Victoria 3 - Dev Diary #94 - Dawn of Wonder

[commissar roach]

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

First week of september means its releasing the same week as 1.4 patch just delayed by a few days right?

Latest the week starting the 4th, though we may be earlier than that - we will keep people posted!

Does the ball on top of Greenwich Observatory move?

It does!

This kinda reminds me of how this feature was implemented in Civ VI, which is probably the best implementation of such a feature thus far IMO.
For the future, have you thought about potentially adding dynamic weather too (snow, rain, etc.)?

Of course! I'd just like to do it alongside some sort of mechanics as well (agricultural output, attrition impact, etc) which is why it wasn't top of the list.

"These outfits all have some significance relating to the passing of time or the sun and moon and will add some really detailed and ornate designs to otherwise plain clothes of pops at certain periods of time."

Not sure what this means. The new outfits will only be active at a certain time? Like in your example, Diwali outfits will only be active on the day of Diwali?

I think they should be active all the time because they are far more accurate than the generic clothing.

Certain outfits are seasonal, and will only be worn by appropriate pops at particular points in (in-game) time, for example a couple of months around the holiday.

am... kokoshniks and midsummer dress??? WAT? All characters in game are politicians and generals they shouldn't have funny dresses!
You can imagine... Elena Stasova (how few famous Russian politicians after Catherine II death) in kokoshnik? I cannot!

These are applied to pops, not characters.

I wonder. Kokoshniks are widely anachronistic in very late game, but kind of fit, especially for the richest parts of the lower strata, in the majority of the period.

Have you considered applying some sort of fashion unification towards endgame, representing increasing globalization and standartized outfits coming in favour worldwide? It could be tied to literacy or even political preferences (western-leaning pops would dress Western). I think this would be a nice detail.

Yes, changing fashions with time and diplomatic relations is definitely on our radar!

Sphere of influence and foreign investement will be dlc too btw, pisses me off, in vic 2 that is base game…

To be clear on this, Sphere of Influence - the name of the expansion - will not reintroduce SoI's from V2 (we already have shared markets and subjects), but a whole new system of influencing other nations around the world with both soft and hard power, and will let you customize the nature of your "sphere" and how it influences the countries in your sphere, alongside a host of other improvements to diplomacy. The same goes for foreign investments, it's a substantially more simulation-y approach compared to V2's implementation that will add a whole new layer to the economic system. And both these features will be fundamentally free, with the paid expansion adding a bunch of extra options to both systems. I think you'll be happily surprised.

so by the 7th since you don't like releasing on a weekend right?

Sept 4th is a Monday. You're correct that we don't like releasing on or close to an upcoming weekend, since we want to be responsive to critical post-launch feedback. But we're definitely still aiming for the beginning of next week. We'll keep you posted.

Sept 4th is a Monday. You're correct that we don't like releasing on or close to an upcoming weekend, since we want to be responsive to critical post-launch feedback. But we're definitely still aiming for the beginning of next week. We'll keep you posted.

As Mikael says, we will keep you updated on when exactly it does launch but the aim is still for next week

Could work if it were implemented along with stockpiles, which is something they have hinted at.

Yeah, stockpiles are a requirement for any kind of seasonal production mechanic for sure. One of these days we'll have time to make a proper public roadmap again, right now it exists more as institutional knowledge in the design department

I love how everything looks, it's absolutely gorgeous, but in the actual state of the performance of the game , I can't play it with all the beautiful features that the game have, in this patch there will be any improvement of the performance?

There are some slight performance improvements in 1.4, but to really make a dent we need to change some of the fundamentals of how e.g. employment and migration works. We're hoping to see bigger improvements in 1.5 as we'll be prioritizing it heavily as the military features mature during Open Beta.

Well this sounds nice actually, but guys, please listen to what a lot of us say. Warfare, and game loop! This is the core issue, u can do as many dlc u want, if the base game is solid we will buy it anyways because it will be worth it.

Also a question: will 1.4 or 1.5 make possible entering ongoing wars and adding wargoals during wars?

See this kind of basics we are talking about. Honestly people want these kind of small changes more than some map graphic change or day night cycle.

