Players are horrified to discover that communism far outweighs capitalism in Victoria 3

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The strategy game Victoria 3 (Steam) depicts the political, social and economic conflicts of the world from 1836 to 1936. In the endgame of the game, it now turns out that communism is superior to capitalism as an economic system because better distributed prosperity boosts the demand for goods. Some players have a problem with this – not only from a balance point of view, but also for ideological reasons.

What are the different economic forms in Victoria 3? In Victoria you build factories, plantations and mines to simulate a country’s economy.

The parameters under which the companies operate are set in one of the countless menus in the strategy game. It is about the means of production, how the goods are transported or what the focus of production should be:

  • Do you want to produce simple clothes in a clothing factory or luxury fashion?
  • Are the goods transported by rail or not?
  • Should it be sewn by hand or by machine?
  • Do you use conventional methods, do you import silk from Asia or do you use the newly researched, hypermodern material “rubber” to produce synthetic fibers?

    • Victoria 3 in the release trailer

    Soviet republic or planned economy – Communism is coming to Steam

    One factor revolves around who actually owns the factory:

  • At the beginning everything is privately owned: rich aristocrats own the factories and mines.
  • In the mid-game, the capitalists take over: their population group (POP) is rich and has a high standard of living, the workers are stuck in the middle or lower social class.
  • In the endgame, however, there is also the possibility of handing over the factories and mines to “the workers” – then communism will rule. Either you rely on a planned economy or you even change the form of government into a council republic and you’ve arrived at the real existing communism.

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    Why is standard of living important? The standard of living decides what kind of products the individual population groups want:

  • Every segment of the population, no matter how poor, wants to eat and drink
  • From standard of living 5, the population groups would like to have furniture in their dwellings
  • Luxury clothes are only interesting for POPs that have reached the standard of living of 15 or higher.
  • From the age of 20, the gentlemen want to have a telephone in their household – because then they also want to be able to communicate
  • From a living standard of 30, even an interest in art becomes a need that needs to be met

    • In general, the higher the standard of living, the higher the demand for goods and the higher the economic power of a nation.

    So if you want to fuel demand for goods and thereby increase the gross domestic product, which is so important in Victoria 3, you have to keep the standard of living as high as possible and for as many people as possible.

    Capitalism fails due to a lack of raw materials – wood and oil are missing

    What is the problem with capitalism in Victoria 3? In Victoria 3, even in a fantastically running economy, ultimately only the “rich class”, the capitalists, achieve a high standard of living.

    Working people remain well below the living standards of the rich.

    In the endgame of a capitalism game are:

  • The poor on standard of living 20 – “safe”
  • The middle class at 28 – “thriving”
  • The upper class at 35 – “plentiful”
    • A screenshot from my game: Despite huge production, there just isn’t enough wood and oil for everyone. The raw material sources are exhausted.

    In the current patch you reach “the limit of growth”

    In addition, there are banal balancing problems: If you are striving for world domination with a country like the USA, the economy and the military demand such a high level of oil and hardwood that the world economy simply can no longer satisfy it and the economy collapses.

    The raw materials in 1915 are simply not enough to saturate all the factories and units that you later build up as a “world power”. A problem that Paradox is already nibbling on, which has to consider: Which oil deposits could actually have been discovered in 1915.

    With the next patch 1.1. should significantly more oil come to Victoria 3 (via paradox). But until that happens, the classic “growth economy” in Victoria 3 has clear limits.

    Communism distributes wealth better – Increases demand for products

    What is the advantage of communism? In communism, the money that the capitalists otherwise skim off is distributed among the workers, which increases their standard of living and purchasing power enormously:

  • The lower class here has 27 – thriving
  • The middle class has 32 – plenty
  • The upper class has only 25 – plenty

    • Because the middle class is much larger than the upper class, this has a positive impact on the economy, as you can see:

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    How is this discussed? Especially the left-leaning US site Kotaku seems amused that communism is so strong. It is somehow logical that there would be an advantage if you don’t give all the money to those who put it in an offshore account in the Cayman Islands, but rather spend it, the US side believes.

    It says, “Left nerds can feel vindicated playing Victoria 3.”

    In the community, this is discussed almost philosophically. It says: This shows that communism is great on paper, as long as a well-meaning, omniscient body distributes the money and no one is pursuing their own interests.

    Some people there don’t seem to like the fact that communism is so strong, in mods they want to remedy that, as they say:

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    There’s quite an ideological argument going on in the comments on reddit about the game’s seemingly so favoring of communism. It says:

  • “It’s just like in real life, Marxism is also meant super/sarcastically”
  • “Constrained!”
  • or: That is also the only time that communism works

    • The question is whether Victoria 3 will remain a communist paradise anyway – usually this only lasts until the next patch.

    Anyway, I’m planning to play my next game as a communist leader; I like left experiments in Victoria 3 anyway:

    Steam: I played Victoria 3 so that the US got a non-white president 160 years before Obama

    mmod-game