Victoria 3 News

Hello and welcome back to a new round of Victoria 3 dev diaries! Today we’re going to be talking about Companies, a new free feature being added in the 1.5 update, which will be available to test and feedback on in the first version of the 1.5 open beta.

As we have previously mentioned, one of our major focuses for the 1.5 update is to improve the replayability and challenge in the core economic gameplay loop, and the main purpose of the Companies feature is to do just that by encouraging countries to specialize in certain industries and develop competitive advantages against other nations. Companies are also intended to add more flavor and differences in gameplay between different nations, as well as giving players more of a reason to care about prestige and their position in global national rankings.

Before I go into the nitty-gritty, I should mention that this dev diary is going to be focused mainly on the Companies feature in the form that will be available in the first open beta release, with a fairly narrow focus on achieving the above design goals for economic specialization, flavor and prestige. However, Companies is a feature that we consider to have near limitless potential for expanding on and hooking into more parts of the game, so I’ll wrap up the dev diary by mentioning some of the ideas we have for building on this feature in the future. Also, please note that this is very much a feature under development, so expect placeholder/WIP art, names, numbers and interfaces!

But enough preamble, let’s get into the details. Companies are national-level entities that are established by a country, with each country being able to support a certain number of companies based on factors such as technology and laws. The vast majority of countries will not start with the ability to support any companies, but will need to reach a certain level of society tech before their first company becomes available.

Each Company is associated with a certain set of building types, for example a Company specializing in metal mines might be associated with Iron Mines and Lead Mines, while a more agriculturally inclined company might instead be associated with certain types of plantations and/or farms.

To establish a company, you need to have the technology and resource potential to construct at least one of their associated building types - it’s currently possible to establish companies without having any of their associated buildings built, though this is something we will be actively looking for feedback from the open beta on how it feels, as it’s something of an immersion versus gameplay question. Flavored companies (more on those below) have other more specific requirements to be established in addition to these basic requirements.

A selection of potential candidates for Sweden’s first company: Combine of Fisheries and the United Forestry Conglomerate are immediately available, while the buildings of Wine & Fruit Inc are… not so suitable to the Swedish climate and hence will only be available if Sweden acquires some warmer lands with potential for those resources.



Once established, a Company will have effects on all buildings of their associated building type in their parent country. These effects are twofold: They increase the throughput of the buildings, as well as the construction efficiency when constructing new levels of the associated building types. The degree by which companies boost their associated buildings is partially scaled based on the Prestige ranking of their parent nation, with the 3rd-ranked nation gaining a larger boost than the 4th-ranked nation and so on. While somewhat abstracted, this is meant to represent competitive benefits the company enjoys from the international status of their home country. The purpose of this effect as a game mechanic is to give players a direct economic reason to care about their overall prestige ranking versus other nations.

It’s also worth noting that in conjunction with this change, we have increased the base construction cost of all buildings and, through the change to local pricing, somewhat lowered the base economic efficiency of most buildings. The overall intent is that the baseline economy should be less efficient, with companies allowing countries to make up the difference in select areas, providing the incentive for specialization and competitive advantages mentioned above. However, one exception to this is that base construction production was increased from 5 to 10 to ensure the baseline slowdown of construction did not make small nations entirely unviable to play.

While the majority of the construction efficiency increase from companies does not depend on your prestige ranking, Sweden’s relatively high placement on the global scoreboard does give its companies an additional edge.



Established Companies also have Productivity and Prosperity ratings. Productivity is simply the average Productivity (yearly average earnings per employee) of all its associated building levels. This is compared against the global average Productivity of all companies in the world, with companies that are doing better than average gaining Prosperity over time, and companies below a certain threshold (which is lower than the threshold for gaining Prosperity) losing it instead.

If a Company reaches 100 Prosperity, its Prosperity modifier will activate, granting a company-specific bonus to its parent nation. This is intended to add an additional dimension to the selection of companies - do you simply want to focus on whatever resources are going to be most profitable for your nation, or aim to build up a specific industry for the bonuses it can give you? As an example, a player that is planning to play a particularly aggressive campaign may want to focus on building up an arms-industry related Company for the military advantages it can grant.

The Agricultural Development Society is doing well enough compared to other companies that its Prosperity is increasing, which will please the Rural Folk once Prosperity hits 100.



