Victoria 3 - Dev Diary #129 - Discrimination Rework

[TitaniumMan91]

I know this is a touchy subject, and I understand that the developers may not want to touch it. However, "visible" minorities had/still have a much harder time assimilating. Not allowing assimilation to a different heritage group would capture this. Apology if this already in place and I missed it.

That's been the core issue for me in most of the discussions, but even non-"visible" minorities had a habit of finding out they weren't actually as assimilated as they had thought. A Pole living in the Rhineland in the 1930s who only spoke German and had lived there all their life would have still found themselves caught up in the anti-Polish rhetoric and most efforts at Russification/Germanization/Americanize etc. populations had the opposite effect. When a community finds itself ostracized for something, it has a tendency to become a rallying cry rather than a sign they need to change.

Will pops in their homelands continue to be immune to assimilation? If not, I can see that having some pretty wild consequences in Eastern Europe,

 

[Jay9462]

Looks good. Wondering if when assimilating, does how closely the current culture align with the new culture they are assimilating to have an effect of the rate of assimilation? like say if there were some North Itlalian and Ethiopian pops that both found thier way to Two Sicilies, assuming both were trying to assimilate would the North Italians do so a lot faster? It would make sence since there is negligble difference between them and the South Itallians where as the Ethiopians are very different

 

[Ronin Szaky]

For now: Yes, that can happen.
But we're looking at potentially adding restrictions like heritage. That's gonna upset the balance in major fashion though, so we'll have to investigate in a bit more detail first before making a call.
What seems like a decent compromise to us is that we make Pops highly prefer assimilation to cultures of same heritage, so that it'd happen less often. We'll have to see how much more we can get done on that front.

First of all, I would like to thank the team for looking into the discrimination or rather, the acceptance system. It is much appreciated and has been long overdue!

Now I may be misunderstanding the changes, but frankly, assimilating to a "random" culture just does not make any sense to me. Do you mean that non-accepted pops may assimilate to:

1. one of the primary cultures randomly (like before);
2. one of the primary cultures or homeland cultures (if the acceptance is higher);
3. any of the cultures present in the province (maybe within the country);
4. any culture whatsoever that has higher acceptance than the pop's current culture?

I'd argue that 2. is perfectly logical, possibly 3. given that the target culture's population share is high enough in the province (say 25%+). However, I got the sense that an immigrant in Alsace–Lorraine could randomly transform into an Englishman.

P.S.: Will pops in their homelands be able to assimilate?

 

[adil3tr]

How does this affect migration?

 

[Anony1200]

Thanks for the kind words!
Living in cultural homeland will improve acceptance. Apart from that, there are only the penalties described in the Dev Diary from recently appearing in a state and law enactments.
This system does open up some avenues for us to play with in the future though and we already have some plans for further additions in the future. Narrative content is another whole block which could make more use of this, so we'll likely experiment with that in the future I'd imagine.

One thing that immediately comes to mind as missing from the list is those events based on specific minority groups- y'know, "Against the Odds", "Unfairly Denied Entry", and so on. As it stands, your choice is usually either the often hard to notice SoL drop for the minority group or an even harder to notice uptick in support for reactionary acceptance laws with the occasional Authority penalty sprinkled in.

It would certainly make sense to retool them to work around this new system by instead making it a choice depending on the context between adding some temporary level of non-acceptance while pleasing reactionaries, or avoiding doing so (or even adding some temporary Acceptance, based on the context of the event) but increasing primary culture pop attraction to the "moral majority" groups mentioned last DD.

Off the top of my head, American Native and Civil War events, French-Algerian Events, and some of the special events regarding the Circassians in the wake of the Great Game also have a few points that might be good for this system.

 

[Fenneru]

I feel like class should play a role here. For example an Italian who's a middle-class engineer or an upper-class capitalist would have an easier time both avoiding discrimination and gaining acceptance if he moves to America than a poor labourer or peasant would.
Maybe something like middle and upper classes get a 50%/100% boost to acceptance, so under National Supremacy the Italian Engineer in America would get +50 from being the same heritage and a bonus +25 from being middle class.

 

[Bisonmask]

I see your point, but I also feel that what you propose, while accurate, could very rapidly become annoying and unfun.

