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Shape A Grand Tomorrow In Victoria 3
Published: May 21, 2021 7:00:00 PM GMT+0300

The railroad and the telegraph. Steamships and the birth of flight. Mass conscription, emancipation and the campaign for women's rights. The Victorian Age saw a world transformed by new technology, new philosophies and new ways of doing politics. This tumultuous century springs to new life in Victoria 3, a grand strategy game from Paradox Development Studio.

After years of community requests and curiosity about the future of one of the company's iconic games, Victoria 3 is instantly one of the most highly anticipated grand strategy games in Paradox's history. Victoria 3 is a society simulator set in a time of great change. Track the needs and desires of national populations, each group with its own political and material preferences. Conservative factions may resist political reform as growing numbers of tradespeople and intellectuals push for a greater say in how the nation is run. Trade a wide range of goods on a global scale to make sure that needs are met at home, because if people are hungry and disenfranchised, revolution beckons.

Victoria 3 will feature:

Deep Societal Simulation: Cultural, economic and ideological divisions compete for power and resources in one of Paradox's most detailed historical worlds.
Tend Your National Garden: Nurture your population, educating it and preparing it for the future, guaranteeing their prosperity and improving their happiness.
Wonders of the Industrial Age: Scientific and social progress give you the chance to improve the lives of your citizens.
Sophisticated Economic System: Import goods to keep costs low, export goods to enrich your citizens, and then tax that wealth to advance your plans.
Challenging Diplomacy: Maintain harmonious relations with your neighbors or provoke a crisis to grab valuable resources or force open new markets.
Political Dealmaking: Manage competing interests in your government, opening up new reforms but risking revolution if key voices are not heard.
Detailed and Living World: Cities grow and factories darken the landscape on a beautifully drawn map of the 19th century globe. Play any of dozens of nations from 1836 and try to claim your place in the sun.

Victoria 3 will be available on Steam, Microsoft Game Pass and the Paradox Store.

Quote from: Maladict on May 21, 2021, 01:57:58 PM
Screenshots
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/threads/steam-page-screenshots.1475057/

Quote from: Syt on May 21, 2021, 02:29:18 PM
Martin says on the panel that the focus is on society management, and that their goal was that war shouldn't be the driving factor and not creating another map builder. That players should be able to play through 100 years without fighting a single war and still have a good time. Mikael says military will still be important, e.g. to help with diplomacy and a threat of war will be there, but anything you can get through war should be attainable through diplomacy.

Seems like a tall order considering the general Paradox fanbase, and I'm curious if they can pull it off.

Quote from: Tyr on May 21, 2021, 03:20:19 PM
Wars as a bad thing was a pretty good and accurate part of the game.
Hopefully they'll make colonising Africa a loss making venture.

Quote from: Tyr on May 21, 2021, 03:20:19 PM
Hopefully they'll make colonising Africa a loss making venture.

Quote from: The Minsky Moment on May 21, 2021, 03:25:02 PM
I thought Victoria 2 worked pretty well in that regard - it gave strong incentives to fight short, quick, and decisive wars.  It didn't handle the ACW particularly well but I'd prefer that outcome to focusing the game mechanics on the ACW.

Quote from: Syt on May 21, 2021, 03:51:20 PM
The way I understood it, these are interest groups, with pop affiliation depending on pop type, literacy, laws, etc. I assume that instead of parties it's meant to represent which interest groups are represented in government. Removing parties feels like losing flavor, though.

Quote from: Syt on May 21, 2021, 03:23:38 PM
I hope they find a better way for influencing minors and adding them to your sphere of influence. The constant whack-a-mole against other nations was just tedious.

Quote from: jimmy olsen on May 21, 2021, 10:39:13 PM
1836-1936 is a crap time frame.

You're basically obligated to have WWI, so you have to stretch it out to 1920, but even that is going too far for any engine that simulates the 19th century well.

Starting date should at least be pushed back to 1815. It would be better if there were a few different revolutionary start dates, the first being 1792.

QuoteFor a broad overview of Vicky 3, check out my announcement coverage on IGN: https://www.ign.com/articles/paradox-reveals-victoria-3-a-long-awaited-sequel-to-a-grand-strategy-series

For everything else...

CAVEAT: Everything I saw was very work-in-progress. Anything could change, especially specific numbers.

KEY: This is a simulation. It's not a map painter. Military conquest is not the main focus. Victoria 3 is more about diplomatic maneuvering, shaping your society and laws, building and industrializing your economy, and "tending the garden" of your nation.

• 1836 - 1936.

• 4 ticks per day, so the number of ticks per campaign is similar to EU4.

• The map is divided into States and Provinces. There are about 730 States at game start, which are the smallest unit you will interact with for purposes of politics and economics.

• It's possible to split existing states, such as when you demand a Treaty Port in a war or Diplomatic Play. This creates a new State that is only one Province in size. Even at game start there are some cases of having more than one State, gameplay-wise, within a single "State Area."

• Provinces are subdivisions that you usually only interact with for maneuvering armies and when colonizing (which is done one Province at a time as you add more Provinces to your Colonial State), and there are roughly the same number of individual Provinces as in HoI4. (According to Google, that's around 13,000 - roughly 18 Provinces per State on average.)

• Visually, urbanization will spread across individual Provinces within a State.

• The pre-alpha map we saw looks better than HoI4 but worse than CK3/Imperator. They did say specifically that it isn't done yet. You can definitely zoom in further than HoI4, so I'd say the map overall feels bigger than the HoI4 map. Zoomed all the way out it looks very similar to the Vicky 2 paper map. Zoomed in you can see realistic clouds and stuff drifting over the landscape. Railroads are visible.

• Well over 100 playable countries, but not all countries are playable. Most of Africa, parts of inner South America, and a few surviving native tribes in North America (including the Lakota, Dakota, and Cree) were not playable. These are "Decentralized Countries." Post-launch, they want to make them playable eventually. But they want to do them right because the gameplay experience should be significantly different. All the Decentralized Countries have names and governments. There are no "uncolonized" provinces, but you can colonize on top of a Decentralized Country without declaring war.

• Full POPs like Victoria 2. Over a billion people are modeled individually, which will roughly double by game end, including Dependents. These represent non-working children and homemakers. Your laws, i.e. Child Labor laws, determine how much economic output your Dependents create and if they collect wages. So like, kids will still be counted as Dependents, but your wages from Dependents might go up (along with mortality rate.)

• Example POP types I saw (not exhaustive): Capitalists, Laborers, Machinists, Farmers, Shopkeepers, Engineers, Aristocrats, Clergymen, Officers, Bureaucrats, Academics, Servicemen, Clerks

• Standard of Living is mostly based on a POP's Wealth, which is determined by your sources of revenue minus your expenses. This can be a salary from your job, stipends and wages from dependents in countries where women and children can work (or if they're receiving welfare payments), and dividends from buildings you own. Increasing wages, lowering taxes, and increasing the supply of goods (thus lowering the prices and therefore the lifestyle expenses) will all generally raise Standard of Living. Standard of Living affects POP Loyalty and Population Growth.

• Your GDP measures how much you produce and affects your Great Power ranking, but it doesn't necessarily reflect how much money you, as a player, have to spend. The Ottomans, for example, start with a very inefficient tax system, so they have a small state budget compared to their GDP.

• Capitalists work completely differently from Vicky 2. Capitalism isn't "Let The AI Do It Mode." Instead, Capitalists (and sometimes Aristocrats depending on your laws) invest profits from buildings they own into a new resource pool separate from state funds called the Investment Pool, which you can only spend on certain things based on your laws and economic system. So you are still personally directing the expansion of industry in a capitalist economy, with some restrictions.

• Every nation has a primary culture and state religion, with varying levels of acceptance for other religions and cultures based on your laws. Non-accepted POPs are paid lower wages (so have a lower Standard of Living) and are more likely to radicalize.

• In places like the US, discrimination is on a racial basis. This is based on your country's laws and can be changed. There are no culture groups, but cultures have traits like Heritage traits and Linguistic traits, and your laws will look at how alike or different those are to your main culture. So someone from England will be less discriminated against in American society. Someone from a different part of Europe will face some more discrimination than the Englishman but not too much. Someone from Africa or Asia will face a lot of discrimination.

• Every State has a proportion of Arable Land, which represents how much agricultural industry it can support. Arable Land you have not directly built any buildings on will automatically generate Subsistence Farms, which employ Peasants. Peasants represent the vast majority of the world's population at game start, and they don't produce very many taxes or sellable goods since they're just focused on their own survival. So you'll generally want to start moving them to work in other industries if you want to grow your GDP and your tax base.

• Spheres have been replaced with Markets. There are many local markets instead of a single world market. Expanding your market is going to be a new playstyle aside from conquest - "painting the map economically". You can bring other countries into your market diplomatically or through war. Trade between markets is done by setting up one-way Import and Export trade deals for specific goods, of which you can only have a limited number at a time per market, based on a number of factors.

• An example given was that Mecklenburg starts out in the Prussian market (modelling the historical Zollverein Customs Union), which may allow them to build luxury furniture to meet the demands of the wealthy Prussian elite. But if they leave that market to form their own, their own elites may not have enough money to afford those luxury goods, and their economy will suffer unless they can set up trade deals to find buyers abroad or join a different, larger market.

• The number of countries that can be in your market at a time is based on the market leader's diplomatic Influence, which is one of the main capacity types. Capacities are different from power/mana in that it's not a pool of points you build up and spend. It's more like having enough electricity to run a lot of devices. Influence is also used for things like alliances, etc. You get Influence primarily from having rivalries, your Power Ranking (Great Powers get a ton), and a few other things that add percentage modifiers.

• Prices of goods are based on Supply and Demand. It's not event-based with arbitrary starting prices like EU4. Full market simulation. POPs and Industries will place Buy orders while Industries will also place Sell orders for finished goods. There's a screen that lets you see what are currently the five most under-produced and the five most overproduced goods in your market, so you can set up trade deals or expand industries to meet demand better.

• The other factor that affects this is Infrastructure. Having insufficient infrastructure will make it harder to get goods from a given State to your wider market efficiently.

• Around 50 trade goods divided into Staples - Consumed by all POPs for daily needs, Industrial Goods - Consumed by industries to make other finished goods, Luxury Goods - consumed by POPs with higher Standard of Living, and Military Goods - Used to create military units including infantry, artillery, ships, and later tanks and planes.

• Trade Goods (incomplete list, mostly guessing based on icons): Tools, Glass, Wood, Coal, Luxury Furniture, Porcelain, Silk, Iron, Chemicals, Meat, Cannons, Ammunition, Fish, Sulfur, Basic Furniture, Clipper Ships, Ironclads, Luxury Clothing, Paper, Artillery Shells, Fruit, Tea, Tobacco, Baked Goods, Coffee, Wine, Steel, Standard Clothing, Guns, Grain, Automobiles, Alcohol, Cotton

• Production buildings have resource inputs and outputs, Throughput rating, and pay wages to all employed POPs. If their output can sell for more than their inputs, they will generate dividends that are paid to the owners and increase their Wealth. Otherwise, they will need to be subsidized or else they will fail. Each also has a personal cash reserve, presumably so it can run at a loss for a bit without subsidies.

• Production Methods affect how buildings operate. For instance, a workshop can be Privately Owned, belong to a Merchant Guild, Publicly Traded, Government Run, or a Worker Cooperative. This affects what kind of POPs are employed here, what wages they are paid, and who collects the dividends/profits. i.e. Privately Owned workshops will employ Capitalists who get most of the wealth generated with the workers getting only wages, whereas in a Worker Cooperative, the people doing the work own the workshop and split the Wealth it generates evenly.

• Government Run industries have mandatory subsidies, meaning any losses they incur will come directly out of your national treasury rather than letting them go out of business. But you can also pocket any profits.

• You can have a Statist, command economy without being Communist. Communism itself, while it often goes hand-in-hand with a command economy, is now more directly related to distribution of wealth and political power. Communism is not when the government does things. The government doing more things doesn't make it more communister.

• POPs can promote/demote and some types are more likely than others. Engineers and Shopkeepers are more likely to become Capitalists, for instance.

• Command Economies do not allow Capitalists or Aristocrats to be employed in your nation, so they will have to find a new job or leave. They also get fewer foreign Trade Routes to work with, but can enact Encourage Consumption, Discourage Consumption, and Consumption Taxes more cheaply. They can embargo all goods and they can (must) subsidize everything.

• You need to have a Command Economy to switch Production Method to Government Control.

• Free Trade gives you more import/export routes, reduces loan interest rates, allows you to subsidize only Service Industries and Infrastructure, and increases the amount of wealth Capitalists contribute to the Investment Pool.

• Isolation cuts off all foreign trade (so you can only operate within your Market/Customs Union), you can embargo all goods, you can subsidize all buildings, and both Capitalists and Aristocrats will contribute to the Investment Pool.

• Traditionalism (used mostly by Unrecognized countries and represents pre-industrial economies): Fewer trade routes, can subsidize only Services and Infrastructure.

• Agrarianism gives you more export routes, lets you subsidize agriculture, infrastructure, and services, Aristocrats contribute to the Investment Pool, and you can embargo Luxury Goods

• Different economic systems dictate what you can or cannot spend Investment Pool money on.

• Services are a non-tradeable good, so they cannot leave your home market. Access to services is based on Infrastructure. So for example, you might have lots of services being produced in New York, but if you don't build railroads out to California, the people in California will have very little or no access to those services (and goods from California won't be able to get to market efficiently) even though both states are in the US market. Until you have better infrastructure, you'll have to rely on producing most things locally.

• Services come from buildings called Urban Centers, which can't be directly built but are generated automatically based on the Urbanization of your States. All buildings you build produce a little bit of Urbanization in the target State, but some provide a lot more than others. If you focus more on expanding agriculture, you won't have as many Urban Centers. If you build lots of Factories and government buildings, you will generate much more Urbanization. The Service sector will employ POPs as well.

• Classes: Lower, Middle, and Upper strata. Determined by POP type. It mainly determines their wage level and taxation under uneven tax laws. Standard of Living goes all the way up to 100, which would be "Jeff Bezos level", but you generally won't see anything above 50 unless you're trying to break the game.

• If you have a system like worker-owned factories, you can get to a point where even the lower strata POPs in your country are richer by the late game than the capitalists were at the beginning.

• Each POP is represented by a 3D character model, looks like the same basic models from CK3, including regional and class-appropriate dress.

• National leaders have 3D, CK3-style portraits and character traits (up to 3 in the build we saw). Monarchies have heirs who also get a portrait.

• POPs can belong to Interest Groups, and these are the main forces that you must contend with to make changes to your society. Not all POPs of a specific type belong to the same Interest Group. i.e. Capitalists are likely to join the Industrialists interest group, but some of them might instead belong to the Devout.

• There are a handful of "Templates" for interest groups that will be used in just about every country, but they can have different traits and desires. For example, Industrialists in Prussia are very pro-Monarchy, whereas in the U.S. that is very much not the case.

• Example Interest Groups we got to see: Industrialists, Landowners (called Junkers in Prussia, Landed Gentry in Britain, Plantation Owners in the US, and Scholar-Officials in Qing), Intelligentsia (called Literati in Qing), Devout (called Anglican Church in Britain and Confucian Schools in Qing) - they said this one specifically will change A LOT in ideology depending on the dominant religion of your country, Armed Forces, Rural Folk, Petite Bourgeoisie, Trade Unions

• Interest Groups have a set of Ideologies, as well as Traits that can be active or inactive at any given time.

• Interest Groups also have a leader with a portrait and traits.

• Ideologies can change over time (such as Trade Unions becoming more socialist). They will be stable for most of the game, but certain events, ideas, and leaders can cause them to shift. The leader of the Interest Group might be a socialist, for instance. They are still tweaking how ideologically malleable or fixed these groups should be.

• Prussian Industrialists have Monarchist (very upset if you switch to any non-Monarchy form of government), Individualist (Disapprove of most welfare/social security/government healthcare/public schools), Abolitionist (Don't like slavery), two others that we didn't get to see.

• If Ideologies are what an IG wants, Traits are what they can do for you. These traits will become active if the IG is loyal enough to your government. Kind of like how loyal Institutions provide bonuses in EU4. The one we got to see for the Industrialists was Job Creators, which increases the contribution to the Investment Pool by Capitalist POPs by 10% if their loyalty is at least 20.

• You can invite Interest Groups into your government. The ones that aren't part of your government will be in Opposition. You can never make everyone happy so you have to choose which groups to champion.

• Clout is how much influence an Interest Group has in your nation. In 1836, the main factors are Wealth, Status, and Workforce. If you liberalize your country you can offset this with Votes. When you hold elections, each Interest Group receives Votes from the enfranchised POPs that support it, which increases their Clout by a set amount per Vote until the next election. Various laws can tweak the political weight of Votes vs Wealth, or give more people Votes, though Wealth will always be a factor. So a truly egalitarian society will need to level the playing field in terms of wealth inequality in addition to democratic reforms.

• Not all POPs belong to an Interest Group at game start. Some of them are considered Politically Inactive.

• Literacy is back from Vicky 2, with your education spending determining what percentage of the country has access to education rather than just how fast it ticks up toward 100%. 100% Literacy will be very hard to achieve. Literate POPs can take certain jobs that illiterate ones cannot. It will be hard to get modern factories and government institutions up and running with low Literacy.

