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Victoria 3 - Dev Diary #73 - Open Beta and Update 1.2 overview

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Hello and welcome! Today we'll be covering several topics relating to Update 1.2:

  • Open 1.2 Beta
  • Feature Overview
  • Anticipated 1.2 Release Date

As mentioned in our last dev diary, 1.2 is a big update with some far-reaching changes, and we don't want to push it out before we feel it's ready for primetime. We're happy overall with the reception of Update 1.1, but those of you who were with us during its initial release will remember - perhaps fondly, perhaps not - how the Legitimacy mechanics seemed to change from day to day for a while there. While we finally managed to iron out most of the kinks in 1.1.2 (more on that later) this is the kind of scenario we'd like to avoid going forward. With a game as highly interconnected and complex as Victoria 3, the only way to do that is to give the patch enough time in the oven, letting our playtesters really give everything a solid rundown.

At the same time, Update 1.2 brings some substantial improvements in several areas that we know are important to you, and we don't want to keep those away from you longer than we absolutely have to. Disentangling specific improvements and bug fixes from the rest of the changes that have already been done to the branch is itself laborious and error-prone. Our assessment is that releasing those in hotfixes would be risky.

So how do we marry these two things together - giving you access to upcoming content as soon as possible, while ensuring high quality of the upcoming update? By launching our first Open Beta, of course! In this way you will have a chance to experience all the juicy parts of Update 1.2, but also share your feedback with us in advance, allowing us to improve what we are currently working on.

Our planned beta launch date is February 8th at 10:00 CET. At that point a new Steam beta branch 1.2-beta will become available to anyone who owns Victoria 3. A new forum post will be made with step-by-step instructions for how to enable it. Once you've started playing the beta, you can always switch back to the live branch in the same way. As always, your existing save games might not be fully compatible with this new version, and you should definitely not expect saves made in 1.2 to be backwards compatible with 1.1.2.

We will also launch a new beta section on our Victoria 3 Discord server where you can discuss the update with other players and report any bugs or balance issues you find. Our moderators will be active on this channel, and so will developers and QA team members as time permits. If you prefer not to use Discord you can also file bugs using our forum bug report tool, even for the beta version.

After the initial beta release, we plan on releasing two additional updates on the beta branch on a weekly basis, containing additional bug fixes, performance improvements, etc and also adjustments we've made according to your feedback. The exact release dates and times of these updates are to be confirmed, but we will keep you posted on the Discord channel.

To set expectations at the right level, playing the beta build will not be a buttery-smooth experience! Some aspects of the game will be greatly improved, but other things will be in a rougher state, and there will be bugs (if not, we'd just launch it without a beta phase!)

Also, some features will be in a less mature state at the beginning of beta than they will be at release. For example, Strategic Objectives will be limited to one per country during the beta, but the intent is to expand this to allow for designating multiple Strategic Objectives. This slimmed-down version is included in the beta to allow you to try it out and feedback on how it feels in general while we continue to work on the full implementation.

So do keep in mind that while you'll get a sneak peek at the latest features and will see many improvements, you should expect some speed bumps along the way. And when you do, we want to hear about it!

Below you can find a short list of some of the new features and improvements made in 1.2. As always, just because something is not on this list doesn't mean we're not aware of it, and may even have addressed it already! The full changelog will be published closer to the release date.

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New Features
  • Autonomous Investment system
  • Strategic Objectives for planning military campaigns
  • Customizable notification settings
  • In-game music player
  • Key rebinding

Improvements and bug fixes
  • Performance optimization
  • Improved AI handling of economy and military, including port management
  • Greater differences in economic systems
  • More realistic modeling of trade route profits and GDP
  • Worldwide Arable Land revision and migration balancing
  • Mega-parties limited by tweaks to party formation logic and ideology

Interface
  • Trade panel overhaul for easier route management
  • More clarity on Pop Needs, Convoys, Radicals and Loyalists
  • Visual upgrades to mapmodes and lenses, such as showing Infrastructure and employable Pops when expanding buildings
  • Outliner enhanced with pinnable market goods and characters
  • Reduced notification spam


We are going to cover most of these things in dev diaries leading up to the release of 1.2, so details on what exactly these entail may be sparse until then. However, all of these will be in the beta build when we release it (although to reiterate, perhaps not in their final form) so come February 8th you can explore them for yourself!

After the third and final beta release, but before the live release of Update 1.2, you can expect the beta build and the beta section on Discord to become unavailable, as we will be channeling all our resources into the release. We will keep you updated on the expected beta shutdown date on Discord as well, of course.

Our preliminary release date for Update 1.2, assuming all goes according to plan, is March 13th. For those of you who opt to continue playing 1.1.2 until then you can follow the new features in upcoming dev diaries. For the rest of you, I'll see you on Discord on Feb 8!

