxury need like tea or coffee. Also sailors need it, if there will be a sailor pop (to avoid scurvy, atleast early in the game)
Cocoa - needed for chocolate
Clay (can someone figure out a better name, please?) - for bricks
Silicon/sand/something - for glass. Because only needing coal to produce it is ridiculous.
Guano (?) - possibly an alternative input material to fertilisers?
Factories
Tannery - turns cattle and salt into leather (CaOH2 isnt represented because it is relatively easy to get). Is important for civils and extremely important to military.
Shoes factory - turns leather into shoes. Also important for both civils and military.
Brewery - turns grain and hops into beer. Would be a life need and/or everyday need
Sugar refinery - turns sugarcane into sugar, a luxury need
Pharmaceutics factory - needs coal, possibly dye and some new resource (I dont know how to name it yet) and turns them into drugs
Cigarettes factory - turns tobacco into cigarettes
Chocolate factory - needs cocoa and sugar, produces chocolate
Luxury glass factory - needs glass and precious metal and turns it into... luxury glass (duh)
Sulphure acid factory - turns coal and sulphur into Sulphure acid, which replaces sulphur for most purposes.
Brickyard - turns clay and coal into bricks. Needed for buildings
I will post some more tomorrow
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The peace-deal system, in my opinion, needs some rethinking. The way to fix it is, I think, to focus on the major themes of the game.
It’s ridiculous that, if you kill or capture the whole British Army, sink the entire British Navy, and occupy every last square inch of the British Empire—no, excuse me, it’s square millimeter now—that lets you take maybe Canada and the Caribbean. The latest expansion ameliorates this by saying that, okay, if you get enough warscore to dictate terms, that means you can pick one goal, like “free India,” and force Britain to do that much.
That makes no sense. The British government knew that at the time and planned accordingly: Admiral Jackie Fisher was “the only man in the world who could lose the Empire in a day.” If you force a country into completely unconditional surrender, you get to literally dictate terms. That you can’t is an arbitrary, artificial way to slow down expansion. It also creates ridiculous rigmaroles when the devs do want to allow great powers to annex each other in a single war, like forming Großdeutchland: you have to completely occupy Austria or Prussia for months until their economy shuts down completely and their game score falls below Belgium, then that lets you select the specific peace terms you need, then that enables a special decision.
The actual reason why you don’t see countries just annexing each other completely is that it wouldn’t be worth it. If you try to annex foreign territory with millions of people on it, they won’t assimilate, they’d just rebel, and everyone would say how horrible you are.
It doesn’t even do you much good, because your real assets are the skills and loyalty of your workforce.
It’s ridiculous that, if you kill or capture the whole British Army, sink the entire British Navy, and occupy every last square inch of the British Empire—no, excuse me, it’s square millimeter now—that lets you take maybe Canada and the Caribbean. The latest expansion ameliorates this by saying that, okay, if you get enough warscore to dictate terms, that means you can pick one goal, like “free India,” and force Britain to do that much.
That makes no sense. The British government knew that at the time and planned accordingly: Admiral Jackie Fisher was “the only man in the world who could lose the Empire in a day.” If you force a country into completely unconditional surrender, you get to literally dictate terms. That you can’t is an arbitrary, artificial way to slow down expansion. It also creates ridiculous rigmaroles when the devs do want to allow great powers to annex each other in a single war, like forming Großdeutchland: you have to completely occupy Austria or Prussia for months until their economy shuts down completely and their game score falls below Belgium, then that lets you select the specific peace terms you need, then that enables a special decision.
The actual reason why you don’t see countries just annexing each other completely is that it wouldn’t be worth it. If you try to annex foreign territory with millions of people on it, they won’t assimilate, they’d just rebel, and everyone would say how horrible you are.
It doesn’t even do you much good, because your real assets are the skills and loyalty of your workforce.
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Some of these are maybe too common to really be “strategic” resources, or are too-easily substituted, but more resource types (and equipment production like in HoI4) isn’t a bad idea at all.
You do want to make sure that each type of good has a distinct purpose in the game. For example, what do you use shoes for that’s different from other clothes?
Most kinds of food crops are pretty interchangeable, in game terms, but sugarcane grows only in tropical climates and was a major part of the world economy.
