Victoria 3 - Dev Diary #73 - Open Beta and Update 1.2 overview

[grommile]

IS there an ETA for the time of release for the beta?

"Our planned beta launch date is February 8th at 10:00 CET"

 

[Cramoxis]

hi, it seems very cool to have this private investment pool it brings life to the game.
But 1 other thing that bother me, has a mostly european countries player, is that austria is too strong so prussia never forms Germany. on a geopolitical plan it limits possibilities for great maneuvers ( or wars) . Do you intend to adress this issue in the immediate future ?

 

[Oglesby]

hi, it seems very cool to have this private investment pool it brings life to the game. But 1 other thing that bother me has a mostly european countries player, is that austria is so strong that prussia never forms Germany. on a geo political plan it limits possibilities for great maneuvers ( or wars) . Do you intend to adress this issue in the immediate future ?

I think that

• Improved AI handling of economy and military, including port management

would have an effect on Austria as I believe they started getting too strong once the code was changed and nations focused more on building ports. Since Austria has limited spots for ports they didn't waste as much of their budget overbuilding ports.

 

[$ilent_$trider]

I think I might be going crazy or I didn't understand it all.
What's the difference in the new Autonomous Construction method we have and the Directly Controlled one?
I changed my rules to Directly Controlled (which, I think it should be the default but I digress) and I still see Government and Private buildings separately.
When, to my understanding if directly controlled, there should be no such split and buildings that can be funded with the Private pool would use that pool first and then whatever else needed from the government funds to pay for the difference.
Am I wrong in this assumption?

 

[grommile]

What's the difference in the new Autonomous Construction method we have and the Directly Controlled one?

Under Autonomous Construction, you can't use the Investment Pool, and an AI representing your proprietorial classes, which is emphatically not the same as the national construction AI of AI-controlled countries, decides how to spend the Investment Pool.

Under Directly Controlled, you decide (within the limits of your laws) how the Investment Pool is used.

 

[$ilent_$trider]

Under Autonomous Construction, you can't use the Investment Pool, and an AI representing your proprietorial classes, which is emphatically not the same as the national construction AI of AI-controlled countries, decides how to spend the Investment Pool.

Under Directly Controlled, you decide (within the limits of your laws) how the Investment Pool is used.

Ok, I understood that as well, but then, why when I start a campaign with Directly Controlled do I still have two different queues?
Is this working as designed?

 

[51states]

Various Observations:
1. Playing as the US the Oregon treaty event does not remove British Columbia interest in Idaho, preventing me from colonizing unless I conquer BC first.

2. Autonomous investment works pretty well, once you unlock oil.

3. I suffered 4 straight revolutions trying to pass laws. Laws that really should not be hard to pass as the US.

4. Finally saw an American Civil war but it's buggy. I read somewhere that having planters migrate to Dixie states might help matters

 

[51states]

Other Observations:

1. Trying to pass Professional Army should not cause an instant revolution in the United States, It's stupid.

2. For some weird reason you cannot have publicly traded steam trawlers directly (for fish and whales), you need to pass the intermediate production method, switch to publicly traded.

 

[BrotherJonathan]

Other Observations:

1. Trying to pass Professional Army should not cause an instant revolution in the United States, It's stupid.

Well, one of the things they're trying to fix is it being too easy to pass laws, so I guess they over-tuned too far in the other direction.

 

[51states]

Well, one of the things they're trying to fix is it being too easy to pass laws, so I guess they over-tuned too far in the other direction.

I get that, but for example I'm promoting the armed forces, building barracks and maxing out a navy (to increase the clout of the armed forces, and I still get supreme opposition from rural folk and trade unions, trade unions i can get, but rural folk in the US against a professional army?

 

[BrotherJonathan]

I get that, but for example I'm promoting the armed forces, building barracks and maxing out a navy (to increase the clout of the armed forces, and I still get supreme opposition from rural folk and trade unions, trade unions i can get, but rural folk in the US against a professional army?

I agree that it's ridiculous, I was just speculating on why it's happening.

