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Victoria 3 - Dev Diary #104 - Quality of Life improvements in 1.6

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Hello and welcome to this Dev Diary that will mainly focus on the Quality of Life improvements we will add to the game with 1.6. The improvements for this update are mainly focused on three areas: Diplomacy, the Outliner and the Census Data panel, with some additional bug fixes and improvements sprinkled on top.

Diplomacy​

The “Start Diplomatic Play” popup has gotten an overhaul that should make it much easier to get an idea of how likely any Country is to side for or against you. The “Relative Preference for Country” tooltip has also been polished up. It now gives you more information on the first level of the tooltip, which in turn should make it clearer which factors go into the AI’s decision making process.

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The tooltip for a Country has gotten completely reworked to include better contextual information, more data and clearer information hierarchy.

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The Country details panel has gotten a slight tweak to the layout, which makes it possible to see both the Country’s Attitude towards you, and their current Strategies at a glance. Since these factors are important in the AI’s decision making process, having them more easily accessible should help make a Country’s behavior more comprehensible.

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The Diplomacy Map Mode has gotten a new Map Marker that shows any ongoing Pacts you have with that Country, their Attitude towards you and Relations (+ any eventual rate of change)

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Diplomatic Pacts have been reworked to more clearly state what could cause them to break. This change is also reflected in the “Pact has broken” Notifications, making them easier to understand.

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Outliner rework​

The Outliner now has tabs (Pinned / Economy / Politics / Diplomacy / Military / All). Most Outliner items also had a design pass, and most of them now show some additional information. We have also added a new Outliner item for Countries, showing their Rank, Attitude towards you and Relations.

In addition to these changes, you are now able to unpin Political Movements, Diplomatic Plays etc, giving you more control over what is shown in the Outliner. We have also added an option to move the Notification feed to the left of the Outliner, similar to what Nugget’s mod “Notifications not over Outliner” does.

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Notifications are now color-coded to give you more information at a glance.

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The Census Data panel, formerly known as The Pop Browser​

In the previous Dev Diary we introduced the Pop Browser (which has been renamed to the “Census Data” panel, based on a suggestion by forum user Buladelu). Since then we have also added Literacy, Job Satisfaction and Needs as columns in a second “page” in the spreadsheet. The common suggestion of visualization of Interest Group membership sadly had to be postponed to a later date due to implementation difficulties and performance concerns. You can of course still see which pops are part of an Interest Group through the Population tab and on the relevant Interest Group details panels, like before. For upcoming updates we are looking at the feasibility of implementing similar screens for other central types of data, with Buildings, States, Countries, and Goods currently being in the very earliest stages of planning.

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Showing columns for Radicals, Loyalists, Standard of Living, Political Strength and Interest Groups

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Showing columns for Literacy, Job Satisfaction and Needs

Misc improvements​

Scroll positions within the left-side panels are now saved and restored when opening/closing or navigating between panels, which results in less unnecessary scrolling.

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Input Goods Shortage Map Markers are now collected per State on mid zoom level, similar to Construction, reducing the overall map clutter

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An “Upgrade All” button has been added, both for Upgrading all Formations in your Country, and for Upgrading all Units within a particular Unit Group in a Formation

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The Employment Indicator has gotten a reworked tooltip that more clearly explains why a Building is able to hire or not.

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The way we display Qualifications has also received some significant changes. Previously, we would display all Qualifications for a particular profession in the State Panel, regardless of whether the Pops that held those Qualifications actually had any real chance of becoming that Profession. For example, your Capitalists might very well have tons of Machinist qualifications, but it’s not too likely that they are going to quit their jobs and make the switch from factory owner to factory worker. Adding to this confusion, the ‘Insufficient Qualifications’ warning when constructing a building or changing a PM would only look at Qualifications among Peasants and the Unemployed, meaning its predictions would often not play out that way in practice.

