VIP - North America - Canada, Mexico, USA, + Revolters

[unmerged(11486)]

The reason for it joining Deseret is because it was part of the Utah Territory, rather than the state of California. Also, Deseret has cores covering Nevada, while California doesn't. I get the feeling too that the early settlers felt closer to Utah than to California on the other side of the Sierras. (This last may be a misperception on my part.)

As far as I know, that is probably true. However, the Mormon Exodus was unpopular among those already living out west, and by forming the Theocracy of Deseret, they would be alienating all or most of the previous settlers. Adding it on to California seems to make more sense, although I could be interpreting this wrong.

Steele

 

[Theodotus1]

As far as I know, that is probably true. However, the Mormon Exodus was unpopular among those already living out west, and by forming the Theocracy of Deseret, they would be alienating all or most of the previous settlers. Adding it on to California seems to make more sense, although I could be interpreting this wrong.

Steele

I'll do some further research before I incorporate the events into the next submission.

 

[pimparel]

The Grat Power of Texas:

Side note, there is much prestige awards to Texas. Look what I have done.

 

[C.N.]

How does the reform trigger works? I found it odd that the Commonwealth vs Hunt event happened even if non-socialist unions was allowed.
The trigger is:

reform = { type = trade_unions level = none }

but does that mean none or better, or none or worse?
Should it be:

NOT = {reform = { type = trade_unions level = non_socialist} }

instead? In events 304011-404013 at least that the second one is used (but without the type =, just reform = XXX level = yyy). Can someone comment on this?

Also in the text of Commonwealth vs Hunt: "laweful", should probably be lawful.

About the populism issue:
Could an invention that is US only be made that replaces the normal populism event:

event = {
	id = XXX
	random = no
	invention = yes

	trigger = {
                          country = USA
                          NOT = { invention = 448 }
	}

	name = "EVT_448_NAME"
	desc = "EVT_448_DESC"
	style = 0

	date = { day = 4 month = january year = 1836 }
	offset = 57
	deathdate = { day = 30 month = december year = 1856 }

	action_a = {
		name = "ACTIONNAME448A" # Populism
		command = { type = vote_on_ideology value = no }
	}
}

invention 448 will also need a

NOT = {invention = XXX }

.

 

[C.N.]

The Grat Power of Texas:

Side note, there is much prestige awards to Texas. Look what I have done.

It is a bit too early to judge that from the first year. If you are still a great power after 5 years it would be problematic.

 

[Theodotus1]

The Grat Power of Texas:

Side note, there is much prestige awards to Texas. Look what I have done.

This is a typical early position for an independent Texas in VIP. Texas can trade Beaver, Oklahoma for Pueblo, Colorado with a 90% chance of success, and the prestige gain for claiming Colorado vaults Texas to Great Power status. (And given the size of the country then, I don't find GP status necessarily unwarranted. But the main thing is that for a while Texas is the talk of the town, due to successfully staying free of Mexico and then annexing Colorado) Typically, though, Great Power status declines and then ceases over the course of the next couple of years.

 

[Jon F. Zeigler]

Second test run of 1860 Election events

Somewhat better results this time - in this game I got the "Populism vs. Establishment" early, chose Populism, and also selected a number of events along the way to slant things against the Democrats. I actually got a Whig Presidency right after the Mexican War.

Still no hope for the Republicans, though - the Full Citizenship slice of the population was much smaller than the Slavery slice going into 1860, and the events I had set up to swing a lot of Yankee POPs to the Liberal camp didn't seem to have much effect. More tinkering is indicated.

First note: I didn't make careful records, but I was watching the dates of elections, and they seemed to come every four years and nine months. Can anyone confirm this? How much do we want to bet that Paradox coded the election timing to start the nine-month election campaign exactly four years after the end of the last campaign?