• Higher Literacy also affects your likelihood to join an Interest Group rather than being Politically Inactive, which sort of replaces the Consciousness system from Vicky 2. Uneducated laborers are more likely to stay out of politics. Likewise, ideas like Egalitarianism and Socialism will spread to your country faster if the lower classes are educated, which further increase political participation, expected minimum Standards of Living, and cause more attraction to groups like the Trade Unions among laborers. If the expected minimum Standard of Living goes up but the actual Standard of Living for those POPs does not, they will start to radicalize. So you can give them more beer and amenities to suppress class consciousness, is basically what it sounds like.

• You can Suppress or Promote IGs directly using your Authority, which is an administrative capacity stat. More absolutist forms of government have more Authority, and so will have more control over the IGs in their nation, whereas democracies will be less able to combat or uplift the ones they prefer.

• Legitimacy is basically a check against inviting too many Interest Groups into your government. If you try to form too large of a coalition, your Legitimacy will tank. You also get Legitimacy from having the Interest Group your leader belongs to in the government – so as Prussia, we had to have the Armed Forces in the government, because they're the king's faction, or we would take a hit to Legitimacy. And that in turn makes it harder to ever pass any laws the military doesn't like. In a Presidential Republic like the US, you might have a different interest group represented by the head of state every election cycle, which dictates what you can accomplish during that term.

• An Autocracy requires you to work with fewer Interest Groups to maintain Legitimacy, whereas a Parliamentary Republic can form larger coalitions. By the same token, Autocratic governments can commit to a more defined strategy (at the risk of annoying everyone who is not part of the government), whereas Republics will have to make more compromises and only be able to pass policies with very broad, cross-party support (while making more people feel their voices are being heard).

• Trickle Migration (Vicky 2 style) will mostly happen within cultural regions, to/from colonies, and within your market. i.e. Germanic cultured pops will be free to move around the Germanic home region, between your metropole and your colonies, or anywhere in their home country's market. POPs won't just trickle migrate wherever at all times.

• The exception to this is Migration Waves, which can be caused by poor economic conditions, political unrest, ethnic discrimination, etc. These will be major events, rather than a trickle. i.e. famine in Ireland might trigger a Migration Wave from Ireland to the US. They will try to target countries that have better standards of living and freer laws than the place they're leaving, but it's not explicitly tied to New World vs Old World like in Vicky 2. So the US and Brazil won't have any arbitrary advantage in attracting immigrants, though conditions in those nations might still make them popular destinations.

• Falling Standard of Living can generate Radical pops (replacing Vicky 2's Militancy system), while rising Standard of Living can convert Radicals to neutrals, or neutrals to Loyalists. Having more Radicals in a state generates Turmoil, which can affect the economy and lead to uprisings. Having more Radicals in an Interest Group will lower that group's Approval score toward the current government (and Loyalists in an interest group will do the opposite), which can lead to a civil war or revolution. Cultural discrimination can also generate Radicals.

• Higher wealth POPs have a lower threshold to radicalize because they expect a higher standard of living. "They can only afford 100 Ming vases instead of 150, and this is absolutely unacceptable."

• Loyalist POPs (and Radicals) can die off, which causes intergenerational conflict. If you had an era of prosperity that generated a lot of Loyalists, and then they die, the younger generation with worse economic opportunities might suddenly be not so happy and change the loyalty and attitude of your Interest Groups.

• You can fund Police Institutions to reduce the local effects of Radicals. They don't go away, but they won't be able to cause as much trouble. You can also bring up the standard of living or change discriminating laws to deradicalize them. Or you can discriminate even harder and hope they decide to go live somewhere else.

• Enslaved POPs will be modeled. This is a historical simulation. They don't want to stray away from the parts of history that are horrific and pretend they didn't exist. They also don't want to pretend that it was a good idea. As an example, slavery is not a flat boon for your country, but it is very profitable for plantation owners, and those Interest Groups will fight against abolition because it's in their economic interest – they want to keep those unpaid wages for themselves and spend them on luxuries. You as the player will have to decide how to deal with those groups.

• At the same time, not every nation needs to be on a set trajectory toward liberalism. If you want to keep Russia an absolutist feudal serf state until the endgame, you can do that assuming you can deal with any radicals who want to change it. There is no assumed best path.

• Example needs for higher wealth pops: Free Movement (Transportation or Automobiles), Luxury Items, Luxury Drinks, Intoxicants, Communication, Heating - Needs are different from goods, and many of them can be filled by multiple different types of goods.

• Example Laws (Not a complete list, just the ones I saw) -

POWER STRUCTURE

• Governance Principles: Monarchy, Chiefdom, Presidential Republic, Parliamentary Republic, Council Republic

• Distribution of Power: Autocracy, Oligarchy, Elder Council, Landed Voting, Wealth Voting, Census Suffrage, Universal Suffrage, Anarchy

• Citizenship: National Supremacy

• Church and State: Freedom of Conscience

• Bureaucracy: Appointed Bureaucrats

• Conscription: Conscription

• Internal Security: No Home Affairs

ECONOMY

• Economic System: Mercantilism, Free Trade, Traditionalism, Isolationism, Agrarianism, Command Economy

• Income Tax: No Income Tax, Payroll Tax (more burden on the poor), Proportional Tax (everyone pays a flat percentage), Graduated Tax (more burden on the wealthy)

• Poll Tax: No Poll Tax

• Colonization: No Colonial Affairs

• Policing: Local Police Force

• Education: Public Schools, Religious Schools, No Schools, Private Schools

• Health System: No Health System, Charity Hospitals, Private Health Insurance, Public Health Insurance

HUMAN RIGHTS

• Free Speech: Censorship

• Labor Rights: Serfdom Abolished

• Children's Rights: Child Labor Allowed

• Rights of Women: Propertied Women, Legal Guardianship

• Welfare: Poor Laws, Wage Controls, No Social Security, Pensions

• Migration: No Migration Controls

• Slavery: Slavery Banned

• Passing laws an interest group doesn't like will lower their approval. If they get upset enough, they can start a civil war. You can only pass laws if at least one interest group that is part of your government approves of it, and many of them require specific inventions as a prerequisite (ie: Graduated Income Tax requires Socialism.) The more Interest Groups that are part of your government approve of a law, the faster you can implement it.

• Institutions are like the organs of your government. Some Institutions are unlocked by specific laws. They have five levels each, with increasing bonuses but also increasing Bureaucracy cost. Bureaucracy is the third capacity, along with Authority and Influence, that is generated by building government buildings in your states and having Bureaucrat and Clerk pops working in them (which also requires literacy). Going over your Bureaucratic capacity will give you a tax penalty due to governmental inefficiency, but there's also a hard cap on the number of Institution levels you can have, which can be raised over time.

• Example Institutions- These modifiers can change based on your laws

• Conscription Office: +2% Conscription Rate and increases the number of Battalions you can mobilize per level (with Conscription)

• Education: +15% Education access per level (with Public education), +2% Wealth-based Education Access (this scales with Wealth so it works out to much higher than 2% at very high Wealth levels) and +20% Intelligentsia Political Strength (with Private Schools), +10% education Access, +20% religious Conversion rate, +20% Devout Political Strength per level (with Religious Schools)

• Law Enforcement: +10 Landowners Political Strength and -20% State Penalties from Turmoil per level (with Local Policing), -5% Radicals from Standard of Living decreases and -15% State penalties from Turmoil with ???

• Colonial Affairs: +20% Colony Growth per level

• Social Security: +10% Industrialists political strength and +2 Minimum Wealth per level

• Workplace Safety Offices: -2% Mortality of Laborers, Machinists, and Engineers employed in Mines and -20% to Dangerous Working Conditions per level

• National Security Agency - No modifiers shown

• Institutions only apply their benefits to Incorporated parts of your country. You can also have Unincorporated areas. The Bureaucratic cost per investment level is based on the total population in all of your Incorporated states, so the more people benefitting from services will result in needing more bureaucrats to maintain.

• Institutions also have a financial cost since you're paying the wages of the Bureaucrat POPs out of the state treasury. There will always be some bureaucrats, even if you're not funding a bunch of government institutions, just from enacting your laws in Incorporated states.

• States like the Qing will begin with massive, sprawling bureaucracies that have a significant impact on their playstyle. They have a huge population in their Incorporated States day one, which is a colossal bureaucratic sink before you even start adding Institutions on top. You probably can't bring 100% education access to everyone in China because it would take an absurd amount of bureaucratic investment, while smaller nations will have a much easier time doing this.

• It's a valid playstyle to run a "lean state" with very few bureaucrats and very few or no public services, freeing people up to do other jobs and relying on the Investment Pool instead of state revenue to expand infrastructure and industry. Minting can allow some countries to replace taxation.

• Diplomatic actions are your standard Paradox stuff. New ones include Trade Agreements, Invite to Customs Union (making them part of your Market), Violate Sovereignty, Start Bankrolling - I didn't get to ask what those last two do but Bankroll is probably just monthly subsidies.

• Diplomatic Plays: Basically an evolution of the crisis system from Vicky 2. This is now the default way you try to get things from other countries who do not want to give them to you! I described it as almost like "Diplomatic Combat."

• Types of plays:

• Conquer State, Liberate Subject, Make Puppet, Open Market, Take Treaty Port, Transfer Subject, Annex Subject, Cut Down to Size, Declare Independence, Ban Slavery, Make Territory, Make Vassal, Return State, Take Colony, Unify Region (in the example we saw it was called "Unify Germany").

• You put your starting demands on the table. Enemy puts their starting demands on the table. It then enters a maneuvering phase where either side can add wargoals, other countries can become involved (mostly if they actually want something from either side - rivals will be very likely to join just to stop you from getting what you want.)

• Ultimately you can back down (the side that didn't blink gets their original wargoal, but not any extra wargoals that were added later by themselves or other nations that became involved), or let the timer expire and go to war (everyone who placed a demand on the table gets called in and all demands on both sides are up for grabs).

• It's possible to Sway nations during the maneuver phase, offering them spoils of war to join your side. This isn't just useful for securing their alliance if it does go to war. Tipping the balance of power more and more in your favor also makes it more likely that the other side will Back Down.

• The more demands you add to your side of the table, the more POTENTIAL threat you will generate and the more likely it is that other nations will pledge their support to your enemy. Particularly if you are a Great Power, other Great Powers will try to head off any massive wars of conquest before they even start by pledging their support to the target and trying to get you to Back Down, to maintain the balance of power. So it's generally safer to eat your neighbors one bite at a time unless you think you can take on everyone at once.

• Allies will generally side with you or stay out of your way. Countries with friendly relations or who don't see you as a threat are also generally unlikely to get involved, so maintaining a strong diplomatic position with other Great Powers will enable faster conquests with less meddling.

• At any point during this process, before war is declared, you can Mobilize your armies to have a head start, which might cause your opponent to back down. If you wait until the war has already started to mobilize, you will be on the back foot compared to countries that mobilized before the timer ran out.

• They don't want this system to make every single conquest into a World War and it's being balanced accordingly. It's always a possibility though if you as a player try to overreach too much.

• They don't want to say One Tag World Conquest is impossible because the players will always find a way, but they described it as "implausible."

• There is no Status Quo in a Diplomatic Play. Either you go to war, or one side Backs Down and the other gets their initial wargoal. (But ONLY the initial wargoal.) So you can't use it risk-free to test the waters.

• No more "uncivilized" nations. Instead there are "Unrecognized" nations, which basically means they weren't seen as equals by the Great Powers at the time. They do NOT get any arbitrary debuffs to technology or combat just for having the "unrecognized" flag. They play by the same rules as everyone else for the most part.

• They will start out technologically behind in many cases, based on historical circumstances, and the social and economic conditions they have to deal with will generally make it harder to become an advanced, industrialized, technologically competitive nation. But that's all tied to the laws, POPs, Interest Groups, resources, and starting infrastructure, not their Unrecognized status.

• The one direct, mechanical difference is that it's cheaper and generates less threat for Recognized nations to take land from Unrecognized nations.

• You can go from Unrecognized to Recognized, for example by beating up a Great Power. The Russo-Japanese War was given as an example of an Unrecognized nation becoming Recognized.

• Colonization works in two different ways: Colonization against Decentralized Countries can be done like in EU4, where you can theoretically do it without open conflict. You establish a Colonial Institution back home and employ POPs as Colonists who will slowly build up the colony in the target province. During this time, you will generate a Tension score with the Decentralized Country you are colonizing on top of, which can result in open warfare. The natives will annex your colony if they win.

• Machine Guns no longer magically make you able to colonize new areas like in Vicky 2. They just help against uprisings if you do have to fight. Medical advances like Malaria Medication will have a major impact on where you can colonize, though.

• Colonization against Unrecognized nations, it's more like declaring a regular war. You can make them your colonial subject, or you can demand a Treaty Port, which will create a new State under your control and give you access to their market.

• Outright annexing overseas territory by either method will create a Colonial State, which is not the same as an Unincorporated State. They are affected by colonial policies, have special migration rules, and distinct mechanics.

• War/combat is unfinished. They're not ready to talk about it yet.

• Prestige is still a thing and affects your Great Power ranking. Cut Down to Size wargoal will take a bite out of your prestige.

• GDP affects your Great Power ranking directly, even if you as the state are not benefitting from that production through taxation. What matters is production, not government revenue. Factories, especially late game, will cause GDP to skyrocket, so you will need to industrialize to remain competitive as a Great Power.

• Each Power Rank has its own intended play experience.

• Minor Powers: Ideal for playing tall. Local concerns. Min-maxing your economy, encouraging immigration, building exactly the society you want, "tending your garden," becoming regionally powerful/influential.

• Major Power: Might have some colonies. Mass political movements outside your control might try to change the shape of your country (this is less of a concern for minor powers). Becoming a Great Power is a realistic goal.

• Great Powers: Global influence. Maintaining and disrupting the worldwide balance of power. Getting involved in smaller nations' affairs in lots of ways beyond just conquest. Proxy conflicts. Gunboat diplomacy. Being #1. They get more tools to change industry top-down, from a macro level, with a single click. You shouldn't be really concerned with economic micromanagement, but still have a lot of control over your economy in broader ways.

• Three different Tech Trees: Production, Military, and Society. More like a traditional, branching 4X tech tree, not like the tech columns in Vicky 2. No split between techs and inventions. Seems like no more RNG for inventions other than that Tech Spread has some RNG involved.

• About 10 "tiers" of tech. Earlier ones might only have three techs in them but later ones have up to 11.

• Production Tech represents the major civilian inventions of the era that directly affect industry. Dynamite, Railways, Cotton Gin, Telegraph.

• Military Tech is pretty self-explanatory. Hardware as well as doctrines. Ironclads, Machine Guns, Modern Nursing, Defense in Depth. Tanks and Planes are at the very bottom. Having something researched doesn't automatically implement it, so for example, just researching Defense in Depth won't give you its benefits until you decide to enact it.

• Society Tech is stuff like Romanticism, Urban Planning, Central Banking, Dialectics. Anarchism and Socialism are two separate ideologies now that function differently. Antibiotics, Malaria Prevention, and other civilian stuff unrelated to direct production of goods is also in this tree.

• Innovations (including social movements like Socialism) can spread into your country even if you choose not to research them, which can be combated by things like censorship at the cost of slowing down your Innovation rate and upsetting the Intelligentsia.

• Almost every tech has advantages and disadvantages. i.e. automation increases overall throughput and reduces costs, but also reduces the number of available jobs in that industry, so you have to figure out what to do with all the newly unemployed.

• Technology Spread is based on your Literacy rate. Higher literacy and a free press will cause techs that are spreading to you from outside to spread faster. This is separate from Innovation Points, which you invest directly into a single tech you are trying to research at a given moment.

• Innovation Points you can spend directly come from building universities and employing Academics. Literacy rate affects how many of those points you can directly invest into research each week. So if you have a well-funded academic elite but low general literacy, you might not be able to spend all of your Innovation Points. These "overflow" Innovation Points beyond your direct investment cap will increase Tech Spread instead. So there's a balance between increasing Literacy, which speeds the adoption of outside ideas, and building academic infrastructure, which gives you more direct control over research. (This is a complicated system and we got to see it for like 30 seconds but I'm pretty sure I was able to get the general idea. I'm sure Martin can find me and yell at me if I'm wrong.)

• Ideas like Socialism, Anarchism, Egalitarianism, will increase the minimum Expected Standard of Living for ALL POPs once present in your nation, so you will need to provide them with more stuff to keep them happy. This might also increase attraction for Interest Groups that want broader suffrage or to abolish slavery, for example.

• Having Anarchism as your organizing principle produces no Authority, so you will have a very reduced ability to make changes to your country directly once you have switched over to it.

• Anarchists can implement a Council Republic government, which gives more Political Strength to Farmers and Machinists and opens up the Worker Cooperative production method, in which workers own their factories and collect dividends from them. This is distinct from USSR-style communism, in which the state controls the industries and (theoretically...) passes the proceeds on to the workers from the top down in the form of subsidies and social programs.

• If a revolution happens, you can side with the rebels. So you can be super duper capitalist on purpose, make life hell for all the workers, then switch sides when the socialists rise up. Neighboring conservative countries will be likely to step in and try to stop a socialist revolution.

• They want it to be playable without a lot of prior experience. It's a very complex game but it should be much more approachable than Vicky 2.

• Rather than a game where you learn how to play "correctly" by following a guide, the goal is for it to be the kind of game where you do what comes naturally and are able to easily understand why your actions led to certain consequences.

• Historical events (Taiping Rebellion, US Civil War) can happen, but only if the correct conditions exist. If the US player plays the interest group game really well and manages to abolish slavery peacefully in the 1850s, there won't be a hardcoded Civil War event chain that fires.

