Victoria 3

[Syt]

[Solmyr]

I'm not even sure 19th century capitalists cared too much about worker radicalization, either. They should probably just pay minimal wage until the government passes some laws increasing it.

[Tamas]

Promising change, also promising dev diary yesterday.

They said they'd go through the full 1.1 changelog in next week's so I guess we are two weeks from the patch being released, which is nice.

I'll probably wait until that now before a new game.

Last time I played I was frustrated enough with never seeing even NGF formed that I went to the Unite Germany AI strategy and edited out everything from it except wanting to protect the countries "voting" for you and antagonising the other unifier candidate. Launched an observer game and stepped away, coming back in 1855 there was an NGF, which is the second time I have seen it. I figure even if this neutered strategy never gets Germany formed, at least Prussia won't destroy itself going berserk on German minors instead of sitting passively and having those same minors join them peacefully. 

[Syt]

Started a game as USA. Using Anbeld's AI mod, the Age mod (that makes characters less likely to live to 100 years), Know When to Fold'em (a mod that helps AI with when to peace out, preventing "stuck" wars), Better IG Attraction (making POP decisions on which IG to support a bit more complex).

Enacted Dedicated Police (to curb Southern Planter Power), Censorship & Migration Controls (to buff Planter approval), then Banned Slavery in 1846.
 
Declared war on Mexico and grabbed the historical states from them. Had to go back and declare a second war, because I forgot to make Utah a wargoal. 

That would have given me Mexican Cession, but I forced them to release the country of Rio Grande ... which formed including my part of Texas. So now I will have to go and conquer Rio Grande.

Haiti, Honduras and Gran Colombia are my protectorates, and I'm working on adding Venezuela, and a couple more Central American states.

Law-wise, I've gone back to Right to Assembly, added Propertied Women and Cultural Exclusion (Yay, 1850s desegregation!).

My main complaint is that so far it's been pretty easy and smooth sailing. I was flush with cash, and was surprised when I checked the budget screen for the first time to see I'm at low taxes and no consumption taxes. Construction is ticking along nicely, and I assume that I have a lead in tech, because no techs are spreading to me anymore. So it's already 1855, and I'm thinking ... "Ok, what now?" I wanted to play somewhat historical, i.e. not conquer the Americas or go crazy on colonies, so I guess I'll just build my industry and play a bit at removing colonial powers from the Americas? Maybe add some colonies in Oceania and be world police or something?

I kinda feel that the way gameplay is structured at the moment all the interesting stuff is happening in the early part of the game, regardless of country - reforming society, enacting laws and juggling IGs, etc. to get to a point where you can expand your industrial economy unimpeded. Sure, you get communists and fascists later, but if you have a form grip on your economy they're not that much of a danger?

I think the biggest differentiation in country flavor comes also from the early parts of the game: what is your local setup, and what steps do you have to take to get to the "optimal" setup? Once you get there, it's more or less the same (with some variation provided by what resources you have and how big you are compared to neighbors/major powers).

I hope there will be more viable playstyles once the first round of patches have ironed out some (esp. economical) kinks. In theory, if economy and trade worked better, you could have international division of labor. Let US produce cotton to feed Britain's clothing industry. Build up cour coffee and banana plantations as Brazil and become an export focused agricultural powerhouse.

As is, the optimal way is always to own all parts of the production chain instead of providing scenarios where trade is the better solution. Currently it's usually only better to bridge temporary shortfalls: need more rubber - better import some till you conquer a rubber producing state and/or upgrade your plantations. That's of course not entirely ahistorical, but it also makes trade feel like a bit of an afterthought, IMHO, when in many ways it should be the "default" way to acquire a bunch of goods and it should be a lot harder to get "direct" access to them, esp. as smaller nations.

Maybe that gets better when AI economy and trade are improved, but I feel as player it will always be "optimal" to just conquer the states that produce what you need and build complete production chains for full autarchy.

[Zanza]

The first third of the game is the most fun part of any Paradox game, except I guess HoI.

[Josephus]

The first third of the game is the most fun part of any Paradox game, except I guess HoI.

