From the dev comments to the DD yesterday:
We’re not ready to talk about the whole scope of 1.2 yet, but you can definitely expect to see several points from our post release plans DD checked off.
Economic Law changes in 1.2. Mostly related to the investment pool stuff from last week, but also one new law(Cooperative Ownership) and a larger overhaul of Command Economy. They also talked about doing a beta for 1.2 which seems like a good idea considering the issues their previous patches have launched with.
This is a very welcome change:
Instead of being a frankly weird system where the Bureaucrats own the profits but you are required to subsidize them, Command Economy now makes use of a new system called Government Shares, which is used by the Government Run ownership production method. Just like how Pop Shares entitle Pops to a portion of a building’s dividends, Government Shares ensure that buildings pay some or all of their profits directly into the treasury - though in large economies this is subject to an efficiency modifier, with some of the money being wasted due to the inefficiencies inherent to large, heavily centralized systems.
Edit: Maybe a step towards pops being able to own shares in multiple buildings, FDI, etc.
Beta 1.2 comes out next week with the estimated date for the actual release of the patch to be mid-March.
Other than that the diary has a bullet point list of features for the patch without any real description of the intriguing bits.
Considering a March release is, 5(?) months after release, I wouldn’t be surprised for them to release either the first art pack or music pack along with this. Wait too long to start releasing DLC and people who bought the Grand Edition are going to complain, but they can’t release any sort of game content DLC yet or people will complain about the base game being broken still while Paradox pumps out DLC.
A whole bunch of really nice UX changes. Hoping I finally start to feel connected to my pops. Also happy that they are willing to basically just integrate popular mods into the base game.
This is the best development philosophy. It’s awful when a key mod goes dead because the modder (understandably) moves on, but then in turn sours future game updates for many players. I feel like many game developers are territorial in not implementing widely lauded mods (or at least their spirit), to their detriment.
This all looks like good stuff. I’m really glad they’re changing the notification system, that constant stream of notifications was pretty useless at highlighting anything important going on.
I’m also glad they put thought into the default notification settings. But as a longtime Paradox fan I’m even more glad to see the return of customizable message settings. Can’t wait for them to integrate the stuff from the Current Situation panel and hopefully let me completely move on from that thing. I didn’t care for it in CK3 and it’s even worse in Vicky 3
Well this is just a bundle of positive changes. All of these were annoyances I had pretty quickly with the game and I’m glad they are all getting addressed in pretty reasonable seeming ways.
TLDR
- Colonial Claims - Reserve colonization of certain areas to countries with colonial claims. So Canada now has a claim on that swath of land the US used to colonize immediately. Now they have to get the claim revoked before they can colonize that location. Argentina and Chile also have claims in Patagonia to stop that from being a free-for-all too(this was one of my go-to places to colonize early as really any country).
- Beating a decentralized country in an uprising as a colonizer no longer annexes the whole country. Instead you get a boost to colonization speed there and they can’t start another uprising.
- A diplomatic play can get more primary wargoals which would all be given if a side backs down. These extend to wargoals that backing nations add when joining that target one of the primary parties.
- Rework of war exhaustion to be less exploitable.
- Rework of AI for peace treaties.
So do you think 1.2 would be a good time to jump in or should I let it cook a bit more, maybe the first gameplay DLC?
Depends on how much you care about the military side. They are making improvements there for 1.2 but that won’t be a really enjoyable feature until it gets a dedicated update.
Otherwise I think 1.2 will basically be what the game should have been at launch.
Thanks for being so clear here - exactly what I wanted to ask.
I’m not sure I’ll be able to muster the patience to finish my EU4 Florence → Italy → Roman Empire game as 100 years of constant war isn’t super appealing to me.
So I decided to get my Paradox fix by trying out the 1.2 beta(it’s on the final beta update before release) and playing as The Papal States to see how far I can extend my enlightened theocracy.
And the very first random event I got made me laugh and I had to share
So far things seem to be going well with the beta patch. A number of weird visual stuff that I assume they’ll iron out, but the game itself seems to be progressing better. Warfare is weird in that countries are forced to capitulate really fast, but that’s something they are aware of and said they’ll address before the patch releases.
Here is where the world is at in 1856. You’ll notice something I’ve never actually seen before, which is Germany forming! Too early, but I blame Austria getting beaten up hard early on. Two Sicilies took Istria from them at some point in one of those wars and then when TS came after me for Italian Unification I was able to take it for cheap from them(as well as the big prize of Campania). Istria is a big deal as it’s a really nice source of coal that I don’t otherwise have. All my coal has been imported to this point and I’ve never had anywhere near enough. Britain already had part of Calabria(didn’t see when/how they did that) and I had to give them the rest to get them to help me stop unification. Another fun thing I noticed is that after I took Campania, Two Sicilies just became Sicily.
Oh also, the pope got caught banging a priest and I chose to sweep it under the rug. Look, I’m trying to build an enlightened papal theocracy but we’re not quite there yet. Wasn’t going to let my beloved skilled pope go just because of that.
I’m surprised they have events specifically tailored to the Papal States, or do you think they were events that could happen in any Catholic country, and they just seem to have special resonance because you’re playing as the Papal States?
Uh, in your game, is the Pope Catholic?
Oh it wasn’t, this is a generic event for countries that share a religion. Look at the event choice with the checkmark next to it, it’s silly.
Even with the performance improvements my game slowed way down by the late 1880s, making me decide to be done in the early 1890s before I could take back the north from Austria. I did get Calabria from the UK after they intervened in one of my wars against an African state. I think they were fighting in another war at the start so by the time they actually committed troops to my war it was too late.
I also managed to largely reform things along the path I wanted to form my enlightened theocracy. We had universal suffrage, several social reforms(public health insurance, unemployment, and workplace safety), restricted child labor, etc. I like the way forming a government in a democratic society has shaped up. Basically the Curia would always be in power due to the Pope, but I’d have to form a coalition with whoever won the election which would significantly change the reforms available to me.
With continued performance issues I think any more games of Victoria 3 will have to wait until I’m not using an eight year old i5 anymore.
The 1.2 patch notes are massive. I’ve been watching the One Proud Bavarian playthroughs of 1.2 beta with his mod so I’m happy to see that they adapted a lot of changes from that mod into the final version of 1.2. AND, now that my CPU is upgraded I should actually be able to play past 1880 without pulling my hair out! If EU4 max speed performance is any indication the performance difference is going to be very large.