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Victoria 3 - Dev Diary #82 - Voice of the People

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Good afternoon Victorians! It is with great pleasure that I can finally reveal to you our first Immersion Pack: Voice of the People. Voice of the People is the Immersion Pack promised by and included in the Grand Edition of Victoria 3, and will be released alongside the free 1.3 Update on May 22nd. Today’s dev diary will give you a feature overview for Voice of the People, as well as some words on our design philosophy for Immersion Packs and an update on our team structure.


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Proudhon is one of many historical Agitators in Voice of the People, alongside other noteworthies such as Leon Trotsky, Sun Yat Sen, and Susan B Anthony.
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Without giving too much away - we’ll be going more in depth on this next week - Voice of the People is named for its headliner feature: Agitators. Agitators are a new kind of character that rally your pops to support Political Movements that align with their Ideology. Agitators will shake up your internal politics, acting independently of their Interest Groups. Amplifying power from below, Agitators serve an opposite function to Interest Group Petitions which reflect the demands of the political elite. Depending on how your goals align with theirs, Agitators might be a painful thorn in your side or a valuable ally to your political agenda.

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Mr Marx, having been unceremoniously booted out of his home country, is looking for a loving home.
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Are you sick and tired of that one Agrarian Party leader with inexplicably high Popularity stealing votes from your cherished Liberals? Is there a Radical Agitator spreading dangerous ideas in your bastion of political reaction? Well I’ve got a solution for you: Exile. Inconvenient characters can now be expelled from your nation and driven into political exile, up for grabs for whatever nation wants to harbor your unpatriotic dissidents. On the other side of things, perhaps you feel like your nation needs a shakeup, and that Danish Anarchist Exile would be just the man for the job - you can peruse the list of available Exiles and invite them to your country as an Agitator.

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Napoleon III went on to restore the French Empire in our timeline, but what would France look like under the House of Orleans or the Legitimists?
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Vive la révolution! Vive la France! Voice of the People’s content and visual focus is themed around France, one of the greatest powers of the era and one of the most, in my humble opinion, in need of a healthy dose of content. In an upcoming dev diary we’ll be going into detail about what we have planned for France, but right now I can tell you that we’ll be tackling such weighty topics as the Paris Commune, the Dreyfus Affair, and the dynastic struggle for the French throne - including of course the return of the Bonapartes. We’ll also be covering the nation’s quest for territorial expansion both within Europe and beyond. With ample new Journal Entries and Events, playing as France will offer a much more immersive experience.

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The map of the world has become some sort of Carte du Monde.
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I think by now you’ve probably noticed that something is different in these screenshots. Voice of the People will add not only a beautiful baroque blue UI skin, but also a totally new French-themed paper map of the world - featuring my personal favorite art in the game, the Pacific Bread Centaur. On the character art side, we’ve added many new historical Agitators who will have their own unique appearance including outfits and props. And as if that weren’t enough, there’s even more to come in the dev diary on visual features in a few weeks' time.

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This is the Bread Centaur. I will not elaborate.
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I think I can state with confidence that devs and players alike share a love of staring at maps. We also really enjoy nitpicking and complaining about maps. While our content designers were busy making French content they noticed that there was room for improvement for the state region and city hub setup in the country. These aren’t the only changes to the map coming in 1.3 - most notably we’ve made major changes to Algeria which we’ll also talk about in a future dev diary.

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Can you spot what else is different about France besides the borders?
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I’d like to talk a bit about what an Immersion Pack entails for Victoria 3 and how we’ve decided which parts of the 1.3 Update will be free to all players and which will be exclusive to the Immersion Pack.

So far, everything we’ve talked about in the previous 1.3 Dev Diaries is part of the free update - the Revolution Clock, the changes to Law Enactment, and the new Laws for instance. These are reworks of existing systems and additions to them, exactly the kinds of changes that Paradox veterans might expect in a free update.

Immersion Packs are envisioned as content-driven and art-heavy, with mechanical features that support this content and make the world come to life. As the title implies, Immersion Packs are about immersion. You can expect them to contain plenty of narrative content like Events and Journal Entries, major visual updates, and light but impactful new mechanical features and systems reworks. Immersion Packs will be themed around one country or region of the world, and this is where the bulk of narrative content and art will be focused and take inspiration from. These new mechanical features and systems reworks will be mostly contained in the free update that will be released alongside the Immersion Pack - everyone gets the feature, but Immersion Pack owners will also get all the bells and whistles. In the case of Voice of the People, Agitators will be a free feature while certain interactions (such as Exiling characters) will be included in the Immersion Pack.

Time for a team update! Since around the game’s release, the Victoria 3 team has transitioned from being a project aimed at delivering a single product - Victoria 3 1.0 - to a team that can work on multiple updates simultaneously. We’ve divided ourselves into three sub-teams with different focuses, sizes, and fields of expertise. For instance the “Machinists” team was responsible for bringing you the 1.2 Update, and is defined by a focus on systems design and code-heavy tasks. Voice of the People and 1.3 is primarily the work of the “Academics” and “Artisans” teams, which focus on narrative design/scripted content and art respectively.

The teams tie in to our major post-release goals that we’ve talked about before: 1.3 and Voice of the People are focused on Internal Politics and Historical Immersion, which (very deliberately) lines up perfectly with the expertise of the Academics and Artisans teams. While the Academics and Artisans work on 1.3, the Machinists team is cooking up the next systems-focused update, which will include some long-awaited free updates related to our other post-release pillars. We’re far from ready to start talking about this now, but I can assure you it is exciting stuff.