As we hinted at earlier in the dev diary, Companies come in two varieties: Standard and Flavored. Standard Companies are ones that are available to all nations unless replaced by a Flavored Company, while Flavored Companies tend to be restricted to a certain culture and/or geographical region. For example, a North German nation that owns certain parts of the Rhineland will have certain historical German companies available to them.

Flavored companies are mostly historical (but not always, as sometimes we have to go a bit alt-history), with a set of building types based around their real-life historical business focuses, and tend to have stronger or more interesting prosperity bonuses than the standard companies. Flavored companies may sometimes replace very similar Standard companies, but this is the exception rather than the rule, most Flavored companies do not replace Standard companies.

Alright, that’s the general gist of what Companies will look like when you first get your hands on it in the 1.5 open beta. As I mentioned at the beginning though, there is a lot of places we envision taking this feature in the future, so here are a few examples of that, though you definitely shouldn’t expect all of this be in scope for the 1.5 update:

• Having companies ‘level up’ beyond just a single prosperity bonus, possibly in a way that ties into diplomacy/rank and replaces the current company bonuses from prestige
  
• Having pops, specific buildings in specific states, Interest Groups, and/or characters more directly associated with Companies instead of them just being a national-level entity
  
• Companies having political and/or geopolitical ambitions (for example, a certain fruit-company might wish to create some, ahem, fruit-focused republics)
  
• Multinational companies that aren’t limited to a single country
  

I’ll sign off by leaving you a bonus screenshot of the first companies added to the game in the earliest iteration of the feature. Sadly, neither Björnmetall nor Martin’s Fish Tank Emporium will be available in the 1.5 version of the game.



That’s all for today! Join us again next week as we go over what other additions changes you can expect to be coming in the 1.5 open beta, with a particular focus on the military. See you then!

Hello and welcome to the last update before our traditional July break! Today I will drop a little more concrete information of what will be coming in future updates 1.4 (Q3) and 1.5 (Q4).

First, a few words about the 1.3.5 patch that we released Monday June 26. We are very happy to see the positive response to the changes made, both to the Voice of the People content and the free update. As we mentioned previously, these are not all the planned improvements to Voice of the People and we plan to give more love to France in 1.5, with further updates to the Paris Commune and more.

Also, while the reception of the feature to selectively demobilize Generals has been overall positive, there is a remaining high-priority concern that you still cannot tell conscripts raised to stand down for as long as you remain at war. This functionality was not implemented for 1.3.5 since we're planning to address the matter more comprehensively in a different way in the near future. We'll touch on that below, in the section about Update 1.5.

We're planning on putting out one more hotfix (1.3.6) in the 1.3 series before we go on summer vacation. With any luck that should be available to you already, if not it will arrive within a few days of this diary publication date. Among other things this fix addresses the bug where overlords helping out their subjects get their claimed states as wargoals if they win.

Now, on to the future!



Update 1.4 focuses mostly on bug fixes and performance improvements, but we have still made a handful of major enhancements:

[h2]Convoy Raiding Revisions[/h2]

Convoy Raiding has been made more impactful on the long term economic health of your supply network, as the time it takes to recover sunk convoys now scales properly against both the damaged shipping lanes and overall number of convoys produced. However, defending against raiders has also been made more reliable, with the introduction of a ‘shielding’ effect where admirals with Escort Convoys orders now directly reduce the number of convoys sunk during attacks by an amount relative to their fleet’s defensive combat effectiveness, further boosted by secondary PMs such as Destroyers.

Patrolling fleets are no longer only there to try and catch convoy raiders in the act, but also act to directly reduce the number of convoys sunk by hostile admirals



[h2]Goods Substitution Changes[/h2]

The Goods Substitution system has received a face-lift to make it more easy to work with for both ourselves and modders. We’ve also taken the time to tweak a bunch of the weights for goods to make certain goods more in demand (such as for example Meat and Fish, as well as Oil for heating in the early game)

[h2]Subject Independence Wars[/h2]

A much-requested fix to independence wars means that subjects that are fighting for their freedom no longer continue to pay subject taxes to or stay in the market of their overlord.

[h2]Imperialist AI Revisions[/h2]

The AI of Imperialist colonial powers in 1.4 has been made more inclined to go on certain overseas adventures such as opening up Japan’s market, and also less inclined to support Unrecognized powers against the aggressions of fellow imperialists unless they have a strong reason to do so (such as an alliance or a desire to seize that land for themselves).

