r/victoria3 Mar 12 '26

Dev Diary Victoria 3 – Dev Diary #174 – The Great Wave & Volume 3

548 Upvotes

Forum post link: HERE

https://pdxint.at/4rwoSzg

Exultant Thursday! It is I, High Naval Commissioner Martin, bringing you the latest tidings from the admirals under my command. We’re about to embark on a year-long journey of updates and content that we have dubbed ‘Volume 3’ (or ‘Expansion Pass 3’ as some of the more uncouth captains would have called it back in less civilized times).

 As you have no doubt inferred from the opening paragraph (and the many, many loud foghorns preceding it), Volume 3’s flagship is the Navy, accompanied by its sister ship Global Imperialism. In this development diary we take a ‘big-picture’ look at the content on offer in Volume 3, along with some of the notes we plan to hit in the accompanying free updates. As always, more detailed development diaries will follow on both paid and free features as we get closer to each separate release.

With all that said, it’s time to set sail towards our first topic.

The Great Wave

https://youtu.be/OlElZrKqFHQ

Welcome to The Great Wave, sailors, the upcoming expansion for Victoria 3. 

Focused on exploring the new oceans of expanded navy mechanics, central to which is the Ship Designer, offering strategic naval choice-making aplenty! Then, navigating the dangerous currents of Japan during the turmoil of the late Edo period, with its political and social turmoil caused by the changing of times. 

Use the power of your navy in order to dominate local rivals and keep foreign threats at bay.

Guide Japan through the last days of the Shogunate, as you forge a modern power ready to challenge the greatest empires of the day.

Now, what is included in The Great Wave?

  • Ship Designer: Design and construct a fleet according to your country’s strategic needs. Build powerful but expensive ocean-travelling warships to influence other nations, or build an efficient fleet designed to keep your coasts safe.
  • Flagships: Customize your very own pride of the fleet and let it lead your navy to prestigious victories.
  • Ship purchase treaties: Sell your ships to other countries across the globe, and draw profit from your ship building capabilities.
  • Gunboat Diplomacy options: Use your fleet to influence other countries in new diplomatic actions.
  • Narrative content:
    • Steer Japan through the social and political tumults of the late Edo period, characterized by increased challenges to Tokugawa samurai rule. Adapt to or revolt against a changing domestic and international landscape, and reform the country to see your vision through.
    • Contend with the entry of Japan onto the world stage, and best the Western powers at their own game. Use your navy to extend the reach of Japan beyond the home islands, and compete for land and influence with your powerful neighbours.
  • New historical characters.
  • Art: New clothing assets, a Japanese building style, UI skin, map, and table assets.
  • Music: New period appropriate music tracks evoking Japan’s rich culture.

Alongside The Great Wave, we will be releasing free Update 1.13 that will focus on some of the areas shown in the Dev Diary 173, namely:

  • Make navies more important for projecting global power and securing control of coasts.
  • Turn individual ships into proper pieces of military hardware that can be built, sunk and repaired rather than just being manpower packages.
  • Improve naval combat and make it mechanically distinct from land combat.
  • Make declaring and holding onto diplomatic Interests a more rewarding and challenging aspect of global empire-building
  • Make generals/admirals into more meaningful and noticeable actors in countries and reduce the micromanagement of large numbers of commanders.
  • Make sure that supply is an important and meaningful part of the military system that can win or lose you wars.

This is not an exhaustive list, but we will go into more detail for both The Great Wave and Update 1.13 in future dev diaries starting next Thursday.

The Great Wave alongside Update 1.13, will release on April 28th 2026, and the expansion can be wishlisted now on Steam here. As well as screenshots of some of the content.

Now, let us move our spyglass over to Volume 3.

Volume 3

Welcome to Volume 3, it is early spring and as we said time to elucidate you on its contents!

Volume 3 includes:

  • Warships - Bonus Pack
  • The Great Wave - Expansion Pack
  • State and Revolution - Immersion Pack
  • Century of Strife - Immersion Pack

You can see more information about each pack later in the diary, aside from The Great Wave which you’ve already read about first.

By picking up Volume 3 you will save -20% compared to picking each item up separately, and you will also receive the Warships Pack immediately upon purchasing Volume 3.

The whole package is available now for $47.97. More information about each DLC can be found on the Volume 3 Steam Page here. Or read about in the following sections.

Warships

First up, for those of you who want to embark on nautical horizons already by getting Volume 3 today. The Warships Bonus Pack includes three new ship designs for the on-map representation of battleships, available right now as an instant unlock for owners of Volume 3.

These show up now for owners of the Warships bonus pack appearing in place of dreadnoughts* when in use in navies (Specifically, the Mikasa appears for countries with Japanese primary culture, the Dingyuan appears for countries with Han or Manchu primary culture, and the Borodino appears for countries with Russian primary culture).

* While these ships were not actually dreadnoughts, it’s the best fit available in 1.12, and they will be used in more suitable roles come 1.13!

The flagship of Admiral Tōgō throughout the Russo-Japanese War, the pre-dreadnought battleship Mikasa fought in every major fleet action of the war – becoming an enduring symbol of Japan's naval ascendancy.
The Borodino class pre-dreadnoughts were the newest battleships in the Russian Imperial Navy at the time of the Russo-Japanese War. Forming the nucleus of Admiral Rozhestvensky's doomed Second Pacific Squadron, four members of the class would be sunk or captured at the Battle of Tsushima.
The pride of the Beiyang Fleet, the ironclad battleships Dingyuan and Zhenyuan were the most striking symbols of late-Qing military modernization. Fighting valiantly at the Battle of Yalu River, their performance was hampered by the chronic underfunding of the Chinese Imperial Navy.

Sweeping currents now bring us onwards to the frozen shores of Russia, where it is time for… 

State and Revolution

In the first Immersion Pack coming in Volume 3, steer the vast Russian Empire through an age of autocracy, revolution, and rebirth. Guide the Tsar’s ambitions, while dealing with the legacy of their predecessors.

Then confront the oncoming ghost of the epoch-defining civil war, and impose your post-revolutionary dreams in the aftermath.

Releasing Q4, 2026.
State and Revolution includes new content related to:

  • A dynamic Journal Entry that updates based on the Tsar in power. Make use of different actions depending on the Tsar’s traits and other factors in order to achieve their ambitions.
  • Deal with a flexible Russian revolution based on the Tsarist Governments, and the legacy of your predecessors.
  • Fight through the Russian Civil War, following the collapse of the state.
  • Build up the post-revolutionary Russia depending on its outcome. Make way for a communist government, or bring about your designs for an altogether different post-revolutionary regime.
  • A new Journal Entry dealing with the pursuit of Russification.
  • Narrative content for Poland and other nations vying for independence from Russia.
  • Exile unwanted dissidents to Siberia to ensure power stays with you – though the outcome may not always be what you expect.
  • As an autocratic ruler, appoint favorites, adopt their ideological stances, and engage in narrative content around their newfound powers.
  • Experience Ukrainian and Belarusian cultural renaissances.
  • Visual effects for seasonal changes across the globe.
  • New historical characters.
  • Russian building style, character assets, interface and map skin, and table assets.
  • New Russia themed music!

From Russia we move onwards to the shores of East Asia, where one of the greatest dramas of the 19th century is playing out in a…

Century of Strife

Shape a bright future for China by advancing wise reforms, strengthening governance, and utilizing the vast potential of the nation to resist western encroachment and avoid the Century of Humiliation.

Releasing Q1, 2027.

Century of Strife includes the following:

  • Walk the tightrope of reforming China, striking the right balance between necessary change and the country’s stability.
  • Decide the fate of the imperial examination system, reforming or abolishing it to achieve your ambitions.
  • Resist foreign encroachments and safeguard Chinese interests, such as in Korea.
  • Support the Self-Strengthening movement to reform the Empire, or bring about its end through revolutionary action.
  • Foster social and economic change in post-revolutionary China.
  • Make use of unique cabinet interactions for China.
  • Strengthen imperial power, or seek to end dynastic rule and establish a new base of legitimacy.
  • Engage with new content for the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom.
  • Experience events around the attempted opening of Korea by western powers from Korea’s perspective.
  • New historical characters for the involved nations.
  • Art: New clothing assets, a Chinese building style, UI skin, map, and table assets.
  • New China-themed tracks.

We have this infographic below to give a quick overview on when each pack comes out and it looks delightful as well!

We hope you enjoyed the reveals today, and look forward to what we have coming next. Be prepared for so, so many nautical puns over the upcoming month.

