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Genre: Simulator, Strategy

Victoria 3

Dev Diary #122 - Sphere of Influence/Update 1.7 Changelog Part 2



Check out Part 1 for the rest of the changelog!


Balance



  • Subjects now need at least 75 Liberty Desire to Expel Diplomats
  • Changed the required techs to research Gantry Cranes to include Screw Frigates
  • Added employment of 200 Clerks and 50 Bureaucrats to base Trade Center PM
  • Officers now take only half the brunt of casualties compared to Servicemen
  • Added adjacencies to the southern Chilean Islands so that they are all connected
  • British and Japanese Intelligentsia are now Constitutionalist by default, rather than Republican
  • Removed Infrastructure cost from Gold Fields
  • Increased farm sizes in some parts of Qing China to prevent immediate famines.
  • Easier than the norm to impose laws on Puppets and Personal Unions
  • Great Hunger Journal entry can no longer appear until at least 1837 and grain prices for the Journal Entry have been increase to 70%
  • Increased the amount of academics and decreased the amount of clerks when bourgeoisie patronage production method is active on Art Academies
  • You can no longer build Fishing Wharfs in the states Ob or Upper Yeniseysk
  • Fixed the starting Military Formations for Greece, Serbia, Two Sicilies, Papal States, Tuscany, Spain, and Portugal so that they no longer start with unit types they can not recruit.
  • Taking states from your subjects (even to give to other subjects) now create diplomatic incidents
  • Reduced Police Institution reduction of Turmoil effects from 15% per level to 10%
  • Vanguardism is now unlocked by Political Agitation rather than Socialism
  • Reduced the Sick Man of Europe modifier's prestige malus from -33% to -25%
  • Changed the progressiveness score of Theocracy law to -25 instead of -50
  • Reduced the size of USA's navy slightly
  • Lowered the amount of convoys needed to complete Improve Supply Network Tutorial



Art



  • New Manor House and Financial District building model for each of the different cultural styles
  • Added social button links on Main Menu (Youtube link, Victoria 3 Wiki link, Victoria 3 player resources link)
  • Added 85 new distinct appearances for historical characters, including rulers and generals
  • Implemented 56 historic character appearances for existing characters in the Americas (courtesy of Galactic Cactus)
  • Added new clothes for power bloc members
  • Adult characters with the hedonist, grifter, and/or expensive tastes traits can be smokers now
  • Added distinct appearance and assets for Empress Dowager Cixi
  • Added Financial District buildings 3D asset for Foreign Investment
  • Adjusted 'Waving Flag' icon for Journal Entries to fit in the Journal Entry frame better
  • Added icons for Prestige, Leverage and Cohesion
  • Added background art for Pro and Anti Lobbies
  • Adjusted Diplomatic Action "Personal Union" icons
  • Added headgear for Catholic clergy
  • Fixed some clipping issues on the infantry units map models
  • Reworked factory smoke VFX
  • Art Academy icon now shows the 'Fine Art' good
  • Adjusted some provinces in Florida, Nevada, and Western Australia
  • Improved Bundle of Flowers 3d asset for characters
  • Improved Ottawa river shape improved on the map
  • Improved Rio Uruguai river position and shape on the map
  • Added Kolyma river on the map
  • Improved Puget sound shore for the 3d map
  • Buildings in the Caucasus region now use European graphics
  • Fixed texture brightness for the African Academy



Audio



  • Fixed a voice stacking bug for the Naval Carrier that caused performance issues
  • Made weapon reload sounds less repetitive
  • Remixed all war sound effects
  • Fixed sail transport ship oddity upon zooming out and back in
  • Fixed inconsistent sound filter effect upon entering a Map Mode



Interface



  • Added a fullscreen Building Registry screen
  • Added functionality to create and add tables to tooltips
  • Reordered things in the Country tooltip to more closely reflect the order of importance
  • Added breakdown details for the Ahead of Time Research Penalty
  • Added a new religion overview mapmode that displays the most prevalent religion in each state and additionally through color blending visualizes the second and potentially third most prevalent religions
  • Upgraded the culture overview mapmode to visualize the second and third most prevalent cultures through color blending
  • Added a new "Subjects" tab in the Diplomacy panel listing all your Subjects
  • Reworked the Country & State right-click menu to be more compact and be less "scrolly"
  • Added notifications for subject interactions
  • Added bar charts for a Pop's needs to their tooltip and info panel
  • Added easy access to the construction queue to the Building Registry
  • Improved the layout and readability of the Peace Deal tab
  • Added the option to have custom icons as divider on double-sided scripted progress bars
  • Added alerts related to a subject's ability to increase its autonomy or have its autonomy decreased
  • Moved Decisions from a second tab in the Journal Panel into the first tab, and Potential Journal Entries are now in the second tab
  • Cleaned up the layout of the Journal Entry page
  • Added a new layout for Interest Group Tooltips
  • Outliner is now sorting Interest Groups by clout
  • Event options marked as show_as_unavailable will now print the trigger conditions that failed in order to make them unavailable
  • Country diplomacy infopanel now shows relevant tooltip info for Pacts rather than just repeat their names
  • Added explanation in war support tooltip when countries are unable to capitulate, for instance due to being a subject
  • The player list in the outliner has been changed to a dropdown
  • Ongoing Diplomatic Actions (bankroll, improve/damage relations) in the outliner are now found in the collapsible section
  • Show the AI Strategies in the Country tooltip
  • Reworked all Outliner items to have more, and better, information
  • It is now possible to pin Countries to the Outliner
  • The amount of debt that is owed to buildings that you own is now shown in the debt tooltip
  • Changed so Diplomatic ties/gained lost and declaring neutrality notifications are hidden by default
  • Changed the total time for your Construction Queue to be displayed in months, years, etc instead of only weeks
  • Convoy breakdown now lists contribution from market members first, with breakdown to see who contributes what, and the remainder of the convoy production breakdown in descending order
  • New map mode displaying the percentage of your GDP that is directly or indirectly controlled by another country
  • gdp_ownership_ratio trigger lets you measure how much of a country's economy another country controls, directly or through investors
  • Changed the map list panel displayed for the Culture Overview mapmode to display more general state information
  • Added "break" names like "Stop doing ActionName" for diplo actions to their tooltips, buttons and confirmation window headers
  • Made the Improve/Damage relations effects description a bit more digestible
  • Added imposable laws as a dropdown directly under each Subject in the Subjects tab
  • Added Overlord/Subject/Bloc actions to the Country panel - Interaction tab
  • Show the Employment Indicator icon in more places
  • Added a short "label" and a "status" for a Country, describing who they are to you and your relationship to them
  • Show the Government Interest Groups in the Country tooltip
  • Improved the Party tooltip to display member Interest Groups in a table
  • State Taxation Revenue text list now display its information as a table
  • Implemented right-click menu for privatization and nationalization
  • Moved the Party Icons on Interest Group entries in the Outliner so they would not interfere with the player moving the mouse into the Interest Group tooltip
  • Fixed diplomatic action influence cost to accurately display base cost when looking at a potential action, and actual cost when looking at an action with full target data
  • Removed superfluous "Yes" statement from tooltips describing "boolean" modifiers, replaced with a symbol corresponding with if the modifier type is considered Good, Neutral, or Bad
  • Added State Traits to the State tooltip
  • Fixed long overlapping texts to not overlap anymore in the Trade States Diplomatic Action popup
  • Sound effect improvements to some parts of the UI
  • On-Map Notifications can now play sounds and use alternate GUI widgets when displayed
  • Tweaks to the map modes on the specific country details panels diplomacy tab
  • Show the influence maintenance cost of Diplomatic Actions more directly in the interface
  • Improved tooltip formatting for Diplomatic Actions
  • Added your Overlord to the Diplomacy panel Overview tab if you are a Subject
  • Show the Religion icon in the Religion tooltip
  • Show the current direction (up/down) of your Relations in Country tooltip
  • It is now possible to unpin Diplomatic Plays from the Outliner
  • It is now possible to unpin Political Movements from the Outliner
  • Split construction panel from the building panel, now it's opened by clicking on the construction button on the topbar and arrow from the buildings panel
  • Set a minimum size on scrollbar handles so they do not get tiny in large lists such as the Census Data
  • Added a game concept for "Busy" Characters to explain what it means
  • Updated the religion colors for Catholicism, Orthodox and Hinduism to better work with the new religion mapmode
  • Improved the responsiveness of the scrollarea for the game objectives on the new game screen
  • Added a Subject Types Visualization table to better visualize how Subject Types work on the Diplomacy panel
  • Show a country's Subject Type in its tooltip
  • Expose the Ranking Number for the stats on the Country details panel
  • Removed misleading Total Occupation number in the Occupation breakdown tooltip for Battles
  • Hid axis labels on trend charts if there is no trend data



Performance



  • Complete rewrite of the modifier system to improve performance
  • Improved performance of several tick tasks
  • Minimized unnecessary counter updates
  • Improved the performance of AI's journal entry interactions by reducing extraneous trigger checks
  • Reduced memory consumption by Coat of Arms flag definitions
  • Optimized the calculation of the current flag definition for each country
  • Optimized the frequency of Coat of Arms updates which led to less total execution time
  • Optimized scripts for some flag definitions
  • Reworked the outliner system to improve performance
  • On-Map Notifications no longer spawn when off-screen



