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Victoria 3 - Dev Diary #65 - Patch 1.1 (part 1)

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Hello and welcome to the second post-release dev diary for Victoria 3. Today we’ll be talking about the first major post-release patch, which we’re aiming to get to you before the end of the year. This patch (1.1) is going to primarily focus on game polish: bug fixing, balancing, AI improvements and UI/UX work, while the next major free patch (1.2) is going to be more focused towards making progress on the plans we’ve outlined in our Post-Release Plans DD by iterating on systems like warfare and diplomacy. With that said, there’s a few more significant changes coming in 1.1 as well, which we’re going to go over in this and next week’s dev diary.

The first of these changes is a rework of the interface for individual Pops, with a particular emphasis on improving the visualization of Pop Needs. In addition to the general overview, there are now separate tabs for Economy and Consumption, with Economy showing a more detailed breakdown of the Pop’s income and expenditure, as well as their top 5 Goods expenditures, and the Consumption tab showing a detailed breakdown of all their Goods expenditures, along with pricing information for the State and Market. We also plan to iterate on Pop Needs further in the future to give you a better idea of what your population needs are country-wide.

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The next significant change in 1.1 is a rework of Legitimacy: some frequent criticisms we have received about the political system in Victoria 3 is that Legitimacy doesn’t matter enough and isn’t clear enough about its effects, as well as that elections don’t have enough of an impact. This rework aims to resolve all those problems by making several changes: First, legitimacy, while still a number from 0 to 100, is now divided into five categories with differing effects, some of which will increase or decrease based on the actual number and not just the threshold:
  • 0-24: Illegitimate Government: This government is considered blatantly illegitimate by most everyone in the country. This legitimacy level reduces the approval of all opposition IGs, makes it impossible to enact laws, and generates a steady stream of radicals in increased numbers the lower Legitimacy is.
  • 25-49: Unacceptable Government: This government is generally not considered acceptable to the people of the country. Laws can be enacted, but opposition IGs will disapprove and radicals will be created over time, though in amounts less than in an Illegitimate Government.
  • 50-74: Contested Government: This government is considered to have somewhat shaky foundations. Opposition IGs will disapprove slightly but otherwise there are no ill or good effects.
  • 75-89: Legitimate Government: This government is considered proper and legitimate. Over time a small number of Loyalists will be generated, with increased numbers the higher Legitimacy is.
  • 90-100: Righteous Government: This government’s legitimacy is considered to be unassailable. In addition to generating Loyalists over time, enactment time for new laws is cut in half.

The way you gain legitimacy has also been altered in democracies, with the share of votes (rather than just clout) represented in Government now having a direct effect on Legitimacy, the degree to which depends on the laws - under more restrictive voting systems, Clout can still be more important than votes, but as more of the population becomes enfranchised votes grow in importance and under Universal Suffrage it should be virtually impossible for a government that doesn’t have the voters behind it to be considered legitimate.

Despite being the largest party in terms of Clout, the Whigs alone are not considered Legitimate due to only commanding 47% of the votes in the last election.
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Lastly for today, we’ve also made a balancing change to the Church and State and Citizenship laws - previously, the only balancing consideration for these laws was that less tolerance gave more Authority, which we felt was neither particularly balanced nor really a complete representation of the reasons that a country might want to discriminate against part of their population. To try and address this, we’ve made it so that by default, slightly more radicals are created by Standard of Living decreases than Loyalists from Standard of Living increases, but offset this with modifiers on the more restrictive laws that increase Loyalist and reduce Radical gain among the accepted parts of the population - the more restrictive your cultural/religious tolerance, the greater the effect on the part of the population that actually falls within it.

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That’s it for today! Next week we’re going to continue talking about Patch 1.1, which as I said at the beginning of the dev diary is planned to be released before the end of the year. We’re also still working on another hotfix (1.0.6) which should hopefully include some late-game performance improvements and other fixes and which we are aiming to release sometime next week.
 
