Victoria 3 - Dev Diary #2 - Capacities

[Wizzington]

The Battle of Koniggratz at the top huh. On the dev diary itself with the mention of authority being drawn from and representation of the head of state, how does authority function in countries like Norway which is in a personal union. What about when you unite something like Scandinavia? Also, I see Secondary Powers are now Major powers or maybe major powers is just everyone above a certain point which technically includes Great Powers but they're also another class in and of themselves?

Major Powers is our name for Secondary Powers, though the advantages they get compared to Minor Powers are a bit different from V2.

 

[Wizzington]

Is influence affected by the nation you are using it on? For example, I think influencing a weak nation should cost less than a great power

I also think a communist country, for instance, should find it much harder to influence a conservative monarchy, and vice versa

Yes, costs vary based on factors like rank, threat, etc

 

[Wizzington]

It looks from the description and the picture that Bureaucratic Capacity is based on the Government Administration building and not the number of Bureaucrats working there. What if we have the building, but no Bureaucrat Pops?

The production from the building scales to the available workforce - an empty building doesn't provide any benefits.

 

[Wizzington]

So if you get more authority from being authoritarian, then what does a non-authoritarian society get in exchange?

Generally speaking, more rights and equality means happier, healthier and wealthier pops with all the benefits that brings.

 

[Wizzington]

From head there are similar things in Vicky 2 : Colonial power and diplomatic influence, both you can increase by building (ships) and technology

Colonial 'power' is an institution you invest into in Victoria 3 (and colonizing requires ports and fleets), but more on that later.

 

[lachek]

A bit not on topic, but the money(?) being presented as capacity(?) seems intriguing. Does it mean money will work the same way, and countries won't be able to accumulate it?

View attachment 727565

Oh gosh no. The money is shown in the top bar next to the Capacities but works like you'd expect a treasury to work. The bar being red means you're halfway towards your credit limit, the positive balance means you're slowly paying your loans off.

The fact that they're rendered exactly the same right now is admittedly confusing and will definitely be fixed!

 

[Wizzington]

We're going to delve more into buildings next week, but you can think of building a Government Administration as essentially creating the offices, logistics etc for your bureaucrats - without it they can't do their jobs, but you still need qualified, literate pops to take those jobs and without them it's just an empty complex doing nothing. All buildings work like this in Victoria 3, including ports and railroads (which did not need pops to function in V2). You even need to employ pops to construct things for you in V3.

 

[Wizzington]

Can I ask you if buildings take a slot of some sort?

Some buildings are limited by things like resources or arable land (for example, iron mines are limited by how much iron is available in the region), but only where it makes sense. How large your cities can grow is really only limited by population.

 

[Wizzington]

The road maintenance thing is sort of interesting. Is authority being used because you're like, demanding with your kingly powers and decrees that road maintenance shall be done? That's how I read it, rather than the maintenance itself taking your authority for some reason (the first King-Foreman of Sweden?)

This is the idea yes, the king exercising his personal power on pet projects.

 

[Wizzington]

i hope this comes mostly from social reforms though? If someone was forced to choose between living in a rich country that is an absolute monarchy/dictatorship (that does not persecute that person) and a poor country that is a perfect democracy. Pretty sure most would pick the rich country.

Voting rights don't directly increase the wealth of pops, but they do give them the ability to push for social reforms that benefit them, which in turn may mean the player is able to get those reforms passed.

 

[lachek]

It's not clear just from this screenshot, but Freedom of Assembly is a law in the Free Speech category of Laws, which "culminates" in Protected Speech. As the most liberal Law in this category, it grants no Authority, while more repressive Laws (like Freedom of Assembly) do. In isolation from the rest of the game, of course that means it looks like granting your people rights increases your Authority but that is actually the opposite of what is happening.

Also, this is of course not the only thing Free Speech Laws govern, there are other effects of the Laws as well which provide trade-offs to your country, but this is the only effect it has on Authority.