Quote from: Syt on May 22, 2021, 04:23:31 AM
Looks good, but let's see if it all comes together in the finished product and doesn't end up a broken unbalanced jumble. :D

Quote from: jimmy olsen on May 22, 2021, 04:59:36 AM

Quote from: Syt on May 22, 2021, 04:23:31 AM
Looks good, but let's see if it all comes together in the finished product and doesn't end up a broken unbalanced jumble. :D

Vicky 2 was all that and it was great!

QuoteI've seen this rumor posted before but as far as I know (and have heard from others at the company who worked on V2) it's not true - it's more that the economy code has been refactored and optimized to the point of being nearly unreadable. There's a fairly solid understanding of how it should operate in theory, but it's an extremely complicated piece of code (written at a time when paradox played pretty fast and loose with code standards) that ends up behaving in weird and unexpected ways. For example, I'm reasonably sure that artisans making tanks out of fruit wasn't in the original design.

Quote from: Syt on May 22, 2021, 05:03:37 AM
Yeah, Tim, but they're building from scratch from what I understand.

To quote Martin Anward from last year:

QuoteI've seen this rumor posted before but as far as I know (and have heard from others at the company who worked on V2) it's not true - it's more that the economy code has been refactored and optimized to the point of being nearly unreadable. There's a fairly solid understanding of how it should operate in theory, but it's an extremely complicated piece of code (written at a time when paradox played pretty fast and loose with code standards) that ends up behaving in weird and unexpected ways. For example, I'm reasonably sure that artisans making tanks out of fruit wasn't in the original design.

Quote from: The Brain on May 22, 2021, 05:18:13 AM

Quote from: Syt on May 22, 2021, 05:03:37 AM
Yeah, Tim, but they're building from scratch from what I understand.

To quote Martin Anward from last year:

QuoteI've seen this rumor posted before but as far as I know (and have heard from others at the company who worked on V2) it's not true - it's more that the economy code has been refactored and optimized to the point of being nearly unreadable. There's a fairly solid understanding of how it should operate in theory, but it's an extremely complicated piece of code (written at a time when paradox played pretty fast and loose with code standards) that ends up behaving in weird and unexpected ways. For example, I'm reasonably sure that artisans making tanks out of fruit wasn't in the original design.

Maybe, maybe not. Many countries in that era used sharpened mangoes as weapons.

Quote from: Solmyr on May 22, 2021, 03:09:09 PM

Quote from: The Brain on May 22, 2021, 05:18:13 AM

Quote from: Syt on May 22, 2021, 05:03:37 AM
Yeah, Tim, but they're building from scratch from what I understand.

To quote Martin Anward from last year:

QuoteI've seen this rumor posted before but as far as I know (and have heard from others at the company who worked on V2) it's not true - it's more that the economy code has been refactored and optimized to the point of being nearly unreadable. There's a fairly solid understanding of how it should operate in theory, but it's an extremely complicated piece of code (written at a time when paradox played pretty fast and loose with code standards) that ends up behaving in weird and unexpected ways. For example, I'm reasonably sure that artisans making tanks out of fruit wasn't in the original design.

Maybe, maybe not. Many countries in that era used sharpened mangoes as weapons.

Only the ones Captain Blackadder was fighting.

Quote from: Crazy_Ivan80 on May 22, 2021, 11:27:55 AM
some things remind me of that AGEOD game that was barely playable

Quote from: grumbler on May 22, 2021, 04:58:02 PM

Quote from: Crazy_Ivan80 on May 22, 2021, 11:27:55 AM
some things remind me of that AGEOD game that was barely playable

I actually quite enjoyed that game once I understood the mechanics.  Too bad it won't work on 64-bit computers.

Quote from: Tamas on May 23, 2021, 04:09:35 AM
and regardless of which country you played the easiest road to stability and prosperity was to go 20th Scandinavia-style democratic welfare state in the most direct and quickest way possible.

Quote from: Tamas on May 23, 2021, 04:09:35 AM
the Reddit rumour-dump sounds amazing obviously, but if they will really create a billion pops the game won't ever get even close to being balanced or making sense.

Quote from: Zanza on May 23, 2021, 04:35:15 AM
When you look at all kind of indicators regarding human life, the argument that Scandinavian welfare states are the pinnacle of human civilization can be legitimately made. So the game is just realistic.  :P

Quote from: Tamas on May 23, 2021, 03:50:00 PM

Quote from: Zanza on May 23, 2021, 04:35:15 AM
When you look at all kind of indicators regarding human life, the argument that Scandinavian welfare states are the pinnacle of human civilization can be legitimately made. So the game is just realistic.  :P

Possibly. What I mean is, for example, from the (cruel) point of view of trying to keep together the Russian empire in the late 19th century, avoiding democratisation was a valid course of action (for a while). But in the game, it was just suboptimal play, when you could just switch to a welfare state without causing any internal instability.

Quote from: Syt on May 24, 2021, 05:10:42 AM
The slides from the Vickynomics presentation can be downloaded here in PDF form: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/threads/vickynomics-panel.1475691/

Quote from: jimmy olsen on May 24, 2021, 07:05:24 AM
Upon further reflection, I would change the timeline of the games even more if I were in charge

Europa Universalis 5: 1399-1763
Victoria 3: 1764-1901 (Fully cover the industrial revolution and liberal revolutions)
Hearts of Iron 5: 1902-1962 (Obviously twelve to fifteen start dates will be required)

Quote from: Sheilbh on May 24, 2021, 07:33:55 AM
Interesting :hmm:

I'd go 1492 - 1789 and 1789 - 1914.

HOI - I'd keep starting at 1936 or maybe 1933 because I think it's different.

Quote from: The Minsky Moment on May 24, 2021, 09:10:15 AM
If WW1 were accurately represented in game, it wouldn't happen.  Any rational human player or any decent AI would peace out rather than fight to utter ruin - or, more likely, not start the fighting in the first place.

Quote from: Zanza on May 24, 2021, 10:19:22 AM

Quote from: The Minsky Moment on May 24, 2021, 09:10:15 AM
If WW1 were accurately represented in game, it wouldn't happen.  Any rational human player or any decent AI would peace out rather than fight to utter ruin - or, more likely, not start the fighting in the first place.

Reading game forums suggests that there are lots of players out there as or more stupid then Wilhelm II, so WW1would still be a distinct possibility with a human player at the helm.  :P

Quote from: Zanza on May 24, 2021, 12:15:21 PM
If this iteration is successful, they may consider a DLC to extend the timeline...

Quote from: DGuller on May 24, 2021, 12:30:15 PM
It seems promising that there are many local markets now, rather than the highly unrealistic one world market.  Modeling the world economy with the simplification of one global market is like modeling car tires with with a simplifying assumption of no friction.

Quote from: Syt on May 24, 2021, 12:31:08 PM

Quote from: DGuller on May 24, 2021, 12:30:15 PM
It seems promising that there are many local markets now, rather than the highly unrealistic one world market.  Modeling the world economy with the simplification of one global market is like modeling car tires with with a simplifying assumption of no friction.

Doesn't Vic2 basically have 8 markets, one per sphere of influence? Or do I misremember. :unsure:

Quote from: DGuller on May 24, 2021, 12:47:51 PM

Quote from: Syt on May 24, 2021, 12:31:08 PM

Quote from: DGuller on May 24, 2021, 12:30:15 PM
It seems promising that there are many local markets now, rather than the highly unrealistic one world market.  Modeling the world economy with the simplification of one global market is like modeling car tires with with a simplifying assumption of no friction.

Doesn't Vic2 basically have 8 markets, one per sphere of influence? Or do I misremember. :unsure:

There was some prioritization around your sphere (sphere owner had priority on selling stuff if there was a glut of it, and priority on buying it if there was shortage), but there was essentially one market with one set of prices.

Quote from: DGuller on May 24, 2021, 02:00:58 PM
Local market prices should be determined by supply and demand.  The effect of infrastructure is to expand the pool from which you determine the total supply and total demand.  You don't care what the supply is in the area that you can't reach, either due to bad transportation efficiency or due to blockade.

Quote from: Zanza on May 24, 2021, 02:18:02 PM
On political parties versus interest groups: (https://i.redd.it/7pa0a683c3171.jpg)

Quote from: Syt on May 23, 2021, 01:40:52 AM

Quote from: grumbler on May 22, 2021, 04:58:02 PM

Quote from: Crazy_Ivan80 on May 22, 2021, 11:27:55 AM
some things remind me of that AGEOD game that was barely playable

I actually quite enjoyed that game once I understood the mechanics.  Too bad it won't work on 64-bit computers.

The Steam version (Pride of Nations, I believe Pardox's was Vainglory of Nations?), appears to run on my Windows 10 64-bit system. Turns still take about 1 minute to process, though (on an i9-10900). :P

Quote from: The Minsky Moment on May 24, 2021, 09:10:15 AM

By the same token it would be an awful idea to put the time period back into the Nappy era.

Quote from: FunkMonk on May 24, 2021, 09:32:46 AM
I feel like the most important part of this new game will be having like five dozens of different variations of each national flag, dependent on the type of government in power.

Good memories from Vicky 2 :wub:

QuoteThose of you who are long-time veterans of Paradox Games will recognize me. No, I hadn't completely vanished into the ether, though life over the past twelve years since the release of Victoria II took me in directions that greatly limited my ability to be involved with the Victoria community and Paradox in general.

Saw the news that Paradox is going to revisit Victoria for a new edition, and my heart filled with joy. I was heavily involved in the development of Victoria II as a beta tester and data contributor during its development in 2008 and 2009 (as well as creating, along with XieChengnuo, the map layout that would be used in not only Victoria, but be the base for the maps of EU3 and HoI3/4), and while the game was not, as Mary Poppins would have preferred, "Practically Perfect in Every Way," there was a lot of great things about the game and how it built upon the foundations established by the original Victoria I release combined with much of the modding work that the Victoria Improvement Project (VIP) mod had done with the first iteration of the game. This is clear from the devotion shown by fans of the game to this day the Victoria franchise and Victoria II.

Although my spare time these days tends to be rather limited, I will definitely be following developments of this new version closely. Godspeed to the development team for Victoria 3

OHGamer

Quote from: garbon on May 25, 2021, 02:14:44 AM
What about OHgamer's aren't I great thread:

QuoteThose of you who are long-time veterans of Paradox Games will recognize me. No, I hadn't completely vanished into the ether, though life over the past twelve years since the release of Victoria II took me in directions that greatly limited my ability to be involved with the Victoria community and Paradox in general.

Saw the news that Paradox is going to revisit Victoria for a new edition, and my heart filled with joy. I was heavily involved in the development of Victoria II as a beta tester and data contributor during its development in 2008 and 2009 (as well as creating, along with XieChengnuo, the map layout that would be used in not only Victoria, but be the base for the maps of EU3 and HoI3/4), and while the game was not, as Mary Poppins would have preferred, "Practically Perfect in Every Way," there was a lot of great things about the game and how it built upon the foundations established by the original Victoria I release combined with much of the modding work that the Victoria Improvement Project (VIP) mod had done with the first iteration of the game. This is clear from the devotion shown by fans of the game to this day the Victoria franchise and Victoria II.

Although my spare time these days tends to be rather limited, I will definitely be following developments of this new version closely. Godspeed to the development team for Victoria 3

OHGamer

Quote from: Syt on May 25, 2021, 02:56:50 AM
I should go and brag about the flags and flavor events I made for Vic1 in development. :P

Though to be fair, the guys who worked the POP mines back then are probably still traumatized to this day. :D

Quote from: garbon on May 25, 2021, 02:14:44 AM
What about OHgamer's aren't I great thread:

QuoteThose of you who are long-time veterans of Paradox Games will recognize me. No, I hadn't completely vanished into the ether, though life over the past twelve years since the release of Victoria II took me in directions that greatly limited my ability to be involved with the Victoria community and Paradox in general.

Saw the news that Paradox is going to revisit Victoria for a new edition, and my heart filled with joy. I was heavily involved in the development of Victoria II as a beta tester and data contributor during its development in 2008 and 2009 (as well as creating, along with XieChengnuo, the map layout that would be used in not only Victoria, but be the base for the maps of EU3 and HoI3/4), and while the game was not, as Mary Poppins would have preferred, "Practically Perfect in Every Way," there was a lot of great things about the game and how it built upon the foundations established by the original Victoria I release combined with much of the modding work that the Victoria Improvement Project (VIP) mod had done with the first iteration of the game. This is clear from the devotion shown by fans of the game to this day the Victoria franchise and Victoria II.

Although my spare time these days tends to be rather limited, I will definitely be following developments of this new version closely. Godspeed to the development team for Victoria 3

OHGamer, insufferable as ever

Quote from: Tamas on May 25, 2021, 02:54:32 AM
:lol: wtf

Quote from: FunkMonk on May 25, 2021, 06:22:55 AM
There's something about Victoria that really fosters a community  :cry:

Quote from: Tamas on May 25, 2021, 02:59:46 AM

Quote from: Syt on May 25, 2021, 02:56:50 AM
I should go and brag about the flags and flavor events I made for Vic1 in development. :P

Though to be fair, the guys who worked the POP mines back then are probably still traumatized to this day. :D

Yeah the "beta" test of Vicky1 was more like "please help us lift it out of alpha". I remember doing the resources for African provinces. Oh the naivety of youth.

Quote from: Maladict on May 25, 2021, 06:37:26 AM
Didn't he post here at some point?

Quote from: garbon on May 25, 2021, 06:38:46 AM

Quote from: FunkMonk on May 25, 2021, 06:22:55 AM
There's something about Victoria that really fosters a community  :cry:

On p'dox forum it has only garnered likes.

Quote from: Syt on May 27, 2021, 11:13:21 AM
First dev diary about: Pops.

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/developer-diary/victoria-3-dev-diary-1-pops.1476573/?utm_source=twitter-owned&utm_medium=social-owned&utm_content=post&utm_campaign=vic3_vic_20210527_for_dd

Quote from: Syt on May 27, 2021, 11:53:29 AM
(https://i.redd.it/vm1ymezxto171.jpg)

Quote from: FunkMonk on May 27, 2021, 11:55:45 AM
Imagine if actual fascists didn't post their stupidity on Steam forums

Quote from: Syt on May 27, 2021, 11:53:29 AM
(https://i.redd.it/vm1ymezxto171.jpg)

Quote from: DGuller on August 27, 2021, 11:40:34 AM
What I really don't like is the lack of inventory mechanics.  I think having the factory dispose of everything they produced every day, one way or the other, is too much of a kludge.  Not having any stockpiles of war materiel for times of war is also disappointing.  I hated the "all income, no assets" philosophy in HOI4, as I think it limited a lot of mechanics, but at least HOI4 never pretended to be an economic simulator.

Quote from: DGuller on August 27, 2021, 11:40:34 AM
What I really don't like is the lack of inventory mechanics.  I think having the factory dispose of everything they produced every day, one way or the other, is too much of a kludge.  Not having any stockpiles of war materiel for times of war is also disappointing.  I hated the "all income, no assets" philosophy in HOI4, as I think it limited a lot of mechanics, but at least HOI4 never pretended to be an economic simulator.

Quote from: Crazy_Ivan80 on August 28, 2021, 11:05:26 AM

Quote from: DGuller on August 27, 2021, 11:40:34 AM
What I really don't like is the lack of inventory mechanics.  I think having the factory dispose of everything they produced every day, one way or the other, is too much of a kludge.  Not having any stockpiles of war materiel for times of war is also disappointing.  I hated the "all income, no assets" philosophy in HOI4, as I think it limited a lot of mechanics, but at least HOI4 never pretended to be an economic simulator.

it's been a while but iirc you could build up stockpiles of this and that in hoi4

Quote from: DGuller on August 28, 2021, 11:26:38 AM

Quote from: Crazy_Ivan80 on August 28, 2021, 11:05:26 AM

Quote from: DGuller on August 27, 2021, 11:40:34 AM
What I really don't like is the lack of inventory mechanics.  I think having the factory dispose of everything they produced every day, one way or the other, is too much of a kludge.  Not having any stockpiles of war materiel for times of war is also disappointing.  I hated the "all income, no assets" philosophy in HOI4, as I think it limited a lot of mechanics, but at least HOI4 never pretended to be an economic simulator.

it's been a while but iirc you could build up stockpiles of this and that in hoi4

You can stockpile equipment and fuel, but nothing else.  You can't stockpile civilian production (which means you can't buy/sell equipment, hence the need for events that give you extra civ factories for a period in exchange for 25 bombers), and you can't stockpile resources.  The moment you lose access to steel, the ship and tank production grinds to a halt the very next day.

Quote from: DGuller on August 28, 2021, 11:26:38 AM
You can stockpile equipment and fuel, but nothing else.  You can't stockpile civilian production (which means you can't buy/sell equipment, hence the need for events that give you extra civ factories for a period in exchange for 25 bombers), and you can't stockpile resources.  The moment you lose access to steel, the ship and tank production grinds to a halt the very next day.

Quote from: Threviel on August 29, 2021, 09:37:34 AM
Yeah, but that didn't happen in a strategical scale during the war. No one had gigantic warehouses chock full of resources just lying around.

The closest approximation would be some kind of lag representing the resources way to the final product, but that would be a two-egged thing since it would take months and months for some newly conquered resources to show up in the system.

I think the current way is an acceptable compromise.

