Hello and welcome to our final development diary before the release of Voice of the People and Update 1.3 on May 22! Today I have the pleasure of announcing the full list of changes made for both the Immersion Pack and the free update.
But first, let's talk about new Achievements! We have 15 new challenges for you, 12 of which are exclusive to Voice of the People and 3 that are also valid for the base game.
New Achievements for Voice of the People
It Never Ends: Cement the Bonaparte dynasty, become a Republic, and Stamp Out Monarchism
Hexagon No More: Complete the Natural Borders of France Journal Entry
Emperor Norton: As the USA, become a Monarchy with Joshua Norton as monarch
Shut the Door Behind You: Have an invited Exile become the ruler of your nation and pass the Closed Borders Law
Crush the Commune: As France, defeat the rebellion of the Paris Commune
Military Junta: Have the Armed Forces coup the government
Huge Ego, Sorry: Unite Germany and have Max Stirner rule your nation
New Achievements for Update 1.3
Agitate Elsewhere: Exile an Agitator with at least 100 Popularity
Amish Paradise: As a Yankee nation, pass the Industry Banned Law before 1846 and have at least 20 average Standard of Living
Authoritarian: Pass the Single-Party State, Militarized Police, and Outlawed Dissent Laws
Breadbasket: Pass the Homesteading Law and be the leading producer of Grain and Groceries
Euphoric: Pass the State Atheism Law and have the Intelligentsia be Powerful
L'Allemagne, c'est Rien: As France, prevent Germany from unifying until 1930
Meiji Restoration: Complete the Restoration Journal Entries as Japan before 1912
Vox Populi: Pass a Law with the support of an Agitator
Major Features in Voice of the People
- 60+ Historical Agitators
- Many new Journal Entries and events relating to France, including dynastic squabbles, the colonization of Algeria, the Dreyfus Affair, the Paris Commune, and more
- French building model set
- New UI theme inspired by Art Nouveau
- New paper map and map room look & feel
- New outfits for historic and generic characters
- City hub VFX for revolutions depending on which Interest Groups are revolting
- Over a dozen new event images
- Character interactions for making an Agitator an Interest Group leader or granting them military command
- Character interaction to force a monarch to Abdicate under certain conditions
- "Coup!" Journal Entry that can cause angry Interest Groups in government to seize power
- New events about the adventures of Guiseppe Garibaldi
- 7 new Achievements
Major Features in Update 1.3
- Agitator characters (new role) that create or empower Political Movements
- Ability to invite Agitators exiled by other countries
- New 'Character Interaction' system adds ability to interact directly with characters in your country (script extensible for modders)
- Character Interactions: Exile Character, Repatriate Exile, Royal Marriage
- Reworked Law Enactment mechanic, putting a law through three phases before it is passed
- Reworked Revolution Progression mechanic with a plethora of new Revolution events
- Politics Overview Panel overhaul providing easier overview of your Loyal and Radical Interest Groups, among other enhancements
- New Political Movements panel giving you a breakdown of supporting Interest Groups, Agitators, and Pops
- New Revolution map marker and visuals
- New Law group: Land Reform
- New Church & State Law: State Atheism
- New Distribution of Power Laws: Single-Party State, Technocracy
- New Economic System Law: Industry Banned
- "Petition" Journal Entry lets Interest Groups in government encourage the passing of their desired laws
- Country border rework for France, Algiers, parts of Africa and Germany
- 8 new Achievements
Improvements
- Added a "Supported Law Cancelled" modifier that radicalizes a placated movement when their law enactment is cancelled
- Political Movements can no longer become revolutionary without the support of an Interest Group
- Added an effect to create more radicals from Standard of Living changes when a country has negative Authority
- Added Opium growing potential to states in Ottoman Empire, Mexico, New Granada and Van Diemen's Land
- Characters are more likely to become opium addicts if their culture is obsessed with opium
- Freed Afro-American/Caribbean/Brazilian etc. nations now get an event that ensures slavery is almost always abolished in their nation
- Added Coal and Gold potential to Morocco and the Sahara to account for historic coal and silver fields
- Added Whaling Station potential to a few states around the world based on historic catch data
- Buildings with low cash reserves, at least 10% employment, and low profits will now avoid hiring more employees, as this would often result in those employees then being fired a few weeks later
- Female leaders of Interest Groups will now only show up after Women's Suffrage is passed (unless they are generated by special content such as the struggle for said suffrage), to better reflect historical disenfranchisement of women in politics
- Base enactment time of various law groups adjusted to match new 3-phase enactment system
- Populated the database with historical Scandinavian IG leaders, admirals, and generals
- Haitian and Dominican population numbers and cultures have been updated to better reflect the situation in 1836
