Hello and welcome to another monthly update video for Victoria 3.
My name is Maciej, I'm part of the community team for Victoria
and today we'll talk about countries in a state of internal turmoil.
First off, Revolutions.
If you've been following along the Dev Diaries for Victoria so far,
you'll know that a big part of the game is balancing the economic and political needs
of different factions in your country.
Revolutions are what happens when you fail to do that.
One idea at the forefront of our mind
when designing those systems for revolutions was that we wanted revolutions
to be very impactful, very threatening to the player but also rare.
To accomplish this, we've given you a lot of tools
to manage the build-up to a revolution and decide how much you want to give in
to the revolutionary movement, and how much you want to oppose them
and perhaps have to fight them militarily.
The first step of a revolution is always a political movement
to enact, preserve, or restore a certain law.
Movements have two parameters that determine
how powerful and dangerous they are.
Support comes from the sheer number of pops
and the political strength of the interest groups that support the movement.
Radicalism comes from the number of radical pops
that support the movement
and the number of angry interest groups that support it.
The precise combination of these two parameters determine
how the political movement will act and how high up on the priority list
it will be for you to deal with it.
A high support but low radicalism movement isn't as likely to start an armed uprising
against you and you might be able to deal with it
for a longer period of time, maybe even use it for your own ends.
Whereas a high radicalism movement with low support might not be so dangerous,
but you will have to fight them.
How you deal with a revolutionary movement is going to be highly impacted
by those parameters as well.
A high radicalism movement will very rapidly start militarily opposing you,
and you will have to deal with them faster,
perhaps by ceasing to enact the law that they don't like.
A movement with strong support but low radicalism at the moment,
you might be able to deal with by, for example,
just improving their material conditions.
In your efforts to deal with political movements you might want to issue decrees,
for example, to violently suppress the revolutionaries in specific states,
or provide emergency relief in others.
You might also want to enact a Home Affairs institution
consisting of, for example, a secret police or a national guard
that help you manage these political movements better.
The laws of the revolutionary country depend on the movement that spawned them
with politicians, generals and admirals, potentially joining the revolution.
Revolutionary wars begin with a diplomatic play.
Other nations can join in this play, either in support of you or opposing you.
In this play there is no white peace. There will be a war.
Players are able to choose their side in their revolution,
but be aware that you have to win this revolution because defeat means game over.
While revolutions do in some sense represent a failure of your country,
they can also provide an opportunity to accelerate your goals
through violent means.
Revolutions were certainly a big thing in the age of industry,
but there were more ways in which people could take matters in their own hands.
Let's talk about Cultural Secessions.
While revolutions are a reaction to legal and political changes in your country,
secessions are what happens when cultural groups in your society are unhappy
and feel something has to change.
One of the main mechanics in secessions is turmoil.
Turmoil is a measure of the social friction and conflicts in your society.
One of the main causes of turmoil in your country
might be discrimination against certain cultural groups.
At the start of the game, most countries will start with laws
that discriminate against different cultures.
Discrimination plays a big role in the power balance in your country.
Discriminated pops are paid less and have far less political power
than more dominant factions in your society.
If you start messing with this balance of power,
these dominant factions might have something to say,
and will try to oppose you.
Ultimately, this might even lead to a revolution.
Discrimination can be measured in different ways in the game,
it can be measured within a state, within a culture,
or within a culture in a country.
If cultures start to feel too discriminated against,
the pops in those cultures may choose to move to other places
where they are more welcome.
If they are already living in a state that they consider to be a homeland,
they might instead choose to take up arms and seek independence.
When a secession movement starts, you, as a player, have several options.
One option might be that you simply accept their demands
and release the country.
Here, you might choose to play as the country
or to release the country as a subject, so you can still meddle in their affairs.
Otherwise, if you choose to ignore their demands, there will be war.
It's important to note that a secessionist movement
starting in your country might be the spark needed
for similar movements to start in neighboring countries.
An example of this might be that if you're playing as Austria,
your Polish pops might start a secession movement
and their counterparts in Russia and Prussia might also rise up
and join the movement.
Ultimately, if you want to keep your country together,
you need to carefully manage the secession movements that might arise.
Now we can't really talk about revolutions and secessions without mentioning
one of the biggest conflicts of the era.
That's right, we're going to talk about the American Civil War.
Slavery is the heart of the American Civil War.
The United States begins with a journal entry
detailing the slavery debate.
As the situation escalates, political movements to preserve or abolish
the institution of slavery will begin to emerge.
Attempting to abolish slavery through the law system may result
in a large, reactionary movement which will escalate into a civil war.
The territory held by each side is not arbitrarily scripted.
It is determined by where the interest groups
on each side have their power bases.
This makes the Civil War very dynamic.
States with powerful plantation owners are very likely to secede.
However, that doesn't mean that we're necessarily going to get
a scenario which is identical to history.
The winner takes it all.
While the Confederacy will attempt to secede
and establish an independent state,
the Union will try to hold itself together at all costs.
In the event of a Union victory, a long process of reconstruction will begin.
You will be charged with healing the scars of the Civil War,
which will not be an easy task by any means.
You'll be presented with multiple goals,
some of which are competing against each other.
Your attempts to reunify the country will be affected by different groups
that will support or oppose racial equality.
The path you take throughout the reconstruction
will have a lasting effect on your nation.
This is a battle for America's cultural soul.
We talked a lot about uprisings and war,
but how does it look in a more practical sense?
Let's delve into Battles.
Battles between two countries can take place on land or at sea
and involve battalions or flotillas from different sides.
For a land battle to break out, there must be at least one general
that is trying to advance that front.
At sea, a naval battle can occur when one admiral intercepts another.
Admirals at sea will engage each other
with the sum total of the flotillas on either side.
On the other hand, on land, the setup is a little more complex.
First, the attacking and defending generals must be picked
from among the possibly several generals that could be on the same front.
A province on the defender's side of the front
is selected as the site of the battle
and the terrain of that province will influence its outcome.
On land, not all battalions under the command of the two generals fighting
will necessarily be involved in every battle,
and in fact some generals might even get reinforcements
from other generals on the same front.
All of these setup steps are scriptable and tweakable by mods.
As the battle commences, a battle condition is selected for each side
which will influence that side going forward until the end of the battle.
The condition that you end up with is dependent on your commander's skills.
At this point, the battle commences and proceeds in rounds,
until one side has had enough and retreats.
Each round, sides will simultaneously try to maximize the number of casualties
they inflict on the other side.
They do so by using their offense or defense scores,
which are determined by the technology that you equip them with.
Which of these stats they get to use
depends on whether they are the attacker or the defender.
Not all of the casualties taken during an exchange are fatal.
Some will simply leave the battle and come back after.
Some will become dependents in your home country.
And some will be killed.
Units will also take damage to their morale depending on
how many casualties they had inflicted upon them,
compared to how much they inflicted on the enemy.
Demoralized units become useless in battle
and when a side has a sufficient number of demoralized units, they will retreat.
After the battle, morale will recover, but only up to the general's supply level.
The side that didn't retreat wins the battle
and possibly a number of provinces.
If the advancer wins, they will capture some of the provinces on the enemy's side,
whereas if the defender wins, they may regain some lost territory.
Ultimately, battles are where you see the effects of all those choices you made
in constructing your military machine,
and where the mettle of two armies is put to the test.
And so we have reached the end of another monthly update video.
We'll be back next month, but until then, as always,
please make sure to follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Discord,
and subscribe to the Victoria 3 newsletter
to stay up to speed on all things Victoria.