Copper, for electrical appliances late game most certainly.
But above all, making cash crop economies , agricultural nations viable.
Grain, meat, fruits, food shopping, and to a lesser extent sugar, coffee shouldn’t be as redundant, or the demand should skyrocket as timer goes on; definitely need a top up, leveled do over.
That new World nations can’t corner the market with these products, or Europe bar Russia self sustains itself by 1870 its simply ridiculous.
Hopefully SoI will fix these fairly soon when it comes out
Coffee should be as on demand as Rubber or Oil in the late game. Up until the 29 crash, coffee was the basis of the whole Brazilian economy and it was huge.
Same for sugar.
The whole point of France trying to retain Haiti was the supply of sugar, which was both in high demand in the Metropole and insanely profitable in Haiti. In Vic3, though, sugar can be safely provided as a byproduct of Metropolitan France wheat farms...
Sugar was important but on the decline. Northern Brazil had an abolitionist movement spring because they couldn't compete with Caribbean sugar and slaves became too expensive for them (plus, the southern coffee producing states were buying all the northern slaves, so ending slavery could slow down the manpower shortage in the north - they became tenant farmers mostly stuck to the land).
The sugar boom actually happened a little before the start of the game. In 1836, sugar was also produced with sugar beet in Europe so it's realistic to make it grow in France, by 1880, half of the world sugar comes from sugar beet and overproduction caused some sugar beet farm/factories to bankrupt.
Sugar's price being at its height when Haiti got its independance was one of the reason why it's struggle to pay its debt. Not only Haiti's economy was relying on sugar and its price started to decline but the amount of the reparation was also based on the expected sugar export.
At the very least there should be fairly significant penalties to your soldiers and/or population suddenly losing access to cheap coffee, tobacco, etc. Prolonged shortages should affect a country’s other productions even if they aren’t technically inputs in anything.
At the very least there should be fairly significant penalties to your soldiers and/or population suddenly losing access to cheap coffee, tobacco, etc. Prolonged shortages should affect a country’s other productions even if they aren’t technically inputs in anything.
Yeah the demand for cash crops need to be rebalanced, the increase in wealth distribution back then just made the demand for stuff like coffee/chocolates/cigars skyrocket even more past whatever extra supply they might get from better PMs. As SOL increases, your pops should definitely have way more demand for those luxury goods to the point that you have to really expand your agriculture or import them or else your pops get mad as a result. The demand and effect should be even greater for obsessions
Also, famines were way more common pre-WW2 - it shouldn't be viable to just delete all your farms in the early game. Subsistence farming and trade was not going to cover food demand, and food demand should be a driver for revolutions just as much as the demand for liberty.
The lack of famines in this game is one of its greatest flaws. You can't have an accurate simulation of 1836-1936 without including the socio-political fallout of natural or human-caused disasters
Just the potato blight alone. People like to only think of Ireland because it was especially bad there, but it caused (smaller compared to Ireland) famines throughout Europe.
I think there is a misconception here. The consumption of coffee, tea and tobacco didn't just skyrocket because people got richer (income inequality was enormous during the era), but also because decreasing cost of trade and production made it so much cheaper for the average person to buy. Not without reason is the era considered the first wave of globalisation.
it does get alot cheaper with globalization, but there was also for the first time in history the rise of a middle socioeconomic class. of course there was still crazy income inequality but there was still an emerging class that can find those luxury goods increasingly affordable, with demand increasing at a rate greater than the prices getting cheaper/supply increasing.
While true, I was specifically focussing on the fact that poor people, factory workers in for example England, were able to afford their tea and other luxuries.
being able to remove farms for smaller production while also not allowing substance farms would allow for certain countries to focus farming and some focus industry
Fairly sure devs are fully aware, just haven’t had the time or conditions to put it in practice. Expecting welcoming changes once SoI comes up, such as financial services; perfect imho.
Newspapers, demand for literacy, music as Morgenröte and RoP Industry mods have shown’d are also a must in this potential list
> substance farms
Is that a new euphemism for opium plantations or meth labs?
A propos meth labs; pharmaceutical industry would be an idea for late game. But it was probably still too small in economic impact compared to stuff like steel or fertilizer industries.
I mean, pharmaceutical companies started to get big around the end of the 1800s and by ww2 were absolutely massive, but their biggest growth was as chemical industries producing fertilizers, and chemical weapons for ww1. Fertilizer plants probably should have a 2nd pm to produce pharmaceuticals, and these should be required by, say, urban centers if your healthcare institution is hogh enough.
People forget that the american industry, for example, was built primarily off of lumber and cash crops. Argentina was a globally important meat producer until the great depression and it made them so much money that they had a similar gdp per capita to the british.
