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Victoria 3 - Dev Diary #80 - Law Enactment and Revolution Clock in 1.3

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Happy Thursday and welcome to the first of several diaries about improvements and changes in Update 1.3! Today we will cover changes made to the process of enacting laws, political machinations by your ruling Interest Groups, and the build-up to revolution.

First off, why are we making changes here? Well, while the core mechanics of law enactment and political movements agitating for legislative change and/or revolution work well and in accordance with the design vision, there are a number of issues that has bothered us and many in the community since release:

  • The feeling of excessive randomness in law enactment mechanics, where you might have only a 5% success chance but could hope for a "critical hit" that wasn't particularly rare, or repeatedly failing and getting stuck when at 80% success chance
  • The risk of getting stuck with "bad rolls" early on in an enactment process leading to repeated frustration until you cancel enactment and start over
  • Exploits related to repeatedly starting/canceling law enactment to prevent revolutions from ever getting off the ground
  • The ability to disarm a revolution by inviting a supporting Interest Group to the government, only to then ignore their desires
  • Interest Groups in government actually having less political agency than those in opposition
  • Revolution buildup not feeling particularly flavorful or engaging as a simple progress bar
  • Several confusing user experiences and tooltips relating to law enactment and revolution

We've tackled these issues with two larger and several smaller features or tweaks.

Law Enactment Changes​

Laws now need to progress through three phases in order to pass, instead of simply having a percentage chance to be enacted once the clock fills up. What is not changing here are the underlying mechanics of Success, Advance, Debate, and Stall chances, which are based on the relative endorsement and opposition of the law from the Interest Groups in your government. However, when the result is a Success, you will progress to the next phase instead of immediately enacting the law. If you then achieve success in the third phase, the law will pass.

To compensate for the additional time requirement, we've increased the pace of the enactment clock - which also means more twists and turns during each law enactment. Previously it was not uncommon that if you had 40% endorsement of a law you want to pass, you might succeed on the very first checkpoint, which makes the whole thing mostly a waiting experience. By requiring a number of successes, we can compensate for the random factor and create more interesting challenges.

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While this is, in the words of Alex in QA (who originally conceived of this feature), "just three EU4 sieges in a trenchcoat", it solves the problem of excessive randomness and feels a lot better: giving you a clearer sense of progress and increases the stakes of each decision made. Choosing to get a +5% Enactment Chance out of an early event now doesn't just give you a +5% bonus to a single roll, but effectively a +5% bonus to each of the three phases, which is a much bigger deal. You're also much more likely to experience a variety of events before the enactment is concluded.

Events spawned by the enactment process are now categorized in association with the UI element that tracks your progress, and identifies the outcome that spawned it to give you more context. They will also time out automatically (selecting the default option) when the clock fills up, so there's always only one enactment event pending - no more delaying taking action on negative events until the next cycle to try to improve your better outcome!
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One issue with the current (1.2.x) build is that after dealing with a few negative events you could end up with a net negative enactment chance, a hole you'd have to try to dig your way out of in order to even have a chance to progress. But of course, the lower the enactment chance the lower the chance of getting a positive event, so this often turns into a self-perpetuating cycle of digging a deeper and deeper hole. The "correct" action at this point is to cancel enactment and try again after a cooldown period, but this feels very bad.

To address this, in 1.3 we have introduced a concept of setbacks which can be taken to recover from a situation like this. Each enactment process can take up to three setbacks, but when it has taken its third it will automatically and irrevocably fail. For as long as you have taken less than that, events will permit you to reset your current enactment progress if you've taken too large of a hit, or in some cases trade a setback to turn an negative outcome into a marginally positive one.

When enactment chance drops below zero, the Legislative Failures event will automatically spawn and let you reset back to a clean slate at the cost of a Setback.
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Many law enactment events have been backfilled with new options that let you take a setback in return for avoiding a more negative repercussion, letting you gamble a bit to try to get your bill passed.
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However, Stall outcomes can also sometimes generate Setbacks without your input, so be wary of pushing your luck too much!

Even with the extra agency provided by the Setback mechanic, you may find that enacting a certain law is so difficult it's just not worth it. When you cancel enactment in 1.3, you will find that the cooldown has increased to 2 years instead of 1 (and is applied even if you have not yet reached the first checkpoint), but also an entirely new effect: if there is a Political Movement currently agitating for this law to pass, and you cease trying to enact it, the movement's Radicalism will shoot up considerably, in many cases all but guaranteeing they will revolt as a result.

