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

[Bearjuden]

I disagree this is a problem. There was an agreement between Brazil and GB in 1826 to banish slave trade (not slavery itself), reinforced with another law in 1831, as the game will seem to portray now. Neither of these laws were actually enforced in reality - and when I say it, it's not like "oh the trade diminished but continued as an illegal activity, hidden from the authorities". Between 1826 and 1850, more than 800 thousand enslaved people were disembarked in Brazil. It was not hidden at all. The law simply didn't exist in practice. The game having slave trade enacted for Brazil is actually a better solution and closer to how it was in reality than the contrary.

Slave trade in Brazil was actually banned only in 1850, with the passing of another law.

Mm, I may have been unclear. I have no issue with Brazil having this dichotomy. I am entirely in support of representing it! It's a good thing to capture!

The problem I perceive relates more to how it was implemented. The current structure makes it bespoke content for Brazil. If anyone else has any other similar situation for any law, the current solution cannot easily be recycled, as it will require entirely new journals, events, etc. There is no systemic way to model the limits of the law where people just ignore it entirely, and particularly so when this matters for international treaty. If any other country enforces on another the ban slavery or open markets demand - the two main instances of a country enforcing that another change its laws - it is always taken as absolute, there is no case of the conceding party nominally fulfilling their obligations but still not doing so. Even if we suppose that a play should always get what it enforces (since it is being taken by force), it would be good to have a system of influencing other countries' laws and being bound by treaty which would benefit from this being a more structured solution instead of a Brazil-unique bit of content.

That's my only real concern. I am not saying in the slightest that representing that situation in Brazil should not be shown at all.

 

[$ilent_$trider]

I disagree this is a problem. There was an agreement between Brazil and GB in 1826 to banish slave trade (not slavery itself), reinforced with another law in 1831, as the game will seem to portray now. Neither of these laws were actually enforced in reality - and when I say it, it's not like "oh the trade diminished but continued as an illegal activity, hidden from the authorities". Between 1826 and 1850, more than 800 thousand enslaved people were disembarked in Brazil. It was not hidden at all. The law simply didn't exist in practice. The game having slave trade enacted for Brazil is actually a better solution and closer to how it was in reality than the contrary.

Slave trade in Brazil was actually banned only in 1850, with the passing of another law.

There’s this town in Pernambuco, whose name translates to “Chicken Harbor” the “chicken” being traded there were “African chicken” (slaves) everyone knew it, everyone kept it business as usual.

 

[Smiths]

As a south american myself I am delighted to see the region get some new content. I want to say though that I think that limiting the formation of the andean federation only to north or south andean countries is a bit limiting. I think platinean countries should be allowed to pursue pannationalism too.

 

[Kazanov]

The way this was phrased made me think this was a bulk pack for South America as a whole, and that sounded like a really good balance of things. Content built around regions means there will be an effort to facilitate interaction between countries, Gran Colombia and Brazil and Paraguay Bolivia and Argentina, which somehow goes almost completely unmentioned in this entire diary (despite this century being essentially the apex of Argentinian power).

Chile was barely mentioned. But that's a lot considering the history of Paradox.
First playthrough, I will invade Bolivia and Perù to form the Andean Federation and get that Llama achievement

As a south american myself I am delighted to see the region get some new content. I want to say though that I think that limiting the formation of the andean federation only to north or south andean countries is a bit limiting. I think platinean countries should be allowed to pursue pannationalism too.

Argentina can invade Paraguay and Uruguay easily, two provinces, you don't need more

 

[Lucododosor]

There’s this town in Pernambuco, whose name translates to “Chicken Harbor” the “chicken” being traded there were “African chicken” (slaves) everyone knew it, everyone kept it business as usual.

Yeah been there many times

 

[Marco Dandolo]

Am I right that I see Cristo Redentor as a new monument for Brazil in the video?