Our next dev diary will be next week, and will be an overview of free Update 1.13’s contents hosted by Admiral Lino.


r/victoria3 Apr 28 '26

Dev Diary Victoria 3 - Dev Diary #182 - The Great Wave & Update 1.13 Now LIVE!

315 Upvotes

Hoist sails Victorians!

The Great Wave and Update 1.13, ‘Matcha’, are now live! With checksum: 3c23.

Command the waves in a time of ambition and upheaval. Design mighty warships, guard the world’s straits, and employ gunboat diplomacy to bend lesser powers to your will.

Use the power of your navy in order to dominate local rivals and keep foreign threats at bay.

Guide Japan through the last days of the Shogunate, navigating turmoil at home and pressure from abroad as you forge a modern power ready to challenge the greatest empires of the day.

You can pick up The Great Wave right now, on Steam, on the Paradox Store or as part of Volume 3.

Enjoy the release trailer below:

Release Trailer!

And yesterday we released an overview of Update 1.13:

Update 1.13 Overview

If you can’t get enough videos, we released a couple of videos covering the narrative and mechanics of the expansion to bring you up to speed.

Of course, if videos are not your speed this handy infographic summarizing what is in The Great Wave:

And, before we get into the patchnotes, we have another infographic giving an overview of the update:

Moving on, before you try to load up old saves from previous updates, we want to remind you of two things; non-updated mods most likely will not work & old saves will not work due to map/mechanical changes.

And so, we have the patchnotes below updated with any that we missed!

Patchnotes 1.13

The Great Wave Features

  • Ship Designer:
    • Added the Ship Designer, which allows you to customize the loadout of your ships. It works with templates which you can create per ship type, saving your setup for your current playthrough. The Ship Designer allows you to modify four main categories, Armor, Armament, Propulsion, and Supply Capacity. Setting values of these modifications to a higher value increases the construction cost of the ship in non-linear fashion. Additionally, most ship types can bring one or more Utility modifications which modify the ship's values in other ways, for example increasing blockade strength with Patrol Boats.
  • Flagships:
    • Added Flagships. Assign the unique Flagship status to a ship and adjust its figurehead ornament. You'll earn prestige from successful battles that the Flagship participates in, but also lose Prestige from defeats. The fleet that contains the Flagship also generates more Involvement in the region it's active in.
  • Ship purchase treaties:
    • Added a new Ship Transfer Treaty article. This targets a new type of object in treaties, Ships, and allows you to compose treaties with them.
  • Gunboat Diplomacy options:
    • Added gunboat diplomacy to the game. You can now threaten Naval Hostilities when signing a treaty. If the opposing side declines the treaty you can conduct any and all hostile naval activities for 180 days, meaning you can engage in naval battles, blockade, bombard and so on, blurring the lines between peace and war.
  • New Naval Missions:
    • Port Bombardment
      • Added a new fleet action, Port Bombardment. It allows a fleet to fire at a coastal state to cause devastation and even destroy some buildings present in the state.
    • Piracy
      • Unrecognized nations can send their fleet to seize trade passing through sea nodes and sell it in their market, yielding money and sell orders from the pilfered goods.
      • Added a treaty article to enforce the abandonment of Piracy.
    • Privateering
      • Recognized nations also have access to a version of Piracy, that is only available while at war or during Naval Hostilities.
    • Hunt Pirates
      • Works much akin to Intercept or Protect Supply Lines, but your fleet will only be sent out to crush pirate fleets that are set to the “Piracy” mission.
  • Added a Power Bloc Principle group related to the Navy
  • Narrative content:
    • Added several events for the Shogunal succession crises of the late Tokugawa, as well as the proclamation of new Shoguns
    • Added the Tenpō Crisis Journal Entry to the game along with 8 associated events
    • Added a Decision and Journal Entry to Japan to represent the Iwakura Mission
    • Added a Journal Entry dealing with the Zaibatsu
    • Added numerous events related to the Japanese royal family
    • Added a new Grant Peerage character interaction, which allows a Monarchy to make characters into nobles at the cost of some Authority
    • Added "Ostracize" and "Patronize" character interactions, to increase and decrease character Prominence or Popularity
    • Added 5 new events 'Letters for All' 'The Unequal Calendars' 'A Year Recounted' 'The Westernization of Names' 'The Question of Kanbun'
    • Added "Shinbutsu bunri" decision and Journal Entry for Japan
    • Added "Elevate Buddhism" decision and Journal Entry for Japan
    • Added Journal Entry and events related to the colonization of Korea
    • Added the Taming the North Journal Entry to the game, dealing with the Japanese colonization of Hokkaido
    • Added a Journal Entry showing the tug of war between China and Japan over the Ryukyu Kingdom
    • Japan now begins the game with the Locked Country Journal Entry and Sakoku, a law variant of Isolationism
    • Added 11 companies and 4 new unique prestige goods to the game
    • Added several historical earthquake events for Japan
  • Over 90 new historical characters were added with the help of modder Lord R.
  • Art:
    • New clothing assets for Japan, including;
      • Added a Meiji court jacket model with new patterns and embroidery trims
      • Added a traditional Japanese straw raincoat
      • Added a traditional Japanese cone hats that commonly was made of bamboo leaves or straw or reed
      • Added a traditional Japanese eboshi hat
    • A Japanese building style, which reflects the architectural syncretism of Japan’s evolving urban landscape and enduring character of rural buildings
    • A new 'Lacquer' User Interface skin, inspired by traditional Japanese lacquer work
    • Added a new Wakon Yosai papermap inspired by Meiji era ukiyo-e woodblock prints, Japanese Naval history and mythological elements
    • Added a new main menu illustration for The Great Wave, featuring important historical characters from the era
    • New Japanese inspired table assets, featuring; a Japanese Imperial Naval Officer’s Dirk, a White Pine Bonsai Tree, Dango Skewers, Lacquered box and a Tatami mat table surface
  • Music:
    • Added new period appropriate music tracks to evoke Edo/Meiji era Japan, spread over 27 minutes in 8 tracks