Entering ongoing wars and adding wargoals during wars is unfortunately too much for us to chew off for 1.5 - we wanted to prioritize actually moving your guys around feel better, limiting the number of fronts, fixing naval invasions and improving naval gameplay, before we tackled the complexities of Diplomatic Plays and the wars they cause. There have been a fair number of improvements in Open Beta here though, like explicitly calling allies and requesting wargoals as a condition for joining.

However, entering ongoing wars and adding wargoals is under active discussion right now and we hope to be able to deliver on these for Sphere of Influence.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but are there any options for base game only players in Theme selector? Because if not - why say that it's a free feature, if all options it has are locked behind DLCs?

If you own zero DLC that adds cosmetics, then no, there are no options for you. But if for example you own Voice of the People but not Dawn of Wonder, you will be able to choose between base game elements and elements from VotP for each category. You don't have to purchase DoW specifically to get use of the Theme Selector.

Do we know the price already? 10 bugs?

Moderator, please hide this post from the business team, we don't want them getting ideas

You are now aiming to improve warfare with 1.5 (and hopefully beyond) that is clear, the question is, do you have a plan B in case at the end of the changes it’s still not good enough? Like plan B as fundamentally scraping the system, and adding something like a hoi4 system, or a system like all the other systems before where u micro battles in provinces?

See I am what they call a vic 3 hoper, I am a an old vic2 mp enjoyer, and i want this game to be good. But some say that the game is fundamentally flawed in it’s base war system, and that changing it is not possible, and it just needs to be replaced completely.

So yea, do u have like a plan B or something in this case?

If we deem the core warfare gameplay to still be of insufficient quality at the launch of 1.5, we will evaluate what needs to be done to improve it further. It is certainly a priority for us to address the concerns.

I can say with some certainty that we will never have a moment where we decide to "throw it all out and start over" with a traditional stack-based province movement model. The gameplay scope and pacing just doesn't support it, which is why we embarked on making a brand new model of warfare for V3 in the first place.

It's also extremely unlikely, even in a case where we deem the current system inadequate, that we would ever rip out the guts completely. Borrowing individual features from e.g. HOI is perfectly fine (in fact, since the last DD I've seen a few people describe the rework as "HOI-lite" and I think I agree with that) but only in the sense of building on or adjusting existing mechanics. Rebuilding everything from scratch both takes incredible amounts of time from the UX-side (because every new feature requires a ton of polish to feel right) and introduces follow-up problems mechanically. Even adding the layer of military formations has required a ton of work, and we have a lot of polish and supporting mechanics we still need to deliver on during the Open Beta period.

I will say that from playing the current (very unpolished) open beta build, I have very few fears that we will reach the need for a "plan B" regardless, though.

Why has the very basic setting forgotten ?

Choosing in-game Location Time.

Do you mean it reacting to individual ticks, so it'd go through a full cycle in a day?? Honestly, I think you could probably get an effect like that or close enough by fiddling with the time slider, but I've never tried because I imagine I'd have a seizure

The theme selector is a pleasant surprise. Any plans to open this up to modders?

I... think it might just work out of the box? All of the options are defined in scriptable databases. But it's possible we'd have to do some tweaks to make it work outside the context of a "DLC". I'll look into it!

I appreciate the new cultural clothes, but I won't lie, I'd prefer more _basic_ clothing for more cultures rather than those highly-specific which we won't notice 99% of the time.

I want to see more variety in cultural clothing too! For this pack we wanted to focus on the Day & Night theme though, rather than throwing in assorted clothing sets. There'll be more opportunities for that in packs focusing more on specific regions.

Allright, thanks for the answer.

I think pvp can be good on this system too, but it definitely needs things added for that even after 1.5 in my opinion.

Some exemples I don’t know if you considered:

-maybe multiple strategic goal orders for generals?

-more order variety for generals (focus on trading bodies for losing less territory… focus on kiting the enemy, cede land but don’t lose too many soldiers, let them attrition… maybe some encirclement tactics generals can roll for encirclements if the shape between states looks like it on the map)

-A supply system that makes cutting off states and encircle armies on a larger scale possible….. (like if i cut germany in half, i want to wipe the troops that are on the other half that i encircled, and not have them teleport away.

