Victoria 3 News

Ahoy Victorians!

Today we released Dawn of Wonder, accompanied by a free update for all owners of Victoria 3.

Please do not use this thread to report any new issues you discover - but rather file any bug reports in the bug reporting forum, thank you!

We can not give any guarantees that save files from 1.3.x will be working in 1.4 without issues which is why we recommend that you roll back your game to the previous version and finish any ongoing games you want to finish before updating to 1.3. More information on rolling back your game version can be found here! (TL;DR is go to properties in Steam -> Betas -> select the version in the dropdown list). This is especially the case due to map changes, such as Vancouver Island.

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• Day/Night cycle, configurable from the Theme Selector
  
• Lighting effects added to many new and existing gfx entities
  
• Night time soundscape now differs from daytime
  
• Festive clothing added for pops celebrating Carnival, Midsummer, Diwali, and royal weddings in Eastern Europe
  
• New Day/Night UI Theme added
  
• Day/Night themed paper map with zodiac illustrations
  
• Greenwich Observatory, Wat Arun, Temple of Poseidon, and Martand Sun Temple added as map decorations
  
• Pocketwatch, Candle, Atabey statue, and Hongshan statue added as table decorations
  
• Day/Night themed stagecoach
  
• New loading screen art
  

• Fixed some issues with goods substitution that was causing certain goods (such as oil in the early game) to not be demanded in correct amounts
  
• Subjects no longer remain in their overlord's market during an independence play/war
  
• Subjects no longer pay taxes to their overlord during an independence play/war
  
• Garibaldi will now stick around in minor Italian cultured nations, even in peacetime
  
• The American Civil war will now only ever happen as a result of a revolution to preserve, expand or abolish slavery
  
• Admirals with Escort Convoys orders now reduce the amount of damage done to convoys under their protection, scaling with the defensive combat stats of their ships
  
• Added strait adjacency to Vancouver Island
  
• Replaced all technology cost modifiers with technology speed modifiers, as these scale better and work properly with temporary modifiers such as from Interest Group traits
  
• Convoy Raiding damage is now partially randomized
  
• Randomly generated characters will now get up to 3 attempts to find a name that is unique among their country's characters
  
• Added a Portuguese admiral active in 1836
  
• Added Wikipedia links for some historical leaders of popular and recommended nations
  

• Loyalists are now gained much slower due to high Legitimacy levels
  
• Standard of Living improvements now create more Loyalists while at the highest Legitimacy level
  
• Construction Sectors now use 3 infrastructure instead of 0.2
  
• Belgium no longer starts with an illegitimate government
  
• Fine Art can no longer be fully substituted by purchasing Services instead
  
• Added Dye Plantation potential to Haiti and Santo Domingo states
  
• Slowed the progress of Cement the Rightful Dynasty for all legitimacy values below 90.
  
• Removed extra starting Arts Academy in Austria from history files
  
• Lanfang now starts with the Academia technology
  
• Papal State starting trade route for Art now goes to Spain instead of Austria
  

• The AI (and autonomous construction) will now stop constructing in states with no workforce once the current available infrastructure is mostly used up, to avoid an endless cycle of constructing unused building levels
  
• The AI is now less likely to accept peace deals or capitulate if the whole country will be annexed
  
• The AI will no longer change who it is supporting for a Unification when at war or committed to a side in a diplomatic play, except to remove support for a country they are at war with (fixes an exploit with abusing temporary attitude changes from diplomatic plays to gain supporters)
  
• The AI for countries with the Economic Imperialism strategy is now more keen on opening up Japan's market
  
• The AI is no longer incorrectly biased to use only Anchorage PM in Ports
  
• The AI is now less inclined to support unrecognized powers against fellow recognized powers unless they have a strong reason to do so
  
• The AI will now take the decision to reduce Haitian debt.
  
• The AI will now take the decision to annex Kraków as Austria.
  

• Performance when playing with mods that add Interest Groups has been improved
  
• Added a setting to cull distant buildings
  
• Optimized the memory consumption by building particles
  
• Optimized the trade routes panel
  
• Performance improvements for character rendering
  
• Particle Optimization
  
• Optimized the graphics for the day and night cycles
  
• Reduced the number of cars spawning on roads late-game
  

• Added a Theme Selector to the main menu and ingame menu
  
• Buildings can now be pinned to the outliner
  
• Added a new read out to the war panel that exposes an AI controlled country's willingness to capitulate in a war
  
• The player now gets a notification if a country that they are at war with (either as a co-belligerent or as an enemy) goes into default, making them more likely to capitulate or accept peace
  
• Amended the character panel with a zoom-to button that orients the map to the location of the character and a location to the panel subtitle
  
• Show Strategic Region names instead of Country names in the Declare Interest Map Mode
  
• The cost tooltip for technologies now explains the penalty for unresearched technologies in earlier eras
  
• Add flavor description to the Interest Groups' tooltips
  
• Added a toast message indicating new and old ruler when they are changed.
  
• Hide the "Trade Routes" section in the Goods Details panel for non-Tradeable Goods.
  
• Add shortcut to the Goods details panel in Goods right-click menu
  
• Sea Node tooltip now tells you how many of your convoys are passing through the node
  
• Change the default keybind for Decisions from F12 to F11
  
• Zoom-to buttons are now disabled when you are already where they would take you
  
• Remove the support value shown on Agitators on the Political Movement panel since Agitators now give a multiplier and not a flat support bonus to the movement
  
• Show all potential Diplomatic Actions in the right-click menu for another Country instead of only showing the currently possible.
  
