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

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Hello and welcome! Today we'll be covering several topics relating to Update 1.2:

  • Open 1.2 Beta
  • Feature Overview
  • Anticipated 1.2 Release Date

As mentioned in our last dev diary, 1.2 is a big update with some far-reaching changes, and we don't want to push it out before we feel it's ready for primetime. We're happy overall with the reception of Update 1.1, but those of you who were with us during its initial release will remember - perhaps fondly, perhaps not - how the Legitimacy mechanics seemed to change from day to day for a while there. While we finally managed to iron out most of the kinks in 1.1.2 (more on that later) this is the kind of scenario we'd like to avoid going forward. With a game as highly interconnected and complex as Victoria 3, the only way to do that is to give the patch enough time in the oven, letting our playtesters really give everything a solid rundown.

At the same time, Update 1.2 brings some substantial improvements in several areas that we know are important to you, and we don't want to keep those away from you longer than we absolutely have to. Disentangling specific improvements and bug fixes from the rest of the changes that have already been done to the branch is itself laborious and error-prone. Our assessment is that releasing those in hotfixes would be risky.

So how do we marry these two things together - giving you access to upcoming content as soon as possible, while ensuring high quality of the upcoming update? By launching our first Open Beta, of course! In this way you will have a chance to experience all the juicy parts of Update 1.2, but also share your feedback with us in advance, allowing us to improve what we are currently working on.

Our planned beta launch date is February 8th at 10:00 CET. At that point a new Steam beta branch 1.2-beta will become available to anyone who owns Victoria 3. A new forum post will be made with step-by-step instructions for how to enable it. Once you've started playing the beta, you can always switch back to the live branch in the same way. As always, your existing save games might not be fully compatible with this new version, and you should definitely not expect saves made in 1.2 to be backwards compatible with 1.1.2.

We will also launch a new beta section on our Victoria 3 Discord server where you can discuss the update with other players and report any bugs or balance issues you find. Our moderators will be active on this channel, and so will developers and QA team members as time permits. If you prefer not to use Discord you can also file bugs using our forum bug report tool, even for the beta version.

After the initial beta release, we plan on releasing two additional updates on the beta branch on a weekly basis, containing additional bug fixes, performance improvements, etc and also adjustments we've made according to your feedback. The exact release dates and times of these updates are to be confirmed, but we will keep you posted on the Discord channel.

To set expectations at the right level, playing the beta build will not be a buttery-smooth experience! Some aspects of the game will be greatly improved, but other things will be in a rougher state, and there will be bugs (if not, we'd just launch it without a beta phase!)

Also, some features will be in a less mature state at the beginning of beta than they will be at release. For example, Strategic Objectives will be limited to one per country during the beta, but the intent is to expand this to allow for designating multiple Strategic Objectives. This slimmed-down version is included in the beta to allow you to try it out and feedback on how it feels in general while we continue to work on the full implementation.

So do keep in mind that while you'll get a sneak peek at the latest features and will see many improvements, you should expect some speed bumps along the way. And when you do, we want to hear about it!

Below you can find a short list of some of the new features and improvements made in 1.2. As always, just because something is not on this list doesn't mean we're not aware of it, and may even have addressed it already! The full changelog will be published closer to the release date.

image1.jpg

New Features
  • Autonomous Investment system
  • Strategic Objectives for planning military campaigns
  • Customizable notification settings
  • In-game music player
  • Key rebinding

Improvements and bug fixes
  • Performance optimization
  • Improved AI handling of economy and military, including port management
  • Greater differences in economic systems
  • More realistic modeling of trade route profits and GDP
  • Worldwide Arable Land revision and migration balancing
  • Mega-parties limited by tweaks to party formation logic and ideology

Interface
  • Trade panel overhaul for easier route management
  • More clarity on Pop Needs, Convoys, Radicals and Loyalists
  • Visual upgrades to mapmodes and lenses, such as showing Infrastructure and employable Pops when expanding buildings
  • Outliner enhanced with pinnable market goods and characters
  • Reduced notification spam


We are going to cover most of these things in dev diaries leading up to the release of 1.2, so details on what exactly these entail may be sparse until then. However, all of these will be in the beta build when we release it (although to reiterate, perhaps not in their final form) so come February 8th you can explore them for yourself!

After the third and final beta release, but before the live release of Update 1.2, you can expect the beta build and the beta section on Discord to become unavailable, as we will be channeling all our resources into the release. We will keep you updated on the expected beta shutdown date on Discord as well, of course.

