Happy Thursday! Today we will reveal the final list of changes in the 1.3.5 update which is due to roll out on Monday June 26th (but more on that at the end!)
As we mentioned a few weeks ago, Update 1.3.5 is bigger than one of our usual post-release patches, since we wanted to take this opportunity not just to fix some of the bugs you've identified but also to make some much-needed improvements to the content in Voice of the People. For those who don't own Voice of the People, there are some new high impact improvements to the base game as well.
This does mean that there may be issues with existing saves, though. Your save games should load up fine, but especially if you're playing with Voice of the People as France, some of the reworks may cause your progress in existing saves to break in hard-to-predict ways. As always you will be able to roll back to version 1.3.3 on Steam to wrap up your games in progress.
With that said, on to the updates! First up, improvements made to Voice of the People. Here we have focused our efforts on improving the content in line with the feedback we have received, as described in Dev Diary #88. As an example, here is the revised Divided Monarchy Journal Entry:
As you can see, the Journal Entry is now a proper race between three dynasties rather than a timer to install the candidate of your choosing. You will still select your preferred candidate, which gives you the option to Sway characters to support that dynasty, but that does not necessarily mean it is that dynasty who will be enthroned once the Journal Entry completes.
So what determines the rate of progress for each dynasty? Let's take a look:
The popularity of characters is one factor. This is not limited to just Interest Group leaders - the ruler, heir, generals, admirals, and agitators can all impact the rate. Furthermore, all of these can be Swayed to your cause, and the cooldown for the Sway interaction has been reduced to 2 years (from 5) to give you more opportunities to do so. Since Agitators tend to have a lot of Popularity, finding one you can invite and bribe into agitating for your candidate can help your cause a lot - or send one of those Bonapartist Generals into war to win battles for you in order to help the Bonapartist cause.
Another major factor is the Clout of Interest Groups led by people of the appropriate Ideology. This is multiplied if you can somehow maneuver the Interest Group into government.
Building levels of a particular type is a major aspect. Bonapartist gain progress from military buildings, Orleanists from industrial buildings, and Legitimists from agricultural buildings. If you feel forced to increase France's military readiness, this will favor the Bonapartist cause. I found out the hard way that this includes Conscription Centers - once your conscripts are fully raised, and for as long as the war is raging, the Bonapartists will hold a lot of sway in France.
Your government Legitimacy will also affect the dynastic dominance. For the house currently enthroned, positive Legitimacy (over 50) will increase the rate of progress while it will decrease it (to a lesser extent) for the other dynasties. This doesn't only apply to the house of Orléans necessarily, because if France were to abolish the monarchy and re-establish it, a different house may sit the throne and the Divided Monarchy Journal Entry may re-emerge.
Of course, your decisions during the events associated with the Journal Entry will also matter, which may lead to other effects on the rate of dynastic progress.
There's one very good reason to try to resolve this Journal Entry as soon as possible:
While the Divided Monarchists Journal Entry is active, a Republican Unrest modifier applies to all of France. This makes it very difficult to get Loyalists from just having a high Legitimacy, but very easy to gain Radicals from a low Legitimacy. It also makes it harder to maintain a legitimate government with an ideologically incoherent government; if your Resistance Party contains Interest Groups of several different dynasties, it's likely your Legitimacy will be hard to maintain due to infighting. Finally, the Radicalism of any Political Movements that may emerge will be higher than usual, making it more likely that political demands will result in taking up arms.
Finally, let's take a look at the failure conditions:
It is not implausible that the Divided Monarchy Journal Entry will devolve into chaos and republicanism. This will happen if there's an Interest Group in France that supports a Presidential Republic, if Turmoil in the capital is quite high, and if one of the following is true:
- France is experiencing the Springtime of the Peoples
- France has more than 25% Radicals
- A civil war is about to break out
This would impose a Provisional Government on France, changing the state to a Presidential Republic and Appointed Bureaucrats, exiling the current monarch, making the leader of an Interest Group that supports Republicanism the President, and calling an election. But of course, should France restore the Monarchy at a later time, the question of dynastic rights will re-emerge.
On the other hand, should you succeed in the Divided Monarchy Journal Entry and enthrone one of the candidates:
you will still have to prove you have the chops to rule:
No progress will be made on this Journal Entry unless you can prove Napoleon (in this case) can assure a stable government, and for as long as you retain it the Divided Monarchists Journal Entry (and its impact on France in terms of republican unrest) will remain. This also means that Divided Monarchists can still fail while Napoleon (or whoever) is cementing his reign.
