Victoria 3 - Dev Diary #64 - Post-Release Plans

[Reaperdamo]

Sounds like Vic4 or a whole new game, these should have been in the base game in my opinion, but good luck with the developments. I have bought the game and support your work, but just a tad bit dissapointed that yet again due to no outside involvement in the game, the obvious only becomes so when the players play it.

 

[Samolub]

From what I read, most of the developers' plans coincide with my thoughts on the gameplay and in which direction the first adjustments of the changes in the game should go, it seems to me that optimizing modifiers and balancing the game in terms of religious and cultural tolerance is really a move in good direction. A more transparent government system of legitimacy with additional information and parameters is a great solution.

When it comes to collections of information on POP, a very important thing for players will be radicalism, unemployment, material situation and the possibility of passing them through filters such as social class, nationality, religion etc. it was done very well in Victoria 2 in the form of a table, you just need to transfer it to the new version in some form, add something, maybe in some other form here I have no opinion. Not necessarily all this information has to be included in the province and building interface, but it should be included in the extended interface / table so that the player can find out which group of people and where they have the highest rates of unemployment, radicalism, living standards, migration or be able to adjust their actions to a specific national minority, social class.

Please see this thread where I also show the legitimacy of minor adjustments to the infami

Infamy and Conquest

Shouldn't an additional modifier be introduced that would increase infamy for conquering large states, for example when playing with Great Britain in January 1836 I declared war on Mexico to conquer California and at that time it is a huge area...

forum.paradoxplaza.com

 

[grommile]

Sounds like Vic4 or a whole new game, these should have been in the base game in my opinion, but good luck with the developments

Nothing listed in this dev diary sounds so radical as to count as Vic 4. It's all iteration and improvement, not rejection and replacement.

 

[TempestM]

If you don't want so many factories spread out over so many states, you could always downsize some factories and replace them with increased levels in your core states with existing factories. It ends up being more efficient too when you factor in economies of scale and the productivity bonus it gives. Though that comes with a trade-off of having less ability to fine tune your production of each good when your economic situation changes. But then again, economic management is the core gameplay loop of the Victoria franchise, so it's fitting for what the game is.

I'd rather cure the disease rather than symptoms. Also you for some reason think that I'm talking about economic part of the problem when I'm talking about UI part of the problem. Dealing with shitty interface is not a core gameplay loop of anything. Thanks for not mentioning any "toy soldiers" this time though

 

[MansaYusef789]

I hope that in the future Africa is readdressed, there are is a huge amount missing, and in some states like Sokoto the population is half of the lower estimate that historians measure. In game there is around 5 million or so, and the lowest estimate is 8-10 million, but the highest is 20 million by 1837. These empires all have isolationism and cannot conduct international trade, which is inaccurate. African empires traded with each other and Europeans prior to the victorian era.

Is there a reason why Mali, Ghana, and Sudan don't have gold mines? It seems like a strange thing to leave out considering these places provided the vast majority of gold for the entire old world for at least a millennium.

Colonization moves too quickly and in an absurd way, for example Russia and the United States colonizing Africa, but the local African states lacking the ability to expand (for example Kongo can only invade it's neighbor Loango if it researches colonization, when historically Loango was a vassal of Kongo and split from the Kingdom during this time period). I know that many people argue that because this game is centered in Europe that Africa needs to be ignored at first, but ignoring Africa also does a disservice to Europe. This vast continent was rich with resources, had a serious social and political development and experienced a boom in state formation during the 19th century. There should be a bigger penalty for colonizers coming from outside the country, either through increasing the defensive power of decentralized states, or creating a guerrilla warfare factor. The wars with Ashanti last half a century and the British invasion of Bunyoro took 30 years.

Another thing that is left out of the colonial system is migration, you can find that the French or Russians have made a home in the middle of the Saharan desert and actually outnumber the natives, despite it being impossible for that to happen in reality. There should be something further down the line that deals with this, settler colonies should only exist in places where it geographically makes sense, like South Africa, or Algeria. At no point should European settlers outnumber natives.

Slave revolts aren't historically frequent enough, it is far too easy to maintain a grip on slavery well into the 20th century. There were massive slave revolts even in British Jamaica (the largest in history) during the time period of this game that aren't properly simulated. Also slaves tend to have such a low birthrate and a high mortality that their population doesn't grow. That isn't realistic when we consider the United States, the slave population doubled during the first half of that century because of higher birthrates among enslaved peoples, despite an end to the trafficking and import of human beings. The only places where more enslaved peopled died than were born was Brazil (some of the time) and Colonial Haiti or Saint Domingue. There were slave revolts every decade of the 19th century and that is what put an end to the slave trade. It needs to be included because it is a key institution in all of the states of the Americas. There should also be a small movement of colonial populations to the capital of the colonial nation. For example, France, Portugal, Spain and Britain all had colonial/enslaved populations living in the mainland.