Cancellation confirmation box explaining the impact of your decision. Laws redacted to not spoil the fun for next week's dev diary, but feel free to speculate in the comments!
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This closes the door on two (unfun) identified exploits: starting to enact a law a movement demands, but canceling it before it succeeds, keeping the movement teetering just on the edge of revolution without giving in to it; and canceling enactment just before the first enactment cycle is up, thus avoiding cooldown and penalties altogether.

But what about the exploit where a revolutionary Interest Group is invited into government, thus removing them from their Political Movement? In one sense, this is working-as-designed; inviting a populist faction to try to execute their politics in a more respectable fashion is a not-infrequently utilized tool for declawing a revolutionary movement. The problem with this in Victoria 3 is that a human player will be in full control of which laws are being enacted, so inviting a group into government doesn't actually give them more power to make change - it only takes away their ability to threaten consequences.

Enter Government Petitions.

Government Petitions​


Petition events commonly appear a few months after a new government has been formed. They can be issued by any of the Interest Groups in government and for any of the law changes they endorse the most.
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The event produces a Journal Entry that you may pursue if you wish, or ignore at your peril. Passing the desired law will of course have the effect of improving the Interest Group's Approval as usual, but it will also improve your Legitimacy for a long time, as you're showing responsive governance. On the other hand, if you don't pass the law on time, or by some other means disenfranchise the petitioning Interest Group, they will become very disappointed with you.
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In effect, this creates a kind of "government agenda" that the player is rewarded for pursuing and penalized for ignoring, further incentivizing building a government constellation of groups whose politics you actually want.

For the modders out there, Government Petitions are implemented entirely in script, and can serve as a good example and pattern for Journal Entries that can be more dynamic and responsive to circumstances.

Finally, what happens when things go sideways and your population demands something you can't (or won't) give them? In the current live build, a Political Movement with high Radicalism will become Revolutionary, triggering a countdown until they rise up against you, taking one or several of your states with them. In 1.3, these fundamentals remain but the countdown has changed drastically.

Revolution Clock​

When a Political Movement becomes Revolutionary, a clock will start ticking. Similar to the enactment clock, every time it fills up the Revolution meter will (usually) increase, with a revolution event triggering alongside it. The event frequently provides some options for how to deal with the revolution. All in all there are 40 such new events in 1.3, many of them contextually triggered based on who is supporting the revolution, what law is currently being enacted, and so on.

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With the support of the Rural Folk and a Political Movement led by the Intelligentsia and Trade Unions (all of them individually weak) we're attempting to ban slavery in early game Afghanistan. The reaction from the Landowners was quite severe. Not only did they leave the government in protest (causing Legitimacy to drop to a level where we cannot make progress on the law enactment), but they also started their own movement to preserve Debt Slavery and, on account of their considerable strength, went straight into plotting a revolution against their former Rural Folk co-rulers.
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On the new Political Movement panel, we can get a good overview of where the support is actually coming from and why they are as strong and radical as they are.
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On the Supporting Pops tab in the same panel, you can find out exactly who is providing the most support and radicalism to the Movement. Perhaps you could temper some of these strong feelings by increasing dividends in their industries or providing some targeted reduction in prices of certain luxury goods?
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The Revolution Clock events usually adjust the revolutionary progression up or down, but can also apply other conditions, some which may upset your country's political balance for quite some time. This can of course also impact revolutionary progression indirectly, as Clout heavily impacts the conditions of the movement.
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Revolutionary movements have also been given their own animated map marker, to make it clearer where the revolution is brewing and what territory is likely to go along with it when it erupts. And yes, once again I've had to redact part of the UI to not spoil some surprises we have in store for you!
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That's all for today! As you can see we're putting a lot of focus on making internal politics more dynamic and fun to play with in Update 1.3, and there's much more to come in subsequent dev diaries. Next week Victoria will present new laws we have introduced in the mix, to fill some late-game gaps and enable new early- and mid-game conflicts between your political factions!
 
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The final law is interesting, because it has a slightly lower support (9.2% rather than 9.8%) and slightly higher opposition. Not sure where the tiny difference is coming from - maybe it's the RF resisting collectivization?

