Victoria 3 News

Hello Victorians! The hotfix today has a number of fixes mentioned in Dev Diary 125, and should be compatible with savegames! We mentioned in the dev diary we would be making changes to the abdicate/resign interaction, this has been delayed to a future update due to technical reasons.

Checksum for the hotfix is, 4b8b. As always, this post is not for bug reports, please instead post them in the bug reporting forum (including a save and steps to recreate is always useful).

The following changes have been made to the game compared to 1.7.5:

[h2]Improvements[/h2]

• Protectionism now has a +25% leverage resistance effect
  

[h2]AI[/h2]

• The AI will now prefer to first cancel constructions of government buildings over demolishing existing ones when trying to save money
  
• Reduced AI naval spending targets from having a large overseas empire, to prevent excessive British overspending on the navy
  

[h2]Interface[/h2]

• Added the prompt saying "CTRL + click to set the levels to a minimum/maximum" directly to the Nationalization popup for better visibility.
  

[h2]Bugfixes[/h2]

• Fixed the bug when guarantee independence wouldn't join if the diplomatic play that was started outside of the current interests
  
• Fixed a bug where it was possible to Enforce Military Access on a subject who is opposing their overlord in a play or a war
  
• Fixed a bug where the AI would sometimes not merge back temporary formations into their parent formations, resulting in a large number of armies with few or no battalions in each
  
• Fixed a bug where the AI would not evaluate Investment Rights and Join Power Bloc wargoals correctly when calculating its desire to dominate another country, resulting in adopting a less aggressive attitude than intended
  
• Fixed CTD related to front distribution cache
  
• Fixed a bug where the AI would use 'Grant own Market' on subjects in cases where it did not make sense to do so, such as Austria granting Krakow their own market due to low supply network strength
  
• Fixed bug where Force Nationalization Wargoal would only take state-owned buildings from the target, ignoring private-owned ones
  
• Fixed the bug when government buildings couldn't promote employees
  
• (Mac CTD fix) Fix/potential stack overflow in cpdxguitextdata
  
• Fixed the bug when fleets in non-home HQs wouldn't recover from being defeated
  
• Fixed a bug where Military Formations could establish a new basecamp somewhere else when they already had a valid one.
  
• Fixed a crash to desktop that could happen upon enacting cooperative ownership
  
• Now subjects subjugated through power bloc action will properly update ports and markets
  

Happy Thursday and welcome back to our first of many development diaries before the end of the year! After a terrific launch and reception of Sphere of Influence in June, followed by several hotfixes with improvements and bugfixes, many devs on the team took a well-deserved vacation during July. We have now reassembled and can't wait to tell you what we've been working on over the summer, and what is coming in the latter half of 2024! First up I want to talk about hotfix 1.7.6 which should reach you in a few weeks and consists of a few high-impact fixes and improvements we've been working on during the summer (alongside work on update 1.8) that I think you'll enjoy.

First, improvements to the Abdicate/Resign character interactions. These interactions have been exploited in the past to cycle through rulers, in decidedly un-fun ways. To address this while retaining their overall intent, the conditions for a ruler to abdicate or resign are now much more narrow but can still be performed when a revolution to enact or restore a law is heating up. You'll be alerted when these conditions are valid, and abdicating or resigning during such a situation will decrease the Radicalism of the movement, giving you a bit more headroom to try to come to a peaceful resolution.

The Force Nationalization wargoal currently only transfers buildings owned by another country directly to you, but with the 1.7.6 hotfix it will also affect buildings owned by pops (Manor Houses or Financial Districts) in the targeted country, letting you cut a country out of your economy completely in one fell swoop.

Army position on a moving frontline will be made more persistent, ensuring that armies do not reposition themselves by traveling to a different position on the front after the line moves if they are still valid where they currently are. This should prevent fronts from suddenly becoming poorly defended after a successful state invasion and make the military system generally feel more stable to interact with. And speaking of military issues, the bug where defeated Admirals won't be restored back into action when they have recovered sufficient manpower will also be addressed.

Several crashes have been fixed, including a crash relating to transferring building ownership and issues with rendering GUI widgets on Mac.

