Victoria 3 - Dev Diary #58 - Interest Revisions

[Hertzila]

Jus a side note: does anyone else feel that interest, as a "power projection" of sorts, should stem from ships rather than naval bases?

As Jamaican Castle says, it's a neat idea to actually tie Interests to ships and for other nations to be able to reduce the British diplomatical supremacy with naval action, but the end result is both cumbersome in gameplay and implies some very odd fridge logic in-universe.

I do hope shortages at naval bases can affect the amount of Declared Interests, so actually managing to strip a rival of their ship-building capability can wreck their overseas affairs. Likewise, I hope ship quality is a factor, so having an expensive bleeding-edge steamer navy is better than a bunch of old EU4 era ships, even if the raw ship count is the same.

 

[Revolution 11]

As Jamaican Castle says, it's a neat idea to actually tie Interests to ships and for other nations to be able to reduce the British diplomatical supremacy with naval action, but the end result is both cumbersome in gameplay and implies some very odd fridge logic in-universe.

I do hope shortages at naval bases can affect the amount of Declared Interests, so actually managing to strip a rival of their ship-building capability can wreck their overseas affairs. Likewise, I hope ship quality is a factor, so having an expensive bleeding-edge steamer navy is better than a bunch of old EU4 era ships, even if the raw ship count is the same.

Definitely like this idea. The United States specifically sent out the Great White Fleet in 1907 to show off their Power Projection. In-game, having a fleet of up-to-date battleships when your peers do not should give more Interests or a bonus Interest. (not saying that the United States was that advanced in 1907)

 

[Brynjar]

Which interestingly means mods should be able to yield declared interests from whatever buildings they want.

Not sure why you would find that interesting. I would be surprised and very disappointed if you can't mod in declared interests from pretty much anything, be it techs, events or province modifiers.

If you look at the screenshot, declared interests are a product of the naval base, not derived from the fleet capacity or current size. The amount is equivalent to 1 per 10 flotillas but they aren't actually connected.

How do you see that? I don't know what the button with ships and a price tag on it is. The most reasonable explanation would be that the button with ships on it builds ships, but I have no doubt that whoever designed the UI thought it would be a good idea to have ships on a button that upgrades a naval base... Add in Wizzington's claim that naval bases gives declared interests per flotilla a country has, and I don't see one or the other source to be any more plausible than the other.

 

[Kimberly]

If you do lose declared interests then the last interest you declared will start to get removed, you get a notification, and have a period of 30 days to react by removing another declared interest and re-declaring he one that was automatically removed before the actual Interest goes away.

The step of re-declaring an automatically removed interest seems superfluous here. You could just make the notification say what will be removed in 30 days if no other interest is removed.

 

[Orinsul]

How does the game represent overland trade?
If you need interests to trade, and that's tied to ships and ports? Is there just no long distance overland trade?

 

[wilcoxchar]

How does the game represent overland trade?
If you need interests to trade, and that's tied to ships and ports? Is there just no long distance overland trade?

You can always trade with markets your market has a land border with.

 

[Orinsul]

You can always trade with markets your market has a land border with.

And markets they border on? Intercontinental overland trade was a significant force in Eurasia.
Berlin-baghdad being the most obvious example, being a whole train route to bring oil to Berlin, and the northern silk road never stopped.
Central asia would be able to trade with european minor powers under this system. look at how many interest regions there are in Europe! Even in the iron age trade was never so limited as it will be in V3's era of global trade 19th century.

That's before even getting to nations that had zero military naval capacity, or even ports, yet still saw vast trade through civilian naval trade or contracted intermediaries. Bhutan as the example in the DD, but it's also about the only example that works for the system, the world was not full of Bhutans. It'd be like basing war mechanics around Switzerland.

 

[BeauNiddle]

And markets they border on? Intercontinental overland trade was a significant force in Eurasia.
Berlin-baghdad being the most obvious example, being a whole train route to bring oil to Berlin, and the northern silk road never stopped.
Central asia would be able to trade with european minor powers under this system. look at how many interest regions there are in Europe! Even in the iron age trade was never so limited as it will be in V3's era of global trade 19th century.

That's before even getting to nations that had zero military naval capacity, or even ports, yet still saw vast trade through civilian naval trade or contracted intermediaries. Bhutan as the example in the DD, but it's also about the only example that works for the system, the world was not full of Bhutans. It'd be like basing war mechanics around Switzerland.

So Berlin declares an interest on Baghdad and now they can trade. If Berlin wants to. Baghdad doesn't have the diplomatic corps or the global reach to force a trade with Berlin.

So trade will be what the big countries wish it to be but the little countries can take advantage while the going is good.

Isn't that both realistic and what the system shows?

Now there is definitely an issue with trade routes being end to end and not capacity (so you can't send other goods on somebody else's trade ships/routes) but that's a flaw with the trade model - not the interests model.

 

[J.P. Morgan]

Cool

 

[grommile]

Why not just let us decide ourselves which countries we consider relevant without having to juggle some boring made up limited resource?

If you can declare the entire world relevant willy-nilly, why would you ever not declare the entire world relevant?

 

[Revolution 11]

If you can declare the entire world relevant willy-nilly, why would you ever not declare the entire world relevant?