Strangely, I feel that way about HOI, as well. Building up, determining what you're going to focus on, and building up your armies to compete with Germany or Russia is the most fun. Once war breaks out, it gets boring 

[Valmy]

The first third of the game is the most fun part of any Paradox game, except I guess HoI.

Strangely, I feel that way about HOI, as well. Building up, determining what you're going to focus on, and building up your armies to compete with Germany or Russia is the most fun. Once war breaks out, it gets boring 

Yep.

1. Intervene in Spain.

2. Mobilize Yugoslavia, Poland, and Czechoslovakia to resist the 1938 Sudetenland Crisis.

3. Kick Germany's ass.

4. Um...guess I will start another game...

[Syt]

Thing with Vicky is that it covers a period of history I'm most interested in, since I was a kid and grew up with (overly romanticized) notions of 19th century wars and colonialism (those pretty uniforms sure helped). It's an era of incredible change to the world and societies, and there's not many games trying to cover that period of transformation. I remember I was sorely disappointed when I picked up SSI's Imperialism when I discovered it to my delight in a shop shortly after its release. I liked what it did in terms of technological advancement and colonial development/wars. But that it was set on a random map and ignored all societal change of the 19th century was a huge minus for me. Vainglory of Nations is another attempt, but ... well, it's not very playable (though I'd like to see them re-try after Field of Glory: Empires turned out quite well).




Another "thing I wish was more impactful": radicals and turmoil. I like the introduction of turmoil as general unrest - causing issues, but not really an armed insurrection (yet). I just feel it should be more impactful than it is. I often ignore it, or maybe up my police institution, and very occasionally use violent suppression.

It would also be great to have better transparency into what causes radicalism/turmoil in certain areas - SoL? Political demands? Discrimination? ... It's opaque in the game, and you can only "guess" by looking at POPs with radicalism which is a pain. I like to think that a lot of the game's opaqueness on information is intentional (states having imperfect vision and all), but it goes a bit far.

Political movements are nice, but it's very rare that my legislation is actually pushed because I have to appease radicals. Like, if Nationalism is researched in your country, your non-accepted pops should get much higher radicalism and push towards acceptance or independence (including against foreign countries, in the case of colonies/puppets, maybe?), creating a lot more problems for the country. And laws like right to assembly or free speech should reduce radicalism for some, but also push radicalism for others who are now more able to express their ideas in the open without suppression.

[Syt]

[Syt]

My US game is in the 1870s. Central America (minus Maya, Mexico, plus Venezuela, Gran Colombia, Ecuador) are my protectorates. I'm struggling with the mapping the Western Frontier. I installed a mod that supposedly fixes the problems with it (IIRC, failing it stacks your chance of failure in future attempts), but I don't seem able to complete it. I had one successful attempt, but I guess that wasnt enough? I've had 5 or 6 more failures since then, even when choosing the most conservative options in events, and have given up for now. Guess I will have to take Oregon another way. 

Meanwhile I've been colonizing the islands in the Pacific, plus New Guinea (rubber!) pretty uncontested. One thing I like is how changing certain parameters changes your political setup. E.g. for the first 20 or so years I barely expanded my military and the military IG became marginalized. I've begin building up navy and army since then, and with more generals needed, I got many military candidates. The military is now third biggest IG, and they, with landowners and clergy have replaced Intelligentsia and Industrialists (the two strongest IGs) for the first time in 30+ years. I have an election coming up, and a Patriotic Party has formed. 

For shits and giggles, I've been switching all industries I could to auto-expand and removed all subsidies. It feels kind of like cheating (I'm using Anbeld's AI mod, after all), but at the same time I couldn't be bothered to expand some of the base industries or agri concerns manually all the time.

I may have overexpanded my construction sector, though. With resonable taxed (medium, taxing services), I make 40k surplus, normally, but construction, when fully active, costs 80-140k, and my investment pool is not keeping up. Time for: laissez faire?

[Syt]

This is fine ...

[Syt]

The dynamically changing maps can look quite pretty:



But I also think some of the urban sprawl is maybe "a bit" too much for 1883:







Meanwhile, Mark Twain is the Social Democrat president of the United States.

