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Victoria 3 - Dev Diary #27 - Technology

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Welcome back to another Victoria 3 development diary! Today we will talk about something we’ve already had to touch on in numerous previous dev diaries, as it is a topic crucial to every part of the game: Technology.

The Victorian era saw revolutionary progress in three major areas: industry, military, and politics. The rise of automation and free enterprise brought about the promise of immense material wealth for anyone willing and able to put in the work. Military technology - on land, at sea, and eventually even in the air - progressed so rapidly it could render a nation’s centuries-old doctrines obsolete overnight. And along with these material changes came a fundamental reorganisation of the societies themselves - sometimes by redistributing power from the ancient noble regimes to benefit the common people, and at other times by reigning such democracies in through entirely novel power structures made up of bureaucrats, business magnates, or populist autocratic strongmen.

These three revolutions are represented in Victoria 3 through three distinct tech trees: Production, Military, and Society. Within each tree, the many technologies your country will discover through each game are organised such that each tech both requires one or several others and leads to one or several others. Modders might be interested to know that each tree automatically rebuilds and reorganises itself whenever changes are made, to make it pain-free to add, remove, or change the tech trees without having to tinker with tree layout or static image files.

To research Shaft Mining, which permits the construction of mining industries, you need both Enclosure (which permits private ownership of land) and Manufactories (which lets you establish basic industries that make finished products). Shaft Mining itself leads to Prospecting (which increases your chance of discovering new resources), Steelworking (which lets you build Steel Mills), and the Atmospheric Engine, a building-sized early steam engine employed to pump water out of mine shafts. Industrialised countries start the game with most or all of these technologies.
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Production technologies are all about increasing your economic capacity in various ways. These tend to be very concrete inventions, such as Cotton Gin which increases the output of Cotton Plantations and Dynamite which can be employed for increased yields in all kinds of Mines. On some occasions they are more abstract, such as Enclosure which is a prerequisite for construction of modern, privately owned farms and ranches or Shift Work which more effectively utilises labor in your manufacturing industries. Production technologies also include advances to Railways, and some even unlock Goods unknown at the start of the game such as Rubber, Electricity, and Automobiles.

Military technologies improve your army and navy. These consist of a mix of new weapon technologies, doctrines, and ways of organising your Servicemen and Officers. Rifling lets you switch Production Methods from Muskets to Rifles in your Arms Industries, increasing their Small Arms production. Trench Infantry, once employed in your Barracks, organises your Battalions for trench warfare, which requires greater access to Small Arms but establishes a more reliable supply of manpower and causes fewer provinces to be lost when territory must be yielded to the enemy. The naval part of the tree is mostly dedicated to the invention of new ship types, but also includes a few new naval strategies that unlock or improve the effectiveness of certain naval Orders as well as upgrades to civilian Ports to improve your Supply Network and trade capacity.

Society technologies are all about new ideas for organising society. These include ideas pertaining to politics, finance, and diplomacy to name a few. Democracy permits the enactment of various voting franchise Laws as well as Republican principles of governing. Pan-Nationalism is a requirement for forming certain larger countries, and leads to Political Agitation which both makes your population more politically active and also gives you more Authority to deal with them. Several political ideas in this tree also unlocks specific Ideologies which may appear from that point on alongside new Interest Group Leaders and shake up the political landscape you had so carefully tuned, such as Feminism and Anarchism. Just as techs in the Production tree often unlock Production Methods, Society techs often unlock Laws - or Ideologies that can lend support for Laws previously thought utterly absurd by the political establishment.

In addition, Society technologies include improvements to your country’s financial system, such as Central Banking which increases your capacity for minting new currency and unlocks the Diplomatic Actions to Bankroll a country or Take on their Debt, as well as new forms of Institutions like Central Archives that unlock the Secret Police Law / Institution and leads to Identification Documents.

We are aiming for roundabout 175 of these technologies in the game on release, split up across the three trees. Many countries will start with 20-30 of these technologies already researched, as their starting economies, legal systems, militaries, and diplomatic relations rely on them. On average, leading edge countries will discover perhaps one new technology per year, though this pace can vary greatly from country to country.

