Victoria 3 - Dev Diary #1 - Pops

[MrParrot]

After reading this dev diary and seeing that both Clergymen and the Sunni Madrasahs faction can exist, I was wondering if potentially creating something of a religious welfare fund paid into by religious groups and preachers. This fund would work similarly to the investment fund in that the fund would first payout to preachers so that they could have a middle tier level of quality of life and then whatever was leftover would be spent as charity on dependents and the lower classes to improve their quality of life. I feel that if this system could be done for religious groups it would both expand the gameplay while allowing for a certain amount of social spending in the early game and reflect some of the role religion played during the Victorian era and contemporarily. I also believe that this would create a gameplay dynamic whereas the state becomes more involved in social spending on healthcare and pensions, the need for charity decreases as does the amount donated.

I know that this idea would probably be difficult to implement, however, it would be a good first step of having religion have an impact on the game in an economic sense.

 

[crowdemon]

I'm looking forward to hear more of Victoria 3.

 

[TheFineOne]

If I do understand, there arent actual alignments to political parties, and instead the pops are aligned with a "interest group"? I kind of liked the political party system and I would honestly be quite to see it dissapear.

 

[johnty5]

If I do understand, there arent actual alignments to political parties, and instead the pops are aligned with a "interest group"? I kind of liked the political party system and I would honestly be quite to see it dissapear.

The devs have said that they’ve heard a lot of people are disappointed about the lack of political parties and are looking at what they can do.

 

[Donal_Huda]

I am so excited about this. The possibilities for interactions and events that have cross-impacts are enormous. So glad you all have announced so we can start seeing these Dev Diaries! Keep 'em coming!

 

[MajorBandgeek]

Adding on, is my understanding correct that individual places of employment are modeled at the province level and the POPs within a state are assumed to live within the same province as their employment? But the simplification is that workers are able to move employment within the provinces of their state without undertaking a migration event in order to smooth out labor supply? I think that simplification makes a lot of sense if so.

I sincerely hope this is the case. It seems like an amazing balance between limiting calculations needed, yet also allowing for individual provinces and urban centers to actually grow and expand

 

[wilcoxchar]

Adding on, is my understanding correct that individual places of employment are modeled at the province level and the POPs within a state are assumed to live within the same province as their employment? But the simplification is that workers are able to move employment within the provinces of their state without undertaking a migration event in order to smooth out labor supply? I think that simplification makes a lot of sense if so.

The problem with this, and IIRC it was still present in earlier Victoria games even with both factories and POPs represented at the province level, is that if you have workplaces at the provinces level and not at the state level then you run into the issue that when a single province with the workplace is captured it creates a sudden lack of employment in the rest of the state.

The workplaces also are not representing an actual single factory or mine or farms or what have you anyway and are representing multiple businesses and workplaces, so it might both make more sense for gameplay and in terms of the abstraction to have them at the state level too and not the province level.

 

[wilcoxchar]

If the only obstacle was political you could play as an absolute monarch, pretend your king was handed some Wollstonecraft, and double your productivity overnight providing the military didn't start a chauvinist coup or something.

Though now that I read it again it does describe women entering the workforce over time after the correct reforms, implying that if you "liberate" them too early most families will stick with the old ways for the time being and you'll have ruffled a lot of feathers for very little gain. IIRC most of the progress on this coincided with labour saving devices that made the traditional "women's work" less time-consuming, causing the old division of labour to make less sense.

Except an absolute monarchy is almost always going to be reactionary or if not that then very conservative so you're likely not going to be able to advance women's (or anyone's) rights under such a government anyway. And as you say, doing so as such a reactionary government would probably upset the monarchist and likely dominant conservative interest groups in your country so you'd be risking rebellion and a rollback of the reform in a rather realistic way. So that's not an issue.

