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Victoria 3 - Dev Diary #34 - Canals & Monuments

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Good evening and welcome to this week’s Victoria 3 development diary! Today’s topic is Canals & Monuments, unique buildings with special inputs, outputs, and effects.

The Vatican City is the seat of the Catholic Church and a great asset to the Papal States in Victoria 3. As Europe developed and industrialized, the power of religious authority in national politics declined steeply but never lost its relevance. Can you change the course of history and renew the temporal power of the Pope?
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Monuments are unique buildings only available in specific states, each with its own 3D model on the map. They make use of some of the more interesting aspects of the production methods system; just as buildings can output Goods, they can also output both national and local modifiers, Capacities, and effects on the pops working there. The Vatican City for instance outputs the Influence capacity as well as greatly increasing the political strength of the Devout Interest Group. Meanwhile the White House adds a multiplier to your national Bureaucracy output as well as increasing the amount of political strength Pops gain from votes. Not all Monuments are present at the start date. Some, like the Eiffel Tower, must be constructed, and Monuments are significantly more costly and time-consuming to construct than standard buildings. Monuments are subsidized by government funding, so if you decide that a Monument is unaffordable or that you aren’t interested in its effects (for instance if you as communist Italy no longer want to Church to wield so much power) you can simply defund them. On release we intend to have eleven different Monuments in total.

The Panama Canal links the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. Finally completed in 1914 after decades of planning and construction, ships no longer had to take the long and treacherous route around South America to travel between the East and West. Yes, we can see the trees and houses in the Canal - we’ll fix it!
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Like Monuments, Canals are unique buildings with a special set of inputs and outputs. But the true allure of constructing a Canal is that it allows you to create new connections between sea nodes, allowing ships to travel through the isthmuses of Panama and Suez. This significantly reduces the Convoy costs for trading and supplying armies across vast ocean distances, as well as your vulnerability to unscrupulous rivals trying to disrupt your supply lines.

We use the Journal Entry system to track the progress of your canal survey. Behind the scenes a variable is increased every month until the goal is reached, which triggers the completion event. The Journal Entry also acts as a reminder that you are spending a lot of Bureaucracy on this project, and that it will eventually be made available again once the survey is complete.
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Constructing a Canal is far from trivial. Before any work can begin, an extensive survey of the region needs to be conducted, costing a hefty chunk of Bureaucracy for the surveyor for around 3 years. Either the owner of the state or a Great Power with an Interest in the region can conduct a survey. Any number of countries can potentially conduct their own surveys and compete to build the Canal themselves.

We’ve made the conscious decision to avoid starting wars or Diplomatic Plays through scripted content wherever possible, instead offering incentives for the player to start their own Plays and encouraging the AI to pursue Journal Entry goals. In this case, the player has the option to either gain a Claim on Sinai or to improve relations with the owner country, helping you along your chosen path but not locking you into a particular course of action.
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Once you’ve completed your survey, the path diverges depending on whether you own the appropriate land. If you already own either a Treaty Port or the whole state region you can simply begin constructing the canal, but if not you’ll need to find a way to acquire it, either through monetary or coercive means. A Decision becomes available allowing you to purchase a Treaty Port in the appropriate State Region in exchange for a series of very large weekly payments, assuming you can convince the local rulers to part with the port. You might however decide that you’d rather keep your money and start a Diplomatic Play for a Treaty Port or the entire State Region (the former will cost you a lot less Infamy), which might lead either to a peaceful concession to your demands or to war.

And that’s all for today! Next week I’ll be handing you over to one of our Content Designers to talk about Expeditions and Decisions.
 
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Why restrict these monuments to special states? I mean, even the Statue of Liberty is built by France and sent to America as a gift. So the monuments that do not present at the start of the game, should be available to those states that fits a general (somehow restrictive) conditions. Therefore, the Eiffel Tower for instance, can be built by any country that hosts Universal Exposition whose economy is great and the culture is prosperous and romantic
Exactly. No need to lock in at the specific ones that historically happened to be built (or remain in place in good shape) in XIX c. by the historical powers of that age.

If you play as nationalist, right-wing Brazil why not have the option to build a huge triumphal arch in Rio de Janeiro? Or, if you manage to modernize / industrialize China why not enable an Eiffel-Tower-like engineering marvel in Beijing or Nankin? This would add nice flavour to ahistorical scenarios that most if not all players want to follow at the end of the day.

Also, I agree that "magical effects" should be avoided. 'Monuments' were meant for political and diplomatic (prestige) reasons and should give only such bonuses. A nicely shaped pile of bricks won't make administration more effective but can make the government look more spectacular, so to say.
 