Hotfix 1.7.6 will also include a few minor bugfixes, and tweaks to AI behavior and Leverage Resistance, and last but not least some UI system performance improvements that should make the game run a bit smoother. Some more extensive performance improvements we have made will be coming with update 1.8 due to the risk and incompatibility issues involved in pushing them out with a hotfix.

We are currently testing a possible solution to the issue of government employees that are heavily bound by Qualifications (such as Officers in certain countries) being a bottleneck for operation of government buildings (such as Barracks). With any luck this behavior should also be improved for 1.7.6.

Additionally, we are improving the visibility of an existing improvement we implemented in 1.7.5 to let you more rapidly nationalize buildings. We are also working on a greatly improved quality-of-life tool to facilitate nationalization efforts across multiple buildings for 1.8, which you will hear more about in subsequent dev diaries.

With 1.7.5 we added support to hold Ctrl when clicking the plus or minus button, which sets the number of levels to the minimum or maximum. Now we’re also going to display this message so that it will be more obvious to more players. Happy nationalizing!

Hotfix 1.7.6 should be arriving in late August or early September, and as usual with hotfixes will be compatible with current save games. Of course we are concurrently hard at work for the next chapter in Victoria 3's chronicle, update 1.8, which you will hear much more about from Martin (Wiz) in 2 weeks from now and in several subsequent diaries. Until then!

Salutations Victorians, we have a small hotfix today targeting some key fixes to improve gameplay experience,

Checksum for the hotfix is, 6fe3. As always, this post is not for bug reports, please instead post them in the bug reporting forum (including a save and steps to recreate is always useful).

The following changes have been made to the game compared to 1.7.4:


[h2]Balance[/h2]

• Reduced starting radicals for countries with historical radicals, such as Argentina and Central America
  
• Reduce the Infamy gained by Tibet's overlord if they refuse Tibet's subjugation in Tibet Expedition
  

[h2]AI[/h2]

• Fixed incomplete logic for AI evaluation of granting states to unrecognized and autonomous subjects, allowing USA to grant states to Indian Territory when it shouldn't
  

[h2]Bug Fixes[/h2]

• Fixed Private Investment Pool behaviour under cooperative ownership
  
• Aristocrats no longer starve due to Subsistence farms suddenly raising wages for peasants
  
• Infamy cost reduction for rebelling subjects is now properly applied to rebellious subjects not loyal subjects
  

Previous Patchnotes
1.7, 1.7.1, 1.7.2, 1.7.3, 1.7.4

Hello Victorians, we have a larger hotfix today featuring a range of balance changes, AI improvements, bug fixes and more! Most of the team will be on vacation now, but part of the team (Including Martin) will be around, so that we maintain the capacity to release fixes as needed!

Checksum for the hotfix is, 5775. As always, this post is not for bug reports, please instead post them in the bug reporting forum (including a save and steps to recreate is always useful).

The following changes have been made to the game compared to 1.7.3:



[h2]Content[/h2]

• Added a journal entry for the reunification of China
  

[h2]Improvements[/h2]

• It is once again possible to start Reduce Autonomy & Annex Subject diplomatic play against subjects, even if their Liberty Desire is high. However, doing so will result in taking on the full infamy cost of the wargoal rather than the usual reduction for targeting subjects.
  
• Peasant Levies now simply prevents Conscripts from being raised as Cavalry or Artillery, as selective limits on which specific types of Infantry etc could be raised as conscripts do not work correctly
  
• Russia/Britain now start with a neutral attitude towards Persia, ensuring they don't immediately go for the throat until Persia does something to earn their ire
  
• Reduced the rate at which "The Russian-British Agreement" fires for player Afghanistan during the Pamir Delimitation
  
• Added Vilnius to the required states for Poland-Lithuania
  
• Renamed "Semireche" state to "Semiplatinsk"
  
• Removed Uighur homeland from Semiplatinsk
  
• Autonomous Investment is now able to execute multiple investments per tick for countries with extremely large (500k+ income) investment pools, so that even massive economies can continue to make full use of the investment pool
  
