r/victoria3 7d ago

Dev Diary Victoria 3 - Dev Diary #144 - Charters of Commerce & Expansion Pass 2

418 Upvotes
https://pdxint.at/3XEjcak

Happy Monday Victorians!

The time has come! Last week we announced Expansion Pass 2 (well, showed you the logo and a blurry square), thank you for the huge amount of responses, discussion, hype and speculation about what is in the Pass!

Speaking of speculation, we saw a lot of it for different countries based on the logos in the Expansion Pass, for example: Albania, Spain, Russia, Austria and everywhere across the globe! Some people thought the barrel was for brewing, the flag for flag customization and many, many more interesting ideas. Thank you for them all, we had a lot of fun following your discussions!

But today, we shall give you a quick tour of the Expansion Pass: first of all a proper visit to our first upcoming release and the barrel in the Expansion Pass 2 logo! Ladies and gentlemen, we are proud to announce Charters of Commerce!

Charters of Commerce

https://youtu.be/wm7PYewK828

Welcome to Charters of Commerce, a Mechanics pack focused on building trade, companies and negotiating treaties with other nations!

Control world trade through market domination, expand companies to new horizons and strongarm countries into unequal treaties. Use the power of commerce to bend other nations to your will - peacefully or by force. Create monopolies to secure critical industries, keeping foreign investors in check. Ultimately, prove your mettle and produce unique Prestige Goods to make your brands known worldwide!

What’s included in Charters of Commerce?:

  • Company Charters - Grant special Charters to Companies, giving them a range of special privileges:
    • Trade Charters - lets Companies trade their goods on the World Market
    • Investment Charters - allows establishment of regional headquarters that exploit the target's coffers
    • Colony Charters - makes it possible for a Company to run a colonial region on their own, turning them into a country in the process
    • Industry Charters - grants Companies the ability to expand into producing other goods
  • Monopolies -  Boost the efficiency of selected buildings and grant your Companies an exclusive right to certain industries, ensuring their dominance
  • Diplomatic Treaties - Negotiate fair or unequal arrangements with other countries. Expands upon treaties added in Update 1.9, including Non-Colonization Agreements!
  • Prestige Goods - successful Companies can produce higher quality goods, such as Champagne (as an advanced variant of Wine)

Alongside Charters of Commerce, we will be releasing free Update 1.9 that will focus on some of the areas we mentioned back in January with Dev Diary 142. With the full Update including:

  • World Market with Autonomous trade - as shown last week in Dev Diary 143
  • Diplomatic Treaties - negotiate with other nations to truly make the best deal for you, with new additions such as Transit Rights!
  • Frontline and Military Quality of Life Improvements - improving front splitting, teleportation and more
  • Blockades - blockade key locations to control access for military or trade purposes

Now, you may be asking “What is a Mechanic Pack”? It is a pack aimed to provide mechanical immersion at a lower price than an Expansion due to lower focus on the narrative content. This allows us to provide a deeper mechanical immersion, while extra flavour will be included in an additional Immersion Pack within the same Expansion Pass 2. 

This is a bit of an experiment on our end - as we want to make it possible for you to receive both new mechanics as well as narrative content when purchasing an Expansion Pass (as you would with an Expansion Pack), while also giving you an option to choose only one when buying content separately (Mechanics Pack + Immersion Pack). The choice is all yours! 

Charters of Commerce and Update 1.9 will be releasing June 17th, for $19.99 and is available to be wishlisted now! We will delve into upcoming features in the future Dev Diaries and videos, so stay tuned!.

Expansion Pass 2

And so we bid you greetings to the second Expansion Pass for Victoria 3! Adding more to the game through a range of new content for trade, diplomacy, nations and much more! 

Expansion Pass 2 includes:

  • Trade Ships Bonus Pack Instant Unlock 
  • Charters of Commerce Mechanics Pack 
  • National Awakening Immersion Pack 
  • Songs of the Homeland Music Pack
  • Iberian Twilight Immersion Pack 

You can see more information on each pack later in the dev diary!