But that is not everything that will be available upon launch of Update 1.4:

[hr] [/hr]



The Open Beta for update 1.5 will launch simultaneously with Update 1.4, and will contain a number of features deemed too experimental or too early in development to go into the main branch. This Open Beta will be running for an extended period during which we will incorporate your feedback to make the final 1.5 release as good as possible.

Among the many features that will be available in Update 1.5 Open Beta will be:

[h2]Shared Fronts[/h2]

Adjacent Fronts belonging to the same side in a Diplomatic Play will now act as one unified Front, thus reducing the number of Fronts to manage in conflicts with many participants. This means that, as an example, a war in pre-unification Germany will not devolve into a dozen or more fronts due to numerous participants.

[h2]Multiple Simultaneous Battles per Front[/h2]

To compensate for the fact that Fronts might now be larger, each advancing General on a Front may be able to start a Battle if the Front is long enough despite one Battle already being fought.

[h2]Reverse Sways in Diplomatic Plays[/h2]

Unintentional rhyme aside, this long-awaited feature will let a potential participant name their own price for joining a side in a Diplomatic Play instead of having to rely on the leaders of the Play guessing at what they want. All Sways (such as Wargoals, Obligations etc) are also valid for Reverse Swaying.

[h2]Call Ally in Diplomatic Plays[/h2]

Countries that can be called into wars, such as subjects or allies, no longer automatically join every Diplomatic Play they could be called into. Instead the primary participant has to explicitly call them in, which costs Maneuvers.

[h2]New Sways[/h2]

Numerous new Sways to offer or request in Diplomatic Plays, including offering or asking for states/subjects and diplomatic deals such as bankrolling or joining a customs union.

Under attack by France and somewhat desperate, Belgium is willing to agree to a number of different concessions in exchange for British military support



[h2]Local Price Variation[/h2]

Goods production / consumption will now always have a local effect no matter how good your Market Access. This leads to natural synergies, where having your Steel Mill in the same state as your Coal and Iron Mines makes for more profitable operations of all three buildings than if they are distributed across the nation. On the other hand, building a Textile Mill in a state with Cotton Plantations but precious few Pops to buy their Luxury Clothes might be worse for the Textile Mill than building it in a major population center with loads of demand.

By looking at the local prices for Wine in the French Market, you can easily see the difference between the states that are major producers and the ones that are not



[h2]New Buildings and Production Methods[/h2]

Several buildings have had select functions split off into dedicated buildings, and many Production Methods have been added and rebalanced. The end result is to make it easier for you to balance your economy without always having to use trade to export excess production.

Vineyards have been split away from grain farms and turned into their own building type



[h2]Retreat and Pursuit[/h2]

Battles that are all-but-decided will now conclude more rapidly through special Battle Conditions instead of dragging on pointlessly for weeks and weeks. More disciplined Generals will be able to organize more controlled, less damaging retreats.

[h2]Military Formations (Armies and Fleets)[/h2]

This will be a major revision to how you manage and organize your armed forces, to give you more intuitive control both before and during active warfare while still retaining the option to let wars play out on their own. As I mentioned in the beginning of this diary, among many other things this will revise how mobilization and conscripts works currently, making both conscription and early demobilization more intuitive and less frustrating.

Military Formations are currently in very active development and we expect it to receive a lot of iteration and polish over the course of the 1.5 Open Beta. Much like Strategic Objectives were not part of the initial 1.2 Open Beta release, you can expect features relating to Formations to be released over several phases. You will learn much more about this in later dev diaries after the summer, the first which you can expect on August 10!

Note that this is by no means an exhaustive list. In addition to these you can expect a great deal more features and major improvements to be made, both for the initial and subsequent Open Beta releases.

Wishing you a wonderful summer filled with lots of Victoria 3, and we'll see you all in 6 weeks!

Good day Victorians!

Today we have a hotfix that will resolve a number of issues in 1.3.5! Please do not use this thread to report any new issues you discover - but rather file any bug reports in the bug reporting forum!


