An Economist Plays... My Mod List for Victoria 3 1.6.X

[@mykavoncarsteinghorsthelman]

Thank you for this video. You've covered a lot of non popular mods which I'd probably wouldn't find myself. Subscribed to a lot of them

[@An_Economist_Plays]

Glad to have helped!

[@argentest]

I just started playing Vic3 and this is great info!

[@Markusvar97]

a tip about local goods (transpotation and electricity) use the local build mode that one shows you the decefit in each state and allows you to the building that produces that reacource all in one menu

[@An_Economist_Plays]

That is a good touch, but it is still too much whack-a-mole for me when electricity is available and I have a vast empire. Let me use these mods, build out the buildings, and allow an excess here to address a shortage there.

[@diogomm710]

Authority being useful and transportation being solvable actually make the game a lot fun for me. Specially for someone who worked as an analyst it was pretty frustrating going "well, that's on you devs. I'm not gonna bother fixing this insanity". There was so little to do, I felt I was back at my old job. Also, flu = imperator rome time. I only needed to see it 2 time to understand it was not meant to ever work.

[@An_Economist_Plays]

Yes, and all that comes together in my next video, with Russia massively industrialized in 1906.

[@Vi0ar]

I agree with you on infamy, I wish infamy was regional to some major extent. Like if I'm a euoprean I am bullying Africans/Chinese no one in Europe would care. The Asian in African countries probably would however. It should be dynamic but I doubt that something they can easily program.

[@An_Economist_Plays]

Maybe track infamy on three scales: there is the infamy incurred on a local scale, against neighbors of expansionist moves. Then global infamy that impacts all nations. Finally, great power infamy where just getting stronger makes the other GPs hate you... or ally with you against a stronger threat. Maybe the last one would be a reworking of the rivalry system...

[@Necrotes_]

40:38 Ayyy, Automate Trade, was hoping it was going to show up here :) I hope that one day Paradox will have an official automated trade mechanic so that my mod won't be necessary.

[@An_Economist_Plays]

Still using it, it's a gem, thanks!

[@dimmler7851]

Very informative video on victoria 3 mods!

[@An_Economist_Plays]

I have an even better one at kzbin.info/www/bejne/oIfSnaGeopmtm7s

[@kyyyni]

39:40 About "Subsistence farms fix". My experience, now having played a few campaigns, has been that historically speaking Vicky 3 isn't buffing the allure of subsistence farms. Rather, it's been too easy for me to make peasants leave their substistence farms. Hear me out for a while as I tell about one scenario (it was only my 3rd playthrough and the 1st "successful" one). Starting with Grand Duchy of Finland, I managed to build a ridiculous monster economy, surpassing by 1900 the Russian GDP and being the world's #1 producer of automobiles and a bunch of other stuff too, etc. No colonial exploits or other dirty stuff but just building and producing and watching numbers go up and money printer go brrr. Because of the Russian market, I even avoided the usual early-game economic micromanaging hellscape since the vast market I was part of right from the start made my economy balance itself way easier. All of this _kind of_ went historically - exploiting the Russian market for some 80 years and then grabbing independence in the endgame when there was both the sufficient power and a convenient geopolitical window of opportunity. The main deviation from actual history was of course the ridiculous scale of it - that it all went way too well. What was the problem _besides_ the fact that everything went too well? The thing is that historically, in Finland and during that period (and right up to the mid 20th century), subsistence farms DID NOT SUCK. Rather they were the place to be. To give one supporting example; in the 1918 Civil War, peasants formed the bulk of the White forces and White supporters against the short-lived Finnish Socialist Workers' Republic; peasants were generally happy with their position and the status quo. Amongst the rural folk, it was generally only the lower-end tenant farmers who were unhappy, if they had just a small patch of substandard farmland and still even having to pay rent for it. Only in that case, or in the event of not having any land to work at all - say, your elder brother inherits the homestead and you got nothing - was it seen as the better option to maybe go into the city, or emigrate to the Americas, or take up arms and rebel and stuff. Anyway, most farmers in Finland did indeed cultivate their own land. As free peasants they were therefore their own masters, and that was always seen as "morally" superior to working for someone else regardless of the nature of the work in question. So, owning and controlling one's own land was a central source of self-worth and pride (an old proverb implies that having to sell one's own land was the second worst thing that could happen to a man's honour, right after breaking one's own word; Finnish-speakers will recognize the original proverb). Moreover, as a peasant one had economic security; every time the trading lifeline of the Baltic was cut off in the event of war or just a very icy winter, it was the city-dweller and the factory worker who starved and not the peasant. What's more, the fledgling cities were not the nice places they are today, but unsanitary, polluted and with crammed living conditions. The rural folks on the contrary had the vast spaces all around them, and certainly the healthier environment; and there was always more land to farm for those who had the willpower and resources to claim it by draining mires and clearing forests. And finally what's yet more: in the countryside, the peasant had the safety and support of the existing social structures - either in the several generations and sometimes even several families living in your homestead in Eastern Finland, or in the socially tightly knit villages in Western Finland. So, going back to my playthrough-example: not only was the scale of my economic success unhistorical. The fact that _regardless of the economic success_ I also managed to suck every single free peasant into the cities or commercial farms before the end of the 19th century (and also create a condition that there was somehow "no more free arable land", even when there should've been hundreds of thousands of square kilometres) was also equally unhistorical. Historically, Finland remained predominantly agrarian, with relatively happy and well-off peasants, right up until the 1950s.