Quote from: grumbler on August 29, 2021, 06:16:53 PM
Actually, Japan did exactly what you say no countries did, especially with oil, aluminum, scrap steel, and high-octane aircraft fuels.  In the case of oil, it was over a year's worth of stockpile (though planned at two years' worth, consumption was much higher than anticipated).

Quote from: Threviel on August 30, 2021, 12:37:04 AM

Quote from: grumbler on August 29, 2021, 06:16:53 PM
Actually, Japan did exactly what you say no countries did, especially with oil, aluminum, scrap steel, and high-octane aircraft fuels.  In the case of oil, it was over a year's worth of stockpile (though planned at two years' worth, consumption was much higher than anticipated).

Yeah, I don't think I mentioned fuel since HoI4 has a stockpile system for that and every state presumably had reserves.

Interesting with Japan, thanks for that. How did that work? What was the cost for them to do that? Did they even have much of an internal production of steel and aluminium?

My guess is that they had been at war for a long time and they planned on staying at war for a year or so at least, so they had a lot of time to plan and prepare. Knowing that they lacked resources they had no choice but to buy and store raw resources. But that is an uneducated guess.

Quote from: Threviel on August 29, 2021, 03:19:24 AM

Quote from: DGuller on August 28, 2021, 11:26:38 AM
You can stockpile equipment and fuel, but nothing else.  You can't stockpile civilian production (which means you can't buy/sell equipment, hence the need for events that give you extra civ factories for a period in exchange for 25 bombers), and you can't stockpile resources.  The moment you lose access to steel, the ship and tank production grinds to a halt the very next day.

If I remember HoI3 correctly you could stockpile vast amounts of resources, enough to last a good part of the war and that seems to me even more unrealistic.

For example Germany relied on Swedish iron ore, without it tank and ship production would have ground to a halt. Sure they had reserves, but not years worth of reserves. And the same with everything really, no one had gigantic warehouses filled with aluminium for use in case of war.

I think the HoI4 system all in all works better, perhaps there should be a time lag based on distance to resource or something, but that seems overly advanced without much gain. It's a game after all, not a logistics simulator.

Quote from: jimmy olsen on August 30, 2021, 09:08:18 AM
Didn't the Germans seize 6-12 months worth of nitrates in Belgium in WWI which made a huge difference in their war effort?

Quote from: garbon on October 28, 2021, 02:52:05 PM
The new system of war/diplomacy as outlined in the latest dev diary sounds interesting.

Quote from: Habbaku on November 04, 2021, 03:33:01 PM
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/developer-diary/victoria-3-dev-diary-22-the-concept-of-war.1496459/

I'm so excited about this.

QuoteThe second pillar, War is Strategic, is exactly what it sounds like. In Victoria 3, all decisions you make regarding warfare are on the strategic level, not the tactical. What this means is that you do not move units directly on the map, or make decisions about which exact units should be initiating battle where. Instead of being unit-in-province-based, warfare in Victoria 3 is focused on supplying and allocating troops to frontlines between you and your enemies. The decisions you make during war are about matters such as what front you send your generals to and what overall strategy they should be following there. If this sounds like a radical departure from the norm in Paradox GSGs, that's because it is, and I'll be talking more about the rationale at the end of this dev diary.

Quote from: Tyr on November 04, 2021, 05:45:44 PM
Sounds nice in theory but didn't the most recent HOI try something like that? And it was quite the unplayable mess....

Quote from: Tyr on November 04, 2021, 05:45:44 PM
Sounds nice in theory but didn't the most recent HOI try something like that? And it was quite the unplayable mess....

Quote from: Tamas on November 04, 2021, 04:12:11 PM
It's VERY cool they have the guts to move away from standard Paradox stack chasing like that. I hope the crying on their forum won't be too much for leadership to make them revert.

Quote from: Razgovory on November 04, 2021, 09:14:35 PM
So is this game just not going to have military units?

Quote from: Razgovory on November 08, 2021, 12:24:04 PM
It will probably resemble HOI4's battle system except that the AI controls both sides.

Quote from: jimmy olsen on November 08, 2021, 07:48:04 AM
This is insanely ambitious. If they can pull it off is the question.

Quote from: crazy canuck on November 08, 2021, 05:48:17 PM

Quote from: jimmy olsen on November 08, 2021, 07:48:04 AM
This is insanely ambitious. If they can pull it off is the question.

My uneducated guess is it might be easier than trying to code AI to move a bunch of units around the map.

Quote from: The Minsky Moment on November 05, 2021, 01:07:52 PM

Quote from: Tamas on November 04, 2021, 04:12:11 PM
It's VERY cool they have the guts to move away from standard Paradox stack chasing like that. I hope the crying on their forum won't be too much for leadership to make them revert.

My thoughts exactly.
E.g. Having to siege every crappy Mexican province to get the historical peace is not an experience that needs repeating.

Hopefully it will also help them address the never solved problem of how to model warfare in the 19th century wars of unification AND also the WW1 era

Quote from: crazy canuck on November 11, 2021, 12:54:59 PM
Excitement level increased.  I will honour the promise to myself never to buy a paradox game on release again, after this one.

Quote from: crazy canuck on November 11, 2021, 12:54:59 PM
Excitement level increased.  I will honour the promise to myself never to buy a paradox game on release again, after this one.

Quote from: Habbaku on November 11, 2021, 12:39:20 PM
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/developer-diary/victoria-3-dev-diary-23-fronts-and-generals.1497106/

:yeah:

Quote from: Josephus on November 11, 2021, 03:51:28 PM

Quote from: crazy canuck on November 11, 2021, 12:54:59 PM
Excitement level increased.  I will honour the promise to myself never to buy a paradox game on release again, after this one.

Yeah, but will you pre order the special uber deluxe version with bonus song.?

Quote from: The Minsky Moment on November 11, 2021, 06:15:21 PM
Posted this in the dev diary thread:

So far, looks good.
Really like the interaction between the generals and their political influence and effects.
However, if there is one nit it is that I think there was a missed opportunity on the general traits (positive) and conditions (negative?)
It is logical to think that the generals would acquire positive attributes through experience but in reality I think that is rarely the case. The Napoleon of 1812-15 was more experienced than the Napoleon of 1797-1805, but not I think the superior general. I don't think Rommel was an effective general in North Africa because he spent many years in deserts. etc.

What would be more interesting is if the general's personality was always known but key traits both positive and negative were hidden and unknown until after the general spent some time in action. That would better reflect the reality that the true abilities of many commanders in the period were not really known until after they had been tested - compare for example the evolution in the reputations of McClellan and Grant. It would also help recreate the real dilemmas that occurred during this period when generals believed to be effective were promoted and obtained political influence only to be exposed as incompetent in the field.

Quote from: garbon on November 12, 2021, 02:37:40 AM
Would it be fun though? Battle after battle, why am I losing? Oh secretly unrevealed terrible general. Okay immediately toss him out assuming I can take rep hit with his interest group.

Quote from: garbon on November 12, 2021, 02:37:40 AM
Okay immediately toss him out assuming I can take rep hit with his interest group.

Quote from: PDH on November 12, 2021, 06:24:52 PM
Not sure if it would be fun, but Minsky's idea allows for something like the string of...interesting generals the Union had in the East during the Civil War.  Of course, the only way to overcome that would be huge grand divisions to chew up the confederates in battle after battle - but people would cry out "gaming the system" in that case.

Quote from: PDH on November 12, 2021, 06:24:52 PM
Not sure if it would be fun, but Minsky's idea allows for something like the string of...interesting generals the Union had in the East during the Civil War.  Of course, the only way to overcome that would be huge grand divisions to chew up the confederates in battle after battle - but people would cry out "gaming the system" in that case.

Quote from: Zanza on April 18, 2022, 05:41:59 AMA developer version has apparently been pirated by a beta tester. Mixed reactions supposedly.
I hope this does not impact sales figures and they don't bin this like Imperator ...

Quote from: Josquius on April 18, 2022, 07:33:22 AM

Quote from: Zanza on April 18, 2022, 05:41:59 AMA developer version has apparently been pirated by a beta tester. Mixed reactions supposedly.
I hope this does not impact sales figures and they don't bin this like Imperator ...

Zero interest in playing it (once upon a time I'd be right on that) but where did you read this? Curious to see people's reactions.

Quote from: DGuller on April 18, 2022, 10:38:59 AMDid the catch the asshole beta tester who leaked it?

Quote from: Richard Hakluyt on August 29, 2022, 04:22:17 AMIt is a very ambitious game; really looking forward to playing it but also expecting problems of one sort or another.

I'll give them my money from the get-go just for trying  :cool:

Quote from: Habbaku on August 28, 2022, 01:41:35 PMI'm predicting early November.

Quote from: Tamas on August 29, 2022, 05:44:41 AM

Quote from: Richard Hakluyt on August 29, 2022, 04:22:17 AMIt is a very ambitious game; really looking forward to playing it but also expecting problems of one sort or another.

I'll give them my money from the get-go just for trying  :cool:

Yeah same.

Quote from: ulmont on August 29, 2022, 11:12:19 AM

Quote from: Habbaku on August 28, 2022, 01:41:35 PMI'm predicting early November.

...presumably the 11th.

Quote from: Richard Hakluyt on August 29, 2022, 04:22:17 AMIt is a very ambitious game; really looking forward to playing it but also expecting problems of one sort or another.

I'll give them my money from the get-go just for trying  :cool:

Quote from: Habbaku on August 30, 2022, 02:56:56 PMI've already got a small group (5, at current) committed to a multiplayer session. You could join us. :sleep:

Quote from: Tamas on August 30, 2022, 03:07:56 PM

Quote from: Habbaku on August 30, 2022, 02:56:56 PMI've already got a small group (5, at current) committed to a multiplayer session. You could join us. :sleep:

Tempting thanks, but I don't think the timezone will work out much.


At the end of the stream you can see the war AI needs work... They as Netherlands attacked Belgium to show how that works, and due to the diplomatic mini-game Russia supported them. SO the Belgium AI decided to land its army in Perm while the Dutch moved in to Belgium pretty much unopposed. :pinch:

Quote from: garbon on August 30, 2022, 03:24:17 PM

Quote from: Tamas on August 30, 2022, 03:07:56 PM

Quote from: Habbaku on August 30, 2022, 02:56:56 PMI've already got a small group (5, at current) committed to a multiplayer session. You could join us. :sleep:

Tempting thanks, but I don't think the timezone will work out much.


At the end of the stream you can see the war AI needs work... They as Netherlands attacked Belgium to show how that works, and due to the diplomatic mini-game Russia supported them. SO the Belgium AI decided to land its army in Perm while the Dutch moved in to Belgium pretty much unopposed. :pinch:

Sounds like the standard Belgian AI. What's not to love?

Quote from: FunkMonk on August 30, 2022, 05:01:44 PMApparently this will be on Game Pass PC on release so I guess I'll pay $0 and play this for many, many hours.

QuoteThe game will be a Steam exclusive at the release - after discussion with our partners it was decided that Victoria 3 won't be a part of Game Pass or Microsoft Store

Quote from: Tamas on August 30, 2022, 03:07:56 PM

Quote from: Habbaku on August 30, 2022, 02:56:56 PMI've already got a small group (5, at current) committed to a multiplayer session. You could join us. :sleep:

Tempting thanks, but I don't think the timezone will work out much.


At the end of the stream you can see the war AI needs work... They as Netherlands attacked Belgium to show how that works, and due to the diplomatic mini-game Russia supported them. SO the Belgium AI decided to land its army in Perm while the Dutch moved in to Belgium pretty much unopposed. :pinch:

Quote from: garbon on August 30, 2022, 09:55:28 PM

Quote from: FunkMonk on August 30, 2022, 05:01:44 PMApparently this will be on Game Pass PC on release so I guess I'll pay $0 and play this for many, many hours.

That doesn't appear in line with what paradox said on their forum.

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/threads/victoria-3-on-steam.1540234/

QuoteThe game will be a Steam exclusive at the release - after discussion with our partners it was decided that Victoria 3 won't be a part of Game Pass or Microsoft Store

Quote from: crazy canuck on August 31, 2022, 09:26:34 AMGreat read, thanks!  Sounds very promising-including the fact the AI is not yet in final form, so less concern about it invading Perm with this build.

QuoteOne of my biggest criticisms (and I even told Martin directly) is that there DEFINITELY needs to be WAY more international pressure if you decide to go communist or especially anarchist. Currently, it's almost none. I was anarchist Switzerland and had +100 relations with monarchist France.

Like in my mind, everyone should try to kill you immediately. Maybe that's a bit further than they want to go, but I'd love a game rule at least that's like "International Shit Fit Reaction to Communism: Lenient / Default / Realistic." At least if the country in question has a Powerful or Influential Industrialist and/or Landowners IG. Your relations should go to like -50 for council republic, -100 for Anarchism. Might fuck around and write a mod.

Quote from: FunkMonk on August 31, 2022, 10:02:45 AM:hmm:

QuoteOne of my biggest criticisms (and I even told Martin directly) is that there DEFINITELY needs to be WAY more international pressure if you decide to go communist or especially anarchist. Currently, it's almost none. I was anarchist Switzerland and had +100 relations with monarchist France.

Like in my mind, everyone should try to kill you immediately. Maybe that's a bit further than they want to go, but I'd love a game rule at least that's like "International Shit Fit Reaction to Communism: Lenient / Default / Realistic." At least if the country in question has a Powerful or Influential Industrialist and/or Landowners IG. Your relations should go to like -50 for council republic, -100 for Anarchism. Might fuck around and write a mod.

Quote from: crazy canuck on August 31, 2022, 07:57:05 PMPre-purchased through steam

Quote from: Habbaku on September 01, 2022, 07:53:59 PMCDKeys somehow has a 31% discount now.  :lol:

https://www.cdkeys.com/victoria-3-pc-steam

QuoteThis leads us to cultural assimilation. The conditions for assimilation are a little more complex than conversion, and in some ways operate by the reverse logic. In order to start assimilating, a Pop must already be culturally accepted. After all, if they can't get citizenship, can't vote, can't participate in politics, can't get paid a fair wage on the basis of who they are, there simply is no way for them to assimilate - by which we mean, integrate themselves into a primary culture such that they are both accepted as such by others and genuinely consider themselves part of that culture. Renouncing one's religious beliefs and practices can be a very practical and concrete choice, but adopting and being adopted by a different culture is not a utilitarian decision.

In addition, Pops will never change culture if they live in a state they consider their Homeland. A Franco-Canadian in Ontario might over time adopt the ways and tongue of their Anglo-Canadian neighbors, but a Franco-Canadian who resides in Quebec?! Plutôt mourir!

(And of course, if a confederated Canada has been created with both Anglo- and Franco-Canadian as primary cultures, none of those types of Pops would be changing cultures in the first place.)

If a Pop should be assimilating, the culture they will be assimilating into will always be a primary culture. This is because, again, this is not a practical decision that's just up to the Pop in question, but a two-way-street of assimilation into the dominant national identity. In the case of countries with multiple primary cultures, the one selected will be the Homeland of the state the Pop lives in, or in case none or several apply, the dominant one among Pops who already live there. A Czech Pop living in a unified Germany (North + South German) in the state of Silesia (North German and Polish Homelands) will assimilate into the North German culture; if they lived in Bavaria they would be assimilating into the South German culture; and if they lived in Bohemia they would not assimilate at all, since Bohemia is a not only a South German but also a Czech Homeland. If this Pop instead lived in Transylvania (with both Hungarian and Romanian primary cultures and Homelands), they would be assimilating into whichever of those cultures is more dominant in the part of Transylvania where they live.

The rate of assimilation is the same as for religion, 0.2% per month. As mentioned, the Promote National Values decree can be used to double this rate on a per-state basis. In addition, a Public School System will provide an increased assimilation rate of +12.5% per investment level, representing perhaps a less overt approach to indoctrination than their religious counterparts. With maximum effort, this means you can assimilate half of a minority population in about 18 years.

Quote from: Tamas on August 31, 2022, 10:54:27 AMI mean, one of my gripes with Victoria 2 was that the cleanest, universal, and really quite easy, way to dominance was to beeline toward a modern Scandinavian-style social democracy. I don't dispute the superiority of such a system, but rather the fact that there were a lot of countries in the 19th and early 20th century, where if you tried to do that, they would had fallen apart (Austria-Hungary, Russia, to name a couple) or would had seen a lot of upheaval from vested interests and the like both internally and externally. Whereas in the game you just had to decide to go for it and it was fine.

Quote from: Tamas on August 31, 2022, 10:54:27 AM

Quote from: FunkMonk on August 31, 2022, 10:02:45 AM:hmm:

QuoteOne of my biggest criticisms (and I even told Martin directly) is that there DEFINITELY needs to be WAY more international pressure if you decide to go communist or especially anarchist. Currently, it's almost none. I was anarchist Switzerland and had +100 relations with monarchist France.

Like in my mind, everyone should try to kill you immediately. Maybe that's a bit further than they want to go, but I'd love a game rule at least that's like "International Shit Fit Reaction to Communism: Lenient / Default / Realistic." At least if the country in question has a Powerful or Influential Industrialist and/or Landowners IG. Your relations should go to like -50 for council republic, -100 for Anarchism. Might fuck around and write a mod.

I mean, one of my gripes with Victoria 2 was that the cleanest, universal, and really quite easy, way to dominance was to beeline toward a modern Scandinavian-style social democracy. I don't dispute the superiority of such a system, but rather the fact that there were a lot of countries in the 19th and early 20th century, where if you tried to do that, they would had fallen apart (Austria-Hungary, Russia, to name a couple) or would had seen a lot of upheaval from vested interests and the like both internally and externally. Whereas in the game you just had to decide to go for it and it was fine.

