Hello Victorians, we have a larger hotfix today featuring a range of balance changes, AI improvements, bug fixes and more! Most of the team will be on vacation now, but part of the team (Including Martin) will be around, so that we maintain the capacity to release fixes as needed!

Checksum for the hotfix is, 5775. As always, this post is not for bug reports, please instead post them in the bug reporting forum[forum.paradoxplaza.com] (including a save and steps to recreate is always useful).

The following changes have been made to the game compared to 1.7.3:

• Added a journal entry for the reunification of China

• It is once again possible to start Reduce Autonomy & Annex Subject diplomatic play against subjects, even if their Liberty Desire is high. However, doing so will result in taking on the full infamy cost of the wargoal rather than the usual reduction for targeting subjects.
  
• Peasant Levies now simply prevents Conscripts from being raised as Cavalry or Artillery, as selective limits on which specific types of Infantry etc could be raised as conscripts do not work correctly
  
• Russia/Britain now start with a neutral attitude towards Persia, ensuring they don't immediately go for the throat until Persia does something to earn their ire
  
• Reduced the rate at which "The Russian-British Agreement" fires for player Afghanistan during the Pamir Delimitation
  
• Added Vilnius to the required states for Poland-Lithuania
  
• Renamed "Semireche" state to "Semiplatinsk"
  
• Removed Uighur homeland from Semiplatinsk
  
• Autonomous Investment is now able to execute multiple investments per tick for countries with extremely large (500k+ income) investment pools, so that even massive economies can continue to make full use of the investment pool
  
• Homesteading & Collectivized Agriculture now also impacts subsistence farms, causing them to be partially or fully self-owned and adding some Farmers to the Workforce
  
• Military Treaty Power Bloc leaders can no longer enact National Militia, and Religious Convocation Power Bloc leaders can no longer enact Total Separation or State Atheism
  
• The Cohesion in Military Treaty Power Blocs is now impacted for any member with the National Militia law, while the same goes (to a greater extent) for members of a Religious Convocation Power Bloc who has Total Separation or State Atheism
  
• Defensive Cooperation II now permits the Power Bloc leader to impose their Army Model law across the Bloc
  
• Treaty Ports are now only functional against a market if they are adjacent to an incorporated state from the market
  
• Moved or removed some military units from formations in the history setup so that they adhere to the law set in that country.
  
• The 'overlord compliance' AI strategy is now invalidated if the subject ends up opposing their overlord in a diplomatic play
  
• Power Bloc statues are now removed when leaving a Power Bloc
  
• The Autonomous Investment AI should now properly focus on Privatization when construction is blocked due to a lack of workforce or infrastructure
  
• Under Cooperative Ownership, buildings in foreign countries that are owned by local Manor Houses & Financial Districts will now be collectivized by the workforce in those countries over time

• Added a new entry for "Your Leverage" to all country's details panel.
  
• Removed tooltips for some modifier values to reduce duplicated information

• Improved Construction Lens performance after having opened it once before. Note that the first time will still be slow.

• Restored the +clout modifiers to Landowners from slavery laws, as the Landowners ended up too weak in some countries after other related balance changes to subsistence farms
  
• Reduced Advanced Research 3 principle's max innovation gain per institution level from 15 to 10
  
• Political Movements to get rid of Traditionalism and Serfdom now attract more supporters from literate pops once Empiricism is researched (loosely representing enlightenment thinking)
  
• Increased the lobby appeasement impact of Support Regime
  
• Haiti now starts the game with debt instead of half-filled gold reserves
  
• Haitian independence payments now cost less each week but much more to pay off in increments
  
• Fix some setup issues in France that caused the July Monarchy to collapse too quickly due to unprofitable buildings and trade routes
  
• Improving Relations will now give leverage on yourself, and will not auto-break at 50 relations if the target is a Power Bloc leader
  
• When a civil war ends in victory for either side, a larger number of pops are now deradicalized to represent civil war fatigue and prevent a second civil war from immediately gaining steam
  
• Italian states with relations above 20 with Austria will no longer be able to spawn Italian radicals in it.
  
• Reduced Austrian radical gain from Italian minor powers.
  
• Divided Monarchists now requires 50% radicals in capital to fail (up from 25%)
  
• Reduced the number of radicals generated over time by Movements to Preserve
  
• Lowered the base and max weights for Wine in luxury drinks need, as adding it to Intoxicants made it overdemanded compared to other goods and hurt the demand for Tea/Coffee
  
• Take Treaty Port can no longer be added as a wargoal against a state without a port constructed, as this results in an inactive treaty port. However, demolishing the port after the wargoal is added will not invalidate the wargoal.

• The AI is now more inclined to accept requests for Support Regime and Knowledge Sharing under favorable conditions
  
• The military power score increase for accepting reverse-sways is now properly capped at 50, preventing the AI from accepting reverse-sways that they should be utterly unwilling to accept
  
• Rebalanced AI aggression. The base aggression (chance to start diplo plays) is lower, but the impact of the aggression game rule on it is higher. However, the impact of the AI aggression game rule on strategic desires was toned down, so that aggressive AIs still try to make strategic alliances etc.
  
• Fixed another bug causing the AI to take a bunch of Treaty Ports they should have no real interest in
  
• The AI is now significantly more likely to try to get rid of Traditionalism and Serfdom when not pursuing a conservative agenda or when there are movements present to change those laws
  
• Fixed the logic for when the AI carves up china to be more consistent in how and when it's applied to the AI's desire to take states there
  
• More tweaking of the AI for Egypt/Ottomans early conflicts to give the Ottomans a better chance of beating Egypt
  
• Fixed a bug where the AI would not correctly evaluate Placated political movements as able to start a revolution and would cancel laws that would result in a very powerful evolution to avoid a much weaker one
  
• The AI is now generally less willing to cede territory when Demand State is used when that is territory is important to its owner, even if it's owned by one of their other subjects
  
• Fixed some issues with AI strategy logic for isolationist countries which was inadvertently applied to non isolationist countries, causing the AI to generally avoid befriending other countries
  
• The AI will now never accept having 'cut down to size' pressed on them as part of a peace deal, but will have to be capitulated
  
• The AI will now try much harder to get rid of peasant levies unless they are very reactionary
  
• The AI will now make use of Enforce Military Access on its subjects to create fronts when needed in wars
  
• Fixed an issue where the AI was setting way too high targets for its army/navy size (partially caused by AI including investee countries in its population census)
  
• The AI is now far less willing to give up wargoals in peace deals unless those wargoals are actually being contested
  
• The AI will now instantly capitulate in a war where they and all their allies are 100% occupied
  
• The AI is now more likely to target their own domestic states and subjects with government-funded constructions, and less likely to target foreign states. This change does not impact autonomous investment, which has its own logic for domestic vs foreign

• Added new trigger has_inactive_journal_entry
  
• Added scripted list war_participant (any_war_participant/every_war_participant etc)
  
• Added console command ai_evaluate_mobilization to print AI mobilization data

• Fixed a crash that occurred in the MP lobby while the game was unpaused
  
• Fixed a bug where it was possible to use Demand State against your overlord's homelands
  
• Fixed a bug where if you saved the game on the exact tick when a country was annexed and then loaded that save, the country would never be properly removed causing diplomatic pacts with it etc to linger forever
  
• Fixed a bug where it was possible for foreign investors to buy worker-owned buildings in countries with Cooperative Ownership enacted
  
• Fixed the issue with invalid diplomatic pacts in the outliner
  
• Fixed a bug where Agitators who did not have a valid law from their ideology to support would almost always end up picking from just a tiny handful of laws to start a movement for (Homesteading and National Militia, for example)
  
• Fixed some issues with the changes to Honorable Restoration that made it too difficult to complete when not going the traditional market opening route and ensured it's always completed when you defeat the Shogunate in a civil war
  
• Fixed sorting trade routes by owner in the trade routes panel
  
• Fixed an Out of Sync related to diplomatic catalysts
  
• Fixed trade routes being incorrectly moved to another market after a market split
  
• Fixed some production methods being incorrectly considered unavailable in the building panel
  
• Fixed some issues with conscripts after states being transferred to another country
  
• Fixed a crash that could happened when showing modifier breakdowns
  
• Debts accrued just after declaring bankruptcy now count as debts rather than disappearing in a powerful bout of creative accounting
  
• Fixed some mobilization options not properly providing their benefits to combat units
  
• Fixed an issue causing predicted loyalist changes from successful enactment of political movement to not apply or apply incorrectly
  
• Savegames are now cleaned of broken construction queue items when loaded
  
• Fixed a bug where Pops that got all their income from dividends would not pay poll taxes (ie, Capitalists and Aristocrats now pay about 0.1% more taxes compared to before)
  
• Replaced the static english text for "Inactive Treaty Port" with a string that is translated into all languages
  
• It is no longer possible to sway-transfer subjects that are opposing their overlord in a play or war
  
• Fixed a bug where the 'Join Power Bloc' diplomatic play would not work correctly after a country declined an invite to a power bloc
  
• Fixed a bug where downsized military buildings would not properly remove the units from their formations
  
• Tanzimat JEs are now pinned by default.
  
