Привет, and happy Thursday. This is Victoria, Narrative Design Lead of Victoria 3, and today I will be talking about Communism.
Please note, as ever, that any screenshots attached are from a work-in-progress build, and certain elements may not be final. Additionally, there is a great amount to cover, and my permitted word count is quite small. This diary will not be exhaustive, and will likely leave open questions. I will leave it to the audience to extrapolate, speculate, endorse or condemn one another’s interpretations, and so on and so forth.
Preface
In Update 1.15, we have taken a thorough look at every facet of our representation of socialism. This process included adding several new laws particular to Council Republics, refining the various socialist ideologies, reworking all existing Journal Entries related to socialism and the systematic path through which one may acquire a Council Republic, and adding some additional, broadly-available content. All of the reworks and additions covered in this diary will be free for those who own the base game.
Our aim for this rework was to represent the historical evolution of and difficulties faced by socialism. To establish – and preserve – a Council Republic is now more difficult than it was before, but also more enriching. To succeed in a socialist playthrough, one will need to develop the potential of the working class, first pushing them to revolution and then defending the state that they shall create.
Before we go into more detail, however, we must know what socialism is.
For Europe, the early nineteenth century was a period of social disruption and creeping, ruinous poverty. This poverty was of a particular sort, which had never been seen on such a scale – the poverty of those whose continued lives relied upon the practice of wage-labour.
In the aftermath of the French Revolution, the traditional artisanal system, in which the production of finished goods was carried out by artisans organised under guilds granted privileges by the state, was collapsing under the pressures of social and technological change. The Revolution’s assault on feudal corporations and internal customs barriers broke guild monopolies and levelled prices across newly free markets. Machines enabled untrained wage-labourers to do work that had once required specialised knowledge, forcing small handicraft producers into competition with industrially-produced goods. With a greater supply of goods and greater competition came lower prices, and with that, a decline in revenue for once-comfortable small producers.
With the erosion of feudal regulations on movement and the rural handicrafts industries that once supplemented their incomes collapsing, young people from the countryside moved en masse to cities in search of a wage. They made their homes in the infamous slums of our period, which became a source of fear amongst the wealthier classes as centres of crime and sedition. With a glut of labour and increasingly narrow profit margins necessitating fierce competition between enterprises, the wages on offer were often unlivable, necessitating child labour, pawnbroking, taking in lodgers, or charity as supplements. It was this appallingly visible and rapidly growing poverty that intellectuals of the 1830s and 40s came to refer to as the “Social Question” – the question of the organisation of society.
The Social Question was not solely the domain of those we would now call the left. Karl Marx’s and Friedrich Engels’ Communist Manifesto, published in 1848, dedicates its third chapter to addressing other political currents which fought over this terrain – from what Marx and Engels referred to as the feudal socialists, who criticised the precarity of the wage system and sought to resolve the social question via restoring traditional paternal relationships, to the conservative or bourgeois socialists, who sought to alleviate social tensions via generalising property ownership and improving conditions under liberal society, to the petty-bourgeois, “True”, and “utopian” socialists. Whilst differing wildly in their content, all shared the desire to alter the organisation of society.
Until the late nineteenth century, the label of “socialism” retained this heterogeneous nature. It was the formation of mass socialist parties under the umbrella of the Second International that made “socialism” synonymous with “Marxism” in political parlance – and, even then, this was largely a European phenomenon. Across the Anglophone world, socialist parties such as the British Labour Party drew from the traditions of Christian socialism, Fabian reformism, trade-unionism, and radical-liberalism over Marxism. It would take until the Russian Revolution for Marxist socialism to eclipse its rivals outside of Europe – and, even then, this triumph was an incomplete one, marked by the fallout of the recent split between reformist and revolutionary socialists. We will go into more detail on this later, under “Reform or Revolution?”.
The socialism of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century – Marxist socialism, or communism – is what Update 1.15’s socialist content revolves around.
To quote Karl Marx in The German Ideology:
“Communism is for us not a state of affairs which is to be established, an ideal to which reality [will] have to adjust itself. We call communism the real movement which abolishes the present state of things. The conditions of this movement result from the premises now in existence. “
The Marxist conception of communism was that of a movement – specifically, the movement of the proletariat. Starting from conditions then in existence – that of a class of wage-labourers, simultaneously responsible for the great majority of production and yet dependent upon selling their labour-power to an employer for a wage in order to survive – the Marxists centred their analysis around this class, and the political activities it engaged in as a result of its situation. Our model of communism, therefore, revolves around movements. A socialist society must emerge from the struggle of the proletariat, by the means of its political movement.
