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A Buttery Pastry posted:A Potato Blight event basically shouldn't be just something that happens, but something you respond to. A Britain that prevents the famine from ever coming to pass through direct aid to the Irish would probably be seen far more favorably by the Irish, plus it'd move Britain closer toward knocking down its ancient institutions. It's a question of foreknowledge. Even if we imagine that devs would want to ask players if they want to kickstart one of the biggest tragedies of the 19th century it's hard to make an interesting gameplay decision. Presumably, no one among the decision makers at the time knew that cutting corners like that would result in a catastrophe such as it was - not that I think everyone was moral, but they probably didn't expect that to become one of the most prominent events of the century. So to put you in the mind of a decision maker they'd give you a choice of something like "Do everything we can" (spend money, not a lot of people die) or "It'll be fine" (don't spend money, 90% chance of it being a regular famine with moderate losses, 10% of it being The Great Famine). I don't see a good way to present this stuff. What I've proposed seems the least wrong approach but it's also not something I'd put in the game if I were responsible for it. So I'm not seeing the Great Famine properly represented in a game like this.
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Aug 22, 2022 09:26
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And from a player's perspective, would you deliberate cause a famine that impoverishes one of your core territories, and kills millions of your citizens, depriving you not only of money and potential soldiers, but also presumably massively strengthening the Irish independence faction... or would you act to prevent it, probably taking a small financial hit immediately but being much better set up for the future? I know which choice I would make. ilitarist's approach does seem like the least wrong approach, but I can already see players getting frustrated about the event. Human brains can't handle probabilities, and you will see a flood of complaints on the forum that they were stuck with the 10% outcome.
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Aug 22, 2022 09:35
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CK3 introduced a cool mechanic with the Iberian Struggle. The game tracks every ruler in the designated area and assigns points to one outcome based on their actions. You could loosely base crisis around this in Vicky 3 by triggering a hidden crisis that eventually becomes active and visible once it hits a certain point, or it may never appear because conditions were there to prevent it in the first place. Things contributing to the potato famine could be English ruler pops in Ireland, technology and industries present.
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Aug 22, 2022 10:21
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If nothing bad is ever allowed to happen to the player the game will be immensely unchallenging and lifeless. The thing that usually kills interest in these games is the lack of challenge. They could just make a bad events: yes/no game rule.
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Aug 22, 2022 10:21
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Too much randomness (or perceived randomness) can also be bad if it makes the player feel like their choices don't matter because they will randomly get a potato famine regardless.
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Aug 22, 2022 10:23
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It could be something as simple as a tradeoff. You can prevent the potato famine by reducing the power of aristocrats and the number of monocrop plantations they own in Ireland. The tradeoff is that you piss off this interest group and if you don't or can't do that, you get the famine. It's basically like the Ottoman mission system. If you can get to X metric before a deadline, you get to click the button that reforms Irish agriculture and you don't get the famine.
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Aug 22, 2022 10:26
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ilitarist posted:It's a question of foreknowledge. Even if we imagine that devs would want to ask players if they want to kickstart one of the biggest tragedies of the 19th century it's hard to make an interesting gameplay decision. Presumably, no one among the decision makers at the time knew that cutting corners like that would result in a catastrophe such as it was - not that I think everyone was moral, but they probably didn't expect that to become one of the most prominent events of the century. So to put you in the mind of a decision maker they'd give you a choice of something like "Do everything we can" (spend money, not a lot of people die) or "It'll be fine" (don't spend money, 90% chance of it being a regular famine with moderate losses, 10% of it being The Great Famine). See also Britain in India, where their one attempt to alleviate famines was cracked down on because it ruined their profits. As for how to make that gameplay, I can see a few options. Firstly, a given regions dependence on certain foods is something the player could influence to preempt a sudden massive drop in available food, thus making any sort of plant disease much less threatening before it even hits. Then if it does hit, there is the the choice to clash with the institutional forces that would prefer a genocide to helping people, which wouldn't just be as simple as paying for food - because the impetus towards causing a famine is not just driven by money, but also a hosed up system of morality. Basically, the anti-imperialist choice. As for people whining about or getting frustrated by this, why should it be a priority to smooth over major historical challenges/issues in Europe while everyone else has to deal with their institutional issues? Britain being a genocidal state is a core aspect the player should have to deal with when tending to that "garden", just as other states might have to contend with conservative social structures that cripple their ability to respond to a rapidly changing world. Demiurge4 posted:It could be something as simple as a tradeoff. You can prevent the potato famine by reducing the power of aristocrats and the number of monocrop plantations they own in Ireland. The tradeoff is that you piss off this interest group and if you don't or can't do that, you get the famine. e: Not that the areas suffering should be required to be a different culture from your main one, that'd just make it harder to get support for not loving them up. A Buttery Pastry fucked around with this message at 10:38 on Aug 22, 2022 |