 

[Danfish77]

The amount of states is very similar to Vicky 2 where California was indeed just one province. They might divide it in two, but that shouldn’t be the default thinking. The entire state system is based on us states which is why almost every one of them were a single unit in Vicky 2

I think it was an okay system for Vicky 2 and I'm sad to see it return in Vicky 3. California and Texas are too big to fit the notion of "State" that works well in many parts of the Old World.

 

[Ekcrbe]

The problem with this, and IIRC it was still present in earlier Victoria games even with both factories and POPs represented at the province level, is that if you have workplaces at the provinces level and not at the state level then you run into the issue that when a single province with the workplace is captured it creates a sudden lack of employment in the rest of the state.

Uhhh... what? If a province with some workplaces is captured, then those workplaces are captured. The POPs who work there are out of luck for a while or perhaps forced to work for the occupying power. It doesn't do anything to the workplaces in other provinces of the state. The bigger problem if everything is modeled at the state level is that occupying individual provinces means you need some algorithm to define how a fraction of all the workplaces are affected.

 

[Alfred Dreyfus]

What right to vote has to do with female pop?

Women, even though they had no political participation, played a great role in the work. So much so that it was cheap labor for industries alongside children. And they were also in the fields, in commerce and in some countries they were part of society.


What we want is not just an event that releases the vote for women. We want an evolution over the years. Demonstration of the workforce, introducing them to society and, in the future, political ascension.

If you've read my posts, I've said that female full integration into society should be treated differently than female legal rights. You can have a country where women and men can both vote, but where there is still a very traditional social structure where men is the main workforce and women are mainly dependants. On the other hand, you can have a country where only men can vote, but where women are more integrated into the social structure and participate more in the economy and workforce. Female full integration into society is not just something you as a player should be able to obtain by just passing a law. It should be something organic that slowly evolves over the years if you unlock it in the cultural technology tree.

In any case, what I don't want is feminism to be a very important issue in a 1836-1936 game like Victoria 3. And I feel the need to repeat that doesn't mean I'm against feminism in real life, the same way I'm not against democracy just because I don't want universal suffrage elections in Crusader Kings 3. I just want the game to have a good historical immersion. Female equality could be present in the late game (20th century), but for sure it shouldn't be present in anyway in the first half of the game. For sure you can mention to me some historical cases of early feminism in the 19th century, but this just doesn't justify the presence of it in the game because it wasn't an important political issue at that time, the same way you can find some cases of early democracy in the medieval age but this doesn't justify the presence of universal suffrage elections in Crusader Kings 3.

 

[Voodoo Lilium]

many countries declared homosexuality to be legal during the 19th century. Are we going to have any laws in order to be able to approve the same in Victoria 3? Or just in mods?

Hmm, just briefly skimming some wikipedia pages, and it looks like there's more variety of lgbt laws in this time period that I thought. It was legalized in Turkey in 1858, apparently, and was legal in Napoleonic France (and presumably also after?). I would be really interested to see how they're going to model this.

 

[LeviathanIaz]

View attachment 724799

Hello everyone! I’m Mikael, Victoria 3’s lead game designer - and oh boy does it feel good to finally be able to say that out loud! Today I have the pleasure to reveal some details about that one feature everyone thinks about when they hear “Victoria” - the Pops.

Pops were introduced in the very first Victoria game to represent your country’s population. Pop mechanics have since snuck into other Paradox titles like Stellaris and Imperator. But this in-depth population simulation is what Victoria is about, and we’re going to bring you a system with more depth than ever before!

In Victoria 3, Pops are the country’s engine - they work the industries, they pay the taxes, they operate the government institutions, and they fight the wars. They’re born, they die, they change occupation, they migrate. And they organize, get angry, and start revolutions.

Every Pop is visualized so you can see which demographic sports the best moustache. Note that Pop portraits are very much a work in progress!
View attachment 724800

You, the player, might be in charge of the country, but you’re not in charge of the Pops and can’t manipulate them directly. Yet everything you do to the country affects them, and they in turn will react in what they perceive to be their own best interests. A large part of your game will consist of trying to sate your population’s appetites for material goods or political reform. But most actions you will take aren’t to the benefit of every Pop in your nation, and by making life better for one part of the population you may inadvertently upset another demographic.

