Happy Thursday and welcome back! After an extended hiatus, we are now returning to regularly scheduled development diaries, the first of which you are reading right at this moment. Todays development diary is going to be a pretty hefty one, focusing on the complete overhaul of trade that is coming in the 1.9 free update. Before we start, I want to remind you of the usual caveat that this is a feature in development, so expect some rough-looking interfaces and for all implementation details and balancing to not yet be fully figured out. We have mentioned on a number of occasions that we are not happy with the way trade works in Victoria 3. It is unreliable, overly fiddly, and inherently inefficient since the introduction of Local Prices and Market Access Price Impact in 1.5. Establishing any kind of long-term trade relationship with another country is almost impossible due to the constantly shifting market conditions, and on top of all this the system exists in a confusing limbo where all trade routes are established and paid for by the government (via convoys) while the profits usually go into the pockets of private owners. Many of these issues are inherent to the way trade routes work, and as such arent easily fixable within the confines of the current system - there really isnt a way to create a reliably profitable trade route with another market when you have no control of the price of the traded good in the other market. For this reason, we have decided to start over from scratch. The old system is completely gone, and in its place we will have not one but two new systems - one which simulates private, autonomous, profit-driven trade, and another which handles strategic trade deals between nations. Today were going to talk only about the former, so while reading all of this, bear in mind that youre only seeing one half of the coin. Direct trade deals between governments will very much still exist in 1.9, they just wont be tied into Trade Centers and private profits. But enough with the caveats, lets get to the point.

World Market & Trade Centers

World Market Location

Interacting with the World Market

Hey! We have some good news to share with you! As we are preparing everything for Victoria 3: Expansion Pass 2 (yes, youve read this right!), its about time to do some Spring clean-up and reorganize the Victoria 3 portfolio to make it truly evergreen. In this way we want to lower the entry threshold for new players, while rewarding the seasoned veterans by making it easier for them to complete their collection. Here are the new packages we are going to introduce:

Victoria 3: Starter Edition

• Victoria 3 Base Game
• Sphere of Influence
• Colossus of the South
• American Buildings Pack

Victoria 3: Ultimate Bundle

• Victoria 3 Base Game
• Sphere of Influence
• Pivot of Empire
• Colossus of the South
• American Buildings Pack
• Melodies for the Masses
• Voice of the People
• French Agitators Bonus Pack
• Dawn of Wonder

Salutations Victorians!

Grab the Base Game:

Get one step closer to completing your collection with the Expansion Pass:

Pull other's into your nations orbit in Sphere of Influence:

Stake a claim on the future of South America in Colossus of the South

Good Day Victorians!

Grab the Base Game:

Get one step closer to completing your collection with the Expansion Pass:

Pull other's into your nations orbit in Sphere of Influence:

Stake a claim on the future of the South America in Colossus of the South

Happy Thursday and welcome back to a brand new year! I hope youve all had a nice holiday and a good start to 2025. As I mentioned in the last dev diary, this one is going to be a brief retrospective on the year thats passed and the updates and DLC that we released in that year. Ill share my thoughts on what I think we did well, and where we want to improve going forward. I will go over each of the major releases in turn, followed by a summary of my overall thoughts for the whole year. Our first release of 2024 was Update 1.6 back in March, and I consider it our low point of the year. While the update itself contained a lot of nice improvements, it was released in a pretty rough shape and also (contrary to our expectations at the time) had worse overall performance for a majority of users. This felt, in all honesty, more than a little embarrassing to me since I had stated improved performance to be one of our goals with the update. The reason this happened is simply that, even though we had made a plethora of performance improvements, other changes (principally AI improvements and changes to migration) degraded performance more than these improvements could make up for. What this made us realize is that our internal tools for monitoring performance were simply inadequate to the task, and our Tech Lead spent a considerable amount of time expanding and improving on something we call The Performance Dashboard, which now monitors not just overall performance but also provides a plethora of useful breakdowns. As an example of new functionality added to the dashboard, the new tools contain a heatmap of the most performance-intensive parts of the game (such as updating pop growth and adjusting trade volumes) with a 2-week history that lets us immediately spot if a change to a particular part of the game causes it to become slower so that we can take immediate action. All of this, alongside some extra allocation of programming resources, allowed us to release both updates 1.7 and 1.8 (as always, on average - individual hardware variation unfortunately means performance improvements are never going to be universal) with significant performance improvements despite all the new features those updates introduced. In addition to general performance monitoring, the Performance Dashboard also tracks more specific data such as the slowest events, which lets us quickly spot when suboptimally written triggers start to impact overall performance. Its worth noting that something being yellow or red here isnt inherently bad - its okay for a complex event to use up more computing power so long as it all adds up to a reasonable level.
However, Im getting a little bit ahead of myself now. Returning to update 1.6, it of course wasnt all bad. On the good side, the update ended up being dubbed The UX Update as it contained a lot of UX improvements, ranging from simple quality of life changes to more significant changes such as formation map marker consolidation and the addition of a proper migration map mode. The most significant and well received new UX feature was probably the Pop Census Panel, which allows you to truly dig down into the nitty-gritty details of your population. The Trains Bonus Pack free DLC we released alongside 1.6 of course also merits a mention, as honestly, who doesnt like free trains? If 1.6 was our low point of 2024, then Update 1.7 and Sphere of Influence, released in June, was definitely the high point! Both the expansion and the update itself performed extremely well, and were very positively received by the community. In particular I want to mention the Building Ownership Rework, a massive months-long effort to create more complex relationships between Buildings, Pops and Countries. There was some internal debate about whether we should really spend so much of our available development time overhauling the economic core of the game for a diplomacy-oriented expansion, but doing so is what allowed us to implement Foreign Investment as a natural extension of the building construction and autonomous investment systems instead of making it a tacked-on mechanic, and I consider it well worth the time spent. Power Blocs is another interesting 1.7/Sphere of Influence addition to mention in relation to its community reception. During their initial conception, Power Blocs were intended to be a broader feature that could capture a variety of transnational agreements, but in actual implementation it suffered from this approach of trying to do a little bit of everything and ended up quite underwhelming. Following feedback from QA and beta testers, we refocused the feature into one focusing almost entirely on imperialist projects. This decision is something that we received some criticism and pushback about in the Power Bloc dev diaries, as some in the community felt the feature was now too narrowly focused (though I know at least a few people who came around to it after the update was released). Ultimately I believe we made the right call, as Id rather we add a feature which does a few things but does them well rather than one which stretches itself thin and just ends up underwhelming. Something that was more on the mixed side of things was the Great Game Objective. While the objective itself seemed pretty well received, and we saw a very noticeable increase in the number of playthroughs of the countries involved with it, there was (and still is) a perception that playing without the objective locks you out of the content added for those countries. I can only attribute this to poor communication on our part, and that we need to more clearly indicate exactly how objectives change the experience, and the fact that they do not lock away country-specific flavor JEs when not enabled. The last thing I want to mention for 1.7 is the AI, as its an area of the game that was significantly improved in the update, especially on the diplomatic side. The catalyst system and the way it explicitly informs you when and why an AI changes their diplomatic stance towards you is something I am personally very happy with, and is a model for how I want to continue to improve the Victoria 3 AI going forward. I want the AI of Victoria 3 to be both an interesting opponent and an interesting ally, self-interested but largely rational, and for players to be able to understand why it makes the decisions it makes even if its not the decisions the player themselves would make. This is an approach which necessitates the kind of transparency offered by the catalyst system as opposed to the opaque black box of hidden dice rolls which preceded it. We of course still have a lot of work to do here, and improving the AI isnt something that is ever really going to be finished, so the main takeaway here is really that we dont just want to make the AI smarter or better at challenging the player, we also want to make it make more sense. Finally then, we have reached Update 1.8 and Pivot of Empire, the final release for 2024. As I recently posted a dev diary on my thoughts for that specific update, I wont go too much into detail, but I do want to mention that we have taken a further look at the balance of the India content (particularly the Unstable Raj JE, where we have looked at telemetry for completion rates across the playerbase and found them significantly lower than intended) and concluded that some further balancing is needed from us in 1.9. Specifically, we want to adjust its difficulty level while also improving rewards for completing it successfully, but also look into making failing the JE less of a game-ruining state. I also want to reiterate that one of the major learnings we have made from 1.8/Pivot of Empire is that we need to focus more on the why of Journal Entries when designing them in the future. That is, why do you want to pursue and complete a Journal Entry - what player fantasy is it fulfilling, what playstyle is it supporting, what rewards does it offer - and to communicate those whys to the player. The reaction of the player to completing a complex and challenging Journal Entry should never be huh, thats it? when presented with the conclusion and rewards. On a more positive note, something we expected to be positively received but which turned out to be extremely well liked was state/hub renaming. We were already planning to continuously add more renaming functionality to the game, and the massive amount of positive feedback weve gotten has only strengthened that ambition. Lastly in regards to 1.8/Pivot of Empire I want to mention which came as something of a surprise to us was the strong negative reaction to the lack of an Expansion Pass for Pivot of Empire. Again this is something weve already talked about, but I do want to mention that there will absolutely be more expansion passes going forward. The reason we didnt do so already is that weve found that Expansion Passes work best for us (in terms of being able to plan and deliver high quality releases) when they start off with a major expansion, rather than ending with one, so that is what well be doing going forward. To conclude this dev diary, I want to share an internal phrase thats been going around: 2024 is the year that Victoria 3 hit its stride. Its no secret that the game had its issues at launch and that we made some mistakes in the initial post-release period, but from update 1.5 onwards, and particularly after 1.7/Sphere of Influence, weve seen excellent playerbase growth and greatly improved community sentiment. In summary, 2024 was a very good year for Victoria 3, and Im very excited to continue building on these successes to add depth, flavor, and excessively in-depth socioeconomic simulation mechanics to this very special game series that is quite unlike anything else I have ever worked on. Thats all for today! With update 1.9 some time away, were now going to take a bit of an extended break to focus solely on the development end of things. Expect us to return sometime early spring with details on the Trade Rework, Frontline Improvements and so much more. See you then!

Good Winter's Day Victorians!

But! That is not all!

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Double Happy Thursday! As is customary after each major update, today well be returning to the future update plans, which we last went over in Dev Diary #124. Just like the previous times, well be going over what changes and improvements we have planned for the game in future free updates such as 1.9, 1.10 and beyond. Once again we will be talking about the same key four improvement areas of Military, Historical Immersion, Diplomacy, Internal Politics as well as Other for anything that falls outside those four categories. Just as before, Ill also be aiming to give you an updated overview of where we stand and where were heading by going through each of these four categories and marking on each one with one of the below statuses:

• Done: This is a part of the game that we now consider to be in good shape. Something being Done of course doesnt mean were never going to expand or improve on it in the future, just that its no longer a high priority for us. Any points that were already marked as Done in previous updates will be removed from the list, to avoid it growing unmanageably long, but you can look at the older dev diaries (#79, #89, #102 and #124) if youre interested in what was done previously.
• Updated: This is a part of the game where we have made some of the improvements and changes that we want to make, but arent yet satisfied with where it stands and plan to make further improvements to it in future updates.
• Not Updated: This is a part of the game where we havent yet released any of our planned changes/improvements in any currently released updates but still plan to do so for future updates.
• New: This is a planned change or improvement that is newly added, i.e. wasnt present on the list last time we went over it
• Reconsidered: This is a previously planned change or improvement that we have reconsidered our approach to how to tackle from previous updates. For these points we will explain what our new plans are, and change the list appropriately in future updates.

Military

• Make sure that supply is an important and meaningful part of the military system that can win or lose you wars.
• Tweaking and improving the frontline system to eliminate excessive front splitting and troop teleportation once and for all

• Making navies more important for projecting global power and securing control of coasts.
• Adding a proper system of military access and finding solutions for the other remaining rough edges in the frontline system.
• Turning individual ships into proper pieces of military hardware that can be built, sunk and repaired rather than just being manpower packages.
• Adding a system for limited wars to reduce the number of early-game global wars between Great Powers

Historical Immersion

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

• Going through the base game Journal Entries and events and making improvements and additions to ensure that they feel meaningful and impactful for players to interact with
• As always, weve updated some of our older Journal Entries for 1.8 and will continue to do so in future updates.
• Adding more country, state and region-specific content to enhance historical flavor of different countries
• Also as always, this is something we continue to do each update and which I will keep on this list as it remains an important priority.

Diplomacy

• Improve on the Treaty Port mechanic and create more ways for countries to cooperate, compete with and exploit others using trade
• Improving the war support system to be much clearer UX-wise about what is needed to contest wargoals, and less all-or-nothing in terms of when countries are on track to capitulate

• Make declaring and holding onto diplomatic Interests a more rewarding and challenging aspect of global empire-building
• Allowing peace deals to be negotiated during a Diplomatic Play instead of only having the option to give in

Internal Politics

• Find a better solution for the ways ideologies appear, attract followers and create support for reforms than the current RNG-heavy leader ideology system.
• Have discrimination not be a purely binary status and reflect forms of discrimination aside from whats written in the law, as well as making assimilation into a more meaningful mechanic in the process.

• Adding laws that expand on diversity of countries and introduce new ways to play the game
• In 1.8 we added Caste System/Social Hierarchy laws to make India more accurate and flavorful.

• Turn legitimacy into a more interesting mechanic, where the strength of a government depends on their successes and failures, and highly legitimate governments cant simply be ousted at a whim but have to be undermined first.
• Introduce a concept of national pride which can increase or decrease depending on a countrys actions and which ties directly into legitimacy.

Other

• Find a way to deal with the excessive fiddliness of the trade system in large economies, possibly by allowing for autonomous trade based on your laws in a similar way to the autonomous investment system.

• Improve on Companies by turning them into actual actors in your country that can own/expand buildings and interact with characters/politics.
• In update 1.8 we made Companies into more distinct entities with headquarters and ownership of specific buildings. We plan to continue to develop these entities in the future and tie them into more systems.

Good Day Victorians! Hotfix 1.8.6, is now live, this hotfix was previously called 1.8.5 when talked about however we also released an opt in beta patch addressing the assimilation and occupation issues - that has been rolled in to this patch somewhat alongside other fixes, balancing and improvements! Check out the full patchnotes below! Checksum is `9358`. We wait for the next funny checksum with bated breath. As always please report any bugs on our bug reporting forums! We have also updated the Known Issues post for 1.8 with fixed issues and more known issues! The following changes have been made to the game compared to 1.8.4: [hr][/hr]

Hotfix 1.8.6 Patchnotes

Improvements

• Insurrectionary countries are now allowed to reform their government, so that they don't get stuck at low legitimacy
• Herat historical characters now have Pashtun culture and Sunni religion

AI

• The AI will now generally avoid declaring bankruptcy while at war, as the effect of doing so is often worse than staying in default
• Fixed an issue where the AI would overvalue labor savings on PMs, resulting in it keeping those PMs active even when they resulted in shortages
• Fixed an issue where the AI would sometimes fail to reform to the government they wanted

Balance

• Reverted the change that allowed cultures to assimilate in their homelands, as this resulted in far too much ahistorical assimilation in places like British India. We plan to revisit this in the future to see where it makes sense to allow it, but for now we have added defines to allow modders to re-enable it if so desired
• The "Total Separation" law now correctly blocks all conversion again
• The "Freedom of Conscience" law no longer allows for conversion of pops of Acceptance levels 4 and 5
• Britain will no longer force successful player East India Companies to become the Raj
• After a civil war ends, there is now a 6 month grace period before another one can start, to give the deradicalization impact of civil war ending a chance to take effect on movement activism
• Reduced the construction needed to build gov. admin buildings, to make it easier to fix otherwise unresolvable ADM shortages
• Reduced the base number of individuals radicalized when declaring bankruptcy
• Reactionary movements can no longer appear at the same time as Legitimist movements in France
• Enabled Enlightened Royalists to agitate for more causes
• Reduced the impact of country turmoil on activism of the Reactionary movement
• Reduced the impact of active laws on activism of the Anarchist and Fascist movements, to compensate for the large number of law groups those ideologies care about

Modding

• Whether cultures can assimilate into different heritages is now controlled by the ALLOW_ASSIMILATION_ACROSS_HERITAGES define
• Whether cultures can assimilate in their homelands is now controlled by a the ALLOW_ASSIMILATION_IN_HOMELANDS define

Bugfixes

• Fixed a bug where a player could not disband units after civil war has broken out
• Fixed a bug where occupation weren't flipped back after enemy occupation
• Fixed a bug where armies defending against naval invasion on occupied land would not get any units participating in the land battle
• Fixed an issue where Interest Groups could end up rebelling together with Political Movements despite being significantly ideologically opposed to those movements
• Fixed a bug where the country budget showed the wrong income value
• Fixed another crash during updating shipping lanes
• Fixed a random crash when closing or switching lenses
• Fixed Literacy tooltip data missing in Russian localization
• Fixed an instance of Error spam occurring in Spanish localization in the Movement tabs related to concept_political_movement_pressured_short
• Removed an old string in STATE tooltips in Russian localization
• Fixed inverted modifier causing bankruptcy to increase institution change speed instead of decreasing it
• The beginning of Reconstruction will no longer unincorporate Washington D.C.
• Researching Pan-Nationalism no longer blocks Religious Minority movements from spawning everywhere instead of just British India
• Fixed an issue where inappropriate events could fire and immediately cancel during secessions
• Fixed a bug where political movement success chance wasn't applied until the law started being enacted
• Fixed a bug that could result in a Lobby Demand targeting the wrong country
• The Fascist movement can now correctly attract Agitators to its cause
• Fixed an issue where abdication could cause enacting a null law if a revolutionary tag already existed
• Fixed an issue where natural interests from subjects would not properly propagate to overlords of overlords
• Fixed a bug where abdicating the throne during a civil war could cause a ruler switcheroo with the insurrectionary country due to the heir joining the insurrection but remaining heir to the loyalists
• Divided Monarchists coups no longer incorrectly occur at 75% progress
• Fixed an issue where religion wage discrimination modifiers weren't being applied.
• Characters sent on the Tibetan Expedition will now return to service properly
• Fixed a bug where a player could get multiple lobbies against the same country after independence war
• Fixed the radicalism prediction for movements tooltip being incorrect when starting or canceling the enactment of a law
• Fixed a bug where the Sacred Civics III principle did not give the reduction to Liberty Desire unlocked in Sacred Civics II
• Fixed an issue where abdicating the throne could result in ending up in a personal union with a civil war country
• Added Quetta to the formable India
• Fixed an issue affecting the way interest groups and movements calculated relative stances on ideologies, resulting in problems such as the law_enactment_stance trigger not returning correct results and insurrectionary countries selecting the wrong laws
• Fixed princely state characters with child traits
• Fixed an issue where the Extradition events could not fire due to secessions
• Fixed an issue, which occurred in the Opt in Beta 1.8.5, where the ALLOW_ASSIMILATION_ACROSS_HERITAGES define wasn't working correctly when disabled
• Fixed an issue where Joshua Norton could be unable to agitate, causing null scopes in his event
• Removed an old Culture string in Russian Localization in the Culture Tooltip

How to Rollback your Game

Happy Thursday everyone, its time for another Victoria 3 development diary. Today Ill be talking about my thoughts on the release of 1.8 and Pivot of Empire, the feedback weve received, and also a bit of whats in store next for Victoria 3. As some of you might remember, 1.8 was actually meant to be two updates - a smaller 1.8 with bug fixes & polish, and a larger 1.9 with Pivot of Empire and the larger free features such as the Political Movement Rework and the Discrimination Rework. We ended up combining these into a single update because the release windows between the two were just too tight, and as a result 1.8 became a chonker of an update, with a lot of potential to cause bugs and balance issues. On the whole, the feedback around the update (and in particular the Discrimination Rework) has been positive, and you seem to be enjoying the additional dimensions that the update adds to the economic and political sides of Victoria 3. However, there are a few issues and bits of feedback on the not-so-positive-side that I specifically want to address:

• On release, we had a very nasty issue introduced by a backend change in the launcher, which caused users with a non-unicode character to crash when launching the game, which unfortunately slipped past our testing due to the fact that all of our work email addresses use only unicode characters. This one actually had us pulling our hairs a bit trying to find the cause, but with help from the engine team we were finally able to narrow it down and get a fix out just before the weekend (we dont usually make a habit of patching at 17:45 on Fridays, but in this particular case it was warranted)
• Weve gotten a fair amount of feedback that the rework of companies to own and affect specific buildings has made them somewhat underwhelming compared to the way they worked in 1.7, and we agree that this is an issue. We have made some changes in the hotfixes since, and are continuing to read your feedback and make adjustments as needed. You can always @ Pelly directly on our social platforms for key feedback in this regard, especially on Discord, the Forums and Reddit!
• Migration ended up far too non-restrictive and Assimilation ended up too restrictive as a result of the changes made to Discrimination. Both of these issues should now have been resolved in hotfixes.

• Most significantly, its clear that we need to spend more time testing and iterating on the balance of complex Journal Entries like The Unstable Raj before releasing them into the wild, to ensure the difficulty level and overall impact on game outcomes are where we want them to be.
• We need to rethink how we set rewards for Journal Entries so that they feel appropriate to the challenge of completing them. We also need to get better about telling the player what those rewards are going to be so they dont have to make a guess or check the wiki when deciding whether or not to try and complete a JE.
• We need to ensure the AI can handle the content we add, particularly for complex/difficult Journal Entries.

• Front splitting causing wars to become unmanageable or frustrating
• Units suddenly teleporting away when their front disappears
• Supply isnt impactful enough and armies win battles they should really lose when facing critical equipment shortages
• Lack of a proper military access system, i.e. Prussia having to naval invade to reach Denmark
• Troop allocation to offensive vs defensive battles causing unexpected outcomes (for example, a general using all local troops to defend against one naval invasion causing another naval invasion to just walk in unopposed)

Salutations Victorians! Hotfix 1.8.4, is now live! Featuring improvements for Companies, fixes for Russia and Britain being too protective of Mexico, removal of the assimilation restriction in homelands and much more!! Check out the full patchnotes below! Checksum is `1a3e`. Alas, no amusing checksum this time. As always please report any bugs on our bug reporting forums! We have also updated the Known Issues post for 1.8 with fixed issues and more known issues! The following changes have been made to the game compared to 1.8.3: [hr][/hr]

Hotfix 1.8.4 Patchnotes

Features

• Made the "Exempt from Service" subject interaction accessible to all

Improvements

• Changed companies so that if they own at least one level of a building, any new level that is built in it by local private investors will be company owned
• Made companies much more likely to be the one privatizing buildings if the building fits their type
• The East India Company now gains annex wargoals against rebellious princely states in the Indian Uprising
• Doctrine of Lapse now transfers the contents of the target's treasury to the East India Company
• Collectivization now only ever targets privately owned levels and is the number of levels to collectivize is calculated as a fraction of privately owned levels, so nationally owned levels are not subject to it, meaning that countries with Cooperative Ownership/Collectivized Agriculture can now also have a public sector and make proper use of public sector foreign investment
• The "Emergency Relief" Decree will no longer auto-cancel as long as least 20% of the population experience some form of starvation
• An independent Ceylon now automatically becomes Sri Lanka
• Improved the clarity of Unstable Raj tooltips

AI

• Russia/Britain now start neutral towards Mexico, so they don't block US westward expansion by default
• The AI now makes more of an effort to reach its desired level of construction and innovation generation
• The AI will now never accept being cut down to size as part of a peace deal and have to be capitulated to enforce this specific wargoal

Balance

• Removed restriction that you could not assimilate if you lived in homeland
• Removed restriction that you can only assimilate to cultures with which you share a cultural heritage trait
• A political movement with 100% militancy can now always 'replace' another movement with less than 100% militancy for the purposes of getting to start a civil war, even if they don't meet the usual 10% higher requirement
• Removed the restriction for conversion on the Violent Hostility acceptance status
• Allowed several revolution events to fire for secessions as well
• The efficiency bonus to private investment now applies all the way up to 50 million GDP, up from 10 million, to make the private sector more able to keep up with intense early game government investment
• Declaring Bankruptcy now radicalizes a minimum of 25% of the country population, with shares in buildings owned adding to that minimum
• Bankruptcy no longer increases the amount of loyalists & radicals gained on SoL changes
• Bankruptcy now reduces leverage gain, migration attraction and MAPI (the latter representing the general shock to the national economy causing business to become more localized)
• Bankruptcy now drastically increases the time it takes to change institution levels (all institutions are still reset to level 1 when declaring bankruptcy)
• Ownership buildings that own subsistence building levels now contribute less money to the investment pool relative to how large a part of their portfolio is subsistence
• Increased base wage and dividends weight for Shopkeepers
• Manor Houses can no longer invest in mines & power plants, and are much less likely to invest in logging & rubber
• Buildings will now lay off employees rather than lower wages if wages are already so low that the employees are going to be rapidly radicalized
• Subsidized buildings will no longer lower wages to increase profitability if wages are already so low that the employees are going to be rapidly radicalized
• Adjusted provinces in the Carnatic so that Pudukottai can't be cut off entirely from the EIC in rare cases
• "Secret Police" Political Movement Activism reduction per level has been reduced from 10% to 5%
• The impact of number of claims on the Fascist Movement pop attraction has been reduced by 50%
• The Fascist movement will now attract more middle and upper class pops if there are any powerful leftist movements in the country, it will now also more proactively poach from the Cultural Majority and Reactionary Movements
• Increased the movement pop attraction for Leftists and Social Democrats moderately, increased even further if certain conditions are met depending on the movement type
• Anarchist movements will now be a slightly less upset on average
• Extraction Economy will no longer destroy Power Plants when enacted
• Buildings are now a bit more willing to raise wages if their workers are being radicalized by low SoL
• Honorable Restoration now instantly fails if you declare bankruptcy
• The conscription rate added to revolutions/secessions from popular support & clout has been reduced and capped at +10%

Art

• Added locust swarm harvest condition effect
• Added optimal sunlight harvest condition effect
• Tweaked color of heatwave and disease outbreak ground effect

Interface

• Updated how the affected movements are displayed in the tooltip when enacting Laws
• Added information about the significant threshold of 25% Movement Activism to relevant concept tooltips

Modding

• Added new trigger to check for the percentage of the population in a state or country that belongs to any of the primary cultures in that country
• Added an effect to set the interest group of a character
• Added modular data functions to retrieve the data model for movements impacted by changes in law enactment as well as getting the values for how much they are impacted



Bugfixes



• Fixed a bug where political movement success chance wasn't applied until the law started being enacted
• Secessions of Cultural Minority Movements now require their culture to make up at least 5% of the population for the homeland state to be a valid target for secessions
• Fixed a bug with the Turtle Island Journal Entry buttons that left them unable to target relevant nations
• Fixed an impassible terrain colonization bug, where a country could proceed colonizing impassible terrain it had no land access to
• Civil Wars that have no valid uprising states (for instance, secessions from cultures with no homelands in your country) are no longer able to start
• Extraction economy now correctly applies multiplicative investment modifiers instead of additive ones
• Fixed a bug where buildings at low profit levels could 'yo-yo', hiring employees one week and firing them the next week
• Cultural majority movements should now properly select states weighted by how much population belonging to primary cultures are in those states
• Fixed a bug where some buildings could have an owner in the null object state after annexation
• The "Declaration of Independence" achievement can no longer be triggered by switching controlled country to an independent one
• Fixed a bug where Texas became the wrong kind of subject in the Texan War of Independence content
• The Journal Entry "A New National Identity" now allows for assimilation of fully accepted pops into the country's new, South American culture
• Resolved an issue that prevented rulers from abdicating when they should be able to
• Fixed a bug where capitulating countries in wars with more than 2 participants could cause war goals to stick around
• Fixed a bug where we didn't spawn civil war events
• Fixed an issue where Italian radicals would not get removed when annexed as a part of Risorgimento Pan-Nationalism, potentially resulting in the annexing country being annexed in turn due to inheriting all those radicals
• Fixed a bug where colonization would be seemingly stuck due to ghost occupation
• Fixed a bug where players could see a subsidize button on canals and government buildings
• Fixed issue that prevented Consolidate Colonial Rule from detecting British subject states
• Fixed Earning Recognition not advancing when a country has high SoL
• Fixed a crash related to trade routes and shipping lanes
• Alaskan Industrialists no longer lack IG traits
• Pressing the "Promote European Migration" button in the "Populating the Americas" Journal Entries now correctly spawns a migration target
• Fixed tooltip for the Imperialism of Promise Journal Entry's fail conditions
• Cancellation of colonization of incorporated states is now prevented when that will annex the colonizer
• The "Pro-Slavery" Movement will no longer be extremely upset about the lack of Barracks or Naval Bases in slave states if Slavery is completely abolished
• Fixed map mode interaction tooltip for establishing colonization where multiple error messages were written
• Fixed issue that occasionally assigned exiled characters ideologies which made no sense
[hr][/hr]

How to Rollback your Game


If you are on an older save you may want to continue an the save, you can roll back to a previous version of the game e.g. 1.7.7 via following the steps below! [olist]
• Right click the game in Steam
• Go to Properties and select the tab called "BETAS"
• Pick the version you want to play and close.
• Allow the game to update
• Make sure, before you load any save, that the version number in the game is the one you want.
• If the previous step fails, exit the game, right click -> properties -> local files -> Verify integrity of game files and wait for all files to be verified before going back to step 5. [/olist] Note: You can freely swap between the latest version and previous versions this way. By selecting "NONE - opt out of all beta programs" you go to the latest released version.
  
  [ 2024-12-05 10:06:06 CET ] [ Original post ]

Happy Thursday everyone and welcome back to yet another Victoria 3 development diary. With update 1.8 and Pivot of Empire having released in the previous week, wed normally be doing a post-release thoughts dev diary. However, this time around we released a bit later in the week than we usually do, and so weve been wrapped up working on the larger 1.8.3 hotfix. For this reason, were going to hold off on our post-release thoughts until next week. Instead, were going to focus on what we have already fixed in 1.8.3 as well as what else is currently on our radar to address in the coming weeks. So to begin with, here are the full patch notes for 1.8.3, which should already have reached you by the time youre reading this:

Hotfix 1.8.3 Patchnotes

Improvements

• Cultures will now seek to mass migrate somewhere where their acceptance is improved somewhat. This isn't a hard requirement, if the potential migration target has high enough migration attraction, that can offset the sought acceptance, meaning cultures might move somewhere they are less accepted as long as the target migration attraction is sufficiently higher than the origin one.
• The ratio between acceptance at the origin and at the target will now scale how many pops actually move in a mass migration per week. If the target acceptance is lower than the origin one, less pops will move. If it's higher, more pops will move.
• Presidency Stability game concept now explains conditions that affect the Unstable Raj Journal Entry progress bars
• Updated tooltips to explain conditions that affect the Sikh Sovereignty Journal Entry's 'Empire Stability' and 'Court Intrigue' progress bars
• Imperialism of Promise Journal Entry will no longer fail from civil wars, except secessions
• Power Blocs can now invite Revolutionary nations
• When recruiting a new commander, historical characters will now be displayed more often

AI

• The AI East India Company should now be more cautious with regards to events that decrease its stability
• Slightly decreased the AIs desire to construct Power Bloc Statues
• The aggression of colonial empires towards Unrecognized Nations now starts off slightly lower and ramps up more significantly as the game progresses
• Britain will no longer ignore the Boer states because they happen to be Recognized Nations when the time to clean up Africa has come

Balance

• Britain is now a part of the Indian Uprising diplomatic plays by default
• Reduced the income transfer of Chartered Company subjects to their overlords from 40% to 30%
• Rebalanced Indian Presidency stability from a scale of 100 to a scale of 300
• Gave the East India Company claims on much of its historical western frontier from game start
• Reduced the flat liberty desire growth in subjects from annexing low-prestige subjects
• Added 5 years of Memento Mori immunity to all starting leaders and agitators
• Reduced the impact from high/very high taxes on Expected Standard of Living, as the values were a bit overtuned
• Made the British East India Company start with high military wages
• Fixed Portugals conquer weights, it should now correctly prioritize annexing Gaza once the time comes
• Bumped Portugal's starting colonial affairs level from 1 to 2

Art

• The optimal sunlight positive harvest condition effect is now less intense, appearing colder at nighttime to illustrate moon light rather than sunlight.
• Reduced the effect and strength of wind effects
• Added disease outbreak particle effects
• Adjusted moderate rainfall vfx
• Resolved an issue where the parasol held by pops sometimes clips out in the portrait view

Content

• The "The Conquest of Algeria" Journal Entry now also grants France a claim on Western Sahara

Interface

• Political Movements are now sorted by type, and alphabetically within the same type
• The Harvest Condition map marker is now clickable and opens the Food Security tab on the Market panel
• Made the Harvest Condition map marker show up in the default and diplo play map modes on the nearest zoom
• Made the list of movements impacted by enacting or cancelling a law into a paged list so it doesn't take as much screen space in situations where there are a lot of movements
• Made it so when enacting or cancelling a law, movements where nothing is happening to their activism won't be listed
• Added the Acceptance Status icon in front of the status name in modifiers based on player feedback.
• Fixed a bug where localization did not have proper values for decaying civil war progress
• Added a go-to button for the active Movement on an Agitator's Character panel

Modding

• Added trigger can_pressure_interest_group to political movements, this must evaluate true for an IG to be able to be pressured by a movement, in addition to the already existing supporting clout requirements (Requested by Better Politics Mod for their 1.8 compatch)
• add_loyalists and add_radicals effects now support negative numbers (ie, add_radicals with a value of -0.5 will remove 50% of radicals)
• Scripted progress bars can be marked as inverted so that progress is defined as making progress values smaller

Bugfixes

• Fixed a bug where civil wars (particularly secessions) could be created without any viable states, resulting in the civil war continually starting and then being cancelled
• For a new insurrectionary movement to 'overtake' the currently active civil war, it now needs to have at least 10% higher activism, fixing an issue where you could have 'ping-ponging' between two civil wars with very similar activism levels
• Likely finally fixed the long-standing bug where battles do not end because the last few soldiers refuse to die or get demoralized
• Fixed an issue that would incorrectly clear occupations of a country that was occupying states belonging to a country that got annexed by losing an insurrection diplomatic play
• Fixed an issue where princely states were unable to be annexed by independent India, citing available Doctrine of Lapse
• Cultures will now require at least 30 general cultural acceptance to mass migrate somewhere. This general acceptance can then be reduced when the pops actually migrate due to things like Cultural Community Acceptance, but as a baseline there shouldn't be cultures moving somewhere they will for sure be Violently Oppressed.
• Government/Subsidized buildings are now able to override the usual hiring restrictions when hiring from ownership buildings, if the new job is equal or better to the old one (ie, government administrations can hire Aristocrats from Manor Houses to be aristocrats in government administration, but can't hire them to be clerks)
• Annexing states through events (such as Canadian Federation, Risorgimento etc) no longer generates radicals as though those states were conquered
• Fixed an issue where only passable provinces are counted towards bonuses to colonization speed. Also fixed a separate issue found with counting impassible provinces in state regions
• Fixed a bug where revolutionary or colonization AI wouldn't merge it's army formations
• Made it so that the Treaty of London Journal Entry will automatically select a response after six months
• Fixed bug where civil war progress would reset on save/load
• Fixed a bug where ideological incompatibility was applied to the countries that don't use a caste system
• Fixed a bug where the popup for agitators would not show which movement they created or joined due to the movement being created after the popup is fired
• When opening the game in debug mode, fixed the error spam related to ig_suppression
• Fixed the cooldown for the "The Contagious Diseases Acts" event so it does not fire if any of its modifiers are still in effect
• Reinvestment value is now calculated from each country's investment laws and tech instead of averaged over the building
• Total building reinvestment income now applies reinvestment efficiency
• The "Construct the Suez Canal" Journal Entry now correctly completes when building the Suez Canal
• Fixed a bug where countries created via create_country effect would get the wrong cultures
• Fixed a bug where heathen tax was applied for all of the religions, now it doesn't apply to religions with a positive acceptance effect
• Fixed a bug for The Positive Stage journal entry progress bar
• Fixed a bug where the Liberal Movement could not be created if the Radical Movement already existed, resulting in weird behaviors such as Market Liberal agitators not having a movement to join when finishing the Corn Laws
• Fixed some start up errors relating to character history
• Fixed a bug where chance of stalling during enactment was not predicted correctly in the law enactment tooltip
• Fixed scoping issue that could result from revolutions in British East India Company
• Sacred Civics II now properly lowers liberty desire for subjects with the same state religion
• Fixed a bug where Azadi Achievement sometimes became unavailable after loading a save
• Fixed a crash in harvest conditions
• Added cooldown to Italian Unification's Pan-Nationalist Radicals event
• Fixed a crash in map graphics
• Fixed a bug where after changing the land border adjacencies for the markets were not properly recalculated
• Fixed an issue where the Rani of Jhansi would not make use of her custom DNA
• Fixed a bug where nationally owned buildings built in other nation's states did not grant the part of their balance going to reinvestments to anyone
• Fixed a rare crash when resyncing a game
• Fixed cancellation trigger for "The Rise of Radicalism" event
• Added military shipyards and whaling stations to influence 3d center model in the port city
• Fixed a bug where ports in split states wouldn't show wharfs and fisheries from time to time
• The "The Scramble for Africa" Journal Entry now also accounts for states controlled by subjects
• Fixed a bug where certain Danish, British, and Portuguese Indian possessions would start as incorporated
• Historical figures now use their intended clothing assets
• Fixed very small countries having their armies stuck in their home HQ when at war
• Fixed wrong reference to Elections concept in factors attracting pops to Radical movement
• Fixed formatting for the "The Integration of the Nordestinos" event
• Fixed a bug where French Company Billboards appeared where they shouldn't appear
• Fixed a bug where the literacy tooltip would flicker

Further hotfix areas

• Continue to improve the balancing of the EIC content and revising some parts of the Unstable Raj journal entry
• Review the rewards of the Pivot of Empire Journal Entries to ensure they feel worth the effort to complete
• Look into the issue with too many frontlines being created in India due to the many small nations
• Evaluate building wages to see if the changes we made in 1.8 made building owners too stingy for their own good
• Find a more comprehensive solution for how acceptance should tie into migration
• Remove the heritage/homeland restrictions on assimilation when it makes sense for pops to assimilate regardless
• Evaluate companies and ensure they do not feel underwhelming as a result of no longer being country-wide
• Doing a balance pass on subject payments, particularly for Chartered Companies

Good Day Victorians! Hotfix 1.8.3, is now live! Featuring a range of fixes to migration, Journal Entries, Secessions and BIC balancing! With much more in the patchnotes below! Checksum is `b4be`. As always please report any bugs on our bug reporting forums! We have also updated the Known Issues post for 1.8 with fixed issues and more known issues! The following changes have been made to the game compared to 1.8.2: [hr][/hr]

Hotfix 1.8.3 Patchnotes

Improvements

• Cultures will now seek to mass migrate somewhere where their acceptance is improved somewhat. This isn't a hard requirement, if the potential migration target has high enough migration attraction, that can offset the sought acceptance, meaning cultures might move somewhere they are less accepted as long as the target migration attraction is sufficiently higher than the origin one.
• The ratio between acceptance at the origin and at the target will now scale how many pops actually move in a mass migration per week. If the target acceptance is lower than the origin one, less pops will move. If it's higher, more pops will move.
• Presidency Stability game concept now explains conditions that affect the Unstable Raj Journal Entry progress bars
• Updated tooltips to explain conditions that affect the Sikh Sovereignty Journal Entry's 'Empire Stability' and 'Court Intrigue' progress bars
• Imperialism of Promise Journal Entry will no longer fail from civil wars, except secessions
• Power Blocs can now invite Revolutionary nations
• When recruiting a new commander, historical characters will now be displayed more often

AI

• The AI East India Company should now be more cautious with regards to events that decrease its stability
• Slightly decreased the AIs desire to construct Power Bloc Statues
• The aggression of colonial empires towards Unrecognized Nations now starts off slightly lower and ramps up more significantly as the game progresses
• Britain will no longer ignore the Boer states because they happen to be Recognized Nations when the time to clean up Africa has come

Balance

• Britain is now a part of the Indian Uprising diplomatic plays by default
• Reduced the income transfer of Chartered Company subjects to their overlords from 40% to 30%
• Rebalanced Indian Presidency stability from a scale of 100 to a scale of 300
• Gave the East India Company claims on much of its historical western frontier from game start
• Reduced the flat liberty desire growth in subjects from annexing low-prestige subjects
• Added 5 years of Memento Mori immunity to all starting leaders and agitators
• Reduced the impact from high/very high taxes on Expected Standard of Living, as the values were a bit overtuned
• Made the British East India Company start with high military wages
• Fixed Portugals conquer weights, it should now correctly prioritize annexing Gaza once the time comes
• Bumped Portugal's starting colonial affairs level from 1 to 2

Art

• The optimal sunlight positive harvest condition effect is now less intense, appearing colder at nighttime to illustrate moon light rather than sunlight.
• Reduced the effect and strength of wind effects
• Added disease outbreak particle effects
• Adjusted moderate rainfall vfx
• Resolved an issue where the parasol held by pops sometimes clips out in the portrait view

Content

• The "The Conquest of Algeria" Journal Entry now also grants France a claim on Western Sahara

Interface

• Political Movements are now sorted by type, and alphabetically within the same type
• The Harvest Condition map marker is now clickable and opens the Food Security tab on the Market panel
• Made the Harvest Condition map marker show up in the default and diplo play map modes on the nearest zoom
• Made the list of movements impacted by enacting or cancelling a law into a paged list so it doesn't take as much screen space in situations where there are a lot of movements
• Made it so when enacting or cancelling a law, movements where nothing is happening to their activism won't be listed
• Added the Acceptance Status icon in front of the status name in modifiers based on player feedback.
• Fixed a bug where localization did not have proper values for decaying civil war progress
• Added a go-to button for the active Movement on an Agitator's Character panel

Modding

• Added trigger can_pressure_interest_group to political movements, this must evaluate true for an IG to be able to be pressured by a movement, in addition to the already existing supporting clout requirements (Requested by Better Politics Mod for their 1.8 compatch)
• add_loyalists and add_radicals effects now support negative numbers (ie, add_radicals with a value of -0.5 will remove 50% of radicals)
• Scripted progress bars can be marked as inverted so that progress is defined as making progress values smaller

Bugfixes

• Fixed a bug where civil wars (particularly secessions) could be created without any viable states, resulting in the civil war continually starting and then being cancelled
• For a new insurrectionary movement to 'overtake' the currently active civil war, it now needs to have at least 10% higher activism, fixing an issue where you could have 'ping-ponging' between two civil wars with very similar activism levels
• Likely finally fixed the long-standing bug where battles do not end because the last few soldiers refuse to die or get demoralized
• Fixed an issue that would incorrectly clear occupations of a country that was occupying states belonging to a country that got annexed by losing an insurrection diplomatic play
• Fixed an issue where princely states were unable to be annexed by independent India, citing available Doctrine of Lapse
• Cultures will now require at least 30 general cultural acceptance to mass migrate somewhere. This general acceptance can then be reduced when the pops actually migrate due to things like Cultural Community Acceptance, but as a baseline there shouldn't be cultures moving somewhere they will for sure be Violently Oppressed.
• Government/Subsidized buildings are now able to override the usual hiring restrictions when hiring from ownership buildings, if the new job is equal or better to the old one (ie, government administrations can hire Aristocrats from Manor Houses to be aristocrats in government administration, but can't hire them to be clerks)
• Annexing states through events (such as Canadian Federation, Risorgimento etc) no longer generates radicals as though those states were conquered
• Fixed an issue where only passable provinces are counted towards bonuses to colonization speed. Also fixed a separate issue found with counting impassible provinces in state regions
• Fixed a bug where revolutionary or colonization AI wouldn't merge it's army formations
• Made it so that the Treaty of London Journal Entry will automatically select a response after six months
• Fixed bug where civil war progress would reset on save/load
• Fixed a bug where ideological incompatibility was applied to the countries that don't use a caste system
• Fixed a bug where the popup for agitators would not show which movement they created or joined due to the movement being created after the popup is fired
• When opening the game in debug mode, fixed the error spam related to ig_suppression
• Fixed the cooldown for the "The Contagious Diseases Acts" event so it does not fire if any of its modifiers are still in effect
• Reinvestment value is now calculated from each country's investment laws and tech instead of averaged over the building
• Total building reinvestment income now applies reinvestment efficiency
• The "Construct the Suez Canal" Journal Entry now correctly completes when building the Suez Canal
• Fixed a bug where countries created via create_country effect would get the wrong cultures
• Fixed a bug where heathen tax was applied for all of the religions, now it doesn't apply to religions with a positive acceptance effect
• Fixed a bug for The Positive Stage journal entry progress bar
• Fixed a bug where the Liberal Movement could not be created if the Radical Movement already existed, resulting in weird behaviors such as Market Liberal agitators not having a movement to join when finishing the Corn Laws
• Fixed some start up errors relating to character history
• Fixed a bug where chance of stalling during enactment was not predicted correctly in the law enactment tooltip
• Fixed scoping issue that could result from revolutions in British East India Company
• Sacred Civics II now properly lowers liberty desire for subjects with the same state religion
• Fixed a bug where Azadi Achievement sometimes became unavailable after loading a save
• Fixed a crash in harvest conditions
• Added cooldown to Italian Unification's Pan-Nationalist Radicals event
• Fixed a crash in map graphics
• Fixed a bug where after changing the land border adjacencies for the markets were not properly recalculated
• Fixed an issue where the Rani of Jhansi would not make use of her custom DNA
• Fixed a bug where nationally owned buildings built in other nation's states did not grant the part of their balance going to reinvestments to anyone
• Fixed a rare crash when resyncing a game
• Fixed cancellation trigger for "The Rise of Radicalism" event
• Added military shipyards and whaling stations to influence 3d center model in the port city
• Fixed a bug where ports in split states wouldn't show wharfs and fisheries from time to time
• The "The Scramble for Africa" Journal Entry now also accounts for states controlled by subjects
• Fixed a bug where certain Danish, British, and Portuguese Indian possessions would start as incorporated
• Historical figures now use their intended clothing assets
• Fixed very small countries having their armies stuck in their home HQ when at war
• Fixed wrong reference to Elections concept in factors attracting pops to Radical movement
• Fixed formatting for the "The Integration of the Nordestinos" event
• Fixed a bug where French Company Billboards appeared where they shouldn't appear
• Fixed a bug where the literacy tooltip would flicker

How to Rollback your Game

Introducing the Gold and Glory Bundle! Watch history unfold before your eyes as you guide nations through the tumultuous centuries leading up to the modern era in the Gold and Glory Bundle from Paradox Interactive. This pack includes two critically acclaimed grand strategy games, covering almost five hundred years of history. In Europa Universalis IV, rule any nation on earth in Paradoxs flagship historical game. Explore the globe, unlock new forms of government, experience religious Reformation and establish the foundations for a world spanning empire. The flavour of the past is enriched by thousands of historical events, dedicated mission trees and profiles unique to many countries. In Victoria 3, govern any of hundreds of richly detailed societies through the dramatic century from the 1830s to the 1930s. This society simulator presents you with a nation riven by economic and cultural division in a time of rapid technological and ideological change. Industrialize your nation, promote or suppress revolutionary ideals and pursue a trade policy that brings the wealth of the world to your doorstep. The Gold and Glory Bundle includes the base games for the above listed titles and is available for a limited time. https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/46785/Gold_and_Glory/

Upon the Autumn day, does Victoria 3 come in the Steam Autumn sale! With savings of up to 50% off, including Sphere of Influence on sale for 20% off! So, why not indulge your Victorian dreams of economic empires, societal change or just to look at trains go by? An admirable endeavour, indeed! https://store.steampowered.com/app/529340/Victoria_3/ As part of the Paradox Steam Autumn sale, you can get great deals on other Paradox titles with savings of up to 90% off!! [previewyoutube=ADoT0Bxi4s0;full][/previewyoutube] Check it out here: https://pdxint.at/PDXAutumn2024 That is not all, we have just launched the Gold & Glory bundle with Europa Universalis 4 for the base games of both game at a reduced price!

