Flemme de traduire.Well after last weeks rather short effort let’s go for something with a little meat in it. The Victoria economic system was very good at simulating large-scale capitalism but there was no small scale manufacturing or pre industrial economies. Our solution is the Artisan.
The Artisan POP acts a bit like a factory; it buys goods of the market and makes things to sell. However, unlike a factory the Artisan is not tied into making a single good, instead every month it will pick a good to make, if last month’s good made money it will be more likely to make the same good again. The Artisan can always make a small number of goods but after that it is limited by your technology, so if you don’t have the radio, the Artisan won’t make one. However Artisans do not gain efficiency via technology, so on a long enough time line factories will always be more competitive and if supply rises fast enough they will force Artisans out of that niche. As a final point Artisans who do very well will consider becoming capitalists, while Artisans who lose lots of money start becoming labourers and craftsmen.
Sounds all rather simple, however here are some neat consequences; firstly we can give any country a manufacturing capacity without giving them factories. If we take a country like China, in 1830 it had something like 30% of the global manufacturing capacity, but it was very inefficient and what should happen is factories in more advanced part of the world should gradually force these guys out of business. Thus we can simulate the de-industrialisation of Asia during the period.
The second thing Artisans supply is bridging in the world market, if there are not enough factories producing an item to meet demand the Artisans can step in to top up production making sure that there is enough of a good available for people to buy. This allows the market to function more effectively and efficiently and also make it much more responsive to POP’s demands.
However my favourite effect that Artisans have is when a new invention appears. Back in Victoria Revolutions you then had to sit around for years for a Capitalist to get round to building a new factory. Well no longer, now the Artisans can step up to the breach straight away. Producing small numbers until the Capitalists get round to starting mass production. This for me adds two cool effects; obviously we have the Artisan bridging effect, which I mentioned in the previous paragraph. However, the best effect for me is that it adds more realism to the economic system. With the invention of the Motor Car, Henry Ford didn’t suddenly hit on the idea of let’s build a huge factory in Detroit. Cars were first produced in small workshops, a market was created and then the factories started to appear.
Politically Artisans have a certain attraction to fascism. In our vision of the game they are the classic losers in the game of Capitalism. The Capitalists are steadily putting them out of business and the benefits like minimum wages that the lower classes win do not apply to them as they are working for themselves. The Ideology of fascism with its simple answers will appeal to them more strongly. Countries than manage to keep a strong artisan class will therefore be more susceptible to fascism.
So there we have the Artisan class. It improves the world market functionality and adds something to the politics, while adding greater realism in economic development. No developer dairy next week as we have a press event on, so keep an eye on the game sites for news about Victoria 2.
En gros, les artisans deviennent vraiment des artisans et produisent de petites quantités, tout ça. Plus de détails quand j'aurais le courage.
:syndromehoi3:
