Victoria 3 - Dev Diary #99 - Colossus of the South

[Theuthis]

Great changes and IMO a fair price.
However, since this DLC has the Paraguayan war as one of its focuses, I'd like to point out that with the current state setup it is not possible to recreate the borders resulting from that war. The state of Alto Paraguay should be divided in two to allow for the historical borders to happen.

 

[lxlTiagolxl]

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On the other hand, whilst the Landowners remain basically supportive of the institution of the monarchy, continuing down the reformist road will alienate them further and further, until they become full-fledged supporters of an oligarchic Republic.

View attachment 1034104


Pictured: Brazil’s unique interaction with the Positivist content, which grants them a slightly more modernist Landowners interest group. If one wishes to pursue the historical Oligarchic Republic route, this may be an excellent asset.
View attachment 1034193​

As seen above the Landowners can have 2 ideologies changed, for better or worse.
But what about the others?
Will the Armed Forces get Caudillismo if they turn against the Monarchy as it happened historically?
Will Intelligentsia become a little less Republican and more supportive of Monarchy if the Fall of the Empire is avoided and a time of a unshackled enlightened monarchy begins?

 

[$ilent_$trider]

Considering Pedro II is from that IG, an Elightened King movement for the Inteligentsia after his passing would be pretty neat

 

[PDX_Pelly]

Hello Victorians!

Community Manager Pelly here. That was a monster of a dev diary, 88 pages in all!

I have something to share about the Expansion Pass, due to technical difficulties, Colossus of the South will not appear in the Expansion Pass Steam store page immediately. It is being worked on to appear as soon as possible. We will keep you updated on this!

Alongside this, when the region pack releases on the 14th of November owners of the expansion pass will need to 're-buy' the pass to gain access to the region pack. This will not cost you anything as in the pass, like the American Buildings pack, Colossus of the South is marked free.

Update 30/10/23:
Colossus of the South is now visible in the Expansion Pass!

 

[Troyen]

I am also worried because of the incentive structure. Paradox's business model makes it hard to sell a product that is "we improved the fundamental mechanical systems underlying our game". It makes it easy to sell expansion packs that are "here is a new mechanic that is grafted onto the existing game" or immersion/content packs that are "here are art assets and journal entries added to the game". Especially with the latter you can do the relatively cheap labour of programming event chains (sorry, we're not allowed to say events are we. I mean journal entries.) compared to the more complex task of adding/changing systems.

I think that's why most of Paradox's in-house games have switched to expansion pass-style systems (Stellaris only sells passes on console afaik but their PC release schedule follows the same pattern as one). One pass is a major expansion DLC + two minor DLC (or more for Vic 3's because of the art/music packs), covering about four patches across a calendar year. By bundling them together, the whole thing can be given a set budget for the year and resources allocated where they're needed.

The fundamental improvements to the underlying systems are the free patches like 1.2 and 1.5 and whatever accompanies the expansion release (e.g. how CK3's Royal Court patch improved the culture system for everyone), funded by the Grand Edition/Expansion Pass 1 DLC.

 

[zipaks]

Personally, I don't really care about south america.

Would have been nice to hear more about where the 1.5 update is, as this is the update that actually touches core mechanics, and tries to fix the game.
And also what plans are after 1.5, because the 1.5 is but one step into fixing the game, much work remains.

Devs told me for exemple, that they sent a dozen dossers full with ideas how to rework naval combat and all, which includes a basic thing like having individual, actual ships, and not abstract groups of 1000 moanpower units fighting on the sea like on land.

Would be nice to know about that kind of ideas and logterm plans are, not a south american cosmetic dlc.



Also about all the ideas the people are giving, and upvoting on discord, dozens of quality of life improvements, and changes and upgrades to core game mechanics. Would like to know when will it be possible to play stable mutiplayer games, even into lategame. Heck, even stable singleplayer late games lol.

I mean the devs know, but pls tell the greedy corporate too that the game is not ready, and that it would attract more customers if the product would be finished, and be good at what it does.

PS: To all the red x-ers, pls tell me what u disagree with? U don't want to see this game actually getting better where it matters the most?

First of all I agree that we do need more mechanics, improvement of core mechanics, and that is the most important but to do so, a South America focused content DLC is the best move as one of the first DLC's, and I reached that conclusion months ago, here is why:

The game is still in its early phase, if we compare eu4 or ck2 on its launch to what it is today we can see that they are a whole different game, it takes time to develop new mechanics, they demand deep knowledge of the game because they change the whole game, new mechanics gradually limit the potential of the game like we see in ck2 where they got to a point that they needed to make a whole new game in order to fit in more depth to the franchise, you can only improve something so much.
Therefore the first DLC's should not focus on mechanics so much (if we want good mechanics) but to add content.

Content serves as the foundation upon where we build mechanics, for example the mechanics of the ACW are poor at the moment, by exploring SA they can draw parallels to what led the ACW to happen in terms of how the game works by comparing the history of the ACW and SA, so if they would add a mechanic for the ACW it would be limited and lacking of scope, but by exploring SA they have more material to develop a mechanic that translates its own need, since Brazil had many of the same issues as the USA but an entirely different outcome, now the devs are better equipped to develop a new mechanic to represent the ACW or even any struggle in any nation banning slavery.

Also the more content they add the more insight they gain of what the game is asking for, the very process of developing such mechanics requires a greater comprehension of how the playabilty of the game works (how the many different aspects of the game interact with each other in relation to the content, the needs and the potentials), otherwise we get halfass mechanics that would limit the game down the line and that would age poorly and feel outdated in a year or two. HOI4 and EU4 both suffer from the mission tree curse which imo is a great mechanic but the worse thing for developers because they have to constantly revisit them to balance and/or add/tweak/remove mechanics. This is the result of adding mechanics before having enough content to support them. That said SA is one of the best candidates to add content and test new ideas. Think about it as a test ground for future DLC's (and big mechanics) much like the Spanish civil war was a test field for the nazi German military.

SA was of great influence and significance to Europe and the USA in that time period, some of its smaller nations were bigger than most nations of Europe, just one state of Brazil (Mato Grosso) is almost twice as big as France while proportionally holding the same potential of agricultural production, SA was instrumental in the unification of Italy, it influenced european-american migration just by existing and by extent their economies, it supplied Europe with cheap plantation goods such as sugar, coffee, cocoa and later on rubber which further influenced the European economy. Its potential is also of great significance, Paraguay was close to become a small industrial powerhouse, Brazil could have surpassed the USA, Argentina too, Gran Colombia if formed had the potential to become a rich developed nation, Peru-Bolivia had the resources for being self sufficient, because of many factors it is what it is today but it could easily have been very different for any of those nations, in some cases one decision could have been the difference between a broken nation to a great power.

Now we all know the core game players of any PDX game, usually plays European nations or the USA and that also the core market is European and American, that's one of the reasons why SA gets little to no love in their games, the other reason is the game's timeframe and SA's impact in that timeframe. SA in EU4 barely scratches the surface, they could focus on the region's colonization but its just not worth it, CK3 needless to say, and HOI4 had SA in its roadmap but we never got to see anything there even though SA had more things happening than in the USA at that time. At one point or another PDX would have to develop SA in V3 and to be honest there is no better game or a game that needs to explore SA more than V3.



So yeah that's pretty much what I think the reasons of all the "x" you are getting, PDX is more than financially and strategically justified. We the players want improvements in the core mechanics and new mechanics yes, but we need to be patient, like any other PDX game on its launch V3 is still a child, it needs to grow a little before it can learn walking, only then it can start learning riding a bike or start doing new things, the cool things we want it to do. This DLC will provide devs with more insight and a better understanding of what the game is asking for, adding more content helps with that and serves as the base upon to build such mechanics, and that's what we need for good mechanics and improvements in core mechanics.

And to be completely honest, yes I am brazilian and yes I am probably biased and yes probably many of the "x" you got are nonsense, but still that's the rationale behind this DLC imo and I do believe it is unbiased enough to be true to why you got so many "x", and yes I thought about all of that months before they announced this DLC, SA is the best test field to develop the game by being one of the first DLC's and will serve them right by paving the way to future DLC's and improving core mechanics just as developing new ones.

 

[zipaks]

Do you think it will be possible to add new regions/states to these countries? I always end up bored because Brazil could have more states, specially in the Northeast. But Amapá, Mato Grosso do Sul, Tocantis and Roraima would be amazing since most of these states actually existed in the Vargas Era. It would also be amazing to see new regions in Argentina, Chile, Bolívia...
And since this is named "Chimarrão" will there be mate plantations? There is a modder that did this ...it would be interesting since just some cultures like the South Brazilians, Paraguayans, Uruguyans, Bolivians, Chileans and Argentines would have it as an obsession

Don't worry I'm that modder and I'm on it as soon as the DLC is out! Also if there is anything you'd like to see please let me know!

 

[zipaks]

I don't know if I understood correctly if those will be the starting cultures of Brazil, but if so they could use some rework. As a Brazillian myself and one who has done his fair share of research in Brazillian history and cultural development, I'd say the "Brazillian" culture, who is actually a mish-mash of several other cultures, would be a formal institutionalized and majority cultural demographic not only in the state of Minas Gerais, but also in Rio de Janeiro (which in-game is the same state as Espirito Santo, which would, indeed, be majority Afro-Brasilian). Speaking of Afro-Brasilian, the state of Parana wouldn't have such majority demographic disposition also, being divided between Sulista and Paulista cultures. I'd say make Rio de Janeiro be majority Brazillian and Paraná majority Sulista. Overall I haven't seen any other major issues (or minor for that matter) with the Brazillian side of the expansion, and I'm eager to try it out.

Thanks in advance for the attention.

I think the reason for using "Brazilian" in MG is because its the best they could come up with, since using "mineiro" would be too specific and "caipira" would be too broad, I was facing the same issue when trying to figure out how to split the Brazilian culture into many different cultures for my mod.

 

[zipaks]

Now that I think about it, will there be events to decide whether the republic will be federal or unitary? The question of federation versus unitary state was a great question that had historically convulsed Mexico, which had constantly shifted to and from federation and unitary state throughout most of its nineteenth century history. In investigating the history of Brazil, it appeared that the republic was historically unitary at least until 1891, after which it became a federation and remained so, in various forms even through the dictatorships (which tend to not be very favorable towards federalism, for obvious reasons), to this day.

I think that would be a great next step after this DLC, the game desperately needs some form of mechanic to represent the different types of governmental organization, hence the centralization x decentralization, also Central America + Mexico would be the best place to explore and develop this mechanic.

 

[zipaks]

The art assets for the statue of Christ the Redeemer existed if you dug through the code of the leak, it's a shame not to see it here as a buildable monument.
Everything that is here looks good, but it's a shame that Milk and Coffee and Amazonian Exploitation doesn't interact with Companies in any way.

Yes and I wanted to use it on my mod, but that would be not nice of me..

 

[$ilent_$trider]

Don't worry I'm that modder and I'm on it as soon as the DLC is out! Also if there is anything you'd like to see please let me know!

Considering there are “tea plantations” in the south, tea works as a good workaround for mate, otherwise by this same reasoning we would be needing chicken farms, beef ranches, pork ranches, etc…

 

[zipaks]

On a more serious note, although the content seems quite extraordinary, I can't help raising a concerned eyebrow when I see the connection: "have created vast coffee production" --> "gain x modifier to landowners" being hardcoded as a journal of a particular nation. It would seem that this kind of correlation is exactly what companies could do!

I beg to disagree, yes companies should do that that but those events/JE modifiers need to be split into a different part of the mechanics specifically to represent other parts of their influence in a nation.

