Border gore

[Datagalningen]

So, one of the major changes in Victoria 3 is the radical increase in provinces from about 3000 to something like the 13000 provinces we see in HOI4. Another change is that we'll be able to split states by taking individual provinces from the state instead of the whole state like we saw in Victoria 2. Now, the devs have said that Victoria 3 wont be a wargame or a mappainter, but nonetheless war and border changes were still an important part of the era and I expect gameplay to reflect that.

These changes do however raise certain concerns. Does being able to take individual provinces in peacedeals mean we'll be able to draw ridiculous borders that could've never been in real life? For example, does this mean we'll be able to split entire countries in two by snaking our way through a country one province at a time as seen in EU4 but at an even worse scale? While the Victoria 2 system was very limiting when it came to border changes it at least led to some pretty respectable borders by the end of the game compared with other paradox titles. I really like the idea of being able to take individual provinces, but I hope some restrictions are also put in place to keep border changes within the realm of possibility.

One way to do this would be to prevent countries from splitting states unless they fully controll a bordering state already (exceptions would have to be made for overseas states to enable treaty ports). Another way would be to give exponentially higher threat penalties to the country taking provinces the further away they are from the country's heartlands or other bordering provinces. These are just some ideas, but I'd be glad to hear if anyone else has any better ideas for keeping border gore off the map without putting any hard restrictions on the player.

 

[Ottoman Master]

Have they actually stated that we'll be able to take individual provinces out of states with the exception of treaty ports? Taking two or three cities on the coast of Guangzhou is not the same as, for example, taking half the provinces in Pomerania or Alsace.

 

[Ololorium]

I don't think they said that splitting states is a general mechanic, they mentioned only treaty ports, which is a special case.
In fact, since the last diary I'm worried about the opposite: they said that all economic buildings such as farms and mines will be present on state level and that pops live in states, not individual provinces. So when a state is split, how is it determined how much population and what buildings go to the splinter and what remains in the original state? I guess we have to wait for a dev diary about the states and provinces to find out.

 

[Datagalningen]

Have they actually stated that we'll be able to take individual provinces out of states with the exception of treaty ports? Taking two or three cities on the coast of Guangzhou is not the same as, for example, taking half the provinces in Pomerania or Alsace.

Devs don't seem to have explicitly stated that we'll be able to split states outside of taking treaty ports, but as people seem to be talking about splitting states along cultural lines and the issues surrounding that with the new state system it seems a lot of people have interpreted that we'll be able to split Pomerania or Alsace such as in your example. I personally think splitting states could be a nice mechanic if done correctly, but if that won't be a thing I would like for the devs to clarify on that.

 

[Bunnytob]

POPs live in states now?
Ohhhh... well, there go my dreams of drawing borders...
(I just want a Ruso-Persian Border along the Aras...)

 

[Ololorium]

POPs live in states now?
Ohhhh... well, there go my dreams of drawing borders...
(I just want a Ruso-Persian Border along the Aras...)

I might be wrong, but that's what the phrase "States are where Pops live and (more importantly for our subject matter) where Buildings are located and built" from the DD sounds like. It's possible that's just worded awkwardly, and in fact we do have population of individual provinces and even buildings in individual provinces, they are just controlled from the state interface.

 

[Vityviktor]

(I just want a Ruso-Persian Border along the Aras...)

Who knows, maybe the states' border follows that line in that particular case.

 

[Datagalningen]

I might be wrong, but that's what the phrase "States are where Pops live and (more importantly for our subject matter) where Buildings are located and built" from the DD sounds like. It's possible that's just worded awkwardly, and in fact we do have population of individual provinces and even buildings in individual provinces, they are just controlled from the state interface.

"Every variation of Profession, Culture, Religion, and Workplace in the world gets its own unique Pop"

Well, going by the above quote from the pop dev diary it would appear that province location is not part of a pops identity, but then there's stuff like:

"Remember that we represent every individual workplace in each state as well, so we actually have substantially more granularity to Pop "location" than in previous titles. [...] We still represent the urban/rural divide by permitting many, many different types of industry in each state [...] 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."

If urbanization is tracked visually, they must be doing some sort of calculation to decide how urbanized the various provinces in your state appears, and I don't see why they couldn't apply such a calculation to divide pops when splitting states. That being said. I'm struggling to understand what is really being said here and would like some other interpretations.

 

[Bunnytob]

I don't know how Vicky 1 worked, but Vicky 2 had POPs in provinces and industry in states.

In the POPs DD, we got a look at a POP - and province isn't specified, but state is. Granted, it is aristocrats, and aristocrats in V2 are state-based (all congregating in one province), but it looks as though POPs are divvied up by state.
Looking through the comments, it seems as though it's been brought up and not been disputed.
Which makes me wonder where the granularity comes in.

Maybe POPs are represented at the state level, and are then split up into provinces based on some other characteristic?

 

[Ololorium]

Well, going by the above quote from the pop dev diary it would appear that province location is not part of a pops identity, but then there's stuff like:

If urbanization is tracked visually, they must be doing some sort of calculation to decide how urbanized the various provinces in your state appears, and I don't see why they couldn't apply such a calculation to divide pops when splitting states. That being said. I'm struggling to understand what is really being said here and would like some other interpretations.

Yes, it's pretty confusing, it can be interpreted either as "we keep track of each province inside the state and visually show what's the main workplace in this province is, farm or a factory" or as "population and industry exists on state level only, but depending on what's built in the state and how industrialized it is, we visually show the cities and factories on the map, like urban sprawl in EU4 and Imperator".

 

[JKComposer]

Well, the reason people are assuming states can be split due to more reasons than treaty ports, is probably due to the way it was initially written. It states "It's possible to split existing states, such as when you demand a Treaty Port" (emphasis mine), implying there are other ways of splitting states. Though, it could very well just be that Treaty Ports are the exception.

