Topic voor nieuwtjes voor Victoria 3
Hello everyone! I’m Mikael, Victoria 3’s lead game designer - and oh boy does it feel good to finally be able to say that out loud! Today I have the pleasure to reveal some details about that one feature everyone thinks about when they hear “Victoria” - the Pops.
Pops were introduced in the very first Victoria game to represent your country’s population. Pop mechanics have since snuck into other Paradox titles like Stellaris and Imperator. But this in-depth population simulation is what Victoria is about, and we’re going to bring you a system with more depth than ever before!
In Victoria 3, Pops are the country’s engine - they work the industries, they pay the taxes, they operate the government institutions, and they fight the wars. They’re born, they die, they change occupation, they migrate. And they organize, get angry, and start revolutions.
Every Pop is visualized so you can see which demographic sports the best moustache. Note that Pop portraits are very much a work in progress!
You, the player, might be in charge of the country, but you’re not in charge of the Pops and can’t manipulate them directly. Yet everything you do to the country affects them, and they in turn will react in what they perceive to be their own best interests. A large part of your game will consist of trying to sate your population’s appetites for material goods or political reform. But most actions you will take aren’t to the benefit of every Pop in your nation, and by making life better for one part of the population you may inadvertently upset another demographic.
The most important aspect of Pops are their Professions, which reflects the types of jobs it carries out in the building where they work. A Pop’s profession determines its social class and can affect its wages, political strength, what other professions it might qualify for, and particularly which political Interest Groups it’s prone to supporting (which you will hear lots more about in future Dev Diaries.) Some of the Pop professions you will encounter in Victoria 3 are Aristocrats, Capitalists, Bureaucrats, Officers, Shopkeepers, Machinists, Laborers, and Peasants. Investing in industries that provide job opportunities for the kinds of professions you want to encourage in your country is key to the “society building” gameplay of Victoria 3.
Every variation of Profession, Culture, Religion, and Workplace in the world gets its own unique Pop. At any given time this results in many tens of thousands of Pops in the world working, migrating, procreating, and agitating.
The people that make up a Pop are distinguished into Workforce and Dependents. Members of the Workforce keep the buildings in the game operational and collect a wage from them in return. Those who cannot or aren’t permitted to be officially employed are considered Dependents. They collect only a small income from odd jobs and government programs.
Laws affect who is included in each category. At game start most countries do not accept women working and collecting a wage outside the home but by reforming laws governing the rights of women more Dependent Pops will enter the Workforce over time. By abolishing child labor, the amount of income Dependents bring home will decrease but will make it easier to educate your populace, increasing their overall Literacy. After a bloody war many Dependents of soldiers may be left without sufficient income, and you may decide to institute pensions to help your population recover.
In short: nothing in your country runs without Pops, and everything about your country affects those Pops, who in turn provide new opportunities and challenges during your tumultuous journey through the Victorian era and beyond.
I have oh so much more to say, but that is all for this week! You will hear much more from me in future Dev Diaries. Next week Martin will return to explain something quite central to the game - Capacities!
Ziet er interessant uit. Ben zeer benieuwd hoe ze dit verder gaan uitwerken.
Happy Thursday and welcome back to yet another Victoria 3 dev diary, this time on the subject of Goods! Goods are a core economic feature of Victoria 3, just as they were in previous Victoria games, and come in a wide variety of types. Also, as in previous Victoria games, the manufacturing of Goods (by Pops in Buildings) is how the vast majority of the wealth in Victoria 3 is created.
Fundamentally, a unit of Goods represent a quantity of a certain type of natural resource, manufactured good or intangible service and come attached with a price tag. This price varies both in base (a single unit of Tanks is pricier than a single unit of Fabric) and in actual market value, as the prices of Goods change depending on supply and demand.
A selection of goods that are bought and sold in the British Market.
There are four broad categories of Goods: Staple Goods, Luxury Goods, Industrial Goods and Military Goods. Of these, Staple/Luxury Goods are mainly consumed by Pops, and Industrial/Military Goods are mainly consumed by buildings, but there are no hard rules here - you will find Buildings using Luxury Goods and Pops purchasing Industrial Goods when and where it makes sense for them to do so.
Staple Goods are everyday goods that Pops need to live, such as food to eat, wood to heat their homes, and clothes to wear. Staple Goods tend to be purchased in vast quantities by poor and middle class pops, with richer pops generally eschewing them for luxury variants.
Grain - possibly the most Staple of all Staple Goods!
