Grand Strategy Victoria 3

[Axioms]

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/threads/what-happened-to-the-vision.1564893/post-28723712

WTF:

"What I meant here was that if we were going to represent Pops' political leanings as V3 ideologies, we'd either have to give every Pop 5-10 of those ideologies and some sort of weight by which they support each, which is pretty much unmanageable both for player, designer, and computer;"

I really wanna know what part of this was unmanageable to him, especially computer wise. I'm not sure what the limitation is otherwise. Your history is already broken and ridiculous so it can't be that the results of the simulation end up ahistorical.

 

[Norfleet]

Ah, yes. remember when Stellaris pops could believe in two things at the same time, instead of just a single tenet?

 

[what am i doing]

I think V3 basically has two problems.
1 is that it was rushed. Clearly. Just the amount of bugs and obvious "literally nobody fucking played this shit or bothered fixing it" stuff makes it clear enough.
2, more importantly, is that Paradox's developers just don't really understand how the world works.

The idea of just clicking a multiculturalism button and suddenly having all your minorities happy to live in your nation is a good example of this. In reality the whole issue of ethnic / cultural tensions actually works in two directions. Yes, there's top-down issues like state backed discrimination, but there's also bottom-up issues like a desire for autonomy (or better yet, sovereignty). A realistic GSG would feature both of these. You might have tolerant laws towards minorities, but there would still be nationalist movements, and quelling these would basically require giving substantial territorial autonomy to let them exist as a country within a country, as Austria did for the Hungarians, or Canada did for the Quebecois. And indeed you could actually have a minority that is catered to with autonomy who then enacts fairly intolerant laws towards relative minorities in their territory, as is the case with Quebec and English speakers in Quebec (Quebec has been trying to suppress the English language in Quebec for as long as they've had the power to do so while simultaneously demanding that the French language be supported in the rest of Canada; they also maintain a regional voting party, the Bloc Quebecois, a mechanic which again is missing from V3 and was missing from V2; there should be parties that aren't ideologically aligned but rather regionally/ethnically aligned), which in turn evokes discontent in the rest of the country's majority population, etc.

A good GSG would represent this sort of concern so that the player has various things they may want to balance out - do I cater to this minority or not, can I give this territory some amount of autonomy and how much, will it upset the rest of the country and why, etc. In V3 you just click the "stop being a bigot" button and suddenly everyone, from Czechs to Serbs to Romanians, loves D I R E C T R U L E F R O M V I E N N A. It's a game made by walking stereotypes of the idiot college-educated NPC who has no fucking clue how human society, economics, or anything works, with a pop culture level of knowledge of history and zero understanding of why historical events played out as they did.

Even if Paradox had put in the effort to make their game not broken, and waited to release until it was finished, it would still have these problems because the people making the mechanics don't understand the world they're trying to simulate.

So what you are saying is you want to play Axioms?

No. I hope your game turns out to be good, and successful, but I'm not, personally, particularly interested in it. First of all, if I recall correctly, it will be procedurally generated, which immediately kills my interest in a grand strategy game (or 4x, which I don't typically play because they're customarily procgen).

Even if this weren't the case, there's not much substance on Axioms of Dominion so far. We've seen one or two screenshots, but most of what you've posted about it, that I've bothered to read (or skim through, honestly), have been design philosophy essays or "the game will be like this idea" in vague terms, but not concrete mechanics. This leaves me without much of an idea of what the gameplay's actually going to be like, so even if it was going to have a hand-crafted world, I still wouldn't have any excitement because there's nothing to go by. Same as Grey Eminence, which is hand-crafted (historical, in that case) but doesn't have anything of substance to back it up. Both it and Axioms of Dominion have plenty of ambition, but ambition for small indie projects tends to make me wary rather than excited, at least until something playable has come out to begin with.

I'm more interested in Princes' Fortune, being made by some anon on /vst/, because it (A) has a hand-crafted world, even if I have specific criticisms for some of the lore & naming schemes, and (B) has a more realistic scope, as it features a relatively small landmass, there's already video footage of observer mode with the AIs warring and taking territory from one another, etc, I believe it can be made and will be made. I'm not super excited because the dev hasn't given us a lot of mechanics detail, but at least there's something there, and he has gone over some of the mechanics (such as combat resolution) in a concrete if simple fashion.

Again, I'm not saying this to be negative, I do genuinely wish your game all the best, but currently there's nothing about it that makes me think I want to play it.

That comment is just related to things specifically mentioned by you in your post. It is sort of like a joke rather than a sincere statement. Like Axioms has the very specific things you are talking about. Actually it is even a bit more detailed than that.

Now as you say it is fantasy and uses procedural world gen, so someone would need to make a handcrafted historical Earth map for it to be historical. That's very easy though, relatively anyways.

I do appreciate someone who understands that GE hasn't actually demonstrated anything meaningful. They have cute mockups and a couple working things and they got posted on some discords for EU4 mods but it seems like people don't understand that they haven't actually shown anything serious yet. Very similar to That Which Sleeps as far as the marketing and response. Always annoys me.