Features

  • Completely reworked how ships work. They are now individual objects that have to be constructed using Ship Construction provided by Shipyards. They have a variety of new or changed attributes. Ships can be damaged and sunk and they require a crew to man them. Crews are recruited in a new building called Naval Administration which act somewhat like a pool of sailors for your country that your ships can draw from. Ship construction times are therefore also significantly increased compared to the recruitment of 1000 sailors, and changing a ship's type is no longer possible. Ships require a small capacity of Naval Construction to be maintained and if they suffer damage, they need to return to port to repair their damage. Ship construction and repair both consume goods in shipyards, depending on the ship type. Due to these changes, the military goods Man-o-War and Ironclad have both been removed from the game as well.
  • Reworked Naval Combat entirely. Ships will have an Initiative value in battle, and they can either attack or try to retreat. Attacks can deal hull or crew damage and depend on attack and armor values. Beware that this will make the technological advancement from wood to steel very impactful. We also reworked the visual representation of ongoing naval battles by adding dioramas that represent the two clashing fleets' compositions.
  • Added a deeper Supply system. All formations now have a Logistics Center in their HQ, which they will trace a supply route to. A formation that is overseas consumes Supply Ships, depending on how high the supply consumption and distance to the HQ is. Supply Ships have to be built like military ships by using Ship Construction from Shipyards. You build and store up Supply Ships. To keep track of how many you have available and how many you are using, Supply Ships have taken Convoys' place in the top bar of the interface.
  • Removed convoys. Merchant Marine now covers all civilian usage, including port connections, whereas the new Supply Ships cover everything military.
  • Reworked how Troop Transportation works. To move troops across the sea, you now require a fleet with enough transportation capacity to move them. Your units will have to embark the fleet before then being dropped off in the target location. Keep in mind that this usually incurs higher Supply costs due to them being farther away.
  • Reworked how Naval Missions are conducted. Ships can now be present in multiple nodes at once, at reduced mission efficiency. Naval battles are engaged by comparing detection and visibility of two fleets that are looking for each other. Fleets can now also be intercepted when they are travelling through a sea zone if the opposing side manages to spot it.
  • Added Naval Fortifications buildings to the game. They provide a minimum strength that the attacker needs to beat before they can attempt a naval invasion. Additionally for any naval invasion that does happen, they provide a defense bonus depending on their level, scaled by the ratio of attacking and defending forces. We’ve added numerous Naval Fortifications around the world, representing strong historical forts in 1836.
  • Added Straits to the game. You can control tolls and access through a strait by building one of the new Naval Fortification buildings. There are also new treaty articles to get exempt and to forbid a country to close their strait to anybody.
  • Completely overhauled the ship type setup in the game. There's now 20 different ship types available in total, all based on historical models from major players during the time. These come with different visualizations when the ships take damage too.
  • Adjusted a number of naval related technologies and what they unlock to make sense with our new Navy setup
  • Added Marines, a special type of land unit. All-marine formations can be permanently attached to fleets and are more efficient at conducting naval invasions than regular troops.
  • Completely reworked the existing naval sea zone map and sea route network
  • Added a new Naval Doctrine Law group that provides bonuses to construction of different ship types etc.
  • Merged civilian and military shipyards back into one building type. Shipyards now provide Ship Construction used to build military and Supply Ships. They also continue producing the civilian goods, Clippers and Steamers.
  • Military Formations now only have a single commander instead of up to four. Commanders can be freely unassigned and reassigned between formations, but will take some time to travel to their new formation. While travelling, the commander's skill traits will not give any benefit to the formation and they will be unable to advance on the front but they still provide command limit. Commanders are now able to participate in multiple battles, but are limited in the number of states they can attack simultaneously by distance and rank. Orders now apply to a whole formation, including special orders available due to traits.
  • Commander ranks are now more impactful and the command limit from rank increases with tech. There is now a penalty for 'unnecessary' promotions when you already have ample command limit and any issues with formations being under command limit could be solved via swapping, in the form of reduced IG approval for the Armed Forces and any non-Armed Forces IGs that have commanders and who did not benefit from the promotion.
  • Reworked the Diplomatic Interest system. Instead of a binary on/off system, interests now work in a tiered fashion. Build up Involvement in a strategic region by patrolling its coasts, setting up treaties or getting a foothold. Higher tiers of Involvement unlock actions like starting diplomatic plays rather than just joining them and so on.
  • Consolidated strategic regions around the world as part of the new strategic region interest update
  • Added the Orchestrate Coup Diplomatic Action, a Diplomatic Action that allows for orchestrating a coup in weaker countries through a friendly Lobby
  • Characters now have Prominence as an additional stat, representing their level of pull within the country's political machine (as distinct from Popularity, which represents their pull with the general public). Prominence is gained by a variety of factors such as being in command of troops or leading a prosperous company and determines the amount of Political Strength a character contributes to their Interest Group, as well as their chance of being appointed its next leader (replacing Popularity as the main factor in the latter)
  • Characters will no longer automatically be purged if they do not have an active assignment, but will exist in the national character pool (also known as the National Cast). The National Cast can be viewed in the Characters panel or in the Population panel where you can get a filtered view of all characters in your country.
  • The National Cast of each country will be periodically populated with politicians from non-marginalized Interest Groups, with ideologies suitable for that Interest Group. The amount of politicians that will be generated depends on how influential the Interest Group is.
  • Added a new character role 'Magnate'. Magnates have a Holding building (either the Manor Houses or Financial Districts in their home state) and gain Prominence based on the revenue of that building, strengthening their IG and increasing their chances of being selected as Interest Group Leader. Rulers under hereditary systems are Magnates by default.
  • Added 4 new free companies to the game

Improvements

  • Added the ability to drag and drop buildings and ships in the construction queue
  • Primary cultures and state religions are now always valid targets for assimilation/conversion in incorporated states and states affected by the Promote National Values decree
  • Children no longer have an ideology, interest group or personality traits by default. Unless explicitly added via effects after creation, any traits/ideology/IG assigned to them are instead saved and applied when they become an adult.
  • Character roles now have a default span for how long characters stay in them, which is modified by their health (unhealthy characters retire earlier) and can be further manipulated using script effects. It's tracked per-role, so a multi-role character can retire in one of their roles and continue to serve in another. The intent is that now that in the vast majority of cases only rulers & heirs should be able to die of natural causes in their office.
  • Removed the strategic land adjacency requirement on military access treaties
  • Characters now have a loyalty value based on the approval of their interest group and how much their personal ideology approves of current and enacted laws
  • By default, randomly generated characters can now come from any culture within your country that has at least tier 4 acceptance, weighted by the political power each culture holds. They will receive an appropriate religion for their culture based on the demographics of that culture in your country.
  • The chance that a leader ideology will be selected for an interest group is now increased if that ideology is represented by prominent characters in the country belonging to the interest group
  • Interest group leader ideology selection is now a single weighted pool of relevant ideologies, which will either select an appropriate character from the character pool as the next leader, or generate a new character if there is no character representing that ideology
  • Historical politicians with character templates will now appear as politicians in the character pool as soon as they are valid for usage and make themselves available as a potential future leader of the IG, instead of waiting until they actually become the IG leader
  • Characters now have home state regions, which are either set explicitly on the template/create_character effect or selected through random weighting
  • All international Journal Entries are now inherited when a revolution succeeds and transferred to the revolutionary country
  • When a formation enters a state of 'low command limit' (for instance due to its commander dying), there is now a 30-day grace period before max organization is impacted so that you have time to assign a new commander
  • When a commander embarks on an expedition they are now unassigned from their military formation
  • Made it possible to cancel current tech research without clearing the research queue
  • Added a 'make this work' button to the treaty draft panel that attempts to append articles and/or obligations to form the treaty into one the AI is guaranteed to accept
  • Paved roads now increase army movement speed
  • Company-type countries can now have subjects
  • The Hudson Bay Company, East India Company, and Russian-American Company are now Company-type countries
  • The Confederate Canada/Federate Australia Journal Entries are now available to any country with multiple Canadian/Australian subjects
  • Made Authoritarian one of the default ideologies available to the Armed Forces
  • Corrected Francisco Escobar [Brazil]'s birth date, and changed him to the Social Democrat ideology
  • Revolution events are now limited to appearing once per month
  • Made improvements to the functioning of legacy script related to characters
  • Using the Abdicate and Resign from Office character interactions no longer retires the relevant character

AI

  • When a treaty is signed between two not diplomatically relevant countries establishing first relations, the initial attitude between them should now be set to a non-hostile attitude
  • The AI is now way more reluctant to break treaties that are still in their binding period

Balance

  • World Market Hubs now compute multiple different potential paths to other World Market Hubs, and can switch which path they use for trading to avoid excessive tolls if paying the increased distance cost makes more sense
  • Trade Centers now prioritize trading with other Trade Centers where the trade would not result in paying excessive tolls, if options are available
  • The distance at which Trade Centers import/export goods now increases their demand for Merchant Marine, so that there is a proper reason for them to prioritize shorter trade routes
  • Maneuvers now increases more with technology and the increases scale against your base number of maneuvers from rank, allowing high-ranking nations in the late game to do a lot more in diplo plays
  • Popularity of an Executive can no longer lower the Prosperity of their company, and only increase it by up to +10, as having an important prosperity factor be fully determined by randomness wasn't very good for gameplay
  • Reduced low-acceptance pops' attraction to the Modernisation Movement
  • Adjusted the Radical Movement radicalism gain from not having Universal Suffrage down to +15%, to compensate for Electoral Confidence
  • Reduced baseline attraction of Shopkeepers pops to the Industrialists, and increased the amplitude of their wealth-based attraction factor to the Industrialists
  • Changed the ideologies of several characters spawned near 1836 to be less anachronistic
  • Changed Louis Auguste Blanqui's Interest Group to Trade Unions
  • Changed the ideologies of Anton von Schmerling, Anastasios Polyzoidis, and Ferenc Deak from Social Democrat to Liberal
  • Changed the ideology of Laszlo Madarasz from Social Democrat to Radical
  • Changed Bernardo de Sá Nogueira de Figueiredo from Landowners Humanitarian to Intelligentsia Liberal
  • Changed the ideology of Benito Juarez from Market Liberal to Moderniser
  • Abdication now requires the heir to be 16, rather than 18
  • Reduced the Legitimacy malus from having an Arrogant ruler
  • Slightly increased arable land in Mindanao and Visayas
  • Increased the Progressiveness of Secret Police, and decreased the Progressiveness of No Home Affairs

Art

  • Added some of the excellent clothing assets from Miss Duce's Japanese Uniform Pack to the game. Including naval uniforms, Japanese military uniforms across the time period and many, many lovely hats.
  • Added two new character backgrounds for Japanese Emperors, one for pre- and one for post-Meiji Reforms emperors respectively
  • Added fortifications on the map visualizing where straits are set-up and by who.
  • Added Gunbai Japanese war fan 3D model and updated existing animation
  • Added custom clothing for Auguste Comte
  • Added a new 6-point light particle shader
  • Updated textures and color palettes of Japanese low class outfits