 

[Svenska Super]

Other Observations:

1. Trying to pass Professional Army should not cause an instant revolution in the United States, It's stupid.

2. For some weird reason you cannot have publicly traded steam trawlers directly (for fish and whales), you need to pass the intermediate production method, switch to publicly traded.

When passing a law like having as a policy a professional army, a similar process like when approving the law should happen.
I mean with this once the law is in place you never have immediately a professional army this transition should be slowed by some modifieres,
of course technologie etc. choices could help you speed up the transition full implementation.

Besides being a proponent of stockpiling principes I'm now also see something in the idea of not only stockpiling weapons but also munition.
Having a sufficient stockpile would than also be a treshold to determine if you can make a certain change in the armed forces.

 

[Gui10]

I get that, but for example I'm promoting the armed forces, building barracks and maxing out a navy (to increase the clout of the armed forces, and I still get supreme opposition from rural folk and trade unions, trade unions i can get, but rural folk in the US against a professional army?

If the starting law is national militia, it makes complete sense. You are essentially trying to remove a large segment portion of the military power of the states (and thus their ability to defend their interests) and give it to the federal government.

 

[51states]

If the starting law is national militia, it makes complete sense. You are essentially trying to remove a large segment portion of the military power of the states (and thus their ability to defend their interests) and give it to the federal government.

That would be the case if it eliminated conscription centers entirely

 

[Gui10]

That would be the case if it eliminated conscription centers entirely

A large segment of it. Compared with national militia, professional army eliminates 50% of the conscription sectors max level and 80% of their ability to recruit troops (from 5% conscription rate to 1%). It also increases the max size of the central government army 20 times (from max level 5 to max level 100) and the power of the armed forces by 50% (from -25% to +25%).

Edit: to clarify the impact, given the small population sizes of american states at game start, the reduction in conscription rate is the one that matters and is reducing the states' army sizes by 80%, while also giving you (the federal government) the ability to rise an enormous army wherever you want. Not only is their opposition expected, but not opposing it would allow you to just steamroll the other side in any american civil war variation.

 

[51states]

Continuing with the observations:

1. Construction goes into negative time to finish, halting all construction, fixed for Government Construction by removing the negative time building to the bottom of the queue, this doesn't help private construction which is helplessly stopped.

 

[51states]

Stopped the game short of 1933, liberated some colonies as the US because I did not like the bordergore and was 2nd world power behind france by a bit of prestige. The game runs much smoother this patch but the revolutions are still too strong and too often and often without reaason. The other things is that interest group happyness comes mostly from passing laws and they ebb when leaders die and change so getting the correct mix of leaders to get the laws you want can be a pain (for example I was able to pass Professional Army when a trade union leader was in favor of the idea and then it took 20 years for then people to stop caring about the army.)

The biggest issue however is the negative construction from private construction queue which is game breaking.

 

[Svenska Super]

i read the enormous amount of ui fixes etc and played the game in its beta for several hours.
This new investment pool, building things is interesting but sometimes resets before reaching 100% why is that? Can any tooltip provide an explanation.

Furthermore other things to improve:
- declare interest; still a doubtful mechanic, i would suggest replacing it with a similar sphere of influence mechanic like in vic 2
- no stockpiling makes an enormous problem. For example you build an iron mine early and can't export, it has no use
- tooltips not show why building can't have more labour or why not more peasant move into building (non farm)
- trade is just .. just automatise this completely and let a player set manage the flows but this current system heavily influence by no stockpiling not good
- game still not well optimised, can't keep stable 60fps framerate on even lowest settings looks really ugly, clearly visible no low performance graphics objects (helpful graphical difference with less complexity, i think you could call it vic3 classic, slightly better graphics than vic2 and way less gpu and cpu usage as intented with this)
- warfare system terrible
- why you can't take back a treaty port if you have a lower rank? again absence of stockpiling negates this
- The good services is a doubtful good and doubtful where its output comes from it should come from an organic growth in conjunction with other buildings

 

[Sudertum]

Have two observations so far:

-Private Investment drains twice its production value. Had (as Prussia) 78 total ,19 by priv. inv. and 39 by my goverment (with way more on) list remaining 19 stayed unsued until private production was finished.
- Had a crash then looking into diplomatic "Information" for Switzerland (played in german), upload didn't work in popping up bug report tool

 

[Svenska Super]

i read the enormous amount of ui fixes etc and played the game in its beta for several hours.
This new investment pool, building things is interesting but sometimes resets before reaching 100% why is that? Can any tooltip provide an explanation.