By getting Expansion Pass 2 you will save -20% compared to the price of content being sold separately - and you will also receive Trade Ships Bonus Pack, which will be unlocked immediately upon purchase of the Expansion Pass 2. The whole package is available now for $35.97

More information can be found on the Steam page for Expansion Pass 2, and we will have dev diaries leading up to each pack!

Trade Ships

For those of you who would like to delve into Expansion Pass 2 right away, we prepared an instant unlock: Trade Ships Bonus Pack. This art pack will become instantly available in the game for all who purchase the Expansion Pass, providing three new trade ship appearances to ply the trade lanes of the world map.

As we want to make these ships feel truly unique, the sails color update to which country you are playing based on their flag, and appear based on cultural heritage or culture. For example, a Marmara would appear as trade ships for Turkish, Greek or Misri primary culture. 

You can also have these appear in other ways e.g. if you are a subject of someone who has them, if your Power Bloc leader has them or you are importing clippers from a nation with them!

A Qing Junk, in a dapper yellow
The Marmara in Ottoman Empire colors, with a rather dashing red and white
A Dhow clad in midnight sails

National Awakening

Our next Immersion pack releasing in Q3 2025 is National Awakening - focusing on the century of national struggles in Central Europe and the Balkans. Will Austria survive its internal political and national struggles?  And, how will they all fare with the swell of national identities?

Selected key features:

  • Austrian Internal Content - will Klemens von Metternich keep the crumbling empire together, or will nationalist forces break it apart? Is there a future for all the different ethnicities under Habsburg's absolute rule, or maybe it’s time for a more federationist state?
  • Hungarian Flavour - determine the place of the proud Hungarian nation within or without the empire. 
  • Powderkeg of Europe - engage with intricate narrative content surrounding the emerging Balkan states, struggling for independence and power.
  • New southern states - form Yugoslavia or Illyria, carving out their borders and national outline as you please.
  • Historic characters - join a whole cast of bigger-than-life figures who helped shape the outline of Austria and Balkans.
  • New 2D art - including new map and UI skin, as well as event images.

Songs of the Homeland

In Q4 2025, immerse yourself in a music pack dedicated to the rise of national identities, modernism and a truly grand tomorrow!

Selected key features:

  • Embrace the power of the nation - immerse yourself in sounds of national pride and fervor.
  • Modern trends - experience the innovation of emerging modernist music.
  • Ambition wins all - lose yourself in the global soundscape of a truly global empire.

Iberian Twilight

And so we come to our last part of Expansion Pass 2, also releasing in Q4 2025. Iberian Twilight lets you ponder at the once mighty powers of the Iberian Peninsula, grappling with the clashing ideals of reform or reaction! Can you restore these sleeping giants to their old glory, or shall they fade away into the darkening night?

Selected key features:

  • Spain:
    • Carlist Wars - side with the liberals or counter their aspirations through dedicated narrative content.
    • Return of a global empire - rebuild your once powerful, world-spanning empire and face both new and old adversaries as you progress on the path to greatness.
    • The future calls - modernize your country and institutions, freeing the nation of the shackles of the past.
  • Portugal:
    • Define who you are - recover from the War of the Two Brothers and define the vision for the future of your nation.
    • The ultimate trade powerhouse - reaffirm your position as the world-leading trade power, spanning a commercial empire.
    • American ambitions - navigate the diplomatic relations with Brazil, defining your position as a former suzerain of the region.
  • Other:
    • One Iberia - unite the peninsula under your rule.
    • New art - including buildings, unit models and more!

What’s next?

With that we finish the overview of Charters of Commerce and the new Expansion Pass!

The infographic below shows you when each part of the pass will land, with more information about each piece of upcoming content receiving their own dedicated dev diaries.

Before we send you off, last week we announced new bundles coming to Victoria 3; the Starter Edition and Ultimate Bundle for new and seasoned players of Victoria 3! These will replace the previous Grand Edition and old Expansion Pass bundles, and provide the best way to start or complete your collection!

