Victoria 3 - Dev Diary #149 - Other Changes

[tdene]

• The create_building effect now allows script values to be passed into the “level” property meaning you can finally prune all those if-statements. (I see you)

This is huge!!! One of the biggest improvements in 1.9! Thank you so much devs!!

 

[gurufabbes]

Private Investment Log
When hovering over the upcoming Private Construction plan you will now be greeted with a new tooltip that lists some of the most recent investments conducted by your pops including Constructions and Privatizations.

This is awesome.

 

[Sighfer]

Up next, we're finally nerfing Austria.

 

[Rabid]

Seeing the map mode tab on the building window makes me think: can we have an infrastructure map mode please?

 

[ghost_of_donut]

Love the blockades! The "Navies Matter" game pillar that was mentioned even before the game's release was one thing (of many) that had me excited for Victoria 3, so it's great to see more reasons to have them. The increased importance of trade with this update makes it especially good to see.

 

[iagocor]

was here any change to arts academy?

 

[Redwallzyl]

Has the ghost military power from assigning a bunch of levies you could never actually raise been toned down? It's serious a cheat code for the player in diplomatic plays.

 

[Idle America]

Part One of the Anaconda Plan can now be executed! Just two more to go.

 

[Mirza Khan]

Will there be some sort of movement rebalance? Right now I almost never get an abolitionist movement even when I invite an agitator who is supposed to start one.

 

[TysonMika]

Thank you for all the changes, and happy birthday! These quality of life changes are amazing.

That being said, I really wish this update had also included some changes to succession movements. Rn, they can be a major obstruction, especially in the late game, mostly because they’re so hard for the player to actually be in conntrol of.
(maybe its just me - I don't have a lot of mod installed, none related to discrimination)

The issue comes down to how radicalism is determined. Since it's based on the disparity between your average SOL and that of your colony, you end up with SOL radicalism stacked on top of conquest radicalism. Even inclusive citizenship laws don’t really help much with this.

Plus once it starts, there's no real way to stop it. Home Affairs only slows it down, which ends up making it even more difficult to downside buildings or reorganize your army.

In one game, I lost my colony in the Sunda islands (my only rice producing state), and all my rice farms lost their PMs and had to be manually reset.

Looking foward to changes to succession in the future, and thanks again!

 

[Chief of Staff]

Look very interesting! As someone who almost always play United Kingdom in the game, blockade is definitely one of the new features that interested me most.

So, I got a few questions. I assume the blockade can only be done during the actual war. Unfortunately, that would mean we cannot do something like the infamous blockade imposed by Lord Palmerston during the notorious Don Pacifico Affair, in which no actual war was involved, despite the blockade being legally regarded, at least in the customary international laws, as an act of war.

By the way, this particular historical instance of blockade is categorized as the so-called pacific blockade, a category introduced in 1827 with the Great Powers blockade of the Turkish-occupied coast of Greece during the Greek War of Independence, the first of its kind. Before then, all blockades had been solely considered a part of the war. Finally, human affairs being a messy thing as it is, as this thing clearly demonstrated, I doubt that computer players can understand this well with our current technologies, so pacific blockade is probably not feasible, but I could be wrong on that.

Another question: as with any tactics, blockades typically comes in variations: close, distant, and loose. Loose blockade is what Admiral Horatio Nelson applied to the blockade of Cadiz in 1805, in hopes of drawing the enemy fleet out. In this, his gamble paid off: the Franco-Spanish fleet sailed out, only for Nelson and his fleet to give a chase and catch up with them, starting one of the greatest naval battles - the Battle of Trafalgar. That being said, is it likely to over-complicate the naval warfare to provide different options for the blockade action? How might it increase or reduce the gameplay value? What is the potential impact of this on the AI? Is it worth considering or nah?