Good Day Victorians! Another quick hotfix for 1.8, targeted at the crash affecting some players, which should be compatible with 1.8 save games! Checksum is 1fc5. As always, this post is not for bug reports, please instead post them in the bug reporting forum (including a save and steps to recreate is always useful). The following changes have been made to the game compared to 1.8.1:

Bugfixes

• Fixed a crash that would consistently happen for some users when launching the game
• Fixed a bug that would happen if the game rule "Loyalties Grace Period" was activated. There would be no gains for Loyalists or Radicals after the period ends.
• Fixed a crash that could happen when a Company was removed

Salutations Victorians! From today, until November 25th, Victoria 3 is free to play on Steam. Grab a friend and try out the range of changes in the new 1.8 Update now! Look through the changelog here!

But, that is not all!

Hello Victorians! A quick and small hotfix for 1.8, which should be compatible with 1.8 save games! There is an crash for some players that we are looking into, but currently has a possible workaround of launching Steam through Administrator mode. Checksum for the hotfix is, 'affa'. As always, this post is not for bug reports, please instead post them in the bug reporting forum (including a save and steps to recreate is always useful). The following changes have been made to the game compared to 1.8.0:

Balance

• Reduced the stability gain from low liberty desire subjects in the Unstable Raj Journal Entry by 50%
• Buildings will no longer include the impact of taxes on expected Standard of Living when setting wages, so that increased taxes don't automatically lead to increased wages (or vice versa)

Bugfixes

• Subsistence farms will now set much lower wages and aim to return as much profit to their owners as possible (this was causing world starting GDP and GDP growth to be significantly depressed compared to 1.7)

Good day Victorians! Im happy to say Pivot of Empire and the free Update 1.8, fittingly named Masala Chai, have been released! The specific checksum is 98cc. The Pivot of Empire Immersion Pack focuses on India and its path through the Victorian age. Many countries in the region have received new Journal Entries and Events that provide a more immersive experience to you. The free Update 1.8, on the other hand, is adding reworks of central mechanics like Political Movements and Discrimination, additions like Harvest Conditions and Food Security, as well as Improvements for Companies and Military quality of life and many many other things. In other news: As some of you may know, we recently hired Tunay, better known as Doodlez in the community, as a Systems Designer. Before joining us, he used to work on a mod called VTM (Victoria Tweaks Mod), together with One Proud Bavarian. We have now integrated a range of improvements from that mod into the base game and might continue to do so in the future. You will find the respective entries marked with VTM at the front. A big thank you to OPB and every other modder that continues to make Victoria 3 better, more interesting or completely different with their mods! As always, you can find a list of Known Issues following the link. Most of these should get addressed in subsequent hotfixes in the coming days and weeks. Keep in mind that save games from 1.7.7 are not going to be compatible with the 1.8 Update, but any hotfixes released after will not break save games from 1.8 onwards. Now lets take a look at the full changelog or start playing right away!

Pivot of Empire Features

• Added the Communal Divides Journal Entry to the game, with associated events
• New random events can trigger when a new culture has recently arrived in a state and faces an acclimatization period
• Added a Journal Entry with associated events for Sikh Empire
• Added a Dravidian Movement journal entry with associated events
• Added a Utilitarianism Journal Entry for East India Company with associated events
• Added a Railways Journal Entry for India with associated events
• Added a Journal Entry with associated events to construct the Victoria Terminus
• Added a Journal Entry for Princely States with associated events
• Added an India-specific famine Journal Entry and associated events
• Added Utilitarian ideology and leader ideology
• Added 7 India-related companies to the game
• Updated John Stuart Mill's character template

• Added new UI skin, panels, headers, buttons and menu assets
• Added Indian building set for the 3D map
• Added Victoria Terminus to the 3D map
• New clothing added for characters and pops in India
• Added historical characters DNA and outfits
• Added an Indian table cloth for the table
• Added two new loading screens for 'Pivot of Empire'
• Urban Indian states now make use of the Indian city image
• Added icon for 'Pivot of Empire'
• Added Theme Selector banner for 'Pivot of Empire'

Achievements

Changelog

Features

• The Discrimination system has been overhauled. Instead of a binary accepted or not accepted status, Pops will now have an Acceptance value from 0-100. This value is determined by Culture and Religion first and foremost and depends on the Citizenship laws you have enacted. Depending on the value, they have one of five Acceptance statuses. Also depending on the Citizenship laws in your country, there are different effects being applied to these statuses.
• The Citizenship and Church and State laws have been reworked and a variety of new modifiers have been added.
• When pops first migrate into a state, they now start at a low cultural acceptance value which will improve over time as their Cultural Community matures
• Passing a law that makes some culture more accepted in your country will now cause them to gravitate towards that acceptance level over time, rather than gaining the full acceptance value they're legally entitled to by law immediately
• Reworked the Political Movement system completely. Political Movements are no longer temporary entities which just want to enact or stop a single law, but long-term ideological/cultural/religious forces that try to reshape the country in their image. In addition to helping or hindering the enactment of laws, movements can also pressure interest groups, resulting in a chance for those interest groups to get leaders with ideologies fitting for the movement.
• Reworked Secessions and Revolutions to work with the new Political Movement system. All civil wars now come from a specific movement and either aim to put that movement in charge of the country, or to secede. Secessions are no longer always culture-based and the old, highly random and turmoil-based cultural secession system has been removed from the game.
• Added a new subject track for Colonial countries
• Added a highly autonomous Chartered Company subject type, centered around income transfer to its overlord
• A social hierarchy system has been added. It is based on social classes which can be defined by a lot of things. In the base hierarchy, the only conditions are professions which result in the Strata setup as it was before, e.g. Aristocrats in Upper Strata, Peasants in Lower Strata.
• For India, we have added the British Caste System. Its classes are different than the base hierarchy. It only affects Pops of Hindu religion with South Asian Heritage. It comes with its own law group which will affect the flavored social classes directly, depending on which law is active.
• Added a Food Security value which measures how easy or difficult it is for a Pop to acquire the food they need to survive. It's based on availability of goods and how much of their money a Pop needs to spend on food.
• Adjusted Pop Starvation to be based on Food Security. Mild and Severe Starvation have drastic effects on birth rate, mortality and radicalization.
• Added 13 harvest conditions that can trigger around the world affecting rural buildings and infrastructure
• Added a map mode that tracks starvation levels globally
• Added a map list panel for the starvation map mode
• Added a resync button to multiplayer games when the game goes out of sync. If the host presses this all clients will immediately resync with the host and the game can continue.
• Companies now can own buildings. To establish them you will need to possess some country-owned building levels or pay a lump sum to transfer the levels from existing other owners to the company (depending on the economic law). Once established, a Company HQ building is constructed in a fitting state.
• Company HQs can use the investment pool in order to construct new buildings or buy existing building levels. They will prefer to invest locally up to a certain level before spreading their influence.
• Company throughput and construction efficiency bonuses now only apply to the levels they own directly or which they are constructing. To compensate for this, these bonuses have been drastically increased.
• States and their cities and towns can now change name based on things like the culture of their owner
• States and their cities and towns can now be renamed by the player
• Military formations can now be moved to fronts, HQs, and sea nodes using right-click
• Multiple formations can now be selected and deployed or stationed together
• You can now drag to select military formations with the mouse
• Added Bulk Nationalization to the Building Registry window. Pressing the "Nationalize Filtered Buildings" will open a window which only includes your filtered buildings. In it, you can choose how many of these levels you want to nationalize and which ownership type they belong to.
• Added pause on event setting to the message settings window. It will unpause after all events are resolved (will show Paused by Event message). If a player wants to keep the game paused just unpause the game while events haven't been resolved it will return the game to normal pausing mode.

Improvements

• It is now possible to add some types of wargoals (such as conquering/returning states) on behalf of subjects that are on your side in a diplomatic play. The infamy is added to the overlord adding the wargoal.
• When a revolution ends or a secession is crushed, the pre-civil war capital state is now restored to capital status if it ended up siding with the rebels
• Pop types now check for starvation rather than Standard of Living to determine their level of political engagement
• Sphere of Influence: Made the Ideological Union Power Bloc action "Force Regime Change" more usable. Instead of looking if the total difference in progressiveness is above 100, it's now enough if one of the two categories is different enough. Additionally, the minimum Cohesion value to activate it has been reduced from 50 to 25.
• It is now always possible to use the 'Increase Autonomy' and 'Independence' war goals when being directly targeted by your overlord in a diplomatic play
• Deaths related to wars are now tracked by culture, and each participant will lose War Support relative to their acceptance status for the cultures of dead pops on both sides (to different degrees). The implication of this is that it will be easier to stay in wars if your country discriminates against the cultures of combatant pops, and harder if you're a very accepting country in a war where either party uses their population as cannon fodder.
• Changed the Doctrine of Lapse from a decision to a subject interaction
• Overlords are now able to support their subjects in a war regardless of their relations level
• Taxation levels will now alter the expected standard of living, in lieu of directly generating radicals
• Which states will side with the rebels in a civil war now depends on the type of support it can bring in. Popular Support tends to result in more states overall rebelling, Military Support tends to result in a greater share of the army/navy rebelling, and Wealth Support tends to result in overseas colonies rebelling. Additionally, insurrectionary IGs will tend to pull in areas where they have a high degree of the local clout.
• Colonies will be stopped from growing if they are isolated from their market
• Frontier Colonization now allows the player to colonize states that border a sea zone that also borders any state connected by land to your capital
• Cooperative Ownership now only affects collectivization of Manufacturing, Resource Extraction and Power Plant buildings. Collectivization of agriculture, plantations and ranching is fully controlled by the land ownership law instead.
• Pro and Anti Lobbies now care about the acceptance status of your country's primary cultures in the target country, in addition to the mere presence of the primary culture
• Restricted the Social Mobility decree to not be usable under enforced caste system laws
• Adjusted France's starting navies so that none of them start with an organization penalty
• Added logging potential to Kyushu (Thanks to user ThatStrategist and many other people for the feedback!)
• When a country changes ruler, if the new ruler already rules another country, a Personal Union is established automatically
• Added dynamic state and hub names for Eastern Europe
• Replaced outdated uses of "Morale Cap" modifier with appropriate modifiers
• Added a new game rule, which is turned off by default. The game rule enables the player to set a grace period of 1, 5, or 10 years during which gains of both Radicals and Loyalists start out low and are progressively increased. Players are encouraged to use this game rule to give themselves a more stable political early game.
• Radicals and Loyalists from Standard of Living (only) are no longer scaled down by default in the early game, leading to unbalanced changes to Radicals and Loyalists from e.g. events
• Industry Banned law now decreases Economic Dependence on Overlord, while Extraction Economy law increases it
• The Devout is no longer very racist by default
• Reduced Japan's starting territories in Hokkaido to the Wajinchi area
• Removed Japan's starting claim on Sakhalin to stop them immediately colonizing the island, and gave them a starting colonization debuff modifier. Claim will be re-added and modifier removed once you complete the Honorable Restoration Journal Entry
• Reworked the map, pop, and culture setup for India and Burma
• The British East India Company now starts with many of its recently-acquired territories as unincorporated states
• Support Independence now increases Liberty Desire in the subject country by a small amount each week
• Unpopular agitators are no longer removed from the game, unless their popularity sinks all the way to -100
• The Andaman and Nicobar islands are no longer impassible
• Events triggered by monthly and yearly pulses are now spread out better
• When you click any of the privatization or subsidy buttons that affect all buildings of a type it will now flag that type so that all new buildings also get that setting
• Added a small experience gain effect for military units to the Military Drill technology (previously had no effect)
• acw_events.5.b now moves part of an existing slave pop from a neighboring slave state rather than create a new pop from thin air
• Made the Abdicate and Resign interactions more visible during valid revolutions
• VTM - Added a cultural trait for the Assyrian culture
• VTM - Added the Turkic cultural trait to cultures that were missing it
• Renamed New Brunswick into Maritimes
• Made Rubber Rush events appear less often
• References for GPU splines were removed from the game shaders
• Changed Isolated Colony alert type to Alert by default

• The AI is now less willing to accept diplomatic play support in exchange for a bankroll from a country which is already the target of other bankrolls
• AI will be less likely to start wars over unrecognized subjects of recognized nations
• Ensured sure that the AI generally wants to pass Police if it has none
• Tweaked some technology weights so that Prussia pursues a military tech advantage over Austria/France when it wants to unify Germany
• The AI no longer puts extra value on conquering split states when they have a Treaty Port in that state
• VTM - Sphere of Influence: Nations with very little construction will now be less likely to accept being granted Foreign Investment rights
• Made the Dutch East Indies more inclined to consolidate Indonesia
• Made Britain more inclined to consolidate South Africa upon researching Malaria Prevention
• The Dutch East Indies will be more aggressive towards Indonesian minor nations
• Tweaked some AI weights for the Enlistment Efforts Decree
• VTM - Made the AI more keen on opening up the schools by passing education laws if they have none
• VTM - Unrecognized Major Powers and higher are now more eager to research Railways
• AI countries will now more strongly try to establish a country-wide network of Power Plants

Balance

• VTM - Historical characters are no longer immune to being cycled through as Interest Group leaders
• Abdication/Resign From Office can now only be used when the ruler or their Interest Group actually disapproves of the law being enacted (and the ruler does not personally approve), and no longer increases loyalists across the entire country
• Bankroll and Fund Lobbies money transfer amounts are now capped at 10% of the sender's income
• The number of loyalists gained from Standard of Living increases should now match the number of radicals gained from standard of living decreases, barring major changes to the country between when the SoL was gained/lost. This means that you can no longer 'print loyalists' by fiddling around with taxes and that events which temporarily increase SoL are no longer a bad thing as they don't generate net radicals.
• Wages for more accepted Pops are now higher under more discriminatory laws, and wages for less accepted Pops are lower, meaning that becoming more tolerant will overall flatten wages and result in reduced Standard of Living for your primary culture/religion pops
• Interest Groups now add Stall chance for laws if they are Unhappy or Angry, whether they are in government or not now only matters for adding success chance
• Agitators now provide a large amount of movement attraction relative to the fraction of a pop that are part of their interest group, meaning that they can be used to pull their Interest Group towards being pressured by (and thus, getting leader ideologies from) their chosen movement
• Grant Leadership to Agitator now requires the agitator's Interest Group to be pressured by their movement
• VTM - Barracks now provide a baseline training rate but their training rate per level of building has been slightly reduced to compensate
• VTM - Increased the amount of manpower required for defeated Admirals to return to a mission from 50% to 75%
• VTM - Victory score from defensive battles has been reduced from 100 to 50
• Charity Hospitals and Religious Schools will now provide their respective institutions at a 20% Bureaucracy discount
• Private Healthcare and Private Schools will now provide their respective institution at a 40% Bureaucracy discount
• Acquiring Foreign Investment Rights in the target nation now causes the Opium Wars to succeed
• Decreased the weekly passive experience gain of units from 1 to 0.5
• Increased the weekly unit experience gain multiplier from "Professional Army" law from 25% to 100%
• Buildings are now much more inclined to use their cash reserves to temporarily cover for low profits, particularly so they can continue to pay dividends to private owners
• Colonization no longer favors countries with large number of incorporated states, only incorporated population and Colonial Affairs level matters
• Colonization speed bonuses and maluses from excessive difference in province size from the norm, as well as a speed penalty for population size have been added
• Retooled Emergency Relief decree to have more relevant effects against starvation and harvest conditions
• Added Food Security modifier to Charity Hospitals and Welfare institution
• Added Harvest Condition impact modifiers to National Guard
• Commanders can now only be retired after they have served for at least a year
• Commanders can now only be picked as Interest Group Leaders after they have served for at least 10 years
• The 'Force Nationalization' wargoal now costs much less infamy to add
• VTM - Increased Obsession spawn chance
• Made fascist ideologies object to the Council Republic law
• The "Tanzimat: Reclaim Syria" journal entry now grants the Ottoman Empire increased diplomatic play maneuvers
• The "Arrange Accident" interaction now becomes more likely to succeed depending on one's level of Secret Police
• Protectionism now has a +25% leverage resistance effect
• Removed Standard of Living modifier from Charity Hospitals
• Added Drought impact modifiers to Fertilizer PMs in farms
• Added Harvest Condition impact modifiers to Pollution effects
• Added Harvest Condition impact modifiers to techs
• VTM - Colonial growth will now prioritize coastal provinces higher resulting in more uniform colonies
• "Chainsaws" Tools input removed, Oil input reduced from 5 to 4, added 1 Engines input, no longer adds 200 Machinists jobs, increased Engineers jobs by 50. Chop chop!
• Decreased the Wood input for the "Rayon" PM from 30 to 10, changed the Dye output from -40 to -10, decreased the Silk output from 40 to 30, increased the number of employed Machinists by 500, no longer employs an additional 500 Engineers
• Decreased the Oil input for the "Automobile Production" PM from 20 to 10, increased the Automobile output from 25 to 30
• Dutch East Indies now starts with Cultural Exclusion law
• Removed the generated leverage from increasing relations
• The chance for any Commander to be picked as the next leader of an Interest Group is now reduced if you have a very large number of commanders compared to the size of your army/navy
• "Automatic Bottle Blowers" Tools input reduced from 5 to 2, Oil input reduced from 10 to 5, added 2 Engines input
• Changed the laws of various Indian nations to better reflect their historical situation
• Added iron mines to the Sikh Empire
• Changed Great Britain's starting law to Migration Controls (was No Migration Controls before)
• Changed Persia's starting laws to better reflect the situation in 1836
• Bloated the starting Haitian army to better reflect historical size and power
• Increased the Education Access per level of institution from Public Schools from 10% to 12.5%
• Increased the Mortality reduction multiplier per level of institution from Public Healthcare from -4% to -5%
• A pro-republican revolution reaching above a certain threshold will now cause France to fail the Divided Monarchists journal entry
• Reduced the frequency of the Bandit trait, as well as its popularity malus
• VTM - Slightly decreased the value of Urban Center Transportation Production Methods
• "Crystal Glass" Glass Output reduced from 70 to 60
• "House Ware Plastics" Oil input reduced from 25 to 20, Lead input reduced from 35 to 30, Glass Output reduced from 110 to 100
• "Ceramics" Glass output changed from -20 to -10, Porcelain output reduced from 20 to 10, Shopkeepers reduced from 500 to 250
• "Bone China" Dye input reduced from 15 to 10, Glass output changed from -55 to -20, Porcelain output reduced from 55 to 30, Shopkeepers reduced from 1000 to 500
• "Reinforced Wooden Ships" Wood input reduced from 40 to 20
• "Capital Ships" Steel input reduced from 50 to 40, Electricity input reduced from 35 to 30, Engines input increased from 15 to 20
• Reduced the Territory of Hawaii event infamy gain
• VTM - Changed countries in Germany to now start off with Freedom of Conscience
• VTM - Set the correct faith for the rulers of Baden, Wurttemberg and Saxony

Art

• Improved Character lighting, as shown in Dev Diary 137
• Paved roads now appear on the map in states with very high infrastructure when the appropriate technology has been researched
• Added Company HQ buildings for all building sets
• Reworked the Taj Mahal 3D model
• Subjects' flags that make use of their overlord's flag in a canton no longer frame said canton
• Added dozens of new flags to the game for both new and already existing nations
• Updated outline color of unit movement arrow for better visual clarity
• Added highlighting of movement arrow for the selected military units
• Adjusted the revolution interface effect
• Karl Marx no longer dresses like the Joker
• Added more variations to the factory smoke vfx
• Characters in Character Panel should no longer overlap the frame
• Reworked rain vfx
• Updated some Production Method icons and colors to match the style of current PMs
• Historical characters now do not gain weight if they have the Expensive Tastes trait

Audio

• Audio has been added to the Population census data button
• The sounds when promoting and demoting generals and admirals are now less disturbing
• Audio for seagulls has been improved, now there is a more accurate positioning of sounds which can be heard around the clock
• Vultures now have sound
• Cargo ships don't sound so overwhelming in mix when far away
• Added missing dropdown and toggle button sounds
• Exported an updated list of FMOD GUIDs

Content

• Reworked the Sepoy Mutiny journal entry
• Added a new "Military Assistance" diplomatic action, which permits a country to improve another's armed forces.
• Added a "Corporate State" law, a fascist or corporatist answer to Council Republics
• Added several journal entries for Russia covering the Great Reforms of Tsar Alexander II's reign
• Added an Extraction Economy law, designed for use with subjects
• Adds a journal entry and associated events dealing with the Congress and Treaty of London (1839)
• Added 3 India-related companies to the game
• Added 10 new achievements to the game
• Reworked the Path to Fascism journal entry
• Reworked "Consolidate Colonial Rule" journal entry for British India
• Voice of the People: Added an "Imprison Agitator" character interaction, permitting countries without Guaranteed Liberties to send agitators to prison for a time
• Egypt now starts as a high-Liberty Desire protectorate of the Ottoman Empire
• Added a Man Who Would be King event for Kafiristan, allowing you to get a western adventurer as your ruler
• Added DNA and character template for Charles XV
• Added DNA and character template for Oscar II
• Added character template for Gustaf V
• Added Sweden Monarchy events to Sweden
• Added some flavored Interest Group names for Indian princely states and Nepal
• Added the Russian-American Company to Alaska
• Added Edward VII as heir to Queen Victoria
• Reworked interest group names, ideologies, and traits for Khalsaji, Granthis, and Jats in Sikh Empire
• Added dynamic names for Balkan state regions and hubs for Greek, Turkish, Hungarian, and German cultured nations
• Added dynamic names for the Indian subcontinent
• Updated Expeditions to the new journal entry progress bar system
• Updated the Earn Recognition journal entry to the new journal entry progress bar system
• Added a Social Bandit trait, for agitators and Rural Folk or Trade Unions characters
• Added the Country of Kafiristan to the game
• Added character DNA for Henrik Ibsen, who has a small chance of appearing as an agitator for the Intelligentsia in Norway and Scandinavia
• Renamed the Texas army to the "Texian Army". Added a Texian navy, and one naval commander each for Texas and Mexico
• Added more starting Interest Group leaders and commanders to the Low Countries
• Added the Church of Finland as a custom Interest Group for Finland
• Dynamic state and hub placenames have been implemented for some regions across the globe
• Expanded the pool of possible Power Bloc names

Hello Victorians! Hope everyone is having a wonderful Thursday! This is the second part of the Art of Pivot of Empire showcasing the 3D art made for the Immersion Pack. If you are interested in having a look at the 2D art aspects of the DLC, Id highly recommend having a look at Dev Diary #135! In this Dev Diary well be covering a bunch of the Characters and related assets, Table and Table assets, Indian Building Set and Harvest Conditions Map Effects.

Characters and Character assets

Table and Table Assets

Free Updates!

Hello. This is Victoria, Narrative Design Lead of Victoria 3, and today I will be covering the narrative content that will be coming in Pivot of Empire. I will also be covering some important free features which I ran out of space to write about in diary #134. Pivot of Empire is centred around British India, its progression from the East India Company to the British Raj, and the Indian struggle for independence. It also includes a selection of narrative content for the Sikh Empire, Princely States, and the Mughal Emperor in Delhi. Owners of Pivot of Empire will be able to experience a myriad of historical and alt-historical courses, from a revived Mughal Empire to an all-encompassing Company run according to the principles of Utilitarianism.

Imperialism of Promise

Indian Nationalism

Communal Divides

The Dravidian Movement

Greetings Victorians and Happy Thursday! This will be the first part of the Art of Pivot of Empire showcasing the 2D art made for the Immersion Pack, while part two, focusing on the 3D art, will be released in a couple of weeks. Like the previous Immersion Pack, a brand new interface skin and paper map have been lovingly crafted with a decidedly Indian flavor. Along with the new skins, we have 8 brand new event illustrations and many more icons to support the new features coming in Pivot of Empire. For both the UI reskin and the paper map, the artists have drawn inspiration from traditional Indian architecture, classical Indian paintings, and commonly used colors such as turquoise and saffron. Without further ado, lets jump straight into the first topic - the new interface skin!

UI Skin

Papermap Skin

Event Illustrations

Icons

As with general icon design principles, the silhouettes must be clear. [/olist] We explored various icon styles with the intention of adding more flavor to the tiers. For instances where the tier icons are displayed really tiny, we always have the numerical icons with the same color styles as mentioned above.
A more illustrative style perhaps or something a little more graphical More exploration gave rise to the idea of continuity and consistent story telling between the 5 tier icons. Each icon will be represented by two characters Tophat guy- a straightforward and iconic representation of the ideal citizen who has made it in life in the Victorian era and Character 2 - which changes every tier.
Exploring multiple variants. Truly horrible to have a person caged like an animal in Tier I For Full Acceptance (V), we can see that Tophat guy is shaking hands with Character 2 which is represented as a typical worker. For Second class citizen (IV) we can see the relationship has sort of soured and Character 2 is facing away from Tophat guy who's giving him a thumbs down. While the thumbs down sign can be hard to see, the pose makes the silhouette more distinct. For tiers (III) to (I), we can see a recurring theme and how Tophat guy treats Character 2 worse and worse. In fact, Character 2 even loses any sense of identity and is just a silhouette of a person with no other distinct features.
[Final tier icons with the simplified variants as well as the Acceptance frame] Icons were also created for Famines and Harvest conditions which is another new feature. However, no new style was needed and we reference the State trait icons to make the new Harvest conditions icons. Core principles for the Harvest Condition icons include a primary or dominant color and of course, distinct silhouettes!

Famine and Harvest Condition icons The 2D art team have also created icons for existing features like Laws, Ideologies, new Buildings, new companies and new Achievements (which will be shown in a future Dev Diary.
Just some of the new icons for existing features. And this wraps up this weeks Dev Diary! I hope you enjoyed the insights into what goes on with the creation of the 2D art for the Pivot of Empire pack! Next week we have Vicka detailing even more exciting narrative content coming for the game!

[ 2024-10-31 15:00:34 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello Victorians, sorry for the...sanguine on the images today. Don't know what could be happening there. We have a small additon today bringing a new game rule, as shown below.

Additions

• Added new game rule to enable or disable fantastical/supernatural content. If this game rule is enabled, there is now a new character with some new events that can make an appearance during the real life months of October and November.

Happy Friday, and welcome to our third and final Dev Diary for the Anniversary week! Before we get into the meat of the diary, we have an infographic showing the progress of free updates since release, visually shown in the look back at free updates video at the start of this week:
That entre is followed up with a delightful smattering of statistics from the game, can you see the difference in how many yellow Prussias there have been since last time?
That is all from me, Community Manager Pelly, I hope you enjoy the Dev Diary proper from Hansi and Victoria! [hr][/hr]

India Map Rework

South Asia

Dynamic Renaming

Narrative Content

Indian Political Setup

The Indian Uprising

Interest Group Priority Cultures

New Subject Tracks

Corporate States

The London Conference

Hello and happy Thursday! Welcome to the first narrative design dev diary! Today we will be going through the British Indian Caste System and Social Hierarchies, hosted by Em. But first a word from Shubham! --- Hey Everyone, my name is Shubham. I am a narrative designer and history nerd from India, and I had the pleasure of working on the upcoming Pivot of Empire immersion pack! There are a lot of cool new systems, Journal Entries, events, and art coming your way, and honestly, I am very excited by all of them. But as dev diaries cant be book-length, I will try to focus on some of the really big points. The first and foremost is the Caste System, which is accompanied by the discrimination rework and also introduces social hierarchies. Em will get into this later, but Ill focus on the history of the subject and what we tried to capture with its implementation. You will see that the Caste System is labeled the British Indian Caste System in the game. This is because the modern understanding of Caste, within and without India, is very much a colonial creation. Before the Indian subcontinent was consolidated under British Colonial rule, the Hindu identity was fragmented. So, while casteism was very much practiced then, it had greater variance and malleability. It was also not legally enforced to the same extent across the nation. Partly because there was no singular power that could enforce it but partly because different places had different beliefs around its relevance. However, after colonization, in an effort to streamline administration, the British conducted a census that tried to give a fixed value to caste. As this process happened, caste became codified and simplified. It became based solely on the Varna system and no longer allowed for any change in status. The Varna system recognizes only four castes and a fifth outcaste. It also gives social roles to each tier. The Brahmins are meant to be teachers and priests. The Kshatriyas are warriors and leaders. The Vaishyas are merchants and traders. The Shudras are peasants. The outcastes are offered no name and are simply considered untouchable. The Portuguese later used the term Dalit to describe them, and that became their caste name. However, as understood by the British, this Varna system ignored Jati, which is also a part of caste. Jati ranges in the hundreds, if not thousands. This resulted in a rigid system that deepened social divides and made social mobility nearly impossible. A lot of effort was made to capture this complex reality in-game. We also considered using different labels for the tiers in the caste system. As Dalits are the most oppressed by this system, we thought to make it a two-tier system consisting of Savarna and Avarna (those belonging to Varna Castes and those outside it). However, this erased the oppression faced by Shudras by other higher castes. Not to mention the role every tier of caste played in oppressing those immediately beneath them. We wanted to capture some of the nuance and complexity of the Hindu identities in that time period, as well as the oppressive, contradictory, and self-cannibalizing nature of the caste system. The other topic that I want to discuss is the Indian independence movement. The Indian Independence movement had many leaders and many different factions. Furthermore, nearly all of them didnt initially demand independence. At first, as the exploitation of resources and people continued under British Raj, discontent pushed those with the privilege (money, land, education) to demand better laws and governance. Many leaders at this time were happy to let the British Empire rule so long as they were allowed to govern themselves with more dignity. It was only when these efforts repeatedly failed that the people were radicalized into starting a revolution. The game captures this through the journal entries around Home Rule and the Indian Independence. But as you will see, many factions affect your ability to complete either Journal Entry. This is because they were not always aligned, even when various leaders agreed that independence was the only way forward. Indeed, the divisions sowed by the British and resultant from the complex history of the subcontinent made it so that factions were fighting each other just as much as they were fighting the British. Three figures really capture this tension: Muhammad Ali Jinnah, leader of the Muslim League and the founding father of Pakistan; Mohandas Gandhi, key leader of the Indian National Congress and the founding father of India; and Periyar, founder of the self-respect movement and leader of the Dravidian movement. Gandhi initially believed that to be truly free, India needed to return to its Hindu roots and reject all British imposition. This scared Jinnah, who thought that this line of thinking would be terrible for Indias Muslim minority. Despite being quite secular himself, Jinnah would often find himself campaigning for the needs of Muslims lest Gandhi and the rest of the INC forget about them. This often put the two parties and the two leaders at loggerheads, a matter that would eventually result in the partition. If returning to Hindu roots upset Jinnah, it also worried people like Periyar. He had initially been part of the INC. As a low-caste man, he feared the INC leading India as most of the leadership was high-caste and often callous towards the needs of the lower-caste people. Thus, Periyar and Jinnah usually tried to negotiate, argue, and even cooperate with the British even if it weakened Gandhi and the INCs stance. To Jinnah and Periyar, it was an opportunity to be heard. Historically, Gandhi did become more cognizant of the needs of the lower caste and Muslim people. But as he and the INC also had to earn the support of the staunch conservative Hindus, such as the Hindu Mahasabha, it was always a compromised position. If you try to build an independent India in the game, you will hopefully feel how the game pushes and pulls at you. Okay, lastly, I want to talk about the Sikh Empire. The Sikh Empire was in a precarious position in 1836. They have the Afghans on one side and the British to the south. Their leader, Ranjit Singh, established the first Sikh Empire but with one too many heirs. When he passes away, a series of successions occur that are violent and sometimes comical. Integrating the narrative of the Sikh Empire was a lot of fun as often it felt like writing a season of Game of Thrones. I hope you have a good time going through these events, as they are as ridiculous as they are compelling. --- Hello! Im Em, one of the game designers on Victoria 3 that specializes in narrative. This is my first dev diary and Im excited to share a bit more about what to expect with 1.8 and Pivot of Empire! Today I'll primarily be walking you through a couple things weve been working on, namely Social Hierarchies, the British Indian Caste System, and a new law group associated with the Caste System. The British Indian Caste System has been designed alongside the Cultural and Religious Acceptance Rework that Lino spoke about a few weeks back. To represent this, we're introducing mechanics for Social Hierarchies and Social Classes to the game. The British Indian Caste System is a Social Hierarchy that makes use of Social Classes in order to represent its effects. screenshot of Social Hierarchy concept
screenshot of Social Class concept
Previously, Pops were distributed by Profession into the Lower, Middle, and Upper Strata. This was fairly rigid, and meant that the previous system couldn't enable culture or country-specific Strata. Academics could only ever be in the Middle Strata. Clerks could only ever be in the Lower Strata. Social Hierarchies are being introduced to address some of that previous one-dimensionality where the social ranking of Professions might differ in different parts of the world and allow for the implementation of the British Indian Caste System. To understand a little better, lets take a look at what this has looked like. Here is how the distribution of Pops by Profession across Lower, Middle, and Upper Strata has appeared previously: screenshot of overview tab in Population panel where you can see the Lower, Middle, and Upper Strata
Clerks, Laborers, Machinists, Peasants, Servicemen, and Slaves are Lower Strata. Academics, Bureaucrats, Clergymen, Engineers, Farmers, Officers, and Shopkeepers are Middle Strata. Aristocrats and Capitalists are Upper Strata. Pops are still distributed as they have been by Profession above. But now, in the Base Hierarchy they will be distributed into the Lower, Middle, and Upper Classes: screenshot of Classes tab in Society panel where you can see Lower Class, Middle Class, Upper Class are Social Classes and are part of a Social Hierarchy called the Base Hierarchy
Pops part of the Base Hierarchy are assigned a Social Class based on their Professions as they had been before. Every Pop has a Social Class, and that Social Class belongs to a Strata. Social Classes can be defined based on a combination of pop type, primary culture, and/or religion. Social Class information will appear in the Society panel. Social Hierarchies are intended to affect all kinds of Pops, with moddability in mind, and can be linked to a law group. This brings us to the British Indian Caste System. Since Shubhams given a bit of the historical and cultural context, I'll dive in with what this looks like in the game! screenshot of Classes tab in Society panel for a country that has the British Indian Caste System where Brahmins, Kshatriyas, Vaishyas, Shudras, and Dalits are Social Classes
The British Indian Caste System recategorizes a Pops Strata differently from the Base Hierarchy. The British Indian Caste System specifically encompasses all Pops that are Hindu and have the South Asian Heritage cultural trait. Other Pops that are not Hindu and do not have the South Asian Heritage cultural trait will default to the existing Lower, Middle, and Upper Social Classes of the Base Hierarchy. So where is the British Indian Caste System found? How is it set? The Caste System will be set from game start on the British East India Company and the Princely States. Otherwise, it will appear with the following criteria:

• A country is a subject of Great Britain
• A countrys primary culture has the South Asian Heritage cultural trait
• More than fifty percent of the population is Hindu.

Hello Victorians, happy Tuesday! It feels odd having a happy Tuesday instead of Thursday, but we have a good reason to release two Dev Diaries this week! This week is our Anniversary and yesterday we talked about what came in free updates since launch. As a follow up, today we have a special treat for you: the announcement and the release date of a new immersion pack, Pivot of Empire, which will come alongside Update 1.8.
Some of you may know the name of this pack from a famous quote: India is the pivot of our Empire... If the Empire loses any other part of its Dominion we can survive, but if we lose India, the sun of our Empire will have set - Victor Bruce, Viceroy of India during the Indian Uprising. This sets the scene for the immersion pack. Pivot of Empire is set in the Indian Subcontinent, focused on the events following the years of discrimination and suppression by the East India Company. The Indian Uprising events take us through the eventual downfall of the East India Company and rise of the British Raj. [previewyoutube=esXmztDsGkA;full][/previewyoutube] Within this Immersion pack you will get to experience narrative content for the East India Company, but also the other Indian Nations, Great Britain imposing its will upon such a wealthy land, and the nearby Sikh Empire trying to assert itself with such an avaricious neighbor. Regardless if you already played in this region or not, Pivot of Empire will bring a lot of unique and fresh flavor to the game And for your easy reference of the content we have this handy dandy infographic (you can enlarge it by clicking on it!):
Now, if you have forgotten what is coming with the free Update 1.8, we also have another quick reference overview graphic too!
As you might have noticed, the Caste System Laws and updated Indian Uprising events are part of the free Update available to all players, while narrative content related to them will be added in Pivot of Empire, along with additional content related to religious tensions in the region, Indian national movements and local initiatives for independence (among other things). We hope you enjoy our foray into the Indian Subcontinent and the surrounding interactions caused by discrimination and movements for liberation! Of course this is just the tip of an iceberg, as we are going to delve more into the details in the upcoming Dev Diaries. Both Pivot of Empire and free Update 1.8 will be released on the 21st of November, Pivot of Empire will cost 9.99 . Check out the Steam store page for screenshots, and don't forget to wishlist this immersion pack! Now, with that all said and the release date coming up in just about a month, we have quite a few Dev Diaries delving into the meat of Pivot of Empire. Starting this week already, with Emperatriz leading the charge on the 24th, where we look at a selection of the narrative content!

Salutations Victorians!

Hello and welcome to another dev diary! Im Alex and today I bring you famine, starvation, ruin and disast I mean, happy Thursday! Back in dev diary #126 we mentioned how for 1.8 were looking at how the availability of food affects the people in your country. Up until now, if food prices were high, that would lead to Pops dropping in Wealth. As a consequence of that, Pops would become unhappy and have their birth and mortality rates change. In extreme cases they would drop below Standard of Living 5, which would mark them as Starving and make their mortality rate be higher than the birthrate, resulting in the Pops population decreasing over time. This is fine, but it created some problems we wanted to tackle. For one, Pop Needs dont have shortages, so when the price caps out at +75%, thats it. Food is always available, it just gets expensive. Another issue is that the starving status is directly tied to what Standard of Living the Pop has, meaning that regardless of why Standard of Living drops below 5, the pop is marked as Starving. Even if food is essentially free and the actual issue is that clothes are expensive. Lastly, the effects of starvation dont scale as much as they probably should, so even at SoL 1, Pops can live on quite a while. With all that in mind, theres three main features weve added to flesh out this aspect of the game:

• Starvation
• Famines
• Harvest Conditions

Starvation, now dynamic

Basic Food Shortages

Food Security

• How much the Basic Food Pop Need is in shortage in the state in question
• How much money the pop is spending on Basic Food compared to their whole buy package at base price

• It means that as pops increase in Wealth, theyll be less affected by increasing prices (due to food becoming a smaller part of the pops total buy package)
• It means that the effects of starvation can become increasingly worse even after the price caps out and shortages become more severe
• It means that there being literally no food in a state will affect rich pops as well even if they have a bunch of money, because you cant eat money. (rich pops dont consume basic food, but the shortage factor still affects them)

Famines, a political classification

• How many people in total are starving in the state in question?
• How many people are specifically suffering from severe starvation in the state in question?

Harvest Conditions

Effects

Regional limitations

Duration, Range and Intensity

Incompatibilities and Synergies

Happy Thursday and welcome back to yet another Victoria 3 development diary. A few weeks ago I went over the changes were making to Political Movements in update 1.8, and promised a followup going more into how this impacts Civil Wars and particularly Secessions. As you might have guessed by the title, this is precisely what well be discussing today, along with a bit more detail on Political Movement Radicalism, where it comes from, and how it ties into Civil Wars. As I went over in the aforementioned Dev Diary, Political Movements have a Radicalism value going from 0-100%. More specifically, this is two values: The current value and the target value, with the current value drifting towards the target value over time. The target value is calculated from a number of factors, including:

• Which laws you have enacted or are in the process of enacting (if the movements core ideology has a stance on them)
• How many radicals and loyalists are members of the movement
• Other factors specific to a particular movement type. For example, a Cultural Majority movement might be upset if the ruler of the country isnt of one of your primary cultures, or a Pro-Slavery movement might be upset if they perceive that Slave States are not receiving their fair share of government building construction, particularly for the army.

• Cultural Minority movements will generally always try to Secede if they can
• Royalist Movements will generally always launch a Revolution if they can, but might Secede under very specific circumstances (see below)
• Pro-Slavery/Anti-Slavery Movements will usually launch Revolutions, but under Legacy Slavery (ie the American Civil War situation) will tend to secede instead
• Religious Minority movement might launch a Revolution to change the State Religion if they have broad enough support, but otherwise would Secede

• The Interest Group must be influenced by the Movement (ie be able to get character ideologies from it)
• The Interest Group must be Angry
• The Interest Group must be at least somewhat ideologically aligned with the Movement (ie, Landowners led by a Slaver wouldnt join an Abolitionist uprising)

• For Revolutions, a fraction of states would rise up based on Movement Support (frequently this would be everything but the capital if the movement was strong enough)
• For Secessions, a fraction of cultural homelands would rise up based on level of turmoil (usually, all of them)
• For Revolutions, only Incorporated states could rise up
• The Capital could never rise up

Happy Thursday Victorians! Its me, Lino and in todays Dev Diary Im going to walk you through the upcoming changes to one of the games central society features, namely the discrimination system. Until now, discrimination was always binary in Victoria 3. A Pop either was discriminated against or they were not. This has led to a fairly one-dimensional feature where theres not a lot of variety in what Pops can be experiencing. It also has made it hard for us to add harsh consequences to discriminated against Pops since it would have affected so many Pops around the world. So we are taking some steps to make that more interesting. First of all, were saying goodbye to talking about discrimination. Instead, we are introducing the opposite, Acceptance. Each Pop will have an Acceptance value between 0 and 100. This value is determined by the Pops countrys laws, in particular the Citizenship and Church & State groups which play the biggest role here. There are other laws that will have an impact, but we are going to talk about those in a later Dev Diary. Primary cultures are clearly the points of authority when it comes to Acceptance values
As you can see, the old rules of cultural similarity still apply in the new system. Now though, instead of being immediately accepted if the culture shares a heritage trait, they will gain a high acceptance value bonus for example. This allows a broader range of acceptance, from the cultures that are facing violent hostility to the primary cultures who will always have the highest acceptance value. The religious impact is changed to provide a bonus if a religion shares a trait with the state religion. This brings us one step closer to the full picture, but were not quite there yet. The Acceptance value actually determines which Acceptance Status a Pop has. There are five possible Statuses, ranging from Full Acceptance to Violent Hostility, which will be used in order to apply consequences to the Pops in question. Figure.09: WIP list of effects. This is definitely going to change - were looking at solutions to make it more readable for release.
You can see that we are not only reworking the system to fit the new vision, but are also expanding on it with new effects, besides the Acceptance value itself. From simple statistical changes like the tax burden per acceptance status to rules for who can work in government buildings or serve in your military, we have added a decent amount of new things to the laws. Another factor that determines a Pops Acceptance value is the age of the Pops cultural community in their state. An immigrant Pop that is "fresh off the boat" will not be as accepted as that of another culture which has been there for 30 years already. No matter what your laws say, your Pops will need some time to get used to the new faces in their neighborhoodbut, eventually, the new arrivals will reach the Acceptance value which the laws have determined for them. Have you seen the looks they gave us? By myself, I couldnt stay here, but with you by my side I know I will make it.
Of course you can still improve your Pops situation by enacting more progressive laws. These provide higher acceptance bonuses to cultures. For example Ethnostate doesnt grant any bonus to cultures that share a non-heritage cultural trait with your primary culture, but National Supremacy grants +25 acceptance if they do. Alright, so you passed Multiculturalism, but you didnt think your Pops would immediately hug and welcome the people they were despising yesterday, did you? Law enactments that increase a Pops Acceptance value will suffer from a penalty much the same as the newly established cultural communities, which will decay over time. This shows the establishment of these new laws quite well and delays the full effectiveness of the more progressive laws. Another thing we are changing is conversion and assimilation (so that your Pops can escape from the undesirable lower statuses of Acceptance). When 1.8 comes out later this year, Pops will be able to assimilate and convert to any culture or religion that would provide them with a higher acceptance value, even if it is not the primary culture or state religion. There is a minimum assimilation value difference that needs to be crossed in order for them to be eligible. For example if their current Acceptance is at 25 and the minimum assimilation value difference from the Citizenship law is defined at 50, their targets culture Acceptance would need to be 75 or higher in order for them to assimilate. This still looks at cultures that are present in the same state, so if none of them have a value of 75 or higher, the assimilation could not happen. The assimilation process may also still be forbidden by laws, e.g. under all laws it is currently not allowed for members of the lowest status to assimilate at all. Similarly, Pops of the highest status also do not assimilate in the current setup, as they already possess enough rights and privileges to enjoy a good life. All of these changes require a fairly substantial rework of our interface. A lot is currently still in development and is coming in pieces, so you will have to discover it on your own, but I still wanted to provide you with a faint idea of whats coming. The Cultures panel has been renamed to Society, which fits better since it also includes Statuses and Religion. The acceptance statuses are listed in a new tab, providing an overview of what percentage of Pops falls under which status and who exactly that is. WIP interface showing the breakdown of acceptance statuses in your country
In the end, we hope this feature rework will enhance your experience with regards to managing your Pops and that it will show much more variety in the Pops lives. Especially on the lower end of the spectrum, you should see a lot more consequences, as sad as that is. This rework is an important step for us, since we can make better use of this system in future narrative content too, and we also have some ideas for future mechanical changes that require this rework as a foundation. Thats all for today. Next week, on October 3, Im handing it back to Martin again, who will provide some more information on what were doing with civil wars. That should be an interesting one, be sure to check it out!

