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Victoria 3 - Dev Diary #65 - Patch 1.1 (part 1)

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Hello and welcome to the second post-release dev diary for Victoria 3. Today we’ll be talking about the first major post-release patch, which we’re aiming to get to you before the end of the year. This patch (1.1) is going to primarily focus on game polish: bug fixing, balancing, AI improvements and UI/UX work, while the next major free patch (1.2) is going to be more focused towards making progress on the plans we’ve outlined in our Post-Release Plans DD by iterating on systems like warfare and diplomacy. With that said, there’s a few more significant changes coming in 1.1 as well, which we’re going to go over in this and next week’s dev diary.

The first of these changes is a rework of the interface for individual Pops, with a particular emphasis on improving the visualization of Pop Needs. In addition to the general overview, there are now separate tabs for Economy and Consumption, with Economy showing a more detailed breakdown of the Pop’s income and expenditure, as well as their top 5 Goods expenditures, and the Consumption tab showing a detailed breakdown of all their Goods expenditures, along with pricing information for the State and Market. We also plan to iterate on Pop Needs further in the future to give you a better idea of what your population needs are country-wide.

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The next significant change in 1.1 is a rework of Legitimacy: some frequent criticisms we have received about the political system in Victoria 3 is that Legitimacy doesn’t matter enough and isn’t clear enough about its effects, as well as that elections don’t have enough of an impact. This rework aims to resolve all those problems by making several changes: First, legitimacy, while still a number from 0 to 100, is now divided into five categories with differing effects, some of which will increase or decrease based on the actual number and not just the threshold:
  • 0-24: Illegitimate Government: This government is considered blatantly illegitimate by most everyone in the country. This legitimacy level reduces the approval of all opposition IGs, makes it impossible to enact laws, and generates a steady stream of radicals in increased numbers the lower Legitimacy is.
  • 25-49: Unacceptable Government: This government is generally not considered acceptable to the people of the country. Laws can be enacted, but opposition IGs will disapprove and radicals will be created over time, though in amounts less than in an Illegitimate Government.
  • 50-74: Contested Government: This government is considered to have somewhat shaky foundations. Opposition IGs will disapprove slightly but otherwise there are no ill or good effects.
  • 75-89: Legitimate Government: This government is considered proper and legitimate. Over time a small number of Loyalists will be generated, with increased numbers the higher Legitimacy is.
  • 90-100: Righteous Government: This government’s legitimacy is considered to be unassailable. In addition to generating Loyalists over time, enactment time for new laws is cut in half.

The way you gain legitimacy has also been altered in democracies, with the share of votes (rather than just clout) represented in Government now having a direct effect on Legitimacy, the degree to which depends on the laws - under more restrictive voting systems, Clout can still be more important than votes, but as more of the population becomes enfranchised votes grow in importance and under Universal Suffrage it should be virtually impossible for a government that doesn’t have the voters behind it to be considered legitimate.

Despite being the largest party in terms of Clout, the Whigs alone are not considered Legitimate due to only commanding 47% of the votes in the last election.
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Lastly for today, we’ve also made a balancing change to the Church and State and Citizenship laws - previously, the only balancing consideration for these laws was that less tolerance gave more Authority, which we felt was neither particularly balanced nor really a complete representation of the reasons that a country might want to discriminate against part of their population. To try and address this, we’ve made it so that by default, slightly more radicals are created by Standard of Living decreases than Loyalists from Standard of Living increases, but offset this with modifiers on the more restrictive laws that increase Loyalist and reduce Radical gain among the accepted parts of the population - the more restrictive your cultural/religious tolerance, the greater the effect on the part of the population that actually falls within it.

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That’s it for today! Next week we’re going to continue talking about Patch 1.1, which as I said at the beginning of the dev diary is planned to be released before the end of the year. We’re also still working on another hotfix (1.0.6) which should hopefully include some late-game performance improvements and other fixes and which we are aiming to release sometime next week.
 
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All sounds good to me, especially getting another hotfix before 1.1.

Do the devs have a recorded stance on France's dominance and (relatedly) the extreme effectiveness of Treaty Ports?
 
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Will the way how IGs are added to parties also change? Because in two of my games I would have kind of a deadlock under the new system, as my legitimacy is low, but I basically cannot change the government as some of the IGs want to be in the parties, but are too angry to be in the government. And under the new system I would not even have the chance to change the laws to make them happier (not that I would actually want to do that).
 