- Updated population numbers in Belgium and the Netherlands to be more historically accurate
- Montenegro has been shrunk even more to better reflect 1836 borders
- Russian generals now have defined ideologies and interest groups
- Updated the names and locations of hubs in Japan, Sakhalin and Taiwan to be more historically accurate
- Revised the starting setup around the Lower Niger River and Mozambique
- Auto expanding buildings will no longer evaluate the length of the construction queue but only check that Cash Reserves and Market Access are above 95%
AI
- Fixed a bug that was preventing some AIs with high budget surpluses from constructing high-priority government buildings such as Construction Sectors
- AI (and Autonomous Investment) is now much more averse to overbuilding in states that don't have the infrastructure to support it
- AI (and Autonomous Investment) will no longer continue to build railway buildings in states that have full market access but no workforce to support new buildings
- AI is now better at prioritizing universities and innovation generation, particularly at using the more advanced University PMs
- AI now has a greater tendency to make 'return state' wargoals into primary wargoals, particularly in cases when they're trying to complete a journal entry
- Fixed an issue where the AI would repeatedly declare and then break rivalries
- AI is now less inclined to seize Treaty Ports without having a strong reason to want them
- AI is now more keen to rival countries back if they don't have the Conciliatory attitude
- Peace evaluation AI no longer considers already enforced war goals as missed opportunities
Balance
- Greatly expanded weights for when pops will join Political Movements independently of their Interest Groups
- Monarchs and heirs now have a variety of factors affecting which Interest Group they are aligned with
- Non-Commander characters are now less likely to become Wounded
- Reduced the chance of Bankrolling giving you an obligation each week from 1% to 0.2%
- Increased the number of radicals generated when conquering states that are not both homelands and a claim of the conqueror
- Caudillismo ideology now favors Presidential Republic
- Corn Laws now requires significantly expensive grain prices, and grants a Market Liberal Landowner Agitator rather than an IG leader
- Landowner and Industrialist characters are more likely to have Expensive Tastes
- Officers now gain Political Strength from the Autocracy law
- Raised maximum personality traits for characters to 2 and reduced maximum skill traits for characters to 2
- Council Republic now gets some Legitimacy from share of votes
- Presidential Republic now gets a Legitimacy bonus for having head of state in government, but slightly less legitimacy from share of votes
- Pops working in Subsistence Buildings now have the impact of Expected Standard of Living from Literacy greatly decreased
- Reduced tech costs in era 4 and 5 to make it not quite so difficult to reach endgame tech
- British East India now starts with railways technology
- Interest Groups will now have a slightly higher tendency to support political movements if an Agitator of that interest group is supporting the political movement
- Support for Multiculturalism is now found in the Humanitarian ideology
- Various personality traits are now incompatible with each other
- Added Logging Camp potential to Connecticut
- Significantly reduced the speed at which characters gain skill traits over time, particularly if they are exiles or commanders in the recruitment pool
- Several more building types are now subject to Dangerous Working Conditions
- Adjusted pop attraction for the Devout Interest Group
- Muslim characters are now less likely to become Alcoholics
- Radical ideology no longer has a stance on Citizenship laws
- Sepoy Mutiny is now a normal Diplomatic Play rather than an instant war
- Industrial Barriers event now targets only notable minorities
- Reduced throughput modifier on "Industrial Safety Slowdowns" from 50% to 10%
- Changed the requirements of The Gamble to require multiple Interest Groups in government
Art
- Added an option to enable an alternate occupation visual (stripes instead of flags) under Game settings
- Added visual planes flying over the military units for the Aerial Reconnaissance production method
- Military visual effects overhaul
- Children now wear unique age-appropriate clothing
- Heirs in monarchies are no longer bald and clean-shaven throughout their entire lives
- Revised clothing weighting so children do not wear clothes that clip through their bodies
- Tweaked pollution VFX
- Louis Delescluze is now prohibited from wearing hats
- Added Garibaldi's red shirts as dynamic soldier and officer pop clothing
- Added a late-game uniform variant for the United States
Interface
- Updated the Law tab, Law Group panel, and the Law Enactment outliner item with the improved Law Enactment system
- Attached the associated Law enactment events to the Law enactment item in the outliner for much better visibility and feedback
- Attached the associated Revolution events to the Revolutionary Political Movement item in the outliner for much better visibility and feedback
- Improved the layout of the Interest Group panel
- More informative tooltips for Political Movements and Revolutions
- Combined Radicals and Loyalists graphs into one and make sure to always show this graph instead of the old one