Rather than the RF, I suppose the IND are the one trying to resist the collectivization since it would probably forbid them from ownership.
 
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Looks good! I would also really like it if defeating a revolution actually made it easier to pass the law the revolution was about.

It feels strange when, for example, I am trying to abolish the monarchy, so I fight the landowners in rebellion (but the old king is on my side for some reason?), win, and then - - still have a monarchy.
 
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The final law is interesting, because it has a slightly lower support (9.2% rather than 9.8%) and slightly higher opposition. Not sure where the tiny difference is coming from - maybe it's the RF resisting collectivization?
I am pretty sure that's Industrialists. Opposing changing to Collective Farms while Serfdom is still active means the IG must hate the latter less than the former, and Industrialists fit there the most. Also, considering this is an early game, and Landowners are so powerful, the only IGs which could have such a miniscule (0.6%) clout are Industrialists and Trade Unions, and the latter are certainly not the ones who would hate collectivization more than serfdom
 
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Will there be a change to the political movement support calculation as well? At the moment it is possible for a single interest group’s clout to be represented up to three times in the stall chance for a law (once for being in government, once for their clout impact on movement support, and once for their pops’ impact on movement support)
 
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Are the events balanced in such a way that the ability to reset to initial probability compensates for the increase in number of ticks that are required for a law to pass (even for laws that we would expect to pass based on the initial power distribution)?
 
In regards do revolution is it still the same as before where the seceding side will still have to start a diplomatic play against you?
I guess that would have to be somehow coupled with a new behaviour for countries joining ongoing wars.
It’s not like the Confederates threatened to split the country and when they finally did they started angrily sending letters to Abe telling him to back off and leave them slavers be.
The secession came together with the war declaration.
 
In regards do revolution is it still the same as before where the seceding side will still have to start a diplomatic play against you?
I guess that would have to be somehow coupled with a new behaviour for countries joining ongoing wars.
It’s not like the Confederates threatened to split the country and when they finally did they started angrily sending letters to Abe telling him to back off and leave them slavers be.
The secession came together with the war declaration.
It's a trade off to enable other nations to take a side.
 
Right, which I guess any changes to that will have to wait when countries can finally join sides of ongoing wars.
 
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Love seeing some new laws being added, always for that. I'm hoping the new events during law enactment make it feel less explicitly like "three EU4 sieges", I can see specific events tied to certain law changes like there already are for Womens Suffrage and the like helping a lot in that regard. Government petitions look like they provide more for IGs to actually do in government so I also hope more additions continue being added in that direction. I'm glad that revolutions are going to be better visualized on the map now, would be nice if at some point soon elections received similar attention in terms of visualization.
 
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Will autocracies work as autocracies in this patch?

If the Emperor-King-Dictator really holds power:
  • endorsed laws should pass no matter what
  • disliked laws should not pass no matter what
  • a law should not take years to pass
  • it should never stall
 
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This is quite disrespectful on your part. I don't think a "lead designer" should be passive aggressively offending players, telling them they don't know what they are talking about or are unable to understand basic probability.

The DD itself notes that the system is "just three EU4 sieges in a trenchcoat". It is just RNG; the player might influence the initial odds and can (if they pay close attention to some corner of their screen, like a point and click game) influence it further, but it is still just RNG.

In CK3, for an example, players can sway or "golden sway" characters into murdering, revolutions, and even changing religions during middle ages. The chances are also based upon a die roll, but the system feels very much player induced. Actions, not several dice, are the main cause for the outcome.

In Vic 3, however, politics feels like a determinist blob. An amorphous mass forms an "interest group" that has absolutely no divergence and is stagnant, unswayable, apart for RNG reasons that might direct them into other stagnant, unswayable views on political stances.

One might say that the probabilistic nature of the whole system is "thought" to account for these sways and inconsistencies, but this would be an utterly contradictory idea. Political negotiations, corruption, personal dissonant views of MPs with their general political group are not random; they are achieved and found by people, dedicated to such matters. In CK3 this is finely done by the player taking action in choosing actions to get relevant actors to pass the threshold for aiding - or stop causing problems -in some cause. In Vic3, only more dice to be thrown year round until you get enough D20s on their finer side.
 
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New laws are always cool. I hope that another set of internal migration law will be added eventually. It's strange that Closed Borders restrict not only external migration but also migrating population between states.
 
