Victoria 3

[Syt]

One year since this released. What is time anymore?

New dev diary: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/developer-diary/victoria-3-dev-diary-99-colossus-of-the-south.1603504/

Patch 1.5 will come Nov 14th, and a new small content pack "Colossus of the South" will come out, covering ... *checks notes* ... Brazil.

Will be 5.99, or free if you have the "Grand Edition" or the Expansion Pass.

[Josephus]

One of these days I'll pick it up again. Didn't really do much for me on launch.

[Syt]

Change log: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/developer-diary/victoria-3-dev-diary-100-anniversary-update-changelog.1608302/

I guess the days of your power plants in London powering your electric railroad in Madagascar are truly over.

Services, Electricity and Transportation are now local goods whose prices are fully set based on local production and consumption and whose market price plays no role at all

[Crazy_Ivan80]

Change log: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/developer-diary/victoria-3-dev-diary-100-anniversary-update-changelog.1608302/

I guess the days of your power plants in London powering your electric railroad in Madagascar are truly over.

Services, Electricity and Transportation are now local goods whose prices are fully set based on local production and consumption and whose market price plays no role at all

Aww dang. There go my stocks in underwater powerlines....

[Solmyr]

Are land connections also not considered? Would be weird if a power plant in Kent cannot power London.

[Syt]

Haven't tried the new patch yet, but I found this thread amusing:

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/threads/great-demand-but-no-one-wants-to-work.1610112

Basically, it seems a lot harder to just build complete supply chains and have them fill with workers, because:
1. job satisfaction - if folks are satisfied with their current job (needs are met etc.) they're unlikely to switch
2. qualifications seem more important (having them and not having them - i.e. overqualified states might run into a shortage of low skill labor)
3. local pricing, meaning that input goods might be very expensive at the start unless they're produced locally (tech advances/infrastructure will help even out local pricing over the game's time somewhat), meaning your steel mill built in the boonies where you have labor but nothing else (coal, iron) is not going to be very profitable in early game, if ever

I especially like comments of, "But this is a strategically important industry for the growth of the nation - people should want to work there!" Not how it works IRL, I think.

This looks quite promising, as it should slow down the industrial expansion a lot, hopefully make specialized economies more important (it was way too easy to just create full production chains yourself even as a middling country), and lead to more interesting decision making (I want to grow industry X, but I need input good Y to be close, and I will have to get people to switch away from factory Z to X).

(I'm sure there will be more balancing around this, and I hope they don't end up nerfing it to become meaningless to appease the people who want to turn Sokoto into a capitalist-industrial democracy within 20 years.)

[The Minsky Moment]

"But this is a strategically important industry for the growth of the nation - people should want to work there!" Not how it works IRL, I think.

I don't understand why my population wouldn't consider taking jobs that a vital to a nations growth.

Example Papal State play I tried - They refused to work in a Military Shipyard, Refused to make Steel.

Yes there are reasons why the 19th century Papacy was not known for its devastating naval power    [Too bad, it would have wiped the smirk off Stalin's face]

However, I was concerned the see the screen shot from the 1856 Pennsylvania game showing only 8000 peasants and 1000 farmers, but with 1 million laborers and hundreds of thousands of machinists, clerks, engineers.  That should not be a feasible pop distribution for that time and place.

[Syt]

That is quite true.

[Syt]

I usually rate images daily on Midjourney - fairly easy to gain an hour of fast processing time (not that I need it, but it's free ). It shows you two images and you click the one you like better.

Came across this just now:


Would make for an excellent Victoria logo.

Prompt: "Pink Alphabet: intricate big letter V in front. Alphabet V, detailed with Celtic and floral design in wooden gold frame, white background"

[OttoVonBismarck]

I have held off on playing until this weekend (there is a free event) since the game had such terrible reviews initially. I'm only into it at a very thin level right now since, like most PDox games, I assume it will take several weeks of play to feel comfortable, but I'm liking it so far.