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The White House is kind of misleading as a name, but a similar bonus it gives should be present in DC. Unlike most other national capitals except Brasilia (and that's out of timeframe), DC was purposefully constructed as a city to be a governmental and bureaucratic center. So it makes sense for it to have a government administration boost in the state. Plus with every single US state being its own state region now, the US is going to have more incorporated states than other comparable countries at game start and most of the time throughout the game, so it probably needs a bit of a bureaucracy boost just to realistically administer what it should have and act normally in most games. Whether that bonus in DC represented by a state modifier or a monument, and whether that monument is the White House, the Capitol, the Washington Monument, or the National Mall as a whole is really the less important part of what is being represented.
Okay, the National Mall, DC, or whatever you want to call it, then yes. I can agree, White House, as it is, it feels wrong (also, kudos for the reference to Brasília).
 
It’s such a shame that Vatican City is no longer the world’s most productive Vatican City
 
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It’s such a shame that Vatican City is no longer the world’s most productive Vatican City
Yeah, hasn't been since Vatican II surpassed it.
 
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Great point! You're right that some of the current effects of monument-type buildings are perhaps unsuitable for the game's theme. As usual the exact numbers are WIP and we definitely appreciate the feedback. I hear you on the White House's national Bureaucracy multiplier for example - will rework this into a larger bonus to local Government Administration buildings instead.

On the other hand, some monument buildings ought to have national effects, as symbols of the nation's accomplishments or identity - the Eiffel Tower or the Hagia Sophia are good examples of these. And if the Ottoman Empire conquers Rome and don't want their Devout IG to gain additional political strength from having taken control of the Vatican, they (or anyone who controls it) can certainly burn it to the ground. It is just a building, and follow all the normal building rules. Monuments don't have any special powers to affect the country in non-immersive, "magical" seeming ways - if they do, we may have made a mistake, and mistakes can be easily fixed. :)
Can a monument be repurpused instead of destroyer?
Can a revolutionary government turn a royal palance into museum?
Or a Christian power conquering Konstantinople re-consecrate St. Sophia?
 
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Monuments don't have any special powers to affect the country in non-immersive, "magical" seeming ways - if they do, we may have made a mistake, and mistakes can be easily fixed. :)
My prediction is that the "fix" will be to come up with increasingly tortured explanations for why the effect could technically not be magical. I've been down this road before.
 
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Well, they did talk about how Lady Liberty was there to embrace the masses. So yes, it worked as a symbol and a powerful one at that. Now, if you want to discuss if the symbol actually matched the reality once arrived, that's another matter for another discussion.
People could have emigrated from Europe to plenty of other places in America, but that statue did act as a symbol of a new chance and a new life in the USA.
For that matter, any American Country with a democracy and Great Power status and a policy of open immigration, should be able to build it.
In the end though, folks came to the US for a lot of reasons; because they thought they would have more political liberties, because of economic opportunity, because they had connections to friends and relatives that had already immigrated there, or because the US was the best-known and most-available option due to the huge industry that had been built up around sending people to the US. The statue only symbolizes all those reasons which have been built up over generations, it doesn't directly affect them. And if all those reasons people immigrated to the US disappeared, people wouldn't go "well, there's a nice statue in the harbor, so I guess I'll move there." I already wrote a whole long post on how migration in Victora 3 could be improved, and having a monument give an immigration bonus wasn't one of them.
 
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@lachek I see you went with the same system as EU4 where monuments are all historic and predefined to their specific nations and places.

So, generic monuments anyone can build are out of question, outside of mods? Couldn't there be at least five or so so that any nation could havr a shot at having their own?
 
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Yeah, hasn't been since Vatican II surpassed it.
Hopefully Vatican III can fix the problems of the first two and bring back elements of the prequels
 
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Looks solid and straightforward.

It's kind of disappointing that there's still just the two canals. It's not worse than Vicky 2 but there was a lot of potential to improve that system to represent all the other canals.
 
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@lachek I see you went with the same system as EU4 where monuments are all historic and predefined to their specific nations and places.

So, generic monuments anyone can build are out of question, outside of mods? Couldn't there be at least five or so so that any nation could havr a shot at having their own?
There are a many reasons for this:
  • Monuments are positioned manually on the map to ensure they fit into the landscape and city hubs. It would be virtually impossible to ensure the Statue of Liberty seamlessly meshes with every coastline unless we painstakingly went through every single coastal state and experimented with its placement there. This means doing this for all states (currently over 700) for all monuments in the game (currently 11) to ensure we place every single monument in the game in a unique position.
  • Many of these monuments are already in place at the start of the game. Nevertheless, if we did have a system where you could build the Eiffel Tower anywhere, then we ought to also have a system where you could build Vatican City somewhere else if you razed it. This means that for consistency we ought to be manually positioning the Vatican City in every single state even though it's unlikely to ever be built elsewhere.
  • Should countries be allowed to build duplicates? After all, if the White House gives such a sweet bonus then shouldn't France or China be able to build the White House too? At that point these buildings become not really special in any way - the White House becomes just a "Bureaucracy Multiplier Palace", the Eiffel Tower just a "Prestige Tower", etc.
  • Some of these monuments are ancient, like Angkor Wat, and are special for this very reason. While you might be able to destroy these in-game, the idea of rebuilding them just doesn't make sense. The idea of another country rebuilding them in another place doubly doesn't make sense.
As should be clear from the above, making monuments generic and buildable by anyone would not only take inordinate time and effort for the development team compared to what it adds to the game, but also cause them to lose a lot of their unique appeal and introduces many strange exception cases that also has to be dealt with. This means we were left with two options: historical monuments in predefined places, or no monuments in any places. We felt it would be a missed opportunity to not acknowledge the enormous feats of engineering countries often engaged in for prestige during this era, so we went with door number one.
 
