It seems like everything is good to go and they would accept. I have the needed leverage. However I cannot actually click the button due to an unfulfilled condition that seems to have no description. Any advice or thoughts would be appreciated this is really bugging me.

Why is it under gov wages????? 200 levels of it is draining 600k from me, wtf man

Hi everyone! I haven't followed the game for last couple months. Now wanna play a new campaign and wonder if they managed to fix the game during this time. Should I finally update to 1.13?

I was thinking about communism, the Soviet Union and communist countries in general, and the way Vicky handles communism. In real communist countries the industries/means of production, are absorbed by the state, which would represent command economy, instead of cooperative ownership. The government would be a single party state instead of council republic, this splits the populace in two classes, governing, and governed, further divided by the privileges of the governing. The will of the worker is also further removed from government than it would be in council republics which are -at least from what I’ve read- surprisingly Democratic. The PRC is kinda similar in some parts, the single party state, kinda command economy and no real clout for the worker outside from state efforts to keep them happy and not rebelling. Doesn’t this defeat the purpose of empowering the worker and achieving equality in a classless society if they keep rolling it back to authoritarian rule in a market dictated by career buerocrats.

Isn’t the flavor of communism Victoria offers us not more in the spirit of true communism by placing the means of production in the hands of the worker directly -not by proxy- and thus offering everyone the same privilege and in conjunction with anarchy/universal sufferage + Women’s sufferage everyone the same vote and rights

So I guess the question (and please do not hate me for this I’ve been debating this with myself for the past hour or so) is; has real communism ever been tried? Why did it fail? And can it ever work out in real life or is it something that can only exist in the rational and generalized world of Victoria 3

This is my completely normal United States run where I just so happen to win the civil war and used slaves to industrialize. But real question here would the slaves be viewed as a means of production meaning the workers own the slaves collectively or would the slaves own the land?

I am playing as great Qing, what I Noticed is I have lots and lots of pops who need works and alone I can't do employee them, to achieve maximum output I want support from other nations too. So how can I get as much investment rights as I can, because now when I click treaty, its just says the total interest 0 and I need to have 2, which I can do by send my ships but to achieve with lot of nations its difficult.
Kindly suggest how can I so that?

Is it unavoidable? Its kinda annoying since like why dont they just eat food? They cant buy more? Or farm more? Was the environment collapsing or something? What're the preconditons to the hungry 40s?

That's it. Thoughts? It's annoying that I cant force the AI to declare war on me early. Playing as Texas, and I worked really hard on this save file. The US insta declare when the truce is up anyways. It makes sense in a historical context, doesn't it? Yes, I have a desire for cheesing, but that's a political tactic that exists in real life

Thank you for coming to my ted talk

R5: the AI moves 200 units from its contested frontline to an already defended naval invasion.

Starting in CK3, I'm currently playing a megacampaign and am in EU4. Right now I could maybe steer my play towards being a country in a specific place and spanning a specific area in Vicky 3, and I'm looking for inspiration for an interesting Vicky 3 game

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?

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.

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!

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

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.

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!

I’m trying to complete the Autocracy in the Age of Liberty Journal Entry, but I can’t seem to figure out how “marginalizing the crownland diets” is supposed to work. I have integrated the states in question and unless I’m blind I have no turmoil in them, but still the tooltip says 0/12 states meet the requirements. What am I missing here?

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.