Victoria 3 - Dev Diary #141 - What’s next after 1.8
Double Happy Thursday! As is customary after each major update, today we’ll be returning to the future update plans, which we last went over in Dev Diary #124. Just like the previous times, we’ll be going over what changes and improvements we have planned for the game in future free updates such as 1.9, 1.10 and beyond.
Once again we will be talking about the same key four improvement areas of Military, Historical Immersion, Diplomacy, Internal Politics as well as Other for anything that falls outside those four categories.
Just as before, I’ll also be aiming to give you an updated overview of where we stand and where we’re heading by going through each of these four categories and marking on each one with one of the below statuses:
Done: This is a part of the game that we now consider to be in good shape. Something being Done of course doesn’t mean we’re never going to expand or improve on it in the future, just that it’s no longer a high priority for us. Any points that were already marked as Done in previous updates will be removed from the list, to avoid it growing unmanageably long, but you can look at the older dev diaries (#79, #89, #102 and #124) if you’re interested in what was done previously.
Updated: This is a part of the game where we have made some of the improvements and changes that we want to make, but aren’t yet satisfied with where it stands and plan to make further improvements to it in future updates.
Not Updated: This is a part of the game where we haven’t yet released any of our planned changes/improvements in any currently released updates but still plan to do so for future updates.
New: This is a planned change or improvement that is newly added, i.e. wasn’t present on the list last time we went over it
Reconsidered: This is a previously planned change or improvement that we have reconsidered our approach to how to tackle from previous updates. For these points we will explain what our new plans are, and change the list appropriately in future updates.
For the final bit of repetition: Just as before we will still only be talking about improvements, changes and new features that are part of planned free updates in this dev diary. I will also remind you that this is not an exhaustive list of the things we are going to do, and that something being ‘Done’ doesn’t mean we’re not going to bugfix, balance or make UX improvements to it afterwards. Alright then, onto the dev diary proper.
Military
New:
Make sure that supply is an important and meaningful part of the military system that can win or lose you wars.
Tweaking and improving the frontline system to eliminate excessive front splitting and troop teleportation once and for all
Not Updated:
Making navies more important for projecting global power and securing control of coasts.
Adding a proper system of military access and finding solutions for the other remaining rough edges in the frontline system.
Turning individual ships into proper pieces of military hardware that can be built, sunk and repaired rather than just being manpower packages.
Adding a system for limited wars to reduce the number of early-game global wars between Great Powers
Historical Immersion
Done:
Tweaking content such as the Meiji Restoration, Alaska purchase and so on in a way that they can more frequently be successfully performed by the AI, through a mix of AI improvements and content tweaks
Updated:
Going through the base game Journal Entries and events and making improvements and additions to ensure that they feel meaningful and impactful for players to interact with
As always, we’ve updated some of our older Journal Entries for 1.8 and will continue to do so in future updates.
Adding more country, state and region-specific content to enhance historical flavor of different countries
Also as always, this is something we continue to do each update and which I will keep on this list as it remains an important priority.
Diplomacy
New:
Improve on the Treaty Port mechanic and create more ways for countries to cooperate, compete with and exploit others using trade
Improving the war support system to be much clearer UX-wise about what is needed to contest wargoals, and less all-or-nothing in terms of when countries are on track to capitulate
Not Updated:
Make declaring and holding onto diplomatic Interests a more rewarding and challenging aspect of global empire-building
Allowing peace deals to be negotiated during a Diplomatic Play instead of only having the option to give in
Internal Politics
Done:
Find a better solution for the ways ideologies appear, attract followers and create support for reforms than the current RNG-heavy leader ideology system.
Have discrimination not be a purely binary status and reflect forms of discrimination aside from what’s written in the law, as well as making assimilation into a more meaningful mechanic in the process.
Updated:
Adding laws that expand on diversity of countries and introduce new ways to play the game
In 1.8 we added Caste System/Social Hierarchy laws to make India more accurate and flavorful.
Not Updated:
Turn legitimacy into a more interesting mechanic, where the strength of a government depends on their successes and failures, and highly legitimate governments can’t simply be ousted at a whim but have to be undermined first.
Introduce a concept of national pride which can increase or decrease depending on a country’s actions and which ties directly into legitimacy.
Other
Not Updated:
Find a way to deal with the excessive fiddliness of the trade system in large economies, possibly by allowing for autonomous trade based on your laws in a similar way to the autonomous investment system.
Updated:
Improve on Companies by turning them into actual actors in your country that can own/expand buildings and interact with characters/politics.
In update 1.8 we made Companies into more distinct entities with headquarters and ownership of specific buildings. We plan to continue to develop these entities in the future and tie them into more systems.
As per usual I’m not able to make specific promises about when all these improvements will come out, but I can say that the next update (1.9) is going to be quite a large update that should tackle several points on this list, and that two particular focuses for it will be Trade and Improvements to the Frontline system. For a bit more detail on the latter point, I refer you to last week’s dev diary where I went over what I consider to be the most pressing issues with the frontline system, all of which we’re aiming to fix or at least improve for 1.9.
Right then, that’s it for today, and in fact, a wrap for 2024. I’ll be back on January 16th to give you a retrospective on the entire year, what we think went well, what we could do better in the future, and see if I can’t find some fun dev moments from the year to share with you as well. See you then!
Hotfix 1.8.6 is now LIVE!
Good Day Victorians!
Hotfix 1.8.6, is now live, this hotfix was previously called 1.8.5 when talked about however we also released an opt in beta patch addressing the assimilation and occupation issues - that has been rolled in to this patch somewhat alongside other fixes, balancing and improvements!
