Victoria 3 - Dev Diary #84 - French Content

[neondt]

Impressive content, though one state change I would like would be the southern Rhine portion of Holland and Gelre into a new state so France can really go all the way up to the Rhine like Napolean had done.

We may tweak this further in the future.

But what if...I were to organize a coup and establish my own government? Ho ho ho, delightfully devilish, Francisco!

"And you call it a legitimate transition of power despite the fact that it is obviously a coup?"
"It's a regional dialect"

The content largely looks very good, I'm especially happy to see the Paris Commune represented far more accuratly than I was expecting (With the only note being that a victorious Commune wouldnt have labled itself as the French Commune, but more likely something along the lines of Confederation of French Communes.)

My large concern is the Dreyfus Affair. It doesnt seem to be addressing the issue around which the Affair fundementally revolved: Antisemitism. Throughout the events of the controversy, Anti-Dreyfusards engaged in numerous Pogroms, and the reson why Dreyfus was even accused of espionage was that he was considered untrustworthy and incapable of being loyal to France due to being Jewish. It is one of the most important examples of Antisemitism in the 19th century, and failing to even acknowledge that much is not only simply inaccurate, its actively disrespectful to the victims of antisemitism.

I fully understand not wanting to make explicit events where Pogroms happen, but reducing the affair to simply a contest between conservative monarchists and liberal republicans is inexcusable whitewashing of history.

These are valid concerns, and perhaps we didn't emphasize this aspect enough in the dev diary itself. There is content associated with the Dreyfus Affair that more explicitly tackles its antisemitic nature.

A content-balance related question : is there any plan to represent the historicaly low-ish french demographic growth that happened in the 19th century?
It is hard to find out why France had such lower demographic growth compared to other european nations, but the known causes could fit very well in this country pack :
- Napoleonic law on land inheritance, discouraging families to have many descents
- Demographic consequences of Napoleonic wars, wich decimated french youth 20 years prior to start date
- The fact France already achieved its demographic transition in the 18th century while other western european nations did not

Thank you!

It's something we thought about but ultimately decided not to pursue because the causes are poorly understood and difficult to model through scripted content.

So are the three monarchist leader ideologies available to the same interest groups?

How would each of them more likely to spawn naturally?

Each of them is available to a different set of Interest Groups and have slightly different factors that make them appear more regularly. Landowners for instance are much more likely to be Legitimists than Bonapartists.

This is really, really good stuff. And if this is the template for immersion packs and country reworks going forward, I can't wait to see what is coming!

We're definitely going to keep adding national/regional flavor going forward, and we've learned a lot from developing this Immersion Pack that will make it easier for us to make better and better content in the future.

Is Sardinia-Piedmont giving away Savoy and Nice just an event? Does this mean giving away states as mentioned in Dev Diary #79 isn't a planned mechanic but just an event driven system?

If so I'm pretty disappointed, I was hoping we would get the ability to offer our own territory in diplomatic plays. Are there still plans for something like this?

We're definitely still planning on doing this as a larger mechanical feature later down the line, but it was well out of scope for the Immersion Pack.

 

[neondt]

This is a fascinating event, and it brings to mind the phylloxera epidemic that nearly wiped out the French (and other European) wine industry in the 1870s. The industry was only 'rescued' when rootstock from resistant American vines were used to graft European vines onto. Either a representation of this, or maybe a system of randomised crop blights, would be a neat addition, I think.

That's a good idea and I'd like to do a big blight/famine rework at some point.