• The Agitator concept now has more information included
  
• Add functionality to instantly create a Trade Route to your Market when looking at the details for a Good in a foreign Market
  
• Add more actionable information to the "Establish Import/Export Route" tooltips (Price, Balance, Sell/Buy Orders)
  
• Make the back button the Sway Offer always go back one step, instead of going back two when a Offer type is selected.
  
• Added a list of IG icons after the name of the Party in a few places throughout the UI
  
• Add enactment cooldown to the setback concept tooltip
  
• Added information about the new leader and ideology to the "IG Leader Retired" Notification
  
• The Hegemon final objective now displays how much of a share of the global population you currently control
  
• Removed confusing checkmark boxes from Healthy Economy Game Concept
  
• Diplomatic Action map interactions will now display the correct cursor
  
• Moved "Cut Off Buildings" setting to advanced graphics section (renamed to "Cull Distant Buildings")
  
• Long graphic card names no longer displays out-of-bounds in settings menu
  

• Vancouver Island isn't connected to British Columbia by land anymore
  
• Map borders now blends better with the map
  
• Updated the look and feel of the New Game Screen
  
• Fixed text and scale on VotP map (VotP)
  
• Fixed the issue were the equator was gone on VotP map (VotP)
  
• Blue flag event marker is now scaled better
  
• Tweaked "Forbidden City" texture values to closer match the rest of the adjacent buildings.
  
• All port buildings now start as "small" size
  
• War Machine factories should no longer cause clipping issues in cities
  

• Added 'kill_population' and 'kill_population_in_state' effects
  
• Character templates can now define a command HQ and rank
  
• New compare triggers 'global_population', 'total_population_share', 'total_population_including_subjects', and 'total_population_including_subjects_share'
  
• Added a 'pop_type_percent_state' trigger that checks whether the scoped state has X% of its population belonging to the specified pop type
  
• Added an 'ignore_battle_conditions' console command
  
• Added a 'noshortages' console command that prevents penalties for supply shortages in Buildings
  
• Added a 'fastincorporate' console command that incorporates states immediately
  
• Added a 'nosupportloss' console command that prevent countries from losing war support
  
• Added a 'month' compare trigger to check the current game month (useful for seasonal dress-up)
  
• Adds console command 'Logging.PopGrowth' to print the birthrate and mortality rates for each Standard of Living level
  

• Added workaround for crashes related to Intel high end CPUs
  
• Unique interest groups are now calculated on creation, rather than in a country's history, allowing revolutionary countries etc. to inherit their parents' unique interest groups
  
• Fixed localisation errors related to France's Natural Borders
  
• Fixed various scope issues in agitator law events
  
• Fixed erroneous scoping in "A Clause is Coming to Town" event
  
• Fixed a spline network crash
  
• Fixed an issue where colonization would be prohibited by other countries with claims even if they had no access to what you were trying to colonize
  
• Fixed a bug that allowed combat units to have more demoralized soldiers than actual soldiers in the unit
  
• Improved MP stability by resolving Out of Syncs resulting from flawed cache operations
  
• Fixed a bug where it was possible to use the 'Transfer Subject' wargoal on Customs Unions and Personal Unions
  
• Fixed an issue where trade route levels would alternate between increasing and decreasing every week due to inconsistencies in profitability calculations
  
• All countries that can create Interests now gain an active Interest in their capital region with no delay
  
• The Vox Diaboli event will no longer fire in atheist countries
  
• Fixed a bug where the zoom button to an Admiral raiding convoys got hung-up on zooming.
  
• Buildings can no longer be queued past the level limit while they are in the private construction queue
  
• Only show savegame incompatibility warning popup when the save is incompatible
  
• Fixed a bug that would prevent the reform government mode from closing when confirming a government with low legitimacy, potentially leading to one or more IGs being visually duplicated
  
• Children no longer experience early hair loss
  
• Fixed an issue in diplomatic play clean up for dying countries
  
• Generated heirs are now subject to the default character template like all other characters
  
• Fixed a bug where the game would keep trying to spawn a Civil War without any uprising States
  
• Fixed a bug where the player as observer without country could still receive notifications
  
• Fixed agitator home country tooltip displaying NULL_OBJ
  
• Fixed a bug where the Buildings Panel would have clickable buttons under "Potential Buildings", for buildings that cannot be built
  
• Fixed notification saying that country was swayed by itself when it was swayed by one of its subject countries
  
• Added a long cooldown to the DEI breakup event, so that choosing option c (continue to exist as DEI) will not cause the event to spam endlessly.
  
• Fixed the bug when becoming non-independent for two neighboring countries in the same state region didn't allow to set up trade routes
  
• Fixed the bug when a low number of convoys due to convoy raiding would not apply to excess convoy calculation
  
• Fixed a bug that would cause error log spam when hovering over the acceptance indicator when proposing wargoals to sway a country in a diplomatic play
  
• Fixed a localization error in the trigger description for is_unification_candidate
  
• Fixed some cases where relations with overlord and top overlord were not being checked when starting diplomatic plays like Conquer State against subjects
  
• Fixed issue with Increase Relations Tutorial not triggering
  
• Reduced spawn rate of certain African colonial events
  
• Fix notification names overflowing in the Message Settings
  
• Fixed an OOS due to the construction queue validation erroneously running during cache recalculation
  
• Fixed a bug related to fetching the ruler title from the government type in an effect splitting up on_government_type_change into two parts, putting the setting of ruler into a second effect on_post_government_type_change
  
• Fixed notification for new Trade Route mistakenly predicting it to "shrink to level -1"
  
• Fixed a bug when sometimes rank loss couldn't be stopped by increasing the prestige
  
• Fixed a bug when newly released country manpower in barracks wasn't properly updated and country had an empty armies that doesn't refill
  