Check out the full patchnotes below! Checksum is `9358`. We wait for the next funny checksum with bated breath.
The following changes have been made to the game compared to 1.8.4:
Hotfix 1.8.6 Patchnotes
Improvements
Insurrectionary countries are now allowed to reform their government, so that they don't get stuck at low legitimacy
Herat historical characters now have Pashtun culture and Sunni religion
AI
The AI will now generally avoid declaring bankruptcy while at war, as the effect of doing so is often worse than staying in default
Fixed an issue where the AI would overvalue labor savings on PMs, resulting in it keeping those PMs active even when they resulted in shortages
Fixed an issue where the AI would sometimes fail to reform to the government they wanted
Balance
Reverted the change that allowed cultures to assimilate in their homelands, as this resulted in far too much ahistorical assimilation in places like British India. We plan to revisit this in the future to see where it makes sense to allow it, but for now we have added defines to allow modders to re-enable it if so desired
The "Total Separation" law now correctly blocks all conversion again
The "Freedom of Conscience" law no longer allows for conversion of pops of Acceptance levels 4 and 5
Britain will no longer force successful player East India Companies to become the Raj
After a civil war ends, there is now a 6 month grace period before another one can start, to give the deradicalization impact of civil war ending a chance to take effect on movement activism
Reduced the construction needed to build gov. admin buildings, to make it easier to fix otherwise unresolvable ADM shortages
Reduced the base number of individuals radicalized when declaring bankruptcy
Reactionary movements can no longer appear at the same time as Legitimist movements in France
Enabled Enlightened Royalists to agitate for more causes
Reduced the impact of country turmoil on activism of the Reactionary movement
Reduced the impact of active laws on activism of the Anarchist and Fascist movements, to compensate for the large number of law groups those ideologies care about
Modding
Whether cultures can assimilate into different heritages is now controlled by the ALLOW_ASSIMILATION_ACROSS_HERITAGES define
Whether cultures can assimilate in their homelands is now controlled by a the ALLOW_ASSIMILATION_IN_HOMELANDS define
Bugfixes
Fixed a bug where a player could not disband units after civil war has broken out
Fixed a bug where occupation weren't flipped back after enemy occupation
Fixed a bug where armies defending against naval invasion on occupied land would not get any units participating in the land battle
Fixed an issue where Interest Groups could end up rebelling together with Political Movements despite being significantly ideologically opposed to those movements
Fixed a bug where the country budget showed the wrong income value
Fixed another crash during updating shipping lanes
Fixed a random crash when closing or switching lenses
Fixed Literacy tooltip data missing in Russian localization
Fixed an instance of Error spam occurring in Spanish localization in the Movement tabs related to concept_political_movement_pressured_short
Removed an old string in STATE tooltips in Russian localization
Fixed inverted modifier causing bankruptcy to increase institution change speed instead of decreasing it
The beginning of Reconstruction will no longer unincorporate Washington D.C.
Researching Pan-Nationalism no longer blocks Religious Minority movements from spawning everywhere instead of just British India
Fixed an issue where inappropriate events could fire and immediately cancel during secessions
Fixed a bug where political movement success chance wasn't applied until the law started being enacted
Fixed a bug that could result in a Lobby Demand targeting the wrong country
The Fascist movement can now correctly attract Agitators to its cause
Fixed an issue where abdication could cause enacting a null law if a revolutionary tag already existed
Fixed an issue where natural interests from subjects would not properly propagate to overlords of overlords
Fixed a bug where abdicating the throne during a civil war could cause a ruler switcheroo with the insurrectionary country due to the heir joining the insurrection but remaining heir to the loyalists
Divided Monarchists coups no longer incorrectly occur at 75% progress
Fixed an issue where religion wage discrimination modifiers weren't being applied.
Characters sent on the Tibetan Expedition will now return to service properly
Fixed a bug where a player could get multiple lobbies against the same country after independence war
Fixed the radicalism prediction for movements tooltip being incorrect when starting or canceling the enactment of a law
Fixed a bug where the Sacred Civics III principle did not give the reduction to Liberty Desire unlocked in Sacred Civics II
Fixed an issue where abdicating the throne could result in ending up in a personal union with a civil war country
Added Quetta to the formable India
Fixed an issue affecting the way interest groups and movements calculated relative stances on ideologies, resulting in problems such as the law_enactment_stance trigger not returning correct results and insurrectionary countries selecting the wrong laws
Fixed princely state characters with child traits
Fixed an issue where the Extradition events could not fire due to secessions
Fixed an issue, which occurred in the Opt in Beta 1.8.5, where the ALLOW_ASSIMILATION_ACROSS_HERITAGES define wasn't working correctly when disabled
Fixed an issue where Joshua Norton could be unable to agitate, causing null scopes in his event
Removed an old Culture string in Russian Localization in the Culture Tooltip
How to Rollback your Game
If you are on an older save you may want to continue an the save, you can roll back to a previous version of the game e.g. 1.7.7 via following the steps below!
Right click the game in Steam
Go to Properties and select the tab called "BETAS"
Pick the version you want to play and close.
Allow the game to update
Make sure, before you load any save, that the version number in the game is the one you want.
If the previous step fails, exit the game, right click -> properties -> local files -> Verify integrity of game files and wait for all files to be verified before going back to step 5.
Note: You can freely swap between the latest version and previous versions this way. By selecting "NONE - opt out of all beta programs" you go to the latest released version.