If you read the design posts on Ideology, which I don't expect you to but if you did, and Administration and Assimilation/Integration, the intended mechanics are pretty similar to what you describe. There's no "Multicult" button. You have to engage in long term, and active, processes to achieve a pluralism directed society. You, or characters associated with you, need to engage in character based social interaction and maybe some Propaganda that targets Populations and also you have to do stuff like decide who has what rights and obligations and who can serve as an administrator, priest, military officer etc, and set up and/or manage existing administrative structures and positions.

So like for a hypothetical Roman Empire mod you'd have all the historical Roman magistrates. What race/gender/religion etc are allowed to hold those positions?

Imperator: Rome has a simplified "citizenship" system, Axioms is like that but with more detail and flexibility. You can't just say accept or maybe set a few checkboxes. You'd have to personally appoint relevant characters to positions, and do other stuff. And Populations have an Ideology that reacts to those actions making them dislike both individual Characters as well as the overall government/society. When a Population has characteristics that have full rights in society they are happier and the converse as well. Also they like or dislike the percentage of "Offices" they can/do hold.

Propaganda is a unique Axioms system that can slowly push Ideology of Characters and Populations, directly modify Opinion in Population and/or Character relationships and so forth.

Axioms is the only game, as far as I am aware, which has even expressed the *intention* of doing this. So while it is true that some people want to see more low level details or watch videos or w/e none of that is even relevant for any other game since like CK3 or Vicky3 they have put in their design plans that they absolutely *won't* be simulating this stuff.

When you say Axioms has / is / etc does that mean these things are implemented and we're just waiting on better graphics before a practical demonstration or is this stuff that's planned but not implemented? Because you talk like the game exists and has these features already.

 

[Axioms]

I think V3 basically has two problems.
1 is that it was rushed. Clearly. Just the amount of bugs and obvious "literally nobody fucking played this shit or bothered fixing it" stuff makes it clear enough.
2, more importantly, is that Paradox's developers just don't really understand how the world works.

The idea of just clicking a multiculturalism button and suddenly having all your minorities happy to live in your nation is a good example of this. In reality the whole issue of ethnic / cultural tensions actually works in two directions. Yes, there's top-down issues like state backed discrimination, but there's also bottom-up issues like a desire for autonomy (or better yet, sovereignty). A realistic GSG would feature both of these. You might have tolerant laws towards minorities, but there would still be nationalist movements, and quelling these would basically require giving substantial territorial autonomy to let them exist as a country within a country, as Austria did for the Hungarians, or Canada did for the Quebecois. And indeed you could actually have a minority that is catered to with autonomy who then enacts fairly intolerant laws towards relative minorities in their territory, as is the case with Quebec and English speakers in Quebec (Quebec has been trying to suppress the English language in Quebec for as long as they've had the power to do so while simultaneously demanding that the French language be supported in the rest of Canada; they also maintain a regional voting party, the Bloc Quebecois, a mechanic which again is missing from V3 and was missing from V2; there should be parties that aren't ideologically aligned but rather regionally/ethnically aligned), which in turn evokes discontent in the rest of the country's majority population, etc.

A good GSG would represent this sort of concern so that the player has various things they may want to balance out - do I cater to this minority or not, can I give this territory some amount of autonomy and how much, will it upset the rest of the country and why, etc. In V3 you just click the "stop being a bigot" button and suddenly everyone, from Czechs to Serbs to Romanians, loves D I R E C T R U L E F R O M V I E N N A. It's a game made by walking stereotypes of the idiot college-educated NPC who has no fucking clue how human society, economics, or anything works, with a pop culture level of knowledge of history and zero understanding of why historical events played out as they did.

Even if Paradox had put in the effort to make their game not broken, and waited to release until it was finished, it would still have these problems because the people making the mechanics don't understand the world they're trying to simulate.

So what you are saying is you want to play Axioms?

No. I hope your game turns out to be good, and successful, but I'm not, personally, particularly interested in it. First of all, if I recall correctly, it will be procedurally generated, which immediately kills my interest in a grand strategy game (or 4x, which I don't typically play because they're customarily procgen).

Even if this weren't the case, there's not much substance on Axioms of Dominion so far. We've seen one or two screenshots, but most of what you've posted about it, that I've bothered to read (or skim through, honestly), have been design philosophy essays or "the game will be like this idea" in vague terms, but not concrete mechanics. This leaves me without much of an idea of what the gameplay's actually going to be like, so even if it was going to have a hand-crafted world, I still wouldn't have any excitement because there's nothing to go by. Same as Grey Eminence, which is hand-crafted (historical, in that case) but doesn't have anything of substance to back it up. Both it and Axioms of Dominion have plenty of ambition, but ambition for small indie projects tends to make me wary rather than excited, at least until something playable has come out to begin with.

I'm more interested in Princes' Fortune, being made by some anon on /vst/, because it (A) has a hand-crafted world, even if I have specific criticisms for some of the lore & naming schemes, and (B) has a more realistic scope, as it features a relatively small landmass, there's already video footage of observer mode with the AIs warring and taking territory from one another, etc, I believe it can be made and will be made. I'm not super excited because the dev hasn't given us a lot of mechanics detail, but at least there's something there, and he has gone over some of the mechanics (such as combat resolution) in a concrete if simple fashion.

Again, I'm not saying this to be negative, I do genuinely wish your game all the best, but currently there's nothing about it that makes me think I want to play it.