[h2]Bugfixes[/h2]
- Overlord will no longer annex the rebellious states from subjects after the civil war

- Countries that don't exist can no longer start uprisings

- Divided Monarchies no longer stalls and fails to transition into the next phase if more than 1 dynasty reaches 360 Progress at the same time

- It is no longer possible to queue agriculture buildings over the Arable Land limit

- Countries about to get annexed no longer get Claims (and trigger notifications for those Claims) for each state annexed

- Belle Époque achievement description now correctly states that you need the highest Innovation and GDP generation in the world, not GDP per capita

- [Turkish] Shortcut button tooltips no longer show long strings of script




[h2]Balance[/h2]
- Fine Art can no longer be fully substituted by purchasing Services instead

Good day Victorians!

Patch 1.3.5 is now released! 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!

Changes from 1.3.4 to 1.3.5:

- Fixes to a few localization issues in French and Korean

- Toasts about claims are no longer displayed to more countries than intended

- Commanders that are in active battle can no longer be retired

Link to 1.3.5 Changelog



If you wish to play with mods not updated to this version you may roll back the game version via:

1. Right click the game in Steam
   
2. Go to Properties and select the tab called "BETAS"
   
3. Pick the version you want to play and close.
   
4. Allow the game to update
   
5. Make sure, before you load any save, that the version number in the game is the one you want.
   
6. If the previous step fails, exit the game, right click -> properties -> local files -> Verify integrity of game files and wait for all files to be verified before going back to step 5.
   

Note: You can freely swap between the latest version and previous versions this way. By selecting "NONE - opt out of all beta programs" you go to the latest released version.

Happy Thursday! Today we will reveal the final list of changes in the 1.3.5 update which is due to roll out on Monday June 26th (but more on that at the end!)

As we mentioned a few weeks ago, Update 1.3.5 is bigger than one of our usual post-release patches, since we wanted to take this opportunity not just to fix some of the bugs you've identified but also to make some much-needed improvements to the content in Voice of the People. For those who don't own Voice of the People, there are some new high impact improvements to the base game as well.

This does mean that there may be issues with existing saves, though. Your save games should load up fine, but especially if you're playing with Voice of the People as France, some of the reworks may cause your progress in existing saves to break in hard-to-predict ways. As always you will be able to roll back to version 1.3.3 on Steam to wrap up your games in progress.

With that said, on to the updates! First up, improvements made to Voice of the People. Here we have focused our efforts on improving the content in line with the feedback we have received, as described in Dev Diary #88. As an example, here is the revised Divided Monarchy Journal Entry:



As you can see, the Journal Entry is now a proper race between three dynasties rather than a timer to install the candidate of your choosing. You will still select your preferred candidate, which gives you the option to Sway characters to support that dynasty, but that does not necessarily mean it is that dynasty who will be enthroned once the Journal Entry completes.

So what determines the rate of progress for each dynasty? Let's take a look:



The popularity of characters is one factor. This is not limited to just Interest Group leaders - the ruler, heir, generals, admirals, and agitators can all impact the rate. Furthermore, all of these can be Swayed to your cause, and the cooldown for the Sway interaction has been reduced to 2 years (from 5) to give you more opportunities to do so. Since Agitators tend to have a lot of Popularity, finding one you can invite and bribe into agitating for your candidate can help your cause a lot - or send one of those Bonapartist Generals into war to win battles for you in order to help the Bonapartist cause.

Another major factor is the Clout of Interest Groups led by people of the appropriate Ideology. This is multiplied if you can somehow maneuver the Interest Group into government.

Building levels of a particular type is a major aspect. Bonapartist gain progress from military buildings, Orleanists from industrial buildings, and Legitimists from agricultural buildings. If you feel forced to increase France's military readiness, this will favor the Bonapartist cause. I found out the hard way that this includes Conscription Centers - once your conscripts are fully raised, and for as long as the war is raging, the Bonapartists will hold a lot of sway in France.

Your government Legitimacy will also affect the dynastic dominance. For the house currently enthroned, positive Legitimacy (over 50) will increase the rate of progress while it will decrease it (to a lesser extent) for the other dynasties. This doesn't only apply to the house of Orléans necessarily, because if France were to abolish the monarchy and re-establish it, a different house may sit the throne and the Divided Monarchy Journal Entry may re-emerge.

Of course, your decisions during the events associated with the Journal Entry will also matter, which may lead to other effects on the rate of dynastic progress.