Victoria 3 - Dev Diary #140 - 1.8 post-release thoughts
Happy Thursday everyone, it’s time for another Victoria 3 development diary. Today I’ll be talking about my thoughts on the release of 1.8 and Pivot of Empire, the feedback we’ve received, and also a bit of what’s in store next for Victoria 3.
As some of you might remember, 1.8 was actually meant to be two updates - a smaller 1.8 with bug fixes & polish, and a larger 1.9 with Pivot of Empire and the larger free features such as the Political Movement Rework and the Discrimination Rework. We ended up combining these into a single update because the release windows between the two were just too tight, and as a result 1.8 became a chonker of an update, with a lot of potential to cause bugs and balance issues.
On the whole, the feedback around the update (and in particular the Discrimination Rework) has been positive, and you seem to be enjoying the additional dimensions that the update adds to the economic and political sides of Victoria 3. However, there are a few issues and bits of feedback on the not-so-positive-side that I specifically want to address:
On release, we had a very nasty issue introduced by a backend change in the launcher, which caused users with a non-unicode character to crash when launching the game, which unfortunately slipped past our testing due to the fact that all of our work email addresses use only unicode characters. This one actually had us pulling our hairs a bit trying to find the cause, but with help from the engine team we were finally able to narrow it down and get a fix out just before the weekend (we don’t usually make a habit of patching at 17:45 on Fridays, but in this particular case it was warranted)
We’ve gotten a fair amount of feedback that the rework of companies to own and affect specific buildings has made them somewhat underwhelming compared to the way they worked in 1.7, and we agree that this is an issue. We have made some changes in the hotfixes since, and are continuing to read your feedback and make adjustments as needed. You can always @ Pelly directly on our social platforms for key feedback in this regard, especially on Discord, the Forums and Reddit!
Migration ended up far too non-restrictive and Assimilation ended up too restrictive as a result of the changes made to Discrimination. Both of these issues should now have been resolved in hotfixes.
I also want to take a moment to talk about the release and reception of Pivot of Empire. We’ve gotten a lot of positive feedback about the flavor it adds to India and how much more interesting playing in the region has become, which of course we’re very happy to hear! With that said, there’s also some things that didn’t work out quite as we wanted, which has resulted in some learnings for the Victoria 3 team going forward:
Most significantly, it’s clear that we need to spend more time testing and iterating on the balance of complex Journal Entries like The Unstable Raj before releasing them into the wild, to ensure the difficulty level and overall impact on game outcomes are where we want them to be.
We need to rethink how we set rewards for Journal Entries so that they feel appropriate to the challenge of completing them. We also need to get better about telling the player what those rewards are going to be so they don’t have to make a guess or check the wiki when deciding whether or not to try and complete a JE.
We need to ensure the AI can handle the content we add, particularly for complex/difficult Journal Entries.
Finally, I want to touch briefly on what’s coming next. I won’t spend too long on this, as next week’s dev diary is going to be the customary ‘what’s next after update 1.8’ which will be all about this topic, but I feel I would be ignoring the elephant in the room if I didn’t address the fact that a significant amount of the feedback we’ve gotten about 1.8 isn’t so much about what is in 1.8, but rather what wasn’t: namely, as a number of you would put it: ‘fixing the military system’.
There is of course a broad range of opinions on what exactly this phrase entails, but from my perspective, these are most significant issues we see with the Victoria 3 military system as it stands:
Front splitting causing wars to become unmanageable or frustrating
Units suddenly teleporting away when their front disappears
Supply isn’t impactful enough and armies win battles they should really lose when facing critical equipment shortages
Lack of a proper military access system, i.e. Prussia having to naval invade to reach Denmark
Troop allocation to offensive vs defensive battles causing unexpected outcomes (for example, a general using all local troops to defend against one naval invasion causing another naval invasion to just walk in unopposed)
For the next update (1.9), our ambition is to take a crack at all of these issues and in particular try to find a proper solution for the front splitting and troop teleportation woes once and for all. Finding good solutions for these issues is going to be a fairly major undertaking, so you might have to wait a while for 1.9, but I promise we’ll try to make it worth the wait!
With that said, we’re done for today. Join us again next week as I continue to talk about what’s next in updates 1.9, 1.10 and beyond. See you then!
Hotfix 1.8.4 is now LIVE!
Salutations Victorians!
Hotfix 1.8.4, is now live! Featuring improvements for Companies, fixes for Russia and Britain being too protective of Mexico, removal of the assimilation restriction in homelands and much more!! Check out the full patchnotes below! Checksum is `1a3e`. Alas, no amusing checksum this time.
