Victoria 3: Sphere of Influence Meta Changes 

Playing as a minor or unrecognized is a slog this patch. Not being able to jump into GBs custom union early will be sorely missed. Doing anything in Central Asia is also nuts. I used to recommend Persia for new players since it was pretty straight forward but the amount of GPs that are down your throat is going to be way too much for new players to handle.

LF may be better, but I prefer coops - I love making my little computer people happy!

It would be cool if command economy gave a general throughput bonus to make up for the negative to economy of scale. And if the waste went into the pockets of your bureaucrats to represent the increased opportunity for corruption and to make it less bad.

Perfect first video on this patch, thank you! Also its funny watching other paradox youtubers not getting how huge and good this update is

Laissez-faire being better on numbers in absolutely normal, because you don't consider all the side effects : Buildings not being able to be downsized, your own construction are put to privatization but can be bought by capitalists from other countries, and if your economy have a little local crash of more than one year, everyone will spontaneously downsize their building. So all in all, laissez faire is stronger, but you also have even less control of your economy.

On interventionism you can reinvest 75% of the profits of a building, capitalists on their own will only do around 30%-45% (with efficency modifiers) and you can increase that with dividends taxes. I would say, especially if you have graduated taxation law lategame, private ownership will come out on top, but for early growth I think that government ownership isn't such a bad thing.

Notes: As part of the decreased output, peasants now get more sub income, and only send 5% of their buy orders to the market (instead of 10%) making depositing more valuable. Council republic might be better than LF because it FORCES private ownership, eliminating the throughput malus domestically, but this is a numbers question.

The construction principle seems busted. Imagine having +30% with a company that buffs the essentials, in addition to the construction sector local throughput bonus, in addition to the decree that boosts construction efficiency.

I've discovered that the open market CB is actually still in the game, it's just now merged into the force investment wargoal. It'll open markets in addition to allowing investment. What sucks though is that it costs infamy and also can't seem to be added in as a side wargoal, but it's probably better overall. Treaty ports not working currently is a real shame though

29:44 simply get all the foreign investment possible early on then join the revolution and nationalise it before giving it to the workers

I think foreign investment is awesome if you’re playing tall. That way your construction is still useful after running out of pops and your capitalists keep making money. Also by investing in foreign countries you increase their SoL and they buy the stuff you produce. 10:56

I knew something was up with grain lol. I was shocked how I could NEVER get the grain supply to match the demand.

27:32 I am certain you use the countries state construction efficiency because it applied the bankruptcy malus to me when I tried to build in a country that had declared bankruptcy.

I think Interventionism is not that bad and might be good early on. Hear my math out. On Interventionism building dividends are split like this: 50% gets reinvested into IP outright. The other 50% will get a 50% government dividends efficiency penalty so that only 25% of the total dividents will go to your budget. So 75% of the total dividends go towards new contruction early on. On LF: 25% go to IP and 80% go to pop consumption (no industrialists' bonus since it's early game). The 80% can be further taxed (assuming medium per capita taxes) for 15% of 80%, which is 12%. Let's say we also have consumption taxes that cover half of capitalist consumption: (80-12)*0.5*0.35 = 11.9%. So in total on LF we get 25+12+11.9=48.9% of total dividends are going towards new contruction. Since 75% > 48.9%, Interventionism supports more construction than LF and should allow faster de-peasanting. Once there are no peasants left and construction is no longer a bottleneck, LF and Co-op become way better.

For newer players, it's less confusing to have the Economies of Scale bonus be equal to the building's level, even if it doesn't make much sense for a level 1 building to benefit from EoS. And from my own perspective, I like round number, so hey.

Please slow down; you were talking much faster than usual.

I have a feeling how you tax your population has a dramatic effect on command economy, proportional and graduated taxes will always net a massive loss compared to per capita taxation since you delete capitalists and aristocrats and replace them with middle strata bureaucrats, but I’d have to do a lot more math to see the actual rates of taxation for each pop under the new command economy

Hey Generalist, can you at some point do some guides for those two achievements in which you need to have all private buldings for 12 years, OR all nationalized buildings for 12 years ? I guess the only national buildings can be done by Command Eco, but i dont know how to force that you only have private buildings, if you had build any at some point. I dont see my people often buying out national buildings.