- Reworked the Law Enactment popup to actually be readable now
- Added the outcome of the Law Enactment checkpoint to the Law Enactment event that spawned because of it for better feedback of what has happened
- Added a State Construction Summary Map Marker for when there is more than one Building being actively expanded in a State, to reduce the amount of Construction Map Markers covering the map
- Sort the entire Modifier databases to make tooltips more readable throughout the entire game
- Added more information of any supported Political Movements on the Interest Groups themselves and their tooltips
- Added the State's urbanization value to State tooltip and Urban Center building tooltip
- Made several changes and tweaks to Alerts and Current Situation items to make them less spammy and more informative, including deactivating a few and moving their information to more appropriate places throughout the UI
- Added functionality to unhide all Important Actions you have previously hidden
- Added button to 'hide' an Important Action in the Current Situation window
- Improved the Pop Support tooltip for politically inactive and total support number
- Improved the Reform Government suggested options buttons and make it clearer which one is currently selected
- Potential time-out results of Journal Entries can now be seen at the bottom of the corresponding Journal Entry panel if it has any
- Added background colors for Journal Entry completion and failure effects
- New game concept 'Neutral' has been added to explain the middle step of Loyalism/Radicalism better
- Renamed Politically Inactive to Politically Unaligned to better describe what it means
- Fixed an issue where a save made in the observer mode would look broken in the launcher
- Fixed that the white peace button would always appear as if the AI would not accept it
- Added Trade Route size trend indicator to the Trade Route list items
- Liberate Country wargoal will now highlight the country being liberated on the map
- Character tooltips have been updated with all relevant information for Agitators and Political Movements
- Made the subtitles of all left side panels be consistent and have go-to buttons to relevant things if possible
- Added the government/opposition stance to the top of Interest Groups' tooltips
- Improved the tooltip for Research Queued
- Right click menus are now accessible for all characters since there can be character interactions available for foreign characters or characters that are in the exile pool
- Map interactions for Buildings you cannot expand further now have the padlock status and are not moved to the Unavailable Options list
- Map interactions for Decrees are now default sorted by state name
- Map interactions for Diplomatic Actions are now default sorted by country name
- Map interactions status checkmark + red cross was removed from the UI and is now displayed as just a red cross
- Map interactions status were reworked to prevent items from jumping from Available to Unavailable options in most cases
- Added Expected Standard of Living to the State Standard of Living tooltip
- Added Fancy Tooltip for Battle Conditions
- Added Important Action for States with a high amount of Pops living under their Expected Standard of Living
- Sort Decisions that can be taken on top of the Decision list
- Migration Target Map Markers are now visible when zoomed further out
- Cut down the amount of decimals for several Modifiers in order to make them more readable
- Show Acceptance description for Citizenship and Church and State laws at the top of those Law tooltips
- Show number of Battalions that can be Mobilized at the top of the Army Model and Internal Security Law tooltips
- Reverse the order of the Ideology stances in the Ideology tooltip to show the Laws that Ideology approve of before the ones they disapprove of
- Added Expected Standard of Living to the State Standard of Living tooltip
- Players can now pin any market they desire to the outliner in the market panel
- Improved map list panel for rivalry action
- Added DLC icons with activation status and Steam store links to the main menu
- Improved the Character right-click menu
- Moved the "This option will be auto-picked" icon to the other side of the button in order to make it easier to get into the nested tooltip for that option
- State Traits now shown as Map Markers in the Production Lens
- Unrealized Taxes breakdown now shown in the Budget Panel
- Interest Groups that support a Law are now shown on the first level of the Law tooltip
- Fixed a bug where maplist highlight was not removed on mouse leave
- The GDP chart now shows Yearly GDP instead of Weekly GDP, matching what's shown in the topbar
- Empty values in initial land/naval battle size tooltips are now omitted
- Fixed that an observer would see the game over screen if the country that they are observing was annexed
- Improved the Current Situation for low standard of living
- Made the Election panel handle more than 3 Parties
- Trimmed recruitable commander tooltip
- The 'Gold Reserves' widget in the budget panel is no longer empty when you have no gold reserves, instead just showing an empty bar
- Removed (almost) unused highlight from Technologies
- Added new background to map list options
- Fix sidebar from opening too eagerly in some languages