That comment is just related to things specifically mentioned by you in your post. It is sort of like a joke rather than a sincere statement. Like Axioms has the very specific things you are talking about. Actually it is even a bit more detailed than that.

Now as you say it is fantasy and uses procedural world gen, so someone would need to make a handcrafted historical Earth map for it to be historical. That's very easy though, relatively anyways.

I do appreciate someone who understands that GE hasn't actually demonstrated anything meaningful. They have cute mockups and a couple working things and they got posted on some discords for EU4 mods but it seems like people don't understand that they haven't actually shown anything serious yet. Very similar to That Which Sleeps as far as the marketing and response. Always annoys me.

If you read the design posts on Ideology, which I don't expect you to but if you did, and Administration and Assimilation/Integration, the intended mechanics are pretty similar to what you describe. There's no "Multicult" button. You have to engage in long term, and active, processes to achieve a pluralism directed society. You, or characters associated with you, need to engage in character based social interaction and maybe some Propaganda that targets Populations and also you have to do stuff like decide who has what rights and obligations and who can serve as an administrator, priest, military officer etc, and set up and/or manage existing administrative structures and positions.

So like for a hypothetical Roman Empire mod you'd have all the historical Roman magistrates. What race/gender/religion etc are allowed to hold those positions?

Imperator: Rome has a simplified "citizenship" system, Axioms is like that but with more detail and flexibility. You can't just say accept or maybe set a few checkboxes. You'd have to personally appoint relevant characters to positions, and do other stuff. And Populations have an Ideology that reacts to those actions making them dislike both individual Characters as well as the overall government/society. When a Population has characteristics that have full rights in society they are happier and the converse as well. Also they like or dislike the percentage of "Offices" they can/do hold.

Propaganda is a unique Axioms system that can slowly push Ideology of Characters and Populations, directly modify Opinion in Population and/or Character relationships and so forth.

Axioms is the only game, as far as I am aware, which has even expressed the *intention* of doing this. So while it is true that some people want to see more low level details or watch videos or w/e none of that is even relevant for any other game since like CK3 or Vicky3 they have put in their design plans that they absolutely *won't* be simulating this stuff.

When you say Axioms has / is / etc does that mean these things are implemented and we're just waiting on better graphics before a practical demonstration or is this stuff that's planned but not implemented? Because you talk like the game exists and has these features already.

So some things are implemented and some aren't, like 50% maybe is done. But if you read my post I'm also specifically talking about intentions. Like no other game even *wants* to have a real simulation of this stuff.

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

Chris King (lead designer on Victoria 1) did a space game called Galactic Inheritors in 2015 that did exactly that. It was called media manipulation instead of propaganda though. He started working on it circa 2013 and the dev diary on that specific topic was a fascinating read but it's gone now. Especially as it was just a few years before 'FB is manipulating us/Russia stole the elections' drama unfolded, so it was very prescient. The game ended up flopping since it was ugly and buggy, but it had some good ideas.

https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/galactic-inheritors-4x-strategy

Chris King was the lead designer on Victoria II; IIRC, he hadn't even joined Paradox yet when the original Victoria: An Empire under the Sun was developed.

 

[Victor1234]

Chris King (lead designer on Victoria 1) did a space game called Galactic Inheritors in 2015 that did exactly that. It was called media manipulation instead of propaganda though. He started working on it circa 2013 and the dev diary on that specific topic was a fascinating read but it's gone now. Especially as it was just a few years before 'FB is manipulating us/Russia stole the elections' drama unfolded, so it was very prescient. The game ended up flopping since it was ugly and buggy, but it had some good ideas.

https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/galactic-inheritors-4x-strategy

Chris King was the lead designer on Victoria II; IIRC, he hadn't even joined Paradox yet when the original Victoria: An Empire under the Sun was developed.

What makes you say so? I remember him there at the time and Mobygames gives him a credit on the original as well as the expansion (V: Revolutions). The one who was super hard to track down was the Swedish designer dude who came up with POPs specifically. For the longest time I thought Chris King came up with POPs (we all know Johan didn't...even though he implies he did by saying he 'coded them') but I found a forum post once that it was another dude who parted ways/got kicked out of the company a long time ago. I think Joakim Bergqvist but I'm not sure anymore.

He had some post on Pdox forums circa 2006 where he told the story of how he was at his Swedish cottage on the weekend when he came up with POPs, but I can't find it easily now. Interestingly this guy's name (Joakim) brings up a Wargamer interview from 2002 where he was the designer on Crusader Kings I and made marriages/inheritance the focus of the game (another big franchise win that he probably didn't get any appreciation for...left the company in 2007 and then quality started to go to shit).

 

[Victor1234]

Hah, found it! Yes, it was Joakim Bergqvist (forum name Greven or 'The Count' in Swedish) who was designer on HOI1, HOI2, EU2, Victoria 1 and Crusader Kings 1. Joined Pdox December 2000 from his previous career of being a military historian...seems like he was the designer on Pdox's failed Diplomacy game in 2005 and fell on his sword because of it, leaving a year or so after.

Some selective quotes:

Spoiler

On VR 1 Pops:

Hmm... My opinion is that it is an historical simulation. All games designed by me are, and I consider this my gem, though somewhat unpolished in the finish.

