Victoria 3 - Dev Diary #142 - 2024 in retrospect

[A Pink Duck]

Have you considered making the bonuses permanent instead of stronger ?

For instance if I make efforts to complete a JE and get a reward like 10% output for 5 years, I forget it instantly

But if the reward was "one state has a permanenent 10% steel output", I would try to complete different JEs to combine bonuses in the states I like

It would actually influences my actions and shape my country, even more if we don't just choose a reward/a state but can influence the result

Full example: JE "Development of mining"
Objective: Have at least 3 states with minimum level 5 mines
Reward: One random state with a level 5 mine or more gets "+10% tools output for the whole game"

That way lies madness (and dragons). Modifier stacking like that is a huge problem in other PDX games and should be avoided at all costs.

 

[Moe 3mperor]

For trade rework, is there idea about make tech spread relevant to trade mechanism? I think this can further differentiate isolationist/open trade play style.

Trade has been crucial for countries lacked behind in tach to catch-up, so potentially this idea can expand strategy thinking for African/Asian countries.

 

[BrotherJonathan]

That way lies madness (and dragons). Modifier stacking like that is a huge problem in other PDX games and should be avoided at all costs.

Maybe have a rule where you can only have one modifier active at a time (like in D&D 4e)? I know it would be gamey, but it would help prevent stacking issues.

 

[ccrepeman]

can you please solve this problem. Its on mac if that helps

 

[adil3tr]

Is there any plan to tweak the puppet/protectorate system? I liked dominions, they were under your thumb but they could also expand on their own.

 

[Metz]

Would you consider adding more resource/industry types?

Masonry, or the extraction of stone could be important for construction sectors as some places don't have much wood so they use stone to build. Masonry could also feed art academies (sculptures). It could be either an alternative PM to use instead of wooden frames or a level after slotting in before the use of concrete.

Precious metals could open up the jewelry industry. Gold mines could then have a PM to see if you use all of it for minting or part of it and send some of the gold to be converted into precious metals.

I would also add more forms of taxation as income tax shouldn't exist for many countries at the start of the game. I would add sliders also for these taxes so you can customize your money sourcing options.

Not sure if it is in the works but minting control and inflation would add more depth to the game. Inflation would affect your local prices on the consumer end.

There is also the selling of government bonds and the taking over of custom houses over debt (where you get part or all of the income from the debtor's tariffs). Prolonged failure to repay debts should make the debtor country allow the creditor country to dictate laws to pass.

 

[andseanfor]

I agree - the plan is not just to make JEs rewarding by piling on unsuitable or unrealistic bonuses. However, there's certainly a middle ground to be found between 'underwhelming' and 'overpowered'.

I think it'd be cool to see minor but permanent changes to the political landscape, like one of the interest groups changing one of its ideologies or upgrading traits, as a reward for major journal entries. Or even just modifying leader ideology spawn chance or something.

 

[Hopciu]

Is it weird to anyone else that the military rework will only be focused on one Eastern European country that doesn't even exist at game start?

Central European!

 

[yurcick]

Well, while the fact that they're overpowered is exacerbating the problem, my argument is that arbitrary bonuses like this ("as a journal entry reward") have no place in a society simulator entirely.

Project caesar has never aspired to be a simulation and never called itself one, and still, their vision on flavour and bonus modifiers seems much more reserved, and, I would say, very much fitting to Victoria.

Players need more dopamine upon completing something that already shows that they're strong? A balanced and game-fitting way to reward them would be a firework animation.

To throw a bone to people who "came to play a game, not watch a model simulate stuff" (which is a very valid point of view), let's find a middle ground here.

Is the discussed potential journal entry a clear internationally recognisable hard-to-achieve feat, something that, if realised, would surprise the world and make it reconsider the abilities of the one accomplishing the feat for the better?
Then we already have a tool to represent this: prestige. Let's give a significant prestige boost as a reward, long-term or permanently.

While I would vehemently oppose direct bonuses to "hard physical stuff", not all useful metrics in the game are physical.
We can (and it would only be logical to do so) attach non-physical stuff to the prestige itself.
The game has several metrics that naturally rely on how your country is perceived, and should have many more.
Let's make immigration attraction partially tied to prestige (or yearly prestige change). Let's finally add investor attraction and tie it to prestige (or yearly prestige change). This would be very natural and cool, if perhaps slightly less diverse than if one JE gave offense bonuses and another one -- minting one, and another still -- education access one.

Spoiler: Prestige rework proposal

Things that prestige affects now and should affect in the future: country status (GP position)
Things that prestige affects now, but shouldn't: company throughput bonuses
Things that prestige doesn't affect now, and should: migration attraction, likelihood of pro-country lobbies forming, likelihood of accepting certain diplomatic actions
Things that don't exist, but should appear and be affected by prestige: investor attraction, national identarians attraction (basically "Habsburg's Austria loyalists" as an identity that would rival the fact that they are Czech, Catholic or engineers)

 

[Timewalker102]

Is the discussed potential journal entry a clear internationally recognisable hard-to-achieve feat, something that, if realised, would surprise the world and make it reconsider the abilities of the one accomplishing the feat for the better?
Then we already have a tool to represent this: prestige. Let's give a significant prestige boost as a reward, long-term or permanently.