Narrative Content
- New dynastic Ideologies for France: Orleanist, Legitimist, and Bonapartist
- New Ideologies: Positivist, Luddite, Socialist
- Added Humanitarian, Protectionist, Jacksonian Democrat, and Authoritarian leader ideologies Socialist Ideology is now added to the Trade Unions after researching Socialism
- Journal Entries are now inherited by a victorious revolution, meaning that JEs such as China's 'Fragile Unity' will not be abruptly ended if the Qing government is overthrown in a revolution
- Major revisions to the Journal Entries surrounding German Unification. The process of annexing German minors through Customs Unions has been removed, and instead the JEs much more closely follow the historical narrative, starting with the Schleswig-Holstein question and allowing for annexation of North/South German minors only on the completion of the German Leadership War
- Implemented a journal entry and variety of events for nihilist movements
- Updated and expanded the Belle Époque journal entry
- Nihilists now support State Atheism
- Added Ruhr State Region
- Added Rhineland releasable nation
- Made Grand Exhibition more playable, removed inconsistencies, provided bonus to techs researched during the Journal Entry
- Added events that retire agitators that no longer serve a purpose
- Added events about the passing of Land Ownership laws
- Added events about the passing of Industry Banned laws
- Added some agitators present at game start
- Added several events that allow for interaction with exiles
- Added events that fire when you have an ongoing revolution
- Added Franco-Provencal culture
- Added additional character traits
- Reduced the frequency of the 'Arming the Natives' Patagonia event, but made the effects more impactful.
- Added Savoy releasable, for Franco-Provencal lands
- Abe Lincoln only appears as an Interest Group leader when he's old enough to be President
- Specified Switzerland's religion as Protestant, but gave it more explicitly Catholic leaders as well
- Changed "Swiss" culture to "Alemannic", and changed all keys referring to Swiss culture
- Converted the French history character file to solely use character templates
- Added Flag for the USA if it were to be formed by California
- Added new flags for communist California and if California controls Baja California
Performance
- Improved performance of tutorial highlights
- Map particle optimization
Modding
- All logging console commands are now renamed to start with "Logging." and log output in a standardized way
- Added Character.IsInExilePool and Character.IsExile for gui and loc scripting
- Added new effect exile_character
- Added new effect remove_character_role
- Added the ability to scope to a character's home country (as opposed to their current country) via home_country
- Added new triggers is_exile and is_in_exile_pool
- Added political_movement link from a character to the movement they support and supporting_character link in the other direction
- Ideologies can now have a priority value set, which determines which ideology is used when two non-leader ideologies have a stance on the same law group
- Added a has_template trigger that can be used on characters to check if they are a certain template
- Added new gui and loc script functions to access an exile's home country and interest group type
- The trigger is_interest_group_type can now also be used in character scope (this is useful for exiles)
- Added scripted weight ai_enact_weight_modifier to laws that allows direct modification of the AI's weight to enact that law
- Added an on_action for when a law enactment a political movement supports is cancelled
- Added a cancel_enactment effect
- Added new trigger can_ruler_have_command to determine if a ruler can be granted command of the country's armies
- New triggers investment_pool_net_income & investment_pool_gross_income
- ordered_preferred_law scriptlist for laws sorted by scoped Interest Group approval
- Added a console logging command for concluded battles
- Added number of buildings, total building levels, and number of global unemployed pops to world population log
- Added a has_monarch_ideology scripted trigger
- land_hq trigger can now also be called in state scope
Bugfixes
- It is no longer possible to recruit Commanders to temporary HQs
- Fixed many instances where population, loyalists, or radicals values could overflow
- Fixed labels for Tax Types in the Population Overview panel
- Fixed a bug where Serfdom only unlocks Serfdom PM options rather than automatically enforce it
- A war goal that has already been enforced (due to capitulation) can no longer be pressed again in peace deals.
- Fixed a bug that allowed to exceed a building's max level cap
- The Regime Change wargoal should now correctly create a government that has at least one shared Interest Group with the wargoal holder and force them to re-evaluate their political strategy shortly after being enforced
- Alerts referring to wars will now open the correct panel when clicked rather than do nothing
- Made loyalists and radicals tooltip numbers be red and green as intended
- Insubordinate Jingoist event now adds tension instead of creating a native uprising
- Rubber plantations are now affected by the Encourage Resource state decree
- Fixed a crash where the game would try to reset script variables in a read-only (invalid) scoped object.
