Victoria 3 - Dev Diary #34 - Canals & Monuments

[lachek]

So monuments are going to have EU4-style magical effects. That's very disappointing. Hopefully we'll be able to mod them out.

Monuments work exactly the same way other buildings do, including employing Pops to produce their effects. They just happen to be unique. But just like other buildings, you can of course mod them (including out) to your heart's content.

 

[lachek]

Will we be able to see ships cross the canals?

Yes!

 

[neondt]

Good evening,great dd,however, i have a question:
How moddable monuments,their production methods,effects,modifiers and so on will be?
Thanks for any replies about this.

Exactly as moddable as any other building, which is extremely moddable!

 

[lachek]

The problem is with the national-scale effects, which don't seem to have any connection to the pops working at the building as far as I can tell. There doesn't seem to be any reason why owning and maintaining the building would cause the effect that it has. Why would the Ottoman Empire conquering Rome make the government more inclined to listen to the Devout IG? Why would the White House burning down make the entire federal bureaucracy permanently become significantly less efficient, or change how political power is distributed in the country? That's the sort of thing I was referring to as "magical effects". Victoria 3 is supposed to be about simulating society, and these sort of causeless changes strike me as being incompatible with that goal.

Great point! You're right that some of the current effects of monument-type buildings are perhaps unsuitable for the game's theme. As usual the exact numbers are WIP and we definitely appreciate the feedback. I hear you on the White House's national Bureaucracy multiplier for example - will rework this into a larger bonus to local Government Administration buildings instead.

On the other hand, some monument buildings ought to have national effects, as symbols of the nation's accomplishments or identity - the Eiffel Tower or the Hagia Sophia are good examples of these. And if the Ottoman Empire conquers Rome and don't want their Devout IG to gain additional political strength from having taken control of the Vatican, they (or anyone who controls it) can certainly burn it to the ground. It is just a building, and follow all the normal building rules. Monuments don't have any special powers to affect the country in non-immersive, "magical" seeming ways - if they do, we may have made a mistake, and mistakes can be easily fixed.

 

[lachek]

@lachek I see you went with the same system as EU4 where monuments are all historic and predefined to their specific nations and places.

So, generic monuments anyone can build are out of question, outside of mods? Couldn't there be at least five or so so that any nation could havr a shot at having their own?

There are a many reasons for this:

• Monuments are positioned manually on the map to ensure they fit into the landscape and city hubs. It would be virtually impossible to ensure the Statue of Liberty seamlessly meshes with every coastline unless we painstakingly went through every single coastal state and experimented with its placement there. This means doing this for all states (currently over 700) for all monuments in the game (currently 11) to ensure we place every single monument in the game in a unique position.
• Many of these monuments are already in place at the start of the game. Nevertheless, if we did have a system where you could build the Eiffel Tower anywhere, then we ought to also have a system where you could build Vatican City somewhere else if you razed it. This means that for consistency we ought to be manually positioning the Vatican City in every single state even though it's unlikely to ever be built elsewhere.
• Should countries be allowed to build duplicates? After all, if the White House gives such a sweet bonus then shouldn't France or China be able to build the White House too? At that point these buildings become not really special in any way - the White House becomes just a "Bureaucracy Multiplier Palace", the Eiffel Tower just a "Prestige Tower", etc.
• Some of these monuments are ancient, like Angkor Wat, and are special for this very reason. While you might be able to destroy these in-game, the idea of rebuilding them just doesn't make sense. The idea of another country rebuilding them in another place doubly doesn't make sense.

As should be clear from the above, making monuments generic and buildable by anyone would not only take inordinate time and effort for the development team compared to what it adds to the game, but also cause them to lose a lot of their unique appeal and introduces many strange exception cases that also has to be dealt with. This means we were left with two options: historical monuments in predefined places, or no monuments in any places. We felt it would be a missed opportunity to not acknowledge the enormous feats of engineering countries often engaged in for prestige during this era, so we went with door number one.

 

[lachek]

Monuments feel like the "great people" of buildings and I thought that we were trying to stay away from a great-people history simulation.

As I see it, the trick with both monuments and characters is to sprinkle them into the gameplay for flavor and historical immersion, without making them so central and important mechanically that they start to dominate. Because yes you're right, we want to tell the story of the many social and economic forces that shaped our modern world, not about how some particular genius statesman or destined nation made the world their oyster. But it'd be a poor decision, I think, to leave them out of the game altogether!

 

[lachek]

Regarding Vatican City and how it grants additional power to the clergy regardless of state religion, it's mainly a result of the fact that we can't trigger a Production Method on religion - it's not a Law, or a Tech, or another Production Method. If time permits we might add that functionality, which would then easily let us change the behavior of Vatican City depending on the state religion of the controlling country.

 

[lachek]

Also, can we get confirmation if owners of canals can restrict access to other nations?

It's functionality we do want to add, but haven't yet, so it's not something I can promise at release. There's a small bundle of potential mechanics oriented around control of narrow naval passages I'd like to explore, so I don't want to prioritize shoehorning in special mechanics only for canals that will rarely have an impact if we can create something more coherent and universally applicable instead.