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Dev Diary #40 - Opium Wars

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Good evening, and welcome to this week’s instalment of the Victoria 3 Dev Diaries! To cap off this month’s theme of trade, I’ll be talking about the Opium Wars and introducing the concepts of Cultural Obsessions and Religious Taboos.

In the 1830’s China was ravaged by opium addiction. The impact was severe and broad in its effects, with myriad social, economic and even military consequences. Despite attempts by the Qing government to restrict imports, British merchants continued to illegally flood the market. The situation came to a head when Qing officials ordered the seizure and destruction of opium in Canton, to which the British responded with force - the First Opium War resulted in crushing defeats for the Qing government and began an era of unfavourable and humiliating treaties with the Western powers.

In Victoria 3 we represent the Opium Wars through Journal Entries and Events. Qing China begins in the midst of this crisis, but it is also possible for other unrecognised countries to experience this content if the in-game conditions are appropriate.


The Opium Crisis event applies harsh negative modifiers to Standard of Living throughout your country, to your Mortality Rate, and to the effectiveness of your military forces.
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This is a good time to talk a little more about Cultural Obsessions. A culture can become obsessed with a specific Good - Pops of that Culture, regardless of where they are in the world, will spend significantly more on Goods they are obsessed with compared to other goods in the same Pop Needs category. So in the case of Opium in China, Han pops will spend a lot more of their wealth buying Opium than they do on Liquor or Tobacco. This naturally drives up demand for Opium, and therefore makes it more expensive within the Chinese market. The foreign powers selling Opium to China are making a killing exploiting this demand and feeding the addiction. Cultures can develop new Obsessions over time, and you’ll need to react to changes in pop demands as a result.

On a mechanically related note (though unrelated to the Opium Wars), Religions have Taboos against certain goods. For instance Muslim faiths have a Taboo against the consumption of Liquor and Wine. This has the opposite effect from a Cultural Obsession - pops following these religions will spend much less on purchasing that Good compared to other Goods in that category. So Muslims will typically buy Tobacco and Opium instead of Liquor, and they will buy Tea or Coffee instead of Wine. Just as in real life, not everybody completely adheres to the tenets of their faith, and so these act as powerful modifiers on purchasing decisions rather than total “bans” on consumption. Unlike Obsessions, Taboos are static throughout the game.


Beijing is one of the most populated States in the world in 1836. Besides its 19 million people, it is also home to the Forbidden City Monument, a massive Government Administration sector, as well as a large section of the now defunct Great Wall.
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Back to the Opium Wars!

If China (or whichever country is the target, but we’ll keep things simple and refer to China from here on out) chooses to confront the issue head on, the Opium Crisis Journal Entry will describe the conditions for successfully resolving the issue, as well as the conditions that will cause immediate failure. China must avoid at all costs enacting the Free Trade law as well as resist the attempts of the Great Powers to establish a Treaty Port - both of these are potential war goals which the AI will strongly prioritize when starting Diplomatic Plays against China. While resisting the Western powers, China must maintain a total ban on the Opium trade.


Playing as Great Britain (or any major opium exporter), you'll have the opportunity to thwart the opium ban through all the usual diplomatic and coercive means at your disposal. It could even be an opportunity to make inroads into China.
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China’s attempts to halt the flow of opium will not go unchallenged. All Great and Major powers exporting Opium to China will receive an event prompting them to decide their stance on the matter - though there is some chance that they will let the issue slide, it is much more likely that they will take an opposing stance. This will add the Opium Wars Journal Entry to that country, in which their success conditions match the failure conditions for China. Opium-trading countries must either force China to adopt the Free Trade law, or else acquire a Treaty Port in that nation that allows them to bypass goods bans. Rather than immediately creating a Diplomatic Play with predefined war goals, the AI (and indeed the player!) is strongly encouraged to start a Play with wargoals that would complete the Journal Entry.


Free from the ravages of opium addiction and the interference of froeign powers, the strengthened Qing dynasty might avoid or avert the crises that would historically bring them to ruin.
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If China succeeds in suppressing the flow of opium while withstanding the onslaught of the Great Powers, the course of history is altered and the addiction crisis will be resolved. All its primary cultures will lose their Opium Obsession, and the negative modifiers representing the effects of widespread addiction will be removed. With foreign powers repulsed, China has not been forced into the unequal treaties that would lead to further conflict and turmoil.