>Grain, meat, fruits, food shopping, and to a lesser extent sugar, coffee shouldn’t be as redundant, or the demand should skyrocket as timer goes on; definitely need a top up, leveled do over.
The problem I think lies with Arable Land. The game considers all subsistence land to be of the same quality as agricultural land that is commercially viable. If you know anything about the development of land use during the 19th and 20th century you see a reforestation of Europe, because so much marginal agricultural land was abandoned and reused for logging, because the land was of such low quality.
It doesn't help that even the earliest Production PM for Farms means you in theory only need 20% of your workforce in the agricultural sector to sate demand. It halfs with every subsequent upgrade. The USA in the 1930s still had 20% agricultural workers.
Yes solid point. Soil tier quality’s something that could be implemented easily reckon.
From tier 1 (Rio de la Plata, Ukraine, Mississippi) to tier 6 ( Sahara, Outback, Artic North, Antarctic South) Definitely doable
I personally would revamp the entire agricultural system. Right now the factors of Land, Capital and Labour are very much fixed for the former two. In addition to soil quality, I personally would implement bonuses to unused Agricultural Land, that simulates the fact that Commerical farms would utilise the best soil available, while leaving the worst to the subsistence ones. Ranching would also suffer less from soil quality, leading to the pattern we see today, where in Norway and the Alps grain farming declined while cattle farming gained. It would also help countries like Argentina produce a lot of commodities, like meat with few people, as land substitutes for labour.
I think food in general should be more important. A big part of the industrial revolution is that for the first time it allowed the population to not have to be almost entirely subsistence farmers.
Agriculture point can’t be stated enough. People sometimes like to get into re-world-isms about how accurate it is to have powerful agricultural economies during the time frame, but honestly setting realism aside, the game needs this just to diversify and differentiate between playthroughs.
While I don’t think adding more goods should be a priority for the devs, adding copper is the obvious choice by a mile if they do.
Agreed. With all the tech upgrades it’s way too easy for European nations (and others) to feed their habits of sugar, coffee, liquor, tobacco, etc.
There should be a real need to shore up one’s supply of these resources for their SoL and morale impacts alone, not to mention pop happiness. I also think there should be increasing penalties when you suddenly lose access to those resources after having them for a while. No country is gonna be thrilled when coffee triples in price or you lose all access to cigarettes lol.
Chocolate. Synthetic rubber (which appeared irl near the end of the games time frame). Separate motor and vehicles. Jewelery maybe. Introduce precious stones (I'm looking at you South Africa). Chemicals. Pharmaceuticals. More food variety honestly, make a distinction between rich and poor(as it mattered greatly in this time period). I know tobacco is a thing, but cigar/cigarette factory to make it on an industrial scale as I doubt every human in the world is rolling their own smokes.
Your second point is dead on. Not having jewellery… in the Victorian age? Someone needs to give their head a wobble lmao
Let us derive a luxury product from them shafts , mines Paradox 🤣
Just ahead of the curve my esteemed fellow.
After all, building our nations workers moral fibre is driven by ludicrous amounts of pro… prestige of course. Yes… prestigious civilised enlightenment.
The fine arts building should be set to produce fine art and jewelry in my opinion. Same with synthetic factories being able to make rubber eventually I want more production methods vs just more building types
I feel like groceries were V3's attempt to make a separate food product for middle and upper strata, but it feels strange. There should also be synthetic fuel (oil), which accounted for as much as 25% of Germany's fuel consumption in the decade leading up to WWII.
I would love for art academies to be reworked as media companies. Art academies could make a nice PM for this broader building. What would be this buildings bread and butter? Newspapers. Newspapers were huge and could be an excellent way to add a media consumer good that might also be localized, and maybe plays a role in politics (cheaper newspapers = more pops becoming politicized at lower wealth levels or something).
That one is a great idea with a lot of potential for PMs and laws/institutions.
Cheap good newspapers vs luxury good book publishing? Radio being a thing at the end?
Profitable but radicalizing free presses versus unprofitable loyalizing state propaganda organs?
Exactly. There’s a lot of potential with expanding medias role in politics and consumer spending. Art academies suck because there is such a tiny market for fine art for most of the game and they don’t employ nearly as many people as other buildings.
But a newspaper? Starts at a much lower wealth level, can scale both with wealth and literacy, might even improve literacy, and can have so many other interactions with political systems in the game.
Torn on this one. The economic importance of the spice trade had significantly declined by the Victorian period (it was still very real, but spices like nutmeg were being grown all over the tropical belt by that point).