Tropical fruits played a big role in U.S. foreign policy; there’s a reason we have the term “banana republic.” Britain, meanwhile, had its sailors start falling victim to scurvy again toward the end of the 19th century because it started using “limes” from its own colonies that happened to be especially low in vitamin C and cooking meals in copper pots that destroyed what little vitamin C there was. Because this was when steam-powered ships began reducing travel times, they didn’t notice right away, until they started sending people on long polar expeditions.
Sulfuric acid is probably not a new kind of good, and certainly not one produced by artisans. Your fertilizer factories are still turning sulfur into fertilizer, so a new production process would just be a technological upgrade to your fertilizer factories.
If you want to add another input, phosphorus is important.
You do want to make sure that each type of good has a distinct purpose in the game. For example, what do you use shoes for that’s different from other clothes?
Most kinds of food crops are pretty interchangeable, in game terms, but sugarcane grows only in tropical climates and was a major part of the world economy.
Tropical fruits played a big role in U.S. foreign policy; there’s a reason we have the term “banana republic.” Britain, meanwhile, had its sailors start falling victim to scurvy again toward the end of the 19th century because it started using “limes” from its own colonies that happened to be especially low in vitamin C and cooking meals in copper pots that destroyed what little vitamin C there was. Because this was when steam-powered ships began reducing travel times, they didn’t notice right away, until they started sending people on long polar expeditions.
The Guano Islands Act of 1856 is still on the books today, entitling any American to annex an island where seabirds defecate, in order to secure America’s critical supply of bird guano for fertilizer.
This reminds me: the reason the Guano Islands Act is a joke today is that the Haber process to produce ammonia and the Ostwald process to turn it into nitric acid were both discovered during this period. They’re a really big deal! Aside from the fact that we’d starve to death without them today, Germany couldn’t have produced either food or explosives. Their in-game effect is probably to replace guano as an input to fertilizer factories with natural gas.
Sulfuric acid is probably not a new kind of good, and certainly not one produced by artisans. Your fertilizer factories are still turning sulfur into fertilizer, so a new production process would just be a technological upgrade to your fertilizer factories.
If you want to add another input, phosphorus is important.
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First of all, neither Mesopotamia nor the southeastern USA (both of which saw cultivation of sugar cane historically) are tropical
Secondly, from 1840 to 1880 sugar beet rose from 5% of global sugar production to 50%. (Currently it accounts for 20%.)
Sugar cane and sugar beet should really be treated as interchangeable. And, sure, put sugar cane production in parts of Florida and Texas.
Sugar would fit the game well as a resource. You see countries colonizing islands over it.
Sugar would fit the game well as a resource. You see countries colonizing islands over it.
Yes. When I said sugarcane I also meant sugar beet, I just forgot to write that.
Well, I am from Czech republic and shoes were our most important export in the Interwar period, so I might be biased, but I would say shoes are different enough to have their own factory. But you're right, having clay as a resource is... wrong.
I will have to to defend salt and leather though. For example, lack of salt was undermining to the war effort of CSA. They couldnt conserve food or make leather products.
That was interesting to read, thank you
I knew that I should have thought of simething more interesting with sulphur, but I wrote the Sulphuric acid to get atleast some sort of chemical industry in the suggestion. Because chemical industry is absolutely underrepresented in the game.
And phosporus is a great idea.
Well, I am from Czech republic and shoes were our most important export in the Interwar period, so I might be biased, but I would say shoes are different enough to have their own factory. But you're right, having clay as a resource is... wrong.
I will have to to defend salt and leather though. For example, lack of salt was undermining to the war effort of CSA. They couldnt conserve food or make leather products.
That was interesting to read, thank you
I knew that I should have thought of simething more interesting with sulphur, but I wrote the Sulphuric acid to get atleast some sort of chemical industry in the suggestion. Because chemical industry is absolutely underrepresented in the game.
And phosporus is a great idea.
Would it detract from the game if Prague's main export were represented as the more general category, clothing?
No, obviously. But I would say that that there is no reason to do so. It's like saying you cannot have tank factories in the game because there are already car factories, and they are both vehicles. Shoes are even made of different materiels.