Do we know when we can expect the hotfix patch? It's badly needed

Kind of disappointing to see them slap a “Government-run = Less efficiency” malus on government owned buildings. Why not try and model *why* that is? Make them cost bureaucracy or something?

so basically people were complaining communism was too strong so they nerfed it,... just like real life

It is possible to privatise government owned buidlings? I mean buildings that already exist and are owned by the gov

Can you post an update guide for 1.7 industrialization?

Thanks for making this. I would love to see some new economy/trade/building guides for 1.7 once some of the initial hotfixes have been released.

Religious Convocation could change the subject religion after 5 years being in the powerblock. If u subjigate. Its funny to force everyone under your rule with Christianity. And u don need to be aggressive against same religion countries.

Can't wait to play the DLC when all of my mods get updated. xD

I see in your turtle island run you have quite a few state owned buildings with Laissez-Faire. In my Great Britain run I have 300 state owned buildings now, as nobody buys my buildings, they just expand buildings. This seems really inefficient to me, but I can't really do anything about it. Is it a bug?

Looking forward to test this in a couple of weeks after the hot fixes.

I wish PDX actually make different economic system a choice. Instead of one being or two being OP and others being memes or situational at best. And make getting out of Traditionalism dynamic, instead of waiting 10+ years and just clicking a button.

i want to understand this game but its too hard, i always end up in civil wars or bankruptcy

27:45 im not sure as well, but for me it looked like i used my own companies for building in other countries. which also makes sense since you are using your own contruction sectors.

Honestly I've tried Command Economy and I've nationalised every building, I was just overflowing with money. Taxes at the minimum, no consumption taxes, government wages at their maximum and yet I still made colossal amounts of money from government dividends. I've made a ginormous army because I could and basically got everything I wanted from other countries. I agree that Laissez-Faire is quite strong (the investment pool is also gigantic, but at some point it just gets too big and you can't even get it without losing money) but I was tired of capitalists building bad buildings in even worse places, and the standard of living hardly even grows. You're just stuck at a maximum of 12 or maybe 15 in the endgame.

The 25% government dividends efficiency is comparable to the base 20-30% investment pool contribution efficiency for Clergymen, Aristocrats, and Capitalists is it not? Even if you had 0% government dividends reinvestment (which is worse than Traditionalism) your investment pool still increases by roughly the same amount as if it were privately owned.

Budget-wise Command Economy is much stronger than before because less money gets deleted from the system and you spam even more construction sectors than before. This also lets you run low taxes to skyrocket your SoL Negative to gov dividends from deficit is also much less punishing + high government ownership makes your interest rates very low Throughput malus sucks. It can be mitigated and it didn’t destroy economy in my game but it still sucks. It also forces you to minmax ownership under other economic laws as well so I hope they get rid of this "feature" The real problem to me is having to nationalize everything manually. It's just painful. There really should be "nationalize all buildings from the category" button like we have with privatization

Do you think it's a good or a bad idea to join the British Empire as a minor nation? I've played two campaigns so far, as Mascara and Cambodia, and both times went the same: I build up good relations with GB, sign up trade agreement and defensive pact, everything goes well. Then after some time they invite me to the power bloc, which I refused both times, as I didn't want them to subjugate me later. And in both cases they instantly turn belligerent and cut all ties with me. As a minor nations enjoyer, playing in this patch really got harder for me. Earlier, I could befriend a great power, potentially join their customs union and be set up defensively and economically. Now, with the power blocs and more aggressive AI, no deal with the great powers seems to last. They're friendly for some time, then they decide they want to subjugate or outright kill you. In my current Cambodia game, GB, USA, France and Spain are all belligerent towards me, actively damaging relations and expelling my diplomats. Which I guess is more historically accurate, but I feel like this patch is a huge boost to great powers and a huge nerf to minor nations. And starting as big, strong countries was never fun for me in Pdx games, so my experience with this patch has been mostly negative so far. The only change I like is diplomatic recognition.