[Syt]

Had a quick look at where the Morgenröte mod currently stands. And they've been busy churning out content. What makes them a bit special to me is that where most gameplay address balance or add a bit more detail, Morgenröte feels like a proper expansion geared towards flavor. And most of it (at a glance) is really just for flavor (and prestige!), though there are gameplay implications.

An overview of the major releases is here: https://steamcommunity.com/workshop/filedetails/discussion/2889925770/3734078642262194596/

I fired up a quick game as Austria. You can now invest resources in your academy of sciences. Specializing your universities allow you to hire characters (e.g. an engineer, an anthropologist, archaeologists ... ) who can then be assigned projects - archaeological expeditions to Crete or the Valley of the Kings (provided you have the permit to dig there), botanical expeditions into the jungles, researching old fossils ... additionally, you can specialize your research, e.g. if you want to have a bonus to military research (at the expense of society and production research). Over time, with your discoveries the tenets of your scientists and society may change.

Sports & Culture add another field where you can invest money to sponsor e.g. balloonists to chase records in height, distance, duration (I assume that will transition to planes later), or sponsor conquering the world's most challenging peaks. The Olympics are also featured, of course.

You can specialize your opera houses, and you have a new point collection for musical tradition - which gives prestige and may allow you to patronize famous composers. Monuments can be built for the likes of Mozart of Beethoven in their birth places. And musical instruments are a new type of good.

Astronomy is another pursuit (mapping the planets, including deciding what *is* a planet ... at start of the game the scientific consensus says "11" - not sure if accurate tbh ).

Plus, there's country specific flavor bits. E.g. as Austria, once you have the necessary requirements (e.g. sewers), you can start a journal entry to build the Ringstraße boulevard.

All in all, it's a pretty impressive mod IMO.

[Solmyr]

Looks interesting, but probably wildly incompatible with everything else?

[Syt]

Unsure. The only other gameplay mod I use is OPB's Victoria Tweaks mods. I played for about an hour or so with both switched on and it seemed to be ok. Not sure though

[Syt]

Dev Diary on upcoming UI changes for 1.6:

[Josquius]

Had a quick look at where the Morgenröte mod currently stands. And they've been busy churning out content. What makes them a bit special to me is that where most gameplay address balance or add a bit more detail, Morgenröte feels like a proper expansion geared towards flavor. And most of it (at a glance) is really just for flavor (and prestige!), though there are gameplay implications.

An overview of the major releases is here: https://steamcommunity.com/workshop/filedetails/discussion/2889925770/3734078642262194596/

I fired up a quick game as Austria. You can now invest resources in your academy of sciences. Specializing your universities allow you to hire characters (e.g. an engineer, an anthropologist, archaeologists ... ) who can then be assigned projects - archaeological expeditions to Crete or the Valley of the Kings (provided you have the permit to dig there), botanical expeditions into the jungles, researching old fossils ... additionally, you can specialize your research, e.g. if you want to have a bonus to military research (at the expense of society and production research). Over time, with your discoveries the tenets of your scientists and society may change.

Sports & Culture add another field where you can invest money to sponsor e.g. balloonists to chase records in height, distance, duration (I assume that will transition to planes later), or sponsor conquering the world's most challenging peaks. The Olympics are also featured, of course.

You can specialize your opera houses, and you have a new point collection for musical tradition - which gives prestige and may allow you to patronize famous composers. Monuments can be built for the likes of Mozart of Beethoven in their birth places. And musical instruments are a new type of good.

Astronomy is another pursuit (mapping the planets, including deciding what *is* a planet ... at start of the game the scientific consensus says "11" - not sure if accurate tbh ).

Plus, there's country specific flavor bits. E.g. as Austria, once you have the necessary requirements (e.g. sewers), you can start a journal entry to build the Ringstraße boulevard.

All in all, it's a pretty impressive mod IMO.

I dunno. This sort of thing all smells rather like the CK3 stuff where the emperor of half the world gets random events about playing chess with a random baron and the like.
Perfectly fine for 'flavour' but does it really fit together with the general scope of the game?