One more thing about blockade... blockade implies not just blocking the enemy fleets but also an act of economic warfare, which means also intercepting the enemy merchant ships. Now, the thing is, while capital ships may be great for both intimidation and for blocking the enemy fleets (particularly if the blockaded fleet has a number of capital ships in them), they are not so great for blockading certain types of merchant ships or a fleet almost entirely composed of light warships, considering that capital ships often tend to be slower than these faster, more maneuverable ships.

Moreover, light ships excel at scouting, allowing the blockading fleet to quickly detect any attempts to break out of the port. This particular significance of the light ships is evident in Nelson's earlier complaints about lack of frigates during the Mediterranean campaign of 1798, in which he (narrowly) missed the French fleet carrying Napoleon and his army to the (nominally) Ottoman province of Egypt for an invasion. Moreover, the blockading navies often posted frigates to watch for the enemy movement out of the port being blockaded, especially if applying the loose blockade (as Nelson did in the blockade of Cadiz before the Battle of Trafalgar).

Therefore, in such situations, an optimal mix of capital ships and frigates may be required in the game for blockading to be effective. Otherwise, if the number of light ships are zero or too low, there is going to be some serious "leakage" in the blockade. I would recommend considering some ways to reflect this and accordingly require a certain ratio of these two categories of warships. Not sure how support vessel category would be calculated in this, but submarines probably could augment or even entirely supersede the light ships in this mix once they become available. But I am a bit ignorant on this particular matters.

Also, in game, a lack of light ships in the blockading fleet could increase the chance that the blockaded fleet entirely composed of light ships, being faster and maneuverable, could escape without even a battle being fought at all, skipping the sea province the blockading fleet is in and appearing in the neighboring sea province. This, then, makes having a sufficient presence of light ships in the blockading fleet even more imperative in such scenarios. It can also provide an interesting dilemma in which the player must decide how to allocate the number of their light ships between blockading and convoy raiding, especially if the number of light ships to them is limited.

 

[Chief of Staff]

does the canton system fit japan as well? with the island of dejima

I think that raises an interesting question: does the Netherlands currently have some kind of special trading privileges in Japan represented at the start of game, given that the Dutch were historically the only people allowed to trade with the Japanese before the end of its so-called sakou (isolationist) policy? Perhaps there should be a way for the Netherlands to somehow be able to trade with Japan at the game start, despite its Isolationism policy currently active.

Also, I am not sure how their trading historically worked, but I suspect there might be some limitations on how much they could trade, similar to the Canton system in China (partly why the First Opium War broke out), so, in the game, there might also be a soft cap on volume of trade between the Dutch and the Japanese or something, if such thing indeed historically existed.

But more information is needed on this. It would be helpful to have historical data to see if the volume of trade between the Dutch and the Japanese have in fact generally increased or stayed relatively static over the time since the Dutch monopoly on European trading with the Japan started. Or information on whether the Japanese government imposed some kind of legal restrictions on the trade that have practical effect of limiting the volume of trade that could be transacted at Dejima.

In the case of Canton System in imperial China, other than the practical effects on the volume of trade from constraints of having only one port open for trade, it is my understanding that there is one other legal restriction that have the practical effect of limiting the volume of trade there, in which it is stipulated that trading can only be conducted during a defined season each year (don't have the information on when is the trading season, but I suspect it might be during the spring and maybe the summer as well). Perhaps something similar were implemented in Japan with respect to the Dutch traders, too.

 

[Bairy]

I think that raises an interesting question: does the Netherlands currently have some kind of special trading privileges in Japan represented at the start of game, given that the Dutch were historically the only people allowed to trade with the Japanese before the end of its so-called sakou (isolationist) policy? Perhaps there should be a way for the Netherlands to somehow be able to trade with Japan at the game start, despite its Isolationism policy currently active.

Though not widely known, the Netherlands was not Japan's only trading partner at the time—Japan also conducted trade with Qing in Nagasaki. Qing merchants had bases in Nagasaki as well. While Dutch merchants were confined to the small island of Dejima, Qing merchants, though under surveillance, were allowed to live within the city of Nagasaki itself.