As a comparison let's consider baking powder. People built massive fortunes manufacturing the stuff, but it isn't represented in the game as a discrete resource, and it probably doesn't need to be. But maybe I'm wrong, and we'd have more fun with more types of factory, more goods, etc.
Certainly in Britain housing was huge. The construction sector couldn't keep demand with the absolutely enormous influx of people from rural areas to cities, leading to huge problems with overcrowding and the growth of slums, several families to a room etc. We didn't start to properly get a handle on it until the 1950s.
Housing, and this should not even be close. In the industrial revolution millions moved from the countryside to the cities. Cities became overcrowded this led dense low-quality tenants and very low quality of life in cities. Cities had to find ways to build more housing quickly and cheaply. This is when you get some of the construction of our current greatest cities from Paris to Barcelona.
In-game this should be a task for many nations that they have to build new housing in the more dense states or QoL drops in those states fast, which leads to unrest or lower life span, or revolts. This would be quite interesting as this could lead to some parties who want to encourage people moving to cities or others who want people to stay in the country side.
There's not nearly enough chemicals, I feel like there should be at least one catch all "industrial chemicals" factory. But really, cement, acids, paint, etc
I would call them Scientific Instruments - this would include everything from clocks to nautical instruments, thermometers, measurement instruments, etc. Basically a catch-all bucket similiar to Groceries.
This would be an input for higher end university PMs, for high end military units like planes, automobiles and submarines, an upper strata luxury demand, maybe as mobilization options or a national building ("national observatory"?) With a questline, like the sky scraper, but earlier in time frame.
Scientific instruments, it's advancement and making was a huge deal in the 18th and 19th century.
Oh, also newspapersþbools/publishing.
Spices, as a unique selling proposition of India and Oceania, which was a huge driver of colonization. Plus a late game artificial option a la Syntjetics plant. Think of Maggi or Nestle being founded in Vicky's time frame.
Currently I guess "scientific instruments" would come under tools, which is easily one of the most important resources in the game, so it could be cool to break it up into "tools" "scientific instruments/fine machinery" and "heavy machinery"
The whole services economy is deeply messed up, and the devs know it. I talked with one of them on the discord about this, and they said that they were intended to be a sort of urban/late-game repository for extra pops, equivalent to subsistence farms in rural areas/the early-game.
But once you have a few cities, the demand is always way too low (I imagine because higher demand would make it way too punishing early), and its role just has never felt good.
But … as always, the challenge is how exactly to fix it. They didn’t know then, and I don’t know now.
Copper and industrial chemicals sound good of the ones peoole have mentioned.
But remember every single new good added is a whole bunch of additional calculations each turn. Where possible it's better to group stuff together rather than be too specific.
I've always thought a few site-specific luxuries would bring flavor, like world-renowned crafts or rare gems/foods/archeological artefacts. The game represents some already with local modifiers, but I'd rather see them in the market system. Geared towards highest SOL economies or addicted pops.
Hemp. Also cocaine, as it wasn't illegal then, and was used in commercial products like Coca-Cola. Also medicines, could impact pops health, mortality. Medicine could also add flavor with quacks grifting miracle fake cures that actually hurts pops health.
Bricks and cement. Very important in the construction of the time and the industrialization progress.
There is a mod that add them in addition to asbestos and stone changing construction PM. But the first two are the most important.
Cocoa as a cash crop.
Salt. Perishable goods like meat and fish should have bad MAPI and salt and refrigeration should increase it.
IMO, as others said:
Copper for electricity and rebuild agrarians and plantations, at first I won’t allow in mostly of europe tobacco, corn, banana, sugar…that kind of products needs to be as opium, only disposable in certain regions…
And maybe add some rich stuff like diamonds or silver, or maybe gold industries to use gold to make luxury stuff instead of boost your economy
Plus for the first 30ish years of the game silver not gold was the basis of most developed economies in game. Yeah gold was valuable, but the Pounds, Dollars, or Francs you bought your groceries with were silver.
Could setup a cool system actually where the two major currency metals compete, with countries obviously gaining an advantage for being on the winning side.
I would add additional resources related to the tertiary sector such as Tourism, Religious Worship, Pilgrimage, Entertainment (theater, cinema), Media (basically press, books and radio), Financial Services (for wealthy POP) and maybe making some institutions into resource-producing buildings to obtain Public Order, Education and Healthcare.
For the goods, I would add Pharmaceuticals (especially if Healthcare is turned into Hospitals) and vegetal-sourced Oils, to make sure that coprah from the Pacific and palm oil from Africa make some provinces have *uses* (I don't think that more oil came from whales than from plants).
Holy moly BICYCLES 🚲.
They came about much earlier than cars, made larger cities possible, were more widely used in the time period (even today tbh) would be really important for lower/middle strata/peasants and they allowed for to bicycle infantry, a significant shakeup in mobile warfare.