[@An_Economist_Plays]

Question regarding the farms - were they subsistence farms or homestead farms? The difference being in that a subsistence farm is usually defined as making only what was needed for survival and a homestead had sufficient surplus to participate in the wider economy.

[@kyyyni]

​@@An_Economist_Plays Ok, sorry, maybe I just weren't aware of the accurate terminology. I'd say that certainly *by default* they were homesteads. That is - whenever there was a surplus, of course the farmer wanted to sell it. When things were worse and there wasn't any surplus - maybe one even had to make tree bark bread like during the Great Famine of 1866-1868 - then the farm was for that period effectively a 100 % subsistence farm. But I'd say that the balance even during the good non-famine years leaned towards subsistence economy, selling your products being a minor factor in the grand scheme of things. Maybe something that added to my confusion is the fact that in Vicky 3, you have to make it a law so that there can be homesteads, which in this case doesn't make sense to me. Historically, in this region, almost every farm was an independent "homestead/subsistence farm" in the way I outlined, and had been for millennia (there never was much manorialism, or even feudal lords of any kind for that matter in the Nordics.) No law needed to permit something that had been so since time immemorial. Another thing that had also _always_ been in the Nordics was (and continues to be) the "everyman's right", ie. the right to roam and also to hunt and fish anywhere regardless of whether someone else had ownership of that land. That aspect must have also been a boon to rural folk in general.

[@An_Economist_Plays]

@kyyyni could be that a simple adjustment could be made if there was homesteading in Finland in 1836.

[@kyyyni]

​@@An_Economist_Plays Yeah, why not. I'd add the same to Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Iceland too for starters, if they don't have it already, just on historical grounds. In the last campaign as I grew a monster economy out of Venezuela (seems to be much harder and the real liftoff took place only after the discovery of rubber and oil; before that I had to ditch the army and navy altogether in order to grow at all, and was not punished for it in any way - not very immersive) I periodically glanced at Finland, and saw the AI too playing Finland "too well" and growing "too fast". But maybe this is just me assuming some kind of historical determinism. That is - maybe it is the other way about, and it was the actual historical timeline that was a little bit on the weak side, ie. possibly having low probability, but still actualising anyway. That's of course a practically impossible counterfactual speculation but still a curious one. (Or equally well, maybe Russia could and "should" have themselves "invented" Nationalism way sooner, and then manage to take away every bit of Finland's autonomy (which in Vicky 3 would be a game over event for the player-Finland I suppose), and then maybe even continue to roll their dice better elsewhere and not implode the whole empire as they did.) The same kind of counterfactual arguments could be applied to practically anything that happens or doesn't happen in Vicky 3 timelines. For instance, I am yet to see the US of A getting Oregon in any of my campaigns, but then maybe the US ending up with Oregon in our actual historical timeline was just a freak accident anyway. (Don't ask me - I have very little knowledge of the history of that :D ).

