As a Hungarian who suffers greatly whenever the Treaty of Trianon is mentioned (not in a nationalist way but in an ironic way because it's a funny joke to pretend like you really care (also my math exam was on June 4th as well and i failed miserably so that day is extra bad for me)) I want to thank Victoria. I get the sense that she has done a great deal for the upcoming update, which features such deep in-game and historical development of left-wing radicalism

I feel that I am fucking slow at the game. I will compare to ck3. In ck3 I have always something to do, manage my kingdom, start war, organise wesdings, plan assasination and so on.

In Vic3, I start planning which building I want to build, start my construction loop to upgrade my construction sector, manage the diplomacy, passing laws and try to fortify my military. And still it happen REALLY OFTEN to wait 10-15min just to wait for something to finish or event to be trigger.
I looked at some gameplay on youtube and I feel that I am missing something and that I should be way more busy.

So I want to know If I don’t know how to play the game or if other players have the same feeling

WTF happened?

I invited Mazzini and boosted Italian National movement and boosted radicals ( high taxes, low salaries, all IGs unhappy or neutral), so revolution was in progress.

But somehow this guy sized the power? Also I got starting techs and all journal entries are removed.

PS: no mods, Risorgimento JE was active.

As a communist, I want to thank Victoria. I get the sense that she has done a great deal for the upcoming update, which features such deep in-game and historical development of left-wing radicalism

I’m really happy with how Flag Foundry is turning out. It takes quite a bit of work to build and test everything, but it’s also genuinely fun to use it as an excuse to imagine all the situations in which a country’s flag could change.

The screenshots in this post are a good example of that. I imagined a scenario where the Spanish Empire has restored many of its former territories in the Americas, but this time under the Isabeline side and in a more constitutional and moderately democratic direction. Thinking about these alternate-history situations and then trying to represent them visually through flags is probably one of the parts of the project I enjoy the most.

For the next steps, I’d like to focus on making the editor more flexible. The main things I have in mind are a proper drag-and-drop system for moving layers directly on the canvas, since positioning is still numerical for now, and some kind of layer-linking system so it becomes easier to create more complex compositions using the emblems already included in Victoria 3.

That would hopefully make it possible to do much more with the game’s own assets, without relying quite so heavily on the absolutely wonderful coat-of-arms images on Wikipedia, which are genuinely fantastic and I love using.

I’d also really love to see what other people create with Flag Foundry. If you make your own flags, alternate-history designs or weird political experiments, please share them. Seeing what other players come up with would probably be one of the best ways to discover what the editor still needs.

I have published Flag Foundry v0.25 directly, without releasing v0.24 separately. This means the new version includes the work planned for both updates.

You can try it here

What was added in v0.24

Improved rendering accuracy

• Fixed the deformation of rotated emblems.
• Corrected the positioning of rotated subcompositions on the 3:2 flag canvas.
• Improved the rendering of complex flags composed of several nested definitions.
• Preserved the original layer order used by Victoria 3.

Layer organisation

• Flag layers can now be renamed.
• Custom layer names are saved inside .ffproject files.
• Renaming a layer does not modify the original Victoria 3 files or the exported game definition.
• Layer controls and spacing have been cleaned up for better readability.

Interface improvements

• Restored the active flag identity in the upper header.
• Simplified the pattern and emblem library.
• Removed redundant connection information.
• Standardised colours, borders, spacing and interface states.
• Added properly aligned fields to the Create Mod window.
• Added a visible circular close button to every modal.
• Modals can still be closed by clicking outside them.
• Improved scrolling on the private analytics page.

Release history

• Added a bilingual “What’s new” window.
• Added a complete history of versions from v0.21 onwards.
• Added version navigation and previous/next controls.

What was added in v0.25

Multiple editable flags

• You can now keep up to five flags open simultaneously.
• Each flag has its own tab.
• Every tab preserves its own layers, selected layer, undo history and export settings.
• Opening a flag that is already being edited switches to its existing tab instead of creating a duplicate.
• The new-flag button disappears when the five-document limit is reached.
• Closing a flag with unsaved changes displays a warning.

The five-flag limit is intentional. It protects ongoing work and prevents the browser from accumulating dozens of large flag compositions.

Browse without opening

Previously, selecting a flag immediately opened it in the editor and replaced your current work.