Quote from: Richard Hakluyt on September 03, 2022, 01:44:51 AMTotally agree with Minsky about the generals. But this seems easy to fix to me; generals could turn up with their reputation with their real stats being revealed by experience.

It would be both hilarious and realistic to slowly realise that the military genius with the impressive beard was really a bit useless  :)

Quote from: Richard Hakluyt on August 29, 2022, 04:22:17 AMIt is a very ambitious game; really looking forward to playing it but also expecting problems of one sort or another.

I'll give them my money from the get-go just for trying  :cool:

Quote from: Habbaku on September 01, 2022, 07:53:59 PMCDKeys somehow has a 31% discount now.  :lol:

https://www.cdkeys.com/victoria-3-pc-steam

Quote from: Syt on September 06, 2022, 12:35:44 AMIt's also why, for all its flaws I still enjoy Stellaris, because it's the most flexible "throw every sci-fi concept into it" space 4X sandbox. Incidentally, it's also one of the few Paradox games I usually play with mods that increase the variety of stuff (more events, more planet modifiers, more planet types, etc.) and I cna just enjoy RPing some weird empire without going too crazy on the min/max (i.e. my main gripe with EU4 :P ).

Quote from: Syt on October 14, 2022, 01:12:56 PMI watched a developer stream this or last week. In three hours they managed to unite Germany as Prussia, mostly focusing on allying the minors etc. They also went fully republican IIRC, abolishing the monarchy around 1849. They mostly ignored all other diplomacy and kept building up industries etc. and reacting to events. Getting through 30 years at speed 5 in a few hours is quite impressive, though other goings on around the world seemed weird (Egypt taking strange territories from Ottomans, US Civil War seeing much of the North West joining the Confederacy, China's muslim territories becoming a heavenly kingdom (or whatever the Taipeh Rebellion was called in game) .... maybe it was them not interacting much with the wider world or internal mechanics, focusing exclusively on unification, but it all seemed a bit too easy (building Germany), and I didn't get an impression they had to watch internal politics much besides enacting laws to keep people a bit happy.

It left me a bit apprehensive, and I hope that it just looked that way on stream. Though I'm not sure I like the menu designs etc. at the moment. It looked all a bit cluttered/"noisy" for my tastes.

Quote from: The Brain on October 17, 2022, 01:03:55 PMI was too afeared to ever attempt any of the Victoria games (even if I owned at least one of them I think). I am lowkey curious though.

Quote from: Tamas on October 17, 2022, 01:19:44 PM

Quote from: The Brain on October 17, 2022, 01:03:55 PMI was too afeared to ever attempt any of the Victoria games (even if I owned at least one of them I think). I am lowkey curious though.

I am very disappointed in you.

Quote from: The Brain on October 17, 2022, 01:32:16 PM

Quote from: Tamas on October 17, 2022, 01:19:44 PM

Quote from: The Brain on October 17, 2022, 01:03:55 PMI was too afeared to ever attempt any of the Victoria games (even if I owned at least one of them I think). I am lowkey curious though.

I am very disappointed in you.

:( I should have been braver. I mean north is up on the map.

Quote from: The Minsky Moment on October 19, 2022, 12:01:21 PMLooking at the latest posted tutorial video, Vic 3 is struggling to represent the American Second Party System.

The Democrats are supported by Evangelicals, which would surprise the Whiggish northern anti-slavery reverends and their followers. The Whigs are supported by "Rural Folk," an odd match for a party that drew its core support from provincial towns and cities.  It's especially off since Andrew Jackson seems to be the factional leader for the Rural Folk.

It appears the Vic political system is designed around a classical 19th century European model of conversative-reactionary parties of the rights vs liberal-radicals of the left, where landowners and clergy form the core support for the right and intelligentsia-industrialists for the liberal-left.  However, the American Whigs and Democrats don't fit properly into that left-right schema and evangelical protestants in antebellum America were often supporting what was then progressive causes. 

Vic 2 had a similar problem, making the protectionist, pro public investment Whigs into the "liberals" and the laissez faire, free trading Democrats into "conservatives"

Quote from: Tamas on October 19, 2022, 02:56:35 PMDo do

Quote from: Tamas on October 19, 2022, 02:56:35 PMDo do you mean Interest Groups or political parties? The latter were not in the original design and were added only after the public outrcy when said original design was explained. So I wouldn't worry too much about the political parties as such, Interest Groups are the real things, the parties are a tacked-on needless thing for the simulation.

And the other question is if Whigs are an IG, then aren't they just a flavour name for a generic IG? Again, not ideal but acceptable .

Quote from: Razgovory on October 19, 2022, 08:47:38 PMSo, you guys gonna beta-test this one for me?

Quote from: Valmy on October 20, 2022, 08:20:29 AM

Quote from: Razgovory on October 19, 2022, 08:47:38 PMSo, you guys gonna beta-test this one for me?

My son will. He cannot wait. I get the daily update of how close we are to Victoria 3's release date.

I will let you know what he thinks about it.

Quote from: Tamas on October 20, 2022, 08:21:47 AMWe are 5 days away.

Quote from: Valmy on October 20, 2022, 08:41:42 AM

Quote from: Tamas on October 20, 2022, 08:21:47 AMWe are 5 days away.

Yes he let me know it was six days away when he got home from school yesterday  :P

Quote from: Tamas on October 20, 2022, 09:29:31 AM

Quote from: Valmy on October 20, 2022, 08:41:42 AM

Quote from: Tamas on October 20, 2022, 08:21:47 AMWe are 5 days away.

Yes he let me know it was six days away when he got home from school yesterday  :P

 :D

I am embracing the hype with nostalgic infantilising enthusiasm. I am probably as excited as your son.

Quote from: HVC on October 20, 2022, 02:29:22 PMI want it to be good, but i have a dreadful feeling that I'll be sad.

Quote from: Tamas on October 20, 2022, 03:03:46 PMIf you were following dev letsplays and such you would know that there are going to be issues (I think AI is guaranteed to be wonky when it comes to diplomacy and peace deals) but the design seems very solid.

I am confident it won't be "sad". It may very well be a diamond in the rough requiring several patches to balance, but definitely not something like Imperator, needing a complete redesign.

Quote from: Valmy on October 20, 2022, 03:16:32 PMNothing will make me sadder than their Napoleonic game.

Quote from: Tamas on October 20, 2022, 03:03:46 PMIf you were following dev letsplays and such you would know that there are going to be issues (I think AI is guaranteed to be wonky when it comes to diplomacy and peace deals) but the design seems very solid.

I am confident it won't be "sad". It may very well be a diamond in the rough requiring several patches to balance, but definitely not something like Imperator, needing a complete redesign.

Quote from: garbon on October 20, 2022, 03:19:40 PM

Quote from: Tamas on October 20, 2022, 03:03:46 PMIf you were following dev letsplays and such you would know that there are going to be issues (I think AI is guaranteed to be wonky when it comes to diplomacy and peace deals) but the design seems very solid.

I am confident it won't be "sad". It may very well be a diamond in the rough requiring several patches to balance, but definitely not something like Imperator, needing a complete redesign.

Okay but what about ck3, 2 years on?

I want to be hopeful that p'dox will properly support its new games but still uncertain.

Quote from: HVC on October 20, 2022, 03:23:37 PM

Quote from: Tamas on October 20, 2022, 03:03:46 PMIf you were following dev letsplays and such you would know that there are going to be issues (I think AI is guaranteed to be wonky when it comes to diplomacy and peace deals) but the design seems very solid.

I am confident it won't be "sad". It may very well be a diamond in the rough requiring several patches to balance, but definitely not something like Imperator, needing a complete redesign.

Maybe I'm just getting older and grumpier but paradox's "eventually it might be good" gamble just doesn't do it for me anymore.

Quote from: Valmy on October 20, 2022, 03:16:32 PMNothing will make me sadder than their Napoleonic game.

Quote from: Tamas on October 20, 2022, 04:33:18 PM

Quote from: garbon on October 20, 2022, 03:19:40 PM

Quote from: Tamas on October 20, 2022, 03:03:46 PMIf you were following dev letsplays and such you would know that there are going to be issues (I think AI is guaranteed to be wonky when it comes to diplomacy and peace deals) but the design seems very solid.

I am confident it won't be "sad". It may very well be a diamond in the rough requiring several patches to balance, but definitely not something like Imperator, needing a complete redesign.

Okay but what about ck3, 2 years on?

I want to be hopeful that p'dox will properly support its new games but still uncertain.

Well, actually. I think CK3 is a well produced game. It is just only half of the kind of game (historical grand strategy) that I would have preferred.

And coming from that angle of design goals, the two games couldn't be farther apart for me. I play CK3 despite its increasing desire to be an RPG. Victoria 3 seems to want to be exactly the kind of economic political and societal simulation that I want from a strategy game especially  19th century one.

And especially with the warfare model they show me they tried to innovate, and put coherent design over marketability. There will be no end of "omg war sucks where are my units" comments and Steam reviews. Nobody has played the game yet and there have been tons of such comments already.


Obviously I cannot be certain the game won't suck but I am almost certain it will the very least have enough to keep me entertained while seeing and learning the various interconnected systems in action.

Heck, come Spring I might be rotting away in some bombed-in shelter thanks to the nukes dropped on London. I am not gonna' be holding off waiting for the perfect 19th century grand strategy, I'll just play the best one available instead.

Quote from: Sheilbh on October 20, 2022, 04:35:29 PM

Quote from: Valmy on October 20, 2022, 03:16:32 PMNothing will make me sadder than their Napoleonic game.

They did a Napoleonic game? :huh:

Quote from: garbon on October 20, 2022, 04:41:39 PM

Quote from: Sheilbh on October 20, 2022, 04:35:29 PM

Quote from: Valmy on October 20, 2022, 03:16:32 PMNothing will make me sadder than their Napoleonic game.

They did a Napoleonic game? :huh:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/227760/March_of_the_Eagles/

Quote from: Sheilbh on October 20, 2022, 04:35:29 PM

Quote from: Valmy on October 20, 2022, 03:16:32 PMNothing will make me sadder than their Napoleonic game.

They did a Napoleonic game? :huh:

Quote from: Tamas on October 20, 2022, 04:33:18 PMAnd especially with the warfare model they show me they tried to innovate, and put coherent design over marketability. There will be no end of "omg war sucks where are my units" comments and Steam reviews. Nobody has played the game yet and there have been tons of such comments already.

Quote from: HVC on October 22, 2022, 01:05:49 PMThe spiffing Brit exploits Vicky 3

https://youtu.be/aN9FwQ6SGSY

Quote from: The Minsky Moment on October 22, 2022, 08:45:13 PMActually makes sense for Pdx to encourage early players to exploit and break things; it's a good way to for them to identify balance items to fix.

Quote from: Tamas on October 23, 2022, 02:18:27 AMYeah but to pay them to publicise that before release?

Quote from: FunkMonk on October 23, 2022, 11:10:11 AMQuill18 is doing a Canada run on YouTube right now and it's much better than the meme marketing videos.

Quote from: The Minsky Moment on October 23, 2022, 11:27:43 AM

Quote from: Tamas on October 23, 2022, 02:18:27 AMYeah but to pay them to publicise that before release?

The memey nature of the gameplay is probably seen as a plus for attracting casual players.
They figure suckers like you and me already preordered.

Quote from: Tamas on October 23, 2022, 12:43:42 PM

Quote from: FunkMonk on October 23, 2022, 11:10:11 AMQuill18 is doing a Canada run on YouTube right now and it's much better than the meme marketing videos.

Indeed, much better. Game may still be broken but at least by going through the details and explaining his train of thought, he shows there are other things in there than clicking declare war and painting the map automatically.

Quote from: Syt on October 25, 2022, 01:56:23 AMNot unlocking till 5 or 6 pm CET tonight

Quote from: Syt on October 25, 2022, 03:16:26 AMMore like the usual Steam release time - 9 am PST. (I think US is already back in winter time? We switch next week.)

Quote from: Habbaku on October 25, 2022, 12:30:55 PMLauncher's bugged for me. Guess I'll wait a bit.  :lol:

Quote from: Habbaku on October 25, 2022, 12:30:55 PMLauncher's bugged for me. Guess I'll wait a bit.  :lol:

Quote from: Valmy on October 25, 2022, 01:54:54 PMJust curious is there a straightforward way to transfer in a EU4 save and transfer out a HOI4 save or is that something Paradox no longer even attempts to do?

Quote from: Valmy on October 25, 2022, 01:54:54 PMJust curious is there a straightforward way to transfer in a EU4 save and transfer out a HOI4 save or is that something Paradox no longer even attempts to do?

Quote from: Barrister on October 25, 2022, 01:57:21 PM

Quote from: Valmy on October 25, 2022, 01:54:54 PMJust curious is there a straightforward way to transfer in a EU4 save and transfer out a HOI4 save or is that something Paradox no longer even attempts to do?

Gosh I remember the one time I tried that - took a CK1 save and imported into EU2.  What a disaster!

My stable and prosperous (in CK1) Kingdom of Jerusalem collapsed within months once in EU2.

Quote from: Barrister on October 25, 2022, 01:58:14 PMThis is a game I very much wish to play.

But this is also a game that I know that by the time I'm actually able to sit down and lay video games for a bit, it will be 9:30 to 10:00pm and I won't have anywhere near enough mental energy to follow along.

Quote from: Zanza on October 25, 2022, 02:27:50 PMI played for an hour or so. No idea what I had to do as it was information iverload. Let's see, will take quite a while to understand. 

Quote from: Barrister on October 25, 2022, 02:46:09 PMHuh - "Canada" is playable in 1836 as a British Dominion?

Sounds rather ahistoric as we weren't a Dominion until 1867, but could be an interesting starting game.

Quote from: Josephus on October 25, 2022, 02:52:11 PM

Quote from: Barrister on October 25, 2022, 02:46:09 PMHuh - "Canada" is playable in 1836 as a British Dominion?

Sounds rather ahistoric as we weren't a Dominion until 1867, but could be an interesting starting game.

Yeah, it's called Hudson Bay Company. Quill18 is playing this on Youtube.

Quote from: Valmy on October 25, 2022, 02:54:17 PM

Quote from: Josephus on October 25, 2022, 02:52:11 PM

Quote from: Barrister on October 25, 2022, 02:46:09 PMHuh - "Canada" is playable in 1836 as a British Dominion?

Sounds rather ahistoric as we weren't a Dominion until 1867, but could be an interesting starting game.

Yeah, it's called Hudson Bay Company. Quill18 is playing this on Youtube.

Oh ok. That makes sense. I presume the non-Hudson Bay Company territories are British Colonies then?

Quote from: Valmy on October 25, 2022, 02:50:44 PMYeah I don't like that decision at all. Canada should just be a British colony until made a Dominion.

But I haven't played it yet. Maybe it makes sense.

But Canada didn't even exist as a Colony until 1840. It should be Upper Canada and Lower Canada. So how does that work?

Quote from: Barrister on October 25, 2022, 03:23:53 PM

Quote from: Valmy on October 25, 2022, 02:50:44 PMYeah I don't like that decision at all. Canada should just be a British colony until made a Dominion.

But I haven't played it yet. Maybe it makes sense.

But Canada didn't even exist as a Colony until 1840. It should be Upper Canada and Lower Canada. So how does that work?

All I know is from the one review someone posted - it sounds like it's done as a simplification in order to make running Britain easier, although it is a pretty substantial simplification.

Quote from: Syt on October 26, 2022, 04:47:30 AMI've been thinking about that too, and I think there's trade offs.

1. You may have to create the majority in government first, i.e. have IGs with the necessary clout in power. Doesn't help if you have 70% approval for a law, but they're in opposition (their votes don't count). Or you may have to boost them first or suppress opponents.
2. With low probability of success you will eventually get the law. However, it will take longer than if you had a strong majority for it, so that's time you're not enacting other laws, or have to spend resources on massaging the clout of your IGs so that your majority holds and not too many opponents get radicalized to an unacceptable degree.

Quote from: Tamas on October 26, 2022, 06:59:47 AMOn issues and such, I was just watching a massive communist rebellion in Austria break out (late 1890s). It covered most of the country and despite the Ottomans joining on the ancien regime's side, as far as I could tell the commies conquered legacy Austria, so then the war between the Austrias ended end... the same old monarchy was left in place.

Except now it is n war with the Ottomans over the wargoal of annexing a parallel Austria that no longer exists...

EDIT: I went back to an autosave to check: the war ended correctly, it's just that that "Communist Austria" had the exact same politics as legacy Austria except for a different monarch, who now leads re-united Austria.

Quote from: Syt on October 25, 2022, 10:45:11 PMAndy's Take has created a 2 hour tutorial video:

Quote from: Tamas on October 26, 2022, 07:39:43 AMBrowsing the Paradox forums, as usual its largely filled by people not liking it (since those liking it are more busy playing), and their criticism boils down to (rather directly) that it is not Victoria 2.

Now, that is I guess a valid point (except they could just play Vicky 2 then), but it is interesting just how much nostalgia (and to be fair, 10 years of modding blurring memories) can cloud things. Victoria 2 was nice because it was the only 19th century grand strategy game. It was broken on a myriad of levels both as a game and as a simulation. Victoria 3 has plenty to improve but it is already significantly better (as a game and as a simulation) than Vicky 2 ever was.

QuoteTook me 30 minutes and I had this game figured out without the tutorial, so try again. Boring as heck unless I go looking for things to break!