• The Tibet Expedition decision will no longer spam errors when Tibet is annexed
  
• Power Bloc emblems are now properly centered
  
• Adjusted inconsistent conditions of Grant and Request own market. You can now only do these actions if the junior partner is either a direct subject (compared to indirect before) or if they are independent and you are the Power Bloc leader in a shared market.
  
• Removed the Liberty Desire impact display from the Grant Market interaction if the target is not actually a subject.
  
• The Disrupt the Russian Caucasus Great Game subgoal now fails properly if Circassia is defeated
  
• Updated descriptions for migration laws to reflect that they only limit migration in and out of the country
  
• Fixed a construction queue tooltip to indicate that the constructing country is paying the cost
  
• Rewrote the placeholder tooltips on the column headers when sending a Military Formation somewhere (Destination, Travel Time, Status).
  
• Fixed a bug that would lead to foreign investments in split states potentially leaving around NULL_OBJ constructions in the investor's queue; particularly visible when pursuing German unification.
  
• Fixed a bug where decreasing relations with your overlord would have a lesser impact on lobby appeasement than increasing it, making it possible to endlessly increase appeasement by alternating increasing and decreasing relations
  
• Resolved an edge case where the Strike: Labor Negotiations event could have no options.
  
• Removed Liberty Desire impact from insufficient supply if a land connection exists between subject and overlord
  
• Added impact on Ranching building group to Collectivized Agriculture law
  
• Amended the India collapse script to account for the Princely States being transferred to Britain
  
• Interface: Fixed a bug that was hiding lobby funding in the budget breakdowns
  
• It is now possible to add the Force Nationalization wargoal to an ongoing Diplomatic Play
  
• The "Secure Influence Over Persia" Great Game subgoal may now progress by annexing Persia
  
• Fixed a bug where the Weak Power Bloc penalty would not be applied after loading a save
  
• Fixed several issues with Cohesion factors not being correctly displayed in the Cohesion tooltip

Previous Patchnotes
1.7[forum.paradoxplaza.com], 1.7.1[forum.paradoxplaza.com], 1.7.2[forum.paradoxplaza.com], 1.7.3[forum.paradoxplaza.com]

Double Happy Thursday! As promised last week, today we’ll be returning to the future update plans, which we last touched on in Dev Diary #102[forum.paradoxplaza.com]. Just like the previous times, we’ll be going over what changes and improvements we have planned for the game in future free updates such as 1.8, 1.9 and beyond.

Once again we will be talking about the same key four improvement areas of Military, Historical Immersion, Diplomacy, Internal Politics as well as Other for anything that falls outside those four categories.

Just as before, I’ll also be aiming to give you an updated overview of where we stand and where we’re heading by going through each of these four categories and marking on each one with one of the below statuses:

• Done: This is a part of the game that we now consider to be in good shape. Something being Done of course doesn’t mean we’re never going to expand or improve on it in the future, just that it’s no longer a high priority for us. Any points that were already marked as Done in previous updates will be removed from the list, to avoid it growing unmanageably long, but you can look at the older dev diaries (#79[forum.paradoxplaza.com], #89[forum.paradoxplaza.com] and #102[forum.paradoxplaza.com]) if you’re interested in what was done previously.
  
• Updated: This is a part of the game where we have made some of the improvements and changes that we want to make, but aren’t yet satisfied with where it stands and plan to make further improvements to it in future updates such as 1.8, 1.9 and so on. Note that this section will mainly focus on updates made in 1.6 and 1.7.
  
• Not Updated: This is a part of the game where we haven’t yet released any of our planned changes/improvements in any currently released updates but still plan to do so for future updates.
  
• New: This is a planned change or improvement that is newly added, i.e. wasn’t present on the list in Dev Diary #102.
  
• Reconsidered: This is a previously planned change or improvement that we have reconsidered our approach to how to tackle from previous updates. For these points we will explain what our new plans are, and change the list appropriately in future updates.

For the final bit of repetition: Just as before we will still only be talking about improvements, changes and new features that are part of planned free updates in this dev diary. I will also remind you that this is not an exhaustive list of the things we are going to do, and that something being ‘Done’ doesn’t mean we’re not going to bugfix, balance or make UX improvements to it afterwards. Alright then, onto the dev diary proper.

New:

• Making navies more important for projecting global power and securing control of coasts.
  
• Adding a proper system of military access and finding solutions for the other remaining rough edges in the frontline system.

Not Updated:

• Turning individual ships into proper pieces of military hardware that can be built, sunk and repaired rather than just being manpower packages.
  
• Adding a system for limited wars to reduce the number of early-game global wars between Great Powers

Done:

• Ensuring unifications such as Italy, Germany and Canada don’t constantly happen decades ahead of the historical schedule, and increasing the challenge of unifying Italy and Germany in particular
  
• Asides from the AI challenges when it comes to forming Germany/Italy, we are now relatively happy with the state of the unifications. There are certainly ways we want to improve unifications in the future, particularly in tying them much closer to the political systems, but that falls outside the scope of this particular point.
  
• General AI tweaks to have AI countries play in a more believable, immersive way
  
• With the introduction of Diplomatic Catalysts and various AI improvements in 1.7 we now consider this to be ‘done’, though in reality this is the sort of point that is never going to stop seeing improvements from our end.

Updated:

• Tweaking content such as the Meiji Restoration, Alaska purchase and so on in a way that they can more frequently be successfully performed by the AI, through a mix of AI improvements and content tweaks
  
• After the release of 1.7.2 we now consider this to be ‘almost there’ but still in need of a bit more work.
  
• Going through the base game Journal Entries and events and making improvements and additions to ensure that they feel meaningful and impactful for players to interact with
  
• We’ve made a number of changes and improvements to older journal entries in 1.6/1.7 such as the addition of scripted progress bars, but we still have more work to do here.
  
• Adding more country, state and region-specific content to enhance historical flavor of different countries
  
• As before, this is something we’re simply going to keep adding to every single update and is never really going to be ‘Done’. For now I am leaving this entry here to mark that this is still one of our top priorities

Done:

• Improving and expanding on interactions with and from subjects, such as being able to grant and ask for more autonomy through a diplomatic action
  
• Have Interest Groups weigh in on diplomacy, for example having the Armed Forces disapprove of an alliance with a country that recently took land from you due to revanchism (Lobbies)
  
• Foreign investment and some form of construction in other countries, at least if they’re part of your market

Not Updated:

• Make declaring and holding onto diplomatic Interests a more rewarding and challenging aspect of global empire-building
  
• Allowing peace deals to be negotiated during a Diplomatic Play instead of only having the option to give in

Updated:

• Adding laws that expand on diversity of countries and introduce new ways to play the game
  
• Similar to the point for region-specific flavor, this is something that will never really be ‘Done’ but remains here to highlight that we consider it an important priority

Not Updated:

• Turn legitimacy into a more interesting mechanic, where the strength of a government depends on their successes and failures, and highly legitimate governments can’t simply be ousted at a whim but have to be undermined first.
  
• Introduce a concept of national pride which can increase or decrease depending on a country’s actions and which ties directly into legitimacy.
  
• Have discrimination not be a purely binary status and reflect forms of discrimination aside from what’s written in the law, as well as making assimilation into a more meaningful mechanic in the process.

New:

• Find a better solution for the ways ideologies appear, attract followers and create support for reforms than the current RNG-heavy leader ideology system.

Not Updated:

• Improve on Companies by turning them into actual actors in your country that can own/expand buildings and interact with characters/politics.
  
• Find a way to deal with the excessive fiddliness of the trade system in large economies, possibly by allowing for autonomous trade based on your laws in a similar way to the autonomous investment system.