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Great point! You're right that some of the current effects of monument-type buildings are perhaps unsuitable for the game's theme. As usual the exact numbers are WIP and we definitely appreciate the feedback. I hear you on the White House's national Bureaucracy multiplier for example - will rework this into a larger bonus to local Government Administration buildings instead.

On the other hand, some monument buildings ought to have national effects, as symbols of the nation's accomplishments or identity - the Eiffel Tower or the Hagia Sophia are good examples of these. And if the Ottoman Empire conquers Rome and don't want their Devout IG to gain additional political strength from having taken control of the Vatican, they (or anyone who controls it) can certainly burn it to the ground. It is just a building, and follow all the normal building rules. Monuments don't have any special powers to affect the country in non-immersive, "magical" seeming ways - if they do, we may have made a mistake, and mistakes can be easily fixed. :)
Why would the Sunni Ottoman Empire have increased Devout strength due to a Catholic monument? I feel like either that +Devout strength should have a conditional based on state religion (i.e. only Catholic countries get the modifier) or otherwise be replaced by a different modifier, like +Political Strength for Catholic Clergy in Lazio.
 
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There are a many reasons for this:
  • Monuments are positioned manually on the map to ensure they fit into the landscape and city hubs. It would be virtually impossible to ensure the Statue of Liberty seamlessly meshes with every coastline unless we painstakingly went through every single coastal state and experimented with its placement there. This means doing this for all states (currently over 700) for all monuments in the game (currently 11) to ensure we place every single monument in the game in a unique position.
  • Many of these monuments are already in place at the start of the game. Nevertheless, if we did have a system where you could build the Eiffel Tower anywhere, then we ought to also have a system where you could build Vatican City somewhere else if you razed it.
  • Should countries be allowed to build duplicates? After all, if the White House gives such a sweet bonus then shouldn't France or China be able to build the White House too? At that point these buildings become not really special in any way - the White House becomes just a "Bureaucracy Multiplier Palace", the Eiffel Tower just a "Prestige Tower", etc.
  • Some of these monuments are ancient, like Angkor Wat. While you might be able to destroy these in-game, the idea of rebuilding them just doesn't make sense. The idea of another country rebuilding them in another place doubly doesn't make sense.
As should be clear from the above, making monuments generic and buildable by anyone would not only take inordinate time and effort for the development team compared to what it adds to the game, but also cause them to lose a lot of their unique appeal and introduces many strange exception cases that also has to be dealt with. This means we were left with two options: historical monuments in predefined places, or no monuments in any places. We felt it would be a missed opportunity to not acknowledge the enormous feats of engineering countries often engaged in for prestige during this era, so we went with door number one.

Yeah like all things, I suppose it is a tradeoff. I will miss the liberty CK2 gave me with "great works", afterall, monuments set in stone limit what is supposed to be a "do it your way" kind of game. But in the other hand all your reasons are super valid too (some more than others).
 
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AS much as I dislike tying arbitrary bonus to certain religions or whatever, I kinda few the Vatican City should be Catholic exclusive. What makes the place relevant is that the Pope live there. Sure, it is an old building (or a series of old buildings), cool museums and whatever, but Europe is filled with those, the reason that Vatican City, specifically, gives bonus to the Devot IG is because that is where the Pope lives and he is the center of that religion.

I guess I can see the case whoever holds the Vatican would have leverage over world Catholics as a whole and, thus, the extra influence would still apply. But the political strength for Devot IG ought to be catholic exclusive.
 
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It would be virtually impossible to ensure the Statue of Liberty seamlessly meshes with every coastline unless we painstakingly went through every single coastal state and experimented with its placement there.
Speaking of the Statue of Liberty, is it a monument the USA (or the owner of New York) can build themselves, or does it have to be gifted by the French once certain conditions are met?
 