My question to the developers is this: Can a strong British Empire (or replacing naval-focused Great Power) be able to declare interests on the entire world? Is that possible within the game as it currently is balanced? Is that desirable for gameplay's sake? And if not the whole world, is the top naval power able to declare interests on a vast majority like 80% of the world?

 

[sbadkins4]

Interests should come from the actual ships, no bases, and ships should have a reduced interest production if they are obsolete.

 

[grommile]

Interests should come from the actual ships, no bases, and ships should have a reduced interest production if they are obsolete.

The first part of this would, I assure you, be a terrible gameplay experience (except for people whose main mode of enjoyment is specifically "bullying the AI").

 

[Ferrous Will]

The first part of this would, I assure you, be a terrible gameplay experience (except for people whose main mode of enjoyment is specifically "bullying the AI").

to be fair, bullying the AI is pretty fun.

 

[dbruser]

Interests should come from the actual ships, no bases, and ships should have a reduced interest production if they are obsolete.

This is the realism idea as Wiz said, but it proved to be incredibly annoying and inconvenient that bogged down gameplay and wasn't worth it, since any time you got into a war and your navy fought someone else's, you would lose a bunch of interests.

 

[MrMcQue]

This is the realism idea as Wiz said, but it proved to be incredibly annoying and inconvenient that bogged down gameplay and wasn't worth it, since any time you got into a war and your navy fought someone else's, you would lose a bunch of interests.

But giving the player a time-buffer, making it a soft-cap or at least tying ships and naval bases together seems like the obvious and easy solution to the problem of "loosing a bunch of interests whenever the navy fought a war" withouth relying solely on said naval bases, no?

 

[anbory]

Although the revision seems to be a significant improvement, I'm a little worry about how would it work with continental empires like Russia, Austria-Hungary, Germany or USA. Does it mean that, for example, Russia has spent its 3 interest points on Kazakhs, Turkestan and China and it needs to build a navy to... declare interest in landlocked Afghanistan? That's a bit silly.

I guess, we need to separate dip interest points between continental and overseas. It really hard to declare many interests all over the world if you don't have a proper navy, but lack of big navy should not limit you to interact you with literally your neighbours.

 

[Ferrous Will]

Although the revision seems to be a significant improvement, I'm a little worry about how would it work with continental empires like Russia, Austria-Hungary, Germany or USA. Does it mean that, for example, Russia has spent its 3 interest points on Kazakhs, Turkestan and China and it needs to build a navy to... declare interest in landlocked Afghanistan? That's a bit silly.

I guess, we need to separate dip interest points between continental and overseas. It really hard to declare many interests all over the world if you don't have a proper navy, but lack of big navy should not limit you to interact you with literally your neighbours.

Borders can be used in lieu of interest, and I'm guessing border via subjects works too

 

[UBERWASP]

With these revisions possibility of Vic3 getting negative reviews reducing. This is the second dev diary that I actually liked and hopefully there will be more revisions in the next dev diaries. Thanks!

 

[DanielPrates]

As Jamaican Castle says, it's a neat idea to actually tie Interests to ships and for other nations to be able to reduce the British diplomatical supremacy with naval action, but the end result is both cumbersome in gameplay and implies some very odd fridge logic in-universe.

I do hope shortages at naval bases can affect the amount of Declared Interests, so actually managing to strip a rival of their ship-building capability can wreck their overseas affairs. Likewise, I hope ship quality is a factor, so having an expensive bleeding-edge steamer navy is better than a bunch of old EU4 era ships, even if the raw ship count is the same.

I think having interests decrease after naval losses would be cumbersome and ultimately not make a lot of sense. ("The navy was defeated in the North Atlantic, better withdraw our ambassador to Japan.") The mechanical implications would also be a pain - would losing an interest automatically suspend agreements or trade routes? What if you're at war with someone in that Interest region? How do you even determine which interests are lost - is it by age? Do you put some "over interest cap" penalty on the player until they remove one (what if they don't do it)?

I admit, those are good points. Above the purely RP reason behind mechanics, there must be good gameplay hovering above. To tie interest capacity to number of fleets would generate an oscillation every time you build more fleets or have them scrapped/destroyed - kinda like in EU4 you keep loosing and regaining your great power status just because someone built more improvements in a province. That would be awfull, you being in the midst of a diplo play and having it evaporate mid course because any number of possibilities both known and unknown. Also, as Jamaican Castle said, the balancing of mechanical implications usually creates more problems than they solve - for instance, again with the EU4 'loosing great power' mechanic, to avoid it changing back an forth every day, there is a time count as a 'safe net' which I always though to be unsatisfactory. Usually, those secondary mechanics built to counter the defect of a main mechanic are two mistakes instead of one.

In a perfect world, more diplomatic projection necessarily has to do with the ability to exert that power all over the world, be it in fact or as a threat, so that would have to be seen as a consequence of large fleets and not a number of bases. But the tradeoff of having wonky mechanics isn't worth it.

Also... I suppose we can imagine the capacity for more declared interests deriving from bases and not proper ships, being explained away by your presumed CIVILIAN naval capacity. Trade, cultural ties, colonial development, movement of passengers etc., all of that require a privately owned fleet, which for sure has to be proportional to your number of bases or it's level of development. So it works in that way as well.