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Victoria 3 - Dev Diary #83 - Agitators and Exiles

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Hello again! Last week we announced that the Voice of the People Immersion Pack will be released alongside the 1.3 Update on May 22nd and included in the Grand Edition of Victoria 3. Following on from that, today we’ll be going into depth on Agitators and Exiles, the central mechanical features of the update.

As I teased in the previous dev diary, Agitators are populist firebrands who lead Political Movements to support their ideological goals in your country. They might be the only avenue towards moving your country in a direction opposed by your political elite, allowing you to leverage their support to enact laws that would otherwise find no support. Alternatively they might be dangerous dissidents who oppose the very foundations of your rule, leading the people to revolt against the state. Agitators are a free feature included in the 1.3 Update but various bells and whistles, primarily the historical Agitator characters, will be exclusive to the Voice of the People Immersion Pack.

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Lenin is one of the historical Agitators that can appear in your game. Depending on conditions in Russia when he becomes politically active, he might either remain there and immediately agitate for a communist revolution or first spend some time in Exile.
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Voice of the People will include over 60 historical Agitators that can appear throughout the world in your game, but regardless of whether you own the Immersion Pack you will also see “unscripted” Agitators emerge. There are three ways that an Agitator can appear your country:

  • They can appear randomly, with a frequency based on your country’s literacy rate
  • They can appear through scripted Events
  • Exiled characters can be invited to your country as Agitators

When Agitators appear in your country, their Ideology is determined both by the many factors that already influence which Ideology characters receive and also by whether they would have laws to agitate for. For example, the Feminist ideology supports Women’s Suffrage, so if you already have this law you will not get Feminist Agitators. Agitators are intended to be opponents of the status quo, fighting alongside the people for the change they want to see in the world.

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Giuseppe Mazzini begins in Exile, and here has decided to take up residence in the Papal States where he was shocked to discover its suboptimal non-republican mode of government.
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Agitators always support a Political Movement. When an Agitator arrives in your country, they will immediately look for an existing movement that they will support - either because their personal Ideology favors it over the current law in that category, or because their Interest Group wants it and it does not conflict with their personal ideology. If there are no Political Movements that an Agitator will support, they will instead create their own, rallying the people to their cause regardless of whether any of the powers that be approve of their methods. When creating their own Political Movements, Agitators will be heavily biased towards reforming whichever law in your country is most detestable to their personal Ideology. For example, a Nihilist Agitator entering a country with State Religion is very likely to create a movement in opposition to that law. This makes some Agitators more dangerous to the status quo than others - Radical Agitators for instance strongly desire a republican form of government, making them especially dangerous in monarchies.

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Through Events, Agitators will take a role in enacting laws, supporting revolutionary movements, and influencing elections.
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Between the free 1.3 Update and the content exclusive to Voice of the People, we have written over 350 new Events for Victoria 3. Many of these Events are aimed at improving the variety of content you’ll experience while your country is passing a law, having an election, or dealing with a brewing revolution, and we’ve focused on prominently including Agitators in as many of them as possible.

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The movement for women’s suffrage will now emerge from Agitators leading your Pops in Political Movements rather than Interest Group Leaders gaining a Feminist Ideology.
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Now that we have Agitators in the game, we’ve updated some existing content to make use of them, often in places where we were instead relying on Interest Group Leaders. In places where the content was much more thematically appropriate to popular movements rather than political elites, we shook things up a bit so that Agitators get created and involved instead or as well. For instance, the Votes for Women and the Springtime of the People Journal Entries and related Events now make extensive use of Agitators.

In 1.3 Agitators will join Political Movements that can boil over into Revolutions. In the future (no promises as to exactly when), we would like to overhaul our Nationalism/Secession systems and also give Agitators a role in national liberation movements. For this reason many significant and interesting figures that might have been solid Agitator candidates like Gandhi or Cao Futian haven’t been included in 1.3, as we feel we can do them more justice at a later time.

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Here you can see which Exiles are looking for a new home. For ease of use, you can sort by Interest Group and by whether your country is able to accept an Exile. You can also helpfully see what kind of Political Movement the Exile will join or create when they become an Agitator in your country.
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Exiles are characters with no nation, who have left or been forcibly ejected from their home country and are seeking new opportunities to spread their political Ideology. This pool of Exiles is populated when other countries (or indeed, you yourself) decide to boot a character out of the country, so all of these Exiles have a story to tell and a home that they have left behind.

Countries have a soft limit on the number of Agitators that can be active at once. If you are at or over your limit, you cannot invite more Exiles to your country and new Agitators will not appear. In 1836 you’ll have 2 at most, if you’re a Great Power, else you’re limited to 1. Later in the game, Society techs will unlock additional potential for Agitators. Labor Movement, Political Agitation, and Mass Propaganda all increase your capacity for Agitators. This means that as the game progresses your internal politics will become increasingly divisive and there will be more competing demands from Agitators and the people they inspire.