Second note: I observe that the monetary costs for some of the treaties with Mexico are way, way out of whack. We need to be consistent about a translation from real-world money to Vicky money - I would suggest that Vicky money measures thousands of dollars, so that the Treaty of Guadelupe-Hidalgo would cost 15,000 pounds. The potential purchases of Texas and Arizona from Mexico, and the Gadsen Purchase, are all well over 100,000 pounds - far too high, in my opinion, and likely to cripple the US. I've changed the amounts in my own events file and will post those when I get the chance.

Third note: I'm observing an odd trend toward the Secularized political position, with over 35% of the USA POPs having Secularized as their dominant issue by 1860. Any idea what's causing this?

 

[C.N.]

Somewhat better results this time - in this game I got the "Populism vs. Establishment" early, chose Populism, and also selected a number of events along the way to slant things against the Democrats. I actually got a Whig Presidency right after the Mexican War.

Still no hope for the Republicans, though - the Full Citizenship slice of the population was much smaller than the Slavery slice going into 1860, and the events I had set up to swing a lot of Yankee POPs to the Liberal camp didn't seem to have much effect. More tinkering is indicated.

Could it be that most of the immigrants goes to the South and get slavery by events? They did at least prefer to move to Virginia and Maryland in my games.

Third note: I'm observing an odd trend toward the Secularized political position, with over 35% of the USA POPs having Secularized as their dominant issue by 1860. Any idea what's causing this?

Paradox hardcoding, it was atheism instead in earlier versions.

 

[Mettermrck]

Somewhat better results this time - in this game I got the "Populism vs. Establishment" early, chose Populism, and also selected a number of events along the way to slant things against the Democrats. I actually got a Whig Presidency right after the Mexican War.
Still no hope for the Republicans, though - the Full Citizenship slice of the population was much smaller than the Slavery slice going into 1860, and the events I had set up to swing a lot of Yankee POPs to the Liberal camp didn't seem to have much effect. More tinkering is indicated.

Hmm, so dominant issue is not as important as we thought. Perhaps we could consider putting small ideology increments in the antebellum events? Shifting the north to liberal and the south to conservative? There's a lot of events so the increments would have to be small...1, 2, or 3...this might mean possibly a 20-35% shift by 1860.

First note: I didn't make careful records, but I was watching the dates of elections, and they seemed to come every four years and nine months. Can anyone confirm this? How much do we want to bet that Paradox coded the election timing to start the nine-month election campaign exactly four years after the end of the last campaign?

That's too bad. Pimparel said the hold_election command delay is 'same day'. So in order to make a November 1860 election, we'd need the end of the prior election to be February 1856. How far before that would the campaign season need to start?

Second note: I observe that the monetary costs for some of the treaties with Mexico are way, way out of whack. We need to be consistent about a translation from real-world money to Vicky money - I would suggest that Vicky money measures thousands of dollars, so that the Treaty of Guadelupe-Hidalgo would cost 15,000 pounds. The potential purchases of Texas and Arizona from Mexico, and the Gadsen Purchase, are all well over 100,000 pounds - far too high, in my opinion, and likely to cripple the US. I've changed the amounts in my own events file and will post those when I get the chance.

I'm inclined to agree with this. I had assumed that we were looking at a ratio of $1 million real to 1,000 pounds game. I don't think the US could handle 100,000 pounds in the 1850s.

Third note: I'm observing an odd trend toward the Secularized political position, with over 35% of the USA POPs having Secularized as their dominant issue by 1860. Any idea what's causing this?

Hmm...it was mentioned earlier that we might want to put in some Second Great Awakening events. I believe the tail end of it, including all the famous Midwest 'camp meetings', were in the 1830s so it's feasible. If there's other notable religious developments, we can put these in to possibly counterbalance that trend towards secularization since the United States was very much a god-fearing nation in the 19th century, particularly the early half.

 

[IanRacey]

My understanding of the settlement of Nevada:

Everything I've ever seen indicates that outside of the Mormon settlements in the greater Salt Lake area, Utah and Nevada were pretty much entirely empty of settlers whose opinion would have been counted (i.e., Anglo-Saxon whites). Keep in mind that when we talk about "Utah" establishing independence any time before the 1861, we're referring to the Utah Territory, which included all of modern-day Utah and Nevada. The first significant settlement in Nevada was established in 1849 and named, tellingly enough, Mormon Station (now Genoa).

