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Victoria 3 - Dev Diary #1 - Pops

Dev Diary 1.png


Hello everyone! I’m Mikael, Victoria 3’s lead game designer - and oh boy does it feel good to finally be able to say that out loud! Today I have the pleasure to reveal some details about that one feature everyone thinks about when they hear “Victoria” - the Pops.

Pops were introduced in the very first Victoria game to represent your country’s population. Pop mechanics have since snuck into other Paradox titles like Stellaris and Imperator. But this in-depth population simulation is what Victoria is about, and we’re going to bring you a system with more depth than ever before!

In Victoria 3, Pops are the country’s engine - they work the industries, they pay the taxes, they operate the government institutions, and they fight the wars. They’re born, they die, they change occupation, they migrate. And they organize, get angry, and start revolutions.

Every Pop is visualized so you can see which demographic sports the best moustache. Note that Pop portraits are very much a work in progress!
ClergyCrop.png


You, the player, might be in charge of the country, but you’re not in charge of the Pops and can’t manipulate them directly. Yet everything you do to the country affects them, and they in turn will react in what they perceive to be their own best interests. A large part of your game will consist of trying to sate your population’s appetites for material goods or political reform. But most actions you will take aren’t to the benefit of every Pop in your nation, and by making life better for one part of the population you may inadvertently upset another demographic.

The most important aspect of Pops are their Professions, which reflects the types of jobs it carries out in the building where they work. A Pop’s profession determines its social class and can affect its wages, political strength, what other professions it might qualify for, and particularly which political Interest Groups it’s prone to supporting (which you will hear lots more about in future Dev Diaries.) Some of the Pop professions you will encounter in Victoria 3 are Aristocrats, Capitalists, Bureaucrats, Officers, Shopkeepers, Machinists, Laborers, and Peasants. Investing in industries that provide job opportunities for the kinds of professions you want to encourage in your country is key to the “society building” gameplay of Victoria 3.

Every variation of Profession, Culture, Religion, and Workplace in the world gets its own unique Pop. At any given time this results in many tens of thousands of Pops in the world working, migrating, procreating, and agitating.
Aristocrats.png


The people that make up a Pop are distinguished into Workforce and Dependents. Members of the Workforce keep the buildings in the game operational and collect a wage from them in return. Those who cannot or aren’t permitted to be officially employed are considered Dependents. They collect only a small income from odd jobs and government programs.

Laws affect who is included in each category. At game start most countries do not accept women working and collecting a wage outside the home but by reforming laws governing the rights of women more Dependent Pops will enter the Workforce over time. By abolishing child labor, the amount of income Dependents bring home will decrease but will make it easier to educate your populace, increasing their overall Literacy. After a bloody war many Dependents of soldiers may be left without sufficient income, and you may decide to institute pensions to help your population recover.

In short: nothing in your country runs without Pops, and everything about your country affects those Pops, who in turn provide new opportunities and challenges during your tumultuous journey through the Victorian era and beyond.

I have oh so much more to say, but that is all for this week! You will hear much more from me in future Dev Diaries. Next week Martin will return to explain something quite central to the game - Capacities!
 
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So Pops in a state are divided by Culture (i.e. Turkish), Religion (i.e. Sunni) and Profession (i.e. Aristocrat), but also workplace?

So this means that if you have "Substinence Farms" and for example "Cash Crop Farms" in a single state, you will have 2 "Turkish Sunni Aristocrat" pops, one for each type of farm?
 
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Will all pops be represented by male avatars? if not what will determine the gender of the avatar? randomness, equality laws?
We aim to have female portraits as well, details beyond that we'll go into later.
 
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View attachment 724799

Hello everyone! I’m Mikael, Victoria 3’s lead game designer - and oh boy does it feel good to finally be able to say that out loud! Today I have the pleasure to reveal some details about that one feature everyone thinks about when they hear “Victoria” - the Pops.

Pops were introduced in the very first Victoria game to represent your country’s population. Pop mechanics have since snuck into other Paradox titles like Stellaris and Imperator. But this in-depth population simulation is what Victoria is about, and we’re going to bring you a system with more depth than ever before!

In Victoria 3, Pops are the country’s engine - they work the industries, they pay the taxes, they operate the government institutions, and they fight the wars. They’re born, they die, they change occupation, they migrate. And they organize, get angry, and start revolutions.

Every Pop is visualized so you can see which demographic sports the best moustache. Note that Pop portraits are very much a work in progress!
View attachment 724800


You, the player, might be in charge of the country, but you’re not in charge of the Pops and can’t manipulate them directly. Yet everything you do to the country affects them, and they in turn will react in what they perceive to be their own best interests. A large part of your game will consist of trying to sate your population’s appetites for material goods or political reform. But most actions you will take aren’t to the benefit of every Pop in your nation, and by making life better for one part of the population you may inadvertently upset another demographic.