16:17 I believe it’s not a bug, the +100% dividend reinvestment might mean it’s double what it was before as an additive and not a ratio, Not super sure though

I hope they make so that it shows only the national buildings iby default nstead of national and foreign combined as it lags every time i want to build something bew

David Ricardo would be extremely proud how you min max investment through foreign investment by utilising countries unique companies

I don't know how to play this game since 1.7, as portugal you just start with a negative 7k income and Ottomans seem completly impossible now, though would love to see you have a go at it.

Im my game i always or often have lots of buildings with starving aristocrats, but not other workforce staving. I think it doesn't make sense.

Governament ownership needs tô be buffed

Huh, what, markets are no longer a thing? Could anybody elaborate please?

So autocracy and ethnostate are still just the worst? I wish they would make it so it’s at least viable lol

Big nice first video to touch on the meta changes! One thing you didn't mention here and perhaps you should touch on next time is the changes to land reforms and particularly Homesteading, as it currently doesn't seem to apply to subsistence farms like it used to. Previously it was the surefire law to destroy Landowners' clout in favour of Rural Folks but it barely has any effect on clout currently. In general, clout management is way harder to manage / manipulate than before, and that's not always necessarily good, especially for backward nations that have hard time getting out of traditionalism / serfdom / isolation. Perhaps this is why they have increased the frequency of random movements popping up, because these were more scarce previously, but I am not a fan of RNG movements when I try to min-max a run. Also, is it true that after 1.7 aristocrats and capitalists no longer pay income taxes and instead you can only tax their dividends? I saw someone mention that in forums and I am not sure if it is bug or intended. Because if that's the case, it makes it even more imperative than before to rush Egalitarianism / Socialism and move to a better taxation law. Some food for thought: Perhaps, (if you are playing a European nation) one positive of starting with very high taxes and radicalizing pops is that it facilitates radicalism movement ideology to generate some useful leaders and pass laws like universal suffrage early. I have seen this event pop up more often after the update in some of my test runs. Regarding LF and Co-Op economic laws, it feels like the line between them became even more blurry than before where we at least understood after what GDP value it's reasonable to consider the change. The still present perks of having an additional company (translating in about 30% faster construction for select buildings) and the still present 25% less interest are particularly important for rapid industrialization regardless of nation, more so now that there are no diminishing returns to IP contribution like before as your GDP went higher. However, I am not sure how, if at all, having private investors downsizing unprofitable buildings affect growth because we don't get a notification if something is about to be downsized from what I know. I reckon that, theoretically speaking, if you are an unrecognized nation and go for high infamy plays for rapid GDP boost, Co-Op might be better to calm down the increased number of radicals from conquest since you can no longer force recognition and enjoy lower infamy generation from turning into a great power early. While previously this would mean you kill your IP (still being the case), but now with foreign investment being a thing and depending on how abusable it can become, a decreased IP might not be as detrimental as it used to. But that's just a theory, I have yet to test many of these things in later dates, still trying to figure what works best in the early game. Thanks for your thoughts in the video, it made me think a couple of scenarios I would like to test in the next few days!

started a persia run with little preparation: my high tax high infamy mass puppeting strat is so tough now. i annexed 2 one province vassals. other than that i have like 10 puppets with 100 liberty-desire. also had anti-brit,anti-rus and anti-france lobbies for almost the whole game. cant even get recognition somewhat early cause its hidden behind a tech now. the problem is, that with this current patch you CANT become a GP earlier, meaning you cant RIVAL other GPs! with my ~15 vassals i was struggling with diplo in the midgame, which never happened to me before. bad infamy decay, cant improve relations... seems like low infamy gameplay is good now, which is a big nerf to weaker nations and a huge buff to GB, FRA, USA took me till 1905 to become a GP, so now finally i can form my own bloc, since NOBODY was interested in even considering inviting me. having puppets( tributaries actually) is whack now. i reverse-swayed almost all of asia and thought i could build in their provinces to get more profits. turns out everyone has -95% building efficiency in their provinces anyway.. grainprices are SO HIGH. those 100 mil people in my chinese puppets eat so much. SOL sucks.. i think i will load in 1875 and try again with different strats. LOL

At around 17:00 you talk about laissez faire and government dividends. The share is increased by 100÷ (not "to" 100÷) so it goes from 25ish to 50ish percent. That's why there is still government dividends.