[@peterschmidt1900]

This is pure gold!

[@An_Economist_Plays]

Wait until you see my next mod list! :-)

[@ExpedientFalcon]

Waiting impatiently for VTM to release their update.

[@An_Economist_Plays]

Which is why I hold off from total conversion mods.

[@minhuctrinh1059]

I do think the port ownership mod will not be necessary in 1.7, they are making capitalists stay in manor houses and stuff, revising ownership shares, so it will be interesting to see

[@An_Economist_Plays]

Yes and hopefully that also nerfs the subsistence farms to where the peasants want to elevate themselves.

[@lopatou_ovalil7361]

that market shortages mod is in vanilla outliner right now.

[@An_Economist_Plays]

It is somewhat, but only for a true shortage. I liked the over-under data for my goods not in shortage, as well.

[@nahimiYT]

Great video! It would be great if you had a steam collection so we can subscribe to all the mods at once

[@An_Economist_Plays]

Those are difficult for me to maintain, so I keep my mod list as a file on my Discord.

[@xModerax]

Surprised to see no Syncretic Cultures. It can either be quite immersive or help performance if you set conversion to 100%. Also theres been some new performance mods like consolidated nations and that yeet pop thingy which is basically even more aggressive pop merging but not everyones taste 😂, oh and the one that uses the script compiler to optimize checks that lagg the game like with flags coas etc.

[@An_Economist_Plays]

Several of those will show up on my 1.7 mod list! Yeet pop fragments and the script compiler are both ones I am testing and enjoying.

[@Caldaron]

35:58 yeah i hat this as well, it makes managing your industry so bad

[@rhel373]

The only thing I'm not sure about is the better decrees mod. I haven't yet played a game where I haven't had social mobility on my most populated states. Or even all of them if I'm a small nation.

[@An_Economist_Plays]

Fair enough. A good number of the mods I've used in the past were no longer needed after the game updated and addressed/nerfed/buffed things that the mod did. It may well be that after 1.7, I'll have more than a few drop off this list.

[@Ali-cj8gi]

Thank you sir

[@An_Economist_Plays]

You are most welcome, sir!

[@kaiiv-n4x]

I just bought the game and adding this mods to my list - thank you for you video. Could u tell little about DLC? which ones are mandatory for me?

[@An_Economist_Plays]

Voice of the People and the upcoming Sphere of Influence are strong additions to the game overall. Sphere of Influence hasn't yet released, but it will be a major development in the game. I am also using Colossus of the South, but not the trains or music packs.

[@theorixlux]

You'd love vic2

[@An_Economist_Plays]

I played that game for over a decade, it gave me thousands of hours of enjoyment.

[@theorixlux]

​@@An_Economist_Playsah, then since there isn't one already, I assume there won't be an "economist who plays vic2" in the future?

[@An_Economist_Plays]

If there is enough clamour, I could be persuaded. As it is, there is much in Vicky 3 that makes me enjoy it more, overall, than Vicky 2. There are still things that modded V2 delivers that V3 can't do yet, but the gap is closing.

[@flor7153]

In 1.6 there is a way to look into local prices. There i usually fix my power issues. Plus i find the power distrubion accuraty. Since Power can not be spread with out high voltage lines and those where not as sufisticated back then, right??

[@An_Economist_Plays]

All true, but for a large country with an expansive market, it is just too much clicking to get everything right on power generation. For the game to work, an abstraction is needed.