There are also some restrictions on which Exiles you are able to invite:

  • Devout Agitators must always share your state religion. We don’t want Buddhist Theocrats agitating for a Protestant Theocracy!
  • On a similar note, if you have the State Religion law all Exiles you invite must share your state religion.
  • You cannot invite Exiles with cultures that are discriminated against in your country. This limits historically implausible scenarios where characters travel vast distances to become major political figures in societies that would likely not accept them.
  • If you have Closed Borders, you are entirely prohibited from inviting Exiles.

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Victor Hugo’s exile took him to some very exciting places, such as the Channel Island of Jersey where he was expelled for criticism of Queen Victoria. He then moved to the much worse island of Guernsey instead. I have absolutely no bias when it comes to the Channel Islands.
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Just as you can invite Exiles to your country, you can also send characters into Exile. Just like with inviting Exiles, Exiling a character also has some restrictions on its use:

  • If you have Protected Speech, you are entirely prohibited from Exiling characters
  • If the character is not an Agitator, their Interest Group cannot be Marginalized, in government, or Insurrectionary
  • You can never Exile your ruler or heir

You’ll notice that these rules absolutely allow you to exile Agitators belonging to Interest Groups that are part of your government.

Exiling a character is not “free”. You are not able to simply remove any character that is not to your taste on a whim without consequence. Like all Character Interactions (more on that soon), there’s a cooldown for using it. But more importantly doing so can create Radicals in your country. You’ll get extra Radicals if you have the Right of Assembly law, and slightly fewer if you have Censorship - but notably no additional Radicals if you have Outlawed Dissent. You’ll also get extra Radicals if the character in question has high Popularity.

An interesting quirk of Exiling a character is that if they have the incredibly boring Moderate Ideology, they will inexplicably develop political opinions that are hostile to the government that Exiled them. No idea why they’d do that.

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Agitators who return home might be met with a hero’s welcome or steely-eyed disdain, depending on how things have changed (or not changed) since they left.
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When a character is Exiled, we store their home country and use this in Events, such as the above. For the modders out there, this is accessible using the home_country scope. You as the player can also use this for your own nefarious purposes, as you can Repatriate Exiles to your Rivals. It can be very satisfying to wait for an opportune moment of weakness and send a Radical Agitator that you have safely harbored in your progressive Republic back to your rival’s ailing Monarchy to cause trouble.

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Finding suitors for your monarchs and heirs can help improve relations with nations that share your religious faith.
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Character Interactions are … well they’re what they say on the tin, a new way to interact with characters accessible through the right-click menu or by pressing the Interactions button at the top right of the character panel. These interactions can entail anything from Exiling a dissident to finding that character a suitably distinguished spouse. The full list of Character Interactions coming in 1.3 is presented here:

  • We’ve converted the Grant and Remove Command interactions for rulers into Character Interactions, as well as Retire Command for ordinary commanders.
  • Royal Marriages! Available for free with the 1.3 Update.
  • Owners of Voice of the People can use the Grant Leadership Interaction to promote an Agitator to an Interest Group Leader, which replaces their Agitator role.
  • Owners of the Voice of the People can use the Grant Command Interaction to promote an Agitator to a General, which does NOT replace their Agitator role.
  • Owners of Voice of the People can have their monarch Abdicate the Throne under certain circumstances, such as the monarch’s advanced age.
  • Though we had previously said that Exile Character, Invite Exile, and Repatriate Exile Interactions are exclusive to owners of Voice of the People, this is something that we have re-examined following the community discussions on the topic. After some internal discussions in the team, we have decided that these interactions are too much a core part of the Agitators mechanic and thus we will make them part of the free update.
  • Owners of Voice of the People have access to some France-exclusive Interactions related to the struggle between the different dynastic Houses. We’ll talk more about that next week.

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Personally I’m quite partial to Sublime. Post your favourite text editor in the comments and argue passionately about which is superior!
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Character Interactions are extremely moddable, and use the same essential scripting norms that we use in Journal Entries, Decisions, etc. You can create your own interactions, define when an Interaction is visible, the circumstances of use, its effect, a cooldown, AI weighting, etc. If for instance you wanted to create a Character Interaction that allows you to target a politician for assassination, it would be relatively easy to write some script that allows you to select an appropriate target for your devious machinations.

And that is all I have for you today. Next week I’ll be back, alongside my Content Designers, to talk about the historical content exclusive to France coming in the Voice of the People Immersion Pack. See you there!
 
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wilcoxchar said:
I like this so far.