The following changes have been made to the game compared to 1.8.3:
Hotfix 1.8.4 Patchnotes
Features
Made the "Exempt from Service" subject interaction accessible to all
Improvements
Changed companies so that if they own at least one level of a building, any new level that is built in it by local private investors will be company owned
Made companies much more likely to be the one privatizing buildings if the building fits their type
The East India Company now gains annex wargoals against rebellious princely states in the Indian Uprising
Doctrine of Lapse now transfers the contents of the target's treasury to the East India Company
Collectivization now only ever targets privately owned levels and is the number of levels to collectivize is calculated as a fraction of privately owned levels, so nationally owned levels are not subject to it, meaning that countries with Cooperative Ownership/Collectivized Agriculture can now also have a public sector and make proper use of public sector foreign investment
The "Emergency Relief" Decree will no longer auto-cancel as long as least 20% of the population experience some form of starvation
An independent Ceylon now automatically becomes Sri Lanka
Improved the clarity of Unstable Raj tooltips
AI
Russia/Britain now start neutral towards Mexico, so they don't block US westward expansion by default
The AI now makes more of an effort to reach its desired level of construction and innovation generation
The AI will now never accept being cut down to size as part of a peace deal and have to be capitulated to enforce this specific wargoal
Balance
Removed restriction that you could not assimilate if you lived in homeland
Removed restriction that you can only assimilate to cultures with which you share a cultural heritage trait
A political movement with 100% militancy can now always 'replace' another movement with less than 100% militancy for the purposes of getting to start a civil war, even if they don't meet the usual 10% higher requirement
Removed the restriction for conversion on the Violent Hostility acceptance status
Allowed several revolution events to fire for secessions as well
The efficiency bonus to private investment now applies all the way up to 50 million GDP, up from 10 million, to make the private sector more able to keep up with intense early game government investment
Declaring Bankruptcy now radicalizes a minimum of 25% of the country population, with shares in buildings owned adding to that minimum
Bankruptcy no longer increases the amount of loyalists & radicals gained on SoL changes
Bankruptcy now reduces leverage gain, migration attraction and MAPI (the latter representing the general shock to the national economy causing business to become more localized)
Bankruptcy now drastically increases the time it takes to change institution levels (all institutions are still reset to level 1 when declaring bankruptcy)
Ownership buildings that own subsistence building levels now contribute less money to the investment pool relative to how large a part of their portfolio is subsistence
Increased base wage and dividends weight for Shopkeepers
Manor Houses can no longer invest in mines & power plants, and are much less likely to invest in logging & rubber
Buildings will now lay off employees rather than lower wages if wages are already so low that the employees are going to be rapidly radicalized
Subsidized buildings will no longer lower wages to increase profitability if wages are already so low that the employees are going to be rapidly radicalized
Adjusted provinces in the Carnatic so that Pudukottai can't be cut off entirely from the EIC in rare cases
"Secret Police" Political Movement Activism reduction per level has been reduced from 10% to 5%
The impact of number of claims on the Fascist Movement pop attraction has been reduced by 50%
The Fascist movement will now attract more middle and upper class pops if there are any powerful leftist movements in the country, it will now also more proactively poach from the Cultural Majority and Reactionary Movements
Increased the movement pop attraction for Leftists and Social Democrats moderately, increased even further if certain conditions are met depending on the movement type
Anarchist movements will now be a slightly less upset on average
Extraction Economy will no longer destroy Power Plants when enacted
Buildings are now a bit more willing to raise wages if their workers are being radicalized by low SoL
Honorable Restoration now instantly fails if you declare bankruptcy
The conscription rate added to revolutions/secessions from popular support & clout has been reduced and capped at +10%
Art
Added locust swarm harvest condition effect
Added optimal sunlight harvest condition effect
Tweaked color of heatwave and disease outbreak ground effect
Interface
Updated how the affected movements are displayed in the tooltip when enacting Laws
Added information about the significant threshold of 25% Movement Activism to relevant concept tooltips
Modding
Added new trigger to check for the percentage of the population in a state or country that belongs to any of the primary cultures in that country
Added an effect to set the interest group of a character
Added modular data functions to retrieve the data model for movements impacted by changes in law enactment as well as getting the values for how much they are impacted
Bugfixes
Fixed a bug where political movement success chance wasn't applied until the law started being enacted
Secessions of Cultural Minority Movements now require their culture to make up at least 5% of the population for the homeland state to be a valid target for secessions
Fixed a bug with the Turtle Island Journal Entry buttons that left them unable to target relevant nations
Fixed an impassible terrain colonization bug, where a country could proceed colonizing impassible terrain it had no land access to
Civil Wars that have no valid uprising states (for instance, secessions from cultures with no homelands in your country) are no longer able to start
Extraction economy now correctly applies multiplicative investment modifiers instead of additive ones
Fixed a bug where buildings at low profit levels could 'yo-yo', hiring employees one week and firing them the next week
Cultural majority movements should now properly select states weighted by how much population belonging to primary cultures are in those states
Fixed a bug where some buildings could have an owner in the null object state after annexation
The "Declaration of Independence" achievement can no longer be triggered by switching controlled country to an independent one
Fixed a bug where Texas became the wrong kind of subject in the Texan War of Independence content
The Journal Entry "A New National Identity" now allows for assimilation of fully accepted pops into the country's new, South American culture
Resolved an issue that prevented rulers from abdicating when they should be able to
Fixed a bug where capitulating countries in wars with more than 2 participants could cause war goals to stick around
Fixed a bug where we didn't spawn civil war events
Fixed an issue where Italian radicals would not get removed when annexed as a part of Risorgimento Pan-Nationalism, potentially resulting in the annexing country being annexed in turn due to inheriting all those radicals
Fixed a bug where colonization would be seemingly stuck due to ghost occupation
Fixed a bug where players could see a subsidize button on canals and government buildings
Fixed issue that prevented Consolidate Colonial Rule from detecting British subject states
Fixed Earning Recognition not advancing when a country has high SoL
Fixed a crash related to trade routes and shipping lanes
Alaskan Industrialists no longer lack IG traits
Pressing the "Promote European Migration" button in the "Populating the Americas" Journal Entries now correctly spawns a migration target
Fixed tooltip for the Imperialism of Promise Journal Entry's fail conditions
Cancellation of colonization of incorporated states is now prevented when that will annex the colonizer
The "Pro-Slavery" Movement will no longer be extremely upset about the lack of Barracks or Naval Bases in slave states if Slavery is completely abolished
Fixed map mode interaction tooltip for establishing colonization where multiple error messages were written
Fixed issue that occasionally assigned exiled characters ideologies which made no sense
How to Rollback your Game
If you are on an older save you may want to continue an the save, you can roll back to a previous version of the game e.g. 1.7.7 via following the steps below!
