Worries about too much player control

[alexti]

It's a fair point that laissez faire economy was not easy to understand or control. It would make sense to steer new players away from such policies, perhaps by labeling the countries that start with it as not recommended for the beginners and warning players about it during the elections.

The actual flaws of LF in Vic2 aren't inherent though. Addition of the markets in Vic3 already fix one of the problems, capitalist decisions are relatively easy to fix and we didn't have much information covering taxes, tariffs etc yet.

 

[Immortal Impi]

It's a fair point that laissez faire economy was not easy to understand or control. It would make sense to steer new players away from such policies, perhaps by labeling the countries that start with it as not recommended for the beginners and warning players about it during the elections.

The actual flaws of LF in Vic2 aren't inherent though. Addition of the markets in Vic3 already fix one of the problems, capitalist decisions are relatively easy to fix and we didn't have much information covering taxes, tariffs etc yet.

I do agree. I just find it frustrating when there is a lot of idealism about some of Victoria 2's systems. I love the game but it's a glorious disaster; from a novice perspective the game's economy is nearly impenetrable and it is very tough to start learning about it. From a veteran's perspective the simulation is a trainwreck that breaks down in late-game because of the great money hoard and liquidity crisis. I don't want advocacy of automation to forget that such automation should not damage the player's ability to actually learn about these systems as in V2.

 

[alexti]

I do agree. I just find it frustrating when there is a lot of idealism about some of Victoria 2's systems. I love the game but it's a glorious disaster; from a novice perspective the game's economy is nearly impenetrable and it is very tough to start learning about it. From a veteran's perspective the simulation is a trainwreck that breaks down in late-game because of the great money hoard and liquidity crisis. I don't want advocacy of automation to forget that such automation should not damage the player's ability to actually learn about these systems as in V2.

Despite all its flaws it was a very good game and the best economic/society sim that I am aware of (and still is). People who are going to like Vic3 are likely people who like complex systems and deep gameplay so having an expectation that new players will have to go through tutorial/read the manual is not unreasonable. As far as the game itself I would like Vic3 to present the information better, in Vic2 some important stuff was only accessible by reading save files

 

[Immortal Impi]

Despite all its flaws it was a very good game and the best economic/society sim that I am aware of (and still is). People who are going to like Vic3 are likely people who like complex systems and deep gameplay so having an expectation that new players will have to go through tutorial/read the manual is not unreasonable. As far as the game itself I would like Vic3 to present the information better, in Vic2 some important stuff was only accessible by reading save files

Yeah, pretty much. It's because I like Victoria 2 so much that I want Victoria 3 to improve on the game's many, many flaws. It is a gem of a game but it is a very unpolished one and had many frustrating aspects, and I'd love for V3 to keep a lot of the complexity without being completely inexplicable. And part of that is to make the gameplay more natural. Paradox games are generally too complex for tutorials to work properly, which just comes with the territory, but even by that metric Victoria 2 is famously obtuse.

 

[Yagami913]

I'm worried about paradox create a mobile game because these kind of complains. This is a GSG for God sake.

 

[alexti]

I'm worried about paradox create a mobile game because these kind of complains. This is a GSG for God sake.

Now that you have said, I finally see the light. Microtransactions: buy funds into investment pools with real money. Plop few buildings, get achievements. Makes perfect sense

 

[Immortal Impi]

I'm worried about paradox create a mobile game because these kind of complains. This is a GSG for God sake.

Victoria 2 is a game which required an undergraduate economic analysis to discover that a core aspect of the game (the late-game economy) did not work because all the money was being swallowed into hidden evil money pits while simultaneously global market transport costs are free and based on an intangible nation rank, such that it is possible as westernized China to eat the world economy and convert Europe into a beef ranch while having iron shortages forever. And while this is very fun, it is not really good game design, and that's not because it's not complex enough.