-actually, the concept of stackwiping troops (rn, unsuccessful invasion, or what looks like an encirclemement on the map just teleports away)

-shore bombardement mechanics from ships?

-being able use a quantity/quality build more properly, which i think would require revisiting how combat width works maybe

-terrains rolled by generals… terrain modifiers…

Can these work on the current system?
Could u consider these? Or maybe you have already?
Click to expand...

We're looking into many of these for the Open Beta actually! But most of all we want to be attentive to what players actually start asking for when they get their hands on it, rather than just implementing what we think sounds cool, so I can't make any promises here quite yet. But if you want to see these things, please agitate (heh) for them in the Discord when we launch the beta!

In what discord? I think I was banned from the official vic 3 discord for expressing dissatisfaction in a passionate manor, idk if that can be reversed I can always agitate here though (I was banned here too i think before, or maybe not)

Oh jeez, I don't know if I can think of any good alt-ernatives for you there my friend.

On the topic of the timing of this release - before the mechanical improvements in 1.5 and upcoming Sphere of Influence - I understand the concerns that releasing a purely cosmetic pack at this time might feel out of place. I'd like to be perfectly candid with the thinking behind this and provide some context for the decision, because not everyone knows how studios and production schedules work behind the scenes.

Unlike many studios, every game team in Paradox has their own art department. This integration provides a much better communication flow between Art and other departments, like design and programming, and ensures every artist intimately understands the nature of the game, its design pillars, and priorities.

However, art assets don't need to be produced at full pace for every expansion product all throughout development. Between wrapping up Voice of the People and starting work on the military improvements for the 1.5 update, that department needs something to do. To ensure we don't unduly cannibalize time from other releases, it needs to be something the Art department can do on their own. The Dawn of Wonder pack is a great candidate for this; it's fully cosmetic and the only code feature needed for it is the Day & Night cycle, which was implemented by our technical artist (who doesn't work on gameplay programming). The only thing that took a little time away from other releases was the Theme Selector, which we knew we had to do eventually anyway in order to support future expansion products.

Being able to provide products for our artists to work on independently outside of their work supporting more mechanics-focused releases is really important for continuity in the studio. While other companies might reassign artists to work on supporting other game teams in such situations, we find this often leads to a lack of long-term expertise and a breakdown in communication, creating unnecessary overhead. It's also a practice that often leads to more reliance on outsourced art, which demands a lot more process and time spent by e.g. designers and producers writing briefs and digging up references. Designers and producers can do more direct work on the game by adding narrative content, balancing, and assuring overall quality if artists intimately understand the product they're working on and what we're trying to do.

As such, from time to time you may see a DLC pop up in the schedule that's purely cosmetic. While I personally feel these add a lot to the immersive qualities of the game, we know there are some folks who always play on the paper map and don't care much to zoom in on cities, vehicles, and battlefields. If that describes you, then what I'd like you to take away from this post is that whether you buy this DLC or not, its production hasn't taken anything away from continuous improvements to the parts of the game you do care about - in fact the opposite, by being able to keep a full art department securely employed on Victoria with no context switching, the rest of us have been able to focus on bringing those improvements to you with the 1.4 free update, 1.5 open beta, and Sphere of Influence, which have all been in development in parallel with Dawn of Wonder.

Hope that bit of extra context helps with understanding why DoW is where it is in the release schedule!

I don't think that adding more light settings and visual objects is a right direction of development in current state of the game. I would remind that the performance issues in Victoria 3 are still not fixed. Even PCs that meet recommended requirements, suffer heavy lags (or sudden freezes, at least) in the second half of Victoria 3 timeframe. Many players are using mods decreasing or completely removing all those small trains and chimneys - just to make the game playable.

As far as I know, dynamic lights and shadows use a lot of video memory. So, on many PCs these upcoming changes will have to be disabled, or they will break the game completely, since no one can play with 10 fps.