 

[Samolub]

Nothing listed in this dev diary sounds so radical as to count as Vic 4. It's all iteration and improvement, not rejection and replacement.

I agree with you, I even think that the developers themselves wanted to release the game a bit earlier, gather information about bugs and users' opinions, and develop the concepts that they planned to be included in the standard of this game. Many of these tweaks are crucial enough to keep the title sustained by a large number of players in the long run, as many of the bugs and shortcomings are key to improving to keep players.

 

[barta]

Most rage-quitting factors for me as of now are:

1. Lack of easily accessible information about pops. What they need, what are they complaining about.
2. Too little to do. In large stretches of the game you just have to wait, and i found myself literally falling asleep.
3. States are too large... I wanna expand my country sometimes, but maybe not too much. I like shaping my country's borders as most precisely as possible. It seems the game could support this, as many states are split at game start.
4. The transition between global map and close up map bothers me. I'd prefer it to be smoother.

 

[TRex1983]

Re: Diplomacy— will there be some balancing of subject types? Going through all the hoops needed to make a country my protectorate (very low infamy, having a much larger gdp+military, friendly relations, in custom union, and an obligation) I didn’t find much if any benefit to it. Whereas puppeting a country is extremely strong and also gives you income.

Yeah and protectorates are d... because they always join wars against you for nearby land. As if that wouldn't imply that being a protectorate is to support your overlord in international politics and conquests.

 

[Samolub]

1. Lack of easily accessible information about pops. What they need, what are they complaining about.

They plan it and many people wroted about it

2. Too little to do. In large stretches of the game you just have to wait, and i found myself literally falling asleep.

I don't think so, nothing to do, all time you have changes in political parties, you built

3. States are too large... I wanna expand my country sometimes, but maybe not too much. I like shaping my country's borders as most precisely as possible. It seems the game could support this, as many states are split at game start.

It is not too big for menage, it is only too big for make borders or for conquer

4. The transition between global map and close up map bothers me. I'd prefer it to be smoother.

Its good, but if is not good enough it is a problem priority number ~ 1621 or ~ 346

 

[braveshaolin]

Reverse swaying is just everything I wanted and I was surprised it wasn't a feature. Some nice improvements up there.
I know it might sound unpopular but I'd really like to see units. Okay, I understand the design concept gameplaywise and I'm all up for it. I trust you guys and am not against it (God knows how much wars intimidate me on other games, not so much so here). But I'd like to see soldiers, and yes, buy cosmetics for them. I love seeing all those little guys in clothes and armor crafted with passion by you guys.

 

[Reaperdamo]

Nothing listed in this dev diary sounds so radical as to count as Vic 4. It's all iteration and improvement, not rejection and replacement.

LOL it was saracasm. If you think that a roadmap this big with fixes to a game, just released, is acceptable you are very forgiving. Usually after a game is released its bug fixing, and a roadmap for future plans for DLC. This is a total fix to major gameplay elements, its like looking at Distant Worlds 2, but at least they have the excuse of a small development studio. 45 quid and they have to spend months fixing it, before they can start adding actual historical content via paid DLC.....

 

[Bearjuden]

• Finding solutions for the issue where theaters can split into multiple (sometimes even dozens) of tiny fronts as pockets are created

One thought that just occurs to me, that fits within the model of not handling individual troop movement while also not requiring figuring out who goes where when pockets get created, is assigning generals to strategic regions rather than to fronts. If I assign a general to the Rhineland, they are responsible for defending territory in it I control from others - both inside the Rhineland and in adjacent areas - as well as for attacking territory in the Rhineland to the extent possible.

Plus it maybe even fits with the declared interests system, if you're limited to deploying generals where your interests are?

 

[enjay]

Thanks, keep up good work!

Until then, I have to put the game aside.
The battles are horrible, the player has absolutely no information as to why this and that general is going into battle when there are others with more battalions standing with him. And the front lines hundreds, thousands of miles long? Only that one prays that the dice will give him a better advantage. Oh, no, please. The war was a huge part of all human history, including the Victorian era.
I get the feeling that you just couldn't keep up with the release date, so you dropped this half-baked misprint.

The other thing you could modify is more control over the production buildings. Why can't I set the production process to just a part of the buildings in the state, why all of them. The level of taxation and salaries of the civil servants and the army the same... a couple of silly buttons like in a mobile game.
And proper tables with overviews of the population, their unemployment, strata, culture, etc., you have to click through five different tooltips. You can't sort, filter, nothing. One long list where you have to scroll like crazy. For that, the UX and UI designer at the company would break my arms if I came up with something like that.