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Aug 22, 2022 10:33
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A Buttery Pastry posted:Cutting corners? They exported tons of food out of an area utterly dependent on a crop that just failed, enough food to have kept everyone fed, in an era where mistreating people was seen as moral because it improved their character. The Great Famine was one part greed, one part hosed up moralism, one part genocidal hatred, not some unforeseen tragedy. You're missing the point. I'm not arguing what led to The Great Famine, I'm arguing (and Torrannor had spelled it out) that you can't ask players if they want to do a crime against humanity (that will in the end be bad for the country as a whole) for a small profit. A Buttery Pastry posted:As for how to make that gameplay, I can see a few options. Firstly, a given regions dependence on certain foods is something the player could influence to preempt a sudden massive drop in available food, thus making any sort of plant disease much less threatening before it even hits. Then if it does hit, there is the the choice to clash with the institutional forces that would prefer a genocide to helping people, which wouldn't just be as simple as paying for food - because the impetus towards causing a famine is not just driven by money, but also a hosed up system of morality. Basically, the anti-imperialist choice. And there you present the issue as something that happened outside of the control of the British government and they just didn't play well enough to solve it quickly and effectively.
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Aug 22, 2022 10:42
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ilitarist posted:You're missing the point. I'm not arguing what led to The Great Famine, I'm arguing (and Torrannor had spelled it out) that you can't ask players if they want to do a crime against humanity (that will in the end be bad for the country as a whole) for a small profit. ilitarist posted:And there you present the issue as something that happened outside of the control of the British government and they just didn't play well enough to solve it quickly and effectively.
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Aug 22, 2022 10:52
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Torrannor posted:And from a player's perspective, would you deliberate cause a famine that impoverishes one of your core territories, and kills millions of your citizens, depriving you not only of money and potential soldiers, but also presumably massively strengthening the Irish independence faction... or would you act to prevent it, probably taking a small financial hit immediately but being much better set up for the future? I know which choice I would make. you are thinking about this like an EU4 event. vicky has many more knobs and gauges relevant to depicting the great famine accurately; that is, that it was fundamentally a political problem, not a matter of spending or not spending state finances. in previous irish famines the british government had swiftly banned food export - a major source of wealth for the british aristocrats that were landlords in ireland - for the duration of the crisis and this generally solved the problem rather quickly, as ireland was only ever susceptible to famine due to food exporting in the first place. the famine wouldn't happen to a player britain because the player hit a button that said "eh, gently caress em" - it would happen because your ruling faction refuses to allow you to ban food exports, whether because it's an aristocratic faction that benefits from them or because it's a laissez-faire faction that won't allow any import/export restrictions or direct aid, or even a coalition of the two as more or less was the case in real life. you don't need to give the player a choice between two buttons, "be history's greatest monster" or "i'd rather not" to simulate events like the many british colonial famines in vicky. it would be something that would happen organically because your political system cannot produce a rational response to the problem Jazerus fucked around with this message at 11:29 on Aug 22, 2022 |
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Aug 22, 2022 11:11
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Jazerus posted:you are thinking about this like an EU4 event. vicky has many more knobs and gauges relevant to depicting the great famine accurately; that is, that it was fundamentally a political problem, not a matter of spending or not spending state finances. in previous irish famines the british government had swiftly banned food export - a major source of wealth for the british aristocrats that were landlords in ireland - for the duration of the crisis and this generally solved the problem rather quickly, as ireland was only ever susceptible to famine due to food exporting in the first place. Ah, this makes sense. And yeah, I never played Vicky, so I'm most familiar with Crusader Kings/Europa Universalis type of events. That would be a strong incentive for a British player to reduce the power of the aristocrats and the liberals to prevent such an outcome then.
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Aug 22, 2022 11:14
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Yes, this would make sense. But the issue here is the game would probably not recognize this happening and a player might dismiss it all - the population has deteriorated in some provinces, the militancy has risen, but stuff like that happens all the time and it might require some effort to even understand the causes of the events. Of course I'm thinking about it with an established EU4 or Victoria 2 approach. I know V3 has those situations that might recognize a situation like this dynamically, but I'm not sure if it would apply to such cases.