Victoria 2 was complex, but more than that, it was obtuse, which prevented even the developers from fully understanding what was going on in the economy. It's not really demanding a mobile game to ask for a game which is less obtuse. Ironically, in a number of ways Victoria 3 is already more complex than 2; 2 never represented state infrastructure beyond railroads and ports except as vague events and decisions and as an assumed part of funding. It also never had railroad workers, or as I recall, paper requirements for bureaucrats. Buildings seem to be partly replacing national foci, which are literally the national gestalt putting the thumb on the scale.

How exactly are you 'encouraging Liberal', my kaiser? Is that a Tesla-patented mind control ray you have there in your hand? Why yes, I do love clipper factories and always have, why do you ask?

 

[Mr. Wiggles]

If you like managing private industry you can try Rise of Industry. I love it, personally. Great game.

Vic3 is about playing as the State and trying to steer your nation and its citizens with the limited government tools you have.

You can try and expand your tools, for example, if you want to control your countries industry, you can implant a Planned Economy policy in your country. That's how it worked in Vic2 and that's how it should work in Vic3.

Because, if we are able to control capitalists POPs, where's the limit? Should we be able to control farmers POPs too? Should we increase our population growth just by clicking a "have babies" button? Why do we collect taxes anyway? Why are we only able to control capitalists money and not all of our citizens money? Why can't we decide were POPs live? We should control everyone living inside our country because we are the "spirit of the nation", right? Or are you trying to say that capitalists are the "spirit of the nation" but farmers are not part of that "spirit of the nation"?

Nonsense.
You can "plop down" farms, too.
Wheter is the AI or the player controlling what to build it does not change anything at the end of the day, "capitalists" are not real people, they are the AI's puppets.
Might as well put them under control of a real human who actually knows what the market needs, a human like, you know, capitalists irl.
They literally said in the DD the player is the spirit of the nation, so, wrong again.
It is the devs who chose what features should be under the player's agency and what should not, this extreme line of thought stating if you can control your industries then you should be able to perfectly steer your population's demographic is a logical fallacy called "appeal to extremes".

It is time to bust this libertarian/neoliberal line of thought creeping in these forums which is even trying to re-write history. Governments had a say in basically every industrializing country, even the USA. Adam Smith advocated the protection of strategic english industries, and they did. Putting tariffs where needed, subsidizing and creating industrial plans together with investors. Governments and privates worked as a concert most of the times.

 

[mikhail321]

I fully understand and to some degree share the “spirit of the nation” argument. What bugs me though is the question of incentives. What the player would care about when making the investment decisions is GDP growth, military considerations, pops well-being and employment, even prestige and diplomatic clout. These are all typical concerns of governments, but not what most potent economic actors of the age cared about. They cared about profits. So unless the devs come up with a smart mechanic for the player to have private profits as a first priority, any system where main investment decision-making lies with the player will be very immersion-breaking. And the interest group discontent would not be a good solution, because capitalists getting angry with the government because they are losing money on a factory they have supposedly built themselves because the spirit of the nation told them so doesn’t make much sense to me.

 

[Vernichtere]

I fully understand and to some degree share the “spirit of the nation” argument. What bugs me though is the question of incentives. What the player would care about when making the investment decisions is GDP growth, military considerations, pops well-being and employment, even prestige and diplomatic clout. These are all typical concerns of governments, but not what most potent economic actors of the age cared about. They cared about profits. So unless the devs come up with a smart mechanic for the player to have private profits as a first priority, any system where main investment decision-making lies with the player will be very immersion-breaking. And the interest group discontent would not be a good solution, because capitalists getting angry with the government because they are losing money on a factory they have supposedly built themselves because the spirit of the nation told them so doesn’t make much sense to me.