The most important aspect of Pops are their Professions, which reflects the types of jobs it carries out in the building where they work. A Pop’s profession determines its social class and can affect its wages, political strength, what other professions it might qualify for, and particularly which political Interest Groups it’s prone to supporting (which you will hear lots more about in future Dev Diaries.) Some of the Pop professions you will encounter in Victoria 3 are Aristocrats, Capitalists, Bureaucrats, Officers, Shopkeepers, Machinists, Laborers, and Peasants. Investing in industries that provide job opportunities for the kinds of professions you want to encourage in your country is key to the “society building” gameplay of Victoria 3.

Every variation of Profession, Culture, Religion, and Workplace in the world gets its own unique Pop. At any given time this results in many tens of thousands of Pops in the world working, migrating, procreating, and agitating.
View attachment 724801

The people that make up a Pop are distinguished into Workforce and Dependents. Members of the Workforce keep the buildings in the game operational and collect a wage from them in return. Those who cannot or aren’t permitted to be officially employed are considered Dependents. They collect only a small income from odd jobs and government programs.

Laws affect who is included in each category. At game start most countries do not accept women working and collecting a wage outside the home but by reforming laws governing the rights of women more Dependent Pops will enter the Workforce over time. By abolishing child labor, the amount of income Dependents bring home will decrease but will make it easier to educate your populace, increasing their overall Literacy. After a bloody war many Dependents of soldiers may be left without sufficient income, and you may decide to institute pensions to help your population recover.

In short: nothing in your country runs without Pops, and everything about your country affects those Pops, who in turn provide new opportunities and challenges during your tumultuous journey through the Victorian era and beyond.

I have oh so much more to say, but that is all for this week! You will hear much more from me in future Dev Diaries. Next week Martin will return to explain something quite central to the game - Capacities!

So happy to see this

 

[Alfred Dreyfus]

With respect to granularity though, there's really no downside to having Pops be able to move freely within their state rather than having to migrate between a handful of provinces within the same state as in previous titles. We still represent the urban/rural divide by permitting many, many different types of industry in each state, including both manufacturing and resource industries (as opposed to one static "RGO" per province) and service/governmental/infrastructure/military workplaces. These different industries and workplaces are visually grouped on the map such that you can see the urbanization and growth of some parts of your state compared to others.

Yes, but for example imagine the population density mapmode, is not going to have any granularity at all. That kind of detail is one of the things that made Vic2 such a special game.

Or for example if San Francisco and Los Angeles are taken away from California, the game will not know that most of the POPs in California where actually in those 2 cities.

Having all the State countryside counted as a single unit is fine, but the cities in that state should be counted differently (see my "Area" unit suggestion in page 16).

 

[Voodoo Lilium]

How can we know if dependents have sufficient income, or in other words if their life needs are fulfilled? Or can we just know that at a PoP level (as in Vic2) and then have to figure out why by ourselves the reason why?

Based on the screenshots I think you can just look to see if they can afford to purchase the goods they need. Presumably, if a large portion of a pop's workforce dies, then the income of that pop goes down, which could drastically affect it's ability to purchase necessary goods.

EDIT: Huh, I guess the screenshot I'm thinking of wasn't from this DD.

Found it

 

[Voodoo Lilium]

Except an absolute monarchy is almost always going to be reactionary or if not that then very conservative so you're likely not going to be able to advance women's (or anyone's) rights under such a government anyway. And as you say, doing so as such a reactionary government would probably upset the monarchist and likely dominant conservative interest groups in your country so you'd be risking rebellion and a rollback of the reform in a rather realistic way. So that's not an issue.