The Mormons certainly considered Nevada just as integral a part of Deseret as they did Utah, and even the US government (whose attitude toward Mormonism could at best be described as cordial dislike) accepted this when it established the bounds of the Utah Territory in 1850. Salt Lake would have liked to be able to claim the New Mexico Territory, too, but unlike Nevada, it was already a little too thickly settled for them to do that convincingly (which is why giving Deseret cores in New Mexico and Arizona is a good idea, IMHO).

White, non-Mormon settlement in the western Utah Territory didn't become a significant phenomenon until the discovery of the Comstock Lode in 1859, and by 1861 the region had enough non-Mormons to establish itself as the Nevada Territory. (The preceding, btw, was all drawn from the 2003 edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica.) Even then, settlement was confined to two towns right on the California border, Virginia City and Fort Carson. IMHO, the province of Fort Carson is still too large to give to California in representation of this, but if you're talking about Californian/Deseret independence at the time of the ACW or later, I think it's something that can be justified. Prior to 1860, however, IMHO Nevada should definitely be just as integral a part of Deseret as Utah.

Ian

EDIT: Noticed while playing: the "province of Fort Carson" to which I refer in the last paragraph is actually the province of Carson City; I would assume Carson City and Fort Carson are one and the same geographically.

 

[Theodotus1]

Second note: I observe that the monetary costs for some of the treaties with Mexico are way, way out of whack. We need to be consistent about a translation from real-world money to Vicky money - I would suggest that Vicky money measures thousands of dollars, so that the Treaty of Guadelupe-Hidalgo would cost 15,000 pounds. The potential purchases of Texas and Arizona from Mexico, and the Gadsen Purchase, are all well over 100,000 pounds - far too high, in my opinion, and likely to cripple the US. I've changed the amounts in my own events file and will post those when I get the chance.

The price on the purchase of Texas event has been changed to be 100,000, representing 10 million. (Paradox had this set to cost 300,000.) Purchase of New Mexico has been changed to 10,000, representing 1 million, which may actually be too cheap. (Paradox had New Mexico and Arizona costing each 100,000 in the game.) The Gadsen Purchase has not been addressed yet -- but Mexico was historically paid 10 million for that stretch of ground, and Paradox has the cost set at 100,000. So for Paradox apparently, 10 million equals 100,000 in the game. (The Texas and New Mexico purchase events typically only fire if Mexico reconquers Texas.)

Keep in mind that the US was historically willing to pay 25 million for Alta California (which includes California, Nevada, Utah, and Arizona).

Input and opinion would be useful on all these prices, and I intend to do more research on what the US historically offered to pay for Texas when it was trying to buy it before 1835. I don't know yet what appropriate prices or conversion amounts should be, but they shouldn't be too low. We don't want Mexico getting ripped off.

 

[Theodotus1]

My understanding of the settlement of Nevada:

Everything I've ever seen indicates that outside of the Mormon settlements in the greater Salt Lake area, Utah and Nevada were pretty much entirely empty of settlers whose opinion would have been counted (i.e., Anglo-Saxon whites). Keep in mind that when we talk about "Utah" establishing independence any time before the 1861, we're referring to the Utah Territory, which included all of modern-day Utah and Nevada. The first significant settlement in Nevada was established in 1849 and named, tellingly enough, Mormon Station (now Genoa).

The Mormons certainly considered Nevada just as integral a part of Deseret as they did Utah, and even the US government (whose attitude toward Mormonism could at best be described as cordial dislike) accepted this when it established the bounds of the Utah Territory in 1850. Salt Lake would have liked to be able to claim the New Mexico Territory, too, but unlike Nevada, it was already a little too thickly settled for them to do that convincingly (which is why giving Deseret cores in New Mexico and Arizona is a good idea, IMHO).