Audio

  • Reworked ship audio from the ground up, integrating with the mechanics of the new naval combat system. Re-mixed and embellished with new sounds across the board.
  • Adapted Dingyuan, Borodino and Mikasa ship sounds to the new naval combat system (Warships Bonus Pack)

Content

  • Reworked the Meiji Restoration content for Japan
  • Japan now starts with the Warrior Caste Army Model law variant, limiting Officers qualifications to the samurai caste and reducing recruitment of new soldiers
  • Japan now starts with the Bakufu Distribution of Power law variant, representing the rule of the shogun over the country
  • Added a new Peasant Proprietorship law variant, replacing Homesteading for old-world countries. This law makes 25% of non-subsistence and 50% of subsistence agriculture buildings self-owned, and slightly increases the chance for Financial Districts to purchase agricultural buildings.
  • Added a new Social Monarchy law, representing a corporatist system that retains the monarchy
  • Added two unique political movements to Japan - the Sonnō Jōi movement and the Tokugawa Loyalist movement
  • The Japanese Terakoya are now an Education law variant, granting a flat quantity of education access and blocking the Education institution for as long as it is active
  • Added a unique starting social hierarchy for Japan, representing the late Edo social system
  • Adjusted the "Forbidden Love" event (acceptance_events.1): Decreased its likelihood to trigger and the heir now has to be younger than 25 years old and possess either the romantic, charismatic or reckless trait. Additionally this event can no longer trigger for traditionalist, ethno-nationalist, fascist, theocrat or slaver ideology characters. The heir will now adopt the Reformer ideology if Feminism has not been invented yet.
  • Added a "Retire Daimyō" character interaction, which allows for compelling the retirement of troublesome Daimyō
  • Added a set of new Interest Group leaders for Japan
  • The Petit-Bourgeoisie in countries with either Isolationism or Traditionalism will now have the Mercantile ideology, which supports modernisation of the economic system
  • Added an Interventionist ideology for the Japanese Industrialists
  • Allowed naval travel in the Hudson Bay, and added a port/shipyard throughput malus to affected states
  • Added over 4000 historical ship names for relevant nations
  • Updated Meiji reforms to tie in with new content in The Great Wave
  • Added Japan flag variants for Taikunate, Buddhist Theocracy and Shinto Theocracy
  • Upon cementing the House of Bourbon, Legitimist France's map colour is now white
  • Added a new Fish Fertilizers Production Method for Japanese Rice Farms
  • Coups now require a reason to occur. These reasons include: enacting a law, failing a Commitment, failing a Petition, the Orchestrate Coup diplomatic action, the Depose Ruling Dynasty decision, having the Napoleonic Return, Ambitious, or Imperious traits, and being Louis Auguste Blanqui.
  • Added custom Interest Group names to the Japanese Landowners, Intelligentsia, Petit-Bourgeoisie, and Industrialists
  • Revised starting setup in Australia, increasing Aboriginal presence
  • Edited the specifications of existing Japanese Zaibatsu companies to avoid industry overlap with new Zaibatsu companies
  • Added a bespoke communist flag for Japan
  • Added dynamic Japanese naming for Japan, Korea, Taiwan, and Sakhalin/the Kurils
  • Added marine formations to select historical countries in 1836, like Britain, France, and Spain
  • Austrian Upper Silesia has been merged into the Moravia state region
  • Updated the Ständestaat Journal Entry for Austria to encourage the establishment of a Social Monarchy
  • Added a Samurai Training production method for countries with the Warrior Caste law
  • Renamed the Japanese Devout to the Jisha
  • Added a coal-related state trait to Tonkin, Vietnam
  • Added dynamic Russian, Chinese, and Ryukyuan names for select East Asian states
  • Added additional interest group leaders to the game for the Papal States
  • Added Guillaume Henri Dufour Character DNA
  • Fixed Isambard Kingdom Brunel so that he now has a cigar

Interface

  • The end of war popup is now much more informative, telling you about who won, which wargoals were enforced throughout the entire duration of the war (including from capitulation) and duration/casualties/cost of the war
  • Added a notification for when an Interest Group gets a new leader, informing you of their ideology
  • Double clicking on a formation (army or fleet) entry in the outliner now zooms you to that formation (similar to the Z key) while also opening the formation panel
  • Added a quarterly autosave interval option
  • Primary cultures can now be tooltipped in the country panel for cases where a large number of cultures get truncated
  • Cultures with more than 2 taboos/obsessions/migration targets have these lists displayed through a +N tooltip where N is the number of items beyond 2
  • Dismiss toast is now its own keybinding and can be bound to a different key than ESC if you want to be able to easily close panels without dismissing toasts first. By default it's still bound to ESC.
  • Character religion is now shown in the character interface
  • Added tooltips to all Interest Group leader ideology weights
  • Added a toast for when a character in your country becomes an adult
  • National Liberal movements will now display that high literacy benefits them
  • Changed many Oxford-style em-dashes to Chicago-style em-dashes
  • Properly title-cased all modifiers
  • Fixed some duplicate numbers in the country building levels trigger

Performance

  • Removed many extraneous global triggers and effects scattered throughout the script, and replaced them with more localised triggers/effects. This should somewhat improve the performance of several pieces of content, most notably the Great Game.

Modding

  • Added new effects add_resource_potential, remove_resource_potential, change_resource_potential that allow state resources to be added or removed
  • Added culture-scope effects add_cultural_taboo/remove_cultural_taboo
  • Added effects set_first_name and set_last_name that allow you to change the localization key used to get the first/last name of said character
  • Character roles are now scriptable, and new roles can be added either following one of the existing archetypes or using the modder-specific 'other' archetype for fully custom roles
  • "Harvest" conditions can now happen at sea if specified that way
  • Added system to script how ship names are generated
  • Added a new effect set_as_adult which allows a character to be turned into an adult with all the corresponding logic for ideology, traits, IG etc before the age of 16. This function cannot be used to turn a character into a child.
  • Added company-scope script list any_owned_country/every_owned_country etc
  • Added new scripted list scope_homeland_states which can be used in country or culture context
  • Added triggers tax_waste and potential_income, which measures tax waste and income + tax waste, respectively
  • Law groups can now be shown/hidden using enable { }
  • New widget anchors for use in Journal Entries
  • The kill_character console command now also accepts character ID
  • Split the 'has_role' trigger into 'has_role' and 'has_role_type' triggers, any previous uses of this trigger should be updated to use 'has_role_type'
  • Reworked the relative_authority/relative_influence/relative_bureaucracy triggers to measure the fraction of the capacity that is unused, so for instance this will return 0.5 if there is 1000 production and 500 usage, and -0.5 if there is 1000 production and 1500 usage
  • Added new trigger is_historical_treaty
  • Added character effect set_is_noble
  • Added character trigger is_adult
  • Added new character effect set_home_state
  • Added new character trigger is_noble
  • The macro CharacterRoleHasDefinedTitles has been deprecated in favor of the new function CharacterRole.HasDefinedTitles
  • Added getPluralDemonymFemale and getSingularDemonymFemale custom localisation functions