An early part of the Society tech tree that deals mostly with finance and diplomacy. While a pre-industrial country might want to prioritise crucial Production technologies, missing out on elementary Society ideas that let you adjust Relations or perform effective International Trade is inadvisable. A rapidly developing country without allies could easily fall under the influence of an ambitious Great Power.
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Embarking on the research of a new technology is a simple matter of clicking on the tech in the tree you’d like to focus on, and time will take care of the rest. But time is perhaps your most precious resource in Victoria 3, since falling behind your neighbours could be a death sentence - or at least might force you to cede your right to self-determination. The pace at which your research progresses is therefore of the utmost importance.

The rate by which countries develop new technologies is measured by Innovation. All countries start with a small amount of Innovation capacity. Those countries who can afford to do so can construct and fund University buildings, which employ Academics and Clerks to boost Innovation and thereby speed up the pace at which a country discovers new things.

Another way to improve research speed is to ensure the Industrialists, Armed Forces, or Intelligentsia are satisfied with the state of the country, as this will cause the effective cost of Production, Military, and Society techs respectively to drop. If only one of these groups are pleased with the society you’ve built, this will incentivize focusing your research on that tree since it’s relatively advantageous. As a result, a country with a large army and Laws favouring Patriotic, Loyalist, and Jingoist Ideologies would also progress faster in their Military technologies, though they may fall behind on Production and Society.

The amount of Innovation you can use to actively research your chosen technology is capped by your country’s Literacy. Even if your Universities are top-notch, your country’s ability to effectively incorporate new learnings will be hampered by a poorly educated population. Those countries who aim to be the guiding light of global progress must maintain a solid primary school system in addition to Universities that carry out their research.

Mexico is evidently on the fast-track of becoming the innovative powerhouse in the Americas, but its current Literacy rate doesn’t quite support making full directed use of the Universities they’ve built - for now.
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Literacy is a product of a Pop’s Education Access. If a given Pop has 30% Education Access, over time 30% of individuals in that Pop will become Literate. The pace by which this value changes is dependent on the birth- and death rate of the Pop, since this sort of learning happens mostly in the early years.

A Pop’s Wealth provides it with a base level of Education Access, and Wealth often varies substantially depending on Profession, making higher-paid Professions have greater Education Access. However, Literacy is often a limiting factor to a Pop’s ability to Qualify for those jobs in the first place, so relying solely on Wealth for Education Access could severely limit your country’s social mobility and opportunity for economic growth. This is where your school system comes in.

The main source of Education Access comes from the Education Institution, which must be established by a Law and can be run by either the religious authorities, the private sector, or by a public administration depending on your school system Law. Each of these systems have their advantages: a religious school system keeps your priesthood strong and helps ensure unity of faith; a private school system works just peachy for Pops with high Wealth levels and ensures the working class don’t get strange ideas; and a public school system lets you enact mandatory schooling for children and encourages cultural assimilation.

A country’s Literacy is simply the percentage of their Pops in Incorporated states that know how to read and write at any given point. This means that if the most educated people in your society decide they’ve had enough and move abroad, your average Literacy will drop, to the benefit of the other country. If a war utterly devastates the backwaters of your nation and slaughters the hundreds of thousands you conscripted to defend it, your average Literacy might increase.

After the Texan Revolutionary War, these Clerks found themselves once again subjects of Mexico. While they currently all know how to read and write, their offspring are unlikely to enjoy the same benefits. Mexico has no formal school system in place and their Wealth doesn’t buy much of an education. To add insult to injury the Catholic Church Interest Group in Mexico is currently spreading Pious Fiction to ensure the children aren’t led astray by heretical ideas. The next generation of Clerks are unlikely to qualify to follow in their parents’ footsteps.
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All technology is organised into Eras, which are rough estimates of progress through the game’s timespan. Anything in Era I is considered pre-1836 technology, going back as far as the very idea of Rationalism to the invention of Steelworking. Era II ranges from the start of the game to around the 1860s - Railways and Percussion Cap ammunition both belong here (though some countries did have railways a little earlier than 1836; this is not an exact science). Era III runs from the early 1860s to the end of the 1880s, and includes Civilizing Mission as a justification for colonisation and Pumpjacks, heralding the rise of the oil industry. Era IV from late 1880 to the early 20th century includes both War Propaganda and Film, both which might make it easier to justify the horrors which are to come in Era V - including Battleships, Chemical Warfare, and Stormtroopers. Era V also sees truly modern civilian inventions such as the Oil Turbine to make Electricity from Oil and Paved Roads to improve your national infrastructure.