For example: "You've chosen to play as the USA! Congratulations! You're going to get a bunch of pop-ups for race riots every other year for the entire game that you can't really do anything about!"

Obviously this is an extreme example, but I still think that taking too much control away from the player would basically just turn diversity into an annoying semi-permanent debuff, basically the opposite of the current problem.

Okay but that's an extremely accurate USA experience especially during this period especially if you expand acceptance past racial segregation

And honestly it's not even close to the only country where that did/would happen

 

[QuinnMallory]

I still see cause for concern about multiculturalism being overpowered. It shouldn't be possible to have migration to the point where the primary culture is no longer a majority and not have any negative effects from that.

 

[le cur]

As Victoria's number one Racism Update lobbyist, I say: excellent work!

How does migration work with the new system? Is there still just the one law for border controls, and if so, are the acceptance thresholds always the same, or do they vary with other laws? Similarly, what's the acceptance threshold on Mass Migration?

Similarly, Pops of the highest status also do not assimilate in the current setup, as they already possess enough rights and privileges to enjoy a good life.

Interesting. And is this affected by Public Schools? For that matter, does Public Schools still increase Assimilation at all? I feel that even under Multiculturalism, it's realistic to anticipate some level of assimilation, and I can imagine that being rather nicer on performance too.

Figure.09: WIP list of effects. This is definitely going to change - we’re looking at solutions to make it more readable for release.

Feels like if nothing else, you could change many of these to just show the minimum level - for instance, instead of listing all the levels eligible for military service, it just says "Allow work in Military Buildings from Cultural Erasure onwards" and so on.

By default only primary culture characters spawn.

Huh. Will there be a way to disable this limitation altogether, rather than relying on manual lists? Also, when you do get characters of other cultures, either spawning internally (e.g. by event) or as invitees, it'd be cool if they could slightly raise the acceptance level of that culture's pops.

Maghrebi and Berber both need to be on second rate citizen acceptance status or higher (second highest or higher). This is the default definition of "being accepted" in most of the narrative content that we had to rework for this.

Good to know. When reworking the Austria narrative content, did you change how the Ausgleich works? It feels oddly cheating that we still have to go through with what was, in OTL, a deeply humiliating and ultimately fatal compromise, even if we've notionally abolished discrimination. Changing it so it triggers at only second rate citizen status adds an actual incentive for the new primary culture, but it also feels like it might make the positive portrayal of the Compromise (especially during the failstate, where it just insta-fixes anti-Hungarian discrimination) much more jarring.

MAYBE we'll have time to add one more law which should cover a somewhat specific use case which I don't want to mention yet in case we don't get to it
But it would affect homelands actually

If this is what I think it is... exciting. Give my thanks (and ideally large sums of money) to the ingenious developer who proposed this.

Acceptance is Pop based. A French Pop living in France will most likely have a different acceptance than one living in Persia (assuming the French are not the primary culture).

And how might that happen? Part of a future dev diary? Is it possible to impose primary cultures on a subject? For that matter, does it currently have any effect if a given culture is the primary culture of your overlord? Would feel a bit odd if, in a British puppet state in Asia, English capitalists are still discriminated against as if they were any other type of European.

I will end this off by saying how utterly delighted I am to see this dev diary; it's getting to the point where it might become an issue, because I worry my enthusiasm comes off as a bit chudcoded. No matter, long live the Acceptance system!

 

[CivMasters]

Are there going to be events that can add or subtract to these temporary acceptance modifiers?

 

[Idle America]

"Cultural Erasure"

 

[CivMasters]

I like these changes, but honestly I'm little worried that we are just ignoring the elephants in the room, like difficulty, national flavours, war and diplomacy.

Can you be more specific on what you mean with "difficulty"?

 

[VineFynn]

I'm a little disappointed that pops can still switch Heritage. I was hoping for some dynamically generated merger cultures like was discussion about in this https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/threads/preventing-pops-from-switching-race.1680439 suggestion thread (Asian-Yankee, for example), which would prevent racially discriminated pops from ever truly escaping racism.

Lobbies and add a "racism" value to the IGs, and their clout to weight it, then add that to the acceptance value.
Landowners and PB are strong ? Discrimination increase. Intelligentsia is in fashion ? Discrimination decreases. That won't be perfect but that would bring variation.