One thing I hope agitators will do is make revolutions feel more revolutionary. I ran a few observer games and it doesn't really feel like a revolution is actually doing much when, say, a communist leading a revolution against a monarchy is keeping the monarchy intact and only fighting for a few smaller laws like higher wage subsidies. It seems like there are too few revolutions right now that are changing what I would consider the bigger laws - government principles, distribution of power, religion and culture discrimination, economic system, and slavery laws.

I also think another problem with countries not looking like they're changing might be the AI strategies not changing enough, especially when a new leader takes over or new interest groups become dominant. But that's a separate issue.
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In an other DD, it was mentioned that revolutions now always change governing principle by the prefered one of the most powerful IG in the revolution
 
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SeekTruthFromFx said:
I both disagree and agree strongly with you.

I respectfully disagree that adding characters is 'un-Victorian'. Any good storytelling needs characters and character development. Yes, we are telling a story about social movements and changes in populations, but without characters we will have a set of aseptic algorithms, not a story. The worst thing about V2 was that you could only directly interact with pops through National Focus, which did not represent any historical dynamic at all and was just a 'increase this number' button. Interacting with characters and responding to the way that they focus demands is a much more interesting and historical way to interact with social change.

And I think your analysis, while helpful, is missing a key distinction between V2 and V3. V3 does have non-character demographic segments, but unlike the earlier incarnations of Victoria they are Interest Groups, not pops. Like pops, IGs are social groups (not characters) that are not fully under player control and their size and influence depends (indirectly) on the buildings you construct and the laws that you pass. So V3 is giving you what you want, just using a different name and at one step removed, as it were.

However, your post helps me to see why I am lukewarm about today's DD and where I share some of your concerns about the direction of V3's development. The implementation of characters in this particular feature shows the downsides of allowing characters to are become somewhat adrift from pops. It appears that the properties of random Agitators (forget about scripted Agitators for the time being) will be set based on 'top-down', national factors such as Literacy Rate and Laws. Pops play no direct role in this. It's not a bad design, but it fails to exploit an opportunity that is latent in the Victoria design games.

In my opinion, characters should be members of pops as well as IGs, because that would enable players to tell richer and more realistic stories, enhance the connections between different parts of the game, and avoid some ahistorical outcomes. Let's illustrate this with a couple of French Agitators (to stay on topic).

One of the Agitators mentioned in the post is Victor Hugo, who as noted lived in the Channel Islands (which for game purposes are subsumed into Great Britain). In the game, this leaves him in Exile and essentially inactive. And that in this case, that is appropriate — Victor Hugo had essentially no historical impact on British politics. But would not be appropriate for all Exiles. With apologies for straying outside the time period, this contrasts strongly with the story ofJean Calvin. His exile in Geneva was his time of greatest influence on France. What was the different between them? Well, as a member of a French pop, M.Hugo was marginalized in British society. By contrast, Francophone pops were dominant in Geneva and the Devout were in government, so M.Calvin was able to influence society on, and as part of, its highest levels. And his influence spread easily across the border to the southern French people who were members of likeminded pops; the resulting social conflict tore France apart and it very nearly became a Reformed country, which would probably have had dramatic effects on world history.

As well as influencing the way that characters operate, it would also be better if their attributes were set 'Pop-up' (if you'll excuse the pun!) rather than 'top-down'. If Russian pops are prosperous, then a random Russian Agitator should be less likely to be a a Vanguardist and more likely to be a Moderate.
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In general I agree.... but :D .... I think what you worry about can be broken down into 2 seperate chalanges. The First and the most obvious, yet also the most hidden, challange is actually the question of balance (e.g. how often and how many agitators can spawn; their strength;...) and thus an irrelevant question IMO.
And the other (about which I worry as well) is the question of how much sense particular agitator makes in a certain region and how his/her influence spreads in his/her domain (your example with Calvin). To use the pretentious buzzword: how much ludonarrative :rolleyes:o_O:eek::cool: appropriate the random generated agitators will be?... I guess, this could be somewhat corrected with for example agitators of discriminated origin having less power and vice-versa.... buuuut that would probably demand having more nuance in the (levels of) discrimination against any particular culture/religion.... oh well, one day i hope :D
 
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Life is Comedy said:
Lovely !
Nice also too see that protected speach becomes less no brainer (for me, as someone bfore wrote the opposite, probably different playstile, i still never played "communist" for exeample, maybe that influences it ?).

I would join @Drakken asking if agitators are meant to be populist of all sides ? So clearly in our time line mostly people asking "progressive" reforms, but i would like a living country whereas "in the old days evrything was better" is true.

I guess yes as you mention religious figures asking for "state religion" and also because of some of the new incoming laws wich seems to be "desireble" only for utopist ?
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Gogo, Boulanger!
 