However there is a great difference between a structural historical simulation and moment-based historical simulation. The last one is, in its extreme, actually what some call a full-blooded straight-jacket interactive factbook. The original boardgame Europa Universalis was that way, but not the computer game. Making me remember an extremely hostile flamewar I had in early 2000 where I feasted upon some Jominian defender's of the "correctness" of the original boardgame. Unfortently those posts doesn't exist anymore.

Back to the topic...I consider Victoria more of a structural historical simulation, even as it has cetain mild jacking with events. The POP feature that weaves into politics, economy, and war is an example that it is definately a simulation.

With this I the designer of the game, writing the first version of the POP system in my country cottage at Muskö, only want to clearify the concepts not opposing the OP.

On VR 1 Design/Badboy Points System:

Heh had I done it again with more funding and time..There would not exist one single event in the game. ;D
Your points are correct. First the BB system could have been much more fine tuned here. The IDEAL would be to have stackable BB effects so that the effect would be accentuated at the excecution of the event and then dissappear very quickly. The would practically mean that the 'Three Cheers' would give the new Germany a big BB penalty (if she has been very naughty that will create war immediately). If nothing happens the BB penalty would diminish very quickly.

As the game stands right now you have to modify the events. I also want to add that the WWI events was the last events that entered the game and thus also the last one to face the testing.

On CK 1 Design:

To clear a small thing up here. I with a lot of assistance and guidance from Johan Andersson and Doomdark (Henrik Fåhreus)
designed Crusader Kings. At the implementation stage designed features often need further technical content and that is things that Snowball did. Much of that have changed in our implementation stage though.

On EU2 Slavery:

For me its much a matter of game logics...

Slaves where immorally bought and sold as commodities, thus they should be part of the logical class of commodities not to add an incoherently new level of detail. However, one could also say that slaves where not just commodities but also a kind of labour. Well this could have been handled differently but it would never be more than a detail anyway...

On HOI1 Artillery:

As an old artillery man meself and also the guy responsible for this I'll try to explain our design idea.

1. The game departs from reality inso that we a tad bit unrealistically allowed special Brigade sized artillery units.

2. These units are to represent Corps and Army Artillery units massed into one unit. Note that these units rearly were used in units larger than Battalion size.

3. Divisional level artillery was never larger than a battalion in size.

This means that we had two options EITHER to leave artillery out of the game and only adding firepower for relative artillery strength OR add the funnier brigade sized units. We choose the second option. And basically I can live with that.

On HOI1 Division Types

Hmm... Please note that the HoI terms MechDiv and MotDiv cannot be translated into its modern definition, because as many have said earlier on very few individual division could have been defined as such.

What we tried to capture was rather a differentiation in armoured defense and mobility of basically infantry (cavalry units). I recollect that Hans v. Seeckt (later Head of Truppenamt) used a combined force of Cavalry, Truck-loaded infantry and Armored Cars to spearhead an offensive in Romania in 1917. This small avant-garde was merely a fraction of all the nameless rifle grunts walking to their firing position. Basically this was an extreme success, mainly because this Combined Force could use Mobility in a deep space on purpose to either defend or attack.

So lets say for the arguement that a HoI ArmDiv = 2 Arm Brig+ 1 Mot.Inf Brig then a HoI MechDiv = 1 Arm.Brig+1Mot.Brig+1Inf.Brig, and thus a HoI Mot.Div = 2 Mot.brig+1Inf.Brig

and as HoI doesn't play with Brigade size units (well there are always exceptions from the rule) we cannot *see* this but we have to imagine it abstractly.

Sincerely

/Greven (Military Historian and Cpt in Swedish Amphibious Corps Reserve)

On CK1 Naval:

Well.. actually what do we mean by important? And what kinds of representation are good and which are bad? For a starter representing it like in EU would be quite incorrect. you just didn't have that kind of control back then. Basically when we talk of naval battles they where mainly very close to the coast and nearly always when the opponents had very good knowledge of the approaching cluster of ships, or when someone closed in on a good harbour where enemy ships where at.

Thus there will not be naval combat in CK, both from the reason that controlling such units would be anachronistic in terms of what the game engine does, and secondly because frankly it was not that important in comparison to all the other features we have in the game. There is always trade-offs and creating a faithful naval combat system had been very cumbersome if really possible at all within our system.

Now we still have Sea Movement and that is in. You can move your army of regiments to a province with a harbour, and if it is friendly, move to another province with harbour. There are restrictions etc etc but i will not disclose the formulae and the feature here. It has to wait.

 

[Axioms]

What a fucking hero lol. Too bad they dumped him to make meme games.

 

[Space Satan]

Victoria 3 - Dev Diary #71 - Autonomous Investment in 1.2​

• Thread starterWizzington
• Start dateYesterday at 16:13

Hello and welcome to another Victoria 3 dev diary! Today’s diary marks the start of dev diaries about Patch 1.2, which is the next major upcoming patch for Victoria 3 (release date to be announced). As with 1.1, 1.2 will contain a slate of bug fixes, UX improvements, AI improvements and so on, but also some more significant changes to game mechanics, which we’re going to go over in these dev diaries.

