Victoria 3 News

Hello again! Last week we announced that the Voice of the People Immersion Pack will be released alongside the 1.3 Update on May 22nd and included in the Grand Edition of Victoria 3. Following on from that, today we’ll be going into depth on Agitators and Exiles, the central mechanical features of the update.

As I teased in the previous dev diary, Agitators are populist firebrands who lead Political Movements to support their ideological goals in your country. They might be the only avenue towards moving your country in a direction opposed by your political elite, allowing you to leverage their support to enact laws that would otherwise find no support. Alternatively they might be dangerous dissidents who oppose the very foundations of your rule, leading the people to revolt against the state. Agitators are a free feature included in the 1.3 Update but various bells and whistles, primarily the historical Agitator characters, will be exclusive to the Voice of the People Immersion Pack.

Lenin is one of the historical Agitators that can appear in your game. Depending on conditions in Russia when he becomes politically active, he might either remain there and immediately agitate for a communist revolution or first spend some time in Exile.

Voice of the People will include over 60 historical Agitators that can appear throughout the world in your game, but regardless of whether you own the Immersion Pack you will also see “unscripted” Agitators emerge. There are three ways that an Agitator can appear your country:

• They can appear randomly, with a frequency based on your country’s literacy rate
  
• They can appear through scripted Events
  
• Exiled characters can be invited to your country as Agitators
  

When Agitators appear in your country, their Ideology is determined both by the many factors that already influence which Ideology characters receive and also by whether they would have laws to agitate for. For example, the Feminist ideology supports Women’s Suffrage, so if you already have this law you will not get Feminist Agitators. Agitators are intended to be opponents of the status quo, fighting alongside the people for the change they want to see in the world.

Giuseppe Mazzini begins in Exile, and here has decided to take up residence in the Papal States where he was shocked to discover its suboptimal non-republican mode of government.

Agitators always support a Political Movement. When an Agitator arrives in your country, they will immediately look for an existing movement that they will support - either because their personal Ideology favors it over the current law in that category, or because their Interest Group wants it and it does not conflict with their personal ideology. If there are no Political Movements that an Agitator will support, they will instead create their own, rallying the people to their cause regardless of whether any of the powers that be approve of their methods. When creating their own Political Movements, Agitators will be heavily biased towards reforming whichever law in your country is most detestable to their personal Ideology. For example, a Nihilist Agitator entering a country with State Religion is very likely to create a movement in opposition to that law. This makes some Agitators more dangerous to the status quo than others - Radical Agitators for instance strongly desire a republican form of government, making them especially dangerous in monarchies.

Through Events, Agitators will take a role in enacting laws, supporting revolutionary movements, and influencing elections.

Between the free 1.3 Update and the content exclusive to Voice of the People, we have written over 350 new Events for Victoria 3. Many of these Events are aimed at improving the variety of content you’ll experience while your country is passing a law, having an election, or dealing with a brewing revolution, and we’ve focused on prominently including Agitators in as many of them as possible.

The movement for women’s suffrage will now emerge from Agitators leading your Pops in Political Movements rather than Interest Group Leaders gaining a Feminist Ideology.

Now that we have Agitators in the game, we’ve updated some existing content to make use of them, often in places where we were instead relying on Interest Group Leaders. In places where the content was much more thematically appropriate to popular movements rather than political elites, we shook things up a bit so that Agitators get created and involved instead or as well. For instance, the Votes for Women and the Springtime of the People Journal Entries and related Events now make extensive use of Agitators.

In 1.3 Agitators will join Political Movements that can boil over into Revolutions. In the future (no promises as to exactly when), we would like to overhaul our Nationalism/Secession systems and also give Agitators a role in national liberation movements. For this reason many significant and interesting figures that might have been solid Agitator candidates like Gandhi or Cao Futian haven’t been included in 1.3, as we feel we can do them more justice at a later time.

