Hello and welcome to another Victoria 3 Dev Diary! Today’s topic will be Political Lobbies, which is a new feature added in the Sphere of Influence expansion with some elements made available for free in the 1.7 update.
So, what is a Political Lobby? Put simply, a Political Lobby is a collection of Interest Groups pushing for the implementation of a specific foreign policy agenda in their country. Superficially, this may appear quite similar to Political Parties, but there a couple key differences in how they function:
- Political Lobbies always form for a specific reason, often due to a Diplomatic Catalyst (more on those and the precise conditions for how they can create lobbies in next week’s dev diary) and pursue a specific long-term agenda that does not change over time
- Interest Groups can be members of multiple Lobbies, so long as those Lobbies do not have directly contradictory goals
The agenda of a Political Lobby is always in relation to a specific foreign power, and there are four types of Political Lobbies being added in 1.7/Sphere of Influence:
- Pro-Country Lobby: This Political Lobby seeks to promote and advance the interests of their target country, both in relation to their home country and in a more global sense
- Anti-Country Lobby: The opposite of the Pro-Country Lobby, this Lobby seeks to hinder the interests of their target country and ‘take it down a peg’ whenever possible
- Pro-Overlord Lobby: A Pro-Overlord Lobby can only form in a subject country, and will always target the overlord. It seeks to promote loyalty towards and closer integration with the overlord.
- Anti-Overlord Lobby: The opposite of the Pro-Overlord lobby, this lobby is also only for subject countries and wants to become less dependent on the overlord, and ideally secure independence for their home country if the opportunity arises.
Interest Groups can join Political Lobbies for a variety of reasons, such as ideological alignment with or opposition to the country they target, or in pursuit of an overarching goal, such as the Industrialists joining a Pro-Country Lobby for a wealthier, more advanced country in the hopes of securing foreign investment capital.
Lobbies have an Appeasement score, which goes up when you take actions that the Lobby feels aligns with their goals, and goes down when you take actions that they consider to be contrary to those goals. Appeasement acts as a modifier on the Approval of their constituent Interest Groups, which means that your foreign policy actions can now directly help or hinder your internal political goals.
For example, are those staunchly Anti-French Landowners doing the Landowner thing of blocking those voting rights you want enacted? Simple! Just declare your opposition to France in a Diplomatic Play and humiliate them, and the Landowners will be so busy celebrating their victory over the perfidious Gallics that they will graciously let you have this one little reform.
On the flipside, you might find that the very pro-British Industrialists are not at all pleased with your continued alliance to a British rival, and that your previous plan of working to strengthen them in order to enact Laissez-Faire has now backfired, as they refuse to work with you until you break said alliance, forcing you to choose which of your two goals is more important to you.
Anti-American sentiment is strong among the Armed Forces and Trade Unions of Mexico, and both have been appeased by declaring an embargo on American trade, though of course the Americans aren’t likely to be too pleased with this action…
Lobbies, of course, do not only affect Interest Group approval but have direct diplomatic benefits or drawbacks depending, once again, on whether the actions you take align with their goals. How large these effects are depends on the combined Clout of the Interest Groups that are part of the Lobby.
For example, having a Pro-Country Lobby will make it easier to conduct diplomacy with that country, both by increasing their AI acceptance for proposals and by lowering the Influence cost of any friendly pacts you maintain with them, but increasing the cost of hostile actions (such as Embargos) and lowering the Influence you gain from rivaling them. As you might expect, Anti-Country Lobbies have the opposite effect, making friendly diplomacy harder and hostile actions cheaper. Anti and Pro-Overlord Lobbies also significantly influence Liberty Desire, as mentioned in the previous dev diary.
Lobbies also have a secondary effect on AI behavior, as an AI country with a Pro-Country lobby will be more likely to adopt a friendly attitude towards the target of said lobby, with the opposite effects for an Anti-Country Lobby, with the Clout of said lobbies once again determining how likely the AI is to fall in line with them. All of these effects, as well as the actual creation of Lobbies themselves, will be available to everyone as part of the free 1.7 update.
Although Russia’s government currently has a positive attitude towards Austria and wishes to pursue closer relations, the powerful Anti-Austrian Lobby in Russia makes it more difficult for them to agree to any proposed new Diplomatic Pacts
For those with the Sphere of Influence expansion, Lobbies can also make their will known through an opportunity or a demand. Opportunities generally come in the form of some diplomatic groundwork done by the Lobby that may allow their parent country to sign a diplomatic pact that is otherwise difficult to get, or even out of reach entirely. For Pro-Country Lobbies this usually involves dealing with the target country directly, while Anti-Country Lobbies will instead work to create opportunities to cooperate with the target’s enemies and rivals. Opportunities can be declined without any penalty, and will only result in a loss of Appeasement if accepted but not followed through on. Accepting and following through on the Opportunity will of course increase their Appeasement.
Even though Great Britain is Cautious about France and thus not willing to sign a Trade Agreement under normal circumstances, the acceptance bonus granted by the opportunity created by the Pro-British Lobby should be enough to secure the deal
Demands, conversely, is when a Lobby believes that the government isn’t doing enough to pursue their agenda and well, demands action. A demand generally comes in the form of a specific action that the Lobby wishes to see taken either against the target country, or against a country relevant to them (for example, a rival or ally). A demand can be declined, but doing so will significantly decrease the Appeasement of the Lobby (though not as much as accepting the demand and then failing to follow through on it).
Feeling that the French government isn’t doing enough to foster closer ties with Britain, the pro-British Lobby demands a grand gesture of enmity with Britain’s Russian enemy
Also available for those with the Sphere of Influence expansion is the new Fund Lobbies diplomatic action. This action works in a fairly similar way to Bankroll, in that it transfers money from the treasury of the initiating country, but instead of the money going to the target country’s treasury it is paid out among the target country’s Pops instead, with who gets what share of the money dependent on the target’s political setup and how much power sharing is going on - when trying to Fund Lobbies in an Autocratic country, nobody is going to bother spreading money around to poor laborers who have no say in politics whatsoever.
The precise effects of Fund Lobbies depends on whether a Pro-Country/Pro-Overlord lobby targeting the initiator already exists in the target country. If one does not exist, the money goes towards promoting the creation of such a lobby, with a weekly chance for this to happen. If such a lobby already exists, or once one is created, the pact switches to supporting that Lobby by increasing the Pop Attraction of Interest Groups that belong to the boosted lobby, which over time will increase the combined Clout of the Lobby’s Interest Groups, which in turn translates into greater mechanical effects and impact on AI decision-making.
Seeking to tighten its grip over their junior Personal Union partner, Sweden begins to spread some money around among the politically influential Norwegian Pops
Finally, I want to wrap up this dev diary by talking a little bit about the moddability and extensibility of the Lobbies system. Besides the Pro and Anti Country Lobbies mentioned above, the system also comes with built-in support for ‘neutral’ Foreign lobbies that have a goal relating to another country which is neither directly friendly nor antagonistic, and even for Domestic lobbies that pursue an entirely internal agenda in the country they are created in. The entire system of forming, appeasing and applying mechanical effects from lobbies is completely moddable, and we definitely intend to use this system to create new and interesting types of lobbies in future updates!
That’s all for today! Since this one ended up pretty long, and we actually have a bunch of semi-related things to go over as well, we’ve decided to change the Dev Diary schedule so that next week’s dev diary will be about Diplomatic Catalysts and the Diplomatic AI. We also still want to talk more about Power Blocs, and will find a way to fit that in before release. See you then!
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