Modding



  • Enabled scripted_widget support for Victoria 3 (usage pattern same as in Crusader Kings III)
  • AI will now consider taking actions defined in a scripted_gui based on its ai_is_valid (trigger) / ai_chance (1-100) / ai_frequency (months) parameters
  • Diplomatic Pacts can now contain an actor_modifier and/or target_modifier that is applied to the country while pact is active
  • The conditions under which a country may impose laws on another are now entirely moddable, including making special rules for each specific law
  • Diplomatic Pacts can declare one or several auto_support_type diplomatic play types. It forces the initiator of the pact to join any diplomatic play of the auto_support_type that the target initiates.
  • Individual Professions can now be blocked from Internal or Mass Migration based on state modifiers (see Serfdom and Land Reform laws for examples)
  • Added new modifiers country_bolster/suppression_cost_mult to the cost of Interest Group bolstering and suppressing
  • Split the create_truce effect into create_bidirectional_truce and create_unidirectional_truce
  • end_truce effect no longer takes a months parameter
  • Added new modifier country_leader_has_law_enactment_success_mult that increases the enactment success for laws the power bloc leader already has
  • Added new trigger for power_bloc_rank
  • Added scripted rules for unlocking power bloc principle slots
  • Added new add_cohesion and set_cohesion console commands
  • Added add_progress and set_progress effects for scripted progress bars
  • Added modifier power_bloc_allow_foreign_invest_lower_rank to allow foreign investment in lower ranked members
  • Added new trigger play_participant_has_war_goal_of_type_against
  • Added new trigger play_side_has_war_goal_of_type_against
  • Added new trigger war_participant_has_war_goal_of_type_against
  • Added new trigger war_side_has_war_goal_of_type_against
  • Added country_disable_privatization_bool, country_force_privatization_bool, and country_disable_nationalization_bool modifiers to regulate privatization
  • Production Method property replacement_if_valid lets you replace a PM under given circumstances
  • Added country_nationalization_cost_non_members_mult modifier that modifies the penalty for nationalizing buildings owned by foreign countries.
  • Added country_legitimacy_min_add that set a lower limit on a governments legitimacy level
  • Added political_movement_preserve_support_mult, political_movement_enact_support_mult and political_movement_restore_support_mult that multiplies the support of political movement by type
  • economic_dependence compare trigger for determining a country's economic dependence on another
  • Added new modifiers on country and country pact scope for adding leverage generation
  • Added new modifier power_bloc_leverage_generation_mult for leverage generation
  • Added new modifier power_bloc_mandate_progress_mult for mandate progress
  • Added power_bloc_disallow_war_bool modifier to prevent wars within Power Blocs
  • Added power_bloc_income_transfer_to_leader_factor modifier to make non-leader members of a power bloc pay a portion of their income to the power bloc leader
  • Added power_bloc_allow_wider_migration_area_bool modifier which allows economic migration within a power bloc even without a unique shared market
  • Added fraction_of_levels_owned_by_country and levels_owned_by_country building ownership compare trigger
  • Added country_innovation compare trigger
  • Added gdp_per_capita_ranking and sol_ranking triggers
  • Added a scripted_bar_progress trigger that checks the progress
  • Removed deprecated error_check trigger and replaced it with explicit visible triggers, where applicable
  • New modifier state_migration_quota_mult allows for fine-tuning how much migration a state permits
  • Added trigger can_break_diplomatic_pact
  • Added trigger can_send_diplomatic_action
  • Added trigger can_create_diplomatic_pact
  • Added trigger would_accept_diplomatic_action
  • Added a country_overlord_income_transfer_mult modifier type to modify the amount of money a subject has to pay their overlord each week
  • Added an income_transfer compare trigger for diplomatic pact scopes
  • enactment_chance_for_law complex compare trigger added to measure the chance a country would currently have to enact a certain law type
  • New modifier country_port_connection_cost_mult, modifying the convoy cost of port connections
  • New modifiers tariff_import/export_outside_power_bloc_mult, modifying countries' tariffs with non-power bloc members
  • New modifiers country_join_power_bloc_member_in_(defensive_)plays_bool
  • New modifier power_bloc_leader_can_add_wargoal_bool, lets the leader of a Power Bloc add a free wargoal in any play where a bloc member is a primary participant without issuing an Offer for Support
  • Added new modifier country_subject_income_transfer_heathen_mult that changes how much income subjects that don't follow the same state religion as the overlord pay
  • Added new modifier power_bloc_religion_trade_route_competitiveness_mult for trade routes targeting countries with the same state religion as the power bloc leader
  • Added new triggers for checking ownership type fractions in a building: private_ownership_fraction, country_ownership_fraction, self_ownership_fraction
  • Implemented Liberty Desire levels with modifiers that propagate to country
  • create_building effect can now specify ownership assignments
  • Added remove_principle effect for power blocs
  • Added free_principle_slots compare trigger for power blocs
  • Added modifier allow_trade_routes_without_interest_bool modifier, which allows a country to establish trade routes even where they don’t have interests
  • New effect disband_political_lobby
  • New scriptlist diplomatically_relevant_country
  • Added effect create_diplomatic_catalyst
  • Added effect create_political_lobby
  • Added trigger num_political_lobbies
  • Added type scope switch for lobbies/catalysts
  • Added new compare trigger potential_diplomatic_play_power_ratio
  • Convoy Contribution is now a country modifier (country_convoy_contribution_to_market_owner_add) that shares the country's convoys directly with the market owner, rather than tied specifically to subjects/overlords
  • Regime Change can now be executed from script using the regime_change effect
  • New modifier type country_leverage_generation_mult affecting how much Leverage a country generates as Power Bloc leader
  • New modifier type country_leverage_lobby_generation_mult affecting how much positively inclined lobbies in another country contribute to the Leverage they impose on them as Power Bloc leader
  • New modifier type country_pact_leverage_generation_mult affecting how much a pact influences the Leverage generated by the senior/initiator part in the pact on the junior/target part in the pact, when the senior is Power Bloc leader
  • Added a current_cohesion_percentage compare trigger for Power Bloc scopes
  • Added add_cohesion_percent and add_cohesion_number effects for Power Bloc scopes
  • New trigger can_trigger_event that can check e.g. if an event is on cooldown for a country in scope
  • New compare trigger liberty_desire_weekly_progress
  • Renamed remaining uses of Interest Group promotion to bolstering to be coherent with the current name
  • Added new trigger for used_principles_slots
  • Added new trigger total_used_principle_levels
  • Made sure all boolean modifier types have a _bool suffix
  • Added allow_trade_routes_without_interest_bool modifier, which allows a country to establish trade routes towards countries that lie outside the range of their interests
  • Added state_migration_quota_mult modifier that affects the amount of people that emigrate from or immigrate to a state
  • Added num_power_bloc_members compare trigger. Returns the number of member countries in the scoped power bloc
  • Added num_power_bloc_states compare trigger. Returns the total number of states of the scoped power bloc.
  • Added neighbors_power_bloc compare trigger. Returns true if the scoped country neighbors the specified power bloc. Note
  • Added neighbors_any_power_bloc compare trigger. Returns true if the scoped country neighbors any power bloc.
  • Added neighbors_member_of_same_power_bloc trigger. Returns true if the scoped country neighbors any other member of their own power bloc.
  • Added trigger is_member_of_lobby
  • Added trigger is_member_of_any_lobby"
  • New script list lobby_member
  • Added new trigger can_add_wargoal_against
  • New add_leverage effect added for power bloc scopes
  • New country_leverage_resistance_add modifier type
  • New progressiveness and law_progressiveness_difference compare triggers added, to compare the progressiveness of a law type or the difference in progressiveness between two law types
  • Added country_law_enactment_imposition_success_add and country_cannot_be_target_for_law_imposition_bool modifier types
  • Added cancel_imposition effect to cancel the imposition status of a country's law
  • Adds imposed_law and imposer_of_law links to be used in country scope
  • country_cannot_cancel_law_enactment_bool modifier type added to prevent a country from manually canceling enactment of laws
  • journal_entry_age compare trigger added for measuring the duration since the Journal Entry was activated
  • Added tenure_in_current_power_bloc_days/weeks/months/years compare triggers for Country scopes
  • New compare triggers power_bloc_share_prestige and power_bloc_share_power_projection in Power Bloc scope
  • New compare triggers power_bloc_worst_liberty_desire, power_bloc_worst_infamy, power_bloc_worst_leader_relations in Power Bloc scope
  • New trigger is_forced_to_join_plays
  • Added console command fastlobbies to make lobbies bypass its chance to spawn, letting them always spawn if possible
  • New console command Logging.GameStateGenerators can be used to display a list of gamestate init functions in the order they are executed, to troubleshoot initialization issues
  • Added new rank based power bloc invite acceptance modifiers power_bloc_invite_acceptance_{rank}_add (need to be accessed in script)
  • Added new country_leverage_resistance_per_population_add modifier that scales with population size
  • Added new country_leverage_resistance_mult modifier
  • Added new market_number_goods_shortage that gives how many goods in a market have a shortage
  • Added new power_bloc_worst_leader_religion_population_fraction which returns the lowest fraction of population that follows the religion of the bloc leader
  • Added new power_bloc_worst_economic_dependence which returns the lowest economic dependence on the leader among the bloc's members
  • Added new power_bloc_share_gdp trigger which returns the share of the total GDP in a bloc a country has
  • Added new power_bloc_total_leading_goods_producer trigger which calculates a score for a power bloc based on how many goods its members are the leading producers of. The number 1 producer gives 3 points, number 2 gives 2 and number 3 gives 1
  • Added GetParticipantWithLowestEconomicDependenceOnLeader data function
  • Added GetParticipantWithLowestLeaderReligionPercentage data function
  • Added GetLeaderReligionPercentage data function to retrieve the percentage of the population in a country that follows the religion of the bloc leader



Bugfixes



  • Wargoals targeting subjects not being contested now prevents overlord from dropping below 0 war support
  • Improved the stability of the multiplayer game by fixing several Out of Sync issues
  • Fixed a bug where an Interest Group could pick the Ruler or Heir of a monarchy to be their next leader, if they were a general
  • All straight apostrophes (') in city, state, hub name loc replaced with typographic/curly apostrophes (’) to address issue where tooltips broke or bloated error log
  • Fixed a bug where the 'Revoke Claim' wargoal could only be used once for each country against each enemy per play
  • Fixed a bug where battles that end inconclusively would display a placeholder text
  • Fixed a bug where the cost of reverse pacts was incorrect in the interface
  • Fixed a bug where reverse pacts could be activated several times and stacked.
  • Fixed a bug that would cause Bismarck to be available as a Landowner leader for every single country in the game
  • Fixed a bug where countries in a diplomatic play could simultaneously be on someone's side and undecided
  • Fixed a bug where it was possible to join diplomatic plays against power bloc members when you should not be able to
  • Reworked the way random events are fired, fixing an issue where certain events would almost never fire. As a result, it's now more common that several events fire simultaneously, this is not a bug.
  • Fixed a crash related to finding a combat unit type's primary culture
  • Fixed a bug that disallowed intra-country migration when inter-country migration was disallowed (i.e. people can now move from a state in a country to a different state in the same country even if the country has closed borders)
  • Fixed a crash that could happen when countries that are part of the same customs union would end up on opposite sides of a war
  • Officers no longer bear the burden of increased ratio of casualties due to rounding errors
  • B.Grimm company now has 10% infrastructure from population instead of 0.1
  • Fixed a bug when the main theme was not playing on startup
  • Fixed the country formation panel to show the correct status for split states
  • Updated conditions for granting and removing command from ruler to prevent strange situations
  • Artillery commander traits are now correctly applied to artillery units
  • Fixed a bug where the revolution map marker could spawn in an incorrect State, with an incorrect Interest Group icon
  • Fixed broken localization in naval invasion stalled tooltip
  • Fixed a bug when after colonizing a province with frontier colonization player could colonize states it didn't have access to
  • It's no longer possible to exceed (if only visually) the commander limit of formations by using the "move all" and "move half" buttons in the formation transfer UI
  • Diplomatic Victory achievement now properly requires the player be a Great Power
  • Fixed a bug that would cause some lens options / map interactions to not be updated when they should have, leading to the displayed information being out of date compared to the actual economic or geopolitical situation
  • Added missing info in the combat unit type tooltip about modifiers that units provide their formations with
  • Diplomatic Plays against your indirect subjects are now disallowed
  • Commanders who are on expeditions are now correctly blocked from doing most of their job as commander
  • While in a Diplomatic Play or at war you can no longer form or expand Colonial Administrations in order to prevent wargoals from being invalidated
  • Empresas Eléctricas Asociadas Company now gives 5% infrastructure from population instead of 0.05
  • C.A. LA Electricidad de Caracas now gives 5 infrastructure per 100k pops instead of 0.05
  • Improved the performance of the Red Scare Journal Entry
  • Added horizontal scrollbars when elements goes off screen in the Census Data & Building Registry fullscreen windows
  • Revolution events and Coups can no longer spawn in communists and council republics before socialism has been researched
  • Should a Bonapartist, Orleanist, or Legitimist non-monarchical ruler die, they no longer automatically generate a same-dynasty heir
  • Nicholas I of Russia dying or abdicating before 1843 will no longer result in the generation of an heir with a negative age
  • Fixed error spam issue with Brazilian agitator clothing
  • Trade States will now be unavailable to select when no valid state options exist
  • Added missing Legitimacy label and value to country tooltip
  • Fixed an issue where dead Interest Group leaders could be targeted by the Kingmaker Caudillo event
  • Seek Royal Marriage can no longer target junior members of a personal union
  • The Positive Stage Journal Entry now requires you to either be Catholic or have state atheism enacted
  • Custom tooltip fixes "The country does not have the variable in question" in tooltip for Ban the Opium Trade button
  • Fixed a bug where the National Self-Defense event may refer to a Politically Unaligned IG
  • Horizontal Filing Cabinets Boost now uses the correct color for the modifier
  • Fragile Unity Journal Entry fail requirements corrected in text and tooltips
  • Fixed a lot of typos across the game
  • Fix bug where sorting countries by AI Attitude wasn't working
  • The Banana Republic achievement now requires the construction of fruit plantations specifically, not any plantations
  • Fixed two more ways in which it was possible to exceed the commander limit in a formation
  • Fixed null_obj appearing in notification for HRE formation
  • The Cholera event will now fire properly
  • Fragile Unity points being gained or lost will now fire the correct notifications
  • The Republic of San Marco will no longer throw errors
  • The agitator_legal_events.5 now displays their correct event image
  • Remaned Farm hub on Åland from Eckerö to Strandgård
  • The Opium Wars now invalidate if their target ceases to exist
  • Fixed a couple of typos in Czech cities
  • Fixed the birth date of Alexander II of Russia
  • Fixed an unlocalized modifier in the event "Obstruction in [state]"
  • Removed duplicate icons for Influence costs for certain Diplomatic Actions


To those of you who have followed our changelogs for a while, you might be surprised at the relatively small size of this one. This is because most of the content in this update is brand new and far reaching, and due to that many of the additions and changes we've made would not make a lot of sense if spelled out on their own. It is safe to say that Update 1.7 "Kahwah" is massive and will introduce a whole new dimension to your Victoria 3 experience, and once you get your hands on it you will see what I mean! In the meantime, I will be happy to answer any of your questions in the official comments section[a].


Next week Martin "Wiz" Anward will return to say a few words about his take on Sphere of Influence post-launch, and I hope you join us again then! Please pop in and say hi on Discord, and let us know what you think of Update 1.7 "Kahwah" and Sphere of Influence!

Dev Diary #122 - Sphere of Influence/Update 1.7 Changelog Part 1



Happy Thursday! Today I'm very pleased to announce the changelog for Update 1.7, appropriately codenamed "Kahwah" after the delicious saffron, cinnamon, and cardamom infused tea from Central Asia. In addition to the changelog you will get a rundown of the major features of the Sphere of Influence expansion most of these features were developed for, but for full details you should read the previous dev diaries on that subject.

Before we get into the changelog I want to also draw your attention to the Known Issues list for Update 1.7. Most of these bugs will be addressed in upcoming hotfixes releasing shortly after the update. As usual, save games made on any 1.7.x version will be compatible with subsequent hotfixes, but save games from 1.6 or before will not be compatible with 1.7 due to the large number of changes.





Update 1.7 "Kahwah", as well as Sphere of Influence, will be released on Monday June 24th around 18:00 CEST. Those of you who own either the Grand Edition of Victoria 3 or our first Expansion Pass will just have to update the game to get your hands on Sphere of Influence and start extending your tentacles around the globe. If you do not yet own it, it can be pre-ordered either standalone or as part of the Expansion Pass.

Let's get into it!



Features of Sphere of Influence


Power Blocs




  • As a Great Power or a powerful Major Power, you can form your own Power Bloc centered around one of five central Identity pillars: Trade League, Sovereign Empire, Military Treaty, Ideological Union, or Religious Convocation.
  • Each of these provide different opportunities and benefits to its leader with respect to its member countries, and can be developed further with up to 4 of 20 different Principle groups, resulting in over twenty thousand different combinations affecting your strategy for global domination!
  • As a Power Bloc leader you can expand your global reach by extending your Leverage over other countries where you have declared an Interest. A large number of factors that can cause you to gain (or lose) Leverage over a country, such as maintaining Diplomatic Pacts, maintaining favorable Lobbies, helping them in their wars, being accepting or discriminatory against their cultures, or making them economically dependent on you through foreign expansion or trade.
  • Power Blocs can be expanded peacefully through diplomatic invitation into your Bloc or, if the invite fizzles, through a Diplomatic Demand the country may or may not yield to without an armed conflict.
  • The leader of a Power Bloc must maintain its Cohesion by enforcing its shared values across the bloc. Failure to properly manage Cohesion across your bloc may result in internal strife.
  • All members of Power Blocs may construct expensive statues to represent its glory, providing a number of benefits to the state it's built in. The leader of a Power Bloc can customize both the appearance of the statue, the Power Bloc emblem, and its name to better represent its ideas and visions for its bright global future.
  • Available with Update 1.7: the Trade League Identity and its two Primary Principle groups, Internal and External Trade, are available even without Sphere of Influence and replaces the Customs Union diplomatic pact by enforcing a shared market across the Power Bloc.
  • Available with Update 1.7: it is also possible to play as Great Britain, Russia, or the Ottoman Empire who starts with the Sovereign Empire Identity, permitting them to subjugate weaker Power Bloc members, or as Austria whose Power Bloc Identity of Ideological Union permits them to Enforce Regime Change in countries that start flirting with the concept of Republicanism and suffrage. Players without Sphere of Influence may also play a member of the Zollverein, an established Trade League at game start.
  • To read much more about Power Blocs, see dev diaries here and here.