I’m sure you’re excited to read more about Voice of the People, but that will have to be all for this week. Join me for next week’s dev diary, where I’ll be going into depth on the mechanical features: Agitators and Exiles - as well as unveiling a new (super moddable) way to interact with characters.

Voice of the People will release on May 22nd alongside Patch 1.3. Pre-orders available now with limited-time bonus content, also included in the Grand Edition!

Pre-order now!
Steam
 
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lachek said:
Building models are geographically selected, so they will always show up in France (assuming you have the DLC enabled) regardless of which country you play.

Other cosmetics - UI skin, paper map, new table and table assets - are enabled regardless of which country you're playing, but can be turned on and off as a separate DLC entry in the launcher. You won't be able to turn on and off individual cosmetic components though (like the map but not the UI skin) - we're working on this functionality but it won't be ready in time for May 22nd.
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Please make the building models tied to the dominant culture of the state, so it can actually spawn in other states that became predominantly French.
 
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Maybe I'm in the minority here, but I really don't care at all about any characters in the game. I have never bothered to care about any IG leader or any other character, CK has this as it's main focus for me already.

Victoria to me was always about the nation, the population as a whole, the underlying spirit, never about individuals.

If Victoria is also going to become another wacky character simulator I'm out. Just not what I'm looking for in a Victoria game is all, CK has that covered for me.

I hope the updates turns out well though for those that do like the character focus, just not my cup of tea.
 
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Cymsdale said:
Please stop this pre-order FOMO garbage. Have some faith in your work and the sales will come.
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Is it possible to get the pre order bonuses post release, or will it be forever gone?

I understand this might be more of a marketing decision by Paradox, but this is just putting me off after initially being really intrigued by the pack.

Further to my question, if one would buy the Grand Edition now, would we get the pre-order bonuses of Voice of the People?
 
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as well as unveiling a new (super moddable) way to interact with characters
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This all looks awesome! Wasn't expecting this immersion pack so soon with all of you working so much on updating the base game. As a modder I'm really excited about the above as character modding is pretty limited right now.
 
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Can every state send people into exile or are there exceptions? Maybe banned by freedom of speech or guaranteed liberties?
 
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Stein14 said:
Can every state send people into exile or are there exceptions? Maybe banned by freedom of speech or guaranteed liberties?
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Agreed. Liberal democracies should generally not be able to exile people except under rare, extreme circumstances (ex. USA during the Red Scare).
 
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Stein14 said:
Can every state send people into exile or are there exceptions? Maybe banned by freedom of speech or guaranteed liberties?
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Seems to be prohibited by Protected Speech:

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Stein14 said:
Can every state send people into exile or are there exceptions? Maybe banned by freedom of speech or guaranteed liberties?
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Good guess! Protected Speech prevents you from exiling characters, and other laws in that category affect how many Radicals are created when you exile someone
 
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I'm generally not inclined to exile the people, but I do wonder about a couple of things....

1.) Can you arrest them and confine them? I prefer house arrest. Though, that option certainly comes with a higher risk of prisoner escaping than with conventional imprisonment.

2.) Can the interest groups put pressure on you to exile a particular agitator even if you are otherwise not inclined to do so? Same question for arresting an agitator if imprisonment is a thing as well.
 
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Frostcreep said:
If Victoria is also going to become another wacky character simulator I'm out.
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As I'm fond of saying:

The strong form of Great Man Theory Rejection Theory is exactly as wrong as the strong form of Great Man Theory.
 
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I think it's good that you've adjusted the provinces of France. My suggestion is that there are many more countries whose provinces could be further optimized. China, for example, has a large population, but most of provinces are overpopulated, while the vast, sparsely populated United States can have 50 states. I hope densely populated countries like China, Korea, Japan and India should have more provinces.
 
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Normally with DLC packs the preorder bonuses appear to be cosmetic.

Does the preorder bonus have an effect on gameplay? As in having the 3 less characters which can be spawned with their traits may affect gameplay for people who haven't preordered down the line.
 
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MohawkWolfo98 said:
Is it possible to get the pre order bonuses post release, or will it be forever gone?

I understand this might be more of a marketing decision by Paradox, but this is just putting me off after initially being really intrigued by the pack.

Further to my question, if one would buy the Grand Edition now, would we get the pre-order bonuses of Voice of the People?
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They recently did a pre-order bonus for the EU4 DLC that was just released and that is now forever gone. This is clearly a new trend that Paradox marketing has gotten behind.
 
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PLEASE TELL ME THIS A JOKE.

You are seriously make a DLC for 10$+ to the game that is in beta?
Jesus, have some corporate dignity and at least bring this game to a state where after one run it makes any sense to start another with another country.
Or just drop it like you did it with Imperator.
I spent money on almost all games and dlc to everything from EU1 to HoI4 but it is enough.
 
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grommile said:
As I'm fond of saying:

The strong form of Great Man Theory Rejection Theory is exactly as wrong as the strong form of Great Man Theory.
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I agree, reality is somewhere in the middle but in my opinion Victoria 3 is pivoting hard into complete Great Man Theory territory and I'm just not a fan of it for a Victoria game.
 
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