The Road to Socialism
Under our new model for socialism, practice precedes ideological consciousness. The Trade Unions will no longer support a socialist system by default upon researching Socialism – for them to become ideologically communist, they must first be mobilised by an appropriate movement into carrying out a revolution.
Once a revolution that supports Factory Councils reaches sufficient Activism, the Factory Councils amendment will be added to the country’s currently active Labour Associations law. This amendment’s effects are similar to the Factory Councils law, increasing the strength of the Trade Unions and strengthening socialist movements. If Council Republic is enacted whilst a country’s Labour Associations law has the Factory Councils amendment, the country will automatically gain the Factory Councils law.
The Communist and Internationalist ideologies represent a radicalised Trade Unions, and favour several of the new revolutionary laws added in this update.
To enact Council Republic, a country must now have Factory Councils as either a Law or Amendment. This is to represent the historical means through which Council Republics came to be, as an outgrowth of assemblies of councils that emerged during a period of revolutionary activity.
To summarise the new method of achieving a Council Republic, a revolutionary movement activates the Factory Councils amendment, and radicalises the Trade Unions. From there, one may either attempt to enact Council Republic as a law and follow up with other revolutionary laws, or push the movement into civil war to achieve Council Republic and a large number of revolutionary laws at once. Any period of time under a Council Republic without certain revolutionary laws – Factory Councils, Communal Administration, and Revolutionary Guard – will lead to increased Consolidation. We will provide more information on this later in the diary, under the “Attack or Defence?” section.
New Socialist Laws
The socialism rework contains four new laws: Labour Suffrage, Extraordinary Commission, Communal Administration, and Revolutionary Guard. Applicable revolutions will start with several of these, depending on the movement type. Extraordinary Commission may be enacted by Council Republics that need a hand in defeating the White Movement – more information on that later.
Labour Suffrage represents the restrictions on political activity for the non-producing classes practised by the Soviet government in its early years. Under this law, exclusively lower-class pops and those involved in the state are permitted votes, with propertied pops being denied suffrage. In a country with a numerically large working class, this will tend to result in substantial success for the socialist or communist party.
The Extraordinary Commission represents a mass organisation dedicated to the repression of counter-revolutionaries, exemplified by the historical Soviet Cheka and the Lenin Boys of the Hungarian Soviet Republic. Levelling up the Extraordinary Commission will provide many of the effects of the Secret Police law, as well as decreasing the political strength and increasing the mortality of those pops which tend to oppose a Council Republic. Enacting the Extraordinary Commission also activates the Extraordinary Measures Journal Entry, which will also be covered later.
Abolition of the standing army and its replacement by a universal militia was a common demand of the social-democratic parties in the pre-WWI era, and briefly practised in the early days of the Soviet Red Army. Activating the Revolutionary Guard law will destroy the political power of the Armed Forces, at the cost of reducing the size of the standing army. Additionally, activating this law will purge the officer corps of non-revolutionary generals, replacing them with fresh-faced militia commanders loyal to the Trade Unions.
The Communal Administration law represents the mode of administration attributed to the Paris Commune by Marx’s The Civil War in France, and expanded upon in Lenin’s The State and Revolution. The Communal Administration law substantially reduces the power of Bureaucrats pops and increases Clerks' attraction to the Trade Unions, but makes Government Administrations require substantially more Clerks than any other Bureaucracy law. If enacted whilst literacy and qualifications are low, one may find it very difficult to replace the standing bureaucracy with the communal mode of administration.
Reworked Ideologies
The stances of the Communist and Vanguardist ideologies have been reworked. Rather than desiring welfare, they would instead like to overthrow the government.
To work out a clean line between the Communist and Vanguardist ideologies is not an easy task. The distinction between the two is largely a product of post-revolutionary historiography, rather than a clear distinction drawn within the period itself. One must contend with the question of intentionalism vs. circumstantialism – historians’ and political scientists’ attempts to define what is referred to as “Vanguardism” [“Leninism” and its descendents] are coloured by the analysis of an existing political regime, whilst “non-Vanguardism” is characterised largely by works of political theory and reactions to the Soviet political regime from outside a position of power.