Here you can see which Exiles are looking for a new home. For ease of use, you can sort by Interest Group and by whether your country is able to accept an Exile. You can also helpfully see what kind of Political Movement the Exile will join or create when they become an Agitator in your country.

Exiles are characters with no nation, who have left or been forcibly ejected from their home country and are seeking new opportunities to spread their political Ideology. This pool of Exiles is populated when other countries (or indeed, you yourself) decide to boot a character out of the country, so all of these Exiles have a story to tell and a home that they have left behind.

Countries have a soft limit on the number of Agitators that can be active at once. If you are at or over your limit, you cannot invite more Exiles to your country and new Agitators will not appear. In 1836 you’ll have 2 at most, if you’re a Great Power, else you’re limited to 1. Later in the game, Society techs will unlock additional potential for Agitators. Labor Movement, Political Agitation, and Mass Propaganda all increase your capacity for Agitators. This means that as the game progresses your internal politics will become increasingly divisive and there will be more competing demands from Agitators and the people they inspire.

There are also some restrictions on which Exiles you are able to invite:

• Devout Agitators must always share your state religion. We don’t want Buddhist Theocrats agitating for a Protestant Theocracy!
  
• On a similar note, if you have the State Religion law all Exiles you invite must share your state religion.
  
• You cannot invite Exiles with cultures that are discriminated against in your country. This limits historically implausible scenarios where characters travel vast distances to become major political figures in societies that would likely not accept them.
  
• If you have Closed Borders, you are entirely prohibited from inviting Exiles.
  

Victor Hugo’s exile took him to some very exciting places, such as the Channel Island of Jersey where he was expelled for criticism of Queen Victoria. He then moved to the much worse island of Guernsey instead. I have absolutely no bias when it comes to the Channel Islands.

Just as you can invite Exiles to your country, you can also send characters into Exile. Just like with inviting Exiles, Exiling a character also has some restrictions on its use:

• If you have Protected Speech, you are entirely prohibited from Exiling characters
  
• If the character is not an Agitator, their Interest Group cannot be Marginalized, in government, or Insurrectionary
  
• You can never Exile your ruler or heir
  

You’ll notice that these rules absolutely allow you to exile Agitators belonging to Interest Groups that are part of your government.

Exiling a character is not “free”. You are not able to simply remove any character that is not to your taste on a whim without consequence. Like all Character Interactions (more on that soon), there’s a cooldown for using it. But more importantly doing so can create Radicals in your country. You’ll get extra Radicals if you have the Right of Assembly law, and slightly fewer if you have Censorship - but notably no additional Radicals if you have Outlawed Dissent. You’ll also get extra Radicals if the character in question has high Popularity.

An interesting quirk of Exiling a character is that if they have the incredibly boring Moderate Ideology, they will inexplicably develop political opinions that are hostile to the government that Exiled them. No idea why they’d do that.

Agitators who return home might be met with a hero’s welcome or steely-eyed disdain, depending on how things have changed (or not changed) since they left.

When a character is Exiled, we store their home country and use this in Events, such as the above. For the modders out there, this is accessible using the home_country scope. You as the player can also use this for your own nefarious purposes, as you can Repatriate Exiles to your Rivals. It can be very satisfying to wait for an opportune moment of weakness and send a Radical Agitator that you have safely harbored in your progressive Republic back to your rival’s ailing Monarchy to cause trouble.

Finding suitors for your monarchs and heirs can help improve relations with nations that share your religious faith.

Character Interactions are … well they’re what they say on the tin, a new way to interact with characters accessible through the right-click menu or by pressing the Interactions button at the top right of the character panel. These interactions can entail anything from Exiling a dissident to finding that character a suitably distinguished spouse. The full list of Character Interactions coming in 1.3 is presented here:

• We’ve converted the Grant and Remove Command interactions for rulers into Character Interactions, as well as Retire Command for ordinary commanders.
  
• Royal Marriages! Available for free with the 1.3 Update.
  
