Victoria 3 - Dev Diary #55 - Achievements

[SurlyUJest]

"Ironman and an unmodified checksum will no longer be required to unlock achievements."

do you know
how greatly
you have improved my quality of life with this change?
I am so grateful to this. it honestly hasn't even been fully comprehended yet. thank you. i had no idea this was even a possibility.

 

[Chief of Staff]

Regarding the achievements, I am not sure if this is feasible but if you want to prove that you have legitimately obtained the achievements, then I might suggest recording the game and then upload the video to YouTube or another platform. Though, I am not sure why you would feel a need to prove yourself to the others. It should be yourself that you think about and not about how the others see you in terms of how you play the game. It is almost as though you are self-conscious about your image or something. And that is unfortunate, especially considering in the era of reality shows full of people committing antics and social media where people always post pictures and videos of themselves, all for the attention from others. Basically, we have become the "me" generation. It is really a sad state of the modern civilization that we are in now.

Frankly, I always saw achievements as little more than bragging rights thing and never had an interest in them, especially when it comes at cost of playing without legitimate mods that adds to the gameplay value. I always have my Paradox games modded and I would rather not play without them simply for the achievements, especially if some of those mods enhances the gameplay in a way that Paradox would not do (i.e. parliamentary election mod (linked in my signature below) for Europa Universalis IV that I made, currently outdated but which I hope to update eventually). For example, I subscribed to a mod that added more advisor types in EU4. I refuse to play under the stifling limitations that the achievements system imposed in Paradox games prior to Victoria III.

For me, gameplay, and the enhancement thereof, is more important than achievements which, again, is nothing more than bragging rights to me. As others said, challenges is something you can set for yourself with or without achievements. Achievements is not a fundamental requirement for challenges.

 

[Hammrtime]

Damn, who would have thought removing achievements from behind Ironman mode would create such a discussion. I personally think they did this to distract the "purists" from the changes to war and the economy lol . I'm joking, I'm joking.

Really like some of the achievements, though I feel like a few to many are directly related to conquering or war. Grow your country this big or take over somewhere on the other side of the world. Would have liked to see more in line with, keeping serfdom in Russia until 1936, or turning an African country into the #1 global power. Sure some might require fighting, but that in of itself is not enough.

My biggest disappointment was no achievement references to Victoria 2. Our perennial whipping boy in Victoria 2, Sokoto, didn't get one. Some sort of anti-colonial achievement would have been a great nod to Victoria 2 meta plays. As well a achievement for having more than 25 infamy, to much bad boy, would have been great.

 

[sepoquro]

ULTRA EASY(Congrats you started the game and played until <certain point in game> with country <xyz>)
These are bottom of the barrel achievements that have no requirement other than passing enough time in the game until you press the right button or get it automatically

• Perkeletankki: Starting as Finland, produce at least 100 units of tanks every week.
• Anarchy in the UK: Starting as Great Britain, have an Anarchist form of government.
• I didn’t vote for Pedro: Starting as Brazil, change government to Republic and implement Universal Suffrage.
• Go West, Young Man: Starting as the USA, own California, Oregon and Washington with 250k or more population in each.
• The Paris Commune: Starting as France, become a Council Republic and have a Command Economy.
• Miners and Minors: Starting as Lanfang, incorporate all states in Borneo and have the 'Compulsory Primary School' law.
• Healthy Man of Europe: Starting as the Ottomans, be the Greatest Power while having max level Public Health Insurance.
• Habsburg Resurgence: Starting as Austria, own Silesia and Prussia must be Minor Power or lower rank.
• The Great Game: Starting as Russia, own the entire Central Asia region.
• Bourbon for Everyone: Starting as Spain, have an average standard of living of at least 20 while remaining a monarchy.
• Manifest Mexico: Starting as Mexico, own the Pacific Coast & Great Plains, and have a higher Power Rank than the USA.
• Broken Promises: As Italy, join a diplomatic play against 2 or more of your allies.
• The Berlin Conference: Starting as Prussia, form Germany and fully own at least 10 states in Africa.
• Deeds, Not Words: Pass the Women's Suffrage law.
• First Flight: Be the first nation in the world to fly aeroplanes.
• Victorian Century: Play a full campaign from 1836 to 1936.
• Poor, Huddled Masses: Have a cultural migration target in one of your states.
• Serf’s Up: Starting as a nation with Serfdom, enact Worker’s Protections Labour Rights Law.
• Risorgimento: Form the nation of Italy.
• Three Hurrahs: Form the nation of Germany.
• Solomon’s Quest: Form the nation of Ethiopia.
• I am a Scandinavian: Form the nation of Scandinavia.
• Enlightened Despot: Have electrical street lights in all states while being an Autocracy.
• Mightier than the Sword: Have the other side back down in a diplomatic play.
• Revolutionary: Switch sides to the revolutionaries in a civil war and win the ensuing conflict.
• We Are Not Amused: Starting as Great Britain, Expel Diplomats of a Great Power with Cordial or better relations.
• Institutional: Have an institution at maximum investment level.

