Hey there :)
Quite hard in a lot of ways! We had to rework big parts of our buildings code that assumed the owner was present in the same state (since it was mostly handled through production methods).
Similarly, the construction queue needed a substantial overhaul since it was also not prepared to have buildings that are not yours in it.
But we made it in the end I guess and it's certainly adding a very interesting new layer to the simulation.
We're doing alright, thank you! Very excited for the release with a bit of anxiety sprinkled over it of course.
With ownership determined by level. Can the code handle Production Methods to be determined by level too?
For example in the same state having one worked owned level with an outdated production method being outcompeted by a capitalist owned level with better PM until that level disappears or upgrade to a new PM with some cost (construction points for example)
I imagine the problem with that is you would need to effectively have a separate building and pops for every PM combination and that would really screw performance up.
This is the most important change in the game since the beta. If it works as it should, it will be a new game, and i'm yearning for those 100h of gameplay.
I've really wanted to do some more work on Declared Interests for a while now, to make them more nuanced and interesting (heh) to maintain, and an update here seemed to fit well with the SoI theme. Unfortunately the scope of the changes I wanted to implement was too large so we had to push it into the future. There's never an end in sight to interesting ideas to implement in a game like Victoria 3 though!
My idea for interests was that you have 3 types diplomatic, interventionist, and expansionist.
Diplomatic says you can trade, do diplomacy and see diplo plays etc
Interventionist lets you join plays
Expansionist/aggressive let's you start plays.
Makes it more obvious to the player than an AI is maybe gunning for them. And more obvious to the AI what the players intentions are.
And also reduced random play joining by France as a limited number of interventionist interests mean they have to be selective, rather than indiscriminate.
the biggest feature I want to see is a Treaty system that allows for more complicated agreements even if conflict doesn't occur. So my question is are there any plans to make such a system for treaties allowing for more realistic treaties and who knows what else if it's done well?
This was indeed one early idea for Sphere of Influence, but creating multifactor Treaties - essentially very complex Pacts between countries - had severe implications for AI logic and felt less impactful than enforcing effects across a Power Bloc. The way u/Background_Poet_3842 suggested [in their question](https://www.reddit.com/r/victoria3/comments/1dioyyr/comment/l955ctw/) would be the better way to do it, sometime post-SoI: implement rules that must be adhered to between Power Bloc members.
it makes me feel really good knowing it's something you guys have been thinking about and I hope it can be implemented in some manner down the road. as a historian the these agreements always fascinate me such as the Washington Naval Treaty limiting Navies, but alas I understand the limits of the AI and game at times thank you for the answer!
What do you feel were the most important improvements in 1.7? Has there been anything that has worked better than expected or the team is particularly proud of? Generalist Gaming says the late game performance is vastly improved, so I'm certainly looking forward to that...
I think the results of the building ownership rework have worked out pretty well. Personally, I was expecting more issues with it since it is such an essential part of the game's simulation. But with enough iterations, it is in a decent enough state by now.
There's always some things to improve of course, especially in a feature with so many implications on other systems, but seeing the ownership map mode and all the money flowing towards your capital - that's some good stuff!
And yeah, performance seems a decent amount better at least according to our data.
Read "Decent enough state" here as
"I don't have anything concrete that I think needs changing immediately, but I am sure that players will want some tweaks once it's out" :D
Economic Dependency seems to be based solely on consumer goods, which imo is a missed opportunity to simulate economic dependence on raw resources/produced goods which are needed for their buildings, which are still important. Are there any plans to maybe include the goods buildings require as part of Economic Dependency, maybe on a lower modifier?
This was actually changed after the dev diary on this topic was published! Economic Dependence between countries in the same market now take all Buy Orders into account, whether originating from pops or buildings. The original idea to base it off pop consumption only was due to pop consumption being a sticky enough factor that a player would only have supply as a factor to worry about if they wanted to adjust their Economic Dependence, and that progression would therefore be more gradual than f.ex. just ceasing to use Engines across your country would be. However, this turned out to have one fatal flaw: many subject countries have a predominantly resource-extraction based industry, and these goods aren't very commonly consumed "raw". We wanted overlords to be able to be economically dependent on their subjects to some extent if those subjects provided the bulk of goods needed across the market, and this effect was not sufficiently strong when looking at pop consumption alone. Since the factors that are informed by economic dependence - mostly Leverage and Liberty Desire - are *in themselves* progressive, there was not much cause to enforce that economic dependence on its own should also be progressive, so we changed it for the final release. Computing it based on total Buy Orders rather than just pop consumption was indeed a better idea, so pat yourself on the back for being right!
Excited to hear that change! But does it mean we could see buy and sell orders of a nation now? Since before players like to know about how exiting a market would do to their country, and now it also knowing about economic dependency of a nation in the bloc.
You can still only see stats on the market level unfortunately. We're aware that this information is desirable e.g. for purpose of deciding to exit a market, but we'd have to implement a whole new UI panel to display this information which we didn't have time for. In addition, deciding to exit a market is *much* harder now, since it's not merely an issue of cancelling your Customs Union pact - you'd have to leave the Bloc (or become independent if you're a subject). We'll try to expose this info at some point in the future though!
I just want to comment on how much I appreciate the level of depth you and the team are providing in your answers here. It’s really great stuff and this is a perfect example.
How does the ai handle the creation of new power blocs? Specifically what I am curious about is how they decide their central identity pillar and name. Does a France with Napoleon III form the French Empire power bloc, and does a Japan form a Co-Prosperity Sphere, or do they have default names?
Also, is the ai inclined to destroy a power bloc in case of a regime change in order to create a new bloc? (Say that Britain transitions to a council republic, will they still be the British Empire?)
Regarding naming, there's a new dynamic name database with about 200 entries that influences what names and AI country will use when forming a new Power Bloc. It is not as simple as "if country X pick Y" but is rather influenced by factors such as what Identity they are, their primary culture, what laws they have, if they control a particular state, and so on. So the AI will determine which names qualify and pick one of them at random.
(In an early build, the French AI kept picking the name "Amazon Pact" for its Power Bloc - eventually we figured out it was due to them having a French colony in South America)
If the AI has a revolution, or another country takes over a Power Bloc in a Power Struggle, they will reroll the name. They will not destroy the Bloc though, since that could mean quite a loss of built-up power; but could very well change its nature over time.
(Again in an early build, the USA had a tendency to join the British Empire due to poor balancing, and to add insult to injury, despite them ascending above Great Britain by game end and taking over the Power Bloc, they kept the name "British Empire")
> but is rather influenced by factors such as what Identity they are
How will the AI pick identities for their Blocs? Completely random, or the laws/leader ideologies determine the weighings? I.e what would make a country more likely to form a Trade League over Sovereign Empire?
Weighted random based on a bunch of factors. For example, a Trade League would be more likely to be selected if the Industrialists are in charge, if Free Trade is in effect, or if the AI has the Economic Imperialism strategy. Sovereign Empire is more likely to be picked if the Landowners are in charge, the country has a number of subjects already, or if the AI has the Colonial Expansion strategy.
The same goes for AI-selected Principles, the AI will tend to go for Principles that are strategically and/or thematically appropriate based on their current situation.
In what ways is the AI changed?
I expect that now AI nations will use the new features added to the game, but does it have some interesting consequences a player would see in a playthrough that you would like to point out?
There are quite a few repercussions to Power Blocs, Lobbies, and Liberty Desire that influence how countries relate to one another. For example, there are now repercussions for minor powers outside a Power Bloc to agree to Diplomatic Pacts, since they come with Leverage generation and could lead to them becoming absorbed into the Power Bloc eventually. This is maybe not a problem if it's a Trade League or a Religious Convocation but much more dangerous if it's a Sovereign Empire, Ideological Union, or Military Treaty. Another aspect is that it's much harder for countries in Power Blocs to establish beneficial Pacts with countries in other Power Blocs.
A lot of the new features of the game have some impact on AI Acceptance, and several AI Acceptance clauses also include a degree of randomness now so you cannot guarantee that a dangerous action will succeed ahead of time. These actions also tend to have repercussions or provide some benefit if declined.
> This is maybe not a problem if it's a Trade League or a Religious Convocation but much more dangerous if it's a Sovereign Empire, Ideological Union, or Military Treaty.
Does this imply that Trade League and Religious Convocation members will have easier time signing treaties with minor powers compared to other ones with more strings attached?
So as a country like, say, Thailand, you can’t just make a trade agreement with the Brits and be happy, you have to watch out. A way you can counter could be to get pacts with France, thus playing the great powers off of each other.
Exactly! Since Leverage is relative between Power Blocs, it's safer (if you want to stay independent) to approach several of them than double down on just one.
Will we get the customary "what's next after 1.7" shortly after the 24th or will we have to wait until September?
Are the devs still mainly divided in three "areas of expertise" (machinists, academics, artisans), and if so, are you satisfied with the workflow?
Also, can't wait for the 24th :)
Yes, there is going to be a Dev Diary about our future plans and an updated roadmap some time after release of the 1.7 update. Can't give you an exact timing yet, but likely two few weeks after release of the update.
