Victoria 3 - Dev Diary #55 - Achievements

[MrRazza]

Perhaps I've misunderstood this whole video game lark, but some people here seem to drastically overestimate the number of people who actually spend their money and buy a game just to cheat and tick off every achievement in a flash, and drastically underestimate the number who actually just want to... play it?

This is a great change. I look forward to having a nudge to try some different playthroughs in a way I haven't before with a Paradox game. But I doubt I'll want to do all of them, and I'm probably not good enough to achieve all of them if I try. I suspect some of those arbitrary "achieved" percentages that some people seem to be so worried about will still be very low.

 

[Spartakus]

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

Why? Black-white-red are quite specific for a german monarchy formed by prussia. I have no idea what other German flags will exist in the game but black-red-gold have been established as the colors of a German unification and republic for some time in 1836.

I'm rather curious what the 3 Hurrahs is supposed to mean - that phrase doesn't ring a bell and a google search led me to Victoria 2.

 

[BeauNiddle]

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"!

The problem is not writing a good AI. The problem is writing a good AI that can calculate at 30+fps.

If the game could take 10 minutes per tick then you could have an AI that would challenge even the best players - but nobody would play the game.

I believe they mentioned that was why they moved away from the scripting language they had for AI in earlier games - they can no longer afford the extra time overhead with the translation of scripting language to game code. The same argument goes for adding more hooks into the AI to change the behaviour - every hook is an extra delay.

That's why I'm so glad to see the warfare change in Vic3 - By moving the battle to a higher level they don't need to worry about AI/pathfinding for every single unit and so the game should run better and they can afford more complex calculations with information they do have (should they wish). Hopefully this means army composition and general skills can have a bigger impact on how wars progress.

 

[Stein14]

Why? Black-white-red are quite specific for a german monarchy formed by prussia. I have no idea what other German flags will exist in the game but black-red-gold have been established as the colors of a German unification and republic for some time in 1836.

I'm rather curious what the 3 Hurrahs is supposed to mean - that phrase doesn't ring a bell and a google search led me to Victoria 2.

Greetings from Germany.

The reason for the three cheers for Germany lies in the proclamation of the emperor in Versailles Palace.

At that time, Frederick I, Grand Duke of Baden, Kaiser Wilhelm's son-in-law, shouted cheers to "His Majesty, Kaiser Wilhelm". This was repeated 3 times by those present. Hence the three hurrays for Germany.

 

[Jamaican Castle]

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

Okay but that's XCOM, you don't know if a game with a normal difficulty setting will go the same way.

 

[Spartakus]

Greetings from Germany.

The reason for the three cheers for Germany lies in the proclamation of the emperor in Versailles Palace.

At that time, Frederick I, Grand Duke of Baden, Kaiser Wilhelm's son-in-law, shouted cheers to "His Majesty, Kaiser Wilhelm". This was repeated 3 times by those present. Hence the three hurrays for Germany.

Thank you. I'm German myself and that particular phrase is not one I would have associated with the unification. Though I can't spontaneously come up with a fitting one either.

 

[TrojanAC]

So can we get a two tier achievement system giving us a golden frame for doing it on iron man?
If they really get rid of all rules we reached high school participation trophies. Achievement are named that way because well... you achieve something overcoming constraints. Without constraints its just as worthless as selling shit in a pigsty.

 

[TempestM]

I like these achievements not just WC or take over this area across the planet from your nation

*cough cough* Sikh and Chinese ones

 

[Stein14]

Thank you. I'm German myself and that particular phrase is not one I would have associated with the unification. Though I can't spontaneously come up with a fitting one either.

I just love history and have read every Wikipedia article on German unification three times.

 

[kolpo]

One idea for a rather crazy achievement that was actually attempted in real history: As a European turn Mexico into a monarchy led by a Habsburg(not sure if game can model the later part)

This whole plot of Napoleon III was so bonders that it sounds like something a streamer would do, but it happened in real history.

 

[TempestM]

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?

Just like it does right now?

has flag "started as LUX" + has flag "Is LUX and producing luxury" = get flag "completed achievement"

 

[Telenil]

Regarding making it so GUI and language mods don't affect checksum, while mods changing game logic do. It's actually very easy for us to customize this. The reason we still do force checksum changes for these types of files is because there's actually a lot you can accomplish with a UI-only mod in the engine we use these days - you could add entire new helper interfaces that exposes action shortcuts once a value in a rival country reached a certain threshold for example, or just reveal crucial insight into other countries' situations that would normally be hidden to other players. In this way one could essentially build an "aimbot" type mod that would be entirely invisible in MP if we didn't track checksum. Since the language files run through the UI computation layer you could do much of the same with a language-only mod, even.

Having said that, it might be possible to manually turn off checksumming these files in a friendly MP game by mutual agreement.

Thank you. It was very annoying to read all these comments "it's too hard to separate graphics mods from gameplay mods!" given how HoI4 (and I think Stellaris?) did exactly that.
But the possibility to "write" otherwise hidden data onto the screen is an interesting point, and even if I still disagree with it, the decision makes more sense now.

 

[za3tarani]

Just like it does right now?

has flag "started as LUX" + has flag "Is LUX and producing luxury" = get flag "completed achievement"

but why the second part? has flag "Is LUX and producing luxury" is not needed, you just need to start as luxembourg, i assmume you could form a country and still get the achievement... so that is why i am asking if you can tag switch and still get the achievement.

i assume the requirement is; has flag "started as LUX" + has flag "is producing luxury" + has flag "is player"

 

[TempestM]

but why the second part?