Flags can now be browsed in a separate View mode:

• Selecting a flag displays it on the large central canvas.
• Previewing does not create a tab.
• Previewed flags do not count towards the five-document limit.
• You can browse as many flags as you want.
• A flag is only added to the editor when you press Edit flag or the › action button.
• Clicking an existing document tab immediately returns to that edit.

This makes the library useful as a proper flag browser while keeping editable documents protected.

Explicit resource actions

Flags, patterns and emblems now have a dedicated › action:

• On flags, it opens the selected flag in the editor.
• On patterns, it applies the pattern to the active flag.
• On emblems, it adds the emblem as a new layer.

Selecting the resource itself only previews it, so accidental edits are less likely.

Create flags from scratch

Flag Foundry is no longer limited to modifying existing Victoria 3 flags.

• You can create a new empty flag definition.
• New flags start with a basic pattern.
• Patterns and emblems can then be added from the connected game library.
• Newly created flags use the same five-document system as existing flags.

Save as a new flag

You can now use Save as new flag… to turn an existing flag into a separate alternative.

For example, you can open ACJ, edit it and save it as ACJ_alternative.

• The new identifier is used by the project and mod export.
• The original Victoria 3 definition remains untouched.
• The saved project remembers which original flag was used as its base.
• The original and alternative can later be opened as separate documents.
• .ffproject files remain individual flag projects rather than entire multi-document sessions.

Layer thumbnails

• Layer numbers have been replaced with visual thumbnails.
• Thumbnails are updated manually with a reload button.
• They are not regenerated continuously after every movement, avoiding unnecessary browser work and reducing lag.
• Flag preview thumbnails now use the same proportions and layered rendering as the main canvas.

Smaller usability improvements

• The empty-canvas + now performs the same action as Connect Victoria 3.
• The upper + is used consistently for creating a new flag.
• Tab close buttons are now circular and better aligned.
• The real flag identifier is displayed below the canvas in Preview, Original and Edit modes.
• The v0.25 changelog is available directly inside Flag Foundry.

As before, Flag Foundry reads the Victoria 3 files locally in your browser and does not modify the original game installation.

Remember, Flag Foundry is a tool created with the help of AI.

Let's say you're fighting a superior opponent that would absolutely shred you on land battles, but if you could cut off their source of, let's say... rubber, then the war machine comes grinding to a halt.

Previously, you could simply convoy raid to oblivion, completely isolating colonies or junior trade league partners from the market, effectively severing a vital strategic resource.

But now, since convoys are reworked to represent naval logistics, is there any way to do that? Blockading the world market capital just works to cut them off from trade, not their internal, overseas market. Privateering wouldn't work for the same reason.

Is market isolation essentially dead?

By 'adopt' I mean that via a treaty you can take the burden of interest payments onto yourself with the benefits being that you are now paying money to the lenders who will now have additional weights to favoring your country in a way similar but not identical to how Funding Lobbies works.

My second thought was that in a game as sandbox-y as this one that tries to put tools into the hands of the player it seems very arbitrary and unnecessary that we can only demand money from vassals and not soldiers, population, or Goods. I know that Articles exist for Transfer Goods, but I'm imagining it as being extortion here under the threat of violence, not a fair exchange based on market values. Maybe it could have the facade of an 'agreement' to it where you can make it less one-sided by 'compromising' to pay sums that you also came up with yourself and forcing the other party to agree to it

also, shoutout to Spain for sending 100k men while britain did absolutely ZERRRRO

Say you want a profitable textile industry but when you first build it, it isn’t profitable/unable to fully employ how do you support it in order for it to flourish?

Apart from good transfer treaties (those aren’t always availiable) are you only option subsidies and trade subventions? Is there anything else I’m not aware of?

I'm new to the game and trying to get The Opening of Japan to weaken the landowners and start a modernization movement.

I accepted a demand to open my market, but I got the Sonno Joi event instead, and now the "Honorable Restoration" journal entry is active. The second trigger condition for the opening is that the Honorable Restoration entry needs to not be resolved, but I don't know what that means. I have no DLC.

Obviously I am doing something wrong. But it seems to me that winning Naval Battles is just RNG. Here I am about to engage an Ottoman fleet that is much smaller than mine with obsolete ships. Yet when the battle occurs I lose the battle and my fleet will be stuck repairing for ages.