 

[Culann]

Interesting. In your experience how do you rope in other great powers to fight Austria? Do they generally accept to side with you for anything at all?
I admit I haven't tried that and felt like Austria was a bit of a Italy final boss, and getting people's help to fight the two sicilies often required to offer tradeports that would just invite a powerful rival in Italy.

The italian minors are actually relatively simple to get with a good economy and inviting them in a custom union (when you do they offer annexation pretty quickly) but the two sicilies has always sizeably bigger army and often strong ties with both the ottoman and the Prussians so even with allies of my own have been a hard nut to crack (fortunately they also subjugated Tunis which allowed me to rope in spain and france promising ports there rather than pieces of Italy)

They usually settle for obligations, which only France used on me.

 

[Major Malfunction]

Please, do something about UI - it is one of the most atrocious part of the game - warfare is a debatable aspect - new mechanics and stuff.
But UI have universal approval method and Victoria 3 UI is BEYOND HORRIBLE. It is uninformative, unintuitive, cumbersome and with abhorrent screen space usage.

 

[aperson456]

Uh, no? Are you serious? Germany literally doesn't unify until 1910 in most games, and you want to make it happen later? I don't remember if Italy unifies ahead of or behind schedule, but it never fully unifies, as Modena and Parma always stay independent. Not to mention Canada is completely fine, I don't see the problem. Unless this is a mistake and it's supposed to be the other way around, this is incredibly stupid.

Idk why y'all are downvoting this, I'm litterally right. Germany never unifies before 1900.

 

[Gorgo Primus]

I'm not asking about actual controllable units on the map, but is there any real chance of getting sprites of troops and ships on the map (that may not even correlate at all to actual troops in use by your ai general if that's an issue) to move around and fight on the map while at war purely so that it can increase immersion and give a better visual indicator of what kind of war is happening beyond just the occupation flags? Right now it's just 'an artillery battery' as your army and nothing(?) as your navy, and that doesn't really do anything to give me either immersion or much in the way of useful non-UI information. It'd be great to be able to look at the map and see "oh Prussia has cannons in their army and a war with ~1850s tech is going on against that German minor who is way outnumbered" in addition to "Prussia is occupying X land in that minor and a 5v3 battle is going on in that spot".

And again, this is not asking for units I can click and move around - just sprites that do their own AI thing to put on a mildly informative show while at war (though if you ever did want to give us actual units for the AI to move about for a less abstracted combat, I'd have no issue with it as a player).

 

[Samolub]

I'm not asking about actual controlable units on the map, but is there any real chance of getting sprites of troops and ships on the map (that may not even correleate at all to actual troops in use by your ai general if that's an issue) to move around and fight on the map while at war purely so that it can increase immersion and give a better visual indicator of what kind of war is happening beyond just the occupation flags? Right now it's just 'an artillery battery' as your army and nothing(?) as your navy, and that doesn't really do anything to give me either immersion or much in the way of useful non-UI information. It'd be great to be able to look at the map and see "oh Prussia has cannons in their army and a war with ~1850s tech is going on against that German minor who is way outnumbered" in addition to "Prussia is occupying X land in that minor and a 5v3 battle is going on in that spot".

I believe that they will introduce them to the basic version of the game and it is perfectly reasonable that countries know where their armies are located, although we cannot fully control individual commanders or armies in all, this is base conception for V3, however, we should have a greater influence on organizing key defense sites main points of the offensive, creating a component of a particular army with a division into specific battalions, perhaps also some additional functions would be available depending on the law or how many supremacy powers we generate in total.
If you have any good ideas what they can add or improve, write about it.

I think that first they should focus on gameplay, i.e. they can let go of, for example, graphics regarding the visibility of military guys and limit ourselves to knowing only what units where they are, even in the form of basic icons, but I think that ultimately boys in green, and then often in that times navy blue , red or gray uniforms should appear in future after gameplay aspects.

 

[christian908]

Who says you got to give positive reviews? I always give my games honest reviews at the time that I play them. If Vic 3 is in an unsatisfactory state when you play it, give it the honest review that you feel it deserves.

It was in reference to how that person said that leaving negative reviews is counter-active to getting the game worked on. I've seen a lot of reviews with that mentality. Who are basically scared that if the game flops pdx will abandond it.

But I agree I think everyone should give honest reviews of when they played it, not positive for potential but honesty in the current state.

 

[WeissRaben]

Idk why y'all are downvoting this, I'm litterally right. Germany never unifies before 1900.

I mean, meh? That's your experience. So far, I've seen Germany unify around the 1870s-1880s, which is a tad later than historical but still pretty close. What I am seeing is a lack of consolidation, instead - there's no push for Germany, nor Italy, to integrate its same-culture lands, so both are always missing this or that piece.