Victoria 3 - Dev Diary #18 - Rank & Prestige

[Wizzington]

The starting GPs should be the same as Vic2. I think it was fantastic to see the 2 great powers of EU4 start as sick GPs at the start and watch them decline and go down in the tier list in substitution of the new 19th century great powers. Spain should be in the same tier as USA and Ottomans in 1836. And Prussia should go above them.

And please don't put the EIC as the 8th strongest "nation" in the game. It's insane. The EIC was by no means the 7th most powerful "nation" in the world in 1836. And I think it is a very bad decision gameplay wise too (EIC shouldn't have enough power to intervine in Europe in 1836, for example).

The list isn't based on us manually ranking countries, it's based on how the game currently calculates prestige, which is a calculation that is likely going to change before release. I don't think the way V2 calculates it is necessarily correct either - Prussia was definitely not stronger than Austria in 1836 for example as far as my understanding of history goes.

 

[Wizzington]

I dont think i like the idea of a government tier list like in eu4.

Even if it was waning, the idea that some crowns/nations are more prestigious than others was absolutely a thing in the 19th century, and it serves as a useful measure of what is a 'rank up' when forming a new nation.

 

[Wizzington]

You mentioned ways to gain prestige, but are there still ways to lose it?

Prestige is calculated - if your economy or army shrinks, your prestige will go down. You can also get permanent and/or temporary increases/decreases.

 

[Wizzington]

As a German, I would contradict them. It is not for nothing that Prussia defeated Austria in EVERY war in which they clashed.

They did not fight any wars in 1836. Prussia grew stronger than Austria in the coming decades but their position in 1836 was not a terribly strong one. 1866 it's a whole other picture, but the game doesn't start in 1866.

 

[Wizzington]

This looks wonderful! One questions:
I hope gaining enough prestige does not automatically release a subject country like in Vic2?

As a side note, I think those art academies have slightly too high Impact on prestige. Perhaps it could be modified to some sort of broader cultural influence resource? Like, what language is being spoken on parties, whose theatre plays are being discussed, etc.

Anyway I LOVE the idea that prestige is now combination of military and GDP. Wonderful decision

All numbers are very much non final when it comes to things like how much prestige art academies give.

 

[Wizzington]

So can a nation "jump" from unrecognized power straight to great power?

If they gain recognition while having enough Prestige to qualify, sure.

 

[Wizzington]

Won't the "average prestige" system cause problems as small nations are annexed in the first years, pushing the average way up and throwing many countries out of GP status?

There's built-in things in the system to prevent this, basically there's an normalizing effect based on how many countries are on the map so that numbers don't get radically shifted due to too few or too many nations.

 

[Wizzington]

My major question is what is the process of getting recognised? As the Qing, could I defeat the UK in the opium wars to gain recognition (as Japan sort of did by defeating Russia in the 1900s) or is there a system underneath for determining whether you're recognised or not?

This is something we'll go into in a later dev diary, but we've definitely looked at the Russo-Japanese war as inspiration for (parts of) the mechanic.

 

[Wizzington]

It would be simpler to just have it be based off of percentage of total prestige

That seems like it could make the problem of too few/too many nations worse, as it might be much easier to have 10% of all prestige if there's 20 nations than if there are 200. Though prestige would scale up to the greater size of countries, so it could work, but what we have now works quite well as it is.

 

[Wizzington]

Can a nation go from recognized to unrecognized?
If not through a game mechanic, can it be done with scripting?

It's possible, yes.

 

[Wizzington]

If one nation really runs away with it, does it still make sense for others to be viewed as Great Powers? Let's say a nation has more than 3x global average, but less than say 25% of the leader, should it still be considered a GP?

The intent is to try and avoid a runaway scenario where there is just one Great Power left due to the impact that would have on various diplomatic mechanics. I think if we want to simulate a power rising above the other Great Powers we should think about adding a rank above Great Power instead.

 

[Wizzington]

Having dynamic requirements for Great Powers and such sounds very nice.