Happy Thursday and welcome back to another Victoria 3 development diary. This week Ill be talking about the Political Movement Rework I mentioned back in Dev Diary #126 and which will be coming to you with update 1.8, slated to release later in the year. Before I start, I want to reiterate that this feature is still very much under active development, and any screenshots or numbers shown are very much not indicative of what will be in the actual release, and the UX in particular will be in a very rough state, so dont read too much into it! Right then. As I stated previously, the principal goal of this rework is to change Political Movements from temporary demands into long-term ideological forces that can shape the political landscape of your country. So what does that mean, in practice? Well, one of the most significant differences is that movements are no longer formed around the enactment or preservation of a single law. Instead, there is a wide variety of movement types, each with its own unique agenda and conditions for forming, but which can be broadly broken down into three categories: Ideological Movements: These are movements that exist to push a particular ideological agenda and try to win support for that agenda among your Pops and Interest Groups. Examples include both more narrowly focused movements such as Abolitionists and Suffragettes, and broader ones such as Communists and National Liberals. Cultural Movements: These are movements that exist to agitate for the rights and privileges of a particular culture in a country. Their specific agenda will vary based on whether the culture is a primary culture or minority culture, as well as the legal status of that culture in the country. For example, a cultural minority movement of South Italians in North Italy would oppose the enactment of Ethnostate since it would strip them of their rights, but that doesnt necessarily mean theyre willing to extend those rights to other, less accepted cultures in the country. Religious Movements: Similar to the cultural movements, but for religions instead The Pro-Slavery Movement in the United States is largely composed of Dixie pops and has wide-reaching influence in multiple Interest Groups
As before, Movements have Support and Radicalism. Previously, both of these numbers could be a little fuzzy in exactly what they represented, so we have changed them into straight percentages between 0 and 100%, where 50% Support now actually means that about half of your country stands behind the movement. Support is currently calculated from two parts of roughly equal importance: Popular Support and Military Support. The former is a straightforward calculation of the number of individuals in your country that are part of the movement, so in a country of 1 million people, a movement backed by 100k individuals would have a Popular Support of 10%. Military Support is a little more complex, and is currently calculated by the fraction of Soldier and Officer Political Strength that are part of the movement, representing the fact that officers tend to have a greater sway on military side-taking than mere enlisted men. We are also looking into ways to tie generals directly into movements and have this impact their Military Support. All of this plays an important role if a movement escalates into a Civil War, but more on that later. So, how do movements gain the support of Pops? Very much like Interest Groups, they now have an attraction weight, which depends completely on the type of nature of the movement. The Abolitionist movement, for instance, might have an outsized attraction on literate pops of certain professions, but also would tend to attract more pops from religions whose scripture and traditions take an anti-slavery stance than from ones which tacitly or overtly approve of it. This attraction weight competes with the attraction weight of all other movements in your country, as individuals can only be part of a single movement at a time. To ensure that this doesnt mean you end up with 20 tiny and fragmented movements, we are planning to have a system of initial enthusiasm, where new movements start with a boost to their attraction which fades over time, and are eventually supplanted entirely by the next shiny new thing. Its worth noting that we may end up only applying this to Ideological Movements, as it doesnt necessarily make sense that your Pops would stop caring about their right to worship freely just because the Positivist movement is taking off. Before we move on, its also worth noting that just like with Interest Groups, Pop support for Movements isnt something that instantly changes overnight: Even if a movement is created with a massive attraction weight, it will take some time for it to pick up supporters from other movements. The pro-Turkish cultural movement in the Ottoman Empire seeks to ensure that Turks remain at the top of Ottoman society, and has a fairly strong base of support in the military.
As mentioned above, movements will champion one or several ideologies, and have a few different ways in which they will push those ideologies. The first and most straightforward one is through direct action. Movements have a level of Radicalism, which will go up or down over time based on how much they perceive the current status quo and governments actions to match their overarching goals. Depending on their level of Radicalism, Movements will be in one of four levels of activity: Passive: Movements with very low Radicalism are Passive, have no direct effects and will only indirectly influence Interest Groups (more on that below) Agitating: The next step up from Passive, Agitating movements will influence the enactment chances of laws that they support or oppose Protesting: Protesting movements have a greater impact on the enactment chances of their supported and opposed laws compared to Agitating movements, but also steadily turn their supporters into Radicals over time Rioting: The highest level of Radicalism, Rioting movements will rapidly radicalize their supporters and may take their level of activity one step further by igniting a Civil War What all this means is that Movement Radicalism is no longer purely a negative thing, at least not when a Movements goals align with yours - if you work too hard at keeping everyone happy, you may find it difficult to push through any radical changes that arent backed by your dominant Interest Groups. The other, less direct way in which Movements affect country politics is the influence they hold over Interest Groups. An Interest Group is considered to be influenced by a Movement if at least a certain % of the Interest Groups total political strength are members of that Movement, and an Interest Group can be influenced by multiple movements. The most significant effect of this is how it impacts IG Leader Ideologies. Previously, when an Interest Group got a new leader, that leader would pick their ideology from a weighted list of all the ideologies in the game (minus ones that were scripted to be unavailable or have a weight of zero for that leader), but this has now been reduced to a much shorter list: Leader ideologies can now only be picked from either a set of basic ideologies inherent to the Interest Group itself, or from one of the movements that is influencing the Interest Group, with Movement ideologies tending to have stronger weights than the basic ones. This also means that the ideology selection can now actually be predicted and displayed, so that you can make an educated guess about the way the political winds are blowing in your IGs. This effectively means that the influencing movements serve as factions inside the Interest Group, competing to install a leader and take control of the IG for as long as that leader remains in power. We are also considering allowing Movements to have more permanent effects on the ideologies of Interest Groups, but this is tricky to pull off in a way that doesnt end up with an IG changing its core identity every 10 years or so, so I dont want to promise that itll be part of the 1.8 update just yet. Torn between the Pro and Anti-Slavery movements, the next leader of Evangelicals may come down on either side of the issue - or be a compromise candidate who sidesteps it altogether.
The final changes I want to go over in this DD is Agitators, which of course have had to go through some changes to fit into this new system. For the most part, Agitators work exactly as before: They appear and start or join movements, can be exiled and invited, and so on. A relatively minor change is that instead of directly adding Support to a movement, they now increase its Pop Attraction by an amount partially scaling to their Popularity, so having Friedrich Engels penning columns singing the praise of your Socialist movement will attract more Socialists over time. The more significant change is that we have flipped the script on what an Agitators Interest Group membership means for their political leanings. Previously, an Agitator would (much like an IG leader) look to their ideology first and interest group ideologies second when determining which laws they support, meaning that you would sometimes get some pretty strange bedfellows and a bunch of Rural Folk Agitators of varying ideologies trying to implement National Militia all over the place for rather unclear reasons. Instead of anchoring Agitators fully to the ideologies of their IG, we have decided that their own ideology, traits and other such circumstances should be what determines which Movement they want to support. In other words, Agitators are now much more fixated on specific ideas, and if there isnt sufficient support for those ideas in your country to get a Movement they would actually care to support going, they may not even be available to invite. On the other hand, we are looking into loosening the rules somewhat around which Agitators you can invite based on discrimination status, but we havent fully worked out the details there, so more on that another time. It would of course not be possible to make all these changes without also making major changes to Civil Wars (particularly Secessions and how they tie into cultural/religious movements), but well cover all of that separately in a later dev diary, along with more detailed information on how Movement Radicalism works. For now Ill wish you adieu and encourage you to check in again next week, when Lino will tell you all about discrimination and the ways its changing in 1.8. See you then!

Good Day Victorians!

Hello Victorians, wake up, grab a brush and put on a little make-up - were talking about Bulk Nationalization today! Also, I will be bringing you more details on the next step in the evolution of the Companies feature: Ownership of building levels. Lets get started, shall we?

Bulk Nationalization

Companies Building Ownership

Happy Thursday and welcome back to another Victoria 3 development diary. This week were going to take a birds eye view of the headline features of update 1.8, which is of course the next free update for the game, planned to be released sometime later this year. However, before we start on the dev diary proper I should tell you about a slight change of plans in our release schedule. Back in Dev Diary #124 I told you that update 1.8 would be a smaller update, focused almost entirely on bug fixing and general polish. This was indeed the plan, with update 1.9 intended as a larger update following relatively closely on the heels of 1.8, but when we sat down to work out the details we realized that our intended timeline simply didnt work out, as we would either have to work on the two updates in too close proximity (creating major challenges for 1.8 post-release support among other things), or delay update 1.9 all the way to next year, which we didnt want to do. So we decided to combine the two updates, with the result that 1.8 is now going to be a single update with the combined scope of both 1.8 and 1.9, meaning it will contain not just bug fixes and polish but also some juicy new free features. But enough about update planning, lets get into those headline features I just mentioned! As I said, this is just an overview dev diary, so were not going to go into any great detail today, but we have plenty more dev diaries planned in the upcoming weeks where we will fill in the blanks. One final thing before I start: All of the features mentioned are still in early stages of development, so any screenshots, numbers and art shown are going to be very, very, very (very) work in progress.

Ideological Forces (Political Movement Rework)

Discrimination Rework

• To introduce multiple levels to discrimination instead of it just being a binary state
• To have the level of discrimination faced by a Pop be determined by factors other than just what the law says
• To turn assimilation into a properly useful feature that isnt only available to fully accepted pops

Food Availability, Famines and Harvest Incidents

• Companies owning and investing in buildings
• Bulk Nationalization tool
• Multi-select and right-click orders for formations
• Adding wargoals on behalf of subjects

Hello Victorians! The hotfix today has a number of fixes mentioned in Dev Diary 125, and should be compatible with savegames! We mentioned in the dev diary we would be making changes to the abdicate/resign interaction, this has been delayed to a future update due to technical reasons. Checksum for the hotfix is, 4b8b. As always, this post is not for bug reports, please instead post them in the bug reporting forum (including a save and steps to recreate is always useful). The following changes have been made to the game compared to 1.7.5:

Improvements

• Protectionism now has a +25% leverage resistance effect

AI

• The AI will now prefer to first cancel constructions of government buildings over demolishing existing ones when trying to save money
• Reduced AI naval spending targets from having a large overseas empire, to prevent excessive British overspending on the navy

Interface

• Added the prompt saying "CTRL + click to set the levels to a minimum/maximum" directly to the Nationalization popup for better visibility.

Bugfixes

• Fixed the bug when guarantee independence wouldn't join if the diplomatic play that was started outside of the current interests
• Fixed a bug where it was possible to Enforce Military Access on a subject who is opposing their overlord in a play or a war
• Fixed a bug where the AI would sometimes not merge back temporary formations into their parent formations, resulting in a large number of armies with few or no battalions in each
• Fixed a bug where the AI would not evaluate Investment Rights and Join Power Bloc wargoals correctly when calculating its desire to dominate another country, resulting in adopting a less aggressive attitude than intended
• Fixed CTD related to front distribution cache
• Fixed a bug where the AI would use 'Grant own Market' on subjects in cases where it did not make sense to do so, such as Austria granting Krakow their own market due to low supply network strength
• Fixed bug where Force Nationalization Wargoal would only take state-owned buildings from the target, ignoring private-owned ones
• Fixed the bug when government buildings couldn't promote employees
• (Mac CTD fix) Fix/potential stack overflow in cpdxguitextdata
• Fixed the bug when fleets in non-home HQs wouldn't recover from being defeated
• Fixed a bug where Military Formations could establish a new basecamp somewhere else when they already had a valid one.
• Fixed a crash to desktop that could happen upon enacting cooperative ownership
• Now subjects subjugated through power bloc action will properly update ports and markets

Happy Thursday and welcome back to our first of many development diaries before the end of the year! After a terrific launch and reception of Sphere of Influence in June, followed by several hotfixes with improvements and bugfixes, many devs on the team took a well-deserved vacation during July. We have now reassembled and can't wait to tell you what we've been working on over the summer, and what is coming in the latter half of 2024! First up I want to talk about hotfix 1.7.6 which should reach you in a few weeks and consists of a few high-impact fixes and improvements we've been working on during the summer (alongside work on update 1.8) that I think you'll enjoy. First, improvements to the Abdicate/Resign character interactions. These interactions have been exploited in the past to cycle through rulers, in decidedly un-fun ways. To address this while retaining their overall intent, the conditions for a ruler to abdicate or resign are now much more narrow but can still be performed when a revolution to enact or restore a law is heating up. You'll be alerted when these conditions are valid, and abdicating or resigning during such a situation will decrease the Radicalism of the movement, giving you a bit more headroom to try to come to a peaceful resolution. The Force Nationalization wargoal currently only transfers buildings owned by another country directly to you, but with the 1.7.6 hotfix it will also affect buildings owned by pops (Manor Houses or Financial Districts) in the targeted country, letting you cut a country out of your economy completely in one fell swoop. Army position on a moving frontline will be made more persistent, ensuring that armies do not reposition themselves by traveling to a different position on the front after the line moves if they are still valid where they currently are. This should prevent fronts from suddenly becoming poorly defended after a successful state invasion and make the military system generally feel more stable to interact with. And speaking of military issues, the bug where defeated Admirals won't be restored back into action when they have recovered sufficient manpower will also be addressed. Several crashes have been fixed, including a crash relating to transferring building ownership and issues with rendering GUI widgets on Mac. Hotfix 1.7.6 will also include a few minor bugfixes, and tweaks to AI behavior and Leverage Resistance, and last but not least some UI system performance improvements that should make the game run a bit smoother. Some more extensive performance improvements we have made will be coming with update 1.8 due to the risk and incompatibility issues involved in pushing them out with a hotfix. We are currently testing a possible solution to the issue of government employees that are heavily bound by Qualifications (such as Officers in certain countries) being a bottleneck for operation of government buildings (such as Barracks). With any luck this behavior should also be improved for 1.7.6. Additionally, we are improving the visibility of an existing improvement we implemented in 1.7.5 to let you more rapidly nationalize buildings. We are also working on a greatly improved quality-of-life tool to facilitate nationalization efforts across multiple buildings for 1.8, which you will hear more about in subsequent dev diaries.
With 1.7.5 we added support to hold Ctrl when clicking the plus or minus button, which sets the number of levels to the minimum or maximum. Now were also going to display this message so that it will be more obvious to more players. Happy nationalizing! Hotfix 1.7.6 should be arriving in late August or early September, and as usual with hotfixes will be compatible with current save games. Of course we are concurrently hard at work for the next chapter in Victoria 3's chronicle, update 1.8, which you will hear much more about from Martin (Wiz) in 2 weeks from now and in several subsequent diaries. Until then!

Salutations Victorians, we have a small hotfix today targeting some key fixes to improve gameplay experience, Checksum for the hotfix is, 6fe3. As always, this post is not for bug reports, please instead post them in the bug reporting forum (including a save and steps to recreate is always useful). The following changes have been made to the game compared to 1.7.4:

Patchnotes

Balance

• Reduced starting radicals for countries with historical radicals, such as Argentina and Central America
• Reduce the Infamy gained by Tibet's overlord if they refuse Tibet's subjugation in Tibet Expedition

AI

• Fixed incomplete logic for AI evaluation of granting states to unrecognized and autonomous subjects, allowing USA to grant states to Indian Territory when it shouldn't

Bug Fixes

• Fixed Private Investment Pool behaviour under cooperative ownership
• Aristocrats no longer starve due to Subsistence farms suddenly raising wages for peasants
• Infamy cost reduction for rebelling subjects is now properly applied to rebellious subjects not loyal subjects

Hello Victorians, we have a larger hotfix today featuring a range of balance changes, AI improvements, bug fixes and more! Most of the team will be on vacation now, but part of the team (Including Martin) will be around, so that we maintain the capacity to release fixes as needed! Checksum for the hotfix is, 5775. As always, this post is not for bug reports, please instead post them in the bug reporting forum (including a save and steps to recreate is always useful). The following changes have been made to the game compared to 1.7.3:

Patchnotes

Content

• Added a journal entry for the reunification of China

Improvements

• It is once again possible to start Reduce Autonomy & Annex Subject diplomatic play against subjects, even if their Liberty Desire is high. However, doing so will result in taking on the full infamy cost of the wargoal rather than the usual reduction for targeting subjects.
• Peasant Levies now simply prevents Conscripts from being raised as Cavalry or Artillery, as selective limits on which specific types of Infantry etc could be raised as conscripts do not work correctly
• Russia/Britain now start with a neutral attitude towards Persia, ensuring they don't immediately go for the throat until Persia does something to earn their ire
• Reduced the rate at which "The Russian-British Agreement" fires for player Afghanistan during the Pamir Delimitation
• Added Vilnius to the required states for Poland-Lithuania
• Renamed "Semireche" state to "Semiplatinsk"
• Removed Uighur homeland from Semiplatinsk
• Autonomous Investment is now able to execute multiple investments per tick for countries with extremely large (500k+ income) investment pools, so that even massive economies can continue to make full use of the investment pool
• Homesteading & Collectivized Agriculture now also impacts subsistence farms, causing them to be partially or fully self-owned and adding some Farmers to the Workforce
• Military Treaty Power Bloc leaders can no longer enact National Militia, and Religious Convocation Power Bloc leaders can no longer enact Total Separation or State Atheism
• The Cohesion in Military Treaty Power Blocs is now impacted for any member with the National Militia law, while the same goes (to a greater extent) for members of a Religious Convocation Power Bloc who has Total Separation or State Atheism
• Defensive Cooperation II now permits the Power Bloc leader to impose their Army Model law across the Bloc
• Treaty Ports are now only functional against a market if they are adjacent to an incorporated state from the market
• Moved or removed some military units from formations in the history setup so that they adhere to the law set in that country.
• The 'overlord compliance' AI strategy is now invalidated if the subject ends up opposing their overlord in a diplomatic play
• Power Bloc statues are now removed when leaving a Power Bloc
• The Autonomous Investment AI should now properly focus on Privatization when construction is blocked due to a lack of workforce or infrastructure
• Under Cooperative Ownership, buildings in foreign countries that are owned by local Manor Houses & Financial Districts will now be collectivized by the workforce in those countries over time

Interface

Double Happy Thursday! As promised last week, today well be returning to the future update plans, which we last touched on in Dev Diary #102. Just like the previous times, well be going over what changes and improvements we have planned for the game in future free updates such as 1.8, 1.9 and beyond. Once again we will be talking about the same key four improvement areas of Military, Historical Immersion, Diplomacy, Internal Politics as well as Other for anything that falls outside those four categories. Just as before, Ill also be aiming to give you an updated overview of where we stand and where were heading by going through each of these four categories and marking on each one with one of the below statuses:

• Done: This is a part of the game that we now consider to be in good shape. Something being Done of course doesnt mean were never going to expand or improve on it in the future, just that its no longer a high priority for us. Any points that were already marked as Done in previous updates will be removed from the list, to avoid it growing unmanageably long, but you can look at the older dev diaries (#79, #89 and #102) if youre interested in what was done previously.
• Updated: This is a part of the game where we have made some of the improvements and changes that we want to make, but arent yet satisfied with where it stands and plan to make further improvements to it in future updates such as 1.8, 1.9 and so on. Note that this section will mainly focus on updates made in 1.6 and 1.7.
• Not Updated: This is a part of the game where we havent yet released any of our planned changes/improvements in any currently released updates but still plan to do so for future updates.
• New: This is a planned change or improvement that is newly added, i.e. wasnt present on the list in Dev Diary #102.
• Reconsidered: This is a previously planned change or improvement that we have reconsidered our approach to how to tackle from previous updates. For these points we will explain what our new plans are, and change the list appropriately in future updates.

Military

• Making navies more important for projecting global power and securing control of coasts.
• Adding a proper system of military access and finding solutions for the other remaining rough edges in the frontline system.

• Turning individual ships into proper pieces of military hardware that can be built, sunk and repaired rather than just being manpower packages.
• Adding a system for limited wars to reduce the number of early-game global wars between Great Powers

Historical Immersion

• Ensuring unifications such as Italy, Germany and Canada dont constantly happen decades ahead of the historical schedule, and increasing the challenge of unifying Italy and Germany in particular
• Asides from the AI challenges when it comes to forming Germany/Italy, we are now relatively happy with the state of the unifications. There are certainly ways we want to improve unifications in the future, particularly in tying them much closer to the political systems, but that falls outside the scope of this particular point.
• General AI tweaks to have AI countries play in a more believable, immersive way
• With the introduction of Diplomatic Catalysts and various AI improvements in 1.7 we now consider this to be done, though in reality this is the sort of point that is never going to stop seeing improvements from our end.

• Tweaking content such as the Meiji Restoration, Alaska purchase and so on in a way that they can more frequently be successfully performed by the AI, through a mix of AI improvements and content tweaks
• After the release of 1.7.2 we now consider this to be almost there but still in need of a bit more work.
• Going through the base game Journal Entries and events and making improvements and additions to ensure that they feel meaningful and impactful for players to interact with
• Weve made a number of changes and improvements to older journal entries in 1.6/1.7 such as the addition of scripted progress bars, but we still have more work to do here.
• Adding more country, state and region-specific content to enhance historical flavor of different countries
• As before, this is something were simply going to keep adding to every single update and is never really going to be Done. For now I am leaving this entry here to mark that this is still one of our top priorities

Diplomacy

• Improving and expanding on interactions with and from subjects, such as being able to grant and ask for more autonomy through a diplomatic action
• Have Interest Groups weigh in on diplomacy, for example having the Armed Forces disapprove of an alliance with a country that recently took land from you due to revanchism (Lobbies)
• Foreign investment and some form of construction in other countries, at least if theyre part of your market

• Make declaring and holding onto diplomatic Interests a more rewarding and challenging aspect of global empire-building
• Allowing peace deals to be negotiated during a Diplomatic Play instead of only having the option to give in

Internal Politics

• Adding laws that expand on diversity of countries and introduce new ways to play the game
• Similar to the point for region-specific flavor, this is something that will never really be Done but remains here to highlight that we consider it an important priority

• Turn legitimacy into a more interesting mechanic, where the strength of a government depends on their successes and failures, and highly legitimate governments cant simply be ousted at a whim but have to be undermined first.
• Introduce a concept of national pride which can increase or decrease depending on a countrys actions and which ties directly into legitimacy.
• Have discrimination not be a purely binary status and reflect forms of discrimination aside from whats written in the law, as well as making assimilation into a more meaningful mechanic in the process.

• Find a better solution for the ways ideologies appear, attract followers and create support for reforms than the current RNG-heavy leader ideology system.

Other

• Improve on Companies by turning them into actual actors in your country that can own/expand buildings and interact with characters/politics.
• Find a way to deal with the excessive fiddliness of the trade system in large economies, possibly by allowing for autonomous trade based on your laws in a similar way to the autonomous investment system.

Hello Victorians, we have a small hotfix today, fixing threekey issues before a larger hotfix next week, what we have been saying is in 1.7.3 for a number of fixes/changes will now be in 1.7.4! Checksum for the hotfix is, 8769. As always, this post is not for bug reports, please instead post them in the bug reporting forum (including a save and steps to recreate is always useful). The following changes have been made to the game compared to 1.7.2:

Patchnotes

Bugfixes

• Fixed an issue where privatization was not correctly checked sometimes, resulting in money being spent to privatize building levels that were already privatized
• Fixed a rare Out of Sync caused by unsorted collecting from unordered map
• Fixed a major issue that would prevent upgrading power bloc principles under some circumstances

Good day valiant Victorians! We have just released a hotfix for 1.7, Checksum 0942, containing a wide variety of fixes, improvements, balance changes and more! As always, this post is not for bug reports, please instead post them in the bug reporting forum (including a save and steps to recreate is always useful) . The following changes have been made to the game compared to 1.7.1:

Patchnotes

Improvements

• Added an event for Persia or Afghanistan winning the Great Game
• Britain and France no longer start with a rivalry, as this doesn't really accurately reflect their relations in 1836
• Austria, Prussia and Russia now start the game with friendly attitudes towards each other, to represent the historical Holy Alliance
• Added a rivalry between Brazil and Argentina at the game start
• Added a rivalry between Britain and Russia at the game start
• The initial Meiji Restoration Journal Entry is now a lot easier to complete and simply requires keeping the Shogunate out of power while maintaining at least middling legitimacy for 10 years, but is failed if the Shogunate gets back into government
• The Impose State Religion bloc action now also converts 2% of the population in non-capital states
• Advanced Research, Colonial Offices and Police Coordination principles now allow bloc leader to impose their law in the education system, colonization and policing law groups respectively
• Advanced Research, Colonial Offices and Police Coordination principles now disallow members from having the base laws in their respective groups (no schools, etc)
• Added dynamic boolean modifiers for disallowing specific laws
• Advanced Research, Colonial Offices and Police Coordination now all reduce their respective institution costs by -10/25/50% and increase speed for changing institution levels by 25/40/50%
• Advanced Research 1 now has +5% Tech spread as a Schools institution modifier instead of the flat value
• Advanced Research 3 now has -5% Ahead of Time Research Penalty as a Schools institution modifier instead of the flat value
• Advanced Research 3 now has an increase of 15 to the weekly innovation cap as a Schools institution modifier instead of the flat value
• Police Coordination 2 now reduces political movement radicalism on the police institution instead of giving authority
• Colonial Offices 3 now adds a decrease of 7% to infamy generation against unrecognized countries to the colonization institution
• Choosing to leave a Power Bloc now results in a relations hit and negative catalyst with the other members
• Liberty desire levels now display what war goals they unlock.
• Unrecognized Major Powers can now form Power Blocs, but will suffer a greater Relations hit with Recognized Power Bloc leaders when doing so, and will only gain Leverage over Recognized countries at 10% the normal rate
• Added a check for establishing Trade Agreement Pacts that their market can actually be reached by your country. This will also prevent Lobbies from requesting the signature of a Trade Agreement which you could not fulfill.
• Added a port to Shaozhou so that Hong Kong starts with a port when taken as a Treaty Port
• Changed Hokkaido to have subsistence pastures instead of rice farms, to more accurately reflect its initial Ainu majority
• Added missing localisation for power bloc identity requirements for production methods
• Restored Asceticism as one of the Chinese Devout IG Traits
• Added the concept_unrecognized_major_power in all languages

AI

• Added and tweaked many starting attitudes and relations of AI countries to better reflect the diplomatic situation in 1836 and/or encourage more historically plausible outcomes
• Increased AI tendency to build gold mines.
• AI recognized powers are now more aggressive against unrecognized powers when they have the Civilizing Mission technology and/or Colonial Officers principle
• Unrecognized powers are now generally more aggressive against each other, particularly in Africa
• Ethiopian princes and Chinese warlord states now make more concerted efforts to unify
• Greece now more aggressively pursues the Greek Nationalism JE where it has claims
• East India Company is now less gung-go about conquering Tibet, but more inclined to target its neighbors in India and Burma
• AI now has a stronger tendency to abolish slavery after Human Rights is researched
• The Great Powers now have a greater tendency to get involved in early Ottomans vs Egypt disputes
• USA and Britain now tend to seek to befriend each other when trying to resolve the Oregon Border Dispute
• France now sometimes chooses to not pursue the Natural Borders JE when given the option
• Fixed a bug where the AI was way too eager to grab treaty ports in places where they had no actual interest in a treaty port
• The US now more aggressively targets the states held by Mexico border it directly at the start, such as Colorado
• Fixed some issues with new attitude changing system that caused the AI to not open up Japan
• The AI now focuses more on befriending Great Powers when on track to complete Earning Recognition
• Added a bespoke strategy and more AI weights for Japan to try to complete the Meiji Restoration
• Fixed an issue where AIs would adopt a Domineering attitude but not actually act on it due to the strategy score calculation not resulting in them wanting any wargoals
• Made the AI more restrictive about mixing generally incompatible wargoals, such as investment rights and subjugation
• The AI no longer has an increased neutrality score in civil wars where they have a truce with the country having a civil war
• The AI is now less inclined to get involved in the German Leadership War so long as neither side starts demanding territory, in which case they will have increased support for the non-expansionist party
• The AI will now be more restrained with what additional wargoals they add in a Unification or Unification Leadership play if they are a primary participant
• Added catalysts for gaining and losing land borders with a country, used to make AI more belligerent when gaining borders with unrecognized powers
• The AI now scales its minimum mobilization level by the number of small conflicts it's involved in, so that it's better at dealing with simultaneous revolts in subjects
• Added a +50 AI acceptance bonus to investment rights proposals if the target country has recently declared bankruptcy. This also means that AI countries who had to declare bankruptcy will be more likely to offer other countries to invest in their country.
• Fixed a bug where the AI would not properly build up its military forces due to incorrect logic when validating its spending
• Subjects with a Defiant or Rebellious attitude towards their overlord now get an appropriate acceptance bonus when asked to support the independence of a fellow subject
• Fixed a bug where some larger countries such as Occitania would become independent when released as a subject
• Fixed a bug where the AI of newly released countries was not properly initialized, causing issues such as no autonomous investment happening

Performance

• Improved frame rate when scrolling in the Building Registry

Balance

• The Ottomans now get an increase to Intelligentsia approval & clout while pursuing the Tanzimat Reforms
• Reduced the required army size to complete Tanzimat Army Reforms from 150 to 100
• Reduced minting and output of gold mines by about a third
• Declining to pursue the Opium Wars now angers the British East India Company
• Literate Pops now tend to more strongly support movements to abolish slavery after Human Rights is researched
• Reduced military and war exhaustion bonuses given to Taiping as they currently tend to always defeat Qing
• Reduced the infamy generation against unrecognized reduction from Colonial Offices 3 from 50% to 25%
• Added infamy generation against unrecognized reductions to Colonization and Civilizing Mission techs
• Extended time you have to complete Tanzimat Reforms from 20 to 30 years, due to some of the JEs requiring several steps of law reform
• Tweaked army setup and military bonuses granted to Texas to give them a better chance to survive the Texan War of Independence
• Chartered Companies can no longer switch Government Principles
• Slavery laws no longer directly increase the clout of landowners, as they also do so in a very significant way indirectly
• Unification Leadership wargoal is now considered to be contested if any incorporated state is occupied by the enemy
• War Goals that previously required any state to be occupied to be contested (such as War Reparations) now requires any Incorporated state to be contested
• Increased aggression of Afghan countries towards Chitral
• Afghan minors can now request more aid from Great Powers twenty years after last receiving it
• Gave Maimana Tajik as a primary culture, enabling them to form Afghanistan.
• Non-Pashtun Afghan countries will now be more aggressive towards each other.
• Great Game passive drift now relies on the extent of a country's direct or indirect control over Central Asian and Persian states
• Declaring Bankruptcy now applies a decaying reduction in welfare payments, starting at 100%
• Declaring Bankruptcy now immediately resets all institution levels to 1
• Removed Poor Laws (and the government admins supporting it) from China, as it's no longer needed to 'balance' their budget and tends to result in chain bankruptcy
• Changed the requirements of Pacification of the Steppes to make the journal entry more feasible
• Subjects now require to have diplomatic autonomy in order to sign foreign investment rights and agreement pacts
• You now must be non-Isolationist in order to form a Power Bloc, and Power Bloc members cannot enact Isolationist trade policy
• Sovereign Empires now only half the Cohesion loss from having subjects with high Liberty Desire, and only from the Liberty Desire of the leader's own subjects, not subjects of other members
• Tweaked subsistence income and building throughput for decentralized nations so they don't end up with the highest SoL in the world in certain edge case scenarios
• Significantly reduced the Ericsson company's education access bonus.
• Reduced Leverage Resistance from Population by 50%, as it was too difficult to overcome in some cases even with a variety of leverage sources
• Having the Armed Forces or an Authoritarian leader in government is no longer sufficient to initiate the Natural Borders of France
• Reduced AI aggression from Natural Borders
• Interface
• Added a separate tooltip description for when a building loses employees due to emigration instead of just saying they were fired
• When inviting a prospective member to a Power Bloc you are now given a prediction of what that will do to your Cohesion
• There is now a confirmation box when pressing 'Leave Power Bloc'
• There is now a notification for other Power Bloc members when a non-leader country leaves the bloc
• Made the sortable column header buttons sticky at the top of the Market panel (Goods tab) when you scroll.
• Building Registry filters are now rows of buttons of icons instead of fold out menus

Modding

• Added new trigger called army_power_projection
• Building groups can now be flagged as always_self_owning, which makes them always worker-owned

Bugfixes

• Fixed an issue with foreign investment that could cause invalid elements to appear and stay around in the Construction Queue permanently, however this will only prevent the issue from appearing in new saves. We are planning to introduce a save-game validation fix for old saves in 1.7.3.
• The Pamir Delimitation JE tooltips no longer lags the game. A tooltip for the JE activation has been added for clarity.
• Tibet Expedition JE now ends when subjugation demand is refused by other countries.
• Fixed an issue that would cause Formations to sometimes travel towards a Front they cannot join.
• Fixed an issue in the code that handles the relationship between interest groups and political lobbies, which caused misleading error messages to be logged.
• Fixed a bug where using a create_country effect in global history files would lead to blocs being disbanded during initialization
• Unrecognized powers no longer get any benefit from infamy reduction against unrecognized modifier
• Fixed a bug where a number of AI countries (such as Greece) did not pursue their Journal Entries because the catalyst for Journal Entry was incorrectly firing on JE creation instead of JE activation
• Fixed a bug where Journal Entries that were created in an inactive state before the start of the game did not notify the player about their activation due to a rather bizarre (and entirely unnecessary) boolean set on creation
• Fixed column header broken loc in map list panel for inviting countries to your bloc
• Fixed a bug where half of the screen sometimes turned orange during the start of diplomatic plays.
• Fixed a crash that occurred when collecting unit distribution data
• Resolved an issue which caused null objects to occasionally appear in exiles events.
• Power bloc statues are now prevented from being transferred when states change hands to countries that shouldn't have them.
• Fixed a bug where employees would switch jobs without taking potential dividends into account
• Fixed a bug causing government owned buildings to have a hard time filling their employment
• Fixed a bug where the country religion link was referencing the country definition's religion instead of the country's state religion, resulting in the Impose State Religion bloc action being repeatable on the same country
• Remove the duplicated Overlord Actions button for Subjects that appeared when you are not a Power Bloc leader.
• Fixed a bug where cohesion for ideological unions was inexplicably trending towards 0
• Removed the placeholder Manul culture from the game.
• Fixed an issue where the relief option in the STATE Crop Failure event would apply the wrong modifiers.
• Conquering a split state now applies the 'State Liberated' rather than 'State Conquered' modifier, as the latter ended up giving tax penalties to a state you already owned, which could be devastating for tiny nations
• Amended the description for the I'm the Captain now achievement.
• Reduce the freeze during annexation caused by diplomatic catalysts
• Gold Fields are now always worker owned
• Fixed fleets being stuck in ally HQs after losing military access to them
• Fixed invalid travel destination options for formations after switching between interactions
• Fixed an issue that caused the game to try to localize the null country when showing the peace treaty popup when one of the displayed wargoals is a wargoal to conquer a split state and the winner is a country that has a different split state in the same region
• Fixed a bug where it was possible to accept a diplomatic proposal that had become invalid in the time between it was proposed and when it was accepted
• Removed Clergymen from Cotton Plantations' default Production Method and replaced them with Farmers.
• Blocs led by a major power which turns into a great power will now lose the weak bloc modifier as intended
• The Cohesion prediction when kicking a member out of your Power Bloc now takes the per-member modifier impact into account correctly
• Fixed a bug where the reinvestment fraction of Government Dividends was not correctly calculated for buildings unless they had 100% government ownership
• Persia and Afghanistan will now properly get the "Great Game, no re" achievement for winning the Great Game
• Fixed autonomous investment constructing too many levels of the same building
• Fixed a bug where the Commander Order tooltip was not showing requirements to activate orders
• Fixed a bug where the wrong production method for Power Bloc statues was shown in the UI
• Homesteading law now also affects the ranching category buildings in addition to agriculture buildings.
• Fixed a bug where the expedition cost in Tibet was still active after the journal entry ended.
• Fixed a construction queue tooltip to indicate that the constructing country is paying the cost
• Added a missing collectivization modifier to collectivized agriculture.
• Fixed a bug for Tibet Expedition Events so it doesn't result in the possibility of Tibet's diplomatic play against itself.
• Fixed a bug where sometimes Treaty Port status would get 'dropped' by markets, resulting in the Treaty Port having no effect despite showing up properly in the state
• Most hills in Japan, North China and Manchuria no longer display as jungle hills in the state panel
• Fixed an issue where Russia would start the game with three landlocked naval bases.
• Fixed a bug where the AI would not use certain actions such as grant own market due to a missing evaluation_chance value
• Fixed an issue with an unlocalized, dynamic name for Azerbaijan.
• Diplomatic Plays can no longer start if the initiator or the target country has no passable provinces
• Fixed an issue where throughput was not correctly updated during building initialization
• Academic caps and glasses are now restricted to characters with relevant traits, even within power blocs with the level III Advanced Research principle.
• Cuirasses are now restricted to characters with either a royal or military affiliation.
• Fixed a bug where it was possible to oppose the subjects of your allies in plays where it would not be possible to object the ally themselves
• Fixed the missing text for the currently enacting Law under the specific Law Group.
• Fixed an issue where the AI would sometimes not construct ports to connect isolated states to its market
• Fixed an issue in how some principle groups were displayed in the principle groups chooser window
• The indicators for what production method is selected in each category for buildings in your country no longer takes foreign buildings into account, so if all your domestic buildings use the same PM it will show that rather than the "mixed" indicator if some of your overseas buildings are using a different PM
• Fixed a rare crash when hosting in Multiplayer
• Fixed a major issue that would prevent upgrading power bloc principles under some circumstances

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Hello and welcome to another Victoria 3 Dev Diary, coming hot on the heels of Update 1.7 and the Sphere of Influence expansion. Todays Dev Diary will be a pretty short one, focusing on our thoughts around the release and our plans for the immediate aftermath. We will be following this up with a proper roadmap update next week. As far as thoughts on the release go, I can definitely say that we consider this release to be a very successful one, and are very happy to see how much you, the players, seem to be enjoying the changes and additions weve made to the game. The Building Ownership Revision in particular is something we have spent a massive amount of time and effort to first implement and then tweak and polish, and its very satisfying to get to read all the feedback and discussions around it, now that you get to try it out for yourselves. When we announced the delay of 1.7/SoI, we did so because we wanted to use the extra time to focus on the quality of the release, and this is precisely what we did. We were able to use the extra time to polish and balance the new features, improve the AI, improve performance and of course fix a lot of bugs. In hindsight I can absolutely say that this was the correct decision and that I am very proud of what the team managed to accomplish in the extra time we were given. The 1.7 performance improvements in particular is an area where I know a bunch of you have expressed surprise that we didnt really talk about it much before release. The reason we didnt is that the real impact of such improvements are actually really tricky to measure until they make contact with the playerbase, so to speak. Weve had internal metrics which showed us that 1.7 was substantially faster than 1.6, but those metrics were collected on a limited number of hardware setups, and we wouldnt really know how it would shake out on the thousands upon thousands of different hardware configurations that are out there until you actually got to try it. Fortunately, as far we can tell, the overwhelming majority of players are in fact experiencing considerably improved performance in 1.7, which honestly is near the very top of things that I am personally most happy about regarding this release. Getting there was by no means a straightforward process, as 1.7 introduced numerous new performance challenges, not the least was the addition of AI construction calculations for foreign investment. So how did we do it? Well, the modifier rework we mentioned in Dev Diary #120 was probably the single biggest individual contributor, but it was actually the result of dozens upon dozens of improvements coming from across the team. A few examples, in no particular order:

• The AI spending system was rewritten to be much smarter about which data was updated and when those updates were actually needed
• The design team made numerous changes to events and other parts of the script which were running slowly
• Improvements were made to market updates to avoid unnecessarily frequent updates of pricing data
• Employment was made much more performant by eliminating rounding errors in the hiring logic that resulted in numerous insignificant employment changes
• The programmers expanded the use of smart caching and multithreading pretty much across the entire game. Military graphics and other map graphics were also heavily optimized.

• Substantial improvements (through AI improvements and balance tweaks) to the AIs ability to execute on historical and historically plausible outcomes, particularly in nation-forming and ability to pursue Journal Entries such as the Meiji Restoration and Tanzimat Reforms
• Setup improvements to relations and AI attitudes to more closely match history
• More aggressive colonial AI, particularly for late-game land grabbing in Africa
• Making it harder to get reparations by occupying insignificant colonies
• Fix for poor building browser performance when using scrollbar
• Improved leverage UX
• Allowing Unrecognized Major Powers to form Power Blocs
• Balancing the Great Game to be less biased towards Britain

Hello Victorians! We have just released a hotfix for 1.7, Checksum b087, which has a number of improvements, bugfixes and balance changes based on feedback/bug reports from players. As always, this post is not for bug reports, please instead post them in the bug reporting forum (including a save and steps to recreate is always useful) . The following changes have been made to the game compared to 1.7.0:

Patchnotes

Improvements

• Added mandate generation from Unrecognized countries to all Identities
• Earning Recognition Journal Entry is now unlocked by Colonization rather than Civilizing Mission and only requires 50 relations with a Great Power to complete
• It is now possible to 'upgrade' an Investment Rights pact to a Mutual Investment Agreement, if the other part agrees to it
• Conquering a split state now applies the 'Recently Liberated' rather than 'Recently Conquered' modifier, as the latter ended up giving tax penalties to a state you already owned, which could be devastating for tiny nations
• Ranches no longer consume grain as a default good, but only if more advanced PMs are activated
• Regime Change Diplomatic Play can no longer be used against your own subjects since Law Imposition can be used for it instead
• Collectivized building levels, or buildings with levels that are undergoing collectivization, can no longer be nationalized
• Cuirassiers no longer consume iron, but use more small arms instead
• Sovereign Empire statues now provides a 25% Decree Cost discount to the state it is constructed in instead of applying it to the whole country
• The Boer States now start with National Militia and with their independence guaranteed by Britain

AI

• The autonomous investment AI now keeps track of how much investment has gone into foreign/domestic states and biases future investment towards domestic states if an excessive amount has gone towards foreign investment, to ensure investment isn't all going overseas
• Fixed an issue where civil war countries and native uprisings would not recruit commanders for their armies due to incorrectly set AI tags for their formations
• Rebellious and Defiant subjects will no longer actively aid their overlord in diplomatic plays outside of what they consider necessary to defend their own territory
• Loyal subjects now mobilize a higher fraction of their troops to aid their overlords in diplomatic plays
• The AI is now able to reassign armies/navies that are traveling, preventing suboptimal naval invasions due to the best fleets not being 'available'
• The AI is now able to launch simultaneous naval invasions, but will generally avoid using all of its armies/fleets at once for this

Balance

• Manor Houses no longer require infrastructure, as this caused major issues for highly populous countries with a lot of subsistence agriculture
• Reduced investment weights for Manor Houses on all non-agricultural buildings, as their tendency to invest into factories in countries like Japan would lead to an odd aristocrat-led industrialization
• Reduced the rate at which generic random events appear to compensate for increased overall event spawn rate due to prior bug fixes
• Reduced effect of Asceticism (Devout) trait from -50%/-100% to -15%/-30% reduction on radicals from changes to standard of living (sorry)
• Reduced effect of Secular Shrine Theory (Devout) trait from +20%/+40% to +15%/+30% conversion
• Reduced effect of Da Wat (Devout) trait from +50%/+100% to +20%/+40% conversion
• Reduced effect of Propagandists (Intelligentsia) trait from +25%/+50% to +15%/+30% migration attraction
• Decrees now have a minimum cost of 10% of its base cost, to prevent modifier stacking for free Decrees
• Imperious now provides a 20% rather than 25% Decree Cost discount
• Cruel trait now provides a 5% Authority boost rather than a Decree Cost discount

Interface

• Map markers will now indicate where your foreign construction is happening
• Demand Force Nationalization wargoal will now display how many building levels and what fraction of GDP would be nationalized
• Fixed some issues with the 'failing to hire' tooltip for buildings where it would sometimes lack a reason for failing to hire and/or contain unnecessary whitespaces
• Added Bloc Leader interaction icon to differentiate it from Bloc Member actions
• Cursor will no longer flicker between the game cursor and operating system cursor while moving the mouse in the loading screen
• Removed duplicated Leverage Resistance description in tooltip
• Fixed long overlapping texts to not overlap anymore in the Trade States Diplomatic Action popup
• Max number of setbacks modifier will now be displayed as a whole value instead of a confusing percentage value

Modding

• Fixed a bug where modders using a create_country effect in global history files would lead to blocs being disbanded during initialization
• Added mandate generation by rank modifiers for unrecognized major, unrecognized regional, unrecognized and insignificant powers
• Added new generic Power Bloc invite acceptance modifier
• Made Power Bloc invite acceptance by rank modifiers support arbitrary ranks defined in script
• Cost calculation for Decrees is now done on a per-state rather than per-country basis, permitting for differing costs dependent on the state the Decree is applied in
• decree_cost link now operates in state scope rather than country scope

Bugfixes

• Fixed a crash related to CollectOwnAndAlliedLandHQs
• Fixed a bug where it was possible to make a diplomatic demand against a country you were already at war with
• The "Land of the Rising Sun" event for Persia now gives a claim on the correct Georgia (hint: not the one north of Florida)
• Fixed inverted values in Earning Recognition Journal Entry causing you to gain progress for low GDP/SoL and vice versa
• Fixed a bug where leaders of Military Treaty Power Blocs would not pay maneuvers for adding wargoals in diplomatic plays where they were a main participant
• Fixed a bug where formations with no commanders could not be mobilized due to incorrect 'all commanders are busy' error
• Fixed bug where cohesion for ideological union was inexplicably trending towards 0
• "Enemy of my Enemy" lobby event can no longer target your own country as the enemy in question, however amusing that might sound
• The Pamir Delimitation will no longer carry over script variables from previous attempts
• It is no longer possible to capture a state in less than 2 battles, as this could result in issues such naval invasions that were impossible to consolidate due to creating multiple fronts
• Fixed bug that made Pacifists only spawn in the Armed Forces rather than the other way around
• Fixed a bug where the -30 relations penalty with Power Bloc leaders for creating a Power Bloc was applied during history initialization, causing the Great Powers to have erroneously low relations with each other at game start
• Political Lobbies will no longer form targeting Revolutionary countries until they actually win the revolution, to avoid highly temporary lobbies forming and then disbanding
• Replaced the Power Bloc Statue throughput with a level scaling effect under the "Prestige Only" game rule to prevent it from granting the prestige while they are still in the construction queue
• Fixed an AI issue that could lead to incorrectly removing conscript units, leading to negative amount of conscripts in an army
• Fixed a bug when manor house levels weren't removed when subsistence farms were removed
• Fixed a bug where the "Add to Primary" button would show up on an Overlord's Wargoals for the Subject
• Resolved issue where Communism and Populism progress bars didn't properly retreat due to laws
• Fixed an issue when 100% worker-owned buildings can still be nationalized if the building is level 1
• Fixed an issue where exiling/inviting agitators would never create lobbies in their home countries
• Fixed a bug where a victorious revolution could end up with a political lobby targeting itself
• The East Indies' End event can no longer fire multiple times per game
• The Tibet Expedition will now properly cancel if at war with Tibet
• The "Can't Touch This" achievement can now be gained even if a country has (non-nationalizable) gold fields or subsistence farms
• Fixed an out-of-sync related to markets
• Fixed the amount of compensation in the notification when nationalizing foreign assets
• Replaced the University and Art Academy's "Increased Exchange" (unlocked by the Freedom of Movement Principle) Production Method's country modifier with a state modifier as originally intended. The former led to way higher migration attraction as it was stacking all states' effects where it was active.
• General Brusilov no longer requires owning the American state of Georgia to spawn
• Fixed a bug where accept/decline effects of reverse pact actions such as Request Knowledge Sharing and Request Support Regime were not correctly shown in tooltips
• The emergency hunger relief modifier from the Famine event chain is now applied only to states affected by famine
• Pink faces will no longer be submitted alongside several Diplomatic Action proposals
• Pink face and NULL_STATE will no longer briefly appear briefly after a building has finished construction in Foreign Queues
• Fixed Power Bloc formation tutorial to prevent player moving forward despite not having completed a necessary step
• The British aid button for Persia will no longer state that it adds the "Russian Military Mission" modifier
• Fixed some instances of missing loc in Tibet Expedition tooltips (English only, other languages will be translated for 1.7.2)
• Fixed missing localization for key catalyst_revolution_successful
• Moved Saint Basil's Cathedral back to Moscow (from Mazovia)
• Added missing text for Building Relationships map mode (English only, will be translated for 1.7.2)
• Fixed a description error in the Dominion concept that stated that they wouldn't need to join their overlords (English only, will be translated for 1.7.2)
• Fixed error spam in the "Britain Demands Withdrawal from Herat" event
• Event ig_revolutions.8 will no longer display [ROOT.GetCountry.GetRuler.GetTitle] instead of the ruler's actual title

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Good day Victorians! Welcome to Update 1.7 Kahwah and Sphere of Influence, Checksum 5ebb. Featuring improvements, bugfixes, map changes, foreign investment, Power Blocs, performance improvements and much more! For Update 1.7 Known Issues please look at this post! [previewyoutube=Rz3l4bY0A-4;full][/previewyoutube] Now on to some of the patchnotes!