I understand that the initial situations call for specific journals for each nation, however the development of an industry for a particular resource seems to be something that develops as the game progresses.
In the same way that a bourgeois coup d'état establishing a dictatorship overthrowing the landowners does not seem to me to be specific to a single nation.

That is exactly why I think there are many things about this game that could be unified under many different mechanics, like one mechanic for every nation with slavery, but this mechanic will most likely result in a civil war in the USA and the abolishing of the monarchy in Brazil. The mechanics themselves shouldn't take flavor away, instead allows for the different circumstances of each nation to steer the result to a direction, then adding the flavor and specifics of each country.

I just hope it doesn't translate into a "mission tree/mechanics specific to each nation" direction for future content, but I'm probably worrying for nothing.

I don't think you are worrying for nothing, it is extremely difficult (I believe) for the dev team to create mechanics that can be used in every nation but reproduce "infinite" outcomes like my example above, that would be the optimal choice since replayability would skyrocket, every little detail could make a difference, playing the same country over and over would be more of a different experience from the previous run, playing different countries wouldn't be so difficult since the mechanics are the same and you only have to look at the specifics to understand what's going on.

So yeah having a "mission tree" would be horrible because PDX would have a lot more work to do and eventually alienate many nations to get the work done, same with "mechanics specific to each nation" which is basically the mission tree problem but a bit more specific like what we have in HOI4.

I do hope they can hit that perfect balance between universal mechanics without sacrificing replayability or flavor.

 

[lxlTiagolxl]

For all nations that own Amazon states, the Exploiting the Amazon journal entry has been reworked, with all-new buttons for transforming the Amazon Rainforest into an asset. For Brazil, it contains additional content, granting the ability to claim the state of Acre from Peru-Bolivia and resolving border disputes in Brazil’s favour.

By creating Rubber Plantations in the Amazon, nations with this journal entry will be able to transform the Amazon Rainforest state trait into something less punishing and more useful for a rapidly industrialising nation.

Devil's Railroad: Complete the Exploiting the Amazon JE and build railroads in all Amazonian states

Well, in reality building railroads in the Amazonian region is simply a bad idea, the fact that until this date the transport there is still mainly done by boats says a lot about how sub-optimal it is to build a road or railroad in a region where rain and floods reigns supreme.
It would make more sense to unlock the building of Ports in the Amazonian and Pantanal regions, giving the ports a bonus while keeping or maybe even increasing the penalty for other forms of infrastructure.

Also, the Amazon is the second largest river and has by far the greatest drainage basin, but have no modifier? The Nile has one and even much smaller and less important rivers give some bonuses, why not the Amazon and other amazonian rivers? Especially with the Exploiting the Amazon JE.

Lastly, about the Amazon rainforest modifiers, why no bonuses to rubber production? And as for bonus to Agriculture: maybe it could happen in exchange of losing the bonus to Hardwood as in reality a land considered proper for planting is one where the forest was decimated, except fruits plantations can be made to coexist with the rainforest very well.

 

[wilcoxchar]

Well, sorry Paradox devs but in reality building railroads in the Amazonian region is simply a terrible idea, the fact that the transport there until this date is still mainly done by boats says a lot about how feasible it is to build a road or railroad in a region where rain and floods reigns supreme.
It would make more sense to unlock the building of Ports in the Amazonian and Pantanal regions, giving the ports a bonus while keeping or maybe even increasing the penalty for other forms of infrastructure.

Yes, that's why the optional game achievement is named after the historical and now abandoned Devil's Railroad.

 

[lxlTiagolxl]

Yes, that's why the optional game achievement is named after the historical and now abandoned Devil's Railroad.

Nothing wrong with getting a optional achievement, but the mention of the completing the Exploiting the Amazon JE for it got me wondering if building railroads in the amazon would be required to complete the JE.

 

[zipaks]

Well, sorry Paradox devs but in reality building railroads in the Amazonian region is simply a terrible idea, the fact that the transport there until this date is still mainly done by boats says a lot about how feasible it is to build a road or railroad in a region where rain and floods reigns supreme.