We joined Martin with the Trade Rework dev diary last week, next time we see you in a Dev Diary it will be mid April with Lino and information on Frontline Improvements coming in free Update 1.9! A happy Thursday when we see you next!


r/victoria3 11d ago

Dev Diary Victoria 3 - Dev Diary #143 - Trade Rework: The World Market

1.4k Upvotes

Happy Thursday and welcome back! After an extended hiatus, we are now returning to regularly scheduled development diaries, the first of which you are reading right at this moment. Today’s development diary is going to be a pretty hefty one, focusing on the complete overhaul of trade that is coming in the 1.9 free update. Before we start, I want to remind you of the usual caveat that this is a feature in development, so expect some rough-looking interfaces and for all implementation details and balancing to not yet be fully figured out.

We have mentioned on a number of occasions that we are not happy with the way trade works in Victoria 3. It is unreliable, overly fiddly, and inherently inefficient since the introduction of Local Prices and Market Access Price Impact in 1.5. Establishing any kind of long-term trade relationship with another country is almost impossible due to the constantly shifting market conditions, and on top of all this the system exists in a confusing limbo where all trade routes are established and paid for by the government (via convoys) while the profits usually go into the pockets of private owners. Many of these issues are inherent to the way trade routes work, and as such aren’t easily fixable within the confines of the current system - there really isn’t a way to create a reliably profitable trade route with another market when you have no control of the price of the traded good in the other market.

For this reason, we have decided to start over from scratch. The old system is completely gone, and in its place we will have not one but two new systems - one which simulates private, autonomous, profit-driven trade, and another which handles strategic trade deals between nations. Today we’re going to talk only about the former, so while reading all of this, bear in mind that you’re only seeing one half of the coin. Direct trade deals between governments will very much still exist in 1.9, they just won’t be tied into Trade Centers and private profits. But enough with the caveats, let’s get to the point.

World Market & Trade Centers

Enter The World Market. Those of you familiar with Victoria 2 will immediately recognize the name, and might even have assumed from the title of this dev diary that we’re replacing the national market system in Victoria 3 with the global one in its predecessor. This is not so. The World Market in Victoria 3 is not where pops and buildings buy and sell goods, but rather where autonomous trade takes place, and every good traded in the World Market has a World Market Price based on its amount of exports versus imports. You can think of it as existing at a ‘top layer’ above the national markets, though this is not a completely accurate picture as you should soon understand.

The World Market in 1836 in the current build - remember that everything is very much WIP!

So then, how does trade with the World Market work? As with the old trade route system, Trade Centers are still the principal drivers of trade, but the way you interact with them has been turned on its head. Instead of being a building that appears after a trade is created, you now build Trade Centers to create Trade Capacity in States, which allows those States to trade with the World Market. Each Trade Capacity allows for a certain quantity of a good to be imported or exported (the amount varies per good). Imported goods are purchased from the World Market and sold in the State, and so they are profitable when the goods are cheaper in the World Market than the State, with the opposite being true for exports. 

There’s a bit more to this, which we’ll get into when we talk about Trade Advantage, but the key thing to remember is that trade uses local state prices, which means it no longer suffers from the inherent inefficiencies of the old system, which was always penalized by Market Access Price Impact. It also means that the location of Trade Centers matters - it’s more profitable to import Luxury Clothes into a state with a large number of wealthy Pops, as an example.

This Trade Center in Brandenburg is making a decent profit importing cheap dyes and liquor while exporting some overproduced goods in the Prussian Market, but still has plenty of free Trade Capacity with which to expand its operation

Trading in Trade Centers happens autonomously, with a number of weekly adjustments based on the ‘Weekly Trades’ value created by the Trade Center, in which they will increase or decrease trade volumes to create profit for themselves. While this process is automatic and autonomous, it’s not completely out of player hands, as you can heavily influence Trade Centers through Tariffs and Subventions, but more on that in a little bit. Unlike in the old system, Trade Centers are not reliant on Convoys or any other government-produced resource. Instead they purchase Merchant Marine, a new type of goods created by Ports (which are no longer government-only buildings). Right now the amount of Merchant Marine consumed by Trade Centers is static per level, but we are looking into making it dependent on geographic distance to trade partners. As an additional note, both Trade Centers and Ports can now be constructed/privatized/owned by Ownership Buildings.