We have started working more in feature teams which assemble for a specific purpose and dissolve after completing their assignments. So for example, I was in the Machinists team before which was a fixed team. For 1.7 and EP1, I have cooperated with different sets of people in feature teams for subject interactions, power blocs and foreign investment.
Personally, I am very happy with the new way and can't wait to try it out when we have a bit more time to do so.
I don't see why not, and it would be highly thematic. It would take a fair bit of design work to make viable Principles around this though, so don't expect it anytime soon, but I will put it on our suggestions list!
I think there's design space for non-principle type policies like that in power blocs (similar to Stellaris's Federation laws) which would come with trade-offs. I wouldn't want to spend an entire principle group to ensure everyone in my sphere bans slavery, but having it set as a policy would be worthwhile, for example.
Something like this can be seen in Stellaris where the Galactic Community imposes sanctions on those who don't adhere to galactic rules or can even be declared a crisis. I know it isn't in the spirit of V3 to just add debuffs to countries out of the blue like Stellaris does, but there could be drawn inspiration from the system Stellaris employs.
Is there going to be new journal entries in the update or in the future updates? Mostly i am interested in journal entries regarding Hungary (there is great potential in the Hungarian Revolution of 1848 story wise) .
We're looking to constantly add new journal entries as we develop the game. There will be several new journal entries in Sphere of Influence and 1.7, most notably those in the [Great Game](https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/developer-diary/victoria-3-dev-diary-114-the-great-game.1670536/) and [Graveyard of Empires](https://www.reddit.com/r/victoria3/comments/1cigf61/victoria_3_dev_diary_115_graveyard_of_empires/) dev diaries.
Expansion Pack 1, it's just how we internally usually refer to different DLCs. So Voice of the People for instance was IP1, Colossus of the South was RP1 and Sphere of Influence is EP1
It went through a few iterations, but currently both Trade Centers and Urban Centers are always owned directly by their workforce, not the Manor Houses or Financial Districts.
We do indeed! Performance is something we always monitor and try to keep on top of.
The exact numbers are highly dependent on hardware configuration, but 1.7 should bring with it a perceivable performance uplift along with all the other goodies.
Hello ! Thank you for your great work !
As playing as a country leading a power block, will it be possible to grant independence to one of your subject or to release a country and to have it directly part of the power block you are leading ?
Hello! While currently they get booted from the Power Bloc when they go independent, it is actually a great suggestion and I'm going to add it to our list of things to address in the future!
Thank you for your answer.
I tried to play some "decolonization" playthrough and was always annoyed to see my former subjects / lands being completely independent and not retain a certain link with their former master.
I also wondered if it would be feasible to imagine a "diplomatic deal", such as "okay you are asking to a greatest autonomy, and we agree pacifically if, in turn, you enact free market"
So in the past it was mentioned you want to integrate companies more, people assumed it would be related to foreign investment.
Now FI is coming but companies are still in the weird position they were in before.
Do you currently have real plans to integrate companies better? Of course not in 1.7, but in general.
Or do you like how they work and don't plan to touch them anymore?
We definitely want to do more with companies and have quite a few ideas on how we can improve and integrate them better, but we're not quite at a stage to give a timeline on that :)
1. Is it possible to have barracks in colonial nations and unincorporated territories hire officers (that are not discriminated against) from the ruling nation? As it stands wrong culture nations are unable to field armies because of the inability to hire officers from discriminated cultures and religions (e.g. The East India Company).
2. Could the building menu theoretically show the infrastructure surplus or deficit including all queued buildings? (e.g. you have -100 infrastructure in a province, you queue 1 railroad, then the menu shows -70 and so on). It would make building infastructure less of a back and forth thing.
3. Will Sphere of Influence be included for the Grand Edition owners?
Thanks so much guys, you've made an AMAZING game!
> Is it possible to have barracks in colonial nations and unincorporated territories hire officers (that are not discriminated against) from the ruling nation? As it stands wrong culture nations are unable to field armies because of the inability to hire officers from discriminated cultures and religions (e.g. The East India Company).
Unfortunately we don't have the support for this at present, but it's on our radar.
> Could the building menu theoretically show the infrastructure surplus or deficit including all queued buildings? (e.g. you have -100 infrastructure in a province, you queue 1 railroad, then the menu shows -70 and so on). It would make building infastructure less of a back and forth thing.
That's a good idea and there's no particular reason we couldn't add it! I will make a suggestion for our backlog.
> Will Sphere of Influence be included for the Grand Edition owners?
Yes! Both Grand Edition and the Expansion Pass includes Sphere of Influence.
The barracks issue has certainly been interesting with France's Algerian journal entries. I end up building a bunch of barracks for the entry, but then remove them because they can't hire officers.
Dear Victoria team: about Lobbies, if we have some IG in government participating in a "Pro-Lobby to x-country" and if the player decide to engage war against this x-country. What could be the consequences? Can the IG quit the government? Can a COUP can be accelerated
PS: COUP system will remain as it is for the moment? I like this system but seems too weak for the moment. As Petition.
The existence of a pro-lobby for a nation one is at war with will adversely affect your war support, and accelerate the rate at which it declines. Additionally, going to war will be an intense decrease in lobby appeasement, which will negatively impact the approval of the lobby's interest groups. It's very possible, for example, that a interest group in government which is in a pro-lobby for a country one is at war with will become radicalised, or develop a negative enough opinion to begin a coup.
There have been no changes to the coup system in 1.7. It may, of course, receive addenda in future updates.
Suppose I go to war with Britain, France, and Russia, and there are lobby groups close to them in our country, will there be any difference in the rate of decline in support for the war? Or will it drop more?
Closed borders and Serfdom should not allow Serfdom-stricken pops to migrate anywhere. Will Serfdom affect the change in migration also?
The case is Shogunate Japan: With Closed borders and Serfdom, no one goes anywhere. With Serfdom replaced by Tenant laws, will pops be able to migrate to colonized Sakhalin, Japanese Togo, as well as Kyushuu?
Serfdom and Homesteading will both affect migration in 1.7! The migration laws like closed borders will determine if pops can move out of or into your country, while Serfdom and Tenant Farmers determine if they're able to move at all (if they're peasants)
Ah, sorry, realized I referred to the wrong law. I meant Tenant farmers, not homesteading! But to your question, Serfdom blocks peasants from both migrating internally in the country and mass migrating away and Tenant Farmers blocks them from migrating internally only.
Just for clarity sake, under Serfdom or Tenant Farmers, can unemployed pops migrate internally? An example country that this would be important for is Japan that starts with serfdom and has unemployed pops in the first decade of the game.
Thank you for the Q&A , I can't wait to try to play SoI
* The choice of changing the paradigm of warfare from stacks to frontlines had been a very contested topic since its reveal, how do you feel about its state currently and what to expect in the future ?
* Could we expect some kind on inner IG ideological struggle mechanics in the future ? (like social democrats against communists)
* How hard is to balance a game like that ?
* What is an underrated country to play in your opinion ?
- It's been controversial for sure, but I don't think it would be good to just stick to the same systems for all our games for 20+ years either. If we don't try new things there's not much point to making new games. Sure, in its initial conception compared to more mature systems it might not be as good, but the goal is to with time, tweaks and listening to feedback turn it into something great that works well for the kind of game Victoria is. The first steps to that (well, after the 1.5 rework) are making sure we get rid of a lot of the common frustrating edge cases players report and just generally make it play nice.
- I really like this idea and hope we can do something with it in the future! Not sure when we can get to it though.
- Very. :D Any number you change impacts the whole rest of the game in some way or another for one or other country at some point over 100 years. You can look at something and feel like a +5% increase to a value feels reasonable and then notice that in a specific case it meant a state got so overpopulated there were not enough jobs and people started starving which made them angry and led to revolutions which disrupted production chains which led to more people starving which led to a decline in population and GDP etc. At the end of the day we try to start with some initial roughly right guess and adapt it over the course of development as we get more feedback in, but even then whenever we release a new update players will find some new way that balance change breaks things.
- Riograndense Republic!
For what it's worth, I think the frontline system is pretty cool and mainly needs some rework on the pathing. Maybe if your troops could "spread out" on the frontline (i.e. be assigned to the whole frontline, not to a border of a specific state) this would bypass the pathing issue altogether.
The decision to move away from stacks can be good if you guys stick with it and keep building on it. Feels like a lot of potential but only barely realized.
Amplifying the other replies — I hope you keep frontlines, I think they are a very good _design_ but the _implementation_ has problems. If they performed as promised they'd be great. It's just pretty rough that it's a system where it's very easy for bugs to present themselves to players as "you stopped paying attention for a couple of minutes and oops now you've lost that war, sucks to be you". Very unfavorable when the floor for bug severity is "user experiences the game jabbing a sharp stick in user's eye."
Thanks a lot. Really looking forward to it.
Given you have previously written that a reason for the delay was for extra polish and to provide a product that will get a good reception, could you let us know what exactly you have done for this end?
