Beginner's guide

This page serves as a guide for players who are new to Victoria 3 or Paradox Strategy games in general.

How do grand strategy games work?

This section assumes you are unfamiliar with Paradox grand strategy games in general. If you have played games like EU4 or HOI4, you can skip ahead.

Victoria 3 is a grand strategy game that hands you the reigns of any 19th-century nation during the dawn of the Industrial Revolution. Rather than being a specific government or government official, the player plays the "spirit of the nation", and is responsible for directing the nation's economic, political, and geopolitical situation. This means that while different monarchs or Presidents (or even both!) might rule the nation, the player still guides it until the end date or the loss of the last state.

The start date of January 1st, 1836 is set up to be as historical as possible. However, as soon as the game is unpaused, history will veer off its rails and become an alternate Earth where players can influence the destiny of nations.

There are no specific victory conditions in Victoria 3 and other grand strategy games. The player is free to take history in whatever direction they desire. Your goal could be to take a small nation with a single state and turn it into a economic powerhouse, take control of a powerful nation and retake some land it historically lost, or anything in between. Many players tailor their games toward earning specific achievements. Many game events are based on real history and can often be further researched via Wikipedia or other sources. Hopefully, you will also learn about real history and geography!

How does Victoria 3 work?

Victoria 3 is a society gardening and economic management grand strategy game. Similar to EU4 and HOI4, the player is responsible for controlling a country on the map. However, unlike those two games, there is a relatively smaller focus on warfare. Warfare is still an important part of the game, but players have more latitude in controlling the economic and political state of their country.

The most fundamental unit of the Victoria series is the Pop (short for Population or Part of Population). A Pop is a grouping of people in a state that share the same profession, culture, religion, and workplace – for example, all the Catholic French Aristocrats working in a Manor House in the state of Île-de-France would be collated into one Pop unit. Although Pops cannot be directly interacted with, they are the lifeblood of your nation. They work in buildings, they purchase goods, they die in wars and famines, they have political opinions and may support interest groups and movements, and more.

Economic management

The economy is composed of markets, which contain buildings and facilitate the trade of goods.

Every country is part of one and only one market. Markets may have multiple countries in it: for example, the East India Company starts in the British Market. Markets contain buildings, which are workplaces in a state that staff Pops, consume goods, and produce goods (and sometimes other modifiers). Goods represent both goods and services: tangible items like  Iron are goods, as well as abstract items such as  Fine Art.

The price of a good varies depending on how many sell orders and buy orders there are in a market. Sell orders consist of all production of the good as well as imports. Buy orders consist of all consumption of the good as well as exports.

Buildings have different production methods which the player can switch between. These methods primarily change the types and amounts of input goods, and in some cases also alter the types or amounts of output goods. They will also typically change the composition of Pops staffing the building.

Society gardening

The government is composed of various interest groups (IGs), who represent the material stakeholders of the countries. IGs have their opinions on laws, are supported by Pops, and have their own Characters such as leaders and generals. There are eight IGs in the game, but their ideology, supporters, power, and names can change through the course of a game and will be different for each country. Pops may also support movements which are more ideological in nature.

Every nation also has its own income and three additional resources named capacities. These are  bureaucracy,  authority, and  influence. The three capacities are non-accumulative: they have a constant generation and usage, but surpluses and deficits are not stored. Instead, the country receives bonuses or maluses for surpluses and deficits (respectively).

Core game loop

The core game loop involves:

1. Construction: The player is primarily responsible for deciding which buildings will be built where, and can also change the production method of buildings in their country. This is the main way nations change their economic and political makeup. Pops will construct buildings themselves as well through the investment pool, but the player is still responsible for most construction.
2. Laws: The player is responsible for deciding which laws to attempt enacting and when. However, whether or not a law can pass will depend on interest groups and movements, and interest groups may even ask the player to attempt certain laws.
3. Diplomacy: The player is responsible for their nation's geopolitical strategy. They can form alliances, declare wars, form trade agreements, and attempt many other actions with other countries.
4. Warfare: The player is responsible for strategic oversight of warfare. Although they cannot directly control units like in other grand strategy games, they determine personnel by hiring generals, giving them orders, and deciding which armies goes to which fronts.
5. Technology: Like many other strategy games, the player is responsible for setting the nation's research priorities.

There are many other actions such as enacting decrees, colonizing countries, and changing taxes, but the core game loop involves construction, laws, diplomacy, and technology.

