The trading system is unintuitive

[_karl_]

Agreed, this is its own weirdness. Nobody is really "buying" or "selling" anything, so even calling what we have "markets" is itself misleading. It's more like if someone heard about the idea of a "market" being a place where there are "buyers" and "sellers" but without understanding that the buyers and sellers were actually engaging in transactions with one another.

Clearly the inspiration of Victoria 3 is not a "market" in the sense of the farmer's market in your neighbourhood on Saturdays. It has to be understood as a market like stock exchanges. Which might be a bit anachronistic on early game, 1836-1900, influenced by Paul's Economy 101 classes of our time, but makes sense around 1900.

If you look at the main commodity exchanges nowadays, such as the Chicago Merc (founded in 1898), "buying orders" and "selling orders" have no reason to refer to the same quantities. Those are just orders, offers made public for a potential trade. This does not correspond to the trading volume. On trading graphs you can usually see these three quantities separately.

 

[EUnderhill]

Transport costs should probably be higher in the game. Transporting goods was expensive back then. It is not like today where freighters have a high tonnage and loading cranes at the docks.
Back then only expensive rare exotic goods was brought to Europe from the colonies and asia by ship.

By the 1840s bulk cargo carriers were efficient enough for a solid export business of cotton from US to Uk, in fact by 1860 it accounted for over half the US foreign exchange. Shipping grain was sufficiently cheap that the US, Canada, and even Australia could ship to UK at a solid profit. Machinery may have been less efficient, but was present nearly at game start, as Buffalo NY saw in 1842 the first steam-powered grain elevator, and unit labor costs were much lower compared to today's six-figure union longshoreman.

 

[romothecus]

But it's not quite true that the transport free. Except in a few very rare cases where you can trade on land routes. What happens is rather that the state is paying the transport costs of the traders, through the construction of ports and maintenance of convoys, which are actually a pretty expensive thing.

You are getting way ahead of yourself. I am not even talking about international trade. I am talking about markets generally.

Within a single domestic market, all goods are treated as teleporting from their point of production to their point of consumption, assuming sufficient "Infrastructure" at both points. This is the main point, without even talking about trade or anything else. For example, suppose I own Madagascar and I own Pennsylvania. I have a steel mill in New York. Where should I produce coal: Madagascar (opposite side of the world from NY) or Pennsylvania (next state over)? The answer is it doesn't matter; coal is coal and they're both in my market. Actually, likely the answer is Madagascar because it has lower wages, and the input Tools needed are the same price in Pennsylvania or Madagascar, even though all the Tools are made in Pennsylvania. Victoria 3 will never be a sensible economic game so long as all goods in the same market can teleport anywhere within the market.

Now, if you want to talk about inter-market trade, yes, you're still talking about teleportation. Land routes aren't that rare, because simply getting a single state somewhere else can transform a "sea route" into a "land route." But even in a true sea route, the goods are still teleporting, just subject to the price of the convoy production and potentially convoy raiding in war time. But once you're paying for the convoy, you are able to teleport goods anywhere. For example a "convoy" from Florida to China is the same price as Florida to Cuba. It doesn't matter how far the convoy has to go; it's just a "convoy."

 

[_karl_]

Within a single domestic market, all goods are treated as teleporting from their point of production to their point of consumption, assuming sufficient "Infrastructure" at both points. This is the main point, without even talking about trade or anything else. For example, suppose I own Madagascar and I own Pennsylvania. I have a steel mill in New York.

Then I think your point is off-topic.
You're talking about introducing some huge complications of the market system, which had been simplified for obvious reasons, but your complications would not solve in any way the issues reported by the OP.

For example a "convoy" from Florida to China is the same price as Florida to Cuba. It doesn't matter how far the convoy has to go; it's just a "convoy."

I think that's incorrect. As far as I know, the number of convoys used do depend on the distance, so the trade road to China does cost more.