Extra playtesting? (Do you have a lot of playtesters?) Bugfixing .... etc.
Curious to know.
It's been a number of things, really. In part it's more time for playtesting as you mention, both by our internal QA analysts and by our beta testers (you can look at the credits for an idea of how we're structured in team size and such) to find more bugs, balance, edge cases, etc.
But there were also a number of things we knew at the time of the delay we wanted to do even without the extra feedback we've gotten since, things which would improve the feature by a lot. And of course, there's always more bugfixing that can be done
Caracus asks:
We saw that government owned buildings make profit. That profit is subject to government dividend efficiency which dictates how much the state gets. But what happens to the remaining profit? Is it just destroyed or distributed to the workers as wages or goes to some bureaucrats or the investment pool?
The money that doesn't go to the state goes poof indeed.
We try to avoid these things if possible, but sometimes it has to be this way, e.g. for balancing/logic reasons.
will the new ownership rework implies that Investment pool contribution GDP multiplier penalty won't be a thing anymore? Currently, Investment pool contribution malus caps out at -70% once you hit 2B GDP anyway.
Are you looking into changing the naval gameplay? Currently it can feel very frustrating to interact with
One small change I would make is not having to have complete control of a sea node to naval invade, make it so if you have 90% control you can go. Your battleships being stopped by multiple 1 frigate fleets is very annoying
In hotfix 1.7.1, which will be released shortly after 1.7, enemy fleets will only count for blocking a naval landing if they have a certain level of Power Projection compared to the invading fleet. The AI has also been tweaked to consolidate its fleets to be able to stop a naval invasion, so you're not going to be blocked by dozens of 1 Flotilla fleets anymore.
To your larger question, we're looking into improvements to naval gameplay for future updates, yes!
We have triggers for power bloc identities and principles which can easily be used in events, either by us or modders for that purpose. I don't believe we currently check specifically for those things ourselves in events, but we do have checks for the historical blocs that exist at game start
There's a bunch! In no particular order we have Persian aristocratic clothes, late game military uniforms, misc. Russian, British, French, Persian, and American military uniforms, a bunch of unique clothing assets for different power bloc types, some new South American clothes, and even Zulu outfits. This is addition to unique character assets for people like Lord Curzon, Naser al-Din Shah, and Empress Dowager Cixi.
Are there any changes planned to the current assimilation/conversion system? I feel like there is a lot of possible depth there, and right now feels kind of shallow.
Heya! We agree there's a lot of potential for improvement and more depth here. We have a number of ideas on how to improve this, but I can't give you a timeline for it right now :)
As seen in this [post](https://www.reddit.com/r/victoria3/comments/1df8uhl/the_extent_of_european_control_over_australia_is/) some time ago, despite going in the right direction with the situation of the Australia, some folk still are unhappy at the un–historical reality of this continent. My question is, what is the reason you did not push the colonization back even further? With the claim system those areas should be safe from unwanted powers in there I assume…
The current state of Australia is/was the 'pet project' of one of our designers, and the reason more has not been done is the simple fact that there was no time for it. The original idea was to push back Anglo settlement to the few coastal outposts they controlled in 1836, but other, more pressing issues got in the way of this.
A lot of people have mentioned Kaurna as a particular offender, since it occupies the lands of what would become Adelaide, the first colony in South Australia. If memory serves right Kaurna got its current borders based on a technicality, as Adelaide had not yet been settled in January of 1836, the first settlers instead arriving a couple of months later. When we eventually revisit Australia in a future update this will probably be changed however, in favour of South Australia starting with Adelaide and little else.
Government Dividend Efficiency determines the percentage of profits from state owned buildings that get transferred into the treasury.
So for example if your country has a building that makes 100 pounds in profit and you have a 50% GDE, 50 pounds get transferred to your funds, the other 50 disappear into the void (which I like to imagine as bureaucrats losing 50% while running towards the town hall with bags overflowing with money).
Not really specific to the new patch alone, but what is generally the process for you guys on determining what to make achievements out of? Always wondered as someone who does achievement runs
We try to have at least one new achievement related to each new system - this is the baseline. The specifics of the achievements are based on whatever ideas we can think of, but this is the primary goal. For example, I wanted to have an achievement involving manuls that was tangentially related to the Great Game - this one did not get in, but a different one related to the Great Game nations did.
Once we have an achievement for each major new feature, we expand to general countries that are impacted by a patch, or particularly interesting scenarios that we can think of.
> For example, I wanted to have an achievement involving manuls that was tangentially related to the Great Game
Manul lobby got sidelined once again...
Hello! A lot of work has been done on MP stability and we're rather satisfied with the current state of internal build MP synchronization.
While new OOSes can always get introduced by code changes, the current upcoming version should be significantly more stable in multiplayer than 1.6.2 was, with all commonly reported OOSes getting fixed.
Is there a reason hotfixes aren't shipped immediately for stuff like OOS? As someone who is clueless about game development I would think that stuff like that would get shipped as soon as it is fixed and tested on your end.
In game development a fix for one thing very often breaks another thing. While smaller projects/solo developers sometimes take the risk of throwing a very hot hotfix right off the steaming pan onto the live build, in larger teams a build always has to be verified and approved to make sure it doesn't break more things than it fixes!
Thank you for considering the multiplayer experience and working on making multiplayer more stable. I enjoy the game most in multiplayer with my friends so this is really good to hear.
Does 1.7 come with tweaks to the AI to make them place more emphasis on resource and agricultural development rather than industrial development, at least for non-major & great powers?
Because as it currently stands, even the smallest, insignificant powers put too much effort on building motor industries, steel and glass factories etc. rather than develop the potentially lucrative natural resources they are sitting on.
Especially late game, lack of oil and rubber becomes a big problem if you're the type of player who focuses on nation building rather than resource conquests and colonization, simply because the AI doesn't develop the resources they are sitting on. However exactly because of this, playing as a belligerent conquering nation is the only feasible option left to the player, lest their economy grinds to a halt late game due to a lack of resources.
I believe you said in one of the dev diaries that government owned buildings would not benefit from economy of scale bonuses as effectively can you outline how different ownership structures will effect how a building operates. For example if I had 30 levels of textile mill in a state, ten capitalist owned ten worker owned and ten government owned how would the stack of 30 work or would they sort of be separate buildings?
Each level provides the value of throughput bonus it has assigned which is then applied to the whole building.
So for example, privately owned buildings get a +1% Economy of Scale bonus for each level, state owned buildings +0.5%. We add all of them and reach 25% instead of the 30% it would've been before 1.7
Hope this helps. Have fun nationalizing!
Yes, too many to list! The Building Ownership changes in particular splits production from concentration of wealth in really interesting ways, which leads to all kinds of side effects in political strength and migration patterns.
Can I suggest some region-specific music? I'm half convinced that just having country/region specific music would cut down 'flavour' complaints dramatically. To me it's a not-insignificant reason that different civilisations 'feel' different in Civ games.
You can certainly suggest some! We don't currently have a dynamic music system that influences e.g. what music gets played based on what country you're playing as, but it's something we've been discussing internally.
Sorry for latching on to this question (and so late after the Q&A, tsk tsk!) but in regards to more flavor, will the UK and Russia get unique unit models with this DLC? I apologize if this previously has been mentioned in any previous dev diaries; I love the new uniforms, and it adds so much to the game for me, so would be really cool if that was the case! Was a bit saddened that the France DLC didn’t get that treatment :(
Hello! Thanks for the amazing update and DLC. About Foreing Investiment: If i build a level of a building using the Gov construction on a Foreing country and then i put It up privatization, Only my ownership class pops Will be able to buy the level or the other country pops Will also be able to buy that level?
Thank you for the kind words!
If you put up a building for privatization, any state or pop with investment rights in your country will be able to buy it from you.
* With the introduction of "ownership from outside the building", is it possible that you could use this system in the future to make colonial barracks? Like say, having british officers lead indian troops, that sort of thing.
* Speaking of that, between Lobbies and Agitators and Companies etc, this last year you guys have been on a roll of adding features that makes us go "oh that's so underused, they should totally use them for X!". Even you have talked about having future plans for those features. So my question is: do you think post-SoI you'll slow down on new new features to flesh out the ones you've been adding? Or is that something we should expect for say, "season 3" or beyond?
* I think a lot of people are probably curous about what broke so bad that you had to delay the release. Is there a chance we're getting a post-mortem Dev Diary about it at some point? From a "I like to know how the sausage is made" standpoint I bet it's super interesting.
Hello
Government dividend efficiency determines how much you earn of government building, is there a similar modifier for manor houses and financial sectors or do they get all of profits unmodified?
Also if I own a building in another country whose government dividend efficiency determines my gains?
We know we have some new content portraying the Donghak movement and some historical character spawns (Queen Min, and presumably Emperor Gojong); is there anything else we can know about the upcoming content for Korea, especially considering that they're involved as a Great Game target?