• Owners of Voice of the People can use the Grant Leadership Interaction to promote an Agitator to an Interest Group Leader, which replaces their Agitator role.
  
• Owners of the Voice of the People can use the Grant Command Interaction to promote an Agitator to a General, which does NOT replace their Agitator role.
  
• Owners of Voice of the People can have their monarch Abdicate the Throne under certain circumstances, such as the monarch’s advanced age.
  
• Though we had previously said that Exile Character, Invite Exile, and Repatriate Exile Interactions are exclusive to owners of Voice of the People, this is something that we have re-examined following the community discussions on the topic. After some internal discussions in the team, we have decided that these interactions are too much a core part of the Agitators mechanic and thus we will make them part of the free update.
  
• Owners of Voice of the People have access to some France-exclusive Interactions related to the struggle between the different dynastic Houses. We’ll talk more about that next week.
  

Personally I’m quite partial to Sublime. Post your favourite text editor in the comments and argue passionately about which is superior!

Character Interactions are extremely moddable, and use the same essential scripting norms that we use in Journal Entries, Decisions, etc. You can create your own interactions, define when an Interaction is visible, the circumstances of use, its effect, a cooldown, AI weighting, etc. If for instance you wanted to create a Character Interaction that allows you to target a politician for assassination, it would be relatively easy to write some script that allows you to select an appropriate target for your devious machinations.

And that is all I have for you today. Next week I’ll be back, alongside my Content Designers, to talk about the historical content exclusive to France coming in the Voice of the People Immersion Pack. See you there!

Good afternoon Victorians! It is with great pleasure that I can finally reveal to you our first Immersion Pack: Voice of the People. Voice of the People is the Immersion Pack promised by and included in the Grand Edition of Victoria 3, and will be released alongside the free 1.3 Update on May 22nd. Today’s dev diary will give you a feature overview for Voice of the People, as well as some words on our design philosophy for Immersion Packs and an update on our team structure.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Proudhon is one of many historical Agitators in Voice of the People, alongside other noteworthies such as Leon Trotsky, Sun Yat Sen, and Susan B Anthony.

Without giving too much away - we’ll be going more in depth on this next week - Voice of the People is named for its headliner feature: Agitators. Agitators are a new kind of character that rally your pops to support Political Movements that align with their Ideology. Agitators will shake up your internal politics, acting independently of their Interest Groups. Amplifying power from below, Agitators serve an opposite function to Interest Group Petitions which reflect the demands of the political elite. Depending on how your goals align with theirs, Agitators might be a painful thorn in your side or a valuable ally to your political agenda.

Mr Marx, having been unceremoniously booted out of his home country, is looking for a loving home.

Are you sick and tired of that one Agrarian Party leader with inexplicably high Popularity stealing votes from your cherished Liberals? Is there a Radical Agitator spreading dangerous ideas in your bastion of political reaction? Well I’ve got a solution for you: Exile. Inconvenient characters can now be expelled from your nation and driven into political exile, up for grabs for whatever nation wants to harbor your unpatriotic dissidents. On the other side of things, perhaps you feel like your nation needs a shakeup, and that Danish Anarchist Exile would be just the man for the job - you can peruse the list of available Exiles and invite them to your country as an Agitator.

Napoleon III went on to restore the French Empire in our timeline, but what would France look like under the House of Orleans or the Legitimists?

Vive la révolution! Vive la France! Voice of the People’s content and visual focus is themed around France, one of the greatest powers of the era and one of the most, in my humble opinion, in need of a healthy dose of content. In an upcoming dev diary we’ll be going into detail about what we have planned for France, but right now I can tell you that we’ll be tackling such weighty topics as the Paris Commune, the Dreyfus Affair, and the dynastic struggle for the French throne - including of course the return of the Bonapartes. We’ll also be covering the nation’s quest for territorial expansion both within Europe and beyond. With ample new Journal Entries and Events, playing as France will offer a much more immersive experience.

The map of the world has become some sort of Carte du Monde.

