Victoria 3 News

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Hello there! My name is Alex and I’m part of the QA team working on Victoria 3! I’m a relatively recent addition to the team, having only joined around March this year. Despite that, it has already been an incredible ride to see the game progress since then! Enough of that though, because today the topic at hand is something you likely have heard a lot about in previous dev diaries but that still deserves its own introduction: Cultures and Religions.

As you probably already know from one of our very first dev diaries, pops have a series of aspects that define and group them. These include where the pops live, what profession they have and what building they work in. On top of that, pops are also defined by their cultural and religious background.

When hovering a culture you get all kinds of data you might find useful, like in this example of the Japanese Pop culture (not to be confused with Japanese pop culture which would much later take the world by storm) tooltip

Cultures and religions in Victoria 3 are closely related and a central concept of what makes the game work. At their core, both of them work by having a set of traits that define how closely-related different cultures and religions are. These traits are what determine if a culture or religion will be accepted or discriminated against based on the different laws you might have in your country. As an example, both Catholicism and Protestantism have the Christian trait, meaning that they accept each other under the Freedom of Conscience law – which requires a shared trait between the religions - but not under the State Religion law – a law under which only pops of the state religion are accepted. The last alternative is of course the Total Separation law which accepts all religions no matter what traits they have..

The world has many cultures and traditions to get to know and learn more about.

Cultures work slightly differently. For one, you have descriptive traits such as which language a culture generally speaks, i.e. lusophone or hispanophone. You also have a special kind of trait called heritage which generally describes very broadly where a certain culture originated from geographically. Some laws specifically require cultures to share a heritage with the primary cultures for them to be accepted, such as National Supremacy and Racial Segregation. There’s also Cultural Exclusion which requires at least a single trait to be shared for the culture to be accepted. Finally, Multiculturalism accepts all cultures regardless of traits.

Maybe your ideal run is to achieve prosperity as an independent Greenland where the Inuit culture gets to decide its own destiny.

Closely tied to cultures and religions are the concepts of taboos and obsessions. Both of these affect, either negatively or positively, how much Pops are willing to pay for and consume certain goods. As such, both taboos and obsessions only apply to consumer goods as opposed to military or industrial goods (so no tank obsessions, sorry). Obsessions are tied to cultures, for instance the French culture being obsessed with wine or the Nepali with tea. As you might have guessed, taboos on the other hand are tied to religions. Importantly though, they still manifest themselves culturally. Every culture has a religion tied to it and “inherits” the taboos from that religion. This means that a catholic turkish pop will still have a taboo against wine and liquor for instance.

The Nepali know Tea is the superior hot drink and not that bitter bean juice people call coffee.

Another difference between obsessions and taboos is that while taboos don’t change throughout the game, obsessions are more fleeting and can emerge organically or be removed in case something significant happens, like the Opium Crisis for instance. If a certain good is abundantly available in a market, the Pops in that market have a small chance of becoming obsessed with it.

A prominent leader of the Comanche, Puhihwitsikwasu, or Iron Jacket for the uncultured Europeans, gets some impressive culturally defined clothes and headdress.

Cultures and religions touch on most of the game’s mechanics in one way or another as can be seen from previous dev diaries. From mechanics related to secessions, migrations and unifications all the way to discrimination, political strength and conversion/assimilation. Cultures are also tied to visual changes such as the appearance of characters. When playing Victoria 3, you will often be thinking about cultures in one way or another.

On top of all that, it might interest some of you that cultures and religions are very easily moddable to do what you want. Below you can find a quick Blorg culture mod I made with some details like localization files omitted. All in all a very simple process!

I’m fully expecting someone to make a “Blorg invasion from Outer Space” total conversion alt history mod now.

As you can see, the modding itself is very simple, even though I glossed over a few details like localization files and properly defining cultural traits as well as actually creating a Pop with the Blorg culture, but all of that is very straight forward.



That’s all for me folks! Exciting times are ahead of us and I’m looking forward to having you all play the game when it’s finally time. Until then maybe I’ll see you at our first upcoming stream next week or maybe even at PDXCON? Either way, next time Mikael will tell you a bit more about The Journey so Far!

Hello and welcome to yet another Victoria 3 development diary. Today we’re going to be talking about Achievements, and since I think absolutely everyone reading this already knows what an Achievement is, I’m not going to do the usual what-is-this-feature preface. But before I get to listing all the achievements that Victoria 3 will be releasing with, we do have something to announce in regards to achievements which will differ in Victoria 3 compared to earlier Paradox Grand Strategy Games, namely that Ironman and an unmodified checksum will no longer be required to unlock achievements.