• Fixed the bug when died recruitable characters created field promotions
  
• Construction queue duration estimate is now more accurate
  
• Subject country name is now correctly displayed in 'join side' diplomatic play notifications
  
• Fixed an UX issue that would cause a lone X to appear in tooltips for character interactions that cannot be executed
  
• Fixed an issue that could cause tooltips for `add_modifier`, `add_enactment_modifier`, `remove_modifier`, and `remove_modifier` effects from displaying incorrectly when the modifier has an apostrophe in the name
  
• Obligation Alert will now display the correct country in all situations
  
• Removed repeat economic law stance in anarchist ideology
  
• Legitimist monarchs no longer kill each other in rapid succession when generated
  
• Limited rate of African colonization event spawn
  
• Giovanni Gentile will now advocate for fascism in Italy rather than Siam, and Ernst Röhm is now a protestant
  
• Fixed CTD which happen while new state was spawned after another state had been removed
  
• Fixed a bug when "Oil Rush" effects or similar wouldn't increase employee count in a building
  
• Fixed CTD when stateless building tried to access impossible array size
  
• Fixed CTD which happen while new state was spawned after another state had been removed
  
• Map interactions involving HQ's will no longer contain duplicate UI entries
  
• Diplomatic Action map interactions no longer allow clicking on invalid interactions
  
• Changing shader quality to low should no longer cause rendering of the map to display in water.
  
• Fixed OOS related to Player Data
  
• Added entries for some missing modifier localization
  
• Infante Alfonso Carlos, Duke of San Jaime will no longer spawn as a Legitimist ruler before 1931 (VotP)
  
• Fixed crash when switching the graphics settings in the main menu after returning to it from the game
  
• Fixed an issue that prevented the Alaska Purchase from firing if the USA had a higher GDP than Russia
  
• Improved script for Government Petitions Journal Entries so it only looks if the Interest Group is powerful or not
  
• Lowered pop needs max supply share for Services and increased weight for Art
  
• Fixed issue with unlocalized Sea Node in the Atlantic Ocean
  
• The tutorial now explain why you can join a customs union
  
• Fixed incorrect text in additional income and additional expenses
  
• Declare Interest Tutorial will now select a region for you to declare an interest in instead of looking for available interests
  
• Removed potential for duplicate Bismarcks
  
• French heirs will now have the proper ideologies
  
• Bohemia can now form Czechoslovakia
  
• The Belle Époque no longer invalidates erroneously
  
• Revolutionary events will no longer occur in unincorporated states
  
• Ships should no longer disappear at the edge of the camera view
  

Good Day Victorians!

As said in the last dev diary, the Open Beta has been delayed from releasing today to ensure we release the best initial version we can.

However, it will be released on Thursday the 31st at 16:00 CEST!

The Open Beta will launch alongside a changelog for the first version of the Beta and a list of known issues, these will be available on our forums and Discord server.

We look forward to seeing you play it and giving us feedback soon!

Greetings Victorians, here comes a new Dev Diary that covers the content of the cosmetic art pack Dawn of Wonder. This pack aims to provide more visual variety to the map and interface of Victoria while also furthering the immersion of anyone who’s a fan of its world by adding a cosmetic Day & Night Cycle that can be customized to your liking. In addition the pack also contains a few new assets for characters, map decorations and more that we’ll be taking a look at below.

Dawn of Wonder releases on the 28th of August, alongside both the free 1.4 update and the start of the 1.5 Open Beta!


At the core of Dawn of Wonder lies the Day and Night Cycle. This feature replaces the static
midday sun that previously lit the map with a customisable cycle of sunlight and moonlight. As the sun sets on your nation, the moon rises, and all the cities and structures turn on their night lights. The city lights have three different hues and strengths depending on your research, so coal powered or gas light will look different from electric light. You will also be able to choose at what speed or even constant time you want the game to be played, in addition, you can also set the cycle to match your computer clock to further immerse yourself!

As night falls the cities still shine!

Dawn breaks on hubs and the shadows recedes!







The light from the lighthouses and hubs makes it easy to navigate Øresund at night.

To customize the speed of the Day & Night cycle there are plenty of options within the new Theme Selector interface (within a separate tab)
The options are as following: Simulation speed: Controls the speed of the day night cycle and sun/moon movement. By default this multiplier is set to 10 which corresponds to 1 minute 30 seconds in real-time or two months of in-game time at speed 3. The bigger the number, the faster the simulation speed!

Sun Hours: The amount of hours that the sun takes up in one 24h cycle of in-game time, with the remaining hours being night, effectively how long it will be day relative to night.
For example, if the sun hours are set to 23, then you will have 23 hours of daylight and only 1 hour of nighttime (kind of like a Swedish Summer).

Enable sync local time: Matches the current hour of the cycle to the computer's local time. If you use this and match the real time sun hours and sunrise time (see next setting) in your location you can look up from your computer screen and outside the window to experience 100% immersion!

Time of sunrise: What hour the night will end and the sun will start to rise.

Enable manual time: This lets you set a fixed time to experience perpetual day or night. Manual time hour lets you choose the time you want, but take note that this is affected by both the sun hours and time of sunrise settings.

All these options have tooltips in case you need a reminder of their functions.


To further accentuate objects and vehicles on the map we’ve made sure to add lights to all of them, so now everything from lighthouses to horse carriages has a light attached to them.
Speaking of carriages, in order to provide more visual variety to the roads of the map we’ve created a new more colorful stagecoach that contrasts the default very functional looking one.

Lighthouse effects guide the way all around!

Trains now also brighten up the night, with the carts being lit as well!

The new carriage brings some class and variety to the roads!