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Monuments feel like the "great people" of buildings and I thought that we were trying to stay away from a great-people history simulation.
As I see it, the trick with both monuments and characters is to sprinkle them into the gameplay for flavor and historical immersion, without making them so central and important mechanically that they start to dominate. Because yes you're right, we want to tell the story of the many social and economic forces that shaped our modern world, not about how some particular genius statesman or destined nation made the world their oyster. But it'd be a poor decision, I think, to leave them out of the game altogether!
 
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There are a many reasons for this:
  • Monuments are positioned manually on the map to ensure they fit into the landscape and city hubs. It would be virtually impossible to ensure the Statue of Liberty seamlessly meshes with every coastline unless we painstakingly went through every single coastal state and experimented with its placement there. This means doing this for all states (currently over 700) for all monuments in the game (currently 11) to ensure we place every single monument in the game in a unique position.
  • Many of these monuments are already in place at the start of the game. Nevertheless, if we did have a system where you could build the Eiffel Tower anywhere, then we ought to also have a system where you could build Vatican City somewhere else if you razed it. This means that for consistency we ought to be manually positioning the Vatican City in every single state even though it's unlikely to ever be built elsewhere.
  • Should countries be allowed to build duplicates? After all, if the White House gives such a sweet bonus then shouldn't France or China be able to build the White House too? At that point these buildings become not really special in any way - the White House becomes just a "Bureaucracy Multiplier Palace", the Eiffel Tower just a "Prestige Tower", etc.
  • Some of these monuments are ancient, like Angkor Wat, and are special for this very reason. While you might be able to destroy these in-game, the idea of rebuilding them just doesn't make sense. The idea of another country rebuilding them in another place doubly doesn't make sense.
As should be clear from the above, making monuments generic and buildable by anyone would not only take inordinate time and effort for the development team compared to what it adds to the game, but also cause them to lose a lot of their unique appeal and introduces many strange exception cases that also has to be dealt with. This means we were left with two options: historical monuments in predefined places, or no monuments in any places. We felt it would be a missed opportunity to not acknowledge the enormous feats of engineering countries often engaged in for prestige during this era, so we went with door number one.
All fair points, especially with monuments being manually positioned on the map. I wondered if that might be one of the reasons, so very understandable why they're not generic or buildable elsewhere.
 
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Regarding Vatican City and how it grants additional power to the clergy regardless of state religion, it's mainly a result of the fact that we can't trigger a Production Method on religion - it's not a Law, or a Tech, or another Production Method. If time permits we might add that functionality, which would then easily let us change the behavior of Vatican City depending on the state religion of the controlling country.
 
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There are a many reasons for this:
  • Monuments are positioned manually on the map to ensure they fit into the landscape and city hubs. It would be virtually impossible to ensure the Statue of Liberty seamlessly meshes with every coastline unless we painstakingly went through every single coastal state and experimented with its placement there. This means doing this for all states (currently over 700) for all monuments in the game (currently 11) to ensure we place every single monument in the game in a unique position.
  • Many of these monuments are already in place at the start of the game. Nevertheless, if we did have a system where you could build the Eiffel Tower anywhere, then we ought to also have a system where you could build Vatican City somewhere else if you razed it. This means that for consistency we ought to be manually positioning the Vatican City in every single state even though it's unlikely to ever be built elsewhere.
  • Should countries be allowed to build duplicates? After all, if the White House gives such a sweet bonus then shouldn't France or China be able to build the White House too? At that point these buildings become not really special in any way - the White House becomes just a "Bureaucracy Multiplier Palace", the Eiffel Tower just a "Prestige Tower", etc.
  • Some of these monuments are ancient, like Angkor Wat, and are special for this very reason. While you might be able to destroy these in-game, the idea of rebuilding them just doesn't make sense. The idea of another country rebuilding them in another place doubly doesn't make sense.
As should be clear from the above, making monuments generic and buildable by anyone would not only take inordinate time and effort for the development team compared to what it adds to the game, but also cause them to lose a lot of their unique appeal and introduces many strange exception cases that also has to be dealt with. This means we were left with two options: historical monuments in predefined places, or no monuments in any places. We felt it would be a missed opportunity to not acknowledge the enormous feats of engineering countries often engaged in for prestige during this era, so we went with door number one.

As I see it, the trick with both monuments and characters is to sprinkle them into the gameplay for flavor and historical immersion, without making them so central and important mechanically that they start to dominate. Because yes you're right, we want to tell the story about the many social and economic forces that shaped our modern world, not about how some particular genius statesman or destined nation made the world their oyster. But it'd be a poor decision, I think, to leave them out of the game altogether!
While completely understandable, it feels it goes against all the other stuff that the game pillars embrace.
While I get it that Eiffel Tower can only be built in Paris because of that, I think not having them in the game and only doing canals as these are pretty much fixed where they can be built would be the better option.
This decision regarding monuments and the way land warfare is designed are the two things I really really dislike in the way the design team chose but I hope all the rest will make up for it.
 
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