Victoria 3

[Tamas]

I think it was because of the game not cleaning old shaders properly. Deleted them manually, been ok since.

[Tamas]

No idea yet about balance or even practical impact but lobby groups are a nice addition, there is now at least a link between internal politics and diplomacy.

As always I am playing Austria to benchmark changes, and I am sucking up to Russia however the pro-Russian lobby wants it (like a trade deal, and embargoing ottomans because they are rivals of Russia) because the lobby group consist of conservatives and I want the positive IG relationship impact to mitigate the loss from my planned law changes.

[The Minsky Moment]

I only saw the Proud Bavarian video but some definite red flags there.  Obviously, rinky dinky Latin American countries in the mid 1800s shouldn't be funneling investment into Europe, even if the "stock market" has been researched.  That has to be nerfed - and even for bigger more sophisticated economies capable of supporting foreign investment flows, IRL the returns hurdle on foreign investment is quite a bit higher than for domestic.  That's still true now, definitely in the 19th century.

The power bloc bonuses are way too good.  10% production bonus on a first level perk?  That's nuts. Maintaining the blocs should be a resource drag and the main benefits should be diplomatic.

[Tamas]

I only saw the Proud Bavarian video but some definite red flags there.  Obviously, rinky dinky Latin American countries in the mid 1800s shouldn't be funneling investment into Europe, even if the "stock market" has been researched.  That has to be nerfed - and even for bigger more sophisticated economies capable of supporting foreign investment flows, IRL the returns hurdle on foreign investment is quite a bit higher than for domestic.  That's still true now, definitely in the 19th century.

The power bloc bonuses are way too good.  10% production bonus on a first level perk?  That's nuts. Maintaining the blocs should be a resource drag and the main benefits should be diplomatic.

Agreed. Overeagerness of pops for foreign investment is a confirmed bug/issue but yeah it feels way off.

As above, I hate the power bloc unlockable magic bonuses.

[The Minsky Moment]

The Americas should be a recipient of FDI not a sender - that includes the United States until very late in the 19th century.  Only mature countries with a strong capital market sent out significant amounts of direct investment.   c. 1914 Britain still accounted for 40% of all outbound direct investment in the world; that proportional probably was significantly higher in the 19th century.  France was second at 20%, Germany third at 13.5%, and the rest was the Netherlands, Belgium, Switzerland and the US.

Bottom line: in the 19th century, pre-Germany, no one should be generating outbound investment other than Britain and France; those were the only countries with sophisticated enough capital markets to do it.  Britain should be very much predominant.  German states should not be investing in anything other than other German states until unification.  The US, Netherlands, Belgium, Japan, and Switzerland could start doing some small scale investing c.1880s with the US ramping up in WW1 timeline and later.  No Latin American, African or Asian country other than Japan should be throwing out FDI in the game.

The main recipients from Britain should be the Commonwealth, their colonies, the US and Latin America, with some in the Middle East area.  For France, their colonies + Russia.

[Valmy]

One of the big themes of French economic and soft power strategy from 1893 until 1914 was cultivating Russia. Billions and billions of Francs were invested of both public and private capital in this enterprise to make Tsarist Russia less of a shitshow and more like France, a truly high functioning civilized country.

One would think the refusal of the Bolsheviks to honor Russian debts plus their seizure of all capitalist stuff would have been a total economic disaster for France but I rarely see this mentioned in the context of the Bolshevik Revolution.

Now maybe it was just because the impact of World War I was so extreme that merely losing out in billions of investment Francs was not a big deal, but it is kind of weird. But it doesn't seem like losing all the investment led to some kind of economic depression in France in the 1920s or anything. But maybe it was a huge deal and just gets lost in all the other stuff going on.

Sorry, that doesn't have anything to do with Vicky 3...

[Syt]

Would it make sense to generally only allow investments in neighboring countries and only major and great powers can invest further away?

[The Minsky Moment]

It's a question of having a developed capital market.  At game start only Britain had one, and only Britain was investing significantly overseas. By the 1860s, France and the US had one, but the US did not invest much overseas until the frontier closed because railroad construction absorbed so much capital the US was a capital importer until the 20th century.

Vic 3 doesn't model the capital markets so there is no way to model this directly at present.  I guess it could be limited to great and major European powers that have researched stock exchange, have an appropriate law, and have a private investment pool of a certain minimum size such that only Britain can qualify as of game start.  The US can only invest in Latin America until 1900. Japan can start investing after Meiji but only in east Asia.

Any country can take inward investment if their laws permit.

[Syt]

FWIW, private investors too eager to invest abroad is a known issue. Also, apparently manor houses use infrastructure, causing issues in some countries.

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/threads/victoria-3-1-7-known-issues.1689531/

[Syt]

Shower thought on Power Blocs - yes, bonuses seem a bit too easy and OP. But. Presumably, most of the world will be part of one Power Bloc or other, which should level the playing field some?

I didn't play yesterday - I was entirely too tired to get my head into the game.

[Sheilbh]

One of the big themes of French economic and soft power strategy from 1893 until 1914 was cultivating Russia. Billions and billions of Francs were invested of both public and private capital in this enterprise to make Tsarist Russia less of a shitshow and more like France, a truly high functioning civilized country.

One would think the refusal of the Bolsheviks to honor Russian debts plus their seizure of all capitalist stuff would have been a total economic disaster for France but I rarely see this mentioned in the context of the Bolshevik Revolution.

Now maybe it was just because the impact of World War I was so extreme that merely losing out in billions of investment Francs was not a big deal, but it is kind of weird. But it doesn't seem like losing all the investment led to some kind of economic depression in France in the 1920s or anything. But maybe it was a huge deal and just gets lost in all the other stuff going on.

Sorry, that doesn't have anything to do with Vicky 3...

Christopher Clark's The Sleepwalkers is really excellent on this - particularly from France where finance and politics were very closely tied. Not just Russia but Serbia too.

It's generally a brilliant book but really interesting on this point particularly.

[The Minsky Moment]

Vic 3 runs till after WW1 (in theory) so it is pertinent.  There was a lobby in France that pursued the interest of the bondholders and negatively impacted France's ability to engage with the USSR. 

[The Minsky Moment]

FWIW, private investors too eager to invest abroad is a known issue. Also, apparently manor houses use infrastructure, causing issues in some countries.

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/threads/victoria-3-1-7-known-issues.1689531/

To me the issue is really immersion breaking.  If you squint enough the V3 economy can "feel" OK as a representation of the time but it's really off putting for me to see Ecuadoran plantation owners investing directly in Italian factories. It completely breaks immersion and is a glaring reminder of V3's failure to model the growth of capital markets and centers of finance, which was a really significant development of that period.

[Syt]

FWIW I didn't see it in an observer game I ran this morning. I had first Russia investing in Morocco for a bit, and then later Greece investing there. But mostly, from what I saw, it made sense, i.e. Prussia investing in German minors, Britain getting to invest in Belgium, Austria in Italy etc. The "furthest" I saw (played till 1880s) was America investing a bit in France, but it was a mutual agreement (same with UK <=> US).

[The Minsky Moment]

That's good to hear.
I think I still may wait a bit for the first fix patch before leaping in on 1.7.