If you're tacking on additional benefits to prestige, isn't this just modifier stacking but with extra steps?

 

[yurcick]

If you're tacking on additional benefits to prestige, isn't this just modifier stacking but with extra steps?

First, it's not really stacking.
If there's a single source of all modifiers, a lot of stacking problems are not present (problems with balancing, problems with understanding sources of all modifiers, problems on edge cases where modifiers become too much and effectively self-multiply, e.g. "cost -45%"+"cost -45%" turning into a tenfold discount).

Second and more important, it's only realistic that things that represent "mental" stuff, how your country is perceived, would be affected by prestige. Some of the metrics, however, don't really show resolve of the workers or trust in your country, they are inherently physical things. And having achievements affect them is anathema.

 

[Leoreth]

I agree - the plan is not just to make JEs rewarding by piling on unsuitable or unrealistic bonuses. However, there's certainly a middle ground to be found between 'underwhelming' and 'overpowered'.

What is wrong with JEs ending with nothing?

I can't speak for everyone's playing experience, but I don't always pursue a JE because it gives me a specific benefit or power to stack on my existing powers, but just to have a goal to pursue. Often this is specifically for historical/roleplaying purposes. Games need goals and achieving the goal should be the goal. I don't need to be rewarded for it. It sometimes feels like saying "winning a game of chess feels underwhelming because there is no reward at the end".

What I am trying to say is that the "huh, that's it" response doesn't necessarily mean that players expected a significant enough benefit as a reward. I think the issue is that accomplishments aren't properly acknowledged, and seeing just another event description text at the end of a JE chain is not an appropriate acknowledgements. So the change could also come in how your achievements are framed when you get them, and remembered and shown to you during the game.

 

[IsaacCAT]

What is wrong with JEs ending with nothing?

I can't speak for everyone's playing experience, but I don't always pursue a JE because it gives me a specific benefit or power to stack on my existing powers, but just to have a goal to pursue. Often this is specifically for historical/roleplaying purposes. Games need goals and achieving the goal should be the goal. I don't need to be rewarded for it. It sometimes feels like saying "winning a game of chess feels underwhelming because there is no reward at the end".

What I am trying to say is that the "huh, that's it" response doesn't necessarily mean that players expected a significant enough benefit as a reward. I think the issue is that accomplishments aren't properly acknowledged, and seeing just another event description text at the end of a JE chain is not an appropriate acknowledgements. So the change could also come in how your achievements are framed when you get them, and remembered and shown to you during the game.

Totally agree here.

The journey along the JE is the reward itself, it transforms your nation. There are JE that need almost the whole expand of the game to get.

What I would expect from finishing a JE is something visual rather than modifiers (as you would have already modified your nation along the process). For example, when you form a nation you get a new flag and a name. So, every JE could get the player nation some visual changes according to the JE. Those changes are better than any event pop up window and will be a badge of accomplishment that will last forever for the player.

 

[TitaniumMan91]

2. No overlap/Multiple participations in Power Blocks. Like, what if I wanted to create something like EU, then switch tags and create NATO-like org that would include countries from the existing EU-like power block without them leaving it.

But it's not meant to be the EU, it's meant to be a semi to explicitly exploitative relationship with clear winners and losers. There's no election for leader, there's at most a power struggle, but even that is rare. Other countries weren't happy to be within the British sphere, it meant constant worry that you or your kid would be deposed so the British could install a puppet. Even the Monroe Doctrine wasn't benevolent, the US wanted to be the one to exploit the New World and that was how they expressed it.

They really, really should have named them Spheres of Influence instead of power blocs.

 

[sigismundus]

Thank you Wiz for the DD and summary of the previous year.

I disagree with you with no patch for 1.8 before 1.9. There are still issues that should be fixed before 1.9.
The companies are in a mess and should be addressed, abolitionist movements (more specifically the complete absence of it) also affect all countries with slavery.
There are so many reports about dividends taken from financial reserves when shouldn't that it is not clear if it is a bug or works as intended so at least clear information to players why it is happening.

So please reconsider it and give us some bugfixing before the 1.9

 

[magistairs]

That way lies madness (and dragons). Modifier stacking like that is a huge problem in other PDX games and should be avoided at all costs.

Temporary modifiers have advantages and disadvantages also, one can be better than the other or not, it depends on the implementation

When I said a 10% bonus throughput in a state, it means a bonus which is not outstanding and impossible to obtain in another way, it's just the equivalent of stacking 10 building levels. Many things in the game have more impact and don't break the economy, like MAPI. They are also already in the hands of the player, the ones who micromanage and the ones who don't, so it won't create a gap between different types of players (the ones who minmax JE rewards and the ones who play normally) to add a few permanent modifiers here and there.
In EU4 this is very different because modifiers stacking allows you to access things which were normally not possible in vanilla, so broken, like 99% admin efficiency, 150% discipline when the IA will be at 110% on average, etc...