There's one very good reason to try to resolve this Journal Entry as soon as possible:



While the Divided Monarchists Journal Entry is active, a Republican Unrest modifier applies to all of France. This makes it very difficult to get Loyalists from just having a high Legitimacy, but very easy to gain Radicals from a low Legitimacy. It also makes it harder to maintain a legitimate government with an ideologically incoherent government; if your Resistance Party contains Interest Groups of several different dynasties, it's likely your Legitimacy will be hard to maintain due to infighting. Finally, the Radicalism of any Political Movements that may emerge will be higher than usual, making it more likely that political demands will result in taking up arms.

Finally, let's take a look at the failure conditions:



It is not implausible that the Divided Monarchy Journal Entry will devolve into chaos and republicanism. This will happen if there's an Interest Group in France that supports a Presidential Republic, if Turmoil in the capital is quite high, and if one of the following is true:

• France is experiencing the Springtime of the Peoples
  
• France has more than 25% Radicals
  
• A civil war is about to break out
  

This would impose a Provisional Government on France, changing the state to a Presidential Republic and Appointed Bureaucrats, exiling the current monarch, making the leader of an Interest Group that supports Republicanism the President, and calling an election. But of course, should France restore the Monarchy at a later time, the question of dynastic rights will re-emerge.

On the other hand, should you succeed in the Divided Monarchy Journal Entry and enthrone one of the candidates:



you will still have to prove you have the chops to rule:


No progress will be made on this Journal Entry unless you can prove Napoleon (in this case) can assure a stable government, and for as long as you retain it the Divided Monarchists Journal Entry (and its impact on France in terms of republican unrest) will remain. This also means that Divided Monarchists can still fail while Napoleon (or whoever) is cementing his reign.

In addition to the enhancements to the Divided Monarchists Journal Entry there are several other improvements made to Voice of the People, so let's go through the full changelog:


[h2]Improvements​[/h2]

• Reworked the Divided Monarchists journal entry to improve depth and player involvement
  
• Added decision for France to purchase Luxembourg
  
• After France declares it natural borders, nations on their war path receive an event warning them of French aggression and adding a conscription modifier to relevant states
  
• Successful coups now cancel a law being enacted if they do not prefer it to the current one
  
• A socialist revolution in France will now lead to a Commune which starts as a Council Republic
  
• Adjusted the Cement the Rightful Dynasty journal entry to require maintaining legitimacy as said dynasty
  
• Lets the French player Sway any character other than rulers or heirs (including Generals, Admirals, and Agitators) to their dynastic ideology of choice
  
• Players will receive relevant information on the Garibaldi and Indochina events as they happen
  
• Enacting Monarchy as a republican France will now prompt the player to choose a historical candidate to enthrone
  

[h2]Interface​[/h2]

• Added notification when France declares its natural borders
  
• Improved usability of Divided Monarchy and Cementing the Rightful Dynasty Journal Entries
  
• Several triggers relating to Sway to French dynastic ideologies should now be much more legible
  
• All Algerian Journal Entry tooltips have been cleaned up and the requirements for The Algerian Departments Journal Entry will no longer reference Provence
  

[h2]Balance​[/h2]

• New Republican Unrest modifier on Divided Monarchy Journal Entry increases Radicals from low Legitimacy, decreases Loyalists from high Legitimacy, increases Legitimacy penalty for having mixed ideologies in government, and increases the Radicalism of Political Movements while the dynastic crisis is ongoing
  
• Increases difficulty and Approval penalties for preventing a coup by removing an Interest Group from government
  
• Reduces the Sway to dynastic Ideology cooldown from 5 years to 2 years
  
• Longer cooldowns to some events associated with Divided Monarchy
  

[h2]AI​[/h2]

• Adjusted French AI weights for default strategies and for individual admin, diplomatic and political strategies, dependent on dynastic control of France
  
• Legitimists and Bonapartists have additional weights towards having a Protect attitude towards the Papal States if it is a theocracy (i.e., they will want to protect the Pope more)
  
• Legitimists have an additional weight to Befriend Spain if Spain is a monarchy
  
• France is more likely to demand the relevant Algerian territory in a peace deal
  
• The French AI will more consistently strive to conquer Algeria, as long as the Conquest of Algeria Journal Entry is active.
  