Quote from: Syt on October 26, 2022, 10:10:25 AMIn short, I wonder how much of this is players having to learn what's happening in game and how much is really in need of fixing.

Quote from: FunkMonk on October 26, 2022, 10:27:34 AM

QuoteTook me 30 minutes and I had this game figured out without the tutorial, so try again. Boring as heck unless I go looking for things to break!

Wow, 200 IQ geniuses in the Paradox forum already figured the game out in no time! It's boring! Need old school warfare ASAP to fix this boring game!!!

Quote from: Tamas on October 26, 2022, 10:31:03 AMI have only had my one war with this civil war so far and it was quirky but not because of the military mechanics, strictly speaking. I MUCH prefer this approach than the whack-a-stack gameplay of chasing the AI up and down the map every war.

Quote from: FunkMonk on October 26, 2022, 10:36:32 AMMy respect for the game that Paradox designed is increasing with every whiny, cringe-inducing post from so-called hardcore high-APM gamerz.

Politics and economy are boring!!! Where my army men??????

Quote from: garbon on October 26, 2022, 12:49:49 PMI started with Chile which was likely a bad choice as most of the journal lessons then wanted you to pass 5+ years. I'll try tutorial again but pick Sweden. -_-

Quote from: FunkMonk on October 26, 2022, 10:36:32 AMMy respect for the game that Paradox designed is increasing with every whiny, cringe-inducing post from so-called hardcore high-APM gamerz.

Politics and economy are boring!!! Where my army men??????

Quote from: Tamas on October 26, 2022, 02:11:19 PM(https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/834042093328138321/1034906269443702834/unknown.png)
:bleeding:

Quote from: Syt on October 26, 2022, 04:56:46 PMAgreed, that needs tweaking. Also, limited colonial wars would be most welcome. I don't want to go to war with half of Europe because of a small backwater in Africa (it should still be possible that they escalate to full wars).

Also, in my game Prussia, while trying to make Germany, was at war with France, Russia, and Austria in varying constellations almost every other year over some German minors, and all of Germany was covered in turmoil by the 1860s. Most notably, none of the combatants had progressed beyond line infantry.

Maybe it's some wonkiness because of the tutorial's default settings that gimp the AI nations a bit. Guess I will see.

I thought it was funny, though, how after Prussia took Holstein from Denmark Scandinavia was formed between Sweden, Norway and Denmark. Oh, and they AGAIN put the Kiel Canal in the wrong spot (same as HOI4). More worryingly, they added it, even though it wasn't opened till 1895 ...  :hmm:

Quote from: Syt on October 26, 2022, 04:56:46 PMAgreed, that needs tweaking.

Quote from: Josephus on October 26, 2022, 05:37:22 PMAnother question I came up with. Unlike Vickie 1 (never played II), I can't seem to find out what my pops need. For instance I saw I can import groceries, and when I clicked on the details I saw that all pops like groceries. But how do I know how much to import and how do I know what else is crucial for them to have? I can't seem to find an obvious spreadsheet for that.

Quote from: Barrister on October 26, 2022, 03:33:44 PMI cracked and bought the game.

I'm working from home so I have no time to actually play but just wanted to take a look - but now I get an error message trying to start it?

Any ideas?

Quote from: Habbaku on October 26, 2022, 07:05:45 PM

Quote from: Barrister on October 26, 2022, 03:33:44 PMI cracked and bought the game.

I'm working from home so I have no time to actually play but just wanted to take a look - but now I get an error message trying to start it?

Any ideas?

I'm experiencing the same. Until they patch it so that the launcher works, I launch directly from the local exe file.

Quote from: FunkMonk on October 26, 2022, 07:20:44 PMThe one thing I'm really, really wanting though is more spreadsheets and charts. The UI needs more work.

Quote from: FunkMonk on October 26, 2022, 11:22:01 PMYeah. This is probably the most complex game Paradox has ever created and the fact that it actually works is a little astonishing.

It's rough around the edges. Warfare needs more work. Diplomacy needs another system to go along with the diplomatic plays. UI could use a little more work. But overall it's a solid foundation.

But will it get the additional work it needs? :hmm:

Quote from: Syt on October 27, 2022, 01:11:26 AMSomething that's really missing is a list view of your states.

Basically take this information, and put it in a table where I can see all of the info for my states at a glance:

(https://i.postimg.cc/B4LYm7V1/image.png)

You could make an argument that the opaqueness of the information is adding to the immersion because it leaves you looking at some KPIs, make some changes based on them and otherwise hope for the best. :P

Quote from: Syt on October 27, 2022, 03:02:27 AMI generally agree and am surely the last person to min/max, but quickly seeing which states have Terra Rossa which give you  agricultural output bonuses would be nice. :P

Quote from: The Brain on October 27, 2022, 05:37:50 AMThey're on Mixed on Steam. How does that compare to the initial response to their other titles?

Quote from: Tamas on October 26, 2022, 06:15:25 PM

Quote from: Josephus on October 26, 2022, 05:37:22 PMAnother question I came up with. Unlike Vickie 1 (never played II), I can't seem to find out what my pops need. For instance I saw I can import groceries, and when I clicked on the details I saw that all pops like groceries. But how do I know how much to import and how do I know what else is crucial for them to have? I can't seem to find an obvious spreadsheet for that.

That helps a bit. Thanks. I wish, though, there was something like there was in Vickie 1, where it says for instance: Groceries Need 347, Available 167, kind of thing. There's a lot of info here, but sometimes it seems to me, the more needy stuff is hard to find, if it's there at all

Yeah it's buried a bit.

Go to the population menu on the left side go to the SoL of the strata you want to check, there will be a percentage there telling you how much more they pay than average for the goods they want. That number also has a tool tip which will list you the goods and how expensibe or cheap they are relative to base price. That gives a guide on which goods to focus on, but usually I just keep an eye on the listed "import candidates" on the middle tab of the market screen, to spot what needs addressing.

Quote from: Josephus on October 27, 2022, 07:35:42 AMThat helps a bit. Thanks. I wish, though, there was something like there was in Vickie 1, where it says for instance: Groceries Need 347, Available 167, kind of thing. There's a lot of info here, but sometimes it seems to me, the more needy stuff is hard to find, if it's there at all

Quote from: Syt on October 27, 2022, 08:34:22 AMI knew about the map list and the "bottom menu" (thanks to the tutorial video), but I had missed the extra details when selecting the menu options on the left (usually because I often play zoomed out for one item, zoomed in for another, and frequently have them closed when I don't need them. :lol:

QuoteAlso, depending on your selection on the menu in the left you can get different tool tip pop ups. E.g. if you select population, it will tell you population size, birth and death rates, expected growth and unemployment (and which pop is unemployed) for the state you put your mouse cursor on.

Similar for cultures: when you select a culture in the cultures list - it will show you where they live in your realm, and if you zoom in you can see what they consider their homeland, denoted by little flags. You can see which areas are the strongholds of interest groups that way, too.

Quote from: Tamas on October 27, 2022, 09:58:54 AMBloody hell!

Quote from: Syt on October 27, 2022, 08:26:33 AMFrom the files of "why is this not explained somewhere"?

Quote from: crazy canuck on October 27, 2022, 09:03:21 AM

Quote from: Syt on October 27, 2022, 08:34:22 AMI knew about the map list and the "bottom menu" (thanks to the tutorial video), but I had missed the extra details when selecting the menu options on the left (usually because I often play zoomed out for one item, zoomed in for another, and frequently have them closed when I don't need them. :lol:

There's a few ways to get that information actually. The way I normally do it is with the lenses in the bottom row combined with the level of zoom on the map. It's what I learned in the tutorial play through in the game.

One thing that seems common with the haters is that they seem to assume that because they don't have access to the spreadsheets that were in Victoria 2,
that this game is more simplistic.  But in fact, this game is more complex and is therefore not reducible to a simple spreadsheet which shows all information. The interactions are much more complex than the previous games.

Quote from: crazy canuck on October 27, 2022, 01:30:57 PMIt's easy to spot the folks who didn't do the introductory tutorial  :)

The differing information depending on level of zoom is one of the first things they covered.

The problem here is I think people thinking that because they are veterans of Paradox games, just skimming through those first few screens.

I agree they should probably have emphasized it a bit more, but really - it was right there.

Quote from: crazy canuck on October 27, 2022, 01:30:57 PMIt's easy to spot the folks who didn't do the introductory tutorial  :)

The differing information depending on level of zoom is one of the first things they covered.

The problem here is I think people thinking that because they are veterans of Paradox games, just skimming through those first few screens.

I agree they should probably have emphasized it a bit more, but really - it was right there.

Quote from: FunkMonk on October 27, 2022, 02:06:29 PMTutorials are for nerds

Quote from: The Minsky Moment on October 27, 2022, 05:59:43 PMWant to force a country into a custom's union?  Just bankroll them and wait.  Eventually an obligation will trigger.  Seems exploity.

Quote from: The Minsky Moment on October 27, 2022, 05:56:42 PMMinor issues:

France's pop grows too fast.  By 1870 up to 50 million (compared to 60M for Russia).  I understand they don't want to do country hard codes but France's slow demographics during the 19th century was an undeniable fact that had very significant political consequences.  So it should be modelled somehow.

I checked out the Polish Jews.  They are retaining Ashkenazi culture but converting to Orthodox Christianity en masse.  That's not right.

There is a bug where if you assign a general or admiral on an expedition, even after the expedition ends, you can't mobilize them and their assigned troops.

Quote from: Richard Hakluyt on October 28, 2022, 05:16:50 AMMaybe start France off with a contraception malus that can be removed by empowering the catholic church  :P

Quote from: Tamas on October 28, 2022, 07:17:21 AMIt's probably because the haters have moved on, but I am noticing the flood of "OMGWTF this is NOT Victoria 2 how DARE you?!" threads on the official forum are steadily being replaced by gameplay questions/praise.

Game still sinking in Steam reviews though.

Quote from: The Minsky Moment on October 28, 2022, 08:57:53 AMI would limit participation in Diplo Plays to powers with an interest AND which have either a naval base or barracks in that region (or perhaps a contiguous region), unless the Play initiates in Europe or the OE.

Quote from: Valmy on October 28, 2022, 11:03:20 AMWait...considering this game goes until 1936 shouldn't North and South Schleswig be separate provinces? Otherwise what actually happened IRL cannot happen in the game, which was one of my biggest problems with EU1.

Quote from: Tamas on October 28, 2022, 12:49:15 PMHave I been just lucky, or laws always pass on the third try? 35%, 19%, on third attempt it succeeds.

Quote from: Tamas on October 28, 2022, 12:49:15 PMHave I been just lucky, or laws always pass on the third try? 35%, 19%, on third attempt it succeeds.

Quote from: Syt on October 28, 2022, 09:38:42 AM(That said, in my game, the US, after losing a war against Mexico, decided to start a play to cut the British East India Company down to size. Britain now owns Plymouth, MA as a treaty port. :lol: )

Quote from: The Minsky Moment on October 28, 2022, 03:07:51 PM

Quote from: Syt on October 28, 2022, 09:38:42 AM(That said, in my game, the US, after losing a war against Mexico, decided to start a play to cut the British East India Company down to size. Britain now owns Plymouth, MA as a treaty port. :lol: )

Making it Plymouth is just trolling.

Quote from: Syt on October 28, 2022, 04:15:54 PMOh, and what's the advantage of buildings being publicly traded instead of privately owned? It seems it increases capitalist jobs, but doesn't that mean more people draw income out of the building and thus lower the building's profits and cash reserves? :unsure:

Quote from: Syt on October 28, 2022, 04:15:54 PMOh, and what's the advantage of buildings being publicly traded instead of privately owned? It seems it increases capitalist jobs, but doesn't that mean more people draw income out of the building and thus lower the building's profits and cash reserves? :unsure:

Quote from: Syt on October 29, 2022, 06:06:42 AMThe year is 1901, and I feel at this stage the Habsburgs would be hard pressed not to bring in more people into government. So I guess I will switch on over to oligarchy. The Emperor will remain as figurehead, but the capitalists and military will be calling the shots together going forward, I think.  :hmm:

(https://i.postimg.cc/hvfxvN7J/image.png)

My current policies and laws:

(https://i.postimg.cc/sVsw-Ccnm/image.png)

Quote from: Josephus on October 29, 2022, 07:29:24 AMI need more opium in Sweden. I'm currently importing from the British Market, and my trade route is at level 1. The tool tip says it will remain at level 1 under current market condition. How do I up that?

Quote from: FunkMonk on October 29, 2022, 12:38:10 AMSo as Russia I accepted a trade agreement with China. Years go by without me noticing that they're importing tons of stuff from me. I only notice because I'm annoyed that clothes are still so expensive even after I build a ton of textile mills. Turns out the Chinese keep buying my clothes and jack the price up.

I decide maybe I should end the trade agreement and start taking advantage of tariffs. My income immediately skyrockets from running a zero balance to hundreds of thousands of pounds. And the Chinese keep buying my stuff. They're hooked on all my beautiful Russian goods, not just the clothes they were buying by the thousands. 

Within a couple years my cash reserves are full because I can't spend all my income fast enough, even after jacking up wages and lowering taxes  :lol:

My income is balanced now after building a ton of construction so I can build more things simultaneously. Thank you, oh Great Qing, for doubling my GDP in a few years and for laying the groundwork for my massive industrialization.

Quote from: crazy canuck on October 29, 2022, 07:53:07 AM

Quote from: FunkMonk on October 29, 2022, 12:38:10 AMSo as Russia I accepted a trade agreement with China. Years go by without me noticing that they're importing tons of stuff from me. I only notice because I'm annoyed that clothes are still so expensive even after I build a ton of textile mills. Turns out the Chinese keep buying my clothes and jack the price up.

I decide maybe I should end the trade agreement and start taking advantage of tariffs. My income immediately skyrockets from running a zero balance to hundreds of thousands of pounds. And the Chinese keep buying my stuff. They're hooked on all my beautiful Russian goods, not just the clothes they were buying by the thousands. 

Within a couple years my cash reserves are full because I can't spend all my income fast enough, even after jacking up wages and lowering taxes  :lol:

My income is balanced now after building a ton of construction so I can build more things simultaneously. Thank you, oh Great Qing, for doubling my GDP in a few years and for laying the groundwork for my massive industrialization.

Yeah, one of the things I learned from my first Russian game is not to enter into trade agreements but instead put export tariffs on goods in demand.

The other mistake I made in that first game was trying to liberalize too quickly.  It became very difficult to create a legitimacy of over thirtyish.

Quote from: Zanza on October 29, 2022, 08:30:46 AMI played Prussia into the mid 1840s now and could already peacefully form the North German Federation. For whatever reasons all those princes that kept their sovereignty since the Middle Ages decided that they should join Prussia after using Improve Relations on them until mixed out. No other power even cared when I annexed all of Saxony, Hesse, Anhalt and Mecklenburg. Not sure why. Anyway wasn't much of a struggle. :hmm:

Quote from: Zanza on October 29, 2022, 08:30:46 AMI played Prussia into the mid 1840s now and could already peacefully form the North German Federation. For whatever reasons all those princes that kept their sovereignty since the Middle Ages decided that they should join Prussia after using Improve Relations on them until mixed out. No other power even cared when I annexed all of Saxony, Hesse, Anhalt and Mecklenburg. Not sure why. Anyway wasn't much of a struggle. :hmm:

I kicked the Junkers from government and had the miltary-industrial complex ruling Prussia. Again with little consequences. There should be major upheaval if I just remove the Junkers with their leader Otto von Bismarck. Maybe the King should be part of that faction,not of the army faction.

Also Prussia could easily afford colonies around the Coast of Africa and even in Oceania. I feel that should be harder.

But so far it is enjoyable, probably more so than CK3. Not yet on alevel with Stellaris or EU4 for me.

Quote from: Syt on October 28, 2022, 10:59:11 AM"Yes, but ..." :P :lol:

(https://i.postimg.cc/WzpKRKGh/image.png)

(https://i.postimg.cc/B647DywM/image.png)

Quote from: The Minsky Moment on October 28, 2022, 05:42:02 PM

Quote from: Syt on October 28, 2022, 04:15:54 PMOh, and what's the advantage of buildings being publicly traded instead of privately owned? It seems it increases capitalist jobs, but doesn't that mean more people draw income out of the building and thus lower the building's profits and cash reserves? :unsure:

Big increase in your investment pool. 

Quote from: FunkMonk on October 30, 2022, 01:45:13 PMIs there a specific process for getting a somewhat historical American Civil War? Nothing I've read or seen tells me that that is even possible.

Quote from: FunkMonk on October 30, 2022, 01:45:13 PMIs there a specific process for getting a somewhat historical American Civil War? Nothing I've read or seen tells me that that is even possible.

Quote from: The Minsky Moment on October 30, 2022, 02:48:32 PM

Quote from: FunkMonk on October 30, 2022, 01:45:13 PMIs there a specific process for getting a somewhat historical American Civil War? Nothing I've read or seen tells me that that is even possible.

Not exactly.  But when the GPs pile willy-nilly into the Mexican war, the US ends up with the same level of war dead and devastation.  So there's that.

Quote from: The Brain on October 31, 2022, 03:25:55 AMHow does the game handle the Austro-Hungarian Compromise btw?