The reinvestment bug simply miscalculates the number. In the video at 17:10, the reinvestment should be calculated as 13.4K*6/10. The game currently miscalculates it as 13.4K*(6/10)^2, then the difference is contributed to dividends.

is it normal that every GP has like less than a third of the troops they used to in the 20th century? im used to USA having 100+1k troops. in my current run they have 25+75.. even germany and russia have a total of 300 if they conscript. it used to be like 500+500 last week...

The bloc offers minor advantages and is expensive in diplomacy moreover if you want to annex a protectorate you have to finance it because it's the way and you have to go through the protectorate, dominion, puppet, every five years, then finally you can do the annexation which costs infamy, a lot of work and time for little, I think it's even better to liberate your protectorates to annex them with a war, he doesn't have time to make an alliance and we save a lot, In short, this update is a great effort that could be interesting but that players will avoid using to the maximum, so it's failure

I have been trying an Argentina run in the new patch and have ended up in an akward position, where my aristocrats are doing really poorly. The upper strata has a SOL below the middle class, sometimes dipping below the lower class at ~15.6 SOL. As a result there is only very little investment going on in the country. So I wonder how I ended up in this situation and of course how to get out of such situation. No matter what kind of economy I run my country by, I would expect the aristocrats to always run profitable if they have profitable places to invest in but it seems more complicated than that. I hope that you can enlighten us more about how we should think about Manor Houses and Financial districts and how to handle them. Because this is at core a completely reworked concept that is still hard for me to get around.

i think government ownership should start very inefficient but become better as you advance your administrative. er, i mean, society tech. but having a mid point where you're very reliant on private ownership could create interesting gameplay dynamics if they made private ownership have consequences for a building functioning when you upset the owners. basically - nationalization interface should be less tedious, but the consequences of overusing it should be more active resistance from the remaining privately owned buildings. i think you mentioned an idea of having foreign-owned buildings stop working when you go to war with a country who owns them? what if such a mechanic could apply internally as well when waging class war. something other than just having a revolutionary country pop out of you, but having your owning pops actively try to disrupt the economy, and that being more complicated to fight than just sending a bunch of soldiers to occupy them. like, some representation of the idea of capital flight? - further, maybe your neighbors should get a bonus to development when your private investors flee to them? all in all, im just thinking of how in 1.6 it felt too easy to coast into being communist. there should be real internal struggle there, the private owners of your buildings arent going to just let that happen.

Does anybody know what will happen if you have SOVERIGN empire power block then you switch to a republic?

Doing a Romania run on 1.7 I didn't do a lot of meddling globally, and GB ended the game just shy of 1B gdp. The economic AI is a lot lot better!

Looks like the fixed the infrastructure cost. From today's hotfix patch notes: *Manor Houses no longer require infrastructure, as this caused major issues for highly populous countries with a lot of subsistence agriculture*

I’ve found the Trade bloc to be heavily reliant on my size. If my gdp is huge i love the market, and the free diplo or convoys. But if im small i can’t get my cohesion. With the other blocs its easier to keep cohesive when you’re small.

Having played some hours, I like this patch, but it introduces too many bugs for my liking. Open betas should be more common.

26:09 I think people are still not completely game changing getting how much constructing in foreign countries will be, considering how much the AI (usually vassals but not only) sit on massive amount of resources and peasants. Think of all the time there is not enough rubber or oil in the market to buy. It basically removes the necessity of getting colonies in Africa

Can you wreck someone else's economy by building all the wrong buildings in their country, assuming they don't go unprofitable?

I think AI is more aggresive. i used to take all the minor states in Arabia as Ottoman Emp early game. Now when i tried to take those state Russia join against me. This was not happening before the patch and dlc.

is anyone else triggered by the "all"-tab for buildings? i played so much of this game that i already know where what is. that tab shifted the other tabs 1 to the right and now i keep clicking the wrong tab before clicking correctly every single time

04:00 Is the free war goal from Military Treaty free as in costing 0 Manoeuvrers, or free as in costing 0 Infamy? Also, does it even apply in Diplomatic Plays where you're not a leader of a side of the play and you can't declare war goals to begin with?