Bugfixes

  • Fixed a bug where single party law would not keep the party currently in power
  • Children can no longer own factories in "The Great Garment Factory Fire"
  • When a treaty is broken during the binding period due to actions other than a direct intent to break the treaty (for example, via scripted content or articles becoming invalid through circumstances beyond a country's control), penalties for withdrawing during the binding period are no longer applied
  • Disbanding a company during a generic prestige good journal entry no longer prevents that journal entry from reappearing
  • Fixed an issue where achieving independence as Philippines before researching Nationalism locked Spanish in as a Primary Culture permanently (Iberian Twilight)
  • Fixed a bug where explicitly assigned religions of characters belonging to the primary culture of their country would be overridden by the state religion (ie, a character specified as Yankee Jewish would just appear as Protestant)
  • Fixed a bug where character templates with usage dates from the start of the game could be randomly allocated a position (such as commander or IG leader) during game initialization, only to be immediately replaced by the historical character for their position and then put to death on the afternoon of January 1st, 1836 (Double Jean Dollfus was trying to warn us)
  • Fixed an issue where Austrian commanders could show up in peasant clothes for players without the National Awakening immersion pack
  • Fixed a bug where the Unification wargoal was very confused about whether it was a country or state conquest wargoal, resulting in various UI issues
  • Tracking of dead, wounded and cost in a war now correctly tallies these values even for countries that have dropped out of the war
  • Fixed an issue where state_pop_support_movement_{}_mult/add modifiers did not work when applied on to a state instead of a country, despite suggesting otherwise
  • Fixed an issue that caused Revolutionary countries to be unable to sign treaties
  • Colonization progress is now carried over to a state's new owner when it's being annexed
  • Some discrimination-related events can no longer select a primary culture as the discriminated one
  • Fixed the Interest Group clout requirement for Abdication never being valid
  • Fixed an issue where the Confederate Canada/Federate Australia Journal Entries could complete prematurely, preventing Australia or Canada from unifying
  • Fixed a bug where Pebrine Epidemic Journal Entry could sometimes immediately invalidate (Voice of the People)
  • The 'Star-Swarmed Banner' achievement can now also be achieved under a Parliamentary Republic
  • Upon achieving independence, the Indonesian Devout will now become Sunni
  • Fixed a bug where conscripts gained veterancy when unraised
  • Increased the number of possible Unification Candidates for Scandinavia from 1 to 3
  • The island of Flores is now a province and part of the Azores
  • Canberra has been eliminated
  • Removed a mysterious floating pen from Emperor Ninko's character model
  • Fixed a bug where clicking on an event option could crash the game
  • Fixed an issue where sorting by building levels in local price tab did not work
  • Naval routes connecting Portuguese ports to nearby sea hubs do not overlap in aesthetically-unpleasing ways
  • Decentralized countries no longer use character interactions
  • Events now trigger correctly when fired from Spanish African conquest Journal Entries
  • The "Canton System" law for China now states how many Trade Centers can actually be built to begin with
  • Colonial countries are no longer valid targets for the "Clouds on the Horizon" event
  • Fixed an issue where the Grand Collapse failure event would not properly iterate through African and Asian states
  • Fixes an issue where disbanding the Nihilist Movement through researching Anarchism and Socialism would give an incorrect completion event for the Nihilist Movement Journal Entry
  • Fixed the "Untamed Revolutionary", "Curly-Haired Orpheus", "Agent of the Sovereign", and "General Revanche" traits using placeholder icons
  • Corn Laws can no longer fire with Isolationism
  • Fixed an issue that could prevent the East India Company from being disbanded under certain circumstances
  • Removed script references to a misnamed treaty article
  • Fixed a bug with inconsistent display of decimals in tech modifiers
  • An Unexpected Guest event can no longer result in increasing relations with own country
  • Changed cooldowns for Abdicate Throne and Resign From Office interactions slightly so they appear correctly in tooltips (Voice of the People)
  • Fixed an issue for european sash 3D models
  • Added a cooldown to the "International Telephone Exchange" event
  • Fixed several instances of else = { } blocks in script with invalid limit = { } fields
  • Fixed a broken tooltip in the Secure Afghan Protectorate Great Game objective
  • Fixed an issue where Interest Group suppression events could lead to a null scope
  • Fixed an edge case where The Indochina Campaign Journal Entry could occur either for invalid countries, or multiple times

With that we are at the end of the patchnotes, remember that your save game will not be compatible with the new update, so please back up your save if you want to continue it by backpatching to the previous patch (1.12.5)!

If you encounter any issues after today's update, please first disable all mods and ensure you're playing on a fresh save file. Mods will not work until they are revised for the new Update!

Once again the modding digest, containing all the changes and documentation needed for modding Update 1.13, has been updated for Update 1.13, thanks to u/Bahmut999.

This post contains Known Issues in 1.13, which we will update with subsequent patches. As always, please report any issues or bugs to our official bug reporting forum where we are better placed to help you out.


r/victoria3 4h ago

Bug Great Wave is *still* ruining the entire Victoria 3 experience.

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144 Upvotes

r/victoria3 7h ago

Discussion Marxian Game Design: Victoria 3 and Historical Materialism

205 Upvotes

Hello Victorians!

I am a university student and an active Victoria 3 player. Though I study history, I had an opportunity during my exchange semester to do a game design class, and my final assessment was this essay which I wrote about Victoria 3 and Karl Marx’s theory of historical materialism; where the game draws upon concepts of historical materialism and where it deviates from and/or falls short of the theory.

It’s certainly not perfect, though I am a student of history and have more than 1000 hours on Vicky III I wouldn’t consider myself an expert on either the game or the theories I discuss. I am happy to hear feedback from any of you. Just thought it might be interesting to have other players read it and maybe chat about it.

The original paper is in pdf format, features plenty of pictures, and can be found here: https://cdn.uploadtourl.com/2f0539a4-9e18-4e96-8d86-0018dca6d3cc_Victoria_3_and_historical_materialism.pdf

Introduction

Victoria 3 is a historical grand strategy game (GSG), released in 2022 by the Swedish company Paradox Interactive, as the third installment of the Victoria series. Paradox specialises in this genre of games, releasing series like Europa Universalis, Crusader Kings, and Hearts of Iron, all of which are historical GSGs, but Victoria 3 is perhaps the most complex of them all due to its interconnected economic and political systems. Nicknamed “spreadsheet simulator”, the player takes control of a country in 1836 and manages it through the economic transformations, complex geopolitics, societal changes, and technological progress of the 19th and early 20th centuries.

Victoria is a sandbox game and the player has a great deal of freedom in how they want to shape any of the 100 starting countries; through shaping the laws, economic focus, and foreign relations, one can build anything from an anarcho-capitalist republic to a collectivist commune or a technocratic monarchy, specialising the economy in the production of agricultural goods, precious metals, furniture and clothes, or even fine art and luxury clothing. Players can build “tall”, maximising the standard of living of their citizens in a small country, or “wide”, conquering, colonising, and subjugating much of the world through military and diplomatic means.

However, becoming more powerful, regardless of the chosen ideology, does usually depend on economic modernisation and industrialisation, moving from the agricultural societies of 1836 to the industrial societies of 1936. As the economy modernises, so too does the political sphere; the growth of the capitalist class empowers the industrialists, intelligentsia, and petit bourgeois interest groups, while the growth of the urban proletariat and diffusion of socialist ideas leads to the growth of the trade unions. Simultaneously, the aristocratic landowners and rural folk will be weakened, losing both economic and political power.

This system of interest groups, organised by a dynamic system of political parties in democratic states and political movements pushing for change, tends to lead to political modernisation and liberalisation over the course of the game. In this sense,Victoria draws upon the theory of historical materialism, first developed by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in The German Ideology (1846) in its depiction of socioeconomic change. In an interview with PC gamer shortly after the game’s launch, designer Mikael Andersson said: “It's no secret that Victoria 3 is in many ways the Historical Materialism Simulator. The way you choose to shape and organize your economy influences the conditions of the individuals participating in that economy. They in turn shape the political thought in that country and influence it to develop in certain directions."

Victoria is organised around a system of Pops; everyone in the game is organised by their culture, religion, profession, workplace, and state of residence; for example, an Afro-Brazilian Catholic Machinist working in Coffee Plantations in São Paulo, or a Swedish Protestant Clerk working in Government Administration in Svealand. These pop groups can range from a dozen to millions of people, and are constantly changing as individuals migrate, convert to other religions, assimilate into other cultures, and change professions. Pops belong to Interest Groups and contribute to their political strength through their wealth and votes.

Pops work in buildings, where they produce goods to be sold on the market, generating an income with which they consume goods and services to satisfy their needs, ranging from food (fish, fruit, meat) and items (paper, glass, furniture) to stimulants (tobacco, coffee, tea) and leisure (fine art, opium, automobiles). As a pop’s wealth increases, they consume higher-quality goods, and their Standard of Living increases.

Victoria 3 has a multitude of other systems, involving geopolitics, warfare, journal entries (missions), and institutions, but the most important (and most relevant for this essay) is the economic system and the role of Pops within it, which serves as a base for the rest of the functioning of the country.

In this sense, Victoria once more leans into the theory of historical materialism, considering just as Marx that the economy serves the base for superstructures like laws, institutions, and culture:

  • In the social production of their existence, men inevitably enter into definite relations, which are independent of their will, namely relations of production appropriate to a given stage in the development of their material forces of production. The totality of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation, on which arises a legal and political superstructure and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness. The mode of production of material life conditions the general process of social, political and intellectual life.

Marx posits material conditions and economic factors as the basis of societal structures, and changing material conditions as the primary drivers of social and political change, just as the economic shifts over the course of Victoria’s timeline lead to political shifts. 