I wouldn't say this is true, there were a number of "enlightened despots" who were absolute monarchs but tried to pursue progressive policies. I think it was more in the late 18th century, but it did exist. It also largely failed, because the nobility were NOT happy about their monarch taking power away from them

 

[Jarolleon]

I wouldn't say this is true, there were a number of "enlightened despots" who were absolute monarchs but tried to pursue progressive policies. I think it was more in the late 18th century, but it did exist. It also largely failed, because the nobility were NOT happy about their monarch taking power away from them

This is happens more often than you'd think. Modernising despots trying to copy the West were quite common from the 18th century onwards (e.g. Peter the Great, Emperor Meiji, Sultan Tanzimat &c. &c.) . The Shah of Iran fell in the 1970s because his modernisation programs managed to anger every element of Iranian society except the intellectuals, but then he alienated even them by the tactics he used. Though allowing the oil to be in the hands of foreign companies didn't help his popularity either.

 

[Mucsaccso]

I'd be surprised if there wasn't some notion of where the cities are inside a larger state. But really, they only need to pin the pops down when it matters. So if someone captured San Francisco in a war, then the game needs to split the state and figure out what fraction of everything was in SF.

In theory, it matters all the time. Think about planning the division of the Austrian Empire that lost a great war. As Romania or Serbia you should be able to know which provinces have a majority of your culture. Also, after the Great War, there were several plebiscites that shaped the borders of the interwar Germany and its neighbours. It can't be preproduces in game with a state-wide cultural representation. We should be able to see the cultural make-up of every province to shape the countries following the cultural/ethnic/national lines.

This is by far one of the things that I'm most concern about in Vic3's development decisions.

I understand that there are is a huge increase in Province density (more or less HOI4's density), but "States being the smallest unit for purposes of politics and economics" (as devs have said) limits heavily the base game for building up game mechanics.

One of the most important characteristics of the game's time period is the conflict and dichotomy between the rural areas and the urban areas. Also, the huge rural exodus to the cities that happened in the period. Making States the smallest unit implies that the game won't able to represent any of this.

Devs have said: "If a State splits, or a Province shifts from one part of the State to another, we determine what resources and pops move between them using semi-proportional math to make the final split make sense." But, the game won't be able to tell the difference between San Francisco, Los Angeles, and the rest of the State of California.

Maybe the solution could be to make an intermediate unit between States and Provinces, that differentiates the cities from the rural area. Something like this:

So you have the State as the main unit of the game, and inside you have lots of Provinces (for military movements or whatever they are designed for), my proposal would be to add an intermediate unit called Areas (for example). In my image California has 5 Areas: "San Francisco", "Sacramento", "Los Angeles", "San Diego", and "the countryside").

So basically, instead of having POPs calculated in dozens of Provinces, you would have POPs calculated only in 5 Areas. Not as detailed as a province level calculation, but a lot more detailed than a simple State level calculation. This would let the game differentiate between cities and rural areas for game mechanics purposes (for example when a Treaty Port separates a city from the rest of the State, or migration from the countryside to the cities).

This really concerns me as well. Your proposal is actually quite good in terms of the USA where the different cultures doesn't really shape tbe borders, but it wouldn't help to represent the fragile states of mixed cultures in Europe, Africa and Asia. In the culturally mixed European regions even the rural territories had a multiculture nature. In the Balkans (but it almost applies everywhere in the Central-European region) it was an important nationalist agenda to annex every village with nation's culture. Without representing the cultural situation of every province, I fear that states or even the areas of your idea are too big to provide a satisfactory resolution.
The case is less heavy in Africa or in Asia, but the subtle cultural differences had an impact on the tragedies of the decolonisation. And it started to happen in Vic3's timeframe (mainly in the Middle East) and it is entirely possible that the game will be able to simulate an earlier global decolonisation if, for example, an anti-colonist Soviet Union wins one or two great wars against colonial powers. In this case, again, where the borders are very important when you create nation states or at least countries that have a dominant culture - detaching one or two provinces from a state in order to achieve a stable country is important. But it doesn't only apply to decolonisation. I have always loved to reshape Europe after destroying its empires, and it was nice to follow the ideas of Wilson who ried to create fair, culturally/ethnically homogenous nation states.