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Ok, so I do like the game and am enjoying it. But I am also continually frustrated by bugs and UI troubles. And the amount of changes coming immediately post-release seems to support the view that the game released too soon.

Also, I have some quibbles with the proposed changes to legitimacy. First off, illegitimate should not be barred completely from passing laws. And the legitimacy in democracies should be higher than just the count of votes. Are two-party systems inherently illegitimate just because each party only gets half the vote? There needs to be some accounting for system legitimacy and not just IG/party legitimacy.
 
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Ok, so I do like the game and am enjoying it. But I am also continually frustrated by bugs and UI troubles. And the amount of changes coming immediately post-release seems to support the view that the game released too soon.

Also, I have some quibbles with the proposed changes to legitimacy. First off, illegitimate should not be barred completely from passing laws. And the legitimacy in democracies should be higher than just the count of votes. Are two-party systems inherently illegitimate just because each party only gets half the vote? There needs to be some accounting for system legitimacy and not just IG/party legitimacy.

There is most probably going to be a Legitimacy bonus inherent to being a democracy, kinda like right now having an IG in power favoured by the Monarch grants a +20 Legitimacy bonus under a Monarchy.
 
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There is most probably going to be a Legitimacy bonus inherent to being a democracy, kinda like right now having an IG in power favoured by the Monarch grants a +20 Legitimacy bonus under a Monarchy.
The screenshot shows the modifiers, and there isn't one for having democratic elections. While it is a Monarchy shown, its is one that has elections and that should give it some legitimacy beyond just the vote share.
 
On topic of legitimacy, I hope you will also readjust how the number is calculated. Better yet, in an ideal world you'd split law enactment time and legitimacy (meaning political legitimation/representation) into two separate things.

I'll show you the somewhat extreme example of my current government:

government_01.png


It doesn't get more legitimate than this: all parties on board, no opposition, everyone loyal. They represent 99.458% of my population and they're all happy to be part of the government and there are no major complaints about the enacted laws.

Fun fact, even the remaining 0.542% of my population, who are represented by the marginalized IG's, are either happy or at least not unhappy:

government_03.png


Yet my legitimacy is merely at 86%, which would be considered only "legitimate" instead of "righteous".

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So the size is the problem. I'd have to kick out one IG from the government to make it more legitimate? I'd have to rob a sizeable part of my population from political representation to have a more legitimate government? Really?

That doesn't make any sense! The more people are directly part of the government through the IG's/parties they belong to, the more legitimate they should view the government.

What should suffer with so many parties on board is the law enactment time (we already have the debate/stalling risks with opposed IG's in the government, which is fair and fine). A big government with many interests to balance needs time to act. But its legitimacy should not be in question here. Not when 99.458% of my people's political interests are directly represented in the stable and loyal government.

Please, separate legitimacy and enactment time, that is what would solve the issue.
 
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Is it safe to assume the overflow bugs (Gdp, loyalists, clout,, and so forth) will be vanquished in 1.0.6? My trade unions are so happy they've collapsed into a hate-singularity, and so powerful they don't exist.
This phenomenon is well documented in "Das Kapital"
 
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Can’t wait to see how the new legitimacy system just get rendered irrelevant entirely by just simply adding another interest group in it via government reforms so you can get it above 50.
Wouldn't that simply be WAD?

Clearly the legitimacy changes aren't there to make players struggle to form legitimate governments - they're there to force players to either bring interest groups they don't want into government (because of votes or clout) or to maintain low legitimacy governments. It'll be an interesting choice.
 
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Lastly for today, we’ve also made a balancing change to the Church and State and Citizenship laws - previously, the only balancing consideration for these laws was that less tolerance gave more Authority, which we felt was neither particularly balanced nor really a complete representation of the reasons that a country might want to discriminate against part of their population. To try and address this, we’ve made it so that by default, slightly more radicals are created by Standard of Living decreases than Loyalists from Standard of Living increases, but offset this with modifiers on the more restrictive laws that increase Loyalist and reduce Radical gain among the accepted parts of the population - the more restrictive your cultural/religious tolerance, the greater the effect on the part of the population that actually falls within it.


That’s it for today! Next week we’re going to continue talking about Patch 1.1, which as I said at the beginning of the dev diary is planned to be released before the end of the year. We’re also still working on another hotfix (1.0.6) which should hopefully include some late-game performance improvements and other fixes and which we are aiming to release sometime next week.
Ok I don't get the deal here, you addressed a pretty valid and very annoying issue, than proposed a "solution" that, from my understanding, had literally nothing to do with it?
 