 

[Andrelvis]

CK3's culture system is a nightmare. It has far too many basic options, and the AI is obsessed with hybridizing, which makes the CPU weight of processing even worse. The only reason it even works is because CK3 doesn't have any kind of pop simulation, each province is basically one person, with a single religion and culture, and no ability to simulate gradients or demographics. Trying to add anything approaching CK3's culture depth into Victoria 3 -- a game that is already slow enough with it's ability to simulate pop jobs, migrations, wages, and social interests -- would torch my CPU and leave it bleeding to death by the side of the road.

I'll admit, I don't really like the way that culture and ethnicity work in Victoria 3, either. Using the aggressive pop compression game rules that make the game playable to the end date has a habit of doing strange and wrong things, like slowly turning South Africa 100% white, or erasing dixie whites entirely if the American South secedes as an Afro-American revolution.

Still though, I understand why its like this, and it has nothing to with reinforcing racist stereotypes. The game is focused on Europe and seeks to simulate the entire planet in pop groups, frankly it has too many different culture groups for what modern CPUs can handle already.

The game already supports multiethnic cultures. It doesn't have any effect on performance. The way it works is that each culture has a list of ethnicities, with a weight to them. Depending on the weight, an ethnicity is randomly chosen when a new pop or character is created of that culture.

The thing is that the game's designers inexplicably decided that all cultures only have a single entry in their ethnicity list. And this for a time period where many multiethnic cultures existed.

Again, adding more ethnicities to a culture's ethnicity list would have no impact on performance.

This is what the ethnicity list looks like for Brazilian culture:

    ethnicities = {
        1 = south_american
    }

Changing it so that there is equal probability of Brazilian pops/characters being mestizo/mestiço ("south_american") or white (which is accurate for Brazilians as per the 1872 census) is as simple as doing this:

    ethnicities = {
        1 = south_american
        1 = caucasian
    }

That's all. It is a really, really simple problem to solve. And yes, it can be solved by modding, but we shouldn't need mods to have a non-racist representation of Latin America.

And I'm sorry, but when all of Latin America is depicted as mestizo stereotypes the game is yes reinforcing racist stereotypes. "The game is focused on Europe" is no excuse - this is a post about a DLC focused on South America, what better time to fix this?

 

[LeSingeAffame]

Absolutely loved the surprise announcement (as I’m sure you can tell )!! That said, here’s a couple things I found:

• Why does “Unrestricted Slave Trade” provide a malus to slave imports? Shouldn’t it be neutral at worst?

I suppose it's because of the treaty nominally abolishing it, and possibly because Britain is also interfering to enforce it

 

[Leoreth]

Every time I see one of these content packs announced and described I become more and more disillusioned about the dev team actually believing in this game being about socio-economic simulation and the domestic and foreign political impacts.

The game is moving more and more towards a mindset of "if in doubt, make a journal entry with a progress bar". I think journal entries and progress bars are boring, deterministic, and mechanically isolated from the actual gameplay systems. I am worried that soon most of the game will be driven by what is being pre-ordained in these journal entries, the scenarios that event developers thought to account for, which journal entries one "owns", and judging from other paradox titles, inconsistencies between old journal entries and changes to the game that happened in later updates that they were not adapted to.

But as Marx once said, history was mainly driven by the conflict of journal entries, so I'm sure it's going to be fine.

 

[ashandresash]

Every time I see one of these content packs announced and described I become more and more disillusioned about the dev team actually believing in this game being about socio-economic simulation and the domestic and foreign political impacts.

The game is moving more and more towards a mindset of "if in doubt, make a journal entry with a progress bar". I think journal entries and progress bars are boring, deterministic, and mechanically isolated from the actual gameplay systems. I am worried that soon most of the game will be driven by what is being pre-ordained in these journal entries, the scenarios that event developers thought to account for, which journal entries one "owns", and judging from other paradox titles, inconsistencies between old journal entries and changes to the game that happened in later updates that they were not adapted to.

But as Marx once said, history was mainly driven by the conflict of journal entries, so I'm sure it's going to be fine.