Foreign Investment



  • With the Foreign Investment Rights or Mutual Foreign Investment Pacts, countries can gain the ability to directly build up another country's resource or manufacturing industries, or offer these rights to another country if they're incapable of rapid industrialization on their own. This right extends to both countries and its investor class, who may use their Investment Pool to construct private industry abroad and gain access to new resources, cheap(er) labor, or both.
  • With the Foreign Investment Power Bloc Principles, these rights can also be extended across an entire Power Bloc by default without the need to establish and maintain potentially fragile pacts. With Power Bloc Leverage being informed in part by economic dependence, this can become a great way to maintain control over your Power Bloc members during the extent of the long Victorian century.
  • Available with Update 1.7: Ownership is represented by two new buildings, Manor Houses (housing the Aristocracy) and Financial Sectors (housing Capitalists), who can own buildings outside their own states or even their country. These buildings extract the profits produced by building levels they own, leading to much greater variance between productive states and wealthy states.
  • Available with Update 1.7: In addition to private ownership through Manor Houses and Financial Sectors, Cooperative Ownership is also possible through the right economic system laws. Cooperative Ownership gives pops working their buildings the fruit of their own labor.
  • Available with Update 1.7: State-owned enterprises are also possible, which yield dividends directly to state coffers (or drain them, if unprofitable). Under most economic systems, buildings constructed by the state are put up for sale when completed, making them available for acquisition by private interests (or even other countries, if Foreign Investment Rights are in play). Under others, it's possible for the state to nationalize industries, with or without compensation to its owners - with sometimes grave repercussions, domestic or international.
  • Available with Update 1.7: Overlords are always able to construct industries in their Subjects, even without Pacts or Power Blocs enabling it.
  • With the Sphere of Influence expansion, it is also possible to nationalize all your country's foreign-owned industries with a Diplomatic Demand - but be prepared to defend your economic self-determination!
  • To read more about Foreign Investment and the Building Ownership overhaul, see the dev diary here.


Lobbies, Catalysts, and Opportunities



  • A Lobby consists of one or more Interest Groups in a country that have a stance on another country in the world. This stance can either be positive, where they wish to form closer relations or imitate its laws and reforms, or negative where the emphasis lies on distancing yourself, forming rivalries, or even crushing them in armed conflict.
  • Lobbies have a chance to form in response to a Diplomatic Catalyst, which can trigger for a variety of reasons such as establishing or breaking a Pact, choosing a particular event option, having a revolution, joining or being kicked out of a Power Bloc, inviting or exiling an Agitator, and so on. Whenever something happens as a result of a Catalyst, such as a lobby forming or an AI strategy changing, you will be told exactly the reason why it happened.
  • Lobbies will benefit or hinder you in a number of ways, such as increasing a country's AI Acceptance for Diplomatic Pacts due to your close ties, or increasing your War Support when fighting a hated foe. The impact your Lobby has relates directly to its Interest Group membership's Clout, so you have a vested interest in supporting those groups that align with your own foreign policy and opposing those who support your geopolitical enemies.
  • Adhering to your Lobbies' wishes will increase their Appeasement, which is another source of Interest Group Approval and leads to political stability at home. Opposing them will of course do the opposite, so think carefully if you can afford to break that pact they like!
  • With the Sphere of Influence expansion, Lobbies will occasionally grant opportunities or make demands. These are Journal Entries that incentivize you to go after specific foreign policy goals, or which you ignore at your peril!
  • Also with the Sphere of Influence expansion, you have access to a new Diplomatic Action that lets you fund lobbies in other countries by bribing providing much-deserved financial support to the country's elite, increasing the chance that lobbies favoring you (or lobbies that oppose your enemies) will emerge there. If a suitable lobby already exists, the financial support you provide will increase its power and improve the Leverage you gain there.
  • Subjugated countries can also be home to two other types of Lobbies - those for or against the country's Overlord, supporting integration or independence respectively. Nurturing or suppressing these Lobbies can provide the necessary political impact you need to nudge Liberty Desire in the direction you want and inform one of four new AI Strategies for subject countries.
  • Read more about Lobbies in the dev diary found here. More on Catalysts can be found here.


Subject Interactions



  • Sphere of Influence comes with a number of brand-new ways you can interact with your Subjects, or if you are a subject, ways you can engage with your Overlord. Several new categories of Diplomatic Actions have been added which apply only to countries with special relationships: Overlord/Subject, Subject/Overlord, Power Bloc Leader/Member, and Power Bloc Member/Member.
  • For example, an Overlord can use actions on their Subject to increase or reduce the weekly payments they must submit, distribute conquered territory between their subjects, share their technological knowledge with them, permit them to control their own market, and more!
  • Similarly, Subjects can petition their Overlord to grant them relief in various ways. This often costs them Liberty Desire, a new metric in Update 1.7 that tracks how much the country's elite is in favor of independence. Like Leverage, this metric is informed by a variety of factors, such as Opinion - but also by many Pacts maintained between the countries, their Economic Dependence on the Overlord, relative Prestige, and so on. If a Subject's Liberty Desire gets very high they will start generating more Radicals, prompting them to request increased autonomy from their Overlord; if not granted, it could well result in a Diplomatic Demand for full independence instead. On the other hand, a Subject with very low Liberty Desire can be persuaded to have their autonomy reduced, potentially leading them down the road to full annexation if they aren't careful.
  • With the Sphere of Influence expansion, in addition to the many new Diplomatic Actions, it is also possible to support a Subject's independence, causing their Liberty Desire to increase and automatically including you as a supporter in any Diplomatic Play for Independence they launch. Subjects may even support each other, and will rebel as a group if a war for independence is imminent! On the flip side you can also Guarantee Independence for a country that is not yet subjugated, ensuring none of your rival Great Powers can make such a demand unquestioned!
  • To read more about Subject Interactions and Liberty Desire, go here.


The Great Game



  • Throughout the nineteenth century, Russia and Britain competed with one another for influence in Asia. This period of rivalry was known colloquially as the Great Game, beginning in the Caucasus and Central Asia, and expanding over time to include struggles for influence in areas as far away as Korea and China. In Sphere of Influence you can play out this crucial "cold war" between these two dominant but very different Great Powers from several perspectives: Russia, Britain, Persia, or one of three countries - Kabul, Herat, and Kandahar - that will form the country of Afghanistan during the era.
  • The Great Game can be experienced by playing one of the six countries in question in any regular game, or through the new Great Game objective which provides a quickstart into all the new features of Sphere of Influence. You will naturally also experience the conflict from the sidelines while playing as any country in the world, and can get involved to help or hinder any of its participants. Many regions adjacent to the Great Game also have their own unique narrative content relating to it, such as the Caucasian War, the Donghak Rebellion in Joseon/Korea, and the expedition to Tibet.
  • The Great Game is designed to make full use of all new features in Sphere of Influence, and you can be sure that your skills in maintaining your Power Bloc, expanding your Leverage, supporting your foreign Lobbies, expanding your economic reach through Foreign Investments, and interacting with your Subjects will be tested in the process!
  • To increase the historical accuracy of the Great Game, the map of Central Asia has been greatly improved, with several new countries and cultures added as well as regional Interest Groups, twelve new Companies, and more.
  • To read much more about the experience of playing as one of the Great Powers in the conflict, see the dev diary here. Even more details on what might be in store if you play as a Central Asian nation is available here.


There are also a wealth of new art features available with the Sphere of Influence expansion:

  • 'Great Empires' papermap theme
  • New main menu
  • 2 new loading screens
  • 10 new event illustrations
  • Late-game European military uniform character outfit as well as late-game female military outfits
  • Added Necklaces, Capes, and Sashes for different Power Bloc identities, to be worn by Heads-of-States in those Power Blocs
  • Persian military outfits, Landowner clothes, and royal character outfit and jewelry
  • Cossack and Cuirass character outfit
  • Greatcoat character outfit for some characters to wear during winter
  • Zulu character outfits
  • Cigars and Smoking Pipes
  • Distinct appearances for many British historical figures, such as Joseph Chamberlain, John Maynard Keynes, Provo Wallis, David Lloyd George, Douglas Haig, Arthur Balfour, Friedrich Engels, Lord Palmerston, and Rotha Lintorn-Orman
  • Distinct appearance and new character assets for Empress Myeongseong, Klemens von Metternich, George Curzon, Reza Shah Pahlavi, Naser al-Din Shah Qajar, Amir Kabir, Sattar Khan, and Abdul Hamid II
  • Distinct appearances for certain Interest Group leaders
  • Updated appearance for Tsar Alexander III
  • Sphere of Influence Coin 3D asset for papermap object
  • Cutty Sark Trading Ship 3D vehicle for Trade Leagues
  • Royal Carriage 3D vehicle for Sovereign Empires
  • Hot Air Balloon 3D frontline asset for Military Treaties
  • Rolls Royce Silver Ghost 3D vehicle for Ideological Unions
  • Ornate Carriage 3D vehicle for Religious Convocations
  • Voice of the People, with Sphere of Influence: Added a late game uniform for France
  • Voice of the People, etc.: Updated the Divided Monarchist journal entry and several other complex journal entries to use the new progressbar system
  • Colossus of the South: Implemented an additional South American clothing set


To read (and view!) even more about the Art of Sphere of Influence, go here.

Achievements


To accompany all the new features and content added in Sphere of Influence, we have added fifteen new achievements to the game:

  • Durran Durran: As Herat, form Afghanistan, own all the historical states of the old Durrani Empire, and do not be a member of any power bloc led by any other country.
  • Hyperpeace: As any country, have both Finland and Korea in your power bloc.
  • Bootlicker: As a subject, have the pro-overlord lobby at max appeasement.
  • I'm the Captain Now: Look at me. As a member of a power bloc, win the struggle for power bloc leadership.
  • The New Order: Have a fully decked out power bloc.
  • Great Game no re: Complete the Great Game Objective.
  • Honor and Life: As Circassia, complete the Honor Before Life journal entry.
  • Iranzamin: As Persia, complete the Eastern Frontier Journal Entry, and have a literacy rating of 80%
  • For Twelve Years You Have Been Asking: Privatize all buildings and prevent them from being state or worker-owned for 12 whole years.
  • Can't Touch This: As a country with at least 10% of your GDP owned by a foreign power, nationalize all buildings and prevent them from being privatized for 12 whole years.
  • Standard Oil: Own at least 30 levels of oil rigs in foreign countries.
  • Diplomatic Victory: As a Great Power, have a pro-country lobby for your country in every other Great Power.
  • Hermit Kingdom: As Korea, act on the Donghak movement's petitions.
  • Cult of Reason: Pass the State Atheism Law and be the leader of an ideological power bloc with at least 10 members.
  • Declaration of Independence: Starting as a subject nation, break free from your overlord.


Of course, no set of achievements is complete without a series of wonderful, and in some cases disturbing, icons to go along with them.

















Changelog


The following changes have been made to the game compared to 1.6.2:


Improvements



  • Removed the Directly Controlled Investment Game Rule from the game, as it is incompatible with the new Building Ownership Rework/Foreign Investment mechanics
  • Added fifteen new events that fire as a result of having an active, non-revolutionary political movement
  • Added a universal Journal Entry for unrecognized countries permitting them to peacefully achieve recognition over time, and a diplomatic action to speed it up
  • Removed the Force Recognition wargoal and diplomatic play, as it has been replaced by the new Journal Entry
  • Added an Afghan Reunification journal entry for Afghan contenders
  • Added scripted Journal Entry progress bars, allowing Journal Entries to track more than one progression value and display them on separate progress bars that can be visualized in a number of different ways
  • Overlord can now join a revolutionary country against their subject
  • Reworked the map of Persia, Central Asia, and Afghanistan, with new state regions, countries, and cultures
  • Truces can now be unidirectional (preventing a country from attacking another without restricting the target country in a similar way) as well as bidirectional
  • Investors now have a chance of finding resources in countries they invest into, even if that country doesn't have technology to do so on their own
  • Removed Ownership PMs from most buildings, since the new ownership model introduced in 1.7 is used where applicable instead
  • A huge number of Diplomatic Catalysts have been added to facilitate Lobby creation, AI Strategies and "memory", cooldowns, and other functions
  • Added Grant and Take State Overlord Actions
  • China, Korea, and Vietnam now all start as Confucian nations. Starting laws and pops have been updated to reflect this.
  • Serfdom law now blocks both Internal and Mass Migration for Peasants
  • Land Reform law now blocks Internal Migration for Peasants (but does not impact Mass Migration)
  • Reworked Russian state regions and populations
  • China, Korea, and Vietnam now all start as Confucian nations. Starting laws and pops have been updated to reflect this.
  • Declining a call to arms will now break off any alliance, defensive pact or guarantee you have against the country calling you in
  • Society techs now give more maneuvers for plays with each era
  • It is now possible for countries that join a play due to a call to arms to add a war goal themselves, so long as that war goal would cost 25 maneuvers or less to add under normal circumstances (does not actually cost maneuvers for the primary participant)
  • Added decaying modifiers that massively nationalization cost & radicals generation from nationalization in newly conquered/liberated states. Recently conquered states also suffer decaying penalties to tax collection, pop political strength and conscription rate.
  • Added new diplomatic action Guarantee Independence which functions like a one-sided defensive pact that doesn't require approval
  • It is now only possible to impose laws on Puppet, Dominion, Vassal, and Personal Union subjects (Protectorates and Tributaries are too independent) unless you're in a Power Bloc that permits it
  • The 'Cut Down to Size' wargoal now also removes all wargoals held by the target in other diplomatic plays/wars (but keeps any wargoals targeting them in those plays/wars)
  • Demands for imposing a Law on another country are now handled with events and a journal entry, similar to Interest Group Petitions. Notifications are triggered when the other country takes action.
  • It is now possible to make Diplomatic Demands even though you're already in a Diplomatic Play (or at war), as long as it's not against a country you're already targeting or a country on the same side as you in another Play / war. You also cannot make additional Diplomatic Demands while already dealing with a Diplomatic Play you initiated until that Play has escalated into war.
  • Added Karelian, Mari, Buryat, Bashkir, Chechen, Mordvin, Chuvash, and Udmurt cultures
  • Added numerous new releasables to Russia
  • Added 6 new companies
  • Commercialized agriculture law now makes Financial Districts more likely to invest in agriculture, ranching and plantations
  • The Homesteading law now makes agriculture buildings convert themselves to 50% self-ownership over time
  • Expanded the Monuments Effect game rule to include Power Bloc Statues
  • Buildings with several unstaffed levels and that are at least 50% privately owned will now autonomously reduce their privately owned levels if they fail to hire for an extended period of time
  • Economy of Scale now scales against the
  • employed
  • levels of a building, so empty building levels no longer grant throughput bonuses. Additionally, Economy of Scale now starts granting bonuses immediately at level 1, so a half-employed level 1 building will get +0.5% throughput, for example.
  • Added a Seminole Wars Journal Entry to USA, present at game start
  • Added a 'Give State' diplomatic action
  • Added diplomatic actions for increasing and decreasing autonomy in subjects
  • You can now impose a Law on another country even if they are currently trying to enact something else (they have an option to cancel the current law or defer enacting it until later) or do not have any support for this law (you will now see their chances before issuing the demand)
  • Changed the time to respond on Diplomatic Proposals from 14 days to 30 days, the AI will still respond in the same amount of time
  • A country can now only ever have one diplomatic proposal pending towards a given country
  • Changed the required tech unlock for Steam Powered Fishing and Whaling Production Methods to Gantry Cranes instead of Ironclads, allowing a smoother distinction between civil and military usage of steam powered ships (thanks to "WOWZA 'Mr. Rework' Scrooge" for the suggestion!)
  • Increase Autonomy and Independence Diplomatic Plays now have Liberty Desire requirements
  • Added an event referring to the Australian Emu War
  • Added new Russian Republic and Russian Soviet Republic names to Russia
  • Reworked the way we display pact influence costs to be more consistent and to always have breakdown tooltips
  • Implemented more characters for Central Asia, East Asia, Britain, and Africa
  • Added the Yat'siminoli, Salish, and Pannakwati to North America
  • Added the Wati and Mirning peoples to Australia
  • There is now a 1 year cooldown between attempts to impose a Law on another country if they outright reject your demand. Otherwise you will have to wait until they enact (or reject) the law you previously imposed on them.
  • Servicemen now gain Officer qualifications faster while deployed in active wars
  • Added additional state traits to Russia
  • Added historical interest group leaders to Australian colonies
  • Added starting pro- and anti-country lobbies to various nations in 1836
  • Added silk as a potential resource in Lebanon, and a starting silk plantation to model the historical Lebanese silk industry
  • Added the Mount Lebanon state trait to Lebanon, increasing the state's silk throughput
  • Forming the Free States of America now requires you to have abolished slavery
  • Made the South Bessarabian retrocession borders more historically accurate.
  • Updated migration concepts for clarity
  • Henry Temple is now referred to as Henry Palmerston
  • Added a historical ruler for Indian Territory at game start
  • Adjusted Tasmanian population to reflect the historical situation
  • The Baltic strategic region has been renamed to Scandinavia, due to Finland becoming its own region