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Looks good! I would also really like it if defeating a revolution actually made it easier to pass the law the revolution was about.

It feels strange when, for example, I am trying to abolish the monarchy, so I fight the landowners in rebellion (but the old king is on my side for some reason?), win, and then - - still have a monarchy.
This is already rather well-modeled. Once they revolt, the IG's in opposition are essentially dropped from your country. If you defeat the revolution, the political power of the losing side is reduced to zero.

If there was any real support for the law you're trying to pass, during this time you'll easily get the law enacted. On the other hand, if you tried to abolish the monarchy with 3% support to begin with, simply defeating the people who got angry over the attempt doesn't mean there's enough support to actually enact it.
 
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  • The ability to disarm a revolution by inviting a supporting Interest Group to the government, only to then ignore their desires
  • Interest Groups in government actually having less political agency than those in opposition
I'm glad to see this being addressed. I know it was called attention to ahead of release - I remember this because I was one of the people noting it - but it wasn't considered an issue at the time. Considered unlikely to be an issue.

if there is a Political Movement currently agitating for this law to pass, and you cease trying to enact it, the movement's Radicalism will shoot up considerably, in many cases all but guaranteeing they will revolt as a result.
Oh! I like this a lot. This is a good move.

And about that REDACTED image, I see a house and plot of land and sales tag in the top right. Are we gonna' get a housing market soon? That's faster than I expected tbh if so.

Government Petitions
I'm curious to see how this plays out with nations that haven't yet changed their laws to modernize, like Japan. I see a big risk of getting soft-locked out of any progress because
  • it's typically impossible to have a non-illegitimate government without the Landowners, so you have to have the Landowners in government to do anything.
  • the Landowners will be continually unhappy as you try to modernize, so any aggravations to their happiness are likely to have huge ramifications.
  • the Landowners will leave the government if you ignore their petitions, which will double up their unhappiness by adding -5 to their approval and also tossing in a net -3 or so from being in government to being most likely powerful and out of government.
So for example, if you try to break off of Hereditary Bureaucrats, the Landowners get really unhappy (-10, iirc, at minimum?). Then they petition you to undo it, get even more unhappy, and rebel. And the more time you give them to cool their heads after stripping back one of their privileges, the more time they have to organize a petition which re-enforces it.

Which runs the risk of just feeling really bad? It could punish you for making progress. Is there a cooldown period between passing laws where it can't be petitioned? Except that feels weird then, since of course a law that was only recently passed is at its most vulnerable, so that's when most people should be trying to undo it, before society starts taking it for granted.

Also, some other petition questions:
  • Does the relative clout of IGs in government affect how likely they are to bring forward petitions? For example, let's say I have Indies at 40% clout and PB at 10% clout forming my government. Does the vastly greater clout of the Industrialists mean they're more likely to press their agenda than the PB, since they dominate the coalition?
  • Are some laws more likely to see petitions than others, depending on some conditions? For example, it makes sense to me that IGs only petition laws that would make them happy. So a happy IG, at +10 approval or more, doesn't bring forward petitions, but at each successive stage down, they bring bigger and bigger changes. Someone at the +5 level might petition to tweak policy while someone down at the -5 level but not radicalized yet might petition a sweeping change that would yield them +10 or +20 opinion. Or IGs could even have customized petition priorities, even outside their law likes and dislikes, so perhaps the Intelligentsia can, with a low priority, propose to implement a healthcare system, and additionally prefer some law changes to others even within equal approval groups (like wanting to focus on banning slavery even more than implementing a republic, regardless of approval changes).

Revolution Clock
Given the new behavior of revolutions, combined with the changes to laws, will it be easier to see in advance how strong a prospective revolution against a law change would be? Right now, the only way to easily see if a revolution would happen and how strong it would be against a law change is to try to pass that law and...well, see what happens.

But that's not going to be a good option now, and while save-scumming is an option I don't think it should be the recommended course of action. So how are you planning on addressing that question?
 
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Will autocracies work as autocracies in this patch?

If the Emperor-King-Dictator really holds power:
  • endorsed laws should pass no matter what
  • disliked laws should not pass no matter what
  • a law should not take years to pass
  • it should never stall
Even autocracies relied on the power of their supporters to actually do anything.
 