In the end, we decided to distinguish the two based on the conditions they must deal with – Vanguardists arise in countries with low labour productivity [as approximated by GDP per capita] and large peasant populations, where the question of pre-capitalist forms and land reform are immediately relevant, whilst Communists arises in countries with high labour productivity and small peasant populations.
Vanguardists lack strict stances on Army Model and Bureaucracy, deferring to their Interest Groups on these issues. A Trade Unions Vanguardist will favour upholding Communal Administration and Revolutionary Guard, whilst an Armed Forces Vanguardist will favour abolishing the Revolutionary Guard in favour of a conventional army with Mass Conscription.
The Social Democrat ideology has been removed, and replaced with the more period-appropriate State Socialist ideology. State Socialists represent the reformist, statist socialist current that historically remained affiliated with the Second International parties in the aftermath of World War I, and is defined by a desire to achieve a socialist economy through reforming the existing state. Ferdinand Lassalle himself is now a Trade Unions State Socialist.
The generic Social Democratic Party has been redesignated as “Socialist”, and given a stylish new logo and pleasant red colour. Other parties have also found new colours – the Free Trade Party in Industrialists Orange, the Religious Party in white, and the Radical Party in a cool salmon pink.
Socialist Content
In the Spring of 1914, nearly every parliament in Europe hosted a sizable delegation from the socialist parties of the Second International. The socialist movement was a strong and assertive factor in the daily lives of most working-class people, and a serious consideration for those who employed them. The socialist parties were affiliated with a complex network of trade unions, workers’ associations, press organs, and other civil society organisations, which fostered a strong sense of class identity in their participants. Six months later, they had thrown themselves behind the cause of nation and empire, and dispatched their constituencies to machine-gun each other on the fields of Ypres.
How did this happen? It is not a question of a few jingoistic politicians, nor the outcome of parliamentary votes. The course of history is rarely decided by something as legible and formal as the proceedings of parliament. A vote that conforms with the world situation is often treated as a cause in itself, and a vote that contradicts the world situation tends to be overwritten by reality – in content, if not in form. Despite Sweden’s neutrality in the First World War, the history of the Socialdemokratiska Arbetareparti closely mirrors that of the belligerent socialist parties. Likewise for the Italian Socialist Party, which maintained an anti-war stance, and expelled its pro-war members in 1914. The fate of the European socialist parties can be charted from the date of their foundings, and lay in an unanswered question at each of their hearts.
Reform or Revolution?
In Sweden, the period between the founding of the Social Democratic Party and the first World War is referred to as the “Heroic Era”. This was the era of the Second International, of mass workers’ movements largely unified behind a single workers’ party. Across Europe, this movement was referred to as “Social Democracy”, and its parties as the social-democratic parties. The German Social Democratic Party [SPD] was an exemplar of this movement, and may be used as a convenient case study in what became of the Second International parties in the early twentieth century.
The party that would become the SPD was founded in 1875 as a merger of the German General Workers’ Association [ADAV] and Social Democratic Workers’ Party [SDAP]. The ADAV drew from the current of state socialism exemplified by Ferdinand Lassalle, whilst the SDAP drew from what was becoming known as the Marxist tradition. As a compromise between Marxists and Lassalleans, the party produced the Gotha Programme, best known for being the subject of Karl Marx’s Critique of the Gotha Programme. The Critique of the Gotha Programme centres around the programme’s lack of a qualitative break from the platforms of the liberal parties, and its treatment of the state as a neutral and independent body whose organs may be peacefully inherited by the proletariat by legal means.
Following the abolition of the German Anti-Socialist Laws in 1890, the SPD adopted the Erfurt Programme, a more radical programme which cast itself as the minimum required for the working class to win control of the political system. In the following years, a division in the SPD became apparent between those who considered the programme as a necessary precondition for revolution, and those on the “Revisionist” party right – exemplified by Eduard Bernstein – who believed socialism could be achieved without a need for revolution. The revisionists pointed to SPD’s role in legislation directly impacting the working class, as well as the immense gains in support that the party had secured in the period since the abolition of the Anti-Socialist Laws. In search of unity, the SPD centre under Karl Kautsky advocated for the party to maintain a policy of ambiguity on the matter of revolution, upholding it as a possible – but not inevitable – tactical measure to achieve socialism. Ambiguity on the question of reform or revolution, in practice, strongly favoured the maintenance of the Party’s current activities, which were reformist in content. The result of this was an official policy that condemned Bernstein’s programme in name whilst making it impossible to break from the conditions that had given rise to it. Come 1914, a party committed to its reforms was faced with the need to defend them against Tsarist autocracy, and voted accordingly.