AI



  • Major work done on the economic AI, both to allow it to use the new features in 1.7/Sphere of Influence and improve its overall ability to grow its economy
  • The AI now always has a concrete reason for changing its Strategic Desire (and Attitude) towards another country, based on the new system of Diplomatic Catalysts. For example, increasing relations with a country may result in the adoption of a more friendly attitude, while breaking a pact or triggering a diplomatic incident can result in the reverse. This is now shown to the player in a notification when a country changes their attitude, and you can tooltip the attitude of an AI country to see what caused them to adopt that attitude.
  • The AI is now much less willing to accept reverse-sways if it has an overwhelming advantage in a play, even if there are undecided participants who can potentially be a challenge for them
  • The AI is now much less willing to accept reverse-sways that involve giving something up (subjects, states etc) if they don't stand to lose much from the enemy wargoals
  • Most Diplomatic Demands now have an upper bound on AI acceptance, ensuring a small-to-moderate chance you won't get your way
  • The AI is now willing to take on more infamy later in the game
  • The AI is now generally more keen to add war goals rather than wasting maneuvers, so long as they don't take on excessive amounts of infamy
  • AI subject countries will now have a chance of accepting a Diplomatic Demand for full annexation when their Liberty Desire level is at Loyal
  • USA will now want to take Colorado from Mexico
  • Acceptance scores for Annexation and Loyal Subject have both been decreased in impact
  • Call Ally now grants a +25 AI acceptance bonus when used as a sway
  • Subjects now have access to four new AI strategies to placate or break free from their overlord
  • Overlords now consider Obligations owed to them by Subjects more important for purpose of AI diplomatic acceptance score calculations
  • Fixed an issue that would make the US not care about Kansas when manifesting their destiny


Continued in Part 2!

Dev Diary #121 - Maps Maps Maps



Greetings fellow map-starers! I am Lufthansi, one of the narrative designers on Victoria 3, and I’m here to talk about the upcoming map and pop setup changes for Sphere of Influence. Since there’s quite a few of them, let’s just jump straight into it.

Persia and Central Asia


The lands of Iran and Turan have gotten a much needed facelift for the upcoming expansion.
Say goodbye to the conspicuously modern-looking looking Afghanistan (bar Wakhan dongle) of 1.6, and say hello to your new best friends in the region: the emirates of Kabul, Kandahar, and Herat. These three Pashtun realms will be the main contenders for the struggle to unify Afghanistan under one banner, though the Uzbek khanates of Maimana and Kunduz might give them a run for their money.



To their immediate south, the Khanate of Kalat’s influence in the region has grown considerably, with an enlarged Makran now starting as a Kalati vassal, standing in for the plethora of local Baluchi tribes that owed the Kalati Khans their allegiance.
Further east, the Sikh Empire’s borders have been redrawn to better reflect the situation in 1836 and the Nawabate of Bahawalpur has been established on the left bank of the Sutlej river. In the Eastern Hindu Kush, Chitral emerges as a new power, representing both itself and dozens of smaller statelets and tribes such as Hunza and the yet-Islamised ‘Kafiristan’.

In Central Asia proper, borders have been polished and shifted around slightly, with the most notable addition being the establishment of a decentralised Turkmen area, representing various Turkmen tribes outside Khivan control, chief among them the Tekke.

Persia has seen its starting territories further reduced, losing control of more of its coastline to Arab and Baluchi rulers and having to contend with a new vassal: the influential Sheikhdom of Muhammara, conveniently parked right on top of the country’s major oil reserves. (Surely nothing bad will ever come of this). Oh, and Persia is now blue (dabadee dabadi).



In terms of state regions, there’s quite a few new ones, and we have tried our very best to toe the line between what is historically appropriate and what is recognizable to the modern eye. The state regions represent a mixture of historical provinces, borders, and cultural areas, so while the initial setup might look alien to some, to all you Durand line fans out there, I say: ‘fear not, there is still a way’.



The old pop setup of Persia and Central Asia included many oddities, like the vast majority of Persian Jews and Armenians being slaves for some reason. This has now been rectified, and pop numbers and cultures for the entire region has been reworked, working off a motley collection of primary and secondary sources of varying trustworthiness as well as a good pinch of creative licence. You will also find three new cultures added to the region: Luri, Mazanderani, and Chitrali, each with their own accompanying country/releasable.

The Russian Empire


Another big change this patch will come in the form of a map rework to the Russian Empire and its surroundings. A whole lot of new states have been added to the game, and even more remoulded to better reflect the international, cultural, and administrative divisions of the time.



Accompanying this state rework is another pop setup change. Primarily based on downscaled and modified data from the 1897 census, it adds a number of new cultures to the game, such as the Mordvins, Bashkirs, Chuvash, Udmurts, and the Buryat.





The Baltic Governorates under General-Governor Carl Magnus von der Pahlen will also make their debut in this patch. Starting as a German-cultured puppet under the Russian Empire, it is there to reflect the unique cultural and political situation of the three governorates of Estonia, Livonia, and Courland.





Of course, no map rework is complete without a slew of new releasables to populate it. I’m not going to list them all here, so feel free to look around and identify your own favourites!

East Asia


Sphere of Influence will also see the arrival of a much requested religion, namely Confucianism. Confucianism will start out as the state religion of China, Korea, and Vietnam, though they all retain large Buddhist minorities. (In Vietnam’s case with the Buddhists making up the majority of the population.) Due to a change in the countries’ law setup, China and Vietnam will both start out by tolerating their Buddhist subjects, whereas the Buddhist practitioners in Korea will be persecuted by the state, representing Korea’s historical anti-Buddhist movement.



America and Australia


To all those still grieving the loss of Noongar some patches back, I bring good tidings: Noongar is back, and it brought some friends! Wati and Miring together help reduce Anglo control over the Outback, better reflecting the limited control settlers then enjoyed over the country’s interior.



North America is also getting a bit busier, with the addition of the Seminoles of Florida (at long last), the Salish and Bannocks of the Western Plains, and the Athabaska of Alaska.



The addition of the Seminole is also accompanied by a new starting Journal Entry for the United States, ‘The Seminole Wars’, detailing the grim conquest and eventual displacement of the Seminole peoples of Florida by the United States.



Miscellaneous Changes


Some other changes include the beautification of the Southern Bessarabian strip ceded as part of Romania’s ‘All for One’ Journal Entry, and the addition of more straits around the Tierra del Fuego to sort out some colonisation wonkiness, which would cause some individual island provinces to not be colonised by either Argentina or Chile.





Well, that’s all for now! I hope you are all as excited for Sphere of Influence as we are! See you all in the next developer diary where WHO WILL DO WHAT?

Editor's Note: We left this because it's funny. But next week the ‘WHAT’ our diary will be is the Changelog for 1.7 and Sphere of Influence, and the ‘WHO’ is writing it is Mikael! With that, have a Happy Thursday all!

Dev Diary #120 - Modding Features in 1.7



Hello. This is Victoria, and today I will be covering the new script features coming in 1.7.

Our scripting language is the basis of all of the ingame content in Victoria 3. This means that every script functionality that we use in making game content is also usable by modders. As well as triggers and effects which interface with new features such as power blocs and building ownership, 1.7 and Sphere of Influence add several novel functionalities for modders. These include our new scripted progress bar system for journal entries.

Scripted Progress Bars



In 1.7, journal entries will have a new way to display data: scripted progress bars. Multiple progress bars can be added per journal entry, and progress bars can be shared between journal entries. Scripted progress bars can also be configured to automatically increment on weekly, monthly, and yearly ticks.



Previously, all journal entries with progress bars have worked off of a “goal” system, where the journal entry is tied to a variable, and incrementing this variable causes the journal entry to progress.

Pictured: When this journal entry is initialised, it gets the current amount of coffee buy orders in one’s market, and multiplies it by 2.5. That multiplied value is the “goal”, and the current value is always equivalent to the current amount of coffee buy orders in the market.


This previous system remains available, and all journal entries utilising it will stay functional. However, the scripted progress bar system permits for new and interesting use cases, such as better support for incrementing progress based on various conditions.

Each scripted progress bar has certain conditions which can change its progress on a weekly, monthly, or yearly basis, and can be changed by means of scripted effect, using the new “add_progress” and “set_bar_progress” effects.



Pictured: The add_progress effect. This is used in a journal entry scope.


Scripted progress bars also have loc support, allowing for printing whatever text one wants on them.

Pictured: Think of these thoughts as limitless light; exposing closing circuitry of fright;


Scripted progress bars are defined in the common/scripted_progress_bars folder, in files therein. Looking inside one of these files, one can see the structure of each progress bar in script.



Going line by line, the first thing one sees is the ID of the progress bar. This is used in the journal entry that the progress bar is connected to. Note that progress bars can be connected to multiple journal entries at once.





Next is the localisation for the progress bar. The desc is the text displayed on the bar itself, and the name is displayed in the tooltip when one mouses over the bar.



Next is the skin the progressbar uses.



This is the communism progress bar, and so it uses the colour red. This is what it looks like ingame.



A complete list of available progress bar skins follows:

  • double_sided_gold
  • default_green
  • default_bad
  • default
  • double_sided_bad


The double-sided progress bars have two text fields, allowing those who use them to put text on both the left and right of the progress bar.

Pictured: The double_sided_bad progress bar skin, which uses the journal entry icon as the mid-point between its two sides. Switching the text was not WAD, but is WAD now.


Going back to the internals of the progress bar script, one now sees the conditions scripted in the progress bar. These are what makes it trend in one direction or the other over the course of various increments.

Pictured: If one’s country has any incorporated state with over 10% of the population as radicals, every incorporated state in the country with over 10% radicals will contribute their radical count to the progress of the journal entry.


For the purpose of this example, all that matters is the amount of radicals in one’s country. In practice, a progress bar can have however many factors behind it as one wants, and all of them will be printed in a nice and orderly list.



Lastly, there is the start_value, the min_value, and the max_value. These values define the bounds of the progress bar - its minimum bound, its maximum bound, and what value it will start with when the journal entry is initialised.



The value of a progress bar can be retrieved, compared, and used in variable math with the scripted_bar_progress trigger in a journal entry scope.





Miscellaneous Script Features


Diplomatic Pact Modifiers



Diplomatic pacts can now apply modifiers to both involved parties. These are controlled by the first_modifier and second_modifier fields in the diplomatic pact’s script–the first_modifier applies to the initiator, and the second_modifier applies to the other country.

For example, the Support Regime subject interaction gives the subject in question lowered radicalism, and less liberty desire, at the cost of some legitimacy for yourself.



Here is how this script looks ingame.

Pictured: I love the Regime.


Diplomatic Interaction Types



Diplomatic interactions now have types.



The type of a diplomatic action determines from where it can be accessed. Current diplomatic action types are as follows:

  • general
  • subject
  • overlord
  • power_bloc_leader
  • power_bloc_member


General diplomatic actions are available for any country, mostly encompassing actions like defence pacts, alliances, and other currently existing actions. Subject interactions are available for subjects of countries petitioning their overlord for something, overlord interactions are available for overlords demanding things of subjects, and power bloc leader/member interactions are much the same, albeit with power blocs rather than subject relationships.