In addition to the enhancements to the Divided Monarchists Journal Entry there are several other improvements made to Voice of the People, so let's go through the full changelog:
Improvements
- Reworked the Divided Monarchists journal entry to improve depth and player involvement
- Added decision for France to purchase Luxembourg
- After France declares it natural borders, nations on their war path receive an event warning them of French aggression and adding a conscription modifier to relevant states
- Successful coups now cancel a law being enacted if they do not prefer it to the current one
- A socialist revolution in France will now lead to a Commune which starts as a Council Republic
- Adjusted the Cement the Rightful Dynasty journal entry to require maintaining legitimacy as said dynasty
- Lets the French player Sway any character other than rulers or heirs (including Generals, Admirals, and Agitators) to their dynastic ideology of choice
- Players will receive relevant information on the Garibaldi and Indochina events as they happen
- Enacting Monarchy as a republican France will now prompt the player to choose a historical candidate to enthrone
Interface
- Added notification when France declares its natural borders
- Improved usability of Divided Monarchy and Cementing the Rightful Dynasty Journal Entries
- Several triggers relating to Sway to French dynastic ideologies should now be much more legible
- All Algerian Journal Entry tooltips have been cleaned up and the requirements for The Algerian Departments Journal Entry will no longer reference Provence
Balance
- New Republican Unrest modifier on Divided Monarchy Journal Entry increases Radicals from low Legitimacy, decreases Loyalists from high Legitimacy, increases Legitimacy penalty for having mixed ideologies in government, and increases the Radicalism of Political Movements while the dynastic crisis is ongoing
- Increases difficulty and Approval penalties for preventing a coup by removing an Interest Group from government
- Reduces the Sway to dynastic Ideology cooldown from 5 years to 2 years
- Longer cooldowns to some events associated with Divided Monarchy
AI
- Adjusted French AI weights for default strategies and for individual admin, diplomatic and political strategies, dependent on dynastic control of France
- Legitimists and Bonapartists have additional weights towards having a Protect attitude towards the Papal States if it is a theocracy (i.e., they will want to protect the Pope more)
- Legitimists have an additional weight to Befriend Spain if Spain is a monarchy
- France is more likely to demand the relevant Algerian territory in a peace deal
- The French AI will more consistently strive to conquer Algeria, as long as the Conquest of Algeria Journal Entry is active.
- France is more likely to take an appropriate diplomatic stance (conquest) towards Algerian minors
Bugfixes
- Fixed a bug where many events from Voice of the People did not play sounds
- Ensures on_pulse events for Divided Monarchy won't continue while the dynasty is cementing its rule
- Garibaldi now becomes an agitator when exiled by event
- Removes the event option for Death of Charles X event that gives Legitimist progress while Cementing the Rightful Dynasty is active
- Fixed case where March on Versailles event can trigger twice
- Restrictions on french_pretenders_pulse.3 event trigger should now ensure the immediate effect always has a chance to save its scope
- All historical members of the d'Orleans dynasty are now properly tracked as being "orleanist_leaders" for the purpose of triggering events
- Removes superfluous cooldown on Death of Charles X event since it can only occur once regardless
But that is not all. We have also made a number of improvements to the base game, some of them to support the new Voice of the People content but also general improvements and important bugfixes. A few very important ones include:
You can now selectively demobilize a General, as long as at least 6 months have passed since mobilization. Doing so will immediately demobilize them and cut their goods consumption, but the budget you've allocated will be reduced gradually over the next 4 months. Nevertheless, if you find yourself in a situation where you have way too many Generals mobilized to successfully prosecute a protracted war, this may be a better option for you.
In addition, a lot of improvements have been made to Unifications, as outlined in more detail in the notes below. We have also improved the new Industry Banned Law to make it more relevant, and changed Interest Group Traits to deactivate at a different Approval level than they activate to cut down on notifications spam. In the process we have also made it possible for modders to change Interest Group Traits through events, opening a lot of possibilities for unique Interest Group Traits for different countries or cultures.
Finally I want to mention performance. Late-game performance is a big priority for both the community and us, and we are working on it continuously. Among other things we have added a Pop Consolidation game rule to let you customize the amount by which you want your small pops to merge as the game goes on. Feel free to try it out and let us know how effective it is in resolving your performance concerns. This is not the only thing we have done to improve performance and we will continue our work on it, to ensure the endgame is more pleasurable than it is currently.
The full list of improvements and fixes follows:
Improvements
- New character interaction to demobilize a general while still at war. Generals must have been mobilized for at least 6 months, and their mobilization cost will remain but decay for up to 4 months after they have been ordered to demobilize.
- Added the starting Journal Entry 'An Odious Debt' to Haiti, as well as associated events, dealing with the Haitian indemnity/debt crisis.
- Moved the decision for Haiti to cancel its French indemnities into the Journal Entry
- Unification plays now target all countries that hold states that are relevant for the unification, and are not supporters, allies or subjects of the initiator
- Unification plays will no longer target disqualified Unification candidates, but can target Great Powers, so Italian unification will tend to target Austria for Lombardy/Venetia and German unification will tend to target France for Alsace-Lorraine
- Unification plays now spawn individual wargoals for each relevant state instead of one umbrella wargoal
- When a unification play is launched, all unification supporters of the initiator are now annexed by them
- The opposing side in a unification play now gets a 'Cut Down to Size' wargoal against the initiator
- Active Interest Group Traits will no longer deactivate until Approval is sufficiently different from the cutoff, to make them more sticky and prevent notification spam
- Petitions should no longer trigger while a law is enacted that the government already likes
- Added flag canton definitions for Germany, the Dutch East Indies, and the Paris Commune
Interface
- Add the Political Movement an Agitator is supporting or will start/join when invited to the character panel.