• France is more likely to take an appropriate diplomatic stance (conquest) towards Algerian minors
  

[h2]Bugfixes​[/h2]

• Fixed a bug where many events from Voice of the People did not play sounds
  
• Ensures on_pulse events for Divided Monarchy won't continue while the dynasty is cementing its rule
  
• Garibaldi now becomes an agitator when exiled by event
  
• Removes the event option for Death of Charles X event that gives Legitimist progress while Cementing the Rightful Dynasty is active
  
• Fixed case where March on Versailles event can trigger twice
  
• Restrictions on french_pretenders_pulse.3 event trigger should now ensure the immediate effect always has a chance to save its scope
  
• All historical members of the d'Orleans dynasty are now properly tracked as being "orleanist_leaders" for the purpose of triggering events
  
• Removes superfluous cooldown on Death of Charles X event since it can only occur once regardless
  

But that is not all. We have also made a number of improvements to the base game, some of them to support the new Voice of the People content but also general improvements and important bugfixes. A few very important ones include:


You can now selectively demobilize a General, as long as at least 6 months have passed since mobilization. Doing so will immediately demobilize them and cut their goods consumption, but the budget you've allocated will be reduced gradually over the next 4 months. Nevertheless, if you find yourself in a situation where you have way too many Generals mobilized to successfully prosecute a protracted war, this may be a better option for you.

In addition, a lot of improvements have been made to Unifications, as outlined in more detail in the notes below. We have also improved the new Industry Banned Law to make it more relevant, and changed Interest Group Traits to deactivate at a different Approval level than they activate to cut down on notifications spam. In the process we have also made it possible for modders to change Interest Group Traits through events, opening a lot of possibilities for unique Interest Group Traits for different countries or cultures.

Finally I want to mention performance. Late-game performance is a big priority for both the community and us, and we are working on it continuously. Among other things we have added a Pop Consolidation game rule to let you customize the amount by which you want your small pops to merge as the game goes on. Feel free to try it out and let us know how effective it is in resolving your performance concerns. This is not the only thing we have done to improve performance and we will continue our work on it, to ensure the endgame is more pleasurable than it is currently.

The full list of improvements and fixes follows:


[h2]Improvements​[/h2]

• New character interaction to demobilize a general while still at war. Generals must have been mobilized for at least 6 months, and their mobilization cost will remain but decay for up to 4 months after they have been ordered to demobilize.
  
• Added the starting Journal Entry 'An Odious Debt' to Haiti, as well as associated events, dealing with the Haitian indemnity/debt crisis.
  
• Moved the decision for Haiti to cancel its French indemnities into the Journal Entry
  
• Unification plays now target all countries that hold states that are relevant for the unification, and are not supporters, allies or subjects of the initiator
  
• Unification plays will no longer target disqualified Unification candidates, but can target Great Powers, so Italian unification will tend to target Austria for Lombardy/Venetia and German unification will tend to target France for Alsace-Lorraine
  
• Unification plays now spawn individual wargoals for each relevant state instead of one umbrella wargoal
  
• When a unification play is launched, all unification supporters of the initiator are now annexed by them
  
• The opposing side in a unification play now gets a 'Cut Down to Size' wargoal against the initiator
  
• Active Interest Group Traits will no longer deactivate until Approval is sufficiently different from the cutoff, to make them more sticky and prevent notification spam
  
• Petitions should no longer trigger while a law is enacted that the government already likes
  
• Added flag canton definitions for Germany, the Dutch East Indies, and the Paris Commune
  

[h2]Interface​[/h2]

• Add the Political Movement an Agitator is supporting or will start/join when invited to the character panel.
  
• Added a toast notification when an agitator appears in the player's country
  
• Exiled characters now send notification to all diplomatically relevant countries
  
• Added important action to alert when characters can be demobilized early
  
• Countries are now notified when a claim is gained in a region they have land in
  
• Make an Exiles notification group and add it to the Message Settings.
  
• Infrastructure derived from the population of a state now displays its cap properly in the tooltip
  
• Character Interactions now display their cooldown time without having to go into the tooltip
  
• Fixed an issue with revolution animations in the outliner.
  