The particular changes we’ll be talking about today, as alluded to by the title, is Autonomous Investment, which is something we said we were going to look into for our post-release plans back in Dev Diary #64. What we said back then is that while we are never going to take construction out of the hands of the player entirely, we were open to the idea of non-government entities constructing buildings in a way not directly controlled by the country, and what we came up with is a system where the Investment Pool will be used by private entities to construct different types of buildings depending on your economic laws.

Before going over how all this works, I first want to mention that we recognize that the community is somewhat split on the issue of autonomous construction, and as such, we’ve opted to create a new Game Rule for Autonomous Investment. By default, Autonomous Investment is enabled, which puts the Investment Pool out of the hands of the player, but you can choose to disable it, which puts the Investment Pool back in the player’s hands and makes it work exactly as it does in the current 1.1.2 version of the game.

The Investment Pool Game Rule allows you to enable or disable autonomous construction with Investment Pool funds, depending on your personal preference

Regardless of whether Autonomous Investment is enabled, the Investment Pool works pretty much the same as it did before: Certain Pop Types with ownership shares in buildings pay part of their dividends into the Investment Pool, the funds in which can then be drawn on for construction. There are, however, a few key differences in 1.2 compared to 1.1.

Firstly, the types of Pops that invest have been expanded from just Aristocrats and Capitalists to also include Farmers and Shopkeepers. Capitalists invest the highest percentage of their dividends (20%), followed by Aristocrats at 10%, with Farmers and Shopkeepers investing only 5% each. The rationale here is that it wasn’t only the wealthiest in society who invested in new businesses, and this also allows a small degree of investment under laws which strip ownership away from the Capitalists and Aristocrats (but more on that next week).

Secondly, the proportion of dividends that are paid into the Investment Pool varies in 1.1 based on your laws, which can have some pretty bizarre effects, such as switching to Laissez-Faire suddenly creating a bunch of Capitalist Radicals because they are now investing more money and thus end with a drop in their Wealth. The proportion of funds that are invested is now a fixed percentage based on pop type, which is then subjected to an efficiency bonus: Capitalists always invest 20% of their dividends, for example, but under Laissez-Faire, this investment is more efficient and ends up contributing more money to the Investment Pool.

There is also a general investment efficiency bonus for payments into the Investment Pool in small and mid-sized economies, and a penalty in very large ones, to ensure the Investment Pool is also relevant for mid-sized countries while not growing to such absurd proportions that it cannot possibly be spent in a 10 billion GDP country. These efficiency bonuses are meant to abstract a system of foreign investment, which is something we’ve also mentioned is on our radar in Dev Diary #64 but is a bigger rework that we are not tackling yet in patch 1.2.

Agrarianism gives a hefty bonus to the investments of your Farmers and Aristocrats, but reduces investments from Capitalists and greatly limits the types of buildings they can put their money into.

So how then, does the Investment Pool funds get turned into buildings when Autonomous Investment is enabled? Well, autonomously, of course! With Autonomous Investment, the Construction Queue is split into Private and Government Constructions, with Government Constructions being anything (regardless of whether it’s a Government building or not) ordered to be built or auto-expanded by the player or country-level AI, while a Private Construction is anything the Pops themselves are building. The Construction capacity of the country will be split between the Private and Government queues in a proportion based on your economic law, though if there isn’t enough constructions queued of one type to use its full allocation, the excess can be used by the other queue instead.

In the construction screen, you’ll be able to see what the next planned Private Construction will be, along with its current funding level. The funding level is a calculated value based on both the total funds available in the Investment Pool as well as the weekly funds coming into it, and can fluctuate based on the Market price of Goods used in construction. Once a project is funded and ready, it’ll be added to the private Construction Queue the next tick. Private Constructions, unlike Government ones, cannot be reprioritized or canceled - they will always be built in the order they are queued up by the Pops.

Though the Government is currently building nothing in France, there are several private constructions in progress, and plans for the expansion of the Alsace-Lorraine iron mines. Note that this UI is highly WIP!

Pop-ordered constructions use a variant of the standard construction AI which doesn’t take into account the country-level AI’s strategic objectives and prioritizes the creation of profitable buildings which will create lucrative jobs for the investing Pop types, but they will also take some more ‘strategic’ factors into account, such as building railroads in low-infrastructure states. Just as with the country-level AI, they also have access to the system of Spending Variables described in Dev Diary #59, which means that they do not operate on a snapshot of the current Market but understand factors such as the impact that already queued buildings (private and government-ordered both) will have on prices once completed and staffed.

Since Autonomous Investment does not only affect player countries, you might be wondering how well this system works together with the AI? The answer is that it actually works quite well! Together with a bunch of AI improvements and fixes in 1.2, this has resulted in more stable economic growth for AI countries and especially seems to have given Great Britain a boost, as the private sector doing its own thing means that the economy is usually growing even if the country’s treasury is having issues, at least as long as the Pops investing into private-sector growth are making healthy profits. There’s still some issues, particularly when AI runs out of available workforce late game, that we are hoping to tackle before 1.2 releases to further improve the AI’s economic growth.

Screenshot from a hands-off game taken in 1908. While there’s certainly still room for improvement and some countries like France and Prussia have underperformed due to wars and turmoil (and Austria continues to overperform compared to history), it’s definitely looking better than in 1.1.2.