In 1.6, we now always show something we call ‘Employable Qualifications’, which is Qualifications held by Pops that are reasonably able to take a job, defined by meeting the following criteria:
  • Isn't already the relevant pop type
  • Is unemployed or a jobseeker
  • Is not enslaved
  • Isn't working in a government building or subsidized building
  • If employed, wouldn't consider the change in pop type to be a downgrade (ie, Aristocrat qualifications for Farmers aren't likely to be considered - based on wage weight and how well their current workplace is paying)

What this means is that when you get a warning for a building that’s to be constructed not having enough Qualifications to fill, that warning can actually be trusted, and you’ll have a much easier time determining which Professions are a bottleneck for your industrialization efforts.

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The tooltip for changing Production Methods now has much more accurate predictions as it now takes more factors into account than before (Employment changes, Throughput, State Traits among others), plus had a few bugs fixed.

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The Construction Interaction now has two modes for the list items: “Condensed” (which is what is currently in game in 1.5) and the new “Full” mode, which has additional information like State Traits, Employment, Production Methods and Local Prices for Input and Output Goods.

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The Transfer Units panel has gotten some extra functionality compared to what is currently available in 1.5 based on many requests from our players. First and foremost, you can now with one quick button press move all or half of the Units and Commanders over to the other side. You may of course want to be more detailed when setting up your transfers, something we now provide additional tools for, namely:
  • Text input box (write the number you want immediately)
  • Slider + Arrow buttons (slide the number to whatever you need it to be)
  • A list of all individual Units (if you want to be really nitty gritty and select/deselect individual units)
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We want to have most lists sortable and/or filterable by suitable factors in our game, which is becoming more and more of a standard for us to help you find the exact thing you want especially in lists with more than 10 entries. In the Transfer Unit window we have included a filter for you to get the Units from a specific State in the selected Formation.

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During one of our Personal Development Time days we finally made a working prototype for what has internally been referred to as the Holy Grail of Tooltips UX: Tables in Tooltips. This implementation is only used in two places as of 1.6, but we’ll most likely start using these more often in the future, as they make it much easier to present certain types of information with greater clarity.

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Closing thoughts​

Working on the Quality of Life improvements for 1.6 has been both really fun and rewarding, as it includes some improvements with a high positive impact on the overall UX of the game. The high point for me was either finally seeing the Census Data panel take shape (after having been one of those features that we have had scheduled for “the next patch” for a very long time) or solving how to move the Start Diplomatic Play predictions out from the tooltips into the popup panel.

That’s it for this week! In two weeks Alex will discuss the upcoming changes to the migration mechanics and their impact on game performance.
 
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The UI has definitely been one of my biggest annoyances since launch, but this looks like a massive step forward. Great work, very exciting stuff.
 
Could you please exclude already employed people from "jobseekers"? In my latest campaign I noticed how this is incredibly misleading, thinking I build buildings in states with a million unemployed people, when in reality, the entire state had no pesants or unemployed people, and buildings were perpetually underemployed and competing for each other's employees. WHY would I want to build in such a state? And more importantly, WHY would you show all workers in that province as a "jobseeker"? Makes no sense what so ever, sorry.
 
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Dsingis said:
Could you please exclude already employed people from "jobseekers"? In my latest campaign I noticed how this is incredibly misleading, thinking I build buildings in states with a million unemployed people, when in reality, the entire state had no pesants or unemployed people, and buildings were perpetually underemployed and competing for each other's employees. WHY would I want to build in such a state? And more importantly, WHY would you show all workers in that province as a "jobseeker"? Makes no sense what so ever, sorry.
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There are already filters for jobseekers, peasants, and unemployed.

Also while not particularly common there are instances where you would prioritize one industry over any other and not have the unemployed or peasant workforce available. In which case knowing that there are pops willing to leave their current job is useful information.
 
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hagerhink said:
During one of our Personal Development Time days we finally made a working prototype for what has internally been referred to as the Holy Grail of Tooltips UX: Tables in Tooltips. This implementation is only used in two places as of 1.6, but we’ll most likely start using these more often in the future, as they make it much easier to present certain types of information with greater clarity.
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Please be careful to keep this dangerous technology out of the HoI team's hands, the world is not ready for the combat unit tooltips they might create
 
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More prediction of AI behaviour in diplo plays and filtering units by states? Love it! That's two of my biggest UI gripes gone. The census data looks neat too for if you want to really dig into the details.
 