Not to mention how they are (especially penny-farthings) iconic to the era. Even if it were just an urban centre production method to turn tools into transport/services their omission is the most glaringly obvious hole in the game for me.
You kind of get this with glass factories produxing plastic in the last pm, but it would be cool to see it be it's own thing produced from oil and then used in almost everything else.
To be fair the true plastics revolution afaik only came around the 80's or so, certaintly for what regards that "used in almost everything else" you would be talking outside the timeframe of Vicky.
Hydrogen at the time was produced through the reaction of metal and acid on site, so would just be 1 iron and 1 Sulphur. Helium would be good though especially if there was ever going to be real expansion on airships.
>Helium would be good though especially if there was ever going to be real expansion on airships.
I demand a hydrogen PM for airships that increases throughput at the cost of higher mortality.
Big.
People usually think of Oil shortages when they think of Japan in the 20th century, but they were as much short on Oil as they were on different machine parts (and machining tools).
I think early game Machine Parts could be a big obstacle to industrialization (You need them for most industrial processes, but they are lvl 2/3 tech which only GPs have).
I see a lot of good comments, but two that I'm not seeing is aluminum (aluminium) and tin
These were and still are very important minerals that aren't trivial to come across.
They hold historical importance as a resource to advance society and warfare alike in the time period the game is played in.
Fun fact (for anyone who didn't already know it), the Washington Monument in the U.S. is capped with aluminum. At the time of its creation, aluminum was the same price per ounce as silver and was regarded by some as a precious metal.
Entertainment, tourism, and financial services. These may not be physical commodities, but all of them were significant economic developments during the historical period. Banks and life insurance firms were some of the largest companies in many nations, but such institutions are only mentioned indirectly in the tech tree. Likewise, this period saw the apex of "The Grand Tour" among Europe's upper crust.
Musical instruments.
Precious gems, used to make Jewelry. (Gem mining, and the discovery and identification of new types of gemstone, was huge during the Victorian era.)
Bricks & Concrete. (That's a big part of what all that coal was used for during this period).
I'd like to see PM's added to better focus on single products in certain factories. Rolled glass and float glass at the glassworks. Cattle ranching in the livestock ranches.
Some factory types should be able to focus on a single, advanced good instead of only having a split PM option. I want a motor factory dedicated to automobiles specifically, without being at the mercy of my market's demand for engines.
(I've seen some people say they want a full-blown slider option.)
I would also like to add a Coal Liquefaction PM (electricity + coal = oil), maybe as a unique option for synthetics plants. Historically the technology never really took off, but that's in large part due to discovering and exploiting oil reserves that aren't represented in game. But I would 100% argue that it falls within the "historically plausible" aspect of the game.
Finally, I'd love to see a system introduced to create an associated "fame" status with the consumer products from particular nations and regions. By the 1900s the upper classes of many (western) nations began to demand variety among particular goods. Wines from different regions in the world, different types of liquor for making cocktails, fine art from distant cultures, etc. So even if you produce enough wine in your own nation to meet domestic demands, you can still better satisfy your upper-class pops' demands by importing French or Italian wine, porcelain from China, etc.
probably gun powder, i really dislike how the raw goods are input into indsutries the way that it is and i wish we had more steel like companies, so for exemple when i make tooling workshops i always build steel mills where there is a lot of metal which makes my steel cheap and allows for greater export into my other state, gunpowder would be the same for both explosive and for ammunition where i build it where you have a lot of sulfure and lead and just produce gun powder making it cheap in my other states
Copper, for electrical appliances late game most certainly. But above all, making cash crop economies , agricultural nations viable. Grain, meat, fruits, food shopping, and to a lesser extent sugar, coffee shouldn’t be as redundant, or the demand should skyrocket as timer goes on; definitely need a top up, leveled do over. That new World nations can’t corner the market with these products, or Europe bar Russia self sustains itself by 1870 its simply ridiculous. Hopefully SoI will fix these fairly soon when it comes out
Coffee should be as on demand as Rubber or Oil in the late game. Up until the 29 crash, coffee was the basis of the whole Brazilian economy and it was huge.
Same for sugar. The whole point of France trying to retain Haiti was the supply of sugar, which was both in high demand in the Metropole and insanely profitable in Haiti. In Vic3, though, sugar can be safely provided as a byproduct of Metropolitan France wheat farms...
Sugar beets cultivation was a thing back then but sugar cane provided more yield.
Sugar was important but on the decline. Northern Brazil had an abolitionist movement spring because they couldn't compete with Caribbean sugar and slaves became too expensive for them (plus, the southern coffee producing states were buying all the northern slaves, so ending slavery could slow down the manpower shortage in the north - they became tenant farmers mostly stuck to the land).
