Victoria 3 - Dev Diary #28 - Flags

[Wizzington]

There is no player override system for which flag to use at the moment. Both that and an in-game flag designer would be really neat, but I wouldn't consider either of those things priority for release.

 

[Wizzington]

How many stars will the USA's flag go up to in vanilla?
Edit: I assume each one has to be designed & implemented individually?

Yes and no. Each variant has to be scripted with properly positioned elements, but it's a lot less work than making and exporting an entire new flag image as you really just have to add and position the correct number of star elements.

 

[Wizzington]

I'm curious about something, as the DD leaves it ambiguous, but does the US flag dynamically change the amount of and rescale the stars based directly on the amount of states or are there several flags defined? I assume the former because the later would be a ridiculous amount of work, but if the former, is this handled directly in the flag definition script or is some form of hidden event called everytime the amount of integrated states change to update the flag with new parameters?

It has one star per incorporated state, up to 100. Each flag variant uses the same graphical elements, while the layout of those elements is determined in script.

 

[Ofaloaf]

How much control does a player have over the flag their country uses? If the player really likes one design over another can they force that one without mods?

Without mods, your best shot for sticking to a design you like is sticking to the conditions that lead to that flag appearing. Modding has some flexibility because of how much can be triggered through script, but it'll have to be through mods.

Is that 83 Stars on the flag?

Maybe? I didn't count- tbh I just used console trickery to make a bunch of places into American states and didn't keep count.

“Or if a war is happening” is an interesting trigger. Is that just a hypothetical or is there a nation with a special battle flag in the game?

Hypothetical, I think. I don't actually remember all the triggers, but I knew the idea of war-specific flags would probably appeal to very specific sorts of flag posters and modders.

 

[Ofaloaf]

Can there ever be multiple nations which share a flag?

Yeah, that's quite doable. Looking at the France example in the first post, I could take another country (let's call it XYZ for the sake of an example) and make a flag definition like

XYZ = { # Hyoptheticalland
    flag_definition = {
        coa = FRA
        subject_canton = FRA
        allow_overlord_canton = yes
        coa_with_overlord_canton = FRA_subject        
        priority = 1
    }
}

and it'd just... reference the same FRA flag design that France proper uses.

 

[Wizzington]

Let's say I think the US flag is too cluttered, and it is in fact demeaning to use your own flag as a tally paper. I assume there is a way to mod a decision into the game so I can switch over to the Betsy Ross flag?

You can trigger a flag on anything, so having a decision that sets a flag that tells the game to always use a particular flag would be pretty trivial.

 

[Ofaloaf]

Hm. Wish I could see this example. So I'm supposed to position each star element individually in the script, like decals?

Yeah. CK3 is a good guide to see how that all works, since the backend script systems are fairly similar.

Roman Mars wants to have a word with you

But Roman Mars doesn't understand: that's the flag of Michigan. I am from Michigan. Ergo, it is a beautiful flag.

 

[SaintDaveUK]

Any chance we could get the British Republican flag as it existed from the early 19th to mid 20th centuries?

Republicanism in the United Kingdom - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Unless something has changed since I last worked on this, that tricolour is the standard British republican flag used in V3. The Cromwell-esque banner shown in the teaser was specifically for a British republic under more dictatorial circumstances.

 

[Ofaloaf]

Unless something has changed since I last worked on this, that tricolour is the standard British republican flag used in V3. The Cromwell-esque banner shown in the teaser was specifically for a British republic under more dictatorial circumstances.

That is the case, yeah. The flag of Oliver Cromwell, Lord Protector of England (Puritan! Born in 1599 and died in 1658 September! etc.), is the dictatorial republican flag, sans escutcheon, while the Chartist tricolor is still the democratic republican flag.

 

[SaintDaveUK]

Also guess we can have some flags being the same for different regimes?

Yes. Forget the rigid V2 system where there are 4 regimes and 4 flags.

In V3 some flags are very general and some are very specific. France for example can use the tricolour whether they are monarchist or republican, but maybe a particularly absolutist monarchy would adopt the ancient fleury banner.

 

[SaintDaveUK]

So what actually decides which flag Russian Empire is using?

Russia is one of those countries that we went into a little more detail with. As a general rule for flavour, absolute monarchies are represented with the historical personal banner of the monarch ("I am the state"), which is why Russia starts in 1836 with the Tsar's yellow flag and not the tricolour. As you draw power away from the emperor, the Russian flag may develop into the modern one.

 

[SaintDaveUK]

On the flipside, if Scotland were to secede, would Britain remove the blue from its flag?

I love flags almost as much as I love trains, so this has gotten me excited!

We've approached the idea that the Great Britain tag is fundamentally the union between Scotland and England (both of which exist as separate tags), and so Scottish elements will not leave the flag.

However if Britain no longer holds onto any Irish states or subjects then they will remove the St Patrick saltire, or if they are an absolute monarchy using the royal banner, they will drop the Irish harp.

 

[SaintDaveUK]

Still no answer on the topic of the Swedish and Norwegian sildesalaten flags? It was a huge issue at the time.

Both Norway and Sweden can get Sildesalaten variants, but they don't start with them in 1836.

 

[SaintDaveUK]

What would happen if there are 2 conflicting triggers? Let's say, we have a trigger A that says that if the country is at war, flag A is used but we also have a trigger B that says that if the country is at war, flag B is used. What trigger is it executed? Or triggers are designed hierarchically, where the main ones are exclusive, and the secondary ones are designed inside the main ones?

Each flag has a priority value assigned. If two flags both trigger as true, then the one with higher priority is selected.