Furthermore other things to improve:
- declare interest; still a doubtful mechanic, i would suggest replacing it with a similar sphere of influence mechanic like in vic 2
- no stockpiling makes an enormous problem. For example you build an iron mine early and can't export, it has no use
- tooltips not show why building can't have more labour or why not more peasant move into building (non farm)
- trade is just .. just automatise this completely and let a player set manage the flows but this current system heavily influence by no stockpiling not good
- game still not well optimised, can't keep stable 60fps framerate on even lowest settings looks really ugly, clearly visible no low performance graphics objects (helpful graphical difference with less complexity, i think you could call it vic3 classic, slightly better graphics than vic2 and way less gpu and cpu usage as intented with this)
- warfare system terrible
- why you can't take back a treaty port if you have a lower rank? again absence of stockpiling negates this
- The good services is a doubtful good and doubtful where its output comes from it should come from an organic growth in conjunction with other buildings

The current declare interest is a non optimal game mechanic. I played as Marocco and i couldnt import any hardwood, B
because I had no declared interest in plenty of countries exporting this.
Also i had no option available to declare interest in a region. So i had one region fixed north africa which in my opinion should be
far larger than the current assigned area, as such better switch to spheres.

Thus Marocco is in my opinion perfect test case to see what needs to be improved in current game, because of being an aspiring nation:

- Enormous potential to grow and throw of colonial shackles (treaty ports) and become member of lead african coalition
- Near colonisable teritorry but can't colonise even if you want to
- Has mines but can't do anything with it eg. early export or stockpiling effectively for later internal use
- You can't control under taxation in a reasonable way, if it switches to paper it will collapse (don't talk about cherry picking the tech tree i did and it's no working), you will find yourself continuously expanding bureacracy building (this could better be complemented with edicts)
- Even when lowering all taxes no increase in living standard happens even when basic staple goods are cheap
- Warfare troop/ battle management is terribly designed in conjunction the prestige system or country ranking because you drop quick as Marocco and suddenly
you naturally intend to fix this by upgrading your army moderately, which leads to the artillery issue, as mentioned after this point.
I think the prestige system, country ranking should way more take in account the assets of a country GDP and gold reserves,
this promotes also more non violent play, expansion
- You can't produce arty because a law doesn't allow it (doesn't allow change production method), than when you finally switch the law,
build arms manufactories you are burdened with iron input problems and hardwood (especially hardwood and already with producing small arms!),
as mentioned earlier, don't mention yeah just switch production method, suddenly than i have big minus in normal wood, like in reality no other farm or someone would be able to provide 'some hardwood', leads to next point
- The game lacks certain resources to trade, produce etc you would like to see and over complicates things with the switch production method,
which is a perfectionism approach. Instead of this it should be more a shift focus approach.
- Type of production machine (or how its called) should also get changed, as soon as a new system is available say steam engine, the business in question should be able to decide to buy it as they naturally know best what is profitable, unless you are a command economy
- Marocco starts out with ports, which are natural harbors? (maybe a nice country summary at start of game is given as a pop up, how eu4 does this)
- Spain offered me a trade agreement i accepted it and barely noticed anything of having it. When settign up export or import routes still
no visible benefit to having this trade agreement or even logical options not available
- I think it shows that besides stockpiling a transportation cost and distance measure pro good hence the sphere of influence is needed.
As such that logical goods in the near region are always able to acquire
- If you just want a fleet to gather some naval experience or tradition, or protect coast to invading troops it's really clear marocco has no fun in current game design
as they cant make a small green water navy
- When you play marocco you should suppose to be able to act from the sultans perspective barely anything is confirming you are playing this kind of political setting

I'm deeply disappointed about this as my favourite nation is actually tripolitana, the ancient libya. But this is even more worse to play as absolutely failed has the joint market mechanic and other things in diplomacy like negotiating a pay of with the otman.