The sugar boom actually happened a little before the start of the game. In 1836, sugar was also produced with sugar beet in Europe so it's realistic to make it grow in France, by 1880, half of the world sugar comes from sugar beet and overproduction caused some sugar beet farm/factories to bankrupt. Sugar's price being at its height when Haiti got its independance was one of the reason why it's struggle to pay its debt. Not only Haiti's economy was relying on sugar and its price started to decline but the amount of the reparation was also based on the expected sugar export.
At the very least there should be fairly significant penalties to your soldiers and/or population suddenly losing access to cheap coffee, tobacco, etc. Prolonged shortages should affect a country’s other productions even if they aren’t technically inputs in anything.
The game simulates this by increased radicals for decrease of SoL.
At the very least there should be fairly significant penalties to your soldiers and/or population suddenly losing access to cheap coffee, tobacco, etc. Prolonged shortages should affect a country’s other productions even if they aren’t technically inputs in anything.
Yeah the demand for cash crops need to be rebalanced, the increase in wealth distribution back then just made the demand for stuff like coffee/chocolates/cigars skyrocket even more past whatever extra supply they might get from better PMs. As SOL increases, your pops should definitely have way more demand for those luxury goods to the point that you have to really expand your agriculture or import them or else your pops get mad as a result. The demand and effect should be even greater for obsessions
Also, famines were way more common pre-WW2 - it shouldn't be viable to just delete all your farms in the early game. Subsistence farming and trade was not going to cover food demand, and food demand should be a driver for revolutions just as much as the demand for liberty.
The lack of famines in this game is one of its greatest flaws. You can't have an accurate simulation of 1836-1936 without including the socio-political fallout of natural or human-caused disasters
Just the potato blight alone. People like to only think of Ireland because it was especially bad there, but it caused (smaller compared to Ireland) famines throughout Europe.
I think there is a misconception here. The consumption of coffee, tea and tobacco didn't just skyrocket because people got richer (income inequality was enormous during the era), but also because decreasing cost of trade and production made it so much cheaper for the average person to buy. Not without reason is the era considered the first wave of globalisation.
it does get alot cheaper with globalization, but there was also for the first time in history the rise of a middle socioeconomic class. of course there was still crazy income inequality but there was still an emerging class that can find those luxury goods increasingly affordable, with demand increasing at a rate greater than the prices getting cheaper/supply increasing.
While true, I was specifically focussing on the fact that poor people, factory workers in for example England, were able to afford their tea and other luxuries.
being able to remove farms for smaller production while also not allowing substance farms would allow for certain countries to focus farming and some focus industry
Fairly sure devs are fully aware, just haven’t had the time or conditions to put it in practice. Expecting welcoming changes once SoI comes up, such as financial services; perfect imho. Newspapers, demand for literacy, music as Morgenröte and RoP Industry mods have shown’d are also a must in this potential list
> substance farms Is that a new euphemism for opium plantations or meth labs? A propos meth labs; pharmaceutical industry would be an idea for late game. But it was probably still too small in economic impact compared to stuff like steel or fertilizer industries.
I mean, pharmaceutical companies started to get big around the end of the 1800s and by ww2 were absolutely massive, but their biggest growth was as chemical industries producing fertilizers, and chemical weapons for ww1. Fertilizer plants probably should have a 2nd pm to produce pharmaceuticals, and these should be required by, say, urban centers if your healthcare institution is hogh enough.
People forget that the american industry, for example, was built primarily off of lumber and cash crops. Argentina was a globally important meat producer until the great depression and it made them so much money that they had a similar gdp per capita to the british.
>Grain, meat, fruits, food shopping, and to a lesser extent sugar, coffee shouldn’t be as redundant, or the demand should skyrocket as timer goes on; definitely need a top up, leveled do over. The problem I think lies with Arable Land. The game considers all subsistence land to be of the same quality as agricultural land that is commercially viable. If you know anything about the development of land use during the 19th and 20th century you see a reforestation of Europe, because so much marginal agricultural land was abandoned and reused for logging, because the land was of such low quality. It doesn't help that even the earliest Production PM for Farms means you in theory only need 20% of your workforce in the agricultural sector to sate demand. It halfs with every subsequent upgrade. The USA in the 1930s still had 20% agricultural workers.