Power Blocs

• As a Great Power or a powerful Major Power, you can form your own Power Bloc centered around one of five central Identity pillars: Trade League, Sovereign Empire, Military Treaty, Ideological Union, or Religious Convocation.
• Each of these provide different opportunities and benefits to its leader with respect to its member countries, and can be developed further with up to 4 of 20 different Principle groups, resulting in over twenty thousand different combinations affecting your strategy for global domination!
• As a Power Bloc leader you can expand your global reach by extending your Leverage over other countries where you have declared an Interest. A large number of factors that can cause you to gain (or lose) Leverage over a country, such as maintaining Diplomatic Pacts, maintaining favorable Lobbies, helping them in their wars, being accepting or discriminatory against their cultures, or making them economically dependent on you through foreign expansion or trade.
• Power Blocs can be expanded peacefully through diplomatic invitation into your Bloc or, if the invite fizzles, through a Diplomatic Demand the country may or may not yield to without an armed conflict.
• The leader of a Power Bloc must maintain its Cohesion by enforcing its shared values across the bloc. Failure to properly manage Cohesion across your bloc may result in internal strife.
• All members of Power Blocs may construct expensive statues to represent its glory, providing a number of benefits to the state it's built in. The leader of a Power Bloc can customize both the appearance of the statue, the Power Bloc emblem, and its name to better represent its ideas and visions for its bright global future.
• Available with Update 1.7: the Trade League Identity and its two Primary Principle groups, Internal and External Trade, are available even without Sphere of Influence and replaces the Customs Union diplomatic pact by enforcing a shared market across the Power Bloc.
• Available with Update 1.7: it is also possible to play as Great Britain, Russia, or the Ottoman Empire who starts with the Sovereign Empire Identity, permitting them to subjugate weaker Power Bloc members, or as Austria whose Power Bloc Identity of Ideological Union permits them to Enforce Regime Change in countries that start flirting with the concept of Republicanism and suffrage. Players without Sphere of Influence may also play a member of the Zollverein, an established Trade League at game start.
• To read much more about Power Blocs, see dev diaries here and here.

Foreign Investment

• With the Foreign Investment Rights or Mutual Foreign Investment Pacts, countries can gain the ability to directly build up another country's resource or manufacturing industries, or offer these rights to another country if they're incapable of rapid industrialization on their own. This right extends to both countries and its investor class, who may use their Investment Pool to construct private industry abroad and gain access to new resources, cheap(er) labor, or both.
• With the Foreign Investment Power Bloc Principles, these rights can also be extended across an entire Power Bloc by default without the need to establish and maintain potentially fragile pacts. With Power Bloc Leverage being informed in part by economic dependence, this can become a great way to maintain control over your Power Bloc members during the extent of the long Victorian century.
• Available with Update 1.7: Ownership is represented by two new buildings, Manor Houses (housing the Aristocracy) and Financial Sectors (housing Capitalists), who can own buildings outside their own states or even their country. These buildings extract the profits produced by building levels they own, leading to much greater variance between productive states and wealthy states.
• Available with Update 1.7: In addition to private ownership through Manor Houses and Financial Sectors, Cooperative Ownership is also possible through the right economic system laws. Cooperative Ownership gives pops working their buildings the fruit of their own labor.
• Available with Update 1.7: State-owned enterprises are also possible, which yield dividends directly to state coffers (or drain them, if unprofitable). Under most economic systems, buildings constructed by the state are put up for sale when completed, making them available for acquisition by private interests (or even other countries, if Foreign Investment Rights are in play). Under others, it's possible for the state to nationalize industries, with or without compensation to its owners - with sometimes grave repercussions, domestic or international.
• Available with Update 1.7: Overlords are always able to construct industries in their Subjects, even without Pacts or Power Blocs enabling it.
• With the Sphere of Influence expansion, it is also possible to nationalize all your country's foreign-owned industries with a Diplomatic Demand - but be prepared to defend your economic self-determination!
• To read more about Foreign Investment and the Building Ownership overhaul, see the dev diary here.

Lobbies, Catalysts, and Opportunities

• A Lobby consists of one or more Interest Groups in a country that have a stance on another country in the world. This stance can either be positive, where they wish to form closer relations or imitate its laws and reforms, or negative where the emphasis lies on distancing yourself, forming rivalries, or even crushing them in armed conflict.
• Lobbies have a chance to form in response to a Diplomatic Catalyst, which can trigger for a variety of reasons such as establishing or breaking a Pact, choosing a particular event option, having a revolution, joining or being kicked out of a Power Bloc, inviting or exiling an Agitator, and so on. Whenever something happens as a result of a Catalyst, such as a lobby forming or an AI strategy changing, you will be told exactly the reason why it happened.
• Lobbies will benefit or hinder you in a number of ways, such as increasing a country's AI Acceptance for Diplomatic Pacts due to your close ties, or increasing your War Support when fighting a hated foe. The impact your Lobby has relates directly to its Interest Group membership's Clout, so you have a vested interest in supporting those groups that align with your own foreign policy and opposing those who support your geopolitical enemies.
• Adhering to your Lobbies' wishes will increase their Appeasement, which is another source of Interest Group Approval and leads to political stability at home. Opposing them will of course do the opposite, so think carefully if you can afford to break that pact they like!
• With the Sphere of Influence expansion, Lobbies will occasionally grant opportunities or make demands. These are Journal Entries that incentivize you to go after specific foreign policy goals, or which you ignore at your peril!
• Also with the Sphere of Influence expansion, you have access to a new Diplomatic Action that lets you fund lobbies in other countries by bribing providing much-deserved financial support to the country's elite, increasing the chance that lobbies favoring you (or lobbies that oppose your enemies) will emerge there. If a suitable lobby already exists, the financial support you provide will increase its power and improve the Leverage you gain there.
• Subjugated countries can also be home to two other types of Lobbies - those for or against the country's Overlord, supporting integration or independence respectively. Nurturing or suppressing these Lobbies can provide the necessary political impact you need to nudge Liberty Desire in the direction you want and inform one of four new AI Strategies for subject countries.
• Read more about Lobbies in the dev diary found here. More on Catalysts can be found here.

Subject Interactions

• Sphere of Influence comes with a number of brand-new ways you can interact with your Subjects, or if you are a subject, ways you can engage with your Overlord. Several new categories of Diplomatic Actions have been added which apply only to countries with special relationships: Overlord/Subject, Subject/Overlord, Power Bloc Leader/Member, and Power Bloc Member/Member.
• For example, an Overlord can use actions on their Subject to increase or reduce the weekly payments they must submit, distribute conquered territory between their subjects, share their technological knowledge with them, permit them to control their own market, and more!
• Similarly, Subjects can petition their Overlord to grant them relief in various ways. This often costs them Liberty Desire, a new metric in Update 1.7 that tracks how much the country's elite is in favor of independence. Like Leverage, this metric is informed by a variety of factors, such as Opinion - but also by many Pacts maintained between the countries, their Economic Dependence on the Overlord, relative Prestige, and so on. If a Subject's Liberty Desire gets very high they will start generating more Radicals, prompting them to request increased autonomy from their Overlord; if not granted, it could well result in a Diplomatic Demand for full independence instead. On the other hand, a Subject with very low Liberty Desire can be persuaded to have their autonomy reduced, potentially leading them down the road to full annexation if they aren't careful.
• With the Sphere of Influence expansion, in addition to the many new Diplomatic Actions, it is also possible to support a Subject's independence, causing their Liberty Desire to increase and automatically including you as a supporter in any Diplomatic Play for Independence they launch. Subjects may even support each other, and will rebel as a group if a war for independence is imminent! On the flip side you can also Guarantee Independence for a country that is not yet subjugated, ensuring none of your rival Great Powers can make such a demand unquestioned!
• To read more about Subject Interactions and Liberty Desire, go here.

The Great Game

• Throughout the nineteenth century, Russia and Britain competed with one another for influence in Asia. This period of rivalry was known colloquially as the Great Game, beginning in the Caucasus and Central Asia, and expanding over time to include struggles for influence in areas as far away as Korea and China. In Sphere of Influence you can play out this crucial "cold war" between these two dominant but very different Great Powers from several perspectives: Russia, Britain, Persia, or one of three countries - Kabul, Herat, and Kandahar - that will form the country of Afghanistan during the era.
• The Great Game can be experienced by playing one of the six countries in question in any regular game, or through the new Great Game objective which provides a quickstart into all the new features of Sphere of Influence. You will naturally also experience the conflict from the sidelines while playing as any country in the world, and can get involved to help or hinder any of its participants. Many regions adjacent to the Great Game also have their own unique narrative content relating to it, such as the Caucasian War, the Donghak Rebellion in Joseon/Korea, and the expedition to Tibet.
• The Great Game is designed to make full use of all new features in Sphere of Influence, and you can be sure that your skills in maintaining your Power Bloc, expanding your Leverage, supporting your foreign Lobbies, expanding your economic reach through Foreign Investments, and interacting with your Subjects will be tested in the process!
• To increase the historical accuracy of the Great Game, the map of Central Asia has been greatly improved, with several new countries and cultures added as well as regional Interest Groups, twelve new Companies, and more.
• To read much more about the experience of playing as one of the Great Powers in the conflict, see the dev diary here. Even more details on what might be in store if you play as a Central Asian nation is available here.

• 'Great Empires' papermap theme
• New main menu
• 2 new loading screens
• 10 new event illustrations
• Late-game European military uniform character outfit as well as late-game female military outfits
• Added Necklaces, Capes, and Sashes for different Power Bloc identities, to be worn by Heads-of-States in those Power Blocs
• Persian military outfits, Landowner clothes, and royal character outfit and jewelry
• Cossack and Cuirass character outfit
• Greatcoat character outfit for some characters to wear during winter
• Zulu character outfits
• Cigars and Smoking Pipes
• Distinct appearances for many British historical figures, such as Joseph Chamberlain, John Maynard Keynes, Provo Wallis, David Lloyd George, Douglas Haig, Arthur Balfour, Friedrich Engels, Lord Palmerston, and Rotha Lintorn-Orman
• Distinct appearance and new character assets for Empress Myeongseong, Klemens von Metternich, George Curzon, Reza Shah Pahlavi, Naser al-Din Shah Qajar, Amir Kabir, Sattar Khan, and Abdul Hamid II
• Distinct appearances for certain Interest Group leaders
• Updated appearance for Tsar Alexander III
• Sphere of Influence Coin 3D asset for papermap object
• Cutty Sark Trading Ship 3D vehicle for Trade Leagues
• Royal Carriage 3D vehicle for Sovereign Empires
• Hot Air Balloon 3D frontline asset for Military Treaties
• Rolls Royce Silver Ghost 3D vehicle for Ideological Unions
• Ornate Carriage 3D vehicle for Religious Convocations
• Voice of the People, with Sphere of Influence: Added a late game uniform for France
• Voice of the People, etc.: Updated the Divided Monarchist journal entry and several other complex journal entries to use the new progressbar system
• Colossus of the South: Implemented an additional South American clothing set

Achievements

• Durran Durran: As Herat, form Afghanistan, own all the historical states of the old Durrani Empire, and do not be a member of any power bloc led by any other country.
• Hyperpeace: As any country, have both Finland and Korea in your power bloc.
• Bootlicker: As a subject, have the pro-overlord lobby at max appeasement.
• I'm the Captain Now: Look at me. As a member of a power bloc, win the struggle for power bloc leadership.
• The New Order: Have a fully decked out power bloc.
• Great Game no re: Complete the Great Game Objective.
• Honor and Life: As Circassia, complete the Honor Before Life journal entry.
• Iranzamin: As Persia, complete the Eastern Frontier Journal Entry, and have a literacy rating of 80%
• For Twelve Years You Have Been Asking: Privatize all buildings and prevent them from being state or worker-owned for 12 whole years.
• Can't Touch This: As a country with at least 10% of your GDP owned by a foreign power, nationalize all buildings and prevent them from being privatized for 12 whole years.
• Standard Oil: Own at least 30 levels of oil rigs in foreign countries.
• Diplomatic Victory: As a Great Power, have a pro-country lobby for your country in every other Great Power.
• Hermit Kingdom: As Korea, act on the Donghak movement's petitions.
• Cult of Reason: Pass the State Atheism Law and be the leader of an ideological power bloc with at least 10 members.
• Declaration of Independence: Starting as a subject nation, break free from your overlord.

Improvements

• Removed the Directly Controlled Investment Game Rule from the game, as it is incompatible with the new Building Ownership Rework/Foreign Investment mechanics
• Added fifteen new events that fire as a result of having an active, non-revolutionary political movement
• Added a universal Journal Entry for unrecognized countries permitting them to peacefully achieve recognition over time, and a diplomatic action to speed it up
• Removed the Force Recognition wargoal and diplomatic play, as it has been replaced by the new Journal Entry
• Added an Afghan Reunification journal entry for Afghan contenders
• Added scripted Journal Entry progress bars, allowing Journal Entries to track more than one progression value and display them on separate progress bars that can be visualized in a number of different ways
• Overlord can now join a revolutionary country against their subject
• Reworked the map of Persia, Central Asia, and Afghanistan, with new state regions, countries, and cultures
• Truces can now be unidirectional (preventing a country from attacking another without restricting the target country in a similar way) as well as bidirectional
• Investors now have a chance of finding resources in countries they invest into, even if that country doesn't have technology to do so on their own
• Removed Ownership PMs from most buildings, since the new ownership model introduced in 1.7 is used where applicable instead
• A huge number of Diplomatic Catalysts have been added to facilitate Lobby creation, AI Strategies and "memory", cooldowns, and other functions
• Added Grant and Take State Overlord Actions
• China, Korea, and Vietnam now all start as Confucian nations. Starting laws and pops have been updated to reflect this.
• Serfdom law now blocks both Internal and Mass Migration for Peasants
• Land Reform law now blocks Internal Migration for Peasants (but does not impact Mass Migration)
• Reworked Russian state regions and populations
• China, Korea, and Vietnam now all start as Confucian nations. Starting laws and pops have been updated to reflect this.
• Declining a call to arms will now break off any alliance, defensive pact or guarantee you have against the country calling you in
• Society techs now give more maneuvers for plays with each era
• It is now possible for countries that join a play due to a call to arms to add a war goal themselves, so long as that war goal would cost 25 maneuvers or less to add under normal circumstances (does not actually cost maneuvers for the primary participant)
• Added decaying modifiers that massively nationalization cost & radicals generation from nationalization in newly conquered/liberated states. Recently conquered states also suffer decaying penalties to tax collection, pop political strength and conscription rate.
• Added new diplomatic action Guarantee Independence which functions like a one-sided defensive pact that doesn't require approval
• It is now only possible to impose laws on Puppet, Dominion, Vassal, and Personal Union subjects (Protectorates and Tributaries are too independent) unless you're in a Power Bloc that permits it
• The 'Cut Down to Size' wargoal now also removes all wargoals held by the target in other diplomatic plays/wars (but keeps any wargoals targeting them in those plays/wars)
• Demands for imposing a Law on another country are now handled with events and a journal entry, similar to Interest Group Petitions. Notifications are triggered when the other country takes action.
• It is now possible to make Diplomatic Demands even though you're already in a Diplomatic Play (or at war), as long as it's not against a country you're already targeting or a country on the same side as you in another Play / war. You also cannot make additional Diplomatic Demands while already dealing with a Diplomatic Play you initiated until that Play has escalated into war.
• Added Karelian, Mari, Buryat, Bashkir, Chechen, Mordvin, Chuvash, and Udmurt cultures
• Added numerous new releasables to Russia
• Added 6 new companies
• Commercialized agriculture law now makes Financial Districts more likely to invest in agriculture, ranching and plantations
• The Homesteading law now makes agriculture buildings convert themselves to 50% self-ownership over time
• Expanded the Monuments Effect game rule to include Power Bloc Statues
• Buildings with several unstaffed levels and that are at least 50% privately owned will now autonomously reduce their privately owned levels if they fail to hire for an extended period of time
• Economy of Scale now scales against the employed levels of a building, so empty building levels no longer grant throughput bonuses. Additionally, Economy of Scale now starts granting bonuses immediately at level 1, so a half-employed level 1 building will get +0.5% throughput, for example.
• Added a Seminole Wars Journal Entry to USA, present at game start
• Added a 'Give State' diplomatic action
• Added diplomatic actions for increasing and decreasing autonomy in subjects
• You can now impose a Law on another country even if they are currently trying to enact something else (they have an option to cancel the current law or defer enacting it until later) or do not have any support for this law (you will now see their chances before issuing the demand)
• Changed the time to respond on Diplomatic Proposals from 14 days to 30 days, the AI will still respond in the same amount of time
• A country can now only ever have one diplomatic proposal pending towards a given country
• Changed the required tech unlock for Steam Powered Fishing and Whaling Production Methods to Gantry Cranes instead of Ironclads, allowing a smoother distinction between civil and military usage of steam powered ships (thanks to "WOWZA 'Mr. Rework' Scrooge" for the suggestion!)
• Increase Autonomy and Independence Diplomatic Plays now have Liberty Desire requirements
• Added an event referring to the Australian Emu War
• Added new Russian Republic and Russian Soviet Republic names to Russia
• Reworked the way we display pact influence costs to be more consistent and to always have breakdown tooltips
• Implemented more characters for Central Asia, East Asia, Britain, and Africa
• Added the Yat'siminoli, Salish, and Pannakwati to North America
• Added the Wati and Mirning peoples to Australia
• There is now a 1 year cooldown between attempts to impose a Law on another country if they outright reject your demand. Otherwise you will have to wait until they enact (or reject) the law you previously imposed on them.
• Servicemen now gain Officer qualifications faster while deployed in active wars
• Added additional state traits to Russia
• Added historical interest group leaders to Australian colonies
• Added starting pro- and anti-country lobbies to various nations in 1836
• Added silk as a potential resource in Lebanon, and a starting silk plantation to model the historical Lebanese silk industry
• Added the Mount Lebanon state trait to Lebanon, increasing the state's silk throughput
• Forming the Free States of America now requires you to have abolished slavery
• Made the South Bessarabian retrocession borders more historically accurate.
• Updated migration concepts for clarity
• Henry Temple is now referred to as Henry Palmerston
• Added a historical ruler for Indian Territory at game start
• Adjusted Tasmanian population to reflect the historical situation
• The Baltic strategic region has been renamed to Scandinavia, due to Finland becoming its own region

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Check out Part 1 for the rest of the changelog!

Balance

• Subjects now need at least 75 Liberty Desire to Expel Diplomats
• Changed the required techs to research Gantry Cranes to include Screw Frigates
• Added employment of 200 Clerks and 50 Bureaucrats to base Trade Center PM
• Officers now take only half the brunt of casualties compared to Servicemen
• Added adjacencies to the southern Chilean Islands so that they are all connected
• British and Japanese Intelligentsia are now Constitutionalist by default, rather than Republican
• Removed Infrastructure cost from Gold Fields
• Increased farm sizes in some parts of Qing China to prevent immediate famines.
• Easier than the norm to impose laws on Puppets and Personal Unions
• Great Hunger Journal entry can no longer appear until at least 1837 and grain prices for the Journal Entry have been increase to 70%
• Increased the amount of academics and decreased the amount of clerks when bourgeoisie patronage production method is active on Art Academies
• You can no longer build Fishing Wharfs in the states Ob or Upper Yeniseysk
• Fixed the starting Military Formations for Greece, Serbia, Two Sicilies, Papal States, Tuscany, Spain, and Portugal so that they no longer start with unit types they can not recruit.
• Taking states from your subjects (even to give to other subjects) now create diplomatic incidents
• Reduced Police Institution reduction of Turmoil effects from 15% per level to 10%
• Vanguardism is now unlocked by Political Agitation rather than Socialism
• Reduced the Sick Man of Europe modifier's prestige malus from -33% to -25%
• Changed the progressiveness score of Theocracy law to -25 instead of -50
• Reduced the size of USA's navy slightly
• Lowered the amount of convoys needed to complete Improve Supply Network Tutorial

Art

• New Manor House and Financial District building model for each of the different cultural styles
• Added social button links on Main Menu (Youtube link, Victoria 3 Wiki link, Victoria 3 player resources link)
• Added 85 new distinct appearances for historical characters, including rulers and generals
• Implemented 56 historic character appearances for existing characters in the Americas (courtesy of Galactic Cactus)
• Added new clothes for power bloc members
• Adult characters with the hedonist, grifter, and/or expensive tastes traits can be smokers now
• Added distinct appearance and assets for Empress Dowager Cixi
• Added Financial District buildings 3D asset for Foreign Investment
• Adjusted 'Waving Flag' icon for Journal Entries to fit in the Journal Entry frame better
• Added icons for Prestige, Leverage and Cohesion
• Added background art for Pro and Anti Lobbies
• Adjusted Diplomatic Action "Personal Union" icons
• Added headgear for Catholic clergy
• Fixed some clipping issues on the infantry units map models
• Reworked factory smoke VFX
• Art Academy icon now shows the 'Fine Art' good
• Adjusted some provinces in Florida, Nevada, and Western Australia
• Improved Bundle of Flowers 3d asset for characters
• Improved Ottawa river shape improved on the map
• Improved Rio Uruguai river position and shape on the map
• Added Kolyma river on the map
• Improved Puget sound shore for the 3d map
• Buildings in the Caucasus region now use European graphics
• Fixed texture brightness for the African Academy

Audio

• Fixed a voice stacking bug for the Naval Carrier that caused performance issues
• Made weapon reload sounds less repetitive
• Remixed all war sound effects
• Fixed sail transport ship oddity upon zooming out and back in
• Fixed inconsistent sound filter effect upon entering a Map Mode

Interface

• Added a fullscreen Building Registry screen
• Added functionality to create and add tables to tooltips
• Reordered things in the Country tooltip to more closely reflect the order of importance
• Added breakdown details for the Ahead of Time Research Penalty
• Added a new religion overview mapmode that displays the most prevalent religion in each state and additionally through color blending visualizes the second and potentially third most prevalent religions
• Upgraded the culture overview mapmode to visualize the second and third most prevalent cultures through color blending
• Added a new "Subjects" tab in the Diplomacy panel listing all your Subjects
• Reworked the Country & State right-click menu to be more compact and be less "scrolly"
• Added notifications for subject interactions
• Added bar charts for a Pop's needs to their tooltip and info panel
• Added easy access to the construction queue to the Building Registry
• Improved the layout and readability of the Peace Deal tab
• Added the option to have custom icons as divider on double-sided scripted progress bars
• Added alerts related to a subject's ability to increase its autonomy or have its autonomy decreased
• Moved Decisions from a second tab in the Journal Panel into the first tab, and Potential Journal Entries are now in the second tab
• Cleaned up the layout of the Journal Entry page
• Added a new layout for Interest Group Tooltips
• Outliner is now sorting Interest Groups by clout
• Event options marked as show_as_unavailable will now print the trigger conditions that failed in order to make them unavailable
• Country diplomacy infopanel now shows relevant tooltip info for Pacts rather than just repeat their names
• Added explanation in war support tooltip when countries are unable to capitulate, for instance due to being a subject
• The player list in the outliner has been changed to a dropdown
• Ongoing Diplomatic Actions (bankroll, improve/damage relations) in the outliner are now found in the collapsible section
• Show the AI Strategies in the Country tooltip
• Reworked all Outliner items to have more, and better, information
• It is now possible to pin Countries to the Outliner
• The amount of debt that is owed to buildings that you own is now shown in the debt tooltip
• Changed so Diplomatic ties/gained lost and declaring neutrality notifications are hidden by default
• Changed the total time for your Construction Queue to be displayed in months, years, etc instead of only weeks
• Convoy breakdown now lists contribution from market members first, with breakdown to see who contributes what, and the remainder of the convoy production breakdown in descending order
• New map mode displaying the percentage of your GDP that is directly or indirectly controlled by another country
• gdp_ownership_ratio trigger lets you measure how much of a country's economy another country controls, directly or through investors
• Changed the map list panel displayed for the Culture Overview mapmode to display more general state information
• Added "break" names like "Stop doing ActionName" for diplo actions to their tooltips, buttons and confirmation window headers
• Made the Improve/Damage relations effects description a bit more digestible
• Added imposable laws as a dropdown directly under each Subject in the Subjects tab
• Added Overlord/Subject/Bloc actions to the Country panel - Interaction tab
• Show the Employment Indicator icon in more places
• Added a short "label" and a "status" for a Country, describing who they are to you and your relationship to them
• Show the Government Interest Groups in the Country tooltip
• Improved the Party tooltip to display member Interest Groups in a table
• State Taxation Revenue text list now display its information as a table
• Implemented right-click menu for privatization and nationalization
• Moved the Party Icons on Interest Group entries in the Outliner so they would not interfere with the player moving the mouse into the Interest Group tooltip
• Fixed diplomatic action influence cost to accurately display base cost when looking at a potential action, and actual cost when looking at an action with full target data
• Removed superfluous "Yes" statement from tooltips describing "boolean" modifiers, replaced with a symbol corresponding with if the modifier type is considered Good, Neutral, or Bad
• Added State Traits to the State tooltip
• Fixed long overlapping texts to not overlap anymore in the Trade States Diplomatic Action popup
• Sound effect improvements to some parts of the UI
• On-Map Notifications can now play sounds and use alternate GUI widgets when displayed
• Tweaks to the map modes on the specific country details panels diplomacy tab
• Show the influence maintenance cost of Diplomatic Actions more directly in the interface
• Improved tooltip formatting for Diplomatic Actions
• Added your Overlord to the Diplomacy panel Overview tab if you are a Subject
• Show the Religion icon in the Religion tooltip
• Show the current direction (up/down) of your Relations in Country tooltip
• It is now possible to unpin Diplomatic Plays from the Outliner
• It is now possible to unpin Political Movements from the Outliner
• Split construction panel from the building panel, now it's opened by clicking on the construction button on the topbar and arrow from the buildings panel
• Set a minimum size on scrollbar handles so they do not get tiny in large lists such as the Census Data
• Added a game concept for "Busy" Characters to explain what it means
• Updated the religion colors for Catholicism, Orthodox and Hinduism to better work with the new religion mapmode
• Improved the responsiveness of the scrollarea for the game objectives on the new game screen
• Added a Subject Types Visualization table to better visualize how Subject Types work on the Diplomacy panel
• Show a country's Subject Type in its tooltip
• Expose the Ranking Number for the stats on the Country details panel
• Removed misleading Total Occupation number in the Occupation breakdown tooltip for Battles
• Hid axis labels on trend charts if there is no trend data

Performance

• Complete rewrite of the modifier system to improve performance
• Improved performance of several tick tasks
• Minimized unnecessary counter updates
• Improved the performance of AI's journal entry interactions by reducing extraneous trigger checks
• Reduced memory consumption by Coat of Arms flag definitions
• Optimized the calculation of the current flag definition for each country
• Optimized the frequency of Coat of Arms updates which led to less total execution time
• Optimized scripts for some flag definitions
• Reworked the outliner system to improve performance
• On-Map Notifications no longer spawn when off-screen

Modding

• Enabled scripted_widget support for Victoria 3 (usage pattern same as in Crusader Kings III)
• AI will now consider taking actions defined in a scripted_gui based on its ai_is_valid (trigger) / ai_chance (1-100) / ai_frequency (months) parameters
• Diplomatic Pacts can now contain an actor_modifier and/or target_modifier that is applied to the country while pact is active
• The conditions under which a country may impose laws on another are now entirely moddable, including making special rules for each specific law
• Diplomatic Pacts can declare one or several auto_support_type diplomatic play types. It forces the initiator of the pact to join any diplomatic play of the auto_support_type that the target initiates.
• Individual Professions can now be blocked from Internal or Mass Migration based on state modifiers (see Serfdom and Land Reform laws for examples)
• Added new modifiers country_bolster/suppression_cost_mult to the cost of Interest Group bolstering and suppressing
• Split the create_truce effect into create_bidirectional_truce and create_unidirectional_truce
• end_truce effect no longer takes a months parameter
• Added new modifier country_leader_has_law_enactment_success_mult that increases the enactment success for laws the power bloc leader already has
• Added new trigger for power_bloc_rank
• Added scripted rules for unlocking power bloc principle slots
• Added new add_cohesion and set_cohesion console commands
• Added add_progress and set_progress effects for scripted progress bars
• Added modifier power_bloc_allow_foreign_invest_lower_rank to allow foreign investment in lower ranked members
• Added new trigger play_participant_has_war_goal_of_type_against
• Added new trigger play_side_has_war_goal_of_type_against
• Added new trigger war_participant_has_war_goal_of_type_against
• Added new trigger war_side_has_war_goal_of_type_against
• Added country_disable_privatization_bool, country_force_privatization_bool, and country_disable_nationalization_bool modifiers to regulate privatization
• Production Method property replacement_if_valid lets you replace a PM under given circumstances
• Added country_nationalization_cost_non_members_mult modifier that modifies the penalty for nationalizing buildings owned by foreign countries.
• Added country_legitimacy_min_add that set a lower limit on a governments legitimacy level
• Added political_movement_preserve_support_mult, political_movement_enact_support_mult and political_movement_restore_support_mult that multiplies the support of political movement by type
• economic_dependence compare trigger for determining a country's economic dependence on another
• Added new modifiers on country and country pact scope for adding leverage generation
• Added new modifier power_bloc_leverage_generation_mult for leverage generation
• Added new modifier power_bloc_mandate_progress_mult for mandate progress
• Added power_bloc_disallow_war_bool modifier to prevent wars within Power Blocs
• Added power_bloc_income_transfer_to_leader_factor modifier to make non-leader members of a power bloc pay a portion of their income to the power bloc leader
• Added power_bloc_allow_wider_migration_area_bool modifier which allows economic migration within a power bloc even without a unique shared market
• Added fraction_of_levels_owned_by_country and levels_owned_by_country building ownership compare trigger
• Added country_innovation compare trigger
• Added gdp_per_capita_ranking and sol_ranking triggers
• Added a scripted_bar_progress trigger that checks the progress
• Removed deprecated error_check trigger and replaced it with explicit visible triggers, where applicable
• New modifier state_migration_quota_mult allows for fine-tuning how much migration a state permits
• Added trigger can_break_diplomatic_pact
• Added trigger can_send_diplomatic_action
• Added trigger can_create_diplomatic_pact
• Added trigger would_accept_diplomatic_action
• Added a country_overlord_income_transfer_mult modifier type to modify the amount of money a subject has to pay their overlord each week
• Added an income_transfer compare trigger for diplomatic pact scopes
• enactment_chance_for_law complex compare trigger added to measure the chance a country would currently have to enact a certain law type
• New modifier country_port_connection_cost_mult, modifying the convoy cost of port connections
• New modifiers tariff_import/export_outside_power_bloc_mult, modifying countries' tariffs with non-power bloc members
• New modifiers country_join_power_bloc_member_in_(defensive_)plays_bool
• New modifier power_bloc_leader_can_add_wargoal_bool, lets the leader of a Power Bloc add a free wargoal in any play where a bloc member is a primary participant without issuing an Offer for Support
• Added new modifier country_subject_income_transfer_heathen_mult that changes how much income subjects that don't follow the same state religion as the overlord pay
• Added new modifier power_bloc_religion_trade_route_competitiveness_mult for trade routes targeting countries with the same state religion as the power bloc leader
• Added new triggers for checking ownership type fractions in a building: private_ownership_fraction, country_ownership_fraction, self_ownership_fraction
• Implemented Liberty Desire levels with modifiers that propagate to country
• create_building effect can now specify ownership assignments
• Added remove_principle effect for power blocs
• Added free_principle_slots compare trigger for power blocs
• Added modifier allow_trade_routes_without_interest_bool modifier, which allows a country to establish trade routes even where they dont have interests
• New effect disband_political_lobby
• New scriptlist diplomatically_relevant_country
• Added effect create_diplomatic_catalyst
• Added effect create_political_lobby
• Added trigger num_political_lobbies
• Added type scope switch for lobbies/catalysts
• Added new compare trigger potential_diplomatic_play_power_ratio
• Convoy Contribution is now a country modifier (country_convoy_contribution_to_market_owner_add) that shares the country's convoys directly with the market owner, rather than tied specifically to subjects/overlords
• Regime Change can now be executed from script using the regime_change effect
• New modifier type country_leverage_generation_mult affecting how much Leverage a country generates as Power Bloc leader
• New modifier type country_leverage_lobby_generation_mult affecting how much positively inclined lobbies in another country contribute to the Leverage they impose on them as Power Bloc leader
• New modifier type country_pact_leverage_generation_mult affecting how much a pact influences the Leverage generated by the senior/initiator part in the pact on the junior/target part in the pact, when the senior is Power Bloc leader
• Added a current_cohesion_percentage compare trigger for Power Bloc scopes
• Added add_cohesion_percent and add_cohesion_number effects for Power Bloc scopes
• New trigger can_trigger_event that can check e.g. if an event is on cooldown for a country in scope
• New compare trigger liberty_desire_weekly_progress
• Renamed remaining uses of Interest Group promotion to bolstering to be coherent with the current name
• Added new trigger for used_principles_slots
• Added new trigger total_used_principle_levels
• Made sure all boolean modifier types have a _bool suffix
• Added allow_trade_routes_without_interest_bool modifier, which allows a country to establish trade routes towards countries that lie outside the range of their interests
• Added state_migration_quota_mult modifier that affects the amount of people that emigrate from or immigrate to a state
• Added num_power_bloc_members compare trigger. Returns the number of member countries in the scoped power bloc
• Added num_power_bloc_states compare trigger. Returns the total number of states of the scoped power bloc.
• Added neighbors_power_bloc compare trigger. Returns true if the scoped country neighbors the specified power bloc. Note
• Added neighbors_any_power_bloc compare trigger. Returns true if the scoped country neighbors any power bloc.
• Added neighbors_member_of_same_power_bloc trigger. Returns true if the scoped country neighbors any other member of their own power bloc.
• Added trigger is_member_of_lobby
• Added trigger is_member_of_any_lobby"
• New script list lobby_member
• Added new trigger can_add_wargoal_against
• New add_leverage effect added for power bloc scopes
• New country_leverage_resistance_add modifier type
• New progressiveness and law_progressiveness_difference compare triggers added, to compare the progressiveness of a law type or the difference in progressiveness between two law types
• Added country_law_enactment_imposition_success_add and country_cannot_be_target_for_law_imposition_bool modifier types
• Added cancel_imposition effect to cancel the imposition status of a country's law
• Adds imposed_law and imposer_of_law links to be used in country scope
• country_cannot_cancel_law_enactment_bool modifier type added to prevent a country from manually canceling enactment of laws
• journal_entry_age compare trigger added for measuring the duration since the Journal Entry was activated
• Added tenure_in_current_power_bloc_days/weeks/months/years compare triggers for Country scopes
• New compare triggers power_bloc_share_prestige and power_bloc_share_power_projection in Power Bloc scope
• New compare triggers power_bloc_worst_liberty_desire, power_bloc_worst_infamy, power_bloc_worst_leader_relations in Power Bloc scope
• New trigger is_forced_to_join_plays
• Added console command fastlobbies to make lobbies bypass its chance to spawn, letting them always spawn if possible
• New console command Logging.GameStateGenerators can be used to display a list of gamestate init functions in the order they are executed, to troubleshoot initialization issues
• Added new rank based power bloc invite acceptance modifiers power_bloc_invite_acceptance_{rank}_add (need to be accessed in script)
• Added new country_leverage_resistance_per_population_add modifier that scales with population size
• Added new country_leverage_resistance_mult modifier
• Added new market_number_goods_shortage that gives how many goods in a market have a shortage
• Added new power_bloc_worst_leader_religion_population_fraction which returns the lowest fraction of population that follows the religion of the bloc leader
• Added new power_bloc_worst_economic_dependence which returns the lowest economic dependence on the leader among the bloc's members
• Added new power_bloc_share_gdp trigger which returns the share of the total GDP in a bloc a country has
• Added new power_bloc_total_leading_goods_producer trigger which calculates a score for a power bloc based on how many goods its members are the leading producers of. The number 1 producer gives 3 points, number 2 gives 2 and number 3 gives 1
• Added GetParticipantWithLowestEconomicDependenceOnLeader data function
• Added GetParticipantWithLowestLeaderReligionPercentage data function
• Added GetLeaderReligionPercentage data function to retrieve the percentage of the population in a country that follows the religion of the bloc leader

Bugfixes

• Wargoals targeting subjects not being contested now prevents overlord from dropping below 0 war support
• Improved the stability of the multiplayer game by fixing several Out of Sync issues
• Fixed a bug where an Interest Group could pick the Ruler or Heir of a monarchy to be their next leader, if they were a general
• All straight apostrophes (') in city, state, hub name loc replaced with typographic/curly apostrophes () to address issue where tooltips broke or bloated error log
• Fixed a bug where the 'Revoke Claim' wargoal could only be used once for each country against each enemy per play
• Fixed a bug where battles that end inconclusively would display a placeholder text
• Fixed a bug where the cost of reverse pacts was incorrect in the interface
• Fixed a bug where reverse pacts could be activated several times and stacked.
• Fixed a bug that would cause Bismarck to be available as a Landowner leader for every single country in the game
• Fixed a bug where countries in a diplomatic play could simultaneously be on someone's side and undecided
• Fixed a bug where it was possible to join diplomatic plays against power bloc members when you should not be able to
• Reworked the way random events are fired, fixing an issue where certain events would almost never fire. As a result, it's now more common that several events fire simultaneously, this is not a bug.
• Fixed a crash related to finding a combat unit type's primary culture
• Fixed a bug that disallowed intra-country migration when inter-country migration was disallowed (i.e. people can now move from a state in a country to a different state in the same country even if the country has closed borders)
• Fixed a crash that could happen when countries that are part of the same customs union would end up on opposite sides of a war
• Officers no longer bear the burden of increased ratio of casualties due to rounding errors
• B.Grimm company now has 10% infrastructure from population instead of 0.1
• Fixed a bug when the main theme was not playing on startup
• Fixed the country formation panel to show the correct status for split states
• Updated conditions for granting and removing command from ruler to prevent strange situations
• Artillery commander traits are now correctly applied to artillery units
• Fixed a bug where the revolution map marker could spawn in an incorrect State, with an incorrect Interest Group icon
• Fixed broken localization in naval invasion stalled tooltip
• Fixed a bug when after colonizing a province with frontier colonization player could colonize states it didn't have access to
• It's no longer possible to exceed (if only visually) the commander limit of formations by using the "move all" and "move half" buttons in the formation transfer UI
• Diplomatic Victory achievement now properly requires the player be a Great Power
• Fixed a bug that would cause some lens options / map interactions to not be updated when they should have, leading to the displayed information being out of date compared to the actual economic or geopolitical situation
• Added missing info in the combat unit type tooltip about modifiers that units provide their formations with
• Diplomatic Plays against your indirect subjects are now disallowed
• Commanders who are on expeditions are now correctly blocked from doing most of their job as commander
• While in a Diplomatic Play or at war you can no longer form or expand Colonial Administrations in order to prevent wargoals from being invalidated
• Empresas Elctricas Asociadas Company now gives 5% infrastructure from population instead of 0.05
• C.A. LA Electricidad de Caracas now gives 5 infrastructure per 100k pops instead of 0.05
• Improved the performance of the Red Scare Journal Entry
• Added horizontal scrollbars when elements goes off screen in the Census Data & Building Registry fullscreen windows
• Revolution events and Coups can no longer spawn in communists and council republics before socialism has been researched
• Should a Bonapartist, Orleanist, or Legitimist non-monarchical ruler die, they no longer automatically generate a same-dynasty heir
• Nicholas I of Russia dying or abdicating before 1843 will no longer result in the generation of an heir with a negative age
• Fixed error spam issue with Brazilian agitator clothing
• Trade States will now be unavailable to select when no valid state options exist
• Added missing Legitimacy label and value to country tooltip
• Fixed an issue where dead Interest Group leaders could be targeted by the Kingmaker Caudillo event
• Seek Royal Marriage can no longer target junior members of a personal union
• The Positive Stage Journal Entry now requires you to either be Catholic or have state atheism enacted
• Custom tooltip fixes "The country does not have the variable in question" in tooltip for Ban the Opium Trade button
• Fixed a bug where the National Self-Defense event may refer to a Politically Unaligned IG
• Horizontal Filing Cabinets Boost now uses the correct color for the modifier
• Fragile Unity Journal Entry fail requirements corrected in text and tooltips
• Fixed a lot of typos across the game
• Fix bug where sorting countries by AI Attitude wasn't working
• The Banana Republic achievement now requires the construction of fruit plantations specifically, not any plantations
• Fixed two more ways in which it was possible to exceed the commander limit in a formation
• Fixed null_obj appearing in notification for HRE formation
• The Cholera event will now fire properly
• Fragile Unity points being gained or lost will now fire the correct notifications
• The Republic of San Marco will no longer throw errors
• The agitator_legal_events.5 now displays their correct event image
• Remaned Farm hub on land from Ecker to Strandgrd
• The Opium Wars now invalidate if their target ceases to exist
• Fixed a couple of typos in Czech cities
• Fixed the birth date of Alexander II of Russia
• Fixed an unlocalized modifier in the event "Obstruction in [state]"
• Removed duplicate icons for Influence costs for certain Diplomatic Actions

Happy Thursday! Today I'm very pleased to announce the changelog for Update 1.7, appropriately codenamed "Kahwah" after the delicious saffron, cinnamon, and cardamom infused tea from Central Asia. In addition to the changelog you will get a rundown of the major features of the Sphere of Influence expansion most of these features were developed for, but for full details you should read the previous dev diaries on that subject. Before we get into the changelog I want to also draw your attention to the Known Issues list for Update 1.7. Most of these bugs will be addressed in upcoming hotfixes releasing shortly after the update. As usual, save games made on any 1.7.x version will be compatible with subsequent hotfixes, but save games from 1.6 or before will not be compatible with 1.7 due to the large number of changes.
Update 1.7 "Kahwah", as well as Sphere of Influence, will be released on Monday June 24th around 18:00 CEST. Those of you who own either the Grand Edition of Victoria 3 or our first Expansion Pass will just have to update the game to get your hands on Sphere of Influence and start extending your tentacles around the globe. If you do not yet own it, it can be pre-ordered either standalone or as part of the Expansion Pass. Let's get into it!

Features of Sphere of Influence

Power Blocs

• As a Great Power or a powerful Major Power, you can form your own Power Bloc centered around one of five central Identity pillars: Trade League, Sovereign Empire, Military Treaty, Ideological Union, or Religious Convocation.
• Each of these provide different opportunities and benefits to its leader with respect to its member countries, and can be developed further with up to 4 of 20 different Principle groups, resulting in over twenty thousand different combinations affecting your strategy for global domination!
• As a Power Bloc leader you can expand your global reach by extending your Leverage over other countries where you have declared an Interest. A large number of factors that can cause you to gain (or lose) Leverage over a country, such as maintaining Diplomatic Pacts, maintaining favorable Lobbies, helping them in their wars, being accepting or discriminatory against their cultures, or making them economically dependent on you through foreign expansion or trade.
• Power Blocs can be expanded peacefully through diplomatic invitation into your Bloc or, if the invite fizzles, through a Diplomatic Demand the country may or may not yield to without an armed conflict.
• The leader of a Power Bloc must maintain its Cohesion by enforcing its shared values across the bloc. Failure to properly manage Cohesion across your bloc may result in internal strife.
• All members of Power Blocs may construct expensive statues to represent its glory, providing a number of benefits to the state it's built in. The leader of a Power Bloc can customize both the appearance of the statue, the Power Bloc emblem, and its name to better represent its ideas and visions for its bright global future.
• Available with Update 1.7: the Trade League Identity and its two Primary Principle groups, Internal and External Trade, are available even without Sphere of Influence and replaces the Customs Union diplomatic pact by enforcing a shared market across the Power Bloc.
• Available with Update 1.7: it is also possible to play as Great Britain, Russia, or the Ottoman Empire who starts with the Sovereign Empire Identity, permitting them to subjugate weaker Power Bloc members, or as Austria whose Power Bloc Identity of Ideological Union permits them to Enforce Regime Change in countries that start flirting with the concept of Republicanism and suffrage. Players without Sphere of Influence may also play a member of the Zollverein, an established Trade League at game start.
• To read much more about Power Blocs, see dev diaries here and here.

Foreign Investment

• With the Foreign Investment Rights or Mutual Foreign Investment Pacts, countries can gain the ability to directly build up another country's resource or manufacturing industries, or offer these rights to another country if they're incapable of rapid industrialization on their own. This right extends to both countries and its investor class, who may use their Investment Pool to construct private industry abroad and gain access to new resources, cheap(er) labor, or both.
• With the Foreign Investment Power Bloc Principles, these rights can also be extended across an entire Power Bloc by default without the need to establish and maintain potentially fragile pacts. With Power Bloc Leverage being informed in part by economic dependence, this can become a great way to maintain control over your Power Bloc members during the extent of the long Victorian century.
• Available with Update 1.7: Ownership is represented by two new buildings, Manor Houses (housing the Aristocracy) and Financial Sectors (housing Capitalists), who can own buildings outside their own states or even their country. These buildings extract the profits produced by building levels they own, leading to much greater variance between productive states and wealthy states.
• Available with Update 1.7: In addition to private ownership through Manor Houses and Financial Sectors, Cooperative Ownership is also possible through the right economic system laws. Cooperative Ownership gives pops working their buildings the fruit of their own labor.
• Available with Update 1.7: State-owned enterprises are also possible, which yield dividends directly to state coffers (or drain them, if unprofitable). Under most economic systems, buildings constructed by the state are put up for sale when completed, making them available for acquisition by private interests (or even other countries, if Foreign Investment Rights are in play). Under others, it's possible for the state to nationalize industries, with or without compensation to its owners - with sometimes grave repercussions, domestic or international.
• Available with Update 1.7: Overlords are always able to construct industries in their Subjects, even without Pacts or Power Blocs enabling it.
• With the Sphere of Influence expansion, it is also possible to nationalize all your country's foreign-owned industries with a Diplomatic Demand - but be prepared to defend your economic self-determination!
• To read more about Foreign Investment and the Building Ownership overhaul, see the dev diary here.