The performance question is totally legit! From what I gather from speaking with artists and tech leads here though, any additional performance implications for DoW come only from the lighting on gfx entities like vehicles and lighthouses, since these require separate particle emitters. Buildings aren't affected by this at all, they just change appearance without adding new emitters. The artists have also taken performance into consideration when designing the lighting effects, keeping them as high-performing as possible and combining them with other particle effects where this has been an option, f.ex. the dust effect coming off the horse cart is combined with the lighting effect.

Regarding dynamic lighting, sun position, etc this has always been in the game (since you can rotate the camera around it's necessary regardless) so there should be no new performance implications here at all.

We're also looking into, with support from the Clausewitz engine team, more aggressive culling of VFX emitters when they're not on-screen or when the player is zoomed out. This will greatly help us with implementing more alive military visuals later on, but will also help with performance for the whole game's gfx.

So it's not been my impression (either from a theoretical technical perspective nor experiential - my dev PC is running a 2060 card, so not exactly top of the line) that DoW adds a lot of gfx performance overhead. I don't think we need to worry much on that point, but thanks for asking the question!

 

[OnceSetCannotBeChanged]

I was hoping for more info on what is coming in 1.5. Oh well, guess we’ll have to wait til early September.

 

[Sofyan Rghiwi]

I'd appreciate the next art pack to focus on making cultures of the MENA region look distinct. Currently, Moroccan pops/rulers and Persian pops/rulers and all nations in between have the same attire.

 

[dw70676]

Finally, I can praise the sun in Victoria 3!

 

[Shneemaster]

Does the ball on top of Greenwich Observatory move?

 

[Mr.Arrow]

First week of september means its releasing the same week as 1.4 patch just delayed by a few days right?

 

[PDX_Pelly]

First week of september means its releasing the same week as 1.4 patch just delayed by a few days right?

Latest the week starting the 4th, though we may be earlier than that - we will keep people posted!

 

[399311]

Beta delayed? frustrating

 

[Lazy Sorcerer]

Someone on the team must have really wanted to do this, huh? Well good for them, I guess.

Edit: I can't say it's bad. It's just like, why?

 

[RedRalphWiggum]

Looks good

 

[PDX_Pelly]

Does the ball on top of Greenwich Observatory move?

It does!

 

[Kipsta]

Looks like I won't be playing the first iteration of the beta as I will be playing Starfield. Sad, I thought it could tide me over until Starfield release.

 

[BrotherJonathan]

This kinda reminds me of how this feature was implemented in Civ VI, which is probably the best implementation of such a feature thus far IMO.
For the future, have you thought about potentially adding dynamic weather too (snow, rain, etc.)?

 

[Quantum_AI]

"These outfits all have some significance relating to the passing of time or the sun and moon and will add some really detailed and ornate designs to otherwise plain clothes of pops at certain periods of time."

Not sure what this means. The new outfits will only be active at a certain time? Like in your example, Diwali outfits will only be active on the day of Diwali?

I think they should be active all the time because they are far more accurate than the generic clothing.

 

[Mr.Arrow]

Any plans on adding weather system in this game? I want to see snow falling across Europe continent (or any temperate region).

 

[lachek]

This kinda reminds me of how this feature was implemented in Civ VI, which is probably the best implementation of such a feature thus far IMO.
For the future, have you thought about potentially adding dynamic weather too (snow, rain, etc.)?

Of course! I'd just like to do it alongside some sort of mechanics as well (agricultural output, attrition impact, etc) which is why it wasn't top of the list.

 

[Loco_HUN]

This is very cool and all, but just keep focusing on warfare and problematic core mechanics.

There is no immersion with the base having broblems.


Also, a question about the navy: is it possible to have some kind of shore bombardement? (Very imoortant thing with the apparition of steamships and bigger weapons!)

 

[lachek]

"These outfits all have some significance relating to the passing of time or the sun and moon and will add some really detailed and ornate designs to otherwise plain clothes of pops at certain periods of time."

Not sure what this means. The new outfits will only be active at a certain time? Like in your example, Diwali outfits will only be active on the day of Diwali?

I think they should be active all the time because they are far more accurate than the generic clothing.

Certain outfits are seasonal, and will only be worn by appropriate pops at particular points in (in-game) time, for example a couple of months around the holiday.

 

[Nnorm]

im glad i can turn off most redundant feature of the DLC - day/night cycle.