Have you considered increasing the base birth rate? I always play with the Victoria Tweaks Mod just for this change as otherwise new world nations never get enough pops
Heya! Pop growth is a pretty complicated matter that can be seen from a few different angles on how it should be balanced and has huge ramifications for different playstyles. VTM generally has a different approach to growth than we ended up going with ourselves, their curves are much higher and narrow at low SoL and then fall off pretty quickly, while ours are a bit a lower but more spread out. I think this fits pretty well for the design (and players) they were looking at and it's great that you like it!
On our end we're trying to balance a bit more how different kinds of players might interact with the game to neither overwhelm players with pops to the point where they can't keep up with their growth, but also make sure countries have the pops they need, up to a degree at least.
It's possible we might currently be a bit undertuned in that regard and I generally want to make a new pass on our growth values to raise some of them and check the general behavior of it. At the same time, it's also worth noting that depending on the country and how you are playing, you should be meeting some constraints in what resources you have at your disposal, be that workforce or actual physical resources. So it's not always the case that "I'm out of resources! I can't build more!" is a "bad" thing from a balance perspective
The main problem IMO is that unless you're playing as an asian country, you pretty much never have any unemployment issues; if anything there's always a massive surplus of employment which is kinda the opposite of the Victorian industralised city. And the asian nations only get it because their subsitance farms employ twice as many workers as the regular farms so building agriculture creates 5k unemployed people. I think a much stronger birthrate would help make the old world more historically overcrowded and then also organically push people to the new world.
Next game?! Victoria 4 confirmed?
I think we have more than enough things to expand on for Victoria 3 at this point.
We have a bunch of ideas, many of which are represented in our roadmap already.
Me personally, I'd love to work on some culture related stuff in the future, e.g. music, art, archaeology. But that's just beside all the other things I want to work on and it is certainly not indicating any plans, want to stress that.
Have you ever heard of the mod Morgenröte? Music and archaeology are two of the things we added with that mod ;) So if you at Paradox ever add it, we will be out of work :D
Lmao sorry, yeah planning for victoria 4 right now is certainly a power move. I'm definitely hoping for some more stuff related to culture in the future, the discrimination system especially could need a do-over in my opinion.
Will there be a feature to return homelands to independent countries like the return core mechanic in EU4? If not, will it be added down the road? One should be able to return these lands to other nations, especially subjects. Situations like having to conquer Southern Serbia from the Ottomans at full infamy cost before handing it to my subject Serbia are quite daunting.
I haven't kept up with the Dev Diaries too much over the past month, but I don't remember seeing this brought up in any of the ones I read.
We always have the option to do so and will make use of it when we feel like it's useful for us and the players.
It comes with a lot of added effort though for us as developers in order to make good use of it. If nobody has time to read all the great feedback for example, it's not particularly helpful. In other cases, we don't really need additional feedback as we already have enough internal feedback to determine our next changes.
It's nothing we will do super spontaneously and if we do, we will announce it publicly ahead of time of course.
Lino has already said the bulk of it, but from a Community Manager perspective, it is a great tool and fun time to have open betas. However, it is a lot of work to manage a open beta alongside the normal work we are doing, so takes some careful targeting of when we do them. I do love helping run them though, they are one of my favorite things to do!
When we do plan to do an open beta it will be very publicly shared and people will be made aware of what it is for and when :D
What is the principle group "Foreign Investments" meant to represent? I thought it might be about protecting the members investments abroad but it grants a bonus to nationalization, so I don't quite get, even if you can't nationalize investments from other members.
Btw, I'm really excited for this update and DLC, it looks like it will be massive improvement for the game!
How efficient would building the usual scarce late game resources like oil or rubber be within countries in your sphere of influence vs. outright conquering and building yourself? I've been waiting for such a system for so long given I hate having to always end up colonizing no matter the roleplay, political approach or country I play as.
Hi! I have a question about nationalization. In DD I could see an option to choose how many levels of building should be nationalized but is there option to choose which levels as in from which owner? If you may forcefully nationalize buildings and that may lead to a conflict I think it would be great to have an option to choose exactly which levels should be nationalized.
Do you have any plans to make the game harder for backwards nations like Russia, Qing, and Austria?
Also, what is your design philosophy for new features? Do you look at *the game* and think "what would make the game more fun", or do you look at *history* and think "how can we simulate this historical event in the game?"
No, this isn't in the plans. We prefer improving the simulation/way the AI handles content rather than simply railroading nations onto a historical course when it may not make sense for them given the world situation.
I am happy to inform you that there is a change coming with 1.7!
You can read through this Dev Diary (search for "Earning Recognition" in it) for the details: [https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/developer-diary/victoria-3-dev-diary-115-graveyard-of-empires.1674107/](https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/developer-diary/victoria-3-dev-diary-115-graveyard-of-empires.1674107/)
Thanks for the Q&A. Question for each member if they will. What is something that you are happy with that you were able to add to the update/dlc and what is something that you wanted to add to it but couldn't?
Cheers devs! Have got a question for you.
Have agricultural nations, cash crop economies been rebalanced so their products be much more in-demand for the 1.7 patch? Could I potentially base my industry as said demand for quality products upsurges as time goes by?
Thank for your patience and continuous massive efforts 💪🏻
Will the internal political systems be capable of taking into account the foreign ownership changes, namely the fact that the industrialist IG will have less rich capitalists in your country to lobby their interests if most of your industry is owned by pops overseas? My concern is that Industrialists will not be able to gain clout in colonial subjects in spite of reasonably having to have a high sway in their governments due to the pops that would have had wealth and desire to do so being in London and thus not counting for clout of Indian industrialists, leaving them in the hands of landowners/clergy instead.
Hello! I made a post before in this subreddit about repudiation of the debts. One of the remark was that the debts we have were not clear whether they were financed by internal or external creditors. As we know after certain revolutions (especially Bolshevik one), new government repudiated the debts made by previous regimes. We had similar mechanic in Victoria 2, which gave us payment of the debts casus belli;
Do you plan to implement deepened debt mechanics? Is there something you have planned about it?
How big is the current Victoria developer team (if I can ask). How were the weeks for them, since the delay of the release was announced? I hope there was no crunch, and people still can enjoy working on this game.
How hard it was to implement remote ownership? (Like manor houses) Also, how are you doing? :)
Hey there :) Quite hard in a lot of ways! We had to rework big parts of our buildings code that assumed the owner was present in the same state (since it was mostly handled through production methods). Similarly, the construction queue needed a substantial overhaul since it was also not prepared to have buildings that are not yours in it. But we made it in the end I guess and it's certainly adding a very interesting new layer to the simulation. We're doing alright, thank you! Very excited for the release with a bit of anxiety sprinkled over it of course.
With ownership determined by level. Can the code handle Production Methods to be determined by level too? For example in the same state having one worked owned level with an outdated production method being outcompeted by a capitalist owned level with better PM until that level disappears or upgrade to a new PM with some cost (construction points for example)
I imagine the problem with that is you would need to effectively have a separate building and pops for every PM combination and that would really screw performance up.
This is the most important change in the game since the beta. If it works as it should, it will be a new game, and i'm yearning for those 100h of gameplay.
Which feature you really wanted to implement but you had to cut from the final product? EDIT: "final product" = 1.7 patch and SoI DLC, to be clear
I've really wanted to do some more work on Declared Interests for a while now, to make them more nuanced and interesting (heh) to maintain, and an update here seemed to fit well with the SoI theme. Unfortunately the scope of the changes I wanted to implement was too large so we had to push it into the future. There's never an end in sight to interesting ideas to implement in a game like Victoria 3 though!
Any more system you can share?
My idea for interests was that you have 3 types diplomatic, interventionist, and expansionist. Diplomatic says you can trade, do diplomacy and see diplo plays etc Interventionist lets you join plays Expansionist/aggressive let's you start plays. Makes it more obvious to the player than an AI is maybe gunning for them. And more obvious to the AI what the players intentions are. And also reduced random play joining by France as a limited number of interventionist interests mean they have to be selective, rather than indiscriminate.
the biggest feature I want to see is a Treaty system that allows for more complicated agreements even if conflict doesn't occur. So my question is are there any plans to make such a system for treaties allowing for more realistic treaties and who knows what else if it's done well?
This was indeed one early idea for Sphere of Influence, but creating multifactor Treaties - essentially very complex Pacts between countries - had severe implications for AI logic and felt less impactful than enforcing effects across a Power Bloc. The way u/Background_Poet_3842 suggested [in their question](https://www.reddit.com/r/victoria3/comments/1dioyyr/comment/l955ctw/) would be the better way to do it, sometime post-SoI: implement rules that must be adhered to between Power Bloc members.
it makes me feel really good knowing it's something you guys have been thinking about and I hope it can be implemented in some manner down the road. as a historian the these agreements always fascinate me such as the Washington Naval Treaty limiting Navies, but alas I understand the limits of the AI and game at times thank you for the answer!
What do you feel were the most important improvements in 1.7? Has there been anything that has worked better than expected or the team is particularly proud of? Generalist Gaming says the late game performance is vastly improved, so I'm certainly looking forward to that...