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Aug 22, 2022 11:37
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Yeah, in terms of making management of a famine an actual interesting puzzle for the player, the interest group system really seems like it would add to it. You have the initial economic question of whether to take the (potentially very large) short term economic hit of ceasing food exports or reducing cash crop cultivation or using revenues to buy foreign grain etc. This is only really an interesting puzzle if the economy is set up to make it challenging to take a large, short term financial hit. Similar to the above, if you want to plan ahead against famines you would also have the economic choice of whether to make a hypothetical 'nice' colony that is food self sufficient but might create less revenues, especially in the early years ; or a very economically exploitative, historically accurate colony. This is only an interesting choice if you're competing heavily with other countries, where the short term larger economic gains from an exploitative colony might be needed to keep up with foreign competition. Adding the interest groups system would make either set of decisions more interesting because you then have to solve the additional problem, of how to get your choice past a bunch of racist victorian oligarchs and hereditary peers.
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Aug 22, 2022 11:45
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ilitarist posted:Yes, this would make sense. But the issue here is the game would probably not recognize this happening and a player might dismiss it all - the population has deteriorated in some provinces, the militancy has risen, but stuff like that happens all the time and it might require some effort to even understand the causes of the events. Why would that be a problem? It's not like the people causing the famine all got together one day and said "ok let's cause the Great Famine and irrevocably change Irish history forever" they were just going about their normal daily lives trying to make a buck. "Huh that's weird, all those useless Micks are dying and fleeing faster than usual, oh well time for tea" is a pretty accurate mindspace to put the players in, causing vast suffering and not even consciously realizing how/why sounds like about 75% of what your state should be doing in this game.
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Aug 22, 2022 14:22
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It's clearly not what a person who asked about the great famine imagined. I didn't mean it's bad in itself. But if you're asking why is it wrong then it's sort of a narrative problem in games like this: the game would throw events at you about some minor occurrences like, I don't know, a first tractor in Somewherelandia, or about a random minor strike at some factory, but then a huge famine that angers millions of people might be hidden behind the numbers and not acknowledged. It's a GSG equivalent of a Skyrim guard greeting the hero, leader of four guilds, and savior of the world, with praise for them helping a miller to kill some rats in the cellar.
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Aug 22, 2022 14:36
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Demiurge4 posted:CK3 introduced a cool mechanic with the Iberian Struggle. The game tracks every ruler in the designated area and assigns points to one outcome based on their actions. You could loosely base crisis around this in Vicky 3 by triggering a hidden crisis that eventually becomes active and visible once it hits a certain point, or it may never appear because conditions were there to prevent it in the first place. This is also how the Reformation happens in EU4. You can slow it down marginally by not making exploitative decisions but it's going to happen eventually because you can't stop everyone from making the wrong decision. The design doesn't really work for famines caused by colonial powers' gross negligence, because at the level that Victoria operates, there's only one actor making the decisions. But Paradox has tackled designs for "inevitable" events that aren't really inevitable before.
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Aug 22, 2022 14:38
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ilitarist posted:It's clearly not what a person who asked about the great famine imagined. I didn't mean it's bad in itself. Perhaps this could be telegraphed in building descriptions or something? "Production Mode: Intensive Monoculture +50% yield, greatly increased risk of crop failure". I think the game design might make famines impossible though. Or at least not nearly as bad as real life. There's no conservation of goods, they just appear ex nihilo when a pop buys them. And the price can only fluctuate within a certain range. So if pops can afford bread at 175% of base price, it can't get any worse.
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Aug 22, 2022 15:15
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IIRC its modeled by pops at very low standard of living having greatly increased mortality, and famines would massively drive up the price of food causing a commensurate decline in living standards. I'm not sure if the effect of food being effectively subsidized in the core while being shipped away from colonies is modeled but I havent actually seen the economy in action so idk if anyone who actually knows how it works can chime in.
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Aug 22, 2022 15:20
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I agree that making Interest Groups the main obstacle to "doing the right thing" would make for a really interesting challenge, as it will focus the player's action towards internal management - the primary focus of the game. Making political inertia the obstacle will give it the organic feeling they're going for, and allow it to transpose cleanly to other situations like the US Civil War.
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Aug 22, 2022 16:46
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Past screenshots have shown a "Corn Laws" journal entry before so there will be at least some content related to this kind of thing.
