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

[Sighfer]

Turn up AI aggression, game is less of a cakewalk. Or are you already playing on all max difficulty?

I'm talking about how managing the realm itself should be a challenge (threats domestic), and you're telling me to increase the number of times outsiders come to beat down my door (threats foreign).

 

[FocusedHope]

I think it's usually the Intelligentsia and the Industrialists mainly. They'll have clout in the high teens or low 20s. I don't remember what kind of legitimacy numbers I usually have while I'm waiting for the timer on the restoration, but I would guess 50ish give or take like 10 or 15%. Usually by then I've passed most of the laws I've been trying to pass, so I'm not as concerned about it.

Makes sense that those two IG's would wind up with the most clout since the entire time I'm building up industry, building universities, and expanding the bureaucracy.

Can you, like, next time you play this, check and report? Because that doesn't add up with how the legitimacy mechanics work. Or do you use some sort of "implement voting" strategy? Because that would make them add up.

Legitimacy for an absolute monarchy is:
Total clout of IGs in government times I think 1.1, maybe 1.2.
- size penalty: -0 for 1 IG in government, -20 for 2, -60 for 3, -much worse for more.
+50 if the monarch's IG (here, the Shogunate) is in government.
+/- 5-10 if you have taxes above or below normal.

So if you're still an absolute monarchy, then basically, if your second IG isn't at least 18% clout, adding them reduces your legitimacy instead of increasing it. Since the monarch's IG is the Shogunate and they're by assumption out of government, you don't have that +50 bonus, which is how you're supposed to actually get legitimacy in an absolute monarchy. Without that, you're basically limited to the legitimacy of your highest-clout IG, maybe plus another 10% if your second-highest is 25-30% clout. If your IGs are usually high teens or low 20s, which is what mine usually are, then you're not getting above 25%.

On the other hand if your strategy involves making elections happen, you get the +20 legitimacy flat that I think all voting systems have. Further, the size penalty for those laws counts parties, not individual IGs, so a single party's clout can be significantly above 20, and thus provide more legitimacy than their size penalty costs. That's the only way I can think of to get above 25% legitimacy or so while the Meiji Restoration journal entry is ticking.

(And of course, I think they alluded to changing how legitimacy is calculated, which might alter any or all of this.)

 

[Sizvahstar]

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.

I'd say they're angry at "the state of things", but that's not very clear cut in all instances to be fair.

 

[Al-Khalidi]

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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.

Cool but how about nerfing France and making russia not implode steadily in every game?

 

[Invader_Canuck]

If there is a pet peeve that I greatly detest, it is the constant need to scroll through. Frankly, I think Victoria 3, while I enjoyed the game, is the classic example of what to NOT do in this respect. I personally find scrolling to be more time consuming and less time-effective than, say, clicking through tabs, even with mouse-wheel button on my computer mouse. I strongly encourage Paradox to look into ways to minimize the need for scrolling as much as possible, at least where it would make sense.

Some of the possible options to deal with this would be making more use of tabs or adding filters, especially for the Market interface. Another option is to remove unnecessary or extraneous content such as portraits from Military interface (since you can see their portrait by another mean anyway). There are probably other options that I have not thought of or forgot.

Tabs = moving the mouse. Scrolling = moving a finger. I'd rather not have to click 8 times on 8 different tabs to see the information I could see in half a second from sliding my finger up or down on a wheel.

 

[DrZoidberg]

I think the reason goverment and legitimacy doesnt make any sense is because interest groups go together into two sides often called left and right that struggle for power. It would make alot more sense to have a model where interest groups would organize in two sides and you choose goverment or have an election which side would win. Now you can put whoever in goverment even parties that is against each others in ideas and values.

 

[kingsword]

Game is already generating millions of radicals that keep everywhere in turmoil and cause constant revolutions for AI and Paradox' first patch is about making even more radicals.

Solve the oscillating fire/hire loop from generating radicals before you do anything else.