Luxury Goods are the things that Pops do not necessarily need but definitely want, such as fine foods, luxury drinks like Tea and Coffee, or fine clothes made from chinese silk. Luxuries tend to be more profitable to produce than Staple Goods, but depend on having a customer base with money - a poor factory worker isn’t going to be buying a whole lot of mahogany cabinets.
You can never have too many painted Ming vases, I always say.
Industrial Goods are goods such as Iron, Coal, Rubber and Lead whose main purpose is often to be converted into other, more profitable goods. Securing a steady supply of vital Industrial Goods is crucial to Industrialization and growing the GDP of your country.
Tools are essential to the operation of many industries.
Military Goods are goods such as Small Arms, Ammunition and Warships that are used by military buildings to arm and supply the armies and navies of the 19th century nations. The more technologically advanced the army or navy, the more complex (and expensive!) Military Goods they will need.
I’m told that soldiers tend to perform better if they’re given ammunition for their guns.
We’ll be returning to the topic of Goods in later dev diaries when discussing related mechanics such as Markets, Pop Needs, Goods Substitution and Cultural Obsessions... but for now, I bid you adieu for a while, as next week Mikael will provide you with a dev diary about something we’ve been teasing for some time now - Production Methods!
Dev Diary #0 — The Vision
2021-04-27
Hello everyone!
Yes, you’re seeing this right. No, this isn’t a belated April Fools joke. After all these years, and all these memes, Victoria 3 really is confirmed at last. I’m Martin “Wiz” Anward, the Game Director of Victoria 3, and it’s my absolute pleasure to finally be able to reveal what I have been working on since 2018 (around the time I stepped down as Game Director of Stellaris).
So what, then, is Victoria 3? I can start by telling you that it’s most definitely a proper Victoria game – namely a game with a core focus on Economy, Politics and Internal Country Management and with the iconic Victoria pop system not just included as a core mechanic but made even deeper than in either of its predecessors.
Though Victoria 3 is its own game and not an iteration on Victoria 2, our ambition is to create a worthy successor that stays true to the core values of the Victoria series while using what have learned over the last decade in terms of making games more accessible – so that we can use that accessibility to build an even deeper game for old and new players alike!
Our vision for Victoria 3 is to create what we call a ‘Society Sim’ – a game that is first and foremost about the internal workings of the 19th-century country that you are playing and how its society is shaped over the course of the game. Politics, Economy and Diplomacy are the three most important parts of the game – Wars are of course a part of the game (just as they were a part of the Victorian age), but Victoria 3 is *not* a wargame or a game about map painting.
Oh, and before you start speculating crazily about what is and is not in the game: No, there is no mana!
Now, there is going to be a lot of dev diaries going forward to dig into the mechanics of the game, but to wrap up this dev diary I want to briefly touch on the four game design pillars that we have been following when designing and building Victoria 3:
- National Gardening: Building, shaping, tweaking and evolving your nation is the first and foremost focus of the game. Events outside your country’s borders can naturally affect your country in significant ways, but the game should never rely on war to provide the main source of enjoyment.
- Diplomatic Eminence: War is a continuation of diplomacy, and everything that is achievable by war should also be achievable through diplomacy (even if that diplomacy sometimes comes at the point of a gun).
- Everything is Political: Politics is at the heart of Victoria 3, and all major features should in some way tie back into the Pops and Interest Groups that form the core of the game’s politics.
- Era of Change: The Victorian era was a time of immense change politically, technologically, culturally, militarily and socially, and these changes should be reflected in the experience of playing a campaign of Victoria 3.
That’s all for this week, but we’ll see you next week, when we’ll be talking about the return of the Victoria Pop System and the introduction of Dependents.
We’ll also have a lot more exciting news to share as we go, so make sure to follow us on Facebook, Twitter, Discord (link coming soon!), the Paradox Forums and the official Victoria 3 website to stay up to date.
Dit is een no brainer - PRE ORDER !
Klinkt goed. Doelen te bereiken zonder oorlog maar met diplomatie…
Ik heb erg genoten van Victoria II en dat ga ik (we?) zeker doen in Victoria III
De populatie (pops) van een natie is enorm belangrijk in Victoria - een populatie bestaat uit:
Ik heb Vic2 nooit echt gespeeld. Maar ben helemaal voor een Vic3 sessie 🙂
Nope. Not my cup of tea. (Victoria style)
My mug of Meade (middle age style) ligt meer bij Crusader Kings 3
Het is even een hele zit 😀 maar dan zou je het moeten begrijpen 😓 🤣 😎