For now I listed a few advantages of my example and I would add that permanent modifiers encourage doing the entries faster, while when I receive something like +5% loyalists I rarely care about doing it early or not

___


Totally unrelated, but the JEs popping in the Journal are a cause of their lack of importance imo, and it's annoying to go to the journal to favorite them each time.

It would be more noticeable with a pop up showing when a JE starts, explaining what happened and what could be the consequences of completing it in one way, another, or not (special events in EU4 anbennar are quite good in that regard)

With possibly 2 buttons to track it or just leave it in the journal (just like MMORPG quests)

And lastly about the UI, when a JE is completed it pops up like an event, to people who only read the buffs/debuffs given by clicking one button or another, like me, it looks like a random event.
If the UI of the pop up is different for JEs, and possibly richer, I will notice directly that this event is special and I will understand that I, the player, achieved something unique in my game and not a random, less relevant, event

 

[Promethium555]

In fairness I don't think that's what the OP was referring to. What I suspect they are referring to was the devs ignoring the people who were screaming at them that the only way for them to "save" the game was to basically gut it and rebuild it from the ground up.

You say "gut" like it's a dirty word, but I'll stand my ground that many mechanics in Victoria 3 need some sort of rework. The devs are actively reworking the trade and naval systems and rebuilding them, because as many people have pointed out- they are highly flawed in their current state. The consensus of the war system seems to be those who want it to be hard-reworked versus those who want it to be soft-reworked.

I would also not mind gutting other mechanics:

1: The Construction queue being uniform for your entire country. A construction project in California should not slow down the building of a university in New England in any significant way. What building is a "construction sector" supposed to represent anyways?

2: IG leaders. What purpose do they serve in the game? They cheapen IGs by promoting a "Great Man" viewpoint where 1 million people will instantly change their minds based off a single person's viewpoints like a Stellaris hivemind. Don't Agitators and movements fulfill their niche of individuals who catalyze political change anyways ? Ideologies need to be more dynamic, ideally with each IG attracting a different composition of which ideologies they support. An upper-house mechanic can expand on this even further.

 

[TitaniumMan91]

If we want permanent modifiers, tie some in to large infrastructure projects that add a state modifier. Want the US to get more immigrants? The modifier is unlocked by building a skyscraper-esque immigration processing center. Your throughput efficiency isn't magic, it's a dedicated government office for economic planning or whatever. It would also be an easy pathway to reducing initial resources but adding projects to seek out more.

 

[BrotherJonathan]

But it's not meant to be the EU, it's meant to be a semi to explicitly exploitative relationship with clear winners and losers. There's no election for leader, there's at most a power struggle, but even that is rare. Other countries weren't happy to be within the British sphere, it meant constant worry that you or your kid would be deposed so the British could install a puppet. Even the Monroe Doctrine wasn't benevolent, the US wanted to be the one to exploit the New World and that was how they expressed it.

They really, really should have named them Spheres of Influence instead of power blocs.

Also something that I think we should keep in mind is that massive EU-style blocs are really a product of the post-World War II era, when our modern idea of multilateral internationalism really took shape. They wouldn't really fit in a game about the Victorian era very well.

You say "gut" like it's a dirty word, but I'll stand my ground that many mechanics in Victoria 3 need some sort of rework. The devs are actively reworking the trade and naval systems and rebuilding them, because as many people have pointed out- they are highly flawed in their current state. The consensus of the war system seems to be those who want it to be hard-reworked versus those who want it to be soft-reworked.

I would also not mind gutting other mechanics:

1: The Construction queue being uniform for your entire country. A construction project in California should not slow down the building of a university in New England in any significant way. What building is a "construction sector" supposed to represent anyways?

2: IG leaders. What purpose do they serve in the game? They cheapen IGs by promoting a "Great Man" viewpoint where 1 million people will instantly change their minds based off a single person's viewpoints like a Stellaris hivemind. Don't Agitators and movements fulfill their niche of individuals who catalyze political change anyways ? Ideologies need to be more dynamic, ideally with each IG attracting a different composition of which ideologies they support. An upper-house mechanic can expand on this even further.

IMO, what you're describing isn't "gutting", it's that you want specific systems reworked because you don't like them. That's constructive criticism. That's good.
The people I was referring to are the ones who were basically saying "tear the entire game down and rebuild it as a clone of Victoria II with better graphics".
They weren't interested in discussion or giving feedback so much as just constantly berating the devs, being rude and condescending to anyone who disagreed with them, ands generally acting like they were somehow personally offended that the game even existed.

 

[stormtemplar]

Trade will be a major rework. Military will mainly be focused on polish and fixing frustrating issues (front splitting etc). There is of course more to the update but not ready to talk about that yet.

This is relevant for both, so is there a plan to make lack of supply matter beyond cost for armies? The biggest thing holding back the whole transition to industrial war thing is that my troops can apparently achieve the same thing as a machine gun by holding a pile of gold and a requisition order and, presumably, shouting "bang!"

The trade rework will presumably impact this a lot and one would hope make things less binary between "we make this weaponry ourselves" and "we fight with sticks" so I hope we'll see it finally