 

[gkbba]

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reading it a 2nd time another observation about the pop panel: I like it, much better than now at least. whats missing here is a header in each column: I gather from the "economy" tab that the shares are actual expenditure shares not volume shares. in the consumption tabs there are just numbers. headers should be "price", "units" or "volume", and "expenditure share"

that leads me to a question of the game in general: as far as I understand it pops of a specific SoL just have a specifc set of needs and try to satisfy them "blindly" (except of goods that have substitutes presumably) until they made so much net income/net losses that they are in another wealth class or do they substitute goods depending on price (or shortages) although they are not explicitely listed as substitutably, e.g. a bit more liquor if they cant get nice clothes etc.
I presume its the former and so anyway, and then the volume column shows their needs (again accounting for substitution), but information easier to work with instead of volume would be to present another column with either the volume shares or the shares of expenditure normalized for base price (or said differently, for every good compute: consumed units(A)*base price(A)/(sum of (consumed units(each good)*base price(each good)). or said even easier: what share of expenditure would a good have for the pop if every good was at base price.

Tabs = moving the mouse. Scrolling = moving a finger. I'd rather not have to click 8 times on 8 different tabs to see the information I could see in half a second from sliding my finger up or down on a wheel.

well, that completely depends on the context whats more fitting. usually scrolling involves searching if we are talking the trade routes panel e.g., whereas tabs have titles. scrolling through a sorted or filtered list, but scrolling through information next to pictures is rather annoying actually.

 

[Oktobermensch]

Sounds like feedback was taken onboard and these are a really meaningful fixes to improve these aspects of the game. I'm seriously looking at the economy and trade overhauls next, as these are vital to making the game loop lasting.

 

[xsmilingbanditx]

Mh...Changes make sense in a way. We'll see how it'll work out. Although I predict AI Japan will now end up in more Revolutions and even less Restorations.

 

[Egodeus]

So, how are these new legitimacy changes going to affect the Meiji Restoration? Where you're expected to spend 10 years with a government that basically can't get legitimacy above 20 or so? Is it basically inevitable for that to cause a civil war?

I've passed the Meiji reformation in the early 1870s without ever dropping below 60% legitimacy or so at any point. The trick is in boosting the IG's you want in population and dropping those laws that give the shogunate IG more clout. And you can still pass laws that the shogunate hate even if they are in the government, as long as they stay above the -10 happiness at which point they kick themselves out immediately. It just required me to wait a few years between new reforms to let them settle down first, or pass something else in the mean time that didn't upset them.

 

[Egodeus]

To get 90% legitimacy, you're going to need pretty much every interest group in government - including those who oppose the laws you're trying to pass. The enactment time will drop, but the enactment chance will drop too.

EDIT:

The "respectfully disagrees" make me think I'm wrong about how this works. Is the above not correct from the screenshots?

EDIT: I restested this, and was wrong. It does only count the amount of clout in the government which sounds somehow wrong, but that's the way this works right now.

No, it is not. The stall chance is the same whether the IG is in government or not, so having an opposing party in governement while trying to pass something has no effect on the chance to stall. So only the enacment time will drop meaning you can try to get it passed faster.

The only limit here is that if the law proposal makes the IG angry (-10 or worse) they will refuse to participate and kick themselves out of the government possibly tanking your ligitimacy and thus your enacment time, but again the stall chance is unaffected.

 

[Egodeus]

Yes, I'm talking about after you do that. Once the Shogunate is no longer powerful, you kick them out of government then wait 10 years where they have to be out of government and not powerful. Because of the penalty for extra IGs in government, the only way to get above 25% legitimacy in an absolute monarchy is to either have a single IG with over 25% legitimacy, or to put the monarch's IG in government for the +50 legitimacy bonus. Or so to Low or Very Low taxes I guess, but I'm not convinced the Meiji Restoration should require that. Even when the Shogunate is at 15% or so, I usually have the Industrialists at maybe 20-25% and another IG or two at or slightly below 20%. I guess if they rework how legitimacy is gained this may no longer be true, but if it is, waiting 10 years at less than 25% legitimacy sounds... dangerous under the new mechanics.

Nah, the trick is to first enact landed voting so you get rid of the requirement to have the ruler in the government for any reasonable legitimacy. Besides, that way you get the real japanese flag. If you stick with autocracy you get the emperors personal flag, which is a golden folwer on a red background. Doable as well, but a different route to be sure.

