Victoria 3 News

Hello fellow Victorians, and happy Thursday!
Alex here and it’s my turn to bring you another exciting update on what’s coming with 1.7. This time I’ve been tasked with showing you a selection of certified Cool™ things we’re doing that didn’t really fit in other Dev Diaries. This will be a lot like the proverbial box of chocolates, you never know what you are going to get next!

[h2]Religion and Culture map modes[/h2]
In case you missed it, a few Dev Diaries ago we mentioned in passing that we now have a new highly requested map mode that shows you what religion the Pops in different states follow. This new mapmode functions similarly to the Culture map mode you are already familiar with.

Additionally, while implementing the religion map mode we also took the opportunity to upgrade both of these map modes so they now show if there are significant cultural or religious minorities in those states. The way it works is that, apart from the largest culture or religion, if a second culture’s or religion’s relative population is above a certain threshold, we blend the colors weighted by that relative population. Up to three cultures or religions can be represented this way, each with separate thresholds for each of the map modes. These thresholds are completely moddable and if you just prefer the old look, you can easily revert back to it.

Being able to see the clear divide between Protestants and Catholics in Europe really hits different!

The new upgraded cultural map mode does a much better job at showcasing all the different cultures in Brazil. I like how you can see the lavender haze shifting in tones between the different Northeastern states as the game progresses.

[h2]National Migration[/h2]
For a long time you have all been talking about how it’s awkward that your migration laws also prevent your pops from migrating inside your country, rather than only restricting it when moving out. With 1.7 this will change!

Migration laws will no longer prevent pops moving between states in your country. Instead, your migration laws will only prevent pops from moving out of or into your country, be it through mass migrations or through regular market migration from other countries within your market or power bloc.

These are the 22 laws Japan starts with. Closed Borders and Isolationism in particular make Japan a fairly unique starting country in how isolated they are. Previously this meant no inter-state migration could happen, which severely limited your growth opportunities.

Starting with 1.7 that won’t be a problem anymore as countries with Closed Borders will allow their own pops to migrate between their states, while still being closed to the outside.

[h2]Support and Guarantee Independence pacts[/h2]
As part of our changes to subject mechanics we’ve also introduced two new diplomatic pacts:

• Support Independence
  
• Guarantee Independence
  

As you might imagine, they allow you to signal to a country that you will side with them in a potential war for their independence. Guarantee Independence works essentially as a one-sided defensive pact letting you support a country if they were to be attacked, while Support Independence is for countries that are not currently independent. One particularly cool aspect of this is that subjects can now support the independence of other subjects of the same overlord, potentially leading to a big war for joint independence.

An Indian-Canadian alliance might be somewhat unexpected, but I can appreciate the enthusiasm to stop being under British rule. So long, London!

Must feel reassuring for Belgium to be Guaranteed by Britain, France and Prussia. You have to wonder what it will mean for the development of Europe. I’m sure it will last.

[h2]Multiple Active Wars[/h2]
Another highly requested feature! For a long time you’ve been asking for this and now we were finally able to do it. In the current version of the game you can’t initiate a war if you already have another war in progress. Starting in 1.7, you will be able to initiate as many simultaneous wars as you want. You still need to wait for each diplomatic play to progress to war before starting another one, but other than that if you wish to wage war against the whole world, you’re free to do so.

Pictured: France thinking they can take on Spain while already fighting Prussia (notice the widget at the top). What year do they think it is? 1808? Maybe it’s time for another coalition. Paris is lovely this time of year.

[h2]Calling an Ally now gives them a war goal of their choosing[/h2]
In 1.7 calling an ally will now let that ally pick a war goal of their own. This is done through the regular Add War Goal interface and adds it as a secondary demand. This war goal is subject to a maneuvers limit, but doesn’t cost maneuvers for the war leader.

Of course, now they want help. Maybe don’t start wars you can’t win. I guess we can help for the right price, but this is the last time.

[h2]Overlords can now side against their subjects during revolutions[/h2]
Tired of having to support your subject in a revolution when they get into their Communist phase despite you being a staunch defender of the sanctity of the free market? In 1.7 you’ll be able to support the revolutionary side instead. If you do, when the war breaks out it will make the revolutionary country your subject instead and you can then fight the war and go on as usual.

Come on, Norway. You knew all too well this was going to happen when you tried to pass State Atheism. I’m done.

See? Look what you made me do. Now I have to fight Prussia while siding with the Devout!

[h2]Unidirectional Truces[/h2]
Another requested feature that is coming with 1.7 is the support for unidirectional truces that only prevents one side from starting fights with the other. Unidirectional truces will, at least for now, only be applied after breaking a Guarantee Independence pact and after changing the autonomy of subjects, but let us know if you have any suggestions for other cool places we could use them in.

Well, that didn’t last long. Good thing Europe is at peace and wars are a thing of the past… Right?

[h2]Subjects can turn against overlord at high enough liberty desire[/h2]
With the coming update, at high enough liberty desire levels, a subject might offer to support your enemies in exchange for their support in getting independence from you or simply raising your subject’s autonomy.

Make sure to keep your subjects happy. The treacherous ones might decide to backstab you.

[h2]Auto-downsizing for Privately owned buildings[/h2]
Privately-owned Buildings that are not able to fill all their vacancies will in 1.7 start downsizing on their own under certain conditions. If it becomes relevant, the building will issue a warning that it intends to downsize in 12 months, unless conditions get better. If it starts downsizing it will remove levels one at a time until the number of employees better matches its output and profit potentials.