That is to say, no matter what mods you have installed and whether you’re playing ironman or not, all of these achievements will be unlockable. There are a few game rules that disallow achievements, but since you could simply mod away that requirement if you wanted, not even this is a particularly hard rule. The reason for this change is simply that after quite a bit of discussion among the designers, we’ve decided that for Victoria 3 we want to emphasize access to achievements for everyone, even if that may end ‘devaluing’ the achievements in the eyes of some players.

Now then, with that out of the way and without further ado, I will get to listing, in no particular order, the 50 achievements that will be available in the release version of Victoria 3!

Peccavi: Starting as the British India Company, fully own the states of Sindh and Punjab.


Perkeletankki: Starting as Finland, produce at least 100 units of tanks every week.


Luxurious Luxemburg: Starting as Luxembourg, be the leading producer of Luxury Clothes, Luxury Furniture, and Porcelain.


Anarchy in the UK: Starting as Great Britain, have an Anarchist form of government.


Mohammed Ali’s Ambition: Starting as Egypt, form Arabia and own Thrace.


An Empire Under the Pun: Starting as the Sikh Empire, subjugate Great Britain.


I didn’t vote for Pedro: Starting as Brazil, change government to Republic and implement Universal Suffrage.


Go West, Young Man: Starting as the USA, own California, Oregon and Washington with 250k or more population in each.


The Western Protectorate: Starting as Great Qing, have a treaty port in France, Germany, the British Isles, Iberia and Italy.


The Paris Commune: Starting as France, become a Council Republic and have a Command Economy.


Barbary’s Back: Starting as Algeria, retake Algiers and become a Major Power.


Miners and Minors: Starting as Lanfang, incorporate all states in Borneo and have the 'Compulsory Primary School' law.


Healthy Man of Europe: Starting as the Ottomans, be the Greatest Power while having max level Public Health Insurance.


Habsburg Resurgence: Starting as Austria, own Silesia and Prussia must be Minor Power or lower rank.


The Great Game: Starting as Russia, own the entire Central Asia region.


Bourbon for Everyone: Starting as Spain, have an average standard of living of at least 20 while remaining a monarchy.


Manifest Mexico: Starting as Mexico, own the Pacific Coast & Great Plains, and have a higher Power Rank than the USA.


American Territory: Starting as the Indian Territory, have the USA as a subject with no more than three states.


Broken Promises: As Italy, join a diplomatic play against 2 or more of your allies.


The Berlin Conference: Starting as Prussia, form Germany and fully own at least 10 states in Africa.


Star-Swarmed Banner: As the United States, have 100 incorporated states represented on your flag.


Belle Époque: Starting as France, have the highest GDP per capita and Innovation generation in the world.


Deeds, Not Words: Pass the Women's Suffrage law.


First Flight: Be the first nation in the world to fly aeroplanes.


Victorian Century: Play a full campaign from 1836 to 1936.


Poor, Huddled Masses: Have a cultural migration target in one of your states.


Billionaire: Have a national GDP of at least £1 billion.


Serf’s Up: Starting as a nation with Serfdom, enact Worker’s Protections Labour Rights Law.


Risorgimento: Form the nation of Italy.


Three Hurrahs: Form the nation of Germany.


Solomon’s Quest: Form the nation of Ethiopia.


I am a Scandinavian: Form the nation of Scandinavia.


Enlightened Despot: Have electrical street lights in all states while being an Autocracy.


Mightier than the Sword: Have the other side back down in a diplomatic play.


Revolutionary: Switch sides to the revolutionaries in a civil war and win the ensuing conflict.


Reading Campaign: Starting as a nation with less than 20% literacy, get to 100% literacy.


We Are Not Amused: Starting as Great Britain, Expel Diplomats of a Great Power with Cordial or better relations.


Institutional: Have an institution at maximum investment level.


Poppydock: Have at least a level 8 port and export at least 2500 units of Opium to foreign markets.


Grander Colombia: Form Grand Colombia and own all land in the Gran Colombia, Andes, and La Plata strategic regions.


Inventive: Research all technologies across all three categories.


Educated: Complete the 'Learn the Game' objective.


Tycoon: Complete the 'Economic Dominance' objective.


Hegemon: Complete the 'Hegemon' objective.


Caretaker: Complete the 'Egalitarian Society' objective.


That’s all of them, and that’s all for today! Join us again next week as Alex goes into more depth about Cultures and Religions!