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Victoria 3 - Dev Diary #2 - Capacities

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Hello and welcome back to another Victoria 3 dev diary! Today we will be talking about three of the four of the main ‘currencies’ of the game - namely Capacities (the last being Money, which we’ll of course come back to later).

We mentioned in the very first dev diary that there is no ‘mana’ in Victoria 3, and since this dev diary is about the game’s “currencies”, I want to be clear on what I mean by that. When we say there is “no mana” we mean that the resources in Victoria 3 arise and are spent in clearly defined ways that are parts of the simulation, not from an overly abstract concept or vague idea. There is, of course, some degree of abstraction involved (all games are abstractions after all), but we want all the game’s currencies to be strongly rooted in the mechanics and not feel arbitrary.

But enough about that and onto Capacities. What exactly are they?

Well, for starters, calling them currencies is actually not accurate. Capacities are not a pooled resource and are not accumulated or spent, but instead, have a constant generation and a constant usage (similar to for example Administrative Capacity in Stellaris), and you generally want to keep your usage from exceeding your generation. Each capacity represents one specific area of your nation’s ability to govern and is used solely for matters relating to that area.

As mentioned, Capacities are not accumulated, so excess generation is not pooled, but instead there is an effect for each Capacity which is positive if generation exceeds usage and quite negative if usage exceeds generation - a country that incorporates territories left and right without expanding its bureaucratic corps may quickly find itself mired in debt as tax collection collapses under the strain!

Bureaucracy represents a nation’s ability to govern, invest in and collect taxes from its incorporated territory. It is produced by the Government Administration building, where many of a nation’s Bureaucrats will be employed. All of a nation’s Incorporated States use a base amount of Bureaucracy which increases with the size of their population, and further increased by each Institution (such as Education or Police - more on those later!) that a country has invested in. Overall, the purpose of Bureaucracy is to ensure that there is a cost to ruling over, taxing and providing for your population - administrating China should not be cheap!

The Swedish Bureaucracy is currently a bit overworked and the country could certainly benefit from another Government Administration building or two.
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Authority represents the Head of State’s personal power and ability to enact change in the country through decree. It is generated from your Laws - generally, the more repressive and authoritarian the country, the more Authority it will generate - and is used by a variety of actions such as enacting decrees in specific states, interacting with Interest Groups and promoting or banning certain types of Goods. Overall, the purpose of Authority is to create an interesting trade-off between more and less authoritarian societies - by shifting the distribution of power away from the Pops into the hands of the ruler, your ability to rule by decree is increased, and vice versa.

The Swedish King has more Authority at his disposal than he is currently using, slightly speeding up the rate at which laws can be passed.
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Influence represents a country’s ability to conduct diplomacy and its reach on the global stage. It is generated primarily from your Rank (Great Powers have more Influence than Major Powers and so on) and is used to support ongoing diplomatic actions and pacts, such as Improving Relations, Alliances, Trade Deals, Subjects and so on. Overall, the purpose of Influence is to force players to make interesting choices about which foreign countries they want to build strong diplomatic relationships with.

Sweden has plenty of unused Influence and could certainly afford to support another diplomatic pact or two!
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That’s all for today! Join us again next week as I cover something yet another topic that’s fundamental to Victoria 3: Buildings. See you then!
 
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Very interesting. I don't mind it as a 'mana' system per se - V2 had its diplomacy points after all - but with the relatviely limited scope of each system here, it seems more realistic than other mana forms that have emerged over the years. My concern is about state-level bureaucracy. Is bureaucratic capactity tracked nation-wide only, or will some states, such as a Capital province retain their administrative capacity even as new states are added to the empire which do not (i.e. necessitating the building of capacity in, for example, newly acquired colonies). Will a UK need to build a government center in India to manage their growing rule there, or will a few buildings in Yorkshire do it? That is my concern right now. I feel like their needs to be some accounting for local differences in bureaucratic capacity.
 
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This seems too similar to Stellaris. I would like the “capacities” in Vicky to be more grounded in reality.
 
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The problem with mana isn't that it's generated by a ruler or that it's abstraced. The problem with mana is that it doesn't scale with becoming bigger. This version doesn't seem as problematic as EUIV or I:R 1.0 mana, but the basic problem of important resources that have to be spend more once you are bigger while genereration doesn't grow with your land still seems to apply to some of these.
 
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I like It. It's not like EU4 where you use mana and Magic happens. It feels more alive...
Also, if money is a capacity and not only a currency we may find ourselves with something like a budget. Interesting and promising, that's for sure. :D
 
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I'm curious, road maintenance reduces authority? Is this, for example, to prevent an industrialized Russian empire from making moves easily against her neighbors/rivals? If not, it just feels a bit weird to me that road maintenance reduces authority, unless its done by some edict for a limited amount of time before it becomes cash. After all, authority in the modern world isn't reduced by roads, and roads are usually maintenance for cash instead of the head of the government's power.