The Eras act as an indicator of roughly where you are at in a given tree, but also serves a role in ensuring that rushing a certain late-game technology is difficult. Not only do technologies in later Eras take more innovative effort to research, but each technology you have not yet researched in that tree from previous Eras makes it harder and harder to make progress. This means techs aren’t unlocked on specific years in Victoria 3, and there is never a hard block preventing you from making your Universities develop technologies earlier than they were historically invented. But keep in mind that it’s a less efficient use of time and resources, so ensure that acquiring that technology ahead of everyone else is actually crucial for your strategy, as it will not come easily.

Trying to take a shortcut from the Atmospheric Engine (Era I) through Water-tube Boiler (II) and Rotary Valve Engine (III) straight to Combustion Engine (IV) so you’re able to manufacture Automobiles in the mid-1800s is certainly possible given enough money and grit, but would be far from the best use of your resources. Even skipping a few Era III Production techs before going for the Combustion Engine could easily yield this 30% time penalty, the difference which might buy you a whole Era III tech. Besides, you might want to research Rubber Mastication and set up a few Rubber Plantations before you start building Automobiles, unless you want your factories to be wholly dependent on foreign rubber for the tires...
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The final yet crucial point about technological development is that government funding and steering of national research is not the dominant way most countries are exposed to new ideas. For each of the three categories of technology (Production, Military, and Society) there is always one technology that is spreading in your country. Which exact tech that spreads to you in each category is out of your hands, but it will always be something in your current technological Era which has already been invented elsewhere.

The speed by which technology spreads to you is highly dependent on your population’s Literacy. In addition, any Innovation you generate in excess of the Literacy cap is funnelled into improving tech spread rate. In other words, oversizing your Universities compared to your school system can assist in catching up to the rest of the world but can never be used to get ahead of the others.

Technology spread is also affected by your Freedom of Speech Laws. Stricter censorship provides you with more Authority but hinders the assimilation of new knowledge throughout your country. This is often to your detriment but could also very well be exactly what you intended! The downside of having a well-educated population is that they get exposed to foreign ideas more easily, and some of those ideas might not be what you had in mind. A bit more state control over what people are allowed to talk about can help keep your population focused on the ideas you want them to know about.
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The technology system in Victoria 3 is meant to shape and change the game as your campaign evolves. While a few techs apply straight bonuses to various attributes of your country, the primary function of most techs is to unlock new actions, options, and even challenges. Very often, discovering a new technology doesn’t have any immediate effect on your country but gives you new ways to run your country and new tools in your toolbox. The introduction of new inventions and ideas can also act as a catalyst for emerging situations in your country, with certain parts of your populace demanding these new developments be adopted - or shunned. Much of this is driven by the Journal system which we will talk more about in a few weeks, but before that we will cover another feature of crucial importance to grand strategy games - Flags! See you next week!
 

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and Vicky 2's tree
Vicky 2 only had a tree in the strict graph-theoretic sense :)

it was more of a set of parallel lines.
 
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Alright, let me put into words why this technology tree is just... eh.
This tree from Civ V looks similar but has loads of icons that show what every tech unlocks and it manages to fit more of them onto the screen without scrolling.
Endless Legend, on the other hand, devotes loads of space to looking nice, but does a better job of it than Vicky 3 is doing. And from its little icons, at a glance, a new player would know what some of these techs do, and they would know what every one of them did at a glance if they learned the handful of little icons under them.
Vicky 3 unironically has one of the worst looking tech trees I have ever seen in a video game. I've actually sat here trying to think of one that's worse and I can't, outside of really obscure stuff. The UI designers need to reconsider what they're doing.
Civ's tree is a decent enough example but Endless Legend's tech tree looks absolutely terrible ngl. The circular tree approach lacks a visual flow, entire portraits instead of icons as decorations are too detailed to look pleasant at a glace, and as a new player (Aka haven't played a single Endless game other than Humankind) the abstract Icons don't really tell me what to expect at all other than vaguely what aspect of the game will be affected one way or another.. A fist and a building? Some sort of military and political advantage to researching this? Rather superfluous, as the tech is already located in the Fist/military section of the circle.
Plus, I'd still need a tooltip, which honestly, I'm going to be reading either way. I still do with civ after years, it's not a fast-paced game, i'd rather take 2 seconds to read what options I'm considering rather than rely on memory. Even then, "Bolt Action Rifles" and "Coking" give me a much better idea of what to expect than a generic "Military Society eggplant emoji".
 