Recommended beginner countries

In general a beginner should look for a country with no immediate threats, that doesn't start at war and is neither too large to easily manage nor so small that doing anything at all is difficult.

Belgium is a two-state country in Western Europe sandwiched between Prussia, Luxembourg, France, and the Netherlands. Its location provides it a front seat to the brutal fighting in Europe without being directly involved, as Great Britain, France, and Prussia will all have good relations with it and will almost never go after it. Belgium also starts with a strong industrial base with great access to all the vital resources for industrialization (wood, iron, and coal). Goals for a Belgium playthrough include building a large colonial empire and/or eventually attacking the Netherlands to form the United Netherlands.

Sweden is a five-state country in Northern Europe. Due to its location, involvement in the war of others is an option and not a necessity, and your neighbors don't require much to keep peace: Denmark has few resources for war, Prussia is relatively friendly and a valuable market, while Russia will industrialize later due to the state of its society. Sweden has ample access to resources, great resource modifiers for state specialization, a strong literacy rate, and a society conducive to liberal reforms. Forming Scandinavia (diplomatically or militarily) and trying to free Finland from Russia's grasp can be goals for a Sweden run.

Dai Nam is a four-state country in Southeast Asia, near several regional powers including Siam and the Dutch East Indies. Unlike the other two nations on this list, Dai Nam is an unrecognized country, and it is a good primer on learning how to play as one of those. It provides a relatively tame experience in this regard, unlike (say) Japan and China which face significant challenges and unique content early on. Nevertheless, as with most countries of its type, the player will have to contend with the obstacles of a less industrialised country including low literacy, 'backwards' laws and a strong  Landowners interest group.

Other fun nations that are relatively beginner-friendly include Spain, Persia, the United States, Brazil, and Colombia.

Initial steps

"Before you try building trains and guns, why not feed your pops." – Paul Depre, QA Manager at Paradox Games

Before unpausing

When you start a new game, it is best to analyze your country's situation before you unpause.

Diplomacy: Who are the major powers in your area? Who are the potential threats? Do you have any treaties, alliances or defensive pacts already? As a beginner, it is better to try and be as diplomatic as possible. Improve relations with your larger neighbours, and if possible try and eventually get a defensive pact or an alliance with one of the great powers in your region (typically the UK, France, or Russia).

Geography: The most important natural resources in the early game are  wood,  iron, and  coal. Later on, you will also want  sulfur and  lead. Do you have any provinces that produce a lot of those resources? Are there any of those five that you don't produce at all? If yes (especially coal and iron), you will need to find expansion targets near you that have those resources. However, it is not advisable for a beginner to play a country that lacks coal or iron (especially an Isolationist one), as it will be difficult to learn how to industrialise without a solid domestic supply of those.

Politics: How do your laws look like? Laws that impede industrialisation include Traditionalism, Isolationism, and Serfdom. Laws that empower the Landowners (who you will want to disempower if you wish to liberalise and industrialise) include Autocracy/ Oligarchy, Hereditary Bureaucrats, Local Police Force, Peasant Levies, Serfdom, and any form of Slavery. If you want to play a standard liberal game, these are the laws you will want to change over time. If you want to roleplay a conservative run, it is still recommended to get rid of very inefficient economic laws like Traditionalism and Serfdom and instead keep some of the other conservative laws instead.

Buildings: Which buildings are currently in your country and which production methods do they use? Are there some that would be better off by using a more advanced one?

Journal Entries: The journal provides a list of unique events, decisions etc., which often comes with specific parameters to achieve. They can be either goals to strive for or things to avoid.

"Depeasanting"

At the start of the game, regardless of which country you play, a significant portion of your POPs will be  peasants. These are people working in subsistence farms: they get paid subpar wages, they have a very low Standard of Living (SoL), and they only consume a small amount of goods. The rest of their needs are paid in subsistence output, a package that includes food, clothing, furniture and everything else they need to survive. This means they will not buy clothing from your clothing mills and groceries from your food industries, limiting the profitability of all your buildings. The only positive thing that can be said about peasants is that it prevents your population from dying of hunger most of the time.

The goal of the early-game is to "depeasant" your population – to give those peasants jobs in farms, factories, and mines, so that they get paid higher wages and so that they can consume goods, thus stimulating your economy. As long as you have a substantial amount of peasants in your country, you are in the early-game, which means that large agrarian countries like Qing may be in the "early game" stage well into the 1890s.