That’s it for today! Join us again next week as we go over more changes to the economy in 1.2, with a particular focus on Economic Laws and the introduction of Government Shares in buildings.

 

[what am i doing]

Victoria 3 - Dev Diary #71 - Autonomous Investment in 1.2​

• Thread starterWizzington
• Start dateYesterday at 16:13

Hello and welcome to another Victoria 3 dev diary! Today’s diary marks the start of dev diaries about Patch 1.2, which is the next major upcoming patch for Victoria 3 (release date to be announced). As with 1.1, 1.2 will contain a slate of bug fixes, UX improvements, AI improvements and so on, but also some more significant changes to game mechanics, which we’re going to go over in these dev diaries.

The particular changes we’ll be talking about today, as alluded to by the title, is Autonomous Investment, which is something we said we were going to look into for our post-release plans back in Dev Diary #64. What we said back then is that while we are never going to take construction out of the hands of the player entirely, we were open to the idea of non-government entities constructing buildings in a way not directly controlled by the country, and what we came up with is a system where the Investment Pool will be used by private entities to construct different types of buildings depending on your economic laws.

Before going over how all this works, I first want to mention that we recognize that the community is somewhat split on the issue of autonomous construction, and as such, we’ve opted to create a new Game Rule for Autonomous Investment. By default, Autonomous Investment is enabled, which puts the Investment Pool out of the hands of the player, but you can choose to disable it, which puts the Investment Pool back in the player’s hands and makes it work exactly as it does in the current 1.1.2 version of the game.

The Investment Pool Game Rule allows you to enable or disable autonomous construction with Investment Pool funds, depending on your personal preference

Regardless of whether Autonomous Investment is enabled, the Investment Pool works pretty much the same as it did before: Certain Pop Types with ownership shares in buildings pay part of their dividends into the Investment Pool, the funds in which can then be drawn on for construction. There are, however, a few key differences in 1.2 compared to 1.1.

Firstly, the types of Pops that invest have been expanded from just Aristocrats and Capitalists to also include Farmers and Shopkeepers. Capitalists invest the highest percentage of their dividends (20%), followed by Aristocrats at 10%, with Farmers and Shopkeepers investing only 5% each. The rationale here is that it wasn’t only the wealthiest in society who invested in new businesses, and this also allows a small degree of investment under laws which strip ownership away from the Capitalists and Aristocrats (but more on that next week).

Secondly, the proportion of dividends that are paid into the Investment Pool varies in 1.1 based on your laws, which can have some pretty bizarre effects, such as switching to Laissez-Faire suddenly creating a bunch of Capitalist Radicals because they are now investing more money and thus end with a drop in their Wealth. The proportion of funds that are invested is now a fixed percentage based on pop type, which is then subjected to an efficiency bonus: Capitalists always invest 20% of their dividends, for example, but under Laissez-Faire, this investment is more efficient and ends up contributing more money to the Investment Pool.

There is also a general investment efficiency bonus for payments into the Investment Pool in small and mid-sized economies, and a penalty in very large ones, to ensure the Investment Pool is also relevant for mid-sized countries while not growing to such absurd proportions that it cannot possibly be spent in a 10 billion GDP country. These efficiency bonuses are meant to abstract a system of foreign investment, which is something we’ve also mentioned is on our radar in Dev Diary #64 but is a bigger rework that we are not tackling yet in patch 1.2.

Agrarianism gives a hefty bonus to the investments of your Farmers and Aristocrats, but reduces investments from Capitalists and greatly limits the types of buildings they can put their money into.

So how then, does the Investment Pool funds get turned into buildings when Autonomous Investment is enabled? Well, autonomously, of course! With Autonomous Investment, the Construction Queue is split into Private and Government Constructions, with Government Constructions being anything (regardless of whether it’s a Government building or not) ordered to be built or auto-expanded by the player or country-level AI, while a Private Construction is anything the Pops themselves are building. The Construction capacity of the country will be split between the Private and Government queues in a proportion based on your economic law, though if there isn’t enough constructions queued of one type to use its full allocation, the excess can be used by the other queue instead.

In the construction screen, you’ll be able to see what the next planned Private Construction will be, along with its current funding level. The funding level is a calculated value based on both the total funds available in the Investment Pool as well as the weekly funds coming into it, and can fluctuate based on the Market price of Goods used in construction. Once a project is funded and ready, it’ll be added to the private Construction Queue the next tick. Private Constructions, unlike Government ones, cannot be reprioritized or canceled - they will always be built in the order they are queued up by the Pops.

Though the Government is currently building nothing in France, there are several private constructions in progress, and plans for the expansion of the Alsace-Lorraine iron mines. Note that this UI is highly WIP!

Pop-ordered constructions use a variant of the standard construction AI which doesn’t take into account the country-level AI’s strategic objectives and prioritizes the creation of profitable buildings which will create lucrative jobs for the investing Pop types, but they will also take some more ‘strategic’ factors into account, such as building railroads in low-infrastructure states. Just as with the country-level AI, they also have access to the system of Spending Variables described in Dev Diary #59, which means that they do not operate on a snapshot of the current Market but understand factors such as the impact that already queued buildings (private and government-ordered both) will have on prices once completed and staffed.