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First of all, I would like each technology tree to fit completely in one window. So that you don't have to scroll through the pages all the time in search of the right technology, or comparing technologies, choosing which one to explore now.

Written with the help of an online translator.
 
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Great dev diary !

I believe Japan will have events simulating Meiji Restoration giving them rapid progress to western technologies. But will other non western countries be able to do the same ?

Also if a western country were forced to release one of its colonies (in Africa or India for example), would the new state inherit the same technology as its former orverlord or would it have the same technological level as neighboring non colonised countries (with eventually some bonus to the technologies they "lost") ?
 
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...

I strongly disagree about the amount of randomness - there's nothing fun or engaging about sitting there waiting for the game to give you the thing you know it's going to give you eventually - but I agree that there should be more of a relationship between the state of your nation (industry, military, and politics) and your research. Relatively few people are out there doing random science experiments to see what happens - they're trying to solve real problems happening for real people, so the kind of nation you have should determine the problems you're facing, and that should determine the solutions your scientists are able to come up with.

...

I strongly (and respectfully!) disagree with your disagreement - one of my most exciting moments in Vic2 was trying planning ahead to make sure I had military directionism, only for the Great War to break out early and my bloody scientists to not be able to wrangle a chlorine filter into a gas mask for the first few months in the war, forcing me back into a desperate last stand to buy enough time for the technology to catch up with the science, and generating all kinds of fun like meta-narrative moments in my head. Sidebar, but I have a close friend who works at a chemical engineering tech startup, and that process - of the technology lagging behind the science by a large and somewhat unpredictable amount - seems very true to his life!
 
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I figure every nation should be able to acquire the technology to produce silk, at least if they have states with the right conditions for it.

But at the same time, building the industry to produce silk in large enough quantities to compete with the massive Chinese silk industry would not be easy, or cheap, and success might well crater the price enough to bankrupt you, so it works out better in the long term to be able to participate in the market as a supplier, or to avoid dependence on Chinese silk, but not to try and supplant the already established silk supply.
 
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Great development diary.
 
Yes you can change your mind, no you don't lose progress made.
Is there any chance of even a small buffer for Innovation points like there is a 10 day buffer for political power and National Focuses in HOI4. A lot of issues pop up in GSG games, especially Paradox games. Even a small buffer will prevent the self-rage that us min-maxers feel when we are not on top of the next thing to research (or focuses).
 
Who has technology? Is it each country, or each state, or pops?

I’m wondering about other methods of acquiring tech. Can we poach scientists? Can we send our scientists to learn in other countries? Can we use a high-tech factory in a recently conquered state?
 
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I really hope that each technology tree will fit on one page and they will not need to be scrolled. This is very inconvenient, it is done in HOI4 and this is a big drawback of the technological tree of HOI4.
 
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What is your idea of how a Japan player may rapidly catch up in technology once the Meiji restoration begins? It seems like it would be really difficult for Japan to catch up to the great powers without some type of "catch-up mechanic"
Didn't Japan have an unusually large literacy rate in Vicky 2? I imagine, if the same holds true for V3, that should give a pretty big boost to tech rate. I don't know if it's enough to let them quickly catch up, but I imagine it's a big factor.
 
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Do wars (winning or losing wars) affect how fast military techs are gained? I can see examples where successful wars give a malus to learning new doctrines and losing wars can speed up the change process and knock down barriers to open minds.

Or is this all modeled through Interest Groups and how they react to wins and losses from wars? Can you give any details on how these interactions or the direct malus/bonus might affect the tech spread rate?
 
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Civ's tree is a decent enough example but Endless Legend's tech tree looks absolutely terrible ngl. The circular tree approach lacks a visual flow, entire portraits instead of icons as decorations are too detailed to look pleasant at a glace, and as a new player (Aka haven't played a single Endless game other than Humankind) the abstract Icons don't really tell me what to expect at all other than vaguely what aspect of the game will be affected one way or another.. A fist and a building? Some sort of military and political advantage to researching this? Rather superfluous, as the tech is already located in the Fist/military section of the circle.
Plus, I'd still need a tooltip, which honestly, I'm going to be reading either way. I still do with civ after years, it's not a fast-paced game, i'd rather take 2 seconds to read what options I'm considering rather than rely on memory. Even then, "Bolt Action Rifles" and "Coking" give me a much better idea of what to expect than a generic "Military Society eggplant emoji".
Yes please. Use readable icons, put a line of text describing the tech, and clear lines indicating the tree structure. Tooltips help a lot but the basic design should work on its own as a first principle.
 