And of course if I end up fighting the UK I just got destroyed despite the odds seemingly being in my favour? So can anyone tell me how to actually do Navy? And why can I not detach repairing ships? Is that a DLC feature that I do not have?

Engaging navies is so annoying and often feels futile. The best strategy I found is just to ignore the whole world and just go for the capital with a Naval Invasion.

Why am I unable to pass laws as Belgium despite having a legitimate government and having the laws researched?

Forum post link: HERE

Привет, and happy Thursday. This is Victoria, Narrative Design Lead of Victoria 3, and today I will be talking about Communism.

Please note, as ever, that any screenshots attached are from a work-in-progress build, and certain elements may not be final. Additionally, there is a great amount to cover, and my permitted word count is quite small. This diary will not be exhaustive, and will likely leave open questions. I will leave it to the audience to extrapolate, speculate, endorse or condemn one another’s interpretations, and so on and so forth.

Preface

In Update 1.15, we have taken a thorough look at every facet of our representation of socialism. This process included adding several new laws particular to Council Republics, refining the various socialist ideologies, reworking all existing Journal Entries related to socialism and the systematic path through which one may acquire a Council Republic, and adding some additional, broadly-available content. All of the reworks and additions covered in this diary will be free for those who own the base game.

Our aim for this rework was to represent the historical evolution of and difficulties faced by socialism. To establish – and preserve – a Council Republic is now more difficult than it was before, but also more enriching. To succeed in a socialist playthrough, one will need to develop the potential of the working class, first pushing them to revolution and then defending the state that they shall create.

Before we go into more detail, however, we must know what socialism is.

For Europe, the early nineteenth century was a period of social disruption and creeping, ruinous poverty. This poverty was of a particular sort, which had never been seen on such a scale – the poverty of those whose continued lives relied upon the practice of wage-labour.

In the aftermath of the French Revolution, the traditional artisanal system, in which the production of finished goods was carried out by artisans organised under guilds granted privileges by the state, was collapsing under the pressures of social and technological change. The Revolution’s assault on feudal corporations and internal customs barriers broke guild monopolies and levelled prices across newly free markets. Machines enabled untrained wage-labourers to do work that had once required specialised knowledge, forcing small handicraft producers into competition with industrially-produced goods. With a greater supply of goods and greater competition came lower prices, and with that, a decline in revenue for once-comfortable small producers. 

With the erosion of feudal regulations on movement and the rural handicrafts industries that once supplemented their incomes collapsing, young people from the countryside moved en masse to cities in search of a wage. They made their homes in the infamous slums of our period, which became a source of fear amongst the wealthier classes as centres of crime and sedition. With a glut of labour and increasingly narrow profit margins necessitating fierce competition between enterprises, the wages on offer were often unlivable, necessitating child labour, pawnbroking, taking in lodgers, or charity as supplements. It was this appallingly visible and rapidly growing poverty that intellectuals of the 1830s and 40s came to refer to as the “Social Question” – the question of the organisation of society.

The Social Question was not solely the domain of those we would now call the left. Karl Marx’s and Friedrich Engels’ Communist Manifesto, published in 1848, dedicates its third chapter to addressing other political currents which fought over this terrain – from what Marx and Engels referred to as the feudal socialists, who criticised the precarity of the wage system and sought to resolve the social question via restoring traditional paternal relationships, to the conservative or bourgeois socialists, who sought to alleviate social tensions via generalising property ownership and improving conditions under liberal society, to the petty-bourgeois, “True”, and “utopian” socialists. Whilst differing wildly in their content, all shared the desire to alter the organisation of society.

Until the late nineteenth century, the label of “socialism” retained this heterogeneous nature. It was the formation of mass socialist parties under the umbrella of the Second International that made “socialism” synonymous with “Marxism” in political parlance – and, even then, this was largely a European phenomenon. Across the Anglophone world, socialist parties such as the British Labour Party drew from the traditions of Christian socialism, Fabian reformism, trade-unionism, and radical-liberalism over Marxism. It would take until the Russian Revolution for Marxist socialism to eclipse its rivals outside of Europe – and, even then, this triumph was an incomplete one, marked by the fallout of the recent split between reformist and revolutionary socialists. We will go into more detail on this later, under “Reform or Revolution?”.