• Added 2 missing modifier icons
  
• Low Training Rate alert at war now triggers based on actual negative training rate modifier and not the military budget level itself
  
• Add empty states in the tooltips for State Infrastructure and Usage
  

[h2]Balance​[/h2]

• Agitator Popularity now amplifies existing Support of Political Movements rather than generate Support from scratch
  
• Significantly improved the Industry Banned law. Halved tech penalties and made them exclusive to Production tech. Added 50% private construction allocation. Added 10% agriculture throughput in all states. Added -10% expected SoL for all pops
  
• Reduced army training rate to 20 per level for all PMs, except 10 for Irregular
  
• Reduced demand for Fine Art, especially by richer pops
  
• Increased demand for Services, especially by richer pops
  
• Fixes a typo in pop needs script that made Services much less substitutable for Fine Art than intended
  
• The reduced impact of the Petition Journal Entry timing out if you're already in the process of enacting the law is now scaled by how far you've gotten; no reduction if still at the initial phase, -5 Approval reduction in the second phase, and -10 Approval reduction in the third phase
  

[h2]Performance​[/h2]

• Optimization of building particle graphics
  
• Scales pop consolidation parameters by the current number of pops in the world, which could help late game performance
  
• Added a Game Rule to let you control what degree of pop consolidation you want
  

[h2]Modding​[/h2]

• Journal Entries now support modifiers, which propagate to their countries while active
  
• Adds prefers_law trigger (returns if a character or interest group prefers one law over another)
  
• Interest Groups can now be given unique Traits per country, both at startup and during play, using the set_ig_trait effect
  
• Adds currently_active_law_in_group event target link (from one law to currently active law in same group)
  
• Modifier types for Radicals/Loyalist gain at low/high Legitimacy added
  
• Added on_actions for on_mobilized_general and on_demobilized_general
  
• Added demobilize effect for character scopes
  
• Added mobilization_cost compare trigger for character scopes
  
• Journal Entry database types now have modifiers_while_active functionality to specify modifiers to automatically apply on activation
  
• New direct link ig_trait implemented
  

[h2]Bugfixes​[/h2]

• Fixed a bug that caused newly released countries to not have any Journal Entries
  
• Fix a bug where released countries would always take the state religion of the releaser, instead of this only being the case for revolutions as intended
  
• Fixed a bug that prevented secessions that can't progress above 0% from disbanding
  
• Fixed CTD when switching the graphics settings in the main menu after returning to it from the game
  
• Liberate Country wargoals are now only mutually exclusive if they have conflicting released states
  
• Autocracies will now properly transition into single-party states
  
• Agitators exiled by AI should now always end up in the Exile pool
  
• Fixed a bug where movements could in rare cases become revolutionary without any Interest Group support
  
• Fixed hidden map objects exposing themselves after changing the graphics settings in the main menu
  
• Coups are no longer inheritable by revolutionary countries
  
• Fixed a bug in the prediction of which political movement exiles would start, causing it to incorrectly say they wouldn't start a movement.
  
• Fixed a bug that caused revolutionary political movements to stay revolutionary when their radicalism dropped. Revolutionary movements whose radicalism drops too low are now turned back into regular political movements.
  
• Springtime of the People Journal Entry is no longer inheritable by revolutionary countries
  
• Agitators now leave political movements when given roles incompatible with the agitator character role.
  
• Fixed scope error in In the Hands of the State and Agitator events
  
• The leaders of French republics will now properly be called the President
  
• Submarines and Carriers now have a per-level training rate penalty instead of unscaled
  
• Make the tooltip for Law Enactment say that there is a chance the Law will pass on the next checkpoint when on the last phase
  
• Added a check to Expand Building Tutorial to ensure the building selected can actually be expanded
  
• Head of States in Parliamentary Republics are now selected based on their Interest Group's Clout (including Voting Power) rather than raw Political Strength
  
• Fixed case where Officer and a Gentleman event could target a character who had not been sent away
  
• Fixed an edge case in government petitions which could cause error log spam
  
• Fixed an issue where exiles events would cause error log spam
  
• Error log no longer spams with [RandomizableValueFloat.GetValue] while in MP
  
• John French can now be recruited as a General starting only in the year he begun his military career, not as a tiny baby
  

We hope this update will address your most pressing concerns with the content in Voice of the People and the base game balance and stability.

As I alluded to in the beginning, while the plan is to release the update officially on Monday June 26, we actually have a pre-release build available right now! You can switch to Steam branch 1.3.4-livetest to try it out. We're making it available ahead of time both to give modders more of a chance to update their mods for compatibility, and to ensure there are no major flaws on rare configurations or save games. Saves made on the livetest version will be fully compatible with the public release once it comes out.

That is all for me this week, but we will be back next Thursday before we take a summer break in the dev diary schedule! Until then!