Bringing further life and wonder to the map are four new Decorative Structures that all have something to do with the sun, moon and stars. These structures are purely decorative and wont yield any benefit to the country currently occupying them, they will however add a bit more flavor to some of the regions of the world.

The sun still shines on the Martand Sun Temple after its near destruction around the 14th century.

The Temple of Poseidon is a mighty view both at dawn and when the moon is full.

Greenwich Observatory has an animation where it opens up for the night to gaze at the stars!

Wat Arun gives Bangkok a lot more personality and signifies the radiance of the rising sun.


When it comes to flavor we also wanted to bring a bit of that to the pops of the world through cultural outfits for certain regions. These outfits all have some significance relating to the passing of time or the sun and moon and will add some really detailed and ornate designs to otherwise plain clothes of pops at certain periods of time.

For Hindu pops in India there’s now an outfit related to Diwali, a festival celebrating lights' victory over darkness. And for Russia the Kokoshnik outfit not just symbolizes the passing of time and maturity but also has a half moon shaped tiara.

For the Nordic and Slavic countries the Midsommar dress makes an appearance celebrating the summer solstice, life and love. Last but not least is the Pierrot costume that has many different cultural meanings, many of them having the characters' relation with the moon in focus.


Further amplifying the new mood of the Day and Night Cycle we’ve also created a brand new look for the interface, this time highly influenced by old folklore surrounding celestial bodies. With a dusk & dawn color scheme and lots of hand drawn details this skin contrasts the existing ones a great deal, giving the interface a bit more mellow yet ornate appearance.

The new interface creates a much more mellow and angular look to the game as a whole.





The existing icon interface looks much more whimsical surrounded by stars


When zoomed out from the world we’ve also made assets to remind you of the passing of time, the lights in the night as well of the mysteries surrounding the sun and moon. These assets are placed upon a newly created table featuring old wood carvings and a sash frame with illustrations.

The jade sculpture from Hongshan is as ancient as it is mysterious, even the warm flame of a candlelight cannot bring its secrets to light.

Even though it has stopped, a nice pocket watch is nice to have and the Taino sun god statue is both cute yet somewhat ominous, what is that black smoke emanating from it sporadically?


The newly made paper map also embodies a lot of the same characteristics, featuring patterns of celestial bodies as well as illustrations of old zodiac signs…that may or may not resemble some of us at the art team with our corresponding signs.

The new paper map is filled with illustrations of mischievous suns and sleepy moons and tons of Zodiac signs.

What peculiar cancer signs…who could they resemble?



Dillon!...I mean, Gemini! You son of a…


To round things off we want to showcase something new we’re adding to the game that comes as a free feature, the Theme Selector. This new submenu can be accessed from the main menu screen and allows you to more easily handle your cosmetic features like the ones contained in Dawn of Wonder. Mix elements from any of your owned packs and base game, use for instance the French UI skin, the default paper map and the new table assets from Dawn of Wonder all together to find the custom combination that you prefer.

The theme selector is accessible from a new button in the main menu, there are icons for each pack to visually help you navigate what asset is from what update.


So, with Dawn of Wonder we hope that the players who enjoy immersing themselves in the world of Victoria find something that furthers their immersion, whether it be the new Day & Night Cycle, the new UI skin or any of the newly added assets to characters and map.

Last but not least is a new loading screen for the pack, capturing both the mysteries of the stars as well as some of the newly added things.

Our next Dev Diary is scheduled to be published three weeks from now, as we will release Dev Diaries on this schedule in conjunction with the updates to the Open Beta. This is to ensure that all members of the team are hyper-focused on the upcoming beta build itself and have time to communicate with you all on the Open Beta channel on the Discord server. See you there!

-----

Hello Victorians, Pelly here!

We have previously said that we want to launch the Open Beta on the 28th, alongside 1.4 and the Dawn of Wonder art pack. However, we are delaying the initial launch of the Open Beta to ensure we get the best initial version of 1.5 into the community's hands.

As such, we are still releasing 1.4 and Dawn of Wonder on the 28th, but you should expect the initial 1.5 Open Beta to be released within the first week of September at the latest.

We know people are excited for the Open Beta, so are we, and we are looking forward to receiving your feedback and talking to you about 1.5 in the Open Beta channels when it does release.

See Part 1 for the rest this Dev Dairy!


Naval Invasions have also been revised to accommodate the new state-based occupation mechanics and improve the UX in managing naval invasions. Naval Invasion can be initiated either from a formation or the Military Lens. Like in the current version of the game you target a state, but as a follow-up step you then get the option to add the formation(s) to be involved in the invasion. During the Open Beta we will enhance this panel with more information to help inform you on the likelihood of success, such as exposing information about landing penalties and the like.

In the initial Open Beta release, only one formation of each kind can be assigned to a naval invasion. In upcoming releases you will be able to assign multiple formations of each kind.



As you confirm the naval invasion, the formations selected will travel to the sea node just off the coast of the targeted state. When they have both arrived, landing battles will commence. A proper front (with armies assigned to that front) will not be created until the state is fully occupied. When this happens the naval invasion has been concluded.

In the interim, the supporting fleet may be attacked by enemy fleets. If any of these naval battles are lost, the naval invasion will fail and both formations will return home. If a naval battle is won but heavy ship casualties are taken, landing battles will take higher penalties until the fleet can be reinforced. During the Open Beta we will also look into adding more formations to a naval invasion already in progress.

Aside from closing some exploits relating to war exhaustion, this revision will make naval invasions a much more serious affair that requires naval dominance. We will be actively seeking feedback during the Open Beta to ensure executing and defending against naval invasions is more fun and interesting than it is in the currently live version.

I don't know about you but I can't wait to see these little guys in action!