 

[8ballsam]

The formula has since received another small but noticeable change. Where in the past the base Prosperity was based on the productivity of the Company compared to other Companies, it is now instead based on the Productivity of the Company compared to the global productivity of the types of buildings owned by said Company. In other words, if a Company owns Logging Camps and Rye Farms, its Prosperity from Productivity will be based on how well it compares to the average productivity of all Logging Camps and Rye Farms in the world.

I'm not a game designer, but wouldn't it be more fun to use absolute values rather than relative? It seems there's more potential for historic immersion, if, and this an unrealistic example for demonstration purposes - that the only way to make companies more prosperous is to move more product, rather than simply destroying identical building types the world over that are not owned by the company.

 

[TheActiveGamer]

Love the new QoL features especially the ports being autobuilt when you start colonizing a state. Speaking of QoL will there be a feature to select how much construction you actually want to use and pay for. Right now if you have budget problems and need to costruct less you have to either stop all public sector construction, delete construction sectors or hope the private sector will build more and take up more construction.

 

[CivMasters]

My name is Tunay (aka Doodlez) and I'm a Game Designer and Rural Folk member on Victoria 3 and I've been tasked with bringing you this Dev Diary.​

Most definitely false. Noone has ever heard of a literate Rural Folk before, at least not on my watch! /i

Jokes aside, serious concern: how is the performance going?

A lot of big changes. The game has seen better and worse performances with patches before and is currently in a good place. It would be sad to see performance degraded now.

 

[Eran Von Baron]

Looks awesome Tunay!

(1) Will a blockade also stop trade from a treaty? Or since that's a neutral party and not through the world market, it won't have any effect? It seems like a crafty player/AI could circumvent a blockade if so.

(2) Has any war goals or war exhaustion features changed so that a blockade can tick war score? Like using a blockade to get a treaty port or to open their market? (I think there's historical precedent for that... But not sure!)

 

[Egodeus]

We are introducing one such Law Variant in Update 1.9 in the form of the “Canton System” a version of Isolationism that exists in China at game start. Implemented by the Qing dynasty, it greatly reduces the amount of outside trade by forcing it to go through a single port without banning it outright however, unlike regular Isolationism!

Would you also consider a similar setup for the Japanese Sakoku system that limited trade with the outside world to go through Nagasaki? There were both Chinese and Dutch traders allowed there and while the trade might not have been huge compared to the size of the nation, it still allowed some western advances to permeate to Japan, and I would think this kind of law would be a better representation for the japanese situation.

 

[ingenieux]

Look very interesting! As someone who almost always play United Kingdom in the game, blockade is definitely one of the new features that interested me most.

So, I got a few questions. I assume the blockade can only be done during the actual war. Unfortunately, that would mean we cannot do something like the infamous blockade imposed by Lord Palmerston during the notorious Don Pacifico Affair, in which no actual war was involved, despite the blockade being legally regarded, at least in the customary international laws, as an act of war.

By the way, this particular historical instance of blockade is categorized as the so-called pacific blockade, a category introduced in 1827 with the Great Powers blockade of the Turkish-occupied coast of Greece during the Greek War of Independence, the first of its kind. Before then, all blockades had been solely considered a part of the war. Finally, human affairs being a messy thing as it is, as this thing clearly demonstrated, I doubt that computer players can understand this well with our current technologies, so pacific blockade is probably not feasible, but I could be wrong on that.

Could this be programmed as an offer of support in diplo-play ? You promise to blockade the opposing side without actually entering conflict, and get an obligation out of it (unless you don't actually blockage enough of course) it would require to change the way wars work but it would limit abuse.

 

[SteppeStepper]

Is there a way to tell which port is connected to which sea node? Can a port have 2 sea nodes so when you block one it can switch to another one a bit further?