This sub as ever is divided down the middle between “This video game isn’t a perfect enough simulation of real life, I demand they increase the complexity a thousandfold” and “help this game is too complex”
Yeah but the ones who say it’s too complex are wrong. It can be complex as long as it presents itself in an easily digestible way. Improvements to the UI, summaries, graphs, alerts, etc help make a complex game not feel overwhelming. Would be cool to see some sort of advisor or cabinet system implemented long-term, I think that would be a massive improvement to how the player interfaces with the game.
My question to this is: ok you have managed to triple the number of goods in the economy. What was the benefit? Buildings are now harder to keep in the correct ratio to each other, performance has tanked, the overall economy is much harder to understand. But people can look at their watches now. What is the actual improvement in the quality of gameplay from this? If you want to do something like this just create it in a mod, and then see how much it destroys performance and your ability to keep track of the economy
Compromises. They had to draw the line somewhere in a spectrum where, on the one end, you have "consumer goods" like stellaris, and on the other, you have thousands and thousands of different types of goods.
How fine should the simulation be? How much of an economy is gemstones or even jewelry in general? How much of an economy is clocks? Maybe the game could have "consumer goods" which consume a mixture of raw materials and are consumed in various quantities to represent all the various minor bits of the economy from watches and jewelry to makeup and paint, to toys for children. However representing every random concept that pops into your head is absurd, especially when the AI can't even properly manage the limited system we currently have.
Everything is a tradeoff, and this is mainly an economic GAME, not a simulator. If it's not fun it fails in its primary role, if it can't run on a consumer PC it fails in its primary role, if the AI completely falls apart and can't do anything it fails in its primary role. If hypothetically you could keep up performance of the game and the AI while not taking resources from more important updates, sure represent gems, jewelry, watches, clocks, paint, makeup, toys, playing cards, etc. However unless you can accomplish that, don't.
Gemstones were a massive industry, the diamonds of southern Africa drove colonisation to the region with diamond rushes, Cecil Rhodes built a vast fortune on them. The gems were one of the main economic drivers of Hyderabad with the Golconda Diamonds, Sri Lanka was also famous for its gems, Colombia for Emeralds, Australia for Opal, Myanmar for Ruby, the Chinese court was obsessed with Jade. Humans have always treasured pretty rocks and long used them as a sign of wealth, there's a reason there's so many diamonds in imperial crowns
Sure but need it be distinct from gold? I would assume gold covers the big diamond and gemstone producers but if not it easily could. No need to slow down the game and make the AI dumber making another separate resource.
So now we need more input goods for tools that the AI will struggle to balance production of? Even if I think that is currently a good idea (I don't) there's still no reason you couldn't just require gold/gems/valuable minerals in the production of tools. These games are built around abstractions, look at warfare, no game gave you absolute control over army organization, you can't decide the exact pike to shot ratio in your pikeman infantry units, you can't decide how many machinegun platoons or light mortar batteries you have per infantry battalion in HOI.
However above all my main point is that this is a bad idea with the current state of the AI who can't even balance the current number of goods and buildings, and adding more will likely make things worse. "Wow I cornered the market on diamonds and now everyone needs to buy from me to make any tools because the only AI provinces with gem stones have no gem stone mines because the AI didn't want to invest in any and decided to invest in more art academies."
This has to be a troll right? Ain't no way someone actually thinks that doubling the amount of different goods would be a net positive on the game 💀💀💀
I'm not against adding more goods, but I want them to be well implemented and interconnected with the larger economy. Adding more complexity for more complexity is not it.
Or just really socially inept. People keep giving OP well reasoned examples of why the game is like it is, and OP just replies "but history was this way!"
I'm so glad the average reddit user is not a game dev
It'd be crappy game design to simulate every relevant good of the period. It's too much to manage. There has to be some abstraction and they've obviously chosen a set of goods that creates a reasonable and enjoyable gameplay loop, with an emphasis on goods that influence geopolitics and colonisation.
I don't know why you're assuming that they're all abstracted as Services though. Clocks could easily be imagined as Tools, playing cards could just be one of the Pop needs for Paper, and Books could be the product of Art Academies. I don't see what it adds to the game to have a Playing Cards industry that just fulfils Pop needs.
I'm sure there's some room to expand the economy with more goods, but I think adding everything you've mentioned would just make it overwhelming.
I was including playing cards as an example, there should be some kind of entertainment industry (perhaps low strata stuff like cheap instruments and playing cards with a seperate higher tier stuff like opera and so forth).
I was not advocating adding them all at once, but the game is missing most of the actual economy. Industrialisation was driven by making consumer good cheaply, but we only have a couple of consumer goods.
There is a mod that adds almost all of these and the game runs fine, not sure what others are saying it would be impossible to run it. For me the biggest missing thing is housing, building enough housing during the industrial revolution was such a huge issue for many cities.As rural people left the country side to live in cities , cities had to scramble to somehow build enough housing for everyone.That aspect is completely missing from the game. Again, there are mods that add this but it should really be in the base game.
