Victoria 3 | Monthly Update #1 | July

[wilcoxchar]

Which is fair, but even as a group would the peasants be more influential than the aristocracy?

When the peasants are two thirds of the population? Yes. The idea that peasants as a group should be artificially limited so they are never more politically relevant than the aristocracy no matter how much of the country's population is made up of the peasantry is just weird and arbitrary.

 

[maxk94]

In 1871 bismarck preferred universal and equal suffrage over the census suffrage, as he assumed, on the basis of his experience in the third french empire, that the rural lower class would vote to the authority. In Prussia, under the conditions of the census suffrage, he experienced great successes by the liberals. In Germany, this submissive electoral behavior was true at least east of the Elbe until the World War.

To prevent liberal success in the mid-19th century, universal suffrage might actually be better than census suffrage.

 

[Vohen]

Probably? The prospect of a unified bloc of peasants makes rulers of the period tremble in a way even a noble revolt could not. But getting the majority of them unified, politically activated and angry was extremely difficult.

Which is really the thing, the chart seems to show the peasants as if they are all politically active, which we know to not be the case in the game.
Maybe that could be useful in some situations, but as far as it has been shown to work, it'd be far more useful to see each pop's political strength proportional to how politically active they are.
Or is that already taken into account when calculating political strength? Genuine question here, would just like to see some clarification.

When the peasants are two thirds of the population? Yes. The idea that peasants as a group should be artificially limited so they are never more politically relevant than the aristocracy no matter how much of the country's population is made up of the peasantry is just weird and arbitrary.

In this time period, more often than not peasants would indeed be a vast majority of the population (2/3 is even on the lower end).
That'd absolutely not mean rulers held their opinion in any particular high regard at all.

And the game does have an organic way to limit political participation, with pops being politically active/inactive depending on literacy among other things.
So it's not that I disagree that peasants should have a huge political strength, but that this info shouldn't be displayed as such in the chart because their de facto strength (and thus the information that is useful to us) will be very much limited by their political awareness.

Edit: also, afaik, political strength has more to do with wealth than anything else, so it makes sense that this is distributed this way, but as I said, their political activity (determining if they actually join an IG) has more to do with literacy and whatnot.
So even if a pop has a lot of P.Str, if they don't have much awareness, a lot of that is going to be wasted, and the "non-wasted" P.Str would be the useful info we'd need in this chart, at least imo.

 

[Wizzington]

I find it really strange that peasants have such a huge political strength, given how we were told they'd be mostly politically inactive (iirc).

Politically inactive pops still have political strength, it's just wasted.

 

[Lorehead]

View attachment 740302

Kind of concerned that they seem to have implemented price floors/ceilings. From this image alone multiple goods are at their max of 45 and one at 60. This implies that victoria3 markets are going to be extremely inefficient.

This is an interesting one. In a classical model, there isn’t a fixed supply or demand, but a quantity supplied or demanded at a given price. You’d say that there’s someone who’d pay £100 for a fruit if that meant only he could serve them at his feast, then people who would and could spend progressively less, until you get to a hunter-gatherer who’s never seen an apple before but is curious enough to trade you a few nuts for one. The market-clearing price is the one where someone can afford to produce as many goods as someone else, somewhere, is willing to buy. If there are more “sell orders” than “buy orders,” that would mean the price is temporarily too high, it needs to fall, and that will put the most-inefficient (or least-subsidized) producers out of work.

So, if this system is supposed to be microfounded, it’d make sense to say that all the middle-class pops can afford to spend £45 on their staple goods and that therefore works as the market price. But, axiomatically, a competitive market should not have more buy orders than sell orders or vice versa. That would only happen under a monopoly, if prices are sticky and unable to change, or a few other cases.

 

[Vohen]

Politically inactive pops still have political strength, it's just wasted.

Ah damn, I edited my post too late.

Well, in essence I argue that the useful info to have on the pie chart would be the "non-wasted" political strength, as it would more or less depict the actual distribution of power in the nation at the moment, no?
Or at least have a grey section in the pie chart showing this wasted political strength.