While most of the graphical enhancements will be appearing across the Open Beta period's two updates, we already have a first iteration of frontline graphics functional in the current development build.

In this screenshot, the frontline graphics system is using the previous battle graphics and additional VFX as placeholder for the assets we are currently producing.



You can even see it from space!



Frontline graphics will represent the current formations at the front, with models being selected based on unit type, culture, tech, and mobilization options active. Specific formations, and even specific Generals, will have a distinct location on the frontline, with "their" units organized in their vicinity.

Concept art of our visual target for the final frontline graphics. One of these dioramas will be assembled dynamically based on formation composition and placed in each province along the front (possibly with some provinces omitted if the front is particularly long and the formations particularly small, to avoid miscommunication about the size of an army).



We are currently experimenting with our approach to animation and applying VFX to these models. It would not be appropriate for all units along a front to be animated at all times, since they aren't necessarily engaged in active warfare, so we will likely trigger animations on and off at certain intervals. This approach would also help with graphics performance.

We have a lot more WIP eyecandy to show you, but I'll leave that for future dev diaries!


As a result of a lot of revisions, a few features have been disconnected from the game to be reworked during the Open Beta period. If you intend on evaluating the Open Beta you should be aware of these omissions and how we intend on addressing them in the updates.


Conscripts no longer make sense as raised on a state-by-state basis, since that makes it hard to determine which army they should belong to. Since we also have distinct unit types not tied to Production Methods, we would also need to know the nature of the conscripts that need to be raised.

The way we intend to solve this is by allowing players to assign conscripts of particular types to their formation, much like you build regular units. This will result in Conscription Centers being built as usual in specific states, but will not automatically raise those conscripts - that will be a toggle on the formation itself. Once formations start raising conscripts, the Conscription Centers will start staffing up as usual, up to the conscription percentage limit imposed by the population of the state, your Laws, Technologies, etc.

Putting conscripts on formation level also means you will be able to demobilize conscripts early, using the same Early Demobilization mechanics as described above.


Naval Warfare is scheduled to be reworked to support the new mechanics around concrete locations. This means that all actions you perform with your fleets will be based around sea nodes, not more abstract concepts like HQs or trade routes. If you are raiding convoys in a sea node, you can only be intercepted by other nearby fleets; if you want to defend against a naval invasion, you have to sail your fleet over to that naval invasion.

To account for the issues that may arise from moving fleets around to intercept each other, we're considering a number of solutions including:

• Fleet Range: the ability for a fleet to be active also in adjacent sea zones, possibly at a reduced interception effectiveness or at a variable range determined by tech or unit type
  
• Limited Fog-of-War: obscuring your enemy's positions and actions and only revealing them under certain conditions (Battleship board game style)
  
• UI alerts and other visual indicators
  
• Some manner of fleet automation, like patrol routes
  

This is an area we expect to do a lot of work in during the Open Beta, and will probably require a dedicated dev diary later on.


As you can see, we've been quite busy! There's still a lot of work to be done, but we're all very happy to be addressing so many high-frequency community concerns in the context of a free update, and the new military mechanics already feel like a huge upgrade even in this immature state. With your direct input during the Open Beta period, on these as well as other features - like the new Companies and several other tweaks and improvements, which will be outlined in upcoming dev diaries - I have no doubt that the 1.5 update will bring Victoria 3 to new heights!

Next week we will hear more exciting stuff from our Art Director Max, this time about what to expect from the new Art Pack: Dawn of Wonder! After that we will move to a dev diary schedule of once every three weeks, to coincide with our sprint schedule and Open Beta update releases. This is to ensure that all members of the team are hyper-focused on the upcoming beta build itself and have time to communicate with you all on the Open Beta channel on the Discord server. See you there!

Happy Thursday to you all! This is a particularly exciting dev diary for me to write, because I finally get to reveal details on what we've been working on since before the summer months - and strap in, because it's a lot!

I want to start out by talking a bit about the Open Beta and expectation setting. As we discussed in Dev Diary #91, we will be running an extended Open Beta from Aug 28th (alongside the launch of the 1.4 update) until our final release of 1.5 in late autumn. During this time we anticipate releasing at least 2 additional updates to the Open Beta branch, coinciding with our 3-week sprint schedule.

Expectations for the first update
Launch date: Aug 28. In the initial release, new features will be in a rudimentary state, with plenty of placeholder interfaces, graphics, and missing mechanical details. Many features will be exploitable and buggy, and absolutely not balanced. Some features will be unused or underused by the AI. Core components of the game that we have not touched should continue to work, so playing a game focused on economy and politics should not be heavily affected by these changes, but be aware that military campaigns may feel unsatisfying or cumbersome. If you wish to partake in testing this update, focus on feedbacking on what additions or balance changes would make the new features fun, not on whether they feel great right now.

Expectations for the second update
Tentative launch: mid September. By this time the new features should feel a lot more mature, with bugs and missing information / graphics filled in, additional mechanical details closing exploits and providing new optimization challenges, and in general more bells and whistles available to you. While beta testing this update, in addition to the aforementioned considerations, focus on balance and UX improvements.

Expectations for the third update
Tentative launch: mid October. If all goes as planned, at this point we should be fully feature-complete for the 1.5 release. This doesn't mean everything is wrapped up and ready to go! We will spend the time between this update and the final release fixing bugs, doing balance updates, and reacting to your feedback. While testing this update you should be able to focus on how fun the game is to play with the new features.

But first a short message from our Community Manager Pelly on how the Open Beta will be run!

___________________________________________

Hello! For those that don’t recognise me, I am the Community Manager for Victoria 3 and helped run the Open Beta for 1.2 last time.

Open Betas are a very involved process, not just from the developers, but also on the community team end too!