[Tamas]

Big-ass patch landing on Monday:

Reworked Morale to inflict a base loss for every round of battle, modified by the difference in casualties inflicted between the sides as well as various other modifiers
- Reworked Legitimacy to provide bonuses and penalties to countries at different Legitimacy levels
- Added a new Legitimacy modifier based on Votes in Government
- Replaced Legitimacy Penalty from Government Size with a Legitimacy Penalty from Ideological incoherence
- Treaty Ports will no longer function if the owner's Power Rank isn't greater than the market owner's, ensuring Great Powers cannot use them to get access to the markets of other Great Powers

balance.jpg

- Rebalanced Legitimacy across all Laws
- Added Authority bonus to High and Very High Government Wages
- Added Morale Recovery and Power Projection bonus to High and Very High Military Wages
- Added Power Projection penalty to Low and Very Low Military Wages
- Lowered Training Rate penalty for Very Low Military Wages
- Lowered the positive and negative approval from Government/Military Wages
- Buildings will now only raise wages if they are either competing for wages or are below their minimum wage target; the target is based on employees' Expected Standard of Living to prevent too much active radicalization
- Building wage targets are lowered in unincorporated states (e.g. colonies) and for discriminated pops
- Laws that restrict cultural / religious tolerance now give a decrease to radicals and increase to loyalists from accepted cultures / religions - the more restrictive the law, the higher the effect
- Pops in Unincorporated States now have their voting power reduced according to current Incorporation level
- Mass migration now only targets incorporated states, to avoid colonies being the main target of mass migration rather than e.g. the New World
- Unincorporated states now have a lower expected standard of living than incorporated states
- Rebalanced potential Oil and Rubber deposits around the world
- Rebalanced Power Plant production method
- Reduced the impact of Artillery Commander traits
- Rebalanced Port production methods to (generally) increase Convoy production
- Rebalanced technology unlocks for potential Port levels to increase sizes over time
- Replaced Cape Colony with Persia as a recommendation for the Learn the Game objective
- USA no longer immediately starts losing its Interest in the Great Plains on game start

ai.jpg

- AI will not begin unifying Canada or Australia until Pan-Nationalism is researched
- Australian and Canadian confederation no longer forces the annexation of a player
- AI acceptance for white peace now increases over time the longer a war goes on
- AI is now less inclined to pursue annexation of subjects with whom they have good relations
- AI is now more willing to settle wars that are going nowhere with a white peace
- AI now also takes into account bankruptcy when considering peace desire, neutrality and confidence, not just debt level
- AI will now properly stop enacting a law to avoid revolution if it calculates this to be in its best interest
- AI will now properly use its investment pool when it can cover the entire construction cost, despite being in deficit
- Fixed native uprisings not mobilizing due to not being able to calculate their conscripts' power projection
- Improve the AI's understanding of when it should produce more military goods of a certain type
- Make the AI more interested in switching to more productive PMs, and less interested in switching to less productive ones unless there is a very good reason to do so
- Great Powers are much more likely to declare an interest in Arabia while the Ottomans are trying to reclaim Syria
- Liberia now begins independent, to discourage US colonization of Africa and to better reflect Liberia's de facto situation
- Changed incorrect check in Powerful Protectors that compared army size to country rank instead of army size
- Fixed some cases where the AI would use the wrong define for computing heuristics

interface.jpg

- Improves the Pop Details Panel with tabs and Consumed Goods
- Added a Good's current Trade Routes to the Goods Panel's Market tab
- Added a delay to opening map tooltips. The amount of delay is controlled by a new setting.
- Added pop consumption goods needs display to Economy and Consumption pop tabs
- Added "show more" button to the Population panel to display all categories, inspired by the "Complete Pop List" mod by Ron Swanson
- Make the Construction Queue building list items say their State as well as making the list items smaller, inspired by the "Construction Queue with States" mod by Seppiya
- Multiple changes to which notification types display as Toasts (middle of the screen) versus Feed (bottom right)
- Show usable manpower involved on each side of a battle in addition to the number of battalions
- The volume for Music Stingers and Background Music can now be adjusted independently in the Audio Settings screen
- Inactive Treaty Ports are now displayed as such, with a tooltip explaining why
- Active Production Methods are now non-clickable and more distinguishable from the rest
- Game rules are now visible even before you select a Player Objective in the New Game Interface
- Moved the Timed Modifiers higher up in the change Production Method tooltip
- The amount of unrealized taxes are now displayed in the country budget tooltip
- Transfer of Power information is now displayed better
- The outliner now shows the number of currently active unpinned Player Objective challenges and Journal Entries
- Update to the construction queue's page buttons visuals
- Establish Trade Route Map List Panel can now sort markets alphabetically by name
- Updated text for convoy raiding order to better represent information to the player
- Right-align the Consumption tax cost in the add Consumption tax menu for better readability
- Removes decimals from Legitimacy modifier types

