Dev Diary #41 - Revolutions

[lachek]

About the game over thing for revolts,if you are not playing on IronMan,can you confirm that you will be able to continue in observer mode and/or select a new country as in all recent Paradox Games or you haven't decided yet for that and there is still a chance you implement it the CK2/VIC2 way where you are completely locked from continuing the game,even in a non-ironman or non-multiplayer game?
Can Turmoil and radicalism be modified by some country,pop,states or Interest Group Modifiers?
Thanks for any replies about this.

Can definitely confirm that outside of Ironman you'll be able to keep playing, as Observer or any country still on the map, after Game Over.
Radicalism Gain modifiers from various factors (such as decreases in Standard of Living or from being Discriminated) can be individually applied on a Country or State level where they would affect the relevant Pops (we don't apply modifiers to Pops directly as they're too mutable ) and are fully available to modders. We're considering implementing them on Interest Group level as well.

 

[lachek]

for ease of modding, will the revolutionary country have a new tag, or for example, revolutionary russia still be RUS?

Revolutionary Russia will share the country definition (i.e. RUS) of loyalist Russia, but there are ways of altering its behaviors or appearance based on its revolutionary nature. So for example, in the country definition file for RUS you could say "The name of your country is Russia, unless you're Revolutionary, in which case if the Rural Folk are Revolutionary your name is Russian Agrarian Uprising, or... ". You can also change flags the same way.

 

[lachek]

What are "progression thresholds"? The threshold where it boils over into civil war is straightforward of course, but are there other steps on the way that you have to watch out for? (Over and above the usual effects of having so many unhappy, radical pops and interest groups, of course.)

This is very unclear in the dev diary, mostly because of a bug that inverted its logic that didn't get quashed until after the screenshot was made.
Basically the threshold is the level where, if Radicalism is currently below this level you're safe, while if Radicalism is above it it's only a matter of time until the uprising.

 

[lachek]

I am disappointed that a revolutionary play can't move into an independence play. This system appears eminently suited to depicting the US Civil War as a result of ongoing political struggle with slavery as the central question, with the CSA deciding that they'd rather be independent and the USA deciding that the nation is indivisible and will be maintained as such.

However, there was to my knowledge no sincere talk in the CSA's halls of power for forcing the USA as a whole to accept slavery, nor was the USA at the start all that interested in forcing the abolishment of slavery. That was actually a later development.

On the topic of the ACW and CSA, we consider this a special case that shares elements of both Revolution and Secession mechanics. We'll cover this more later on, but it has not been forgotten about or misrepresented within these Revolution mechanics.

 

[lachek]

That sounds good but what about simple coups within the elite that don't tear the whole country apart ?

Yeah, coups are an interesting design challenge actually because nobody wants to just Game Over with no warning just because they lost track of their military for a couple months, yet that's basically the whole point of coups.
There are two mechanics in the game that duplicate what a coup does in practice:
1) An Interest Group gets so powerful and cranky that a player realizes they cannot ignore them, and is forced to put them in charge to prevent a revolution.
2) A revolution breaks out that the player feels they can't win, so they Capitulate to it, Game Over, and switch country to prevent too much bloodshed.
You can of course roleplay these as a coup, but to be honest none of them really have the "feel" of one. However, since they fill the role of what a coup actually does we'd need to come up with unique and compelling mechanics for them so they're not just yet another way to create the same effect. So for the moment, coups are not represented in the game other than through things like assassination events.

 

[lachek]

Is there truly no possibility for a "white peace" in a revolution? I believe that such a possibility coming to fruition would be awesome, it would create a lot of interesting scenarios in-game. I would love to hear the reasoning for this decision, for i truly believe that it is a shame that this is not a possibility.

If I recall correctly, the original reason was because
1) there's little historical precedent for things like this*
2) we didn't want to have to deal with a map full of countries named things like "Radical Revolutionary Rebellious Saxony" after 100 years of ever-fragmenting micro-states

*edit to add: specifically, little historical precedent for revolts by political movements over a specific legal framework for the nation, that ended up in two permanent states with the same national identity but different laws

 

[lachek]

Will there be things an unhappy movement can do when they lack power for a complete revolution? I mean like strikes, terror, sabotage, or assassinations.

Yes, these are represented as events.

 

[lachek]

What about national revolts looking to establish independent countries? Presumably these should allow both white peace and potentially even multiple nations to appear at once. Do they have a seperate system or are they a special case of revolutions?