 

[romothecus]

Clearly the inspiration of Victoria 3 is not a "market" in the sense of the farmer's market in your neighbourhood on Saturdays. It has to be understood as a market like stock exchanges. Which might be a bit anachronistic on early game, 1836-1900, influenced by Paul's Economy 101 classes of our time, but makes sense around 1900.

If you look at the main commodity exchanges nowadays, such as the Chicago Merc (founded in 1898), "buying orders" and "selling orders" have no reason to refer to the same quantities. Those are just orders, offers made public for a potential trade. This does not correspond to the trading volume. On trading graphs you can usually see these three quantities separately.

This is an interesting analogy (as I used to work across the street from the CME) but it doesn't bear any scrutiny whatsoever. The CME is a derivative exchange for future deliveries, while Victoria 3 is supposed to be the underlying production and consumption in real time. Suggesting it has any inspiration from or connection to stock exchanges is ludicrous. Victoria 3 prices are all for immediate consumption; the game simply uses a very bad system of price adjustment where there is a "natural price" (in a universal currency) and the ratio of buy order:sell orders adjusts that base price up or down, with hard caps. This has absolutely zero to do with a stock market or anything like it.

 

[EUnderhill]

You are getting way ahead of yourself. I am not even talking about international trade. I am talking about markets generally.

Within a single domestic market, all goods are treated as teleporting from their point of production to their point of consumption, assuming sufficient "Infrastructure" at both points. This is the main point, without even talking about trade or anything else. For example, suppose I own Madagascar and I own Pennsylvania. I have a steel mill in New York. Where should I produce coal: Madagascar (opposite side of the world from NY) or Pennsylvania (next state over)? The answer is it doesn't matter; coal is coal and they're both in my market. Actually, likely the answer is Madagascar because it has lower wages, and the input Tools needed are the same price in Pennsylvania or Madagascar, even though all the Tools are made in Pennsylvania. Victoria 3 will never be a sensible economic game so long as all goods in the same market can teleport anywhere within the market.

Now, if you want to talk about inter-market trade, yes, you're still talking about teleportation. Land routes aren't that rare, because simply getting a single state somewhere else can transform a "sea route" into a "land route." But even in a true sea route, the goods are still teleporting, just subject to the price of the convoy production and potentially convoy raiding in war time. But once you're paying for the convoy, you are able to teleport goods anywhere. For example a "convoy" from Florida to China is the same price as Florida to Cuba. It doesn't matter how far the convoy has to go; it's just a "convoy."

Once a ship in New Orleans was laden, the cost difference between shipping the cotton to Liverpool versus Lowell was negligible.

 

[MatthewP]

You are getting way ahead of yourself. I am not even talking about international trade. I am talking about markets generally.

Within a single domestic market, all goods are treated as teleporting from their point of production to their point of consumption, assuming sufficient "Infrastructure" at both points. This is the main point, without even talking about trade or anything else. For example, suppose I own Madagascar and I own Pennsylvania. I have a steel mill in New York. Where should I produce coal: Madagascar (opposite side of the world from NY) or Pennsylvania (next state over)? The answer is it doesn't matter; coal is coal and they're both in my market. Actually, likely the answer is Madagascar because it has lower wages, and the input Tools needed are the same price in Pennsylvania or Madagascar, even though all the Tools are made in Pennsylvania. Victoria 3 will never be a sensible economic game so long as all goods in the same market can teleport anywhere within the market.

If this is the thing preventing it from being a sensible economic game, then that's great because it's already implemented. You need convoys to transport the goods from Madagascar. The number you need is related to the distance as well as the infrastructure cost in Madagascar, which represents abstractly how much is being moved.

Now, if you want to talk about inter-market trade, yes, you're still talking about teleportation. Land routes aren't that rare, because simply getting a single state somewhere else can transform a "sea route" into a "land route." But even in a true sea route, the goods are still teleporting, just subject to the price of the convoy production and potentially convoy raiding in war time. But once you're paying for the convoy, you are able to teleport goods anywhere. For example a "convoy" from Florida to China is the same price as Florida to Cuba. It doesn't matter how far the convoy has to go; it's just a "convoy."

This isn't accurate, the cost changes based on distance.