content.jpg

- Added decision to cancel surveys of Panama/Suez
- Added event greatly weakening the Shogunate if Japan is forced to open its market
- Skyscraper now has a Trade Nexus base PM as an option for Bureaucratic Nexus
- Changed the requirement for completing the Reading Campaign to only require 95% literacy.
- Made several repeating events fire less often
- Fixed various issues in 1848 content
- Expanded the name lists for North German, South German, North Italian, South Italian, and Thai cultures
- Added some variant unifier flags for Germany and Italy
- Germany's default flag is now the Black-Red-Gold tricolor
- Italy's default flag is now the Green-White-Red tricolor without the House of Savoy's coat of arms
- Conservative IGs such as the Landowners, Devout and Rural Folk now tend to be significantly stronger at the start of the game in most countries
- Fixed the large starting unemployment in several Decentralized Countries
- Reduced Hokkaido's population to historical levels
- Made events that strengthen abolitionism rarer in the USA
- Manifest Destiny decision now requires an Interest in the Pacific Coast
- Manifest Destiny now provide claims on the colonized split states of Mexico
- Alaska Purchase decision now has significantly easier requirements
- American West Expedition is now significantly easier to complete
- "The Dream" event for gold rushes no longer has one unequivocally better option
- Sub-Saharan African states now have more cultural homelands assigned to them
- Amended Great Qing flavor text to better fit its historical situation
- Reduced the urban center requirements for the Underground Railway Journal Entry from 30 to 20, and made the completion goal valid for cases where the country's capital and the country's market capital are in different states
- People's Springtime is now correctly triggered by a powerful Radical IG, not only through insurrection
- tanzimat_events.10 now requires Napoleonic Warfare
- migration_laws.6 now displays pop names correctly
- "A Tale of Hope" event no longer targets a null state
- "An Economic Prison" event no longer applies trade route effects to isolationist countries
- "Devout Scandal" no longer has a sentence starting with a lowercase letter
- "Elevating Our Situation" journal entry has been made less convoluted
- "Expand the East Indies Administration" is now visible whenever the Dutch East Indies exists
- "Mutually Beneficial" event now applies the correct popularity modifiers.
- "The Rogue Imperialist" event can no longer cause a diplomatic incident with yourself
- Austrian-formed Germany no longer has the Matter of Hungary Journal Entry
- Fixed many issues in cultural_homelands_events
- China now re-incorporates the states of the Heavenly Kingdom upon defeating the rebellion.
- Commanders can no longer cheat with their own spouses
- Defeat in the Opium Wars will now remove opium bans and opium ban Authority cost
- Countries with the Free Trade law can now remove trade bans but not add them
- Doctrine of Lapse decision for the British East India Company now has a proper cooldown of two years
- Elitist ideology now has a stance on theocracy
- Ethiopia now requires at least two fully controlled states to form
- Poland now requires only 5 Polish states to form rather than 7
- Event "Campaign Financing" now requires active parties to fire
- Expand Productive Building tutorial challenge now tests if the player can actually expand the target building an additional level before selecting it as a target building
- Italian nations classified as minor powers may now participate in Risoregimento
- Efficient Home Affairs modifier is now actually efficient
- Made the "Good Word of the Revolution" event less spammy
- Mustard Gas no longer permanently applies modifiers to states
- North German Federation, South German Federation, and Italy are now formable if all completion requirements are achieved before Nationalism is researched
- Numerous law enaction events will now fire properly, and not auto-cancel
- Paying for school supplies now costs bureaucracy instead of benefiting it
- Philip Sheridan's birth date is now correct
- Presidents in Republics now die less frequently
- Railway research bonus in the Atmospheric Engine tech event now requires all railway prereqs to be unlocked
- Resolved edge case where native_resettlement.4 has no options
- Resolved issue with error spam when China was annexed
- The Free States of America's name now shows up in its secession event
- The Ripper can no longer be a child or toddler
- Tooltip for "How to Reform your Government" tutorial will no longer flood the error log
- West America expedition now removes event tracking variables properly
- Bureaucracy tech no longer uses the same localization key as bureaucracy concept