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So, it seems to me like this system is designed to prevent tech rushing without using artificial ahead of time penalties. So that if I am say, France, and I threw literally everything I got into advancing my technology, the Germans will also greatly benefit from all the technology I researched and be able to wipe the floor with me from all of the technology they got for free. Is that correct?
Eventually yes. The Germans will get tech spread from any techs they do not have themselves, some of which will be those expensive learn-at-any-cost French techs. France will still have an advantage in the specific area it rushed, but it is time-limited.

That is that if by 1860, France rushed to 1900-expected/equivalent small arms tech (is this possible, devs?), the Germans would be disadvantaged but not necessarily until 1900. Tech spread will reduce the timing window that France gets over Germany.

In the meantime, the Germans might be several techs ahead of France in other areas because they researched in a more time-efficient manner.

All of this would be affected by the Innovation points and the Education institutions and universities and free speech laws and maybe even Interest Groups. That means that it is impossible to say for sure that the player as France should always tech rush or never tech rush vs an opponent like Germany.

That is the genius of this tech system. On its own, it is just a regular old traditional tech tree. But combined with the "secret sauce" of Economic and Political systems, it adds to the complexity and replayability of Vic 3. Now tech advantage is one of many factors that influence when to go to war or engage in Diplomatic tomfoolery.

My question is, "Does Victoria 3 have a good espionage system or intelligence mechanics? Is there at least a comprehensive ledger with all the statistics for the different game systems? How does the player (and the AIs!) know what the state of diplomatic affairs, economic strength, military might, and tech levels are for their allies, enemies, and target nations?
 
I am not quite content with this fixed connection between Society techs and ideologies. Those should spread around the world like especially liberalism and socialism did historically during this period of time. Ideologies spread with immigrations, trade relations and other connection between societies. Sometimes the spread of an ideology was furthered by the enemies of a country. You shouldn't be able to slow down the spread of an ideology just by not researching it.

Ah, but they do spread around the world with the tech spreading mechanic. You can hold back the wheels of progress for awhile by not researching an ideology, but sooner or later it will spread into your lands on its own.

The proposed system spreads ideologies around the world but for the wrong reasons. Ideologies like liberalism, nationalism and socialism shouldn't be researched and their spread shouldn't depend on the literacy of your people (Pops) but rather their consciousness, their radicalism and status of enfranchisement or discrimination. Ideologies should emerge, where these factors exceed some kind of treshold and spread from there. Socialism didn't see the light of day just because Marx wrote a sophisticated book about it but because the blue-collar workers wanted their share of economical and political participation.

Of course you should be able to hinder the spread - by restricting the freedom of speech as example. But not by "not researching liberalism" and keeping your Pops illiterate, so it spreads slowlier.
 
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Does historical universities have their own name? Like Harvard instead of University in Massachusetts

No :( We will however look into player-named buildings (and other entities) post-release, we love the idea and want it in the game but it comes with some unexpected complexity we don't want to risk at the moment.

Mild downside: deciding which universities 'make the cut,' especially in places like the Northeast US, which is absolutely riddled with world-tier universities. Just Massachusetts alone. There's Harvard, MIT, Tufts, Williams, Amherst, Smith - just naming some of the more prestigious ones in the state. Now, in all fairness, I don't think anyone would actually argue that, if you only had to pick one in the state, Harvard is the one to pick. But, well, Americans do tend to take their university rivalries pretty serious.
 
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Great question! We actually experimented with a lot of crazy ideas for quite some time, both on paper and in prototypes. All of the things we modeled were cool in their own way, but often got in the way of player expectations, were confusing, exploitable, or impossible to balance. Most of all, early feedback kept returning to the same thing: where is the tech tree? After digging further we came to the conclusion that the key thing most people were after in the tech system for this game was the ability to plan ahead and strategize, and a lot of our clever ideas got in the way of that. As a supporting system for pacing and player strategizing, we came to the conclusion that technology in V3 needed to be intuitive and comprehensible first and foremost, not a minigame or something that drastically deviated from player expectations.

To piggy back off this question, is there going to be anything similar to the invention system from vicky2, which had inventions separate from the technologies themselves?
 
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