So, basically, the things you want are already in the game, you just haven't noticed them or incorporated them into your strategy. The one exception is land connections, which I hope will be addressed in some way in a future patch.

 

[romothecus]

Then I think your point is off-topic.
You're talking about introducing some huge complications of the market system, which had been simplified for obvious reasons, but your complications would not solve in any way the issues reported by the OP.

The OP is talking about Sikh market iron being bought by Qing in an overland route. It's all the convoy discussion that is completely off-topic.

I think if the price of hauling iron from Punjab to Guangdong were included in the Sikh-Qing trade route, yes, that might actually address the issue reported by the OP.

I think that's incorrect. As far as I know, the number of convoys used do depend on the distance, so the trade road to China does cost more.

Looks like you are correct about this, although the difference is relatively small. In any case, it's off-topic, since the OP is talking about a land route.

The one exception is land connections, which I hope will be addressed in some way in a future patch.

ie, the thing the OP is actually about.

 

[romothecus]

If this is the thing preventing it from being a sensible economic game, then that's great because it's already implemented. You need convoys to transport the goods from Madagascar. The number you need is related to the distance as well as the infrastructure cost in Madagascar, which represents abstractly how much is being moved.

Sorry, bad example, since it involves convoys. But even then, the convoys themselves aren't part of the "price" for the actual economic transaction of producing steel. They're not in the wage/production decision that the Steel Mill makes; transportation of inputs is a free externality. Like Infrastructure, if I'm producing that up-front, it's totally severed from the consideration of the economic exchange for the production of the coal and its subsequent sale in New York. But again, we're getting off-topic.

A better example would have been: I have Iron and Coal in Pennsylvania. Where should I build the Steel Mill?

Answer: whichever state in the US has lowest wages, because the Iron and Coal will simply teleport overland to the location of the new Steel Mill.

 

[MatthewP]

Sorry, bad example, since it involves convoys. But even then, the convoys themselves aren't part of the "price" for the actual economic transaction of producing steel. They're not in the wage/production decision that the Steel Mill makes; transportation of inputs is a free externality. Like Infrastructure, if I'm producing that up-front, it's totally severed from the consideration of the economic exchange for the production of the coal and its subsequent sale in New York. But again, we're getting off-topic.

A better example would have been: I have Iron and Coal in Pennsylvania. Where should I build the Steel Mill?

Answer: whichever state in the US has lowest wages, because the Iron and Coal will simply teleport overland to the location of the new Steel Mill.

Yeah, with this part I tend to agree. First that land trade should be treated similarly with sea trade: that seems like a no-brainer. Have it cost transportation calculated the same way as convoys. It would take some rebalancing and testing but that’s ok.

second, I think it would be cool if convoys were a good rather than a special thingy. Paradox has reasons for not doing it that way which they’ve clearly stated and make some sense: basically it would be bad gameplay if a naval invasion crashed and burned because port owners didn’t know an invasion was planned, and they wanted to give the player control of trade so it makes sense to, you know, give them control of trade.

But it seems like there are fixes for the naval invasion issue, and I don’t find the trade game to be that compelling - I’d rather it happened automatically and I could control it with tariffs and such. So I hope they revisit convoys as a good at some point. It would make sense to do it as part of an update to land trade.

 

[shoebird]

I can't discourage china from my iron, which is incredibly valuable to me.

Of course you can. Your selling price is 49.9 (54.89 with a 10% tariff to exports). Increase your consumption so your pre trade price of 34.4 raises I don’t know to 45 or so and you should make the route unprofitable. If you can’t subsidize use construction to raise iron price.

 

[Oglesby]

Don't know why you listed my comments as someone else's quotes.

Agreed, this is its own weirdness. Nobody is really "buying" or "selling" anything, so even calling what we have "markets" is itself misleading. It's more like if someone heard about the idea of a "market" being a place where there are "buyers" and "sellers" but without understanding that the buyers and sellers were actually engaging in transactions with one another.