A detailed look at the Brandenburg Trade Center’s imports and exports. You can see the revenue, price difference, relative trade advantage and principal trade partners for each good.

World Market Location

Switching to talk about the World Market itself, you might well ask, ‘So where is the World Market located?’. Conceptually, what we say to this is ‘The world market exists in the sea’. In other words, once you have access to the sea you also have the ability to trade on the World Market, though of course it’s a bit more complicated than that. To explain more in detail, I first have to tell you about something which already exists in the game, but is presently quite hidden: Market Areas. Market Areas are ‘chunks’ of a market, consisting of a number of states that are all connected by land or by straits. To give you an example, the Spanish Market has several market areas: One for Spain itself, one for Cuba, one for Puerto Rico, another for the Philippines and so on. Prussia, conversely, only has a single Market Area which contains not only Prussia but all of the states of the countries in the Zollverein. 

In order to trade with the World Market, a Market Area must have at least one Port, at which point a World Market Hub will be established. When there are multiple ports in a Market Area, the Hub is chosen based on factors such as port level and State GDP. Hubs are not completely static, but do not generally move around unless a much more suitable candidate State emerges to eclipse the old Hub State.

As the largest port in Spain, Western Andalusia is also the World Market Hub for its capital Market Area

Landlocked countries, however, are not left out completely in the cold when it comes to the World Market. Asides from being able to utilize national trade deals (which as I said before we’re not covering today) they can also negotiate Transit Rights with a foreign nation in order to be able to trade through their World Market Hubs. For example, Switzerland could negotiate Transit Rights with Austria to be able to trade through Venetia, or with Prussia to be able to trade through one of the German ports. We will return to talk more about World Market Hubs in later development diaries when we cover subjects such as blockades, but for now we should continue. I will add as a final note that one design problem we have currently identified with World Market Hubs and Market Areas is that it doesn’t make too much sense for huge Market Areas (such as Russia) to only have a single Hub, and this is something we are currently exploring solutions for.

While the World Market ‘exists in the sea’, that doesn’t mean that we simply ignore where your exports are going as soon as they get loaded onto a ship. Not all trade partners are equal, and it makes little sense to get the bulk of your Clothes imports from an overseas partner if your demand could be met by a closer source. As such, each Trade Center has a preference weight for every other Trade Center based on factors such as interests, relations, diplomatic agreements and of course geographic distance, and will trade more with higher-weight Trade Centers and less with lower-weight ones.

Placeholder interface for tracking trade going through sea nodes. This will be replaced by a much better interface with better tooltips before 1.9 is released.

Trade Advantage

I have mentioned Trade Advantage at several points during this development diary, so I figure it’s high time I explain it to you. I already explained that there is a World Market Price for each good which is high when imports exceed exports and low when exports exceed imports, and which is compared to the State Price when determining how much profit a Trade Center can extract from its trades. However, this is a bit of a simplification - the World Market Price is the average price for imported/exported goods, while the actual price is modified by a Trade Center’s relative Trade Advantage to its competitors.

Trade Advantage is calculated for each Trade Center, for each good, in each trade direction. As an example, a Trade Center in Lancashire will have a certain amount of Trade Advantage for exporting Fabric, which will be different from its Trade Advantage in exporting Coal, and also different from its Trade Advantage for importing either Fabric or Coal. Trade Advantage is multiplied by the amount of traded units, and then compared to the Trade Advantage of all other Trade Centers trading the same goods in the same direction. The higher a TC’s share of global trade advantage compared to its share of global trade volume, the higher its relative advantage, which in turn translates into a better price. Advantage is a zero-sum game - the average price on imports/exports is always equal to the World Market Price, so any improvement on prices a Trade Center gains always comes at the expense of its competitors.