Right click the game in Steam
Go to Properties and select the tab called "BETAS"
Pick the version you want to play and close.
Allow the game to update
Make sure, before you load any save, that the version number in the game is the one you want.
If the previous step fails, exit the game, right click -> properties -> local files -> Verify integrity of game files and wait for all files to be verified before going back to step 5.
Note: You can freely swap between the latest version and previous versions this way. By selecting "NONE - opt out of all beta programs" you go to the latest released version.
Victoria 3 - Dev Diary #139 - Hotfix 1.8.3 released and future patches
Happy Thursday everyone and welcome back to yet another Victoria 3 development diary. With update 1.8 and Pivot of Empire having released in the previous week, we’d normally be doing a post-release thoughts dev diary. However, this time around we released a bit later in the week than we usually do, and so we’ve been wrapped up working on the larger 1.8.3 hotfix. For this reason, we’re going to hold off on our post-release thoughts until next week.
Instead, we’re going to focus on what we have already fixed in 1.8.3 as well as what else is currently on our radar to address in the coming weeks. So to begin with, here are the full patch notes for 1.8.3, which should already have reached you by the time you’re reading this:
Hotfix 1.8.3 Patchnotes
The following changes have been made to the game compared to 1.8.2:
Improvements
Cultures will now seek to mass migrate somewhere where their acceptance is improved somewhat. This isn't a hard requirement, if the potential migration target has high enough migration attraction, that can offset the sought acceptance, meaning cultures might move somewhere they are less accepted as long as the target migration attraction is sufficiently higher than the origin one.
The ratio between acceptance at the origin and at the target will now scale how many pops actually move in a mass migration per week. If the target acceptance is lower than the origin one, less pops will move. If it's higher, more pops will move.
Presidency Stability game concept now explains conditions that affect the Unstable Raj Journal Entry progress bars
Updated tooltips to explain conditions that affect the Sikh Sovereignty Journal Entry's 'Empire Stability' and 'Court Intrigue' progress bars
Imperialism of Promise Journal Entry will no longer fail from civil wars, except secessions
Power Blocs can now invite Revolutionary nations
When recruiting a new commander, historical characters will now be displayed more often
AI
The AI East India Company should now be more cautious with regards to events that decrease its stability
Slightly decreased the AIs desire to construct Power Bloc Statues
The aggression of colonial empires towards Unrecognized Nations now starts off slightly lower and ramps up more significantly as the game progresses
Britain will no longer ignore the Boer states because they happen to be Recognized Nations when the time to clean up Africa has come
Balance
Britain is now a part of the Indian Uprising diplomatic plays by default
Reduced the income transfer of Chartered Company subjects to their overlords from 40% to 30%
Rebalanced Indian Presidency stability from a scale of 100 to a scale of 300
Gave the East India Company claims on much of its historical western frontier from game start
Reduced the flat liberty desire growth in subjects from annexing low-prestige subjects
Added 5 years of Memento Mori immunity to all starting leaders and agitators
Reduced the impact from high/very high taxes on Expected Standard of Living, as the values were a bit overtuned
Made the British East India Company start with high military wages
Fixed Portugals conquer weights, it should now correctly prioritize annexing Gaza once the time comes
Bumped Portugal's starting colonial affairs level from 1 to 2
Art
The optimal sunlight positive harvest condition effect is now less intense, appearing colder at nighttime to illustrate moon light rather than sunlight.
Reduced the effect and strength of wind effects
Added disease outbreak particle effects
Adjusted moderate rainfall vfx
Resolved an issue where the parasol held by pops sometimes clips out in the portrait view
Content
The "The Conquest of Algeria" Journal Entry now also grants France a claim on Western Sahara
Interface
Political Movements are now sorted by type, and alphabetically within the same type
The Harvest Condition map marker is now clickable and opens the Food Security tab on the Market panel
Made the Harvest Condition map marker show up in the default and diplo play map modes on the nearest zoom
Made the list of movements impacted by enacting or cancelling a law into a paged list so it doesn't take as much screen space in situations where there are a lot of movements
Made it so when enacting or cancelling a law, movements where nothing is happening to their activism won't be listed
Added the Acceptance Status icon in front of the status name in modifiers based on player feedback.
Fixed a bug where localization did not have proper values for decaying civil war progress
Added a go-to button for the active Movement on an Agitator's Character panel
Modding
Added trigger can_pressure_interest_group to political movements, this must evaluate true for an IG to be able to be pressured by a movement, in addition to the already existing supporting clout requirements (Requested by Better Politics Mod for their 1.8 compatch)
add_loyalists and add_radicals effects now support negative numbers (ie, add_radicals with a value of -0.5 will remove 50% of radicals)
Scripted progress bars can be marked as inverted so that progress is defined as making progress values smaller
Bugfixes
Fixed a bug where civil wars (particularly secessions) could be created without any viable states, resulting in the civil war continually starting and then being cancelled
For a new insurrectionary movement to 'overtake' the currently active civil war, it now needs to have at least 10% higher activism, fixing an issue where you could have 'ping-ponging' between two civil wars with very similar activism levels
Likely finally fixed the long-standing bug where battles do not end because the last few soldiers refuse to die or get demoralized
Fixed an issue that would incorrectly clear occupations of a country that was occupying states belonging to a country that got annexed by losing an insurrection diplomatic play
Fixed an issue where princely states were unable to be annexed by independent India, citing available Doctrine of Lapse
Cultures will now require at least 30 general cultural acceptance to mass migrate somewhere. This general acceptance can then be reduced when the pops actually migrate due to things like Cultural Community Acceptance, but as a baseline there shouldn't be cultures moving somewhere they will for sure be Violently Oppressed.