Finally something is being done about all those abandoned buildings all over the place. Maybe we can clean it up and repurpose old industrial areas into parks or something.

[h2]New Character Outfits[/h2]
We have also added a few more character clothing options. In particular I really like these late game military British and French outfits!

This guy is exactly how I imagine an innocent British lord in the 1800s going on their first field trip to the colonies would look like. “Blimey lads, they have us surrounded!”

This one on the other hand looks like he has some serious bad blood with someone (probably the Prussians)

Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition! (also look at this guy’s style! I want a hat like that)

[h2]New Companies[/h2]
We have a number of new companies coming for Sphere of Influence owners! Here’s some of my favorite ones:







In addition to these, the following companies will also be introduced with Sphere of Influence:

• Perskhlopok
  
• Persshelk
  
• Šerkat-e Eslāmiya
  
• West Ural Petroleum Company, Limited
  
• Kirgizian Mining [Joint Stock] Company
  
• Moscow Irrigation Company
  
• Tashkent Railroad
  
• MM. Nicolas Portalis et Cie.
  
• Anglo-Persian Oil Company
  

The following companies will be available for all players as part of the 1.7 free update:

• Iranian State Railway
  
• Šerkat-e Etteḥādīya-ye Welāyat-e Šemālī
  
• Bongāh-e Enḥeṣār-e Ṣāderāt-e Taryāk
  
• Arthur Guinness Son & Co. Ltd
  
• Oriental Development Company
  
• Turkish Petroleum Company
  

That’s all for now! Hope you enjoyed this smörgåsbord of assorted changes coming soon. Next week Vicka will be telling you more about modding in 1.7!

Hello and happy Thursday!
It’s Lino, back from the depths of development, to talk about more details on Power Blocs, one of the central new systems coming to you with Sphere of Influence on June 24.
If you don’t know anything about Power Blocs yet, I recommend you to give my first Dev Diary on them a good look because we will be referencing a lot of the terminology today.

Small disclaimer for today’s Dev Diary:
You will see a lot of WIP values, for modifiers and bonuses, for special powers and so on. Take them all with a grain of salt please, as we’re in the process of touching a number of these right now. If you have feedback on them, we’re happy to read it though! We have plans to adjust some values before release.

[h2]Identities[/h2]
On release, there will be five different Central Identity Pillars to choose from for your Power Bloc. One of which is available to everybody, even if you did not purchase the DLC.

The Identities differentiate themselves from another by a couple of things:

• All five Identities have a unique power that the leader has access to which is central to how the Identity plays out
  
• They have one or more unique effects for the leader or members
  
• The Primary Principle Groups which each Bloc needs at least one Principle from are different
  
• Some Principle Groups are unlocked only by a specific Identity
  
• How a Power Bloc’s Cohesion value is calculated depends on its Identity
  

Even if you do not own Sphere of Influence, you can play as the countries that have a historic Power Bloc at game start, even if they are not a Trade League (Great Britain, Russia, Ottoman Empire, Austria). You can keep the Principles their Power Blocs start with, that you would not usually have access to, but you will not be able to expand on them or replace them with other principles you could not usually pick.

The five Identities are:

• Trade League (free with 1.7)
  
• Sovereign Empire
  
• Military Treaty
  
• Ideological Union
  
• Religious Convocation
  

So let’s look at some Identity details, shall we?

Trade League

The first big thing we can see for the Trade League Identity is their unique attribute which automatically makes every Power Bloc member part of a Customs Union under the Power Bloc Leader.
This lets you recreate the Customs Union pact functionality which will be removed with the 1.7 update.
Don’t worry, for all other Identities there will be an alternative path which we’ll get to.

Next up, we can see the Bloc Leader only effect for Trade Leagues. In this case, 4 Trade Routes will be free of bureaucracy cost for the leader.

Also the Internal Trade Principle Group is unlocked by this Identity and is in fact one of Trade League’s Primary Principle Groups. One of these Primary Groups is required to be picked from when you first create your own Power Bloc.

Speaking of that Principle Group, here is a closer look at Internal Trade.






As you can see, the first tier comes with a heavy hitter in the form of a bonus to Market Access Price Impact (also lovingly called MAPI) for all Bloc members.
Growing convoy contributions to the Power Bloc Leader can be seen, alongside tariff increases and other infrastructure improvements due to the harmonization of regulations within the Bloc.

The other Primary Principle Group for Trade Leagues is the External Trade Group:

Note that in some cases (a customs union in the Bloc) the bureaucracy cost is not actually going to provide any benefit. But since you can use it also outside the Trade League, it will provide a benefit for you there.





Due to unified trade policies, various improvements to Trade Routes can be found in this group. But we also see a new thing in the list, which is the unlocking of a new Production Method (PM) for Trade Centers.
When selected, that PM will replace the base PM since it is an upgraded version of it and provides you with a bonus to Influence!
Last but not least, we can see that on tier 3, members will gain the power to establish trade routes without requiring interest in the region. That should make it easier, even for small member countries, to engage in trade across the globe.

The last thing that is specific for Trade Leagues is how their Cohesion value is calculated. For this we look at the leader’s GDP share of the total Bloc GDP. The higher the leader’s share, the better for Cohesion. Then we also apply a penalty for each shortage that is happening in your market. To compensate for this, we are adding a bonus for each top producer of a good (rank #1 to #3).