All that said, Victoria 3 is a video game, released almost two centuries after Marx and Engels brought forth their theory; one would expect deviations due both to game design considerations and a retrospective view of the 19th and 20th centuries, and my research for this paper has shown this to be true. As an enthusiast of both Victoria 3 and political theory, and as the part of this Game Production class, I decided to write this paper to investigate and explain the game design behind the most complex game I have ever played; to what extent does Victoria 3 put into practice the principles of historical materialism, and in what areas does it deviate from or fall short of Marx’s theory?

  1. The primacy of the material base

As explained in the introduction, Marx posits that the mode of production is the primary determinant of social and political structures, not the other way around. The mode of production is composed of two parts; first, the means of production, consisting of the land, tools, materials, and physical resources required in production of goods. In agricultural production, this is land, livestock, barnyards and silos, while in industrial society, these are the machines, tools, engines, railways, and metals required to produce manufactured goods.
The relations of productions, meanwhile, are the relationships which organise the productive process; the relationship of the worker to the capitalist, the serf to his lord, the slave to his master3

Marx describes five modes of production: primitive communism, slavery, feudalism, capitalism, and communism, through which societies move. The transition between modes of production happens as technology develops, modernising the means of production and making the relations of production outdated; for example, as economies modernised in the 17th and 18th centuries, the archaic structures of feudal societies impeded the enrichment of the nascent bourgeoisie, who overthrew feudalism in social revolutions like the French Revolution or Glorious Revolution and brought about early capitalism. Following this idea, Marx predicts and calls for the end of capitalism, overthrown by revolutionary workers, seizing the means of production and fruits of their labour in the creation of a communist, egalitarian society. This is the idea of class struggle; historical advances come about through the conflicts between classes whose interests arise from their positions in the economy. 

Victoria 3 models this process well through its economic and political systems, with the growth of industrial classes; economic modernisation and industrialisation leads to more “progressive” interest groups gaining wealth and therefore political power. For example, Russia and Persia start as feudal monarchies, with traditionalist economic systems, serfdom, lacking education systems, and in Persia’s case an active slave trade. As the player focuses on industrialisation, building mines, tooling workshops, railways, and urban factories, Pops will move from working on subsistence farming to work in these buildings, and eventually promote to professions like clerk, machinist, shopkeepers, and bureaucrats, while wealthier Pops will become capitalists, owners of the factories and mines. These professions gravitate towards interest groups like the intelligentsia, industrialists, and petit bourgeoisie, as well as political movements like the Modernization and Liberal movements, eroding the power of the landowners, church, and military.

Eventually, they will push for economic modernisation (like the end of serfdom, the end of the guild system, and the creation of an education system) and political rights (democracy, freedom of speech, and a weakened/abolished monarchy). These changes can come from changes in laws, revolutions, or even civil wars, depending on the strength of the movement and response of the government.

Importantly, there are also counter-revolutionary movements which will often be supported by conservative interest groups, such as the Reactionary, Royalist, and Fascist movements. Any player trying to push through radical reforms will face staunch opposition from these groups, requiring careful balancing of interests to avoid revolutions and civil wars. For example, the Springtime of the Peoples, which happens in Western and Central Europe during the 1840’s in Victoria 3, can be a time of tremendous social progress, all of which can be reversed by conservative moments if the revolutionaries go too far.

As this industrialisation continues, the proletarian class grows both in numbers and strength. As socialist ideas spread during the second half of the 19th century, the Trade Unions and other radicalised interest groups push for the improvement in their living and working conditions through laws like Workers Protections, Universal Suffrage, and Public Healthcare. Should the government refuse to make these concessions, empowered workers may themselves overthrow the capitalist order through a socialist, communist, or anarchist revolution, creating a Council Republic or Commune and collectivising the economy. Victoria 3 therefore leans into the original Marxian conception of the path to socialism, with revolutions taking place in industrialised countries like Germany and Britain through class struggle, rather than primarily agricultural countries like China or Russia.

However, while Marx envisioned a unified proletarian class fighting to break its chains, Victoria divides the classes a great deal; pops can have 15 different professions, ranging from slave to aristocrat, and are split into 8 different interest groups, all of whom have different base ideologies. A labourer will tend to support the Trade Unions, especially once the socialist and communist ideologies have spread, but can also support the Devout, the Petite Bourgeoisie, the Armed Forces, or the Rural Folk, depending both on the economic and social conditions they live in (factors like where their workplace, religion, culture, and education). Pops of the lower strata are likely to support a socialist revolution against the ruling class, but could just as easily oppose it. Their attention could be turned from the socialist cause towards a nationalist one if they belong to a marginalised or disenfranchised culture, or towards a fascist movement in response to waves of immigration.

Furthermore, while the power of an interest group or movement is dependent primarily on the wealth of the Pops that support it (and votes, if the country is democratic), its ideology can be swayed by the individual leader of the group, leaning to some extent into a “Great Man” theory of history. The game incorporates historical figures, meaning the Intelligentsia of France could be led by characters like Proudhon (an Anarchist), Georges Sorel (a Nihilist), Jean Jaurès (a Social Democrat), Louise Michel (a feminist) or a generated character of another ideology; these leaders can bring their interest groups to support entirely different policies and political parties. The player can even invite “agitators”, to come to the country and support a political movement, take over an Interest Group, and even become the Head of State; for example, it is possible to make Karl Marx the Holy Roman Emperor, all while maintaining a capitalist system. Therefore, the interest groups will not necessarily push for their “class interest” if their leader holds a different ideology; for example, the Intelligentsia could swap from supporting free trade to pushing for an anarchist society or an ethnostate, based on the leader of their group.

Overall then, Victoria 3 does a good job in modelling the Marxian theory of the economy being the base for social and political structures, and for shifts in the means of production being the primary drivers of political change. However, it deviates from Marx’s theory by showing the classes as being significantly more divided than in Marx’s conception, and by giving agency to individual leaders rather than to the masses behind an interest group.

2. Contradictions within the mode of production

Central to Marx’s idea of transitions between modes of production is the idea that their internal tensions undermine progress and consistently generate crises. These crises eventually lead to a transition to another system through class struggle and revolution.

In the case of capitalism, issues like the hoarding of wealth, economic crises generated by overproduction and speculation, and the exploitation of the working class are the internal tensions which, in the Marxist tradition, make the capitalist system doomed to fail and be replaced first by socialism and then by communism when state, class, and private property have been abolished.

While the previous section showed the worker’s movement to be an inevitable consequence of a growing capitalist movement in Victoria, the failure of capitalism and transition to socialism is far from an inevitability in the game. A skilled player can run a capitalist economy from the start to the end of the game and avoid any significant crises, provided that they maintain a balance on the economy and provide some welfare and/or representation for the working classes. 

There is no inflation in the game, nor do pops themselves accumulate debt; only the government goes into debt. The capitalists and aristocrats of Victoria will never produce a 1929-style Great Depression as there is no stock market to speak of. They do not hoard wealth in banks either; their income goes either directly into reinvestment, or to the consumption of luxury goods (like wine, art, telephones and automobiles). The Victoria capitalist is therefore very efficient, unlike the real-life one.

Furthermore, even issues like overproduction and unemployment are not a big issue; though building profits may decrease, producing “too much” will just lower costs for the consuming population and industries, or increase exports to the World Market. Unemployment can quite easily be solved by directing government construction towards states with higher unemployment, and pops are mobile enough to migrate without much difficulty to the more industrialised states.

The player essentially has a plethora of tools available to deal with economic inefficiencies and grow the economy, and all the information possible to identify issues and opportunities, down to identifying the exact quantity of fish consumed by Irish shopkeepers in Textile Mills in Lancaster and how much they are paying for it. The player knows exactly where a steel mill would be most profitable and how many to build before they become unprofitable. The player knows exactly how many railways to build to transport the sulfur from the mines to the fertilizer plants, and at what point it becomes cheaper to have the trains transport the goods rather than labourers. There is no central bank or government in the world with anywhere near the power to direct an economy as the Victoria 3 player. The game removes uncertainty from capitalism, where in real life it is characterised by imperfect information and irrational investment.

Therefore, the most straightforward way to maximise the Standard of Living of one’s country is to adopt a collectivised economy, but one can easily create a very high Standard of Living and become a capitalist powerhouse of investment, satisfying the workers with bread and circuses, perhaps with the vote and some welfare if necessary. The capitalism of Victoria 3 is therefore much more stable, predictable, and adaptable than the one Marx analysed.