Government/Subsidized buildings are now able to override the usual hiring restrictions when hiring from ownership buildings, if the new job is equal or better to the old one (ie, government administrations can hire Aristocrats from Manor Houses to be aristocrats in government administration, but can't hire them to be clerks)
Annexing states through events (such as Canadian Federation, Risorgimento etc) no longer generates radicals as though those states were conquered
Fixed an issue where only passable provinces are counted towards bonuses to colonization speed. Also fixed a separate issue found with counting impassible provinces in state regions
Fixed a bug where revolutionary or colonization AI wouldn't merge it's army formations
Made it so that the Treaty of London Journal Entry will automatically select a response after six months
Fixed bug where civil war progress would reset on save/load
Fixed a bug where ideological incompatibility was applied to the countries that don't use a caste system
Fixed a bug where the popup for agitators would not show which movement they created or joined due to the movement being created after the popup is fired
When opening the game in debug mode, fixed the error spam related to ig_suppression
Fixed the cooldown for the "The Contagious Diseases Acts" event so it does not fire if any of its modifiers are still in effect
Reinvestment value is now calculated from each country's investment laws and tech instead of averaged over the building
Total building reinvestment income now applies reinvestment efficiency
The "Construct the Suez Canal" Journal Entry now correctly completes when building the Suez Canal
Fixed a bug where countries created via create_country effect would get the wrong cultures
Fixed a bug where heathen tax was applied for all of the religions, now it doesn't apply to religions with a positive acceptance effect
Fixed a bug for The Positive Stage journal entry progress bar
Fixed a bug where the Liberal Movement could not be created if the Radical Movement already existed, resulting in weird behaviors such as Market Liberal agitators not having a movement to join when finishing the Corn Laws
Fixed some start up errors relating to character history
Fixed a bug where chance of stalling during enactment was not predicted correctly in the law enactment tooltip
Fixed scoping issue that could result from revolutions in British East India Company
Sacred Civics II now properly lowers liberty desire for subjects with the same state religion
Fixed a bug where Azadi Achievement sometimes became unavailable after loading a save
Fixed a crash in harvest conditions
Added cooldown to Italian Unification's Pan-Nationalist Radicals event
Fixed a crash in map graphics
Fixed a bug where after changing the land border adjacencies for the markets were not properly recalculated
Fixed an issue where the Rani of Jhansi would not make use of her custom DNA
Fixed a bug where nationally owned buildings built in other nation's states did not grant the part of their balance going to reinvestments to anyone
Fixed a rare crash when resyncing a game
Fixed cancellation trigger for "The Rise of Radicalism" event
Added military shipyards and whaling stations to influence 3d center model in the port city
Fixed a bug where ports in split states wouldn't show wharfs and fisheries from time to time
The "The Scramble for Africa" Journal Entry now also accounts for states controlled by subjects
Fixed a bug where certain Danish, British, and Portuguese Indian possessions would start as incorporated
Historical figures now use their intended clothing assets
Fixed very small countries having their armies stuck in their home HQ when at war
Fixed wrong reference to Elections concept in factors attracting pops to Radical movement
Fixed formatting for the "The Integration of the Nordestinos" event
Fixed a bug where French Company Billboards appeared where they shouldn't appear
Fixed a bug where the literacy tooltip would flicker
Further hotfix areas
Beyond 1.8.3, we’re planning to do at least one more hotfix, tentatively scheduled sometime next week, and we’re not ruling out the possibility of additional patches beyond that, as we want to leave the game in a good place before the Christmas holidays begin. In no particular order, these are some of the things on our radar for 1.8.4 and beyond, based on the feedback we’ve been getting from you since release:
Continue to improve the balancing of the EIC content and revising some parts of the Unstable Raj journal entry
Review the rewards of the Pivot of Empire Journal Entries to ensure they feel worth the effort to complete
Look into the issue with too many frontlines being created in India due to the many small nations
Evaluate building wages to see if the changes we made in 1.8 made building owners too stingy for their own good
Find a more comprehensive solution for how acceptance should tie into migration
Remove the heritage/homeland restrictions on assimilation when it makes sense for pops to assimilate regardless
Evaluate companies and ensure they do not feel underwhelming as a result of no longer being country-wide
Doing a balance pass on subject payments, particularly for Chartered Companies
This is of course not even close to being an exhaustive list, and we will continue to collect your feedback and make adjustments and fixes as a result. For now though, that’s all for today, so please join us again next week for the proper post-release thoughts on Pivot of Empire and update 1.8. See you then!
Hotfix 1.8.3 is now LIVE!
Good Day Victorians!
Hotfix 1.8.3, is now live! Featuring a range of fixes to migration, Journal Entries, Secessions and BIC balancing! With much more in the patchnotes below! Checksum is `b4be`.
The following changes have been made to the game compared to 1.8.2:
Hotfix 1.8.3 Patchnotes
The following changes have been made to the game compared to 1.8.2:
Improvements
Cultures will now seek to mass migrate somewhere where their acceptance is improved somewhat. This isn't a hard requirement, if the potential migration target has high enough migration attraction, that can offset the sought acceptance, meaning cultures might move somewhere they are less accepted as long as the target migration attraction is sufficiently higher than the origin one.