As always, I cannot make any specific promises about when these things will be coming. However, I can tell you that the next update (1.8) will be a standalone free update that should knock a point or two off this list, but will mainly be focused on bug fixing, general polish and more AI improvements. Before then we also have at least one more hotfix (1.7.4) planned to address the remaining high priority issues from the 1.7 release (tentatively planned for next week) and part of the team will continue working for a few more weeks like I mentioned in last week’s dev diary[forum.paradoxplaza.com].

Right then, that’s all for this time, and all for this side of the summer! Dev diaries will return on August 15th but until then, I can but wish you many a Happy Thursday in the sun (or possibly snow, if you happen to live in the south hemisphere). Regardless, I hope you have a great July!

Hello Victorians, we have a small hotfix today, fixing threekey issues before a larger hotfix next week, what we have been saying is in 1.7.3 for a number of fixes/changes will now be in 1.7.4! Checksum for the hotfix is, 8769. As always, this post is not for bug reports, please instead post them in the bug reporting forum (including a save and steps to recreate is always useful).

The following changes have been made to the game compared to 1.7.2:

• Fixed an issue where privatization was not correctly checked sometimes, resulting in money being spent to privatize building levels that were already privatized
  
• Fixed a rare Out of Sync caused by unsorted collecting from unordered map
  
• Fixed a major issue that would prevent upgrading power bloc principles under some circumstances

Previous Patchnotes
1.7[forum.paradoxplaza.com], 1.7.1[forum.paradoxplaza.com], 1.7.2[forum.paradoxplaza.com]

Good day valiant Victorians!

We have just released a hotfix for 1.7, Checksum 0942, containing a wide variety of fixes, improvements, balance changes and more! As always, this post is not for bug reports, please instead post them in the bug reporting forum[forum.paradoxplaza.com] (including a save and steps to recreate is always useful) .

The following changes have been made to the game compared to 1.7.1:

• Added an event for Persia or Afghanistan winning the Great Game
  
• Britain and France no longer start with a rivalry, as this doesn't really accurately reflect their relations in 1836
  
• Austria, Prussia and Russia now start the game with friendly attitudes towards each other, to represent the historical Holy Alliance
  
• Added a rivalry between Brazil and Argentina at the game start
  
• Added a rivalry between Britain and Russia at the game start
  
• The initial Meiji Restoration Journal Entry is now a lot easier to complete and simply requires keeping the Shogunate out of power while maintaining at least middling legitimacy for 10 years, but is failed if the Shogunate gets back into government
  
• The Impose State Religion bloc action now also converts 2% of the population in non-capital states
  
• Advanced Research, Colonial Offices and Police Coordination principles now allow bloc leader to impose their law in the education system, colonization and policing law groups respectively
  
• Advanced Research, Colonial Offices and Police Coordination principles now disallow members from having the base laws in their respective groups (no schools, etc)
  
• Added dynamic boolean modifiers for disallowing specific laws
  
• Advanced Research, Colonial Offices and Police Coordination now all reduce their respective institution costs by -10/25/50% and increase speed for changing institution levels by 25/40/50%
  
• Advanced Research 1 now has +5% Tech spread as a Schools institution modifier instead of the flat value
  
• Advanced Research 3 now has -5% Ahead of Time Research Penalty as a Schools institution modifier instead of the flat value
  
• Advanced Research 3 now has an increase of 15 to the weekly innovation cap as a Schools institution modifier instead of the flat value
  
• Police Coordination 2 now reduces political movement radicalism on the police institution instead of giving authority
  
• Colonial Offices 3 now adds a decrease of 7% to infamy generation against unrecognized countries to the colonization institution
  
• Choosing to leave a Power Bloc now results in a relations hit and negative catalyst with the other members
  
• Liberty desire levels now display what war goals they unlock.
  
• Unrecognized Major Powers can now form Power Blocs, but will suffer a greater Relations hit with Recognized Power Bloc leaders when doing so, and will only gain Leverage over Recognized countries at 10% the normal rate
  
• Added a check for establishing Trade Agreement Pacts that their market can actually be reached by your country. This will also prevent Lobbies from requesting the signature of a Trade Agreement which you could not fulfill.
  
• Added a port to Shaozhou so that Hong Kong starts with a port when taken as a Treaty Port
  
• Changed Hokkaido to have subsistence pastures instead of rice farms, to more accurately reflect its initial Ainu majority
  
• Added missing localisation for power bloc identity requirements for production methods
  
• Restored Asceticism as one of the Chinese Devout IG Traits
  
• Added the concept_unrecognized_major_power in all languages

• Added and tweaked many starting attitudes and relations of AI countries to better reflect the diplomatic situation in 1836 and/or encourage more historically plausible outcomes
  
• Increased AI tendency to build gold mines.
  
• AI recognized powers are now more aggressive against unrecognized powers when they have the Civilizing Mission technology and/or Colonial Officers principle
  
• Unrecognized powers are now generally more aggressive against each other, particularly in Africa
  
• Ethiopian princes and Chinese warlord states now make more concerted efforts to unify
  
• Greece now more aggressively pursues the Greek Nationalism JE where it has claims
  
• East India Company is now less gung-go about conquering Tibet, but more inclined to target its neighbors in India and Burma
  
• AI now has a stronger tendency to abolish slavery after Human Rights is researched
  
• The Great Powers now have a greater tendency to get involved in early Ottomans vs Egypt disputes
  
• USA and Britain now tend to seek to befriend each other when trying to resolve the Oregon Border Dispute
  
• France now sometimes chooses to not pursue the Natural Borders JE when given the option
  
• Fixed a bug where the AI was way too eager to grab treaty ports in places where they had no actual interest in a treaty port
  
• The US now more aggressively targets the states held by Mexico border it directly at the start, such as Colorado
  
• Fixed some issues with new attitude changing system that caused the AI to not open up Japan
  
• The AI now focuses more on befriending Great Powers when on track to complete Earning Recognition
  
• Added a bespoke strategy and more AI weights for Japan to try to complete the Meiji Restoration
  
• Fixed an issue where AIs would adopt a Domineering attitude but not actually act on it due to the strategy score calculation not resulting in them wanting any wargoals
  
• Made the AI more restrictive about mixing generally incompatible wargoals, such as investment rights and subjugation
  
• The AI no longer has an increased neutrality score in civil wars where they have a truce with the country having a civil war
  
• The AI is now less inclined to get involved in the German Leadership War so long as neither side starts demanding territory, in which case they will have increased support for the non-expansionist party
  
• The AI will now be more restrained with what additional wargoals they add in a Unification or Unification Leadership play if they are a primary participant
  
• Added catalysts for gaining and losing land borders with a country, used to make AI more belligerent when gaining borders with unrecognized powers
  
• The AI now scales its minimum mobilization level by the number of small conflicts it's involved in, so that it's better at dealing with simultaneous revolts in subjects
  
• Added a +50 AI acceptance bonus to investment rights proposals if the target country has recently declared bankruptcy. This also means that AI countries who had to declare bankruptcy will be more likely to offer other countries to invest in their country.
  
• Fixed a bug where the AI would not properly build up its military forces due to incorrect logic when validating its spending
  
• Subjects with a Defiant or Rebellious attitude towards their overlord now get an appropriate acceptance bonus when asked to support the independence of a fellow subject
  
• Fixed a bug where some larger countries such as Occitania would become independent when released as a subject
  
• Fixed a bug where the AI of newly released countries was not properly initialized, causing issues such as no autonomous investment happening

• Improved frame rate when scrolling in the Building Registry

• The Ottomans now get an increase to Intelligentsia approval & clout while pursuing the Tanzimat Reforms
  
• Reduced the required army size to complete Tanzimat Army Reforms from 150 to 100
  
• Reduced minting and output of gold mines by about a third
  
• Declining to pursue the Opium Wars now angers the British East India Company
  
• Literate Pops now tend to more strongly support movements to abolish slavery after Human Rights is researched
  
• Reduced military and war exhaustion bonuses given to Taiping as they currently tend to always defeat Qing
  
• Reduced the infamy generation against unrecognized reduction from Colonial Offices 3 from 50% to 25%
  
• Added infamy generation against unrecognized reductions to Colonization and Civilizing Mission techs
  
• Extended time you have to complete Tanzimat Reforms from 20 to 30 years, due to some of the JEs requiring several steps of law reform
  
• Tweaked army setup and military bonuses granted to Texas to give them a better chance to survive the Texan War of Independence
  
• Chartered Companies can no longer switch Government Principles
  
• Slavery laws no longer directly increase the clout of landowners, as they also do so in a very significant way indirectly
  
• Unification Leadership wargoal is now considered to be contested if any incorporated state is occupied by the enemy
  
• War Goals that previously required any state to be occupied to be contested (such as War Reparations) now requires any Incorporated state to be contested
  
• Increased aggression of Afghan countries towards Chitral
  
• Afghan minors can now request more aid from Great Powers twenty years after last receiving it
  
• Gave Maimana Tajik as a primary culture, enabling them to form Afghanistan.
  