I think by now you’ve probably noticed that something is different in these screenshots. Voice of the People will add not only a beautiful baroque blue UI skin, but also a totally new French-themed paper map of the world - featuring my personal favorite art in the game, the Pacific Bread Centaur. On the character art side, we’ve added many new historical Agitators who will have their own unique appearance including outfits and props. And as if that weren’t enough, there’s even more to come in the dev diary on visual features in a few weeks' time.

This is the Bread Centaur. I will not elaborate.

I think I can state with confidence that devs and players alike share a love of staring at maps. We also really enjoy nitpicking and complaining about maps. While our content designers were busy making French content they noticed that there was room for improvement for the state region and city hub setup in the country. These aren’t the only changes to the map coming in 1.3 - most notably we’ve made major changes to Algeria which we’ll also talk about in a future dev diary.

Can you spot what else is different about France besides the borders?

I’d like to talk a bit about what an Immersion Pack entails for Victoria 3 and how we’ve decided which parts of the 1.3 Update will be free to all players and which will be exclusive to the Immersion Pack.

So far, everything we’ve talked about in the previous 1.3 Dev Diaries is part of the free update - the Revolution Clock, the changes to Law Enactment, and the new Laws for instance. These are reworks of existing systems and additions to them, exactly the kinds of changes that Paradox veterans might expect in a free update.

Immersion Packs are envisioned as content-driven and art-heavy, with mechanical features that support this content and make the world come to life. As the title implies, Immersion Packs are about immersion. You can expect them to contain plenty of narrative content like Events and Journal Entries, major visual updates, and light but impactful new mechanical features and systems reworks. Immersion Packs will be themed around one country or region of the world, and this is where the bulk of narrative content and art will be focused and take inspiration from. These new mechanical features and systems reworks will be mostly contained in the free update that will be released alongside the Immersion Pack - everyone gets the feature, but Immersion Pack owners will also get all the bells and whistles. In the case of Voice of the People, Agitators will be a free feature while certain interactions (such as Exiling characters) will be included in the Immersion Pack.

Time for a team update! Since around the game’s release, the Victoria 3 team has transitioned from being a project aimed at delivering a single product - Victoria 3 1.0 - to a team that can work on multiple updates simultaneously. We’ve divided ourselves into three sub-teams with different focuses, sizes, and fields of expertise. For instance the “Machinists” team was responsible for bringing you the 1.2 Update, and is defined by a focus on systems design and code-heavy tasks. Voice of the People and 1.3 is primarily the work of the “Academics” and “Artisans” teams, which focus on narrative design/scripted content and art respectively.

The teams tie in to our major post-release goals that we’ve talked about before: 1.3 and Voice of the People are focused on Internal Politics and Historical Immersion, which (very deliberately) lines up perfectly with the expertise of the Academics and Artisans teams. While the Academics and Artisans work on 1.3, the Machinists team is cooking up the next systems-focused update, which will include some long-awaited free updates related to our other post-release pillars. We’re far from ready to start talking about this now, but I can assure you it is exciting stuff.

I’m sure you’re excited to read more about Voice of the People, but that will have to be all for this week. Join me for next week’s dev diary, where I’ll be going into depth on the mechanical features: Agitators and Exiles - as well as unveiling a new (super moddable) way to interact with characters.

Voice of the People will release on May 22nd alongside Patch 1.3. Pre-orders available now with limited-time bonus content, also included in the Grand Edition!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2282100

Hello. This is Victoria, also known as Pacifica, and today we will be going over the new laws added in 1.3.

By and large, these laws exist to grant an experience that allows for more “modern” forms of states, to represent the changing ideologies of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and to represent some of the most contentious and important issues of the period - land reform, anti-clericalism, and more modernised systems of governance.





One of the most important political issues within modernising nations was the matter of land reform. Whilst most European nations, by 1836, had abolished formal serfdom, they often still had tenant farming systems which gave landlords an immense amount of power over the peasantry. Within the period of Victoria 3, many political movements throughout developing nations explicitly sought to handle the issue of landlord power even after serfdom was formally abolished.