Don't get me wrong, everything else regarding the pops seems awesome. But, at least for me, someone who is from the ethnically and culturall diverse Central Europe, it would be nice to see the cultural situation of every province. And right now it doesn't seem to be the case. However it was also comfirmed that Could a dev elaborate on this? Because I am hopeful due to this:

A single state can support numerous variations of different mines, agriculture, plantations, logging, fishing etc and you can definitely have a state where almost the entire population lives and works in the urban area.

Does it imply that there is some kind of province-level pop-tracking? Do we misunderstand the situation?

 

[Xain]

Based on the screenshots I think you can just look to see if they can afford to purchase the goods they need. Presumably, if a large portion of a pop's workforce dies, then the income of that pop goes down, which could drastically affect it's ability to purchase necessary goods.

EDIT: Huh, I guess the screenshot I'm thinking of wasn't from this DD.

Found it

View attachment 725219

Yes, but this concerns the entire PoP (7.34K dixie farmers in Louisiana), not just the dependents.
My question was if we will have a stat like this, but just for the dependents.

But now that I think of it, under the "significant factors affecting the Pop's Standard Of Living" there could just be an entry like "workforce not big enough to provide for dependents"

 

[Butter For Less]

In theory, it matters all the time. Think about planning the division of the Austrian Empire that lost a great war. As Romania or Serbia you should be able to know which provinces have a majority of your culture. Also, after the Great War, there were several plebiscites that shaped the borders of the interwar Germany and its neighbours. It can't be preproduces in game with a state-wide cultural representation. We should be able to see the cultural make-up of every province to shape the countries following the cultural/ethnic/national lines.

This really concerns me as well. Your proposal is actually quite good in terms of the USA where the different cultures doesn't really shape tbe borders, but it wouldn't help to represent the fragile states of mixed cultures in Europe, Africa and Asia. In the culturally mixed European regions even the rural territories had a multiculture nature. In the Balkans (but it almost applies everywhere in the Central-European region) it was an important nationalist agenda to annex every village with nation's culture. Without representing the cultural situation of every province, I fear that states or even the areas of your idea are too big to provide a satisfactory resolution.
The case is less heavy in Africa or in Asia, but the subtle cultural differences had an impact on the tragedies of the decolonisation. And it started to happen in Vic3's timeframe (mainly in the Middle East) and it is entirely possible that the game will be able to simulate an earlier global decolonisation if, for example, an anti-colonist Soviet Union wins one or two great wars against colonial powers. In this case, again, where the borders are very important when you create nation states or at least countries that have a dominant culture - detaching one or two provinces from a state in order to achieve a stable country is important. But it doesn't only apply to decolonisation. I have always loved to reshape Europe after destroying its empires, and it was nice to follow the ideas of Wilson who ried to create fair, culturally/ethnically homogenous nation states.

Don't get me wrong, everything else regarding the pops seems awesome. But, at least for me, someone who is from the ethnically and culturall diverse Central Europe, it would be nice to see the cultural situation of every province. And right now it doesn't seem to be the case. However it was also comfirmed that Could a dev elaborate on this? Because I am hopeful due to this:

Does it imply that there is some kind of province-level pop-tracking? Do we misunderstand the situation?

I think this nicely lays out the importance of pops being represented on a per-province level and not just state wide. Sure maybe in America where most states will be majority Yankee/Dixie, but when you get to places like the Balkans or the Caucasus, it sounds like it will be pretty much impossible for this system to accurately represent the region. Unless if states are as small as Victoria II provinces, but they've already confirmed that's not the case (eg. California is one state).

Overall I'm liking the changes I've heard about so far, but not having province level pops seems like a major simplification to me and kind of kills my hype.