White, non-Mormon settlement in the western Utah Territory didn't become a significant phenomenon until the discovery of the Comstock Lode in 1859, and by 1861 the region had enough non-Mormons to establish itself as the Nevada Territory. (The preceding, btw, was all drawn from the 2003 edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica.) Even then, settlement was confined to two towns right on the California border, Virginia City and Fort Carson. IMHO, the province of Fort Carson is still too large to give to California in representation of this, but if you're talking about Californian/Deseret independence at the time of the ACW or later, I think it's something that can be justified. Prior to 1860, however, IMHO Nevada should definitely be just as integral a part of Deseret as Utah.

Ian

This matches my understanding of the history. And the event will fire before the ACW. So I'm leaning toward Nevada going to Deseret, with the possibility of Nevada trying to leave to join the US or California (depending on circumstances) as it becomes more populated.

 

[eeers]

Has anyone suggested splitting up the North America thread into 3 seperate threads, this is getting to be way to much to read through and get any feel for the proposed changes, or maybe just an edited post just to keep up to date with implemented/proposed changes.

 

[Theodotus1]

Has anyone suggested splitting up the North America thread into 3 seperate threads, this is getting to be way to much to read through and get any feel for the proposed changes, or maybe just an edited post just to keep up to date with implemented/proposed changes.

Probably the best thing is for someone (maybe me) to just post updates on changes and additons, rather than splitting this thread. Perhaps something like a "coming attractions" thread.

At this point we've been working more on fixing certain errors in VIP, as opposed to adding much new. (Although Texas may seem like a lot was added, since we've got missing events in place now. And I did add several events to Texas, also.) After 0.11 comes out, though, there will be more of the new.

 

[eeers]

Theodotus1 i think that that would be a great idea, i have looked at the VIP mod forums on several occasions and have kinda been turned off, because i can't really get a feel on what is actually bieng done.

Looks like a very large and ambitious project. With 2500 posts in NA alone seems like there will need alot of error testing just to get the first wave of changes to work, much less keep some cense of game balance.

I guess this is where i should offer to help with the beta testing, i will download and start some games over the weekend, is there a thread where concernes or objectives that you would like tested?

 

[aprof]

Theodotus1 i think that that would be a great idea, i have looked at the VIP mod forums on several occasions and have kinda been turned off, because i can't really get a feel on what is actually bieng done.

Looks like a very large and ambitious project. With 2500 posts in NA alone seems like there will need alot of error testing just to get the first wave of changes to work, much less keep some cense of game balance.

True, anyone coming into VIP late will find this thread daunting to read all the way through. And even then, I'll bet that you'll not get any kind of overview of what has been done.

But there is an answer: our Yahoo site (listed in the first post of the thread) is the place to go.

Read through the NA_Events.txt file that Theo works hard to keep up-to-date and you'll see our list of events.

Skimming through the various event files there will give an idea of what form our events are taking.

I guess this is where i should offer to help with the beta testing, i will download and start some games over the weekend, is there a thread where concernes or objectives that you would like tested?

Post your ideas or suggestions here. There are (at least) five regulars to this thread that have contributed significantly to the VIP project who read this thread daily - and probably two, three or four times a day. If you read it at least once a day, you'll soon be as up-to-date as you need.

 

[Jon F. Zeigler]

The price on the purchase of Texas event has been changed to be 100,000, representing 10 million. (Paradox had this set to cost 300,000.) Purchase of New Mexico has been changed to 10,000, representing 1 million, which may actually be too cheap. (Paradox had New Mexico and Arizona costing each 100,000 in the game.) The Gadsen Purchase has not been addressed yet -- but Mexico was historically paid 10 million for that stretch of ground, and Paradox has the cost set at 100,000. So for Paradox apparently, 10 million equals 100,000 in the game. (The Texas and New Mexico purchase events typically only fire if Mexico reconquers Texas.)

Bear in mind, though, that the prices set by Paradox in these events were set before the 1.00 release, in which it was easy to come by oodles of cash.