 

[TheLand]

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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In this case, I feel the Whigs should get some kind of legitimacy bonus for being the largest party after the election - even if they didn't get over 50% of the votes. Most countries don't have an expectation that they have governments with 50% of votes. But do have an expectation that whoever 'wins' the election with a plurality forms part of the government.

 

[grommile]

Most countries don't have an expectation that they have governments with 50% of votes.

Countries with both proportional representation and an ability for the legislature to call a vote of no confidence expect exactly that the governing party/coalition has 50% or more of the popular vote (because a governing bloc that doesn't have that, gets ejected by Parliament).

And quite a few presidential republics demand that presidents be elected by 50% + 1 of the votes cast and hold a runoff round if nobody gets that in the first round; America is weird for having 18th century assumptions about transport and communications baked into its Constitution.

 

[PDJR_Alastorn]

The changes are nice, but i personally can wait for them even longer, those are not important things for now. What we really need as fast as possible is a performance patch or maybe even more than just one. Many can not play longer than 1870-1880 cause of the incredible slow down.

You should prioritize performance for now over absolutely everything else.

That's the fun thing, we can work on both at the same time. The Artists, Designers, UX Designers are not the one's dealing with performance issues.
The performance issue is known to us, we delayed putting it into the hotfix because it wasn't yet vetted. You will get it in 1.0.6 sometime next week.
And after that there will continue to be a developer working on performance.

But trust me when we show you UX work and maybe some of the stuff I might tease next week, you don't want me working on performance instead - I will actively make it worse since I don't know what I am doing on that front.

 

[PDJR_Alastorn]

This looks good, although I do hope you might add "Electoral Laws" or "Anti-Corruption" categories in the future to represent the ability for non-majority governments will be able to enforce their will with sufficiently authoritarian policies.

Also, will you be making another pass over IG ideologies? It's really weird that the Roman Curia is a key supporter of secularizing the Papacy because they prefer Monarchy to Theocracy, especially when the Roman Landowners have a special ideology to make them prefer Theocratic governments.

Not too much comment on when its getting a pass but trust me this is something thats on our list of continual areas of improvment. I think Tolman has been working on it but I am not sure when its going to be vetted for a branch. The reason I am ignorant on this is because I've got my nose in economic balancing but more on that in the future. If you have specific suggestions, discord and forums is a great place to put it. Community and QA are regularly rounding up the feedback for us.

 

[TheLand]

Countries with both proportional representation and an ability for the legislature to call a vote of no confidence expect exactly that the governing party/coalition has 50% or more of the popular vote (because a governing bloc that doesn't have that, gets ejected by Parliament).

Yup. A great feature of European social democracy since 1945. Not a great feature for a game representing politics worldwide from 1836-1930

 

[Egodeus]

Yeah, in my experience, it's been a process of steadily undermining the shogunate's power until I can just kick them out of the government without losing almost all of my legitimacy. I've never tried kicking them out while they're still really powerful. I keep them in and switch around the other IG's to try to push laws through that slower weaken the shogunate. I wish there was some kind of just straight up civil war option, based on the Boshin War, but alas, that doesn't appear to be an option.

There is, actually. Just move to abolish serfdom while the shogunate is already unhappy. They will become angry, and quickly radicalize and start a revolution attempt with the samurai who will basically radicalize from the abolishment attempt whatever you do. If they lose the revolution they will lose a lot of clout and you can then pass several other reforms through to seal the deal.

I can't suggest going trhough that route unless you game the system and delete all the barracks in states other than Kansai to make them toothless, but it is an option.

 

[Egodeus]

When you do kick the Shogunate out, what IGs do you have in government, what's their clout, and how much legitimacy do you end up with?

I had Industrialists and Intelligentsia both at almost 30% clout with Peasants supporting them with 9,something%, while the Shogunate was hovering just over 20%. With landed voting I had gotten rid of the requirement to have the shogunate in the government to gain any reasonable legitimacy so my legitimacy was over 70% but I can't remember the exact numbers.