I got the Reconquista achievement shortly after the launch of Iberian Twilight, while Infamy for protectorate wars was still bugged, so I recently decided to try to do it again legitimately.

It was pretty rough! You get a ton of infamy and have to constantly be on the watch for US and Britain intervening. I'm not here to complain about it being hard though, it should be, Spain reconquering her colonies is pretty absurd and should be difficult.

I did another game as Spain, this time deciding to go for normalisation.

I did treaties with all the former colonies, recognizing their independence, usually in return for investment rights and a power bloc embassy. This, in addition to the bonuses provided by the JE, allowed me to pretty quickly get them all in my bloc, a sovereign empire, and then I was able to turn them all into subjects. All of that significantly faster and with way less infamy than when I pursued reconquista.

Of course, this didn't allow me to reorganize the colonies and I didn't get the nice bonus at the end, but it still felt wrong that this was easier to achieve than when I decided to actively pursue it. Maybe the Reconquista JE should provide just some small bonus while active to avoid this.

Funny difference between Victoria 3 and Eu4, with how I engaged with their DLC. When I got into EU4, buying all of the "required" DLC was right around 200 dollars. I... did not have that money, nor did I want to spend it on a game. I mean, I bought the humble bundle whenever it came up, but they are always no less than 2 required DLC out of date, and that's just exhausting.

With Victoria 3, only 2 of the 6 DLC is considered required.. And I bought them. And when I finally get free cashflow, I'll be buying more, because it has earned my support. Turns out, I kinda like actually playing the Steam version, and Vikky3 isn't trying to milk me for every cent that I don't have. I genuinely appreciate it.

Every campaign consists of liberalizing slowly and the optimal thing to do is encouraging migration into your country. The pops of primary culture will never 'push' against it. They will get only radicalized if they go unemployed, not becouse 'THEY took mur jerb', but becouse 'I have no job'. Filling your 10 million population african country with 1 million of chinese and 2 millions of french should absolutely radicalize the majority primary culture - it should cause some sort of 'cultural friction' - where through cultural shock the cultures that historically have no ties through meeting in 1 state start radicalizing against each other (the strength of the friction should be based on the amount and speed of the arrival of foreign pops).

This cultural friction should be able to grow into a grudge. Let's say (idk just making up stuff, ok?) you are a France and you lose a war against Germany. The French pops in your country should develop a grudge against German pops - they should want to A) implement laws specifically against German pops in France. B) Should get radicalized if you as France (country) improve opinion with Germany or even sign any 'friendly' treaty (never mind an alliance) with them, should grow radical if you don't fight against Germany in diplomatic play for long time. C) Should care less about other minory pops (focus shifts onto the culture with grudge).

Through propaganda the player could increase the levels of friction/grudge or decrease it. The player could spread the propaganda outside his own country to others - different cultures with grudge against the same culture could have less 'friction' between each others, nations with majority of such primary cultures should have better opinion of each other etc. The factory owners of culture X that has grudge against culture Y should refuse to hire pops of culture Y.

This would also encourage playing tall and not painting the map. Since going into war would cause grudges and friction.

Furthermore the majority primary culture should always want to stay the absolute majority, to be privileged over the others and lowering this relative privilege (by lowering the levels of oppression on the minorities) should radicalize them. The game takes place in 19th century, not the 21st.

The game has complete blind spot when it comes to human behavior, it pretends that racism and xenophobia exists in society becouse it's ordained by rules. It sees racism as 'trickle down' thing - where racist institutions and laws are the causes of racism (not the other way around), it believes that people are not inherently racist and xenophobic, but institutions and laws cause them to be. The game of course then shows why such position is naive: if it were the case, no state would ever enact racist laws and as such the states shouldn't have the racist laws enacted on start dates - but historically that isn't the case.

In tomorrow’s Dev Diary they will show us the new achievements. Until then we can guess what they wil be. So write a comment with your ideas. Here are mines:

Three Mountains: Starting as Ryukyu conquer the world be the #1 country.

You need new capitals: In a war destroy the flagship of your enemy and take their capital state.

Bismarck in motion: Playing as Germany build a battleship with max hull and firepower.

You shall not pass: Posses both side of a strait and close it from everyone.

Undecided restoration: Starting as Japan finish the Honorable Restoration JE with the parlamentary path.

Are we the baddies?

I’ve always found the colonization in this game to be completely inefficient. I changed the AI’s behavior and added journal entries and events to make the colonization as historical as possible. Hope you guys like it.

Historical Colonization MOD