The most important aspect of Pops are their Professions, which reflects the types of jobs it carries out in the building where they work. A Pop’s profession determines its social class and can affect its wages, political strength, what other professions it might qualify for, and particularly which political Interest Groups it’s prone to supporting (which you will hear lots more about in future Dev Diaries.) Some of the Pop professions you will encounter in Victoria 3 are Aristocrats, Capitalists, Bureaucrats, Officers, Shopkeepers, Machinists, Laborers, and Peasants. Investing in industries that provide job opportunities for the kinds of professions you want to encourage in your country is key to the “society building” gameplay of Victoria 3.

Every variation of Profession, Culture, Religion, and Workplace in the world gets its own unique Pop. At any given time this results in many tens of thousands of Pops in the world working, migrating, procreating, and agitating.
View attachment 724801

The people that make up a Pop are distinguished into Workforce and Dependents. Members of the Workforce keep the buildings in the game operational and collect a wage from them in return. Those who cannot or aren’t permitted to be officially employed are considered Dependents. They collect only a small income from odd jobs and government programs.

Laws affect who is included in each category. At game start most countries do not accept women working and collecting a wage outside the home but by reforming laws governing the rights of women more Dependent Pops will enter the Workforce over time. By abolishing child labor, the amount of income Dependents bring home will decrease but will make it easier to educate your populace, increasing their overall Literacy. After a bloody war many Dependents of soldiers may be left without sufficient income, and you may decide to institute pensions to help your population recover.

In short: nothing in your country runs without Pops, and everything about your country affects those Pops, who in turn provide new opportunities and challenges during your tumultuous journey through the Victorian era and beyond.

I have oh so much more to say, but that is all for this week! You will hear much more from me in future Dev Diaries. Next week Martin will return to explain something quite central to the game - Capacities!
How do we influence pops now? I'm just wondering to what extent I can influence their politics etc like with national focuses. Are they still a feature?
 
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I hope the POP overview ist not near its final state. there is a lot of text with low contrast and not many icons, colors oder diagrams to convey informations. It looks more like a tooltip. I hope we can get a pie chart for political support for example.

edit: did others noticed the tiny icons in the text? ahead of "aristocrat", "bureaucrat" etc. I don't think they are readable because they look way to similar and dont really pop in color or contrast. maybe you could increase constrast and saturation for them. or make low resolution icons that are pixel perfect - like the icons in older paradox titles.
 
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so is the 39K political power the one from this state and the 1,55M one for the all aristocrate in the empire?
also i hope the 1,55M info makes sense in game, or that it is added a % of total political power next to it, as we dont know right now if thats a lot or not, as i guess political power make sense relative to other groups, not in absolute number
 
Is each industry going to have just one type of "working" pop inside it, like the Victoria 2 RGOs, or can industries have multiple types of pop working inside them (i.e. Clerks and Craftsmen in Victoria 2 Factories)?
The Logging Camp in this panel has 3 different workers and one top hat wearing, maniacally evil laughing, whip-cracking Capitalist
wages.png
 
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So, every single Human being will be simulated, with a specific birthday and day of death? Are we able to see stuff like birthrates, so let's say our population gets wealthier and more literate, does this mean our birthrate will go down? Or maybe even when women will be granted the same rights, could this have an impact on the birthrate, too?

Oh boy, I'm so hyped, thank you guys so much! Really enjoying what I'm seeing, and, I have to say, haven't been this hyped since I was a little poop waiting for christmas. Keep it up!

Oh, and: We're one step closer to confirm that we indeed live in a Vicky-3-style of simulation haha ..
 
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I see that the Turkish guy wears Fez. Will it be possible to ban religious headwear and clothes for non clergy like Atatürk did?
 
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It indeed seems that population and thus the economy are only tied to states, thus the province is sadly reduced to nothing but a tile for a army to stand on, which I would categorize under "dumbing down"

I also find it noteworthy how much of this screen is just kind of worthless. Why do you need such a large 3D model of the pop in question? (Besides showing off that PDX finally has a engine to do it ofcourse.) The portrait is useless space besides that big "Secure (22)" field which we see, which I guess is the life standard (or whatever it's called) of the pop. A lot of the space in the bottom right field is also kind of useless, it explains what the pop exactly is, what it does and the simple mechanics of pop promotion (and also perhaps demotion), but such information is mostly useless to those who already know more of the game (anybody who plays more than a couple of hours), it might just be better reserved for some questionmark somewhere in this screen, which explains exactly what each and everything means, a in game tutorial/gameplay wiki. (PDX has done it before, but for the historical characters in CKII)
 
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I like what I see.

So, In previous vicky's POPs were the equivalent of a family-ish? Kind of?

Will Vicky 3's system simulated them as individual individuals? How will children and women be represented?
 
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Sweet dev diary start. I don't know, maybe I'm nuts, but anybody think the French priest looks a little like Scott Clark in Stranger Things?
This is not a crticism, keep that!
 
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Could be cool to have the achievement "a nation of shopkeepers" for getting the shopkeeper profession to ludicrous heights in Britain
 
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