Hello Victorians! It has been a few days since the release of 1.5 and the Colossus of the South region pack.
First of all, we would like to thank you all for the response to both 1.5 and Colossus of the South. The appreciation for the art, narrative content, UX changes, mechanics and more have been very much received.
We're also, as always, very appreciative for the feedback you've provided since release! Today we're releasing hotfix 1.5.8, which contains a few fixes and improvements including:
Bugfixes:
- Fixed a crash in CCombatUnit::GetModifierValueImpl
- Fixed a crash in the military formations manager
- Fixed a bug that would sometimes cause Transfer Subject war goals to not resolve as promised when a peace is signed or when a party gives in during a Diplomatic Play
- Imposing laws on your subjects now forces them to start enactment of that law as intended
- The Country panel's Domestic tab UI will no longer break when that country is in the process of enacting a law
- Fixed bug that prevented Quechua and South Andean subjects from being annexed
- Fixed a bug where military flags weren't visible if the Voice of The People DLC was not enabled
Interface:
- Added a player-configurable toggle for which Workforce number to show in the Expand Building Map Interaction (Jobseekers / Peasants / Unemployed)
Modding:
- Added a start_enactment effect
- Added an on_action for on_impose_law that will be overridden by on_impose if specified on the law type
This hotfix might already be in your hands by the time you read this! If not, it should be there within an hour or two.
We are currently working to address feedback we received at the tail of the Open Beta and after the full release. These changes will be coming in a future patch tentatively numerated 1.5.9, which will be compatible with current 1.5 saves. We're aiming to get this patch in your hands before the end of November, focusing on the following improvements:
UX, AI, and balance
We're working on several improvements in these areas, mostly pertaining to military matters. A few things you can expect on the UI front in 1.5.9 includes:
Added a new Mobilization Tab to the Military Panel. It gives you an overview of the Mobilization Options for all of your Formations, and allows you to customize them.
We're also improving the signaling of how many units are currently "Under Recruitment" for a specific Formation in several places of the UI.
Convoy Raiding and Defense
The naval warfare systems were revised in 1.5 to account for Fleet formations and precise locations. In most cases we have seen usability improvements from these reworks, but the convoy raiding rework resulted in a bit of a hodge-podge where legacy design goals involving uncertainty and risk-taking conflicted with the new precise locations and visualizations. As a result the convoy raiding system is quite hard to understand, and can also create notification spam sometimes. For 1.5.9 we're working on a revision that should be less chance-based, more easily understood, and revolving more around a push-and-pull in particular sea nodes than guesswork.
Borrowed Troops
In the old system, generals on the same side on the same front would often "borrow" troops from each other for both offensive and defensive operations to ensure battles weren't too lopsided, particularly when one side had many and one side had few generals. Various aspects of the new system, such as formations pooling troops between different generals as well as multiple battles, make this behavior unnecessary and sometimes problematic for offensive operations, so it was removed (but retained for defensive purposes, since losing a front is bad for all involved parties). However, as some of you have noted, this can lead to situations where your AI-controlled allies perform reckless attacks against far superior foes, or where a player-controlled small army with a powerful ally has little agency.
To address this we're working on adding player-togglable support for troop borrowing / lending between formations on an army-by-army basis. In addition to fixing the reckless AI issues, this will let you more easily manage wars where you just want to supply your ally with some extra manpower or revoke access to your troops and go it alone if your ally sends their most bumbling fool of a politically appointed general to lead their charge.
Job Satisfaction / Jobseekers
We introduced a new pop mechanic in 1.5.5 (Open Beta build) where pops will now evaluate how well they like their professional lot in life, based on a number of factors such as wage competitiveness, qualifications for other jobs, expected standard of living, and so on. The intent of this mechanic is two-fold: it gives you more information about where your pops are most keen to get access to new, high-paying jobs which can be used to inform construction decisions, and it acts as a filter on the employment mechanics for performance purposes so not every pop will need to be evaluated for all available jobs. We also intend on building further on this mechanic in the future, for example to inform the revised Migration system (which we launched alongside Job Satisfaction in Open Beta, but reverted for the 1.5.7 launch since it needed a bit more time in the oven).
We've discovered a few balancing and UX issues with Job Satisfaction since launch, which can in some situations make the mechanic quite frustrating and difficult to understand. Polishing away some of the rough edges in this system is a priority for the 1.5.9 patch.
Military Good Shortages
In the military system used in 1.4 and prior, where your military was fully managed through buildings such as barracks, naval bases, and conscription centers, good shortages suffered by military buildings would translate directly into penalties to the combat units supported by those buildings. In 1.5.7, shortages have no direct effect on combat units' ability to fight, since they are now managed by formations rather than buildings and formations don't care about shortages.
While it's already the case that running a military on goods you have a problem supplying results in very high costs, we don't feel this is sufficient. For 1.5.9 we're looking to implement a system where formations "inherit" the shortages from their units' buildings, which will impact the Supply value of formations and thereby limit the Morale that units in those formations will recover. You will also be blocked from building unit types that require goods your market has no access to.
Bugs
With a whole lot of content added in both Update 1.5 and Colossus of the South, a number of edge cases and non-game-breaking but still annoying bugs have been identified since launch. We're working our way down this list also.
Flamethrowers
No commentary necessary.
We also have some other news today!
From later today the Victoria 3 base game is free to play for the weekend, from the 16th - 20th of November!
So, we hope you help out your fellow Victorians when they have questions about the game, direct them to game resources/knowledge and share the spirit of camaraderie around the Victorian age!
Our Discord server has a set of helpers on hand to help new players and our resources on YouTube, the forums and Steam to explain mechanics.
We will see you next time in the next dev diary, arriving in two weeks time on the 30th of November, with Martin talking about the past year and some of what is next post 1.5!