Hello and welcome to the March monthly update video for Victoria 3.
My name is Sanna, I'm part of the community team for Victoria,
and in this month's video we're going to explore new territory
and build marvelous feats of engineering.
But first, let's talk about colonization.
Colonies are states that can be established
within the territory of decentralized nations,
so long as you've researched the colonization technology
and invested in the Colonial Affairs Institution.
Why do you want a colony?
Your colonies are probably filled with natural resources
that you can exploit, such as rubber and coal,
that you might not have in your part of the world.
You do not want your rivals to exploit colonial land,
because if they are exploiting that land, you are not.
There are three main differences between colonial and ordinary states:
Colonial states have a bonus on migration attraction,
your institutions do not apply there,
and pops living in that state have very limited political power.
In order to establish a colony, you need to research Colonization,
a tier 2 society tech.
Once you do this, you'll unlock the ability to pass laws
to determine what kind of colonies you're establishing.
These laws allow you to invest in the Colonial Affairs Institution,
which determine the rate of colonization.
Just because you've started a colony in a state region
doesn't mean you have a monopoly on it.
Your rivals can also create colonies within the same state region,
so long as there's decentralized land to colonize.
Multiple colonies in the same state are bound to generate diplomatic tension,
which could lead to a war.
Three main factors affect the rate of colonial growth:
We've already mentioned your investment in the Colonial Affairs Institution,
which costs Bureaucracy.
Your incorporated population also is a contributing factor.
And finally, local conditions in the state region
have an impact on growth.
For example, a malarial province will seriously impede your growth.
Colonizing decentralized nations is not simply free land.
As your colony grows, there's a chance it will generate tension
with the surrounding decentralized nations.
When tension becomes very high, a native uprising will begin.
This is a kind of diplomatic play.
This means that other countries with the interests in the region
can join in and potentially join the side of the native uprising.
The native uprising also has the home advantage:
While you have to send troops from abroad, and supply them and arm them,
the natives really don't have these problems.
There is a great deal to gain from colonization in Victoria 3,
but it will be expensive and it will be risky.
I'm sure I heard mention of decentralized nations in there somewhere,
so let's learn a bit more about them
and where they fit on the map of Victoria 3.
Decentralized nations are unplayable factions
that represent some of the peoples of the world
who otherwise wouldn't appear on the map.
They represent the less organized kingdoms, polities,
and just various groups of people who are and were present across the globe.
Mapping these decentralized nations was a challenge.
There was a lot of research to be done,
and a lot of holes to fill in terms of different data
and trying to figure out who exactly was where at any given time.
Shockingly, there's not a good census of every people
in Sub-Saharan Africa in 1830 to work on.
You have to try to go through a lot of different sources
published across a myriad array of magazines and books and such
to try to create anything resembling a good model to work with.
Mapping out these people has presented some challenges
trying to balance design and gameplay and historical accuracy.
For example, when working on New Zealand and representing the Maori,
who were present still as independent polities at the time,
we had to try to create groups that could still pose a big mechanical punch
to any colonizer who shows up.
if you break down a nation too far, it becomes a little bit more difficult
when it comes to native uprisings, for example.
I'm really happy with how it turned out.
I like how much more alive the map looks,
and how much more alive the world as a whole is because of it.
Every part of the map is... there are people,
and you get to see those people, you get to interact with those people.
The world is more alive, more colorful because of it.
Balancing historical accuracy and gameplay does sound like quite the challenge.
Speaking of challenges, let's move on to canals and monuments.
Monuments are unique buildings with special inputs, outputs, and effects
that can only be built in specific states.
While some monuments are present at the start date on the map,
others need to be constructed,
and these will be costly and time-consuming to create.
So why would you take on this expense?
The benefits more than make up for the expenses.
The Statue of Liberty, for instance,
greatly increases the migration attraction in the state of New York.
Each monument, such as the Kremlin or Angkor Wat,
brings its own unique benefits to the table,
giving you an immense amount of prestige.