Lobbies, Catalysts, and Opportunities

• A Lobby consists of one or more Interest Groups in a country that have a stance on another country in the world. This stance can either be positive, where they wish to form closer relations or imitate its laws and reforms, or negative where the emphasis lies on distancing yourself, forming rivalries, or even crushing them in armed conflict.
• Lobbies have a chance to form in response to a Diplomatic Catalyst, which can trigger for a variety of reasons such as establishing or breaking a Pact, choosing a particular event option, having a revolution, joining or being kicked out of a Power Bloc, inviting or exiling an Agitator, and so on. Whenever something happens as a result of a Catalyst, such as a lobby forming or an AI strategy changing, you will be told exactly the reason why it happened.
• Lobbies will benefit or hinder you in a number of ways, such as increasing a country's AI Acceptance for Diplomatic Pacts due to your close ties, or increasing your War Support when fighting a hated foe. The impact your Lobby has relates directly to its Interest Group membership's Clout, so you have a vested interest in supporting those groups that align with your own foreign policy and opposing those who support your geopolitical enemies.
• Adhering to your Lobbies' wishes will increase their Appeasement, which is another source of Interest Group Approval and leads to political stability at home. Opposing them will of course do the opposite, so think carefully if you can afford to break that pact they like!
• With the Sphere of Influence expansion, Lobbies will occasionally grant opportunities or make demands. These are Journal Entries that incentivize you to go after specific foreign policy goals, or which you ignore at your peril!
• Also with the Sphere of Influence expansion, you have access to a new Diplomatic Action that lets you fund lobbies in other countries by bribing providing much-deserved financial support to the country's elite, increasing the chance that lobbies favoring you (or lobbies that oppose your enemies) will emerge there. If a suitable lobby already exists, the financial support you provide will increase its power and improve the Leverage you gain there.
• Subjugated countries can also be home to two other types of Lobbies - those for or against the country's Overlord, supporting integration or independence respectively. Nurturing or suppressing these Lobbies can provide the necessary political impact you need to nudge Liberty Desire in the direction you want and inform one of four new AI Strategies for subject countries.
• Read more about Lobbies in the dev diary found here. More on Catalysts can be found here.

Subject Interactions

• Sphere of Influence comes with a number of brand-new ways you can interact with your Subjects, or if you are a subject, ways you can engage with your Overlord. Several new categories of Diplomatic Actions have been added which apply only to countries with special relationships: Overlord/Subject, Subject/Overlord, Power Bloc Leader/Member, and Power Bloc Member/Member.
• For example, an Overlord can use actions on their Subject to increase or reduce the weekly payments they must submit, distribute conquered territory between their subjects, share their technological knowledge with them, permit them to control their own market, and more!
• Similarly, Subjects can petition their Overlord to grant them relief in various ways. This often costs them Liberty Desire, a new metric in Update 1.7 that tracks how much the country's elite is in favor of independence. Like Leverage, this metric is informed by a variety of factors, such as Opinion - but also by many Pacts maintained between the countries, their Economic Dependence on the Overlord, relative Prestige, and so on. If a Subject's Liberty Desire gets very high they will start generating more Radicals, prompting them to request increased autonomy from their Overlord; if not granted, it could well result in a Diplomatic Demand for full independence instead. On the other hand, a Subject with very low Liberty Desire can be persuaded to have their autonomy reduced, potentially leading them down the road to full annexation if they aren't careful.
• With the Sphere of Influence expansion, in addition to the many new Diplomatic Actions, it is also possible to support a Subject's independence, causing their Liberty Desire to increase and automatically including you as a supporter in any Diplomatic Play for Independence they launch. Subjects may even support each other, and will rebel as a group if a war for independence is imminent! On the flip side you can also Guarantee Independence for a country that is not yet subjugated, ensuring none of your rival Great Powers can make such a demand unquestioned!
• To read more about Subject Interactions and Liberty Desire, go here.

The Great Game

• Throughout the nineteenth century, Russia and Britain competed with one another for influence in Asia. This period of rivalry was known colloquially as the Great Game, beginning in the Caucasus and Central Asia, and expanding over time to include struggles for influence in areas as far away as Korea and China. In Sphere of Influence you can play out this crucial "cold war" between these two dominant but very different Great Powers from several perspectives: Russia, Britain, Persia, or one of three countries - Kabul, Herat, and Kandahar - that will form the country of Afghanistan during the era.
• The Great Game can be experienced by playing one of the six countries in question in any regular game, or through the new Great Game objective which provides a quickstart into all the new features of Sphere of Influence. You will naturally also experience the conflict from the sidelines while playing as any country in the world, and can get involved to help or hinder any of its participants. Many regions adjacent to the Great Game also have their own unique narrative content relating to it, such as the Caucasian War, the Donghak Rebellion in Joseon/Korea, and the expedition to Tibet.
• The Great Game is designed to make full use of all new features in Sphere of Influence, and you can be sure that your skills in maintaining your Power Bloc, expanding your Leverage, supporting your foreign Lobbies, expanding your economic reach through Foreign Investments, and interacting with your Subjects will be tested in the process!
• To increase the historical accuracy of the Great Game, the map of Central Asia has been greatly improved, with several new countries and cultures added as well as regional Interest Groups, twelve new Companies, and more.
• To read much more about the experience of playing as one of the Great Powers in the conflict, see the dev diary here. Even more details on what might be in store if you play as a Central Asian nation is available here.

• 'Great Empires' papermap theme
• New main menu
• 2 new loading screens
• 10 new event illustrations
• Late-game European military uniform character outfit as well as late-game female military outfits
• Added Necklaces, Capes, and Sashes for different Power Bloc identities, to be worn by Heads-of-States in those Power Blocs
• Persian military outfits, Landowner clothes, and royal character outfit and jewelry
• Cossack and Cuirass character outfit
• Greatcoat character outfit for some characters to wear during winter
• Zulu character outfits
• Cigars and Smoking Pipes
• Distinct appearances for many British historical figures, such as Joseph Chamberlain, John Maynard Keynes, Provo Wallis, David Lloyd George, Douglas Haig, Arthur Balfour, Friedrich Engels, Lord Palmerston, and Rotha Lintorn-Orman
• Distinct appearance and new character assets for Empress Myeongseong, Klemens von Metternich, George Curzon, Reza Shah Pahlavi, Naser al-Din Shah Qajar, Amir Kabir, Sattar Khan, and Abdul Hamid II
• Distinct appearances for certain Interest Group leaders
• Updated appearance for Tsar Alexander III
• Sphere of Influence Coin 3D asset for papermap object
• Cutty Sark Trading Ship 3D vehicle for Trade Leagues
• Royal Carriage 3D vehicle for Sovereign Empires
• Hot Air Balloon 3D frontline asset for Military Treaties
• Rolls Royce Silver Ghost 3D vehicle for Ideological Unions
• Ornate Carriage 3D vehicle for Religious Convocations
• Voice of the People, with Sphere of Influence: Added a late game uniform for France
• Voice of the People, etc.: Updated the Divided Monarchist journal entry and several other complex journal entries to use the new progressbar system
• Colossus of the South: Implemented an additional South American clothing set

Achievements

• Durran Durran: As Herat, form Afghanistan, own all the historical states of the old Durrani Empire, and do not be a member of any power bloc led by any other country.
• Hyperpeace: As any country, have both Finland and Korea in your power bloc.
• Bootlicker: As a subject, have the pro-overlord lobby at max appeasement.
• I'm the Captain Now: Look at me. As a member of a power bloc, win the struggle for power bloc leadership.
• The New Order: Have a fully decked out power bloc.
• Great Game no re: Complete the Great Game Objective.
• Honor and Life: As Circassia, complete the Honor Before Life journal entry.
• Iranzamin: As Persia, complete the Eastern Frontier Journal Entry, and have a literacy rating of 80%
• For Twelve Years You Have Been Asking: Privatize all buildings and prevent them from being state or worker-owned for 12 whole years.
• Can't Touch This: As a country with at least 10% of your GDP owned by a foreign power, nationalize all buildings and prevent them from being privatized for 12 whole years.
• Standard Oil: Own at least 30 levels of oil rigs in foreign countries.
• Diplomatic Victory: As a Great Power, have a pro-country lobby for your country in every other Great Power.
• Hermit Kingdom: As Korea, act on the Donghak movement's petitions.
• Cult of Reason: Pass the State Atheism Law and be the leader of an ideological power bloc with at least 10 members.
• Declaration of Independence: Starting as a subject nation, break free from your overlord.

Changelog

Improvements

• Removed the Directly Controlled Investment Game Rule from the game, as it is incompatible with the new Building Ownership Rework/Foreign Investment mechanics
• Added fifteen new events that fire as a result of having an active, non-revolutionary political movement
• Added a universal Journal Entry for unrecognized countries permitting them to peacefully achieve recognition over time, and a diplomatic action to speed it up
• Removed the Force Recognition wargoal and diplomatic play, as it has been replaced by the new Journal Entry
• Added an Afghan Reunification journal entry for Afghan contenders
• Added scripted Journal Entry progress bars, allowing Journal Entries to track more than one progression value and display them on separate progress bars that can be visualized in a number of different ways
• Overlord can now join a revolutionary country against their subject
• Reworked the map of Persia, Central Asia, and Afghanistan, with new state regions, countries, and cultures
• Truces can now be unidirectional (preventing a country from attacking another without restricting the target country in a similar way) as well as bidirectional
• Investors now have a chance of finding resources in countries they invest into, even if that country doesn't have technology to do so on their own
• Removed Ownership PMs from most buildings, since the new ownership model introduced in 1.7 is used where applicable instead
• A huge number of Diplomatic Catalysts have been added to facilitate Lobby creation, AI Strategies and "memory", cooldowns, and other functions
• Added Grant and Take State Overlord Actions
• China, Korea, and Vietnam now all start as Confucian nations. Starting laws and pops have been updated to reflect this.
• Serfdom law now blocks both Internal and Mass Migration for Peasants
• Land Reform law now blocks Internal Migration for Peasants (but does not impact Mass Migration)
• Reworked Russian state regions and populations
• China, Korea, and Vietnam now all start as Confucian nations. Starting laws and pops have been updated to reflect this.
• Declining a call to arms will now break off any alliance, defensive pact or guarantee you have against the country calling you in
• Society techs now give more maneuvers for plays with each era
• It is now possible for countries that join a play due to a call to arms to add a war goal themselves, so long as that war goal would cost 25 maneuvers or less to add under normal circumstances (does not actually cost maneuvers for the primary participant)
• Added decaying modifiers that massively nationalization cost & radicals generation from nationalization in newly conquered/liberated states. Recently conquered states also suffer decaying penalties to tax collection, pop political strength and conscription rate.
• Added new diplomatic action Guarantee Independence which functions like a one-sided defensive pact that doesn't require approval
• It is now only possible to impose laws on Puppet, Dominion, Vassal, and Personal Union subjects (Protectorates and Tributaries are too independent) unless you're in a Power Bloc that permits it
• The 'Cut Down to Size' wargoal now also removes all wargoals held by the target in other diplomatic plays/wars (but keeps any wargoals targeting them in those plays/wars)
• Demands for imposing a Law on another country are now handled with events and a journal entry, similar to Interest Group Petitions. Notifications are triggered when the other country takes action.
• It is now possible to make Diplomatic Demands even though you're already in a Diplomatic Play (or at war), as long as it's not against a country you're already targeting or a country on the same side as you in another Play / war. You also cannot make additional Diplomatic Demands while already dealing with a Diplomatic Play you initiated until that Play has escalated into war.
• Added Karelian, Mari, Buryat, Bashkir, Chechen, Mordvin, Chuvash, and Udmurt cultures
• Added numerous new releasables to Russia
• Added 6 new companies
• Commercialized agriculture law now makes Financial Districts more likely to invest in agriculture, ranching and plantations
• The Homesteading law now makes agriculture buildings convert themselves to 50% self-ownership over time
• Expanded the Monuments Effect game rule to include Power Bloc Statues
• Buildings with several unstaffed levels and that are at least 50% privately owned will now autonomously reduce their privately owned levels if they fail to hire for an extended period of time
• Economy of Scale now scales against the
• employed
• levels of a building, so empty building levels no longer grant throughput bonuses. Additionally, Economy of Scale now starts granting bonuses immediately at level 1, so a half-employed level 1 building will get +0.5% throughput, for example.
• Added a Seminole Wars Journal Entry to USA, present at game start
• Added a 'Give State' diplomatic action
• Added diplomatic actions for increasing and decreasing autonomy in subjects
• You can now impose a Law on another country even if they are currently trying to enact something else (they have an option to cancel the current law or defer enacting it until later) or do not have any support for this law (you will now see their chances before issuing the demand)
• Changed the time to respond on Diplomatic Proposals from 14 days to 30 days, the AI will still respond in the same amount of time
• A country can now only ever have one diplomatic proposal pending towards a given country
• Changed the required tech unlock for Steam Powered Fishing and Whaling Production Methods to Gantry Cranes instead of Ironclads, allowing a smoother distinction between civil and military usage of steam powered ships (thanks to "WOWZA 'Mr. Rework' Scrooge" for the suggestion!)
• Increase Autonomy and Independence Diplomatic Plays now have Liberty Desire requirements
• Added an event referring to the Australian Emu War
• Added new Russian Republic and Russian Soviet Republic names to Russia
• Reworked the way we display pact influence costs to be more consistent and to always have breakdown tooltips
• Implemented more characters for Central Asia, East Asia, Britain, and Africa
• Added the Yat'siminoli, Salish, and Pannakwati to North America
• Added the Wati and Mirning peoples to Australia
• There is now a 1 year cooldown between attempts to impose a Law on another country if they outright reject your demand. Otherwise you will have to wait until they enact (or reject) the law you previously imposed on them.
• Servicemen now gain Officer qualifications faster while deployed in active wars
• Added additional state traits to Russia
• Added historical interest group leaders to Australian colonies
• Added starting pro- and anti-country lobbies to various nations in 1836
• Added silk as a potential resource in Lebanon, and a starting silk plantation to model the historical Lebanese silk industry
• Added the Mount Lebanon state trait to Lebanon, increasing the state's silk throughput
• Forming the Free States of America now requires you to have abolished slavery
• Made the South Bessarabian retrocession borders more historically accurate.
• Updated migration concepts for clarity
• Henry Temple is now referred to as Henry Palmerston
• Added a historical ruler for Indian Territory at game start
• Adjusted Tasmanian population to reflect the historical situation
• The Baltic strategic region has been renamed to Scandinavia, due to Finland becoming its own region

AI

• Major work done on the economic AI, both to allow it to use the new features in 1.7/Sphere of Influence and improve its overall ability to grow its economy
• The AI now always has a concrete reason for changing its Strategic Desire (and Attitude) towards another country, based on the new system of Diplomatic Catalysts. For example, increasing relations with a country may result in the adoption of a more friendly attitude, while breaking a pact or triggering a diplomatic incident can result in the reverse. This is now shown to the player in a notification when a country changes their attitude, and you can tooltip the attitude of an AI country to see what caused them to adopt that attitude.
• The AI is now much less willing to accept reverse-sways if it has an overwhelming advantage in a play, even if there are undecided participants who can potentially be a challenge for them
• The AI is now much less willing to accept reverse-sways that involve giving something up (subjects, states etc) if they don't stand to lose much from the enemy wargoals
• Most Diplomatic Demands now have an upper bound on AI acceptance, ensuring a small-to-moderate chance you won't get your way
• The AI is now willing to take on more infamy later in the game
• The AI is now generally more keen to add war goals rather than wasting maneuvers, so long as they don't take on excessive amounts of infamy
• AI subject countries will now have a chance of accepting a Diplomatic Demand for full annexation when their Liberty Desire level is at Loyal
• USA will now want to take Colorado from Mexico
• Acceptance scores for Annexation and Loyal Subject have both been decreased in impact
• Call Ally now grants a +25 AI acceptance bonus when used as a sway
• Subjects now have access to four new AI strategies to placate or break free from their overlord
• Overlords now consider Obligations owed to them by Subjects more important for purpose of AI diplomatic acceptance score calculations
• Fixed an issue that would make the US not care about Kansas when manifesting their destiny

Greetings fellow map-starers! I am Lufthansi, one of the narrative designers on Victoria 3, and Im here to talk about the upcoming map and pop setup changes for Sphere of Influence. Since theres quite a few of them, lets just jump straight into it.

Persia and Central Asia

The Russian Empire

East Asia

America and Australia

Miscellaneous Changes

Hello. This is Victoria, and today I will be covering the new script features coming in 1.7. Our scripting language is the basis of all of the ingame content in Victoria 3. This means that every script functionality that we use in making game content is also usable by modders. As well as triggers and effects which interface with new features such as power blocs and building ownership, 1.7 and Sphere of Influence add several novel functionalities for modders. These include our new scripted progress bar system for journal entries.

Scripted Progress Bars

• double_sided_gold
• default_green
• default_bad
• default
• double_sided_bad

Miscellaneous Script Features

Diplomatic Pact Modifiers

Diplomatic Interaction Types

• general
• subject
• overlord
• power_bloc_leader
• power_bloc_member

New Script Support

• country_innovation - compares against the total innovation produced by a country
• gdp_per_capita_ranking - compares against a list of all countries GDP/c stats. Note that in this case, lower is better, as the top GDP/c ranking is 1.
• sol_ranking - compares against a list of all countries Standard of Living stats.
• income_transfer - compares against the income transferred by a diplomatic pact.
• potential_diplomatic_play_power_ratio - compares against the expected power ratio in a diplomatic play between two countries.
• can_add_wargoal_against - evaluates true if a country can add a wargoal against a specified country.
• can_break_diplomatic_pact - evaluates true if a country can break a specified diplomatic pact with a specified country.
• can_create_diplomatic_pact - evaluates true if a country can create a specified diplomatic pact with a specified country.
• would_accept_diplomatic_action - evaluates true if a specified country would accept a request for a specified diplomatic pact.
• progressiveness - compares against the progressiveness of a given law type.
• law_progressiveness_difference - compares the progressiveness of two law types.
• journal_entry_age - compares against the time since a journal entry was activated, in days.
• enactment_chance_for_law - compares against the enactment chance for a law type, if it were to begin enactment immediately.
• can_trigger_event - takes an event ID, returns true if the event is currently fulfilling its trigger conditions.
• economic_dependence - compares against one countrys economic dependence on the another country.
• gdp_ownership_ratio - compares against the percentage of one countrys economy that is owned by another country.

• allow_trade_routes_without_interest_bool - Boolean modifier that, when set to true, enables a country to establish trade routes with countries that it does not have an interest in.
• state_migration_quota_mult - increases or decreases the amount of people migrating to a given state.
• country_overlord_income_transfer_mult - increases or decreases the amount of money that a subject pays to its overlord.
• country_convoy_contribution_to_market_owner_add - increases or decreases the amount of convoys that a country contributes to its market.
• country_cannot_cancel_law_enactment_bool - Boolean modifier that, when set to true, forbids a country from manually cancelling a law enactment.
• country_port_connection_cost_mult - increases or decreases the convoy cost of port connections.
• tariff_[import/export]_outside_power_bloc_mult - increases or decreases tariffs for non-power-bloc members goods.

• regime_change - immediately forces a Regime Change wargoal against the specified country, using the current country scope as a template.

Modifier Rework

Scripted Widgets

Hello fellow Victorians, and happy Thursday! Alex here and its my turn to bring you another exciting update on whats coming with 1.7. This time Ive been tasked with showing you a selection of certified Cool things were doing that didnt really fit in other Dev Diaries. This will be a lot like the proverbial box of chocolates, you never know what you are going to get next!

Religion and Culture map modes

National Migration

Support and Guarantee Independence pacts

• Support Independence
• Guarantee Independence

Multiple Active Wars

Calling an Ally now gives them a war goal of their choosing

Overlords can now side against their subjects during revolutions

Unidirectional Truces

Subjects can turn against overlord at high enough liberty desire

Auto-downsizing for Privately owned buildings

New Character Outfits

New Companies

• Perskhlopok
• Persshelk
• erkat-e Eslmiya
• West Ural Petroleum Company, Limited
• Kirgizian Mining [Joint Stock] Company
• Moscow Irrigation Company
• Tashkent Railroad
• MM. Nicolas Portalis et Cie.
• Anglo-Persian Oil Company

• Iranian State Railway
• erkat-e Ettedya-ye Welyat-e eml
• Bongh-e Ener-e dert-e Taryk
• Arthur Guinness Son & Co. Ltd
• Oriental Development Company
• Turkish Petroleum Company

Hello and happy Thursday! Its Lino, back from the depths of development, to talk about more details on Power Blocs, one of the central new systems coming to you with Sphere of Influence on June 24. If you dont know anything about Power Blocs yet, I recommend you to give my first Dev Diary on them a good look because we will be referencing a lot of the terminology today. Small disclaimer for todays Dev Diary: You will see a lot of WIP values, for modifiers and bonuses, for special powers and so on. Take them all with a grain of salt please, as were in the process of touching a number of these right now. If you have feedback on them, were happy to read it though! We have plans to adjust some values before release.

Identities

• All five Identities have a unique power that the leader has access to which is central to how the Identity plays out
• They have one or more unique effects for the leader or members
• The Primary Principle Groups which each Bloc needs at least one Principle from are different
• Some Principle Groups are unlocked only by a specific Identity
• How a Power Blocs Cohesion value is calculated depends on its Identity

• Trade League (free with 1.7)
• Sovereign Empire
• Military Treaty
• Ideological Union
• Religious Convocation

Principles

Leverage 2.0

Hi, Aron here. Im one of the User Experience (UX) designers on Vicky 3 and I would like to give you an overview of our UX focus we have had in the Sphere of Influence expansion and the accompanying free update. I will start with the UX focus for our new features followed by the more general improvements.

Subject Improvements

• The common actions such as Go-to country, Pin country to Outliner, and Zoom-to country have been moved to the headers with simple icon buttons, following the standard we already have set up for them in other panels.
• Actions that go under the same category such as Diplomatic Actions, Subject Actions, Overlord Actions, and Bloc Member Actions get to live under their own drop-down menu.

Lobbies

Building Ownership Revision & Foreign Investment

• The icon on the bar will represent one of the following:
• Owning Country
• Owning Pop Type
• Owning Building

• Orange: Your government
• Light Blue: Your pops
• Gray/white: Local population or government
• Yellow: Foreign investors that are not you
• We have tried using colors that work best for most color blindnesses.

• The icon on the bar will represent the building it owns.
• The color is from the country of the building it owns.

Power Blocs

General Improvements for 1.7

Good day Victorians!

Victoria 3 is on sale!

Base Game

Immersion Pack

Region Pack

Art & Music Packs

Overview

Power Blocs

The Great Game

Community Collaboration

New Buildings and Ownerships

Subject Improvements, Lobbies and Diplomacy Interface

New Companies

New Paper Map

Achievement Icons

Summary

Hello. This is Victoria, and today I will be covering the remainder of the Great Game-themed narrative content which is coming in Sphere of Influence and its accompanying update. To avoid any confusion, I would like to clarify that none of the narrative content shown in this diary, nor the last diary, is gated behind the Great Game objective. The Great Game objective provides objective subgoals which grant points for certain journal entries and a score tracker which interfaces with much of this content for a more focused experienceit is not required to experience this content. All content within this diary, unless specified otherwise, is available both in sandbox mode or during the course of any objective.

Afghanistan

Persia

Korea

The Caucasus

Earning Recognition

Hello. This is Victoria, and today I will be covering much of the Great Game-themed narrative content which is coming in Sphere of Influence. This will be the first dev diary covering narrative content, with the second covering minor nations in the Great Game and other related content.

The Great Game

Generic Content

Afghanistan

Persia

Himalayan Exploration

Country-Specific Content

The Caucasian War

Kazakhstan

Other Russian Subgoals

British Subgoals

Hello and welcome to another Victoria 3 Dev Diary! As we already mentioned, theres been some changes in the Dev Diary schedule due the release date to Sphere of Influence/Update 1.7 being delayed, so today well be talking about Diplomatic Catalysts instead of the previously planned Great Game dev diary. Well be posting a new Dev Diary schedule as soon as its finalized, most likely next week. Right then, lets get to the topic at hand. Diplomatic Catalysts is a new system added in update 1.7, the role they play in creating Political Lobbies, and the impact they will have on how the diplomatic AI acts towards other countries. So, what is a Diplomatic Catalyst? Put simply, a Diplomatic Catalyst is a type of diplomatic occurrence, positive or negative, between two countries. There are many different types of Catalysts, here is a small list of examples:

• Relations between two countries increases by one full level (for instance from Cordial to Amicable)
• A subject has their autonomy decreased
• Two countries end up on the same side in a Diplomatic Play
• A country reforms their government and becomes significantly ideologically divergent from another countrys government
• A country declares another country their rival
• A country breaks off a mutually negotiated Diplomatic Pact with another

Hello Victorians, this is Martin here with an update on the release date of the Sphere of Influence expansion. A few weeks ago we announced we were planning to release the expansion and its accompanying update on May 6th. Since that time weve unfortunately come to the conclusion that both the update and the expansion are in need of more time for bug fixing and polish. Both update 1.7 and Sphere of Influence contain several fundamental changes to how the game functions, particularly in the form of the Building Ownership Revision and Power Blocs, which has resulted in bugs, as well as balance and technical stability issues. While we are happy with the features on offer in 1.7/Sphere of Influence, we simply do not believe that sticking to the original release date will allow us to deliver those features in a polished and balanced state, and we frankly do not want your enjoyment of them to be marred by excessive bugginess, crashes or general lack of polish. We believe that a delay will allow us to release the update and expansion in a state that both we as the developers and you as the players will be much more happy with. The new release date will be Monday the 24th of June. We will continue releasing weekly dev diaries up to that point, as there is still quite a lot to cover with both the DLC and the update. We know many of you are eagerly anticipating the expansion and apologize for the extended waiting that this will create, but we really want Sphere of Influence to meet your expectations and for this release to be one that we can be proud of as a development team!

Hello and welcome to another Victoria 3 Dev Diary! Todays topic will be Political Lobbies, which is a new feature added in the Sphere of Influence expansion with some elements made available for free in the 1.7 update. So, what is a Political Lobby? Put simply, a Political Lobby is a collection of Interest Groups pushing for the implementation of a specific foreign policy agenda in their country. Superficially, this may appear quite similar to Political Parties, but there a couple key differences in how they function: Political Lobbies always form for a specific reason, often due to a Diplomatic Catalyst (more on those and the precise conditions for how they can create lobbies in next weeks dev diary) and pursue a specific long-term agenda that does not change over time Interest Groups can be members of multiple Lobbies, so long as those Lobbies do not have directly contradictory goals The agenda of a Political Lobby is always in relation to a specific foreign power, and there are four types of Political Lobbies being added in 1.7/Sphere of Influence:

• Pro-Country Lobby: This Political Lobby seeks to promote and advance the interests of their target country, both in relation to their home country and in a more global sense
• Anti-Country Lobby: The opposite of the Pro-Country Lobby, this Lobby seeks to hinder the interests of their target country and take it down a peg whenever possible
• Pro-Overlord Lobby: A Pro-Overlord Lobby can only form in a subject country, and will always target the overlord. It seeks to promote loyalty towards and closer integration with the overlord.
• Anti-Overlord Lobby: The opposite of the Pro-Overlord lobby, this lobby is also only for subject countries and wants to become less dependent on the overlord, and ideally secure independence for their home country if the opportunity arises.

Happy Thursday, it's time for more Sphere of Influence / Update 1.7 news! One of the many benefits of being a Victorian-era Great Power is that you might get to lord over not just your own people, but other nations as well. Whether acquired through brutal conquest, colonial machinations, or willing subserviency, countries subjugated under your leadership can benefit your empire in a number of ways:

• they expand your market
• they provide you with a share of their Prestige
• they may compensate you with taxes in exchange for your protection
• they may join your wars
• etc.

Liberty Desire

• Break Free: the AI attempts to become independent from their overlord
• Increased Self-Reliance: the AI attempts to increase their autonomy and become less dependent on their overlord, but will not seek outright independence
• Maintain Autonomy: the AI wants to maintain their autonomy and relationship with their overlord just as it is
• Integrate with Suzerain: the AI wants closer integration with their overlord and will loyally comply with their wishes

• Relations: obviously, high relations will lower Liberty Desire and vice versa
• Relative Prestige: the greater the difference in Prestige between overlord and subject the lower the Liberty Desire. The less autonomous your subject is, the greater the Prestige difference you need to maintain to depress Liberty Desire.
• Economic Dependence and Lobbies: explained in greater detail below
• Market Isolation or supply problems: if you cannot provide your subject with effective access to your market, they will be more inclined to demand sovereignty
• Change Rate scaling: the higher or lower Liberty Desire gets, the slower its rate of progression, giving you more opportunities to manipulate it with Diplomatic Actions (which we'll discuss soon)

Economic Dependence

Lobbies

Subject Actions

Overlord Actions

Support Independence

Improved Imposition of Laws

Conclusion

Hello and welcome to another Victoria 3 Dev Diary! After last weeks look at Power Blocs, we are going to take a look at another major set of changes that are going to arrive with Sphere of Influence and the free 1.7 update. Namely, a revision of the Building Ownership system and what it allows us to do: Foreign Investment, a much requested feature which makes its debut in 1.7. You will see that the changes we are making impact your visibility of ownership and the affected Pops throughout the game. To understand all the mechanics we will be looking at an example country in the heart of Europe.

Ownership types

• Worker owned
• Privately owned (Financial Districts and Manor Houses)
• Country owned

Privatization

Investment

Foreign Investment

One-directional Investment Rights in either direction, so you either demand to be allowed to invest in their country or offer another country to invest in yours [/olist] The [redacted] has been [redacted]. We shall see its effects on the 11. of April.
There is also a Power Bloc Principle group that deals with Foreign Investment which on Tier 3 has the consequence of being able to invest in any member country. No matter how you got the Investment Rights, you and also your Pops will be able to invest in the target country. Private investment does consider foreign states as potential targets for their expansions, allowing them to build profitable buildings more easily. As nice as it is that Prussia has invested in new buildings in Bavaria, I dont think we can let them get away with diverting the profits to Berlin instead of our own population!

Nationalization

Nationalization allows you to take control of foreign assets in your country. You cannot nationalize other countries assets as long as they possess Foreign Investment rights in your country. Once that is no longer the case, e.g. if Bavaria left the Zollverein Power Bloc, you can peacefully nationalize their building levels in your country. For that you need to pay a sum of money from your treasury. Similarly to Privatization, the sum is determined by the construction cost + modifiers from laws. You will also be able to nationalize your own Pops building levels, both worker-owned and privately owned, if youd like to take ownership. Nationalization is not seen positively by the affected Pops of course and will radicalize them. We should compensate them to reduce the quarrels.
But what if the Bavarian coffers are empty yet you still want to take over that juicy productive Furniture Manufacturies that is owned by Prussia? Well, there is always an alternative. Pay them? I dont think so!
You can demand nationalization of a countrys assets in your country. If they accept, their building levels ownership changes to your country. If they dont, you can try and enforce it as a wargoal. If you are successful, you will also remove their Foreign Investment Rights for your country in addition to taking control of their buildings in your country.

Building Registry

To visualize all these new mechanics, we are introducing the Building Registry, which allows you a customizable look at your countrys situation. All the building data one could wish for
This is a major new UI, that similar to the Census Data window, comes with a lot of functionality to filter the available data. Only show buildings outside your country? Sure. See all buildings that are owned by Pops and which are currently not hiring but not fully employed? No problem. Lots of filter groups to browse through
We hope you find this as useful as we do. You can access it via the button on the bottom of the Buildings panel. Really recommend pressing that button

Implications for the Directly Controlled Investment Pool Game Rule

As you can imagine, this new system of ownership, geographic wealth extraction, and privatization/nationalization has far-reaching implications on the economic foundations of Victoria 3. It enables a lot of interesting dynamics we haven't been able to model until this time and adds a whole new dimension to your economic laws. It also comes with the consequence of making the Directly Controlled Investment Pool game rule that we introduced with 1.2 (as a legacy alternative to the new Autonomous Investment system) impossible to maintain. In 1.6 and prior, if this game rule was turned on, the player would be directing all construction efforts. As long as there was money in the investment pool and the construction queue was building a privately-owned building, the cost of construction goods would be coming out of the investment pool first before being carried by the state budget. With the new rules for building ownership, investment rights, and so on in 1.7 this no longer makes sense - there's now a very clear distinction between a building project initiated by a private investor and the state, a potential source of conflict innate to both foreign ownership and the privatization/nationalization mechanics, and even differences between owners in different regions that cannot be represented if all construction projects were player-initiated. Because of this it no longer makes sense for players to be in charge of both public and private investments simultaneously, and as such the Directly Controlled Investment Pool rule has had to be removed for 1.7 and beyond. While we can't support non-default game rules to the same degree as the standard options, removing a game rule completely is not something we'd ever do without good cause. We know that a smaller fraction of you favored this setting so we want to be clear with why its removal was a necessity to move forward with these improvements to ownership and foreign expansion.

Outlook

I would like to end todays Dev Diary by providing a short outlook for what these changes also enable us to do in the future. The main thing here is affecting Companies. The way we have reworked ownership allows us to create Company headquarter buildings which can then own specific building levels of industries they care about, determining its profitability from and providing their throughput bonuses only to these. While we cannot provide a concrete timeline for that change at this point, it is something we would like to tackle for one of our next free updates. Thats it for today. Check back next week when Mikael is going to walk you through what changes 1.7 and Sphere of Influence brings to relations and interactions between Overlords and Subjects, including how these foreign investment mechanics relate to your grip over your extended empire. Overview for all upcoming Dev Diaries: [table] [tr] [th]Date[/th] [th]Topic[/th] [/tr] [tr] [td]4th April[/td] [td]Subject Interactions[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]11th April[/td] [td]Lobbies and More on Power Blocs[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]18th April[/td] [td]The Great Game[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]25th April[/td] [td]The Art of Sphere of Influence[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]2nd May[/td] [td]Changelog 1.7[/td] [/tr] [/table]

[ 2024-03-28 15:01:00 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello and welcome to another Victoria 3 Dev Diary! Im Lino, a Game Design Lead on the project and today I will take you through one of the big features of the Sphere of Influence expansion: Power Blocs. As Martin wrote last week, Power Blocs are multinational associations that are led by a Great or Major Power. They can take many different shapes, some of which I will showcase today. With your skills playing Victoria 3 (or rather: your skills picking Great Britain), you too should be able to lead one in no time, Im sure! Display of the most powerful members of a Power Bloc under Great Britains rule
But lets get into the details, starting with some general aspects.

General

Customization

Central Identity Pillar

• They provide a special ability to Power Bloc leaders, e.g. the Trade League Identity making everybody part of a customs union under the leader, or the Sovereign Empire letting the leader turn a member into a subject of theirs under certain conditions
• They define some rules for your Bloc, e.g. how Cohesion is gained (which well talk about later)
• They can unlock groups of Principles which is what Ill talk about next
• They define the rate at which you get Principle Mandates, which allows you to enact these Principles

Principles

Leverage

• At least one of the Power Bloc's members having an active interest in the country (a hard requirement for gaining Leverage)
• Positive relations and certain other pacts like Alliance or Trade Agreement
• Siding with target in Diplomatic Plays
• Lobbies for or against your country
• Economic dependence (which well cover in more detail in a future Dev Diary, but which includes e.g. trade routes between the countries)

Cohesion

Power Struggle

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Hello and welcome to the first Development Diary for the 1.7 update and Sphere of Influence expansion for Victoria 3. This Dev Diary is meant to give you a broad overview of the major Expansion and update features, which well naturally go over in much greater detail in the next few weeks. As mentioned previously, all of this is scheduled to release on May 6th and you can pre-order Sphere of Influence right now.

Power Blocs (Sphere of Influence)

Interest Group Lobbies (Sphere of Influence)

Foreign Investment (Sphere of Influence)

The Great Game (Sphere of Influence)

Subject Interactions (Sphere of Influence)

Building Ownership Revision (Update 1.7)

Liberty Desire (Update 1.7)

Hello Victorians! We have a hotfix today, with a number of bugfixes and in particular fixing the internal migration issue reported by players. Not for problem reports, but rather file any bug reports in the bug reporting forum, thank you!

Patchnotes

BugFixes

AI

Hello to the last Dev Diary on 1.6! A little of a mash up between 1.6, Sphere of Influence and the Train Pack! It is I, Pelly, here to be the voice of Victoria! (Read in the voice of the mysterons voice, old 1960s references are always relevant) We released a hotfix (1.6.1) this morning addressing the Mac crash related to sea nodes, one of the issues mentioned in the 1.6 Known Issues post. Otherwise for 1.6, we are looking to address a number of issues in upcoming patches including, but not limited to:

• A crash in the Census panel
• The Radicals and Loyalists in the Census Panel being reversed
• Embargo not being allowed below Poor Relations
• Script errors that may cause large error logs

Hello Victorians! Today we have a small hotfix targeting one of the known issues, namely the Mac SeaNode Crash! We are currently looking into other reported issues and will look into providing updates to them as soon as we can. Not for problem reports, but rather file any bug reports in the bug reporting forum, thank you! Patchnotes: BugFixes - Fixed Early game crash on Mac related to SeaNodes, blocking gameplay after a few years at the game start.

Hello Victorians! Today is not only free Update Blackcurrant 1.6! We also have an update about the Expansion Pack, Sphere of Influence, and a surprise free pack for all players! First up, the free Trains Bonus Pack! Choo Choo! The power and potential of steam transportation is brought to new life for Victoria 3 in Trains Bonus Pack. [previewyoutube=gYogd9Ye0HA;full][/previewyoutube] In this bonus pack, free for download for all Victoria 3 owners, players will see new models of classic train engines from the dawn of rail transport to the years of the iron horse, when the expansion of railways across continents signaled a new age and a smaller world. This free pack includes a total of ten new 3D models of train engines traveling across the game map. Five Experimental Trains:

• The Planet (Great Britain)
• John Bull (America)
• Saxonia (Germany)
• Cherepanov (Russia)
• Le Continent (France)

• GNR Stirling Great Britain)
• Jupiter (America)
• Sdbahn Class 23 (Germany/Austria)
• Class G (Russia)
• 120 Ouest (France)

• Fierce Competition: Use your Prestige to become a Great Power and create your own Power Bloc! Dominate other nations in a diplomatic arrangement to pursue common economic or ideological goals, whether promoting open trade around the world or spreading specific values to other nations.
• Power Bloc Customization: Choose the identity and principles of your loose alliance, whether it be a group promoting ideological concerns like the Comintern, or an economy-oriented bloc pushing for cross-border market integration like the Zollverein. You can even customize colors and emblems for your bloc!
• The Great Game: New events, journal entries and decisions inspired by the Russian and British rivalry in Central Asia, and a new Objective - you can play as any of the powers central to that conflict, including Persia and Afghanistan. A newly redrawn map highlights the many competing interests in this frontier between empires.
• Foreign Investment: Invest in the economic development of countries outside of your direct influence, making a profit from their financial success.
• Nationalization: Start a Diplomatic Play to seize foreign assets in your country and prevent your wealth from going overseas.
• Subject Interactions: Adjust the payments from your vassals and protectorates, meddle in their internal politics and more!
• Interest Group Lobbies: Domestic interest groups will pursue foreign policy objectives, promoting amicable relations with some countries and hostility with others, or even influence the development of friendly lobbies in other nations.
• Power Bloc Monuments: Build majestic monuments to emphasize your blocs influence and domination over world events.
• New Historical Flavor: New historical characters and companies, most centered on the Great Game content, as well as more events, new journal entries, Lobby related content, new clothing and event art.

Good day Victorians! Update 1.6 Blackcurrant is now live! Featuring a variety of quality of life changes, balancing, bugfixes and a number of new features! For Known Issues please look at this post! Please do not use this thread to report any new issues you discover - but rather file any bug reports in the bug reporting forum, thank you!

New Features in Update 1.6

• Free: Migration system rework with Cultural Communities limiting which states pops might consider moving to, as a measure to improve UX and late-game performance
• Free: Filterable and sortable fullscreen Census Data panel, to give you more insight into your population than you ever thought you needed
• Voice of the People: Implemented additional content for abdicating during revolutions
• Voice of the People: Added resign from Office character interaction
• Voice of the People: Implemented additional character interactions for countries with Secret Police, allowing for the assassination of troublesome characters

Improvements

• A newly spawned country that inherits a war goal from a war in progress will now be automatically targeted with a new war for those war goals by the holder of that war goal, at no additional infamy. A common issue addressed by this change is that revolutions no longer invalidate war goals.
• It is now possible to merge the entirety of a formation (A) that is itself the target of a merge into a different formation (B). This will retarget the formations that are traveling to merge with A so that they will instead travel to merge into B. Previously, this kind of merge was forbidden.
• The Art pop need category has been replaced with a new Leisure category, letting the very wealthiest among your people self-actualize in style. This need consists mostly of Fine Arts but also an assortment of other goods such as Clippers, Small Arms, Wine, Aeroplanes, etc. Services act as a low-weighted fallback if these other goods are exceptionally rare in your market.
• When a subject starts an Independence or Increase Autonomy diplomatic play, that play now takes place in the subject's capital rather than in the overlord's
• Overlords taking control of a play no longer get the option to switch sides
• Native Uprisings now have the native country as attacker rather than defender, and so no longer prevent the colonizing country from starting their own plays
• Added button to upgrade all units in a unit group
• The game will now warn you if you launch with mods that aren't marked as compatible with your current version. Pressing "ignore" will ignore this warning for the current version of the game.
• Garibaldi will no longer show up to defend countries against autocratic revolutions (e.g. Garibaldi should not be getting involved in Indian Peasant uprisings)
• Garibaldi will no longer show up to defend democratic countries against significantly weaker autocratic ones (e.g. Garibaldi should not be defending the USA against Native Americans)
• Garibaldi can now show up to fight for democratically inclined revolutions and secessions against autocratic countries
• Only fully occupied states now contribute towards war exhaustion, occupation progress has no effect
• Added new Mass Migration Attraction concept
• Updated migration concepts to be more representative of the current state of the game and be more interconnected
• Added mobilization and movement speed modifiers for formations and unit modifiers for formations
• Added a button to upgrade all upgradable units in a Military Formation, and one for all Military Formations owned by the player
• It is now possible for subjects to switch sides in a play if the other side has a Liberate Subject wargoal targeting them and haven't added any additional wargoals against them (the AI will do only do this if they are Rebellious)
• It is now possible to attempt to sway rebellious and human-controlled subjects by offering them Independence or Increase Autonomy as a wargoal. Reverse-swaying is also supported, so the subject can offer to side against their overlord in exchange for one of these wargoals.
• The effects of breaking manually vs auto-breaking a pact can now differ, auto-breaking an Alliance won't cause a relations hit but still creates a truce, for example
• Added more URLs for Historical Characters
• Canals now provide a bonus to migration attraction
• Mandatory baldness is no longer enforced on non-Buddhist Devout IG leaders
• The Pampas state trait now gives a bonus to ranching as well
• Mongolia is now only released in Outer Mongolia. A Greater Mongolian state will take some additional effort.
• Japan, Korea, Siam, Vietnam, Tibet, and Cambodia now start with the Sericulture technology
• Adjusted the population/arable land of Inner and Outer Mongolia to better reflect the situation in 1836
• Replaced the 'Gobi Desert' trait in Monan with 'Eastern Steppe'
• Renamed the 'Tianshan' state region to 'Tarim Basin'
• Added a Mongolian homeland to Dzungaria
• Updated the demographic data of Dzungaria and the Tarim Basin to better reflect the situation in 1836
• Revised Bulgarian and Corsican namelists
• Enacting Free Trade will now remove opium ban if you have it active as China
• Improved tooltips and performance in the Diplomatic Actions lens
• Decentralized nations now have their own logic for which attitude they display based on tension and whether there is an ongoing native uprising, and won't randomly display a friendly attitude that doesn't actually have mechanical significance
• Taiping states now require turmoil to be selected
• Baluchistan now requires Nationalism rather than Pan-Nationalism to form
• Moved a Dutch general from the character pool to the Dutch East Indies, where he will serve as a general and an IG leader.

