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Victoria 3 - Dev Diary #89 - What’s next after 1.3?

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Hello and welcome to our Post-Release Plans update dev diary for 1.3. Just as we did in Dev Diary #79, in this dev diary we’ll be going over what changes and improvements we have planned for the game in future free updates such as 1.4, 1.5 and beyond. In the previous Post-Release Plans Dev Diaries we outlined four key areas of improvement for the game, which we’ll be sticking to for this one: Military, Historical Immersion, Diplomacy, and Internal Politics. The Other section is also still there for anything that doesn’t fall neatly into one of the four categories.

Just as last time, I’ll be aiming to give you an overview of where we stand and where we’re heading by going through each of these four categories and marking on each one with one of the below statuses:
  • Done: This is a part of the game that we now consider to be in good shape. Something being Done of course doesn’t mean we’re never going to expand or improve on it in the future, just that it’s no longer a high priority for us. Any points that were already marked as Done in the previous update will now be removed from the list, to avoid it growing unmanageably long!
  • Updated: This is a part of the game where we have made some of the improvements and changes that we want to make, but aren’t yet satisfied with where it stands and plan to make further improvements to it in future updates such as 1.4, 1.5 and so on. Note that this section will mainly focus on updates made in 1.3.
  • Not Updated: This is a part of the game where we haven’t yet released any of our planned changes/improvements in any currently released updates but still plan to do so for future updates.
  • New: This is a planned change or improvement that is newly added, ie wasn’t present on the list in Dev Diary #79.
  • Reconsidered: This is a previously planned change or improvement that we have reconsidered our approach to how to tackle from previous updates. For these points we will explain what our new plans are, and change the list appropriately in future updates.

Finally, just like in the original Post-Release Plans dev diaries, we will only be talking about improvements, changes and new features that are part of planned free updates in this dev diary. So then, let’s get to the categories and see where we stand! For each point in each category that isn’t new to this update there will be a sub-point detailing our progress on the point so far.

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Military​

Done
  • Solving the issue of armies going home after Generals die during a war by adding a system for field promotion
    • Field promotions have been added to the game in 1.3 to solve the most critical issue of armies simply going home. In the future we’ll aim to further improve this through changes to armies/navies and having defined successors for your commanders.
Updated:
  • Improving the ability of players to get an overview of their military situation and exposing more data, like the underlying numbers behind battle sizes
    • This is an area where we are continuously making improvements but where we still definitely have more work to do. A particular area of improvement we’ve identified is the need to more clearly be able to see a summary of a country’s military strength instead of just seeing unit counts.
  • Increasing the visibility of navies and making admirals easier to work with
    • As above, this is an area where we are continuously making improvements but still have work to do. In particular, we want to improve the sense of where exactly your navy is and what exactly it is doing.
  • Finding solutions for the issue where theaters can split into multiple (sometimes even dozens) of tiny fronts as pockets are created
    • We have mitigated this issue in update 1.2 by auto-closing small pockets and improving battle province selection but the issue still persists (particularly in wars with a large number of small countries) so further improvements are needed here
New:
  • Adding a system for limited wars to reduce the number of early-game global wars between Great Powers
  • Adding systems for organizing your generals and admirals into discrete armies and navies to allow more control over geographic positioning, military composition and unit specialization
  • Adding more options for strategic control over your generals to allow for more ‘smart play’ in wars
  • Adding more on-map graphics for armies and navies, including soldiers on the map
Reconsidered:
  • Experimenting with controlled front-splitting for longer fronts
    • After some internal design consideration, we have decided that this is not the best approach going forward - instead we will aim to solve the issues with long fronts by supporting multiple battles and improving the strategic options you have to direct your generals.

Historical Immersion​

Updated:
  • Tweaking content such as the Meiji Restoration, Alaska purchase and so on in a way that they can more frequently be successfully performed by the AI, through a mix of AI improvements and content tweaks
    • Improvements to this were made in both 1.2 and 1.3 (the most significant being preventing journal entries such as Fragile Unity from being broken by revolutions) but we still have some work planned here, particularly to the Meiji Restoration and the willingness of AI countries to open up Japan.
  • Ensuring unifications such as Italy, Germany and Canada don’t constantly happen decades ahead of the historical schedule, and increasing the challenge of unifying Italy and Germany in particular
    • The German Unification received a significant rework in 1.3 to more closely follow the historical narrative, with other unifications planned to receive similar improvements in the near future.
  • General AI tweaks to have AI countries play in a more believable, immersive way
    • This is something we are continuing to work on in every update. Some tweaks and improvements were made in 1.3 but the biggest improvements here should come alongside planned updates to diplomacy.