I would disagree here. It is more like if they realized that they are only dealing with the big sector players (5k per level of building) and not all of them. This also allows for various things to be abstracted such as speculators warehousing, black markets, recycling of older product, etc. So without having to create mechanics for every single producer and consumer this is a good abstraction.

It would be in their current data structure (and by "constantly," it could just be "weekly" absent specific triggers like convoys being raided). So yes, some major optimizations and improvements would be in order. I mean, ideally, the game never would have been structured this way in the first place, but here we are. A likely irredeemable mess.

Every time a new building is complete anywhere or another nation is looking to start a new import or export of a good or even to see if the amount of goods imported or exported should change. Whenever a pop is deciding if it should burn coal or wood, or any of the other possible substitutions. If you are truly tracking good from producer to consumer both intra-market and inter-market some sort of best-path sorting algorithm will have to run every update cycle (what ever that cycle is) which will add a lot of computational power and run into other issues (or have to deal with abstracting other things).

Paradox has mentioned, I believe it was Wiz specifically, wanting to look into adding a 'convoy' like cost for overland intra-market trade routes and also a benefit for co-locating consumers with producers.

 

[romothecus]

I would disagree here. It is more like if they realized that they are only dealing with the big sector players (5k per level of building) and not all of them. This also allows for various things to be abstracted such as speculators warehousing, black markets, recycling of older product, etc. So without having to create mechanics for every single producer and consumer this is a good abstraction.

I think you are getting at a different issue here, which is the fact that even with zero available input (say, zero Coal for a Steel Mill) you still get some level of output. The issue we are actually talking about in this thread IS the big sector players and their ability to teleport products overland. I mean this is an era where a defining theme is the expansion of railroads and other forms of transcontinental infrastructure. And yet the game doesn't really have very much to say about why that would happen or how it would be useful besides a vague hand-wave at "infrastructure," and then the even greater magic of "Transportation" as a good.

Every time a new building is complete anywhere or another nation is looking to start a new import or export of a good or even to see if the amount of goods imported or exported should change. Whenever a pop is deciding if it should burn coal or wood, or any of the other possible substitutions. If you are truly tracking good from producer to consumer both intra-market and inter-market some sort of best-path sorting algorithm will have to run every update cycle (what ever that cycle is) which will add a lot of computational power and run into other issues (or have to deal with abstracting other things).

Yes, but the question is how frequently do you do those things, what level of abstraction do you do them at, can you spread them around, etc. For example if a new building is built, do you really need to immediately recalculate the price? Do you need to calculate every single pop's wood vs coal vs electricity heating decision, or can you just calculate per stratum per state? Can that maybe be pushed off to monthly? Etc. Ironically one of my other beefs with the game is the ability to instantaneously switch an entire sector of your economy, with an immediate change on prices. Maybe if I switch 100+ levels of Lumber Mills to "Hardwood focus", it would be OK if the price didn't actually change that week. Maybe a month would be fine.

And if the alternative is the current system, maybe something else needs to change. Maybe there are some .json optimizations they can do as well, who knows.

Paradox has mentioned, I believe it was Wiz specifically, wanting to look into adding a 'convoy' like cost for overland intra-market trade routes and also a benefit for co-locating consumers with producers.

Yeah, the irony is we have a "Transportation" good but it has no bearing here. It is mostly consumed as an input for buildings where you can use "Rail Transportation" yet there is no actual need to have "Transportation" produced nearby. For example I could have a massive Railway in one state on the other side of the continent and it would produce all the "Transportation" needed for the other side of the continent. But whatever they're going to do will be more computationally heavy than the current system, for sure.

 

[Oglesby]

I think you are getting at a different issue here, which is the fact that even with zero available input (say, zero Coal for a Steel Mill) you still get some level of output. The issue we are actually talking about in this thread IS the big sector players and their ability to teleport products overland. I mean this is an era where a defining theme is the expansion of railroads and other forms of transcontinental infrastructure. And yet the game doesn't really have very much to say about why that would happen or how it would be useful besides a vague hand-wave at "infrastructure," and then the even greater magic of "Transportation" as a good.