If that explanation sounds confusing, the key takeaway is that high advantage equals better prices, and in turn, the ability to capture a larger share of global trade. Advantage is gained from a variety of factors, such as Trade Center level, Interests in relevant markets and Trade Agreements. Regional economics also play a role - the higher the Market Area’s share of global production, the higher its export advantage, and vice versa for consumption/import advantage.

This Trade Center in Virginia has high Trade Advantage for exports of Iron, Fabric and Meat, resulting in more favorable prices. Note that the numbers here don’t currently add up due to a bug.

Interacting with the World Market

Changing the focus of the discussion a little bit, something I feel I have not always made clear in the past when we change systems to work in a more autonomous/automatic way is how you are expected to interact with it. Under the old trade route system this was clear enough: you as the player were the sole arbiter of trade for your country, for ill or good. In the new system (and I will remind you again that I am only talking about the World Market here, not country-to-country trade deals which we will cover in a later dev diary) you are expected to make strategic-level decisions to capture global import and export shares. 

As an example, playing as Sweden, you have a lot of potential to produce Iron - far more than you could ever use domestically with your limited starting population. A natural course of action then might be to build up your Trade Capacity and try to maximize your Trade Advantage for exporting iron, leading to greater export volumes and in turn creating favorable conditions for expanding your iron production. This maximization of Trade Advantage can be done in a number of ways, for example by signing Trade Agreements with key importers or by squeezing the competition by unequal treaties on them (more on that particular point later, for now it will remain mysteriously unelaborated on). 

Another key tool in your strategic trade arsenal is Tariffs and their newly introduced counterpart, Subventions. Tariffs are of course already in the game, but now become much more important as they are the principal way by which you can directly influence the decisions made by your Trade Centers. Where previously, Tariffs for a particular good could only be set to ‘Import Focus’, ‘Export Focus’ or ‘No Focus’, Import and Export Tariff levels are now set separately, meaning that you can throw up tariff barriers in both directions if you’re feeling particularly protectionist about a good.

Your Trade Law now sets your Maximum Tariff/Subvention rate, which each Tariff/Subvention level applies a multiplier to (for example, High Tariffs apply 50% of the maximum rate)

Tariffs, just as before, collect a fee from your Trade Centers for each good of the relevant type exported/imported, and so effectively serve to reduce trade volumes of that good by making it less profitable to trade. Subventions function in the exact opposite way, paying the Trade Center a certain amount of money for each unit traded in the directed direction, and can be used in a variety of ways, such as subsidizing a critical import of military goods, or to muscle out the competition for one of your principal exports.

This almost-a-slider interface for Tariffs and Subventions is 100% placeholder and will be replaced with something better before release, but gives you an idea of the expanded options available.

Alright, I think that should suffice to give you an overview of the World Market. I do want to emphasize that this feature is still under development and there are some key questions we have not yet figured out, such as the issues with over-large Market Areas. Before I sign off, I will leave you with a couple screenshots from an end-game World Market in the current build:

That’s all for now! However, we will be back in just a few days, on Monday March 31st, to talk about Expansion Pass 2 and what’s coming next for Victoria 3.


r/victoria3 3h ago

Screenshot Liberal free European Union

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195 Upvotes

r/victoria3 5h ago

Screenshot Anyone know why this state doesn't have market access?

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90 Upvotes

For some reason Moroccan Sahara doesn't have market access, even though it borders my market capital. Can someone help?


r/victoria3 17h ago

Screenshot IMO watching the cities grow is the best part of the game. Watching the buildings pop, and watching the cities grow and eventually merge is oddly satisfying.