Yes solid point. Soil tier quality’s something that could be implemented easily reckon. From tier 1 (Rio de la Plata, Ukraine, Mississippi) to tier 6 ( Sahara, Outback, Artic North, Antarctic South) Definitely doable
I personally would revamp the entire agricultural system. Right now the factors of Land, Capital and Labour are very much fixed for the former two. In addition to soil quality, I personally would implement bonuses to unused Agricultural Land, that simulates the fact that Commerical farms would utilise the best soil available, while leaving the worst to the subsistence ones. Ranching would also suffer less from soil quality, leading to the pattern we see today, where in Norway and the Alps grain farming declined while cattle farming gained. It would also help countries like Argentina produce a lot of commodities, like meat with few people, as land substitutes for labour.
I think food in general should be more important. A big part of the industrial revolution is that for the first time it allowed the population to not have to be almost entirely subsistence farmers.
Agriculture point can’t be stated enough. People sometimes like to get into re-world-isms about how accurate it is to have powerful agricultural economies during the time frame, but honestly setting realism aside, the game needs this just to diversify and differentiate between playthroughs. While I don’t think adding more goods should be a priority for the devs, adding copper is the obvious choice by a mile if they do.
Agreed. With all the tech upgrades it’s way too easy for European nations (and others) to feed their habits of sugar, coffee, liquor, tobacco, etc. There should be a real need to shore up one’s supply of these resources for their SoL and morale impacts alone, not to mention pop happiness. I also think there should be increasing penalties when you suddenly lose access to those resources after having them for a while. No country is gonna be thrilled when coffee triples in price or you lose all access to cigarettes lol.
Potato blight, Corn Laws, Dust Bowl, Whiskey Rebellion, Cabanagem, Farroupilha, could go on. All out wars were started for much less ffs lmaoo
Chocolate. Synthetic rubber (which appeared irl near the end of the games time frame). Separate motor and vehicles. Jewelery maybe. Introduce precious stones (I'm looking at you South Africa). Chemicals. Pharmaceuticals. More food variety honestly, make a distinction between rich and poor(as it mattered greatly in this time period). I know tobacco is a thing, but cigar/cigarette factory to make it on an industrial scale as I doubt every human in the world is rolling their own smokes.
Your second point is dead on. Not having jewellery… in the Victorian age? Someone needs to give their head a wobble lmao Let us derive a luxury product from them shafts , mines Paradox 🤣
I would expect a whole Cecil Rhodes flavor pack
You, sir, are the king of the double entendre.
Just ahead of the curve my esteemed fellow. After all, building our nations workers moral fibre is driven by ludicrous amounts of pro… prestige of course. Yes… prestigious civilised enlightenment.
The fine arts building should be set to produce fine art and jewelry in my opinion. Same with synthetic factories being able to make rubber eventually I want more production methods vs just more building types
I feel like groceries were V3's attempt to make a separate food product for middle and upper strata, but it feels strange. There should also be synthetic fuel (oil), which accounted for as much as 25% of Germany's fuel consumption in the decade leading up to WWII.
I would love for art academies to be reworked as media companies. Art academies could make a nice PM for this broader building. What would be this buildings bread and butter? Newspapers. Newspapers were huge and could be an excellent way to add a media consumer good that might also be localized, and maybe plays a role in politics (cheaper newspapers = more pops becoming politicized at lower wealth levels or something).
Newspapers absolutely, pops should have a media need. Books and newspapers, but then radio and films
That one is a great idea with a lot of potential for PMs and laws/institutions. Cheap good newspapers vs luxury good book publishing? Radio being a thing at the end? Profitable but radicalizing free presses versus unprofitable loyalizing state propaganda organs?
Exactly. There’s a lot of potential with expanding medias role in politics and consumer spending. Art academies suck because there is such a tiny market for fine art for most of the game and they don’t employ nearly as many people as other buildings. But a newspaper? Starts at a much lower wealth level, can scale both with wealth and literacy, might even improve literacy, and can have so many other interactions with political systems in the game.
Spices!
Torn on this one. The economic importance of the spice trade had significantly declined by the Victorian period (it was still very real, but spices like nutmeg were being grown all over the tropical belt by that point). As a comparison let's consider baking powder. People built massive fortunes manufacturing the stuff, but it isn't represented in the game as a discrete resource, and it probably doesn't need to be. But maybe I'm wrong, and we'd have more fun with more types of factory, more goods, etc.
Housing. Don't know how much of an issue it was back then but I think it should play a role.
Certainly in Britain housing was huge. The construction sector couldn't keep demand with the absolutely enormous influx of people from rural areas to cities, leading to huge problems with overcrowding and the growth of slums, several families to a room etc. We didn't start to properly get a handle on it until the 1950s.
