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Victoria 3 - Dev Diary #55 - Achievements

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Hello and welcome to yet another Victoria 3 development diary. Today we’re going to be talking about Achievements, and since I think absolutely everyone reading this already knows what an Achievement is, I’m not going to do the usual what-is-this-feature preface. But before I get to listing all the achievements that Victoria 3 will be releasing with, we do have something to announce in regards to achievements which will differ in Victoria 3 compared to earlier Paradox Grand Strategy Games, namely that Ironman and an unmodified checksum will no longer be required to unlock achievements.

That is to say, no matter what mods you have installed and whether you’re playing ironman or not, all of these achievements will be unlockable. There are a few game rules that disallow achievements, but since you could simply mod away that requirement if you wanted, not even this is a particularly hard rule. The reason for this change is simply that after quite a bit of discussion among the designers, we’ve decided that for Victoria 3 we want to emphasize access to achievements for everyone, even if that may end ‘devaluing’ the achievements in the eyes of some players.

Now then, with that out of the way and without further ado, I will get to listing, in no particular order, the 50 achievements that will be available in the release version of Victoria 3!

Peccavi: Starting as the British India Company, fully own the states of Sindh and Punjab.
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Perkeletankki: Starting as Finland, produce at least 100 units of tanks every week.
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Luxurious Luxemburg: Starting as Luxembourg, be the leading producer of Luxury Clothes, Luxury Furniture, and Porcelain.
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Anarchy in the UK: Starting as Great Britain, have an Anarchist form of government.
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Mohammed Ali’s Ambition: Starting as Egypt, form Arabia and own Thrace.
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An Empire Under the Pun: Starting as the Sikh Empire, subjugate Great Britain.
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I didn’t vote for Pedro: Starting as Brazil, change government to Republic and implement Universal Suffrage.
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Go West, Young Man: Starting as the USA, own California, Oregon and Washington with 250k or more population in each.
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The Western Protectorate: Starting as Great Qing, have a treaty port in France, Germany, the British Isles, Iberia and Italy.
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The Paris Commune: Starting as France, become a Council Republic and have a Command Economy.
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Barbary’s Back: Starting as Algeria, retake Algiers and become a Major Power.
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Miners and Minors: Starting as Lanfang, incorporate all states in Borneo and have the 'Compulsory Primary School' law.
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Healthy Man of Europe: Starting as the Ottomans, be the Greatest Power while having max level Public Health Insurance.
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Habsburg Resurgence: Starting as Austria, own Silesia and Prussia must be Minor Power or lower rank.
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The Great Game: Starting as Russia, own the entire Central Asia region.
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Bourbon for Everyone: Starting as Spain, have an average standard of living of at least 20 while remaining a monarchy.
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Manifest Mexico: Starting as Mexico, own the Pacific Coast & Great Plains, and have a higher Power Rank than the USA.
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American Territory: Starting as the Indian Territory, have the USA as a subject with no more than three states.
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Broken Promises: As Italy, join a diplomatic play against 2 or more of your allies.
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The Berlin Conference: Starting as Prussia, form Germany and fully own at least 10 states in Africa.
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Star-Swarmed Banner: As the United States, have 100 incorporated states represented on your flag.
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Belle Époque: Starting as France, have the highest GDP per capita and Innovation generation in the world.
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Deeds, Not Words: Pass the Women's Suffrage law.
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First Flight: Be the first nation in the world to fly aeroplanes.
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Victorian Century: Play a full campaign from 1836 to 1936.
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Poor, Huddled Masses: Have a cultural migration target in one of your states.
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Billionaire: Have a national GDP of at least £1 billion.
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Serf’s Up: Starting as a nation with Serfdom, enact Worker’s Protections Labour Rights Law.
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Risorgimento: Form the nation of Italy.
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Three Hurrahs: Form the nation of Germany.
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Solomon’s Quest: Form the nation of Ethiopia.
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I am a Scandinavian: Form the nation of Scandinavia.
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Enlightened Despot: Have electrical street lights in all states while being an Autocracy.
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Mightier than the Sword: Have the other side back down in a diplomatic play.
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Revolutionary: Switch sides to the revolutionaries in a civil war and win the ensuing conflict.
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Reading Campaign: Starting as a nation with less than 20% literacy, get to 100% literacy.
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We Are Not Amused: Starting as Great Britain, Expel Diplomats of a Great Power with Cordial or better relations.
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Institutional: Have an institution at maximum investment level.
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Poppydock: Have at least a level 8 port and export at least 2500 units of Opium to foreign markets.
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Grander Colombia: Form Grand Colombia and own all land in the Gran Colombia, Andes, and La Plata strategic regions.
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Inventive: Research all technologies across all three categories.
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Educated: Complete the 'Learn the Game' objective.
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Tycoon: Complete the 'Economic Dominance' objective.
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Hegemon: Complete the 'Hegemon' objective.
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Caretaker: Complete the 'Egalitarian Society' objective.
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That’s all of them, and that’s all for today! Join us again next week as Alex goes into more depth about Cultures and Religions!
 