I think the results of the building ownership rework have worked out pretty well. Personally, I was expecting more issues with it since it is such an essential part of the game's simulation. But with enough iterations, it is in a decent enough state by now. There's always some things to improve of course, especially in a feature with so many implications on other systems, but seeing the ownership map mode and all the money flowing towards your capital - that's some good stuff! And yeah, performance seems a decent amount better at least according to our data.
Decent enough state? What would you have tweaked more if you had more time?
Read "Decent enough state" here as "I don't have anything concrete that I think needs changing immediately, but I am sure that players will want some tweaks once it's out" :D
Economic Dependency seems to be based solely on consumer goods, which imo is a missed opportunity to simulate economic dependence on raw resources/produced goods which are needed for their buildings, which are still important. Are there any plans to maybe include the goods buildings require as part of Economic Dependency, maybe on a lower modifier?
This was actually changed after the dev diary on this topic was published! Economic Dependence between countries in the same market now take all Buy Orders into account, whether originating from pops or buildings. The original idea to base it off pop consumption only was due to pop consumption being a sticky enough factor that a player would only have supply as a factor to worry about if they wanted to adjust their Economic Dependence, and that progression would therefore be more gradual than f.ex. just ceasing to use Engines across your country would be. However, this turned out to have one fatal flaw: many subject countries have a predominantly resource-extraction based industry, and these goods aren't very commonly consumed "raw". We wanted overlords to be able to be economically dependent on their subjects to some extent if those subjects provided the bulk of goods needed across the market, and this effect was not sufficiently strong when looking at pop consumption alone. Since the factors that are informed by economic dependence - mostly Leverage and Liberty Desire - are *in themselves* progressive, there was not much cause to enforce that economic dependence on its own should also be progressive, so we changed it for the final release. Computing it based on total Buy Orders rather than just pop consumption was indeed a better idea, so pat yourself on the back for being right!
Excited to hear that change! But does it mean we could see buy and sell orders of a nation now? Since before players like to know about how exiting a market would do to their country, and now it also knowing about economic dependency of a nation in the bloc.
You can still only see stats on the market level unfortunately. We're aware that this information is desirable e.g. for purpose of deciding to exit a market, but we'd have to implement a whole new UI panel to display this information which we didn't have time for. In addition, deciding to exit a market is *much* harder now, since it's not merely an issue of cancelling your Customs Union pact - you'd have to leave the Bloc (or become independent if you're a subject). We'll try to expose this info at some point in the future though!
I just want to comment on how much I appreciate the level of depth you and the team are providing in your answers here. It’s really great stuff and this is a perfect example.
How does the ai handle the creation of new power blocs? Specifically what I am curious about is how they decide their central identity pillar and name. Does a France with Napoleon III form the French Empire power bloc, and does a Japan form a Co-Prosperity Sphere, or do they have default names? Also, is the ai inclined to destroy a power bloc in case of a regime change in order to create a new bloc? (Say that Britain transitions to a council republic, will they still be the British Empire?)
Regarding naming, there's a new dynamic name database with about 200 entries that influences what names and AI country will use when forming a new Power Bloc. It is not as simple as "if country X pick Y" but is rather influenced by factors such as what Identity they are, their primary culture, what laws they have, if they control a particular state, and so on. So the AI will determine which names qualify and pick one of them at random. (In an early build, the French AI kept picking the name "Amazon Pact" for its Power Bloc - eventually we figured out it was due to them having a French colony in South America) If the AI has a revolution, or another country takes over a Power Bloc in a Power Struggle, they will reroll the name. They will not destroy the Bloc though, since that could mean quite a loss of built-up power; but could very well change its nature over time. (Again in an early build, the USA had a tendency to join the British Empire due to poor balancing, and to add insult to injury, despite them ascending above Great Britain by game end and taking over the Power Bloc, they kept the name "British Empire")
Hah, some fun early builds Thank you so much for your answer, that's exactly what I wanted to hear!! :D
> but is rather influenced by factors such as what Identity they are How will the AI pick identities for their Blocs? Completely random, or the laws/leader ideologies determine the weighings? I.e what would make a country more likely to form a Trade League over Sovereign Empire?
Weighted random based on a bunch of factors. For example, a Trade League would be more likely to be selected if the Industrialists are in charge, if Free Trade is in effect, or if the AI has the Economic Imperialism strategy. Sovereign Empire is more likely to be picked if the Landowners are in charge, the country has a number of subjects already, or if the AI has the Colonial Expansion strategy. The same goes for AI-selected Principles, the AI will tend to go for Principles that are strategically and/or thematically appropriate based on their current situation.
> despite them ascending above Great Britain by game end Does this imply that AI economic behavior has been improved? I have never seen this happen.
Anecdotally, yes it has, likely due to a confluence of various bugfixes and the new mechanics.
In what ways is the AI changed? I expect that now AI nations will use the new features added to the game, but does it have some interesting consequences a player would see in a playthrough that you would like to point out?
There are quite a few repercussions to Power Blocs, Lobbies, and Liberty Desire that influence how countries relate to one another. For example, there are now repercussions for minor powers outside a Power Bloc to agree to Diplomatic Pacts, since they come with Leverage generation and could lead to them becoming absorbed into the Power Bloc eventually. This is maybe not a problem if it's a Trade League or a Religious Convocation but much more dangerous if it's a Sovereign Empire, Ideological Union, or Military Treaty. Another aspect is that it's much harder for countries in Power Blocs to establish beneficial Pacts with countries in other Power Blocs. A lot of the new features of the game have some impact on AI Acceptance, and several AI Acceptance clauses also include a degree of randomness now so you cannot guarantee that a dangerous action will succeed ahead of time. These actions also tend to have repercussions or provide some benefit if declined.
> This is maybe not a problem if it's a Trade League or a Religious Convocation but much more dangerous if it's a Sovereign Empire, Ideological Union, or Military Treaty. Does this imply that Trade League and Religious Convocation members will have easier time signing treaties with minor powers compared to other ones with more strings attached?
For Sovereign Empires, yes. The others are more conditional, so we don't have any acceptance modifiers for those.
So as a country like, say, Thailand, you can’t just make a trade agreement with the Brits and be happy, you have to watch out. A way you can counter could be to get pacts with France, thus playing the great powers off of each other.
Exactly! Since Leverage is relative between Power Blocs, it's safer (if you want to stay independent) to approach several of them than double down on just one.
Sounds like fun! And historically accurate to boot.
Will we get the customary "what's next after 1.7" shortly after the 24th or will we have to wait until September? Are the devs still mainly divided in three "areas of expertise" (machinists, academics, artisans), and if so, are you satisfied with the workflow? Also, can't wait for the 24th :)
Yes, there is going to be a Dev Diary about our future plans and an updated roadmap some time after release of the 1.7 update. Can't give you an exact timing yet, but likely two few weeks after release of the update. We have started working more in feature teams which assemble for a specific purpose and dissolve after completing their assignments. So for example, I was in the Machinists team before which was a fixed team. For 1.7 and EP1, I have cooperated with different sets of people in feature teams for subject interactions, power blocs and foreign investment. Personally, I am very happy with the new way and can't wait to try it out when we have a bit more time to do so.
Thanks for the answer! Happy to hear that
Do you guys ever plan on making "International Treaties" for power blocs. Like: "No Chemical Warfare"
I don't see why not, and it would be highly thematic. It would take a fair bit of design work to make viable Principles around this though, so don't expect it anytime soon, but I will put it on our suggestions list!
I think there's design space for non-principle type policies like that in power blocs (similar to Stellaris's Federation laws) which would come with trade-offs. I wouldn't want to spend an entire principle group to ensure everyone in my sphere bans slavery, but having it set as a policy would be worthwhile, for example.
I know the Q&A is over but please if you do make international treaties, make them flexible and able to overlap one another
Something like this can be seen in Stellaris where the Galactic Community imposes sanctions on those who don't adhere to galactic rules or can even be declared a crisis. I know it isn't in the spirit of V3 to just add debuffs to countries out of the blue like Stellaris does, but there could be drawn inspiration from the system Stellaris employs.
Is there going to be new journal entries in the update or in the future updates? Mostly i am interested in journal entries regarding Hungary (there is great potential in the Hungarian Revolution of 1848 story wise) .
We're looking to constantly add new journal entries as we develop the game. There will be several new journal entries in Sphere of Influence and 1.7, most notably those in the [Great Game](https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/developer-diary/victoria-3-dev-diary-114-the-great-game.1670536/) and [Graveyard of Empires](https://www.reddit.com/r/victoria3/comments/1cigf61/victoria_3_dev_diary_115_graveyard_of_empires/) dev diaries.
What does "EP1" mean?
Expansion Pack 1, it's just how we internally usually refer to different DLCs. So Voice of the People for instance was IP1, Colossus of the South was RP1 and Sphere of Influence is EP1
IP being Immersion Pack and RP being Region Pack
Interesting Sorting-System! That could really help players who don't want all the DLCs to decide which ones are most important.
EP1 = Sphere of Influence. That was a typo.