The Reform or Revolution Journal entry tracks the evolution of this question. Once 25% or more of the world’s GDP is controlled by countries with a Socialist Movement or Party, the Reform or Revolution Journal Entry will become active. Whilst it is active, every country with a Socialist Movement or Party will contribute to shaping the international socialist movement. Populous countries will naturally be advantaged in this, but an especially powerful - or marginal - socialist movement may make certain countries count for far more or less than their population would suggest.
Pictured: The organisation of the SPD in Bavaria causes her to eclipse the much larger North German Federation.
The strength of socialism in a country corresponds to the amplitude of its contributions to either Reform or Revolution. Whether a country will contribute to Reform or Revolution depends upon the particular conditions of her socialist movement - a socialist party that has entered a governing coalition outside of a revolution, and refuses revolutionary measures such as Factory Councils will contribute strongly to Reform, whilst a movement that is organising an insurrection will benefit Revolution.
If a war breaks out between more than 50% of the countries involved in this Journal Entry, the trend will multiply rapidly. For example, if the international socialist movement is generally reformist, such a war will cause a rapid Reformist victory, whilst a drift towards Revolution will swiftly turn the world Revolutionary.
The outcomes of this Journal Entry have consequences for the entire world. Upon a Reformist victory, the Socialist Movement will split between Socialists and Communists, unlocking the Communist Movement and Communist Party, the Socialist Movement will lose its revolutionary ideologies, and the ideology of the Socialist Movement will change to State Socialist.
Conversely, if Revolution wins, the Socialist Movement will become radicalised worldwide, changing its core ideology to Revolutionary Socialist and avoiding the historical split between Communism and Socialism. Moderates will flee the socialist parties and movements, reducing their attractiveness to non-socialist Interest Groups and less radical Pops.
Attack or Defence?
In Update 1.15, a Council Republic will become engulfed in conflict from birth. Once the Council Republic law is enacted, all anti-socialist ideological movements in the country will amalgamate into the White Movement, which will immediately seek to bring about its downfall.
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Due to the length of this Dev Diary we couldn't post is all here on reddit. Please jump on over to our forums HERE to read it in full!
Привет! Welcome all to the first dev diary for State and Revolution, the upcoming Immersion Pack all about Russia, states, and revolutions! Releasing October 22nd, alongside free Update 1.15, you can pick it up as part of Volume 3 - and you can already check the full list of included content on our Steam page. In the meantime, please join me, Mike, a designer who likes trains too much, as we go over what a state is, what a revolution is, and what a Russia is.
Let's go over the historical background briefly. Russia in 1836 is a conservative empire, still shaken by the Napoleonic Wars. Moscow burned in defiance of Napoleon's occupation of the city just twenty-four years earlier- as far back from the present as 2002 is for us in 2026. The shocks of that war, the ideas spurred on by it, and the further surprise of the Decemberist revolt of 1825 all reinforced an arch-conservatism in the Russian court, a fear of any whiff of liberalism and a deep-seated commitment to a paternalistic vision of autocracy, of a Tsar that is Russia's head and its heart.
Tsar Nicholas I has gotten a bit of a glow-up. And hey, what's with two portraits below him?
This vision of Russia would be severely challenged over the course of the 19th century. The viability of the old order was challenged by military defeats in the 1850s and diplomatic and economic failures; the state had to change if it wanted to survive. Reactionary Nicholas I was succeeded by his son, Alexander II, a tsar who believed that Russia needed to reform in order to prosper. Revolutionary sentiment was already beginning to brew, however, and despite the passage of some reforms, notably including finally emancipating the serfs of Russia, and victories abroad such as the 1877-78 Russo-Turkish War, he was eventually assassinated by revolutionaries in 1881. That caused his son and successor, Alexander III, to reaffirm his belief in the old conservative order and the failure of reformism. Alexander III would do all he could to assert his autocratic vision of Russia, and succeeded in impressing his idea of what Russia should be and what a tsar should be onto his son, the future Nicholas II, but he failed in passing on the lessons of rulership and governance. Under Nicholas II, Russia lost the Russo-Japanese War and experienced a great upheaval in 1905 which many at the time thought was the Revolution, but they didn't know what was to come in 1917…
Russia, then, is an empire committing itself to a vision of a tsar-led empire, an imperial realm which seeks to push back the obscene ideas of the French Revolution- but there's no guarantee it will maintain that vision, or even maintain its empire. It won't help that the Tsar doesn't rule entirely alone, even as an autocrat- he might have a court favorite by his side, advising him about industrial policies, paths to reform, or how the favorite can magically heal the crown prince.