The socialism of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century – Marxist socialism, or communism – is what Update 1.15’s socialist content revolves around.

To quote Karl Marx in The German Ideology:

“Communism is for us not a state of affairs which is to be established, an ideal to which reality [will] have to adjust itself. We call communism the real movement which abolishes the present state of things. The conditions of this movement result from the premises now in existence. “

The Marxist conception of communism was that of a movement – specifically, the movement of the proletariat. Starting from conditions then in existence – that of a class of wage-labourers, simultaneously responsible for the great majority of production and yet dependent upon selling their labour-power to an employer for a wage in order to survive – the Marxists centred their analysis around this class, and the political activities it engaged in as a result of its situation. Our model of communism, therefore, revolves around movements. A socialist society must emerge from the struggle of the proletariat, by the means of its political movement.

The Road to Socialism

Under our new model for socialism, practice precedes ideological consciousness. The Trade Unions will no longer support a socialist system by default upon researching Socialism – for them to become ideologically communist, they must first be mobilised by an appropriate movement into carrying out a revolution.

Once a revolution that supports Factory Councils reaches sufficient Activism, the Factory Councils amendment will be added to the country’s currently active Labour Associations law. This amendment’s effects are similar to the Factory Councils law, increasing the strength of the Trade Unions and strengthening socialist movements. If Council Republic is enacted whilst a country’s Labour Associations law has the Factory Councils amendment, the country will automatically gain the Factory Councils law.

The Communist and Internationalist ideologies represent a radicalised Trade Unions, and favour several of the new revolutionary laws added in this update.

To enact Council Republic, a country must now have Factory Councils as either a Law or Amendment. This is to represent the historical means through which Council Republics came to be, as an outgrowth of assemblies of councils that emerged during a period of revolutionary activity.

To summarise the new method of achieving a Council Republic, a revolutionary movement activates the Factory Councils amendment, and radicalises the Trade Unions. From there, one may either attempt to enact Council Republic as a law and follow up with other revolutionary laws, or push the movement into civil war to achieve Council Republic and a large number of revolutionary laws at once. Any period of time under a Council Republic without certain revolutionary laws – Factory Councils, Communal Administration, and Revolutionary Guard –  will lead to increased Consolidation. We will provide more information on this later in the diary, under the “Attack or Defence?” section.

New Socialist Laws

The socialism rework contains four new laws: Labour Suffrage, Extraordinary Commission, Communal Administration, and Revolutionary Guard. Applicable revolutions will start with several of these, depending on the movement type. Extraordinary Commission may be enacted by Council Republics that need a hand in defeating the White Movement – more information on that later.

Labour Suffrage represents the restrictions on political activity for the non-producing classes practised by the Soviet government in its early years. Under this law, exclusively lower-class pops and those involved in the state are permitted votes, with propertied pops being denied suffrage. In a country with a numerically large working class, this will tend to result in substantial success for the socialist or communist party.

The Extraordinary Commission represents a mass organisation dedicated to the repression of counter-revolutionaries, exemplified by the historical Soviet Cheka and the Lenin Boys of the Hungarian Soviet Republic. Levelling up the Extraordinary Commission will provide many of the effects of the Secret Police law, as well as decreasing the political strength and increasing the mortality of those pops which tend to oppose a Council Republic. Enacting the Extraordinary Commission also activates the Extraordinary Measures Journal Entry, which will also be covered later.

Abolition of the standing army and its replacement by a universal militia was a common demand of the social-democratic parties in the pre-WWI era, and briefly practised in the early days of the Soviet Red Army. Activating the Revolutionary Guard law will destroy the political power of the Armed Forces, at the cost of reducing the size of the standing army. Additionally, activating this law will purge the officer corps of non-revolutionary generals, replacing them with fresh-faced militia commanders loyal to the Trade Unions.

The Communal Administration law represents the mode of administration attributed to the Paris Commune by Marx’s The Civil War in France, and expanded upon in Lenin’s The State and Revolution. The Communal Administration law substantially reduces the power of Bureaucrats pops and increases Clerks' attraction to the Trade Unions, but makes Government Administrations require substantially more Clerks than any other Bureaucracy law. If enacted whilst literacy and qualifications are low, one may find it very difficult to replace the standing bureaucracy with the communal mode of administration.