• Non-Pashtun Afghan countries will now be more aggressive towards each other.
  
• Great Game passive drift now relies on the extent of a country's direct or indirect control over Central Asian and Persian states
  
• Declaring Bankruptcy now applies a decaying reduction in welfare payments, starting at 100%
  
• Declaring Bankruptcy now immediately resets all institution levels to 1
  
• Removed Poor Laws (and the government admins supporting it) from China, as it's no longer needed to 'balance' their budget and tends to result in chain bankruptcy
  
• Changed the requirements of Pacification of the Steppes to make the journal entry more feasible
  
• Subjects now require to have diplomatic autonomy in order to sign foreign investment rights and agreement pacts
  
• You now must be non-Isolationist in order to form a Power Bloc, and Power Bloc members cannot enact Isolationist trade policy
  
• Sovereign Empires now only half the Cohesion loss from having subjects with high Liberty Desire, and only from the Liberty Desire of the leader's own subjects, not subjects of other members
  
• Tweaked subsistence income and building throughput for decentralized nations so they don't end up with the highest SoL in the world in certain edge case scenarios
  
• Significantly reduced the Ericsson company's education access bonus.
  
• Reduced Leverage Resistance from Population by 50%, as it was too difficult to overcome in some cases even with a variety of leverage sources
  
• Having the Armed Forces or an Authoritarian leader in government is no longer sufficient to initiate the Natural Borders of France
  
• Reduced AI aggression from Natural Borders
  
• Interface​
  
• Added a separate tooltip description for when a building loses employees due to emigration instead of just saying they were fired
  
• When inviting a prospective member to a Power Bloc you are now given a prediction of what that will do to your Cohesion
  
• There is now a confirmation box when pressing 'Leave Power Bloc'
  
• There is now a notification for other Power Bloc members when a non-leader country leaves the bloc
  
• Made the sortable column header buttons sticky at the top of the Market panel (Goods tab) when you scroll.
  
• Building Registry filters are now rows of buttons of icons instead of fold out menus

• Added new trigger called army_power_projection
  
• Building groups can now be flagged as always_self_owning, which makes them always worker-owned

• Fixed an issue with foreign investment that could cause invalid elements to appear and stay around in the Construction Queue permanently, however this will only prevent the issue from appearing in new saves. We are planning to introduce a save-game validation fix for old saves in 1.7.3.
  
• The Pamir Delimitation JE tooltips no longer lags the game. A tooltip for the JE activation has been added for clarity.
  
• Tibet Expedition JE now ends when subjugation demand is refused by other countries.
  
• Fixed an issue that would cause Formations to sometimes travel towards a Front they cannot join.
  
• Fixed an issue in the code that handles the relationship between interest groups and political lobbies, which caused misleading error messages to be logged.
  
• Fixed a bug where using a create_country effect in global history files would lead to blocs being disbanded during initialization
  
• Unrecognized powers no longer get any benefit from infamy reduction against unrecognized modifier
  
• Fixed a bug where a number of AI countries (such as Greece) did not pursue their Journal Entries because the catalyst for Journal Entry was incorrectly firing on JE creation instead of JE activation
  
• Fixed a bug where Journal Entries that were created in an inactive state before the start of the game did not notify the player about their activation due to a rather bizarre (and entirely unnecessary) boolean set on creation
  
• Fixed column header broken loc in map list panel for inviting countries to your bloc
  
• Fixed a bug where half of the screen sometimes turned orange during the start of diplomatic plays.
  
• Fixed a crash that occurred when collecting unit distribution data
  
• Resolved an issue which caused null objects to occasionally appear in exiles events.
  
• Power bloc statues are now prevented from being transferred when states change hands to countries that shouldn't have them.
  
• Fixed a bug where employees would switch jobs without taking potential dividends into account
  
• Fixed a bug causing government owned buildings to have a hard time filling their employment
  
• Fixed a bug where the country religion link was referencing the country definition's religion instead of the country's state religion, resulting in the Impose State Religion bloc action being repeatable on the same country
  
• Remove the duplicated Overlord Actions button for Subjects that appeared when you are not a Power Bloc leader.
  
• Fixed a bug where cohesion for ideological unions was inexplicably trending towards 0
  
• Removed the placeholder Manul culture from the game.
  
• Fixed an issue where the relief option in the STATE Crop Failure event would apply the wrong modifiers.
  
• Conquering a split state now applies the 'State Liberated' rather than 'State Conquered' modifier, as the latter ended up giving tax penalties to a state you already owned, which could be devastating for tiny nations
  
• Amended the description for the I'm the Captain now achievement.
  
• Reduce the freeze during annexation caused by diplomatic catalysts
  
• Gold Fields are now always worker owned
  
• Fixed fleets being stuck in ally HQs after losing military access to them
  
• Fixed invalid travel destination options for formations after switching between interactions
  
• Fixed an issue that caused the game to try to localize the null country when showing the peace treaty popup when one of the displayed wargoals is a wargoal to conquer a split state and the winner is a country that has a different split state in the same region
  
• Fixed a bug where it was possible to accept a diplomatic proposal that had become invalid in the time between it was proposed and when it was accepted
  
• Removed Clergymen from Cotton Plantations' default Production Method and replaced them with Farmers.
  
• Blocs led by a major power which turns into a great power will now lose the weak bloc modifier as intended
  
• The Cohesion prediction when kicking a member out of your Power Bloc now takes the per-member modifier impact into account correctly
  
• Fixed a bug where the reinvestment fraction of Government Dividends was not correctly calculated for buildings unless they had 100% government ownership
  
• Persia and Afghanistan will now properly get the "Great Game, no re" achievement for winning the Great Game
  
• Fixed autonomous investment constructing too many levels of the same building
  
• Fixed a bug where the Commander Order tooltip was not showing requirements to activate orders
  
• Fixed a bug where the wrong production method for Power Bloc statues was shown in the UI
  
• Homesteading law now also affects the ranching category buildings in addition to agriculture buildings.
  
• Fixed a bug where the expedition cost in Tibet was still active after the journal entry ended.
  
• Fixed a construction queue tooltip to indicate that the constructing country is paying the cost
  
• Added a missing collectivization modifier to collectivized agriculture.
  
• Fixed a bug for Tibet Expedition Events so it doesn't result in the possibility of Tibet's diplomatic play against itself.
  
• Fixed a bug where sometimes Treaty Port status would get 'dropped' by markets, resulting in the Treaty Port having no effect despite showing up properly in the state
  
• Most hills in Japan, North China and Manchuria no longer display as jungle hills in the state panel
  
• Fixed an issue where Russia would start the game with three landlocked naval bases.
  
• Fixed a bug where the AI would not use certain actions such as grant own market due to a missing evaluation_chance value
  
• Fixed an issue with an unlocalized, dynamic name for Azerbaijan.
  
• Diplomatic Plays can no longer start if the initiator or the target country has no passable provinces
  
• Fixed an issue where throughput was not correctly updated during building initialization
  
• Academic caps and glasses are now restricted to characters with relevant traits, even within power blocs with the level III Advanced Research principle.
  
• Cuirasses are now restricted to characters with either a royal or military affiliation.
  
• Fixed a bug where it was possible to oppose the subjects of your allies in plays where it would not be possible to object the ally themselves
  
• Fixed the missing text for the currently enacting Law under the specific Law Group.
  
• Fixed an issue where the AI would sometimes not construct ports to connect isolated states to its market
  
• Fixed an issue in how some principle groups were displayed in the principle groups chooser window
  
• The indicators for what production method is selected in each category for buildings in your country no longer takes foreign buildings into account, so if all your domestic buildings use the same PM it will show that rather than the "mixed" indicator if some of your overseas buildings are using a different PM
  
• Fixed a rare crash when hosting in Multiplayer
  
• Fixed a major issue that would prevent upgrading power bloc principles under some circumstances

Previous Patchnotes
1.7[forum.paradoxplaza.com], 1.7.1[forum.paradoxplaza.com]

Salutations fine Victorians!