This diary has had the opposite effect on me, as I think it shows devs know now what to do. I, like you, prefer a game driven by mechanics rather than by narrative content, though I think the latest has its role, like this post explained so well:

I don't think it is deterministic as all those things were already in motion by the time the game starts. Ignoring it would just make a sandbox game with a bit of historical flavor. Meanwhile, having them will let you play alternative ends to such scenarios if they are well made.

You can overreach, of course (EU4, IMHO, is going too much in that direction) but I think this DLC, and the differentiation developers are making now between immersion and content packs, is fine. The content introduced to us in this diary doesn't "railroad" Brazil like mission trees are doing in EU4 but contextualizes it (and, in a lesser extent, the region). I wouldn't mind seeing more of this in other regions.

It's a completely different issue what an "immersion pack" should be: a DLC mainly built over free "medium" mechanics, making them more complex or adding to them regional flavour, not just plain content. That's what made Voice of the People fail so much: it was basically narrative content (worse designed than this one, btw), with more cosmetics... and a marginal mechanic, not related at all to the "French experience" indeed (some additional interaction with characters). The free mechanic shouldn't have been agitators but monarchy successions and coups (that have been represented as more or less complex events), to which the DLC could have added more options, French related content, etc.

On the other hand, expansions should be exactly that: a expansion of the game by means of a rework of an important mechanic, the addition of new features, etc., like Sphere of Influence will allegedly do with diplomacy.

 

[Letharion]

View attachment 1034065
[/CENTER


The starting situation of Peru-Bolivia has been reworked in Update 1.5, to include the governments established in the wake of the Salaverry-Santa Cruz war of 1835-36. Where a unified Peru once stood, there is now North Peru, South Peru, and Iquicha, states subordinated to the Supreme Protector of Bolivia, Andrés de Santa Cruz.

View attachment 1034218​

At game start, the states of the Peru-Bolivian Confederation are working to establish a stable government with a functional constitution, whilst facing pressure from their neighbours. The Peru-Bolivia journal entry has been reworked, now requiring the maintenance of a legitimate government and the management of more component states against foreign aggression. The Peruvian states will begin with a large amount of radicals, presenting the constant risk of a revolt to break free from Bolivian influence.

​

This new configuration for Peru-Bolivia could also be used for Austria-Hungary to better represent their situation until there is a specific solution for them, couldn’t it? I think this would be worth a try from the devs.​

 

[FranklyJustNess]

With all the Brazilian slave trade and culture stuff, I really really hope you introduce some way for assimilation of African pops into African minority cultures. It always struck me as weird how there are cultures like Afro American or Afro Brazilian, but all pops from Africa always retain their original culture, or later assimilate into a primary one once accepted.

 

[Leoreth]

This diary has had the opposite effect on me, as I think it shows devs know now what to do. I, like you, prefer a game driven by mechanics rather than by narrative content, though I think the latest has its role, like this post explained so well:

Fair enough - it is definitely worthwhile to have a better representation of starting conditions in this game, as many nations currently feel quite samey.

Nevertheless I dislike the approach - "push progress bar and then thing happens" is not very engaging gameplay and it is in stark contrast to the dynamic and systemic nature of the fundamental mechanics that are supposed to represent the heart of the game. Simply cross reference "the vision" from the original dev diaries and how "journal entry mechanics" are essentially an abandonment of them.

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 don't want to elevate expansion packs in this context either, as a new mechanic also has the potential to be isolated from the core game systems. But I think the risk with scripted content, which journal-entries-formerly-known-as-events inherently are, is much greater.

 

[atomicsoda]

Now this is really good. Never expected to see a S. America centered content and looks well thought out.

 

[MohawkWolfo98]

Just have a question: is it possible to have male heirs of Pedro succeed him? Or is it hardcoded so that only Princess Isabella does?

 

[ashandresash]

Fair enough - it is definitely worthwhile to have a better representation of starting conditions in this game, as many nations currently feel quite samey.