Now, if hypothetically every country would be recognized, free and all had the exact same prestige, two things:
1. What would be the tie breaker, to determine the actual order of ranks?
2. Would all countries be Great Powers since all of them would be within the 75% of whoever makes rank #1?

1) GDP is tie breaker for two countries of the exact same prestige.
2) If everyone had the exact same prestige everyone would be a Great Power but due to the various normalization mechanics built into the game, this basically cannot happen short of some extreme modding.

 

[Wizzington]

Just to re-emphasise, those rankings are not final and probably not really correct. For instance, the US probably shouldn't be #5 and the EIC probably shouldn't be #8. Whether Spain should start as a Great Power or a Major Power is something where I haven't really made up my mind honestly.

 

[Wizzington]

thinking the same, almost doubting if it are trolling values to lure people like us in the commenting section
A bit more realism plz prdx and the game will be an outright hit

They are WIP values, as indicated by the WIP images placed on the screenshots. Final balancing of all values isn't done until close to release. In fact, one thing will often do during development is to set overpowered values to things on purpose, so we can see how it feels to play with and gradually adjust down. The reason we do this is that setting values on a feature too low from the start can lead to testers ignoring the feature and it being more or less forgotten about.

 

[Wizzington]

what would be the tie breaker if they have same prestige and gdp?

Exact same GDP is virtually impossible since it's a big value that scales down to 5 decimals but if it happened against all odds then country tag index would be the tie breaker.

 

[Wizzington]

How many country ranks there will be?

There are 7 currently, but they're completely moddable so there isn't really a limit to how many there can be.

 

[Wizzington]

Glad to hear, I was specially worried about EIC being #8

About Spain, I think it clearly fits more in the tier of USA and Ottomans than the tier of Two Sicilies.

I mean, even Two Sicilies being a 'Major Power' seems a bit off. Maybe the solution would be to add another tier (for example 'Medium Powers') for better granularity?

1) Great Powers: United Kingdom, France, Russia, Austria
2) Major Powers: Prussia, USA, Ottoman Empire, Spain
3) Medium Powers: Netherlands, Belgium, Sardinia-Piedmont, Two Sicilies, etc ...
4) Minor Powers: Mexico, Brazil, Sweden, Denmark, Portugal, etc ...
5) Insignificant Power: ...
6) Unrecognized Power: ...
7) Unrecognized Minor Power: ...

The Kingdom of the Two Sicilies was by far the strongest Italian power in 1836, and also the most industrialized one. As with Prussia/Austria, don't confuse the 1830s with later decades.

 

[Wizzington]

So is there a certain optimal balance/ratio to maintain between certain aspects of prestige? In Vic2, we had prestige spam, where someone would just take cultural techs and use prestige events to push them into being a GP regardless of the other two factors. Will there be anything that would say, cause diminishing returns for one aspect of prestige if it is much higher than the others? If I just built a bunch of art academies and got prestige that way while having a navy staffed by three guys in a dingy, and an army that has shoes for weapons, would the art academies give me less prestige as it goes up higher than the other aspects?

There is nothing like that right now but it's for sure on my to look at list, as yeah, I don't think a country should really be able to be a Great Power on art alone.

 

[lachek]

Tell me which of the reigning Great Powers in 1836 considered the East India Company as its equal?

A country under the dominion of another is largely subservient to its overlord in diplomatic matters. If someone wants to mess with the EIC they're also forced to deal with Great Britain, so their Recognition status is largely irrelevant under these circumstances.

But what really matters is what happens if a Subject nation gains its independence. If EIC decided to mount a rebellion against the Crown and successfully became an independent Major Power in the Indian subcontinent, would the Great Powers treat it with some modicum of respect or would they be considered irrelevant other than as a ripe target for exploitation? The game mechanics argue that the former makes more sense.

And to be clear, if an Unrecognized country is Puppeted and subsequently Released, its status as Unrecognized remains.