A feature related to monuments are canals.
Unique amongst all buildings in the game,
canals create new connections between sea nodes.
This will reduce your convoy costs while you're trading,
as well as making it easier to supply your armies overseas.
Canals are by far the most difficult building in Victoria 3 to construct.
Before you even begin constructing your canal,
you'll need to invest in an extensive survey of the region,
which will cost you a great deal of Bureaucracy.
You can conduct this survey if you either own the region yourself,
or if you are a great power with an interest in the region.
The two canals you can build in Victoria 3 are the Suez and Panama Canals.
As a great power who's completed the survey,
you have the option to try to purchase a treaty for it,
which will allow you to build the canal,
or you could just take it.
Canals and monuments offer you the opportunity
to build some of the most impressive landmarks in the Victorian period.
In other words, they are the best way to leave your mark on the map.
Truly monumental.
Now let's go on an expedition.
Exciting new discoveries await.
Decisions are certain options you can enact under certain conditions
that can trigger all sorts of content.
They can trigger events, they can trigger simple little packages of content
like the purchase of Alaska, or they can even trigger expeditions.
Expeditions are chains of content, chains of events
that guide a country through exploration of a specific realm,
be it the Congo River, the Niger River.
The Victorian era itself is a whole age of exploration and discovery.
You get to go out and you finally really get to see what the whole world is.
Once you really get all the way through an expedition,
if you've done well, that's fantastic.
You can get all sorts of bonuses from achieving an expedition.
You can get little advances in your technology,
both at the end and along the way,
you can get huge boosts of prestige,
people can look up to your government.
It could be a whole grand experience all around.
Of course, if you fail in your expedition, it's not going to be so good.
People aren't going to be as happy,
you're not going to get a big amount of prestige
if everybody died halfway up a river because of malaria.
I mean, maybe better luck next time.
To start an expedition depends on a couple of different things.
It depends on the specific expedition.
You may need to research quinine
in order to really go anywhere in Sub-Saharan Africa.
Of course, once you actually have met those requirements,
once you have met those conditions,
you can start your expedition at any time of your choosing.
There's two major factors with the success of an expedition:
There's both the progress and the peril of an expedition.
Progress is fairly simple:
It's measuring how much you've progressed in an expedition,
if you've actually managed to go up that first cataract in a river,
that second cataract in the river.
How far have you gotten to the source of the Nile?
Peril is about what risks you've taken along the way.
Maybe you had to discard a crate full of food,
and now you've increased your peril.
Maybe there's a chance that your men will die on that expedition,
because you've angered too many people along the way.
If you reach high enough peril during an expedition,
all sorts of disasters can happen.
I mean, the worst of all, of course, just being that the expedition dies.
Future expeditions can come across the remains;
you can build upon previous expeditions,
find abandoned camps, build upon and learn from their previous mistakes.
Still, if you've managed to really reach max. peril and everybody dies,
that's the end of that expedition.
How do you know what your progress or your peril is during an expedition?
It's recorded right in the journal entry for the expedition itself.
As your expedition progresses,
you get updates in the journal entry about how you're doing.
So at any given time,
if you want to know how your party's doing going up that one river,
you can check that journal entry and see exactly how well you're doing.
Of course, you can also affect the progress and the peril
just through your own choices.
During an expedition, various events will pop up,
different choices will be presented to you,
and you can choose things that may help the progress but increase peril
or maybe lose a bit of progress, but also you lose a lot of peril at the same time.
Simple little trade-offs.
Expeditions are one of the best ways we have
to engage with that great element of exploration in the Victorian era,
of not just being a big old state and big old empire just sitting there,
but of going out into the world and seeing what's out there.
And that brings us to the end of this monthly update video.
We'll be back again next month with more from the dev team behind Victoria 3.
In the meantime, follow us on Twitter and Facebook,
join the official Victoria Discord,
and subscribe to the Victoria 3 newsletter.
Until then, see you later alligator!