[@Games-tt9hu]

Could you make a Steam collection of the mods you use and link it? IMO that wouldn't even take away from the videos since you would still want to know which one to keep and which not.

[@An_Economist_Plays]

I have a hard time maintaining Steam collections, I prefer to keep them on my Discord server.

[@DiNap44]

Love the list but can you provide a load order for these mods? Thanks

[@An_Economist_Plays]

That would be in my mod list kept on my Discord server.

[@MarcelM12]

Thank you

[@fatbasementdweller]

+1 sub for Germany steel blue

[@flor7153]

I would love a mod to form political oppinions through school. Teach them racism is not a thing and end up them bein less into war. Teach the kids war is a thing - and you got enough recruits. Have Slaves exported to the main land.

[@An_Economist_Plays]

Politicized education is a fantastic suggestion - and the downside is that it will anger political opponents, who seek either a different politicization or none of it... which would anger those who want political schools, around and around!

[@piellamp]

victoria 3 is mostly cpu limited not gpu limited unless your gpu is really really bad the best cpu for paradox games is probly the 7800x3d beceause of the triple amount of L3 cache the nice thing about this cpu is its also incredible power efficient compared to none x3d cpus also the mod Economic and Financial Mod (E&F) might be something you wanna look at it introduces currencies for nations and tries to really simulate a national bank,inflation etc

[@An_Economist_Plays]

Thing is, I don't want cycles used for elements that give me no utility - the ultimate economics decision. And this is why I stay away from the E&F mod, as it does not work with mods I consider essential while introducing ahistorical mechanics. What I can do is go deeper into the economic history of the period and explore what sorts of things would be appropriate economic flavor.

[@piellamp]

@@An_Economist_Playsi legitimatly have no idea what u mean with the first part🤷😅

[@An_Economist_Plays]

If I get no benefit from the graphic eye candy, then that is zero utility in economics terms. Even if my GPU can handle it, I would prefer that it not. It's like getting free condiments that I don't want. It's a waste and the waste is avoided if they don't come out with the food.

[@piellamp]

@@An_Economist_Plays oh that was ur point yea i see. As for the mod though its still a very interesting concept. Not sure if its that ahistorical since there is always a bit of ahistorical things in any videogame. Particularly the trade system has been improved u now actually lose value of currency when importing

[@An_Economist_Plays]

@@piellamp This mod, though, breaks history by taking late 20th Century concepts and forcing them into a 19th Century context. It's like having helicopters and nukes in 1840 kind of ahistorical element.

[@Caldaron]

dude, why don't you create a steam workshop collection? sneaky, sneaky ;-)

[@An_Economist_Plays]

Because I hate making Steam Workshop collections. Too much clicking! :-)

[@flor7153]

how about a mod that allows you to concer lands for your subsidies for less infamy...

[@An_Economist_Plays]

I think that might be in 1.7 or the DLC... We shall see!

[@Melganor]

Hmmm. we got a mod list, if we nag for a real Let's play we might get one?

[@An_Economist_Plays]

How would you like that to look? A full run or a highlights reel?

[@Melganor]

@@An_Economist_Plays full run with as little editing as possible, with how you think and why, so that I can get a hang in how to not suck att the game ^^ and thank you for making these videos!

[@An_Economist_Plays]

@@Melganor Oh dear me that's a looooooooooooooooooong video you're asking for, with lots of boring bits. 🙂You would also need to be using the same mods I'm using to have the same experience in the game that I'm having.

[@Melganor]

@@An_Economist_Plays Well boring bits is a part of the whole and with out it some things will not make sense time wise 🙂

[@An_Economist_Plays]

@@Melganor well put. My side is that I'd want it to be something that would be of interest to my wider audience... sounds like a thing I'd like to discuss more on Discord, if you'd like.

[@swagysnoop5248]

competitive ai gives the ai massive buffs and changes alot of the basegame. Laaxus Revision of AI Fix Kuromi's AI Smarter Ai are much better

[@An_Economist_Plays]

Thanks for the suggestions. 😊