AI

• The military AI is now much better at organizing its formations in HQs, and will create, merge, split and rearrange its formations to have more balanced sizes
• The military AI can now split off temporary formations during wars in order to defend or advance on fronts it would not otherwise be able to properly cover. The temporary formations are merged back into their parent formation after the war is over.
• The AI is now less interested in subjugating themselves to foreign powers they do not have a good relationship with in diplomatic plays
• The military AI will now create explicit garrison formations in important HQs that will focus on defending that HQ and not travel too far away from it. Garrisons have their own separate mobilization logic and will usually be mobilized during war if there is a perceived threat to their HQ.
• The AI is now more reluctant to give up its subjects in diplomatic plays, particularly if they are of significant value
• The AI now places greater emphasis on defending their capital state, especially against backdoor naval invasions
• The AI now tends to use defensive orders for their generals if those generals are commanding below-average quality troops on the front, so as not to reverse the overall progress with failed attacks
• The AI now considers qualifications to be more of a factor when determining what buildings to build and PMs to change to

Balance

• Capped the amount of of interests you can receive from Naval Power Projection
• Technologies can now increase the amount of max Interests
• Added another canning Production Method to Food Industries that allows you to pick between Fish or Meat as a consumption good
• Lowered Farm output of Grain from 30/50/90/140 to 20/40/80/120
• Removed South Africa's starting navy.
• Added a cooldown to establishing and disbanding companies. A recently established company cannot be immediately disbanded and a recently disbanded one cannot be reestablished right away.
• Pops will now consider their job satisfaction during employment updates.
• Reduced penalties on decentralized nations to prevent mass starvation
• Rebalanced the starting situations for most countries with Military Formations in the History files
• Hardwood Production and Focused Hardwood Production, Production Methods reduced Hardwood output to 10 and 20
• Decreased the amount of food from Subsistence Farms from 2.5 per level to 2
• Agitators may now only participate in an election once every six months.
• Edited the starting Spanish, Hanseatic, East Indies, Luxembourgish, Portuguese, Prussian and Russian armies to better reflect the historical situation.
• Greener Grass Campaign has been rebalanced and now provides a flat migration attraction bonus along a lower multiplicative bonus.
• Downsizing a building level that isn't fully staffed now only generates a proportional number of radicals to its staffing, and no radicals at all if the level was not staffed at all
• Researching Paved Roads no longer adds any infrastructure from Pops
• Pop Consumption of Automobiles in a state now adds a small amount of infrastructure, which is increased when Paved Roads is researched
• Converting to State Atheism now gives you a larger number of immediate 'converts' in incorporated states
• Added combat penalties to Panicked Retreat
• Added morale damage penalties to Controlled and Panicked Retreat
• Added Straits between: Sumatra and Java, Java and Bali, Zealand and Jutland, and New Zealand
• Citrus Orchard Production Methods now don't consume all wheat
• Barbed Wire is now unlocked by Field Works
• Removed Serfdom and swapped Slave Trade for Legacy Slavery in Grao Para
• Companies that required 10 levels of Buildings now only require 3 levels
• Changed unlocking technologies for some Cavalry units
• Consumer Goods Tutorial now looks at local prices instead of market prices for goods
• Travel time for formations through different terrains has been lowered
• Stormtroopers Technology now gives Offense bonus to Trench, Squad and Mechanized Infantry
• The Brazilian monarchy now benefits from Great Power status
• China now starts with the Closed Borders law
• Drastically increased the naval power projection requirement for Brazilian slave trade events.
• Job Satisfaction from being able to afford expenses now scales with the income / expenses ratio instead of being a flat value
• When a country is Cut Down to Size, it now receives a decaying prestige penalty and is unable to start any aggressive diplomatic plays for 5 years
• Pop need rebalancing between categories, especially in the Wealth 20+ range
• Hanyang Company now gives 20% attack bonus for Shrapnel Artillery
• Removed Impassable Terrain from Islands and other areas where it is blocking combat for no reason
• Reduced Rubber input for Elastics to 10
• Lowered Rubber input, and Tools output for Machined Steel Tools
• Reduced Engines input of Reinforced Wooden Ships Production Methods
• Increased Steamers output in Steam Ships Production method
• Lowered the modifier for Metropolitian Railway
• Lowered the Interception chance of Admirals on Convoy Escort missions
• Added Submarine Offense Modifier to Experienced and Expert Convoy Raider
• Added a Farm to Piratini, Warsangali and Isaaq
• Gone through and balanced some Companies to make Prosperity bonuses more valuable
• Reduced the amount of Infrastructure from Streetlights Production Methods by 50%
• Increased the attraction of middle/upper strata pops in military industries to the Armed Forces.
• Slightly reduced the military penalties from the Lost the Opium Wars modifier.
• Reduced radical gain from losing the Opium Wars.
• Added Dye potentials to South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida.
• Mass Migration now consistently checks for turmoil or SoL specifically in the relevant states (e.g. homelands) and not as much in the whole country
• Removed Strait between Svealand and land
• Publicly Traded is now available at all levels of Motor Industry
• Removed the Artillery Foundry in Mexico because they have no consumption
• Pollution is now on Meat Production Methods instead of Fabric Production Methods
• "Socialist Demagogue" will now spawn less often
• Puppeting Bolivia now makes the Peru-Bolivia journal entry fail
• Increased the requirements needed to form the Confederation of the Rhine
• Characters that basically agree with the government can no longer be exiled.
• Elected Bureaucrats law now makes Bureaucrats more inclined to join the Petit-Bourgeoisie, rather than boosting raw PB political strength.
• Hereditary Bureaucrats law now increases Aristocrats political strength rather than raw Landowners political strength.
• Appointed Bureaucrats law now increases Bureaucrats political strength rather than raw Intelligentsia political strength.
• Subsistence buildings under Collectivised Agriculture now employ fewer Clergymen.
• The Monarchy law now increases the political strength of Aristocrats, rather than providing a flat bonus to Landowners clout.
• Council Republics are now more inclined to enact progressive laws and develop industrially.
• Agitators no longer interfere in the enactment of laws they have no stance for.
• Few states penalty to mass migration chance now works through a multiplicative modifier rather than division
• Rebalanced the value of the population factor for migration.
• Gave Montenegro and Nejd a Grain Import Trade Route
• Compaa Sudamericana de Vapores now targets Shipyards instead of Ports so that it can be Prosperous
• Exiling interest group leaders now angers their interest group.
• Patronise Realism no longer requires so many Arts Academies
• Reduced Bureaucracy penalty for Greece restoring the Olympics.

Art

• Tanks and Artillery now explode when defeated
• Added a representation of the Chemical Warfare mobilization option to battle dioramas when attacking
• Locomotive types are now spawned based on culture, political connections and market connections
• Added visuals to city buildings which to represent the Standards of Living in the area
• Added new first aid cart and field hospital 3D models to frontline graphics
• Fixed an issue with revolution flags appearing black, they are now correctly colored as the revolutionary interest group color
• Added new Flamethrower effects
• Added Maxim machinegun visual and audio effects
• Ships now splash when sunk
• Added new Vfx when battles end
• Fixed a bug where some of the Asian buildings would clip with each other
• Fixed a bug that causes the military flags to not be visible if the player did not have the Voice of The People DLC turned on
• Enhanced details on map units weaponry
• Reduced the range of the torpedo fired by the Submarine and Torpedo Boat
• Fixed lightmask on navy ships Frigate, Monitor and Submarine 3D model

Interface

• Added manpower, organization, and morale bars to the Military Formation tooltip
• Added quick action buttons to move all or half of the units and commanders from one side to the other side in the Transfer Popup
• Added info about tariffs and consumption taxes to the Goods tooltip, and also added buttons to change them there directly
• Added a table of Undecided Countries in the "Start a Diplomatic Play" confirmation, showing Military Strength and how likely they are to join either side of the Play
• When there are multiple enemy/allied formations in the same location, they are now consolidated into a single map marker which shows a summarized view instead of forming a 'tower' of map markers. Clicking the consolidated map marker will open a selection list to let you select any one of the formations it contains. The player's formations still always get their own individual map markers.
• Building expansion tooltip now takes into account the impact of understaffed buildings and queued constructions and so no longer displays overly optimistic revenue estimates for a building that's mostly empty or which has a bunch of queued levels already
• Added current + expected number of a default unit type's units to their selection menu buttons.
• Added number of current + expected units in a Unit Type to the Unit Type tooltips in a Formation.
• Added a more detailed list item in the Construction Interaction list, showing Employment, State Traits, Production Methods and Local Prices
• !' is now removed from the production method after mouse hovers over it
• The tooltip for changing production methods should now show much more accurate information as to the building's production, consumption, revenue and employment immediately after the change takes effect
• The tooltip for showing an active production method now properly takes into account throughput, input and output multipliers such as economy of scale
• Revised the way qualifications are displayed so that for each pop type, qualifications are only shown if the qualifying pop would have a reasonable chance of actually taking the job, based on factors such as job satisfaction and pop type wage, meaning that the qualification numbers can now actually be trusted to tell you whether you have Pops that both qualify and would consider actually doing the job in question
• Added new Migration map mode that displays amount of migration to and from states
• Added new Mass Migration Attraction map mode that gives a rough idea of what countries mass migrations are likely to target
• Added new Mass Migration Potential Targets map mode that shows the migration attraction among the states that are eligible for mass migrations
• Added customize button for a Formation's name/icon to their right-click menu.
• Added groups for journal entries
• Added a short "label" and a "status" for a Country, describing who they are to you and your relationship.
• AI Strategies are now shown in the tooltip for a Country
• Character Interaction cooldown duration now shows as preview before interaction is triggered
• Buildings that are unwilling or unable to hire now show more detailed tooltips with the exact reason they are unwilling/unable
• Reworked the layout of formations on the Military Panel
• Reworked Migration Attraction map mode to only show states in your market to better indicate how intra-market migration works and better indicate where pops move in your market
• Migration tooltips now indicate if a state is eligible for mass migrations or not
• Cleaned up and sorted the interest group tooltip
• Added Infamy value to the topbar.
• Exposed a Country's preference for each side in the Diplomatic Play directly in the Sway panel without having to dig through several layers of nested tooltips
• The Government Interest Groups are now added to the tooltip for a Country
• The current direction (up/down) of your Relations in the tooltip for a Country is now visible
• Replaced "State Taxation Revenue" text list in with the same information as a table
• Removed the Ongoing Diplomatic Pacts Outliner section (replaced with pinnable Countries)
• When Fleets are zero, they will no longer appear in the Diplomatic Play Sway panel
• When Mobilization is zero, it will no longer appear in the Diplomatic Play Sway panel
• Lists within the panels on the left side of the UI no longer reset their position back to the top when you close the window and then reopen it. They also retain their old positions when switching between tabs.
• Added the companies icon to the sidebar button
• Fixed issue where NO_ORIGIN_FORMATION_SELECTED was shown as tooltip text in Transfer Popup.
• An army or fleet without a commanding officer can now be merged with another formation
• The tooltip for changing production methods now warns you if changing a PM would result in other PMs (such as ownership PMs) would be changed as a result, and includes the effects of those changes in its calculations of production, revenue etc Migration values are now displayed as weekly values rather than annual ones (with a few exceptions)
• Added a small Price graph to each Goods item in the Market panel
• The number of Conscripts is now visible in the Diplomatic Play Sway panel
• Added new icon for electric companies
• Map notification for Grant Independence shows valid text
• Fixed Slave pops mentioned in Slave State tooltip not having a tooltip
• The warning for insufficient qualifications now provides more information, such as how many months of current qualification growth the missing qualifications represent for the relevant pop types
• Alerts that a diplomatic pact is about to break now only show up if relations are actively trending towards the break point due to ongoing actions/pacts, not if they're just close to the break point but have no reason to up/go down further
• When a pact breaks or is about to break, the interface will now provide much clearer and more readable information about the reason for the break
• Devastation and Turmoil Effect Map Markers are now visible on mid zoom level if State is being highlighted
• Tweaked the layout for the Country Details panel to show AI Strategies without having to scroll
• Reordered things in the tooltip for countries to more closely reflect the order of importance
• The Subject Types a Country has is now shown in the tooltip for a country
• Exposed the Ranking Number for the stats on the Country details panel
• Replaced "Members" text list in the tooltip for parties with a table
• The "Attitude towards you" icon is now shown on each Country item in the Diplomatic Play Sway panel
• Sorted all lanes based on total Power Projection of the Country in the Diplomatic Play Sway panel
• Agitator number on hover shows tooltip on where the Agitator Slots comes from
• Tooltip for political strength shows reason for slaves not having political strength
• Generals who used to Advance on a front but have switched to Defend no longer contribute their old Advancement progress to the front side's combined Advancement meter (visual bug only)
• Added tooltips for the sort header buttons on the Local Price tab for a Good.
• Optimized the performance of the Outliner by flattening the layout hierarchy
• Made it possible to unpin Diplomatic Plays from the Outliner
• Made it possible to unpin Political Movements from the Outliner
• Added a Country Map Marker to the Diplomacy Map Mode, showing Attitude and Relations
• Cleaned up the layout on the Diplomatic Play Sway panel, generally made things more compact to give a better overview
• Added a setting for having the Notification Feed show up the left of the Outliner
• Added colors to Notifications (good/neutral/bad)
• Transfer formation popup now supports state and unit filters
• Added Military Formation breakdowns in Country battalion tooltips.
• Fixed issue where unit type icons would sometimes not show up in nested tooltips
• Will now show the reason for Commanders not being able to transfer sides in Transfer Pop up
• The text for loading game in both main menu & in-game menu now says 'Load Game' for consistency
• Fixed long country names in various places
• Fixed overlapping text in Lenses for different languages
• Increased time allowance for players to answer sway offers from 7 to 14 days. The AI should still answer them within a few days.
• Tooltip when attempting to Disband Formation with too many commanders is now more intelligible
• Tooltip for Diplomatic Actions that improve or damage relations have been reworded to be less confusing
• Added better tooltips for commander orders
• Added keyboard shortcuts for "Zoom to" (z) and "Pin in Outliner" (x)
• Hooked in "Go to details" keyboard shortcut in all Information Panel headers
• The Religion texture is now visible in the tooltip for Religion
• Made it possible to pin Countries to the Outliner
• Reworked all Outliner items to have more, and better, information
• Market Goods Shortage is no longer duplicated in the Notification settings panel.
• Combat Unit unlocks in the tech tree now has frame around it
• If Load game is not available, an in-game menu with show 'Load Game' text in italic for consistency will appear
• Changed Judaism's color to light blue
• Fixed an issue where an empty army's mobilization status failed to display correctly.
• Changed the "Never" label for permanent Modifiers to "Permanent"
• Cultural turmoil now displays with consistent number rounding.
• Release subject option will be default option in Release-Subject tab in Diplomacy panel
• Added localization to sea node names
• Updated Attrition concept

Performance

• Reworked how pops migrate to reduce the overall number of pops in the world, in order to improve late game performance
• Shortened load times when starting a new game
• Made AI spending updates more performant
• Reduced the size of several of the particle textures to improve performance
• Resolved a performance issue with the revolution update toggling all mesh objects off each frame even when unnecessary
• Reduced performance impacts of Diplomatic Plays by having the AI calculate when it wants to declare neutrality once per diplomatic play instead of checking each tick
• Optimized battle code to prevent unnecessary modifier recalculations
• Parallelize checks for battle condition updates
• Improved performance when iterating pops by reducing the object's memory footprint, leading to better cache utilization
• Improved the performance of unit morale calculations

Modding

• Several migration defines have been renamed, restructured or removed
• Production Methods can now specify that they require access to particular goods to be able to be selected
• New trigger (num_cultural_communities) to check how many cultural communities are present in a state implemented
• Added new trigger that checks if a given state is eligible for mass migrations
• Added functionality to create and add tables to tooltips
• Added script links for migration attraction to be able to check what a state or country's migration attraction is
• New event target links for formation to home_hq, formation to current_hq, hq to strategic region
• country_army_unit_type_fraction and formation_army_unit_type_fraction triggers check the fraction of a specific unit type in a country's army or in a specific formation
• country_navy_unit_type_fraction and formation_navy_unit_type_fraction triggers check the fraction of a specific unit type in a country's navy or in a specific formation
• army_mobilization_option_fraction trigger checks the fraction of units having a specific mobilization option in a country's army
• Added console command `enactment_checkpoint `
• Removed `is_repairing` trigger, because it was untruthful

Hello Victorians! Today's dev diary will be a rundown of all the changes you can expect in free Update 1.6, codenamed "Blackcurrant". As we mentioned in our first teaser for Update 1.6, this update focuses almost entirely on polish - bug fixes, performance work, UX and AI improvements - rather than major new features. Our aim here is simply to make the game feel better to play. Nevertheless, we're sure there will be many lines in the sections below that are cause for excitement! As we mentioned last week, Update 1.6 is due to be released sometime next Wednesday, March 6th. Make sure to keep an eye out on our forums, Discord, or social media channels on that day!

New Features in Update 1.6

• Free: Migration system rework with Cultural Communities limiting which states pops might consider moving to, as a measure to improve UX and late-game performance
• Free: Filterable and sortable fullscreen Census Data panel, to give you more insight into your population than you ever thought you needed
• Voice of the People: Implemented additional content for abdicating during revolutions
• Voice of the People: Added resign from Office character interaction
• Voice of the People: Implemented additional character interactions for countries with Secret Police, allowing for the assassination of troublesome characters

Improvements

• A newly spawned country that inherits a war goal from a war in progress will now be automatically targeted with a new war for those war goals by the holder of that war goal, at no additional infamy. A common issue addressed by this change is that revolutions no longer invalidate war goals.
• It is now possible to merge the entirety of a formation (A) that is itself the target of a merge into a different formation (B). This will retarget the formations that are traveling to merge with A so that they will instead travel to merge into B. Previously, this kind of merge was forbidden.
• The Art pop need category has been replaced with a new Leisure category, letting the very wealthiest among your people self-actualize in style. This need consists mostly of Fine Arts but also an assortment of other goods such as Clippers, Small Arms, Wine, Aeroplanes, etc. Services act as a low-weighted fallback if these other goods are exceptionally rare in your market.
• When a subject starts an Independence or Increase Autonomy diplomatic play, that play now takes place in the subject's capital rather than in the overlord's
• Overlords taking control of a play no longer get the option to switch sides
• Native Uprisings now have the native country as attacker rather than defender, and so no longer prevent the colonizing country from starting their own plays
• Added button to upgrade all units in a unit group
• The game will now warn you if you launch with mods that aren't marked as compatible with your current version. Pressing "ignore" will ignore this warning for the current version of the game.
• Added offense, defense and occupation modifiers for unit types
• Garibaldi will no longer show up to defend countries against autocratic revolutions (e.g. Garibaldi should not be getting involved in Indian Peasant uprisings)
• Garibaldi will no longer show up to defend democratic countries against significantly weaker autocratic ones (e.g. Garibaldi should not be defending the USA against Native Americans)
• Garibaldi can now show up to fight for democratically inclined revolutions and secessions against autocratic countries
• Only fully occupied states now contribute towards war exhaustion, occupation progress has no effect
• Added new Mass Migration Attraction concept
• Updated migration concepts to be more representative of the current state of the game and be more interconnected
• Added mobilization and movement speed modifiers for formations and unit modifiers for formations
• Added a button to upgrade all upgradable units in a Military Formation, and one for all Military Formations owned by the player
• It is now possible for subjects to switch sides in a play if the other side has a Liberate Subject wargoal targeting them and haven't added any additional wargoals against them (the AI will do only do this if they are Rebellious)
• It is now possible to attempt to sway rebellious and human-controlled subjects by offering them Independence or Increase Autonomy as a wargoal. Reverse-swaying is also supported, so the subject can offer to side against their overlord in exchange for one of these wargoals.
• The effects of breaking manually vs auto-breaking a pact can now differ, auto-breaking an Alliance won't cause a relations hit but still creates a truce, for example
• Added more URLs for Historical Characters
• Canals now provide a bonus to migration attraction
• Mandatory baldness is no longer enforced on non-Buddhist Devout IG leaders
• The Pampas state trait now gives a bonus to ranching as well
• Mongolia is now only released in Outer Mongolia. A Greater Mongolian state will take some additional effort.
• Japan, Korea, Siam, Vietnam, Tibet, and Cambodia now start with the Sericulture technology
• Adjusted the population/arable land of Inner and Outer Mongolia to better reflect the situation in 1836
• Replaced the 'Gobi Desert' trait in Monan with 'Eastern Steppe'
• Renamed the 'Tianshan' state region to 'Tarim Basin'
• Added a Mongolian homeland to Dzungaria
• Updated the demographic data of Dzungaria and the Tarim Basin to better reflect the situation in 1836
• Revised Bulgarian and Corsican namelists
• Enacting Free Trade will now remove opium ban if you have it active as China
• Improved tooltips and performance in the Diplomatic Actions lens
• Decentralized nations now have their own logic for which attitude they display based on tension and whether there is an ongoing native uprising, and won't randomly display a friendly attitude that doesn't actually have mechanical significance
• Taiping states now require turmoil to be selected
• Baluchistan now requires Nationalism rather than Pan-Nationalism to form
• Moved a Dutch general from the character pool to the Dutch East Indies, where he will serve as a general and an IG leader.

AI

• The military AI is now much better at organizing its formations in HQs, and will create, merge, split and rearrange its formations to have more balanced sizes
• The military AI can now split off temporary formations during wars in order to defend or advance on fronts it would not otherwise be able to properly cover. The temporary formations are merged back into their parent formation after the war is over.
• The AI is now less interested in subjugating themselves to foreign powers they do not have a good relationship with in diplomatic plays
• The military AI will now create explicit garrison formations in important HQs that will focus on defending that HQ and not travel too far away from it. Garrisons have their own separate mobilization logic and will usually be mobilized during war if there is a perceived threat to their HQ.
• The AI is now more reluctant to give up its subjects in diplomatic plays, particularly if they are of significant value
• The AI now places greater emphasis on defending their capital state, especially against backdoor naval invasions
• The AI now tends to use defensive orders for their generals if those generals are commanding below-average quality troops on the front, so as not to reverse the overall progress with failed attacks
• The AI now considers qualifications to be more of a factor when determining what buildings to build and PMs to change to

Balance

• Capped the amount of of interests you can receive from Naval Power Projection
• Technologies can now increase the amount of max Interests
• Added another canning Production Method to Food Industries that allows you to pick between Fish or Meat as a consumption good
• Lowered Farm output of Grain from 30/50/90/140 to 20/40/80/120
• Removed South Africa's starting navy.
• Added a cooldown to establishing and disbanding companies. A recently established company cannot be immediately disbanded and a recently disbanded one cannot be reestablished right away.
• Pops will now consider their job satisfaction during employment updates.
• Reduced penalties on decentralized nations to prevent mass starvation
• Rebalanced the starting situations for most countries with Military Formations in the History files
• Hardwood Production and Focused Hardwood Production, Production Methods reduced Hardwood output to 10 and 20
• Lowered the requirement on Companies that affect Oil Rigs to only need 5 or more Building Levels
• Public Trams and Public Motor Carriages Production Methods for Urban Centers now produce Transportation
• Decreased the amount of food from Subsistence Farms from 2.5 per level to 2
• Improved the starting situation for Spain, Austria, Russia, Netherlands and Egypt by adjusting their buildings and Production Methods
• Agitators may now only participate in an election once every six months.
• Edited the starting Spanish, Hanseatic, East Indies, Luxembourgish, Portuguese, Prussian and Russian armies to better reflect the historical situation.
• Greener Grass Campaign has been rebalanced and now provides a flat migration attraction bonus along a lower multiplicative bonus.
• Downsizing a building level that isn't fully staffed now only generates a proportional number of radicals to its staffing, and no radicals at all if the level was not staffed at all
• Researching Paved Roads no longer adds any infrastructure from Pops
• Pop Consumption of Automobiles in a state now adds a small amount of infrastructure, which is increased when Paved Roads is researched
• Converting to State Atheism now gives you a larger number of immediate 'converts' in incorporated states
• Added combat penalties to Panicked Retreat
• Added morale damage penalties to Controlled and Panicked Retreat
• Added Straits between: Sumatra and Java, Java and Bali, Zealand and Jutland, and New Zealand
• Citrus Orchard Production Methods now don't consume all wheat
• Barbed Wire is now unlocked by Field Works
• Removed Serfdom and swapped Slave Trade for Legacy Slavery in Grao Para
• Companies that required 10 levels of Buildings now only require 3 levels
• Changed unlocking technologies for some Cavalry units
• Consumer Goods Tutorial now looks at local prices instead of market prices for goods
• Travel time for formations through different terrains has been lowered
• Stormtroopers Technology now gives Offense bonus to Trench, Squad and Mechanized Infantry
• The Brazilian monarchy now benefits from Great Power status
• China now starts with the Closed Borders law
• Drastically increased the naval power projection requirement for Brazilian slave trade events.
• Job Satisfaction from being able to afford expenses now scales with the income / expenses ratio instead of being a flat value
• When a country is Cut Down to Size, it now receives a decaying prestige penalty and is unable to start any aggressive diplomatic plays for 5years
• Pop need rebalancing between categories, especially in the Wealth 20+ range
• Hanyang Company now gives 20% attack bonus for Shrapnel Artillery
• Removed Impassable Terrain from Islands and other areas where it is blocking combat for no reason
• Reduced Rubber input for Elastics to 10
• Lowered Rubber input, and Tools output for Machined Steel Tools
• Reduced Engines input of Reinforced Wooden Ships Production Methods
• Increased Steamers output in Steam Ships Production method
• Lowered the modifier for Metropolitian Railway
• Lowered the Interception chance of Admirals on Convoy Escort missions
• Added Submarine Offense Modifier to Experienced and Expert Convoy Raider
• Balanced many Companies Prosperity modifiers to not be as powerful and made them more diverse
• Added a Farm to Piratini, Warsangali and Isaaq
• Explosives factories now consume Fertilizer and Paper instead of Coal and Iron
• Reduced the amount of workers removed from Automation Production Methods in Livestock Ranches
• Gone through and balanced some Companies to make Properity bonuses more valuable
• Reduced the amount of Infrastructure from Streetlights Production Methods by 50%
• Increased the attraction of middle/upper strata pops in military industries to the Armed Forces.
• Slightly reduced the military penalties from the Lost the Opium Wars modifier.
• Reduced radical gain from losing the Opium Wars.
• The Taiping Heavenly Kingdom will now be much more of a credible threat
• Added Dye potentials to South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida.
• Mass Migration now consistently checks for turmoil or SoL specifically in the relevant states (e.g. homelands) and not as much in the whole country
• Removed Strait between Svealand and land
• Publicly Traded is now available at all levels of Motor Industry
• Removed the Artillery Foundry in Mexico because they have no consumption
• Pollution is now on Meat Production Methods instead of Fabric Production Methods
• "Socialist Demagogue" will now spawn less often
• Puppeting Bolivia now makes the Peru-Bolivia journal entry fail
• Increased the requirements needed to form the Confederation of the Rhine
• Characters that basically agree with the government can no longer be exiled.
• Increased the chance of wealthy lower-strata pops joining the Petit-Bourgeoisie
• The Strike event no longer reduces the productivity of the entire country
• Shopkeepers pops in resource buildings now may join the Petit-Bourgeoisie.
• Increased the chance of wealthy lower-strata pops joining the Petit-Bourgeoisie.
• The Strike event no longer reduces the productivity of the entire country.
• Elected Bureaucrats law now makes Bureaucrats more inclined to join the Petit-Bourgeoisie, rather than boosting raw PB political strength.
• Hereditary Bureaucrats law now increases Aristocrats political strength rather than raw Landowners political strength.
• Appointed Bureaucrats law now increases Bureaucrats political strength rather than raw Intelligentsia political strength.
• Subsistence buildings under Collectivised Agriculture now employ fewer Clergymen.
• The Monarchy law now increases the political strength of Aristocrats, rather than providing a flat bonus to Landowners clout.
• Council Republics are now more inclined to enact progressive laws and develop industrially.
• Agitators no longer interfere in the enactment of laws they have no stance for.
• Few states penalty to mass migration chance now works through a multiplicative modifier rather than division
• Rebalanced the value of the population factor for migration.
• Gave Montenegro and Nejd a Grain Import Trade Route
• Compaa Sudamericana de Vapores now targets Shipyards instead of Ports so that it can be Prosperous
• Exiling interest group leaders now angers their interest group.
• Patronise Realism no longer requires so many Arts Academies
• Reduced Bureaucracy penalty for Greece restoring the Olympics.
• Vineyards are now in the Agricultural Building Group and instead of the Plantation Building group

Art

• Tanks and Artillery now explode when defeated
• Added a representation of the Chemical Warfare mobilization option to battle dioramas when attacking
• Locomotive types are now spawned based on culture, political connections and market connections
• Added visuals to city buildings which to represent the Standards of Living in the area
• Added new first aid cart and field hospital 3D models to frontline graphics
• Fixed an issue with revolution flags appearing black, they are now correctly colored as the revolutionary interest group color
• Japanese characters and pops will transition to more European fashions after the Meiji Restoration is completed
• Added new Flamethrower effects
• Added Maxim machinegun visual and audio effects
• Ships now splash when sunk
• Added new Vfx when battles end
• Fixed a bug where some of the Asian buildings would clip with each other
• Fixed a bug that causes the military flags to not be visible if the player did not have the Voice of The People DLC turned on
• Enhanced details on map units weaponry
• Reduced the range of the torpedo fired by the Submarine and Torpedo Boat
• Fixed lightmask on navy ships Frigate, Monitor and Submarine 3D model

Interface

• Added manpower, organization, and morale bars to the Military Formation tooltip
• Added quick action buttons to move all or half of the units and commanders from one side to the other side in the Transfer Popup
• Added info about tariffs and consumption taxes to the Goods tooltip, and also added buttons to change them there directly
• Added a table of Undecided Countries in the "Start a Diplomatic Play" confirmation, showing Military Strength and how likely they are to join either side of the Play
• When there are multiple enemy/allied formations in the same location, they are now consolidated into a single map marker which shows a summarized view instead of forming a 'tower' of map markers. Clicking the consolidated map marker will open a selection list to let you select any one of the formations it contains. The player's formations still always get their own individual map markers.
• Building expansion tooltip now takes into account the impact of understaffed buildings and queued constructions and so no longer displays overly optimistic revenue estimates for a building that's mostly empty or which has a bunch of queued levels already
• Added current + expected number of a default unit type's units to their selection menu buttons.
• Added number of current + expected units in a Unit Type to the Unit Type tooltips in a Formation.
• Added a more detailed list item in the Construction Interaction list, showing Employment, State Traits, Production Methods and Local Prices
• !' is now removed from the production method after mouse hovers over it
• The tooltip for changing production methods should now show much more accurate information as to the building's production, consumption, revenue and employment immediately after the change takes effect
• The tooltip for showing an active production method now properly takes into account throughput, input and output multipliers such as economy of scale
• Revised the way qualifications are displayed so that for each pop type, qualifications are only shown if the qualifying pop would have a reasonable chance of actually taking the job, based on factors such as job satisfaction and pop type wage, meaning that the qualification numbers can now actually be trusted to tell you whether you have Pops that both qualify and would consider actually doing the job in question
• Added new Migration map mode that displays amount of migration to and from states
• Added new Mass Migration Attraction map mode that gives a rough idea of what countries mass migrations are likely to target
• Added new Mass Migration Potential Targets map mode that shows the migration attraction among the states that are eligible for mass migrations
• Added customize button for a Formation's name/icon to their right-click menu.
• Added groups for journal entries
• Added a short "label" and a "status" for a Country, describing who they are to you and your relationship.
• AI Strategies are now shown in the tooltip for a Country
• Character Interaction cooldown duration now shows as preview before interaction is triggered
• Buildings that are unwilling or unable to hire now show more detailed tooltips with the exact reason they are unwilling/unable
• Reworked the layout of formations on the Military Panel
• Reworked Migration Attraction map mode to only show states in your market to better indicate how intra-market migration works and better indicate where pops move in your market
• Migration tooltips now indicate if a state is eligible for mass migrations or not
• Cleaned up and sorted the interest group tooltip
• Added Infamy value to the topbar.
• Exposed a Country's preference for each side in the Diplomatic Play directly in the Sway panel without having to dig through several layers of nested tooltips
• The Government Interest Groups are now added to the tooltip for a Country
• The current direction (up/down) of your Relations in the tooltip for a Country is now visible
• Replaced "State Taxation Revenue" text list in with the same information as a table
• Removed the Ongoing Diplomatic Pacts Outliner section (replaced with pinnable Countries)
• When Fleets are zero, they will no longer appear in the Diplomatic Play Sway panel
• When Mobilization is zero, it will no longer appear in the Diplomatic Play Sway panel
• Lists within the panels on the left side of the UI no longer reset their position back to the top when you close the window and then reopen it. They also retain their old positions when switching between tabs.
• Added the companies icon to the sidebar button
• Fixed issue where NO_ORIGIN_FORMATION_SELECTED was shown as tooltip text in Transfer Popup.
• An army or fleet without a commanding officer can now be merged with another formation
• The tooltip for changing production methods now warns you if changing a PM would result in other PMs (such as ownership PMs) would be changed as a result, and includes the effects of those changes in its calculations of production, revenue etc
• Migration values are now displayed as weekly values rather than annual ones (with a few exceptions)
• Added a small Price graph to each Goods item in the Market panel
• The number of Conscripts is now visible in the Diplomatic Play Sway panel
• Added new icon for electric companies
• Map notification for Grant Independence shows valid text
• Fixed Slave pops mentioned in Slave State tooltip not having a tooltip
• The warning for insufficient qualifications now provides more information, such as how many months of current qualification growth the missing qualifications represent for the relevant pop types
• Alerts that a diplomatic pact is about to break now only show up if relations are actively trending towards the break point due to ongoing actions/pacts, not if they're just close to the break point but have no reason to up/go down further
• When a pact breaks or is about to break, the interface will now provide much clearer and more readable information about the reason for the break
• Devastation and Turmoil Effect Map Markers are now visible on mid zoom level if State is being highlighted
• Tweaked the layout for the Country Details panel to show AI Strategies without having to scroll
• Reordered things in the tooltip for countries to more closely reflect the order of importance
• The Subject Types a Country has is now shown in the tooltip for a country
• Exposed the Ranking Number for the stats on the Country details panel
• Replaced "Members" text list in the tooltip for parties with a table
• The "Attitude towards you" icon is now shown on each Country item in the Diplomatic Play Sway panel
• Sorted all lanes based on total Power Projection of the Country in the Diplomatic Play Sway panel
• Agitator number on hover shows tooltip on where the Agitator Slots comes from
• Tooltip for political strength shows reason for slaves not having political strength
• Generals who used to Advance on a front but have switched to Defend no longer contribute their old Advancement progress to the front side's combined Advancement meter (visual bug only)
• Added tooltips for the sort header buttons on the Local Price tab for a Good.
• Optimized the performance of the Outliner by flattening the layout hierarchy
• Made it possible to unpin Diplomatic Plays from the Outliner
• Made it possible to unpin Political Movements from the Outliner
• Added a Country Map Marker to the Diplomacy Map Mode, showing Attitude and Relations
• Cleaned up the layout on the Diplomatic Play Sway panel, generally made things more compact to give a better overview
• Added a setting for having the Notification Feed show up the left of the Outliner
• Added colors to Notifications (good/neutral/bad)
• Transfer formation popup now supports state and unit filters
• Added Military Formation breakdowns in Country battalion tooltips.
• Fixed issue where unit type icons would sometimes not show up in nested tooltips
• Added historically accurate company icons
• Will now show the reason for Commanders not being able to transfer sides in Transfer Pop up
• The text for loading game in both main menu & in-game menu now says 'Load Game' for consistency
• Fixed long country names in various places
• Fixed overlapping text in Lenses for different languages
• Increased time allowance for players to answer sway offers from 7 to 14 days. The AI should still answer them within a few days.
• Tooltip when attempting to Disband Formation with too many commanders is now more intelligible
• Tooltip for Diplomatic Actions that improve or damage relations have been reworded to be less confusing
• Added better tooltips for commander orders
• Added keyboard shortcuts for "Zoom to" (z) and "Pin in Outliner" (x)
• Hooked in "Go to details" keyboard shortcut in all Information Panel headers
• The Religion texture is now visible in the tooltip for Religion
• Made it possible to pin Countries to the Outliner
• Reworked all Outliner items to have more, and better, information
• Market Goods Shortage is no longer duplicated in the Notification settings panel.
• Combat Unit unlocks in the tech tree now has frame around it
• If Load game is not available, an in-game menu with show 'Load Game' text in italic for consistency will appear
• Changed Judaism's color to light blue
• Fixed an issue where an empty army's mobilization status failed to display correctly.
• Changed the "Never" label for permanent Modifiers to "Permanent"
• Cultural turmoil now displays with consistent number rounding.
• Release subject option will be default option in Release-Subject tab in Diplomacy panel
• Added localization to sea node names
• Updated Attrition concept

Performance

• Reworked how pops migrate to reduce the overall number of pops in the world, in order to improve late game performance
• Shortened load times when starting a new game
• Made AI spending updates more performant
• Reduced the size of several of the particle textures to improve performance
• Resolved a performance issue with the revolution update toggling all mesh objects off each frame even when unnecessary
• Reduced performance impacts of Diplomatic Plays by having the AI calculate when it wants to declare neutrality once per diplomatic play instead of checking each tick
• Optimized battle code to prevent unnecessary modifier recalculations
• Parallelize checks for battle condition updates
• Improved performance when iterating pops by reducing the object's memory footprint, leading to better cache utilization
• Improved the performance of unit morale calculations

Modding

• Several migration defines have been renamed, restructured or removed
• Production Methods can now specify that they require access to particular goods to be able to be selected
• New trigger (num_cultural_communities) to check how many cultural communities are present in a state implemented
• Added new trigger that checks if a given state is eligible for mass migrations
• Added functionality to create and add tables to tooltips
• Added script links for migration attraction to be able to check what a state or country's migration attraction is
• New event target links for formation to home_hq, formation to current_hq, hq to strategic region
• country_army_unit_type_fraction and formation_army_unit_type_fraction triggers check the fraction of a specific unit type in a country's army or in a specific formation
• country_navy_unit_type_fraction and formation_navy_unit_type_fraction triggers check the fraction of a specific unit type in a country's navy or in a specific formation
• army_mobilization_option_fraction trigger checks the fraction of units having a specific mobilization option in a country's army
• Added console command `enactment_checkpoint `
• Removed `is_repairing` trigger, because it was untruthful

Hello! Im Alex, one of the system designers on Victoria 3 and Im here to tell you a bit about what changes we have been planning for Migration in 1.6. I have also [strike]conscripted[/strike] volunteered one of our programmers, Konrad, down from the code mines to give us some of the nitty gritty details about whats going on.

Goals for the changes

General Concepts

So, what has changed?

Pop Selection

Migration Destinations

Cultural Communities

Mass Migrations

Go through the eligible states in that country and pick the one with the highest migration attraction (after adding a small random factor) [/olist] After all this we spawn the mass migration for the selected culture and country we picked in step 2 to the state we picked in step 5. You might also have noticed that we now mostly display migration as a weekly value, instead of an annual one. The reason is that migration can change pretty quickly between weeks which used to make it confusing or even misleading when we focused on the annual value.
At this point, similarly to market migration, we select pops we want to move, trying to prioritize smaller whole pops and send them on their way to their new home. We do keep track so we dont send too many people from any one state or to any one state so we neither depopulate nor overwhelm states during mass migrations.

Results

So how did all these changes turn out? For now our own tests have given us positive results with a reduction of around 15-20% in the number of pops towards the end game. This comes both from a reduction in fragmented pops, but also in pops getting more concentrated in which states they are sent to, which also leads to somewhat fewer buildings overall. For all you [strike]gamers[/strike] economists out there, in this case line go down is good!

New shiny UX improvements

I bet youre thinking What about the UX improvements you mentioned though? Give them to me!. Also hello to all of you impatient readers who skipped through the details right to the shiny screenshots and UX changes. As mentioned, with the migration changes we wanted to also make the system a bit more accessible from a UX perspective as development itself showed there was a lot of information that felt way too hard to access and understand given how important it is. One change I personally am quite a fan of is that we now clearly display if a state can actually receive a mass migration now: Whod ever want to go to Rhode Island of all places?

If you are wondering about what the requirements for this are, they are now displayed in the updated concept for Mass Migration targets:
These requirements are not new, we just havent properly exposed them before. It can of course be tedious to check states one by one if they are eligible for mass migration, so we also added a map mode that shows you this: Remember to integrate your states if you want them to get any mass migrations! Also, its probably a good idea to make sure they are properly connected to your market..
While we are on the topic of map modes, we have also added a map mode that tells you roughly what country is most likely to receive a mass migration: The New World displaying its promise for greatness in bright green!
This map mode also includes a new concept for Mass Migration Attraction: Cant get a mass migration if youre so small people cant even spot you on a map
Something Ive felt has been missing from the game for a long time is a map mode that shows you where people are actually moving, rather than where theres high migration attraction. We have that now! Whats up with Idaho, though?
Finally, we also reworked the old migration attraction map mode so it only shows states in your market, rather than the whole world. This should better communicate the difference between market and mass migrations as well as show you where in your market people are likely to move to and from: Now you should be able to more clearly understand the migration flow in your market even in other countries.
For the modders out there, youll find we also restructured, renamed and removed a bunch of defines (this is your reminder to update your mods when 1.6 drops):

Next Time

Thats it for today! Hope you enjoyed reading about how were working with migration and that you are looking forward to playing with these new map modes and other improvements when free update 1.6 releases on March 6! If you cant wait until then, the next dev diary (two weeks from now) will have the full changelog for 1.6, which will include all the other things we've done outside of migration and UX improvements. See you then!

[ 2024-02-15 15:00:43 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello and welcome to this Dev Diary that will mainly focus on the Quality of Life improvements we will add to the game with 1.6. The improvements for this update are mainly focused on three areas: Diplomacy, the Outliner and the Census Data panel, with some additional bug fixes and improvements sprinkled on top.

Diplomacy

Outliner rework

The Census Data panel, formerly known as The Pop Browser

Misc improvements

• Isn't already the relevant pop type
• Is unemployed or a jobseeker
• Is not enslaved
• Isn't working in a government building or subsidized building
• If employed, wouldn't consider the change in pop type to be a downgrade (ie, Aristocrat qualifications for Farmers aren't likely to be considered - based on wage weight and how well their current workplace is paying)

• Text input box (write the number you want immediately)
• Slider + Arrow buttons (slide the number to whatever you need it to be)
• A list of all individual Units (if you want to be really nitty gritty and select/deselect individual units)

Closing thoughts

Hello Victorians! Today we have released a hotfix targeted at a few key crashes in the game, whilst we previously had said in the last Dev diary that we were unlikely to have more hotfixes. It was deemed important to fix these key crashes in a separate hotfix prior to update 1.6 releasing. Not for problem reports, but rather file any bug reports in the bug reporting forum, thank you!

Patchnotes:

Bugfixes

• Fixed a crash caused by peace deals allowing to-be-annexed countries to press conquer state wargoals.
• Fixed an out-of-bounds access crash related to Military Path Arrows
• Fixed a crash related to Military Path Arrow length

Hello everyone, happy new year and welcome back to another Victoria 3 development diary, the first of many for 2024. Today is just going to be a very short dev diary with a first look at free update 1.6, which as we mentioned in Dev Diary #102, will be a standalone update (meaning not accompanied by a paid DLC) that is next up on our release schedule. 1.6 is going to be a smaller update that focuses almost entirely on game polish (meaning bug fixes, performance work, UX and AI improvements) and not on adding features to the game, since after the massive slew of changes to the game that was 1.5 we now want to instead focus on smoothing out some of the rougher edges of the game. While we could of course just continue to release hotfixes for 1.5, focusing our efforts into a proper update instead is going to allow us to tackle some things (particularly on the performance and military pathfinding side) that would be too risky to include in a hotfix. While all this means that you shouldnt expect much to change on the post-release plans roadmap from 1.6 alone, you can expect some nice new QoL changes, such as the Pop Browser, a new interface inspired by Victoria 2s Pop Interface, which gives you a comprehensive overview of your countrys population that allows you to more easily identify problems or opportunities, such as pinpointing where exactly those 1 million radicals that keep stirring up trouble are coming from. The Pop Browser comes with an extensive list of filters to make the selection of Pops you want to look at as broad or narrow as suits your needs
The Pop Browser is one of a few other UX improvements coming in the update, but we will elaborate more on the other changes in our next dev diary (in two weeks) - going through the specifics of UI/UX changes in 1.6. See you then!

Victorians, wintery tidings bring news of a sale starting in the snowy lands of Steam! Explore the grand tomorrow, from the comfort of your room*! *Coal fire and smoking jacket, optional. 50% off Victoria 3 for the Winter Sale! New players can find information, our wiki, links to guides and more here! https://store.steampowered.com/app/529340/Victoria_3/ As well as the rest of the Paradox Interactive portfolio being up to 75% off!

Small hotfix today, fixing a number of OOS's! Please do not use this thread to report any new issues you discover - but rather file any bug reports in the bug reporting forum, thank you! Known bugs in 1.5.11/1.5.12 are present in this thread.

• Fixed OOS in AI related to headquarters when a client has a different operating system than the host
• Fixed OOS in AI related to fronts

Hello Victorians! Today we have released a hotfix for 1.5, which contains a variety of gameplay issues and is aimed to enhance your gameplay stability and experience. As mentioned in Dev Diary 102 it also includes convoy raiding balance, whilst also fixing other prominent issues such as some AI navies conscripting land units to swim around with them and conscript only armies not functioning as intended. Please do not use this thread to report any new issues you discover - but rather file any bug reports in the bug reporting forum, thank you! Known bugs in 1.5.11 are present in this thread.