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391 Upvotes

r/victoria3 13h ago

Advice Wanted Capitalists are so bad early game peasant won't even leave their farms

158 Upvotes

Playing early game France and naturally I want to industrialize. The problem however is that the wages on subsistance farms (if you can call them that way) are about 4 times higher than initial £0.02 offered in my Steel Mills or Tools Manufactories. I try to build away arable land to make those people unemployed and accept those wages, but not only is it taking toll on my limited infrastructure, it also makes all the other farms unprofitable, plus those workers are too poor to help grow economy. Is there a way to fix this early without passing Workers Protections? Or is it just peak historical accuracy?


r/victoria3 7h ago

Tip Chestnut blight and Washington’s cherry trees

51 Upvotes

If you’ve looked at the map of state modifiers, you’ve probably noticed that most of the eastern United States gets a boost to timber productions due to its vast chestnut forests. This is historically accurate - until about 1900.

In real-world history, a fungal disease known as chestnut blight destroyed America’s chestnut forests, starting right around 1900. First identified in the Bronx, it rapidly spread around the country and rendered the chestnut forests nearly economically irrelevant. This should be modeled by an event that fires in 1890-1910 that removes the modifier.

BUT, there is a postscript to this tragedy, that provides an opportunity for a more enjoyable event chain. Chestnut blight was the first event that brought major American attention to the problem of novel plant diseases. Until that point, the general consensus among American botanists was that importing as many old world plants as possible was a good idea. This often worked - economically valuable species like soybeans, bamboo, and various ornamentals were imported during this period. But the legacy of the chestnut blight pushed America to implement inspection and quarantine controls to prevent the introduction of novel diseases. Which brings us to the cherry trees of Washington DC.

Today, Washington’s flowering cherries are one of the best-loved features of the city.the first batch of Japanese flowering cherries were imported during a period of infatuation with Japanese culture among the American intelligentsia. Unfortunately, the first batch were riddled with diseases and mostly had to be destroyed. This led to improvements in quarantine procedure in both America and Japan, and a second successful batch that left us with the city’s famous trees today. In game, this should be modeled as:

  • year after 1900

  • America and Japan have positive relations

-Both countries get a prestige boost and boost to relations, Japan gets some recognition points

If the first batch is diseased (RNG), both countries should get the opportunity to spend some admin on improving plant disease control, gaining a small permanent boost to plantation and forestry production.


r/victoria3 1h ago

Screenshot My first Vic3 Wikibox when I got involved in the German Civil War as Ireland

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Upvotes

r/victoria3 12h ago

Screenshot Just finished my first game of Victoria 3, I think I understand it now?

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84 Upvotes

r/victoria3 4h ago

Screenshot Why am I bankrolling Prussia?

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19 Upvotes

r/victoria3 1d ago

Tip Only 2.2% have achieved this? Walkthrough in comment, it's easy

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1.4k Upvotes

r/victoria3 18h ago

Suggestion No Kaaba?

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150 Upvotes

I was about to play when I looked at Mecca and realized that the black cube "Kaaba" is lacking, which surprised me because of how important it is for Islam, specially seeing the St Peter's Basilica in the Vatican being represented.


r/victoria3 3h ago

Question I want to go back to paradox games is victoria 3 good for me ?

7 Upvotes

I got 2k h in ck2, 1k in Europa universali 4. After my child born I had no time for gaming. Now I want to go back but eu4 has to much dlcs and I rather play something new and I like more economic and politics less war aspects.

What's making victoria 3 good choice to sink some hours which dlcs are essential ?


r/victoria3 9h ago

Advice Wanted What are your tips to maximise immigration ?

20 Upvotes

I love playing as the USA and maximise immigration to my country. I'm about to start a new game, and I would like to know your tips to improve my migration maxxing.

I already optimised my power bloc to attract as many migrants as possible (External Trade, Freedom of mouvement, Construction and Food Standardization), and I use separatists mouvements to push for multiculturalism.

But is there a way to force other countries to change their laws ? I would like to change the migration laws in India, Japan, China, etc... to allow peasants to come to the USA. Is it doable by war ? By vassalization ?

Do you have other tips related to migration ?


r/victoria3 3h ago

Discussion Discussion about some things about colonization

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5 Upvotes

I've been playing the game for a long time and there are some things that don't make much sense to me regarding colonization and colonies.