There's revolutions, and then there's the Revolution. Before it happened, it was a phantasm that haunted the minds of rulers for a century. It wasn't always destined to be an uprising draped in red - the revolution the crowned heads of Europe feared in the 1800s was a repeat of the French Revolution, of national assemblies, phrygian caps, and the tricolor flags. When Russians took to the streets in 1905, many of them sang the Marseillaise, not the Internationale. The shape of the Revolution was always in flux, reacting to the direction of the Russian Empire's policies, influenced by mass movements and charismatic individuals, changing as exiles stewed on ideas in Siberia and Switzerland. The Revolution only became one solid thing when the Revolution actually happened, and even then people argue over its causes and its goals to this day.
What does State & Revolution contain?
Emperor and Autocrat: The Tsars of Russia have unique agendas based upon their ideologies and historical personalities, directing the state according to their own visions of what the empire should be. From Nicholas I to Nicholas II and even beyond, each Tsar has his own particular ambition he wants to achieve, and helping him achieve his goals allows the emperor to pass through decrees- ukases- which allow him to manipulate the levers of government in powerful and unique ways.
The Russian Revolution: As the pressures of the Victorian era mount, dissidents whisper a word among themselves that stirs their hearts- Revolution. The revolution itself, the Revolution, builds up in reaction to the tsars and the Russian state, defining itself in opposition to the established order. A rigid autocracy will cause liberals and socialists alike to yearn for the Revolution, but a reformist turn might upset conservatives in Russia even as it placates liberals.
Favorites: Even the autocratic tsars rarely worked entirely alone. Every tsar has the ability to appoint favorites, figures who can influence the shape of government, the passage of laws, and even provide unique agendas for tsars to pursue. Favorites can be almost anyone, from well-educated nobles eager to industrialize the empire to wild-eyed peasant holy men with the remarkable ability to inspire, generations later, the creation of one of the best Eurodisco songs to come out of Germany.
TheotherReds & Whites: Before the Russian Revolution, there was the January Uprising. Try to preserve a crumb of Polish autonomy, either by currying the favor of the Russian government or silently preparing to stage an uprising which gambles everything for Polish independence.
Ukrainian and Belarussian cultural Renaissances: The 19th century was a pivotal time in the development of national identities across the Russian Empire, and many modern elements of Ukrainian and Belarussian identity have their roots in ideas established during this time. Populations satisfied with Russian rule in 1836 may become less compliant over time as nationalist ideas develop, a growing corpus of poets and journalists write works in their own tongues, and peasants move to cities to find better work in Russia's growing industrial sector and find themselves exposed to new concepts and new ways to express themselves.
The evolution of Socialist politics: As the socialist movement develops in a country, the shape of socialism will become informed by choices made by the state and the socialist movement. Will socialists become reformists committed to electoralism or die-hard revolutionaries? In Russia, a radical group of communists might show up and declare themselves 'the majority'- will these Bolsheviks end up heading the radical left wing, or will Mensheviks or Social Revolutionaries lead the way?
Over the next two months we will go over more of State and Revolution, from tsars to exiles, old empires crumbling and new nations rising, and the fantastic work our team has done in every discipline. See you next week!
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Now an interjection from Pelly.
Yesterday Martin talked about the AI update and 1.14 - and above you will have seen mention of 1.15. This is not a typo, the AI update, when it is in the Open Beta will be 1.14, but when we publicly release it, it will be rolled into the 1.15 update and released on the 22nd of October.
This is for versioning reasons and because 1.14 is a special beast, so please don’t be confused when the update coming alongside State and Revolution is 1.15.
I was thinking about the next dlc and the fact that Poland was gonna get added as a starting nation. Then I was wondering what kind of achievements could be added.
> So I have an idea for the achievement "Szklane domy" or "Glass houses". This idea comes from this very popular polish book called "Przedwiośnie" written by Stefan Żeromski. The book talks about a boy from Baku called Cezary Baryka who has a russian dad (actually his dad was polish but was just in the tsarist army thanks for the correction) and a polish mom. This takes place before, during and after the russian revoultion. At first the boy thinks the communist ideas are great but he soon sees the harsh reality of violence, chaos, and even the death of his own mother at the hands of the communists who sent her to do forced labor.