Under the new Land Reform law category, production methods pertaining to the rural economy have been decoupled from the Economic System law, instead being folded into this category. The ownership production methods available for farms and plantations will be determined through the player’s Land Reform laws.

Previously, the distinction between the system of serfdom and non-serfdom was extremely non-granular. Once serfdom was abolished, the player could safely ignore the issue of land reform for the entirety of the game, only touching this law category again if they wished to implement workers’ protections. With the new Land Reform law category, the issue of who owns land has been separated from the rights of workers, allowing for increased choice within both categories, and options for interesting political setups, such as a highly laissez-faire republic with a modern commercialised agriculture law and a total lack of workers’ rights, or a paternalistic monarchy that maintains serfdom, but considers protections for labourers to be an innate component of its social contract.



The new Land Reform laws represent a variety of land ownership schema, all of which play an important role in affecting the political strength of groups in your nation. Whilst Serfdom and Tenant Farmers greatly benefit the traditional landowning elites, the new Homesteading law both provides a base benefit to the political strength of the Rural Folk, and unlocks the new Homesteading production method, which cuts the proportion of Aristocrats in farms, whilst increasing the amount of Farmer jobs.

Pictured: A wheat farm in Russia with Serfdom active, versus a wheat farm in the USA with Homesteading active. The USA’s starting Homesteading law empowers the Rural Folk in the North, whilst the Southern plantations remain dominated by the Landowners.



Commercialised and Collectivised Agriculture, respectively, represent more “modern” systems of industrial agriculture, with commercialised agriculture treating land as private property and farming as a business like any other, unlocking the Publicly Traded production method. Collectivised agriculture, on the other hand, organises the land into plots worked by agricultural collectives. These collectives can either be owned by the workers themselves, or owned directly by the state, unlocking both the Workers’ Cooperative and Government Run production methods.



As laws that greatly affect the balance of power within nations, land reform is prone to sparking very contentious debate amongst the populace, as well as fierce resistance from those that have interests in the current system - but the opportunity granted to emerging classes by the prospect of land reform will serve as a boon to the player’s efforts to enact them.







Many states within the time frame of Victoria 3 had politics that were dominated by differing attitudes towards religion. Nations such as Mexico, the Spanish Republic, and the socialist states of the early 20th century all practised strong anti-clerical politics, seeking to minimise the political influence of traditional religious institutions within society. These anti-religious policies will be modeled in 1.3 with the new State Atheism law, and with it, the new Atheist “religion”.



State Atheism is the ultimate means to reduce the power of the Devout within a nation, banning religion from public life and making all religions discriminated against. Nations with State Atheism will gain a new Atheist state religion to replace their previous one, and enactment will grant a small group of Atheist pops in your nation.

Pictured: Whilst Mexico’s policy may be State Atheism, Catholics still make up a supermajority of the nation - it has a long way to go to truly eradicate religion from public life.



Whilst this is an immensely effective way of reducing the power of religious institutions within the state, State Atheism will create a massive group of discriminated pops, which will increase turmoil through the nation. With this law, it will be ever more important to both focus on keeping standard of living high, and prioritising national values to quash the remnants of religion within your country.

State Atheism will generally be backed by Nihilists, Communists, and other similar ideologies. The process of enacting State Atheism will ignite conflicts between secular and religious society - but it will also open new opportunities for social experimentation, as traditional institutions are rendered marginalised.







The final two laws added in 1.3 are the Technocracy and Single-Party State laws, both representing more modern distributions of power that were either implemented or theorised about during the tail end of our time period. Both of these laws grant significant Authority, with Single-Party State granting the highest flat bonus to Authority in the game.



The new Single-Party State law is intended as a late-game replacement to the Autocracy and Oligarchy laws, designed to fit into the era of mass politics and the party-state. Once Single-Party State is enacted, either the ruler’s IG’s political party will become the sole political party in the nation, or a new political party involving the ruler’s IG will form. Elections will be held every four years as normal, with the single legal party always getting 100% of the vote.