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Hello and welcome to another Victoria 3 Dev Diary, coming hot on the heels of Update 1.7 and the Sphere of Influence expansion. Today’s Dev Diary will be a pretty short one, focusing on our thoughts around the release and our plans for the immediate aftermath. We will be following this up with a proper roadmap update next week.

As far as thoughts on the release go, I can definitely say that we consider this release to be a very successful one, and are very happy to see how much you, the players, seem to be enjoying the changes and additions we’ve made to the game. The Building Ownership Revision in particular is something we have spent a massive amount of time and effort to first implement and then tweak and polish, and it’s very satisfying to get to read all the feedback and discussions around it, now that you get to try it out for yourselves.

When we announced the delay[forum.paradoxplaza.com] of 1.7/SoI, we did so because we wanted to use the extra time to focus on the quality of the release, and this is precisely what we did. We were able to use the extra time to polish and balance the new features, improve the AI, improve performance and of course fix a lot of bugs. In hindsight I can absolutely say that this was the correct decision and that I am very proud of what the team managed to accomplish in the extra time we were given.

The 1.7 performance improvements in particular is an area where I know a bunch of you have expressed surprise that we didn’t really talk about it much before release. The reason we didn’t is that the ‘real’ impact of such improvements are actually really tricky to measure until they ‘make contact’ with the playerbase, so to speak. We’ve had internal metrics which showed us that 1.7 was substantially faster than 1.6, but those metrics were collected on a limited number of hardware setups, and we wouldn’t really know how it would shake out on the thousands upon thousands of different hardware configurations that are out there until you actually got to try it.

Fortunately, as far we can tell, the overwhelming majority of players are in fact experiencing considerably improved performance in 1.7, which honestly is near the very top of things that I am personally most happy about regarding this release. Getting there was by no means a straightforward process, as 1.7 introduced numerous new performance challenges, not the least was the addition of AI construction calculations for foreign investment. So how did we do it? Well, the modifier rework we mentioned in Dev Diary #120[forum.paradoxplaza.com] was probably the single biggest individual contributor, but it was actually the result of dozens upon dozens of improvements coming from across the team. A few examples, in no particular order:

• The AI spending system was rewritten to be much smarter about which data was updated and when those updates were actually needed
  
• The design team made numerous changes to events and other parts of the script which were running slowly
  
• Improvements were made to market updates to avoid unnecessarily frequent updates of pricing data
  
• Employment was made much more performant by eliminating ‘rounding errors’ in the hiring logic that resulted in numerous insignificant employment changes
  
• The programmers expanded the use of smart caching and multithreading pretty much across the entire game. Military graphics and other map graphics were also heavily optimized.

However, with all that said, a release of this size and complexity will always bring with it some bugs and balance issues that we weren’t able to discover and fix in time and which are now our top priority to address. When you are reading this, hotfix 1.7.1[forum.paradoxplaza.com] should already have dropped as of a couple hours ago, and we are planning to follow it up with at least one more hotfix, tentatively planned to release early next week, and I’ll wrap up this dev diary by listing a few select fixes that 1.7.2 will contain:

• Substantial improvements (through AI improvements and balance tweaks) to the AI’s ability to execute on historical and historically plausible outcomes, particularly in nation-forming and ability to pursue Journal Entries such as the Meiji Restoration and Tanzimat Reforms
  
• Setup improvements to relations and AI attitudes to more closely match history
  
• More aggressive colonial AI, particularly for late-game land grabbing in Africa
  
• Making it harder to get reparations by occupying insignificant colonies
  
• Fix for poor building browser performance when using scrollbar
  
• Improved leverage UX
  
• Allowing Unrecognized Major Powers to form Power Blocs
  
• Balancing the Great Game to be less biased towards Britain

The above is of course NOT an exhaustive list, and we are not ruling out additional hotfixes after 1.7.2 if needed - while I think we released 1.7 in a good shape, we still want to ensure that any significant new bugs and balance issues are dealt with as speedily as possible. For this reason a part of the team (myself included) will continue working for a few weeks into July (taking our vacations later in the year instead), so that we maintain the capacity to release fixes as needed.

That’s all for today, but you’ll be seeing me again next week as I make the customary roadmap update and tell you about some of what we have in store for 1.8, 1.9 and beyond. See you then!

Hello Victorians!

We have just released a hotfix for 1.7, Checksum b087, which has a number of improvements, bugfixes and balance changes based on feedback/bug reports from players. As always, this post is not for bug reports, please instead post them in the bug reporting forum[forum.paradoxplaza.com] (including a save and steps to recreate is always useful) .

The following changes have been made to the game compared to 1.7.0:

• Added mandate generation from Unrecognized countries to all Identities
  
• Earning Recognition Journal Entry is now unlocked by Colonization rather than Civilizing Mission and only requires 50 relations with a Great Power to complete
  
• It is now possible to 'upgrade' an Investment Rights pact to a Mutual Investment Agreement, if the other part agrees to it
  
• Conquering a split state now applies the 'Recently Liberated' rather than 'Recently Conquered' modifier, as the latter ended up giving tax penalties to a state you already owned, which could be devastating for tiny nations
  
• Ranches no longer consume grain as a default good, but only if more advanced PMs are activated
  
• Regime Change Diplomatic Play can no longer be used against your own subjects since Law Imposition can be used for it instead
  
• Collectivized building levels, or buildings with levels that are undergoing collectivization, can no longer be nationalized
  
• Cuirassiers no longer consume iron, but use more small arms instead
  
• Sovereign Empire statues now provides a 25% Decree Cost discount to the state it is constructed in instead of applying it to the whole country
  
• The Boer States now start with National Militia and with their independence guaranteed by Britain

• The autonomous investment AI now keeps track of how much investment has gone into foreign/domestic states and biases future investment towards domestic states if an excessive amount has gone towards foreign investment, to ensure investment isn't all going overseas
  
• Fixed an issue where civil war countries and native uprisings would not recruit commanders for their armies due to incorrectly set AI tags for their formations
  
• Rebellious and Defiant subjects will no longer actively aid their overlord in diplomatic plays outside of what they consider necessary to defend their own territory
  
• Loyal subjects now mobilize a higher fraction of their troops to aid their overlords in diplomatic plays
  
• The AI is now able to reassign armies/navies that are traveling, preventing suboptimal naval invasions due to the best fleets not being 'available'
  
• The AI is now able to launch simultaneous naval invasions, but will generally avoid using all of its armies/fleets at once for this

• Manor Houses no longer require infrastructure, as this caused major issues for highly populous countries with a lot of subsistence agriculture
  
• Reduced investment weights for Manor Houses on all non-agricultural buildings, as their tendency to invest into factories in countries like Japan would lead to an odd aristocrat-led industrialization
  
• Reduced the rate at which generic random events appear to compensate for increased overall event spawn rate due to prior bug fixes
  
• Reduced effect of Asceticism (Devout) trait from -50%/-100% to -15%/-30% reduction on radicals from changes to standard of living (sorry)
  
• Reduced effect of Secular Shrine Theory (Devout) trait from +20%/+40% to +15%/+30% conversion
  
• Reduced effect of Da Wat (Devout) trait from +50%/+100% to +20%/+40% conversion
  
• Reduced effect of Propagandists (Intelligentsia) trait from +25%/+50% to +15%/+30% migration attraction
  
• Decrees now have a minimum cost of 10% of its base cost, to prevent modifier stacking for free Decrees
  
• Imperious now provides a 20% rather than 25% Decree Cost discount
  
• Cruel trait now provides a 5% Authority boost rather than a Decree Cost discount

• Map markers will now indicate where your foreign construction is happening
  
• Demand Force Nationalization wargoal will now display how many building levels and what fraction of GDP would be nationalized
  
• Fixed some issues with the 'failing to hire' tooltip for buildings where it would sometimes lack a reason for failing to hire and/or contain unnecessary whitespaces
  
• Added Bloc Leader interaction icon to differentiate it from Bloc Member actions
  
• Cursor will no longer flicker between the game cursor and operating system cursor while moving the mouse in the loading screen
  
• Removed duplicated Leverage Resistance description in tooltip
  
• Fixed long overlapping texts to not overlap anymore in the Trade States Diplomatic Action popup
  