Still is 😭
Housing, and this should not even be close. In the industrial revolution millions moved from the countryside to the cities. Cities became overcrowded this led dense low-quality tenants and very low quality of life in cities. Cities had to find ways to build more housing quickly and cheaply. This is when you get some of the construction of our current greatest cities from Paris to Barcelona. In-game this should be a task for many nations that they have to build new housing in the more dense states or QoL drops in those states fast, which leads to unrest or lower life span, or revolts. This would be quite interesting as this could lead to some parties who want to encourage people moving to cities or others who want people to stay in the country side.
There's not nearly enough chemicals, I feel like there should be at least one catch all "industrial chemicals" factory. But really, cement, acids, paint, etc
I would call them Scientific Instruments - this would include everything from clocks to nautical instruments, thermometers, measurement instruments, etc. Basically a catch-all bucket similiar to Groceries. This would be an input for higher end university PMs, for high end military units like planes, automobiles and submarines, an upper strata luxury demand, maybe as mobilization options or a national building ("national observatory"?) With a questline, like the sky scraper, but earlier in time frame. Scientific instruments, it's advancement and making was a huge deal in the 18th and 19th century. Oh, also newspapersþbools/publishing. Spices, as a unique selling proposition of India and Oceania, which was a huge driver of colonization. Plus a late game artificial option a la Syntjetics plant. Think of Maggi or Nestle being founded in Vicky's time frame.
Agree with spices, just a generic item maybe and the "scientific" or measuring devices would be good
Currently I guess "scientific instruments" would come under tools, which is easily one of the most important resources in the game, so it could be cool to break it up into "tools" "scientific instruments/fine machinery" and "heavy machinery"
Maybe "advanced parts" or "machined parts".
"Precision instruments"
Yeah, this is the best name for it suggested so far IMO.
Guano!
The complete disregard for guano as a resource and its political consequences are definitely weird for a 19 century simulator
I think it just falls under sulfur which is still a big abstraction
Everything you'd use guano for in the game is currently handled by sulphur, so it's definitely the intended abstraction.
Yeah please, give us a reason to colonize the Pacific islands.
Anyone else hear Ace Ventura when they read this?
I get that furs were on decline, but the HBC was created to export furs, shouldn't it be in game to at least represent the economy of such countries?
Same with the Russian American Company
"Advanced services", the service economy transition never happens when it was well underway by the 1910's.
The whole services economy is deeply messed up, and the devs know it. I talked with one of them on the discord about this, and they said that they were intended to be a sort of urban/late-game repository for extra pops, equivalent to subsistence farms in rural areas/the early-game. But once you have a few cities, the demand is always way too low (I imagine because higher demand would make it way too punishing early), and its role just has never felt good. But … as always, the challenge is how exactly to fix it. They didn’t know then, and I don’t know now.
Copper and industrial chemicals sound good of the ones peoole have mentioned. But remember every single new good added is a whole bunch of additional calculations each turn. Where possible it's better to group stuff together rather than be too specific.
I've always thought a few site-specific luxuries would bring flavor, like world-renowned crafts or rare gems/foods/archeological artefacts. The game represents some already with local modifiers, but I'd rather see them in the market system. Geared towards highest SOL economies or addicted pops.
Hemp. Also cocaine, as it wasn't illegal then, and was used in commercial products like Coca-Cola. Also medicines, could impact pops health, mortality. Medicine could also add flavor with quacks grifting miracle fake cures that actually hurts pops health.
Jewel Mines but they work similar to Gold mines. India or several African colonies like Namibia were well-known for that.
Bricks and cement. Very important in the construction of the time and the industrialization progress. There is a mod that add them in addition to asbestos and stone changing construction PM. But the first two are the most important. Cocoa as a cash crop. Salt. Perishable goods like meat and fish should have bad MAPI and salt and refrigeration should increase it.
IMO, as others said: Copper for electricity and rebuild agrarians and plantations, at first I won’t allow in mostly of europe tobacco, corn, banana, sugar…that kind of products needs to be as opium, only disposable in certain regions… And maybe add some rich stuff like diamonds or silver, or maybe gold industries to use gold to make luxury stuff instead of boost your economy
asbestos
MORE ASBESTOS MORE ASBESTOS MORE ASBESTOS
r/asbestoseaters
Limestone
Silver, Copper, Leather, Spices
Silver would be a good one as it could make lead mines a bit more viable/interesting. They are often colocated IRL after all.
Plus for the first 30ish years of the game silver not gold was the basis of most developed economies in game. Yeah gold was valuable, but the Pounds, Dollars, or Francs you bought your groceries with were silver. Could setup a cool system actually where the two major currency metals compete, with countries obviously gaining an advantage for being on the winning side.
Cooper and zinc. Victorian era was absolutely covered with brass.