modding.jpg

- Cleaned up defines to remove unused ones
- Renamed some defines to be more precise about what they do
- Exposed several parameters of character life expectancy calculation as defines

majorbugfixes.jpg

- Fixed font atlas not notifying the map system when textures where recycled, leading to garbled map names especially frequent in Chinese, Japanese, and Korean languages
- Enabled new logging system that prevents log files from growing too large
- Fixed overflows in politics related math that could lead to weird values for political strength of pops, or amount of votes in elections, and other such things
- Fixed an issue that led to most characters having a natural lifespan in excess of 90 years
- Fixed computation error that made it possible to have two highly profitable routes trading the same good back and forth between two markets
- Fixed an issue that made the "force open market" and "ban slavery" wargoals forbid the affected country from changing policy for 60 years instead of 60 months
- Fixed an overflow in gold reserves limit
- Fixed a bug that would cause garrison units to not recover morale
- Ensures that angry IGs always leave the government if able to do so, even when in a party
- Fixed an issue where tariffs would incorrectly be paid out to market owner from tariff-exempt trade routes
- Revolutionary and seceding countries can no longer engage in colonization until the civil war is over
- Discriminated Pops now have their Political Strength reduced by 90% as intended
- Pops in Unincorporated States now get a 50% penalty to Political Strength as intended
- Battalions are now assigned to battles in order of descending usable manpower (including Morale)
- Countries can no longer make progress on colonies in regions without maintaining an active Interest there
- Subjects no longer have to ratify a peace deal if their overlord does, even if they have diplomatic autonomy
- Expedition leaders are now always properly returned to service upon expedition conclusion
- Expeditions no longer automatically fail after turning back on the Niger River
- Expedition modifier for expedition taxes now removed upon expedition end
- Fixed general travel exploit that would allow to teleport generals by alternating orders towards the same destination
- Fixed a general travel duration exploit that was possible when giving several orders targeting different destinations, causing GENERAL_TRAVEL_OVERSEAS_SCALE to sometimes not be applied
- Fixed a bug where making a general return to a previous location during travel would sometimes apply GENERAL_TRAVEL_OVERSEAS_SCALE
- Military buildings are now unable to provide more Battalions or Flotillas than their level can support
- Fixed the bug when Cut Down To Size wargoal would liberate conquered states regardless of when they were acquired
- Fixed a bug that would cause only one admiral to be able to defend against naval invasions
- Fixed a bug that allowed an admiral to be able to naval invade a state that has no passable coastal provinces controlled by the enemy
- Fixed an issue that caused secessionist countries to not being able to be targeted by diplomatic plays even after they win the secession war
- Fixed a bug where Treaty Ports could give you access to markets in states outside the same state region
- Fixed bug where market access was not updated in states split due to ceding a Treaty Port or gaining independence
- Fixed the bug when status of convoy raiding wasn't displayed on the map nodes
- Combat unit allocation between commanders is now recomputed if a commander loses their role
- Failed or timed out Journal Entries won't be triggered by an Objective again unless marked as repeatable
- Fixed an error that caused the building tooltip to display incorrectly and produce error log spam when the building was built in a state with an apostrophe in its name
- Fixed commonly occuring crash caused by offscreen GUI VFX not being cleaned up properly
- Fixed crash when running out of cloud storage space for save files
- Fixed OOS for Elections when hot-joining
- Fixed a crash that would happen when the same peace deal is accepted at the same time in multiple wars
- Fixed crash when listing saves
- Fixed crash arising from cultural_homeland_events.1
- Fixed crash during commander generation