 

[alexti]

Well, in essence I argue that the useful info to have on the pie chart would be the "non-wasted" political strength, as it would more or less depict the actual distribution of power in the nation at the moment, no?
Or at least have a grey section in the pie chart showing this wasted political strength.

Both seems to be potentially useful. Perhaps one pie chart for overall political strength and another - for "active" one? One can never have too many pie charts

 

[wilcoxchar]

Ah damn, I edited my post too late.

Well, in essence I argue that the useful info to have on the pie chart would be the "non-wasted" political strength, as it would more or less depict the actual distribution of power in the nation at the moment, no?
Or at least have a grey section in the pie chart showing this wasted political strength.

Non-wasted political strength would be a good thing to show, but that would be better to show in the politics window and not the population window.

 

[Vohen]

Non-wasted political strength would be a good thing to show, but that would be better to show in the politics window and not the population window.

Well,

But seriously, I'd say it's quite important to have it at least alongside the full political strength chart.
As it is, the information it shows doesn't tell the whole story, and might confuse new players to see marginalized pops taking such a big chunk there without any explanation that a lot of these aren't actually politically active.
One of the stated design goals is to make the UX more accessible than it was in previous games, this sort of information being presented in an unambiguous way is quite necessary to achieve that.

 

[RamboBilambo]

Only at the start, later characters are randomly generated, thankfully

I disagree. Randomly generated characters will always be less interesting than the historical figures and the fact that they won't be in the game is the biggest disappointment for me so far. Thankfully, I'm certain some mods will remedy this.

 

[maxk94]

I disagree. Randomly generated characters will always be less interesting than the historical figures and the fact that they won't be in the game is the biggest disappointment for me so far. Thankfully, I'm certain some mods will remedy this.

especially when we have such a great database for politicans around the globe in the 19th century, unlike in I:R, CK and also EU-timelines.

 

[ASPGolan]

So far, so good. The game appears to have the kind of features that I was hoping for, it's refreshing to see that the devs and designers know their audience.

Also, I'm still playing Vic 2 which has an outdated interface. As long as it doesn't get in the way and is responsive, I don't really care that much about the UI. But the new one looks surprisingly good and I'm hoping it will be less intimidating for new players to the franchise or to Pdox grand strategy games.

 

[Werther]

Which is fair, but even as a group would the peasants be more influential than the aristocracy?

I don't know for Austria, but in XIXth century France, paysants were one of the most important group, way ahead of the aristocrats. Any governments which failed to have their support (including the famous Commune byt the way) just failed. And the Third Republic did everything to please the paysants (who still represented 40% of the population in 1914!) and so enjoyed 70 years of relative stability.

 

[Falkenhayn1]

Why Russia has an ahistorical flag?
It's Royal Standard, it's not national/state flag.
A national flag before the 1858 was White-Blue-Red, like a contemporary Russian flag.
After that Russia used a Black-Yellow-White flag. This flag was used de facto until 1888 and de jure before 1896.
When you use Royal Standard as a Russian national flag you make the same mistake if you would use US Presidential Standard as an American national flag.

Second. I know that the game is under development, but anyway. Why Nicholas I has trait "Cruel"? He has an authoritarian governing style, but "cruelty" is a clear value judgment. Negative image of Nicholas was created by some left-wing and liberal writers. He really was authoritarian guy, but why he's "cruel"? What cruel did he do?
In general, is the "cruel" trait is relevant for the game about the Victorian era? It was not Medieval age with a hundreds of enemies, impaled personally by ruler. Rather, it is more appropriate to say about authoritarian persons, not about "cruel".
Maybe this trait is better to replace with "Authoritarian", "Rigid" or "Harsh".

 

[Khanconette]

Why Russia has an ahistorical flag?
It's Royal Standard, it's not national/state flag.
A national flag before the 1858 was White-Blue-Red, like a contemporary Russian flag.
After that Russia used a Black-Yellow-White flag. This flag was used de facto until 1888 and de jure before 1896.
When you use Royal Standard as a Russian national flag you make the same mistake if you would use US Presidential Standard as an American national flag.

