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Victoria 3 - Dev Diary #2 - Capacities

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Hello and welcome back to another Victoria 3 dev diary! Today we will be talking about three of the four of the main ‘currencies’ of the game - namely Capacities (the last being Money, which we’ll of course come back to later).

We mentioned in the very first dev diary that there is no ‘mana’ in Victoria 3, and since this dev diary is about the game’s “currencies”, I want to be clear on what I mean by that. When we say there is “no mana” we mean that the resources in Victoria 3 arise and are spent in clearly defined ways that are parts of the simulation, not from an overly abstract concept or vague idea. There is, of course, some degree of abstraction involved (all games are abstractions after all), but we want all the game’s currencies to be strongly rooted in the mechanics and not feel arbitrary.

But enough about that and onto Capacities. What exactly are they?

Well, for starters, calling them currencies is actually not accurate. Capacities are not a pooled resource and are not accumulated or spent, but instead, have a constant generation and a constant usage (similar to for example Administrative Capacity in Stellaris), and you generally want to keep your usage from exceeding your generation. Each capacity represents one specific area of your nation’s ability to govern and is used solely for matters relating to that area.

As mentioned, Capacities are not accumulated, so excess generation is not pooled, but instead there is an effect for each Capacity which is positive if generation exceeds usage and quite negative if usage exceeds generation - a country that incorporates territories left and right without expanding its bureaucratic corps may quickly find itself mired in debt as tax collection collapses under the strain!

Bureaucracy represents a nation’s ability to govern, invest in and collect taxes from its incorporated territory. It is produced by the Government Administration building, where many of a nation’s Bureaucrats will be employed. All of a nation’s Incorporated States use a base amount of Bureaucracy which increases with the size of their population, and further increased by each Institution (such as Education or Police - more on those later!) that a country has invested in. Overall, the purpose of Bureaucracy is to ensure that there is a cost to ruling over, taxing and providing for your population - administrating China should not be cheap!

The Swedish Bureaucracy is currently a bit overworked and the country could certainly benefit from another Government Administration building or two.
bureaucracy.PNG

Authority represents the Head of State’s personal power and ability to enact change in the country through decree. It is generated from your Laws - generally, the more repressive and authoritarian the country, the more Authority it will generate - and is used by a variety of actions such as enacting decrees in specific states, interacting with Interest Groups and promoting or banning certain types of Goods. Overall, the purpose of Authority is to create an interesting trade-off between more and less authoritarian societies - by shifting the distribution of power away from the Pops into the hands of the ruler, your ability to rule by decree is increased, and vice versa.

The Swedish King has more Authority at his disposal than he is currently using, slightly speeding up the rate at which laws can be passed.
authority.PNG

Influence represents a country’s ability to conduct diplomacy and its reach on the global stage. It is generated primarily from your Rank (Great Powers have more Influence than Major Powers and so on) and is used to support ongoing diplomatic actions and pacts, such as Improving Relations, Alliances, Trade Deals, Subjects and so on. Overall, the purpose of Influence is to force players to make interesting choices about which foreign countries they want to build strong diplomatic relationships with.

Sweden has plenty of unused Influence and could certainly afford to support another diplomatic pact or two!
influence.png

That’s all for today! Join us again next week as I cover something yet another topic that’s fundamental to Victoria 3: Buildings. See you then!
 
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The Battle of Koniggratz at the top huh. On the dev diary itself with the mention of authority being drawn from and representation of the head of state, how does authority function in countries like Norway which is in a personal union. What about when you unite something like Scandinavia? Also, I see Secondary Powers are now Major powers or maybe major powers is just everyone above a certain point which technically includes Great Powers but they're also another class in and of themselves?
 
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General Dev Diary Questions:

1. Is there any other information about the topic that you wanted to include or talk about, but couldn't fit into the diary?

2. What about this dev diary topic is the most exciting aspect to you when working on it?

3. What aspects do you think the community should be most excited about regarding the dev diary topic?

4. How are your pets doing? (Post pics pls)
 
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I like this system a lot. It is a nice compromise, better than the political influence from Imperator, I think, at least at first glance. Hopefully it finds itself in more future Paradox games. I also like that you gain boni for being under cap. I wish that there was more of that concept in games.
 
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Ok, this really sounds good overall. This puts a realistic strain on large nations. Espacially bureaucracy will probably be hard to increase as an "uncivilized" nation, and therefore hamper your possibility to expand economically.

