Victoria 3 - Dev Diary #119 - Smörgåsbord of Changes in 1.7

[NoXeno]

Some kind of migration quantity limit or reduction modifier should show how serfdom block people from moving. Most European nations already failed to fully implement it before anyway.

 

[MasterOfGrey]

With all updates we're always looking at improvements we can make to the AI in different ways. It's just that it's often "we made the AI consider this edge case a bit more when trying to do X", which generally doesn't make for very exciting dev diaries. If it's something the community would like to see we could look into writing a DD or something focused on how our AI system works at some point though

<snip>

One AI thing I think we'd really like to see a bit about is how the economic AI changes (if at all) for subject nations.

It's noticeable at the moment that subject nations trend towards gradual impoverishment even under ideal conditions.

For example, Korea has all the natural resources needed to be a powerhouse right up until rubber becomes necessary. Should Qing's border laws ever allow migration, it should be fairly trivial for Korea to become and remain a relatively powerful nation and attract migrants to its limited and productive territories, even as a subject of Qing. And yet, it's a bit sad that AI Korea doesn't seem to be able to manage to develop and take advantage of even a Qing with open borders.

Case in point, I am running a game as Qing currently that is almost completed, where I actively supported Korea by sponsoring beneficial law changes and by bankrolling when at peace (once I had the tech for bankroll).

Yet, eventually in 1925, I annexed them because they had diminished to a mere 6 million people and had become an impoverished adjunct to the Qing empire.
They had attracted 0 Han migrants to the country despite having had over 60 years of shared open border laws with Qing.
Their economic AI had been unable to make decisions that allowed them to flourish - even though its very easy to demonstrate as a player that the potential is there, and very strong.

I use this example specifically because Korea has all the advantages - if anyone could thrive as a subject, it would logically be Korea.
Yet they cannot.

The sense is that Economic AI for subject nations may need to be adjusted for the purposes of avoiding gradual impoverishment - and if you guys could talk about how the Economic AI works and any differences to how it "thinks" that might occur when functioning as a subject nation, that would be really good to see.

 

[bigrigg47]

Please, if buildings will auto downsize, there NEEDS to be some sort of refund.

If you do the maths right now on infrastructure costs and construction costs, even if you downsize a building at the very start of the game the reduced infrastructure usage will literally never recoup the cost of constructing the building in the first place. As it stands now, downsizing buildings is literally always a terrible idea that throws money away. At best this change will force you to play inefficiently (nobody who min/maxes their economy will ever choose to downsize a single building as it currently works), at worst it can have dreadful consequences for military:

Considering the increase in military goods demand post-mobilisation, especially with conscription, the best thing to do is to have a bunch of superfluous military goods production buildings which can surge with new staff when demand grows. With Laissez-Faire in 1.7 making all buildings automatically privately owned, this would now be impossible.

Please reconsider this change. Or at the very least add an option to disable it. Or at the very very least, some way for modders like me to disable it. Please please do not make this a baseline behaviour that mods cannot interact with, at minimum please have the 12 month time limit as a define so it can be set to 1200 months if I wish to disable that feature.

Alternatively of course, making it actually useful in any context to downsize buildings would work too. At present that is simply never the case.

I don't think empty, privately-owned buildings auto-downsizing is supposed to be a feature that is helpful to the player ... to me at least, it seems fine if it's purely a negative that hurts your country (trying to maintain a large, mostly empty arms industry doesn't sounds like laissez-faire policy to me...)

 

[Helmut von Dandy]

It applies to any wars targeting the guaranteed country! It works the same as a defensive pact essentially. If a war starts against the guaranteed country, they're able to call any countries guaranteeing them to support them.

I mean, you can see the issue, surely? It should probably not be called "Guarantee Independence" if that's not what it does. "Guarantee Security" or "Guarantee Support" would be more accurate.

 

[MasterOfGrey]

I mean, you can see the issue, surely? It should probably not be called "Guarantee Independence" if that's not what it does. "Guarantee Security" or "Guarantee Support" would be more accurate.

This is how "Guarantee Independence" has worked in every pdx game that's had it since the company started.

Since anyone can start a war for something minor and then add subjugation and conquest wargoals after the fact - the only way to guarantee independence is to be willing to spring to their defence regardless of what the official war trigger is.

 

[Caekdaemon]

ward that your migration laws also prevent your pops from migrating inside your country, rather than only restricting it when moving out. With 1.7 this will change!

I don't suppose this means you've taken notice of this little thing? Come on, give us that religious laws check - I patched it myself for a multiplayer game but it'd be better if this was part of vanilla

 

[offhand]

I like the Auto-downsizing, but here is my suggestion:

When in the downsizing notification period

• Let the building be nationalized with a discount;
• Let the building be nationalized at the market price and the previous owners get a bit more happy with the government;

Nationalizing at a discount was also my first thought, but the second thought was that it probably can be gamed by purposefully making buildings unprofitable.

Although making industries unprofitable to buy them out on the cheap, by government or by quasi private entities assisted by the government, is not unrealistic. It just might not be good gameplay.