No I was responding directly to the issue that I quoted. Which while it isn't what the OP started this thread about it is where the last few comments brought us. Please stop straw manning, no I wasn't talking about zero production is treated as more than zero. I was explaining why I feel the Buy/Sell orders and not having them need match is a suitable abstraction. And why I feel we do not need a 100% closed system that tracks all goods from creation to consumption and the path it takes to get there which will be a computation nightmare and open a different can of worms.

For the transportation questions...
For intra-national markets, it seemed like infrastructure and sub-100% market access was going to be the issue be that added cost layer but currently it is too simple to maintain 100% access. Convoys appeared to be the cost for inter-national but there is still the specter of over-land paths which needs an overland path from market center to market center).

Yes, but the question is how frequently do you do those things, what level of abstraction do you do them at, can you spread them around, etc. For example if a new building is built, do you really need to immediately recalculate the price? Do you need to calculate every single pop's wood vs coal vs electricity heating decision, or can you just calculate per stratum per state? Can that maybe be pushed off to monthly? Etc. Ironically one of my other beefs with the game is the ability to instantaneously switch an entire sector of your economy, with an immediate change on prices. Maybe if I switch 100+ levels of Lumber Mills to "Hardwood focus", it would be OK if the price didn't actually change that week. Maybe a month would be fine.

By constantly I was meaning every time through where they normally do it. It seemed you were implying that it wouldn't have to be every time and only need special triggers. I was indicating that there are so many things that are triggers that it probably would take more time determining if it should run than it would take performing the rare times it runs and didn't need to.

You would want to iterate across all the PoPs as their situation will possibly change the answers to the questions and maybe even the questions. Slowing down the period when the question is asked only makes the system lag (though the system is already lags as I believe, barring shortages, the amount of substitutions has a bit of inertia to it). Do you really want your Pops to starve because the amount of grain reduced on the second of the month but they don't recalculate their food until the first next month? Also it is not just heating depending on wealth level there are anywhere from 4 to 9 different classes of goods that have substitution options.

You would want your pathing to change when you are changing to "Hardwood" focus so you can tell where the new hardwood is going and where the softwood shortages will be so you can address that. So the PM change takes from 1-30 days to implement depending on which day you did the update? Unless you are suggesting a month after the PM changes which mean that any day could be a rerun the where everything goes algorithm and since there could be changes in shortages to other factories it would then add/remove other goods causing other knock on effects.

I believe the longer the time period the less stable the system will be.

And if the alternative is the current system, maybe something else needs to change. Maybe there are some .json optimizations they can do as well, who knows.

The algorithms needed wouldn't be helped by .json optimizations.


Personally I would add a market layer between the National Market and the State Market before I would ever want to change to a closed system with goods tracking.

 

[_karl_]

Paradox has mentioned, I believe it was Wiz specifically, wanting to look into adding a 'convoy' like cost for overland intra-market trade routes and also a benefit for co-locating consumers with producers.

Co-locating bonuses would indeed be interesting, in particular when the "consumer" is another industry. I think Victoria 2 did have these kind of bonuses. I would love the game to push for a bit more vertical integration: my steel factory should have a massive bonus from being in the same province where I produce my coal and iron, more than by putting it in my capital and using the edict, and then my tool factory should have some non-negligible bonus from being in the same province as my steel factory.
Right now the only incentive to do that is that if the market access along my supply chain is disrupted for some reason, with shortage of coal for the trains or convoy raiding, the vertical integration reduces the impact on your economy and buys me more time to solve the issue.
We're wandering farther and farther from the original topic, but I like this idea, which should not be extremely complicated to implement and would be an elegant abstraction of most of the transporting costs.

 

[romothecus]

Personally I would add a market layer between the National Market and the State Market before I would ever want to change to a closed system with goods tracking.

I was just thinking the same thing while walking my dog. There would be fewer changes needed than matching sell and buy orders, probably.

 

[Leoreth]

We really need to stop calling it stealing when traders from a country that are allowed to buy things in a market go into said market and buy things there.