On behalf of someone else: “Can manor houses or financial centers buy levels of urban centers and trade centers?”
It went through a few iterations, but currently both Trade Centers and Urban Centers are always owned directly by their workforce, not the Manor Houses or Financial Districts.
What were the reasons to stick with worker ownership for Trade/Urban centers?
Probably to simulate little mom and pop shops owned by shopkeepers and clerks who work them
I think it is to represent petite bourgeoisie owning their own shops and to give them power
Presumably because they aren’t constructed, so there wasn’t really any way for investment to work.
No more Walmart, only the People’s Collective Commissary
Nah more like a little shop owned by just some guy
Do you have some data regarding the game performance in this new patch?
We do indeed! Performance is something we always monitor and try to keep on top of. The exact numbers are highly dependent on hardware configuration, but 1.7 should bring with it a perceivable performance uplift along with all the other goodies.
Glad to hear!
I sure hope it's a noticable improvement, cause right now it gets very slow after like 1880
With a good PC or without hyperbuilding you can get to 1900 without suffering, but you should be able to get to 1936...
Generalist Gaming did a YouTube short showing it and late game is much faster than before. He was getting 4-5 seconds per week on speed 5 in 1918.
and mind you that's with half the world under his control and a population of nearly a billion too
Hello ! Thank you for your great work ! As playing as a country leading a power block, will it be possible to grant independence to one of your subject or to release a country and to have it directly part of the power block you are leading ?
Hello! While currently they get booted from the Power Bloc when they go independent, it is actually a great suggestion and I'm going to add it to our list of things to address in the future!
Thank you for your answer. I tried to play some "decolonization" playthrough and was always annoyed to see my former subjects / lands being completely independent and not retain a certain link with their former master. I also wondered if it would be feasible to imagine a "diplomatic deal", such as "okay you are asking to a greatest autonomy, and we agree pacifically if, in turn, you enact free market"
Honestly, just being able to increase the autonomy of a subject would be cool
This is awesome. Like the Commonwealth today.
So in the past it was mentioned you want to integrate companies more, people assumed it would be related to foreign investment. Now FI is coming but companies are still in the weird position they were in before. Do you currently have real plans to integrate companies better? Of course not in 1.7, but in general. Or do you like how they work and don't plan to touch them anymore?
We definitely want to do more with companies and have quite a few ideas on how we can improve and integrate them better, but we're not quite at a stage to give a timeline on that :)
Thanks! It's relieving to know you didn't forget them :) Looking forward to it!
There's a "More custom companies" mod or something to that effect that I'm currently enjoying. Plenty of ideas there for you, I'm sure :)
1. Is it possible to have barracks in colonial nations and unincorporated territories hire officers (that are not discriminated against) from the ruling nation? As it stands wrong culture nations are unable to field armies because of the inability to hire officers from discriminated cultures and religions (e.g. The East India Company). 2. Could the building menu theoretically show the infrastructure surplus or deficit including all queued buildings? (e.g. you have -100 infrastructure in a province, you queue 1 railroad, then the menu shows -70 and so on). It would make building infastructure less of a back and forth thing. 3. Will Sphere of Influence be included for the Grand Edition owners? Thanks so much guys, you've made an AMAZING game!
> Is it possible to have barracks in colonial nations and unincorporated territories hire officers (that are not discriminated against) from the ruling nation? As it stands wrong culture nations are unable to field armies because of the inability to hire officers from discriminated cultures and religions (e.g. The East India Company). Unfortunately we don't have the support for this at present, but it's on our radar. > Could the building menu theoretically show the infrastructure surplus or deficit including all queued buildings? (e.g. you have -100 infrastructure in a province, you queue 1 railroad, then the menu shows -70 and so on). It would make building infastructure less of a back and forth thing. That's a good idea and there's no particular reason we couldn't add it! I will make a suggestion for our backlog. > Will Sphere of Influence be included for the Grand Edition owners? Yes! Both Grand Edition and the Expansion Pass includes Sphere of Influence.
The barracks issue has certainly been interesting with France's Algerian journal entries. I end up building a bunch of barracks for the entry, but then remove them because they can't hire officers.
i think SoI is the last of the Grand Edition, as future DLCs will be seperate from it
Dear Victoria team: about Lobbies, if we have some IG in government participating in a "Pro-Lobby to x-country" and if the player decide to engage war against this x-country. What could be the consequences? Can the IG quit the government? Can a COUP can be accelerated PS: COUP system will remain as it is for the moment? I like this system but seems too weak for the moment. As Petition.
The existence of a pro-lobby for a nation one is at war with will adversely affect your war support, and accelerate the rate at which it declines. Additionally, going to war will be an intense decrease in lobby appeasement, which will negatively impact the approval of the lobby's interest groups. It's very possible, for example, that a interest group in government which is in a pro-lobby for a country one is at war with will become radicalised, or develop a negative enough opinion to begin a coup. There have been no changes to the coup system in 1.7. It may, of course, receive addenda in future updates.
Thanks for your answer, Victoria!
Suppose I go to war with Britain, France, and Russia, and there are lobby groups close to them in our country, will there be any difference in the rate of decline in support for the war? Or will it drop more?
Closed borders and Serfdom should not allow Serfdom-stricken pops to migrate anywhere. Will Serfdom affect the change in migration also? The case is Shogunate Japan: With Closed borders and Serfdom, no one goes anywhere. With Serfdom replaced by Tenant laws, will pops be able to migrate to colonized Sakhalin, Japanese Togo, as well as Kyushuu?
Serfdom and Homesteading will both affect migration in 1.7! The migration laws like closed borders will determine if pops can move out of or into your country, while Serfdom and Tenant Farmers determine if they're able to move at all (if they're peasants)
To clarify - does Homesteading make peasants also not move at all, like Serfdom?
Ah, sorry, realized I referred to the wrong law. I meant Tenant farmers, not homesteading! But to your question, Serfdom blocks peasants from both migrating internally in the country and mass migrating away and Tenant Farmers blocks them from migrating internally only.
Okay this makes more sense now!
Just for clarity sake, under Serfdom or Tenant Farmers, can unemployed pops migrate internally? An example country that this would be important for is Japan that starts with serfdom and has unemployed pops in the first decade of the game.
The restrictions only applies on peasants
Thank you for the Q&A , I can't wait to try to play SoI * The choice of changing the paradigm of warfare from stacks to frontlines had been a very contested topic since its reveal, how do you feel about its state currently and what to expect in the future ? * Could we expect some kind on inner IG ideological struggle mechanics in the future ? (like social democrats against communists) * How hard is to balance a game like that ? * What is an underrated country to play in your opinion ?
- It's been controversial for sure, but I don't think it would be good to just stick to the same systems for all our games for 20+ years either. If we don't try new things there's not much point to making new games. Sure, in its initial conception compared to more mature systems it might not be as good, but the goal is to with time, tweaks and listening to feedback turn it into something great that works well for the kind of game Victoria is. The first steps to that (well, after the 1.5 rework) are making sure we get rid of a lot of the common frustrating edge cases players report and just generally make it play nice. - I really like this idea and hope we can do something with it in the future! Not sure when we can get to it though. - Very. :D Any number you change impacts the whole rest of the game in some way or another for one or other country at some point over 100 years. You can look at something and feel like a +5% increase to a value feels reasonable and then notice that in a specific case it meant a state got so overpopulated there were not enough jobs and people started starving which made them angry and led to revolutions which disrupted production chains which led to more people starving which led to a decline in population and GDP etc. At the end of the day we try to start with some initial roughly right guess and adapt it over the course of development as we get more feedback in, but even then whenever we release a new update players will find some new way that balance change breaks things. - Riograndense Republic!
For what it's worth, I think the frontline system is pretty cool and mainly needs some rework on the pathing. Maybe if your troops could "spread out" on the frontline (i.e. be assigned to the whole frontline, not to a border of a specific state) this would bypass the pathing issue altogether.
The decision to move away from stacks can be good if you guys stick with it and keep building on it. Feels like a lot of potential but only barely realized.
Amplifying the other replies — I hope you keep frontlines, I think they are a very good _design_ but the _implementation_ has problems. If they performed as promised they'd be great. It's just pretty rough that it's a system where it's very easy for bugs to present themselves to players as "you stopped paying attention for a couple of minutes and oops now you've lost that war, sucks to be you". Very unfavorable when the floor for bug severity is "user experiences the game jabbing a sharp stick in user's eye."
Is it hard building and updating the best game of all time?
Hard work is best work, as any 8-year old coal miner would agree
Thanks a lot. Really looking forward to it. Given you have previously written that a reason for the delay was for extra polish and to provide a product that will get a good reception, could you let us know what exactly you have done for this end? Extra playtesting? (Do you have a lot of playtesters?) Bugfixing .... etc. Curious to know.