 

[Serensius]

What a beautiful spread of features Allies not gaining war goals has always been really weird, and it's allowed the player to sort of take advantage of the AI by calling them into wars they gain nothing from. Now you have to be a little more careful when calling in allies, and consider which war goals they might choose (also, which war goals the AI chooses will be a big part of how this feature "feels" I think - if the AI targets some state that they can't get to or is on the other side of the front line, it's gonna feel bad).

We'll finally have subjects turning against their overlords, possibly even together, and overlords siding with the "right" side based on their ideology, amazing. Looking forward to seeing how that turns out with the Ottoman Empire - I'm guessing down the line (not 1.7) there will be changes to the Tanzimat events and the whole setup there.

I'm a little skeptical of being able to declare more wars than one - it's great for players who want to conquer the world, but it sounds like a footgun for the AI (see: the recurring problem of Germany declaring suicidal wars in HoI 4, like starting Barbarossa while fighting trench warfare on the Western Front).

Finally, a shoutout to Vorondil and the Ultra Historical team, who can now (probably) delete the Guarantee Independence action from their mod Great to see that make it into the base game.

 

[offhand]

Discriminated pops can't economically migrate to states other than their homelands, so if you want make sure colonial pops aren't migrating to the imperial core, you'll need to discriminate against them.

Sorry just to confirm, is this a change in 1.7?

In 1.6.2, discriminated pops can market migrate to any state with a cultural community, not only to homelands. The chance to spawn a community is decreased, but it can spawn.

For example, as Russia annex California, and spawn a Tatar community there. Discriminated Tatar will start migrating there right away.

 

[Wizzington]

Sorry just to confirm, is this a change in 1.7?

In 1.6.2, discriminated pops can market migrate to any state with a cultural community, not only to homelands. The chance to spawn a community is decreased, but it can spawn.

For example, as Russia annex California, and spawn a Tatar community there. Discriminated Tatar will start migrating there right away.

Ah sorry, you are right, internal migration of discriminated colonial pops is possible but not very likely. I will take another look at this to ensure that we don't get weird migration patterns as a result of this change. If necessary we could introduce additional limitations to the colonial laws.

 

[Wizzington]

Some kind of migration quantity limit or reduction modifier should show how serfdom block people from moving. Most European nations already failed to fully implement it before anyway.

Serfdom will prevent peasants from migrating in 1.7.

 

[Helmut von Dandy]

This is how "Guarantee Independence" has worked in every pdx game that's had it since the company started.

Since anyone can start a war for something minor and then add subjugation and conquest wargoals after the fact - the only way to guarantee independence is to be willing to spring to their defence regardless of what the official war trigger is.

That doesn't mean it always has to be called that. It shouldn't be called Guarantee Independence if that's not what it's doing. Something like "Guarantee Sovereignty" would be better because other war goals could be seen as violations of that country's sovereignty, even if they're not focused on automonmy. It could be a bit confusing with the Violate Sovereignty demand, but that could be called Military Access or something instead.

 

[RedRalphWiggum]

So can we support the independence of countries which aren’t in the map now, via the new mechanic?

 

[Helmut von Dandy]

So can we support the independence of countries which aren’t in the map now, via the new mechanic?

I doubt it. It’s a diplomatic pact which means it needs to be a country. You can’t make diplomatic pacts with states or groups of states of another country.

 

[Aloraand]

Ah sorry, you are right, internal migration of discriminated colonial pops is possible but not very likely. I will take another look at this to ensure that we don't get weird migration patterns as a result of this change. If necessary we could introduce additional limitations to the colonial laws.

I think if you have a large market with lots of cultures, then the chance for a culture this to happen is low, but the expected number of times this happens is > 0 due to the number of cultures, so it does happen quite regularly from my experience. E.g. as France, I had a state that was majority discriminiated Amazigh in 1880 and national supremacist Argentina in my market has a majority Tatar state.

 

[Greifental]

In DD #117 there is different table:

That table shows the icon for vassal for a reduced PU. But vassal isn't possible with a recognized overlord.

 

[za3tarani]

the changes to subjects are appreciated - there is one thing that always bothered me though:
under no circumstances would BIC for instance ally with Russia/France etc against UK. it is not a subject like Canada, for instance. BIC was british rule over indian population. Why would they want independence - and suddenly collapse and lose control to indians? only way india gets independence should be by indians rebelling.

there should be some kind of fix for BIC (and dutch india as well- they wouldnt be able to sustain themselves as an independent entity, and wouldnt rebel against netherlands)

 

[399311]

Serfdom will prevent peasants from migrating in 1.7.

This is great. Didn’t the previous QA say it can’t be implemented in 1.7? Something has changed so quickly?

 

[Don_Quigleone]

Regarding downsizing of privately owned factories, I think it would be good if this returned some amount to the investment pool to reflect "selling industrial equipment" etc. I don't know what the right amount would be, perhaps half the buy value?

 

[Notme1]

Which pops will be employed in following buildings for 1.7?

I bet that:
Subsistence farms will have peasants only, unless some land reforms exchange bunch of peasants with farmers. Clergy and aristocrats are in manor houses.
Urban centers will lose all clergy and shopkeepers - they will be in manor houses or financial centers.
Trade centers will have only laborers or clerks - capitalists and shopkeepers go to financial centers.