Second. I know that the game is under development, but anyway. Why Nicholas I has trait "Cruel"? He has an authoritarian governing style, but "cruelty" is a clear value judgment. Negative image of Nicholas was created by some left-wing and liberal writers. He really was authoritarian guy, but why he's "cruel"? What cruel did he do?
In general, is the "cruel" trait is relevant for the game about the Victorian era? It was not Medieval age with a hundreds of enemies, impaled personally by ruler. Rather, it is more appropriate to say about authoritarian persons, not about "cruel".
Maybe this trait is better to replace with "Authoritarian", "Rigid" or "Harsh".

I totally agree on both points. For me, it's quite weird to give such epithets to the rulers of the 19th century in total. What about, for example, the Queen Victoria herself? I bet she wouldn't get such a trait, but we always can say a lot of harsh words about the British colonial affairs during her rule, about the Irish question, workhouses so well-portrayed by Dickens (we're in love with literature as a source for our historical game, right? Then why Tolstoy and not Dickens?). This game is neither RPG-centered nor about personalities in particular, then why would we make such arbitrary traits for the rulers? This trait set says nothing about the Nicholas I's policies and their influence onto his nation, and that's what I consider the main role of the ruler's traits. What made him a political operator, by the way? He inherited his throne, he never led any intrigues to achieve it. Arrogant? Well, perhaps all aristocrats of that time were arrogant. So, what do we have here? Three traits for a leader of one of the major nations, none of them are actually plausible and none of them have any relation to his influence on the country he rules. I definitely hope that this is just some alpha random screenshot and vast improvements are still to be done

 

[Earmuffs]

The mustache game is pretty good so far. The 1800's was the golden age of the mustache though so I'm expecting some top quality 'stashes with large presence and high quality tip curling.

 

[10CentJimmy]

I definitely want to corner the market on potted plants.

 

[grommile]

What about, for example, the Queen Victoria herself? I bet she wouldn't get such a trait, but we always can say a lot of harsh words about the British colonial affairs during her rule

During her reign, thank you very much.

Her Majesty did not rule (though she undoubtedly wielded a certain amount of soft power). That was left to her Prime Ministers.

It can fairly be argued that the last Westminster monarch to rule this island was Queen Anne, who is the last to have withheld the Royal Assent from a bill duly passed by Parliament.

 

[nuarbnellaffej]

I disagree. Randomly generated characters will always be less interesting than the historical figures and the fact that they won't be in the game is the biggest disappointment for me so far. Thankfully, I'm certain some mods will remedy this.

I can see where you’re coming from, but at the same time I feel like historical characters throughout might feel shoehorned if a game’s timeline veers away from OTL, and the original circumstances that led to OTL historical figures aren’t present.

To be fair I’m not all that read up on 19th century personas compared to the 20th century ones, so it wouldn’t be much of a loss to me anyways, same as they aren’t in CKIII.

 

[Leoreth]

Probably? The prospect of a unified bloc of peasants makes rulers of the period tremble in a way even a noble revolt could not. But getting the majority of them unified, politically activated and angry was extremely difficult.

Yeah. People usually underestimate this but autocratic rulers often cared a lot about what the rural population thought of them, and often believed (rightly or not) that the average peasant in their realm agreed with and supported their rule, and opposition only came from

some left-wing and liberal writers.

Now, sometimes they were actually right about that, and sometimes they weren't. On a few occasions with fatal consequences, in the case of our friends Louis XVI and Nicholas II. Note that the same was also true for radical opposition groups, who often (rightly and wrongly) thought that the rural populace would surely rise and support their ideas if they were only properly informed and empowered.

Turns out that a group as large as 2/3 of the population has a wide range of political beliefs that are depending on context and situation.

But in the end it often rarely mattered because autocrats in practice made sure their opinion didn't matter. I don't think they did so because they were deluded about the consequences otherwise.