• Max number of setbacks modifier will now be displayed as a whole value instead of a confusing percentage value

• Fixed a bug where modders using a create_country effect in global history files would lead to blocs being disbanded during initialization
  
• Added mandate generation by rank modifiers for unrecognized major, unrecognized regional, unrecognized and insignificant powers
  
• Added new generic Power Bloc invite acceptance modifier
  
• Made Power Bloc invite acceptance by rank modifiers support arbitrary ranks defined in script
  
• Cost calculation for Decrees is now done on a per-state rather than per-country basis, permitting for differing costs dependent on the state the Decree is applied in
  
• decree_cost link now operates in state scope rather than country scope

• Fixed a crash related to CollectOwnAndAlliedLandHQs
  
• Fixed a bug where it was possible to make a diplomatic demand against a country you were already at war with
  
• The "Land of the Rising Sun" event for Persia now gives a claim on the correct Georgia (hint: not the one north of Florida)
  
• Fixed inverted values in Earning Recognition Journal Entry causing you to gain progress for low GDP/SoL and vice versa
  
• Fixed a bug where leaders of Military Treaty Power Blocs would not pay maneuvers for adding wargoals in diplomatic plays where they were a main participant
  
• Fixed a bug where formations with no commanders could not be mobilized due to incorrect 'all commanders are busy' error
  
• Fixed bug where cohesion for ideological union was inexplicably trending towards 0
  
• "Enemy of my Enemy" lobby event can no longer target your own country as the enemy in question, however amusing that might sound
  
• The Pamir Delimitation will no longer carry over script variables from previous attempts
  
• It is no longer possible to capture a state in less than 2 battles, as this could result in issues such naval invasions that were impossible to consolidate due to creating multiple fronts
  
• Fixed bug that made Pacifists only spawn in the Armed Forces rather than the other way around
  
• Fixed a bug where the -30 relations penalty with Power Bloc leaders for creating a Power Bloc was applied during history initialization, causing the Great Powers to have erroneously low relations with each other at game start
  
• Political Lobbies will no longer form targeting Revolutionary countries until they actually win the revolution, to avoid highly temporary lobbies forming and then disbanding
  
• Replaced the Power Bloc Statue throughput with a level scaling effect under the "Prestige Only" game rule to prevent it from granting the prestige while they are still in the construction queue
  
• Fixed an AI issue that could lead to incorrectly removing conscript units, leading to negative amount of conscripts in an army
  
• Fixed a bug when manor house levels weren't removed when subsistence farms were removed
  
• Fixed a bug where the "Add to Primary" button would show up on an Overlord's Wargoals for the Subject
  
• Resolved issue where Communism and Populism progress bars didn't properly retreat due to laws
  
• Fixed an issue when 100% worker-owned buildings can still be nationalized if the building is level 1
  
• Fixed an issue where exiling/inviting agitators would never create lobbies in their home countries
  
• Fixed a bug where a victorious revolution could end up with a political lobby targeting itself
  
• The East Indies' End event can no longer fire multiple times per game
  
• The Tibet Expedition will now properly cancel if at war with Tibet
  
• The "Can't Touch This" achievement can now be gained even if a country has (non-nationalizable) gold fields or subsistence farms
  
• Fixed an out-of-sync related to markets
  
• Fixed the amount of compensation in the notification when nationalizing foreign assets
  
• Replaced the University and Art Academy's "Increased Exchange" (unlocked by the Freedom of Movement Principle) Production Method's country modifier with a state modifier as originally intended. The former led to way higher migration attraction as it was stacking all states' effects where it was active.
  
• General Brusilov no longer requires owning the American state of Georgia to spawn
  
• Fixed a bug where accept/decline effects of reverse pact actions such as Request Knowledge Sharing and Request Support Regime were not correctly shown in tooltips
  
• The emergency hunger relief modifier from the Famine event chain is now applied only to states affected by famine
  
• Pink faces will no longer be submitted alongside several Diplomatic Action proposals
  
• Pink face and NULL_STATE will no longer briefly appear briefly after a building has finished construction in Foreign Queues
  
• Fixed Power Bloc formation tutorial to prevent player moving forward despite not having completed a necessary step
  
• The British aid button for Persia will no longer state that it adds the "Russian Military Mission" modifier
  
• Fixed some instances of missing loc in Tibet Expedition tooltips (English only, other languages will be translated for 1.7.2)
  
• Fixed missing localization for key catalyst_revolution_successful
  
• Moved Saint Basil's Cathedral back to Moscow (from Mazovia)
  
• Added missing text for Building Relationships map mode (English only, will be translated for 1.7.2)
  
• Fixed a description error in the Dominion concept that stated that they wouldn't need to join their overlords (English only, will be translated for 1.7.2)
  
• Fixed error spam in the "Britain Demands Withdrawal from Herat" event
  
• Event ig_revolutions.8 will no longer display [ROOT.GetCountry.GetRuler.GetTitle] instead of the ruler's actual title

Previous Patchnotes
1.7[forum.paradoxplaza.com]

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Good day Victorians!

Welcome to Update 1.7 “Kahwah” and Sphere of Influence, Checksum 5ebb. Featuring improvements, bugfixes, map changes, foreign investment, Power Blocs, performance improvements and much more! For Update 1.7 Known Issues please look at this post[forum.paradoxplaza.com]!

Now on to some of the patchnotes!

• As a Great Power or a powerful Major Power, you can form your own Power Bloc centered around one of five central Identity pillars: Trade League, Sovereign Empire, Military Treaty, Ideological Union, or Religious Convocation.
  
• Each of these provide different opportunities and benefits to its leader with respect to its member countries, and can be developed further with up to 4 of 20 different Principle groups, resulting in over twenty thousand different combinations affecting your strategy for global domination!
  
• As a Power Bloc leader you can expand your global reach by extending your Leverage over other countries where you have declared an Interest. A large number of factors that can cause you to gain (or lose) Leverage over a country, such as maintaining Diplomatic Pacts, maintaining favorable Lobbies, helping them in their wars, being accepting or discriminatory against their cultures, or making them economically dependent on you through foreign expansion or trade.
  
• Power Blocs can be expanded peacefully through diplomatic invitation into your Bloc or, if the invite fizzles, through a Diplomatic Demand the country may or may not yield to without an armed conflict.
  
• The leader of a Power Bloc must maintain its Cohesion by enforcing its shared values across the bloc. Failure to properly manage Cohesion across your bloc may result in internal strife.
  
• All members of Power Blocs may construct expensive statues to represent its glory, providing a number of benefits to the state it's built in. The leader of a Power Bloc can customize both the appearance of the statue, the Power Bloc emblem, and its name to better represent its ideas and visions for its bright global future.
  
• Available with Update 1.7: the Trade League Identity and its two Primary Principle groups, Internal and External Trade, are available even without Sphere of Influence and replaces the Customs Union diplomatic pact by enforcing a shared market across the Power Bloc.
  
• Available with Update 1.7: it is also possible to play as Great Britain, Russia, or the Ottoman Empire who starts with the Sovereign Empire Identity, permitting them to subjugate weaker Power Bloc members, or as Austria whose Power Bloc Identity of Ideological Union permits them to Enforce Regime Change in countries that start flirting with the concept of Republicanism and suffrage. Players without Sphere of Influence may also play a member of the Zollverein, an established Trade League at game start.
  
• To read much more about Power Blocs, see dev diaries here[forum.paradoxplaza.com] and here[forum.paradoxplaza.com].

• With the Foreign Investment Rights or Mutual Foreign Investment Pacts, countries can gain the ability to directly build up another country's resource or manufacturing industries, or offer these rights to another country if they're incapable of rapid industrialization on their own. This right extends to both countries and its investor class, who may use their Investment Pool to construct private industry abroad and gain access to new resources, cheap(er) labor, or both.
  
• With the Foreign Investment Power Bloc Principles, these rights can also be extended across an entire Power Bloc by default without the need to establish and maintain potentially fragile pacts. With Power Bloc Leverage being informed in part by economic dependence, this can become a great way to maintain control over your Power Bloc members during the extent of the long Victorian century.
  
• Available with Update 1.7: Ownership is represented by two new buildings, Manor Houses (housing the Aristocracy) and Financial Sectors (housing Capitalists), who can own buildings outside their own states or even their country. These buildings extract the profits produced by building levels they own, leading to much greater variance between productive states and wealthy states.
  