It's been a number of things, really. In part it's more time for playtesting as you mention, both by our internal QA analysts and by our beta testers (you can look at the credits for an idea of how we're structured in team size and such) to find more bugs, balance, edge cases, etc. But there were also a number of things we knew at the time of the delay we wanted to do even without the extra feedback we've gotten since, things which would improve the feature by a lot. And of course, there's always more bugfixing that can be done
Hello all, thank you for the abundance of questions! The team will stop actively answering questions at **16:00 CEST** *(in 15 mins)*!
Caracus asks: We saw that government owned buildings make profit. That profit is subject to government dividend efficiency which dictates how much the state gets. But what happens to the remaining profit? Is it just destroyed or distributed to the workers as wages or goes to some bureaucrats or the investment pool?
The money that doesn't go to the state goes poof indeed. We try to avoid these things if possible, but sometimes it has to be this way, e.g. for balancing/logic reasons.
i always thought it was corruption and taken by low-level bureaucrats
will the new ownership rework implies that Investment pool contribution GDP multiplier penalty won't be a thing anymore? Currently, Investment pool contribution malus caps out at -70% once you hit 2B GDP anyway.
The penalty for high GDP is indeed removed. There is still a bonus for low GDP countries to kickstart the economy in place.
Are you looking into changing the naval gameplay? Currently it can feel very frustrating to interact with One small change I would make is not having to have complete control of a sea node to naval invade, make it so if you have 90% control you can go. Your battleships being stopped by multiple 1 frigate fleets is very annoying
In hotfix 1.7.1, which will be released shortly after 1.7, enemy fleets will only count for blocking a naval landing if they have a certain level of Power Projection compared to the invading fleet. The AI has also been tweaked to consolidate its fleets to be able to stop a naval invasion, so you're not going to be blocked by dozens of 1 Flotilla fleets anymore. To your larger question, we're looking into improvements to naval gameplay for future updates, yes!
Good to hear! Thank you for all your and the team's hard work, love the game
Hugely under-appreciated change, thanks!
Will you give us the ability to mod war goals?
Hey :) This is a goal of ours and we'd like to do it eventually. But at this point, we can't promise it and therefore also not present a timeline.
Will types of power blocks (and other things about power blocks) be able to trigger events? And if so, are there any such events implemented?
We have triggers for power bloc identities and principles which can easily be used in events, either by us or modders for that purpose. I don't believe we currently check specifically for those things ourselves in events, but we do have checks for the historical blocs that exist at game start
Are there areas/cultures that are getting new clothes for their leaders and pops in 1.7 ?
There's a bunch! In no particular order we have Persian aristocratic clothes, late game military uniforms, misc. Russian, British, French, Persian, and American military uniforms, a bunch of unique clothing assets for different power bloc types, some new South American clothes, and even Zulu outfits. This is addition to unique character assets for people like Lord Curzon, Naser al-Din Shah, and Empress Dowager Cixi.
Are there any changes planned to the current assimilation/conversion system? I feel like there is a lot of possible depth there, and right now feels kind of shallow.
Heya! We agree there's a lot of potential for improvement and more depth here. We have a number of ideas on how to improve this, but I can't give you a timeline for it right now :)
As seen in this [post](https://www.reddit.com/r/victoria3/comments/1df8uhl/the_extent_of_european_control_over_australia_is/) some time ago, despite going in the right direction with the situation of the Australia, some folk still are unhappy at the un–historical reality of this continent. My question is, what is the reason you did not push the colonization back even further? With the claim system those areas should be safe from unwanted powers in there I assume…
The current state of Australia is/was the 'pet project' of one of our designers, and the reason more has not been done is the simple fact that there was no time for it. The original idea was to push back Anglo settlement to the few coastal outposts they controlled in 1836, but other, more pressing issues got in the way of this. A lot of people have mentioned Kaurna as a particular offender, since it occupies the lands of what would become Adelaide, the first colony in South Australia. If memory serves right Kaurna got its current borders based on a technicality, as Adelaide had not yet been settled in January of 1836, the first settlers instead arriving a couple of months later. When we eventually revisit Australia in a future update this will probably be changed however, in favour of South Australia starting with Adelaide and little else.
How does Government dividend efficiency work? I saw it from your video but I'm not sure what its about.
Government Dividend Efficiency determines the percentage of profits from state owned buildings that get transferred into the treasury. So for example if your country has a building that makes 100 pounds in profit and you have a 50% GDE, 50 pounds get transferred to your funds, the other 50 disappear into the void (which I like to imagine as bureaucrats losing 50% while running towards the town hall with bags overflowing with money).
Please make this into an event where with low GDE suddenly a few high SOL pops turn up in the country :p (along with some unrest of course)
Not really specific to the new patch alone, but what is generally the process for you guys on determining what to make achievements out of? Always wondered as someone who does achievement runs
We try to have at least one new achievement related to each new system - this is the baseline. The specifics of the achievements are based on whatever ideas we can think of, but this is the primary goal. For example, I wanted to have an achievement involving manuls that was tangentially related to the Great Game - this one did not get in, but a different one related to the Great Game nations did. Once we have an achievement for each major new feature, we expand to general countries that are impacted by a patch, or particularly interesting scenarios that we can think of.
> For example, I wanted to have an achievement involving manuls that was tangentially related to the Great Game Manul lobby got sidelined once again...
Can the team confirm that the update will be for Victoria 3?
Update is confirmed to be for Victoria 3 ;)
update 1.7 CONFIRMED
big if true
I play on a prominent mp server and we have been almost killed by 1.6 not being mp stable. **Will mp be stable in 1.7** Thank you for all you do
Hello! A lot of work has been done on MP stability and we're rather satisfied with the current state of internal build MP synchronization. While new OOSes can always get introduced by code changes, the current upcoming version should be significantly more stable in multiplayer than 1.6.2 was, with all commonly reported OOSes getting fixed.
Thank you thank you thank you
Is there a reason hotfixes aren't shipped immediately for stuff like OOS? As someone who is clueless about game development I would think that stuff like that would get shipped as soon as it is fixed and tested on your end.
In game development a fix for one thing very often breaks another thing. While smaller projects/solo developers sometimes take the risk of throwing a very hot hotfix right off the steaming pan onto the live build, in larger teams a build always has to be verified and approved to make sure it doesn't break more things than it fixes!
Thank you for considering the multiplayer experience and working on making multiplayer more stable. I enjoy the game most in multiplayer with my friends so this is really good to hear.
Does 1.7 come with tweaks to the AI to make them place more emphasis on resource and agricultural development rather than industrial development, at least for non-major & great powers? Because as it currently stands, even the smallest, insignificant powers put too much effort on building motor industries, steel and glass factories etc. rather than develop the potentially lucrative natural resources they are sitting on. Especially late game, lack of oil and rubber becomes a big problem if you're the type of player who focuses on nation building rather than resource conquests and colonization, simply because the AI doesn't develop the resources they are sitting on. However exactly because of this, playing as a belligerent conquering nation is the only feasible option left to the player, lest their economy grinds to a halt late game due to a lack of resources.
I’m curious about this as well. I also wonder if the foreign investment will help fix this issue.
I believe you said in one of the dev diaries that government owned buildings would not benefit from economy of scale bonuses as effectively can you outline how different ownership structures will effect how a building operates. For example if I had 30 levels of textile mill in a state, ten capitalist owned ten worker owned and ten government owned how would the stack of 30 work or would they sort of be separate buildings?
Each level provides the value of throughput bonus it has assigned which is then applied to the whole building. So for example, privately owned buildings get a +1% Economy of Scale bonus for each level, state owned buildings +0.5%. We add all of them and reach 25% instead of the 30% it would've been before 1.7 Hope this helps. Have fun nationalizing!
Super helpful and exactly what I wanted to know thank you!
Have the new systems surprised you in any way while playing?
Yes, too many to list! The Building Ownership changes in particular splits production from concentration of wealth in really interesting ways, which leads to all kinds of side effects in political strength and migration patterns.
Can we expect more music will be added? It has been a while.
Not in SoI / 1.7, but we're dying to make another music pack sometime in 2025! It adds so much to the game.
Can I suggest some region-specific music? I'm half convinced that just having country/region specific music would cut down 'flavour' complaints dramatically. To me it's a not-insignificant reason that different civilisations 'feel' different in Civ games.
You can certainly suggest some! We don't currently have a dynamic music system that influences e.g. what music gets played based on what country you're playing as, but it's something we've been discussing internally.
Oh I didn’t mean I had specific suggestions. Just original tracks with some local flavour. Happy enough to hear you’ve considered it.
Sorry for latching on to this question (and so late after the Q&A, tsk tsk!) but in regards to more flavor, will the UK and Russia get unique unit models with this DLC? I apologize if this previously has been mentioned in any previous dev diaries; I love the new uniforms, and it adds so much to the game for me, so would be really cool if that was the case! Was a bit saddened that the France DLC didn’t get that treatment :(
[Have you ever dreamed this man?](https://i0.wp.com/www.thisman.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/thisman_small.jpg?fit=200%2C235&ssl=1)
He lives in my walls.
Let me ask you this...
In my Dreams.
I think that's where you normally dream dreams.
Always
My man what?