Sovereign Empire

Onwards to the Sovereign Empire Identity. At game start, multiple Power Blocs will have this at their core. Namely the British, Russian and Ottoman Empire.
It allows the leader to subjugate other Power Bloc members and make them a vassal of their own!
Additionally, choosing this Identity reduces the weekly Liberty Desire progress of all subjects that the Power Bloc leader has. Note: The current effect’s description is wrong, it will be updated for release to indicate this applies to their subjects, not themself.

Next up we also have two Primary Principle Groups for the Sovereign Empire. Let’s start with a closer look at Vassalization:






We can see that it does what the name promises - various improvements to having subjects and managing them with the third tier even allowing you to enact decrees in your subjects which you use to further bolster them.

Next is a group that is exclusive to Sovereign Empire Power Blocs, Exploitation of Members:






Here we see that this group comes with some penalties for the regular members, in favor of only providing the leader with benefits.
In turn, since members will not enjoy that of course, the Power Bloc’s Cohesion takes a hit. So you will need to evaluate if the benefits outweigh the costs for you or if you are able to find other ways to cut down on Cohesion penalties.

Speaking of Cohesion, for Sovereign Empires you will have to manage your subjects and strengthen your Prestige. The highest Liberty Desire among the leader’s subjects imposes a penalty of equal value. So if the British East India Company has the highest Liberty Desire among the British subjects with a value of 40, the Cohesion penalty will also be 40 for example.
On the other hand leaders get a bonus to Cohesion based on their share of total Prestige in the Power Bloc.



The third Identity we’re looking at today is the Military Treaty (yes, it received a catchier name).

Military Treaty Military Goods Cost is a placeholder effect which will be replaced before release

First thing we see is “Allows free War Goal”. But what does that mean? It means that the Leader of a Military Treaty Power Bloc may add a single secondary War Goal to any Diplomatic Play of members that the Leader is also involved in, even if they joined of their own volition. This war goal can “cost” up to 30 maneuvers, but it will not actually subtract any when selected.

There is also a placeholder modifier in this screenshot (which will be replaced before release!), that reduces the military goods cost for all Bloc members. In its place another effect is going to be added, with the focus remaining on the military side of things of course.
In addition there are a few more for increased Prestige from Power Projection for both, leader and member.

As for the other identities, we have two Primary Principle Groups, one of which is exclusive to Military Treaty Blocs.

The first group is Defensive Cooperation:






Like most other Principle Groups, Defensive Cooperation does what you would expect. Through mutual commitment, Power Blocs with this Principle are not able to wage war among each other. On the higher tiers, swaying countries gets easier if you’re the target of a play and on tier 3, all members are being forced to join all Diplomatic Plays if a member is being targeted.

But what would imperialism be without waging some war yourself? That’s what the other, exclusive to the Military Treaty group is for:






Ranging from lower infamy generation to forcing every member to join all Diplomatic Plays of any other member, this group is for you if you’re planning to conquer the world (or at least parts of it). Beware of the Cohesion penalty on the third tier due to members not wanting to go to war constantly.
Cohesion in Military Treaty Blocs is dependent on the leader’s share of the Bloc’s Power Projection, similar to how Prestige works for Sovereign Empires in that regard.
Reductions to Cohesion are based on the highest infamy value in the Bloc and the country with the worst relations with the leader.

Next up, we’re taking a peek at Ideological Unions:

Ideological Union

Here we see that Ideological Union leaders can Force Regime Changes in member countries. There are a few conditions like how different their laws need to be compared to the leader’s, how much Cohesion the Power Bloc has and some minor others.
When you do it, what happens is again what you would expect: You enforce a regime change on the target country, changing their laws, without having to go to war.

Good thing the Ideological Union Power Blocs have an easier access to Regime Changes. Because one of the negative Cohesion factors for these Blocs is the country with the biggest difference in Governance Principles and Distribution of Power law groups compared to the leader.
A positive factor is found in the form of the leader’s Legitimacy.

Creative Legislature and Ideological Truth are the two Primary Principle Groups for Ideological Union Power Blocs, with the latter being exclusive to them.







For Creative Legislature we see various bonuses to the enactment of laws. It allows you to have more setbacks on the third tier, essentially giving you another roll at it, in addition to the reduced stall chance, making the process proceed faster. Also, it reduces Movement spawn chances that would undo the work you are trying to do with the enactment of your desired law.

Now let’s take a look at the Principle Group exclusive to Ideological Union Blocs.






Here we can see that this group focuses on Interest Groups (IG) and your government. It not only makes unwanted Agitators’ lifes harder, lets you bolster your desired IGs and suppress your enemies at the cost of less authority, but even increases your Minimum Legitimacy by 25 on the third tier.

The fifth and last Central Identity Pillar is great for everybody who always wanted to play as a religious great power, uniting the world.

Religious Convocation

Religious homogeneity is what this Power Bloc Identity strives for. It allows leaders to impose their state religion on other members. It’s an unique Diplomatic Action which will set a member's State Religions to the leader’s. Similarly to other Power Bloc Leader actions, it requires a certain Cohesion and Prestige value and also cannot be used immediately on a new member.

The Religious Convocation Identity also boosts conversion rates in all members, which goes nicely with your power to convert Power Bloc members. For release, we’re supplementing this effect with another one, likely along the lines of reducing radicalism.

Its Primary Principle Groups both deal with the involvement of church in different aspects of life.
The first of the two is also exclusive to the religious Identity - it’s Divine Economics.