• Homesteading & Collectivized Agriculture now also impacts subsistence farms, causing them to be partially or fully self-owned and adding some Farmers to the Workforce
  
• Military Treaty Power Bloc leaders can no longer enact National Militia, and Religious Convocation Power Bloc leaders can no longer enact Total Separation or State Atheism
  
• The Cohesion in Military Treaty Power Blocs is now impacted for any member with the National Militia law, while the same goes (to a greater extent) for members of a Religious Convocation Power Bloc who has Total Separation or State Atheism
  
• Defensive Cooperation II now permits the Power Bloc leader to impose their Army Model law across the Bloc
  
• Treaty Ports are now only functional against a market if they are adjacent to an incorporated state from the market
  
• Moved or removed some military units from formations in the history setup so that they adhere to the law set in that country.
  
• The 'overlord compliance' AI strategy is now invalidated if the subject ends up opposing their overlord in a diplomatic play
  
• Power Bloc statues are now removed when leaving a Power Bloc
  
• The Autonomous Investment AI should now properly focus on Privatization when construction is blocked due to a lack of workforce or infrastructure
  
• Under Cooperative Ownership, buildings in foreign countries that are owned by local Manor Houses & Financial Districts will now be collectivized by the workforce in those countries over time
  

[h2]Interface[/h2]
Added a new entry for "Your Leverage" to all country's details panel.
Removed tooltips for some modifier values to reduce duplicated information

[h2]Performance[/h2]

• Improved Construction Lens performance after having opened it once before. Note that the first time will still be slow.
  

[h2]Balance[/h2]

• Restored the +clout modifiers to Landowners from slavery laws, as the Landowners ended up too weak in some countries after other related balance changes to subsistence farms
  
• Reduced Advanced Research 3 principle's max innovation gain per institution level from 15 to 10
  
• Political Movements to get rid of Traditionalism and Serfdom now attract more supporters from literate pops once Empiricism is researched (loosely representing enlightenment thinking)
  
• Increased the lobby appeasement impact of Support Regime
  
• Haiti now starts the game with debt instead of half-filled gold reserves
  
• Haitian independence payments now cost less each week but much more to pay off in increments
  
• Fix some setup issues in France that caused the July Monarchy to collapse too quickly due to unprofitable buildings and trade routes
  
• Improving Relations will now give leverage on yourself, and will not auto-break at 50 relations if the target is a Power Bloc leader
  
• When a civil war ends in victory for either side, a larger number of pops are now deradicalized to represent civil war fatigue and prevent a second civil war from immediately gaining steam
  
• Italian states with relations above 20 with Austria will no longer be able to spawn Italian radicals in it.
  
• Reduced Austrian radical gain from Italian minor powers.
  
• Divided Monarchists now requires 50% radicals in capital to fail (up from 25%)
  
• Reduced the number of radicals generated over time by Movements to Preserve
  
• Lowered the base and max weights for Wine in luxury drinks need, as adding it to Intoxicants made it overdemanded compared to other goods and hurt the demand for Tea/Coffee
  
• Take Treaty Port can no longer be added as a wargoal against a state without a port constructed, as this results in an inactive treaty port. However, demolishing the port after the wargoal is added will not invalidate the wargoal.
  

[h2]AI[/h2]

• The AI is now more inclined to accept requests for Support Regime and Knowledge Sharing under favorable conditions
  
• The military power score increase for accepting reverse-sways is now properly capped at 50, preventing the AI from accepting reverse-sways that they should be utterly unwilling to accept
  
• Rebalanced AI aggression. The base aggression (chance to start diplo plays) is lower, but the impact of the aggression game rule on it is higher. However, the impact of the AI aggression game rule on strategic desires was toned down, so that aggressive AIs still try to make strategic alliances etc.
  