The ratio between acceptance at the origin and at the target will now scale how many pops actually move in a mass migration per week. If the target acceptance is lower than the origin one, less pops will move. If it's higher, more pops will move.
Presidency Stability game concept now explains conditions that affect the Unstable Raj Journal Entry progress bars
Updated tooltips to explain conditions that affect the Sikh Sovereignty Journal Entry's 'Empire Stability' and 'Court Intrigue' progress bars
Imperialism of Promise Journal Entry will no longer fail from civil wars, except secessions
Power Blocs can now invite Revolutionary nations
When recruiting a new commander, historical characters will now be displayed more often
AI
The AI East India Company should now be more cautious with regards to events that decrease its stability
Slightly decreased the AIs desire to construct Power Bloc Statues
The aggression of colonial empires towards Unrecognized Nations now starts off slightly lower and ramps up more significantly as the game progresses
Britain will no longer ignore the Boer states because they happen to be Recognized Nations when the time to clean up Africa has come
Balance
Britain is now a part of the Indian Uprising diplomatic plays by default
Reduced the income transfer of Chartered Company subjects to their overlords from 40% to 30%
Rebalanced Indian Presidency stability from a scale of 100 to a scale of 300
Gave the East India Company claims on much of its historical western frontier from game start
Reduced the flat liberty desire growth in subjects from annexing low-prestige subjects
Added 5 years of Memento Mori immunity to all starting leaders and agitators
Reduced the impact from high/very high taxes on Expected Standard of Living, as the values were a bit overtuned
Made the British East India Company start with high military wages
Fixed Portugals conquer weights, it should now correctly prioritize annexing Gaza once the time comes
Bumped Portugal's starting colonial affairs level from 1 to 2
Art
The optimal sunlight positive harvest condition effect is now less intense, appearing colder at nighttime to illustrate moon light rather than sunlight.
Reduced the effect and strength of wind effects
Added disease outbreak particle effects
Adjusted moderate rainfall vfx
Resolved an issue where the parasol held by pops sometimes clips out in the portrait view
Content
The "The Conquest of Algeria" Journal Entry now also grants France a claim on Western Sahara
Interface
Political Movements are now sorted by type, and alphabetically within the same type
The Harvest Condition map marker is now clickable and opens the Food Security tab on the Market panel
Made the Harvest Condition map marker show up in the default and diplo play map modes on the nearest zoom
Made the list of movements impacted by enacting or cancelling a law into a paged list so it doesn't take as much screen space in situations where there are a lot of movements
Made it so when enacting or cancelling a law, movements where nothing is happening to their activism won't be listed
Added the Acceptance Status icon in front of the status name in modifiers based on player feedback.
Fixed a bug where localization did not have proper values for decaying civil war progress
Added a go-to button for the active Movement on an Agitator's Character panel
Modding
Added trigger can_pressure_interest_group to political movements, this must evaluate true for an IG to be able to be pressured by a movement, in addition to the already existing supporting clout requirements (Requested by Better Politics Mod for their 1.8 compatch)
add_loyalists and add_radicals effects now support negative numbers (ie, add_radicals with a value of -0.5 will remove 50% of radicals)
Scripted progress bars can be marked as inverted so that progress is defined as making progress values smaller
Bugfixes
Fixed a bug where civil wars (particularly secessions) could be created without any viable states, resulting in the civil war continually starting and then being cancelled
For a new insurrectionary movement to 'overtake' the currently active civil war, it now needs to have at least 10% higher activism, fixing an issue where you could have 'ping-ponging' between two civil wars with very similar activism levels
Likely finally fixed the long-standing bug where battles do not end because the last few soldiers refuse to die or get demoralized
Fixed an issue that would incorrectly clear occupations of a country that was occupying states belonging to a country that got annexed by losing an insurrection diplomatic play
Fixed an issue where princely states were unable to be annexed by independent India, citing available Doctrine of Lapse
Cultures will now require at least 30 general cultural acceptance to mass migrate somewhere. This general acceptance can then be reduced when the pops actually migrate due to things like Cultural Community Acceptance, but as a baseline there shouldn't be cultures moving somewhere they will for sure be Violently Oppressed.