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Aug 22, 2022 16:55
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I thought they mentioned how they had a whole set of - if not mechanics then background calculations - that decided how the American slavery debate would work out, with civil war on one end and peaceful reform on the other (the latter being basically impossible of course). I assume some nerd could do something similar for dynamic famines based on interest group pressure, laws, monetary policy, employment, province development, and government and colonial structure. I also assume this would be very easy to do, no more than half a days work (less if they weren't so lazy of course), and will begin drafting insults to send to Paradox developers every hour on the hour until it's implemented. I am very smart and know a lot about game development.
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Aug 22, 2022 17:06
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Wouldn't it be modeled via a journal entry? https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/developer-diary/victoria-3-dev-diary-31-journal-entries.1508059/ It'd be a timed journal entry that causes the Famine if precautions aren't taken
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Aug 22, 2022 18:03
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One of the AARs on their discord had a volcano eruption/global crop failure event combo that severely tanked agricultural production across the board. It was clarified by a dev that it was semi-random when it would happen. You could easily have semi-random crop blights. I don't know how much internal trade is simulated, so you might not be able to simulate exporting food from Ireland specifically to the rest of the British Empire, but you could just have a decision about who to offer relief to, and the options are about helping just your accepted pops or also helping your "unaccepted" pops, with the decision to help your discriminated minority pops seriously pissing off certain interest groups. I think that's the way they represent political resistance to an idea- they don't seem to usually directly limit what a player can do, but if you go against the interests of a particular interest group they get less happy, and if they're a powerful faction that can have all sorts of other consequences. Eiba fucked around with this message at 18:10 on Aug 22, 2022 |
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Aug 22, 2022 18:06
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DaysBefore posted:I thought they mentioned how they had a whole set of - if not mechanics then background calculations - that decided how the American slavery debate would work out, with civil war on one end and peaceful reform on the other (the latter being basically impossible of course). I assume some nerd could do something similar for dynamic famines based on interest group pressure, laws, monetary policy, employment, province development, and government and colonial structure. Eiba posted:One of the AARs on their discord had a volcano eruption/global crop failure event combo that severely tanked agricultural production across the board. It was clarified by a dev that it was semi-random when it would happen.
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Aug 22, 2022 18:16
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A Buttery Pastry posted:
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Aug 22, 2022 18:40
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DaysBefore posted:I also assume this would be very easy to do, no more than half a days work (less if they weren't so lazy of course), and will begin drafting insults to send to Paradox developers every hour on the hour until it's implemented. I am very smart and know a lot about game development.
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Aug 22, 2022 18:54
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I hope there's a little warning icon at the top of the screen when one of your pops is in significant population decline.
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Aug 22, 2022 19:57
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A Buttery Pastry posted:Yellowstone better be able to blow up in Victoria.
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Aug 22, 2022 20:21
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https://twitter.com/PDXVictoria/status/1562077202719641601?t=nut4JUFVuAC0zii2USLjvA&s=19
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Aug 23, 2022 16:05
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Release date for a release date, gently caress off with that poo poo
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Aug 23, 2022 16:13
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Gaius Marius posted:Release date for a release date, gently caress off with that poo poo
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Aug 23, 2022 16:15
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yeti friend posted:
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Aug 23, 2022 16:39
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With how PDX likes to release stuff I am assuming early November so they can get a patch or two out before the holidays.
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Aug 23, 2022 16:40
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Gaius Marius posted:Release date for a release date, gently caress off with that poo poo posts like this just make wiz more powerful
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Aug 23, 2022 17:03
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Gaius Marius posted:Release date for a release date, gently caress off with that poo poo What if the release date is that day? Like when a Nintendo Direct goes "Available Today!"
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Aug 23, 2022 17:06
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Gaius Marius posted:Release date for a release date, gently caress off with that poo poo And there was a teaser about this teaser of a release date for a release date. MonsieurChoc posted:What if the release date is that day? Like when a Nintendo Direct goes "Available Today!" Would be cool if Nintendo Direct went "Victoria 3 available today".
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Aug 23, 2022 17:17
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ilitarist posted:Would be cool if Nintendo Direct went "Victoria 3 available today". *Monkey's paw curls* Only for WiiU.
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Aug 23, 2022 17:25
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Prediction: Holiday 2023 
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Aug 23, 2022 17:36
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Gaius Marius posted:Release date for a release date, gently caress off with that poo poo Actually, it's a release date for the release date of the pre-release date event in which we will give hints about the release date of the release date.
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Aug 23, 2022 18:06
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Wiz posted:Actually, it's a release date for the release date of the pre-release date event in which we will give hints about the release date of the release date. Archduke Frantz Fanon posted:posts like this just make wiz more powerful poo poo you were right
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Aug 23, 2022 18:08
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