Well, no actors are simulated on the micro level, not even in the predecessors. The Pops just react. The factory itself reacts to the market. It does not buy any more factories. There is no expansion. In this respect, the decision in favor of a common pool of national capitalists makes sense. But if I have such a pool, then again there is no point in implementing my own RNG decision-making process

If you implement your own decision-making process here, you simulate a strange capitalism. Pop has a factory or it doesn't have a factory. He's just building this factory and trying to keep it going. Displacement processes then only go on until the capacities of this one factory are exhausted. You cannot grow any further.

 

[qer]

The question that we should ask if if there is going to be a lot of meaningful micro or a lot of unnecessary one. Buildings factories early on (in Vic II) is crucial, but once you have a solid industrial base, one could argue there are few meaningful choices. Similarly, building infrastructure as say the Soviet Union was a chore because you know it needs to be done, but it is going to take a lot of unnecessary clicks ( and thanks to god for the province build option).

A lot of the appeal of LF was exactly that: once you have build your country, it could let it run without too much bother. It wasn't optimal, as any other form of government is preferable, but I can definitely see the appeal. Finally, capitalist building wasn't a complete disaster, as you could get industries that were competitive, and although they fail to utilize adjency bonuses, building one of every type of factory isn't a bad idea considering pops buy from the local market first

 

[WARenie]

But if I have such a pool, then again there is no point in implementing my own RNG decision-making process

The point exactly the same as the point in implementing the following
You can't just give direct orders to RNG decision-making machines called as "Heroes" in Majesty and need to rely on their (in)sanity.
You can't just directly spend wealth pool of your estates in MEIOU, but need to ask them for the smallest of favour. And these estates are just RNG decision making mechanism essentially too.
You can't control what caps are trying to build in vic2, only nudge probabilities with NFs.
You can't decide for these pesky RNG-machines called "characters" in imperator that they should stop being corrupted and disloyal and they better invest money into your cities just because you are spirit of a nation.
You don't decide freely where impy/vic2 pops should migrate, you are improving local conditions and "immigrant attraction" and their "rng-brain" is more likely to choose this province to migrate.

The point is that it's more fun to play with nudging and fighting with "behaviour" (read as "influencing ranges and thresholds in ifs after rolling math.random() and dealing with result of chosen action" if you like it that way) of "rng-machines" be it characters, heroes, estates or capis, than doing what they are doing directly yourself and just have option to automate it.

 

[Woifee]

If you like randomness you can try an RNG based game, I love them, personally.
Victoria 3 is about nation building and as devs said they want to represent player's agency as the "spirit of the nation", not just the government. Laissez faire in Victoria 2 was terrible.
I just do not get it.

Yes, LF was terrible in Vic2, but that doesn't mean it has to go but more that it should be fixed.

 

[General WVPM]

I don't think old grognard players actually remember how bad laissez faire was, and how absolutely inexplicable it was for a new player. You're playing and then there's an election with Liberals and suddenly every machine parts factory has closed, you're going to have a revolution but at least the clipper factories are rising up in a late 1910s comeback tour.

Laissez Faire could function but it created a very stale meta where the same logic applied every time - you state capitalize until you have enough factories, then switch to LF and let it run. This is not very intuitive, and in the process the capitalists made very bizarre decisions and could and did crash economies. At the other end of the scale, planned economy is unplayable, especially as it comes at the end of the game where you're likely to have a huge number of factories.

It's really bad as a game. Part of what a game is supposed to do is use direct interaction to teach you core mechanics. Since Victoria 2 so often had capitalists at the helm players had far less opportunity to learn the essential parts of their economy. This may be somewhat 'realistic' in that in reality economic systems are far less legible than a game presents it as, but it is a really serious problem for actually teaching players how to play the game. Investment pools and having actual choices that you have to make around factories early on are a teaching tool for learning how to interact with the economy.

Sure, there should be automation options, but LF was an awful, awful way of presenting this to the player. Nothing about it is intuitive, nothing about how the AI behaves in it is sensible. The player should be forced to interact with the system to learn how to play the game because that's what games are for: interaction. I like the idea of LF, but the implementation was so lacking that it was anti-fun.