All of these diplomatic action types are scriptable, and can make use of the new diplomatic action modifier system to have a wide variety of different effects.

New Script Support



In addition to a selection of triggers, modifiers, and effects related to new features, several new and useful triggers for pre-existing game content have been added in 1.7. These include:

Triggers:

  • country_innovation - compares against the total innovation produced by a country
  • gdp_per_capita_ranking - compares against a list of all countries’ GDP/c stats. Note that in this case, lower is better, as the top GDP/c ranking is 1.
  • sol_ranking - compares against a list of all countries’ Standard of Living stats.
  • income_transfer - compares against the income transferred by a diplomatic pact.
  • potential_diplomatic_play_power_ratio - compares against the expected power ratio in a diplomatic play between two countries.
  • can_add_wargoal_against - evaluates true if a country can add a wargoal against a specified country.
  • can_break_diplomatic_pact - evaluates true if a country can break a specified diplomatic pact with a specified country.
  • can_create_diplomatic_pact - evaluates true if a country can create a specified diplomatic pact with a specified country.
  • would_accept_diplomatic_action - evaluates true if a specified country would accept a request for a specified diplomatic pact.
  • progressiveness - compares against the progressiveness of a given law type.
  • law_progressiveness_difference - compares the progressiveness of two law types.
  • journal_entry_age - compares against the time since a journal entry was activated, in days.
  • enactment_chance_for_law - compares against the enactment chance for a law type, if it were to begin enactment immediately.
  • can_trigger_event - takes an event ID, returns true if the event is currently fulfilling its trigger conditions.
  • economic_dependence - compares against one country’s economic dependence on the another country.
  • gdp_ownership_ratio - compares against the percentage of one country’s economy that is owned by another country.


Modifiers:

  • allow_trade_routes_without_interest_bool - Boolean modifier that, when set to true, enables a country to establish trade routes with countries that it does not have an interest in.
  • state_migration_quota_mult - increases or decreases the amount of people migrating to a given state.
  • country_overlord_income_transfer_mult - increases or decreases the amount of money that a subject pays to its overlord.
  • country_convoy_contribution_to_market_owner_add - increases or decreases the amount of convoys that a country contributes to its market.
  • country_cannot_cancel_law_enactment_bool - Boolean modifier that, when set to true, forbids a country from manually cancelling a law enactment.
  • country_port_connection_cost_mult - increases or decreases the convoy cost of port connections.
  • tariff_[import/export]_outside_power_bloc_mult - increases or decreases tariffs for non-power-bloc members’ goods.


Effects:

  • regime_change - immediately forces a Regime Change wargoal against the specified country, using the current country scope as a template.


To acquire a full list of triggers, effects, modifiers, and scopes, use the script_docs command in the console. This will export files full of useful documentation to your Documents/Paradox Interactive/Victoria 3/docs folder, or the equivalent on your computer.

I will now hand things over to Mikael to cover the modifier rework and new scripted widget system.

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Modifier Rework



In 1.7, the modifier_types database has been replaced with the new modifier_type_definitions database, and the modifiers database renamed to static_modifiers. Loc strings for modifier types will no longer have “modifier_” appended to their beginnings.

Modifiers have been a mainstay in Paradox grand strategy games for several generations and are an integral component of the Clausewitz game engine, but their implementation details and usage patterns sometimes differ from game to game. In Victoria 3, modifiers are used to run the entire socioeconomic simulation, and define everything from the throughput of buildings and how many units of coal are being produced, to how much Political Strength an aristocrat can wield and how quickly a starving farmer radicalises. They propagate from modifier sources, such as technologies or commander orders, through a tree of game objects (for example technology -> country -> state -> building, or commander order -> unit -> battle). When a modifier reaches its final destination, it still needs to be aware of its origin so we can explain in a tooltip that the reason your soldiers are currently fighting at 125% their base strength is because of a certain mix of commander orders & traits, the technologies you've researched, and the mobilisation options you've permitted. This system of tracking, propagating, and aggregating variables is very flexible both for programmers and designers, and has the very nice side effect of also being highly useful to modders.

However, it is also very performance intensive; due to the web of interdependencies in the game object tree it needs to keep track of the validity of each modifier node and send a signal up the tree to refresh everything when it's no longer valid. For example, whenever you change a Production Method in a building, the entire economic state of your market needs to be refreshed, which could also have an effect on other objects interfacing with the economy (which, this being Victoria, is most objects in the game).

The number of modifier nodes and invalidation events of those nodes has the biggest impact on the aggregate performance of the game, competing with number of pops for the prestigious #1 spot of "worst performance factor". Due to the increased demand on the simulation coming with 1.7/Sphere of Influence, we have had to do a major overhaul to the modifier system in the Clausewitz engine, specifically to improve performance by avoiding unnecessary work in modifier node recalculations.

This rewrite comes at a cost. Whereas previously, new modifier types defined in the modifier_types database would propagate down the tree in accordance with the first part of the modifier type name (for example, country_ targets countries and will not propagate further; building_, when applied to f.ex. a technology, will propagate to the country, then its states, then all buildings in those states), new modifier types defined by modders in script (in the modifier_type_definitions database) will no longer have a designated target and will propagate everywhere. If you specify a new modifier type country_phlogiston_generation_add and apply it to a technology, it will not stop at countries that have that technology but will merrily copy itself down the whole tree, to states, buildings, interest groups, characters, etc - all game objects that could inherit modifiers from countries. While with some careful planning this might still permit your mod to work, it can cause both performance problems and confusing UX bugs, and in the worst scenario cause modifier duplication.

We're currently working on a solution to this issue that will allow you to optionally turn on custom modifier type registration in your mod. This will allow custom modifier types to propagate according to the earlier rules. We hope it will be ready for release, if not it should appear in a hotfix afterwards. Watch the patch notes for news on this, and until then try not to include new modifier types in your modding endeavours.

Scripted Widgets



Finally, some of you will be pleased to know that we have ported over the scripted_widgets system introduced in Crusader Kings III to Victoria 3, allowing you to more easily add new UI elements to your mod without causing conflicts with other UI mods touching the same files. In addition, the AI will now evaluate whether it should be taking actions defined in the scripted_gui database dependent on its ai_is_valid trigger, the ai_frequency noted (in months), and the ai_chance (number between 1-100) defined for the scripted gui. We hope these features will allow your mods to interface even deeper with the rest of the game mechanics!

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And that is all. Thank you for reading. Next week, Hansi will cover the new map and culture changes coming in 1.7.

Dev Diary #119 - Smörgåsbord of Changes in 1.7



Hello fellow Victorians, and happy Thursday!
Alex here and it’s my turn to bring you another exciting update on what’s coming with 1.7. This time I’ve been tasked with showing you a selection of certified Cool™ things we’re doing that didn’t really fit in other Dev Diaries. This will be a lot like the proverbial box of chocolates, you never know what you are going to get next!

Religion and Culture map modes


In case you missed it, a few Dev Diaries ago we mentioned in passing that we now have a new highly requested map mode that shows you what religion the Pops in different states follow. This new mapmode functions similarly to the Culture map mode you are already familiar with.

Additionally, while implementing the religion map mode we also took the opportunity to upgrade both of these map modes so they now show if there are significant cultural or religious minorities in those states. The way it works is that, apart from the largest culture or religion, if a second culture’s or religion’s relative population is above a certain threshold, we blend the colors weighted by that relative population. Up to three cultures or religions can be represented this way, each with separate thresholds for each of the map modes. These thresholds are completely moddable and if you just prefer the old look, you can easily revert back to it.

Being able to see the clear divide between Protestants and Catholics in Europe really hits different!


The new upgraded cultural map mode does a much better job at showcasing all the different cultures in Brazil. I like how you can see the lavender haze shifting in tones between the different Northeastern states as the game progresses.


National Migration


For a long time you have all been talking about how it’s awkward 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!

Migration laws will no longer prevent pops moving between states in your country. Instead, your migration laws will only prevent pops from moving out of or into your country, be it through mass migrations or through regular market migration from other countries within your market or power bloc.

These are the 22 laws Japan starts with. Closed Borders and Isolationism in particular make Japan a fairly unique starting country in how isolated they are. Previously this meant no inter-state migration could happen, which severely limited your growth opportunities.


Starting with 1.7 that won’t be a problem anymore as countries with Closed Borders will allow their own pops to migrate between their states, while still being closed to the outside.


Support and Guarantee Independence pacts


As part of our changes to subject mechanics we’ve also introduced two new diplomatic pacts:

  • Support Independence
  • Guarantee Independence


As you might imagine, they allow you to signal to a country that you will side with them in a potential war for their independence. Guarantee Independence works essentially as a one-sided defensive pact letting you support a country if they were to be attacked, while Support Independence is for countries that are not currently independent. One particularly cool aspect of this is that subjects can now support the independence of other subjects of the same overlord, potentially leading to a big war for joint independence.

An Indian-Canadian alliance might be somewhat unexpected, but I can appreciate the enthusiasm to stop being under British rule. So long, London!


Must feel reassuring for Belgium to be Guaranteed by Britain, France and Prussia. You have to wonder what it will mean for the development of Europe. I’m sure it will last.


Multiple Active Wars


Another highly requested feature! For a long time you’ve been asking for this and now we were finally able to do it. In the current version of the game you can’t initiate a war if you already have another war in progress. Starting in 1.7, you will be able to initiate as many simultaneous wars as you want. You still need to wait for each diplomatic play to progress to war before starting another one, but other than that if you wish to wage war against the whole world, you’re free to do so.

Pictured: France thinking they can take on Spain while already fighting Prussia (notice the widget at the top). What year do they think it is? 1808? Maybe it’s time for another coalition. Paris is lovely this time of year.


Calling an Ally now gives them a war goal of their choosing


In 1.7 calling an ally will now let that ally pick a war goal of their own. This is done through the regular Add War Goal interface and adds it as a secondary demand. This war goal is subject to a maneuvers limit, but doesn’t cost maneuvers for the war leader.

Of course, now they want help. Maybe don’t start wars you can’t win. I guess we can help for the right price, but this is the last time.


Overlords can now side against their subjects during revolutions


Tired of having to support your subject in a revolution when they get into their Communist phase despite you being a staunch defender of the sanctity of the free market? In 1.7 you’ll be able to support the revolutionary side instead. If you do, when the war breaks out it will make the revolutionary country your subject instead and you can then fight the war and go on as usual.

Come on, Norway. You knew all too well this was going to happen when you tried to pass State Atheism. I’m done.


See? Look what you made me do. Now I have to fight Prussia while siding with the Devout!


Unidirectional Truces


Another requested feature that is coming with 1.7 is the support for unidirectional truces that only prevents one side from starting fights with the other. Unidirectional truces will, at least for now, only be applied after breaking a Guarantee Independence pact and after changing the autonomy of subjects, but let us know if you have any suggestions for other cool places we could use them in.

Well, that didn’t last long. Good thing Europe is at peace and wars are a thing of the past… Right?


Subjects can turn against overlord at high enough liberty desire


With the coming update, at high enough liberty desire levels, a subject might offer to support your enemies in exchange for their support in getting independence from you or simply raising your subject’s autonomy.

Make sure to keep your subjects happy. The treacherous ones might decide to backstab you.


Auto-downsizing for Privately owned buildings


Privately-owned Buildings that are not able to fill all their vacancies will in 1.7 start downsizing on their own under certain conditions. If it becomes relevant, the building will issue a warning that it intends to downsize in 12 months, unless conditions get better. If it starts downsizing it will remove levels one at a time until the number of employees better matches its output and profit potentials.

Finally something is being done about all those abandoned buildings all over the place. Maybe we can clean it up and repurpose old industrial areas into parks or something.


New Character Outfits


We have also added a few more character clothing options. In particular I really like these late game military British and French outfits!

This guy is exactly how I imagine an innocent British lord in the 1800s going on their first field trip to the colonies would look like. “Blimey lads, they have us surrounded!”


This one on the other hand looks like he has some serious bad blood with someone (probably the Prussians)


Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition! (also look at this guy’s style! I want a hat like that)


New Companies


We have a number of new companies coming for Sphere of Influence owners! Here’s some of my favorite ones:







In addition to these, the following companies will also be introduced with Sphere of Influence:

  • Perskhlopok
  • Persshelk
  • Šerkat-e Eslāmiya
  • West Ural Petroleum Company, Limited
  • Kirgizian Mining [Joint Stock] Company
  • Moscow Irrigation Company
  • Tashkent Railroad
  • MM. Nicolas Portalis et Cie.
  • Anglo-Persian Oil Company


The following companies will be available for all players as part of the 1.7 free update:

  • Iranian State Railway
  • Šerkat-e Etteḥādīya-ye Welāyat-e Šemālī
  • Bongāh-e Enḥeṣār-e Ṣāderāt-e Taryāk
  • Arthur Guinness Son & Co. Ltd
  • Oriental Development Company
  • Turkish Petroleum Company


That’s all for now! Hope you enjoyed this smörgåsbord of assorted changes coming soon. Next week Vicka will be telling you more about modding in 1.7!

Dev Diary #118 - Power Blocs Round Two



Hello and happy Thursday!
It’s Lino, back from the depths of development, to talk about more details on Power Blocs, one of the central new systems coming to you with Sphere of Influence on June 24.
If you don’t know anything about Power Blocs yet, I recommend you to give my first Dev Diary on them a good look because we will be referencing a lot of the terminology today.

Small disclaimer for today’s Dev Diary:
You will see a lot of WIP values, for modifiers and bonuses, for special powers and so on. Take them all with a grain of salt please, as we’re in the process of touching a number of these right now. If you have feedback on them, we’re happy to read it though! We have plans to adjust some values before release.


Identities


On release, there will be five different Central Identity Pillars to choose from for your Power Bloc. One of which is available to everybody, even if you did not purchase the DLC.