• Available with Update 1.7: In addition to private ownership through Manor Houses and Financial Sectors, Cooperative Ownership is also possible through the right economic system laws. Cooperative Ownership gives pops working their buildings the fruit of their own labor.
  
• Available with Update 1.7: State-owned enterprises are also possible, which yield dividends directly to state coffers (or drain them, if unprofitable). Under most economic systems, buildings constructed by the state are put up for sale when completed, making them available for acquisition by private interests (or even other countries, if Foreign Investment Rights are in play). Under others, it's possible for the state to nationalize industries, with or without compensation to its owners - with sometimes grave repercussions, domestic or international.
  
• Available with Update 1.7: Overlords are always able to construct industries in their Subjects, even without Pacts or Power Blocs enabling it.
  
• With the Sphere of Influence expansion, it is also possible to nationalize all your country's foreign-owned industries with a Diplomatic Demand - but be prepared to defend your economic self-determination!
  
• To read more about Foreign Investment and the Building Ownership overhaul, see the dev diary here[forum.paradoxplaza.com].

• A Lobby consists of one or more Interest Groups in a country that have a stance on another country in the world. This stance can either be positive, where they wish to form closer relations or imitate its laws and reforms, or negative where the emphasis lies on distancing yourself, forming rivalries, or even crushing them in armed conflict.
  
• Lobbies have a chance to form in response to a Diplomatic Catalyst, which can trigger for a variety of reasons such as establishing or breaking a Pact, choosing a particular event option, having a revolution, joining or being kicked out of a Power Bloc, inviting or exiling an Agitator, and so on. Whenever something happens as a result of a Catalyst, such as a lobby forming or an AI strategy changing, you will be told exactly the reason why it happened.
  
• Lobbies will benefit or hinder you in a number of ways, such as increasing a country's AI Acceptance for Diplomatic Pacts due to your close ties, or increasing your War Support when fighting a hated foe. The impact your Lobby has relates directly to its Interest Group membership's Clout, so you have a vested interest in supporting those groups that align with your own foreign policy and opposing those who support your geopolitical enemies.
  
• Adhering to your Lobbies' wishes will increase their Appeasement, which is another source of Interest Group Approval and leads to political stability at home. Opposing them will of course do the opposite, so think carefully if you can afford to break that pact they like!
  
• With the Sphere of Influence expansion, Lobbies will occasionally grant opportunities or make demands. These are Journal Entries that incentivize you to go after specific foreign policy goals, or which you ignore at your peril!
  
• Also with the Sphere of Influence expansion, you have access to a new Diplomatic Action that lets you fund lobbies in other countries by bribing providing much-deserved financial support to the country's elite, increasing the chance that lobbies favoring you (or lobbies that oppose your enemies) will emerge there. If a suitable lobby already exists, the financial support you provide will increase its power and improve the Leverage you gain there.
  
• Subjugated countries can also be home to two other types of Lobbies - those for or against the country's Overlord, supporting integration or independence respectively. Nurturing or suppressing these Lobbies can provide the necessary political impact you need to nudge Liberty Desire in the direction you want and inform one of four new AI Strategies for subject countries.
  
• Read more about Lobbies in the dev diary found here[forum.paradoxplaza.com]. More on Catalysts can be found here[forum.paradoxplaza.com].

• Sphere of Influence comes with a number of brand-new ways you can interact with your Subjects, or if you are a subject, ways you can engage with your Overlord. Several new categories of Diplomatic Actions have been added which apply only to countries with special relationships: Overlord/Subject, Subject/Overlord, Power Bloc Leader/Member, and Power Bloc Member/Member.
  
• For example, an Overlord can use actions on their Subject to increase or reduce the weekly payments they must submit, distribute conquered territory between their subjects, share their technological knowledge with them, permit them to control their own market, and more!
  
• Similarly, Subjects can petition their Overlord to grant them relief in various ways. This often costs them Liberty Desire, a new metric in Update 1.7 that tracks how much the country's elite is in favor of independence. Like Leverage, this metric is informed by a variety of factors, such as Opinion - but also by many Pacts maintained between the countries, their Economic Dependence on the Overlord, relative Prestige, and so on. If a Subject's Liberty Desire gets very high they will start generating more Radicals, prompting them to request increased autonomy from their Overlord; if not granted, it could well result in a Diplomatic Demand for full independence instead. On the other hand, a Subject with very low Liberty Desire can be persuaded to have their autonomy reduced, potentially leading them down the road to full annexation if they aren't careful.
  
• With the Sphere of Influence expansion, in addition to the many new Diplomatic Actions, it is also possible to support a Subject's independence, causing their Liberty Desire to increase and automatically including you as a supporter in any Diplomatic Play for Independence they launch. Subjects may even support each other, and will rebel as a group if a war for independence is imminent! On the flip side you can also Guarantee Independence for a country that is not yet subjugated, ensuring none of your rival Great Powers can make such a demand unquestioned!
  
• To read more about Subject Interactions and Liberty Desire, go here[forum.paradoxplaza.com].

• Throughout the nineteenth century, Russia and Britain competed with one another for influence in Asia. This period of rivalry was known colloquially as the Great Game, beginning in the Caucasus and Central Asia, and expanding over time to include struggles for influence in areas as far away as Korea and China. In Sphere of Influence you can play out this crucial "cold war" between these two dominant but very different Great Powers from several perspectives: Russia, Britain, Persia, or one of three countries - Kabul, Herat, and Kandahar - that will form the country of Afghanistan during the era.
  
• The Great Game can be experienced by playing one of the six countries in question in any regular game, or through the new Great Game objective which provides a quickstart into all the new features of Sphere of Influence. You will naturally also experience the conflict from the sidelines while playing as any country in the world, and can get involved to help or hinder any of its participants. Many regions adjacent to the Great Game also have their own unique narrative content relating to it, such as the Caucasian War, the Donghak Rebellion in Joseon/Korea, and the expedition to Tibet.
  
• The Great Game is designed to make full use of all new features in Sphere of Influence, and you can be sure that your skills in maintaining your Power Bloc, expanding your Leverage, supporting your foreign Lobbies, expanding your economic reach through Foreign Investments, and interacting with your Subjects will be tested in the process!
  
• To increase the historical accuracy of the Great Game, the map of Central Asia has been greatly improved, with several new countries and cultures added as well as regional Interest Groups, twelve new Companies, and more.
  
• To read much more about the experience of playing as one of the Great Powers in the conflict, see the dev diary here[forum.paradoxplaza.com]. Even more details on what might be in store if you play as a Central Asian nation is available here[forum.paradoxplaza.com].

There are also a wealth of new art features available with the Sphere of Influence expansion:

• 'Great Empires' papermap theme
  
• New main menu
  
• 2 new loading screens
  
• 10 new event illustrations
  
• Late-game European military uniform character outfit as well as late-game female military outfits
  
• Added Necklaces, Capes, and Sashes for different Power Bloc identities, to be worn by Heads-of-States in those Power Blocs
  
• Persian military outfits, Landowner clothes, and royal character outfit and jewelry
  
• Cossack and Cuirass character outfit
  
• Greatcoat character outfit for some characters to wear during winter
  
• Zulu character outfits
  
• Cigars and Smoking Pipes
  
• Distinct appearances for many British historical figures, such as Joseph Chamberlain, John Maynard Keynes, Provo Wallis, David Lloyd George, Douglas Haig, Arthur Balfour, Friedrich Engels, Lord Palmerston, and Rotha Lintorn-Orman
  
• Distinct appearance and new character assets for Empress Myeongseong, Klemens von Metternich, George Curzon, Reza Shah Pahlavi, Naser al-Din Shah Qajar, Amir Kabir, Sattar Khan, and Abdul Hamid II
  
• Distinct appearances for certain Interest Group leaders
  
• Updated appearance for Tsar Alexander III
  
• Sphere of Influence Coin 3D asset for papermap object
  
• Cutty Sark Trading Ship 3D vehicle for Trade Leagues
  
• Royal Carriage 3D vehicle for Sovereign Empires
  
• Hot Air Balloon 3D frontline asset for Military Treaties
  
• Rolls Royce Silver Ghost 3D vehicle for Ideological Unions
  
• Ornate Carriage 3D vehicle for Religious Convocations
  
• Voice of the People, with Sphere of Influence: Added a late game uniform for France
  
• Voice of the People, etc.: Updated the Divided Monarchist journal entry and several other complex journal entries to use the new progressbar system
  
• Colossus of the South: Implemented an additional South American clothing set

To read (and view!) even more about the Art of Sphere of Influence, go here[forum.paradoxplaza.com].