- Subject countries can now only support their overlord as a unification candidate
- The lower bound for throughput bonus is now -1 (in other words no throughput at all), rather than throughput bonus being capped to only positive values
- Reduced Whaling Stations mortality
- Fixed several bugs in the Internal Security laws
- Fixed overflow of party name on Interest Group panel
- Fixed issues that could happen during clean up of a commander's orders
- German States will no longer be forced into Hannover's market if they left before Victoria comes to power
- Honorable Restoration JE now requires that Japan is a monarchy
- Rogue Imperialist and Colonial Clash events can now trigger only once per country
- Fixed the potential crash-to-desktop on game exit when the save game window was open
- Feminism and Patriarchal Suffrage now have their stances on Rights of Women/Free Speech override any stance from base ideologies, such as Liberal
- Fixed an issue that prevented Unification play from being launched if all potential targets were in a Customs Union
- Battle modifiers for captured provinces and recovery rate now work correctly
- People's Springtime.5 event can no longer apply to the same state twice, and now applies only to incorporated states
- Renamed the Maures culture to Bidan, and changed cultural traits to fit history more accurately.
- Fixed a bug where buildings that have not been constructed yet would show an alert for being unable to hire
- Scripted army_size link no longer includes conscripts by default, which should fix tutorial and the assumptions behind several AI scripts (new link army_size_including_conscripts now covers the previous use case)
- Several missing or wrong UI highlights during the Tutorial have been fixed
- Added the correct Interest Group tooltip for Interest Group buttons everywhere
- Removed the in-government icon from the Interest Group icon on the Interest Group tooltip due to clipping
- Fixed various small localization errors (spelling, grammar, phrasing etc.) across a number of game concepts
- Changed the Naval Invasion Battle panel subtitle to mention Naval Invasion instead of battle
- Assassination events now correctly invalidate if the assassin's target dies from other causes
- Fixed loc string for modifier_unit_supply_consumption_mult
- Romania is no longer a valid country for secessionists
- Tanzimat: Suppress Separatism now fails with over 50% secession progress
- Fixed an issue where the "show invalid savegames" checkbox had no effect.
- Fixed a bug where bankrolling pacts would be cancelled unexpectedly
- Fixed a bug where new traits for characters were not updated until game reload
- Fixed a bug where occupying a province with connection via strait to an isolated island could cause split occupation
- Fixed an issue when after researching quinine colony progress speed wasn't updated
- Fixed a bug where countries without elections had no last reform date saved
- add_pollution effect now displays correct amount of pollution
- Characters in the "void" no longer gain skill traits over time
- Turkestan now counts the state of Ili in the list of possible states to form Turkestan in
- Releasing Transcaucasia no longer requires Yemen to be released
- Removed duplicate modifiers for Livestock Ranch throughput modifiers
- "Dangerous Equipment" and all other pm_events now have a five year cooldown
- Option C of the "Kindly Burn this Letter" event no longer throws endless errors.
- Removed NULL_OBJ from the name of goldrush.5
- Sepoy Mutiny no longer leaves states unincorporated for the EIC once defeated
- Sepoy Mutiny no longer results in the EIC having two annex wargoals
- bic_breakup.1 event no longer fires every month when its conditions are satisfied
- bic_breakup.1 event now properly switches the Devout to the Hindu Priesthood in the pan-nationalist option
- Fixed several bugs in the Child Labour events
- Resolved several issues in the Psychology event chain
- Added missing icon to the Marginalized concept tooltip
- Rhode Island forestry hub now has a name
- Fixed an issue where the load savegame confirmation window would remain opened outside the load game view.
- Fixed an issue with the Nicaragua, Tripoli and Cauca Treaty Ports not being properly defined
- Fixed a bug where the Opium Wars victory event could display without a title
- Fixed some instances in which tutorial lessons could end up referring to a null object
- Fixed a bug where the custom German flags based on different unifiers would not work if NGF/SGF was formed on the way to becoming Germany
- italian_unification.1.b now uses the correct loc key
- Fixed an issue that led to scope problems in expedition conclusion events
And that's it!
It should be pretty obvious at this point but most of Update 1.3 focuses on increasing both the complexity and your agency over your internal politics. Expect to be surprised by some of the situations that can arise from the interplay of the new Agitator, revolution, enactment, and petition mechanics, among other improvements and tweaks we've made! We can't wait to see what political imbroglios that arise in your nations next Monday, and hear how you end up dealing with them.
Next week will likely be a brief dev diary from us, as we'll be focusing our efforts on listening to feedback and planning the next update. As always you can find us on the forum and on the official Victoria 3 Discord server!