EASY
These require some basic knowledge of the gameplay mechanics to optimize your country in some way

• Peccavi:Starting as the British India Company, fully own the states of Sindh and Punjab.
  • While the Sikh Empire is the strongest contender in the region, it has no chance unless China or Russia help it
• Belle Époque: Starting as France, have the highest GDP per capita and Innovation generation in the world.
  • Might require a minimum of game knowledge in regards to economic planning
• Reading Campaign:Starting as a nation with less than 20% literacy, get to 100% literacy.
  • Considering a 100% literacy nation doesn't exist in the world, this would be quite the achievement, but something tells me it won't be all that hard
• Poppydock: Have at least a level 8 port and export at least 2500 units of Opium to foreign markets.
  • Actually this should go to Ultra Easy, but...I guess you have to at least plan a little bit?
• Inventive: Research all technologies across all three categories.
  • Might require basic knowledge of game mechanics

MEDIUM
These achievements require careful planning and precise execution

• Mohammed Ali’s Ambition:S tarting as Egypt, form Arabia and own Thrace.
  • Heavily bordering easy territory; once the Ottomans are out of the picture there is nothing stopping you
• The Western Protectorate: Starting as Great Qing, have a treaty port in France, Germany, the British Isles, Iberia and Italy.
  • By endgame you will probably be able to war the entire world on your own anyways as China
• Star-Swarmed Banner: As the United States, have 100 incorporated states represented on your flag.
  • Who can stop the player-led USA from conquering America? Nobody.
• Billionaire: Have a national GDP of at least £1 billion.
  • Automatically achieved when you do The Western Protectorate
• Grander Colombia: Form Grand Colombia and own all land in the Gran Colombia, Andes, and La Plata strategic regions.
  • Not all that strong at the start of the game, it will depend on how much USA and European powers decide to meddle

HARD
Depending on world circumstances it might not be doable or you must be a very well learned player

• Luxurious Luxemburg: Starting as Luxembourg, be the leading producer of Luxury Clothes, Luxury Furniture, and Porcelain.
  • OPM start, will probably have to form Benelux or some meme country, it's easy if you can form Germany which I dunno
  • It might require suppressing China to dominate in Porcelain(do they have a special PM?), France and USA strong contenders in LC and LF production
  • Depends very much on how strong the AI is on release(will be easy lol)
• An Empire Under the Pun: Starting as the Sikh Empire, subjugate Great Britain.
• Barbary’s Back: Starting as Algeria, retake Algiers and become a Major Power.
• American Territory: Starting as the Indian Territory, have the USA as a subject with no more than three states.
  • Realistically(and videogamemically) this shouldn't be possible so: Just play the game, do the meme

IN TOTAL

• 27 Participation trophies
• 5 Easy
• 5 Medium
• 4 Hard
• 4 Unrated

Make of that what you will, but personally I am not a fan of these no-brain achievements. Everything below easy might as well not exist.

My exact thoughts when I saw the list.

 

[Axe99]

Cheers for the DD Alastorn, and all the extra info from you and Iachek Lots of fun-looking achievements there, and as someone who only played achievements as a "this might be a fun thing to try and do in a game", not having them on ironman works well for me - although I totally appreciate the bragging rights crowd (very strong in human nature, comparisons with each other are) may take some adjusting to it (although, that being said, I'm fairly sure there were ways to exploit and cheat around quite a few achievements in the past - I remember seeing at least a few in my travels through the internet - so I'm not sure how much of a real difference the change makes, even if it may feel like a big change on the surface).

I was a little sad to see no naval/ship-based achievements - thar be tanks and planes, but no ships - but maybe for an expansion? I'll mention again that the ship, and control of sea lines of communication via warships, were the most important economic and (arguably) militarily elements of the era - and there's plenty of scope for interesting achievements relating to achieving tech at a good point, of having a huge merchant (convoy) fleet, doing well navally with inferior tech, and so on.

That being said, there are lots of very cool-looking achievements, and there are at least pictures of ships in a couple of achievement icons, so all is not lost For a naval-themed pic, I'm going to draw a very long bow off the 'research all technologies' achievement, for a pic of USS Yorktown - laid down in 1934, so just within scope of the game, and in 1934 one of the most technologically advanced things under construction

 

[ScottyWired]

Oh no! This extremely moddable game will devalue achievements!

Unrelated picture of the hardest XCOM 2 achievements still being under 1%!

 

[Sabotage13]

Which begs the question, why change how it works? People are already free to set their own challenges, and having achievements require a checksum gives people who derive their enjoyment from challenge a way to validate/compare with others without recording the entire run as proof.