Nevertheless I dislike the approach - "push progress bar and then thing happens" is not very engaging gameplay and it is in stark contrast to the dynamic and systemic nature of the fundamental mechanics that are supposed to represent the heart of the game. Simply cross reference "the vision" from the original dev diaries and how "journal entry mechanics" are essentially an abandonment of them.

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 don't want to elevate expansion packs in this context either, as a new mechanic also has the potential to be isolated from the core game systems. But I think the risk with scripted content, which journal-entries-formerly-known-as-events inherently are, is much greater.

I agree with you. Well designed events (old-school paradoxer here XD) are fine but they can't be the main source of flavour, in no way a substitute for mechanics.

I wasn't a fan of Journal Entries but, to be honest, in order to represent "pre-existing conditions", or situational phenomenons, I prefer this system rather than HoI4's "mini-games" (Stalin's Paranoia, US Congress, Spanish pre-Civil War decisions... Balance of Power may be the exception), which I find clunky and tedious.

The risk you say (scripting more and more journal entries instead of developing mechanics to give us sort of a "narrative emergent" gameplay) exists, of course (it's what I would call "EU4's mission trees syndrome": encapsullating the whole gameplay of a country in a mission tree), so I think we should praise PDS when things are done well (6 out of the 8 entries in Colossus of the South seem a proper use of them, IMO), and criticize them when not (like succession in monarchies and coups d'état, absolutely mis-represented in Voice of the People: they are mechanics, not events).

Analysing some of the patterns of the "journal entries" that I've found properly used to represent what it is going on in the early game (but not if they're railroaded to mid and late game) we can see some "narrativewise" mechanics (I mean, not oriented exclusively to improve the simulation). To name a few...

1) From "Magnanimous Monarch", "The New Republic"and "Coffe & Milk": making Interest Group (IG) ideologies more dynamic (and context-driven), changing the relationship between POPs and IGs, struggle inside a IG, interaction between government actions (not just "laws") and IGs, etc.

2) From "The Paraguayan War", "Pan-Nationalism" and "Nation Building": build-up of tension in a region, centralization (aka state-building), cultural integration (aka nation-building)...

Maybe one, or some, of those features could be developed one day. Maybe not. But, as I said in the beginning, I agree with you that the future of a game like Victoria 3 relies on the strength of its mechanics and their interaction to give us players an emergent experience, not in developing exclusively scripted content. And I think the developers would agree with that, too. But narrative content has its role to provide us with context (I don't want Vic3 to be an asymmetrical 4X), and maybe to inspire new mechanics to catch what there's behind them.

 

[kosteyy]

Regarding Journal Entries.
I feel very bad about the quest branches in Imperator and EU4, and cautious about Journal Entries.
It all makes the game play the way the game wants it to play, not the way I want it to play. If it says in the journal that if I go up and to the right and I get something, then I will never go down and to the left in 99% of games. Because it's logical, it's profitable, it's strategic.

So there should be a balance in general, and a counterbalance to quests/journal entries - so that in 50% of cases, depending on other mechanics and what's going on in the game, taking one or another quest/journal entrie is not the best choice.
(Even if there are a lot of these entries, it doesn't mean there is a choice, I still want to go in through the circle on the right side then turn 22° left to then 95° right).

 

[lxlTiagolxl]

That "Tenetes" is a typo of Tenentes?

Children's Right appear twice.

 

[gustavotoniato]

One question, if I go to Brazil, and expand my borders, can I assimilate other cultures to form Brazilian culture?

 

[sparrow_ger]

I really like the content of the DLC. While many players don't like this "mission tree like" content, I actually enjoy it. There are some things that are so specific, that the game could never be complex enough to let those events happen "naturally" be only using the generic game mechanics.

And while I can enjoy playing sandbox games with only self-set goals to some extend, having fixed goals by the game (mission trees, journal entries, achievements etc.) is definitely pushing my motivation to achieve certain things.

I will buy this DLC for sure.