When the Open Beta for 1.5 starts, the old 1.2 channels will be reopened for usage by the community! Any user can access these, to make it as easy as possible to provide feedback and chat about the Beta update!

As soon as the Open Beta is live, you can access the Beta Steam branch by following these instructions:

• Right click Victoria 3 in your steam Library, select properties.
  
• Click on ‘Betas’, then in the ‘Beta Participation drop down box select the 1.5 Open Beta option, when it is live, it will appear there similar to these options:
  

Now a bit about the Discord Channel structure:

• Open-beta-news - where news about the open beta is posted, e.g. when Beta updates are announced.
  
• Open-beta-changes-and-bugfixes - where changelogs for the Beta updates are posted so you know what has been changed or fixed between versions.
  
• Open-beta-pelly-post - this is where I go through all the feedback and bug reports for the day. Then I list them here, with any dev responses or mark if they are duplicates. This helps everyone know that their items have been looked at and seen by the devs! This is updated every day for the previous day's issues, normally closer to 16:00 CEST!
  
• Open-beta-chat - the area to chat generally about the beta updates, I still know people who really enjoyed talking here and became part of the ‘open-beta-chat’ gang!
  
• Open-beta-feedback - The place to post any feedback about the updates, tags are used to distinguish the topic and if it has been looked at by devs/! Developers will be around to talk in these threads, however don’t expect an answer for every single thread!
  
• Open-beta-bug-reports - We don’t normally have bug reporting on discord, as the bug reporting forums are the place to post these issues. However, during the Open Beta period it is easier if we have both feedback and bug reports on the same platform for ease of communication.
  

That is all from me, I hope you will enjoy the Open Beta when it starts and I see people around!

I will be there most of the time and happy to chat to y’all if you have any questions.

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Now let's jump into the juicy stuff! For these features we are looking to improve the military gameplay in three broad areas: Agency, Depth, and Visuals.

By Agency we mean the degree of control the player feels they have over their military campaigns. Equally important to granting more agency is ensuring the player doesn't experience a lack of agency, for example by having more fronts to manage than Generals; uncontrollable, unpredictable front splitting; or armies that suddenly return home because their General decided an active front was an opportune place to die of old age.

Depth refers to both detail and realism. More military attributes and configuration options, armies and fleets that are composed and behave more like you'd expect from history, and more interesting decision-making during warfare.

Visuals require little introduction: it's about what we have come to affectionately refer to internally as "little dudes on the map". Seeing your armed forces in action, in transit, and being able to put a concrete location on everything (which also helps with agency).


One issue that can rear its ugly head from time to time in the current version of Victoria 3 is the very large number of fronts you may be dealing with at any given moment. Many of you have pointed out that this leads to mandatory micromanagement of the war effort, which defeats the design goal that led us to create a more hands-off system for Victoria 3 in the first place. Reducing the number of fronts, especially in wars involving several countries on either side, to a more manageable number is a big priority for us.

The first in a one-two-punch effort to solve this problem is to make fronts adjacent between two or more allied countries into a single unified front. This can drastically reduce the number of fronts active at the start of a war.


There isn't that much more to say about shared fronts, which is a good thing. While quite complex in implementation (and we still have a few edge cases to sort out), they do what it says on the tin and are very intuitive in play. Here's an example of a single front between Bavaria and Württemburg on one side, and Hesse, Frankfurt, and Baden on the other. In the current live version this would be 4 unique fronts!




The second strike in our fight against too numerous and unpredictable fronts is state-based front movement. While merging adjacent fronts is a method of controlling the initial number of fronts between known participants, the bigger problem for most players is the unpredictable front splitting and merging that happens during the course of war, as battles are won and small pocket theaters are created. This feature eliminates the uncertainty of what might happen once a battle concludes, and drastically reduces the number of "temporary" fronts that emerge (which then causes you to lose the war because you don't have another General to staff it with so your enemy stomps all over you).

It works like this: battles will be fought in a province like before, but when you win you capture a fraction of the state that province is in, not a number of provinces. Only one state can be captured at a time, and only once the whole thing has been captured will the front actually move.

As part of this we have also permitted battles to be disconnected from frontlines, so you won't be attacking only the border provinces repeatedly until you have won the entire state. In our current build the province is chosen randomly from provinces in the state, but during Open Beta we will enhance this to select from provinces deeper and deeper into the state depending on occupation already earned.



As a battle concludes, the winning side earns a victory score - currently just a flat value, but this will eventually be changed to be conditional on the size of the victory. This victory score is allocated towards gaining or clearing occupation in states adjacent to the front, depending on the winning side; defenders will only clear occupation while attackers will clear some from their own states (if any) and gain some in the state they attacked.

In the current version of Victoria 3, the number of provinces gained on winning a battle are dependent on the size of the win, the stats of the advancing General, and some randomness within a min-max range. With 1.5, the amount of occupation gained in a state from a battle is dependent instead on a comparison between the victory score and the "occupation cost" of the state(s) in question. The occupation cost is determined by a number of factors:

• State population
  
• Amount of provinces with difficult terrain
  
• Number of mobilized battalions left standing in the defender's theater compared to the size of the theater
  

Both victory score and occupation cost are broken down in the UI and fully scriptable/moddable. We intend on tweaking both during the Open Beta phase heavily in response to your feedback, to make sure states that are supposed to be hard to take are actually more challenging to conquer (without it becoming a slog) while depopulated savannahs are easier to march across.

What we have found in testing this feature is that in addition to controlling the sudden appearance of new fronts, this new behavior also makes it very easy to determine whether you're in control of a particular wargoal. In the future we hope to add new mechanics tied into this feature, such as economic exploitation of states occupied during war.