minorbugfixes.jpg

- Fixed issue with displaying country names for civil war countries
- Ensures the correct number of Battalions are reported for both Regulars and Conscripts on various panels and tooltips
- Death notifications no longer fire upon the retirement of a politician
- Fixed an issue in prediction tooltips where Peasant goods consumption was incorrectly calculated, causing price predictions to be wrong for certain goods
- Fixed an issue where price predictions for pop-consumed goods would get increasingly inaccurate the longer the game went on due to old data not being properly cleared
- Fixed flickering map mode in the culture panel
- Fixed front map markers not showing up correctly in Observer Mode
- Fixed overlapping text of the options in the Sway Country Panel
- Fixed overlapping text on the Nation Formation panel to not overlap
- Fixed text overlapping and alignment issues on the War Panel
- Fixed the Diplomatic Play title text to not overlap the flags when very long
- Fixed 'You' label being visible for other players in the War Panel in a Multiplayer game
- Fixed invalid diplomatic relations expandable tooltip
- Fixed wrong scope provided to on_sway_offer_rejected
- Added missing localization for is_direct_subject_of
- Fixed a missing texture that would appear in the war tooltip when the initiator of a diplomatic play had obtained all of their declared war goals
- Fixed an issue that made it possible to change government or military wage rates when the country wasn't actually paying any government / military wages
- Fixed incorrect text that would appear in the war tooltip when either side of a diplomatic play had obtained all of their declared wargoals
- Fixed notifications accidentally appearing twice when closed
- Fixed typo in Pop Properties tutorial lesson
- Fixed missing text for Annex Subject Diplomatic Play Tooltip
- Korean officers now wear clothes
- Male Academics and Capitalist pops no longer carry parasols
- Dinka slave pops are now properly naked
- The final fallback for character clothing is now peasant's clothes instead of a birthday suit
- The Confederate States of America should now always be called such during the American Civil War
- Taiping Rebellion war name is now properly localized
- Corrected spelling issues with Australian hubs and Theodore Roosevelt
- Commanders-in-Chief now use the correct Character background on their Character Panel
- Fixed unlocalized string in the load game button in the multiplayer game over screen
- Resolved several typos in the country flavor text for Parma, Modena, and Krakow
- Fixed spelling of "Van Diemen's Land", "Concepción", and "Legazpi"

* A known issue with loading 1.0.6 save games into 1.1 is that the Bureaucracy tech will be "forgotten" and has to be re-researched. If you don't want to do this in-game, you can fix it by running your game with the debug console enabled in the launcher, loading up your save game, opening the console, and typing 'research tech_bureaucracy'.

We hope you enjoy this update! Please continue to provide your feedback and make sure to let us know if you run into any other bugs so we can continue to improve the game for the next free patch 1.2. We will return to discuss our next plans for the future next Thursday!

[Syt]

Good list, I think. I like seeing circle trades being addressed, and hopefully the AI will be better at doing economy and wars won't drag on forever.

Really curious to see how the legitimacy changes/penalties for having "non-compatible" parties in government will play out, and having the correct political power modifiers applying to non-accepted POPs.

I like that they now create better incentives for keeping discriminatory laws (keeps wages down for affected POPs, making businesses more profitable, creates loyalty for accepted POPs), and incentives for not incorporating every territory you get (by nerfing unincorporated states' POPs political power).

The dev responses in the thread also hint that more substantial (good) changes are coming to e.g. trade and a "correct" GDP calculation (i.e. value added, not all revenue of businesses which currently counts revenue at every stage of the production chain, which currently leads to inflated GDP numbers).

And I'm really looking forward to harbors providing more convoys, because - has anyone ever NOT gotten the "trade route needs more convoys" alert spammed ALL THE TIME?

[Syt]

I really do hope we get a diplo rework at some point. Considering the level of simulation they attempt with economy, pops and politics, diplomacy seems weirdly boardgame-like, with fairly limited range of interactions or flexibility. (Not to mention the rigid  rules on wars that preclude intervening/joining existing wars, more bargaining/negotiation during the diplomatic play phase, distinguishing meaningfully between minor and major wars - like Britain immediately invading France over a dispute over an island in Indonesia instead of requiring some escalation, or better interactivity with subjects.)