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hagerhink said:
That is already available unless I am missing something. Alt-Click on the "Move up in Construction Queue" button moves it to the top (and vice versa for the "Move down" button).
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I do not know if its OS (debian) or keyboard settings related, but the alt-Click never worked for my Construction queues. Am I the only one ?
 
For country taking sides in a diplomatic play, could there be a fourth column that explains the reason for their siding, Ex. Alliance, obligation, relations, balance of power, etc.

For the politician outliner, will it show what IG/ political party they belong to?

For the IG chart when viewing a party’s UI, there’s a space at the left for “leaders” in case the game one day adds politicians based on how big the IG clout is. For now there can be just the main leader of the IG involved in that party.

One last suggestion would be to show how PMs will affect wages (hiring/firing). Also an indicator to show if wages will rise or decrease and a chart that shows wage history for that particular building with an indicator showing when it was leveled up (with dynamic scaling based on how big the building is).

@hagerhink
 
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hagerhink said:
Not for 1.6, but Your Market, Interest Groups, Army, and Navy will be pinned by default now.
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Speaking on default...
Every single time I start the game, my first action is to click on this button (I prefer the small list mode)
I humbly request that the display status is saved somewhere (save file, config file, at this point I would accept anything !)

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This has been a super-duper dev diary, and I think the various changes you have described are amazing. Truly.
I do have one concern, though, and it comes as someone who is a good deal older than almost all of your community, someone whose eyesight is not as good as it once was.
The Census Data screen is my favorite novelty of all the things you described, but it also worries me. With so much crammed onto one screen, I fear that it will be difficult to read without pushing my face right up to the screen -- and I have an external monitor, so it's a bit of a stretch! Would it be conceivable to allow the census data to be configurable in a way that by hiding certain columns, like you would in an excel spreadsheet, you can allow the others to be presented with a larger font size?

I've never seen anything like this in a Paradox game, and I realize this may take some significant reworking of the graphics display routines. But I thought it worth asking. I DO want to have ALL of that data on the census screen. But I would like not to have it all at the same time! ;)
 
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I'm usually not excited for UI/QoL changes, but this one really took me of guard. Well done, guys. Now give it to us!!!
 
Grindipo said:
Speaking on default...
Every single time I start the game, my first action is to click on this button (I prefer the small list mode)
I humbly request that the display status is saved somewhere (save file, config file, at this point I would accept anything !)

View attachment 1079334
Click to expand...
Similar thing could be dome for charts, sorting and toggles, so it remembers that you want piecharts, or sort goods by price or show unemployed numbers instead of jobseekers.
 
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This looks very promising. Are there plans to give us more notification options over event popup/toasts?
 
I'm sorry to ask if this has already been mentioned or asked for, but...

Can the construction queue in any way be updated to allow players to highlight multiple buildings at once and either click-and-drag them through the queue, or click a button to move them all up/down one space, top of current page/bottom of current page, and top of queue/end of queue?

I've grown accustomed to rapidly clicking alt-down or alt-up to set up the next buildings I want in the queue, it just feels like a tedious workaround.
 
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Is there a way to only see unemployment instead of jobseeker? Reducing unemployment is far bigger priority vs make employed ptomoted.
 
1. Will the scroll stop resetting every time I cancel something on the Construction window?
2. Will we be able to drag-and-drop projects in the construction queue, like in HOI4's Production window?
 
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I really appreciate all of this, especially the Census Data panel, the scroll not resetting in windows, and ESPECIALLY the Notifications Not Over Outliner mod being included, at some point the mod stopped being updated and I had to maintain my own version, even to the point of making my own compatibility versions for other mods.

One addition I'd love for the new Political Party tooltip would be to include the Party Attraction for each interest group, to see which ones I could potentially break out of the party without needing to scroll over each IG's value independently.
 
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The change to the way Diplomatic Play are shown is amazing. My prediction is that even if the AI acts in exact same way, players will be far more understanding of why and the game will feel a lot less random.

Would it be possible to mark the countries which are “readily swayable”, by way of a favor or who would already ask for a war goal, in orange and maybe even indicate that possibility?
 
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