Separate but related system, covered next week!

 

[lachek]

It's not a proper Victoria experience unless there's 50K rebels all simultaneously rising up all over the country despite things not being that bad.

Not that bad for you maybe, but I could only buy 24.7 units of Porcelain last week and I'm ready to blow

 

[lachek]

Let's say you have a large country, and the revolutionary supporters are dispersed throughout your borders. Will the states they take control of be centralized, or could they end up taking patches of unconnected states here and there? In other words, could there be a blobbing effect when revolution breaks out?

At the moment it's possible for revolutionary states to be disconnected from each other, but this is a rare occurrence that may or may not be present at release.

Another question I have, is could we see a multi-sided revolution break out, like the Spanish Civil War in HOI4?

Sadly no, there's no support for that at present and things tend to be chaotic enough without simultaneous counter-revolutions. Something I'd love to explore in the future but right now it would conflict with some fundamental rules around Diplomatic Plays.

 

[lachek]

Will revolutions be able to change multiple laws at the same time or is only one law per revolution changed?
So can political movements that do not contradict unite to achieve the same goal? For example a Political movement/Revolution that seeks to implement "poor laws" in welfare and a movement that seeks to implement autocracy in power distribution might unite to both achieve their laws or not?

A Political Movement is only for one particular Law, but if a revolution actually breaks out into its own country over not getting that, the revolutionaries change not only that Law but also some other ones on their wishlist while they're at it. If they win the war, those Laws remain in place, so a larger political shift than was originally intended may be on the table in that case.

 

[lachek]

Will it be possible to have multiple revolutions fire at the same time? And if so will the various revolutionary states all be at war with one another? Or just the "parent" state?

Only one revolution at a time, please. Form an orderly line.

 

[lachek]

Can we enact State decrees in Unincorporated States ?

Yes!

 

[lachek]

how genuine of a threat are revolutions to the player? Will a skilled player be able to avoid almost any revolution, no matter how polarized society is or how oppressive the government, or is a revolution almost guaranteed in such playthroughs?

Revolutions and Political Movements in general are less common when there's a lot of political apathy, which is inversely related to Literacy and Standard of Living, so if you're playing a very rural, low-tech, low-wealth society you're going to be more capable of managing your politics than if you're an industrialized Great Power. You can also dodge a lot of political conflict by refraining from enacting new Laws since this is often what triggers backlash. You can also be purely reactive in your law enactments, waiting for supporting movements to demand them before embarking on passing them. So yeah, a skilled player can avoid the threat of revolution by being risk-averse, but might also fall behind other nations by being risk-averse.

 

[lachek]

Do army sizes scale with IG clout? So like how slaveowners are a small population but since they command a lot of power in the American South, they rebel with all the people affiliated with them?

The territory taken by the revolution at the start of the uprising scales with Clout (Support, actually, but that's based on Clout), and the size of the army they get is based on what territory they get. Revolutions also get a temporary boost to Conscription Rate, so can raise more civilians in their cause (for obvious reasons) than the loyalist country can.

 

[KaiserJohan]

for ease of modding, will the revolutionary country have a new tag, or for example, revolutionary russia still be RUS?

Both Russia and Rev. Russia inherits the Rus "country definition" but only the original country has the RUS tag - unless Rev. Russia wins, then it inherits it.

EDIT: only now saw Lachek already answered this

 

[KaiserJohan]

The American Civil War is without a doubt going to be represented by journal entries, so doesn't neatly fall into either the revolutionary or cultural secession mechanics and doesn't really have to strictly conform to either.

ACW is indeed a special chain of events/journal entries

 

[KaiserJohan]

So, just to be completely clear: when a Revolution Diplo Play breaks out, the player can switch sides to the rebels. Can they do this as often as they like, switching forward and back? And could a player, for instance, delete the original nation's entire military / military infrastructure and then swap over to the rebels, allowing them to totally steamroll over them (except for their allies)?

You can only switch once.
Once Revolution is on the way you can't cheese it by disbanding commanders and downsizing barracks etc. Also revolutionary country has access to special conscription centers so even if there was no barracks there they can still pack a punch.

 

[lachek]

So strikes are only represented as events? In a game about the industrialization, strikes, lockouts and all of those conflicts would seem like something that could deserved a core system? Well, hopefully that can be a focus for the future then

The revolutions themselves sound nice though

General strikes are actually represented as Journal Entries, so they function a bit more like a scripted mini-system that plays out over time than one-shot events.