> Later on Cezarys dad, Seweryn who was a russian officer and was presumed dead or missing finds his son and after some time Seweryn tells his son that they will travel to a newly created Poland because of the chaos and instability in Russia. Seweryn presents the idea of Szklane domy or Glass houses. He says that he knows a guy in Poland who builds houses out of glass. They are very modern and protect people from extreme tempratures, are very cheap, stable and easy to build. He presents Poland as a very technologically advenced country where issues like poverty, and illnesess can be overcome with modern ideas. This later turns out to be false but thats not the point.
> The achievement could require you to get independence as Poland, and then have the highest standard of living and also be the no. 1 producer of glass. The standard of living refers directly to the idea of the modern and technologically advanced Poland, and the glass production is a small pun since after all the idea is called "GLASS houses".
Happy Thursday, and welcome to the Art & Music developer diary. I am Karl, Art Director, and the less I write, the better. Let’s get started.
As usual, to avoid this turning into an interminable list of random things, we have to break this down into two general parts: 3D Art, which encompasses the character art, the 3D map buildings, the seasonal visual effects, and the table assets; and 2D Art, which includes the 2D map, the interface, the event illustrations, and the main menu illustration.
Also as usual, too many things have been added for us to bring them all into this diary, and we look forward to you discovering them in the game.
With that, let’s begin with the 3D category, and a brief look at architecture.
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Due to how large this Dev Diary is we couldn't fully post it here on reddit! Please read it in full on our forum HERE!
Given that infamy cost for conquering a state will now also depend on GDP in the beta and upcoming update, should GDP ownership play a role?
Imagine the following: You build up a subject by investing in them. As a consequence, you own a high share of their GDP. But the investment has pushed their GDP upwards, making them very expensive to annex - even though it's still your stuff.
My question: Should having a large ownership share in the GDP of a state reduce the infamy cost?
The effect would be that only the GDP not owned by yourself counts towards the infamy calculation.
In this case, it would be a valid reason to build up a state through foreign investment first, before annexing it. Same goes for the example with a subject that I mentioned before. Because the system, as it is right now, would disincentivize investing abroad if you'd have the plan to take the states in the future (except through unification). If you already own 75% of the stuff in a state, taking it could maybe lead to fewer consequences than if you took something that you don't have any ownership in.
In our timeline, shipping fruit from India to Britain or Hawaii to the US was functionally impossible until refrigeration technologies improved to a point where perishable goods could be imported from overseas at scale, particularly from 1900 onwards. Despite that, fruit exports are one of the most profitable early-game strategies for less developed nations due to the low marginal gain from technology combined with fruit’s use in the basic and luxury food groups.
My best understanding is that good-specific MAPI to represent perishability isn’t a thing, which makes representing their profitability difficult, but something like a modifier to world market exports could function similarly.
Transportation should be a market wide good, but only if the state has a railway and that railway is connected to a world market hub. (Or market capital)
I think that having it be a local good makes sense when from a developer perspective, but from a gameplay perspective it’s major pain point. This is simply a compromise, allow transportation to still be market wide to reduce the subsiding + auto expand nightmare while still sticking to the essence of the feature. I doubt this would have any computational impact as checking to see if something is connected is easy and the framework for market hubs, market goods, and alike already exist.
Maybe we could come up with another idea for electricity because my god it’s so painful to use.
Straight up would be historically accurate. Muhummad Ali Pasha fully monopolized land under the state and used those profits to build out state owned industry
Not making Egypt a command economy feels like a total missed opportunity, as it would make playing it feel so unique, instead of just another unrecognized country
Semi-new to this game. Forming Romania and finally got the oppertunity to attack a very strong Austria with Russia. I know they have a huge debt and my war will push them to default. This works! After a while it gets so bad that they reach -50% on attack, defense and throughput. Suddenly a couple months later they are completely out of default. I turned back time and switched tags to see what's up. At their worst they were -50 million in debt and over their max credit also around 50 million. Then switching over a couple months later I see they are under their new max of 38 million, completely out of default.
My question is then where does the 12 million come from? Just seems like magic.
I enjoy playing female rulers in these types of games, and Victoria 3 seems to have less of them than the other Paradox games. I've found the Iberian queens, the Queen of Cambodia, and some random African country. Are there any other fun ones?
