I'll say I love the idea of these debts but the UK for me always starts the game declaring bankruptcy which makes the big bad of the game quite tame.

@kousei seems like pdx trying to add more "flavours" to central europe with the release of new expansion.

@BeheadThoseWhoInsultKane

>I am fairly certain developers understand current limits of the game and AI strategies (however barebones they are) and thus decided not to pursue debt logic yet.

Than they shouldn't have given debt to prussia, austria, and the benelux than, the whole point of this mod was that its stupid paradox skipped the rest of the world and just started to add debt to central europe. Now I don't know what you want me to do, do you want the ai tweaked or the numbers changed

Also what i've noticed with AI is that it usually tend to have positive balance and not dip into debt at all unless forced to, usually getting reserves up to some % full.

@Kousei
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>Also I don't know whats going on with your tests but the gdp growth for all my tests have shown similar growth to vanilla after the first couple of years of the game. It does slow down the gdp growth a bit, but its not going to break the game.

Nowhere i am saying that AI will just stop playing, but debt >50% of the ceiling will slow it down significantly because it won't utilize gov construction.
Consider also that rebels will blow up Britain and France usually every game (in Britain it is home county radicals, in France it is Nap and/or Republic) which is also affecting debt ceiling, as there's less credit available due to largest GDP states seceding.

I am fairly certain developers understand current limits of the game and AI strategies (however barebones they are) and thus decided not to pursue debt logic yet.

As of now if i understand configs correctly the only lever without tweaking AI is always being lower than 40% percentage of national debt.

This variable indirectly affects the build queue because gold reserves are considered after subtracting the cost of the building
CONSTRUCTION_RESERVES_NEW_CONSTRUCTIONS = 0.1

These variables directly affect the growth
CONSTRUCTION_DEBT_RESUME = 0.2
CONSTRUCTION_DEBT_PAUSE = 0.4

So it's either being lower than hysteresis range of 20% of debt ceiling after construction is paused, or never hitting 40% of debt ceiling as this will fully stop the construction queue (gov)

@BeheadThoseWhoInsultKane I'm not tweaking the ai cause this is a historical debt mod, not a ai mod. I'm open to suggestion to make the numbers more accurate, but I can't do much to teach the ai how to play this game better.

Also I don't know whats going on with your tests but the gdp growth for all my tests have shown similar growth to vanilla after the first couple of years of the game. It does slow down the gdp growth a bit, but its not going to break the game.

@Kousel My point was that AI scripts are directly affected by debt, the thing that did not happen historically.

GDP and industrialization lag will happen in Europe with current implementation as European countries (Britain and France) will stop building until debt threshold to construction is cleared. This can have severe knock-on effects. This, again, did not happen.

Per losing objectives - AI has a bunch of "random factor" weights that will change their strategy from game to game other than specific journal entries, so this is just a compound on debt problem.

As you've made it clear this is MP foremost mod i'd abstain from further suggestions, what AI does is irrelevant in MP.

@Reisuna Thank you I'll get to this later in the week

@BeheadThoseWhoInsultKane I just did 3 observer games to double check, each time the UK started a major war in the first 5 years, 2 were against china, the third was a random ww1 over a african colony. And in all of them the UK still is one of the largest gdps, the biggest thing that affected them was india collapsing which I have nothing to do with. So I'm not sure if your playing with more mods that are causing the UK for you to do badly.

I'm not reducing the British debt, as I stated in the description this mod was made with multiplayer in mind cause the UK would be untouchable in the first 20 years if not the whole game if every country banded against them.

@Kousei the source is "Deuda externa de México Bonos y tenedores de bonos 1824-1888" by Michael P. Costeloe. The information is on the first page of the introduction, and obviously everything is in spanish.

As other commenters have suggested, this fails to capture just how cheap British debt was; British consols were the first government debt asset to trade as a truly safe asset and traded at a very low discount and with a very low interest rate throughout this entire period. I would reduce British debt by at least a third to compensate.

Basically TLDR at the moment this is "make pretend" mod that does not account for real game and must be adjusted to AI scripts expectations.

I think this mod's origins are nice, but to be useful it must be balanced closely with the AI variables and strategies that track GDP and interest.

f.e check for variable CONSTRUCTION_DEBT_PAUSE, CONSTRUCTION_DEBT_RESUME in the game's directory and see how it affects overall AI strategy. (f.e. default_strategy file)
Granted, the AI scripts are very bare bones, so i don't think Vicky 3 at current tech level can model the reality in any way.

It's not really perfect because they will lose on early objectives (Hong Kong), that are "guaranteed" historically at their datetime, stiffling their growth further.

It's the same as in EU4 when the navy rules got updated and England had to downsize their navy since day 1 because it's just a treasury drain.

You can check GDP growth estimations here: obviously no one stopped building anything (well except France being somewhat stagnant in second half of the 19th century) and no one stopped profiteering from colonials
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_history_of_the_United_Kingdom#19th_century
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_history_of_France#1789%E2%80%931914

Perfect. Britain became very limited in the early game because of this, but they become stronger again as time goes on. One of the best mods I've come across to date, and one that doesn't detach itself from the reality of the time.

Got a few runs in with the mod.

It seems that Britain and France AI scripts are handicaped by the debt, and just stop building for a while, getting their GDP behind peers. It's mostly not growing for 10+ years at the start.
Also due to having to downsize the military Britain can lose India, basically disabling the country for the rest of the game.

Probably need some statistical testing approach as those are some anecdotes of a few runs. But at the moment would probably agree with posters below: without representing cheap debt AI countries are (severely) handicaped by high debt at the start of the game. Or at least it feels like that.

very cool mod but, cause the UK is drowning in debt, they dont attack Qing for hong kong anymore

"First off, this is a fascinating mod. However, my feedback is that the mechanics for Great Britain don't seem to fully capture its historical trajectory. Specifically, it struggles to model the rapid industrial and economic expansion of the Victorian period, which was often spurred by leveraging significant national debt."

Without a reasonable in-game system to simulate the interest these countries had to pay, I would advise you to rescale them by the mean interest rate each county was paying. This is why the UK and netherlands had higher debts, their cost of servicing was lower than other countries, which is not reflected in-game, mostly.

the U.S had roughly 30,000 debt in 1836 from multiple sources the highest I seen from one source was 56,000

@Reisuna if you give me the source I'll be happy to add mexico

Thank you, genuinely, I kinda complained about this in my review of Vic3 and I'm happy to see someone made a mod for starting debts.

If you're happy with, I can provide you with Mexico's debt from a reliable source, although not exaclty from 1836, but 1824. This debt was of 6,400,000 british pounds.

@Man O' Lore It was around 4%

please add haiti

wasn't like 90% of the British debt 0% interest?

thanks for doing Paradox job, sad that they do this every time

this should be in vanilla

pdx gotta implement this mod asap

this is a very good idea.

Springtime of Nations just makes every country rebel, my austria game with zero mods had me prussia russia france and a bunch others have like 50 rebellions

@BeheadThoseWhoInsultKane the ai UK tends to have a good amount more radicals during spring time of the people, but from my tests it doesn't derail the empire, honestly the biggest issue with UK is from india constantly exploding but I have nothing to do with that

Have you tried running for 20+ years with it?
With national awakening patch while Springtime of Nations is running Britain is seriously under pressure with rebels blowing up the country, credit won't help them be on the historical path i think. But the change is welcoming.

Very interesting, subscribed

@Kag Its slows down industrialization a bit, the main balance change is that the UK ai has to spend a few years getting itself out of the hole

This is a really cool idea. How does it effect game balance in single-player?

Good.

pd smells :)

The UK nerf we needed