Pictured: The modern face of the Empire of Japan, ruled by the firm hand of the Taisei Yokusankai.



Under a monarchial single party state, the head of state will be hereditary as normal, but under another system, whenever the head of state dies or otherwise changes, a new leader will be chosen from the interest groups within the party. A single-party state does permit including non-party interest groups - but they will come at a substantial hit to legitimacy.

Enacting a single-party state will enrage those interest groups not contained within the party - but it will allow a unique political situation where both more “authoritarian” laws like Command Economy and Collectivised Agriculture, and more “democratic” laws such as Women’s Suffrage and Elected Bureaucrats are available.

Pictured: An enactment event that can arise, if the idea of a single-party state is already popular in your country… and one that can arise if the people are not so thrilled about it.





Pictured: A closer look at the Regime. I love the Regime.



Meanwhile, a Technocracy represents rule by the trained and educated, in accordance with the theories of figures such as Henri de Saint-Simon and Howard Scott. The tendencies that technocracy draws from are myriad, but all desire a state primarily ruled by technical experts. A technocratic state will tend to be supported more by the Intelligentsia and Industrialists, and provides benefits to the political strength of the educated class, from academics to officers. Technocracies will dispense with the inefficient and unenlightened notion of “democracy” altogether, removing political parties, cancelling elections, and ruling in a fashion similar to Autocracies, Anarchies, and Oligarchies.



Technocracy can be combined with every set of governance principles in the game [although such combinations may be quite unstable], meaning that both the Platonic ideal of enlightened governance, and the grand dreams of true Vperedist patriots can be realised under this law.



A Technocracy will be greatly beneficial for those that wish to enshrine the rule of the Industrialists and Intelligentsia without worrying about elections - and it, as well, permits the Command Economy law, allowing for a highly centralised, streamlined, and optimised economy under the auspices of stone-faced men in stately grey suits.





As the final law we will be visiting, we have precisely the opposite of Technocracy, and one of the most drastic changes in playstyle in Victoria 3 - Industry Banned.



The Industry Banned law represents the most radical elements of opposition to the industrialisation of the Victorian Era. Under this law, all heavy industry in your nation - steel mills, motor industries, chemical plants, and more - will be destroyed, and cannot be replaced until the law is replaced. Furthermore, this law forbids all automation technologies for the industries that remain, mandating the economy remain both small-scale and labour intensive. Technology spread and research speed will be sharply reduced, allowing your nation to remain in a pristine pastoral state, unblemished by things such as smog, labour-saving technology, or modern medicine.

Pictured: The machines may threaten to overthrow us, but there is one thing they lack - the unbreakable and universal concordat of Humanity.



Of course, passing this law will be immensely contentious. Any group that has an opinion on the economic system will usually have a low opinion of abolishing the means of production entirely. There are, of course, some proponents of this law that may arise, however - and, under a sufficiently cruel and alienating system, some otherwise reasonable people may see putting an end to industry itself as desirable to the status quo.



Industry Banned will enormously empower the Rural Folk, and through disabling heavy industry, will also harm the influence of the Industrialists, and boost the Landowners. By combining Homesteading and Industry Banned, one can acquire a +75% bonus to the clout of the Rural Folk - creating the rural, idyllic realm within which power lies primarily with smallholding settlers.

As you can see, we are putting significant effort into making both internal politics and ideological variation more interesting and flavourful in 1.3, as well as creating additional laws for both more exotic late game situations and critically important political issues that defined the time.

Also, revolutions now always adopt the most desired governance principles of their most powerful IG. You won’t be seeing any more radical or communist revolutions with monarchs at their heads.

Pictured: One example of a revolutionary government against a monarchy, composed mostly of people who are ambivalent on the question of monarchism versus republicanism.



That is all, and we will see you next week.