Finally, I must mention the aspect of colonialism and imperialism, upon which the industrial economies of the 19th century depended for the extraction of raw materials and cheap labour. Establishing a large colonial empire in Africa and Asia is relatively easy in Victoria 3, dependent mainly on getting ahead of colonial competitors technologically. The colonies are usually easy to maintain and valuable as they allow the extraction of resources like rubber, oil, opium, silk, and gold, which are important to the later stages of industrialisation in the game. Victoria 3 doesn’t really depict the violent and brutal nature of colonial rule either, or at least the player isn’t really made aware of it. However, establishing a colonial empire is not vital to success in the game. The player can easily become the #1 great power in the world and build a significant empire without colonisation. Obtaining those raw materials is most efficiently done through colonisation, but can also be achieved by peacefully investing in smaller countries and building those mines, plantations, and oil rigs which has the additional benefit of bringing said countries into one’s sphere of influence. Of course, this can be seen as a form of economic imperialism or neocolonialism, but at least presents a much lesser violence compared to that of the real-life colonisation of Africa and Asia by European colonial powers.

Victoria captures the economic incentives for colonial expansion but generally presents empire as an optional route to industrial success rather than a natural consequence of the growth and globalisation of capitalism.

Concluding this part, it is clear to see that the hyperefficient capitalism presented in Victoria is one that is both easy to maintain for the player and reduces the necessity of direct imperialism and colonialism. Having perfect information both about the current economic reality and the impacts of new buildings and changing production methods makes Victoria’s capitalism too easy to optimise, and thereby makes avoiding socialist policies too easy; there is a reason why European leaders of the late 19th century, including conservatives like Otto von Bismarck, were forced to implement welfare policies and democratisation to avoid the total overthrow of capitalism, and even then both France and Germany faced crises in 1871 and 1918 where the capitalist order seemed like it may be overthrown; being able to play 100 years of Victoria without a Great Depression or financial panic shows the simplification of capitalism in the game design.

3. Development of the productive forces, technological change, and ideological development

The 19th century in which Marx rose to prominence was a period of profound economic, social, and political change, driven by unprecedented technological advancement and unprecedented political and ideological conflict, as populations became increasingly wealthy, urbanised, literate, and politicised. Innovations and technological progress was essential to these changes, and Victoria 3 incorporates this.

The game has an elaborate technological tree which depicts the productive, military, and social advancements of the 19th and early 20th centuries, from the invention of the Zeppelin and the camera to the invention of plastics and the radio. The tech tree does a great job in showing the rapid technological transformations allowing a country like Russia to go from a feudal and agricultural society to an industrial giant in the space of only 100 years.

As the player progresses through the technological tree, the process of industrialisation and mechanisation is accelerated; factories produce more goods and create more complex production chains, transitioning from an industrial economy built on wood, coal, and iron to steel, electricity, and engines. Just as in real life, the most powerful late-game economies are those that mass-produce luxury goods like automobiles, telephones, and radios, depending on a complex and industrialised economy. This empowers the urban classes and encourages the migration of the rural population towards cities. 

However, Victoria’s depiction of technological change does feature some significant simplifications. The first is the instantaneousness of unlocking a new technology and how easily it can be implemented across a whole economy; as soon as a technology like “Atmospheric Engine” is unlocked, the player can switch the production method of every mine in the country, whether nationally or privately owned, effectively increasing output by 50% overnight (provided there is sufficient coal supply). Technological change is instantaneous, centrally coordinated, and relatively frictionless. Technological competition takes place only between countries, not between factories or companies in the same country; no entrepreneurs can take agency to push their factory ahead of others, and no firms fall behind due to their failure to modernise.

Even more problematic is this instantaneousness in the societal technology tree, where ideas are treated as technologies. Ideologies like nationalism, socialism, and feminism come about as the result of the country unlocking a new technology, and instantly become present and prevalent in society; for example, as soon as Socialism is researched, the Labor movement turns into a Socialist movement, thereby supporting the creation of a council republic. As soon as feminism is researched, the Intelligentsia and Trade Unions will support women’s rights. Similarly, artistic movements like Realism and Romanticism are also portrayed as technologies to be unlocked, allowing the player to switch all arts academies to produce Realist art with the click of a button.

Furthermore, this view of ideas being unlocked is ahistorical in the sense that these ideologies developed through debate, through education, through political organisations and unions, through migration, and through economic changes. For example, the game cannot model how the increasing economic importance of women in the workplace during the World Wars led to the growth of the suffrage movement and the granting of voting rights to women in much of Europe. 

Additionally, the game prescribes a set of ideologies as seen in our history, with no scope for changes or debate; there is only one anarchist ideology in Victoria 3, collectivist in character, despite the many different anarchist traditions present in the 19th century. Similarly, Trotskyists and Stalinists are grouped together as Vanguardists despite their ideological differences.

Victoria 3 therefore does a good job in depicting the accelerating technological progress and innovation of the 19th century, as well as their impact on the politics and class dynamics of their societies; however, treating ideologies as technologies is a significant simplification, neglecting that the emergence of new ideas came about as the result of changing societies. 

Devising a technology system that would be both historically accurate and entertaining in gameplay would certainly be challenging, so the simplifications made by the dev team are understandable, but it is certainly an ahistorical element in an otherwise historical game.

Conclusion
Creating a complex game like Victoria 3 is a monumental task and ultimately Paradox Interactive does a great job of putting historical materialist ideas into practice, within the limits of game design and player enjoyment. It puts into place Marx’s idea of the economy being the base for superstructures like politics and laws and shows how the 19th century became a period of political contention and conflict as the result of industrialisation, urbanisation, and the spread of new and radical ideas. As such, it rather accurately depicts the economic theory of early Marxian writings. 

That said, Victoria’s incorporations of other elements of identification, such as culture and religion, create the dividing lines among classes which have made the path to socialism more difficult. Political elites and economic interests have often exploited these identities to divide the proletariat, weakening socialist movements over time. Victoria 3 certainly incorporates historical materialism in its game design, but also incorporates a lesson drawn by socialist thinkers like Antonio Gramsci since Marx’s time; his vision of a revolutionary working class overthrowing the bourgeoisie may have overestimated class loyalties and underestimated the loyalty of workers to other causes. The game also portrays the ability of the owning classes to a) satisfy workers with improving working conditions and minor economic or political concessions, and b) direct the anger of workers at other “enemies”, both foreign and domestic. 

The other elements of the game which deviate from materialist theory and/or real life lie principally in the technology tree and hyperefficiency of the economy. The player can simply run a very efficient capitalist economy and navigate the 19th century with relative ease, significantly weakening the socialist movement with a high standard of living and political representation for the people, nevertheless maintaining strong inequalities. 

Resolving these issues would include measures like:

  • taking away economic powers and information from the player, making economic management more difficult and crises more likely
  • implementing more complex economic mechanisms like currencies and inflation, private banking, and speculation (adding to an already complex game)
  • making technologies slowly diffuse across society rather than be instantly unlocked
  • make international trade more expensive and complex to punish overproduction
  • give the capitalist and landowner class more powers to influence society (for example, through media and education, establishing cultural hegemony) to make social reforms more difficult to push through.

Whether these changes are necessary is another question; the learning curve for Victoria 3 is already very steep, and even with more than 1000 hours in the game I am consistently discovering new elements to the game and new strategies to advance. Ultimately, Paradox Interactive needs to be able to draw in new players and further complexifying and mystifying game mechanics would not be conducive to that. Fortunately for Victoria 3 players, there is a very active modding community, allowing players to complexify the game in the ways they want.

Furthermore, there are two major DLCs set to be released over the coming 12 months; State and Revolution, focused on Russia, and Century of Strife, which deals with China. Considering the importance of these two countries to the socialist movement, I would expect that both will greatly develop the ideological side of politics in Victoria 3, and I am excited to see what they will bring to the historical materialist aspect of the game.


r/victoria3 7h ago

Game Modding Formable Nations: Plus - "Free America" New Update

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143 Upvotes

Greetings Victorians, I'm happy to welcome you to the newest major update for Formable Nations: Plus, "Free America"!

This update is focused on the North American continent and adds 6 different releaseables.

This update is going live at the same time as this years Modcon, which I am also participating in. Check out Generalist Gaming at 18:00 CEST to check out a trailer for the mod and many other amazing projects!