Government/Subsidized buildings are now able to override the usual hiring restrictions when hiring from ownership buildings, if the new job is equal or better to the old one (ie, government administrations can hire Aristocrats from Manor Houses to be aristocrats in government administration, but can't hire them to be clerks)
Annexing states through events (such as Canadian Federation, Risorgimento etc) no longer generates radicals as though those states were conquered
Fixed an issue where only passable provinces are counted towards bonuses to colonization speed. Also fixed a separate issue found with counting impassible provinces in state regions
Fixed a bug where revolutionary or colonization AI wouldn't merge it's army formations
Made it so that the Treaty of London Journal Entry will automatically select a response after six months
Fixed bug where civil war progress would reset on save/load
Fixed a bug where ideological incompatibility was applied to the countries that don't use a caste system
Fixed a bug where the popup for agitators would not show which movement they created or joined due to the movement being created after the popup is fired
When opening the game in debug mode, fixed the error spam related to ig_suppression
Fixed the cooldown for the "The Contagious Diseases Acts" event so it does not fire if any of its modifiers are still in effect
Reinvestment value is now calculated from each country's investment laws and tech instead of averaged over the building
Total building reinvestment income now applies reinvestment efficiency
The "Construct the Suez Canal" Journal Entry now correctly completes when building the Suez Canal
Fixed a bug where countries created via create_country effect would get the wrong cultures
Fixed a bug where heathen tax was applied for all of the religions, now it doesn't apply to religions with a positive acceptance effect
Fixed a bug for The Positive Stage journal entry progress bar
Fixed a bug where the Liberal Movement could not be created if the Radical Movement already existed, resulting in weird behaviors such as Market Liberal agitators not having a movement to join when finishing the Corn Laws
Fixed some start up errors relating to character history
Fixed a bug where chance of stalling during enactment was not predicted correctly in the law enactment tooltip
Fixed scoping issue that could result from revolutions in British East India Company
Sacred Civics II now properly lowers liberty desire for subjects with the same state religion
Fixed a bug where Azadi Achievement sometimes became unavailable after loading a save
Fixed a crash in harvest conditions
Added cooldown to Italian Unification's Pan-Nationalist Radicals event
Fixed a crash in map graphics
Fixed a bug where after changing the land border adjacencies for the markets were not properly recalculated
Fixed an issue where the Rani of Jhansi would not make use of her custom DNA
Fixed a bug where nationally owned buildings built in other nation's states did not grant the part of their balance going to reinvestments to anyone
Fixed a rare crash when resyncing a game
Fixed cancellation trigger for "The Rise of Radicalism" event
Added military shipyards and whaling stations to influence 3d center model in the port city
Fixed a bug where ports in split states wouldn't show wharfs and fisheries from time to time
The "The Scramble for Africa" Journal Entry now also accounts for states controlled by subjects
Fixed a bug where certain Danish, British, and Portuguese Indian possessions would start as incorporated
Historical figures now use their intended clothing assets
Fixed very small countries having their armies stuck in their home HQ when at war
Fixed wrong reference to Elections concept in factors attracting pops to Radical movement
Fixed formatting for the "The Integration of the Nordestinos" event
Fixed a bug where French Company Billboards appeared where they shouldn't appear
Fixed a bug where the literacy tooltip would flicker
How to Rollback your Game
If you are on an older save you may want to continue an the save, you can roll back to a previous version of the game e.g. 1.7.7 via following the steps below!
Right click the game in Steam
Go to Properties and select the tab called "BETAS"
Pick the version you want to play and close.
Allow the game to update
Make sure, before you load any save, that the version number in the game is the one you want.
If the previous step fails, exit the game, right click -> properties -> local files -> Verify integrity of game files and wait for all files to be verified before going back to step 5.
Note: You can freely swap between the latest version and previous versions this way. By selecting "NONE - opt out of all beta programs" you go to the latest released version.
The Gold & Glory Bundle, with Europa Universalis 4!
Introducing the Gold and Glory Bundle!
Watch history unfold before your eyes as you guide nations through the tumultuous centuries leading up to the modern era in the Gold and Glory Bundle from Paradox Interactive. This pack includes two critically acclaimed grand strategy games, covering almost five hundred years of history.
In Europa Universalis IV, rule any nation on earth in Paradox’s flagship historical game. Explore the globe, unlock new forms of government, experience religious Reformation and establish the foundations for a world spanning empire. The flavour of the past is enriched by thousands of historical events, dedicated mission trees and profiles unique to many countries.
In Victoria 3, govern any of hundreds of richly detailed societies through the dramatic century from the 1830s to the 1930s. This society simulator presents you with a nation riven by economic and cultural division in a time of rapid technological and ideological change. Industrialize your nation, promote or suppress revolutionary ideals and pursue a trade policy that brings the wealth of the world to your doorstep.
The Gold and Glory Bundle includes the base games for the above listed titles and is available for a limited time.
As part of the Paradox Steam Autumn sale, you can get great deals on other Paradox titles with savings of up to 90% off!!
Check it out here: https://pdxint.at/PDXAutumn2024
That is not all, we have just launched the Gold & Glory bundle with Europa Universalis 4 for the base games of both game at a reduced price!
Hotfix 1.8.2 is now LIVE! - Not for Problem Reports!
Good Day Victorians!
Another quick hotfix for 1.8, targeted at the crash affecting some players, which should be compatible with 1.8 save games! Checksum is 1fc5.
As always, this post is not for bug reports, please instead post them in the bug reporting forum (including a save and steps to recreate is always useful).
The following changes have been made to the game compared to 1.8.1:
Bugfixes
Fixed a crash that would consistently happen for some users when launching the game
Fixed a bug that would happen if the game rule "Loyalties Grace Period" was activated. There would be no gains for Loyalists or Radicals after the period ends.
Fixed a crash that could happen when a Company was removed
How to Rollback your Game
If you are on an older save you may want to continue an the save, you can roll back to a previous version of the game e.g. 1.7.7 via following the steps below!
1. Right click the game in Steam 2. Go to Properties and select the tab called "BETAS" 3. Pick the version you want to play and close. 4. Allow the game to update 5. Make sure, before you load any save, that the version number in the game is the one you want. 6. If the previous step fails, exit the game, right click -> properties -> local files -> Verify integrity of game files and wait for all files to be verified before going back to step 5.
Note: You can freely swap between the latest version and previous versions this way. By selecting "NONE - opt out of all beta programs" you go to the latest released version.
Victoria 3 Free to Play Weekend and Sale!
Salutations Victorians!
From today, until November 25th, Victoria 3 is free to play on Steam. Grab a friend and try out the range of changes in the new 1.8 Update now! Look through the changelog here!
But, that is not all!
The game and selected content is on sale for up to 50% off, until the 27th, including Sphere of Influence at 20% off!