Since Autonomous Investment does not only affect player countries, you might be wondering how well this system works together with the AI? The answer is that it actually works quite well! Together with a bunch of AI improvements and fixes in 1.2, this has resulted in more stable economic growth for AI countries and especially seems to have given Great Britain a boost, as the private sector doing its own thing means that the economy is usually growing even if the country’s treasury is having issues, at least as long as the Pops investing into private-sector growth are making healthy profits. There’s still some issues, particularly when AI runs out of available workforce late game, that we are hoping to tackle before 1.2 releases to further improve the AI’s economic growth.

Screenshot from a hands-off game taken in 1908. While there’s certainly still room for improvement and some countries like France and Prussia have underperformed due to wars and turmoil (and Austria continues to overperform compared to history), it’s definitely looking better than in 1.1.2.

That’s it for today! Join us again next week as we go over more changes to the economy in 1.2, with a particular focus on Economic Laws and the introduction of Government Shares in buildings.

This is what it looks like when an incredibly arrogant company begins to realize they were wrong.

 

[IDtenT]

But that's just like every release.

 

[what am i doing]

But that's just like every release.

I could be wrong because I don't pay a huge amount of attention to most Paradox games beyond the Victoria series, but it seems to me like most games were released unfinished and then gradually had content tacked on whereas here Paradox was pretty adamant about not wanting a pop-driven economy and that everything should be under the player's control and fans who wanted a Victoria 2 sequel were wrong. Now here they are sheepishly putting the pop-driven economy back in (or at least, parts of it).

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

Chris King was the lead designer on Victoria II; IIRC, he hadn't even joined Paradox yet when the original Victoria: An Empire under the Sun was developed.

What makes you say so? I remember him there at the time and Mobygames gives him a credit on the original as well as the expansion (V: Revolutions).

The people credited at Mobygames for Victoria's "Research and Scripting" are volunteer beta testers, all members of the Paradox forum, who spent time writing events, or on similar tasks, and requested the credit. Chris King was a member of the Paradox forums under the imaginative username "King" and one of the testers for Hearts of Iron, Victoria, and Crusader Kings, but he wasn't hired by Paradox until after that.

The one who was super hard to track down was the Swedish designer dude who came up with POPs specifically. For the longest time I thought Chris King came up with POPs (we all know Johan didn't...even though he implies he did by saying he 'coded them') but I found a forum post once that it was another dude who parted ways/got kicked out of the company a long time ago. I think Joakim Bergqvist but I'm not sure anymore.

He had some post on Pdox forums circa 2006 where he told the story of how he was at his Swedish cottage on the weekend when he came up with POPs, but I can't find it easily now. Interestingly this guy's name (Joakim) brings up a Wargamer interview from 2002 where he was the designer on Crusader Kings I and made marriages/inheritance the focus of the game (another big franchise win that he probably didn't get any appreciation for...left the company in 2007 and then quality started to go to shit).

Hah, found it! Yes, it was Joakim Bergqvist (forum name Greven or 'The Count' in Swedish) who was designer on HOI1, HOI2, EU2, Victoria 1 and Crusader Kings 1. Joined Pdox December 2000 from his previous career of being a military historian...seems like he was the designer on Pdox's failed Diplomacy game in 2005 and fell on his sword because of it, leaving a year or so after.

Yes, Greven was the main designer on Victoria, which is indicated on Mobygames by him being the only designer listed. I don't recall him being particularly to blame for the Diplomacy disaster; Paradox had committed to Hasbro that it would release the game by a certain time, while engaging in a cockamamie scheme wherein all communication, whether between two human players or between a human and an AI, would rely entirely on symbols rather than language, so that AI-controlled sides would be rendered indistinguishable from human-controlled sides. In the meantime, they proved incapable of developing an AI that wasn't brain-dead in regard to the tactical component of the game, much less the diplomatic aspect. IIRC, they eventually admitted defeat some time after the game had launched, by patching in direct communication between human players, so that the software could at least be used as an online version of a regular multiplayer Diplomacy game sans AI-controlled sides.

 

[Beastro]

Even if Paradox had put in the effort to make their game not broken, and waited to release until it was finished, it would still have these problems because the people making the mechanics don't understand the world they're trying to simulate.

Things like this come to mind: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massacre_of_Italians_at_Aigues-Mortes

There should be limits on how much the government can open things up to foreigners and the state can't regulate their people's reactions.

Even going back centuries, they weren't welcome by and large, like Peter the Great's foreign servants.

 

[Victor1234]

Chris King was the lead designer on Victoria II; IIRC, he hadn't even joined Paradox yet when the original Victoria: An Empire under the Sun was developed.

What makes you say so? I remember him there at the time and Mobygames gives him a credit on the original as well as the expansion (V: Revolutions).

The people credited at Mobygames for Victoria's "Research and Scripting" are volunteer beta testers, all members of the Paradox forum, who spent time writing events, or on similar tasks, and requested the credit. Chris King was a member of the Paradox forums under the imaginative username "King" and one of the testers for Hearts of Iron, Victoria, and Crusader Kings, but he wasn't hired by Paradox until after that.