• Fixed another bug causing the AI to take a bunch of Treaty Ports they should have no real interest in
  
• The AI is now significantly more likely to try to get rid of Traditionalism and Serfdom when not pursuing a conservative agenda or when there are movements present to change those laws
  
• Fixed the logic for when the AI carves up china to be more consistent in how and when it's applied to the AI's desire to take states there
  
• More tweaking of the AI for Egypt/Ottomans early conflicts to give the Ottomans a better chance of beating Egypt
  
• Fixed a bug where the AI would not correctly evaluate Placated political movements as able to start a revolution and would cancel laws that would result in a very powerful evolution to avoid a much weaker one
  
• The AI is now generally less willing to cede territory when Demand State is used when that is territory is important to its owner, even if it's owned by one of their other subjects
  
• Fixed some issues with AI strategy logic for isolationist countries which was inadvertently applied to non isolationist countries, causing the AI to generally avoid befriending other countries
  
• The AI will now never accept having 'cut down to size' pressed on them as part of a peace deal, but will have to be capitulated
  
• The AI will now try much harder to get rid of peasant levies unless they are very reactionary
  
• The AI will now make use of Enforce Military Access on its subjects to create fronts when needed in wars
  
• Fixed an issue where the AI was setting way too high targets for its army/navy size (partially caused by AI including investee countries in its population census)
  
• The AI is now far less willing to give up wargoals in peace deals unless those wargoals are actually being contested
  
• The AI will now instantly capitulate in a war where they and all their allies are 100% occupied
  
• The AI is now more likely to target their own domestic states and subjects with government-funded constructions, and less likely to target foreign states. This change does not impact autonomous investment, which has its own logic for domestic vs foreign
  

[h2]Modding[/h2]

• Added new trigger has_inactive_journal_entry
  
• Added scripted list war_participant (any_war_participant/every_war_participant etc)
  
• Added console command ai_evaluate_mobilization to print AI mobilization data
  

[h2]Bug Fixes[/h2]

• Fixed a crash that occurred in the MP lobby while the game was unpaused
  
• Fixed a bug where it was possible to use Demand State against your overlord's homelands
  
• Fixed a bug where if you saved the game on the exact tick when a country was annexed and then loaded that save, the country would never be properly removed causing diplomatic pacts with it etc to linger forever
  
• Fixed a bug where it was possible for foreign investors to buy worker-owned buildings in countries with Cooperative Ownership enacted
  
• Fixed the issue with invalid diplomatic pacts in the outliner
  
• Fixed a bug where Agitators who did not have a valid law from their ideology to support would almost always end up picking from just a tiny handful of laws to start a movement for (Homesteading and National Militia, for example)
  
• Fixed some issues with the changes to Honorable Restoration that made it too difficult to complete when not going the traditional market opening route and ensured it's always completed when you defeat the Shogunate in a civil war
  
• Fixed sorting trade routes by owner in the trade routes panel
  
• Fixed an Out of Sync related to diplomatic catalysts
  
• Fixed trade routes being incorrectly moved to another market after a market split
  
• Fixed some production methods being incorrectly considered unavailable in the building panel
  
• Fixed some issues with conscripts after states being transferred to another country
  
• Fixed a crash that could happened when showing modifier breakdowns
  
• Debts accrued just after declaring bankruptcy now count as debts rather than disappearing in a powerful bout of creative accounting
  
• Fixed some mobilization options not properly providing their benefits to combat units
  
• Fixed an issue causing predicted loyalist changes from successful enactment of political movement to not apply or apply incorrectly
  
• Savegames are now cleaned of broken construction queue items when loaded
  
• Fixed a bug where Pops that got all their income from dividends would not pay poll taxes (ie, Capitalists and Aristocrats now pay about 0.1% more taxes compared to before)
  
• Replaced the static english text for "Inactive Treaty Port" with a string that is translated into all languages
  
• It is no longer possible to sway-transfer subjects that are opposing their overlord in a play or war
  
• Fixed a bug where the 'Join Power Bloc' diplomatic play would not work correctly after a country declined an invite to a power bloc
  
• Fixed a bug where downsized military buildings would not properly remove the units from their formations
  
• Tanzimat JEs are now pinned by default.
  
• The Tibet Expedition decision will no longer spam errors when Tibet is annexed
  
• Power Bloc emblems are now properly centered
  
• Adjusted inconsistent conditions of Grant and Request own market. You can now only do these actions if the junior partner is either a direct subject (compared to indirect before) or if they are independent and you are the Power Bloc leader in a shared market.
  