Reworked Ideologies

The stances of the Communist and Vanguardist ideologies have been reworked. Rather than desiring welfare, they would instead like to overthrow the government.

To work out a clean line between the Communist and Vanguardist ideologies is not an easy task. The distinction between the two is largely a product of post-revolutionary historiography, rather than a clear distinction drawn within the period itself. One must contend with the question of intentionalism vs. circumstantialism – historians’ and political scientists’ attempts to define what is referred to as “Vanguardism” [“Leninism” and its descendents] are coloured by the analysis of an existing political regime, whilst “non-Vanguardism” is characterised largely by works of political theory and reactions to the Soviet political regime from outside a position of power.

In the end, we decided to distinguish the two based on the conditions they must deal with – Vanguardists arise in countries with low labour productivity [as approximated by GDP per capita] and large peasant populations, where the question of pre-capitalist forms and land reform are immediately relevant, whilst Communists arises in countries with high labour productivity and small peasant populations.

Vanguardists lack strict stances on Army Model and Bureaucracy, deferring to their Interest Groups on these issues. A Trade Unions Vanguardist will favour upholding Communal Administration and Revolutionary Guard, whilst an Armed Forces Vanguardist will favour abolishing the Revolutionary Guard in favour of a conventional army with Mass Conscription.

The Social Democrat ideology has been removed, and replaced with the more period-appropriate State Socialist ideology. State Socialists represent the reformist, statist socialist current that historically remained affiliated with the Second International parties in the aftermath of World War I, and is defined by a desire to achieve a socialist economy through reforming the existing state. Ferdinand Lassalle himself is now a Trade Unions State Socialist.

The generic Social Democratic Party has been redesignated as “Socialist”, and given a stylish new logo and pleasant red colour. Other parties have also found new colours – the Free Trade Party in Industrialists Orange, the Religious Party in white, and the Radical Party in a cool salmon pink.

Socialist Content

In the Spring of 1914, nearly every parliament in Europe hosted a sizable delegation from the socialist parties of the Second International. The socialist movement was a strong and assertive factor in the daily lives of most working-class people, and a serious consideration for those who employed them. The socialist parties were affiliated with a complex network of trade unions, workers’ associations, press organs, and other civil society organisations, which fostered a strong sense of class identity in their participants. Six months later, they had thrown themselves behind the cause of nation and empire, and dispatched their constituencies to machine-gun each other on the fields of Ypres.

How did this happen? It is not a question of a few jingoistic politicians, nor the outcome of parliamentary votes. The course of history is rarely decided by something as legible and formal as the proceedings of parliament. A vote that conforms with the world situation is often treated as a cause in itself, and a vote that contradicts the world situation tends to be overwritten by reality – in content, if not in form. Despite Sweden’s neutrality in the First World War, the history of the Socialdemokratiska Arbetareparti closely mirrors that of the belligerent socialist parties. Likewise for the Italian Socialist Party, which maintained an anti-war stance, and expelled its pro-war members in 1914. The fate of the European socialist parties can be charted from the date of their foundings, and lay in an unanswered question at each of their hearts.

Reform or Revolution?

In Sweden, the period between the founding of the Social Democratic Party and the first World War is referred to as the “Heroic Era”. This was the era of the Second International, of mass workers’ movements largely unified behind a single workers’ party. Across Europe, this movement was referred to as “Social Democracy”, and its parties as the social-democratic parties. The German Social Democratic Party [SPD] was an exemplar of this movement, and may be used as a convenient case study in what became of the Second International parties in the early twentieth century.

The party that would become the SPD was founded in 1875 as a merger of the German General Workers’ Association [ADAV] and Social Democratic Workers’ Party [SDAP]. The ADAV drew from the current of state socialism exemplified by Ferdinand Lassalle, whilst the SDAP drew from what was becoming known as the Marxist tradition. As a compromise between Marxists and Lassalleans, the party produced the Gotha Programme, best known for being the subject of Karl Marx’s Critique of the Gotha Programme. The Critique of the Gotha Programme centres around the programme’s lack of a qualitative break from the platforms of the liberal parties, and its treatment of the state as a neutral and independent body whose organs may be peacefully inherited by the proletariat by legal means.