The one who was super hard to track down was the Swedish designer dude who came up with POPs specifically. For the longest time I thought Chris King came up with POPs (we all know Johan didn't...even though he implies he did by saying he 'coded them') but I found a forum post once that it was another dude who parted ways/got kicked out of the company a long time ago. I think Joakim Bergqvist but I'm not sure anymore.

He had some post on Pdox forums circa 2006 where he told the story of how he was at his Swedish cottage on the weekend when he came up with POPs, but I can't find it easily now. Interestingly this guy's name (Joakim) brings up a Wargamer interview from 2002 where he was the designer on Crusader Kings I and made marriages/inheritance the focus of the game (another big franchise win that he probably didn't get any appreciation for...left the company in 2007 and then quality started to go to shit).

Hah, found it! Yes, it was Joakim Bergqvist (forum name Greven or 'The Count' in Swedish) who was designer on HOI1, HOI2, EU2, Victoria 1 and Crusader Kings 1. Joined Pdox December 2000 from his previous career of being a military historian...seems like he was the designer on Pdox's failed Diplomacy game in 2005 and fell on his sword because of it, leaving a year or so after.

Yes, Greven was the main designer on Victoria, which is indicated on Mobygames by him being the only designer listed. I don't recall him being particularly to blame for the Diplomacy disaster; Paradox had committed to Hasbro that it would release the game by a certain time, while engaging in a cockamamie scheme wherein all communication, whether between two human players or between a human and an AI, would rely entirely on symbols rather than language, so that AI-controlled sides would be rendered indistinguishable from human-controlled sides. In the meantime, they proved incapable of developing an AI that wasn't brain-dead in regard to the tactical component of the game, much less the diplomatic aspect. IIRC, they eventually admitted defeat some time after the game had launched, by patching in direct communication between human players, so that the software could at least be used as an online version of a regular multiplayer Diplomacy game sans AI-controlled sides.

Victoria I you're probably right about, but Victoria Revolutions has always been seen as Chris King's baby on the economic side (ie, he's the one who came up with the idea for capitalists to do factory things). Whatever the case, he definitely had a formal role at Pdox already by that time and gets a designer credit on Mobygames.

https://www.gamewatcher.com/interviews/victoria-revolutions-interview/11497

Strategy Informer: Hi! Please tell us with whom are we speaking with? What is your role in development of Victoria: Revolutions?

Chris King: Hi I am Chris King, Q & A Manager for Paradox Interactive. My main role was coordinating testing for Revolutions, but I was involved in a little bit of everything including the design and I even turned my hand to a little coding.

 

[Axioms]

So Victoria 3 today is running at 50% the players of CK3 and CK3 is at 90% the players of EU4. HoI4 is running at 200% of EU4. Interesting numbers. Meanwhile TI is at like 15% of Vicky 3. Civ6 is 50% higher peak daily compared to HoI.

 

[Tyrr]

If you enjoy the setting, micro-managing production and importing resources, better play Anno 1800.

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

Victoria I you're probably right about, but Victoria Revolutions has always been seen as Chris King's baby on the economic side (ie, he's the one who came up with the idea for capitalists to do factory things). Whatever the case, he definitely had a formal role at Pdox already by that time and gets a designer credit on Mobygames.

Yes, and that DLC add-on was released in late 2006, three years after the release of Victoria itself.

 

[Fedora Master]

So Victoria 3 today is running at 50% the players of CK3 and CK3 is at 90% the players of EU4. HoI4 is running at 200% of EU4. Interesting numbers. Meanwhile TI is at like 15% of Vicky 3. Civ6 is 50% higher peak daily compared to HoI.

HoI is the meme-est of the listed games so of course it attracts the most people

 

[Axioms]

It is bonkers how absolutely consistent these Paradox player count numbers are.

Whatever Vicky 3 is at, for today 9,000, you double it to get CK3, 18,000, add 25% for EU4 22,500, and then double that for HoI4, 46,000. I've been keeping up with this for a month or so checking a couple times a week and the ratio is always the same.

 

[Space Satan]

 

[LizardWizard]

It is bonkers how absolutely consistent these Paradox player count numbers are.

Whatever Vicky 3 is at, for today 9,000, you double it to get CK3, 18,000, add 25% for EU4 22,500, and then double that for HoI4, 46,000. I've been keeping up with this for a month or so checking a couple times a week and the ratio is always the same.

Meanwhile Stellaris, despite the lower average player count than Eu/Hoi4.. seems to be consistently above them in Steam top sellers raking in that dlc revenue.

 

[Space Satan]

Devs actually considered using 2d art and even had placeholder portraits for generals adn statesman:

What a hideous faces. Just look how 3d nuPortraits are superior to this obsolete 2d scribbles

 

[Hace El Oso]

Devs actually considered using 2d art and even had placeholder portraits for generals adn statesman:

That’s so tragic I almost don’t want to know.

 

[Raghar]

Devs actually considered using 2d art and even had placeholder portraits for generals adn statesman:

What a hideous faces. Just look how 3d nuPortraits are superior to this obsolete 2d scribbles

Looks like 3D converted to 2D. And they overdid it with bloom.
Either they have too many polygons, or they were not able to invent auto face generation algorithms to make faces of theirs children to look decent.