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While this is, in the words of Alex in QA (who originally conceived of this feature), "just three EU4 sieges in a trenchcoat", it solves the problem of excessive randomness and feels a lot better: giving you a clearer sense of progress and increases the stakes of each decision made. Choosing to get a +5% Enactment Chance out of an early event now doesn't just give you a +5% bonus to a single roll, but effectively a +5% bonus to each of the three phases, which is a much bigger deal. You're also much more likely to experience a variety of events before the enactment is concluded.
Honestly... I am very disappointed in the way Devs are making this change. I know I am in the minority, judging by the likes. Maybe I just don't 'get' it yet. But from my point of view, the devs saw that laws were very RNG-reliant, making it so you just need to be lucky once to pass a major law, and they want to change that. I agree, it makes sense and isn't fun. So, instead of moving away from RNG reliance, they chose to make it more RNG by adding two more timers to it?
  • The feeling of excessive randomness in law enactment mechanics, where you might have only a 5% success chance but could hope for a "critical hit" that wasn't particularly rare, or repeatedly failing and getting stuck when at 80% success chance
  • The risk of getting stuck with "bad rolls" early on in an enactment process leading to repeated frustration until you cancel enactment and start over
They saw these and wanted to fix them, but the way I see it, the way they're fixing it is just by adding more 'siege timers' and adding in ways to continue trying to pass a law that went south to bad RNG with setbacks. I don't think these are bad.

What I am disappointed by is that they still haven't made it possible to compromise with neutral or opposed IG's without having it spawn from an event. Wouldn't it be more interesting and engaging if you could try to appease other IG's that are neutral or opposed to a law passing, and in return, they either vote in favor of the law passing or increase the chance in general? Say the Armed Forces are neutral towards passing a law, and I want their support. What if I promised them that I would raise the military spending by one for a period of a few years, and in return, they vote in favor? Or what if the Industrialists are against passing safety standards in the workplace? Wouldn't it be more interesting if I they agreed to stay neutral during the law enactment time if I subsidized some factories for a while, or maybe opened new ones? Or perhaps the Rural Folk will only support some law if I promise to provide them with tractors or something? Etc Etc Etc.

Hell, what about corruption? Wouldn't it be interesting if you could try bribing important members of IG's to 'convince' them that the coming law is worth voting for? Slide some Bureaucracy Capacity, money, and authority their way and they could possibly accept it and vote, at the risk of getting caught or exposed?

Basically, I was hoping that the changes to laws and reforms would provide for more player input and interaction with Interest Groups aside from static events that may or may not fire after a 'siege tick'. I'm glad that they're trying to improve the system, but all I feel the current change is doing is adding in more 'sitting there waiting for the circle to fill up a few times before the law passes' instead of 'Finding ways to get the approval of other IG's or political parties by doing favors, bribery, or other political manipulation'.
 
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So for example, if you try to break off of Hereditary Bureaucrats, the Landowners get really unhappy (-10, iirc, at minimum?). Then they petition you to undo it, get even more unhappy, and rebel. And the more time you give them to cool their heads after stripping back one of their privileges, the more time they have to organize a petition which re-enforces it.

Which runs the risk of just feeling really bad? It could punish you for making progress. Is there a cooldown period between passing laws where it can't be petitioned? Except that feels weird then, since of course a law that was only recently passed is at its most vulnerable, so that's when most people should be trying to undo it, before society starts taking it for granted.
Yeah, god forbid the game tries to give you some natural barriers to passing whatever laws you want. If you want to pull a rug from under powerful entrenched landowners, you should be prepared to fight a rebellion.

Here's an idea for you: Win the civil war (or don't cause in the first place). If you are caught between two civil wars, then I guess you just have pick a side.
 
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I feel like my problem with this is that while its probably for the better in adding the implementation stages, it still feels so reactive. You have to wait for events to fire to see results, and outside of bolstering an interest group and maybe changing a production method you got very little influence on how things seem to develop going into laws passing. More Journals and other things to incentivise different IGs influence and whatnot could be useful? Like take Japan. Maybe instead of just loosing a bunch of landowner influence temporarily upon loosing and being opened it could have an event that really boosts military, industrialist, and intelligencia interest groups to catch up to the west as a journal entry(and to help with the restoration... its kinda hard to do without cheese right now).

I'd just like more options to be proactive about shaping the nation instead of being reactive and waiting for events/time to pass with groups being bolstered/suppressed.
 
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