Quote from: Richard Hakluyt on October 31, 2022, 12:39:41 PMNow that was a bit of a surprise; Otto von Bismarck, leader of the junkers, got caught frequenting a male brothel in Berlin :pickelhaube

I'm trying to cover it up  :cool:

QuoteMartin Anward
@Martin_Anward
With
@PDXVictoria
 now released, the team is hard at work fixing bugs and addressing your feedback. One of the first mechanics we're tweaking is Legitimacy, increasing its impact and making it so share of votes in government matters far more, especially with more democratic laws.

Quote from: Richard Hakluyt on October 31, 2022, 12:39:41 PMNow that was a bit of a surprise; Otto von Bismarck, leader of the junkers, got caught frequenting a male brothel in Berlin :pickelhaube

I'm trying to cover it up  :cool:

Quote from: Syt on October 31, 2022, 02:38:03 PMThe game has a pandemic event. If you thought that the random comets in EU2 were bad .... :bleeding:

Quote from: crazy canuck on October 31, 2022, 02:54:44 PM

Quote from: Syt on October 31, 2022, 02:38:03 PMThe game has a pandemic event. If you thought that the random comets in EU2 were bad .... :bleeding:

In one of my games there was a devastating eruption in Alaska - just after I built a number of gold mining buildings there  :mad:

Quote from: crazy canuck on October 31, 2022, 02:54:44 PMIn one of my games there was a devastating eruption in Alaska

Quote from: The Brain on October 31, 2022, 03:29:42 PM

Quote from: crazy canuck on October 31, 2022, 02:54:44 PMIn one of my games there was a devastating eruption in Alaska

Burrito night at casa katmai.

Quote from: crazy canuck on October 31, 2022, 10:25:26 PM

Quote from: The Brain on October 31, 2022, 03:29:42 PM

Quote from: crazy canuck on October 31, 2022, 02:54:44 PMIn one of my games there was a devastating eruption in Alaska

Burrito night at casa katmai.

It was devastating. Not an extinction level event.

Quote from: Josephus on November 01, 2022, 09:34:17 AMOk, so I think I'm grasping the economics of the game. So moving on to military. I'm playing as Two Sicilies, and just for fun I decided to join France in their war against Kongo, which is in the interior of Africa. Now I've mobilized one of my generals but I can't seem to give it orders. Both "advance" and "defend" don't have any fronts available.

Quote from: The Minsky Moment on November 01, 2022, 11:30:27 AM

Quote from: Josephus on November 01, 2022, 09:34:17 AMOk, so I think I'm grasping the economics of the game. So moving on to military. I'm playing as Two Sicilies, and just for fun I decided to join France in their war against Kongo, which is in the interior of Africa. Now I've mobilized one of my generals but I can't seem to give it orders. Both "advance" and "defend" don't have any fronts available.

You may have to give a naval invasion order to a fleet assigned to that HQ, no?

Quote from: Syt on November 01, 2022, 12:03:44 PMWorst case would be if the target is landlocked with no war participating countries bordering it.

QuoteIt's teaser time again! One of the things we're looking at in upcoming @PDXVictoria patches is balancing cultural/religious tolerance laws by having more restrictive laws increase the loyalty of accepted pops, so there is an actual trade-off involved.

Quote from: The Minsky Moment on November 01, 2022, 11:30:27 AM

Quote from: Josephus on November 01, 2022, 09:34:17 AMOk, so I think I'm grasping the economics of the game. So moving on to military. I'm playing as Two Sicilies, and just for fun I decided to join France in their war against Kongo, which is in the interior of Africa. Now I've mobilized one of my generals but I can't seem to give it orders. Both "advance" and "defend" don't have any fronts available.

That option wasn't available either.
You may have to give a naval invasion order to a fleet assigned to that HQ, no?

Quote from: Tamas on November 01, 2022, 02:45:48 PMStarted another Sweden game to test this popular (and only) AI mod that's mostly about the economy plus some smaller national tweaks as  I understand.

No idea how different the economy is so far, but first time ever I am seeing a huge Austria civil war against their "radical" version which is the same political system just different IGs ruling. It's 1847 so that's also a neat timing -if only it was a liberal uprising- and Russia plus France also helping the "legacy" side.

Quote from: Tamas on November 01, 2022, 02:45:48 PMNo idea how different the economy is so far, but first time ever I am seeing a huge Austria civil war against their "radical" version which is the same political system just different IGs ruling. It's 1847 so that's also a neat timing -if only it was a liberal uprising- and Russia plus France also helping the "legacy" side.

Quote###################
# Game Balance
###################
# Economy
- Petit-Bourgeoisie now also care about government wages
- Slashing government wages will now reduce prestige
- Slashing military wages will now reduce training rate
- Debt slavery can now enslave pops up to wealth level 9, in reduced numbers for each point
of wealth
- Reduce the max number of pops enslaved each week by debt slavery from 5% to 0.5% of
state population
- Debt slavery will no longer enslave additional pops when slaves is 20% or more of the state
population
- Tweak subsistence production in decentralized nations so African pops don't start at
starvation levels
# Politics
- Increased the chance of progressive political movements appearing over the course of the
game
- Movements to Preserve now have a larger effect on the chance for a law to stall, making it
harder to pass laws opposed by powerful groups
- Political Movements for or against changes in Slavery and Government principles laws will
now be more radical
- Reduced base effect of Propagandists Intelligentsia trait from 50% to 25%
- Reduced effect of guaranteed liberties on loyalists and radicals growth
# Colonization
- Native Uprisings now get a significant bonus to their combat capabilities, mainly on the
defensive
- Reduced the chance of Native Uprisings occuring when provinces are colonized
###################
# AI
###################
# Diplomacy
- AI is now a bit less likely to back down in diplomatic plays
- AI is now a bit more likely to get involved in diplomatic plays
- Make the AI more keen on swaying countries to its side if outmatched in a diplomatic play
# War
- AI is now a lot more focused on taking land-adjacent states and conquering contiguous land
areas in general
- Increase AI aggression against Unrecognized countries after unlocking Civilizing Mission
# Colonization
- Increased AI tendency to get involved in Native Uprisings slightly
###################
# Interface
###################
# Tooltips
- Improve revenue predictions when constructing buildings to show more accurate and useful
data
###################
# Bugfixes
###################
- Fixed a bug where capitulating in one war could cause your generals in another war to
standby
- Added additional check to prevent monuments from being targeted in tutorial
- Added a check to the Declare Interest Tutorial that was miscounting the maximum amount of
Declared Interests possible.
- Fix issue where Investment Pool could be used for disallowed building types
- Fix issue where predicted price for goods after goods substitution would sometimes show the
wrong value
- Political movements can now start organizing a revolution at 50 radicalism rather than 100
(100 is needed for the revolution to actually begin though)
- Fixed typos in several defines
- Fix pop attraction reasons tooltip CTD in Asian languages
- Fixed a CTD caused by trying to create a shipping lane between two market areas with at
least one of them being only nominally coastal due to the entire coast being impassable
- Fixed a CTD that could be triggered when clicking on the "mobilize all" button"
- Fixed late game CTD when transferring troops
- Fix CTD when hovering sell orders after having country join your market (__chkstk
(chkstk.asm: 109))
- Fix CTD in NPdxParticle2Internal::SParticlePool::GetActive
- Fix CTD in CJominiSplineNetworkGraphics::GetStripLengthInternal

Quote from: Tamas on November 02, 2022, 04:29:51 AM:lol:


Agreed on lack of focus on what's going on in the world, Syt, and yeah I think high AI aggression is necessary in vanilla at the moment to make things happen.

QuoteKey word here is "considering" - it's something I would like to prototype to see how it would actually play. We are also not talking about any sort of full AI control here, it may even be only something for certain laws. We will never take the economy out of the hands of the player entirely, just try to add more depth and challenges.

Quote from: Syt on November 02, 2022, 04:28:35 AM[...]

 :lol:

Quote from: The Minsky Moment on November 02, 2022, 11:00:31 AMAgreed it's a good start but it doesn't seem to address the two-way trading loop problem.

Quote from: Syt on November 02, 2022, 12:04:22 PM

Quote from: ulmont on November 02, 2022, 12:44:41 PM

Quote from: The Minsky Moment on November 02, 2022, 11:00:31 AMAgreed it's a good start but it doesn't seem to address the two-way trading loop problem.

I thought that (having trade routes not quite use market prices) was a deliberate change made and discussed during development, so there's not that much they can do without restoring the problems they changed to avoid?

I think they have got to do something.  You can't have a situation where two countries can make lots of money trading the same article to each other in enormous quantities.

Quote from: Tamas on November 02, 2022, 02:56:58 PMPlaying Austria with the patch for comparison's sake.

The thing about more political movements and the fact that revolutions start "charging up" from 50 radicalism (but won't trigger before 100) are easily noticable.

The aristocrats were already pretty miffed when I just launched a campaign to switch to appointed bureaucrats. What happened was that they already had a political movement to introduce agrarianism on low support and radicalisation, that the latter jumped to critical when I started going with the the bureaucracy thing, and the revolution "charge up" started, so I gave up and things calmed back. :)

Quote from: Syt on November 03, 2022, 02:12:13 AMWith trade centers being overpriced I thought I'd give Japan a go. :P

I immediately went for Colonization tech, but before I finished, the Russians were already on Hokkaido.  <_< I'm not sure what a good mechanical solution would be for this, but it's rather annoying that this happens every game.

In terms of annoyances that are not gamebreaking but still peeving me it ranks up there with the US never taking that bit of Colorado from Mexico, or Italy never trying to take Lombardy, South Tyrol, Istria & Venetia from Austria. :P

I've not dabbled with gameplay mods, but I've installed a number of UI mods - e.g. the states in outliner showing # of peasants & unemployed, the IGs in outliner showing approval rating, some more condensed trade screens etc.

Quote from: Tamas on November 03, 2022, 09:43:53 AMYeah agreed, it's the diplomacy AI that really causes issues with wars. I had Prussia stuck in a war with a minor it didn't border for a decade. Then it somehow violated the neutrality of the country between them (got an event popup if I wanted to help the poor guys) but I don't know how that goes.

Quote from: Tamas on November 03, 2022, 09:43:53 AMYeah agreed, it's the diplomacy AI that really causes issues with wars. I had Prussia stuck in a war with a minor it didn't border for a decade. Then it somehow violated the neutrality of the country between them (got an event popup if I wanted to help the poor guys) but I don't know how that goes.

Quote from: garbon on November 03, 2022, 09:51:59 AM

Quote from: Tamas on November 03, 2022, 09:43:53 AMYeah agreed, it's the diplomacy AI that really causes issues with wars. I had Prussia stuck in a war with a minor it didn't border for a decade. Then it somehow violated the neutrality of the country between them (got an event popup if I wanted to help the poor guys) but I don't know how that goes.

There's a diplomatic play to violate the neutrality of a third party - though it looks like you can only do it if your relations are low with the third party.

Quote from: Syt on November 03, 2022, 10:00:49 AM

Quote from: garbon on November 03, 2022, 09:51:59 AM

Quote from: Tamas on November 03, 2022, 09:43:53 AMYeah agreed, it's the diplomacy AI that really causes issues with wars. I had Prussia stuck in a war with a minor it didn't border for a decade. Then it somehow violated the neutrality of the country between them (got an event popup if I wanted to help the poor guys) but I don't know how that goes.

There's a diplomatic play to violate the neutrality of a third party - though it looks like you can only do it if your relations are low with the third party.

It would be helpful, though, (and IMHO quite reasonable) if you could ask a friendly country for military access, too.

Quote from: Syt on November 03, 2022, 02:43:45 AMThe V3 province map: https://i.redd.it/eccslaknxlx91.png

Quote from: Valmy on November 03, 2022, 11:16:43 AM

Quote from: Syt on November 03, 2022, 02:43:45 AMThe V3 province map: https://i.redd.it/eccslaknxlx91.png

Ok one more bit of history nerd rage: Saint Pierre and Miquelon are on the map. They are right there off the coast of Newfoundland...yet they are not part of France but part of the UK? What? Why have them even on the map then? Just leave them off if they are not important enough to be given to the correct country. I am all for just pretending they don't exist if you want to do that, but come on. They are  important enough to exist but not important enough to exist accurately?

Especially as this is an economic game and they were part of France for fishing interests, economics. Seems like something Victoria 3 would care about.

Quote from: garbon on November 03, 2022, 11:46:18 AM

Quote from: Valmy on November 03, 2022, 11:16:43 AM

Quote from: Syt on November 03, 2022, 02:43:45 AMThe V3 province map: https://i.redd.it/eccslaknxlx91.png

Ok one more bit of history nerd rage: Saint Pierre and Miquelon are on the map. They are right there off the coast of Newfoundland...yet they are not part of France but part of the UK? What? Why have them even on the map then? Just leave them off if they are not important enough to be given to the correct country. I am all for just pretending they don't exist if you want to do that, but come on. They are  important enough to exist but not important enough to exist accurately?

Especially as this is an economic game and they were part of France for fishing interests, economics. Seems like something Victoria 3 would care about.

Because they aren't large enough to be a state?

Quote(https://forumcontent.paradoxplaza.com/public/888777/16_9.jpg)

Hello and welcome to the first of many post-release Victoria 3 dev diaries! The game may now be out at last (weird, isn't it?) but for us that just means a different phase of work has begun, the work of post-release support. We've been quite busy collecting feedback, fixing bugs and making balance changes, and are now working on the free patches that will be following the release, the first of which is a hotfix that should already be with you at the time you read this.

Our plans are naturally not limited to just hotfixes though, and so the topic of this dev diary is to outline what you can expect us to be focusing on in the first few larger free patches. We will not be focusing on our long-term ambitions for the game today; we certainly have no shortage of cool ideas for where we could take Victoria 3 in the years to come, but right now our focus is post-release support and patches, not expansion plans.

However, before I start, I want to share my own personal thoughts on the release. Overall, I consider the release a great success, and have been blown away by the sheer amount of people that have bought and are now playing Victoria 3. I've had a hand in this project since its earliest design inception, and have been Game Director of Victoria 3 since I left Stellaris in late 2018, and while it certainly hasn't been the easiest game to work on at times, it is by far the most interesting and fulfilling project I've ever directed. The overarching vision of the game - a 'society builder' that puts internal development, economy and politics in the driving seat - may not have changed much since then, but the mechanics and systems have gone through innumerable iterations (a prominent internal joke in the team is 'just one more Market Rework, please?') to arrive where we are today, at what I consider to be a great game, one that lives up to our vision - but one that could do with improvement in a few key areas.

(https://forumcontent.paradoxplaza.com/public/889709/V3-PostLaunch-ForLoc.jpg)

The first of these areas is military: The military system, being very different from the military systems of previous Grand Strategy Games, is one of those systems that has gone through a lot of iterations. While I believe that we have landed on a very solid core of how we want military gameplay in Victoria 3 to function and we have no intention of moving back towards a more tactical system, it is a system that suffers from some interface woes and which could do with selective deepening and increasing player control in specific areas. A few of the things we're looking into improving and expanding on for the military system follow here, in no particular order:

- Addressing some of the rough edges in how generals function at the moment, such as improving unit selection for battles and balancing the overall progression along fronts

- Adding the ability for countries to set strategic objectives for their generals

- Increasing the visibility of navies and making admirals easier to work with

- Improving the ability of players to get an overview of their military situation and exposing more data, like the underlying numbers behind battle sizes

- Finding solutions for the issue where theaters can split into multiple (sometimes even dozens) of tiny fronts as pockets are created

- Experimenting with controlled front-splitting for longer fronts

The second area is historical immersion: While we have always been upfront with the fact that Victoria 3 is a historical sandbox rather than a strictly historical game, we still want players to feel as though the events unfolding forms a plausible alt-history, and right now there are some expected historical outcomes that are either not happening often enough, or happening in such a way that they become immersion-breaking. Again, in no particular order, some areas targeted for improvement in the short term:

- Ensuring the American Civil War has a decent chance to happen, happens in a way that makes sense (slave states rising up to defend slavery, etc), and isn't easily avoidable by the player.

- Tweaking content such as the Meiji Restoration, Alaska purchase and so on in a way that they can more frequently be successfully performed by the AI, through a mix of AI improvements and content tweaks

- Working to expose and improve content such as expeditions and journal entries that is currently too difficult for players to find or complete

- Ensuring unifications such as Italy, Germany and Canada doesn't constantly happen decades ahead of the historical schedule, and increasing the challenge of unifying Italy and Germany in particular

- General AI tweaks to have AI countries play in a more believable, immersive way

We're balancing cultural/religious tolerance laws by having more restrictive laws increase the loyalty of accepted pops, so there is an actual trade-off involved.

(https://forumcontent.paradoxplaza.com/public/888778/DD64%2001.png)

The third area is diplomacy. While I think what we do have here is quite good and not in need of any significant redesign, this is an area that could do with even more deepening and there's some options we want to add to diplomacy and diplomatic plays:

- Making it easier to get an overview of your Pops and Pop factors such as Needs, Standard of Living and Radicals/Loyalists

- Experimenting with autonomous private-sector construction and increasing the differences in gameplay between different economic systems (though as I've said many times, we are never going to take construction entirely out of the hands of the player)

- Ironing out some of the kinks with the late-game economy and the AI's ability to develop key resources such as oil and rubber

- Making it more interesting and 'competitive' but also more challenging to play in a more conservative and autocratic style

One of the first mechanics we're tweaking is Legitimacy, increasing its impact and making it so the share of votes in government matters far more, especially with more democratic laws.