I find that under Victoria 1.03, it's not unreasonable to set up the US economy so that it produces about 50 pounds per day of surplus. To pay off 10,000 pounds takes under a year. To pay off 100,000 pounds would take over 5 years - although the interest on such a large debt will almost certainly prevent you from keeping up your 50 pounds per day, so closer to 10 years seems more likely. During that time you're not doing anything else but paying off debt.

Requiring the US to pay something like 500,000 pounds for the entire Southwest is a sure way to cripple the US. One-fifth or even one-tenth that amount might be more reasonable. I'd suggest a conversion of $1 million = 1,000 pounds, unless the economic model is made more generous in future patches.

 

[Theodotus1]

True, anyone coming into VIP late will find this thread daunting to read all the way through. And even then, I'll bet that you'll not get any kind of overview of what has been done.

But there is an answer: our Yahoo site (listed in the first post of the thread) is the place to go.

Read through the NA_Events.txt file that Theo works hard to keep up-to-date and you'll see our list of events.

Skimming through the various event files there will give an idea of what form our events are taking.

Post your ideas or suggestions here. There are (at least) five regulars to this thread that have contributed significantly to the VIP project who read this thread daily - and probably two, three or four times a day. If you read it at least once a day, you'll soon be as up-to-date as you need.

I think that what I'll do in the near future is draw up a list of how things have changed in various respects, at least with North America. And then I'll post that on Yahoo, so that people can get a bit better feel for what's changing.

 

[Theodotus1]

Bear in mind, though, that the prices set by Paradox in these events were set before the 1.00 release, in which it was easy to come by oodles of cash.

I find that under Victoria 1.03, it's not unreasonable to set up the US economy so that it produces about 50 pounds per day of surplus. To pay off 10,000 pounds takes under a year. To pay off 100,000 pounds would take over 5 years - although the interest on such a large debt will almost certainly prevent you from keeping up your 50 pounds per day, so closer to 10 years seems more likely. During that time you're not doing anything else but paying off debt.

Requiring the US to pay something like 500,000 pounds for the entire Southwest is a sure way to cripple the US. One-fifth or even one-tenth that amount might be more reasonable. I'd suggest a conversion of $1 million = 1,000 pounds, unless the economic model is made more generous in future patches.

Excellent information. Just the sort of data needed to evaluate prices.

What I'd like to do is reach a consensus on a conversion ratio. It's not usually impossible to find out what people historically were willing to pay for territory, and with an agreed conversion ratio we can then bring all of these events into concurrence.

(My only concern remains not ripping Mexico off. Of course, the way I rewrote the events, the US needs relations with Mexico above 189 for there to be more than a 5% chance of a purchase offer being accepted, so at the moment it's not necessarily an emergency issue. I set it that high based on my current Mexico research, which sources indicate that sales of Mexican territory -- Gadsen Purchase notwithstanding -- were basically not something the Mexican people would have accepted absent extraordinary relations with the USA. The Gadsen Purchase was an aberration related to Santa Anna, and I intend to work it into the Santa Anna scheme of events that will be in 0.11, though I haven't done so yet.)

Any other thoughts regarding the $1 million = 1,000 pounds ratio?

 

[pimparel]

This is a typical early position for an independent Texas in VIP. Texas can trade Beaver, Oklahoma for Pueblo, Colorado with a 90% chance of success, and the prestige gain for claiming Colorado vaults Texas to Great Power status. (And given the size of the country then, I don't find GP status necessarily unwarranted. But the main thing is that for a while Texas is the talk of the town, due to successfully staying free of Mexico and then annexing Colorado) Typically, though, Great Power status declines and then ceases over the course of the next couple of years.

Sorry to bring this back, but this is a little off, cause to a clever player, he can, as I have done, reach the 1st position in prestige, allowing me to buy ANYHTING that I want in WM. As for example Machine Pieces, starting the industrial revolution very early, cause I can run in debt for a long time.