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VIP - Economy & Resource Distribution

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Remove opium. After all, it is not really used for very much in the game. Or if keeping opium is important, combine sheep and cattle. Use the available RGO for copper/other metal.

And by combining timber and tropical wood one more RGO goods is available and also luxury furniture factory. Use this free RGO slot to represent some "new" (from western point of view) agriproduct made available by colonisation and resulting commercialisation of agriculture, like rubber. Bananas would be represented by fruits (United Fruit would be very nice to see!) but perhaps something like that could be doable. Jute, perhaps.. and it might even be used as possible raw material for clothes?

Change luxury furniture factory to metal plant (other metal than steel factory). New factory product (be it named whatever) could be used as a basic raw material for quite a lot of other factories making industrialisation demand also this new metal product. Also by having the new factory use up copper + coal it would make coal a bit more strategically important raw material, not to mention larger demand. And of course copper would become quite important raw material to be sought after.
 
Couple of ideas:

Change iron to "Metals", which covers just about everything.

I like the idea that cattle and sheep could be merged into "livestock".

Opium can probably go.

Could explosives and ammunition be merged into one product?

Another idea I've been mulling is including goods in the cost of expanding RGOs. I always thought it a bit odd that you just pay money to expand RGOs, when in reality the cost of expanding a farm, for example, requires fertiliser, steel, concrete and lumber just as expanding a factory does.

I like the idea of a "tools" factory, separate from machine tools. We also probably need sugar, given how important it historically was in the Caribbean.
 
I'm really against removing opium. Really against it. Here's why: A. It was one of the few "cash crops" out there. It generated a lot of revenues, both in terms of sales and in taxes; B. In some significant cases, it was the only export from a province; C. It caused two wars in China, and several other disturbances around the world; D. If we decide to fit in a pharmaceutical factory, this will have to be one of the inputs.

Now, that all said, we could rename opium to something more generic, and use it to represent all such products.
 
I like the idea of merging wine and liquor, because I always get annoyed when I build units that require those. I don't like the idea of merging luxury clothes and luxury furniture.

Alternatively, if you don't decide to merge wine and liquor, grapes could be a resource that went into wine. Not necessary, but I think it could add flavor to the game.


I think VIP needs to be careful about removing resources like tropical wood, because it is one of the reasons that a player would want to colonize/conquer uncivilized areas. Being able to pinpoint what you need and make a decision to go to war to get that resource is a rewarding experience.

edit: if anything I think you should add more of these resources, sugar is one that I approve of.
 
JRaup said:
I'm really against removing opium. Really against it. Here's why: A. It was one of the few "cash crops" out there. It generated a lot of revenues, both in terms of sales and in taxes; B. In some significant cases, it was the only export from a province; C. It caused two wars in China, and several other disturbances around the world; D. If we decide to fit in a pharmaceutical factory, this will have to be one of the inputs.

Now, that all said, we could rename opium to something more generic, and use it to represent all such products.
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And it is important to remember opium was a consumer good in much of the West, especially among the upper classes - its use was not made illegal in the USA until 1914 and not in the UK until 1920 (though it was a controlled drug only to be supplied by pharmacists from 1868, though such prescriptions were fairly easy to obtain) while its refined use remains a key element in the pharmaceutical industry to the present (In Turkey the regulated refinement of opium around Afyon is a key industry)
 
Things to keep:

Opium should definitely stay, for reasons already mentioned.

Keeping the division between timber and tropical wood is important for game-balance reasons.

Fish should stay, I think, as it's so distinct from other meat producing industries.

I think we need to keep glass, as it's the only representation of the ceramics industry currently in the game, and that was a rather important sector of the consumer economy at the time. Possibly it needs a name change, such as "glass and ceramics" or just "ceramics" but that is hardly a high priority.

Things to change:

I think merging sheep and cattle into one livestock RGO is a brilliant idea, as this covers things like the pork industry and people who ate mutton.

Merging lux furnature and lux clothes sounds like a good idea, and I would very much love to see a luxury goods factory that consumed precious metals, as I always see a glut of these in my games.

Replacing fertilizer with chemicals is another good idea.

Splitting non-ferous metals from iron is long overdue, and would be a real boon to the South American economies, so I'm emphatically for this.

I think replacing grain with a staple food RGO would be nice (though not a high priority), as this is what the game uses grain for anyhow.

I wouldn't be adverse to sugar and cacao being introduced, though I'd suggest you make a "luxury foods" RGO to represent these and the high-value fruits all in one (replacing the normal fruit resource).

Merging wine and liqour into one alcohol good isn't a high priority for me, but I'd do it in a snap if I needed the factory slot.

I agree that RGO expansion should have additional costs than just money.