Improvements

• Formations that are merging into a formation that is destroyed will now try to merge into the closest available formation to the one that got destroyed
• After completing the Opium Crisis Journal Entry, it is now possible to unban opium through a decision, but doing so will remove the reward modifier granted from winning the opium wars
• Resolving the Opium Crisis now gives a much stronger reward modifier for a longer time
• Refusing to address the Opium Crisis now gives a negative modifier for a longer time and adds progress towards shattering china
• There is now a 10 year limit to complete the Opium Crisis Journal Entry, after which it will fail with similar effects to refusing to address the crisis
• The Tibet-India border is now only passable in a couple places, so that a frontline won't be created in the Himalayas between India and China in the Opium Wars
• Power Plants now have the same structure of ownership PMs as Railway, and can use the Government Owned PM under most economic systems
• Power Plants can now be subsidized under laws that allow subsidies for critical infrastructure, such as Laissez-Faire
• Naval HQs are no longer created in regions with only impassable coastal provinces or sea regions

AI

• The AI is now properly able to understand the need to construct Power Plants in each relevant state to 'seed' those states with electricity
• The AI now considers subsidies for critical infrastructure (power plants, trade centers & railways) a must-have due to the potential economic armageddon that can be created if they are removed

Balance

• Reduced Attrition values from an average 2% per week to 0.8%, through a combination of reducing the chance and also the min and max casualties of Attrition
• Increased the average time between convoy raids in a node from 15 to 20 days
• Convoy recovery is now 4x higher during peacetime
• Capital Ships are now only 50% as effective as other ships at Convoy Raiding, as a scaler to Offense
• Naval bases now recruit new manpower somewhat faster
• Front advancement speed bonuses has been replaced with equivalent character (general) advancement speed modifiers
• Changed unlocking technologies for some Cavalry units
• Increased the requirements needed to form the Confederation of the Rhine

Art

• Replaced the background graphics of historic companies with more fitting ones

Interface

• The disband formation button will now mention that there are formations that are traveling to merge into the formation that is being disbanded, if any such formation exists
• Updated the Special Unit Group concept tooltip to list the correct Special Unit groups

Performance

• Improved the performance and thread utilization of supply network updates
• Small optimization in respawning unit entities

Modding

• It is no longer possible to target fronts with timed modifiers, or to make new modifier types that target fronts

Bugfixes

• Fixed a CTD when create_military_formation was run in an invalid HQ
• Fixed a CTD when one tried to add characters to a non existing formation
• Fixed an OOS causing error in the Characters category
• Fixed a bug that would multiply Convoy Raiding strength for every hostile country that held shipping lanes in a node
• Defeated Admirals are no longer able to contribute to convoy raiding
• Fixed an exploit that would allow ship-less fleets to be deployed to a sea node, blocking naval invasions
• Fixed a bug where Native Uprisings would not mobilize their armies properly
• Fixed an issue where AI attitudes were not correctly initialized on game start, causing most countries to have the 'Cautious' attitude regardless of strategic considerations
• Removed non-functional and misleading "enemy advancement speed penalty" modifier on the Defend order
• Commanders will now properly inherit relevant modifiers from active Mobilization Options (while mobilized) or timed modifiers on their formation
• Fixed a bug where state occupation percentages were not properly cleared when a country is leaving the war
• Fixed an issue where modifiers to war exhaustion from casualties would affect all sources of war exhaustion and not just from casualties
• Fixed a bug that could cause fronts to largely overlap one another
• Fixed a bug where the navy would travel to a node via land as a horse caravan when traveling through the land nodes was available
• Fixed a bug where adding conscripts to navies was not explicitly blocked, causing some very strange AI navies to occasionally appear
• Fixed a bug where the cost of construction queue items would sometimes not be properly calculated when the entire construction queue capacity wasn't used, which could cause private investment to over- or underuse the investment pool
• Autonomous Investment is now properly re-evaluated when a state is ceded, to prevent invalid constructions from being added in states a country no longer owns
• The Republican Proposal for Brazil now properly sets Pedro as the ruler of the country
• Fixed a bug where Paraguay's starting leader and traits would never go away in non-CotS versions of the game
• Fixed Mobilization speed modifier
• Fixed incorrect modifier for Truck Transport mobilization option
• Fixed Chocolate Mobilization not reducing 50% morale when removed from mobilized army
• Armies are no longer leaving a front for an HQ just because a participant left the Diplomatic Play that is still ongoing
• Fixed an issue that made it so AI countries with the relevant Journal Entry would not liberate subjects of Peru-Bolivia unless they had high infamy
• Fixed a bug where naval invasions could get stuck and never proceed to landing phase if the attached army's supply was not at 100%
• Fixed a bug that could cause Naval Invasions not to end properly
• Fixed a bug that would display irrelevant shipping lanes that didn't intersect the selected sea node
• Fixed an issue in the military formation notification for being restationed
• Audio soundbanks updated which fixes a couple of audio bugs like sounds appearing when zoomed out
• It is no longer possible to switch sides or declare neutrality in a diplomatic play where one of your subjects is targeted by Transfer Subject (this could be exploited to get subjects through sways and then invalidate the enemy wargoal by declaring neutrality)
• Fixed a bug where a Transfer Subject wargoal could cause subjects to not capitulate along with their overlord, resulting in strange lingering wars
• Fixed a bug where the overlord of a peace negotiating country in a war would sometimes not be considered a peace negotiator themselves, which could block peace entirely
• Fixed a bug where it was impossible to support allies against their subjects due to having an alliance with them
• Fixed a bug where an alliance with your market owner could block starting plays against your subjects
• Fixed a bug where Customs Union leader was considered to be the overlord of subjects of countries in their market, leading to incorrect diplomatic blocks and AI behavior
• Fixed a bug where only one 'liberate country' wargoal would show up for each target when adding wargoals
• Fixed a bug that prevented mobilization of armies with only non raised conscripts
• Mult modifiers can no longer reduce a value below the fixedpoint resolution limit (0.0001)
• Fixed a bug where the player got alerts for shortages for other countries in their market
• Fixed a bug that caused the notification for a repaired fleet to fire multiple times
• Fixes an issue in the naval invasion tooltip
• Fixed missing Loc for Subsidizing Power Plants
• Removed unnecessarily eliding label for job satisfaction in the Pop Details panel

Hello and welcome to our Post-Release Plans update dev diary for 1.5. Once again, just as in Dev Diary #79 and Dev Diary #89, well be going over what changes and improvements we have planned for the game in future free updates such as 1.6, 1.7 and beyond. Before we get started, a quick note that we are planning to release hotfix 1.5.11 next week. This hotfix addresses a few dozen remaining issues in the 1.5 release, including some rare crashes and out-of-syncs, graphics polish, some military-related modifiers not working as they should, and convoy raiding balance. Today we will continue talking about the same key four improvement areas as in previous dev diaries, namely Military, Historical Immersion, Diplomacy, Internal Politics and Other for anything that falls outside those four categories. Just as before, Ill also be aiming to give you an updated overview of where we stand and where were heading by going through each of these four categories and marking on each one with one of the below statuses:

• Done: This is a part of the game that we now consider to be in good shape. Something being Done of course doesnt mean were never going to expand or improve on it in the future, just that its no longer a high priority for us. Any points that were already marked as Done in previous updates will now be removed from the list, to avoid it growing unmanageably long!
• Updated: This is a part of the game where we have made some of the improvements and changes that we want to make, but arent yet satisfied with where it stands and plan to make further improvements to it in future updates such as 1.6, 1.7 and so on. Note that this section will mainly focus on updates made in 1.4 and 1.5.
• Not Updated: This is a part of the game where we havent yet released any of our planned changes/improvements in any currently released updates but still plan to do so for future updates.
• New: This is a planned change or improvement that is newly added, i.e. wasnt present on the list in Dev Diary #89.
• Reconsidered: This is a previously planned change or improvement that we have reconsidered our approach to how to tackle from previous updates. For these points we will explain what our new plans are, and change the list appropriately in future updates.

Military

• Improving the ability of players to get an overview of their military situation and exposing more data, like the underlying numbers behind battle sizes
• The military rework in 1.5 completely overhauled the interface and the addition of discrete armies makes it far easier to see where your soldiers are and what they are doing. We still have UX polish work to do here, but this is otherwise done.
• Increasing the visibility of navies and making admirals easier to work with
• The 1.5 military rework changed navies to work on a fleet basis, to have a visual representation on the map and to always operate in a specific node, which addresses the vast majority of the issues listed above. As with armies, there are still some UX quirks to work out here, but otherwise we consider this done.
• Finding solutions for the issue where theaters can split into multiple (sometimes even dozens) of tiny fronts as pockets are created
• With the addition of front consolidation in 1.5 and the ability to split formations to cover more fronts, this should no longer be a major issue. There may still be bugs that cause unintentional front splitting, and we will of course fix those as they pop up.
• Adding systems for organizing your generals and admirals into discrete armies and navies to allow more control over geographic positioning, military composition and unit specialization - Added to the game in the 1.5 update
• Adding more options for strategic control over your generals to allow for more smart play in wars - Added to the game in the 1.5 update
• Adding more on-map graphics for armies and navies, including soldiers on the map - Added to the game in the 1.5 update

• Turning individual ships into proper pieces of military hardware that can be built, sunk and repaired rather than just being manpower packages.

• Adding a system for limited wars to reduce the number of early-game global wars between Great Powers

Historical Immersion

• Tweaking content such as the Meiji Restoration, Alaska purchase and so on in a way that they can more frequently be successfully performed by the AI, through a mix of AI improvements and content tweaks - This is mostly done but there are still some issues with certain pieces of content, particularly the Meiji Restoration that the AI still struggles with.
• Ensuring unifications such as Italy, Germany and Canada dont constantly happen decades ahead of the historical schedule, and increasing the challenge of unifying Italy and Germany in particular
• Both Italian and German Unifications received some key improvements in 1.4 and 1.5, but were still not entirely happy with these and plan to do some further improvements before we consider this done.
• General AI tweaks to have AI countries play in a more believable, immersive way - As before, this is something we are continuing to work on in every update. The highest priority improvements planned here is to make the AI more active on the world stage and to make the diplomatic AI in particular feel less random and volatile.
• Going through the base game Journal Entries and events and making improvements and additions to ensure that they feel meaningful and impactful for players to interact with
• Several pieces of content such as Scramble for Africa had improvements and changes made to them in 1.5 but we are not done with this.
• Adding more country, state and region-specific content to enhance historical flavor of different countries
• Companies, country-unique IGs and a number of new State Traits were added in 1.4/1.5, along with several new pieces of regional content, but this is a point we are also aiming to continue to improve on in upcoming updates.

Diplomacy

• Reverse-swaying, i.e. the ability to offer to join a side in a play in exchange for something - Added to the game in the 1.5 update
• More things to offer in diplomatic plays, like giving away your own land for support - Added to the game in the 1.5 update
• Trading (or at least giving away) states - Added to the game in the 1.5 update

• Improving and expanding on interactions with and from subjects, such as being able to grant and ask for more autonomy through a diplomatic action
• Increasing and decreasing autonomy as well as imposing laws on subjects was added in 1.5, but we still want to add more ways to interact with your subjects in the next couple of updates.

• Have Interest Groups weigh in on diplomacy, for example having the Armed Forces disapprove of an alliance with a country that recently took land from you due to revanchism
• Make declaring and holding onto diplomatic Interests a more rewarding and challenging aspect of global empire-building

• Foreign investment and some form of construction in other countries, at least if theyre part of your market
• Allowing peace deals to be negotiated during a Diplomatic Play instead of only having the option to give in

Internal Politics

• Making it more interesting and competitive but also more challenging to play in a more conservative and autocratic style
• There are now specific laws for late-game autocracies such as One Party State and generally both more benefits to holding on to power and more pushback against it. This is in done not because we no longer want to do it, but because we consider further improvements to this part of the New points about legitimacy and national pride below.

• Adding laws that expand on diversity of countries and introduce new ways to play the game
• We have continued to add more laws and ideologies to the game in 1.4/1.5 but this is still an ongoing area for improvement, particularly in improving on the migration law group to be more about what kind of migration you want to encourage/discourage rather than whether its allowed at all.

• Turn legitimacy into a more interesting mechanic, where the strength of a government depends on their successes and failures, and highly legitimate governments cant simply be ousted at a whim but have to be undermined first.
• Introduce a concept of national pride which can increase or decrease depending on a countrys actions and which ties directly into legitimacy.
• Have discrimination not be a purely binary status and reflect forms of discrimination aside from whats written in the law, as well as making assimilation into a more meaningful mechanic in the process.

Other

• Improving Alerts and the Current Situation widget to provide more useful and actionable information.
• The Current Situation and Alert system is now fully customizable and you can choose which information you want presented as an alert, important action (or not at all)
• Increase the overall challenge in the economic core loop, as well as creating more clear mechanical differences between different countries and their starting positions in ways that encourage more economic specialization. - This was done through a combination of Local Prices and Companies in the 1.5 update, so that it now matters a lot more what you build where

• Improve on Companies by turning them into actual actors in your country that can own/expand buildings and interact with characters/politics.

• Find a way to deal with the excessive fiddliness of the trade system in large economies, possibly by allowing for autonomous trade based on your laws in a similar way to the autonomous investment system.

Hello Victorians! Today we have released a hotfix, that we internally started calling the Hotfix++ for how big it is! It includes a number of improvements alongside bugfixes and other changes. Please do not use this thread to report any new issues you discover - but rather file any bug reports in the bug reporting forum, thank you!

Improvements

• Convoy Raiding mechanics have been rewritten to operate on a sea-node-per-sea-node basis, triggering intermittent attacks on convoys from local raiders, which is reduced by fleets defending convoys in that node
• Military Formations can now start moving away from a front even if some of their units are in battle
• Your and your allies' formations can now borrow/lend troops from one another even for offensives if the "Allow borrowing and lending troops" toggle is set under Formation Settings
• Pops that get paid dividends or have investment losses will now be more or less satisfied with their jobs accordingly
• Disband Formation button with an informative tooltip of what will happen to Commanders and Units in the formation when disbanded
• Peasants will no longer feel satisfied with their job just because the aristocrats and clergy that own their lands are paid on average more than the rest of the country, as a consequence peasants are now more likely to go work somewhere else
• Buildings that fail to hire will now adjust down their hiring target and attempt to hire a smaller number of people next week (down to a minimum), while buildings that successfully hire will raise their targets instead (up to a maximum). This should address the cases where limited market sell/buy orders would make a building at 10% employment not hire because it would be unprofitable at 20%, even though there is a shortage of the goods it produces and it would still be very profitable at 15%.
• Added a button to voluntarily cancel a Naval Invasion in progress for the invading player on the Naval Invasion panel
• Defeated Admirals are no longer fully ready to return to battle as soon as they arrive at their home HQ, but require at least 50% manpower before they can set sail again
• Job satisfaction term for pops feeling overqualified has been reduced
• Job satisfaction term for pops comparing the wage rate in their building with the national wage rate has been reduced
• Added a new journal entry to China, covering foreign missionary activities
• The Feminism technology will now change the stances of Liberal and Egalitarian Interest Groups on women's rights
• Buildings now fire a smaller number of people each time it does layoffs, but will do more frequent layoffs instead.
• Colonies no longer grow if the State is occupied or has any occupation progress by an enemy
• Extra Supplies and Luxurious Supplies mobilization options now also increase the overall goods consumption of units but grant them stronger combat bonuses
• Establishing and disbanding companies now have a cooldown; a recently established company cannot be immediately disbanded and a recently disbanded one cannot be reestablished right away
• Added entity visualization for off-road travel for armies
• Input Good Shortages in military buildings now affect Formation Supply
• Liberate Country wargoal is now considered contested if all the states that it would release are occupied by the holder or their allies
• Regular battalions under Peasant Levies no longer have any limitations on what unit type they can be, but conscripts are limited to only Irregulars and Hussars
• Forming Turtle Island now has additional requirements
• You can no longer use Disband Formation if this would result in Commanders being dismissed
• It is now possible to transfer all Admirals out of a fleet in a sea node, resulting in the original fleet automatically returning home
• Rehoming a formation now also causes it to travel to the new home headquarters
• It is no longer possible to construct unit types whose upkeep goods you have no access to in the target state
• Added formation mobilization and movement speed modifiers to military units
• Demobilization cooldown is now triggered for armies demobilized during diplomatic plays as well as after the war has broken out
• Armies can only be rehomed when demobilized; fleets can be rehomed at will
• Cavalry other than Hussars now require Military Drill to recruit
• Jobseekers metric now correctly excludes employees working in government or subsidized buildings (they were already excluded in logic, this just make it clearer what employees are actually available)
• Only Great Powers may now establish the Confederation of the Rhine
• Rivalries can no longer be immediately removed after being declared, you have to wait 5 years to do so
• Historical starting Companies now have establishment dates
• Adjusted the building groups that affect the Canal companies and their bonuses so they can achieve profitability
• "The Great Locomotive Chase" will now stop firing some decades after the end of the American Civil War, even though it's fun to steal trains even in peacetime
• Starting Chinese and Russian commanders have been assigned to relevant formations
• Added more dynamic country names in South America

AI

• AI will now correctly identify whether it can or cannot borrow troops from other formations on the front and use that in its advancement decision making
• AI will now Convoy Raid again (previously disabled due to a performance-related bug in 1.5.9)
• AI will no longer advance with small armies if there are other larger armies on the front that could attack instead
• AI is now more likely to back down in plays where they are outmatched and the demands against them are not particularly harsh, particularly if by doing so they can avoid harsher secondary demands
• AI is now less likely to back down in plays where they have a large quantity of harsh primary demands being pressed against them, particularly if those demands include taking states
• AI will no longer advance with armies that have low morale or organization
• AI is now more likely to agree to an alliance or defensive pact if you have rivals in common with them
• Fixed an issue where the AI would be reluctant to mobilize too much of their army due to powerful allies even when they were in the process of losing the conflict and being occupied
• Fixed an issue where the AI would never upgrade its training production methods for barracks
• AI is now much less interested in offers of support that wouldn't contribute a meaningful amount of military power to their side in the play
• AI is now much less interested in offers of support if they already have overwhelming military power on their side in the play
• AI is now less keen on bankrolling countries in exchange for diplo play support if it would be a significant expense
• Added a new AI strategy for France, which assists it in gaining natural borders
• Fixed an issue in the AI where Britain would not start the Opium Wars due to their desire for treaty port not being correctly applied to their conquest attitude score
• AI will now never cancel trade routes with countries whom they have a trade agreement with unless those routes are at level 1 and unproductive, since those routes cost no BUR to maintain
• Fixed an issue where AI countries trying to open Japan would do so in a rather overly aggressive way, starting with treaty ports instead of using it as a defensive wargoal if attacked by Japan or outright annexing states alongside Open Market
• The AI's choices in the Fall of Salaverry event now properly impacts their diplomatic relations with the Federation

Balance

• Increased migration values across the board (to account for a general decrease caused by fixing a migration bug that enforced a minimum per pop)
• More advanced unit types now consume far more goods, particularly advanced naval units
• Somewhat reduced Persian resource potentials (primarily iron, suplhur, and coal) due to balance and historicity issues
• Stormtroopers Technology now gives Offense bonus to Trench, Squad and Mechanized Infantry
• Updated Trade routes so that nations are not missing artillery at game start
• Rebalanced the combat stats for many of the previously less useful unit types, particularly Submarines and Carriers
• Increased the chance of wealthy lower-strata pops joining the Petit-Bourgeoisie
• Industry Banned now gives a throughput bonus to plantations
• Removed de Francia's starting health bonus, making the Perpetual Dictator a little less... perpetual
• The South Atlantic Slave Trade Journal Entry for Britain now times out after 50 years, as opposed to 20 months
• Shopkeepers pops in resource buildings now may join the Petit-Bourgeoisie
• The Brazilian monarchy now benefits from Great Power status
• China now starts with the Closed Borders law
• Replaced some company prosperity modifiers with the new formation speed modifiers
• Reduced the enactment chance penalty for the starting Pyrages modifier, and removed it entirely for the follow-up one
• Reduced Brazil's starting army size to ensure all starting war participants can at least achieve a white peace
• The Strike event no longer reduces the productivity of the entire country
• The Taiping Heavenly Kingdom will now be much more of a credible threat
• Paddle Steamer tech now gives a small combat bonus to navies instead of extra convoys
• Patronise Realism no longer requires so many Arts Academies
• Removed the Artillery Foundry in Mexico because they have no consumption
• Removed starting Portuguese claims in Africa
• Slightly adjusted the population makeup of Mesopotamia
• Tweaked revolution_pulse2_events.5 to be less severe

Art

• Added flamethrower representation in battles when attacking
• Added a new victory and defeat battle end vfx
• Military troops will now start marching around your states when you mobilize your formations
• New audio events for flamethrowers, battle victory/defeat, rowboat, cancel naval invasion button
• Added backgrounds to the Company list items, based on Company Type
• Added Electric company icon for generic electric companies
• Updated some Alert icons
• Turned down revolution effect brightness during night-time

Interface

• Added a "Mobilization" tab to the Military panel in order to make it easier to change and get an overview of each Formation's Mobilization Options
• Added a new confirmation for switching production methods that is shown if any of the affected buildings is predicted to have a low productivity after the change
• Added functionality to expand Buildings from the Goods Local Prices
• Buildings that are choosing not to hire due to concerns about lowered productivity will now show a different status icon from buildings that are trying but failing to hire
• Added support to plan naval invasions by right-clicking a State
• The reasons given when hiring fails should now be more indicative of the actual fail reason
• Added ongoing Naval invasions to the corresponding State, War, Battle, and Sea Region panels
• Added functionality to recruit Units to a Formation directly from the Military panel
• Effects of unit veterancy is now displayed in the unit rank tooltip
• Added a new alert if your growing colony is isolated from your market
• Added naval invasions display to the war panel, sea region panel, state panel and battle panel
• Names for historical military formations are now localized
• Naval Invasions now always display the reason they are not currently progressing, such as waiting for traveling formations or being stalled due to admirals having the wrong orders
• The notifications for when a Rivalry, Humiliation or War Reparations pact expires are now far more readable
• Added number of available options to deploy/station military formation buttons
• Added a list for which Special Orders a Commander can take to the Recruit Commander window
• Added an alert for when a naval invasion is stalled due to none of its admirals having orders that let them battle opposing fleets
• Added a warning to the transfer units button and to its tooltip when a transfer would result in a military formation being sent back to their home HQ
• Military Formation panel is automatically opened when creating a new Formation or when merging a Formation into another one
• Made all default Unit Types visible on the Formation panel even though there might not exist any unlocked Unit Types in that Unit Group
• Made the warning for "too many special units" make more sense
• Effects of units on battle victory score is now displayed in the breakdown
• Early Demobilization now has a confirmation box that explains the consequences
• Added "Units Under Recruitment" information to Formations
• Added warnings in the naval invasion planner when the selected fleet has no admiral with an intercept order, or the selected army has no general with an advance order
• Added the raise conscripts button the the Army right-click menu
• Implemented disband tooltip descriptions for different units (and button will now be grayed out if you have 0 units of this type)
• Added indicators of monthly progress to the Matter of Slavery and the Age of Caudillos
• When a Diplomatic Play escalates to War, the Diplomatic Play panel will now replace itself with the resulting War panel
• Added the raise conscript button to the Army list items on the Military panel
• Slaves are now included in the "jobseekers" metric for construction interactions
• More status descriptions were added for military formations
• Show Military Formation Icon in Military Formation Alerts
• Companies now display their establishment dates
• Added a warning to changing default unit type on a formation if the change would cancel some units from upgrading
• Added a reminder to the Fleet concept that they take a long time to build and can get outdated
• Combat unit tooltips are now more likely to show the correct unit icon for its culture
• Sorted the "Expand Building" Map Interaction list by number of Levels by default
• Adjusted the error message for not being able to upgrade a unit with the information that the types are too different
• The colony map markers are now shown when you are part of an ongoing diplomatic play
• Removed Rank Icon from portrait_mini
• Commander concept now refers to Generals, Admirals and Formations
• Combat Unit unlocks in the tech tree now has a more visually pleasing frame around it

Modding

• All defines for Job Satisfaction now allow for decimals to be used
• Added a gui macros file ("data_binding/gui_macros.txt") and added an IsZero and NotZero function
• The is_mobilized trigger no longer supports a character scope, and now only works in a military formation scope
• Added a new effect to set the establishment date of a company
• Added separate AI strategy script value, value link and debug console command for AI desire for treaty ports
• Added a Logging.MilitaryFormations console command to print the current properties of all formations
• Several defines related to GOVERNMENT_STICKYNESS have been renamed to GOVERNMENT_STICKINESS

Bugfixes

• Fixed a crash related to CPdxSpan
• Fixed a crash that could happen during convoy raiding calculations
• Fixed a crash related to elections
• Fixed crash in "Poland not lost" event after a button click in Christ of Nations Journal Entry
• Fixed a crash where the Heavenly Kingdom would always attempt to create a formation in South China HQ even if it doesn't have states there
• Fixed a crash related to transferring units between formations
• Fixed a deadlock that could happen when the player got notifications in parallel code
• Fixed a rare crash that could happen if the Heavenly Kingdom ceases to exist
• Fixed a random crash that could occur when starting freshly loaded savegame
• Fix crash that could happen after production method switching while time was ticking
• Fixed a bug with earnings predictions where sometimes buildings would not accurately predict their earnings after hiring, resulting in them hiring even though it craters their earnings
• Enemy fleets with no remaining manpower are no longer able to block a naval invasion
• Fixed a bug where fleets with Escort Convoys style orders were not able to intercept enemy fleets despite having interception chance in their modifiers
• Fixed a bug where unification would annex colonial subjects
• Fixed an issue where the amount of goods buildings were producing and consuming would lag behind employment changes by a week, resulting in incorrect market sell/buy orders and buildings making incorrect decisions about whether to hire/fire based on outdated data
• Dependents created from casualties in war are now distributed amongst the state population again, to prevent military buildings getting filled up with dependents
• You can no longer use Disband Formation on a Commander-in-Chief to "reroll" your Ruler
• Naval battles that occur as part of naval invasions are no longer subject to a "Landing Penalty"
• Fixed a front update issue that would cause front destruction, causing armies to unexpectedly go home
• You can no longer transfer more commanders into a formation than what it can fit
• Fixed bug where sometimes supply routes would not show up in Sea Region panel
• Combat Units are now again listed in the Battle Panel
• Fixed bug that caused the light tank to not be represented in dioramas
• Added missing tooltip on conscript numbers in the recruit conscripts map interaction
• Fixed demobilization cooldown not being removed after diplomatic plays and wars are over
• Fixed an issue where the completion trigger for the strike Journal Entry required more angry workers as opposed to less
• Local Goods can now never be in shortage on an entire Market (only in their local State) as this created misleading alerts
• Fixed an Out-of-Sync that happened when playing with different languages
• Fixed an issue that would sometimes prevent valid fronts from being created when impassable provinces were involved
• Demobilization cooldown is now properly calculated when transferring units between formations
• It is no longer possible to demobilize armies that are actively involved in a naval invasion
• Fixed an issue that was causing the obligation chance from bankroll to not appear in the bankroll tooltip
• Fixed issue with last Hegemon objective not appearing
• Prevented from auto moving military formation when its front splits if doing so would leave that front side empty
• Fixed issue where conscript numbers did not add up in the Military Formation panel
• Restricts candidates for Romanian unification to ones that can actually have subjects themselves, to prevent event spam
• The La Plata event will no longer give claims on state regions that contain uncolonized states, thus blocking colonization for other nations
• Several tweaks to ambient audio effects (volume, mixing, etc)
• Fixed audio layering issue on the Carrier fleet model
• Fixed cannon fuse audio attenuation issue that would cause cannons to be audible even on the paper map
• Update to soundbanks to fix 3D hub ambience issue and vehicles/movement pausing audio issues
• Ambient sound associated with horse carts and rowboat is now reduced in volume
• Loyalists no longer benefit the communist movement in "The Spectre Haunting the World" Journal Entry
• Military formations now cannot split during a naval invasion
• Fixed a bug when flags would flicker in diplomatic play menus
• Ensured that a formation that is rehomed is also able to be stationed in the headquarters that it is being rehomed to
• Cost of War is now displayed for all war participants in the tooltip
• The Hell on Earth event should now be significantly less spammy
• New conscription limits are now properly enforced when switching laws
• Fixed an issue during the merging of two states where some pops would lose their jobs
• Fixed a bug where, when moving a military formation from a front that had moved, the formation would get teleported to the initial front location
• Rubber plantations can now use slaves as workforce
• Removed the native warbands modifier for a decentralized nation that becomes a puppet or Argentina (no more Patagonian Super Soldiers)
• Increase/Reduce Autonomy' diplomatic plays now only display in the 'Unavailable plays' list if there is a subject relation
• Unification diplomatic plays will no longer appear in the 'Unavailable Plays targeting state' list
• Fixed an issue where the hiring fail reason due to low qualifications would incorrectly display more qualifications being available than needed
• Fixed an issue where a subject would get no market access in their states that require a port connection during an independence war
• Fixed an exploit where it was possible to upgrade units to types they were not allowed to be upgraded to
• Consumer Goods Tutorial now looks at local prices instead of market prices for goods
• Land and Naval HQ map markers are now separate map markers with different positions on the map
• Fixed an issue where some state regions had incorrectly defined provinces
• Fixed the bug when local consumption breakdowns were incorrect
• Resolved issue where famines would fire in null states
• Added localisation for from_free_trade in the Social-Democratic Party modifiers
• Resolved issue where the Coluna Prestes would fire an empty notification
• Fixed a localization bug with the Catarinense Republic's adjective
• Russia no longer clones all of their commanders on startup
• Allowed Power Plants to be automatically expanded again
• Replaced a broken Paraguayan fertility modifier with a working mortality reduction one
• Fixed rotation of ships in naval battles to fire in the right direction
• Fixed a localization error with the portrait render scale setting
• Fixed an edge case where the game didn't consider employment a requirement for a pop to be satisfied which led to unlocalized strings
• Fixed some incorrect calculations relating to mobilization
• Fixed the broken conditions for the Ottoman Tobacco Company
• Fixed bug causing all the battle dioramas to have their units placed incorrectly
• Algerian nations will no longer employ five year old girls as generals
• Fixed flickering bug with the conscription vfx
• Added country descriptions to some European and Arabian countries that lacked them
• Fixed bug that cause the military flags to not be visible if the player did not have the Voice of The People DLC turned on
• Fixed additional issues with exiles' clothing and the Meiji Restoration
• Excluded units from other formations in the units breakdown from "Building for Formations"
• Fixed an issue where an empty army's mobilization status failed to display correctly
• Replaced placeholder icons for Mobilization Options Groups' tooltips
• The Red Scare will no longer continue firing events targeting a nation that no longer exists
• Domingo Sarmiento is now properly born in 1811
• The Paris Commune no longer creates two wargoals that do the same thing
• Removes unused defines: DIPLO_PLAY_SWAY_COUNTRIES_LEANING_MULT, WAR_GOAL_INFAMY_UNIFICATION, DIRECT_CONNECTION_COST_MULT
• The Rule by Decree modifier no longer uses a placeholder icon
• Fixed spelling of Ecuadorian culture
• Fixed one instance where one trigger was incorrectly localized with a duplicate error status indicator

Hello Victorians! The Autumn Steam Sale has started, for example the Paradox catalog is on sale now! Alongside picking up glamorous games for phenomenal prices, the Steam Award nominations have also started today! So, start voting today!

Victoria 3 is on Sale!

Hello Victorians! Today we have released a small hotfix addressing a crash, hotfix is numerated 1.5.9. The patch described in Dev diary 101 will now be 1.5.10 unless otherwise changed in the future! Please do not use this thread to report any new issues you discover - but rather file any bug reports in the bug reporting forum, thank you! Bugfixes:

• Fixed a crash that happened during formation calculations.

• Disabled AI convoy raiding temporarily as a short-term fix for a critical performance issue that could stall the game. A proper fix is in progress and will be deployed ASAP.

Hello New Victorians joining us for the Free to Play weekend! Below, we have some new player advice, video tutorials on how to play the game, alongside some common terms used by the community!

Starting out Advice

Suggested Starting Nations

• Persia - nice spread of resources and pretty stable!
• Belgium - helps you learn trading, colonizing and more
• Japan - a fun nation, can be isolated letting you learn at your own pace

Politics

Economy

• Pops use them for food, heating and other 'needs'.
• Buildings use them as input to make something. E.g. An iron mine uses tools to extract iron.
• Armies and Fleets use them with mobilization options and troops e.g. ammunition.

Diplomacy

Warfare

1.5 Specific Tutorials

Common Abbreviations

• AF - Armed Forces
• ATT - Attack
• CTD - Crash To Desktop
• DD - Developer Diary
• DEF - Defense
• DP - Diplomatic Play
• GDP - Gross Domestic Product
• GP - Great Power
• IG - Interest Group
• JE - Journal Entry
• LF - Laissez-faire
• LO - Land Owners
• MAPI - Market Access Price Impact
• NGF - North German Federation
• OOS - Out of Sync
• PB - Petite Bourgeoisie
• PM - Production Method
• PMG - Production Method Group
• POP(s) - Population in game
• RF - Rural Folk
• RP - Region Pack
• SGF - South German Federation
• SoL - Standard of Living
• TU - Trade Unions
• UC - Urban Center

[previewyoutube=NeR_wDxxhCE;full][/previewyoutube] https://store.steampowered.com/app/529340/Victoria_3/ New to Victoria 3? Join our Discord Server and ask our Helpers for help, or look at our wiki and resources!

Hotfix 1.5.8 is now live! Please do not use this thread to report any new issues you discover - but rather file any bug reports in the bug reporting forum, thank you! Bugfixes:

• Fixed a crash in CCombatUnit::GetModifierValueImpl
• Fixed a crash in the military formations manager
• Fixed a bug that would sometimes cause Transfer Subject war goals to not resolve as promised when a peace is signed or when a party gives in during a Diplomatic Play
• Imposing laws on your subjects now forces them to start enactment of that law as intended
• The Country panel's Domestic tab UI will no longer break when that country is in the process of enacting a law
• Fixed bug that prevented Quechua and South Andean subjects from being annexed
• Fixed a bug where military flags weren't visible if the Voice of The People DLC was not enabled

• Added a player-configurable toggle for which Workforce number to show in the Expand Building Map Interaction (Jobseekers / Peasants / Unemployed)

• Added a start_enactment effect
• Added an on_action for on_impose_law that will be overridden by on_impose if specified on the law type

Hello Victorians! It has been a few days since the release of 1.5 and the Colossus of the South region pack. First of all, we would like to thank you all for the response to both 1.5 and Colossus of the South. The appreciation for the art, narrative content, UX changes, mechanics and more have been very much received. We're also, as always, very appreciative for the feedback you've provided since release! Today we're releasing hotfix 1.5.8, which contains a few fixes and improvements including: Bugfixes:

• Fixed a crash in CCombatUnit::GetModifierValueImpl
• Fixed a crash in the military formations manager
• Fixed a bug that would sometimes cause Transfer Subject war goals to not resolve as promised when a peace is signed or when a party gives in during a Diplomatic Play
• Imposing laws on your subjects now forces them to start enactment of that law as intended
• The Country panel's Domestic tab UI will no longer break when that country is in the process of enacting a law
• Fixed bug that prevented Quechua and South Andean subjects from being annexed
• Fixed a bug where military flags weren't visible if the Voice of The People DLC was not enabled

• Added a player-configurable toggle for which Workforce number to show in the Expand Building Map Interaction (Jobseekers / Peasants / Unemployed)

• Added a start_enactment effect
• Added an on_action for on_impose_law that will be overridden by on_impose if specified on the law type

UX, AI, and balance

Convoy Raiding and Defense

Borrowed Troops

Job Satisfaction / Jobseekers

Military Good Shortages

Bugs

Flamethrowers

Enjoy the changes spread across warfare, politics, economy and more! As well as experiencing Brazil during a key era in history! Read the Patchnotes: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/threads/victoria-3-update-1-5-and-colossus-of-the-south-region-pack-now-available.1609767/

Hello Victorians and welcome to our centennial dev diary, which appropriately will be for the biggest free update Victoria 3 has ever received, with particular emphasis on the military mechanics! Alongside this update we will also make our new Region Pack Colossus of the South available for purchase, or for free to Grand Edition or Expansion Pass holders. You can read more about Colossus of the South in our previous dev diary. Update 1.5 "Chimarro" will be available on November 14, which also - not entirely by coincidence, I must admit - marks the 20th anniversary of the Victoria series!
Victoria: An Empire Under the Sun was released on November 14, 2003 and marked the beginning of an era of economy-focused, population-simulating Grand Strategy games. All of us in the Vicky dev team are humbled and honored to be able to carry on and elevate its legacy two decades later, proving our fantastic player community continues to demand deep, complex, immersive society simulators and (alt-)history gameplay. We hope you will love what we have transformed Victoria 3 into for its Anniversary Update, and here's to two more decades!
A very quick overview of the main features of Update 1.5 "Chimarro" above - if you want a lot more details, read on! First let's cover the adventures you can expect in Colossus of the South.

Major Features in Colossus of the South

• 19 new Journal Entries, including:
• Reign of Pedro II: Historical actions highlighting the reforms and ambitions of Brazils Emperor Pedro the Magnanimous, including the abolition of slavery and the modernization of Brazils economy.
• The Old Republic: The power of Brazilian landowners and the emergence of the Positivist revolution against the monarchy.
• Populism: Challenges to the agrarian oligarchy in Brazil from anti-government bandits and the populist Integralist movement.
• National Awareness: Development of a unique and diverse Brazilian culture, as well as expansionist goals in Paraguay, South American unification from Gran Colombia, and Pan-National movements of the Federation of the Andes and Rio de la Plata.
• Amazonian Riches: Exploit the riches of the Amazon while avoiding international conflict and national disorder.
• Over 100 new events, including 20 new events for national unifications
• Over 200 new historical characters (rulers, commanders, politicians, and agitators) from Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay, and Venezuela
• 11 new South American Companies
• New Gaucho outfits
• New Brazilian Interest Groups
• 5 new Achievements
• New event illustrations and a new state illustration, plus 3 new event audio stingers
• Christ the Redeemer monument
• New formable nation: Federation of the Andes/Americas
• New loading screen

• 8 new or reworked Journal Entries
• 48 new events
• 38 new historical characters
• New map setup for Peru and Bolivia
• New formable nation: Rio de la Plata
• New Ideology: Despotic Utopian
• New cultures: Sulista, Nordestino, Paulista, Amazonic, Ecuadorian, Venezuelan, Colombian, Argentine, Chilean, Uruguayan, Paraguayan

Hello. This is Victoria, and today I have two very important reveals to share with you. First off, the long-awaited Update 1.5 Chimarro, which has been in Open Beta since September, will be released on November 14. Second, it is my pleasure to announce our new Region Pack Colossus of the South, focusing on the Amazonas region of South America. Colossus will be released alongside Update 1.5, and will be free to all Grand Edition or Expansion Pass owners. The price of the standalone pack will be $5.99.
[previewyoutube=2P2kG1a73R0;full][/previewyoutube] Region Packs are a new type of product for Victoria, and will contain detailed content regarding a certain region or political sphere. They differ from Immersion Packs through a heavier focus on narrative content, and a lighter focus on art and mechanical systems. Whilst Region Packs do include some 3D and 2D art assets, such as clothing and event images, they do not include features such as new UI skins or building sets.

Infographics

Hello Victorians! This hotfix resolves the issue of AI using a lot of 0-sized Armies and Fleets on 1.5.4. For those unaware, the issue was: [quote]The AI wants to create a new formation but does it in the wrong HQ, thus it goes 'oh I need a new formation in Poland' (makes one in Prussia). Next tick: 'oh I need a new formation in Poland' and so on, creating the towering 1 unit formation stacks.[/quote] As always, please provide feedback and bug reports for the Open Beta on our Discord server! I shall see you there!

Hello everyone! Today we will cover the upcoming hotfix coming to the Open Beta plus a further set of improvements coming in the free Update 1.5 release (tentative release date: sometime in November). With the latest release of the Open Beta (Update 2) we introduced a few new mechanics which, it turned out, weren't quite ready for release. Being a beta build that is perhaps understandable (and you've all been very understanding!) but nevertheless we feel the issues are too game-breaking to leave in their current state. As a result we will be releasing a hotfix imminently (if it hasn't been released already, as I'm writing this in the past) that will contain fixes for the following issues: Cannot change language in the Settings menu unless game was started in English This could be worked around by setting the language in the Launcher before starting the game, but should nevertheless be fixed now. Occupying a state may remove fronts from the war Winning the last bit of a state, causing fronts to move, may remove that front from the war temporarily. In most cases the front re-emerges again after some time, but this causes you to have to redeploy formations to the front again. This should no longer happen. Crash to desktop in some cases when a front is destroyed, or when reloading the game Seemingly random crash related to repositioning of armies when their current front is no longer valid and they are forced to travel elsewhere, or sometimes when recalculating cached data upon reloading a game. The game should no longer crash under these conditions. Trade Route Caravans not visible This applies to all "caravans" traveling the network except for armies and fleets - horse buggies, trains, zeppelins, trading vessels, etc. They are now visible again, alongside armies and fleets. Occupation texture not visible on the paper map Sometimes partial occupation won in a state would be shown correctly and sometimes it would not, leading to some confusion over who won certain battles. Partial occupation should now always be properly displayed again. AI <3 Infantry The AI refuses to build any unit type other than Infantry or Light Ships. This issue has now been patched up - the AI is still not the greatest at evaluating which unit types to build for different purposes, but at least it's open for a bit of experimentation now. This job sucks A balance issue in the new Job Satisfaction + Migration system caused especially rich strata pops to be incredibly hard to hire and retain. In practice this looked like these job openings were just incredibly hard to fill or pops were "bouncing around", but the reason for this turned out to be as follows:

• A lower-strata pop is given a new job opportunity, for example a Clerk becomes a Capitalist
• The Clerk, having been promoted from a much lower Wealth level (Wealth 13, for example) suddenly finds themselves a Capitalist and starts comparing themselves to everyone around them
• Realizing that other Capitalists in their state and/or market has a much higher Wealth than they do, they become incredibly and instantly dissatisfied with their new lot in life
• Due to having such low Job Satisfaction, they decide they better seek their fortunes elsewhere, and join a migration wave to another state on the following week - effectively blinking out of existence as soon as they popped in
• Next week the building realizes they need replacement Capitalists and starts hiring more Clerks into that position
• Rinse and repeat

The Paris Commune

Miscellaneous Additions

Frontier Colonisation

The Red Scare

Clothing Additions

The Romanov Family

The Age of Caudillos

Hello Victorians! Today we have released a hotfix for the 1.5 Open Beta, which includes fixes for:

• Cannot change language in the Settings menu unless game was started in English
• Occupying a state may remove fronts from the war
• Crash to desktop in some cases when a front is destroyed, or when reloading the game
• Trade Route Caravans not visible
• Occupation texture not being visible on the paper map
• AI having a tendency to only build Infantry or light ships
• Job Satisfaction causing buildings to find it hard to hire pops, particularly rich pops
• Migration is reversed

Welcome Victorians, to the next update to the Open Beta! Featuring changes, improvements and new features highlighted in Dev Diary 97! Alongside this, we have also updated the known issues post - please make sure to read it before reporting bugs or submitting feedback. Finally, remember to join our Discord server to submit feedback! Key Features include from Dev Diary 97:

• Multiple Battles!
• Naval Battles are re-enabled!
• Conscription is re-enabled!
• Unit Experience and upgrading of units.
• Retreat and Pursuit during battles!
• Re-home formations!
• Food, Pollution and Population Growth changes!
• UI/UX updates.
• Narrative content additions and changes, including to colonial administrations, dynamic countries, more formables/unifications (including the winners of the community poll).
• Interest Group tweaks!
• Military Graphics!
• Finally some Performance improvements through Job Satisfaction for example.

Finally clicking the right side drop down box and clicking 1.5-beta - 1.5 Open Beta [/olist]

[ 2023-10-12 14:02:14 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello Victorians! Victoria 3 is now on sale from today until the 13th of October! So, grab your conductors hat and whistle your way along the Victorian era! (The expansion pass will also be affected due to it dynamically changing with price/items owned) https://store.steampowered.com/app/529340/Victoria_3/ https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/32180/Victoria_3_Expansion_Pass/

Good Day Victorians! The Remastered Victoria 2 soundtrack, previously a pre-order bonus for Victoria 3 at release, has now been given away to all owners of the game for free! You can access the soundtrack both in-game via the music player or through the files: \Steam\steamapps\common\Victoria 3\game\dlc\dlc001_preorder\Victoria 2 Remastered Soundtrack

Today's Dev Diary will be looking at the changes and improvements coming in the second update to the 1.5 Open Beta! Due to the sheer size of this Dev Diary we couldn't post it here natively! Please visit our forums to read and see all the improvements coming to Open Beta 1.5 here: https://pdxint.at/3F7EqUl

Happy Thursday! It's time for an update on how things are moving along with the 1.5 Open Beta. Today we will take a look at a few major improvements we've made since last time, both to the new military-related mechanics but also a number of other aspects of the game. As a reminder, adapted from dev diary #93: Update 1 will tentatively launch early next week. By this time the new features should feel a lot more mature, with bugs and missing information / graphics filled in, additional mechanical details closing exploits and providing new optimization challenges, and in general more bells and whistles available to you. While beta testing this update, in addition to feedbacking on what tweaks would make for more fun gameplay, focus especially on balance and UX improvements. We don't expect 1.5 to go live until sometime in November, so keep that in mind when assessing and feedbacking. We have planned two more 3-week sprints after this update for making additional improvements, fixing bugs and balance issues, and hooking up all the additional graphics our Artisans team is hard at work at. With that out of the way, let's get into the changes! Due to just how large this Dev Dairy is we are unable to share it on steam, please follow the link to our forums to read it in it's entirety! >Dev Dairy #96 - Open Beta 1.5 Update 1<

Hello, hello Victorians! We have released a hotfix for 1.4.2 today which includes a few fixes and changes to the game. Please do not use this thread to report any new issues you discover - but rather file any bug reports in the bug reporting forum, thank you! Fixes include:

• Time of day (unrelated to Day/Night cycle) is now visible in the top-right timekeeper widget again, with icons instead of numbers
  
• AI is now even less inclined to overuse Anchorages in Ports
• Import/export buttons are now available when observing goods in other markets
• Taino Statue mystic smoke is now less frequent (but equally mysterious)
• Fixed a crash related to Windows error 0xc0000409
• Fixed an Out of Sync in Additional Income calculations
• "SETTING_TEXTURE_STREAMING_TOOLTIP" is now properly localized also in non-English languages

The day is finally here! Hot on the heels of Dawn of Wonder and the 1.4 update, we have now launched a very early look at version 1.5 in Open Beta. This update is of course opt-in, and you can access it by switching to Steam beta branch 1.5-beta. During the Open Beta we will of course listen to and discuss your feedback directly on the Open Beta section of the Victoria 3 Discord server. If you haven't already, I would urge you to go back and read Dev Diaries #92 and #93 as well as this one, since they cover the Companies and Military Improvements in more detail than we do in the changelog here. If you elect to participate in the Open Beta it is especially important you read the first part of #93 since it goes deeper into what to expect from each beta release. There are also a number of known issues with the initial release, some of them which might heavily impact your game, which you should be aware of. I will echo it here for your convenience, but remember to always consult the living document since that will reflect the most major issues of the Open Beta build as we find more of them. [hr][/hr] Dear Victorians! It is time for some feedback for our Open Beta. But before we would like to introduce some known issues in our 1.5 Open Beta. If you encounter any issues in 1.5 Open Beta not listed below, please report it! First some notes about hurdles and exploits you might encounter during warfare:

• Commander Orders are undergoing a bit of a rework, since they will now represent the behavior of individual commanders (what they're doing) while the location (where they're doing it) is determined by their formation. This has a few implications that may not be apparent at the moment:
• The "Stand By" Order does nothing and will be removed in future beta builds, there is never any reason to assign this currently
• Formations will not advance unless at least one General has the Advance order. If you notice a formation you've sent to the front not advancing and creating battles, make sure the Generals you want leading the attack actually have the Advance order set. This can be done either from the Character panel or the Formation panel.
• All Naval Orders are currently useless, they will be reworked in future beta builds
• Naval Invasions currently have a very unintuitive UX flow and are very easy to exploit. Both will be improved in future beta builds. In 1.5.0, follow these steps to issue a Naval Invasion:
• From the Military lens -> Navy tab, click Plan Naval Invasion
• Select the state you want to invade
• In the popup, select a fleet and a demobilized army
• Ignore the static pink text as these are placeholders for information that will be added in future beta builds
• Confirm the naval invasion
• The fleet will now travel to the sea node off the coast of the target state
• Meanwhile, the army will start mobilizing
• Once the fleet has arrived and the army has mobilized, a landing battle will ensue; it is likely, in the current build, that there is no resistance and the battle will be immediately won, with the state conquered and a front created
• The invasion is now won and the army will be assigned to the front. Remember to ensure at least one General in the army has an Advance order if you want to advance the front.

• Morale Loss does not work correctly in battles, making them take an excessively long time to conclude.
• Visible issue in the Military tab there are two Artillery sections.
• It is possible to change names of Formations that do not belong to the player.
• Hovering the Garrisoned in the Formation window displays the concept for Mobilize Army.
• In some cases flags in the Load Game menu will be swapped causing inaccuracy.
• Creating an Army in an HQ does not close the map interaction for Army creation, which may give an impression that no army is created
• Outdated Important Action for Admirals with no Flotillas in Current Situations.
• We are aware about the untranslated main menu text, basic information in the main menu is available in English only.
• The Naval Invasion Planner Interface contains a lot of (pink) placeholder text. The functionality that is described in this temporary text , e.g. calculations about travel time and efficiency are inaccurate.
• When splitting a Fleet in transit during a Naval invasion, the split fleet continues on the same path as the original Naval Invasion.
• There is some clipping in the Formation panel.
• In the right-click menu of formations - the Station command is available within formations/fleet menus, but it's grayed out in the right-click menu.
• You also might notice that we have unlocalized tooltips in Naval Invasions and in Military Unit Type instances.
• Observing greater wars and clicking on Sea Nodes might decrease the performance of the game.

• MacOS hosting in multiplayer sessions leads to out of syncs.
• High chance to get an Out of Sync shortly after starting a new game in multiplayer.