Our preliminary release date for Update 1.2, assuming all goes according to plan, is March 13th. For those of you who opt to continue playing 1.1.2 until then you can follow the new features in upcoming dev diaries. For the rest of you, I'll see you on Discord on Feb 8!

v3_discordbanner.jpg
 
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This comment is reserved by the Community Team for gathering Dev Responses in, for ease of reading.


magriboy0750 said:


Good afternoon,a great DD and very happy for the music player.However,a few questions regarding the beta:
1)Will we have a code to enter on steam for it in order to access it or we will just have to switch it like for the older versions for example?
2)Will the other languages be localized or the bêta will be English-only initially?
Thanks for any replies about this.
No code will be necessary, you will be able to just switch to the branch.
Regarding localization it's a mixed bag. Most things will be localized, but some things might only show properly in English.


Andarnio said:


Can we get more info on the changes to trade route profit calculation or is that still WIP?
It's using post-trade market prices now, so will be operating on the exact same basis as local industries.

enderro said:


Hi! With regards to more realistic modeling of GDP - does this mean you will deduct the inputs from the GDP calculation? I remember a reddit post, which explained why current calculations are very overstated.
Exactly! This way resources economies operate on the same playing field with manufacturing economies that also produce their own raw materials. The latter type is heavily favored (unfairly so) in 1.1.2.


Somentus said:


Have I missed strategic objectives in a previous dev diary, or has that not been discussed yet?
We will dedicate a later dev diary to this.


Gui10 said:


Does this only mean an increase of it in the Americas or also a decrease in India and East Asia? If so, how are subsistance farms handled now?

If it will all be explained in another developer diary, I am fine waiting :p.
It means both, we've made a special rice paddies subsistence farm that can take twice as many employees which has allowed us to drastically reduce the amount of arable land in China.


Al-Khalidi said:


Sounds pretty good, especially strategic objectives! Nice to see that feedback was heard.
I assume improvements in AI can lead to a bit better world balance, like, russia not imploding in every game anymore?
Absolutely, but every change we've made to AI or balance could also lead to worse world balance, which is a big reason why we feel the beta is so important!


lin001 said:


Great changes! And will the techs queue and more battles per front be added in 1.2, as mentioned in game jam dev diary?
Tech queueing, yes. Multiple battles per front was added as an experiment in the Game Jam and will not be turned on by default, as it introduces complications with the design (e.g. more generals = more win, which is not a dynamic we want). We all want multiple battles per frontline to be a thing and remain committed to trying to solve these design problems. In the meantime, you can try out multiple battles for yourself by changing a define in the configuration files, or installing a mod that does it for you.


Fawr said:


I'm looking forward to the trade rework (both the mechanics and the UI).

The big gap in the list of changes is any changes to how IGs work (other than how they group into parties). Plus no simulation of horses in the game (pre railway techs just need labourers, but don't need extra food or anything for animal based transportation).

Interestingly 3 beta releases, at 2 per week sounds like the beta will be going for 2 weeks or less than half the time until the next patch.
Exact dates of the subsequent releases aren't confirmed but we're actually aiming for 1 / week, with a longer period between the last beta update and the live release. The reason for this is because we need to freeze the build for final testing a bit ahead of release.


Gort11 said:


I am a little concerned I haven't seen anything about making it less of a chore to manage a nation with thousands of construction points, or to make it so outnumbering your enemy on a front means you outnumber them in battles - those are the main game issues for me.

Fingers crossed they've been worked on but not mentioned, or they're made better by other changes.
We're working on the balancing of battles right now actually - changes should be in for the second beta release - and numeric advantage is one of the things we're tweaking and balancing.

Managing a nation with large amounts of construction will be made easier naturally due to Autonomous Investment. We're also introducing a quality-of-life feature that help you manage production methods in recently conquered or recovered states.


Marco Dandolo said:


"In-game music player". Nice! Did I miss this in previous Dev Diaries?
No, most of the things on this list are announced for the first time today.


399311 said:


How much of the content in this journal will be implemented in the game in the beta version released on February 8th?
All of it. It may be a little rough around the edges, which is what the beta is for, but everything listed in the image posted will be in the beta on Feb 8th.


Rituro said:


Exciting times! A while back, the possibility of a "reverse sway" mechanic -- basically, here's what you could offer for me to join your war -- was mentioned. Did that idea ever pan out? Of all the features that have been brainstormed in these DDs, that one sticks with me as one that could be a massive improvement to the diplomacy experience.
It won't be in patch 1.2, sadly. It's still something we're passionate about and are looking into adding in the future.


Gerulus Sum said:


Regarding migration, have you considered making it so that cultural migration only causes emigration in homelands of that culture? It's very odd when, for example, an Afro-American migration caused by turmoil in the USA results in Afro-American pops living in Canada migrating to Haiti.
A number of changes along these lines have been made to the mass migration mechanic in 1.2 actually, yes.