Not Updated:
  • Adding more country, state and region-specific content to enhance historical flavor of different countries

New:
  • Going through the base game Journal Entries and events and making improvements and additions to ensure that they feel meaningful and impactful for players to interact with


Diplomacy​

Not Updated:
  • ‘Reverse-swaying’, ie the ability to offer to join a side in a play in exchange for something
  • More things to offer in diplomatic plays, like giving away your own land for support
  • Trading (or at least giving away) states
  • Foreign investment and some form of construction in other countries, at least if they’re part of your market
  • Improving and expanding on interactions with and from subjects, such as being able to grant and ask for more autonomy through a diplomatic action
  • Allowing peace deals to be negotiated during a Diplomatic Play instead of only having the option to give in

Internal Politics​

Done:
  • Improving the mechanics of law enactment and revolutions to be more engaging for the player to interact with
    • Law enactment and revolutions received a significant rework in 1.3 to behave in less random and more engaging ways, while also somewhat (intentionally) increasing the challenge involved in rapidly reforming your country
  • Adding more mechanics for characters and giving the player more reason to care about individual characters in your country:
    • Agitators were introduced as a new character type in 1.3 that directly interacts with political movements and serves to push more forcefully for political reforms. There are definitely more types of characters we want to add and more we want to do here in the future, but right now it’s not a high priority when compared to the other items on this list.
  • Added Petitions to ensure the Interest Groups you add to your government has agency in demanding political change
    • This was not previously on the list but is something we’ve added since we consider it a fairly significant change to internal politics.

Updated:
  • Making it more interesting and ‘competitive’ but also more challenging to play in a more conservative and autocratic style
  • New laws were introduced in 1.3 (such as One Party State) that makes late-game autocracies more viable, and the addition of Agitators means that conservative countries now face a greater internal push for reform.
  • Adding laws that expand on diversity of countries and introduce new ways to play the game
    • A number of new laws were introduced in Update 1.3, but there is definitely more we want to do in the future here

Other​

Updated:
  • Improving Alerts and the Current Situation widget to provide more useful and actionable information.
The Current Situation widget received a series of tweaks in 1.3 to give more useful and actionable information. In the future, we want to improve this further by giving the player much more custom control over the alert/current situation system similar to what we’ve done with message settings.

New:
  • Increase the overall challenge in the economic core loop, as well as creating more clear mechanical differences between different countries and their starting positions in ways that encourage more economic specialization.
  • Find a way to deal with the excessive fiddliness of the trade system in large economies, possibly by allowing for autonomous trade based on your laws in a similar way to the autonomous investment system.

So when can you expect these changes to reach the game? I can’t give specifics for any particular points but what I can say is that we are planning a large update with an extended open beta period in the second half of this year which will check off a considerable number of points from the list. In particular, that update will be aiming to tackle many of the points from the Warfare and Diplomacy sections of this list. I’ll end this dev diary by reminding you yet again that this list only covers changes and additions that will be part of free updates.

Well then, that’s all for today’s update. We will see you in two weeks for our next Dev Diary, on the 22nd while we work on 1.3.3!
 
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Are there any plans to add events/journal entries about the 1840's European potato famine? It was one of the most important events of the time period, causing massive emigration from Europe and setting the stage for 1848, and yet it's just not represented in the game at all which leads to ahistorical outcomes post-1840s.
 
