Victoria 3 - Dev Diary #116 - The Art of Sphere of Influence

[Duarte]

so question is portugal gonna start in the british empire from now on? what's the justification, gameplay that is because from historical perspective it's quite the stretch.

 

[Kultakala Siika]

I'll start by commending the art team on a great job! The clothes, event art and historical figures especially look fantastic, but like many others I feel obligated to respectfully voice my disappointment in regards to the current look of monuments. I don't particularly mind the idea or proposed mechanics of monuments as a way of spreading the image of your empire across the globe, after all this was a vital way for real empires of the Victorian age to do just that, however I find the current aesthetics and feel of the monument designer to be far too anachronistic, unserious and ultimately immersion-breaking to fullfill this fantasy. It's not a matter of the monuments looking bad , but it honestly just feels like whoever designed them completely forgot what game they were working on in the first place. Unlike most other art in the game, which is well researched and at least truthful enough to the era to where it feels authentic, the monuments showcased, especially the one with a skull, doesn't even try to adhere to the historical art of any point within the game's timeframe. To make things worse there are (literally) tons of real monuments to use as reference, Nelson's Column for one, is an excellent example of the kind of monument actual Victorians built to project the power and prestige of their empires. For some reason though, rather than taking inspiration from history someone has actively decided that tasteless and anachronistic golden skulls with top-hats and giant squids is the superiour way of visually implementing this system.

Again, the art for this expansion looks great overall and that, I am sure, is why the monuments are especially souring to people. In an expansion where the quality of modelling and research looks especially good they stick out as immersion-breaking by undermining the visual and historical identity of the game. I truly hope that these are reconsidered and that the game retains at least a semi-historical and serious aesthetic.

Perhaps Paradox has crunched the numbers and they think money is CK route of anachronistic memes and sparkly octopus fun, not in immersive gritty strategy in the era of nationalism. (History is boring, memes make viral videos metric go up.)

 

[adil3tr]

Is the late game aspect of this going to be fleshed out? Especially ideological unions? I'm most excited about this because I want to finally have a realistic radical politics diplomacy where there is a communist revolution in the leading country and then the puppets, dominions, etc can be forced to have revolutions as well.

 

[king.kaiser7]

Loving the new 3D assets and late game uniforms. And the 2D art is always amazing and fitting!

With Reza Shah Pahlavi now being in the game, will there be an event that has the Qajar dynasty being overthrown and replaced with the Pahlavi dynasty? Like what happened historically.

 

[greywulfos]

Not gonna lie, I'm not a fan of these monuments and statues, or even how much these power blocs affect the "visuals" of a nation.

The concept of power blocs seems an interesting gameplay mechanic, but this is the era of nationalism. WWI was not fought between the "Entente" and the "Central Powers" it was a war of Empires, fought over their own flags, not in the name of some supranational institution or concept. The overemphasis on power blocs kinda seems that supersedes this basic nationalist notion/ideal and I'm not convinced it's the right direction for this game.

Have you been reading many of the dev diaries prior to this? The point of this mechanic is largely about great powers competing for soft power in smaller countries, which was an extremely prolific feature of the time period. I somewhat doubt the point of this mechanic is going to be for representing blocs of multiple great powers.

 

[TechGlitchReporter]

It's absolutely awesome to see Nechayev and Kollontai. Is there any hope of seeing Spiridonova?

 

[Swamphill]

Am I the only one to find the Subjects menu too clunky? It looks like the early Trade menu, and I don't think it will be navigable when I have 10+ subjects. I hope for a more condense grid-like display like subjects menu of EU4.

Totally agree, there is way too much space wasted. I did a quick mockup in paint and reduced the height per subject by one third without removing any information. And I still think it could and should be even more compact.

 

[Idle America]

It's a Caduceus not to be confused with a Staff of Asclepius.

Yes, modern medical organisations in some parts of the world (notably the US) regularly use the wrong one

"Given that the caduceus is primarily a symbol of commerce and other non-medical symbology..."

Well, that explains the USA, at least.