Xephos Demonslayer said:


Out of curiosity, is there any chance that you could add vineyards as a new type of plantation that only produces wine?

Keeping up with the price of wine always results in me building an absolutely absurd amount of wheat farms all set to wine production, and that always ends up absolutely tanking my price of wheat. I'll regularly have wheat over 10% below market price while wine is 20-30% above market price. It's personally rather confusing to me that there are special, separate plantations for tea and coffee, which are entirely luxury drinks, but not for wine, which is also a luxury drink.
Not for 1.2, but splitting out Vineyards into its own Plantation-type building is something we're looking into for the reasons you mention.


magriboy0750 said:


Does mods will need an update for the tech tree update or will the game adjust automatically new modded techs to the new interface?
The game should adjust the tech trees accordingly! Our tech trees aren't always the easiest to parse visually compared to other games that custom craft them (something we're hoping to improve on eventually), but the benefit of them is that you can add any tech in anywhere and the tree will automatically adjust.


za3tarani said:


rather than adding new type of plantations/building... why not change so the player can balance amount of output (with a ledger or something). so if you want a plantation to produce 100% and no wheat, it should be able.

this should also be added for every building that has 2 types of output good.

also, there should generally be less type of buildings, or atleast we should be able to group them somehow rather than have a long list of buildings to scroll down to. quantity of buildings (or anything really) doesnt equate quality, rather it is the gameplay that gives quality.

iron/coal/lead etc should be grouped, food sources (farms) like wheat, rice etc etc should be grouped, opium and other plantations should be grouped. consumer goods should be grouped etc etc

Click to expand...
Because it would introduce an absolutely insane amount of micro to manually set sliders of PM distributions on individual buildings.

We're considering different solutions to the industrial good output substitution problem long-term, but at the moment balancing the system we have is better.


Meriador_ said:


I vaguely recall a dev saying that yall were looking into modifying the colonization system to account for claims in 1.2, to help stop the sort of sillyness the current game has in places like Hokkaido and the Alberta/Montana area, etc. Should I expect to see that in the patch, or has that been pushed back?
That's going to be in the update (and the beta).


TalTal said:


Great!) looking forward to patch 1.2!
I am glad that the redevelopment of arable land in the world has finally passed.
Since we are talking about separate plantations for growing grapes. Can we expect sugar beet plantations to appear as well? For the same reason as stated above.
Sugar beets have a really interesting history I'd love to represent in the game, but I think it's better served as something other than a distinct building, personally.


CollectorOfBolts said:


Out of curiosity, is the infrastructure for the message settings part of the engine or specific to Vic3? In other words, how easy/difficult would it be to port the system over to CK3?
Game specific
 
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Bindable keys my beloved
 
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Good afternoon,a great DD and very happy for the music player.However,a few questions regarding the beta:
1)Will we have a code to enter on steam for it in order to access it or we will just have to switch it like for the older versions for example?
2)Will the other languages be localized or the bêta will be English-only initially?
Thanks for any replies about this.
 
  • 1Like
Reactions:
Hello and welcome! Today we'll be covering several topics relating to Update 1.2:

  • Open 1.2 Beta
  • Feature Overview
  • Anticipated 1.2 Release Date

As mentioned in our last dev diary, 1.2 is a big update with some far-reaching changes, and we don't want to push it out before we feel it's ready for primetime. We're happy overall with the reception of Update 1.1, but those of you who were with us during its initial release will remember - perhaps fondly, perhaps not - how the Legitimacy mechanics seemed to change from day to day for a while there. While we finally managed to iron out most of the kinks in 1.1.2 (more on that later) this is the kind of scenario we'd like to avoid going forward. With a game as highly interconnected and complex as Victoria 3, the only way to do that is to give the patch enough time in the oven, letting our playtesters really give everything a solid rundown.

At the same time, Update 1.2 brings some substantial improvements in several areas that we know are important to you, and we don't want to keep those away from you longer than we absolutely have to. Disentangling specific improvements and bug fixes from the rest of the changes that have already been done to the branch is itself laborious and error-prone. Our assessment is that releasing those in hotfixes would be risky.

So how do we marry these two things together - giving you access to upcoming content as soon as possible, while ensuring high quality of the upcoming update? By launching our first Open Beta, of course! In this way you will have a chance to experience all the juicy parts of Update 1.2, but also share your feedback with us in advance, allowing us to improve what we are currently working on.