The AI needs a serious rework on how it evaluates "prohibit trade with world market" actions. Qing gets a special modifier effectively blocking it from directly prohibiting the opium trade through treaties with great britain, but only if it's proposing *Qing* stops importing rather than Britain stops exporting.
Even outside of this interaction, nations consistently favor prohibiting trade with the world market, tariffs, and subventions on goods they overproduce even for nations that net-import said goods. It leads to all sorts of counterintuitive situations like seen above.
Was in the middle of a very fun Bulgaria game (credit to the amazing if slightly buggy Gates of the Bosporus mod) when all hell began to break lose in Central Europe. Apologies if I’m over-dramatising it but I’m quite a new player and this is the coolest thing to me.
First, successful rebellions against the Ottomans and an Italian unification inspired nationalist sentiments to arise across the Austro-Hungarian empire.
The inevitable Hungarian revolution of 1856 was supported by the Italian monarchists (2 Sicilies united most of the peninsula) in hopes of aiding their reclamation of Venice. However, the expansionist French Bonapartists immediately intervened by sponsoring simultaneous Piedmontese and Venetian republican uprisings. With Russia distracted with its war of liberation in the northern Balkans, the conflict soon deteriorated into a brutal stalemate. Hundreds of thousands bled out in the Danubian plains.
After nearly 5 devastating years, pan-German nationalists revolted in Vienna, forming a rival Austrian government and declaring their support for a Prussian-led German nation. Seeing their opportunity, a perhaps slightly unprepared Prussia began a unification war in 1859. France rallied the greater of the German states not already aligned with the Prussians, as well as their Danish allies, to bring the ambitious would-be Germany to its knees. They not only demanded the return to pre-war Prussian borders, but also the direct annexation of the entire Rhineland into France. The Italians, spurned by the previous French support for the Venetian republic of San Marco, sided with their German comrades. What remained of the Austrian empire (a marching corpse in all but name) declared neutrality, as their domain collapsed yet further into anarchy.
The initial phase of the war was reminiscent of the glory days of the French empire. The Grand Armée stormed across the Rhine, and on every front the Prussians were turned back. They swept through Belgium, occupying its north to deter a British expeditionary force. However, as the weeks turned to months, the unstoppable might of the French began to drain. The Prussians had not wanted a war of attrition, but now one was here, and they were fighting on their own turf. Despite devastating early losses, the Prussian state managed to increasingly mobilise its economy and population, whilst reforming the outdated tactics that had initially seen its armies scattered. As months became years, French troops became increasingly demoralised, and great battles in Dresden and Cologne saw the tide begin to turn. The eastern Rhine was liberated, a daring Italian counterattack saved the Alp line from collapse.
The year is now 1863, for 4 long years Central Europe has been ablaze. 2 million soldiers have lost their lives, with triple that wounded. The battle lines have for the first time returned to what they were at the start of this catastrophe. Britain looks on with quiet joy as its greatest rivals continue to pour yet more of their blood into the red-stained Rhine, whilst the aging Russian tsar, now free from his eastern campaigns, sees the chance for one last glorious conquest in Galicia.
And what of Bulgaria? Their newly elected Tsar, Alexander Exarch, styled as the Bulgarian Bonaparte by the French for his parliamentary Reforms and cult of personality, stands at a crossroads. The Russians, who up until now have been his greatest ally, view his liberal policies as a threat to their control. His preferred allies the French have become the pariahs of Europe, chasing a bygone empire that slips further beyond the horizon the faster they approach. Prussian envoys circle his palace like hungry wolves, barking promises and threats in equal measure. His new crown already weighs heavy, but Bulgaria - nay - the Balkans, must remain strong. They are so close now, to liberty, strength and unity. He need only play his cards right.
This is quite possibly the most interesting yet plausible early game I have ever experienced, and it was done almost entirely without my involvement (my one contribution was perhaps that my liberation war against the ottomans distracted Russia and Britain from intervening in Austria). I’m really looking forward to seeing how it plays out, and how my young nation will navigate a brave new world.
I’m really happy with how Flag Foundry is turning out. It takes quite a bit of work to build, test and fix all the weird edge cases that keep appearing, but at the same time it’s been really fun to see how far the project can go.
Since v0.25, the biggest change is that Flag Foundry now feels much closer to what I had in mind when I started: not just a tool for tweaking existing flags, but something closer to a small flag studio.
You can now move, scale and rotate elements directly on the canvas, work with proportional or free scaling, select multiple layers at once, group them, add several custom images to the same flag, and generally work in a much more visual way.