Sounds like the rust belt to me.

But as a gameplay mechanic, it sucked. I agree.
I am still stunned how much 1 election could change in Victoria 2.
Liberals get into office? EVERYONE can vote (regardless of culture).
Socialists get into power? State controlled railroads everywhere.

In real life such drastic changes never occur overnight due to 1 election. They can happen for example during wars where governments 'nationalize' industry & infrastructure. Or after a successful revolution.

 

[Leoreth]

Yes, LF was terrible in Vic2, but that doesn't mean it has to go but more that it should be fixed.

Yes. The fix is player control via investment pools.

People who are talking about how it's more fun to nudge and influence via policy etc etc are phantasising about a system that doesn't exist and hasn't been proven to exist.

Such a system is only fun if the independently acting agents you are interacting with are behaving logically under their own volition, and respond logically to your actions. This is an immense AI challenge. I think people underestimate how great this AI challenge is when they dodge this problem with "well they need to make it better". Paradox games already look worst where the challenge is inherently contingent on AI competence, there is no need to expose another whole vector of the game to this issue just due to some idealistic notion of what should be simulated.

This isn't even going into the challenge of making the cause and effect of such independent decision making transparent to the player, especially given the complex nature that such decision making would require.

 

[Vernichtere]

The point exactly the same as the point in implementing the following
You can't just give direct orders to RNG decision-making machines called as "Heroes" in Majesty and need to rely on their (in)sanity.
You can't just directly spend wealth pool of your estates in MEIOU, but need to ask them for the smallest of favour. And these estates are just RNG decision making mechanism essentially too.
You can't control what caps are trying to build in vic2, only nudge probabilities with NFs.
You can't decide for these pesky RNG-machines called "characters" in imperator that they should stop being corrupted and disloyal and they better invest money into your cities just because you are spirit of a nation.
You don't decide freely where impy/vic2 pops should migrate, you are improving local conditions and "immigrant attraction" and their "rng-brain" is more likely to choose this province to migrate.

The point is that it's more fun to play with nudging and fighting with "behaviour" (read as "influencing ranges and thresholds in ifs after rolling math.random() and dealing with result of chosen action" if you like it that way) of "rng-machines" be it characters, heroes, estates or capis, than doing what they are doing directly yourself and just have option to automate it.

Buildings are an important factor in the game. The AI will not be able to handle such an RNG mechanic. That would be a system that doesn't simulate the competition on the micro level anyway, but just imposes massive disadvantages on the AI. I can outsource the wishes and preferences of the capitalists to the level of the influence groups and into the investment pool itself, with a slight RNG. The country tags keep control without making it too complicated. AI will not be able to consciously let industries die. And it will also be counterintuitive for the player. It doesn't start with more control, but with less.

The characters in Imperator Rome still seem more or less alive because they have certain goals. The capitalists here have no goals. You can't expand. They only defend their one factory. But they do that anyway without any power of disposal over the investment. The player does not control the dividends and wages in the laissez-faire economy.

It's also completely unproblematic. As soon as the game is out, there will be appropriate mods. But the AI won't be able to handle it.

 

[WARenie]

Yes. The fix is player control via investment pools.

People who are talking about how it's more fun to nudge and influence via policy etc etc are phantasising about a system that doesn't exist and hasn't been proven to exist.

Such a system is only fun if the independently acting agents you are interacting with are behaving logically under their own volition, and respond logically to your actions. This is an immense AI challenge. I think people underestimate how great this AI challenge is when they dodge this problem with "well they need to make it better". Paradox games already look worst where the challenge is inherently contingent on AI competence, there is no need to expose another whole vector of the game to this issue just due to some idealistic notion of what should be simulated.

This isn't even going into the challenge of making the cause and effect of such independent decision making transparent to the player, especially given the complex nature that such decision making would require.

Such systems already exist. For example, pops and budget in vic2. You increase education budget, more people want (increase probability of changing occupation) to become clergy. Clergy gives you more research points and helps to educate people. Educated people are able to work as clerks. But the more people are becoming a clergymen the more massive sum you need to pay them. Is this system just a fantasy, not existing and non proven to exist? How much an 10% increase of probability to become a clergy is an illogical and not volitional responce? What could you say about imaginary vic2 edict which will subsidize next 5 artillery factories and increases weight of capis choosing arti factory two-three times? Is it logical and transparent enough? I do not know. But this system is fun for me.

The problem of showing cause and effect already exists with core system, they are already more complex than in vic2. The only way to show an effect that i see is usage of tooltips in tooltips and hoping that player could understand what all this imply: You look at button and see: education wages increased by 20%, then you look what exactly influence education wages: they increase some probability/speed/whatever. Why can't you do the same with policies of capis?

Buildings are an important factor in the game. The AI will not be able to handle such an RNG mechanic.

It is already able to manage it in vic2 just fine. The vic2 problem is not capis but an economy itself. Which is hopefully will work as intended in vic3.

The characters in Imperator Rome still seem more or less alive because they have certain goals. The capitalists here have no goals. You can't expand. They only defend their one factory. But they do that anyway without any power of disposal over the investment. The player does not control the dividends and wages in the laissez-faire economy.

Why do you think every agent need a clear goal that it will pursue? What is a goal of peasants pop that increased probability of promotion to soldiers and clergy due to increased pay? I don't care about laissez-faire economy at all. I care about rich pops having ability to invest their wealth into buildings like local factory producing chairs that will then profit them, and some ability to influence their decision to do it, no matter is it ancap utopia or mild state cap, be it rng based or some "goal".

It's also completely unproblematic. As soon as the game is out, there will be appropriate mods. But the AI won't be able to handle it.

I am not arguing or trying to influence what vic3 should be, it's up to developers to decide what solution to implement and i will respect every their decision and then make my own decision if i will buy their game. I am just trying to explain why people like me enjoy capis in vic2 and are not satisfied with solution of player controlled investment pool and to fuel a discussion of this topic.

 

[Gilbert95]

There is definitely a point where giving the player too much control can take away some of a game’s challenge (sometimes I feel CK3 gets close to that line), but I generally think that the more control the better.

In a series like Vicky, where shaping your nation should be more like pruning a bonsai tree than it is like driving a car, I think there is plenty of room for more levers to shape your nation than there were in Vicky 2.

I just want to say I appreciate your username. I am currently doing a WOT reread in anticipation of the coming TV series

 

[Juanvito]

It's a fair point that laissez faire economy was not easy to understand or control. It would make sense to steer new players away from such policies, perhaps by labeling the countries that start with it as not recommended for the beginners and warning players about it during the elections.

The actual flaws of LF in Vic2 aren't inherent though. Addition of the markets in Vic3 already fix one of the problems, capitalist decisions are relatively easy to fix and we didn't have much information covering taxes, tariffs etc yet.

I do think that most of the problems with Capi AI in Vicky 2 are actually caused by money traps, lack of finance, and the way the world market works. With a mod that bodges over the money supply issues (PDM, ViconomicNGTR, VRRP) Capis work rather well IMO.

 

[Guedes]

Sounds like the rust belt to me.

But as a gameplay mechanic, it sucked. I agree.
I am still stunned how much 1 election could change in Victoria 2.
Liberals get into office? EVERYONE can vote (regardless of culture).
Socialists get into power? State controlled railroads everywhere.

In real life such drastic changes never occur overnight due to 1 election. They can happen for example during wars where governments 'nationalize' industry & infrastructure. Or after a successful revolution.

I agree, but that added a lot to the gameplay entertainment. You have to plan ahead to make sure you desired political party stays in power or else the consequences can be quite bad for your long term strategy.

I'm all about to give "realism" a sidetrack in favor of entertaining gameplay mechanics. This is a game after all.