(https://forumcontent.paradoxplaza.com/public/888779/DD64%2002.png)

The above is of course not even close to being an exhaustive list of everything we want to do, and I can't promise that everything on the list is going to make it into the first few patches, or that our priorities won't change as we continue to read and take in your feedback, only that as it stands these are our plans for the near future. I will also remind once again that everything mentioned above is something we want for our free post-release patches. At some point we will start talking about our plans for expansions, but that is definitely not anytime soon!

What I can promise you though, is that we're going to strive to keep you informed and do our best to give you insight into the post-release development process with dev diaries, videos and streams, just like we did before the game was released. I'll return next week as we start covering the details of the work we're doing for our first post-release patch. See you then!

Quote from: Tamas on November 02, 2022, 01:41:59 PMApparently they accidentally made trade centers eat inordinate amounts of infrastructure per trade route in the patch, effectively breaking the game, although a few people seem to like the severe cap on trading.

Quote from: Valmy on November 03, 2022, 11:16:43 AM

Quote from: Syt on November 03, 2022, 02:43:45 AMThe V3 province map: https://i.redd.it/eccslaknxlx91.png

Ok one more bit of history nerd rage: Saint Pierre and Miquelon are on the map. They are right there off the coast of Newfoundland...yet they are not part of France but part of the UK? What? Why have them even on the map then? Just leave them off if they are not important enough to be given to the correct country. I am all for just pretending they don't exist if you want to do that, but come on. They are  important enough to exist but not important enough to exist accurately?

Especially as this is an economic game and they were part of France for fishing interests, economics. Seems like something Victoria 3 would care about.

Quote from: Sheilbh on November 03, 2022, 02:52:09 PMTremendous work having a Canadian history hijack in a game that literally includes the American Civil War.

Quote from: Syt on November 03, 2022, 02:43:45 AMThe V3 province map: https://i.redd.it/eccslaknxlx91.png

Quote from: Zanza on November 03, 2022, 03:20:52 PMYou have to wonder why they bothered. Virtually all game mechanics are on the state level with the exception of warfare. But as they cut the tactical warfare from the game, so many provinces serve little purpose. It allows border gore from colonization and representing non-unified countries like Germany or Italy. But I feel that for both purposes much fewer provinces would have been sufficient.

Quote from: Zanza on November 03, 2022, 01:01:02 PM

Quote from: Tamas on November 02, 2022, 01:41:59 PMApparently they accidentally made trade centers eat inordinate amounts of infrastructure per trade route in the patch, effectively breaking the game, although a few people seem to like the severe cap on trading.

Ah, that must have happened in my game. All of a sudden I had to build lots of ports and railroads in some of my core provinces. I had wondered why.

Quote from: HVC on November 03, 2022, 05:15:40 PM

Quote from: Zanza on November 03, 2022, 01:01:02 PM

Quote from: Tamas on November 02, 2022, 01:41:59 PMApparently they accidentally made trade centers eat inordinate amounts of infrastructure per trade route in the patch, effectively breaking the game, although a few people seem to like the severe cap on trading.

Ah, that must have happened in my game. All of a sudden I had to build lots of ports and railroads in some of my core provinces. I had wondered why.

Any timeline for a fix?

Quote from: HVC on November 03, 2022, 06:34:10 PMThanks!

Quote from: Syt on November 05, 2022, 09:27:59 AMSo after trying to survive as Sikh Empire, or reform Japan, or (as Britain) dismantling the Empire and trying to turn the isles into an isolationist agrarian serf autocracy I've started a game as France, playing "normal" (develop industry, expand influence in the world) ... and after the last more niche game it suddenly feels like easy mode. Decent income, good laws, footholds in various areas, big military ... currently thinking, "There's got to be a catch somewhere ..."  :hmm:  :lol:

Quote from: The Brain on November 06, 2022, 06:30:35 AMAre there soldier pops?

Quote from: Tamas on November 06, 2022, 06:49:02 AM

Quote from: The Brain on November 06, 2022, 06:30:35 AMAre there soldier pops?

yes

Quote from: Syt on November 06, 2022, 06:24:09 AMI think a problem here is that the game treats discrimination in a very simplified way, i.e. only looking at discrimination done by the state, basically. So "multiculturalism" (which, in its modern meaning is a bit misleading in the game IMHO), basically should mean, "no discrimination by the state."

What's not covered, really, is discrimination between POPs. Now, I'm not sure how best to model in game that if you have non-discriminatory laws your German shopkeepers might still discriminate against e.g. Jewish clerks. Laws could then be expanded to not just go non-discrimination (current "multiculturalism") but also "ban all racial discrimination", "ban all religious discrimination" etc. This will lead to less discrimination but will lead to more radicalism from the ones who want to do the discriminating.

• Multiculturalism linked to a non-researchable tech I added, and made the USA start with it - multiculturalism just feels way off in this time period, but flat-out deleting it would mess with a bunch of references to it elsewhere, plus I wanted to leave it available for the US, not that it makes much more sense there.
• locked racial and cultural segregation behind the pan-nationalism tech, mainly to slow down their enactment across the world a bit
• increased minimum assimilation numbers both for culture and religion to try help with late game performance - it's not really helping, but according to the devs the issue isn't with tiny mini-pops after all, but with myriad of dependent pops created in the background and then withering to zero eventually. Hopefully the fix will be out soon.
• increased AI weight on resources their buildings need and are not being produced - I MIGHT be seeing that improve the Opium situation, although not dramatically. Will see what happens when I get to oil being needed
• I have tweaked peace-preference scores for the AI, slightly increasing white peace willingness and weight of devastation and turmoil, and significantly reducing the positive effect of gold reserves (they are still one of the key numbers but not outweighing much everything else)
• Made violate sovereignty more readily available (unavailable only on best -warm- relations), doesn't seem to make the AI any more ready to use it, unfortunately
• Treaty port diplomatic play can only be launched by recognized countries against uncreognized ones. Sadly the wargoal is still freely available as a secondary wargoal as I haven't been able to find where to remove that
• French treaty port at Pondycherry removed altogether and handed to the EIC - I read that the free access to the British market greatly contributes to the French juggernaut - well, by the late 1880s they are still massively ahead in GDP of everyone but China, but in overall score they are in competition with UK so that's an improvement I guess

Quote from: The Brain on November 06, 2022, 07:02:44 AM

Quote from: Tamas on November 06, 2022, 06:49:02 AM

Quote from: The Brain on November 06, 2022, 06:30:35 AMAre there soldier pops?

yes

Do they lack voting rights in places like Third Republic France (where applicable)?

Quote from: Tamas on November 06, 2022, 07:08:58 AM

Quote from: The Brain on November 06, 2022, 07:02:44 AM

Quote from: Tamas on November 06, 2022, 06:49:02 AM

Quote from: The Brain on November 06, 2022, 06:30:35 AMAre there soldier pops?

yes

Do they lack voting rights in places like Third Republic France (where applicable)?

The game doesn't have "specific pop occupations cannot vote in specific countries" kind of things. There are country-wide voting laws of none, land-based, wealth-based, census-based, and universal suffrage. Plus there is the additional layer of whether women can vote or not.

So in your case, it depends. If you have wealth or census restrictions then likely they cannot vote, but that's independent of what weird setup France had historically.

Quote from: crazy canuck on November 06, 2022, 09:40:03 AMThe other thing is that voting rights are not the only kind of political power in the game. There is a game mechanism called clout which is exercised by the interest groups in the game.  It changes over time depending on the decisions you make and the laws you enact.

It is possible, especially if you go the traditionalist authoritarian route, to have an army faction that has a lot of clout.

Quote from: Tamas on November 06, 2022, 07:06:57 AMYep, luckily they are testing changes where the more progressive citizenship laws make primary cultures more unhappy.


I am trying a set of modifications for myself such as:

• Multiculturalism linked to a non-researchable tech I added, and made the USA start with it - multiculturalism just feels way off in this time period, but flat-out deleting it would mess with a bunch of references to it elsewhere, plus I wanted to leave it available for the US, not that it makes much more sense there.
• locked racial and cultural segregation behind the pan-nationalism tech, mainly to slow down their enactment across the world a bit
• increased minimum assimilation numbers both for culture and religion to try help with late game performance - it's not really helping, but according to the devs the issue isn't with tiny mini-pops after all, but with myriad of dependent pops created in the background and then withering to zero eventually. Hopefully the fix will be out soon.
• increased AI weight on resources their buildings need and are not being produced - I MIGHT be seeing that improve the Opium situation, although not dramatically. Will see what happens when I get to oil being needed
• I have tweaked peace-preference scores for the AI, slightly increasing white peace willingness and weight of devastation and turmoil, and significantly reducing the positive effect of gold reserves (they are still one of the key numbers but not outweighing much everything else)
• Made violate sovereignty more readily available (unavailable only on best -warm- relations), doesn't seem to make the AI any more ready to use it, unfortunately
• Treaty port diplomatic play can only be launched by recognized countries against uncreognized ones. Sadly the wargoal is still freely available as a secondary wargoal as I haven't been able to find where to remove that
• French treaty port at Pondycherry removed altogether and handed to the EIC - I read that the free access to the British market greatly contributes to the French juggernaut - well, by the late 1880s they are still massively ahead in GDP of everyone but China, but in overall score they are in competition with UK so that's an improvement I guess

EDIT: I have also added claims of Italy on the Austrian provinces in Italy but it doesn't seem to have any effect on the AI. Quite possibly because Two Sicilies are chums with Austria and Piedmont is so bloody weak that its always Sicilies uniting Italy.

EDIT #2: and I forgot that I increased research costs across the board by 1/3rd :D

Quote from: Syt on November 06, 2022, 12:24:00 PMOne thing I hope they sort out is the global production of certain goods.

Some products (usually furniture, glass, clothing and similar) are almost always high priced. And if you expand your production capabilities for those it usually doesn't move the needle on the price, because there's a good chance that the extra production goes into exports.

Quote from: Tamas on November 06, 2022, 01:55:23 PMYeah, I have been supplying the industrialisation of Russia, mainly with Tools.  :D I am sure my factory workers and owners are making bank but yes at least in part this must be due to the AI not building enough factories. Italy was also syphoning up a lot of my iron production until I embargoed them.

That AI mod I mentioned is supposed to be pretty good with the economy (it's dynamic though, just a scripted build order so I am sceptical about it) but it's killing game speed so I'll wait for the performance fix patch before running proper games with it.

Quote from: Syt on November 06, 2022, 04:30:33 PM

Quote from: Tamas on November 06, 2022, 01:55:23 PMYeah, I have been supplying the industrialisation of Russia, mainly with Tools.  :D I am sure my factory workers and owners are making bank but yes at least in part this must be due to the AI not building enough factories. Italy was also syphoning up a lot of my iron production until I embargoed them.

That AI mod I mentioned is supposed to be pretty good with the economy (it's dynamic though, just a scripted build order so I am sceptical about it) but it's killing game speed so I'll wait for the performance fix patch before running proper games with it.

From what I see on the Paradox forums, the mod seems to help big powers, but since it's railroading the AI into always choosing the best production methods, regardless of whether or not they can afford them, it seems to screw over small countries the world over, with their local populations collapsing and migrating elsewhere.

See the thread here: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/threads/im-using-anbeelds-revision-of-ai-mod-it-greatly-improves-the-economical-ai.1555414/

Quote from: Tamas on November 06, 2022, 04:40:40 PMInteresting. Also regarding best production methods - I was noticing with Austria that perhaps I don't always want to do that? Especially when I have a massive population and I am still trying to raise people out of subsistence farming, why would I want to destroy low-skill jobs with more automatisation?

Quote from: Tamas on November 06, 2022, 04:48:22 PMNot to jump to conclusions but I think my increasing of min. pop numbers allowed to migrate and assimilate may have improved performance. First time I am reaching 1920s and I am still as fast at speed 5 than 1907-ish with vanilla.

I have raised MIGRATION_MIN_POP_AMOUNT to 300, MIN_ASSIMILATION and MIN_CONVERSION to 100 each in the defines file.

EDIT: I have measured, doing a month in 22 seconds, in my last vanilla measurement as Sweden in 1907 it was 23 seconds :D

Quote from: Tamas on November 06, 2022, 04:40:40 PMInteresting. Also regarding best production methods - I was noticing with Austria that perhaps I don't always want to do that? Especially when I have a massive population and I am still trying to raise people out of subsistence farming, why would I want to destroy low-skill jobs with more automatisation?

Quote from: The Minsky Moment on November 07, 2022, 11:37:44 AM

Quote from: Tamas on November 06, 2022, 04:40:40 PMInteresting. Also regarding best production methods - I was noticing with Austria that perhaps I don't always want to do that? Especially when I have a massive population and I am still trying to raise people out of subsistence farming, why would I want to destroy low-skill jobs with more automatisation?

International competitiveness.  If you are going to lag in PMs better keep those tariffs up.

QuotePDXMikael
·
3 days ago
🔨 Lead Designer
This is being addressed! I mentioned here that we had a branch in testing that addresses the proliferation of pops by mid- to late-game, and since we've now been able to confirm that it doesn't have any unfortunate emergent issues on global demographics or game economy, we should be able to roll it out to you soon, release engineers / tech gods willing.

The biggest issue turned out to be the progressive creation of pops that consisted only of dependents, which would simply languish in each state's unemployment pool since no buildings wanted to hire them due to their lack of workforce. As a result they weren't permitted to move around and merge with other pops, so they'd just sit there until they succumbed to starvation.

Quote from: Tamas on November 07, 2022, 04:27:05 PMYeah I am kind of hoping they release that fix this week,so after 70 hours I might play something else for a few days. :D

Quote from: Maladict on November 08, 2022, 08:51:37 AM

Quote from: Tamas on November 07, 2022, 04:27:05 PMYeah I am kind of hoping they release that fix this week,so after 70 hours I might play something else for a few days. :D

70 hours after two weeks?  :wacko:

Quote from: Sheilbh on November 08, 2022, 12:59:19 PMYes to all of Syt's suggestions. I'd also like them to look at 1848 as a separate mechanic - at the minute I think the revolution mechanic is a little too abstract/connected to laws. Maybe along the lines of the reformation in EUIV?

Possibly - especially for Germany and Italy have "unification" as a thing for interest groups, simlarly with modernisation/traditionalism in, say Japan or China, in ways that go beyond their views on laws?

I really like the national museum etc idea - maybe tie to expeditions at the minute/make it linked to either art academies or colonialism.

Quote from: Barrister on November 08, 2022, 01:04:39 PMIs there a mechanism to simulate the spreading of revolutions or at least revolutionary ideas across borders, even into countries with very different laws and systems?

That's what we saw in 1848, but also 1989, 2011 (arab spring) off the top of my head.

Quote from: garbon on November 11, 2022, 03:52:15 PMI conquered a northern Italian state and learned I had acquired 28 Polish pops. Then I got a notice that there was a great Polish migration to Tasmania. :huh:

Quote from: Tamas on November 11, 2022, 07:51:00 AMThanks Syt, I might check the AI mod out now.

Making white peace look better definitely helps in my experience, although whats probably even more important is drastically reducing the impact of gold reserves on AI decision.

Increasing min. number of pops migrating and assimilating is also something I have tried and as I mentioned I think it might have delayed the onset of really terrible lag to the early 1920s

Quote from: Syt on November 12, 2022, 01:52:33 AMThis mod to help AI make peace worked quite well for me, btw: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2886364566

Quote from: Zanza on November 13, 2022, 11:59:53 AMI formed Germany now in the early 1850s. I had humiliated Austria before and had the German leadership warhoal. So the unification war was against Württemberg, who had UK and Austria intervening on their side. I had Russia. My military easily conquered Württemberg, I became Germany. That left me with a war with UK and Austria,but they accepted white peace.  Not particularly hard, can probably be done in the 1840s or so.

Quote from: Syt on November 14, 2022, 02:24:23 AM- Stay in your lane. Haven't tried it yet, but it locks overseas colonization for e.g. US and Russia behind Civilizing mission, with the aim to keep them out of Africa (or, in the case of the US, out of Canada) until later in the game.

QuoteBalance
- Reduced the number of monthly radicals from political movements to enact and restore


Performance
- Reduced the number of pops in the mid- to late-game by merging very small pops back into the general population
- Reduced the number of pops in the mid- to late-game by forcing unemployed pops to switch profession when sufficiently poor
- Improved performance of updating trends for political movements
- Improved performance of enumerating Liberation war goals


AI
- Increased AI tendency to stick by its allies and subjects in conflicts
- Fixed AI acceptance for 'powerful protectors' factor to appear in virtually any alliance/customs union
- Fixed AI confidence and peace desire from gold reserves not being capped to 100% reserves
- Fixed AI incorrectly calculating how much an ongoing war or diplomatic play should add to their neutrality, making them abandon allies due to involvement in small conflicts
- Fixed AI involvement in a diplomatic play shown as an empty string in their neutrality calculation


Bugfixes
- Fixed settings (such as in-game language) not being saved correctly when path contains non-latin characters
- Properly fixed flotillas not recovering morale
- Fixes "Pass a Law that enables an Institution" tutorial challenge being impossible to complete or writing to the error log under certain circumstances
- Fixed issue where a placated Political Movement might still trigger a revolution
- Fixed issue with American Territory Achievement using an incorrect trigger
- Fixed issue with not being able to get Berlin Conference Achievement.
- Star Swarmed Banner no longer requires exactly 100 states exactly to get the achievement, but rather 100 or more
- Fixed issue with placeholder image being used for flamethrower event modifiers
- Fixed CTD in CPdxTerrain::CreateEffect
- Fixed CTD in CWarGoal::IsAdjacent
- Fixed CTD in CBuildingType destructor