The Identities differentiate themselves from another by a couple of things:

  • All five Identities have a unique power that the leader has access to which is central to how the Identity plays out
  • They have one or more unique effects for the leader or members
  • The Primary Principle Groups which each Bloc needs at least one Principle from are different
  • Some Principle Groups are unlocked only by a specific Identity
  • How a Power Bloc’s Cohesion value is calculated depends on its Identity


Even if you do not own Sphere of Influence, you can play as the countries that have a historic Power Bloc at game start, even if they are not a Trade League (Great Britain, Russia, Ottoman Empire, Austria). You can keep the Principles their Power Blocs start with, that you would not usually have access to, but you will not be able to expand on them or replace them with other principles you could not usually pick.

The five Identities are:

  • Trade League (free with 1.7)
  • Sovereign Empire
  • Military Treaty
  • Ideological Union
  • Religious Convocation


So let’s look at some Identity details, shall we?

Trade League


The first big thing we can see for the Trade League Identity is their unique attribute which automatically makes every Power Bloc member part of a Customs Union under the Power Bloc Leader.
This lets you recreate the Customs Union pact functionality which will be removed with the 1.7 update.
Don’t worry, for all other Identities there will be an alternative path which we’ll get to.

Next up, we can see the Bloc Leader only effect for Trade Leagues. In this case, 4 Trade Routes will be free of bureaucracy cost for the leader.

Also the Internal Trade Principle Group is unlocked by this Identity and is in fact one of Trade League’s Primary Principle Groups. One of these Primary Groups is required to be picked from when you first create your own Power Bloc.

Speaking of that Principle Group, here is a closer look at Internal Trade.






As you can see, the first tier comes with a heavy hitter in the form of a bonus to Market Access Price Impact (also lovingly called MAPI) for all Bloc members.
Growing convoy contributions to the Power Bloc Leader can be seen, alongside tariff increases and other infrastructure improvements due to the harmonization of regulations within the Bloc.

The other Primary Principle Group for Trade Leagues is the External Trade Group:


Note that in some cases (a customs union in the Bloc) the bureaucracy cost is not actually going to provide any benefit. But since you can use it also outside the Trade League, it will provide a benefit for you there.





Due to unified trade policies, various improvements to Trade Routes can be found in this group. But we also see a new thing in the list, which is the unlocking of a new Production Method (PM) for Trade Centers.
When selected, that PM will replace the base PM since it is an upgraded version of it and provides you with a bonus to Influence!
Last but not least, we can see that on tier 3, members will gain the power to establish trade routes without requiring interest in the region. That should make it easier, even for small member countries, to engage in trade across the globe.

The last thing that is specific for Trade Leagues is how their Cohesion value is calculated. For this we look at the leader’s GDP share of the total Bloc GDP. The higher the leader’s share, the better for Cohesion. Then we also apply a penalty for each shortage that is happening in your market. To compensate for this, we are adding a bonus for each top producer of a good (rank #1 to #3).

Sovereign Empire


Onwards to the Sovereign Empire Identity. At game start, multiple Power Blocs will have this at their core. Namely the British, Russian and Ottoman Empire.
It allows the leader to subjugate other Power Bloc members and make them a vassal of their own!
Additionally, choosing this Identity reduces the weekly Liberty Desire progress of all subjects that the Power Bloc leader has. Note: The current effect’s description is wrong, it will be updated for release to indicate this applies to their subjects, not themself.

Next up we also have two Primary Principle Groups for the Sovereign Empire. Let’s start with a closer look at Vassalization:






We can see that it does what the name promises - various improvements to having subjects and managing them with the third tier even allowing you to enact decrees in your subjects which you use to further bolster them.

Next is a group that is exclusive to Sovereign Empire Power Blocs, Exploitation of Members:






Here we see that this group comes with some penalties for the regular members, in favor of only providing the leader with benefits.
In turn, since members will not enjoy that of course, the Power Bloc’s Cohesion takes a hit. So you will need to evaluate if the benefits outweigh the costs for you or if you are able to find other ways to cut down on Cohesion penalties.

Speaking of Cohesion, for Sovereign Empires you will have to manage your subjects and strengthen your Prestige. The highest Liberty Desire among the leader’s subjects imposes a penalty of equal value. So if the British East India Company has the highest Liberty Desire among the British subjects with a value of 40, the Cohesion penalty will also be 40 for example.
On the other hand leaders get a bonus to Cohesion based on their share of total Prestige in the Power Bloc.



The third Identity we’re looking at today is the Military Treaty (yes, it received a catchier name).

Military Treaty

Military Goods Cost is a placeholder effect which will be replaced before release

First thing we see is “Allows free War Goal”. But what does that mean? It means that the Leader of a Military Treaty Power Bloc may add a single secondary War Goal to any Diplomatic Play of members that the Leader is also involved in, even if they joined of their own volition. This war goal can “cost” up to 30 maneuvers, but it will not actually subtract any when selected.

There is also a placeholder modifier in this screenshot (which will be replaced before release!), that reduces the military goods cost for all Bloc members. In its place another effect is going to be added, with the focus remaining on the military side of things of course.
In addition there are a few more for increased Prestige from Power Projection for both, leader and member.

As for the other identities, we have two Primary Principle Groups, one of which is exclusive to Military Treaty Blocs.

The first group is Defensive Cooperation:






Like most other Principle Groups, Defensive Cooperation does what you would expect. Through mutual commitment, Power Blocs with this Principle are not able to wage war among each other. On the higher tiers, swaying countries gets easier if you’re the target of a play and on tier 3, all members are being forced to join all Diplomatic Plays if a member is being targeted.

But what would imperialism be without waging some war yourself? That’s what the other, exclusive to the Military Treaty group is for:






Ranging from lower infamy generation to forcing every member to join all Diplomatic Plays of any other member, this group is for you if you’re planning to conquer the world (or at least parts of it). Beware of the Cohesion penalty on the third tier due to members not wanting to go to war constantly.
Cohesion in Military Treaty Blocs is dependent on the leader’s share of the Bloc’s Power Projection, similar to how Prestige works for Sovereign Empires in that regard.
Reductions to Cohesion are based on the highest infamy value in the Bloc and the country with the worst relations with the leader.

Next up, we’re taking a peek at Ideological Unions:

Ideological Union


Here we see that Ideological Union leaders can Force Regime Changes in member countries. There are a few conditions like how different their laws need to be compared to the leader’s, how much Cohesion the Power Bloc has and some minor others.
When you do it, what happens is again what you would expect: You enforce a regime change on the target country, changing their laws, without having to go to war.

Good thing the Ideological Union Power Blocs have an easier access to Regime Changes. Because one of the negative Cohesion factors for these Blocs is the country with the biggest difference in Governance Principles and Distribution of Power law groups compared to the leader.
A positive factor is found in the form of the leader’s Legitimacy.

Creative Legislature and Ideological Truth are the two Primary Principle Groups for Ideological Union Power Blocs, with the latter being exclusive to them.







For Creative Legislature we see various bonuses to the enactment of laws. It allows you to have more setbacks on the third tier, essentially giving you another roll at it, in addition to the reduced stall chance, making the process proceed faster. Also, it reduces Movement spawn chances that would undo the work you are trying to do with the enactment of your desired law.

Now let’s take a look at the Principle Group exclusive to Ideological Union Blocs.






Here we can see that this group focuses on Interest Groups (IG) and your government. It not only makes unwanted Agitators’ lifes harder, lets you bolster your desired IGs and suppress your enemies at the cost of less authority, but even increases your Minimum Legitimacy by 25 on the third tier.

The fifth and last Central Identity Pillar is great for everybody who always wanted to play as a religious great power, uniting the world.

Religious Convocation


Religious homogeneity is what this Power Bloc Identity strives for. It allows leaders to impose their state religion on other members. It’s an unique Diplomatic Action which will set a member's State Religions to the leader’s. Similarly to other Power Bloc Leader actions, it requires a certain Cohesion and Prestige value and also cannot be used immediately on a new member.

The Religious Convocation Identity also boosts conversion rates in all members, which goes nicely with your power to convert Power Bloc members. For release, we’re supplementing this effect with another one, likely along the lines of reducing radicalism.

Its Primary Principle Groups both deal with the involvement of church in different aspects of life.
The first of the two is also exclusive to the religious Identity - it’s Divine Economics.







We see here that we get various effects with relation to faith and economy. Higher subject payments if they’re following a different religion, but on the flip side higher trade route competitiveness if they are following the same religion for example.
The PMs that you can unlock on tier 2 allow you to exchange some workforce in the new Manor House and Financial District buildings with Clergymen. You don’t have to make use of it of course, but you get the option to.

The other Principle Group is Sacred Civics:






This group features three unique effects. It improves upon Liberty Desire and general acceptance for diplomatic proposals if the country shares the same state religion.
On tier 3, you can see it also allows the leader to impose their own church and state laws onto Power Bloc members.

Cohesion for Religious Convocations has a few factors as well. First, it looks at the leader’s Devout IG clout to determine a bonus to Cohesion. Secondly, we add or subtract Cohesion based on the lowest share of population in a Bloc member that follows the same religion as the leader’s state religion.
So if you have a member that has 0% of their Population following the same religion as yourself as leader, you will get a penalty, but if you are actually able to have the lowest member value be 50%, you will get a bonus instead.

That was a detailed look at all the Identities. But wait, there’s more!

Principles



Apart from the Primary Principle Groups, there are a number of other groups of different flavors that you can make use of to assemble your dream Power Bloc. In total, including the 5 Identity exclusive groups, there are 20 Principle Groups with three Principles each for you to choose from.

Here are some examples:







This Principle Group is the alternative route to get to a Customs Union without having to pick the Trade League Central Identity Pillar.
It comes with a few other bonuses on the lower tiers, in particular the +5% MAPI bonus you have seen in the Trade Union exclusive group.

Another example I’d like to show because of its differently themed effects is Police Coordination.







This group provides multiple positive effects for the Police Institution in particular and upgrades its effects. The +50 Authority and reduction in Political Movement Radicalism is applied to each level of the institution. So the deeper you go into this, the more you will profit from it too.

The last group we want to show you today is dealing with Foreign Investment.







We can see three interesting effects in this group. On the first tier, you will get a higher amount of Leverage from Economic Dependence which, if you recall, is based a lot on how many investments you have in another country which makes them more dependent on you.
The second tier provides you with a reduction for Nationalization cost, which you can make use of to decrease your own dependence on other countries for example.
On the last tier, every member of the Bloc gets automatic Investment Rights in other Members of lower rank. This should allow you and other powerful countries to spread your influence inside your Bloc more easily, which in turn makes it more likely for the lower rank countries to stay inside your Bloc.

Another thing that has changed slightly since the original Power Blocs Dev Diary is the slots that are available to your Power Bloc.
If you own Sphere of Influence, by default each Power Bloc you’re leading has two slots that you can fill with Principles.
Even if you don’t own the DLC, you will still have one slot available for customization, where you can choose one of the two Primary Principle Group paths to take.
You can unlock the third and fourth slot by overtaking the other Power Blocs in the rankings for which we look at the total prestige of all members.
For the third slot you will need to be among the top 5 Power Blocs and have at least 5 members, the fourth one will be unlocked if you are among the top 3 and have at least 10 members in your Bloc.
Due to this change, we have removed the maximum number of Principle Mandates which you can spend. So in theory you can now get to 4 fully leveled tier 3 Principles, it is just going to be harder for you to do so.

Next, I’d like to provide you with a seemingly small, but significant update to how we deal with Leverage.

Leverage 2.0


Since the last Dev Diary on Power Blocs, we have made some changes to how Leverage works and also added a few more sources of Leverage. If you recall, Leverage is what you need to build up in other countries to make them join your Bloc.
Apart from the sources mentioned last time, we have now added factors for adjacency, meaning if you have a direct adjacency or a treaty port for example, you will get more Leverage in the target country. High infamy values on the other hand will reduce the gain of Leverage, so you will have to keep it in check if you want to make good use of the resources you’re investing into building up Leverage.
Various other diplomatic pacts now will also provide or reduce the Leverage you can build up in other countries.

The main change we’ve done though is how Leverage is calculated. Before it was basically a never-ending race of building up infinite amounts of Leverage. Now we have changed it so that there is instead a shared pool of 1000 Leverage which all involved parties (including the target country) need to fight over. This value of 1000 never changes, never shrinks or grows.
The best way to understand this is by looking at a screenshot of the WIP tooltips that our UX designer Aron has made:



Here we see (from the British perspective), how Leverage over Greece is currently split up and what distribution it is trending towards.
In the upper bar, we see the current Leverage situation and we can see that Greece is currently able to stand up for itself against the Blocs trying to influence it. Its value of 584 is 490 higher than the British value which therefore is currently at 94, resulting in 9.4% Leverage Share for Great Britain. The Greek value is also directly translatable into their Leverage Share of 58.4%. The target country’s Share is called Unclaimed Leverage since no Power Bloc is taking that for themselves. If no Power Bloc was active in gaining Leverage in Greece (this should barely ever be the case), their Leverage Share/Unclaimed Leverage would be 100%.

What is actually happening in that situation though is that all 4 involved Power Blocs currently have a higher Leverage Factor (which is kind of like a Leverage “income”) than Greece has resistance. They might have a bunch of diplomatic agreements with Greece or trade or have sided in Diplomatic Plays with them for example. So over time, the Greek share of the pie will decrease, while all Power Blocs in this case will make gains and expand their influence over Greece, eventually (and if nothing about this situation changes) resulting in the situation depicted in the bar on the bottom of the tooltip.
The Russian Empire will have roughly 40% of the Leverage Share then and will likely be able to invite Greece to their Bloc with a good chance of success.
You can hover over each bit of the bars of course to get more detailed information on how the depicted share is calculated.

This system change makes Leverage something worth fighting over even if you are late to the party because nobody will be able to accumulate mountains of Leverage before you try yourself to get active in the country.
It also makes it possible to not only build up more Leverage, but reduce another Bloc’s Leverage Share, by having more positive Leverage Factors going for you than they do.

Another thing that we’d like to bring to your attention is a few examples for how Leverage is tied into our narrative content, in particular the Great Game content that was presented to you in the previous Dev Diaries for the Great Game and the Graveyard of Empires.
For example, in the Afghan unification, if you appeal to Great Britain or Russia, this will create Leverage on your country for their respective Power Blocs.