Because Ironman requirements were nonsense to begin with, given how a couple crashes could ruin your entire run.

 

[pr0blemil]

Please change the flag colours of the "Three Hurrahs" achievement to black, white, red.

 

[aarthurr]

You're barking up the wrong tree making a counterfit money argument in comparison to a coding change about achievements... to the individual with an economics degree.
So lets not go there.

he knows money good

 

[Pl4t0n1c]

CTRL+F: "byzantine"
0 matches found

 

[SeekTruthFromFx]

well to be fair, if you just fixed the ai you wouldn't hear that so often lol

Sorry, what you should really do on this is offer people some training on the ai code, and tell them you'll pay them if they fix it.

I suspect complaints would subside. Either that or some sorcerer would actually manage it, and you'd be happy to pay lol

I do think PDS has consistently missed a trick here by not making the AI more moddable through player-created strategies.

It's easier to explain in HoI4 terms since I've played and modded that. At the moment, there is a generic AI with very limited options for using ai_strategy and similar files for customizing AI at the country level. You can't really mod the battle planner or naval AI. But if players could do that, I think you'd quickly get a Darwinian AI modding scene that would produce far better AI than PDS can, because there be an order of magnitude more strategies, iterations, and tests. PDS can't write a file that says, for example, "if this front is attempting a naval invasion of Japan as China, do XYZ" because there are thousands of such possibilities and they can't write an AI strategy for every possibility. The community has enough people to do that (look how many C:S assets there are!) and I think there'd be huge interest in watching competing AIs battle it out ("who wins if PlayerOne's ChinaInvadeJapan code fights PlayerTwo's JapanDefendHomeland code?"). But at the moment there are neither triggers nor effects for the battle planner or naval deployments, even though we know that code makes very simplistic assumptions.

Warfare will work very differently in V3 than HoI4, but I think that players would still end up with much better AI if its opened up far more because the two games both share the same critical element: they use a fixed starting map. If they used procedural maps (like Civilization, Humankind, Stellaris, etc.) then my proposal wouldn't work. But with a fixed starting map, the possibility space is small enough that certain situations are going to occur again and again and humans can optimize for them far better. For example, you're not going to get the American Civil War in every V3 game, but it will happen often enough that players can write AIUSACivilWarDiploPlay scripts that will outperform anything a generic AI can do. One modder might discover that is optimal for the USA to march straight through Georgia if it's fighting the CSA alone, but to hold in the South while focusing on Canada if the UK gets involved. At least until some other modder finds that it's better for the UK to forget about Canada and mobilize to the CSA instead. And so, in a Darwinian way, hundreds of uncoordinated modders will produce better results than one or two coders in Stockholm trying to produce a generic AI that handles every corner case too.

So my plea, to use a term from the HoI4 era, is "give us the tools to finish the job"!

 

[zhangjim]

The Western Protectorate: Starting as Great Qing, have a treaty port in France, Germany, the British Isles, Iberia and Italy.

Considering the development potential of the Qing Dynasty in the game, the difficulty of this achievement can be appropriately increased.
Players can retaliate against the shame of 1900 in the game,the target of conquest was extended to eight countries that were once enemies of the Qing Dynasty

 

[Miraiteko]

Can we modders add new achievenment in our mods?(even though they cannot be shown in steam)

 

[RichardOlcese]

Cool, we're not EU4 our codebase is not even similar and we could not guarantee that.

Are you EU5?

 

[BrotherJonathan]

As an aside, are you going to post a list of formable tags before the game is released?

 

[krokobone]

Nice to see the requirements for achievements losen up. Although I got used to playing on Ironman and enjoyed hunting achievements that way (especially in HOI IV), nowadays I have a lot less time for playing, so I prefer more casual gaming. Not having to resort to Ironman and/or higher difficulties just to earn achievements is much appreciated for this reason.

 

[PDJR_Alastorn]

I'm not sure if anyone mentioned this yet but the post clearly says that there are 50 achievements.

You only posted 45 of them. I counted.

Why?

Highly likely 5 achievements are not finished or able to be shown because their original conditions have changed due to reworks and we still have fleshing them out as todo. Thus we don't want to publish them as certain if they might change.

Or we are keeping them a secret.
Or we simply forgot.

All are feasible.

 

[Asherett]

Ironman and an unmodified checksum will no longer be required to unlock achievements

I mean... Maybe I'm cynical here, but won't this mean there'll quite quickly be "install this to get all achievements" mods? I get not requiring Ironman, but allowing mods seems to throw the whole "achievement" idea out the window.

 

[za3tarani]

how does "start as... do..."-achievements work in non-iron man if i can switch tag? can i start as luxembourg, tag switch to uk and then produce most luxury etc and still get the achievement?

 

[diglosgr]

No IKEA achievement for Sweden ?