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I am surprised how much military focused these are.
You know I hadn't thought of that, but yeah, some more focused on diplomacy would be good.


I would like to point out that I think that might be that due to a misconception that unification can only come militarily and not peacefully through diplomacy.
Power and Rank can be adjusted not by militarily shrinking or taking territory by someone but by economically overpowering them.

Sikh subjugating Great Britain is likely to require war as you would have to be very powerful for the AI to willingly subjugate.
The Qing Treatyports, war is likely but diploplays and having them aqueise and back down is totally possible.

Many of these "take territories" don't require going to war, they require threatening war. You only have to go to war if you aren't imposing enough and have your bluff called.
 
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I am surprised how much military focused these are.

Exactly. I expected some very absurd economic challenges, like control x ressources or produce x stuff in country y in the spirit of the Luxembourg and Finland achievement.
 
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I would like to point out that I think that might be that due to a misconception that unification can only come militarily and not peacefully through diplomacy.
Power and Rank can be adjusted not by militarily shrinking or taking territory by someone but by economically overpowering them.

Sikh subjugating Great Britain is likely to require war as you would have to be very powerful for the AI to willingly subjugate.
The Qing Treatports, war is likely but diploplays and having them aqueise and back down is totally possible.

Many of these "take territories" don't require going to war, they require threatening war.

Yea but France is gonna take a key state prior to unification. I know how these things go,,,,
 
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THANK YOU! It's so nice to see the rigid restrictions for achievements dropped.

I never understood why achievements were locked behind Ironman anyway. They literally mean nothing to anyone but the person who has them. They're just goals for the player to shoot for or ignore. You don't get anything from them except a sense of accomplishment and if someone is satisfied cheating to get an achievement in a single player game why stop them?
 
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I didn't call him hostile. To be clear, I consider the previous Paradox policy hostile to the player, I'm not saying anyone here is being hostile.

It's difficult to be the minority position on these forums. Politely arguing one's point of view while being drowned in red crosses is hard. Much kudos!
OK I misunderstood that sorry, long day... Though my conclusion remains the same. achievements disabled by mods is not exclusive to paradox.

I don't get many achievements, as I often play paradox games modded, but the ones I do get, I like knowing they were earned on a level playing field.

I had suggested 2 of every achievement, the second one earnable under the previous no mods ironman conditions.

I'd probably find getting achievements, which I do rarely in these games, would make me try things I wouldn't otherwise and then look to get the same one unmodded ironman, but i really can't agree enforcing that previously was player hostile sorry.
 
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Exactly. I expected some very absurd economic challenges, like control x ressources or produce x stuff in country y in the spirit of the Luxembourg and Finland achievement.
A lot of that should be covered in "economic dominance" objective which is a bit more dynamic in setting up that challenge. We like to try a bit of everything in the first achievement list and then see what goes well, what doesn't and take that feedback going forward.

But if you want absurd economic based challenges going foward, I hear you and will do my best to supply them.
 
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So what? Only a third of the people who've played CK3 have the marriage achievement and its only achievement with higher than 30% a completion rate. Only 24 out of the 97 achievements have a double digit completion rate.

This is an incredibly important point that gets lost in the conversation. I understand the concerns about judging achievement difficulty by how many people completed it and the fear that there will be a confusing inflation in numbers with this system, but the inflation is illusory in this case.

The numbers are actually severely deflated, with the really simple achievements, which have been completed by essentially anyone who has played the PDX games past the loading screen, being shown as earned by only 30% or so of players because the rest just don't play ironman achievement-compatible games.

The only shift that will happen will be the simple achievements having 90% competition by the community, as they should, and the ones that are now 0.1 being 5-10% instead. It will be a very easy change to adjust to and it will still be worthwhile I believe.
 
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You are more than welcome to turn on ironman to limit yourself to get your achievements, I am not sure how others having the freedom to play the game the way they please is such a reason for you to get upset.

That's the same as saying that counterfeit money is no big deal. Ironman is an incentive to have people overcome challenge honestly. Without Ironman, there is no achievements that can't be completed on the second tick.
 
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Regarding making it so GUI and language mods don't affect checksum, while mods changing game logic do. It's actually very easy for us to customize this. The reason we still do force checksum changes for these types of files is because there's actually a lot you can accomplish with a UI-only mod in the engine we use these days - you could add entire new helper interfaces that exposes action shortcuts once a value in a rival country reached a certain threshold for example, or just reveal crucial insight into other countries' situations that would normally be hidden to other players. In this way one could essentially build an "aimbot" type mod that would be entirely invisible in MP if we didn't track checksum. Since the language files run through the UI computation layer you could do much of the same with a language-only mod, even.