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"In-game music player". Nice! Did I miss this in previous Dev Diaries?
 
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Gort11 said:
to make it so outnumbering your enemy on a front means you outnumber them in battles
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I think this is intended. Wars in the period saw more advanced foes achieve local superiority in troop numbers against more numerous enemies due to the ability to move troops faster, be it due to internal rail networks or ship transportation. That would be lost if they allowed by battles to be determined by the number of troops in the front, although I would like the tech tree to interact with it a bit more (or perhaps it already does and I just don't notice it ><).
 
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Oh boy, the trade route and GDP calculation changes and the new economic systems really make my economist brain go BRRRRRRRRRRRR
 
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Fawr said:
Interestingly 3 beta releases, at 2 per week sounds like the beta will be going for 2 weeks or less than half the time until the next patch.
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That is what I thought when I first read this line, "After the initial beta release, we plan on releasing two additional updates on the beta branch on a weekly basis".
Once I got to the end I was able to parse it to, that each addition update is to be released weekly.
 
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Can auto expand build multiple levels of building in same state at once now?
Can autonomous investment also do this?

If you have 50 levels of steel mill in state then both autoexpand and autonomous investment should build up to 10% of existing levels - that is up to 5 steel mills in same state depending on stuff.
That is order 5 levels of steel mills in that state.
 
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Still nothing on people who preordered multiple DLC, then? Fair enough.
 
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I hope political parties' names can be defined in another files rather than written with other paramters like weight where ig will join, because it is bad to compatibility of mods
 
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13-03 i take a peak here and maybe boot it up
trade should be expanded more goods, difference, tonnage metric as well as much easier management of customs market when you join as junior partner, which means you cant change be dominant over your peer 'partner'
 
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Visual upgrades to mapmodes and lenses, such as showing Infrastructure and employable Pops when expanding buildings
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After just building up Austria without railways first and then adding the first ones I can't stress enough how much I need to have this.
- Show the amount of infrastructure that's available in a state (with color on map)
- When picking railways for builing show amount of infrastructure also so I can see where it is already close or even missing
 
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Gui10 said:
I think this is intended. Wars in the period saw more advanced foes achieve local superiority in troop numbers against more numerous enemies due to the ability to move troops faster, be it due to internal rail networks or ship transportation. That would be lost if they allowed by battles to be determined by the number of troops in the front, although I would like the tech tree to interact with it a bit more (or perhaps it already does and I just don't notice it ><).
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That doesn't seem right to me. If I have ten times the troops on the front, I should usually find myself outnumbering them in the battles. Instead, the defender pretty much always outnumbers the attacker, even when outnumbered vastly.

It makes large enemy militaries very unthreatening when you can just sit back and be confident of a numbers advantage as long as you just defend.
 
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magriboy0750 said:
Good afternoon,a great DD and very happy for the music player.However,a few questions regarding the beta:
1)Will we have a code to enter on steam for it in order to access it or we will just have to switch it like for the older versions for example?
2)Will the other languages be localized or the bêta will be English-only initially?
Thanks for any replies about this.
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No code will be necessary, you will be able to just switch to the branch.
Regarding localization it's a mixed bag. Most things will be localized, but some things might only show properly in English.
 
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enderro said:
Hi! With regards to more realistic modeling of GDP - does this mean you will deduct the inputs from the GDP calculation? I remember a reddit post, which explained why current calculations are very overstated.
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Exactly! This way resources economies operate on the same playing field with manufacturing economies that also produce their own raw materials. The latter type is heavily favored (unfairly so) in 1.1.2.
 
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I think the low reception this DD received since it's release yesterday, should indicate how anticipated this patch is. I appreaciate the effort, but the game doesn't get more exciting with this patch. As i said before: automated industry kills pretty much the only thing i actually do by myself in the game. Since there are so few events and decision i basically just wait until 1936. There is something fundamentally lacking in this game, which makes it the first Paradox Game i actually find boring. Despite the lackluster contend at release i got 140 h into Imperator in the first months after it release. I barly hit 30 in Victoria and don't see any reason to touch it again.

I expect Victoria 3 to give me something to do!
 
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Ares Enyalios said:
I think the low reception this DD received since it's release yesterday, should indicate how anticipated this patch is. I appreaciate the effort, but the game doesn't get more exciting with this patch. As i said before: automated industry kills pretty much the only thing i actually do by myself in the game. Since there are so few events and decision i basically just wait until 1936. There is something fundamentally lacking in this game, which makes it the first Paradox Game i actually find boring. Despite the lackluster contend at release i got 140 h into Imperator in the first months after it release. I barly hit 30 in Victoria and don't see any reason to touch it again.

I expect Victoria 3 to give me something to do!
Click to expand...
It was released just today, actually!
They just prep it beforehand.
 
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