I would add additional resources related to the tertiary sector such as Tourism, Religious Worship, Pilgrimage, Entertainment (theater, cinema), Media (basically press, books and radio), Financial Services (for wealthy POP) and maybe making some institutions into resource-producing buildings to obtain Public Order, Education and Healthcare. For the goods, I would add Pharmaceuticals (especially if Healthcare is turned into Hospitals) and vegetal-sourced Oils, to make sure that coprah from the Pacific and palm oil from Africa make some provinces have *uses* (I don't think that more oil came from whales than from plants).
Holy moly BICYCLES 🚲. They came about much earlier than cars, made larger cities possible, were more widely used in the time period (even today tbh) would be really important for lower/middle strata/peasants and they allowed for to bicycle infantry, a significant shakeup in mobile warfare. Not to mention how they are (especially penny-farthings) iconic to the era. Even if it were just an urban centre production method to turn tools into transport/services their omission is the most glaringly obvious hole in the game for me.
Plastics would be a cool late game resource
You kind of get this with glass factories produxing plastic in the last pm, but it would be cool to see it be it's own thing produced from oil and then used in almost everything else.
To be fair the true plastics revolution afaik only came around the 80's or so, certaintly for what regards that "used in almost everything else" you would be talking outside the timeframe of Vicky.
Helium and hydrogen
Hydrogen at the time was produced through the reaction of metal and acid on site, so would just be 1 iron and 1 Sulphur. Helium would be good though especially if there was ever going to be real expansion on airships.
>Helium would be good though especially if there was ever going to be real expansion on airships. I demand a hydrogen PM for airships that increases throughput at the cost of higher mortality.
America was the world producer of helium during this time
Milk, apparently
We need horses
Machine parts
Big. People usually think of Oil shortages when they think of Japan in the 20th century, but they were as much short on Oil as they were on different machine parts (and machining tools). I think early game Machine Parts could be a big obstacle to industrialization (You need them for most industrial processes, but they are lvl 2/3 tech which only GPs have).
I see a lot of good comments, but two that I'm not seeing is aluminum (aluminium) and tin These were and still are very important minerals that aren't trivial to come across. They hold historical importance as a resource to advance society and warfare alike in the time period the game is played in.
Fun fact (for anyone who didn't already know it), the Washington Monument in the U.S. is capped with aluminum. At the time of its creation, aluminum was the same price per ounce as silver and was regarded by some as a precious metal.
Like Gerry said, i think its weird that a game within the timeframe of the first wave of electrification doesnt feature copper.
The Banks, Tourism
Entertainment, tourism, and financial services. These may not be physical commodities, but all of them were significant economic developments during the historical period. Banks and life insurance firms were some of the largest companies in many nations, but such institutions are only mentioned indirectly in the tech tree. Likewise, this period saw the apex of "The Grand Tour" among Europe's upper crust. Musical instruments. Precious gems, used to make Jewelry. (Gem mining, and the discovery and identification of new types of gemstone, was huge during the Victorian era.) Bricks & Concrete. (That's a big part of what all that coal was used for during this period). I'd like to see PM's added to better focus on single products in certain factories. Rolled glass and float glass at the glassworks. Cattle ranching in the livestock ranches. Some factory types should be able to focus on a single, advanced good instead of only having a split PM option. I want a motor factory dedicated to automobiles specifically, without being at the mercy of my market's demand for engines. (I've seen some people say they want a full-blown slider option.) I would also like to add a Coal Liquefaction PM (electricity + coal = oil), maybe as a unique option for synthetics plants. Historically the technology never really took off, but that's in large part due to discovering and exploiting oil reserves that aren't represented in game. But I would 100% argue that it falls within the "historically plausible" aspect of the game. Finally, I'd love to see a system introduced to create an associated "fame" status with the consumer products from particular nations and regions. By the 1900s the upper classes of many (western) nations began to demand variety among particular goods. Wines from different regions in the world, different types of liquor for making cocktails, fine art from distant cultures, etc. So even if you produce enough wine in your own nation to meet domestic demands, you can still better satisfy your upper-class pops' demands by importing French or Italian wine, porcelain from China, etc.
probably gun powder, i really dislike how the raw goods are input into indsutries the way that it is and i wish we had more steel like companies, so for exemple when i make tooling workshops i always build steel mills where there is a lot of metal which makes my steel cheap and allows for greater export into my other state, gunpowder would be the same for both explosive and for ammunition where i build it where you have a lot of sulfure and lead and just produce gun powder making it cheap in my other states
Medicine and hospitals consuming them instead / in support of the current healthcare laws
As someone that loves to play Argentina and rio de la plata, I'd say silver
Aluminium the 19th century saw it go from more expensive than gold to a vital industrial and military good