The Amazon region did have railroads including one iirc financed by Ford himself.

It would make more sense to unlock the building of Ports in the Amazonian and Pantanal regions, giving the ports a bonus while keeping or maybe even increasing the penalty for other forms of infrastructure.

That is a good idea.

Also, the Amazon is the second largest river and has by far the greatest drainage basin, but have no modifier? The Nile has one and even much smaller and less important rivers give some bonuses, why not the Amazon and other amazonian rivers?

If I have to guess its probably because boats back at the time couldn't navigate as well in the amazon river compared to todays boats, the river is only going to the middle of nowhere so what gives and lastly even if we consider small boats thhat wouldn't be enough to support adding a modifier there.

Lastly, about the Amazon rainforest modifiers, why no bonuses to rubber production?And as for bonus to Agriculture: maybe it could happen in exchange of losing the bonus to Hardwood as in reality a land considered proper for planting is one where the forest was decimated, except fruits plantations can be made to coexist with the rainforest very well.

Imo a bonus for rubber production wouldn't be as good as increasing the amount of rubber resource, in terms of realism, that said it would be very interesting to have interactions like loosing bonus to hardwood because of rubber production. Agriculture wise I don't think it'd make sense, there is a reason why the Amazon wasn't burned down yet and that's because the land is not fertile for agricultural production, but that idea could work amazingly well for MT, GO, MA and other states where the land is fertile.

 

[lxlTiagolxl]

The Amazon region did have railroads including one iirc financed by Ford himself.

My point is that water based infrastructure is better than land based one for the Amazon, not that the land based one can't be build.

If I have to guess its probably because boats back at the time couldn't navigate as well in the amazon river compared to todays boats, the river is only going to the middle of nowhere so what gives and lastly even if we consider small boats thhat wouldn't be enough to support adding a modifier there.

Certainly it makes sense to have little to no bonus at the beginning, but what about with better tech and with the efforts of the Exploiting the Amazon JE?

Imo a bonus for rubber production wouldn't be as good as increasing the amount of rubber resource, in terms of realism, that said it would be very interesting to have interactions like loosing bonus to hardwood because of rubber production. Agriculture wise I don't think it'd make sense, there is a reason why the Amazon wasn't burned down yet and that's because the land is not fertile for agricultural production, but that idea could work amazingly well for MT, GO, MA and other states where the land is fertile.

Well, frankly i just don't like the Exploited Amazon Rainforest modifier: the bonus to hardwood plus the +10% to agriculture is bad and don't make much sense asthe land simply is not that good and it was only after burning down the forest and pouring money and effort to improve it that it ended up being good for agriculture in some estates.
In terms of realism i think two paths would be better, of coexisting with the forest or of destroying it.
The first one could something like keeping the penalties but get a bonus to Logging, Rubber and Fruit production.
While the second one of losing most of the penalties while having a small bonus to logging and Cattle production.

 

[Lakigigar]

I like the content South America gets here. Also price is fair (fairer than basically any other DLC). If this is "the future model" of DLC i'll probably be more supportive of it. Makes a lot more sense.

 

[MrPoKa]

I almost forgot, you can make a chain of events similar to the Paris commune. Because in 1917, in São Paulo, we had the General Strike of 1917, which was when the unions organized themselves and carried out a large general strike and which kind of scared the entire capitalist class in Brazil, and caused large industrial owners to gave concessions to the strikers, leading to victory for the strikers. However, in the game, you can make or give the option for the strike to continue, this strike that was characterized by anarchist movements and not socialist/communist, thus giving a unique meaning to this whole issue.

 

[MrPoKa]

There is also the contested war of 1914, which was an incident in which workers rose up against their bosses, but the government categorized them as monarchists and religious sympathizers, and sent the armed forces, in which curiously ended up having the first air accident in Brazil. and by using the plane as a weapon, it would influence Santos Dummond and his sad end.
which is another thing that should be addressed later or in this dlc, the father of aviation Santos Dummond.