To accompany all the new features and content added in Sphere of Influence, we have added fifteen new achievements to the game:

• Durran Durran: As Herat, form Afghanistan, own all the historical states of the old Durrani Empire, and do not be a member of any power bloc led by any other country.
  
• Hyperpeace: As any country, have both Finland and Korea in your power bloc.
  
• Bootlicker: As a subject, have the pro-overlord lobby at max appeasement.
  
• I'm the Captain Now: Look at me. As a member of a power bloc, win the struggle for power bloc leadership.
  
• The New Order: Have a fully decked out power bloc.
  
• Great Game no re: Complete the Great Game Objective.
  
• Honor and Life: As Circassia, complete the Honor Before Life journal entry.
  
• Iranzamin: As Persia, complete the Eastern Frontier Journal Entry, and have a literacy rating of 80%
  
• For Twelve Years You Have Been Asking: Privatize all buildings and prevent them from being state or worker-owned for 12 whole years.
  
• Can't Touch This: As a country with at least 10% of your GDP owned by a foreign power, nationalize all buildings and prevent them from being privatized for 12 whole years.
  
• Standard Oil: Own at least 30 levels of oil rigs in foreign countries.
  
• Diplomatic Victory: As a Great Power, have a pro-country lobby for your country in every other Great Power.
  
• Hermit Kingdom: As Korea, act on the Donghak movement's petitions.
  
• Cult of Reason: Pass the State Atheism Law and be the leader of an ideological power bloc with at least 10 members.
  
• Declaration of Independence: Starting as a subject nation, break free from your overlord.

The following changes have been made to the game compared to 1.6.2:

• Removed the Directly Controlled Investment Game Rule from the game, as it is incompatible with the new Building Ownership Rework/Foreign Investment mechanics
  
• Added fifteen new events that fire as a result of having an active, non-revolutionary political movement
  
• Added a universal Journal Entry for unrecognized countries permitting them to peacefully achieve recognition over time, and a diplomatic action to speed it up
  
• Removed the Force Recognition wargoal and diplomatic play, as it has been replaced by the new Journal Entry
  
• Added an Afghan Reunification journal entry for Afghan contenders
  
• Added scripted Journal Entry progress bars, allowing Journal Entries to track more than one progression value and display them on separate progress bars that can be visualized in a number of different ways
  
• Overlord can now join a revolutionary country against their subject
  
• Reworked the map of Persia, Central Asia, and Afghanistan, with new state regions, countries, and cultures
  
• Truces can now be unidirectional (preventing a country from attacking another without restricting the target country in a similar way) as well as bidirectional
  
• Investors now have a chance of finding resources in countries they invest into, even if that country doesn't have technology to do so on their own
  
• Removed Ownership PMs from most buildings, since the new ownership model introduced in 1.7 is used where applicable instead
  
• A huge number of Diplomatic Catalysts have been added to facilitate Lobby creation, AI Strategies and "memory", cooldowns, and other functions
  
• Added Grant and Take State Overlord Actions
  
• China, Korea, and Vietnam now all start as Confucian nations. Starting laws and pops have been updated to reflect this.
  
• Serfdom law now blocks both Internal and Mass Migration for Peasants
  
• Land Reform law now blocks Internal Migration for Peasants (but does not impact Mass Migration)
  
• Reworked Russian state regions and populations
  
• China, Korea, and Vietnam now all start as Confucian nations. Starting laws and pops have been updated to reflect this.
  
• Declining a call to arms will now break off any alliance, defensive pact or guarantee you have against the country calling you in
  
• Society techs now give more maneuvers for plays with each era
  
• It is now possible for countries that join a play due to a call to arms to add a war goal themselves, so long as that war goal would cost 25 maneuvers or less to add under normal circumstances (does not actually cost maneuvers for the primary participant)
  
• Added decaying modifiers that massively nationalization cost & radicals generation from nationalization in newly conquered/liberated states. Recently conquered states also suffer decaying penalties to tax collection, pop political strength and conscription rate.
  
• Added new diplomatic action Guarantee Independence which functions like a one-sided defensive pact that doesn't require approval
  
• It is now only possible to impose laws on Puppet, Dominion, Vassal, and Personal Union subjects (Protectorates and Tributaries are too independent) unless you're in a Power Bloc that permits it
  
• The 'Cut Down to Size' wargoal now also removes all wargoals held by the target in other diplomatic plays/wars (but keeps any wargoals targeting them in those plays/wars)
  
• Demands for imposing a Law on another country are now handled with events and a journal entry, similar to Interest Group Petitions. Notifications are triggered when the other country takes action.
  
• It is now possible to make Diplomatic Demands even though you're already in a Diplomatic Play (or at war), as long as it's not against a country you're already targeting or a country on the same side as you in another Play / war. You also cannot make additional Diplomatic Demands while already dealing with a Diplomatic Play you initiated until that Play has escalated into war.
  
• Added Karelian, Mari, Buryat, Bashkir, Chechen, Mordvin, Chuvash, and Udmurt cultures
  
• Added numerous new releasables to Russia
  
• Added 6 new companies
  
• Commercialized agriculture law now makes Financial Districts more likely to invest in agriculture, ranching and plantations
  
• The Homesteading law now makes agriculture buildings convert themselves to 50% self-ownership over time
  
• Expanded the Monuments Effect game rule to include Power Bloc Statues
  
• Buildings with several unstaffed levels and that are at least 50% privately owned will now autonomously reduce their privately owned levels if they fail to hire for an extended period of time
  
• Economy of Scale now scales against the employed levels of a building, so empty building levels no longer grant throughput bonuses. Additionally, Economy of Scale now starts granting bonuses immediately at level 1, so a half-employed level 1 building will get +0.5% throughput, for example.
  
• Added a Seminole Wars Journal Entry to USA, present at game start
  
• Added a 'Give State' diplomatic action
  
• Added diplomatic actions for increasing and decreasing autonomy in subjects
  
• You can now impose a Law on another country even if they are currently trying to enact something else (they have an option to cancel the current law or defer enacting it until later) or do not have any support for this law (you will now see their chances before issuing the demand)
  
• Changed the time to respond on Diplomatic Proposals from 14 days to 30 days, the AI will still respond in the same amount of time
  
• A country can now only ever have one diplomatic proposal pending towards a given country
  
• Changed the required tech unlock for Steam Powered Fishing and Whaling Production Methods to Gantry Cranes instead of Ironclads, allowing a smoother distinction between civil and military usage of steam powered ships (thanks to "WOWZA 'Mr. Rework' Scrooge" for the suggestion!)
  
• Increase Autonomy and Independence Diplomatic Plays now have Liberty Desire requirements
  
• Added an event referring to the Australian Emu War
  
• Added new Russian Republic and Russian Soviet Republic names to Russia
  
• Reworked the way we display pact influence costs to be more consistent and to always have breakdown tooltips
  
• Implemented more characters for Central Asia, East Asia, Britain, and Africa
  
• Added the Yat'siminoli, Salish, and Pannakwati to North America
  
• Added the Wati and Mirning peoples to Australia
  
• There is now a 1 year cooldown between attempts to impose a Law on another country if they outright reject your demand. Otherwise you will have to wait until they enact (or reject) the law you previously imposed on them.
  
• Servicemen now gain Officer qualifications faster while deployed in active wars
  
• Added additional state traits to Russia
  
• Added historical interest group leaders to Australian colonies
  
• Added starting pro- and anti-country lobbies to various nations in 1836
  
• Added silk as a potential resource in Lebanon, and a starting silk plantation to model the historical Lebanese silk industry
  
• Added the Mount Lebanon state trait to Lebanon, increasing the state's silk throughput
  
• Forming the Free States of America now requires you to have abolished slavery
  
• Made the South Bessarabian retrocession borders more historically accurate.
  
• Updated migration concepts for clarity
  
• Henry Temple is now referred to as Henry Palmerston
  
• Added a historical ruler for Indian Territory at game start
  
• Adjusted Tasmanian population to reflect the historical situation
  
• The Baltic strategic region has been renamed to Scandinavia, due to Finland becoming its own region

To read the full Patchnotes follow this link!: https://pdxint.at/3VyWLS5

For those who have a game in progress, 1.6 saves will be not compatible due to map changes!