Having said that, it might be possible to manually turn off checksumming these files in a friendly MP game by mutual agreement.
Quality explanation, thanks for this!
 
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I was thinking of something like "As Poland, achieve no other achievements in your playthrough to 1936"
But then I starting trying to think of how would I script that and my brain started leaking.

Hmm maybe:

Must be fulfilled: 12/31/1935

Must not be fulfilled: Enter all the conditions for fulfilling the other achievements here.
 
Why not make them available in multiplayer? If we’re going to water them down for the sake of fun and accessibility, then this decision makes zero sense to me. If you can use mods and console command your way into them, then why the opposition to letting you and a few buddies team up for some schnitzels and giggles achievement runs??
 
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> Historically speaking, religion conversion between monotheisms was really rare in the XIXth centruy. Game should reflect this and maybe only alow those kind of conversion via the implementation of a decree in a state region that cost autority. (e.g. Jews did not convert to catholic faith in France in this time period, same with muslims in French Algeria, Greek orthodox in the Ottoman Empire or the catholic Irish in the USA exept some individual cases)
This doesn't really apply to the New World - check out the Second and the Third Great Awakening, for example. But I actually agree that conversion should be reasonably rare, with things like the Awakening being handled as events or modifiers (it would actually make for a fun event chain for the US, I think). I definitely want to see thriving Jewish communities at the end of the game.
 
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I would like to point out that I think that might be that due to a misconception that unification can only come militarily and not peacefully through diplomacy.
Power and Rank can be adjusted not by militarily shrinking or taking territory by someone but by economically overpowering them.

Sikh subjugating Great Britain is likely to require war as you would have to be very powerful for the AI to willingly subjugate.
The Qing Treatports, war is likely but diploplays and having them aqueise and back down is totally possible.

Many of these "take territories" don't require going to war, they require threatening war. You only have to go to war if you aren't imposing enough and have your bluff called.

yeah those are good points. To be honest though my complaint was more of a "these are excellent, but could be perfect" type of complaint lol

I assume more will come with expansions, but as a starting point they are not what I would call bad lol
 
Okay, here are some hard numbers to compare a game without achievement restrictions, Civ6, to one with restrictions, CK3. The most basic "have you spent ten minutes playing the game" achievement has an 80% completion in Civ6, build ten improvements, while in CK3 it is 33%, get married. Civ6 has difficulty levels, with Deity being the highest, and currently 6% of players have won on Deity. Achievements with similar rates of completion in CK3 are reach max court grandeur, reach max level of splendor, fully upgrade a duchy building and unlock all innovations. I don't think achievements based on "basic play the game well achievements" should really the have the same value as beating the game on the highest difficulty setting, yet they have the same achievement rate because of Iron Man mode. The only thing Iron Man does is restrict who can get achievements, not make them hard.
 
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A lot of that should be covered in "economic dominance" objective which is a bit more dynamic in setting up that challenge. We like to try a bit of everything in the first achievement list and then see what goes well, what doesn't and take that feedback going forward.

But if you want absurd economic based challenges going foward, I hear you and will do my best to supply them.
I'm sure I have my fun with Vicky! I was never an achievement hunter myself, but I enjoy a good achievement, there are really some good ones.

To make my idea more clear, some historical achievements come to mind, like Germany having a certain number of automobile factories/producing a certain number of cars (or, in contrary, becoming a country mainly focusing on horses following the [fake] motto 'I believe in the horse!'), or Thailand trying to control a certain share of Opium. Maybe I should sleep a night or two about it.
 
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That's the same as saying that counterfeit money is no big deal. Ironman is an incentive to have people overcome challenge honestly. Without Ironman, there is no achievements that can't be completed on the second tick.
You're barking up the wrong tree making a counterfit money argument in comparison to a coding change about achievements... to the individual with an economics degree.
So lets not go there.
 
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Doing achievements that a very small portion of the player base has received is fun for me.
But you can still do that. It's just that now you have to do this for achievements that are actually difficult. I would be surprised if more then 2% of players will have the US as a subject when starting as the Indian Territory.
 
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I'm sure I have my fun with Vicky! I was never a achievement hunter myself, but I enjoy a good achievement, there are really some good ones.

To make my idea more clear, some historical achievements come to mind, like Germany having a certain number of automobile factories/producing a certain number of cars (or, in contrary, becoming a country mainly focusing on horses following the [fake] motto 'I believe in the horse!'), or Thailand trying to control a certain share of Opium. Maybe I should sleep a night or two about it.
As said before (but I do not mind repeating it) I fully expect to community source some achievement ideas in the future so we will be happy to hear your ideas in the future.
 
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