Things I'd like to see:

I'd very much appreciate some representation of whaling and other industrially important sea life. Whaling and sealing were important engines of the South Atlantic and Pacific economies, as well as important raw materials in a whole host of the industries of the time.

Changing the name of Sulpher to Nitrates would be nice to see.

It would be nice to have a factory that produced Sulpher/Nitrates a la the Haber process (though it should be an inefficient factory). Without the Haber process, Germany would not have been able to sustain its war machine for so long in WW1, and I've never understood why it wasn't included in the game before.

On hulls:

As far as the naval hulls thing goes, I think the whole setup in Victoria at the moment is decidedly odd, and personally I'd go further than just introducing a new naval good... Would it be possible to get rid of both steamers and clippers, and replace them with, say, steam engines and hulls? The idea being that when you're building a man-o-war you use "hulls", cloth, timber and artillary, and when you're building a Dreadnought, you use "hulls", a whole passel o' steel, artillary, "engines" and fuel. Where "hulls" are more of an abstract representation of shipyard capacity than anything else.

The problem is, I'm not sure what would happen to your convoys if we did this. Does anyone know how modable convoys are?

fasquardon
 
fasquardon said:
The problem is, I'm not sure what would happen to your convoys if we did this. Does anyone know how modable convoys are?

fasquardon
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Not sure what you mean here

If you mean what it takes to build clippers and steamer as units for military unit transport, yes that is moddable.

If you mean what gets assigned to transport resources from your overseas empire to the metropole, I think that is hardcoded to be "put a steamer transport/clipper transport in on convoy duty"
 
OHgamer said:
If you mean what gets assigned to transport resources from your overseas empire to the metropole, I think that is hardcoded to be "put a steamer transport/clipper transport in on convoy duty"
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Yes, it was the latter case I was asking about.

That being the case, I wouldn't be adverse if you added a steel hull factory, if just making steel a big requirement for the high-end ships is insufficient for VIP's purposes.

fasquardon
 
JRaup said:
I'm really against removing opium. Really against it. Here's why: A. It was one of the few "cash crops" out there. It generated a lot of revenues, both in terms of sales and in taxes; B. In some significant cases, it was the only export from a province; C. It caused two wars in China, and several other disturbances around the world; D. If we decide to fit in a pharmaceutical factory, this will have to be one of the inputs.

Now, that all said, we could rename opium to something more generic, and use it to represent all such products.
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Yes, of course what you say is true - but I haven't found Opium to be much of a cash crop in the game. So I thought Opium could go as it is not refined to anything in a factory and it does not really make much profit. And since cultivating opium is not that spread around the globe in Vicky I thought it could go as a RGO.

Opium wars have little to do with the RGO opium, I think. Those wars are event-driven and there is no need for actually cultivating any opium for those wars to launch. So I think those wars should not really matter in this.

Now, if pharmaceutical factory is implemented with opium as an input, that will of course change the situation. Then opium will be more useful and should stay. But I think opium, as it now is in the game, should go (or made more useful).
 
I would like to see the following changes:

RGOs:
Merge sheep and cattle.
Introduce non-ferrid metals into the game.

Factories:
Merge luxury furniture and cloth into luxury goods.
Rename fertilizers nitrates.
Add Hulls.

Adding sugar/cocoa is perhaps a bit overkill as they could easily be included into Agricultural Products together with grain. Perhaps it is then necessary to modify the base price and production levels of various RGOs. Anyway correct me if I am wrong, but these resources did not have the same importance as say cotton or rubber during the Victorian era.
 
Armfeldt said:
Adding sugar/cocoa is perhaps a bit overkill as they could easily be included into Agricultural Products together with grain. Perhaps it is then necessary to modify the base price and production levels of various RGOs. Anyway correct me if I am wrong, but these resources did not have the same importance as say cotton or rubber during the Victorian era.
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sugar most certainly did - it was the lifeblood of a large number of colonies in the Americas as well as places like Natal and Fiji. Several Latin American independent nations also were major sugar producers.

And once the refinement process for transforming sugar beets was perfected, sugar production in European nations took off, and in several countries sugar became a state monopoly, heavily taxed.

thinking on this more, cacao could be merged with coffee, but sugar would be the best new ag product to add since it not only would be something to make colonies worth more, but also could allow modelling the rise of the sugar beet industry in Europe by changing certain provinces from grain or fruit into sugar provinces to represent the rise of the sugar beet industry.
 
Sugar is definitely a good idea, IMO, just as OHgamer has laid it out.
 
I definately support the idea of adding a non-ferrous metal RGO in the mix since in Missouri there is nothing noting the massive lead-zinc mining in the old lead beat and later on the tri-state mining area.

Another thing is that when any changes are made, is there going to be a complete overhaul of determining what RGO is produced in a province and what the value is. In this process we can also have a uniform set of rules for determining production value of RGO and how it changes.
 
