Victoria 3

[Zanza]

Quite a list...
I am away for the long weekend and will just play it next week.

[Syt]

Observer game 1.13.1 hotfix patch, the year is 1878.





I feel the AI needs to get better at managing their fleets and economies.

[Zanza]

Why does the German Empire have a black flag? What ideology does it have? 

[Syt]

I don't know, it happens a lot in my games that the tiny flag for Germany in these lists is black but has the proper black-white-red in other screens. Probably one of the gfx mods I use. Only happens to Germany, too.

[Syt]

Edit: I get the tiny black flag even without mods. Probably need to verify my game files.

Anyways, doing some more observer games while working from home, and it's all pretty much the same. I guess I'll stick with 1.12 for now when I play.

[Syt]

Lots of countries collapsing, though, if you like that sort of thing

[Syt]

Ok, ran this a bit further to 1909 and then stopped.



Britain has like 400 ships (good). Germany is the #2 Great Power with about 60. What's worse is the lack of tech advancement, I guess? Britain has a large market for rubber (but no radio, telephone, automobile ... ). Germany and Russia don't have rubber in their markets at all yet, as in: the good doesn't exist in their markets' list of goods. France does, but it's tiny compared to Britain (Britain is at ca. 3,000/2,100 demand/supply, France at 60/20).

I normally don't gripe much about buggy patches, but this is REALLY bad IMHO.

[Syt]

Another hotfix. Unfortunately, it still doesn't get the AI to manage its economy. By 1900, only Britain and Qing have GDP over 100 million, and looking at other Great Powers (which includes Egypt and Ottomans), most have their construction sectors built up but hardly building anything (the private sector does some building, at least), if not pausing their construction altogether. They all have decent cash flow, though.

(Though two GPs (France, Spain) had recent bankruptcies.)

[The Minsky Moment]

I see Steam has Vic 3 on play for free through May 4, so they are really trying to maximize the shadow open beta test.

Syt - any sense as to the cause of the problem?  Are countries not getting essential inputs because they don't know how to manage their interests?  Or is it something else?

[Syt]

I think the AI is confused as to how much it can budget for construction, maybe, between covering its expenses. Private construction is going as usual in those countries (though there's some reports of them sometimes being obsessed with building useless stacks of one type in one state ... though that's nothing new ).

On the other hand there seem to be more bankruptcies than usual, but it's hard for me to tell if that's cause or symptom.

As for access to inputs - don't really think so - Britain shows the same behavior, from the start of the game, and they should generally be fine at that point. Though managing fleets and overseas endeavors might play a role. Russia is not doing great, either, but they don't seem to tailspin quite as badly.

Maybe it's also related to fleet management. I see numbers of ships going up and down for nations a fair bit. I'm guessing (haven't verified yet) they're scrapping entire navies of "obsolete" vessels before having new ones ready instead of replacing them more gradually. My impression is also that they're more likely to keep ship repairs and construction going than regular construction, but more often than not both queues may be stalled out.

But that's just my guesstimation. I hope it's a fairly easy tweak where AI currently believes it's poorer than it is.  When the DLC came out, I was playing a bit as Sweden to get my bearings. And a navy sure is expensive - sending my Högsjäfljötten or whatever out to project power in the Baltic and North Seas to increase my interest in Europe a bit is costing a fair bit (as it should, IMO). I queued up some more ships and quickly stopped after two new vessels, because construction was just so dire.

That said, the Öresund toll was granting me a decent income. GB also collects tolls in Gibraltar (which, some commented, would be a historical and should only be possible for that spot if you control both sides of the straight), so maybe that aids their economy at the start (and fucks over France, Italy etc.).

I did check a few times if some smart brain put a tweak mod on the workshop in case the main issue was a simple script fix, but didn't see one yesterday.

[Syt]

Seen someone saying that the bad economy might have something to do with supply ships.

Supply ships are automatically built based on available naval shipyard capacity, i.e. if you build warships you build fewer supply vessels, if you build no warships it all goes into supply ships, if I understand correctly. You can adjust the ratio warships/supply ships to some degree, but unless you pause ship construction entirely, it never seems to stop ever.

E.g. look at GB in 1899:



They have plenty supply ships available in their pool. They're not building any warships.

But they spend 287K building supply ships.

(They also spend 580K on "normal" construction, but it's all coming from private sector.)

Two thoughts: either supply ships need to cap out (based on naval admin offices/tech/# of shipyards?), or the AI needs to know when to stop building and pause the queue (they only seem to do it when they're deep in debt, like the regular construction queue).

Not sure if it would fix it, as there might be other compounding issues.

Also, in the same game, France sits at 700 or so supply ships - they haven't been in a way recently, but they're basically broke and paused all construction.

[The Minsky Moment]

Thanks Syt.

Not sure why it was set up to require fixed proportions of supply ship construction; why not have the player put in orders for them like any other ship?   Or if that would be too much micro, why not at least give the option for a 0/x ratio of supply to warship construction?

That said, the Öresund toll was granting me a decent income. GB also collects tolls in Gibraltar (which, some commented, would be a historical and should only be possible for that spot if you control both sides of the straight), so maybe that aids their economy at the start (and fucks over France, Italy etc.).

I saw from some of the YT creator vids that tolls could be strong and a good strat might be trying to get control of the best straits and milk them.  But for me that breaks immersion because this was the era where tolling maritime chokepoints was abandoned in favor of the principle of free movement.  Oresund toll was abandoned in 1857. Gibraltar was never tolled AFAIK. The Treaty of Paris in 1856 neutralized the Dardanelles and required free movement of merchant vessels.  As Britain was the champion of that principle, it seems particularly jarring to see them tolling traffic through the Med, regardless of whether they control El Rif or not.

[Syt]

I see conflicting info about whether the "constant Supply Ships building" was present in the pre-1.13.2 patches. Either way, I did comp runs with 1.13.0 and .1 and in neither case does the AI seem to do much of anything with their state construction queue.

On the tolls - I feel that if you enact "free trade" you should not be able to block straights for shipping or charge tolls. AI is supposed to take toll costs into account when trading, but if Britain controls Gibraltar and Suez that still screws the Mediterranean over. I feel there should be a diplomatic cost scaling with the amount of trade applied when you charge tolls.

[Syt]

Bosted by Martin on various channels:

This week we have a hotfix planned for 1.13 that is aimed at fixing critical issues, such as; Supply interruptions and balance, troop transportation, AI economic performance and trade not routing through a newly opened Suez canal, among other critical issues reported by players.

As well as, a dev diary this Thursday addressing our hotfixing plans for 1.13 and our plans for improving the overall AI ability to interact with systems in the medium term.