The intelligentsia were quite racist during this period. They literally invented the concept of race.

 

[Askorti]

If Pops are very very discriminated or barely discriminated they will not assimilate. In the first case because more established Pops basically won't let them, in the second because they don't feel the need to.
As mentioned in other comments, we're looking at the heritage. Just fyi, in the current version of the game this is already the case.

Personally I think that "barely discriminated" pops should still assimilate, just more slowly. As an example, In the good old Poland-Lithuania, some Lithuanian nobles quite readily took up Polish customs and culture, because it was beneficial and advantageous for them. And as far as I know, they weren't particularly discriminated. Some discrimination obviously happened, but I think it would be more on the "barely discriminated" side of things.

 

[BrotherJonathan]

Okay but that's an extremely accurate USA experience especially during this period especially if you expand acceptance past racial segregation

And honestly it's not even close to the only country where that did/would happen

This is mostly true.

But I feel like my main point is still valid. Adding a level of discrimination that the government can't really do anything about is realistic, but for the purposes of this game I feel like it would just amount to slapping a permanent, annoying debuff on any nation that's not completely homogeneous. I'm worried it would become sort of like Random Harm events in CK III; essentially, random setbacks that the player has no control over and can't avoid.

 

[germaniec7]

I am very excited about that rework. Looking great.

Will player be able to boost acceptance to one specific culture group by lets say authority (and alternativly reduce it[just like party suppression/boosting])?
I would really love that, if not now, than hopefully later.

 

[VonHuerde]

Can you add negative acceptance modifiers for the primary cultures of your countries rivals. Maybe this could also bei amplified by using the "humilation" wargoal.
Another application of this idea could be to add a negative modifier to the primary culture of your Former overlord when a vassal Breaks free

 

[CivMasters]

We like that idea a lot and will see what we can do. That's true in general for tie-ins with other systems as well.
No promises though, we have a lot on our plate already.

What do you mean with "a lot in our plate"? Care to elaborate?

There has been no commitment to a release date, 1.9 plans were postponed. You can develop and QA this all the way to the December sale and release your second acceptable patch since game release (1.7 was the first).

A bunch of players would be getting into the game by the end of the year festivities and sale. Having a(nother) broken patch would hurt the sales performance and reviews even more.

Please do the right thing. No more patches making the game slow down to a halt, adding game breaking bugs or thoughtlessly implemented features.

Dev Diaries for 1.8 up until now have been presenting a promising path, albeit a little lacking in details. Seeing so much evasiveness in answers is not the sign I've been expecting.

 

[Friedrich von Deutschland]

This seems like it could have bizarre consequences? Like new African migrants to Australia turning Chinese to become more accepted.

My read is that heritage should constrain what cultures pops can assimilate to. So if the U.S. starts receiving African immigrants they’ll assimilate to Afro-American, and only then can they maybe assimilate to Yankee or Dixie, though it should be slower no matter what. The whole point of heritages is to allow racism to be depicted, and since racists will never see someone as capable of changing race it makes sense that heritage should be mostly locked in. The main problem with that is every culture would need a variant for every heritage.

 

[IsaacCAT]

The assimilation process may also still be forbidden by laws, e.g. under all laws it is currently not allowed for members of the lowest status to assimilate at all. Similarly, Pops of the highest status also do not assimilate in the current setup, as they already possess enough rights and privileges to enjoy a good life.

When you say status you mean stratta, SOL or wealth?

A player can improve wealth and SOL levels but it is more difficult to move POPs from one stratta to another, locking most POPs out of assimilation if this is the case.

About POPs being blocked by ‘status’ I believe class discrimination is more about acceptance than assimilation/conversion.

Like others have already said in this thread, the decision to assimilate for one POP is allowed by acceptance but should not be the main driver, other considerations should be in order.

IMHO there should be a percentage of all POPs assimilating if acceptance allows it with events in the game modifying this percentage.

PS: ok, now I understand that status is blocks of acceptance levels. Then, I will only ask to have wealth as another modifier for acceptance and assimilation be not dependent on acceptance status only but a small percentage of all POPs that are above the acceptance threshold.