A lot of work has also gone into things that are less visible, but were necessary to make everything behave better: improving rotation and mirroring, refining transparency cropping, making exports match the editor more closely, improving project saving, and reducing unnecessary loading when browsing large libraries.
One of the things I still enjoy most about the project is using it as an excuse to imagine all the situations in which a country’s flag could change.
Monarchist restorations, alternative republics, subject states, colonial variants, revolutions, dynastic changes or completely absurd political experiments. Thinking about those scenarios and then trying to represent them visually is probably still the part I enjoy the most.
Version 0.50 also marks an important step for the project as a whole: Flag Foundry is no longer limited to Victoria 3 and now also includes support for Europa Universalis V. I wanted to keep this post focused mainly on the Victoria 3 side, but it felt worth mentioning because it is probably the biggest expansion the tool has had so far.
I’d also really love to see what other people are creating with Flag Foundry. If you make historical flags, alternate-history designs, cursed flags or simply something you find funny, please share them. Seeing what other people come up with is probably one of the best ways to discover what the editor still needs.
Version 0.50 also includes a number of usability and safety improvements: collapsible panels, better layer and colour management, session caching, progressive emblem loading, more reliable projects, and warnings before switching games or libraries when there are unsaved changes.
And as always, Victoria 3 files are processed locally in your browser. They are not uploaded to any server, even if the browser file picker uses the word “Upload”.
Infamy is gained pretty much only by wars and special events, we can lose it only by waiting or diminishing the size of the country. Different laws, technologies, and events cause the decline and growth to be sometimes faster and sometimes slower, but do you think there should be more variables with infamy?
A few examples:
-Slavery is not widely supported in developed countries, as time goes on, more and more countries view it as barbaric. In the end a country that enters the 20th century with slavery should be extremely infamous. Lets say +10 to infamy passive. Serfdom would be pretty similar.
-Domestic policy. If you are an authoritarian tyranny, your citizens are starving, and you do not allow even a small bit of freedom of speech or even rigged elections—all of this makes you, in the eyes of others, a horrible regime that should not exist.
-Lobbying could lower your infamy because you’re portraying yourself as a wonderful country (sort of like “useful idiots”), but on the other hand, your rival could constantly use their own lobby to slander you, causing you to lose popularity on the international stage.
-A technological advantage can reduce your infamy. This is already partly the case with one specific technology that significantly slows the rate at which infamy increases, but the game could also consider technological development as a whole.
-Special "grand projects"—similar to what’s currently in CK3. For example, a massive flood, a volcanic eruption, an epidemic, a famine, or the construction of great architectural wonders like the Suez Canal—all of these require significant financial investment, and individual countries can participate. For example, in exchange for sending food, you’ll get a 10% more expensive food in your market, but your infamy will decrease. Meanwhile other countries will accept refugees, other will donate ship and so on and so on.
Please explain to a noob (will post screenshot when will manage to, I am on mobile when writing this) how they work, how to improve assimilation and such; also which laws are better for assimilation?
For context, it's a Wallachia game where I am conquering Bulgaria that triggered this question
After watching yet another "the late game economy is broken because I have no PoPs" video last week I decided to toss together this mod.
What the mod does:
Decomposes every single production method in the game into a cotinuous 1-100% set of PM's
Uses construction of either a government or private re-tooling building (50% of base building construction) to increment what blend of production methods are applied to the building via modifiers
Allows players to update puppets production methods
To give the player some agency back in exchange for the losses of production methods a new set of game levers have been added as economic policy settings in the building tab
Private construction now appears in "Private tab"
Tracks re-investment weekly
Tracks who is contributing to re-investment
Allows player to adjust ai weightings into 5 categories (Light/Heavy Industries, Resources, Agriculture & Infastructure)
Allows players to further augment Ai weighting with economic policies
Playing as Cape Colony, just passed Cultural Exclusion, in hopes of being able to accept the Griqua people. The JE states the average acceptance needs to be at least 40. Cultural exclusion makes it 35, then they SHOULD be getting another +15 from all being Protestant. But they are stuck at Cultural erasure (under 40)
I played as Great Britain and went for their Empire mostly historically; however, I found myself constantly fighting secessionist revolutions in Africa, India, Malaysia, even in territories I started with like Guyana and Jamaica. The same ethnic groups start up revolutions so quickly that I never get even close to incorporation. How can I alleviate this issue?
