Happy Tuesday Victorians!
The first update for the 1.14 Open Beta is here! This update brings various bug fixes and improvements for issues reported over the last week, including the building hiring issue and some focused around the War Support Rework and War Goal Flipping, as well as the first iterations of Naval Transportation Improvements, Improved AI State Values and AI being more likely to use Naval Hostilities.
To those of you who are just finding out about the beta or need a refresher on how to join, you can opt into the Beta by following these instructions:
Navigate to your Steam Library.
Right-click Victoria 3 and select “Properties”.
In the newly created window, select “Game Versions & Betas”.
Now find the “1.14-openbeta” option and select it.
If you wish to opt out and return to the live version of the game, you can scroll back up to the top of the same list and select “Default Public Version”
The Open Beta is only available in English, other languages will be supported when changes make it to the public version of the game.
Changes in 1.14 Open Beta Update 1
Everything in this section will be available to test in the first Open Beta, which should release shortly after this Dev Diary goes live. To see the changes brought by the opening update of the Open Beta, click here.
War Support Rework / War Goal Flipping polish
What is it: Various fixes and improvements to the war support rework and war goal flipping system based on feedback from last week. To name a few fixes: diplomatic demands now work again, revoke claim can no longer be enforced by timer, and split states can be reconstituted via mirrored war goals.
What to test/feedback: Continue testing these systems and provide feedback on how they feel after these changes
Naval Transportation Improvements
What is it: Improvements to the naval transportation system to make it less brittle and more reliably track armies for post-transportation merge. UI improvements to naval transportation to surface more information and let you choose whether the fleet should go home at the end.
What to test/feedback: Whether naval transportation missions now work as expected or whether they still tend to fail midway through
Improve AI State Values
What is it: First iteration of AI state/subject value improvements, correcting issues such as the infamous Lucca subjugation
What to test/feedback: Whether AI geopolitical behavior feels more sensible than before, whether there are still significant improvements needed
AI Threaten Naval Hostilities
What is it: The AI is now much more likely to make use of naval hostilities threats when it makes sense for it to do so
What to test/feedback: Whether the AI now makes active use of threatening naval hostilities, whether its use feels excessive or inappropriate to the circumstances
Planned changes in future 1.14 Open Betas
As the feedback so far has been very focused on the changes already made (which is great to see!), this list is unchanged from last week - asides from the points that made it into this week’s build, of course!
Early Troopships
Add early troopships to make transportation less of a hassle early-game
AI Naval Improvements
Make the AI better at fleet management and overseas force projection. Find a good balance between spreading out fleets for power projection and keeping them consolidated to win naval battles.
Expand on AI Regional Stances
Deepen the AI Regional Stance system and use it to give the AI a better grasp of geopolitics and which regions it should actually be interested in expanding into.
AI Strait Handling
Improve AI understanding of straits: both in how to use them and how to diplomatically react to player strait closures.
Diplomatic AI Improvements
Do a major pass on AI diplomacy and treaty article acceptance to eliminate some of the more nonsensical AI behavior and promote interesting AI ‘roleplaying’.
AI Trade & Production
Give the AI better tools for evaluating trade capabilities in its market and which goods it should encourage importing as opposed to domestically producing. Make AI understand which goods it can overproduce to fill key needs in the world market.
That’s all from us today but we’ll see you on Thursday for our next Dev Diary!