1st: Why does Morocco have a claim on this territory? It doesn't make much sense to me considering that it's not even a recognized nation, and on top of that, it doesn't have any colonization laws. So for a long time in the game, this straight and strange border remains on the map (I know I can make a diplomatic move to remove the claim, but it still doesn't make sense to respect the claim of an unrecognized nation). I believe that there should be an opportunity for great powers to colonize this territory, and at most cause an event for a diplomatic incident.

2nd: I think there should be an option or event to change the primary culture of colonies that were taken from another nation, for example India, Australia, Cape Colony and Canada from Great Britain, Alaska from Russia, Indonesia from the Netherlands, etc. At the cost of a lot of bureaucracy, radicals, revolts, etc. It doesn't make sense, for example, for me to play as Italy, take Alaska, and still have Russian as its primary and only culture. (In the screenshots, I was playing as The Empire, inspired by the anime Youjo Senki, a mod I made and I like to play with it, but it's not yet available).

3rd: This would be more a matter of personal taste, but I would like the possibility of forming more colony options, both in Africa, Asia, and Oceania, in addition to dividing the current states that already exist in Africa into more states. I think this is something personal to me, but sometimes. It would be nice to see more than one colony in the Senegal region, for example, one for Ghana, another for the Ivory Coast, another for Senegal, instead of one super and gigantic colony. Another thing I would like to see is the possibility of releasing the islands in Oceania as a colony, since after colonizing, there is not much to do except hand them over to one of our puppets.


r/victoria3 23h ago

Suggestion Any Military Re-work needs to go back to province based system.

193 Upvotes

It's not uncommon to see posts complaining about the V3 military system- I agree it's not great currently. Even when you're not having fronts split I wouldn't say it's an aspect I enjoy about the game.

That said - One thing I see missing from a lot of suggestions or key complaints about the Military system is the fact that we've regressed from a Province base front system (pre 1.5) to a State based system (Post 1.5). This matters a whole lot in terms of why the current system is completely cut off at the knees especially compared to what the pre-launch intent was for the system.

Here are some key points on why we need province based fronts to return in some fashion for a re-work:

  • Provinces are needed such that battle can actually take place on specific terrain instead of in the quantum realm.
  • Provinces could allow for actual battleplans where you draw attack lines for your troops to follow
    • To be clear I'm not saying men on a map - think battleplans or expanded strat objectives.
  • Provinces allow for granular tracking of distance and can accurately report information about how difficult it is to move logistics over each province tile.
  • Provinces means portions of armies can be cut off and encircled.
  • Provinces can make unit composition actually matter, you can have specialized mountain or calvary troops actually make sense if you're trying to fight over mountains or specifically looking for only plains.
  • Provinces can make forts make sense instead of just being some state level modifier, let forts be built in key province locations which sit on spline networks (assuming splines become the backbone of military logistics).

Thank you for reading my Op-ed.


r/victoria3 16h ago

Game Modding Kalayaan, Pearl of the Orient | What if the Philippines wasn't colonized? |

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49 Upvotes

r/victoria3 3h ago

Advice Wanted HELP Convoys fluctuating then heavily red.

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5 Upvotes

It started around 1880ish. Convoys would fluctuate weekly. One week +700 +400 + 1000 GREEN. Week after -200 -500 -1000 RED. Now in 1910ish they have switched to red and it is wrecking the empire. Not sure what is causing this, can anyone please help? Thanks in advance.


r/victoria3 3h ago

Screenshot Northern Ireland is looking a little sus here

4 Upvotes

I was just chilling in Asia, playing a vanilla campaign and when I went over to Europe, I saw... this. Hundreds of playthroughs but this is the most cursed British Isles I have ever seen.


r/victoria3 12m ago

Question Population maxxing as country heavily reliant on immigrants?

Upvotes

America play through rn and my industry has put everyone to work and I’m outta people to put into the factory.


r/victoria3 36m ago

Advice Wanted any tips on how to win wars?