• Removed the Liberty Desire impact display from the Grant Market interaction if the target is not actually a subject.
  
• The Disrupt the Russian Caucasus Great Game subgoal now fails properly if Circassia is defeated
  
• Updated descriptions for migration laws to reflect that they only limit migration in and out of the country
  
• Fixed a construction queue tooltip to indicate that the constructing country is paying the cost
  
• Rewrote the placeholder tooltips on the column headers when sending a Military Formation somewhere (Destination, Travel Time, Status).
  
• Fixed a bug that would lead to foreign investments in split states potentially leaving around NULL_OBJ constructions in the investor's queue; particularly visible when pursuing German unification.
  
• Fixed a bug where decreasing relations with your overlord would have a lesser impact on lobby appeasement than increasing it, making it possible to endlessly increase appeasement by alternating increasing and decreasing relations
  
• Resolved an edge case where the Strike: Labor Negotiations event could have no options.
  
• Removed Liberty Desire impact from insufficient supply if a land connection exists between subject and overlord
  
• Added impact on Ranching building group to Collectivized Agriculture law
  
• Amended the India collapse script to account for the Princely States being transferred to Britain
  
• Interface: Fixed a bug that was hiding lobby funding in the budget breakdowns
  
• It is now possible to add the Force Nationalization wargoal to an ongoing Diplomatic Play
  
• The "Secure Influence Over Persia" Great Game subgoal may now progress by annexing Persia
  
• Fixed a bug where the Weak Power Bloc penalty would not be applied after loading a save
  
• Fixed several issues with Cohesion factors not being correctly displayed in the Cohesion tooltip
  

Previous Patchnotes
1.7, 1.7.1, 1.7.2, 1.7.3

Double Happy Thursday! As promised last week, today we’ll be returning to the future update plans, which we last touched on in Dev Diary #102. Just like the previous times, we’ll be going over what changes and improvements we have planned for the game in future free updates such as 1.8, 1.9 and beyond.

Once again we will be talking about the same key four improvement areas of Military, Historical Immersion, Diplomacy, Internal Politics as well as Other for anything that falls outside those four categories.

Just as before, I’ll also be aiming to give you an updated overview of where we stand and where we’re heading by going through each of these four categories and marking on each one with one of the below statuses:

• Done: This is a part of the game that we now consider to be in good shape. Something being Done of course doesn’t mean we’re never going to expand or improve on it in the future, just that it’s no longer a high priority for us. Any points that were already marked as Done in previous updates will be removed from the list, to avoid it growing unmanageably long, but you can look at the older dev diaries (#79, #89 and #102) if you’re interested in what was done previously.
  
• Updated: This is a part of the game where we have made some of the improvements and changes that we want to make, but aren’t yet satisfied with where it stands and plan to make further improvements to it in future updates such as 1.8, 1.9 and so on. Note that this section will mainly focus on updates made in 1.6 and 1.7.
  
• Not Updated: This is a part of the game where we haven’t yet released any of our planned changes/improvements in any currently released updates but still plan to do so for future updates.
  
• New: This is a planned change or improvement that is newly added, i.e. wasn’t present on the list in Dev Diary #102.
  
• Reconsidered: This is a previously planned change or improvement that we have reconsidered our approach to how to tackle from previous updates. For these points we will explain what our new plans are, and change the list appropriately in future updates.
  

For the final bit of repetition: Just as before we will still only be talking about improvements, changes and new features that are part of planned free updates in this dev diary. I will also remind you that this is not an exhaustive list of the things we are going to do, and that something being ‘Done’ doesn’t mean we’re not going to bugfix, balance or make UX improvements to it afterwards. Alright then, onto the dev diary proper.



[h2]Military[/h2]
New:

• Making navies more important for projecting global power and securing control of coasts.
  
• Adding a proper system of military access and finding solutions for the other remaining rough edges in the frontline system.
  

Not Updated:

• Turning individual ships into proper pieces of military hardware that can be built, sunk and repaired rather than just being manpower packages.
  