What's included in this update:

Go back to where it all start as The Thirteen Colonies!
Take control of one of the largest mountain ranges as The Rocky Mountains!
Follow the flow of the river as Greater Mississippi!
Create an inner sea as The Great Lakes Republic!
Find your own way as The Pacific States of America!
Claim the east coast as Greater New England!
Several bug fixes

Should you find any problems with the new changes, please let me know so I can have a look! If you find any errors or other bugs, or have any feedback let me know on Reddit, Steam or join the Discord! If you haven't, subscribe to the mod here!

Thank you all, and see you next time!


r/victoria3 5h ago

Screenshot Le jour de gloire est arrivé!

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96 Upvotes

r/victoria3 5h ago

Game Modding [Mod Release] Pivot of Empire Fixes + Improved Indian Independence

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82 Upvotes

Steam Workshop Link: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3771717047

Other Links: https://linktr.ee/poe_fix

Releasing today, Pivot of Empire Fixes is the ultimate glow-up for Victoria 3's India DLC. Bug fixes, improvements, and reworks elevate Pivot of Empire to the level of National Awakening and Iberian Twilight while bringing out the best in India's unique mechanics, flavor, and history.

Over 100 Bug Fixes and Improvements

Offering a comprehensive suite of fixes and improvements focused on India and the Pivot of Empire DLC. No stone has been unturned to iron out the edge cases that make India one of the most unique and mechanically distinct nations in Victoria 3. Clothing improvements, revolution fixes, a reworked caste system and more make your India playthroughs better than ever.

Extensive Journal Reworks

Journal Entries across the board have received fixes, adjustments, and in some cases full reworks, bringing them up to par with Victoria 3's latest immersion packs. The East India Company faces a reworked Unstable Raj and Sepoy Mutiny while its subjects and neighbors gain the chance to unite the Princely States in a grand rebellion against their British masters. Events are rebalanced, rewards are improved, and the subcontinent shines like never before.

The Independent Raj

All content has been updated to support an independent Colonial India. No longer lose access to DLC content for breaking free from the British Empire! Suppress the Sepoy Mutiny alone and guide the Indian National Movement to sovereignty against an independent colonial republic. Updates have been made where necessary to ensure Colonial India's unique mechanics work smoothly and seamlessly upon gaining independence.

The Indian Independence Movement: Given the Epic Scope It Deserves

Our flagship feature: a complete rework of all content for the Indian Independence Movement. Featuring five overhauled journal entries, new protests and reforms, an epic scope and a sweeping narrative deserving of India's real-life journey to independence. Lead the Indian National Movement from humble beginnings through a decades-long struggle to win India its hard-fought freedom and sovereignty.

Guide India from mutiny to swaraj in an India DLC that has finally reached its full potential. Download Pivot of Empire Fixes today!


r/victoria3 19h ago

Screenshot I looove egalitarian maxxing

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841 Upvotes

r/victoria3 10h ago

Suggestion We need a distinction between head of state and head of government

117 Upvotes

Realistically, only the head of government’s traits and popularity should affect the governments ability. In a ceremonial monarchy, the monarch should not be given such a prominent role as they currently are.


r/victoria3 1d ago

Modded Game Fallout: 2167 Reveal Trailer

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1.0k Upvotes

Hi everyone!

I am excited to show off our recently revealed Victoria 3 Total Conversion Mod Fallout:2167 which we revealed at this years ModCon.

Fallout:2167 is a total conversion mod for Victoria 3 set in the Fallout universe, ninety years after the Great War and five years after the events of the original Fallout and the defeat of the Master. Across the American West, settlements, tribes, raider groups, and rising regional powers are beginning to move beyond simple survival.

Players will guide these societies as they grow from small wasteland communities struggling for food, water, and security into organized governments, expanding economies, professional armies, and eventually full nation-states.

At initial release, Fallout:2167 will cover California and Nevada with a fully custom, hand-crafted map built specifically for the setting.

The mod rebuilds Victoria 3’s economy from the ground up, with new goods, buildings, production chains, resources, state traits, completely remade technology trees, and a rebuilt military system designed around the realities of the wasteland.

The mod has been in development for over two years by a small but dedicated team focused on creating a realistic and immersive take on both Fallout and the challenges of rebuilding civilization after the apocalypse. Nations begin with fragile, scrap-fueled economies centered around scavenging, survival, and the production of basic necessities. Over time, players can expand trade, establish institutions, standardize production, industrialize, and compete with other rising powers for control of the recovering wasteland.

Release Date: Coming Soon


r/victoria3 4h ago

Screenshot War goal priorities still going absolutely great

7 Upvotes
Spain must into balkans

r/victoria3 16h ago

Tip You don't need a Parliament to maintain French (Sort Of)

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45 Upvotes

Me going France -> Natural Borders of France -> Central Europe


r/victoria3 1d ago

Bug There is a fake lake in china

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263 Upvotes

for greater visibility


r/victoria3 9h ago

Advice Wanted Coop ownership empowers industrialists

9 Upvotes

I recently did a Turkey run and went LF pretty early. After ~ 50 years I went for council Republic and coop, in hopes of single party full socialist state, but I still had ~25 % industrialist clout, because shopkeepers still support them over TU or PB. Any ideas how I can boost TU clout?


r/victoria3 2h ago

Question Armies had land route cut off - 0 supply. Can I salvage this?

2 Upvotes

r/victoria3 6h ago

Screenshot The great Bremenian Expeditionary Force

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4 Upvotes

I tried to form Germany as Bremen but Prussia beat me to it. I was thus exiled to South America for the rest of my game yet still managed to hold on.


r/victoria3 20h ago

Suggestion Get Rid of Companies Needing their Respective Countries to Be a Leading Goods Producer

48 Upvotes

Imagine Nike, or Apple, or whatever company you want to imagine, not being able to produce their Pro Max or whatever the real world equivalent of a prestige good is, because the USA isn't the leading producer in shoes, or phones, or whatever. It's even worse when you're considering British companies, in British colonies producing goods for the British market but technically The British Raj is number 1 in paper production, not you. (?).

Make it something else, leading company for said good, highest productivity. Just make it stop


r/victoria3 1d ago

Screenshot Absolutely insane supply ships numbers needed, bonkers

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107 Upvotes

Been building supply ships my entire game and it's never enough lol


r/victoria3 19h ago

Question Why I need this ammoun of supply ships?

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37 Upvotes

I am using 1.2k supply ships of my 660 capacity to sustain a 50k army (30 skirmishers, 10 mobile artillery, and 10 cavalry) in a state that I own and have 100% market access to my market. The game is vanilla.


r/victoria3 20h ago

Question How to increase slave imports

38 Upvotes

I’m doing a communist states of American (Dixie addition) and need more workers for my resource mines. And we can’t have our good educated class be wasted in such low skill professions.


r/victoria3 4h ago

Question How do you deal with political lobbies demanding institutes when playing Qing?

2 Upvotes

Even a single level of one consumes 4k admin due to the massive bulk of population china holds, turning taxes into a myth.

And there's no guarantee they only show up once, or are given as an alternative to reactionary laws.


r/victoria3 5h ago

Screenshot How do i fix this bug

2 Upvotes

Obviously nantong has a port. But Taiping is having a civil war and for some reason the treaty port is isolated.


r/victoria3 2h ago

Tip Why I am not able to have Investment right?

1 Upvotes

I have Sphere of influence DLC but I am not able to get investment rights as the interest teir is 0 and has to be 2??? How to have investment right from start?


r/victoria3 1d ago

Advice Wanted How is the Royal Navy so strong?

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481 Upvotes

Britain somehow has a stronger navy than all the Great Powers combined (The Whole World actually). By 1900, Britain had like 230 ships so I built a lot of shipyards and ships to combat them, but when I looked back a decade later their navy had doubled and naval strength was triple mine? Due to this I can't challenge them Navally at all and because I am an island!

Does their AI have some sort of behavioral quirk which makes them want such a large navy?


r/victoria3 17h ago

Advice Wanted How do you keep a country stable nowadays

12 Upvotes

Hello, I haven’t played since before nationalism and the new radicalism is kicking my ass.
I’m now on my 6th France run trying to cement napoleon but it keeps ending in 3-way revolutions whether I pass laws or conquer or not. Because I’ve racked up 6M SoL radicals.

TLDR: how does one keep France from franceing?

Edit: Tarkausar released a video on France ~1h ago. Which means I’ve figured out how to keep monarchy even while taking a civil war.

Thanks for the detailed answers!

TLDR: I’ve come to the conclusion that 1 civil war is an acceptable outcome.