The reason why Road Maintenance uses Authority is because it's a decree (one of many different types) issued in a state to its population, and doesn't cost the government anything other than the Authority to ensure its people are following its directives. This is a pretty early-game solution to maintaining a good market connections in a few states at a time, more effective means of leveraging your economy to ensure cohesion between your states tend to emerge later in the game, freeing your Authority up for other things like suppressing your political opponents (or, you know, granting your people more rights, if that's how you want to go about it.)

 

[Wizzington]

Good, though does this mean even in absolute monarchies a player cant just enact reforms on a whim (granted one Zar got assassinated for abolishing serfdom as far as i know, but still...)?

Absolute monarchs never actually had absolute power, an absolute monarch without a power base is not going to remain a monarch for much longer. It would perhaps be interesting to always allow laws to attempt to be passed by an absolute monarch but realistically if all power is held by the landowners, trying to pass universal suffrage should result in a rapid coup.

 

[Wizzington]

Absolute monarchs never actually had absolute power--yes, so what about Bonapartism?
Bonapartism is an example of a monarch exercising absolute power over conflicts of classes. Example: Second Empire.
Is Napoleon III a constitutional monarch, an absolute monarch, or a presidential dictatorship?

An absolute monarch is only absolute so long as there's enough people agreeing that he is absolute. If the entire army decides to disagree, well, the title doesn't mean much anymore.

 

[lachek]

you get influence from??

Primarily your Rank, which is determined by Prestige, which is determined by a combination of other factors. In other words, the more impressive/terrifying the rest of the world thinks you are, the more leeway you get in pushing your weight around on the world stage.

There are other potential sources of Influence as well which also make sense, given what Influence is used for. We absolutely do not want you to feel like the way you get a resource has no relation to how you can allocate that resource.

 

[Wizzington]

Exactly. It's not just pressing "Create Governement Building" and hop!, Bureaucrats will pop out. They will most probably need to purchase different goods as office supplies as well to perform properly, otherwise they won't.

Correct, both people and goods like paper are needed to run your bureaucracy.

 

[Wizzington]

Late dame Democratic governments should in fact have close to equal if not more authority than early game absolute monarchies. If we are going historically speaking, of course, if we go with this with a boardgame mindset then asymmetric design makes more sense.

Autocrats (or anyone with a great deal of personal power) can do things in a way that cuts through red tape, that's basically what Authority is representing. It's meant to be a trade-off but it also simulate a very real effect.

 

[Wizzington]

Is bureaucracy capacity equals to how much money you invest? Sounds like that if you has enough money to afford administration building and bureaucrats' salary, you can have as many bureaucracy capacity as you want. I'm worry about that when you get everything on track in the mid-game and have stable income, bureaucracy capacity will never be a problem.

The need for bureaucracy scales upwards with a higher incorporated population, especially if you want to run social programs. You're essentially paying for every pop you want to educate, provide healthcare for, etc. As the example given, it's extremely expensive just to govern China, providing it with solid infrastructure and social programs is meant to be a herculean undertaking.

 

[Wizzington]

Will bureaucracy usage grow lineary with the number of states and pops or will there be an upward curve? I.e. will large states like China and Russia need to allocate a larger share of resources to bureaucracy than say Serbia everything else being equal? Will it make blobing beyond certain point prohibitively expensive? And will the mechanic apply to colonial states?

Bureaucracy usage scales with the number of people you administrate. Providing education to a million people is ten times more expensive than providing it to a hundred thousand people. There is also a flat cost per incorporated state, to represent the difficulties in governing large territories (even if those territories are depopulated).

 

[Wizzington]

That is not how it worked in Vic 2, Railroads or Naval Bases required resourses (lumber, steel, cement etc.) the monetary cost is the price of purchasing these goods and it varied depending on the market price and sometime these goods not availlable at all to your nation. In V3 seems they are adding hiring construction workers as an addional input to building construction costs

Yeah, buildings cost goods to construct (which goods depend on the method of construction used, if you're building say wooden or steel-and-glass buildings) which are subject to market prices and impact the market in turn.