As for pops, they are indeed simulated on the state level, however plenty of things happen on the province level, such as urbanisation and from what I gather the geographic location of farms and possibly other RGOs. How exactly the calculation for dividing pops goes we don't know, but it's fair to assume that taking an urban province from a state means that all the urban pops associated with that urban area (or that are urban in general, I'm not sure if pops are tied to any specific urban area or just all urban areas in a state) are assigned to the new state, and I'm guessing other geographically based factors (arable land, RGO locations etc) will impact what pops go where when splitting a state. Though, the question of ethnicity of course isn't easily tied geographically by this way of doing things (unless urban pops happen to be dominated by a different ethnicity than rural pops), but they may very well have some other way to calculate that.

 

[Vityviktor]

Well, the reason people are assuming states can be split due to more reasons than treaty ports, is due to the way it was initially written. It states "It's possible to split existing states, such as when you demand a Treaty Port" (emphasis mine), implying there are other ways of splitting states. Though, it could very well just be that Treaty Ports are the exception.

As for pops, they are indeed simulated on the state level, however plenty of things happen on the province level, such as urbanisation and from what I gather the geographic location of farms and possibly other RGOs. How exactly the calculation for dividing pops goes we don't know, but it's fair to assume that taking an urban province from a state means that all the urban pops associated with that urban area (or that are urban in general, I'm not sure if pops are tied to any specific urban area or just all urban areas in a state) are assigned to the new state, and I'm guessing other geographically based factors (arable land, RGO locations etc) will impact what pops go where when splitting a state. Though, the question of ethnicity of course isn't easily tied geographically by this way of doing things (unless urban pops happen to be dominated by a different ethnicity than rural pops), but they may very well have some other way to calculate that.

It would be good to know how population (and culture, religion, etc) mechanics would behave in some contexts.

Let's say a state with mixed German/Prussian and -let's say- Polish population is somehow split in two.

 

[Slavicist]

I am not thrilled with the decision to put pops in States instead of Provinces, if that's true.

I reckon the shear number of provinces may have something to do with it; i.e. let's call it "the Hoi4 phenomenon".

 

[JKComposer]

It would be good to know how population (and culture, religion, etc) mechanics would behave in some contexts.

Let's say a state with mixed German/Prussian and -let's say- Polish population is somehow split in two.

I agree.

If I were to speculate based on what we know and only what we know, I'd guess it'd work like this: If you take only rural provinces, and the farmer pops are, say, 75% Polish and 25% Prussian, then the new state would be of those same demographics, if you take an urban province and the urban workers are 40% Polish and 60% Prussian then the new state will be as such, and if you have a mix of urban or rural it'll be a combination of sorts.

However, this of course doesn't solve the issue of mostly geographically homogenous provinces, such as an entirely rural state populated with farmers, having different ethnic groups for different parts of the state.

I do hope the devs have found a good solution, as I can imagine a number of scenarios where this kind of detail would be crucial to accurately represent them.

 

[Mucsaccso]

Well, the reason people are assuming states can be split due to more reasons than treaty ports, is probably due to the way it was initially written. It states "It's possible to split existing states, such as when you demand a Treaty Port" (emphasis mine), implying there are other ways of splitting states. Though, it could very well just be that Treaty Ports are the exception.

As for pops, they are indeed simulated on the state level, however plenty of things happen on the province level, such as urbanisation and from what I gather the geographic location of farms and possibly other RGOs. How exactly the calculation for dividing pops goes we don't know, but it's fair to assume that taking an urban province from a state means that all the urban pops associated with that urban area (or that are urban in general, I'm not sure if pops are tied to any specific urban area or just all urban areas in a state) are assigned to the new state, and I'm guessing other geographically based factors (arable land, RGO locations etc) will impact what pops go where when splitting a state. Though, the question of ethnicity of course isn't easily tied geographically by this way of doing things (unless urban pops happen to be dominated by a different ethnicity than rural pops), but they may very well have some other way to calculate that.

Well, there is a little info we know.

Mikael Andersson stated in the Discord q&a that "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 maths to make the final split make sense."

Although, it is not much and doesn't entirely clarify the situation.

 

[JKComposer]

Well, there is a little info we know.

Mikael Andersson stated in the Discord q&a that "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 maths to make the final split make sense."

Although, it is not much and doesn't entirely clarify the situation.

Yes, but it's really the details to the maths that will make or break the system. Though, I trust that they've thought about it and have some good solutions up their sleeve!

 

[nuarbnellaffej]

Personally I think we won’t be able to split states, same as Vicky2.

 

[Bradley Hutson]

Ideally there would be some sort of mechanics that would make bordergore (at least in certain circumstances) disadvantageous. One place to start could be the "Communication Efficiency" mechanic from the MEIOU and Taxes mod for EU4. In this mod, Communication Efficiency is the amount of time it takes for someone to get from your capital province to a given non-capital province. It decreases with distance, although things like roads and capitol buildings can improve it. The worse a province's Communication Efficiency it is, the higher its unrest and autonomy are.

 

[Buttons12345]

I unironically and unashamedly use console commands to clean up borders, I don't feel bad as long as the land exchange is balanced or minor and doesn't result in conflicts (giving France more land on the left bank of the Rhine and sacrificing some overextension on the right bank is fine, giving Russia Bukovina after they take Ruthenia isn't okay since it would result in wars with Romania).

 

[Thure]

I hope we can spöit states. This is one of the big things I absolutelly hate about Victoria 2. If I play as Prussia and wanted to reclaime Newchastel in Switzerland I have to annex whole Western Switzerland instead of just the one province I claimed. Which is stupid.