An example of the new outcome of battle and the occupation cost breakdown. In this case Piratini should have gotten to plant their flags across 87% of the state, but some advanced math (a.k.a. bug) as described by this screenshot only granted 10% - guess it's back to the code mines for me!



Speaking of flags! While it won't be in the initial Open Beta build, this is one way we plan on visualizing partial state occupation despite the frontline itself not moving, in addition to shading the terrain itself.



While state-based front movement is primarily a way to control and predict the number of fronts that emerge during a war, this feature is also something we're looking to expand on in the future by tying state occupation tighter into other game mechanics, like economics and military supply.

I'll close this section out by saying that while multiple simultaneous battles per front won't be in the initial beta release (should be coming in the 1st or 2nd update), the way we plan to implement and balance them is to only allow 1 battle / front / state at a time. This means you would only potentially benefit from having more Generals than your enemy on particularly long fronts, and even then only if you outnumber their defending troops. This is however an area we are actively going to solicit feedback on, and you'll hear more about it in future dev diaries.


This feature has a number of sub-features that I'll go into in some detail, but first a bit of background to what this is and why we're doing it.

Having Generals and Admirals as the leaders of your armed forces is great both for flavor and for the knock-on effects it can have on the political system, but in retrospect characters are simultaneously too static and too ephemeral to serve as good containers of military units for a player to control. Commanders are meant to have names, traits, and faces so you can remember them, and if you have too many of them you can't tell them apart. But limiting the number of them you can maintain simultaneously restricts your ability to fine-tune your military and control who goes where, which can be frustrating (especially when you have to assign Generals to an indeterminate number of fronts!)

But, let's say we put gameplay over narrative concerns about identity uniqueness and removed the cap. Then we run into the issue of having to give every one of them a unique order every time we want them to go somewhere or do something different. This is very annoying when you just want everyone to go defend your single frontline.

To make things worse, if one of them kicks the bucket due to old age or gets suddenly ripped away due to some special event, your entire military campaign might be irrevocably disrupted in an instant! While we made an initial pass to address this issue in 1.3 with Field Promotion of new commanders, having a non-character container for your armed forces removes this problem altogether - your units will remain in place, and you can assign or recruit a new commander to lead them as you wish.

Another issue with the current system is that Buildings act as your only main vector for customizing your military. While this makes sense to model the economic and population impact your armed forces have, it can be a cumbersome and unintuitive way of constructing a diverse and capable military.

Military Formations tackles the issue of commanders being simultaneously too static and too ephemeral by providing a container for both commanders (generals or admirals, depending on formation type) as well as combat units (battalions / flotillas). You can create as many Formations as you want - with or without commanders, each with as many commanders as you like, and you can move both units and commanders between formations at will.

The design intent here is to provide you with a kind of entity - that's programmer-speak for thingamajig - that is more customizable to your own needs for agency than commanders are. These needs may vary a lot depending on what kind of country you're playing, where in the world you are, and what kinds of wars you happen to get yourself into. It also gives us a better platform for customization - adding depth - than commanders and buildings are, which we will see below. And finally, facets we're including with formations such as concrete movement and unit types give us a lot more opportunities to visually represent your military on the map and in the UI. So let's get into some more details!


Combat Unit Types
In addition to recruiting commanders into Military Formations (which works similarly to how it currently does in the live version) you can also recruit specific unit types and mix and match to your heart's desire. If you're playing a single-state country and want to recruit 5 Skirmish and 10 Line Infantry, you cannot do so in the current version of the game since unit type is governed by Production Method and all levels of a building must have the same methods. But in 1.5 you can do just that in a Formation, and the Barracks that get constructed "around" those units as a result will maintain the mix.

This works by creating the units inside the scope of the Military Formation itself, not by expanding buildings directly. That follows our UX design vision for this feature: rather than configuring and maintaining your military through an awkward mix of interactions with buildings and characters, all interactions with your military are done through formations first and foremost, with characters and buildings appearing around the formations as supporting entities to ensure existing game mechanics continue to function.

In addition to the different types of infantry units, we are also adding additional groups of units with different properties: infantry, artillery, and cavalry on the army side; as well as light ships, capital ships, and support ships for the navy. For the final release, most or all of these will have unique illustrations/icons; right now they all have the same placeholder icon.



Units constructed in this way will be upgradeable between types (though not for the first Open Beta release) but only in certain cases: you will be able to upgrade your Ship-of-the-Line to Ironclads, as was often done historically, but you cannot upgrade your Ironclads to a different ship class like Battleships.

We're very interested in hearing your feedback on the specific units we're adding into the Open Beta, how they're grouped and balanced, and how managing them in the UI feels!


I've always been happier with the current mobilization mechanics in theory than in practice. I like the increased demand on my industry during wartime and how that changes my economy (and my pops' economy). I also appreciate that I can't cheese the game by cranking down my consumption of military goods to zero in peacetime and turn it up to max when I'm at war, and that increased consumption is handled automatically as I mobilize a General into activity. I enjoy the tough decisions I sometimes have to make about whether I can truly afford to mobilize another General, or if my currently mobilized forces should be able to mop up the opposition in time.

What I don't like about it is how hard it is to balance, both as a designer and player, since it only increases the quantity of goods they're already consuming and therefore can only do so in a quantity that doesn't cause immediate shortages in your economy. Having to maintain mandatory unprofitable import trade routes for guns & ammo with potential elasticity to ensure I can prosecute my future wars sounds cool but can feel a bit much in practice sometimes.

Mobilization Options permit you to customize what goods you want to give your battalions when they're out active soldiering, with powerful effects providing trade-offs for the increased costs. Sometimes those goods are military hardware, other times they're just better rations or fancier uniforms. Adding consumer goods as a possible cost to mobilization also means a stronger impact on the civilian population during the war effort, which is both realistic and a great game dynamic.