EDIT: Also it looks to me less like an binary (uncivilized - civilized) way to hamper development of an unciv. The capacities will likely be partially tech based, but bureaucracy is more of an gradual buildup, linked to your level of economic development. An nation of subsistence farmers can't support as many bureaucrats as an high-tech nation.
 
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Quite good info, however I hope Buraucracy cost is not linear with state number and pop, but more exponential, as I fear without that we could just build more Admin buildings with no real additionnal strain to rule over a large empire

EDIT: to clarify i dont mean actuallty following exponential rule, but an incremental one; like how handling a project twice bigger doesnt mean its twice harder to manage it, but maybe 2.2 because bigger is harder to manage, and three time bigger could be 4 time harder...
 
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Is influence affected by the nation you are using it on? For example, I think influencing a weak nation should cost less than a great power

I also think a communist country, for instance, should find it much harder to influence a conservative monarchy, and vice versa
 
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I'm predicting a forum meltdown about this and calling it mana.

I like that now, with Influence, you actually have to choose carefully whom you establish preferred relationships with foreign policy-wise.
 
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Hm. I do really like the bureaucratic capacity, and I would never call it mana. As you have said, it follows from the simulation, its drains are realistic, and more importantly, its generation is realistic (bureaucrat pops). However, I am undecided on the authority capacity and I definitely dislike the diplomatic capacity, which for me is basically mana. Namely, as far as I can see, there are no realistic means for you to increase your diplomatic capacity beside raising your rank. I think there needs to be something similar to bureaucrat pops, say diplomatic corps, which lets you increase your points by investing your manpower and resources in it. Also it would be nice if some repressive buildings (jails, or even courthouses) would increase your authority points.

In my opinion, in order for capacity not to be mana, it needs to be influenceable by pops/jobs/buildings.
 
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It does look like mana... with mutton chops and a monocle

I was never a mana abolitionist anyway, it all depends on implementation, and this one sounds good

It also looks that money is capped, so you can't ever build a massive treasury right? Not sure how I feel about that
 
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Bureaucracy represents a nation’s ability to govern, invest in and collect taxes from its incorporated territory. It is produced by the Government Administration building, where many of a nation’s Bureaucrats will be employed. All of a nation’s Incorporated States use a base amount of Bureaucracy which increases with the size of their population, and further increased by each Institution (such as Education or Police - more on those later!) that a country has invested in. Overall, the purpose of Bureaucracy is to ensure that there is a cost to ruling over, taxing and providing for your population - administrating China should not be cheap!

The Swedish Bureaucracy is currently a bit overworked and the country could certainly benefit from another Government Administration building or two.
It looks from the description and the picture that Bureaucratic Capacity is based on the Government Administration building and not the number of Bureaucrats working there. What if we have the building, but no Bureaucrat Pops?
 
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I would have preferred the Vicky 2 beaurocracy mechanics where the ratio of pops mattered and the way to increase that ratio wasn't through buildings. Personally I think buildings in general will lead to needless micro and annoyances. I can't really take a stance yet though, seeing as there might be way more to the system.

Influence is a clear improvement to how things worked in Victoria 2, which I am happy about.
 
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Why is road maintenance costing authority? And i hope that bureaucrats are required for producing the points instead of dumping a building somewhere and you get more points.
 
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I am not sure how I feel about this yet. It isn't mana which is nice, but still it feels quite abstracted, especially how you gain more capacity.
In Victoria 2 we already had some kind of capacity, namely colonial capacity which was generated by naval bases and shippower, which felt right.

But here getting just a flat out 500 capacity by beeing a minor power or 200 by an enacted law feels to abstracted.

Maybe it is because of the difference of numberscale? With colonial capacity in Victoria 2 each ship provided only a little bit, so you needed a big fleet and each time a new ship finished construction the capacity went up a bit, but also you ongoing cost.

Here with those numbers shown it feels the numbers change in big chunks by only a few predefined modifiers, which feels more similar to EU4.

But will need to see, how it works out in the game.
 
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I would have preferred the Vicky 2 beaurocracy mechanics where the ratio of pops mattered and the way to increase that ratio wasn't through buildings. Personally I think buildings in general will lead to needless micro and annoyances. I can't really take a stance yet though, seeing as there might be way more to the system.

Influence is a clear improvement to how things worked in Victoria 2, which I am happy about.

Except that your only worry in Victoria 2 was your 1% ratio of Bureaucrats present in every state, and not much else.
 
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