We see here that we get various effects with relation to faith and economy. Higher subject payments if they’re following a different religion, but on the flip side higher trade route competitiveness if they are following the same religion for example.
The PMs that you can unlock on tier 2 allow you to exchange some workforce in the new Manor House and Financial District buildings with Clergymen. You don’t have to make use of it of course, but you get the option to.

The other Principle Group is Sacred Civics:






This group features three unique effects. It improves upon Liberty Desire and general acceptance for diplomatic proposals if the country shares the same state religion.
On tier 3, you can see it also allows the leader to impose their own church and state laws onto Power Bloc members.

Cohesion for Religious Convocations has a few factors as well. First, it looks at the leader’s Devout IG clout to determine a bonus to Cohesion. Secondly, we add or subtract Cohesion based on the lowest share of population in a Bloc member that follows the same religion as the leader’s state religion.
So if you have a member that has 0% of their Population following the same religion as yourself as leader, you will get a penalty, but if you are actually able to have the lowest member value be 50%, you will get a bonus instead.

That was a detailed look at all the Identities. But wait, there’s more!

[h2]Principles[/h2]

Apart from the Primary Principle Groups, there are a number of other groups of different flavors that you can make use of to assemble your dream Power Bloc. In total, including the 5 Identity exclusive groups, there are 20 Principle Groups with three Principles each for you to choose from.

Here are some examples:







This Principle Group is the alternative route to get to a Customs Union without having to pick the Trade League Central Identity Pillar.
It comes with a few other bonuses on the lower tiers, in particular the +5% MAPI bonus you have seen in the Trade Union exclusive group.

Another example I’d like to show because of its differently themed effects is Police Coordination.







This group provides multiple positive effects for the Police Institution in particular and upgrades its effects. The +50 Authority and reduction in Political Movement Radicalism is applied to each level of the institution. So the deeper you go into this, the more you will profit from it too.

The last group we want to show you today is dealing with Foreign Investment.







We can see three interesting effects in this group. On the first tier, you will get a higher amount of Leverage from Economic Dependence which, if you recall, is based a lot on how many investments you have in another country which makes them more dependent on you.
The second tier provides you with a reduction for Nationalization cost, which you can make use of to decrease your own dependence on other countries for example.
On the last tier, every member of the Bloc gets automatic Investment Rights in other Members of lower rank. This should allow you and other powerful countries to spread your influence inside your Bloc more easily, which in turn makes it more likely for the lower rank countries to stay inside your Bloc.

Another thing that has changed slightly since the original Power Blocs Dev Diary is the slots that are available to your Power Bloc.
If you own Sphere of Influence, by default each Power Bloc you’re leading has two slots that you can fill with Principles.
Even if you don’t own the DLC, you will still have one slot available for customization, where you can choose one of the two Primary Principle Group paths to take.
You can unlock the third and fourth slot by overtaking the other Power Blocs in the rankings for which we look at the total prestige of all members.
For the third slot you will need to be among the top 5 Power Blocs and have at least 5 members, the fourth one will be unlocked if you are among the top 3 and have at least 10 members in your Bloc.
Due to this change, we have removed the maximum number of Principle Mandates which you can spend. So in theory you can now get to 4 fully leveled tier 3 Principles, it is just going to be harder for you to do so.

Next, I’d like to provide you with a seemingly small, but significant update to how we deal with Leverage.

[h2]Leverage 2.0[/h2]
Since the last Dev Diary on Power Blocs, we have made some changes to how Leverage works and also added a few more sources of Leverage. If you recall, Leverage is what you need to build up in other countries to make them join your Bloc.
Apart from the sources mentioned last time, we have now added factors for adjacency, meaning if you have a direct adjacency or a treaty port for example, you will get more Leverage in the target country. High infamy values on the other hand will reduce the gain of Leverage, so you will have to keep it in check if you want to make good use of the resources you’re investing into building up Leverage.
Various other diplomatic pacts now will also provide or reduce the Leverage you can build up in other countries.

The main change we’ve done though is how Leverage is calculated. Before it was basically a never-ending race of building up infinite amounts of Leverage. Now we have changed it so that there is instead a shared pool of 1000 Leverage which all involved parties (including the target country) need to fight over. This value of 1000 never changes, never shrinks or grows.
The best way to understand this is by looking at a screenshot of the WIP tooltips that our UX designer Aron has made:



Here we see (from the British perspective), how Leverage over Greece is currently split up and what distribution it is trending towards.
In the upper bar, we see the current Leverage situation and we can see that Greece is currently able to stand up for itself against the Blocs trying to influence it. Its value of 584 is 490 higher than the British value which therefore is currently at 94, resulting in 9.4% Leverage Share for Great Britain. The Greek value is also directly translatable into their Leverage Share of 58.4%. The target country’s Share is called Unclaimed Leverage since no Power Bloc is taking that for themselves. If no Power Bloc was active in gaining Leverage in Greece (this should barely ever be the case), their Leverage Share/Unclaimed Leverage would be 100%.

What is actually happening in that situation though is that all 4 involved Power Blocs currently have a higher Leverage Factor (which is kind of like a Leverage “income”) than Greece has resistance. They might have a bunch of diplomatic agreements with Greece or trade or have sided in Diplomatic Plays with them for example. So over time, the Greek share of the pie will decrease, while all Power Blocs in this case will make gains and expand their influence over Greece, eventually (and if nothing about this situation changes) resulting in the situation depicted in the bar on the bottom of the tooltip.
The Russian Empire will have roughly 40% of the Leverage Share then and will likely be able to invite Greece to their Bloc with a good chance of success.
You can hover over each bit of the bars of course to get more detailed information on how the depicted share is calculated.