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Some modders also changed New York and Kaniningrad to look more realistic.
Are those map changes including this too? Cities are smaller as this overhaul mod contains miniature world tweaks
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Part of our plans involved in creating discrete armies and navies is indeed to allow reorganization of units in this way. We'll of course go over all this in dev diaries when it's closer to release.
Thank you for the reply !! I'm fell very intresting to the system for limited wars, referring to the fighting in Ukraine's Donbas region since 2014 (Russia supports militias, NATO provides weapons to support Ukraine and help train the army), or France's military operations in Africa, there should be a system that allows the state to support part of a military act against a hostile state without directly declaring war. I would also like to be able to add resources to support the system of belligerents, such as the American Revolution, when France supported a large number of weapons without declaring war on Britain. The system could be designed, for example, to support the United States against Britain in France would create a diplomatic game that would eventually lead to war between the two countries, or France would yield and stop supporting the United States.

Think about it, if in a war one side receives arms and materials from all European countries at the same time (which can be purchased from these countries at a very low price, or obtained for free), and the other side can only rely on its own factories and agriculture to supply weapons and food, then even the most powerful country should eventually be unable to consume the side supported by the vast majority of countries.
 
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I know this is unrelated a little but since we are talking about victoria 3 plans, have you considered introducing crisis again? it was a really special part of the game in victoria 2 and it gave you something to look forward to as a minor power to hopefully gain some land and as a major power to flex your muscle through sheer diplomacy
 
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For automating PMs, it's an idea we've toyed around with but we've gone no further than that right now.
I imagine that it is isn't easy to get right. It sounds great on paper and immersionwise, but even without being a coder at all I smell instantly two problems here:

1. Not only that "most efficient" for building X might be devastating for the country (and in the end for X as well...), but it is very likely a moving target. And constant recalculating/resetting might not only directly eat precious performance, but also...
2. ...might screw up things for buildings Y and Z trying the same, while consuming what X produces (or supporting it with what it needs)

Now throw in the already planned autonomous trading on top... That creates a fairly complex system where anything depends on everything. Not saying it is impossible, but I view it as magnitudes more complex than the autonomous investment you already added (which works quite good for my taste - I wasn't really able to nail down cases yet where the AI clearly did stupid things with it...sure, I have sometimes other wishes or would deem a different decision more profitable, I sometimes wish they would be faster or more inclined to take a risk with building e.g. the first steel mill...but for an AI its making a pretty good job :) )

So I'm looking forwards to this challenge and hope we can help you with the work on it in the beta!
 
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Thank you for the update and your hard work. Victoria 3 looks like an heavy thing to update and balance, but each patch is making the game better.
 
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Seems like a solid plan. Honestly better to stick with it and do things carefully and slowly than to rush out a bunch of rickety hacks that will eventually have to be replaced themselves, even if it means a few more months of "Fix X NOW!!!!!" rants.
ALso, are you planning to add an option to auto-cancel unprofitable trade routes? Having to do that manually is kind of annoying and tedious.
 
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Could you consider front joining for small fronts so they consolidate between sides? It currently gets extremely micromanagement heavy in Europe and India, which the system is not built to handle.

It could work very well with multiple battles per front too.
Yes, this is part of the roadmap and in fact something we're working on right now. Austria and Krakow against Prussia should be one front, for example.
 
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Honestly, I'm still quite concerned at how underbaked the actual mechanics of internal politics is. There's still no complexity or nuance to the preferences of POPs, their behaviour in elections, the party system, or in the behaviour and alignments of IGs. The addition of agitators were a nice bit of extra something, but still way short of making politics, well, actually feel like politics.

Appreciate some of this would be future DLC material, but also hope this isn't simply the case that political mechanics are regarded as "done", with just more laws needed now. (Not least because the most recently added laws are... well, let's say mixed.)
 
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Honestly, I'm still quite concerned at how underbaked the actual mechanics of internal politics is. There's still no complexity or nuance to the preferences of POPs, their behaviour in elections, the party system, or in the behaviour and alignments of IGs. The addition of agitators were a nice bit of extra something, but still way short of making politics, well, actually feel like politics.

Appreciate some of this would be future DLC material, but also hope this isn't simply the case that political mechanics are regarded as "done", with just more laws needed now. (Not least because the most recently added laws are... well, let's say mixed.)
As mentioned in the dev diary, something being 'done' doesn't mean we don't plan to expand or build on it, just that it isn't on the roadmap for the next few updates. This also isn't a complete list of everything we'll be doing for those updates, just the most important items.
 