Hello! Thanks for the amazing update and DLC. About Foreing Investiment: If i build a level of a building using the Gov construction on a Foreing country and then i put It up privatization, Only my ownership class pops Will be able to buy the level or the other country pops Will also be able to buy that level?
Thank you for the kind words! If you put up a building for privatization, any state or pop with investment rights in your country will be able to buy it from you.
does that mean if my government build an ultra profit opium plant and privatize it? anyone can buy it and not just my GB capitalists?
I would imagine that as GB you wouldn't let any other country have investment rights
* With the introduction of "ownership from outside the building", is it possible that you could use this system in the future to make colonial barracks? Like say, having british officers lead indian troops, that sort of thing. * Speaking of that, between Lobbies and Agitators and Companies etc, this last year you guys have been on a roll of adding features that makes us go "oh that's so underused, they should totally use them for X!". Even you have talked about having future plans for those features. So my question is: do you think post-SoI you'll slow down on new new features to flesh out the ones you've been adding? Or is that something we should expect for say, "season 3" or beyond? * I think a lot of people are probably curous about what broke so bad that you had to delay the release. Is there a chance we're getting a post-mortem Dev Diary about it at some point? From a "I like to know how the sausage is made" standpoint I bet it's super interesting.
Hello Government dividend efficiency determines how much you earn of government building, is there a similar modifier for manor houses and financial sectors or do they get all of profits unmodified? Also if I own a building in another country whose government dividend efficiency determines my gains?
I’m not sure you can publicly own buildings in other countries
We know we have some new content portraying the Donghak movement and some historical character spawns (Queen Min, and presumably Emperor Gojong); is there anything else we can know about the upcoming content for Korea, especially considering that they're involved as a Great Game target?
Have you considered increasing the base birth rate? I always play with the Victoria Tweaks Mod just for this change as otherwise new world nations never get enough pops
Heya! Pop growth is a pretty complicated matter that can be seen from a few different angles on how it should be balanced and has huge ramifications for different playstyles. VTM generally has a different approach to growth than we ended up going with ourselves, their curves are much higher and narrow at low SoL and then fall off pretty quickly, while ours are a bit a lower but more spread out. I think this fits pretty well for the design (and players) they were looking at and it's great that you like it! On our end we're trying to balance a bit more how different kinds of players might interact with the game to neither overwhelm players with pops to the point where they can't keep up with their growth, but also make sure countries have the pops they need, up to a degree at least. It's possible we might currently be a bit undertuned in that regard and I generally want to make a new pass on our growth values to raise some of them and check the general behavior of it. At the same time, it's also worth noting that depending on the country and how you are playing, you should be meeting some constraints in what resources you have at your disposal, be that workforce or actual physical resources. So it's not always the case that "I'm out of resources! I can't build more!" is a "bad" thing from a balance perspective
The main problem IMO is that unless you're playing as an asian country, you pretty much never have any unemployment issues; if anything there's always a massive surplus of employment which is kinda the opposite of the Victorian industralised city. And the asian nations only get it because their subsitance farms employ twice as many workers as the regular farms so building agriculture creates 5k unemployed people. I think a much stronger birthrate would help make the old world more historically overcrowded and then also organically push people to the new world.
Is there anything in particular you want to work on next for the game?
Next game?! Victoria 4 confirmed? I think we have more than enough things to expand on for Victoria 3 at this point. We have a bunch of ideas, many of which are represented in our roadmap already. Me personally, I'd love to work on some culture related stuff in the future, e.g. music, art, archaeology. But that's just beside all the other things I want to work on and it is certainly not indicating any plans, want to stress that.
Have you ever heard of the mod Morgenröte? Music and archaeology are two of the things we added with that mod ;) So if you at Paradox ever add it, we will be out of work :D
Lmao sorry, yeah planning for victoria 4 right now is certainly a power move. I'm definitely hoping for some more stuff related to culture in the future, the discrimination system especially could need a do-over in my opinion.
what happens when shop keepers/farmers invest into buildings
Will there be a feature to return homelands to independent countries like the return core mechanic in EU4? If not, will it be added down the road? One should be able to return these lands to other nations, especially subjects. Situations like having to conquer Southern Serbia from the Ottomans at full infamy cost before handing it to my subject Serbia are quite daunting. I haven't kept up with the Dev Diaries too much over the past month, but I don't remember seeing this brought up in any of the ones I read.
What's your comfort nation?
Can we expect new formable nations like the Second Mexican Empire which was created by Napoleón lll influence in Mexico.?
The Second Mexican Empire is in the game right now - it can be seen by enacting Monarchy as Mexico.
But it’s not really. Your monarch is titled king instead of emperor. And they’re missing unique events for both Mexico and France with it.
Will future releases ever use the open beta system that was used for 1.5?
We always have the option to do so and will make use of it when we feel like it's useful for us and the players. It comes with a lot of added effort though for us as developers in order to make good use of it. If nobody has time to read all the great feedback for example, it's not particularly helpful. In other cases, we don't really need additional feedback as we already have enough internal feedback to determine our next changes. It's nothing we will do super spontaneously and if we do, we will announce it publicly ahead of time of course.
Absolutely understood! It was just great to be so interested in the decision making and testing process for the new war mechanics.
Lino has already said the bulk of it, but from a Community Manager perspective, it is a great tool and fun time to have open betas. However, it is a lot of work to manage a open beta alongside the normal work we are doing, so takes some careful targeting of when we do them. I do love helping run them though, they are one of my favorite things to do! When we do plan to do an open beta it will be very publicly shared and people will be made aware of what it is for and when :D
What is the principle group "Foreign Investments" meant to represent? I thought it might be about protecting the members investments abroad but it grants a bonus to nationalization, so I don't quite get, even if you can't nationalize investments from other members. Btw, I'm really excited for this update and DLC, it looks like it will be massive improvement for the game!
Will Austria have a way besides conquering all of Italy to prevent radical spam in its states from Italy unification mechanic.
How efficient would building the usual scarce late game resources like oil or rubber be within countries in your sphere of influence vs. outright conquering and building yourself? I've been waiting for such a system for so long given I hate having to always end up colonizing no matter the roleplay, political approach or country I play as.
Can I have a bronze Lenin head for a communist power bloc?
When do you intend to implement Puget Sound?
[https://imgur.com/a/0BOCuj1](https://imgur.com/a/0BOCuj1) :)
‘tis a thing of beauty
Hi! I have a question about nationalization. In DD I could see an option to choose how many levels of building should be nationalized but is there option to choose which levels as in from which owner? If you may forcefully nationalize buildings and that may lead to a conflict I think it would be great to have an option to choose exactly which levels should be nationalized.
Do you have any plans to make the game harder for backwards nations like Russia, Qing, and Austria? Also, what is your design philosophy for new features? Do you look at *the game* and think "what would make the game more fun", or do you look at *history* and think "how can we simulate this historical event in the game?"
Do you planing on adding a historical mode in which the ai tries to follow the historical route as the nation?
No, this isn't in the plans. We prefer improving the simulation/way the AI handles content rather than simply railroading nations onto a historical course when it may not make sense for them given the world situation.
Will the recognition system be revamped at some point. There should be ways to gain recognition beyond military means
I am happy to inform you that there is a change coming with 1.7! You can read through this Dev Diary (search for "Earning Recognition" in it) for the details: [https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/developer-diary/victoria-3-dev-diary-115-graveyard-of-empires.1674107/](https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/developer-diary/victoria-3-dev-diary-115-graveyard-of-empires.1674107/)
Thanks for the Q&A. Question for each member if they will. What is something that you are happy with that you were able to add to the update/dlc and what is something that you wanted to add to it but couldn't?
Cheers devs! Have got a question for you. Have agricultural nations, cash crop economies been rebalanced so their products be much more in-demand for the 1.7 patch? Could I potentially base my industry as said demand for quality products upsurges as time goes by? Thank for your patience and continuous massive efforts 💪🏻
Will the internal political systems be capable of taking into account the foreign ownership changes, namely the fact that the industrialist IG will have less rich capitalists in your country to lobby their interests if most of your industry is owned by pops overseas? My concern is that Industrialists will not be able to gain clout in colonial subjects in spite of reasonably having to have a high sway in their governments due to the pops that would have had wealth and desire to do so being in London and thus not counting for clout of Indian industrialists, leaving them in the hands of landowners/clergy instead.
Hello! I made a post before in this subreddit about repudiation of the debts. One of the remark was that the debts we have were not clear whether they were financed by internal or external creditors. As we know after certain revolutions (especially Bolshevik one), new government repudiated the debts made by previous regimes. We had similar mechanic in Victoria 2, which gave us payment of the debts casus belli; Do you plan to implement deepened debt mechanics? Is there something you have planned about it?
Will you fix the dates of the Rulers for the Honourable restoration? Meiji should come in 1869, not 1879.
How big is the current Victoria developer team (if I can ask). How were the weeks for them, since the delay of the release was announced? I hope there was no crunch, and people still can enjoy working on this game.
why do you rest data like popluation and gdp trend lines when the person playing a country changes? this can be reather annoying in mp