This system change makes Leverage something worth fighting over even if you are late to the party because nobody will be able to accumulate mountains of Leverage before you try yourself to get active in the country.
It also makes it possible to not only build up more Leverage, but reduce another Bloc’s Leverage Share, by having more positive Leverage Factors going for you than they do.

Another thing that we’d like to bring to your attention is a few examples for how Leverage is tied into our narrative content, in particular the Great Game content that was presented to you in the previous Dev Diaries for the Great Game and the Graveyard of Empires.
For example, in the Afghan unification, if you appeal to Great Britain or Russia, this will create Leverage on your country for their respective Power Blocs.

Similarly, the Eastern Frontier Journal Entry buttons and also an accepted Circassia recognition will create some Leverage for the according Power Blocs in the target country.

That’s it for today. We hope you liked this expanded outlook on Power Blocs. Next week, Alex is going to talk about some general changes that we’re making with the 1.7 update. Get ready for a cute mapmode and have a lovely rest of this happy Thursday!

Hi, Aron here. I’m one of the User Experience (UX) designers on Vicky 3 and I would like to give you an overview of our UX focus we have had in the Sphere of Influence expansion and the accompanying free update. I will start with the UX focus for our new features followed by the more general improvements.

[h2]Subject Improvements[/h2]
In this feature we have broadened the agency you have over your Subjects as an Overlord significantly. You can read more in-depth about the feature here. Naturally, we have put the majority of the interactions under the Diplomacy panel to have a clear central place to look for them, but also to make this panel more interactable. Previously, it has been more of an informational panel than a place where you interact, but that we are here to change!



However, many of these actions are things you want to be able to do on the go which led us to work a lot with our context menus such as our right-click menus. One of the most used right-click menus in the game is the Country & State right-click menu, but it is also one of the largest. Unsurprisingly enough, it is the right-click menu we wanted to put even more things into now as we have added ways for you to interact with your Subject and your Overlord. This sparked some rethinking of how we can make the right-click menus more compact while still retaining the intuitivity.

End result,

• The common actions such as “Go-to country”, “Pin country to Outliner”, and “Zoom-to country” have been moved to the headers with simple icon buttons, following the standard we already have set up for them in other panels.
  
• Actions that go under the same category such as Diplomatic Actions, Subject Actions, Overlord Actions, and Bloc Member Actions get to live under their own drop-down menu.
  

Before:The current chonky Country right-click menu in 1.6.

After: Right-clicking Hannover as Great Britain now gives a heavily compacted right-click menu with your Overlord Actions and Diplomatic Actions neatly grouped under their respective drop-down menu.

Opening the Overlord Actions drop-down gives you the full list of potential actions.

Similarly, right-clicking one of your own States neatly stores all Decrees under its own drop-down menu. Also notice the smaller round buttons for go-to, zoom-to and pin/unpin next to the Country and State headers.

This might be more of a technical improvement on the development side of things, but it definitely benefits us all in the end. The Subject, Overlord, and Bloc Member Actions all fall under the same umbrella as Diplomatic Actions and it was clear early on during development of this expansion that we were in dire need to get their tooltips sorted out with a clear pattern with all of these new actions coming in. Both to make it easier to work with them and to benefit the end result for us players. We have two versions of tooltips, fancy custom tooltips (Cooltips) and regular tooltips, that might not be obvious to you as a player, but if you are implementing them, there is a very clear difference in what you can do with them. The regular tooltip gives us very little flexibility to what you can do since it is basically only a long text string that we build with line breaks while the Cooltip essentially is another UI panel where we have full flexibility to do whatever the GUI system can do (everything!). In other words, me as a UX designer can do a lot of cool changes directly in a Cooltip without much of a hassle while it is much more of a struggle editing regular tooltips, generally speaking. You would mainly see the difference in-game by looking at the tooltip headers and the structure of the tooltip. Most of the time, a Cooltip has an icon in the top left corner with a larger header and a type concept in the top right corner, while the regular tooltip has no icon and only a regular text header. If the tooltip feels a bit nicer and a bit more structured, it is most likely a Cooltip, even though we do have some nice regular tooltips out there as well of course.

We took the time to move all of the above Diplomatic Actions over to a Cooltip, meaning we (especially I) get more direct agency over these tooltips, what they contain and how they are structured. The Diplomatic Actions are still very text heavy tooltips, but I will bring this up again later when we talk about Power Blocs and you will see more of the neat power of Cooltips.

The “Guarantee Independence” Diplomatic Action as a typical regular tooltip with a normal header, a breaking line followed by the rest of the tooltip content. In this case, most of it is coming from code making it difficult for me as a UX designer to change anything on the go.

The same action as a typical Cooltip with an icon and a larger header that easily can be made contextual. In this case, we are hovering the button for an ongoing “Guaranteeing Independence” action and it gives us the action prompt of “Stop doing this” rather than just the name of the action. In the Cooltip, I can be the one adding this contextual header, while in a regular tooltip I could not and I would have to steal precious time from one of our programmers. This goes for all you modders out there as well, go crazy!

In a similar fashion, we have worked on the confirmation popups for the Diplomatic Actions to be consistent with the tooltips and clearly show the difference of starting and stopping an action.

The confirmation popup for “Stop Guarantee Independence”.