To check that you still play Luxemburg and didn't tag switch! Seems kidna obvious to me. It's a simple check
Don't know if forming countries will change tags in V3, in HOI it's mostly cosmetical and Russia is always SOV, for example

 

[za3tarani]

To check that you still play Luxemburg and didn't tag switch! Seems kidna obvious to me. It's a simple check
Don't know if forming countries will change tags in V3, in HOI it's mostly cosmetical and Russia is always SOV, for example

forming germany will def change tag, actually most formables (if not all) change tag in vicky... in eu4 you can start as a nation, culture convert and change to more or less any country, and still get a given achievement... so long it is done in iron man.

 

[Davincie]

I don't mind the Ironman change (in fact I welcome it) and I haven't read the entire thread, but maybe as a way to satisfy those upset about it you could add a little icon if you completed the achievement in ironman in the ingame achievement screen. Is that possible?

 

[TempestM]

forming germany will def change tag, actually most formables (if not all) change tag in vicky...

Source? On Vic3, not 2

in eu4 you can start as a nation, culture convert and change to more or less any country, and still get a given achievement... so long it is done in iron man.

Well yes, because there you can't tag switch that easily. Here you can. So just add that simple check, problem solved

 

[za3tarani]

Source? On Vic3, not 2

the source is that SEVERAL countries can form germany, so germany would have to have their own tag... also there are other ways to know of vic3 tags, unofficial ways.

 

[TempestM]

the source is that SEVERAL countries can form germany, so germany would have to have their own tag...

That's not a proof, because country being renamed to Germany and getting "formed Germany" effect doesn't necessarily require changing tags

also there are other ways to know of vic3 tags, unofficial ways.

Well if you checked that in the leak and confirmed it to be the case then it's true, but you didn't mention it before

 

[Kipsta]

Being anarchist in anywhere is hard, it will definitely be hard as a world-spanning empire.

Who forces you to keep a world spanning empire if you just want the achievement? That's not the requirement. As far as I am aware you could release yourself as Wales right at the start and get the achievement.

Lanfang is hard against the Dutch and the British.

Okay, I give you that. Dutch already have a presence on Borneo at the start of the game and if they expand that quickly it will be harder, but I don't think they will

Surpassing Britain, France, Germany and US as Ottomans is challenging.

Nah... you are the strongest power between Balkans and Central Asia, easy blobbing, easy economy. Just change your laws to multi-cultural or make a vassal swarm.

Beating US as Mexico definitely requires fine playership.

This isn't Vic2 where national differences(manpower, tech) were much more pronounced. In this game Mexico will be a lot stronger starting out and as long as you manage to be friendly with the US to hold them off, pass some laws that attract immigrants you'll easily usurp the US powerwise.

Pretty sure both EUIV and CKIII have achievements for MARRYING, and that's a literal day one click. Not all of them are supposed to be hard anyway.

None of these require you to play a specific nation up to mid or late game just so you can perform the singular requirement that is asked of you.

Belle Epoque is definitely challenging.

France is the strongest European power, just by reaching end game and doing some basic economy everybody will be above 20 SOL.

Literacy now works different than maxing out the education slider with you actually having to maintain schools so Reading Campaign is definitely doable only in late game with sufficient technology and spending.

You literally put the school institution to 5, you just have to get enough bureaucracy points.

The Opium one is probably doable only as an independent India or China, but still a challenge for them and very challenging for anyone else.

Bro... Great Britain already starts with probably thousands of units of production.

Inventive is definitely hard. It required an especially tall gameplay even in Victoria 2 and this game has innovation much more complex.

Not really. As your maxed school institution makes your people more literate, you have to build some Universities and that's it. Start with the highest literacy country or something like Switzerland, enjoy peaceful speed 5 game. Click some buttons here and there.

Like come on, it is fairly hard to beat Ottomans as Egypt, let alone getting their capital as well as many Arab lands some of which are under Western control by that point.

Same point as Mexico vs US.

Western Protectorate is VERY hard. You have to westernize and then separately beat every significant European power with all their allies.

Ally Russia and you can simply use their border to war Europe.

Star Swarmed Banner is hard because you have to INCORPORATE the states. You know, setting institutions and crushing separatism in all of them with crazy amounts of bureaucracy.

It's not hard, just don't use your bureaucracy points on institutions, get accepting culture/religion laws, maybe only max police institution and you have plenty of points to integrate.

Also Grander Colombia will be hard until you get it rolling, with Brazil and Argentina challenging you.

That's what I said, the start will be hard. Obviously you start out with blobbing the smaller nations.

Yeah, it is easy if you beat Prussia and Austria as an insignificant OPM.

Use France or Prussia to help you form Benelux.

Barbary's Back is, in my opinion, pretty much medium actually. You can probably catch France vulnerable at least once a game, plus Morocco and Tunis are there for conquest.

I half-agree, but in the end Algeria is a weak country with low population. It's like the Ottomans achievement, just that you have to even become Ottoman level first.

In total, these achievements are not supposed to be a full-set of impossible to do challenges, they all sound like fun playthroughs to try.

I don't want or need them to be impossible to do challenges or everything has to be hard. I want them to be fun and everything that is listed below easy just isn't fun. It's just a time grind without much thought put into it. From what I understand, overall you do agree with my judgement seeing as to how you even made a thread pertaining to specific country achievements. It's just that I am especially frustrated by those that aren't fun which is everything listed below easy.