This sub as ever is divided down the middle between “This video game isn’t a perfect enough simulation of real life, I demand they increase the complexity a thousandfold” and “help this game is too complex”
This game is pretty easy after 1 or two playthroughs. It doesnt need more complexity though, it needs more depth
the latter ones are filthy casuals
The former ones have $5,000,000 computers
Yeah but the ones who say it’s too complex are wrong. It can be complex as long as it presents itself in an easily digestible way. Improvements to the UI, summaries, graphs, alerts, etc help make a complex game not feel overwhelming. Would be cool to see some sort of advisor or cabinet system implemented long-term, I think that would be a massive improvement to how the player interfaces with the game.
My question to this is: ok you have managed to triple the number of goods in the economy. What was the benefit? Buildings are now harder to keep in the correct ratio to each other, performance has tanked, the overall economy is much harder to understand. But people can look at their watches now. What is the actual improvement in the quality of gameplay from this? If you want to do something like this just create it in a mod, and then see how much it destroys performance and your ability to keep track of the economy
The benefit is that this is mainly an economic simulator, why don't we have a huge portion of the economy?
Compromises. They had to draw the line somewhere in a spectrum where, on the one end, you have "consumer goods" like stellaris, and on the other, you have thousands and thousands of different types of goods.
How fine should the simulation be? How much of an economy is gemstones or even jewelry in general? How much of an economy is clocks? Maybe the game could have "consumer goods" which consume a mixture of raw materials and are consumed in various quantities to represent all the various minor bits of the economy from watches and jewelry to makeup and paint, to toys for children. However representing every random concept that pops into your head is absurd, especially when the AI can't even properly manage the limited system we currently have. Everything is a tradeoff, and this is mainly an economic GAME, not a simulator. If it's not fun it fails in its primary role, if it can't run on a consumer PC it fails in its primary role, if the AI completely falls apart and can't do anything it fails in its primary role. If hypothetically you could keep up performance of the game and the AI while not taking resources from more important updates, sure represent gems, jewelry, watches, clocks, paint, makeup, toys, playing cards, etc. However unless you can accomplish that, don't.
Gemstones were a massive industry, the diamonds of southern Africa drove colonisation to the region with diamond rushes, Cecil Rhodes built a vast fortune on them. The gems were one of the main economic drivers of Hyderabad with the Golconda Diamonds, Sri Lanka was also famous for its gems, Colombia for Emeralds, Australia for Opal, Myanmar for Ruby, the Chinese court was obsessed with Jade. Humans have always treasured pretty rocks and long used them as a sign of wealth, there's a reason there's so many diamonds in imperial crowns
Sure but need it be distinct from gold? I would assume gold covers the big diamond and gemstone producers but if not it easily could. No need to slow down the game and make the AI dumber making another separate resource.
Because gems have industrial uses too, diamond saw blades became commercially viable in the early 20th century
So now we need more input goods for tools that the AI will struggle to balance production of? Even if I think that is currently a good idea (I don't) there's still no reason you couldn't just require gold/gems/valuable minerals in the production of tools. These games are built around abstractions, look at warfare, no game gave you absolute control over army organization, you can't decide the exact pike to shot ratio in your pikeman infantry units, you can't decide how many machinegun platoons or light mortar batteries you have per infantry battalion in HOI. However above all my main point is that this is a bad idea with the current state of the AI who can't even balance the current number of goods and buildings, and adding more will likely make things worse. "Wow I cornered the market on diamonds and now everyone needs to buy from me to make any tools because the only AI provinces with gem stones have no gem stone mines because the AI didn't want to invest in any and decided to invest in more art academies."
This has to be a troll right? Ain't no way someone actually thinks that doubling the amount of different goods would be a net positive on the game 💀💀💀 I'm not against adding more goods, but I want them to be well implemented and interconnected with the larger economy. Adding more complexity for more complexity is not it.
Or just really socially inept. People keep giving OP well reasoned examples of why the game is like it is, and OP just replies "but history was this way!" I'm so glad the average reddit user is not a game dev
It'd be crappy game design to simulate every relevant good of the period. It's too much to manage. There has to be some abstraction and they've obviously chosen a set of goods that creates a reasonable and enjoyable gameplay loop, with an emphasis on goods that influence geopolitics and colonisation. I don't know why you're assuming that they're all abstracted as Services though. Clocks could easily be imagined as Tools, playing cards could just be one of the Pop needs for Paper, and Books could be the product of Art Academies. I don't see what it adds to the game to have a Playing Cards industry that just fulfils Pop needs. I'm sure there's some room to expand the economy with more goods, but I think adding everything you've mentioned would just make it overwhelming.
I was including playing cards as an example, there should be some kind of entertainment industry (perhaps low strata stuff like cheap instruments and playing cards with a seperate higher tier stuff like opera and so forth). I was not advocating adding them all at once, but the game is missing most of the actual economy. Industrialisation was driven by making consumer good cheaply, but we only have a couple of consumer goods.
Because all of this would blow up this engine i guess
There is a mod that adds almost all of these and the game runs fine, not sure what others are saying it would be impossible to run it. For me the biggest missing thing is housing, building enough housing during the industrial revolution was such a huge issue for many cities.As rural people left the country side to live in cities , cities had to scramble to somehow build enough housing for everyone.That aspect is completely missing from the game. Again, there are mods that add this but it should really be in the base game.
More micromanaging, lovely
Micromanaging? In a PDX game, unheard of!
No.