Happy Thursday Victorians!
It’s me, Lino and in today’s Dev Diary I’m going to walk you through the upcoming changes to one of the game’s central society features, namely the discrimination system.

Until now, discrimination was always binary in Victoria 3. A Pop either was discriminated against or they were not. This has led to a fairly one-dimensional feature where there’s not a lot of variety in what Pops can be experiencing. It also has made it hard for us to add harsh consequences to discriminated against Pops since it would have affected so many Pops around the world.

So we are taking some steps to make that more interesting. First of all, we’re saying goodbye to talking about discrimination. Instead, we are introducing the opposite, Acceptance.
Each Pop will have an Acceptance value between 0 and 100. This value is determined by the Pop’s country’s laws, in particular the Citizenship and Church & State groups which play the biggest role here. There are other laws that will have an impact, but we are going to talk about those in a later Dev Diary.

Primary cultures are clearly the points of authority when it comes to Acceptance values


As you can see, the old rules of cultural similarity still apply in the new system. Now though, instead of being immediately accepted if the culture shares a heritage trait, they will gain a high acceptance value bonus for example. This allows a broader range of acceptance, from the cultures that are facing violent hostility to the primary cultures who will always have the highest acceptance value.
The religious impact is changed to provide a bonus if a religion shares a trait with the state religion.

This brings us one step closer to the full picture, but we’re not quite there yet. The Acceptance value actually determines which Acceptance Status a Pop has. There are five possible Statuses, ranging from Full Acceptance to Violent Hostility, which will be used in order to apply consequences to the Pops in question.

Figure.09: WIP list of effects. This is definitely going to change - we’re looking at solutions to make it more readable for release.


You can see that we are not only reworking the system to fit the new vision, but are also expanding on it with new effects, besides the Acceptance value itself. From simple statistical changes like the tax burden per acceptance status to rules for who can work in government buildings or serve in your military, we have added a decent amount of new things to the laws.
Another factor that determines a Pop’s Acceptance value is the age of the Pop’s cultural community in their state. An immigrant Pop that is "fresh off the boat" will not be as accepted as that of another culture which has been there for 30 years already. No matter what your laws say, your Pops will need some time to get used to the new faces in their neighborhood–but, eventually, the new arrivals will reach the Acceptance value which the laws have determined for them.

“Have you seen the looks they gave us? By myself, I couldn’t stay here, but with you by my side I know I will make it.”


Of course you can still improve your Pops’ situation by enacting more progressive laws. These provide higher acceptance bonuses to cultures. For example Ethnostate doesn’t grant any bonus to cultures that share a non-heritage cultural trait with your primary culture, but National Supremacy grants +25 acceptance if they do.

Alright, so you passed Multiculturalism, but you didn’t think your Pops would immediately hug and welcome the people they were despising yesterday, did you?
Law enactments that increase a Pop’s Acceptance value will suffer from a penalty much the same as the newly established cultural communities, which will decay over time. This shows the establishment of these new laws quite well and delays the full effectiveness of the more progressive laws.

Another thing we are changing is conversion and assimilation (so that your Pops can escape from the undesirable lower statuses of Acceptance).
When 1.8 comes out later this year, Pops will be able to assimilate and convert to any culture or religion that would provide them with a higher acceptance value, even if it is not the primary culture or state religion. There is a minimum assimilation value difference that needs to be crossed in order for them to be eligible. For example if their current Acceptance is at 25 and the minimum assimilation value difference from the Citizenship law is defined at 50, their target’s culture Acceptance would need to be 75 or higher in order for them to assimilate.
This still looks at cultures that are present in the same state, so if none of them have a value of 75 or higher, the assimilation could not happen. The assimilation process may also still be forbidden by laws, e.g. under all laws it is currently not allowed for members of the lowest status to assimilate at all. Similarly, Pops of the highest status also do not assimilate in the current setup, as they already possess enough rights and privileges to enjoy a good life.

All of these changes require a fairly substantial rework of our interface. A lot is currently still in development and is coming in pieces, so you will have to discover it on your own, but I still wanted to provide you with a faint idea of what’s coming.
The Cultures panel has been renamed to Society, which fits better since it also includes Statuses and Religion. The acceptance statuses are listed in a new tab, providing an overview of what percentage of Pops falls under which status and who exactly that is.

WIP interface showing the breakdown of acceptance statuses in your country


In the end, we hope this feature rework will enhance your experience with regards to managing your Pops and that it will show much more variety in the Pops’ lives. Especially on the lower end of the spectrum, you should see a lot more consequences, as sad as that is.
This rework is an important step for us, since we can make better use of this system in future narrative content too, and we also have some ideas for future mechanical changes that require this rework as a foundation.

That’s all for today. Next week, on October 3, I’m handing it back to Martin again, who will provide some more information on what we’re doing with civil wars. That should be an interesting one, be sure to check it out!