Fragile Unity is the “broadest” Journal Entry in Victoria 3, encompassing content that can emerge at all stages of the game - for instance while the stage is already set for the Opium Wars in 1836, the Boxer Rebellion will not happen until later in the game when a stronger sense of Han nationalism has appeared.
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Failure, however, may have dire consequences. The government will lose Legitimacy, Radicals will rise across the nation, and Turmoil will engulf your states. But that is not the worst of it; failing the Opium Wars Journal Entry increases your fragmentation, tracked by the Fragile Unity Journal Entry. If your fragmentation rises to 100%, it will herald the end of a unified China, with the nation breaking up into a dozen warlord states. Failing the Opium Wars Journal Entry will indirectly lead to an influx of missionaries into China which may spark radical uprisings on a scale never seen before. And if exploitative foreign presence in China continues into the era of Han nationalism, the people’s demands for sovereignty will shake the foundations of the state and threaten the survival of the Qing Dynasty. One great failure can lead to a chain reaction of disaster.

That’s all for today! Next week we’ll be moving on from trade to a month of focus on the theme of strife. Join us next week where Mikael Andersson will introduce Victoria 3’s Revolutions.
 

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Just as in real life, not everybody completely adheres to the tenets of their faith, and so these act as powerful modifiers on purchasing decisions rather than total “bans” on consumption. Unlike Obsessions, Taboos are static throughout the game.
Is the strength of the modifier fully static as well?
I mean, it would certainly make sense that the more liberal/radical pops have less respect for the taboos, or that taboos are less respected in moralist regimes, or that there is some kind of marginal interaction between taboos and laws.
And I guess there's a separate mechanism for prohibition then, but it could have been unified.
 
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I think I've read somewhere that the main culture of Tag can't be changed, but the episode of the debate over whether to build a Han Chinese-only China or a Five Races Under One Union country after the collapse of the Qing dynasty, Is it expressed only by the cultural discrimination system? Is it possible to treat only some specific cultures as same as a major culture by this system?
 
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What happens when the culture's obsession and the religious taboo are the same for a given pop?

E.g.; French culture obsession is wine, Muslim taboo is wine... what happens to a French Muslim?
A taboo isn't a complete ban.
So the French Muslim would likely consume less wine than the average French pop and more wine than the average Muslim pop.
Would likely consume more tea and coffee though as a substitute.
 
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If I have a culture with an obsession for alcohol (lets say I mod in dwarfs ir give French people an obsession with wine), then convert them to Islam, which takes primacy? Will they cancel out? Or does either taboo or obsession win out?
 
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This is completely unrelated, but I just recently discovered that there are buttons for next dev diary and prev dev diary at the top, and this is SO HANDY when I've missed a couple weeks and am trying to catch up, and don't feel like scrolling through pages of the forum or twitter to find previous dev diaries :p
 
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Very nice. Like the detailed event chains that seem possible.

One thing I noticed is that the information in Opium Crises pop-up is rather vague/confusing when the previous ones I've seen were quite clear.

opiumwarsnew.png


The All Markets and Any State parts in particular don't make sense to me.

I feel like the city "sprawl" in terms of the graphic should be much larger when showing major cities like Beijing or London etc... As we build things in the city, will it change how it looks. I'm thinking along the lines of CIV6 type of deal.
 
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This is completely unrelated, but I just recently discovered that there are buttons for next dev diary and prev dev diary at the top, and this is SO HANDY when I've missed a couple weeks and am trying to catch up, and don't feel like scrolling through pages of the forum or twitter to find previous dev diaries :p
Also if you click on the dev diary tag in the thread title it will show only others with that tag.
There is also a pinned topic that has links to them and the monthly updates.
 
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Back to the Opium Wars!

