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Victoria 3 - Dev Diary #17 - Migration

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Hello and welcome to yet another Victoria 3 dev diary. Today’s topic is Migration (meaning the movement of Pops between states), what role it plays in Victoria 3, and how it functions mechanically. There are two types of Migration in Victoria 3: Intra-Market Migration and Mass Migration, and we’ll be explaining both of these starting with Intra-Market Migration.

Intra-Market Migration is the movement of Pops between two States that are part of the same Market. Barring certain exceptions (such as slaves not being able to migrate, as covered in the previous dev diary), Pops are generally always able to move between States in the Market, though the number of individuals that are able to change their homes on a weekly basis varies based on factors such as the local Infrastructure and Market Access in the two States.

Which Pops migrate from and to what States depends on the Migration Attraction of each State. Migration Attraction is a value that is based on the average Standard of Living in the state, and modified by various factors such as over/underpopulation, unemployment/available jobs and so on. It is possible for a country to directly encourage Migration to a specific state through the ‘Greener Grass Campaign’ Decree, at the cost of some Authority. In general, Pops will move from States with a low standard of living and a lack of employment opportunities to states with a high standard of living and jobs to offer. States with a low population compared to the amount of available land are especially attractive to economic immigrants.

Kansas, already an attractive state for American settlers due to its sparse population, has been further prioritized for migration through the use of a Greener Grass Campaign decree
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Discrimination, too, plays a role in migration. Pops that are being discriminated against in a particular State, and have the opportunity to migrate to another State in that market where they would not be discriminated against (perhaps because of multiple countries sharing the same Market, and one of those countries having more liberal citizenship or religious laws) will take that opportunity in greater numbers, provided of course that there is an underlying economic reason for them to want to move there in the first place. After all, while enjoying voting rights is certainly nice, putting food on the table is higher on the agenda for most Pops.

Discrimination can also have the opposite effect: Pops that are already enjoying full citizen rights are generally going to need to be in pretty dire economic straits to consider moving somewhere where those rights are going to be taken away, and in the case of a Pop that is going to be discriminated against no matter where they go in the Market, they tend to stick to their cultural Homelands.

French colonial settlement policies means that their colony of Algiers receives a steady trickle of immigrants from mainland France every week
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So, what then of Mass Migration? Mass Migration is a mechanic introduced to try and model the migration of large amounts of people to places such as the US, Brazil and Australia in the 19th century. Mass Migration can happen when a particular culture experiences Turmoil, which is a product of having a large number of radicalized pops. A culture that has enough Turmoil to meet the threshold has a chance to create a Migration Target somewhere in the world, which is a flag set on a particular State that attracts huge numbers of migrants from that culture over the course of a limited timespan to that State and any States neighboring it.
Migration Targets are more likely to be created if the Pops in the culture have a low Standard of Living and high Literacy, and particularly likely to be created if there is widespread starvation among the Pops of that culture.

The selection of States for Migration Targets is based on a number of factors, including the state’s Migration Attraction, whether or not the culture is legally discriminated against in the country, and if there is a logical ‘path’ that Pops of the migrating culture would be able to follow from their Homelands to the target (such as trade routes). There is no inherent advantage in certain country ‘tags’ for who gets migrants - the US tends to get migrations because of availability of jobs and land combined with liberal citizenship laws, not because they have a built-in migration attraction bonus.

Fed up with economic hardship and political oppression in their homelands, a large group of Polish people have decided to try their luck at a new life in France
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There is one more aspect of migration that we’re only going to briefly touch on: Migration Policy. This is a group of Laws which lets you set the stance of your country on migration. For example, whether you want to promote the movement of people from your core lands to your colonies, attract skilled workers from other countries for your manufacturing economy, or even just minimize all migration (external and internal) as a way of maintaining your iron grip over the population. The reason we won’t be going into this today is because it’s currently in the process of being redesigned to this end (from a previous, much simpler set of laws). We’ll try to return to it at a later time!

With that said, we’ve reached the end of this dev diary, and in fact, the end of the current string of politics dev diaries, as next we’ll be changing our focus from inwards to outwards and talking about Diplomacy, on the topic of Prestige and Rank!
 
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Yes, it's based on proportion of population vs Arable Land.
In the real world, a person can benefit from moving to a sparsely populated state by claiming a larger and therefore more profitable farm. Is there any analogous benefit in the V3 model? I'm thinking that all else being equal, a farm that is 25%, 50% or 75% full of employees basically generates the same income per employee.
 
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Even though you won't be talking about migration policies, may I suggest you include some sort of subsidy to migration? Brazil attracted many migrants that way at the time, paying for passage and housing for new arrivals.
 