Similarly, the Eastern Frontier Journal Entry buttons and also an accepted Circassia recognition will create some Leverage for the according Power Blocs in the target country.

That’s it for today. We hope you liked this expanded outlook on Power Blocs. Next week, Alex is going to talk about some general changes that we’re making with the 1.7 update. Get ready for a cute mapmode and have a lovely rest of this happy Thursday!

Dev Diary #117 - The UX of Sphere of Influence



Hi, Aron here. I’m one of the User Experience (UX) designers on Vicky 3 and I would like to give you an overview of our UX focus we have had in the Sphere of Influence expansion and the accompanying free update. I will start with the UX focus for our new features followed by the more general improvements.

Subject Improvements


In this feature we have broadened the agency you have over your Subjects as an Overlord significantly. You can read more in-depth about the feature here. Naturally, we have put the majority of the interactions under the Diplomacy panel to have a clear central place to look for them, but also to make this panel more interactable. Previously, it has been more of an informational panel than a place where you interact, but that we are here to change!



However, many of these actions are things you want to be able to do on the go which led us to work a lot with our context menus such as our right-click menus. One of the most used right-click menus in the game is the Country & State right-click menu, but it is also one of the largest. Unsurprisingly enough, it is the right-click menu we wanted to put even more things into now as we have added ways for you to interact with your Subject and your Overlord. This sparked some rethinking of how we can make the right-click menus more compact while still retaining the intuitivity.

End result,

  • The common actions such as “Go-to country”, “Pin country to Outliner”, and “Zoom-to country” have been moved to the headers with simple icon buttons, following the standard we already have set up for them in other panels.
  • Actions that go under the same category such as Diplomatic Actions, Subject Actions, Overlord Actions, and Bloc Member Actions get to live under their own drop-down menu.



Before:The current chonky Country right-click menu in 1.6.


After: Right-clicking Hannover as Great Britain now gives a heavily compacted right-click menu with your Overlord Actions and Diplomatic Actions neatly grouped under their respective drop-down menu.


Opening the Overlord Actions drop-down gives you the full list of potential actions.


Similarly, right-clicking one of your own States neatly stores all Decrees under its own drop-down menu. Also notice the smaller round buttons for go-to, zoom-to and pin/unpin next to the Country and State headers.

This might be more of a technical improvement on the development side of things, but it definitely benefits us all in the end. The Subject, Overlord, and Bloc Member Actions all fall under the same umbrella as Diplomatic Actions and it was clear early on during development of this expansion that we were in dire need to get their tooltips sorted out with a clear pattern with all of these new actions coming in. Both to make it easier to work with them and to benefit the end result for us players. We have two versions of tooltips, fancy custom tooltips (Cooltips) and regular tooltips, that might not be obvious to you as a player, but if you are implementing them, there is a very clear difference in what you can do with them. The regular tooltip gives us very little flexibility to what you can do since it is basically only a long text string that we build with line breaks while the Cooltip essentially is another UI panel where we have full flexibility to do whatever the GUI system can do (everything!). In other words, me as a UX designer can do a lot of cool changes directly in a Cooltip without much of a hassle while it is much more of a struggle editing regular tooltips, generally speaking. You would mainly see the difference in-game by looking at the tooltip headers and the structure of the tooltip. Most of the time, a Cooltip has an icon in the top left corner with a larger header and a type concept in the top right corner, while the regular tooltip has no icon and only a regular text header. If the tooltip feels a bit nicer and a bit more structured, it is most likely a Cooltip, even though we do have some nice regular tooltips out there as well of course.

We took the time to move all of the above Diplomatic Actions over to a Cooltip, meaning we (especially I) get more direct agency over these tooltips, what they contain and how they are structured. The Diplomatic Actions are still very text heavy tooltips, but I will bring this up again later when we talk about Power Blocs and you will see more of the neat power of Cooltips.


The “Guarantee Independence” Diplomatic Action as a typical regular tooltip with a normal header, a breaking line followed by the rest of the tooltip content. In this case, most of it is coming from code making it difficult for me as a UX designer to change anything on the go.


The same action as a typical Cooltip with an icon and a larger header that easily can be made contextual. In this case, we are hovering the button for an ongoing “Guaranteeing Independence” action and it gives us the action prompt of “Stop doing this” rather than just the name of the action. In the Cooltip, I can be the one adding this contextual header, while in a regular tooltip I could not and I would have to steal precious time from one of our programmers. This goes for all you modders out there as well, go crazy!

In a similar fashion, we have worked on the confirmation popups for the Diplomatic Actions to be consistent with the tooltips and clearly show the difference of starting and stopping an action.


The confirmation popup for “Stop Guarantee Independence”.

Lobbies


Political Lobbies are a quite straightforward feature from a UX perspective (read more about Lobbies here).

While you probably will encounter Lobbies more often in Events and Journal entries, or by seeing their reactions to various diplomatic actions, they also have an info panel when selected.


The new Lobby info panel..

In the Lobby info panel, you can see each Interest Group that supports the Lobby along with their Approval (since it is directly impacted by the Lobby’s overall Appeasement).

Most importantly, you can also see all actions that would affect this Lobby’s Appeasement. While the Lobbies that are in the game currently are somewhat straightforward (Pro-Lobbies encourage you to do friendly actions towards their favored Country). This is something we have the potential to greatly expand upon in the future and make it more involved.


An Interest Groups’ support of this Lobby.

You can also see why a certain Interest Group is supporting this Lobby. While it might be unlikely that you can force an Interest Group out of a Lobby due to their reasons, it does mean it is easier to tell why Lobbies form in the first place.

We also wanted players to be able to see Lobbies outside their own Country. While this may not affect your decisions as often as your own Lobbies, it is still nice to see the people of other Countries reacting to your benevolent power projection. As such we use the map mode in the Political Lens to show your Lobbies, along with any Lobbies from other Countries that concern your Country.


Map markers for your Lobbies targeting other countries and other countries Lobbies targeting you in either a pro or anti way.


Lobbies in Foreign Countries appear in their respective Countries’ Info Panel.

Building Ownership Revision & Foreign Investment


When we started development of the Building Ownership Revision & Foreign investment (read more about the feature specifics here), we had to create several early prototypes to see if this is feasible to communicate in a good and intuitive way before giving this feature the green light. Buildings are such a fundamental piece of our game and making any major changes to them must be made with care. The prototypes showed that the struggle will definitely be to illustrate who owns what of a specific building and how much, but also the opposite perspective, when looking at a Financial District for example, which buildings the Financial District owns and how much of each building, from which country, and so on. This is also where we have spent the most time to ensure it is properly communicated to the player.

We ended up with a combination of ways of illustrating this division of a building’s ownership. Some more clear than others, but our hope is that the combination of all of them will make it intuitive.

To visually represent the combination of ownership of a specific building, we used a horizontal bar divided by ownership:

  • The icon on the bar will represent one of the following:
  • Owning Country
  • Owning Pop Type
  • Owning Building

The color of the bar represents where the ownership is:

  • Orange: Your government
  • Light Blue: Your pops
  • Gray/white: Local population or government
  • Yellow: Foreign investors that are not you
  • We have tried using colors that work best for most color blindnesses.



If you look at the horizontal bar in the middle, you can see the representation of different ownership based on the instructions above. Also note that you can filter this whole list on “Owner” in the filters to the left. Filters being: All | Nationally Owned | Privately Owned | Foreignly Owned.

Similarly, we use the same kind of horizontal bar for Financial Districts and Manor Houses that owns other buildings, but then it is divided by the buildings it owns:

  • The icon on the bar will represent the building it owns.
  • The color is from the country of the building it owns.



Note the Manor Houses with their red horizontal bars indicating that all buildings they own are buildings in Great Britain as Great Britain's map color is red.

These specific patterns might not be intuitive to start with when you do not know them and have no one explaining them to you, but the intention is for it to become a subconscious thing that you learn as you play. In the end, you will probably not notice when and how this helps you see the different ownerships since you have been exposed to them through the whole game and gradually learnt them, all the while you now only glance at the bar and instantly know what owns what (insert Praying Patrick meme here).

We have also experimented with putting some visualization of ownership on the map, working with arrows pointing from the owned building to the owning building. While doing so, we ended up adding visualization to input and output of Goods to a building as well. It all resulted in a big mix of arrows pointing and animating in all kinds of directions on the map. It felt a tad bit overwhelming at first, so we tweaked and toned it down slightly, and after playing with it for a while many of us felt we could not play without it.


In the example of looking at the Tooling Workshop in Burgundy above you can see all of the following on the map:

  • Ownership arrows are yellow and they go from the building’s State to the owning Building (Manor House or Financial District).
  • Ownership arrows are red if the owning building is a Government building and the arrows then go from your Capital State to the building instead.
  • Input Goods arrows are orange.
  • Output Goods arrows are green.
  • Arrows are thick if in the same state, a bit thinner if in a neighboring state, and very thin and transparent if further away.



For Financial Districts, you get a visual representation on the map of where in the world it has invested its money by looking at the animating yellow arrows.


Arrows for Input and Output of Goods animating to or out from the selected building, and oh yes, you can cycle through the associated buildings more easily now as all buildings that have anything to do with the selected building show up as map markers on the map and you can click them.


This Financial District owns a whole bunch of stuff for sure! Indicated by all the animated arrows going to this Financial District. The specific number of building levels owned by this Financial District are shown as a number on each of the owned buildings on the map with the accumulated total being the total level of the Financial District (25 in this case).

Power Blocs


One new left side menu button, a whole new panel, several new popups, and several new large scale visualizations on the map. This feature is grand. Trying to tie it all together UX wise has been a lovely challenge. You can read the specifics about Power Blocs here, but also a shout out to the awesome Art we have seen from the Art team especially for this feature as Max is telling you all about in the Art of Sphere of Influence.

Being in a Power Bloc is a grand thing. We want you to experience that and clearly feel how it is affecting you in all its pros and cons (mostly pros). Since Power Blocs are such grand things, we have worked a lot with the visual representation of them on the map, giving you full customizability of your Power Bloc if you happen to form one or be the leader of one, to give each Power Bloc its true unique feeling and look. This is of course mirrored in the mechanics as the different Central Identity Pillars are profoundly different from each other in what they do and unlock. Add the Principles to the mix and the options are quite varied, and I need to make tooltips that fits all this variation! As you may imagine, all the possible versions of a Power Bloc have been a challenge to present in a way that does not mean custom solutions for each version. One way we have tackled this is early structuring of game concepts and being consistent in the use of them. An example of this is the way we have structured the Central Identity Pillar’s cooltip into segments based on the game concepts of: Power Bloc, All Bloc Members, Bloc Leader, and Non-leader Bloc Members. This structure is then reused in all other identities’ cooltips with a segment potentially being removed if there are no effects for that specific game concept / group in that Identity.


The cooltip for the Central Identity Pillar “Military Treaty”.


The cooltip for the Central Identity Pillar “Religious Convocation”. To tie this back to how neat Cooltips are, if you look at the Primary Principle Groups in the above cooltips, you get to see the true power of the Cooltips as we have the ability to put larger icons, boxes, and basically whatever we feel like into the tooltip itself. This would not be possible in a regular tooltip that is text only.

As a more general thing for update 1.7, we have worked a lot with making sure most of the new concepts and values we have added have icons associated with them for better recognizability and coherence. New concepts like Leverage, Cohesion, and Power Bloc Members all get their unique icon as you can see below.


The WIP list of all Power Blocs at the start of the game. Each Power Bloc rocking its own style.

General Improvements for 1.7


Those icons work as a perfect segway to the more general UX improvements coming in the free update 1.7 accompanying the expansion. First out, the Outliner. In 1.6 we were sooo done with the old chonky outliner and replaced it with something new and fresh. As always when you replace anything with something new, there are a lot of edges to smooth out and the outliner was no exception. In 1.7, we have taken another pass and delved into more of these edges and details. Among many smaller tweaks, the outliner has been compacted even more with additional dropdown menus. Both ongoing diplomatic actions and the list of players (in multiplayer) are now under their own dropdown menus if there are more than one at any time. Some of the already existing dropdowns such as Interest Groups have also been changed to be closed by default.


The outliner with some ongoing diplomatic actions under a dropdown menu.

Next up, in association with the Foreign Investment feature, we have taken a pass on the construction queue. One thing we noticed during early playtesting was the lack of feedback when foreign investment is happening and where it is happening. This was both from the perspective of you doing the foreign investment and others investing in you. We then took the liberty to split the construction queue up into clearer parts. A national queue and a foreign queue, the national queue includes everything you or your pops are building both domestically and abroad while the foreign queue includes everything other Countries or their pops are building in your Country. We added filters to your national queue for both the location (domestic or abroad) and funding (where does the money come from).


Your national queue with the filters open.


In a second tab of the Construction panel, you find all foreign queues in your country grouped by country.

Apart from these larger general UX improvements, we have been working hard with tweaking the UI and UX based on your feedback from the forums and discord, so please do not be shy and keep the feedback coming. We might not be responding to it all, but we for sure are collecting and reading all of it. For now, I hope you enjoyed getting a small glimpse from a UX perspective of Victoria 3’s first major expansion. You will have to wait for the patch notes to see all of the UX and UI improvements in detail. Take care until then or come back next week to delve deeper into the Power Bloc feature with our lead game designer Lino!

Steam Publisher Week Sale!



Good day Victorians!

Victoria 3 is on sale!


https://store.steampowered.com/app/529340/Victoria_3/

The Endless Replayability Fest is on until the 23rd of May, with Victoria 3 participating. Alongside other Paradox games also taking part!

You can find selected items up to:

Base Game


Victoria 3 76% off
Victoria 3: Grand Edition 40% off

Immersion Pack


Victoria 3: Voice of the People 40% off

Region Pack


Victoria 3: Colossus of the South 20% off

Art & Music Packs


Victoria 3: Dawn of Wonder 20% off
Victoria 3: Melody of the Masses 20% off

Dev Diary #116 - The Art of Sphere of Influence



Overview


Hello again Victorians, this dev diary will cover the visual elements coming alongside the Sphere of Influence Expansion Pack. With this pack a lot of effort has been put into putting the grandeur and influence of the newly added Power Blocs on visual display. In addition, a lot of new outfits, characters and illustrations have been made for major events added with the pack alongside a few brand new building types.