The investment fund in the interventionist system seems to me to have increased a lot, in 1900 I had 2500 production units yet I had the notification that I did not have enough means of production to maintain my investment fund, it is unbelievable it requires so much means to satisfy the needs of 2500 production units in resources, but the game tells me that it is not enough.I suppose that in laissez-faire the investment fund is even higher for the same production, the quantities are too large I think they should reduce the money intended for the investment fund in favor of the state budget

I''ve found industry banned + food standardization is cracked. Your investment pool goes nuts due to the aristocrats putting in more and in the long run your whole bloc gets big pop growth due to low food costs -mortality which means more consumers and workers for you.

The Religious Powerblock doesnt really have to many issues with heathen subjects because its a one time modifier not something u get from each member. Milking African nations for their money as Colonizer is actually a decent strat if u combine it with investing into their plantations and u still remain in the highest bracket if u just keep the influence of ur relgious ig good.

Started a new run with the Ottomans, but after 5 years of industrialization i still have the capitalist marginalized… Is it the new ownership changes or just the Ottomans laws ?

any thoughts on how to milk india the best way as uk? I tried on multiple runs to enact laissez faire and let the capitalists do the stuff but maybe there a more efficient way?

A.I is entaily much more aggressive but really drops off in production of units, US seems to boom but hardly builds any units which is abit strange.

Finally the video to tell me what the fuck is happening with my games is out!

Rest of the goverment-owned buildings surplus seems to be going to the investment pool, at least judging by tooltip

Don't tell he boys I'm here

idk if its a bug but i found you dont have to have a primary principle. I have a trade league with construction where the primary should go

Advanced research is amazing. I've gotten like 400+% research and tech spread because of it

So seems that new grocery building from power block (60 -> 70 ) +16% bonus should help with grain problems ...

The economic law may be also apply to your foreign investment that is why you have +100from government dividend

Thanks for the overview on the changes, there's a lot to chew off in this mega update. So if building in a foreign country uses that countries construction does the building get added to their construction queue instead of your own? I haven't got their myself yet, decided to start a new game with a small subject country.

On another note forcing investment rights in someone is the replacement for open market

Regarding investment rights principle - i think the real benefit here is that you dont have to keep spending influence maintaining investment rights on a country once theyre in your bloc

Does the religious bloc change a nations religion or a nations religious law?

fellow krakow winner in my krakow run i definetly did worse than your run as you have an austrian aubject and triple my gdp so good job

Recruitment being slower is WAD.

I'm not sure exactly how to evaluate this video

Really appreciate this update. Do you think bankrolls are harder to get than before?

Care to elaborate how LF is not falling off atm? Is it because of the supposed bug?

Turmoil seems to be a lot bigger issue later in the game

Would u be able to have a guide on how to exploit migration?

When will the hotfix come out?

Is it just me or is building leverage on a country hard? It almost seems like its just better to protectorate them or dec for something and add join power bloc wargoal...

Turtle Island guide?

is this a krakow RUN? OMG maybe its viably to play the nation that is so powerful could be!

Solid video, thx

Will that affect my save file?

Force regime change is not only for subjects. It applies to bloc members as well.

Thanks general !

Thank you!

laissez-faire is so bad now actually.. i have subjects with -95% construction efficiency and like half of the private queue is in these terrible provinces for some reason. if i could atleast place decrees there or fix market prices it would be fixable, but grain is extremely expensive, especially when you have chinese puppets.. now im experimenting with just giving those chinese their own markets, so MAAAYBE i can annex them later, or have them help me with my wars or something.. if all puppets have their own markets, theres no point in even getting them to begin with. id earn the benefits only like 40 years later, which is not worth it. it would be better to yoyo-sway for 1 province instead of having them as a subject who does nothing other than pay me 5k tax...wow. thats kinda underwhealming

I LOVE META!

They need to bring back the option to turn the private construction off. I hate when the AI builds buildings that I don't want for my strategy.

Minor disclaimer @ 7:15 "I think if you want to use Market Unification you should probably go Trade League", Trade Leagues cannot use Market Unification at all.

I don’t understand how paradox could oversee the cohesion bug and the infrastructure problems from manor houses in Qing, EIC all you’d have to do is just play one game on 1.7 and you’d see it like WTF… I mean at least there’s less bugs this time around