 

[wilcoxchar]

Totally agree, there is way too much space wasted. I did a quick mockup in paint and reduced the height per subject by one third without removing any information. And I still think it could and should be even more compact.View attachment 1131832

Your mockup is a lot worse. It is way too busy and cluttered, and unlike Paradox's orientation, it leaves very little space to consider how localization into other languages affects the length of the text. Not good design at all.

 

[Swamphill]

Your mockup is a lot worse. It is way too busy and cluttered, and unlike Paradox's orientation, it leaves very little space to consider how localization into other languages affects the length of the text. Not good design at all.

Imposing laws is a subject interaction and can be put in the subject interaction menu (the green button, or so I assume), the country rank is not really relevant so it can be moved to a tooltip or removed, there is plenty of room to both improve and shrink my mockup at the same time.

 

[Metz]

In terms of graphics, I think one aspect that could be improved for all countries is giving more clothing variations to the different SoL levels.

 

[Max_Art]

The new uniforms are absolutely stunning! Can we expect new updated unit sprites for UK/Russia in the 3D battles as well?

Thanks! That's something we'll try to add in a later patch, we prioritized the wide variety of outfits and will look into going in depth with more uses for them (like the front lines) at a later point.

 

[Max_Art]

Will there be new building and city styles in the expansion? As it was for France in the laste dlc?

Not with this Expansion Pack, we've instead focused the art assets around the newly added features for such a big pack. For future Immersion/Region Packs there absolutely will be new buildings though, especially if it's something the community is looking for.

 

[Max_Art]

Will there be a new UI theme to accompany the new paper map?

Not this time unfortunately, we've focused on all the new interfaces, icons and mechanics UI-wise instead, the paper map being more of an illustration gave us capacity to do it in this case.

 

[Max_Art]

In countries strongly influenced by Chinese culture, monarchs, ministers, and aristocrats always wore formal headgears.
Currently, in this game, Chinese and Japanese monarchs wear traditional clothing and headgear, but Korean kings only have traditional robes and no headgear.

Please add the traditional headgear "Ikseongwan" to the Korean kings.

Will look into doing this, the empress hairstyle came to be due to her appearing on the key art in this case.

 

[Max_Art]

How would Cossack outfits be assigned to pops/characters? Does this mean that cossacks are getting some representation in content in the update?

Correct, there will be some cossack representation with the update, aside from the events surrounding them the outfits will also appear for Circassian leaders, some Kuban pops as well as certain Russian generals.

 

[Max_Art]

Those new characters and uniforms look really great. Also the background art and map mode. I’m not really feeling the statues and power bloc symbols (why is the trade bloc represented by a medical symbol?), and I don’t really see myself using the customization for power bloc visuals. But overall, the art team is still doing an amazing job.

Since there's been a lot of questions regarding the variety and fantastical elements of Statues and Emblems our intent was to show how far you could push things, but rest assured that you can still create much more natural and historical looking results. We think that this allows both more traditional looking ones as well as a bit more fun and colorful ones.

Here are some more examples:

 

[Metz]

Rotha Linton-Ormon should appear alongside Oswald Mosley. Makes more since to have him as the leading figure for fascism in the UK though.

 

[Max_Art]

I want to thank Paradox for using texture patterns on the map modes in addition to colors. It really helps a lot to make them more visible and differentiate the power blocs from each other.

We're happy that some of you enjoy them, but we also hear loud and clear the feedback regarding their high contrast, so we'll be toning them down towards release more in-line with this:

(cohesion will also be adressed in when it's displayed, but we need to figure that out)

 

[PDX_H4n1baL]

The art looks great! I love it!

Some additions make me very happy (like the new military outfits and shakos! If I ever work on my Community Outfit Mod again, those will surely come in handy!

If you ever need scientists, artists, etc. I created a lot of DNA for Morgenröte, feel free to use them! I also still have that Dufour DNA that Switzerland needs. After all he is the most important Swiss general!

Thanks for the feedback and your kind offer!
I'll let some folks know and potentially get into contact with you if it fits what we need