• Adding a system for limited wars to reduce the number of early-game global wars between Great Powers
  

[h2]Historical Immersion[/h2]
Done:

• Ensuring unifications such as Italy, Germany and Canada don’t constantly happen decades ahead of the historical schedule, and increasing the challenge of unifying Italy and Germany in particular
  
• Asides from the AI challenges when it comes to forming Germany/Italy, we are now relatively happy with the state of the unifications. There are certainly ways we want to improve unifications in the future, particularly in tying them much closer to the political systems, but that falls outside the scope of this particular point.
  
• General AI tweaks to have AI countries play in a more believable, immersive way
  
• With the introduction of Diplomatic Catalysts and various AI improvements in 1.7 we now consider this to be ‘done’, though in reality this is the sort of point that is never going to stop seeing improvements from our end.
  

Updated:

• Tweaking content such as the Meiji Restoration, Alaska purchase and so on in a way that they can more frequently be successfully performed by the AI, through a mix of AI improvements and content tweaks
  
• After the release of 1.7.2 we now consider this to be ‘almost there’ but still in need of a bit more work.
  
• Going through the base game Journal Entries and events and making improvements and additions to ensure that they feel meaningful and impactful for players to interact with
  
• We’ve made a number of changes and improvements to older journal entries in 1.6/1.7 such as the addition of scripted progress bars, but we still have more work to do here.
  
• Adding more country, state and region-specific content to enhance historical flavor of different countries
  
• As before, this is something we’re simply going to keep adding to every single update and is never really going to be ‘Done’. For now I am leaving this entry here to mark that this is still one of our top priorities
  

[h2]Diplomacy[/h2]
Done:

• Improving and expanding on interactions with and from subjects, such as being able to grant and ask for more autonomy through a diplomatic action
  
• Have Interest Groups weigh in on diplomacy, for example having the Armed Forces disapprove of an alliance with a country that recently took land from you due to revanchism (Lobbies)
  
• Foreign investment and some form of construction in other countries, at least if they’re part of your market
  

Not Updated:

• Make declaring and holding onto diplomatic Interests a more rewarding and challenging aspect of global empire-building
  
• Allowing peace deals to be negotiated during a Diplomatic Play instead of only having the option to give in
  

[h2]Internal Politics[/h2]
Updated:

• Adding laws that expand on diversity of countries and introduce new ways to play the game
  
• Similar to the point for region-specific flavor, this is something that will never really be ‘Done’ but remains here to highlight that we consider it an important priority
  

Not Updated:

• Turn legitimacy into a more interesting mechanic, where the strength of a government depends on their successes and failures, and highly legitimate governments can’t simply be ousted at a whim but have to be undermined first.
  
• Introduce a concept of national pride which can increase or decrease depending on a country’s actions and which ties directly into legitimacy.
  
• Have discrimination not be a purely binary status and reflect forms of discrimination aside from what’s written in the law, as well as making assimilation into a more meaningful mechanic in the process.
  

New:

• Find a better solution for the ways ideologies appear, attract followers and create support for reforms than the current RNG-heavy leader ideology system.
  

[h2]Other[/h2]
Not Updated:

• Improve on Companies by turning them into actual actors in your country that can own/expand buildings and interact with characters/politics.
  
• Find a way to deal with the excessive fiddliness of the trade system in large economies, possibly by allowing for autonomous trade based on your laws in a similar way to the autonomous investment system.
  

As always, I cannot make any specific promises about when these things will be coming. However, I can tell you that the next update (1.8) will be a standalone free update that should knock a point or two off this list, but will mainly be focused on bug fixing, general polish and more AI improvements. Before then we also have at least one more hotfix (1.7.4) planned to address the remaining high priority issues from the 1.7 release (tentatively planned for next week) and part of the team will continue working for a few more weeks like I mentioned in last week’s dev diary.

Right then, that’s all for this time, and all for this side of the summer! Dev diaries will return on August 15th but until then, I can but wish you many a Happy Thursday in the sun (or possibly snow, if you happen to live in the south hemisphere). Regardless, I hope you have a great July!