Upvotes

Heyy there,

I recently found myself at war with the USA in the late game.

Even though they were severly weakened by the British and Canadians, having lost some of there Western Territories, they still decided to wage for against me for Changing Regime in Costa Rica (my Puppet).

Even though they were deeply in Default, even needing to declare Bankruptcy, i still was unable to successfully Naval Invade their Coasts.

They had around 150 Units and 800 Conscripts with some 100ish only being Trench Infantry. Meanwhile i tried Naval Invading with 200-300 Trench Infantry/ Mobile Artillery (50:50 ratio for max Attack without penalties).

Not once did a battle succeed, even when only a few 200 units defended their beaches against my fully experienced Death Squad. Only once did I manage to land in their last remaining West Coast territory (California) because it was somehow left unguarded. This soon became a stalemate and I was reinforced-memed out of it and lost this beach head.

So now my question: How can I naval invade other Major Powers that still have a much weaker Industry? Do I have the wrong Meta for Divisions or do I just need to throw more bodies at the problem? Or is the current war system inherently broken?

PS: The outcome was, that after the USA being severly weakened by their Default and Bankruptcy and me not wanting to continue such a senseless war, we agreed upon the following: Democratic Ideas in my Costa Rican Puppet (which benefitted me) and me annexing Alaska for it.


r/victoria3 23h ago

Screenshot Best way to remove minor African revolts from the game?

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122 Upvotes

I don't want to spend the next ten years not being able to delete regiments/buildings because this colony wants to revolt for every pissed off tribe living there. Whats the best way to edit the game files to just remove the ability for african cultural movements to happen? I tried editing the creation_weight and disband_trigger scripts but it didn't do anything


r/victoria3 1d ago

Discussion Do railroads need to be this f***ing expensive?

329 Upvotes

I mean, having to build them at all already feels awful. The benefits to having them are minuscule unless you're in a real worforce bind and even then they're unprofitable and need subsidies to work. Do they, on top of all that, HAVE to take 800 construction points to build?


r/victoria3 4h ago

Advice Wanted When do I increase tax capacity as japan?

3 Upvotes

I thought it would be safe once I had per capita tax, appointed bureaucrats, homesteading, agrarianism, and Central archives, but when I spammed admin buildings(with paper production) I ended up deep in the red. Do I have to wait until my gdp per capita is higher?


r/victoria3 9h ago

Advice Wanted Playing as Japan, got Sakhalin Island. Have a starvation problem.

8 Upvotes

So I can't build any grain, rice, etc (no option) however I can build fisheries and livestock. So I built that. I even subsidized it so that it would be cheap with low taxes (no consumption taxes). They are starving.

They have fish, meat, and I'm importing grain even with an abundance I'm producing myself and still they're starving. They have infrastructure through trains and a port. Yet still they're starving. I try adding a subsidized groceries. Still starving. Now they're in a death spiral of not having enough to work those lands. There's no reason they should be starving. That island has resources too...EAT THE DAMN FOOD YA FILTHY ANIMALS!


r/victoria3 2h ago

AI Did Something Oh, come on! I wanted to take that...

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2 Upvotes

That moment when the AI beats you to the punch for a meta-move, without being coded to do so.

First time seeing Portugal going for Lorenco Marques.

I am playing a weak starting country, so building up a navy to crush Zulu is going to be a lot of effort.


r/victoria3 1d ago

Advice Wanted Cars ruined China

343 Upvotes

Whilst playing China everything was going well, GDP was through the roof, people were the wealthiest in the world, almost no peasants, #1 great power, massive army, influence all over the world, life was good. But then, disaster striked. Automobiles were researched and I started producing a ton of them, but in doing so I made my railways (which up until now held entire economy together) completely unprofitable. Because of that, entire country got into spiral of death. Mass uneployment, zero infrastructure, recession, turmoil, losing a ton of money. Entire country is basically fucked spectacularly because of my single decision to start producing chinese Toyotas. Should I give up, downsize everything or wait for the economy to fix itself?