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Oglesby said:
The way I read it is that once you reach the limit you can no longer invite them but they can still be created, etc. This is a soft limit.
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Though they did directly state that "If you are at or over your limit, you cannot invite more Exiles to your country and new Agitators will not appear", so the three answers I can think of are 1. You can't just invite anyone from an ideological point of view, as we saw two darkened "invite" buttons on one of the pictures, meaning that you probably can't invite someone who already would agree with your government, 2. A problematic Agitator may appear before your invite cooldown is over, if there's one just like with Exile, and 3. They did state it's a soft limit so likely the AI can repatriate your Agitators, if you did even boot one (back to my question, though).
 
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CassalettIV said:
Though they did directly state that "If you are at or over your limit, you cannot invite more Exiles to your country and new Agitators will not appear", so the three answers I can think of are 1. You can't just invite anyone from an ideological point of view, as we saw two darkened "invite" buttons on one of the pictures, meaning that you probably can't invite someone who already would agree with your government, 2. A problematic Agitator may appear before your invite cooldown is over, if there's one just like with Exile, and 3. They did state it's a soft limit so likely the AI can repatriate your Agitators, if you did even boot one (back to my question, though).
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Maybe my mind skipped over that part as it didn't make sense ;).
Maybe specialized events still occur, but random ones no? I am at a loss how it can be soft limit (I guess if your limit drops, but never heard that as a soft limit).
 
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Hello, you spoke of royal marriages, if my monarch dies without a heir will i become the house of the person whom i married and if so will that become a personal union and will this feature be used to expand the personal union vassalage uses ingame? thank you in advance
 
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Pass_West said:
This is a great expansion on the character system which is new to the Victoria series. A quick question - most if not all of the historical Agitators we've seen so far have been liberal or leftist. Could you give a few examples of historical Agitators that are conservative/reactionary?

EDIT: besides Napoleon III...
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Louis Napoleon is actually a liberal in 1836 but you can have Henri d'Artois as an exiled Legitimist
 
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megacoolgamerok said:
I wonder if we'll be able to create new personal unions with the Royal Marriages. Would be a fun new way to gain a subject without infamy.
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While I think the game could benefit if this could be modded in, nevertheless personally I think that for the base game, creating personal unions via marriages is too ahistorical and non-plausible for this time period.
 
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osvaldopiazzolla said:
Louis Napoleon is actually a liberal in 1836 but you can have Henri d'Artois as an exiled Legitimist
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The number of named Black Hundred Agitators are too numerous to name - let's start with Saint John of Kronstadt. Same with the anti-Stolypins landowners who strenuously objected to his land reforms as attacking peasantry as the "soul of Russia". Rasputin would also definitely count as an Devout Agitator.

As a joke, I would also include Pyotr Ratchkovsky as an Agitator - the Head of the Okhrana bureau in Paris. He was the quintessential "Agent Provocateur" mastermind, using Agitators and paying them handsomely to stir up widespread agitation conspiracies only to entrap its participants. Plus, he had a hand into the drafting of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

Maréchal de MacMahon was a staunch monarchist, even as President of the Third Republic, and he was elected by the conservatives with the expectation that he would restore the Monarchy as soon as which branch would take the throne would be decided. Problem was, the issue was never decided. By the time he made his move, it was already too late. But even through the whole of the 19th century Republic during Thiers' mandate, quite a number of conservatives both inside and outside the Assembly remained adamant that the Third Republic was a constitutional aberration and the Monarchy should be restored - this line of thought continued all the way to the Action Française and the Croix-de-feu in the twenties and thirties.

I would also count individuals and secret societies in Japan who pushed for a absolutist restauration of the Emperor, or a more aggressive expansionist policy, to the point of committing assassinations as "Agitators." Namely, the Shinsengumi and Ryuma Sakamoto.

My main point is, restricting Agitators to a certain political direction is quite reductionist and misguided. While a number of agents were pushing for radical change, a number of others were also pushing for reaction, or radical pushback in the opposite direction. All societies had such elements, and although they were all on the wrong side of history, they were there and very active.
 
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I realize this is Vic3, not CK3, but shouldn't a not-so-liberal country be able to give an agitator an "accident" (or even a "deliberate" if they're repressive enough)? After all, some countries -- and no, I'm not naming any -- do so today.
 
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VERY glad to see exiles included in the free mechanical update! Chances are I'll still get the DLC, because I am excited about historical agitators and especially about a lot of French flavor.

Only concern about the latter is that the historicity of France will be tied to the DLC, so people without the DLC will still not see it follow journal entries that lead to a more historically plausible global power balance.

But overall completely satisfied and excited with the decision to fully implement the entire agitator system into the base game, really appreciate the team taking the feedback seriously!
 
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