Our planned beta launch date is February 8th at 10:00 CET. At that point a new Steam beta branch 1.2-beta will become available to anyone who owns Victoria 3. A new forum post will be made with step-by-step instructions for how to enable it. Once you've started playing the beta, you can always switch back to the live branch in the same way. As always, your existing save games might not be fully compatible with this new version, and you should definitely not expect saves made in 1.2 to be backwards compatible with 1.1.2.

We will also launch a new beta section on our Victoria 3 Discord server where you can discuss the update with other players and report any bugs or balance issues you find. Our moderators will be active on this channel, and so will developers and QA team members as time permits. If you prefer not to use Discord you can also file bugs using our forum bug report tool, even for the beta version.

After the initial beta release, we plan on releasing two additional updates on the beta branch on a weekly basis, containing additional bug fixes, performance improvements, etc and also adjustments we've made according to your feedback. The exact release dates and times of these updates are to be confirmed, but we will keep you posted on the Discord channel.

To set expectations at the right level, playing the beta build will not be a buttery-smooth experience! Some aspects of the game will be greatly improved, but other things will be in a rougher state, and there will be bugs (if not, we'd just launch it without a beta phase!)

Also, some features will be in a less mature state at the beginning of beta than they will be at release. For example, Strategic Objectives will be limited to one per country during the beta, but the intent is to expand this to allow for designating multiple Strategic Objectives. This slimmed-down version is included in the beta to allow you to try it out and feedback on how it feels in general while we continue to work on the full implementation.

So do keep in mind that while you'll get a sneak peek at the latest features and will see many improvements, you should expect some speed bumps along the way. And when you do, we want to hear about it!

Below you can find a short list of some of the new features and improvements made in 1.2. As always, just because something is not on this list doesn't mean we're not aware of it, and may even have addressed it already! The full changelog will be published closer to the release date.

New Features
  • Autonomous Investment system
  • Strategic Objectives for planning military campaigns
  • Customizable notification settings
  • In-game music player
  • Key rebinding

Improvements and bug fixes
  • Performance optimization
  • Improved AI handling of economy and military, including port management
  • Greater differences in economic systems
  • More realistic modeling of trade route profits and GDP
  • Worldwide Arable Land revision and migration balancing
  • Mega-parties limited by tweaks to party formation logic and ideology

Interface
  • Trade panel overhaul for easier route management
  • More clarity on Pop Needs, Convoys, Radicals and Loyalists
  • Visual upgrades to mapmodes and lenses, such as showing Infrastructure and employable Pops when expanding buildings
  • Outliner enhanced with pinnable market goods and characters
  • Reduced notification spam


We are going to cover most of these things in dev diaries leading up to the release of 1.2, so details on what exactly these entail may be sparse until then. However, all of these will be in the beta build when we release it (although to reiterate, perhaps not in their final form) so come February 8th you can explore them for yourself!

After the third and final beta release, but before the live release of Update 1.2, you can expect the beta build and the beta section on Discord to become unavailable, as we will be channeling all our resources into the release. We will keep you updated on the expected beta shutdown date on Discord as well, of course.

Our preliminary release date for Update 1.2, assuming all goes according to plan, is March 13th. For those of you who opt to continue playing 1.1.2 until then you can follow the new features in upcoming dev diaries. For the rest of you, I'll see you on Discord on Feb 8!

Sounds pretty good, especially strategic objectives! Nice to see that feedback was heard.
I assume improvements in AI can lead to a bit better world balance, like, russia not imploding in every game anymore?
 
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  • Strategic Objectives for planning military campaigns
Nani? First time hearing this for the 1.2. Im happy, dont get me wrong, but I was thinking that its going to be a part of larger military rework.
 
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Hi! With regards to more realistic modeling of GDP - does this mean you will deduct the inputs from the GDP calculation? I remember a reddit post, which explained why current calculations are very overstated.
 
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Great changes! And will the techs queue and more battles per front be added in 1.2, as mentioned in game jam dev diary?
 
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I'm looking forward to the trade rework (both the mechanics and the UI).

The big gap in the list of changes is any changes to how IGs work (other than how they group into parties). Plus no simulation of horses in the game (pre railway techs just need labourers, but don't need extra food or anything for animal based transportation).

Interestingly 3 beta releases, at 2 per week sounds like the beta will be going for 2 weeks or less than half the time until the next patch.
 
Worldwide Arable Land revision
Does this only mean an increase of it in the Americas or also a decrease in India and East Asia? If so, how are subsistance farms handled now?

If it will all be explained in another developer diary, I am fine waiting :p.
 
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I am a little concerned I haven't seen anything about making it less of a chore to manage a nation with thousands of construction points, or to make it so outnumbering your enemy on a front means you outnumber them in battles - those are the main game issues for me.

Fingers crossed they've been worked on but not mentioned, or they're made better by other changes.
 
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