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Is inter-market migration not a thing? France's pied-noir population was not only from France, but also neighboring Spain and Italy. Not to mention overseas immigration to the New World took place in steady trickles as well as in waves.
 
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I hope that the Migration Laws available will be able to represent the role of laws such as the Chinese Exclusion Act or White Australia Policy, as well as the societal factors that caused them: anti-immigration policies were strongly supported by Australia's trade unions, while many members of the Progressive Movement in America were closely connected with Eugenics and the ensuing preference for "Nordic" migration.

It should be possible for IGs to try and pressure the government to choose sub-par migration policies to appease them (i.e. the promise of independence to the Philippines being influenced by a desire to avoid integrating the country and allowing non-white people to gain citizenship, as shown in the specific inclusion of migration quotas in the Tydings-McDuffie Act).

Additionally, including events in which people agitate for or intellectuals/politicians propose restrictions on migration in countries with open borders would also help add to the representation of the controversies surrounding border policy in this era.
 
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Mhmhm yes yes good new header art, thank you kind sir.
With that said, we’ve reached the end of this dev diary, and in fact, the end of the current string of politics dev diaries, as next we’ll be changing our focus from inwards to outwards and talking about Diplomacy, on the topic of Prestige and Rank!

Very excited to finally hear about Diplomacy!
 
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Is it possible for mass migration to change the base culture/religion of a developing country? Can a devastating war in the Italian peninsula make it so that for example Argentina becomes an Italian country on paper (culturally)?
No, countries have fixed primary culture (one or several) and this does not change other than if the country's definition changes (e.g. through forming a new nation). More context here.

Discrimination law effects are measured against the primary cultures, so a large population of non-primary culture immigrants may demand equal treatment or pack up and move elsewhere, or even demand self-governance under certain conditions.
 
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"Colonial" migration from day 1? Let's go! We're turning the Maghreb French by 1900, boys!
 
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Can players compete for migration in MP? I would like to grow by stealing pops from other players that have less migration attraction and standard of living but also be able to target where this migration should come from, i.e., getting the type of pops I want (culture, class, etc..).

Coming from Imperator where migration is severely limited between nations and players cannot 'steal' pops except by pirate raidings, I think Vic 3 could make this a very interesting gameplay for MP.
 
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Is there a chance that enough Poles will swarm Paris to make a Polish city? Or will the free jobs and lands run out first?
 
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So how hard will be as SAF to stole migrants which are supposed to go USA? Will we be able, if we want, to create new immigrant heaven in South Africa? Will it be also possible to force certain culture groups to emigrate from your country by using right discriminatiom laws?
 
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I noticed there is a big imbalance in Algiers' standard of living. I imagine these French migrants are then midddle and upper class only in this situation, since there isn't any reason for poor folks to move there?
 
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When you say that pops will move somewhere because of access to land, what exactly does that mean? Is it just available jobs at subsistence farms/regular farms? Or is there an actual system of pop land ownership?
 
Mass Migration is based on cultures, not POP's? Can turmoil in Russian Poland cause a Mass Migration for the Polish Pops in Austria with 60 Standard of Living that are all Loyalists as well?
 
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Maybe the Greener Grass Campaign should also give a small flat bonus, like +2? We need a scam to encourage people to move to 'Greenland', for example.
 
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I like most of these mechanics, not a big fan of the mass migrations having an arbitrary time limit though. Migration shouldn't stop until the driving force behind it has been dealt with, either by government action or simply becausee so many people have already left that jobs and opportunities have been freed up.

I'd also like to know how war will effect migration. For example, if the american civil war is much longer and more destructive than in real life, it would make sense for some of the more recent immigrants to decide maybe this freedom thing aint so great after all and go back to their home countries.
 
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Barring certain exceptions (such as slaves not being able to migrate, as covered in the previous dev diary), Pops are generally always able to move between States in the Market, though the number of individuals that are able to change their homes on a weekly basis varies based on factors such as the local Infrastructure and Market Access in the two States.​
Does the movement of people in migration use up any kind of transportation service or infrastructure? Does anyone get paid when say a million people move to America?
 
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Does the "average standard of living" basis for pop migration apply to a general standard of living, or on the basis of pop professions? Because I could envision a scenario where there are extremely wealthy pops that would raise the balance, but other pops being worse off.
 
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I like this.
The mechanics are understandable and realistic. And it's possible for the player to influence immigration by improving (or not) their own states.
I'm looking forward to more information on the policies.

Question:
1. You said there's a chance a Migration Target will be created. So let's say two states have the potential to become a MT and they have the exact same Migration Attraction and other factors are also the same. The chance will then be 50/50 on which of them becomes the MT?

2. So then if they differ slightly and one is more attractive. Will in that case the most attractive state definitely become the MT or is there still a chance the other state will become the target?
 
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