[h2]Lobbies[/h2]
Political Lobbies are a quite straightforward feature from a UX perspective (read more about Lobbies here).

While you probably will encounter Lobbies more often in Events and Journal entries, or by seeing their reactions to various diplomatic actions, they also have an info panel when selected.

The new Lobby info panel..

In the Lobby info panel, you can see each Interest Group that supports the Lobby along with their Approval (since it is directly impacted by the Lobby’s overall Appeasement).

Most importantly, you can also see all actions that would affect this Lobby’s Appeasement. While the Lobbies that are in the game currently are somewhat straightforward (Pro-Lobbies encourage you to do friendly actions towards their favored Country). This is something we have the potential to greatly expand upon in the future and make it more involved.

An Interest Groups’ support of this Lobby.

You can also see why a certain Interest Group is supporting this Lobby. While it might be unlikely that you can force an Interest Group out of a Lobby due to their reasons, it does mean it is easier to tell why Lobbies form in the first place.

We also wanted players to be able to see Lobbies outside their own Country. While this may not affect your decisions as often as your own Lobbies, it is still nice to see the people of other Countries reacting to your benevolent power projection. As such we use the map mode in the Political Lens to show your Lobbies, along with any Lobbies from other Countries that concern your Country.

Map markers for your Lobbies targeting other countries and other countries Lobbies targeting you in either a pro or anti way.

Lobbies in Foreign Countries appear in their respective Countries’ Info Panel.

[h2]Building Ownership Revision & Foreign Investment[/h2]
When we started development of the Building Ownership Revision & Foreign investment (read more about the feature specifics here), we had to create several early prototypes to see if this is feasible to communicate in a good and intuitive way before giving this feature the green light. Buildings are such a fundamental piece of our game and making any major changes to them must be made with care. The prototypes showed that the struggle will definitely be to illustrate who owns what of a specific building and how much, but also the opposite perspective, when looking at a Financial District for example, which buildings the Financial District owns and how much of each building, from which country, and so on. This is also where we have spent the most time to ensure it is properly communicated to the player.

We ended up with a combination of ways of illustrating this division of a building’s ownership. Some more clear than others, but our hope is that the combination of all of them will make it intuitive.

To visually represent the combination of ownership of a specific building, we used a horizontal bar divided by ownership:

• The icon on the bar will represent one of the following:
  
• Owning Country
  
• Owning Pop Type
  
• Owning Building
  

The color of the bar represents where the ownership is:

• Orange: Your government
  
• Light Blue: Your pops
  
• Gray/white: Local population or government
  
• Yellow: Foreign investors that are not you
  
• We have tried using colors that work best for most color blindnesses.
  

If you look at the horizontal bar in the middle, you can see the representation of different ownership based on the instructions above. Also note that you can filter this whole list on “Owner” in the filters to the left. Filters being: All | Nationally Owned | Privately Owned | Foreignly Owned.

Similarly, we use the same kind of horizontal bar for Financial Districts and Manor Houses that owns other buildings, but then it is divided by the buildings it owns:

• The icon on the bar will represent the building it owns.
  
• The color is from the country of the building it owns.
  

Note the Manor Houses with their red horizontal bars indicating that all buildings they own are buildings in Great Britain as Great Britain's map color is red.

These specific patterns might not be intuitive to start with when you do not know them and have no one explaining them to you, but the intention is for it to become a subconscious thing that you learn as you play. In the end, you will probably not notice when and how this helps you see the different ownerships since you have been exposed to them through the whole game and gradually learnt them, all the while you now only glance at the bar and instantly know what owns what (insert Praying Patrick meme here).

We have also experimented with putting some visualization of ownership on the map, working with arrows pointing from the owned building to the owning building. While doing so, we ended up adding visualization to input and output of Goods to a building as well. It all resulted in a big mix of arrows pointing and animating in all kinds of directions on the map. It felt a tad bit overwhelming at first, so we tweaked and toned it down slightly, and after playing with it for a while many of us felt we could not play without it.

In the example of looking at the Tooling Workshop in Burgundy above you can see all of the following on the map:

• Ownership arrows are yellow and they go from the building’s State to the owning Building (Manor House or Financial District).
  
• Ownership arrows are red if the owning building is a Government building and the arrows then go from your Capital State to the building instead.
  
• Input Goods arrows are orange.
  
• Output Goods arrows are green.
  
• Arrows are thick if in the same state, a bit thinner if in a neighboring state, and very thin and transparent if further away.
  

For Financial Districts, you get a visual representation on the map of where in the world it has invested its money by looking at the animating yellow arrows.

Arrows for Input and Output of Goods animating to or out from the selected building, and oh yes, you can cycle through the associated buildings more easily now as all buildings that have anything to do with the selected building show up as map markers on the map and you can click them.

This Financial District owns a whole bunch of stuff for sure! Indicated by all the animated arrows going to this Financial District. The specific number of building levels owned by this Financial District are shown as a number on each of the owned buildings on the map with the accumulated total being the total level of the Financial District (25 in this case).

[h2]Power Blocs[/h2]
One new left side menu button, a whole new panel, several new popups, and several new large scale visualizations on the map. This feature is grand. Trying to tie it all together UX wise has been a lovely challenge. You can read the specifics about Power Blocs here, but also a shout out to the awesome Art we have seen from the Art team especially for this feature as Max is telling you all about in the Art of Sphere of Influence.