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Please make more ways to grow your population, specifically by making birthrates more interesting, here are some ideas, maybe give a birthrate boost to more religious laws, maybe a promote families decree? Maybe even increase birthrate based on how large of a percentage of your population are peasants, they did historically have more children than the urban workers after all.
 
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It'd be great if there was a bar on the relevant Pop tab that showed their progress towards the next Wealth - it's already in the tab under Net Income but it could be placed at a place where it is easier to find.

Additionally, some sort of explanation why your nation's Strata's overall SoL is the number that it is and and indicator or explanation for how to raise it more easily - currently you either just try to create jobs all over or you have to dig down into the data and find poorer pops and what State they live in and try to employ them in said State.

The Population tab could easily include a sub-tab for "Pops in States" where each State is listed and showing how the Pops are doing in terms of SoL, and likely other things.
 

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Currently there is a problem where the party that wins an election cannot become part of the government if they are angry.

For example, say the USA radicalizes the Southern Planters by abolishing slavery, and then the Democrats win the next election. It is not possible to put them into the government, the game forces me to continue playing with an illegitimate losing party.

Who are Interest Groups loyal to, happy with, angry with, etc? Is it the disembodied "spirit of the nation" or is it the government in power? Is John Calhoun mad at Henry Clay and the Whigs, or is he mad at me? Who am I playing as? This design philosophy does not seem to be consistent.
 
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I don't think this is a bug, but rather something VERY not clear. Voting power is influenced by things like wealth (simulating that being rich will amplify your ability to impact politics, particularly with differences in election types.

But yes, this is not clear and could probably be represented in a different way.
This is easy to assume, but actually not the case. Even in Universal Voting, votes are magnified by x20. We don't know why, but it has nothing to do with wealth really, it's just literally "everyone who votes casts 20 votes"
 
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When will you be adding the drainage production method to oil rigs so we can steal oil from neighboring countries?
 
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Let me help y'all out a bit.

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Try this:

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More info upfront with fewer clicks. Add some headers and pretty it up from my paint cut and paste if you want.
 
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Cheers for the DD Wiz, and for all of the team that have been beavering away post-release for their work :) All of those changes sound excellent, and particularly making it easier to see pop needs (something I look at regularly, and is a big "decision influencer" on how I develop my economy once the industrial base is in order). The Church and State/Citizenship laws also sound tops, and the legitimacy changes have a heap of potential :)

One thought on "having voters behind them" is getting the balance right between a "somewhat legitimate gov't" that might have parties with 51% of the vote ("Contested Government perhaps") and a 60-40 vote split which in most democracies would be legitimate gov't (indeed, 60% of the vote for one party in most democracies would be huge), and where to draw the line for "Righteous Government".

For a naval-themed pic related to standard of living, here's a British Royal Navy sailor getting paid in 1895 :)

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We’re also still working on another hotfix (1.0.6) which should hopefully include some late-game performance improvements and other fixes and which we are aiming to release sometime next week.​
For me, this is the only relevant piece of information. My ability to care about anything else related to V3 depends on performance being dramatically improved in the mid to late game.
 
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This is easy to assume, but actually not the case. Even in Universal Voting, votes are magnified by x20. We don't know why, but it has nothing to do with wealth really, it's just literally "everyone who votes casts 20 votes"

agreed. and I don’t have a screenshot for this, but I’m pretty sure that elections early on in the game (eg maybe with wealth voting and a smaller population), looked fine. They appear to break later in the game
 
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Currently there is a problem where the party that wins an election cannot become part of the government if they are angry.

For example, say the USA radicalizes the Southern Planters by abolishing slavery, and then the Democrats win the next election. It is not possible to put them into the government, the game forces me to continue playing with an illegitimate losing party.

Who are Interest Groups loyal to, happy with, angry with, etc? Is it the disembodied "spirit of the nation" or is it the government in power? Is John Calhoun mad at Henry Clay and the Whigs, or is he mad at me? Who am I playing as? This design philosophy does not seem to be consistent.
He is mad at the spirit of the nation, and will not join the government until the spirit makes amends.
 
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