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The changes are nice, but i personally can wait for them even longer, those are not important things for now. What we really need as fast as possible is a performance patch or maybe even more than just one. Many can not play longer than 1870-1880 cause of the incredible slow down.

You should prioritize performance for now over absolutely everything else.
 
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Looks good. Will you consider releasing beta patches for us to try out during the development process?

I'm currently spending more time trialling different performance increasing mods than I am actually playing the game.

Things like decreased total amount of cultures, increase assimilation, scripts that kill dependents, I'm desperate to run this game past 1890!
 
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On topic of legitimacy, I hope you will also readjust how the number is calculated. Better yet, in an ideal world you'd split law enactment time and legitimacy (meaning political legitimation/representation) into two separate things.

I'll show you the somewhat extreme example of my current government:

View attachment 907518

It doesn't get more legitimate than this: all parties on board, no opposition, everyone loyal. They represent 99.458% of my population and they're all happy to be part of the government and there are no major complaints about the enacted laws.

Fun fact, even the remaining 0.542% of my population, who are represented by the marginalized IG's, are either happy or at least not unhappy:

View attachment 907551

Yet my legitimacy is merely at 86%, which would be considered only "legitimate" instead of "righteous".

View attachment 907519

So the size is the problem. I'd have to kick out one IG from the government to make it more legitimate? I'd have to rob a sizeable part of my population from political representation to have a more legitimate government? Really?

That doesn't make any sense! The more people are directly part of the government through the IG's/parties they belong to, the more legitimate they should view the government.

What should suffer with so many parties on board is the law enactment time (we already have the debate/stalling risks with opposed IG's in the government, which is fair and fine). A big government with many interests to balance needs time to act. But its legitimacy should not be in question here. Not when 99.458% of my people's political interests are directly represented in the stable and loyal government.

Please, separate legitimacy and enactment time, that is what would solve the issue.

From the screenshots, it looks like they've done away with the "Size of government" effect - which should sort your problem out.
 
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Regarding pop needs I truly believe an aggregate system is needed. Of course it is nice to see what an individual pop needs but, in reality, the average country is going to have hundreds of pops, which makes it really not useful to manage your needs (although it is a welcome addition).
It's also important that we can ser both the current needs and the maximum needs (to see if it is useful to keep expanding a resource or industry or the player efforts are better spent other way). In addition to that I think that having separate information from the different countries in the market would be quite handful, as at the end you care about your own pops and making them richer, not really about another member in the market (or at least not that much).

I also wanted to ask wether you guys have discussed moving a bit away from the showing tooltips into more button kinda thing. For instance there are too many times in which you want to access a menu but you have to wait for the tooltip to show, then navigate it and then click details. Or having to go over and get another tooltip to come and then another one. For instance if I wanted to see how much a pop fertility or mortality is in Normandy I would have yo click the state, go to population, go to the list, click to open the specific pop type, then click on the pop, move my mouse to the growth, then go over birth rate and then see it. Maybe with more buttons instead of tooltips (or ir to be optional to see maybe) or reworking pop and state lists in a way that resembles Vic2 (in a sense that by toggling off or with some filters we could easily access the kind of pop we want)

Another thing that I wanted to ask is if you are planning on showing assimilation somewhere. Right now it's really hard to see how many people would assimilate or why would (or wouldn't) they. Same thing with religion.
It would also be nice if you could come up with a religion map. I know it's not the most important factor in this time but it really would help to understand what's happening in your country por how the world is developing. It would be cool if the religion or culture map were stripped between the 2 Major cultures por religions in the state as right now unless you go one by one with your mouse it's quite hard to get a sense of how the ethnic or religion composition is.

Apart from that just wanted to say that I'm quite happy to see how you're taking feedback into account and how you're keeping on improving the game since day one :)
 
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These seem like very good reworks! But, even in the strongest modern democracies having a minority government is still not all that uncommon. As long as the laws that get passed still have a majority in parliament. So the more logical thing to do would be to have passing laws that are not supported by a majority, give heavy negative hits to legitimacy and perhaps have legitimacy deteriorate over time if you don't have a majority government.

It would be very cool to see a future DLC where political capital also plays a role in all this. Where you can somehow simulate the trade in policies/laws implemented that is often a big part of political systems with a high plurality!

On the subject of pop needs: Will there be ledgers as well?

Something like this?
| good 1 | good 2 |etc.
-----------------------------------------------------
pop 1 | 10 %| 20%| etc.
-----------------------------------------------------
pop 2 | etc.
 
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