I'm glad that we're getting personal unions in VIC3, since that means we'll also probably see a future EU4 to VIC3 converter incorporate that mechanic hopefully. It does make me wonder about how personal unions work as compared to regular puppet/satellite states, though, or if you can annex/integrate them.
 
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ero_sk said:
Not necessarily. For example I like the Influence capacity. Rather than having a hard cap on diplomatic relations like in EU4, where any sort of diplomatic action occupies a slot, here by using capacity countries will be able to have more flexible diplomatic relations. For example, guaranteeing a country shouldn't cost the same as a fully-fledged alliance with another country.
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cope
 
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Liggi said:
Authority strikes me as an abstraction of "where the state's attention is directed". Road maintenance takes authority away because it's representative of the state utilising its authority to direct resources towards that task, and people within the state machinery following those orders on down the hierarchy.
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If it costs any of the capacities then the road maintenance should cost bureau instead. It is not like maintaining a road is something you have to do against the locals will as they really hate it having to walk on it instead of some beaten path.
 
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It is very important that Bureaucratic Capacity is given by the number of Bureaucrat POPs that are employed, rather than by the mere presence of Administration buildings.
 
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ero_sk said:
A bit not on topic, but the money(?) being presented as capacity(?) seems intriguing. Does it mean money will work the same way, and countries won't be able to accumulate it?

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Today we will be talking about three of the four of the main ‘currencies’ of the game - namely Capacities (the last being Money, which we’ll of course come back to later).
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I don't think money is a capacity in the same way as the others though I couldn't answer to what the bar would then mean.
 
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Tirenedon said:
I am a bit confused by Bureaucracy since in Victoria 2 it was based on how many bureaucrat pops you had to govern your states and how much funding you gave them. But here its based on a building you have in your capital city?
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If it is anything like stellaris, the buildings will create bureaurocrat jobs. So it will the bureaucrats working in those buildings that generate the capacity. Without buildings, no jobs to fill no bureaucrats.
 
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@Wizzington you mentioned the (obvious) drawbacks of not being able to generate enough capabilities and the bonuses of producing them more than needed.

Don't you feel that producing too much could also be dangerous?

An hyper-bureaucratic country should have some drawbacks ( i.e. the way you want to regulate any activity could be feeled oppressive or brings to inefficiencies)
An hyper-authoritarian country should have bigger problems with any libertarian parts of the population
An hyper-influencing country could be faced by other countries which may have concern about the international status-quo
 
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Voigt said:
I am not sure how I feel about this yet. It isn't mana which is nice, but still it feels quite abstracted, especially how you gain more capacity.
In Victoria 2 we already had some kind of capacity, namely colonial capacity which was generated by naval bases and shippower, which felt right.

But here getting just a flat out 500 capacity by beeing a minor power or 200 by an enacted law feels to abstracted.

Maybe it is because of the difference of numberscale? With colonial capacity in Victoria 2 each ship provided only a little bit, so you needed a big fleet and each time a new ship finished construction the capacity went up a bit, but also you ongoing cost.

Here with those numbers shown it feels the numbers change in big chunks by only a few predefined modifiers, which feels more similar to EU4.

But will need to see, how it works out in the game
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I entirely agree, but a great deal rests with how these capacities are implemented. If for example you have to follow certain "research paths" to improve bureaucracy and make other long-term commitments, then the abstracted "mana-like" quality will feel more authentic.
 
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I feel like capacities ought to derive more from pops than infrastructure and national modifiers. For example, Bureaucracy deriving its capacity from... Bureaucrat pops, whose generation of Bureaucracy capacity differs depending on their quality, such as literacy rate, loyalty to the government, crime rate, etc. Authority could derive its capacity from Interest Groups, especially the ruling coalition.

Infrastructure should instead make bureaucrats more efficient, or make more people adhere to the ruling interest groups, etc. rather than being flat bonuses on their own. At the end of the day, a building is just a building without people to work in it, after all.
 
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Personal union? Are you going to create various levels of independence for vassalized countries?
 
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Honestly I don't like how the building part sound, the cost for a functional bureaucracy should come from personal cost, buildings being abstracted. Similarly, I don't know if there is truly a need for an authority capacity: If it represent the ability of the central government to change things, bureaucracy would be needed as well.
 
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D.Knight said:
The Battle of Koniggratz at the top huh. On the dev diary itself with the mention of authority being drawn from and representation of the head of state, how does authority function in countries like Norway which is in a personal union. What about when you unite something like Scandinavia? Also, I see Secondary Powers are now Major powers or maybe major powers is just everyone above a certain point which technically includes Great Powers but they're also another class in and of themselves?
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Major Powers is our name for Secondary Powers, though the advantages they get compared to Minor Powers are a bit different from V2.
 
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