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Will you make it possible to start diplomatic plays whilst at war or whilst having others active? Right now it is really annoying because every tiny native uprising or seccesion prevents you from declaring an actual war.
 
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Could you elaborate a bit more on your intentions for trade automation in large/late economies? Is this more along the lines of being able to set up rules for conducting trade (such as always export/import for given good if profitable, or perform all profitable trades with a given country, but you have the option for not enacting those rules), or more along the lines of automatic routes being generates regardless of player intention?
 
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Also, I know this is a minor thing, but I mentioned it at launch in several places and nothing has ever been said or done about it - but could we please consider renaming the "North Sea" strategic region? Only one coast of one part of the region is even on the North Sea (the east of Scotland)

I know it's not a map you have to open very often, but it always stands out as a mistake to me on the occasions that I do! Surely "North Atlantic" makes a lot more sense?
 

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IMO what the game needs ASAP:
- Add journal entries and flavour for all the Great Powers and Major Powers that don't have any. After this base flavour is added, you can release DLCs that expand the flavour of this countries and other minor countries. But some basic flavour for the important countries must be added without the need to wait for specific DLCs.
- Make the AI play competitive and in a historically plausible way. The AI needs to be a challenge for the player. And the world needs to progress in a realistic way, not as a full sandbox as if this was as Sci-Fi game like Stellaris.
- Improve diplomacy options. Subject interactions. Releasing countries choosing the states they receive, the official religion and culture, etc. Let us play with the map and organise it.
- Fix important bugs.
 
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I am really happy to see the two economic and trade adjustments added to your "new" category toward the end of the dev diary. I have long waited for an indication that something would be done to make the economic play of the game more challenging. These two items are very encouraging.
 
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sounds interesting, an enormous broad scope is presented with deeper game mechanics tailored to more realism.
in case stockpiling is not debatable, is there a way to mod this in?
also with autonomous trade i would like to add devs consider the natural base value of trade existing between a border region eg. a farmer sells his eggs and cattle on a market in a neighbouring province (other county), as well as the micro trade of shipping in Apac region.
With considering natural availability of river trade, shallow waters and harbours, if than the goods produced get a value in e.g. tonnage metrics (incl. logistics a bit more).
When no improved harbour can't engage in deep sea shipping etc. Things will shape up pretty nice, the game design (look) was always satisfying to me except for the absence of more refinement and characterisation preservement.
 
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As a long term goal, I'd love to see some sort of "centralization" law category, with options like, federalism, confederalism, unitary state, ect.

It would be great to have, for example, individual U.S. states implementing their own slavery laws based on local political strength.
 
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Excited to see adding actual armies to the game. Having battalions as a blob tied to a general with no ability to influence to the composition of, was always very disappointing. Being able to compose your armies and assign to generals should be a marked improvement.

I would like to voice 2 items that I feel are lacking within Vic3 related to game's original vision that I don't see within the roadmap.
  1. Nationalism
    • This is a game heavily influenced by pops in an age where ethnically defined boarders were a major concern of both the people of the era (ex. Greeks wanting to unify both lands inhabited by Greeks with foreign hands, or Russian control and freedom of Slavs from non-Slavic overlords.). Currently I have not felt my pops _want_ push to every do these things.
    • Similarly the foreign policy of your nation should feed back into your pops. And not just in radicalism, but in proper ideologic shifts.
  2. Diplomatic Congresses and negotiated Treaties
    • While uneven treaties were a feature of warfare and diplomatic negotiations between European powers and non-European nations. Primarily Great Power intervention into the "Diplomatic plays" of "lesser" states took the form of enforcing the peace as arbitrators. Well known examples include:
      • The Congress of Paris to craft the 1856 Treaty of Paris end the Crimean War.
        • Prussia did not participate (formally) in the conflict, yet were a participant shaping what the peace terms should look like to favor them.
      • The Triple Intervention in response to the Japanese terms of peace from the First Sino-Japanese War
        • Russia, Germany and France, who all had interests in China or near China, pressured Japan to relent on territorial acquisitions.
          • This then ties back into the Nationalism bit, as it was humiliating for Japan and they saw these European powers build fortress on the land that they were forced to cede, feeding into desire to strike back in the Russo-Japanese war.
 
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