Mobilization Options (typically) impose a cost in goods per unit in a Formation, which is applied to that unit's building, in exchange for an effect on all units. Both cost and effect are applied only when mobilized, and Mobilization Options can be toggled on or off only while the Formation is demobilized.

This is the list of Mobilization Options we will launch with the initial Open Beta release (fully unlocked, of course), but it's neither finalized nor well-balanced. Some of the options may even end up as new unit types instead (or in addition to) for example. We will be actively seeking feedback on what other options you want to see, and rework the UI to allow us to fit more options. Icons are currently borrowed from other areas of the game and are particularly WIP.



Mobilization Options don't have to be just about goods, it can also just be toggles on how you want this Formation to behave. For example, Forced March causes the Formation to move faster but at a cost of increased morale loss (a penalty which could be countered by Luxurious Supplies, if desired). Rail Transport is mutually exclusive with Forced March, doesn't cause morale loss, but requires both the Railway tech and Transportation goods.

The way we see Mobilization Options used is as toggles that can be set prior to active warfare, taking properties like market conditions, commander traits, and combat unit mix into account. You could customize a small, fast formation of elite crack troops or a giant army of cheap irregulars forced to march on an empty stomach, depending on your strengths as a nation and who you're likely to be fighting against.


While we initially added early demobilization with 1.3.6, it was a little bit hacky: it operated as a character interaction rather than a military command, and only applied a flat cost to a country in response to the goods cost prior to demobilization instead of incurring actual consumption.

We have now made it possible to demobilize armies during active warfare if desired. When this happens, the army will first have to travel home, and will then spend 4 months in demobilization (exact value very much subject to feedback) where mobilization supply cost will be gradually decreased over the duration. Unlike the current live implementation on Generals, these goods will be properly consumed in the interim so your industries and trade routes don't immediately collapse with nothing to gain for it.

Early demobilization can also be a little more relevant in the Open Beta due to Mobilization Options, in case those options you provided ended up a little too costly over the course of the war and you want to return home for reconfiguration.





Station at HQ
Military Formations, both armies and fleets, are initially created in an HQ but do not need to stay there. You can re-station a Military Formation at an HQ - even a temporary one you have established during the course of the war on allied or occupied territory - if you're willing to pay the increased supply cost for doing so depending on where your combat units are actually from (once we get around to adding that increased supply cost that is - until then, re-station away!).

You can station a fleet in any coastal HQ. Later during the Open Beta we will require an active Naval Base to exist in order to station your fleet there.



This also means if you want to move an army to proactively defend against an impending naval invasion, you can do so (as long as you're quick about it!)



Concrete Location
Another thing we have been dissatisfied with is the lack of a tangible location for your armed forces. In the current live version, Generals and Admirals are either at the HQ they're recruited into or on a mission somewhere, depending on their current order. But when a commander moves somewhere in response to their order changing, they are put into a kind of limbo while they are moving to a new location (typically a front, with naval movement being more abstracted as an "execution time") with the travel time only visualized as a countdown in the UI.

In the Open Beta, Formations will always have a concrete on-map location, so you can track their real-time movement between locations more easily. Generals and Admirals no longer have their own independent locations as this is inferred by their Formation, but Generals can autonomously spread out across fronts to visually indicate what state they are primarily defending and/or attacking.

For the first Open Beta release, movement will be tracked only in straight lines. Here we see an army moving first from the Maranhão Pará Front, then towards the Maranhão Rio Grande do Sul Front, and finally back towards its HQ in Rio de Janeiro when it's demobilized.



For upcoming Open Beta releases, formations will pathfind across roads, railways, and sea lanes (or sea lanes only for fleets, for obvious reasons) and travel along those to their destination. Here we see the path taken by an army traveling from Örebro, Sweden to Tampa, Florida. The short skip over English territory visualized here is because the pathfinder currently does not take either military access or spline travel time into account but just travel length; once we've completed our work on the pathfinder it should still be possible for armies to disembark/traverse land/re-embark if the time savings makes it worth it, but it will generally be avoided.




Of course there will be moments where you would like to split, merge, or transfer commanders and units between two formations of the same type. Even with shared fronts and state-based occupation, there may be instances where a new front is created in an area where you already have an army - for example, if you join a totally separate war while you already have another military engagement.

This can be easily done in the field if you have a single formation with multiple commanders. You can right-click one of those commanders and choose to "Split" it off into a new formation, which will cause them to quickly take a number of representative units in proportion to their own Command Limit and form a new formation with the same properties and in the same place.

You can tune this more precisely if you like by opening a Transfer popup, where you can select the exact commanders and units you want to move, select a target formation (which could be a brand new one), and execute the transfer. If the target formation is not in the same location as the origin, a temporary formation will be created that automatically travels to the destination where it will automatically merge with the target.

In-game mockups of what the Transfer popup will look like. We're hard at work trying to get this implemented for the first Open Beta release but it might not be fully functional until the second release, in September. We're also considering other potential enhancements to this, such as a double-sided panel where you can transfer Commanders and units back and forth between two formations.






When a formation is first created it gets a name selected based on your primary culture, type, and how many other formations you have of that type. You can change that name to your liking, to help you remember what you've designed it for or just for flavor and immersion.

In subsequent releases of the Open Beta you will also be able to customize the symbol and color of the formation icon, making it even easier to identify which formation is traveling across the map or deploys across a front.

A very work-in-progress screenshot of the formation appearance customization popup. The "pattern" section will provide a list of possible unique icons while the "color" section will contain a palette suitable for the formation type.



Continued in Part 2!