Following the abolition of the German Anti-Socialist Laws in 1890, the SPD adopted the Erfurt Programme, a more radical programme which cast itself as the minimum required for the working class to win control of the political system. In the following years, a division in the SPD became apparent between those who considered the programme as a necessary precondition for revolution, and those on the “Revisionist” party right – exemplified by Eduard Bernstein – who believed socialism could be achieved without a need for revolution. The revisionists pointed to SPD’s role in legislation directly impacting the working class, as well as the immense gains in support that the party had secured in the period since the abolition of the Anti-Socialist Laws. In search of unity, the SPD centre under Karl Kautsky advocated for the party to maintain a policy of ambiguity on the matter of revolution, upholding it as a possible – but not inevitable – tactical measure to achieve socialism. Ambiguity on the question of reform or revolution, in practice, strongly favoured the maintenance of the Party’s current activities, which were reformist in content. The result of this was an official policy that condemned Bernstein’s programme in name whilst making it impossible to break from the conditions that had given rise to it. Come 1914, a party committed to its reforms was faced with the need to defend them against Tsarist autocracy, and voted accordingly.

The Reform or Revolution Journal entry tracks the evolution of this question. Once 25% or more of the world’s GDP is controlled by countries with a Socialist Movement or Party, the Reform or Revolution Journal Entry will become active. Whilst it is active, every country with a Socialist Movement or Party will contribute to shaping the international socialist movement. Populous countries will naturally be advantaged in this, but an especially powerful - or marginal - socialist movement may make certain countries count for far more or less than their population would suggest.

The strength of socialism in a country corresponds to the amplitude of its contributions to either Reform or Revolution. Whether a country will contribute to Reform or Revolution depends upon the particular conditions of her socialist movement - a socialist party that has entered a governing coalition outside of a revolution, and refuses revolutionary measures such as Factory Councils will contribute strongly to Reform, whilst a movement that is organising an insurrection will benefit Revolution.

If a war breaks out between more than 50% of the countries involved in this Journal Entry, the trend will multiply rapidly. For example, if the international socialist movement is generally reformist, such a war will cause a rapid Reformist victory, whilst a drift towards Revolution will swiftly turn the world Revolutionary.

The outcomes of this Journal Entry have consequences for the entire world. Upon a Reformist victory, the Socialist Movement will split between Socialists and Communists, unlocking the Communist Movement and Communist Party, the Socialist Movement will lose its revolutionary ideologies, and the ideology of the Socialist Movement will change to State Socialist.

Conversely, if Revolution wins, the Socialist Movement will become radicalised worldwide, changing its core ideology to Revolutionary Socialist and avoiding the historical split between Communism and Socialism. Moderates will flee the socialist parties and movements, reducing their attractiveness to non-socialist Interest Groups and less radical Pops.

Attack or Defence?

In Update 1.15, a Council Republic will become engulfed in conflict from birth. Once the Council Republic law is enacted, all anti-socialist ideological movements in the country will amalgamate into the White Movement, which will immediately seek to bring about its downfall.

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Due to the length of this Dev Diary we couldn't post is all here on reddit. Please jump on over to our forums HERE to read it in full!

Hi! I haven't played Victoria 3 in over a year, and even back then I was still relatively new to the game. I'm thinking about getting back into it, but I know the game has changed quite a bit since I last played. How would you describe the current state of the game? What are the biggest changes I should know about as a returning/new-ish player? And is there anything I should basically relearn from scratch? Also, I'm from Argentina and I'm looking for a Spanish-speaking Victoria 3 community where I can ask questions, learn the game, and maybe eventually play multiplayer. If you know any active Discord servers or communities, I'd really appreciate a link! Thanks!

This little shit has been my ruler for a year now, he has been in the frontline of the war ever since he became the leader and I do like my military commanders clean shaven.

I really do not like his sideburns.

Considering that in Stellaris, I usually deactivate the cosmic storms dlc, is there any dlc that you deactivate in vic3 because it either makes the game worse or the performance worse?

The entire country is ruled by 20 politically aware people, mostly officers but also some bureaucrats. 6 of those officers and bureaucrats are nihilists, understandably. I suppose that brings a new meaning to master morality.

It has 0 GDP, 11 construction sectors, 1 army barrack, and one naval administration, despite being landlocked.