Being in a Power Bloc is a grand thing. We want you to experience that and clearly feel how it is affecting you in all its pros and cons (mostly pros). Since Power Blocs are such grand things, we have worked a lot with the visual representation of them on the map, giving you full customizability of your Power Bloc if you happen to form one or be the leader of one, to give each Power Bloc its true unique feeling and look. This is of course mirrored in the mechanics as the different Central Identity Pillars are profoundly different from each other in what they do and unlock. Add the Principles to the mix and the options are quite varied, and I need to make tooltips that fits all this variation! As you may imagine, all the possible versions of a Power Bloc have been a challenge to present in a way that does not mean custom solutions for each version. One way we have tackled this is early structuring of game concepts and being consistent in the use of them. An example of this is the way we have structured the Central Identity Pillar’s cooltip into segments based on the game concepts of: Power Bloc, All Bloc Members, Bloc Leader, and Non-leader Bloc Members. This structure is then reused in all other identities’ cooltips with a segment potentially being removed if there are no effects for that specific game concept / group in that Identity.

The cooltip for the Central Identity Pillar “Military Treaty”.

The cooltip for the Central Identity Pillar “Religious Convocation”. To tie this back to how neat Cooltips are, if you look at the Primary Principle Groups in the above cooltips, you get to see the true power of the Cooltips as we have the ability to put larger icons, boxes, and basically whatever we feel like into the tooltip itself. This would not be possible in a regular tooltip that is text only.

As a more general thing for update 1.7, we have worked a lot with making sure most of the new concepts and values we have added have icons associated with them for better recognizability and coherence. New concepts like Leverage, Cohesion, and Power Bloc Members all get their unique icon as you can see below.

The WIP list of all Power Blocs at the start of the game. Each Power Bloc rocking its own style.

[h2]General Improvements for 1.7[/h2]
Those icons work as a perfect segway to the more general UX improvements coming in the free update 1.7 accompanying the expansion. First out, the Outliner. In 1.6 we were sooo done with the old chonky outliner and replaced it with something new and fresh. As always when you replace anything with something new, there are a lot of edges to smooth out and the outliner was no exception. In 1.7, we have taken another pass and delved into more of these edges and details. Among many smaller tweaks, the outliner has been compacted even more with additional dropdown menus. Both ongoing diplomatic actions and the list of players (in multiplayer) are now under their own dropdown menus if there are more than one at any time. Some of the already existing dropdowns such as Interest Groups have also been changed to be closed by default.

The outliner with some ongoing diplomatic actions under a dropdown menu.

Next up, in association with the Foreign Investment feature, we have taken a pass on the construction queue. One thing we noticed during early playtesting was the lack of feedback when foreign investment is happening and where it is happening. This was both from the perspective of you doing the foreign investment and others investing in you. We then took the liberty to split the construction queue up into clearer parts. A national queue and a foreign queue, the national queue includes everything you or your pops are building both domestically and abroad while the foreign queue includes everything other Countries or their pops are building in your Country. We added filters to your national queue for both the location (domestic or abroad) and funding (where does the money come from).

Your national queue with the filters open.

In a second tab of the Construction panel, you find all foreign queues in your country grouped by country.

Apart from these larger general UX improvements, we have been working hard with tweaking the UI and UX based on your feedback from the forums and discord, so please do not be shy and keep the feedback coming. We might not be responding to it all, but we for sure are collecting and reading all of it. For now, I hope you enjoyed getting a small glimpse from a UX perspective of Victoria 3’s first major expansion. You will have to wait for the patch notes to see all of the UX and UI improvements in detail. Take care until then or come back next week to delve deeper into the Power Bloc feature with our lead game designer Lino!

Good day Victorians!

Victoria 3 is on sale!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/529340/Victoria_3/

The Endless Replayability Fest is on until the 23rd of May, with Victoria 3 participating. Alongside other Paradox games also taking part!

You can find selected items up to:
[h2]Base Game[/h2]
Victoria 3 76% off
Victoria 3: Grand Edition 40% off

[h2]Immersion Pack[/h2]
Victoria 3: Voice of the People 40% off

[h2]Region Pack[/h2]
Victoria 3: Colossus of the South 20% off

[h2]Art & Music Packs[/h2]
Victoria 3: Dawn of Wonder 20% off
Victoria 3: Melody of the Masses 20% off

[h2]Overview[/h2]
Hello again Victorians, this dev diary will cover the visual elements coming alongside the Sphere of Influence Expansion Pack. With this pack a lot of effort has been put into putting the grandeur and influence of the newly added Power Blocs on visual display. In addition, a lot of new outfits, characters and illustrations have been made for major events added with the pack alongside a few brand new building types.

Sphere of Influence will release on Jun 24, 2024



[h2]Power Blocs[/h2]
With the major addition of Power Blocs to the game a lot of new visual elements have been added to emphasize their impact and importance, ranging from clothing assets of politicians in the Power Bloc to customizable statues and emblems for the Power Bloc itself as well as a brand new map mode and much more.

The pattern chosen in the emblem customization also represents your Power Bloc on the map

The capital city of a Power Bloc is where the pulses signifying their influence emanates from

The more cohesion, the more complete the puzzle will be

When a player creates a new Power Bloc they will be able to create and customize their own Emblem and Statues, these visual elements will represent your Power Bloc in both interface and in the cities.

Your influence will spread like tentacles over the world

Emblems consist of 7 (including colors and pattern options for the map) different component categories with a variety of different assets within, you can combine these assets in any way you see fit to create an emblem worthy of representing your own Power Bloc in any interface.

