Victoria 3 - Dev Diary #51 - Tutorial

[PDJR_Alastorn]

Why Sweden at the moment? Low chance of war? A secondary power without the baggage of a great one? Issues that cover all the major systems of the game to help people learn?

In no way is Sweden overpowered, but a lot of us here (especially the Swedes) think its fun to play

 

[lachek]

Is there any sort of compendium where all of the "Tell Me Why/How" stuff can be found in one place?

The Vickypedia will let you read many of the lessons, but not all of them. The reason is because many of the lessons contain dynamic text based on the conditions of the challenge you're on, like referencing "the Wheat Farm in New York" which doesn't make any sense outside of the challenge. But we'll include as many lessons as we can in there for you to read up on at your leisure.

so are you envisaging that a new DLC, say, could come with its own 'learn this DLC' objective?

100% yes. Whether this is how we'll apply it we'll see in the future of course, but the system is built to support this.

An important question: How moddable are tutorials? I imagine modders, especially total conversion makers, would really apprechiate the ability to create custom tutorials for the features added by their mods.

Extremely. The challenges are all built using the same fundamental building blocks as Journal Entries, and the tutorial pop-ups are a pretty simple fully scripted system for stepping through instructive text, highlighting UI elements, and transitioning between steps based on the UI state. Modders would definitely be able to use it for their own purposes.

Good evening,a great dd,however,i have a question:
Apparently,based on the second screenshot,the difficulty options such as 'Very Easy','Normal' and so on are apparently no longer a thing and are replaced with AI behavior game rules.Is this correct?If so,what is the reason for this change and can the good old difficulty options be modded if we want them?
Thanks for any replies about this.

We've just split up "difficulty" into its components, to let players customize the experience better. Modding the non-differentiated difficulty levels back would be as easy as combining those game rule entries into a single one.

I love how they put Sweden as a recommended country

It actually started out as a bit of a placeholder during development, but it's a decent tutorial country: a reasonable but not overwhelming number of states, a single subject on fairly friendly terms, possibility to trade both overland and by sea with a number of nations, a good set of natural resources but not particularly developed in 1836, lots of possibility for reform and Prestige growth, some tension with Russia and Denmark maybe but no mortal enemies.

Keep in mind this is still WIP though and the set of Recommended Countries may change before release.

I think the initial pop-up of the tutorial should explain what differences there are between this "*" tutorial version and the normal game, so it's clear that it's not gonna be the exact same. I can imagine people playing just a little bit of it, feeling like they got it, trying to play normally and not understanding what they are doing wrong that it doesn't work anymore.

The differences are very slim, next to unnoticeable. In early development we actually tried to make the tutorial experience more unique by for example speeding up construction of buildings or making other countries extra-friendly - we found that this actually detracted from the learning experience since it didn't prepare the player for the dynamics of the actual game. So our approach now is that playing the tutorial should be identical to playing sandbox, except the guidance of the challenges and some very minor gating to ensure you don't get curb-stomped by Britain before we've taught you about boats.

Do you get bonuses for fulfilling the tutorial journal entries like with any normal journal?

Also, i suppose you cannot play in ironman mode as the tutorial right?

No, because we felt that would take away from the tutorial's optional nature - if you want to ignore a particular challenge because you already get it, we don't want to incentivize you to just go through the motions to get a bonus. If you've selected Learn the Game as your player objective, we figure learning is its own reward.

Selecting to Learn the Game will disable Ironman by default but if I'm not entirely mistaken you can override that and play Ironman anyway if you really want to.

Hold on a second-- if I'm understanding this correctly, enabling the tutorial will set a game rule-- lowered AI aggressiveness-- by default at the beginning of the game. But then, after certain parts of the tutorial are completed, it will change that game rule mid game.

Can this system be generalized to modders? For example, a modded player objective that massively increases AI aggressiveness if the player becomes a great power?

The game rules for AI aggressiveness is set for the campaign once it is started. The dynamic adjustment of AI behavior once you reach a certain point in the tutorial is on top of that. It is absolutely open to modders, and we'll discuss all that in a future DD on AI.

No achievement has value. At best its an optional challenge to attempt

It really wouldn't be a Victoria 3 forum thread without a spirited discussion about Value theory!