Sphere of Influence will release on Jun 24, 2024



Power Blocs


With the major addition of Power Blocs to the game a lot of new visual elements have been added to emphasize their impact and importance, ranging from clothing assets of politicians in the Power Bloc to customizable statues and emblems for the Power Bloc itself as well as a brand new map mode and much more.


The pattern chosen in the emblem customization also represents your Power Bloc on the map


The capital city of a Power Bloc is where the pulses signifying their influence emanates from


The more cohesion, the more complete the puzzle will be

When a player creates a new Power Bloc they will be able to create and customize their own Emblem and Statues, these visual elements will represent your Power Bloc in both interface and in the cities.


Your influence will spread like tentacles over the world

Emblems consist of 7 (including colors and pattern options for the map) different component categories with a variety of different assets within, you can combine these assets in any way you see fit to create an emblem worthy of representing your own Power Bloc in any interface.


The interface for the Emblem customization allows for a lot of variation

Statues consist of 5 different 3D component categories allowing you to compose your own statue monument that can be built in each of your cities to give modifiers aligned with the Identity of your Power Bloc.


Are we the classy baddies?

The leaders and politicians that are part of your Power Bloc will also receive new assets to showcase their unity and influence. Based on what Central Identity Pillar you’ve chosen for your Power Bloc, important characters now wear assets that further showcase their commitment and allegiance with the Power Bloc, ranging from ornate sabers to the fanciest of capes. In addition to the characters, the vehicles within a Power Bloc will also spawn new models on roads or seas depending on your Central Identity Pillar.


Alignment with a sovereign empire grants characters a beautiful ornate saber




Trade union grants various different crowns and earrings as well as a new ship for your trade routes


Different necklaces for the central identity pillars




Religious Union grants some lovely capes and a very ornate carriage for your roads


Ornate cape you say? Hold my top hat and monocle


Military Treaty Power Blocs can soar above the battlefield by mobilizing hot air balloons bearing the emblem of your Power Bloc proudly.


Power blocs really bring some class to the roads, especially the Ideological Union

For the Central Identity Pillars we’ve created a variety of new icons, cementing their importance. In addition there’s also a large variety of new icons made for the principles your Power Bloc can align with.


Central Identity icons


The principles of a Power Bloc vary a whole lot

In order for you to get an overview of the countries and rulers in your Power Bloc we’ve made a new interface screen that shows the axis of the most powerful ones. Within this screen we’ve also made new ranking icons to signify your Power Blocs’ standing among the others and for the top 3 there’s also shiny new effects ranging from bronze to gold.


The rulers of your Power Bloc can all compare beards

These effects also appear on the Power Blocs’ emblems when you switch to the new Power Bloc mapmode to signify the top 3 ranking ones. In addition, this new mapmode features the visualization of Power Blocs’ using the pattern and colors chosen for the emblems. You can also get an insight into a specific Power Blocs’ influence by switching to another mapmode that utilizes a new pulse shader, showing just how far your Power Blocs’ reach is and where it originates from. In addition there’s another new visualization of the cohesion levels of your Power Bloc allowing you to get an overview of the puzzle that is keeping the entire bloc aligned.


Stay golden at #1


See the silver lining at #2


Nobody wants to be stuck in the bronze age at #3






Even your emblems will really shine if your Power Bloc reaches the highest rankings

The Great Game


For the objectives of The Great Game we have created a large number of new event images covering different aspects of the rivalry, alongside of the events we have also created a variety of historical character DNAs’ and new outfits related to all of it. We’ve also created a new animated main menu image depicting some of the involved parties, setting the tone for the narrative of the pack as a whole and some other miscellaneous in-game assets that helps the narrative.


New menu screen featuring a lot of the players of the great game


Cossacks on the prowl


Ancient persian thrones look quite comfortable


A beautiful day at the market!


Alexander III is appearing a lot


Reza Shah Pahlavi






New military uniforms for Russia and Britain


Cossack outfits


New great coats for the people!


New late-era uniforms


Fancy Vivandiere outfits!




New historical characters

Community Collaboration


Aside from the paid characters added with The Great Game we’re also adding a ton of free historical character appearances. These were created by Timothy "Galactic Cactus" Hicks, who made and later donated the Americas Character DNA mod to us for inclusion in the base game for Update 1.5. The 85 characters he provided for the free update alongside Sphere of Influence (full list in the upcoming changelog) were created in collaboration with him as a contractor. We hope that this sort of collaboration is something we can do more of in the future and will be creating some guidelines and benchmarks for interested community members.


Just a few of the newly added DNAs

New Buildings and Ownerships


With the free update coming alongside the pack comes two new building types, Manor Houses and Financial Districts both serving a function when it comes to ownership of other buildings (which you can read more about in DD #110), these two new buildings both have unique looks for each visual culture in the game.


All the financial districts are quite detailed and vary between cultures




Manor houses class up any rural area


The icons for the new buildings

Subject Improvements, Lobbies and Diplomacy Interface


A lot of new interface assets have been made to accommodate the new features and functions of the Subject Improvements, the new Lobbies as well as the Diplomacy improvements.


Get an overview of all your (hopefully) loyal subjects

New Companies


We’re also adding some new companies and their emblems with Sphere of Influence ranging from big oil companies to legendary ale.


Here are some of the newly added company emblems

New Paper Map


Another addition is also a new Paper Map added with Sphere of Influence. This map is inspired by the more minimalistic maps from the era, lending itself well to those seeking clarity combined with a new (old) coat of paint.



Achievement Icons


Last but not least are a variety of new achievement icons, some depicting the exact thing you need to achieve, some that might give you a vague hint and some that contain pop culture references that you might guess.


There are so many easter eggs among these new achievement icons

Summary


So with Sphere of Influence a lot of new visual elements have been added to both interface and map. We’ve put a lot of effort into making Power Blocs feel like they have a presence in all aspects of the games’ visuals, really tried to ensure that there’s a lot of new visual elements for The Great Game and also added some nice details while also collaborating with the community.

Next weeks’ Dev Diary will be detailing the many UX improvements coming with the Sphere of Influence update.

Dev Diary #115 - Graveyard of Empires



Hello. This is Victoria, and today I will be covering the remainder of the Great Game-themed narrative content which is coming in Sphere of Influence and its accompanying update.

To avoid any confusion, I would like to clarify that none of the narrative content shown in this diary, nor the last diary, is gated behind the Great Game objective. The Great Game objective provides objective subgoals which grant points for certain journal entries and a score tracker which interfaces with much of this content for a more focused experience–it is not required to experience this content. All content within this diary, unless specified otherwise, is available both in sandbox mode or during the course of any objective.

Afghanistan



Afghanistan in 1836 is far from a united land. The slow collapse of the Durrani Empire has left it in a state of civil war for decades, with the primary claimants to the throne forming fiefdoms centred in Herat, Kabul, and Kandahar. In addition to this unfortunate internal situation, the Afghan states find themselves menaced by Persia’s expansionist ambitions from the West, the encroaching British East India Company from the East, and Russian influence from the North.



All Afghan states start with the Afghan Reunification Journal Entry active. Whilst the primary contenders for reunifying Afghanistan are Herat, Kandahar, and Kabul, the minor khanates of Maimana and Kunduz also have this available, allowing for the formation of an Afghanistan under an Uzbek Khan.



This journal entry allows all Afghan contenders to appeal to either Russia or Britain for military and diplomatic support in reunifying Afghanistan. If the relevant Great Power approves the contender’s request, they will be more inclined to support said contenders in diplomatic plays, and the contender will receive military bonuses in return for an obligation.



Once unified, a freshly formed Afghanistan may choose to either pursue additional claims on Pashtun and Tajik homelands, at the cost of infamy, or stop its expansion whilst it’s ahead.



Afghanistan’s unification content will be available to all players in the free update accompanying the release of Sphere of Influence.

Persia



Persia in 1836 is a country swelling with expansionist ambitions. The newly enthroned Mohammad Shah has consolidated his power, and wishes to annex the Principality of Herat as part of a grand ambition that would unify the Persian-speaking populace of Afghanistan with Persia and extend Persian influence throughout Central Asia.



In Sphere of Influence, these expansionist ambitions are represented through the Eastern Frontier Journal Entry. This journal entry provides the tools needed to realise Persia’s expansionist interests, with buttons for approaching either Russia or Britain, as well as gaining claims on the remainder of Central Asia under certain conditions..



If Persia occupies Herat, Britain will be warned, and will have the opportunity to demand that Persia withdraw from the region. If Britain sends the demand and Persia chooses to back down, this will represent a major humiliation setback in its expansionist ambitions. If Persia refuses to back down, Britain will become much more hostile towards Persia, and represent a major impediment to its future efforts.




While expanding North and East, Persia will encounter the massive slave markets of Turkmenia and Uzbekistan, and be faced with the need to either free the slaves or allow them to remain in captivity.



Additionally, Persia will have the opportunity to restore the great city of Merv, formerly one of the largest cities in the world before its desolation by Tolui Khan.



If Persia is successfully able to complete this Journal Entry, it is almost certain to become a major power in its own right–one that may be able to become recognised, expel both Russia and Britain from Central Asia, and force an end to the Great Game.



The above content for Persia is available for all owners of the Sphere of Influence expansion pack.

Korea



Korea, despite being far from Central Asia, was not untouched by the Great Game. In the mid-to-late nineteenth century, it began feeling the effects of European influence, causing unrest among the intellectual class and the peasantry. The philosophy of Donghak, or Eastern Learning, was intended to present a path to establishing a democratic and egalitarian society in Korea whilst simultaneously refusing encroachment by foreign powers.



To represent Korea’s isolation from the world during this period of the Joseon Dynasty, Korea has been given the Isolationism law at game start. Once this law is replaced by a different trade law, a sufficient degree of turmoil builds up, and the effects of foreign influence begin to be felt in Korea, a new journal entry will appear. The Donghak Movement journal entry represents the hybrid religious-political peasant movements that occurred in Korea around the late 19th century. Whilst it is active, revolutions involving the Rural Folk will be greatly strengthened.




There are two paths to removing the threat of a peasant rebellion–reducing the amount of radicals in Korea to a manageable level, or completing the demands that the movement offers the government. Whilst the Donghak movement is active, they may issue a petition to the government, demanding that Korea go back into isolation, permit religious tolerance, and reduce the power of the Yangban. Accepting the petition will please the Rural Folk and decrease the threat of imminent revolution, but failing to meet its demands within the time allotted will make the situation endlessly worse.




If a movement involving the Rural Folk becomes revolutionary, the Journal Entry will fail, and massively escalate both the radicalism of the movement and the progress of the revolution. What would formerly have been mere civil unrest will transform into a near-guaranteed civil war–one which could run the risk of a foreign intervention which would be disastrous for Korea.



If Korea has a civil war whilst a subject of China, China will be inclined to come to the defence of its loyal government–but a modernised Japan may also be inclined to intervene, and be much less predictable in its allegiance.



As a bonus, Korea has also had several events pertaining to the Joseon monarchy added, allowing for the appearance of characters such as Gojong and the Empress Myeongseong.



This content for Korea is available for all players who own the Sphere of Influence expansion pack.

The Caucasus



In Sphere of Influence, both of Russia’s opponents in the Caucasian War–Circassia and the Caucasian Imamate–receive journal entries to represent their role in the conflict. In the case of Circassia, this journal entry is completed by expelling the Russians from Kuban and achieving the borders claimed by the Circassian parliament.



Upon either the expiration of the truce between Circassia and Russia–or Russia’s escalation of the war using its Caucasian War journal entry–Circassia receives an event representing the historical Parliament of Independence in 1861. This event offers the opportunity to either focus on modernising the military in preparation for a Russian invasion, or appealing to foreign powers for recognition and support.



Foreign powers with an interest in the Caucasus region will receive the option to offer recognition to Circassia upon the conclusion of its war with Russia, as well as becoming more inclined to support it in a defensive war.



The Caucasian Imamate has also received a journal entry covering its struggle for independence. Its attached modifier grants the Imamate benefits in terms of morale and defence on states it owns.



Once Circassia’s starting leaders have died, the Imamate may use this journal entry to dispatch a leader to Circassia, fostering a formal alliance between both states.



If the Imamate and Circassia reverse the course of their wars and expel Russian influence from the North Caucasus, the Russian government will no longer have the ability to exert influence within the region. It will be forced to either try to maintain its administration through a storm of radicalism, or pull out from the region. Depending on the social technologies that Russia has unlocked, the collapse of the Caucasus may take the form of the restoration of some of its traditional kingdoms, the appearance of modern nation-states, or the establishment of a unified Transcaucasia.

Pictured: The third option is unlocked by the Nationalism technology, and the fourth by Pan-Nationalism.


Pictured: The result of the first option.


Content for the Caucasian Imamate and Circassia is available to those who own the Sphere of Influence expansion pack.

Earning Recognition



The “Earning Recognition” Journal Entry permits an unrecognised major power to work towards the status of recognised nation. This journal entry replaces the currently existing Force Recognition wargoal–whilst defeating the Great Powers in wars still benefits an unrecognised nation immensely, it is not a one-and-done path to being regarded as an equal.



Conditions which benefit the cause of recognition include defeating Great or Major powers in wars, having high vital statistics such as GDP per capita, standard of living, and literacy, enacting voting rights, and using the new Request Embassy diplomatic action on Great Powers.



The Request Embassy Diplomatic Action is unique to this journal entry, and permits for requesting embassies in Great Powers. Each Great Power that is willing to accept an embassy will raise the progress towards Recognised status by 10%.



Conditions which harm the cause of recognition include having poor vital economic indicators, being defeated in a war, and having certain regressive laws that demonstrate one’s nation to be an unreliable business partner.



Earning Recognition will be available to all players as a part of the free update 1.7.

And that is all. Thank you for reading. Next week, Max will cover the new art of Sphere of Influence.