If China (or whichever country is the target, but we’ll keep things simple and refer to China from here on out) chooses to confront the issue head on, the Opium Crisis Journal Entry will describe the conditions for successfully resolving the issue, as well as the conditions that will cause immediate failure. China must avoid at all costs enacting the Free Trade law as well as resist the attempts of the Great Powers to establish a Treaty Port - both of these are potential war goals which the AI will strongly prioritize when starting Diplomatic Plays against China. While resisting the Western powers, China must maintain a total ban on the Opium trade.

Will there be multiple ways to avoid the Opium Wars? I ask because the Qing considered many solutions, and, on the British side, support for the war was extremely limited and many regarded it as entirely immoral.

For example, the Qing considered legalizing the import of opium while also levying high taxes on it (basically, taxes that were just a little less than the bribes officials took from opium smugglers), in order to fund efforts to help addicts - this would likely have had the effect of limiting its use to the elite, like it had been in previous eras. They also considered re-assessing the system of conducting all foreign trade out of Canton. Another idea they had was to grow opium domestically, cutting off the smugglers (which they ultimately did, not that it helped anything, other than the flow of specie out of their country).

Also, will the game at all model the greater concern the Qing had about the opium trade: since it was illegally smuggled into the country, it was bought with silver, which was taken out of circulation (said silver could not be used to buy goods in China, since the Qing forbid its export in the first place) and severly disrupted the economy.

I also want to note that smoking opium requires tobacco, so consumption of opium as a drug should include consumption of tobacco.

On the angle of religious taboos, can they be of varying degrees? For example, can Catholics consume 1/7 less meat, due to avoiding it on Fridays?
 
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Rather than immediately creating a Diplomatic Play with predefined war goals, the AI (and indeed the player!) is strongly encouraged to start a Play with wargoals that would complete the Journal Entry.
AI will always be strongly encouraged to start a play with wargoals that would complete a journal entry or this behavior is exclusive of Opium War in China?
 
So based on the number of conditions, it seems like it's possible for china to break apart without ever beating the Taiping. Will this happen and the Qing will split apart in the middle of the war with the Taipings if they screw-up bad enough?

Also, just a note but I feel it's weird for there to be a Zhili state and Great Qing on the map at the same time. Zhili means "Centrally Ruled", the idea being that the Zhili regions are under the direct rule of the imperial Court in Beijing rather than the provincial administrations(there was a northern and southern Zhili, centered around Beijing and Nanjing respectively, though the most important and recognized one was the northern one of course).

So there being a Zhili state at the same time as the Qing doesn't make a ton of sense. The Zhili clique was a thing historically because it rose out of the center of the Qing and the Republic as they fell apart and claimed some legitimacy from that, but with Qing still existing it doesn't make sense.

I might recommend the name of Hebei instead, being somewhat matching with the province as well as the geographic meaning(that being "North of the (Yellow) River".
 
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From the dev diary, it looks like the only option available to the Qing is to either successful resist foreign influence, or fail to resist foreign influence. Would it be possible to lean into foreign influence, by for example, working with the Europeans to sell opium. Also, would it be possible to at least partially avoid the crisis by legalizing opium and growing it yourself?
 
I like what I see, however, I think there should be some more factors that could lead to increasing the "fracture" counter for Qing. Some examples:
1. Signing unequal treaties.
2. Losing a war
3. Perhaps a % for every treaty port held by a foreign power (which can be gotten back by retaking the port).
4. Having a Free trade law (which can be gotten back by abolishing the law).
5. Other Asian nations modernizing (like Japan, Vietnam, Korea etc.)

As it is, I think so long as you avoid losing the opium war(which should also avoid the Taiping crisis) it's going to be too easy to avoid fragmentation playing a Qing, which will make the rest of the playthrough less engaging (as the Opium war is in the first 10 years).
 
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From the dev diary, it looks like the only option available to the Qing is to either successful resist foreign influence, or fail to resist foreign influence. Would it be possible to lean into foreign influence, by for example, working with the Europeans to sell opium. Also, would it be possible to at least partially avoid the crisis by legalizing opium and growing it yourself?

I'm sure you can do that in theory, but the consequences of having a whole country of junkies are still gonna be there and lead to your countries decline and possible collapse?
 
Will it be possible for other countries to condemn the sale of opium via decisions or events? Apparently, the US wasn't too keen on it.

This has nothing to do with my obsession with playing as the US, honest.
 
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