- Added a toast notification when an agitator appears in the player's country
- Exiled characters now send notification to all diplomatically relevant countries
- Added important action to alert when characters can be demobilized early
- Countries are now notified when a claim is gained in a region they have land in
- Make an Exiles notification group and add it to the Message Settings.
- Infrastructure derived from the population of a state now displays its cap properly in the tooltip
- Character Interactions now display their cooldown time without having to go into the tooltip
- Fixed an issue with revolution animations in the outliner.
- Added 2 missing modifier icons
- Low Training Rate alert at war now triggers based on actual negative training rate modifier and not the military budget level itself
- Add empty states in the tooltips for State Infrastructure and Usage
Balance
- Agitator Popularity now amplifies existing Support of Political Movements rather than generate Support from scratch
- Significantly improved the Industry Banned law. Halved tech penalties and made them exclusive to Production tech. Added 50% private construction allocation. Added 10% agriculture throughput in all states. Added -10% expected SoL for all pops
- Reduced army training rate to 20 per level for all PMs, except 10 for Irregular
- Reduced demand for Fine Art, especially by richer pops
- Increased demand for Services, especially by richer pops
- Fixes a typo in pop needs script that made Services much less substitutable for Fine Art than intended
- The reduced impact of the Petition Journal Entry timing out if you're already in the process of enacting the law is now scaled by how far you've gotten; no reduction if still at the initial phase, -5 Approval reduction in the second phase, and -10 Approval reduction in the third phase
Performance
- Optimization of building particle graphics
- Scales pop consolidation parameters by the current number of pops in the world, which could help late game performance
- Added a Game Rule to let you control what degree of pop consolidation you want
Modding
- Journal Entries now support modifiers, which propagate to their countries while active
- Adds prefers_law trigger (returns if a character or interest group prefers one law over another)
- Interest Groups can now be given unique Traits per country, both at startup and during play, using the set_ig_trait effect
- Adds currently_active_law_in_group event target link (from one law to currently active law in same group)
- Modifier types for Radicals/Loyalist gain at low/high Legitimacy added
- Added on_actions for on_mobilized_general and on_demobilized_general
- Added demobilize effect for character scopes
- Added mobilization_cost compare trigger for character scopes
- Journal Entry database types now have modifiers_while_active functionality to specify modifiers to automatically apply on activation
- New direct link ig_trait implemented
Bugfixes
- Fixed a bug that caused newly released countries to not have any Journal Entries
- Fix a bug where released countries would always take the state religion of the releaser, instead of this only being the case for revolutions as intended
- Fixed a bug that prevented secessions that can't progress above 0% from disbanding
- Fixed CTD when switching the graphics settings in the main menu after returning to it from the game
- Liberate Country wargoals are now only mutually exclusive if they have conflicting released states
- Autocracies will now properly transition into single-party states
- Agitators exiled by AI should now always end up in the Exile pool
- Fixed a bug where movements could in rare cases become revolutionary without any Interest Group support
- Fixed hidden map objects exposing themselves after changing the graphics settings in the main menu
- Coups are no longer inheritable by revolutionary countries
- Fixed a bug in the prediction of which political movement exiles would start, causing it to incorrectly say they wouldn't start a movement.
- Fixed a bug that caused revolutionary political movements to stay revolutionary when their radicalism dropped. Revolutionary movements whose radicalism drops too low are now turned back into regular political movements.
- Springtime of the People Journal Entry is no longer inheritable by revolutionary countries
- Agitators now leave political movements when given roles incompatible with the agitator character role.
- Fixed scope error in In the Hands of the State and Agitator events
- The leaders of French republics will now properly be called the President
- Submarines and Carriers now have a per-level training rate penalty instead of unscaled
- Make the tooltip for Law Enactment say that there is a chance the Law will pass on the next checkpoint when on the last phase
- Added a check to Expand Building Tutorial to ensure the building selected can actually be expanded
- Head of States in Parliamentary Republics are now selected based on their Interest Group's Clout (including Voting Power) rather than raw Political Strength
- Fixed case where Officer and a Gentleman event could target a character who had not been sent away
- Fixed an edge case in government petitions which could cause error log spam
- Fixed an issue where exiles events would cause error log spam
- Error log no longer spams with [RandomizableValueFloat.GetValue] while in MP
- John French can now be recruited as a General starting only in the year he begun his military career, not as a tiny baby
We hope this update will address your most pressing concerns with the content in Voice of the People and the base game balance and stability.
As I alluded to in the beginning, while the plan is to release the update officially on Monday June 26, we actually have a pre-release build available right now! You can switch to Steam branch 1.3.4-livetest to try it out. We're making it available ahead of time both to give modders more of a chance to update their mods for compatibility, and to ensure there are no major flaws on rare configurations or save games. Saves made on the livetest version will be fully compatible with the public release once it comes out.
That is all for me this week, but we will be back next Thursday before we take a summer break in the dev diary schedule! Until then!