The interface for the Emblem customization allows for a lot of variation

Statues consist of 5 different 3D component categories allowing you to compose your own statue monument that can be built in each of your cities to give modifiers aligned with the Identity of your Power Bloc.

Are we the classy baddies?

The leaders and politicians that are part of your Power Bloc will also receive new assets to showcase their unity and influence. Based on what Central Identity Pillar you’ve chosen for your Power Bloc, important characters now wear assets that further showcase their commitment and allegiance with the Power Bloc, ranging from ornate sabers to the fanciest of capes. In addition to the characters, the vehicles within a Power Bloc will also spawn new models on roads or seas depending on your Central Identity Pillar.

Alignment with a sovereign empire grants characters a beautiful ornate saber



Trade union grants various different crowns and earrings as well as a new ship for your trade routes

Different necklaces for the central identity pillars



Religious Union grants some lovely capes and a very ornate carriage for your roads

Ornate cape you say? Hold my top hat and monocle

Military Treaty Power Blocs can soar above the battlefield by mobilizing hot air balloons bearing the emblem of your Power Bloc proudly.

Power blocs really bring some class to the roads, especially the Ideological Union

For the Central Identity Pillars we’ve created a variety of new icons, cementing their importance. In addition there’s also a large variety of new icons made for the principles your Power Bloc can align with.

Central Identity icons

The principles of a Power Bloc vary a whole lot

In order for you to get an overview of the countries and rulers in your Power Bloc we’ve made a new interface screen that shows the axis of the most powerful ones. Within this screen we’ve also made new ranking icons to signify your Power Blocs’ standing among the others and for the top 3 there’s also shiny new effects ranging from bronze to gold.

The rulers of your Power Bloc can all compare beards

These effects also appear on the Power Blocs’ emblems when you switch to the new Power Bloc mapmode to signify the top 3 ranking ones. In addition, this new mapmode features the visualization of Power Blocs’ using the pattern and colors chosen for the emblems. You can also get an insight into a specific Power Blocs’ influence by switching to another mapmode that utilizes a new pulse shader, showing just how far your Power Blocs’ reach is and where it originates from. In addition there’s another new visualization of the cohesion levels of your Power Bloc allowing you to get an overview of the puzzle that is keeping the entire bloc aligned.

Stay golden at #1

See the silver lining at #2

Nobody wants to be stuck in the bronze age at #3





Even your emblems will really shine if your Power Bloc reaches the highest rankings

[h2]The Great Game[/h2]
For the objectives of The Great Game we have created a large number of new event images covering different aspects of the rivalry, alongside of the events we have also created a variety of historical character DNAs’ and new outfits related to all of it. We’ve also created a new animated main menu image depicting some of the involved parties, setting the tone for the narrative of the pack as a whole and some other miscellaneous in-game assets that helps the narrative.

New menu screen featuring a lot of the players of the great game

Cossacks on the prowl

Ancient persian thrones look quite comfortable

A beautiful day at the market!

Alexander III is appearing a lot

Reza Shah Pahlavi





New military uniforms for Russia and Britain

Cossack outfits

New great coats for the people!

New late-era uniforms

Fancy Vivandiere outfits!



New historical characters

[h2]Community Collaboration[/h2]
Aside from the paid characters added with The Great Game we’re also adding a ton of free historical character appearances. These were created by Timothy "Galactic Cactus" Hicks, who made and later donated the Americas Character DNA mod to us for inclusion in the base game for Update 1.5. The 85 characters he provided for the free update alongside Sphere of Influence (full list in the upcoming changelog) were created in collaboration with him as a contractor. We hope that this sort of collaboration is something we can do more of in the future and will be creating some guidelines and benchmarks for interested community members.

Just a few of the newly added DNAs

[h2]New Buildings and Ownerships[/h2]
With the free update coming alongside the pack comes two new building types, Manor Houses and Financial Districts both serving a function when it comes to ownership of other buildings (which you can read more about in DD #110), these two new buildings both have unique looks for each visual culture in the game.

All the financial districts are quite detailed and vary between cultures



Manor houses class up any rural area

The icons for the new buildings

[h2]Subject Improvements, Lobbies and Diplomacy Interface [/h2]
A lot of new interface assets have been made to accommodate the new features and functions of the Subject Improvements, the new Lobbies as well as the Diplomacy improvements.

Get an overview of all your (hopefully) loyal subjects

[h2]New Companies[/h2]
We’re also adding some new companies and their emblems with Sphere of Influence ranging from big oil companies to legendary ale.

Here are some of the newly added company emblems

[h2]New Paper Map[/h2]
Another addition is also a new Paper Map added with Sphere of Influence. This map is inspired by the more minimalistic maps from the era, lending itself well to those seeking clarity combined with a new (old) coat of paint.



[h2]Achievement Icons[/h2]
Last but not least are a variety of new achievement icons, some depicting the exact thing you need to achieve, some that might give you a vague hint and some that contain pop culture references that you might guess.

There are so many easter eggs among these new achievement icons

[h2]Summary[/h2]
So with Sphere of Influence a lot of new visual elements have been added to both interface and map. We’ve put a lot of effort into making Power Blocs feel like they have a presence in all aspects of the games’ visuals, really tried to ensure that there’s a lot of new visual elements for The Great Game and also added some nice details while also collaborating with the community.

Next weeks’ Dev Diary will be detailing the many UX improvements coming with the Sphere of Influence update.