Changelog Open Beta 1.5.0

Features

• Military Formations can now be created, which will contain up to 4 commanders and any number of units. Military Formations determine the location of your military forces, while commander Orders continue to determine their behavior in that location.
• Companies: Each country now has a number of company slots which increases from technology and laws. A company has a number of associated building types, and improves the throughput and construction speed of those building types in its country. If a company's buildings have high productivity compared to the global average, the company will gain Prosperity over time and unlock a special bonus modifier. There are a number of basic companies that are available to all countries which can construct their associated building types. Companies unique to countries with particular circumstances, such as culture and geographic boundaries, will be added in future beta updates.
• The degree to which the Market can influence the price on goods in a State is now capped by the Market Access Price Impact modifier. This means that local production and consumption will now always matter when determining the price of a good in a state, creating the opportunity for local synergies and supply chains.
• It is now possible for a participant in a diplomatic play to offer support to either side in exchange for a desired sway ('reverse-swaying')
• The "Start Diplomatic Play" interaction has been changed into "Make Diplomatic Demand". This allows one country to demand a single war goal from another, which if rejected will start a diplomatic play for that wargoal. It is possible to bypass the demand phase and start a diplomatic play right away (useful if you want to make multiple demands for example).
• Mobilization Options let you configure how much extra goods you want your armies to consume when mobilized, with trade-offs to the efficacy of the army. At the moment these can only be toggled on/off while the army is demobilized, in future updates this will also be possible while mobilized at a penalty. Note that the UI is very basic and will get a facelift. At the moment, mobilization options not yet invented are not visible and there are not yet any indications what techs will unlock which options.
• Occupation is now gained or removed in a state (instead of provinces) as a result of successful battles. The frontline will not move until the whole state has been occupied.
• Added the Call Ally sway which can be used to sway an ally (Alliance if initiator, Alliance or Defensive Pact if target) to your side in a diplomatic play. This sway offers no additional acceptance score but also doesn't promise anything to the ally.
• Combat Units can now be one of multiple types, which belong to a group (e.g. Infantry, Artillery, Cavalry; Light Ships, Capital Ships, Support Vessels)
• Services, Electricity and Transportation are now local goods whose prices are fully set based on local production and consumption and whose market price plays no role at all
• It is now possible to decline a sway offer that is calling in an obligation, though doing so will repudiate the obligation with all associated penalties
• Added the Become Subject sway which allows you to offer to become the Subject of a country (and consequently offer a country to become your Subject) in exchange for Diplomatic Play support
• Added the Transfer Subject sway which allows you to transfer one of your Subjects (and consequently offer a country to transfer their Subject to you) in exchange for Diplomatic Play support
• Added the Transfer State sway which allows you to transfer one of your State (and consequently offer a country to transfer their state to you) in exchange for Diplomatic Play support
• Added the Diplomatic Pact sway which allows you to offer certain Diplomatic Pacts such as Trade Agreements, Customs Unions and Bankrolling to a country in exchange for Diplomatic Play support, with a forced duration of 5 years if accepted. Bankroll pacts resulting from this do not generate any Obligations while their forced duration is in effect.
• Battles are now detached from Fronts. They don't necessarily happen in the front line anymore; they will not be destroyed when the Front gets destroyed. Also, if a Front gets destroyed by being merged into another, all of their battles (active and ended) are transferred to the other front.
• Unique approval-activated traits for Interest Groups in several countries
• The player can now force a subject country to start enactment of a different law than their current one from the subject's country panel (early functionality, to be improved later)
• Armies can be demobilized during wars, leading to them returning to the closest HQ and gradually reducing their mobilization consumption over 4 months
• The player can rename each individual formation

Improvements

• Instead of having a Front being defined by an adjacent pair of enemy theaters, now each Front side has its own set of theaters. On each side, each theater must be adjacent to at least one enemy theater, and if there are other theaters on the same side, each theater on that side has to be adjacent to an allied theater as well.
• You can transfer commanders and units between formations of the same type, which will create a temporary formation that travels to automatically rendezvous with the target if they are not already in the same location
• Added new Experimental Trains PM to railways and rebalanced existing PMs.
• Added new Vineyards building
• Split up Shipyards into two separate buildings that produce either civilian or military ship types
• Adding a war goal against a neutral enemy subject to a play now also forces the targeted subject to become part of the enemy side in the play so the war goal can be properly contested
• Station at HQ map interaction for Army and Fleet formations added
• Added new building Explosives Factory that produces Explosives
• Removed Explosives from Chemical Plants
• Livestock Ranches now produce Meat and Fertilizer as a base Production Method, Fabric is now a secondary Production Method
• It is now possible to start Liberate Country Diplomatic Plays, with the country to be liberated being picked from a selection list in the confirmation popup
• Radical pops are now more drawn to opposition interest groups, and Loyalist pops are more drawn to government interest groups.
• Petitions can now only be made for laws that are potentially able to be supported by a political movement
• Streetlights now produce a small amount of infrastructure when enabled
• Meat Packaging (formerly Vacuum Canning) now consumes meat and fish instead of just fish
• Traditionalism now gives -15% State Market Access Price Impact
• Stock Exchange now gives 10% State Market Access Price Impact
• German/Italian unification candidate now inherit the incorporation status of any countries they annex as part of the unification event chains (but not the wargoal)
• Increased the number of states required to form Germany to 23, which means Prussia needs to either take a state from France or Austria in addition to the various minor countries
• Illegitimate governments may now only enact laws that have support from a Political Movement rather than being blocked from enactment altogether
• Removed diplomatic actions to become/demand subject and ask for independence (these are now done through diplomatic demands instead)
• Ranching is now a fully separate building group from Agriculture, just like Plantations
• Revised modifiers & state traits that affect agriculture throughput to also affect ranching and plantations where appropriate
• Number of maximum commanders per country is now removed, in favor of a limitation of max 4 per Formation
• Removed Vineyards Production Method from Wheat and Maize Farms
• Added Wine potential for certain states
• The maximum potential imports & exports of trade routes in a market is now multiplied by the BUY_SELL_DIFF_AT_MAX_FACTOR define, so that exported/imported goods with no local consumption/production aren't always stuck around base price
• Deploy to Front map interaction for Army formations added
• Combat Units can now be disbanded from the Formation panel
• Deploy to Sea Node map interaction for Fleet formations added
• Colonial exploitation law now lowers manufacturing throughput in unincorporated states by 10%, but boosts throughput of mining, plantations, rubber and logging by 20%
• Dongola and Blue Nile now have the Nile River state trait
• Automatic formation repositioning: a formation will automatically reposition when the front it is deployed to gets destroyed. In that case, it will first look for a front to redeploy to, and if that fails it will look for a HQ where it can station itself in. A formation will also automatically reposition when the HQ it is stationed in is destroyed.
• Removed Sahara desert penalties from Dongola
• Recontextualized several agitator law events to fit better with their position as populist figures.

Balance

• Numerous state traits that add infrastructure penalties for difficult terrain have been changed to either only be present in states which have a majority of such terrain or is clearly divided by that terrain
• Some state traits that had infrastructure penalties and which were not deemed suitable for any state have been changed into other traits or removed
• Readjusted pop needs so that pops are less likely to buy basic goods when better goods are available
• Rice Farms now have double the Employment and Production
• Adjusted values of secondary PMs on Textile Mills, Furniture Manufacturies, Glassworks, and Chemical Plants so they are usually profitable
• Unincorporated States now have -10% state access price impact
• Lowered the cost to build Shipyards
• Standardized Trains (formerly Steam Engine trains) PM is now unlocked by Steel Railway Cars
• Electric Trains now give higher infrastructure, but also have higher input costs
• Diesel Trains now give higher infrastructure, but also have higher input costs
• Infrastructure has been lowered for Steam Trains, Electric Trains and Diesel Trains
• Balanced Prussia's, France's, Great Britain's and USA's starting buildings, Production Methods and Trade Routes so that they aren't immediately unprofitable after State Market Access Price Impact changes
• Lowered the amount of alcohol that subsistence buildings produce
• Anchorages now produce only 20 convoys (down from 50)
• Reduced urbanization from heavy industry to cut down on excessive service production in industrialized states
• Reduced overall level of service production (as well as input goods) on urban centers
• Art Academies were changed to have a 5k workforce so as not to differ so much from other urban buildings
• Increased the amount of Fabric Livestock Ranches can produce
• Craftsman Sewing production method for Textile mills luxury clothes output increased from 20 to 30.
• Craftsman Sewing production method for Textile mills clothes output changed from -20 to -30.
• Craftsman Sewing production method for Textile mills silk input increased from 10 to 20.
• Craftsman Sewing production method for Textile mills fabric input changed from -10 to -20.
• Elastics production method for Textile mills luxury clothes output increased from 35 to 70.
• Elastics production method for Textile mills clothes output changed from -35 to -70.
• Elastics production method for Textile mills silk input increased from 10 to 40.
• Elastics production method for Textile mills fabric input changed from -10 to -30.
• Elastics Sewing production method for Textile mills rubber input increased from 10 to 20.
• Luxury Furniture production method for Furniture manufacturies luxury furniture output increased from 20 to 30.
• Luxury Furniture production method for Furniture manufacturies furniture output changed from -20 to -30.
• Luxury Furniture production method for Furniture manufacturies hardwood input increased from 10 to 15.
• Luxury Furniture production method for Furniture manufacturies wood input changed from -10 to -15.
• Precision Tools production method for Furniture manufacturies luxury furniture output increased from 40 to 55.
• Precision Tools production method for Furniture manufacturies furniture output changed from -40 to -55.
• Precision Tools production method for Furniture manufacturies hardwood input increased from 20 to 35.
• Precision Tools production method for Furniture manufacturies wood input changed from -20 to -25.
• Precision Tools production method for Furniture manufacturies tools input increased from 10 to 15.
• Ceramics production method for glassworks porcelain output decreased from 25 to 20.
• Bone China production method for glassworks porcelain lass output increased from 40 to 55.
• Bone China production method for glassworks glass output increased from -20 to -55.
• Bone China production method for glassworks dye input increased from 30 to 50.
• Leblanc Process production method for chemical plants fertilizer output changed from -15 to -20.
• Leblanc Process production method for chemical plants coal input increased from 15 to 20.
• Ammonia-soda Process production method for chemical plants explosives output increased 40 to 45.
• Ammonia-soda Process production method for chemical plants fertilizer output changed from -40 to -45.
• Ammonia-soda Process production method for chemical plants coal input increased 15 to 20.
• Vacuum Evaporation production method for chemical plants fertilizer output changed from -30 to -70.
• Vacuum Evaporation production method for chemical plants coal input increased 15 to 20.
• Vacuum Evaporation production method for chemical plants sulfur input increased 30 to 45.
• Brine Electrolysis production method for chemical plants fertilizer output changed from -50 to -100.
• Brine Electrolysis production method for chemical plants coal input increased 15 to 20.
• Brine Electrolysis production method for chemical plants sulfur input increased 30 to 45.
• Muskets production method for Arms industries small arms output increased 25 to 30.
• Rifles production method for Arms industries small arms output increased 35 to 50
• Repeaters production method for Arms industries small arms output increased 50 to 70.
• Bolt Action Rifles production method for Arms industries small arms output increased 75 to 100.
• Cannons production method for Arms industries small arms output changed from -10 to -15.
• Smoothbores production method for Arms industries small arms output changed from -15 to -25.
• Breechloaders production method for Arms industries small arms output changed from -25 to -35
• Added Recoil Mechanics production method for Arms industries.
• Hardwood production method for Logging camps hardwood output increased from 10 to 20.
• Hardwood production method for Logging camps wood output changed -10 to -30.
• Added Focused Hardwood Production production method for Logging camps.
• Balanced Glassworks and Chemical Plants so that later production methods are now profitable at a base level
• Lowered input goods of Coal and Engines for Railways
• Lowered Transport output goods for base Railway production methods
• Passenger carriage PMs for trains no longer reduce infrastructure when activated
• Increased Logging potential in Amazons, Congo and Siberia
• Manufacturing, Government and Military buildings now have lowered throughput in Unincorporated States
• Gave Bavaria intensive agriculture
• Gave Greece a starting interest in Italy

AI

• AI is now more likely to offer support to a side in a diplomatic play if they are already leaning towards that side
• AI is now more likely to attempt to sway an undecided country in a diplomatic play if that country is already leaning towards their side
• AI will now actively attempt to sway countries that are already committed participants on the opposite side into switching sides
• AI now places more value on holding obligations on diplomatically relevant powerful countries, even if they're just Wary towards them
• Allies are no longer automatically added as backers in Diplomatic Plays, but have an increased support score towards their ally
• Predictions for which country will lean towards supporting what side in the Diplomatic Play should now always be accurate (instead of intentionally unreliable), and takes the relations impact of the initial wargoal into account, though leaning towards a side is still not a guarantee of actually supporting that side.
• AI is now generally less willing to trigger revolutions when enacting laws unless they are doing so to avoid another revolution
• AI is now willing to enact laws with a lower chance of success if those laws have a revolutionary movement or government petition behind them
• Fixed an issue where the AI would activate anchorages over proper ports due to overvaluing the workforce reduction they provided
• AI will now be less likely to use restrictive export tariffs on goods which they have substantial unused potential for in their country
• AI will now be less likely to use restrictive import tariffs on goods which they do not have substantial unused potential for in their country
• AI is now less keen to get involved in plays when they have a truce with either primary participant
• AI should now be better at setting up trade routes for goods that are important for their economy to import or export
• AI should now be better at importing key industrial goods like rubber if they don't have those goods in their market
• AI now prioritizes universities more unless it is very close to its innovation cap
• Fixed an issue where the AI was calculating its gold reserve and income surplus targets incorrectly for some types of spending
• AI Great Powers are now much more keen on launching and joining Cut Down to Size diplomatic plays against Pariah countries
• Added AI strategy weights for how much the AI desires to have a country as a subject or become a country's subject
• Fixed inconsistent triggers in government petitions that were creating problems for the AI in following through on them
• Fixed an issue where some AI strategies did not work correctly due to a bad is_adjacent check against states

Performance

• Improves the evaluation speed of the Belle Epoque Journal Entry by 20x, improving overall Journal Entry update performance by 33%
• Improved performance of the Garibaldi event trigger by not iterating over all characters in the world

Interface

• Added a message settings tab for Alerts and Important Actions in the Message Settings window
• Improved the tooltips when swaying countries or offering support to countries
• Added what stance a country has in a Diplomatic Play to their respective tooltips in the Sway Countries tab
• The tooltip and confirmation box for making a Diplomatic Demand/starting a Diplomatic Play now shows more consolidated and useful information for the potential sides and supporters in the Play
• Army and Navy formations are created with a generated name based on a numerals and country culture
• Added important action for when a state has a shortage (but the market does not).
• Front panel has been updated with support for Formations instead of commanders
• Added 'zoom to front' button on the front panel
• Only show full details for goods that are locally produced/consumed in a state in state panel
• Show a simple grid of goods that are present in market but not locally consumed/produced in state panel
• The Hegemon final objective now displays how much of a share of the global population you currently control
• Journal Entry buttons that can be pressed and remain "selected" now appear as such, to distinguish them from buttons you don't qualify to press
• Fixed a number of typos in Concepts, Events and Technologies

• Graphics entities are now added along the frontline when formations are present there
• Added portrait resolution upscaling setting for sharper portrait details
• Improved flag resolution and scaling for flag icons, preserving more details
• Improved "Zoom To" icon
• Production Method icon colors should now be consistent with their functions

Modding

• Added an in-game script profiler for modders to assess performance impact of script (ScriptProfiling.Enable, ScriptProfiling.Dump)
• War Exhaustion is now a script value that can be scripted with any factors and conditions
• All modifier types "building_input_" and "building_output_" are now renamed to "goods_input_" and "goods_output_" to support their usages in other contexts than buildings (such as units)
• Added new trigger has_political_movement =
• Added new trigger can_potentially_get_political_movement =
• On-actions added for when an army is mobilized or demobilized
• ignore_government_support console command now also lets you bypass the cannot_enact_laws modifier
• New compare triggers global_population, total_population_share, total_population_including_subjects, and total_population_including_subjects_share
• Adds country_turmoil compare trigger
• Adds enemy_occupation compare trigger
• Adds enemy_contested_wargoals compare trigger
• Adds size_weighted_lost_battles_fraction compare trigger
• Adds Additional War Exhaustion compare trigger
• Adds War-Diplomatic Play link
• front_battle_state_weight script value added to determine which state a battle will be launched in (before province is selected)
• Added console commands for `count_buildings`, `count_countries`, `count_markets`, `count_pops`, `count_potential_parties`, and `count_states`

Bugfixes

• Fixed a bug where buildings that were doing poorly could get stuck in a loop of firing employees, only to then raise wages to attract more employees which they then would fire again, leading to absurdly high wages and an unviable building
• Fixes an issue where trade route competitiveness share was not correctly calculated for trade routes that had been around for a while, leading to trade routes shrinking for no sensible reason
• Fixes an issue where trade routes would sometimes set their level targets incorrectly when you had multiple trade routes for the same good
• Fixes some issues with maneuver cost for wargoals
• Fix unset scope error in the IG Agenda Journal Entry
• Nursing events will no longer fire in wars with less than 1000 deaths
• Fixed a small bug in the BIC breakup event
• Fixed script issue in Victoria scripted effects that lacked an OR statement.
• Fixed interest group tooltips to show the correct political strength value
• Fixed issue with Shipyards appearing twice in Building Lens

Future Plans

• Visuals of your armies moving along roads and railways on the map
• Improved frontline graphics
• The return of conscripts and naval warfare mechanics (which we disabled for this initial release)
• Improved Orders, with more options available for specific commanders
• Historical Companies that let you leverage your country's unique specialties
• More Mobilization Options and a revamped interface
• Formation Organization metric, which will enable you to adjust Mobilization Options for mobilized formations at a temporary penalty
• Improvements to Military Formation customization
• Unit Experience, letting you build up the might of your military forces over time
• Loads and loads of bugfixes, improved UX flows, and stability improvements that should make your playthroughs a lot more enjoyable
• And of course, as many of your own suggestions on Discord that we can muster!

Good Day Victorians! Today we have released a hotfix for a few issues present in Update 1.4! As normal, please do not use this thread to report any new issues you discover - but rather file any bug reports in the bug reporting forum, thank you! These fixes include:

• A fix for a CTD in the particle system
• Stops the game randomly crashing within the first 30 minutes of playing
• Users should no longer should have a modified checksum due to FRA.txt -> fra.txt
• We fixed a memory leak causing performance issues with particles
• Reduced infrastructure usage from 3 down to 2 in Construction sectors.

From the glory of the sunrise to the glow of the gas lamp, this Art Pack takes the theme of light and shadow to add new life to the visual experience. [previewyoutube=asXn-FBPmw4;full][/previewyoutube] This new pack for Victoria 3 includes:

• Customizable Day-Night Cycle - that adds new nocturnal flavor to the map, at a pace you can set. The lights of buildings and passing trains illuminate the nighttime landscape while lighthouses guide your ships safely home
• New Paper Map option - inspired by lunar and solar themes
• Greater variety of clothing - to illustrate the many cultures and societies of Victoria 3
• Four New On-Map Landmarks - thematically related to the night sky
• More table decorations - for your desk when you zoom out

Ahoy Victorians! Today we released Dawn of Wonder, accompanied by a free update for all owners of Victoria 3. Please do not use this thread to report any new issues you discover - but rather file any bug reports in the bug reporting forum, thank you! We can not give any guarantees that save files from 1.3.x will be working in 1.4 without issues which is why we recommend that you roll back your game to the previous version and finish any ongoing games you want to finish before updating to 1.3. More information on rolling back your game version can be found here! (TL;DR is go to properties in Steam -> Betas -> select the version in the dropdown list). This is especially the case due to map changes, such as Vancouver Island. [previewyoutube=5zVdtTpPvDI;full][/previewyoutube]

• Day/Night cycle, configurable from the Theme Selector
• Lighting effects added to many new and existing gfx entities
• Night time soundscape now differs from daytime
• Festive clothing added for pops celebrating Carnival, Midsummer, Diwali, and royal weddings in Eastern Europe
• New Day/Night UI Theme added
• Day/Night themed paper map with zodiac illustrations
• Greenwich Observatory, Wat Arun, Temple of Poseidon, and Martand Sun Temple added as map decorations
• Pocketwatch, Candle, Atabey statue, and Hongshan statue added as table decorations
• Day/Night themed stagecoach
• New loading screen art

• Fixed some issues with goods substitution that was causing certain goods (such as oil in the early game) to not be demanded in correct amounts
• Subjects no longer remain in their overlord's market during an independence play/war
• Subjects no longer pay taxes to their overlord during an independence play/war
• Garibaldi will now stick around in minor Italian cultured nations, even in peacetime
• The American Civil war will now only ever happen as a result of a revolution to preserve, expand or abolish slavery
• Admirals with Escort Convoys orders now reduce the amount of damage done to convoys under their protection, scaling with the defensive combat stats of their ships
• Added strait adjacency to Vancouver Island
• Replaced all technology cost modifiers with technology speed modifiers, as these scale better and work properly with temporary modifiers such as from Interest Group traits
• Convoy Raiding damage is now partially randomized
• Randomly generated characters will now get up to 3 attempts to find a name that is unique among their country's characters
• Added a Portuguese admiral active in 1836
• Added Wikipedia links for some historical leaders of popular and recommended nations

• Loyalists are now gained much slower due to high Legitimacy levels
• Standard of Living improvements now create more Loyalists while at the highest Legitimacy level
• Construction Sectors now use 3 infrastructure instead of 0.2
• Belgium no longer starts with an illegitimate government
• Fine Art can no longer be fully substituted by purchasing Services instead
• Added Dye Plantation potential to Haiti and Santo Domingo states
• Slowed the progress of Cement the Rightful Dynasty for all legitimacy values below 90.
• Removed extra starting Arts Academy in Austria from history files
• Lanfang now starts with the Academia technology
• Papal State starting trade route for Art now goes to Spain instead of Austria

• The AI (and autonomous construction) will now stop constructing in states with no workforce once the current available infrastructure is mostly used up, to avoid an endless cycle of constructing unused building levels
• The AI is now less likely to accept peace deals or capitulate if the whole country will be annexed
• The AI will no longer change who it is supporting for a Unification when at war or committed to a side in a diplomatic play, except to remove support for a country they are at war with (fixes an exploit with abusing temporary attitude changes from diplomatic plays to gain supporters)
• The AI for countries with the Economic Imperialism strategy is now more keen on opening up Japan's market
• The AI is no longer incorrectly biased to use only Anchorage PM in Ports
• The AI is now less inclined to support unrecognized powers against fellow recognized powers unless they have a strong reason to do so
• The AI will now take the decision to reduce Haitian debt.
• The AI will now take the decision to annex Krakw as Austria.

• Performance when playing with mods that add Interest Groups has been improved
• Added a setting to cull distant buildings
• Optimized the memory consumption by building particles
• Optimized the trade routes panel
• Performance improvements for character rendering
• Particle Optimization
• Optimized the graphics for the day and night cycles
• Reduced the number of cars spawning on roads late-game

• Added a Theme Selector to the main menu and ingame menu
• Buildings can now be pinned to the outliner
• Added a new read out to the war panel that exposes an AI controlled country's willingness to capitulate in a war
• The player now gets a notification if a country that they are at war with (either as a co-belligerent or as an enemy) goes into default, making them more likely to capitulate or accept peace
• Amended the character panel with a zoom-to button that orients the map to the location of the character and a location to the panel subtitle
• Show Strategic Region names instead of Country names in the Declare Interest Map Mode
• The cost tooltip for technologies now explains the penalty for unresearched technologies in earlier eras
• Add flavor description to the Interest Groups' tooltips
• Added a toast message indicating new and old ruler when they are changed.
• Hide the "Trade Routes" section in the Goods Details panel for non-Tradeable Goods.
• Add shortcut to the Goods details panel in Goods right-click menu
• Sea Node tooltip now tells you how many of your convoys are passing through the node
• Change the default keybind for Decisions from F12 to F11
• Zoom-to buttons are now disabled when you are already where they would take you
• Remove the support value shown on Agitators on the Political Movement panel since Agitators now give a multiplier and not a flat support bonus to the movement
• Show all potential Diplomatic Actions in the right-click menu for another Country instead of only showing the currently possible.
• The Agitator concept now has more information included
• Add functionality to instantly create a Trade Route to your Market when looking at the details for a Good in a foreign Market
• Add more actionable information to the "Establish Import/Export Route" tooltips (Price, Balance, Sell/Buy Orders)
• Make the back button the Sway Offer always go back one step, instead of going back two when a Offer type is selected.
• Added a list of IG icons after the name of the Party in a few places throughout the UI
• Add enactment cooldown to the setback concept tooltip
• Added information about the new leader and ideology to the "IG Leader Retired" Notification
• The Hegemon final objective now displays how much of a share of the global population you currently control
• Removed confusing checkmark boxes from Healthy Economy Game Concept
• Diplomatic Action map interactions will now display the correct cursor
• Moved "Cut Off Buildings" setting to advanced graphics section (renamed to "Cull Distant Buildings")
• Long graphic card names no longer displays out-of-bounds in settings menu

• Vancouver Island isn't connected to British Columbia by land anymore
• Map borders now blends better with the map
• Updated the look and feel of the New Game Screen
• Fixed text and scale on VotP map (VotP)
• Fixed the issue were the equator was gone on VotP map (VotP)
• Blue flag event marker is now scaled better
• Tweaked "Forbidden City" texture values to closer match the rest of the adjacent buildings.
• All port buildings now start as "small" size
• War Machine factories should no longer cause clipping issues in cities

• Added 'kill_population' and 'kill_population_in_state' effects
• Character templates can now define a command HQ and rank
• New compare triggers 'global_population', 'total_population_share', 'total_population_including_subjects', and 'total_population_including_subjects_share'
• Added a 'pop_type_percent_state' trigger that checks whether the scoped state has X% of its population belonging to the specified pop type
• Added an 'ignore_battle_conditions' console command
• Added a 'noshortages' console command that prevents penalties for supply shortages in Buildings
• Added a 'fastincorporate' console command that incorporates states immediately
• Added a 'nosupportloss' console command that prevent countries from losing war support
• Added a 'month' compare trigger to check the current game month (useful for seasonal dress-up)
• Adds console command 'Logging.PopGrowth' to print the birthrate and mortality rates for each Standard of Living level

• Added workaround for crashes related to Intel high end CPUs
• Unique interest groups are now calculated on creation, rather than in a country's history, allowing revolutionary countries etc. to inherit their parents' unique interest groups
• Fixed localisation errors related to France's Natural Borders
• Fixed various scope issues in agitator law events
• Fixed erroneous scoping in "A Clause is Coming to Town" event
• Fixed a spline network crash
• Fixed an issue where colonization would be prohibited by other countries with claims even if they had no access to what you were trying to colonize
• Fixed a bug that allowed combat units to have more demoralized soldiers than actual soldiers in the unit
• Improved MP stability by resolving Out of Syncs resulting from flawed cache operations
• Fixed a bug where it was possible to use the 'Transfer Subject' wargoal on Customs Unions and Personal Unions
• Fixed an issue where trade route levels would alternate between increasing and decreasing every week due to inconsistencies in profitability calculations
• All countries that can create Interests now gain an active Interest in their capital region with no delay
• The Vox Diaboli event will no longer fire in atheist countries
• Fixed a bug where the zoom button to an Admiral raiding convoys got hung-up on zooming.
• Buildings can no longer be queued past the level limit while they are in the private construction queue
• Only show savegame incompatibility warning popup when the save is incompatible
• Fixed a bug that would prevent the reform government mode from closing when confirming a government with low legitimacy, potentially leading to one or more IGs being visually duplicated
• Children no longer experience early hair loss
• Fixed an issue in diplomatic play clean up for dying countries
• Generated heirs are now subject to the default character template like all other characters
• Fixed a bug where the game would keep trying to spawn a Civil War without any uprising States
• Fixed a bug where the player as observer without country could still receive notifications
• Fixed agitator home country tooltip displaying NULL_OBJ
• Fixed a bug where the Buildings Panel would have clickable buttons under "Potential Buildings", for buildings that cannot be built
• Fixed notification saying that country was swayed by itself when it was swayed by one of its subject countries
• Added a long cooldown to the DEI breakup event, so that choosing option c (continue to exist as DEI) will not cause the event to spam endlessly.
• Fixed the bug when becoming non-independent for two neighboring countries in the same state region didn't allow to set up trade routes
• Fixed the bug when a low number of convoys due to convoy raiding would not apply to excess convoy calculation
• Fixed a bug that would cause error log spam when hovering over the acceptance indicator when proposing wargoals to sway a country in a diplomatic play
• Fixed a localization error in the trigger description for is_unification_candidate
• Fixed some cases where relations with overlord and top overlord were not being checked when starting diplomatic plays like Conquer State against subjects
• Fixed issue with Increase Relations Tutorial not triggering
• Reduced spawn rate of certain African colonial events
• Fix notification names overflowing in the Message Settings
• Fixed an OOS due to the construction queue validation erroneously running during cache recalculation
• Fixed a bug related to fetching the ruler title from the government type in an effect splitting up on_government_type_change into two parts, putting the setting of ruler into a second effect on_post_government_type_change
• Fixed notification for new Trade Route mistakenly predicting it to "shrink to level -1"
• Fixed a bug when sometimes rank loss couldn't be stopped by increasing the prestige
• Fixed a bug when newly released country manpower in barracks wasn't properly updated and country had an empty armies that doesn't refill
• Fixed the bug when died recruitable characters created field promotions
• Construction queue duration estimate is now more accurate
• Subject country name is now correctly displayed in 'join side' diplomatic play notifications
• Fixed an UX issue that would cause a lone X to appear in tooltips for character interactions that cannot be executed
• Fixed an issue that could cause tooltips for `add_modifier`, `add_enactment_modifier`, `remove_modifier`, and `remove_modifier` effects from displaying incorrectly when the modifier has an apostrophe in the name
• Obligation Alert will now display the correct country in all situations
• Removed repeat economic law stance in anarchist ideology
• Legitimist monarchs no longer kill each other in rapid succession when generated
• Limited rate of African colonization event spawn
• Giovanni Gentile will now advocate for fascism in Italy rather than Siam, and Ernst Rhm is now a protestant
• Fixed CTD which happen while new state was spawned after another state had been removed
• Fixed a bug when "Oil Rush" effects or similar wouldn't increase employee count in a building
• Fixed CTD when stateless building tried to access impossible array size
• Fixed CTD which happen while new state was spawned after another state had been removed
• Map interactions involving HQ's will no longer contain duplicate UI entries
• Diplomatic Action map interactions no longer allow clicking on invalid interactions
• Changing shader quality to low should no longer cause rendering of the map to display in water.
• Fixed OOS related to Player Data
• Added entries for some missing modifier localization
• Infante Alfonso Carlos, Duke of San Jaime will no longer spawn as a Legitimist ruler before 1931 (VotP)
• Fixed crash when switching the graphics settings in the main menu after returning to it from the game
• Fixed an issue that prevented the Alaska Purchase from firing if the USA had a higher GDP than Russia
• Improved script for Government Petitions Journal Entries so it only looks if the Interest Group is powerful or not
• Lowered pop needs max supply share for Services and increased weight for Art
• Fixed issue with unlocalized Sea Node in the Atlantic Ocean
• The tutorial now explain why you can join a customs union
• Fixed incorrect text in additional income and additional expenses
• Declare Interest Tutorial will now select a region for you to declare an interest in instead of looking for available interests
• Removed potential for duplicate Bismarcks
• French heirs will now have the proper ideologies
• Bohemia can now form Czechoslovakia
• The Belle poque no longer invalidates erroneously
• Revolutionary events will no longer occur in unincorporated states
• Ships should no longer disappear at the edge of the camera view

Good Day Victorians! As said in the last dev diary, the Open Beta has been delayed from releasing today to ensure we release the best initial version we can. However, it will be released on Thursday the 31st at 16:00 CEST! The Open Beta will launch alongside a changelog for the first version of the Beta and a list of known issues, these will be available on our forums and Discord server. We look forward to seeing you play it and giving us feedback soon!

Overview

Day & Night Cycle

Light Effects & New carriage

Map Decoration Structures

New cultural outfits

New UI Skin

New Map Table and Assets

New Paper Map

Theme Selector

Summary

See Part 1 for the rest this Dev Dairy!

Revised Naval Invasions

Frontline Graphics

What we broke :(

Conscription

Naval Warfare (other than naval invasions)

• Fleet Range: the ability for a fleet to be active also in adjacent sea zones, possibly at a reduced interception effectiveness or at a variable range determined by tech or unit type
• Limited Fog-of-War: obscuring your enemy's positions and actions and only revealing them under certain conditions (Battleship board game style)
• UI alerts and other visual indicators
• Some manner of fleet automation, like patrol routes

Conclusion

Happy Thursday to you all! This is a particularly exciting dev diary for me to write, because I finally get to reveal details on what we've been working on since before the summer months - and strap in, because it's a lot! I want to start out by talking a bit about the Open Beta and expectation setting. As we discussed in Dev Diary #91, we will be running an extended Open Beta from Aug 28th (alongside the launch of the 1.4 update) until our final release of 1.5 in late autumn. During this time we anticipate releasing at least 2 additional updates to the Open Beta branch, coinciding with our 3-week sprint schedule. Expectations for the first update Launch date: Aug 28. In the initial release, new features will be in a rudimentary state, with plenty of placeholder interfaces, graphics, and missing mechanical details. Many features will be exploitable and buggy, and absolutely not balanced. Some features will be unused or underused by the AI. Core components of the game that we have not touched should continue to work, so playing a game focused on economy and politics should not be heavily affected by these changes, but be aware that military campaigns may feel unsatisfying or cumbersome. If you wish to partake in testing this update, focus on feedbacking on what additions or balance changes would make the new features fun, not on whether they feel great right now. Expectations for the second update Tentative launch: mid September. By this time the new features should feel a lot more mature, with bugs and missing information / graphics filled in, additional mechanical details closing exploits and providing new optimization challenges, and in general more bells and whistles available to you. While beta testing this update, in addition to the aforementioned considerations, focus on balance and UX improvements. Expectations for the third update Tentative launch: mid October. If all goes as planned, at this point we should be fully feature-complete for the 1.5 release. This doesn't mean everything is wrapped up and ready to go! We will spend the time between this update and the final release fixing bugs, doing balance updates, and reacting to your feedback. While testing this update you should be able to focus on how fun the game is to play with the new features. But first a short message from our Community Manager Pelly on how the Open Beta will be run! ___________________________________________ Hello! For those that dont recognise me, I am the Community Manager for Victoria 3 and helped run the Open Beta for 1.2 last time. Open Betas are a very involved process, not just from the developers, but also on the community team end too! When the Open Beta for 1.5 starts, the old 1.2 channels will be reopened for usage by the community! Any user can access these, to make it as easy as possible to provide feedback and chat about the Beta update! As soon as the Open Beta is live, you can access the Beta Steam branch by following these instructions:

• Right click Victoria 3 in your steam Library, select properties.
• Click on Betas, then in the Beta Participation drop down box select the 1.5 Open Beta option, when it is live, it will appear there similar to these options:

• Open-beta-news - where news about the open beta is posted, e.g. when Beta updates are announced.
• Open-beta-changes-and-bugfixes - where changelogs for the Beta updates are posted so you know what has been changed or fixed between versions.
• Open-beta-pelly-post - this is where I go through all the feedback and bug reports for the day. Then I list them here, with any dev responses or mark if they are duplicates. This helps everyone know that their items have been looked at and seen by the devs! This is updated every day for the previous day's issues, normally closer to 16:00 CEST!
• Open-beta-chat - the area to chat generally about the beta updates, I still know people who really enjoyed talking here and became part of the open-beta-chat gang!
• Open-beta-feedback - The place to post any feedback about the updates, tags are used to distinguish the topic and if it has been looked at by devs/! Developers will be around to talk in these threads, however dont expect an answer for every single thread!
• Open-beta-bug-reports - We dont normally have bug reporting on discord, as the bug reporting forums are the place to post these issues. However, during the Open Beta period it is easier if we have both feedback and bug reports on the same platform for ease of communication.

Shared Fronts

State-based Front Movement

• State population
• Amount of provinces with difficult terrain
• Number of mobilized battalions left standing in the defender's theater compared to the size of the theater

Military Formations

Mobilization Options

Early Demobilization

Transferring Commanders and Units between Formations

Name and Icon customization

Hello and welcome back to a new round of Victoria 3 dev diaries! Today were going to be talking about Companies, a new free feature being added in the 1.5 update, which will be available to test and feedback on in the first version of the 1.5 open beta. As we have previously mentioned, one of our major focuses for the 1.5 update is to improve the replayability and challenge in the core economic gameplay loop, and the main purpose of the Companies feature is to do just that by encouraging countries to specialize in certain industries and develop competitive advantages against other nations. Companies are also intended to add more flavor and differences in gameplay between different nations, as well as giving players more of a reason to care about prestige and their position in global national rankings. Before I go into the nitty-gritty, I should mention that this dev diary is going to be focused mainly on the Companies feature in the form that will be available in the first open beta release, with a fairly narrow focus on achieving the above design goals for economic specialization, flavor and prestige. However, Companies is a feature that we consider to have near limitless potential for expanding on and hooking into more parts of the game, so Ill wrap up the dev diary by mentioning some of the ideas we have for building on this feature in the future. Also, please note that this is very much a feature under development, so expect placeholder/WIP art, names, numbers and interfaces! But enough preamble, lets get into the details. Companies are national-level entities that are established by a country, with each country being able to support a certain number of companies based on factors such as technology and laws. The vast majority of countries will not start with the ability to support any companies, but will need to reach a certain level of society tech before their first company becomes available. Each Company is associated with a certain set of building types, for example a Company specializing in metal mines might be associated with Iron Mines and Lead Mines, while a more agriculturally inclined company might instead be associated with certain types of plantations and/or farms. To establish a company, you need to have the technology and resource potential to construct at least one of their associated building types - its currently possible to establish companies without having any of their associated buildings built, though this is something we will be actively looking for feedback from the open beta on how it feels, as its something of an immersion versus gameplay question. Flavored companies (more on those below) have other more specific requirements to be established in addition to these basic requirements. A selection of potential candidates for Swedens first company: Combine of Fisheries and the United Forestry Conglomerate are immediately available, while the buildings of Wine & Fruit Inc are not so suitable to the Swedish climate and hence will only be available if Sweden acquires some warmer lands with potential for those resources.
Once established, a Company will have effects on all buildings of their associated building type in their parent country. These effects are twofold: They increase the throughput of the buildings, as well as the construction efficiency when constructing new levels of the associated building types. The degree by which companies boost their associated buildings is partially scaled based on the Prestige ranking of their parent nation, with the 3rd-ranked nation gaining a larger boost than the 4th-ranked nation and so on. While somewhat abstracted, this is meant to represent competitive benefits the company enjoys from the international status of their home country. The purpose of this effect as a game mechanic is to give players a direct economic reason to care about their overall prestige ranking versus other nations. Its also worth noting that in conjunction with this change, we have increased the base construction cost of all buildings and, through the change to local pricing, somewhat lowered the base economic efficiency of most buildings. The overall intent is that the baseline economy should be less efficient, with companies allowing countries to make up the difference in select areas, providing the incentive for specialization and competitive advantages mentioned above. However, one exception to this is that base construction production was increased from 5 to 10 to ensure the baseline slowdown of construction did not make small nations entirely unviable to play. While the majority of the construction efficiency increase from companies does not depend on your prestige ranking, Swedens relatively high placement on the global scoreboard does give its companies an additional edge.
Established Companies also have Productivity and Prosperity ratings. Productivity is simply the average Productivity (yearly average earnings per employee) of all its associated building levels. This is compared against the global average Productivity of all companies in the world, with companies that are doing better than average gaining Prosperity over time, and companies below a certain threshold (which is lower than the threshold for gaining Prosperity) losing it instead. If a Company reaches 100 Prosperity, its Prosperity modifier will activate, granting a company-specific bonus to its parent nation. This is intended to add an additional dimension to the selection of companies - do you simply want to focus on whatever resources are going to be most profitable for your nation, or aim to build up a specific industry for the bonuses it can give you? As an example, a player that is planning to play a particularly aggressive campaign may want to focus on building up an arms-industry related Company for the military advantages it can grant. The Agricultural Development Society is doing well enough compared to other companies that its Prosperity is increasing, which will please the Rural Folk once Prosperity hits 100.
As we hinted at earlier in the dev diary, Companies come in two varieties: Standard and Flavored. Standard Companies are ones that are available to all nations unless replaced by a Flavored Company, while Flavored Companies tend to be restricted to a certain culture and/or geographical region. For example, a North German nation that owns certain parts of the Rhineland will have certain historical German companies available to them. Flavored companies are mostly historical (but not always, as sometimes we have to go a bit alt-history), with a set of building types based around their real-life historical business focuses, and tend to have stronger or more interesting prosperity bonuses than the standard companies. Flavored companies may sometimes replace very similar Standard companies, but this is the exception rather than the rule, most Flavored companies do not replace Standard companies. Alright, thats the general gist of what Companies will look like when you first get your hands on it in the 1.5 open beta. As I mentioned at the beginning though, there is a lot of places we envision taking this feature in the future, so here are a few examples of that, though you definitely shouldnt expect all of this be in scope for the 1.5 update:

• Having companies level up beyond just a single prosperity bonus, possibly in a way that ties into diplomacy/rank and replaces the current company bonuses from prestige
• Having pops, specific buildings in specific states, Interest Groups, and/or characters more directly associated with Companies instead of them just being a national-level entity
• Companies having political and/or geopolitical ambitions (for example, a certain fruit-company might wish to create some, ahem, fruit-focused republics)
• Multinational companies that arent limited to a single country

Hello and welcome to the last update before our traditional July break! Today I will drop a little more concrete information of what will be coming in future updates 1.4 (Q3) and 1.5 (Q4). First, a few words about the 1.3.5 patch that we released Monday June 26. We are very happy to see the positive response to the changes made, both to the Voice of the People content and the free update. As we mentioned previously, these are not all the planned improvements to Voice of the People and we plan to give more love to France in 1.5, with further updates to the Paris Commune and more. Also, while the reception of the feature to selectively demobilize Generals has been overall positive, there is a remaining high-priority concern that you still cannot tell conscripts raised to stand down for as long as you remain at war. This functionality was not implemented for 1.3.5 since we're planning to address the matter more comprehensively in a different way in the near future. We'll touch on that below, in the section about Update 1.5. We're planning on putting out one more hotfix (1.3.6) in the 1.3 series before we go on summer vacation. With any luck that should be available to you already, if not it will arrive within a few days of this diary publication date. Among other things this fix addresses the bug where overlords helping out their subjects get their claimed states as wargoals if they win. Now, on to the future!

Selected Highlights in Update 1.4

Convoy Raiding Revisions

Goods Substitution Changes

Subject Independence Wars

Imperialist AI Revisions

Highlights in Update 1.5 Open Beta

Shared Fronts

Multiple Simultaneous Battles per Front

Reverse Sways in Diplomatic Plays

Call Ally in Diplomatic Plays

New Sways

Local Price Variation

New Buildings and Production Methods

Retreat and Pursuit

Military Formations (Armies and Fleets)

Good day Victorians! Today we have a hotfix that will resolve a number of issues in 1.3.5! Please do not use this thread to report any new issues you discover - but rather file any bug reports in the bug reporting forum!

Bugfixes

Balance

Good day Victorians! Patch 1.3.5 is now released! Please do not use this thread to report any new issues you discover - but rather file any bug reports in the bug reporting forum, thank you! Changes from 1.3.4 to 1.3.5: - Fixes to a few localization issues in French and Korean - Toasts about claims are no longer displayed to more countries than intended - Commanders that are in active battle can no longer be retired Link to 1.3.5 Changelog If you wish to play with mods not updated to this version you may roll back the game version via: [olist]

Happy Thursday! Today we will reveal the final list of changes in the 1.3.5 update which is due to roll out on Monday June 26th (but more on that at the end!) As we mentioned a few weeks ago, Update 1.3.5 is bigger than one of our usual post-release patches, since we wanted to take this opportunity not just to fix some of the bugs you've identified but also to make some much-needed improvements to the content in Voice of the People. For those who don't own Voice of the People, there are some new high impact improvements to the base game as well. This does mean that there may be issues with existing saves, though. Your save games should load up fine, but especially if you're playing with Voice of the People as France, some of the reworks may cause your progress in existing saves to break in hard-to-predict ways. As always you will be able to roll back to version 1.3.3 on Steam to wrap up your games in progress. With that said, on to the updates! First up, improvements made to Voice of the People. Here we have focused our efforts on improving the content in line with the feedback we have received, as described in Dev Diary #88. As an example, here is the revised Divided Monarchy Journal Entry:
As you can see, the Journal Entry is now a proper race between three dynasties rather than a timer to install the candidate of your choosing. You will still select your preferred candidate, which gives you the option to Sway characters to support that dynasty, but that does not necessarily mean it is that dynasty who will be enthroned once the Journal Entry completes. So what determines the rate of progress for each dynasty? Let's take a look:
The popularity of characters is one factor. This is not limited to just Interest Group leaders - the ruler, heir, generals, admirals, and agitators can all impact the rate. Furthermore, all of these can be Swayed to your cause, and the cooldown for the Sway interaction has been reduced to 2 years (from 5) to give you more opportunities to do so. Since Agitators tend to have a lot of Popularity, finding one you can invite and bribe into agitating for your candidate can help your cause a lot - or send one of those Bonapartist Generals into war to win battles for you in order to help the Bonapartist cause. Another major factor is the Clout of Interest Groups led by people of the appropriate Ideology. This is multiplied if you can somehow maneuver the Interest Group into government. Building levels of a particular type is a major aspect. Bonapartist gain progress from military buildings, Orleanists from industrial buildings, and Legitimists from agricultural buildings. If you feel forced to increase France's military readiness, this will favor the Bonapartist cause. I found out the hard way that this includes Conscription Centers - once your conscripts are fully raised, and for as long as the war is raging, the Bonapartists will hold a lot of sway in France. Your government Legitimacy will also affect the dynastic dominance. For the house currently enthroned, positive Legitimacy (over 50) will increase the rate of progress while it will decrease it (to a lesser extent) for the other dynasties. This doesn't only apply to the house of Orlans necessarily, because if France were to abolish the monarchy and re-establish it, a different house may sit the throne and the Divided Monarchy Journal Entry may re-emerge. Of course, your decisions during the events associated with the Journal Entry will also matter, which may lead to other effects on the rate of dynastic progress. There's one very good reason to try to resolve this Journal Entry as soon as possible:
While the Divided Monarchists Journal Entry is active, a Republican Unrest modifier applies to all of France. This makes it very difficult to get Loyalists from just having a high Legitimacy, but very easy to gain Radicals from a low Legitimacy. It also makes it harder to maintain a legitimate government with an ideologically incoherent government; if your Resistance Party contains Interest Groups of several different dynasties, it's likely your Legitimacy will be hard to maintain due to infighting. Finally, the Radicalism of any Political Movements that may emerge will be higher than usual, making it more likely that political demands will result in taking up arms. Finally, let's take a look at the failure conditions:
It is not implausible that the Divided Monarchy Journal Entry will devolve into chaos and republicanism. This will happen if there's an Interest Group in France that supports a Presidential Republic, if Turmoil in the capital is quite high, and if one of the following is true: