Hi there and welcome to the first Monthly Update video
for Victoria 3.
I'm Sanna, part of the community team for Victoria.
This month we're going cover some of the core economy features of the game.
We're going to start off by talking about Pops.
So, Pops are collections of people in Victoria.
In any given State,
in any given workplace,
those people that share the same culture and religion
and do the same profession,
they are collected into a single unit called a 'Pop'.
For every single Pop, we simulate details
such as their wealth, their size,
and their size broken down into Workforce versus Dependents,
how many of them are Loyalists or Radicals,
how many of them are Literate.
Everything you change about your society
will have some sort of effect on the Pops.
All those details that are simulated about them
will shift in reaction to the changes in your society.
For example, if you were to provide them with Education,
their literacy will grow up,
which will in turn increase their qualifications,
which will enable them to pick up
more advanced jobs in their workplaces.
Similarly, if the price of a Good increases in your market,
those people that need to buy it
will have to spend more of their paycheck on that,
and this will mean that their wealth level will decrease,
which might cause them to become more and more disgruntled.
The most basic profession a Pop can have is that of a Laborer.
Other than that they can have many professions,
including being an Engineer,
being an Aristocrat, being a Machinist,
or a Clerk maybe.
An important detail that we keep track of for Pops
is how their size is divided between the Workforce and the Dependents thereof.
Only the part of a Pop's size that is considered
part of the Workforce can gain employment
in the Industrialized Buildings of your nation.
It all boils down to the Pops, it seems.
Now, we move on to Capacities.
So, Capacities are generated currencies,
but they don't accumulate over time.
Instead, you have a continuous production,
and a continuous consumption of a certain Capacity.
So, for example, for Bureaucracy:
you generate Bureaucracy by constructing
Government Administration Buildings,
then employ Bureaucrats and Clerks to work there,
who also consume paper,
all on your dime.
And in return they provide you with some Bureaucracy.
You need this Bureaucracy to tax the people in your Incorporated States,
and also provide Institutions
that give some sort of support to the Pops
or help you run the country.
A very different kind of currency that still works in a similar way is Authority.
Authority represents not the reach of your State necessarily,
but your Head of State's personal power,
and ability to enforce that power on the population.
So Authority is generated by your Laws.
So, the Ruler might say,
'This State is a very nice place for you to move to,'
which will increase the migration attraction of that State.
Or, 'We need to boost production in this part of the country,'
and that will have that sort of effect.
You can also use Authority for a number of other things
that affect the economy of the country.
For example, you can tax specific Goods,
it's another very prominent way of doing it…
or embargo certain Goods.
The amount of influence you have available
comes from your power rank,
which is indirectly a result of your Prestige.
You get Prestige from a number of sources,
for example, being top producer of certain Goods,
or being a very powerful economic force
or a very powerful military force.
All of these things sum up into a Prestige score,
which is compared to other countries,
and then determines your rank.
That determines the amout of Influence
you have available to spend.
And now on to another interesting topic
and a very important feature in running a nation:
Buildings.
Victoria 3 is divided into States.
Even though we have smaller areas that make up States,
the State is the main gameplay element
that you interact with on the map.
Buildings appear in the States,
and that is where your Pops go to work.
Buildings have a rather complex hiring simulation
in order to gain employees to work there.
Obviously whatever that Building is producing
is going to be dependent on how fully it has been able to fill its employment.
Now, Pops will be able to choose to be employed somewhere
depending on the wages that the Building offers,
and the Building, in turn, will be able to shift
the wages that it offers up and down based on its profitability.
Buildings will usually be consuming some kind of input Good,
employ a number of Workforce
and output some finished product.
But in some cases,
especially mines and Agricultural Buildings,
such as farms and plantations,
there may be less of an input Good,
but more of an output Good,
which is like the bounty of the earth.
So, if there was no industry in a State,
it would be completely covered by what we call 'Subsistence Buildings'.
These are the Buildings in which Pops go to work to just get by.
They do not produce any meaningful Industrial Goods,
and you as a player do not need to construct them.
But as you construct Agricultural or Industrial Buildings in a State,
those Subsistence Buildings will begin to disappear
and be replaced by these more profitable
and more meaningful Buildings.
Among these Buildings that you construct in your States,
some of them are considered 'Urban Buildings',
and they provide an effect called 'Urbanization'.
As there is more and more Urbanization in the State,
another type of Building will appear in there:
it's called the 'Urban Center', and it's going to grow
as you have more and more Urban Buildings.
The Urban Center itself will provide services
that are required by the Pops
that are considered to be living in the urban part of your State.
Government Buildings are usually also Urban Buildings,
but the important distinction here
is that they're considered to be owned by the Government,
which means that they enjoy some benefits,
such as better access to employment and recruitment,
but any deficit in their budget
will be paid out of the Government's pocket.
Any Building that is not considered a Government Building
is considered privately owned,
unless you enact some different economic laws, that is.
These Buildings have produced their profit,
which they pool in their cash reserves,
and once that's full the Pops that are considered the owners of those Buildings
will begin to withdraw dividends from the profits of the Building,
and become wealthier and wealthier.
Development Buildings can be both private and Government-owned,
and they provide some non-industrial benefits,
such as a transportation system, or an army for the country.
We mentioned the use of Goods,
but what are Goods?
Here's Mikael telling us a bit about that.
Goods are both tangible and intangible things that are being sold.
They are produced by Buildings,
so, as an example,
coffee might be produced in a coffee plantation,
or groceries are produced by taking grain or fish
and processing it through a food industry.
But we also have Urban Centers that produce services,
railways that produce transportation,
and these kinds of intangible Goods are also represented
to some degree in the game.
So Goods are split into four categories.
The categories have no special mechanics in and of themselves,
they're just ways of categorizing and figuring out what each Good is.
So we have Staple Goods, which are mostly consumed by Pops…
…sometimes used in Buildings as well…
so this covers things like grain like I mentioned,
and groceries and clothes and furniture.
Then we have Industrial Goods,
which are used in the production of other Goods,
and that could be tools, or coal, or steel.
And we have Luxury Goods,
which are also consumed by Pops predominantly,
but mostly by very wealthy Pops.
And that covers things like luxury clothes,
wine, and exotic things like porcelain
that might not be manufactured locally.
Sometimes these Goods might not be readily available
in the core parts of your country,
and you might have to import them,
or extend your reach through Colonialism to gain access to them.
Finally, we have Military Goods, which are used in the business of war, of course.
And this covers things like ammunition, small arms,
all the way up to airplanes and tanks.
Goods can be produced in a variety of ways.
And that leads us to our next topic:
Production Methods.
So we've already talked about how Buildings don't do anything on their own,
they need Pops to work in them in order to do anything meaningful.
It's a little more complicated than that,
as every Building has a variety of different Production Methods,
which is what's actually causing the Building to have some sort of effect.
As an example, if we take textile mills,
textile mills don't do anything on their own.
The Production Method of producing some clothes
takes an input of fabric and outputs some clothes,
and in the process employs some people,
for example, Laborers in this case, maybe some Machinists,
but there are multiple different Production Methods in a Building.
So you might decide that…
'I also want this textile mill to produce some luxury clothes,'
and as a result that will create some job opportunities
for some shopkeepers to hawk these clothes,
and also divert some of the basic clothes production
into luxury clothes production, in addition to silk,
which is also required to make this happen.
So you can configure and customize your Buildings
in all kinds of different ways, in order to have different effects.
So Production Methods are uniquely scripted on each Building,
and although they can have certain aspects in common,
like electricity or railroads
or other things that are used by different industries,
they are unique to the Building
and can have unique properties on each Building.
And we limit ourselves design-wise to exactly what Production Methods do.
They have some effects outside of the Goods inputs and outputs,
but we usually just do labor and mortality
or something like that for nitroglycerin
and similar dangerous Production Methods.
But, from a modeling standpoint, these are handled through modifiers,
and these are the same modifiers used to do anything else in the game,
from the political system, to the economics, to anything.
So Production Methods, from a modeling standpoint, could do almost anything.
Production Methods are totally free form in how they are scripted,
but in the game we found it useful
to group them into four main categories.
So there's a 'Base' category that produces…
that's the sort of base output of the Building.
So for textile mills that will be:
consume fabric, produce clothes.
Then we have a 'Refinement' method,
which lets you trade one of those base outputs
for a more refined version of that.
So in this case it will be…
basic clothes plus silk means luxury clothes.
Then we have 'Automation' processes,
which consume some Industrial Goods,
but let you operate the Building
without a lot of the previous unqualified Workforce.
So, for example, once you invent
dough rollers in food factories,
you don't need to employ as many Laborers,
but you might need some additional tools in the process.
And then finally we have the 'Ownership' category
which determines who owns the Building,
and who gets paid dividends
from the excess profits that the Building has available,
and this is driven by laws,
and is crucial for how the economy of your country works
going forward throughout the ages.
And that's all for this Monthly Update video,
but we'll be back again next month with more.
And until then, make sure to follow us on Twitter and Facebook to stay up to date.