I like the idea of glass-> glass and ceramics or such since in my games at least 1/3 or more of my factories always seem to be glass.

For livestock I'm not sure since sheep as far as I know were supposed to represent wool as the base cloth good with dye.

I'd like a split between tropical fruits like bannanas/pineapples and old world fruits like grapes and such. While my central american history is kinda fuzzy, Gen. Skobelev's mention of the united fruit company was very important for the region if I recall.

A change I'd like is changing small arms to require steel/some type of wood and making ammo instead required for all equivalent units as well.
 
OK after considering the various ideas in this thread and our own ideas, here is what the developers of VIP have come up with

Changes from the current system of resources & factories

1) Luxury Furniture and Luxury Clothing to be merged into one Luxury Goods factory and resource. Frees up 1 factory and 1 resource

2) Wool and Cattle to be merged into one Livestock Good. Frees up 1 good.

3) Telephones and Radio to be merged into one "Consumer Technology" good (still working on the name). Frees up 1 factory and 1 resource

4) Ammunition to be removed as an good in production. Will rework inputs for small arms and explosives, which currently have ammo as an input but really does not need to have ammo as an input as ammunition is not an integral part in their creation - ammo will be included in supplyconsumption costs. Frees up 1 factory and 1 resource.

Total gains : 3 factories and 4 resources

New goods and factories :

Resources :

Non-Ferrous Metals
Sugar
Chemicals
Hulls (for steam-based capital ships)

Factories :

Chemical Factory
Hull Factory
Synthetic Nitrate Factory
 
This may sound like a late addition, but one of things I was thinking is that we don't see a lot of the major metropoli (polis'?) growing to their historical dominance. What about a City resource, that is only available in major cities (or by event) that attracts immigration like Gold? An example currently would be Chicago, which starts small and does not grow to its historical size by the end of the GC.

The resource wouldn't necessarily be something traded, but the lost resource revenue would be made up with extra POPs to turn into craftsmen. Let's face it, the Grain resource in New York isn't exactly of much use other than the fact it raises growth rate.

Another thought would be making Chemicals attract immigration, as major cities would probably be the locales that developed these (industrial processes). They could be added via event.
 
Alyosha said:
This may sound like a late addition, but one of things I was thinking is that we don't see a lot of the major metropoli (polis'?) growing to their historical dominance. What about a City resource, that is only available in major cities (or by event) that attracts immigration like Gold? An example currently would be Chicago, which starts small and does not grow to its historical size by the end of the GC.

The resource wouldn't necessarily be something traded, but the lost resource revenue would be made up with extra POPs to turn into craftsmen. Let's face it, the Grain resource in New York isn't exactly of much use other than the fact it raises growth rate.

Another thought would be making Chemicals attract immigration, as major cities would probably be the locales that developed these (industrial processes). They could be added via event.
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i don't think that there is any way we can make the new resources behave like "immigration magnets" - that is I am pretty sure set in the .exe

And in the end it is not resources that determine where POPs migrate within a nation, but rather the number of provinces in a state and to a lesser extent life ratings. Short of completely reconfiguring the US map (which many players opposed in the past when we did the reconfig in New England, would be similar if we were to merge say IL, WI and IN together into one state) it is simply outside our power to make Chicago a major city, other than events that would add pops to the province over time to at least bring it to historic levels.
 
And in the end it is not resources that determine where POPs migrate within a nation, but rather the number of provinces in a state and to a lesser extent life ratings. Short of completely reconfiguring the US map (which many players opposed in the past when we did the reconfig in New England, would be similar if we were to merge say IL, WI and IN together into one state) it is simply outside our power to make Chicago a major city, other than events that would add pops to the province over time to at least bring it to historic levels.
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Fair enough. Just another hair-brained idea.

On another note - if I don't grant Alaska state status (Victoria state status, not event based) will it get as man immigrants (with the gold in Sitka)?
 
OK folks need some recommendations for the placement of new RGO goods for VIP:R 0.2

We'll have 2 new RGO goods : Sugar and non-ferrous Metals

Here is what I've developed for Sugar provinces at the start of the GC (in red)

sugar1.jpg


sugar2.jpg


Also :

2719 - Mauritius
2547 - Rembang, Java
2039 - Manila, Philippines

Please recommend others.

There will also be events for transferring provinces to sugar once colonization happens, to reflect the expansion of sugar (or mining) in wake of the colonial occupation

So for example for sugar, Fiji, the Queenland Coast, Natal and Hawaii will all have events for changing their initial RGO to sugar once the game starts.

As for the Non-Ferrous Metals, this will include :

Copper
Tin
Lead
Nickel

Any provinces that should start with one of those minerals in 1836, please recommend.
 
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