Depeasanting your population involves the "construction loop".  Construction points are some of the most valuable resources in the game, and you can think of the number of Construction Sectors you have as a proxy for your GDP growth rate. Your main play pattern in the early game will be creating construction sectors, then creating the inputs for construction sectors to make the construction sectors less expensive, and then repeating. This will increasingly stimulate the economy: you pay money to construct buildings, these buildings manufacture goods, those buildings pay other buildings, their workers can buy more goods, which pay more buildings and so on. You should always be constructing buildings outside of dire emergencies like very difficult wars or an insurmountable debt spiral.

Initial budgeting

You can start by opening the Budget tab on the left to set taxes. You should almost always set taxes at the start of the game to High. While this will reduce your Pops' SoL which is usually not a good thing, the added revenue will help you build more construction sectors and buildings and open up more job openings, improving their SoL in the the long-term.

You should levy Consumption Taxes on goods consumed by wealthy pops (that is, the upper strata). You can check which goods each strata consumes by clicking the Population tab on the left, and expanding the "Needs" row. Find goods that the upper strata consumes at a high amount and the lower strata does not – typically, these include  Services,  Transportation,  Luxury Clothes,  Luxury Furniture, Drinks and some others. Levy a few of these depending on how much revenue they earn and how much  Authority you have overall – it's good to float a little Authority for the law enactment time bonus, and to implement decrees.

It is better to levy consumption taxes on upper strata-consumed goods for two reasons:

• Consumption taxes on luxury goods require less authority per good taxed.
• Standard of Living is logarithmic – a 10% reduction in wealth of a richer 20 Standard of Living Pop gives you more leeway than a 10% reduction in wealth of a poorer 7 SoL Pop. Additionally, a reduction of SoL below 10 means a significant reduction in birth rate and increase in death rate, while a reduction above 15 does not.

You can also consider lowering military wages and/or government wages to increase revenue even further to facilitate even more production.

The construction loop

Using the additional revenue, you can now build  Construction Sectors. You want to focus your construction sectors and industrial base in one or two states. This is because of two reasons:

• Throughput bonuses, which is a percentage bonus that increases the amount of input goods consumed and output goods produced. Every added level of a building in a state increases its throughput bonus by 1%, which means you get more supply and demand of goods for the same price.
• MAPI (see below).

To determine these states, look for states that have both  iron and  coal, and if there are none, then look for states that have lots of both iron and  wood and lots of peasants. For example, this would be Gotaland and Svealand as Sweden, or Tohoku and Kanto as Japan. Build construction sectors in these states (and ideally turn on the Road Maintenance decree in those states, to get more construction efficiency and infrastructure). Keep building construction sectors until you do not have a budget surplus anymore or expanding a construction sector would result in a shortage.

Note that there are countries that are so small, that the number of construction sectors they can support initially is 0. Then you want to build using only your 10 base construction until you have an economy that can support construction sectors at all.

The next step is to create the inputs for these construction sectors. At the start of the game, before you've researched Atmospheric Engine, or if you have no access to iron or coal at all, it is recommended to stick on the Wooden Buildings production method for your Construction Sectors. Afterwards, you should change your Construction Sectors to Iron-Frame Buildings as they are much more efficient. The inputs to the construction sectors are wood+fabric (for Wooden Buildings), and wood+fabric+iron+tools (for Iron-Frame Buildings). Fabric isn't too important to produce as it is the smallest part, and the Aristocrats in the investment pool will likely construct  Cotton Plantations or  Livestock Ranches for you (and you can often import it if needed). However, Wood, Iron, and Tools are the central part of the construction loop. With Atmospheric Engine, Coal gets added to the loop to increase iron production, and once steel tools have been invented, Steel can be considered a part of the construction loop too, since it is used to create  tools.

Wood is produced using Tools (with the Saw Mills production method), Tools are produced using Wood and Iron/Steel, Steel is produced using Iron and Coal, Iron is produced using Tools and Coal, and Coal is produced using Tools. This forms a closed loop, and this is the loop you want to focus on. Build these in the states you've picked as your industrial bases (or wherever they're available) to keep their prices low (in the 0% to −10% range – although steel can be more expensive and wood can be less expensive). This will keep all of their buildings profitable and stimulate the economy, while also making construction sectors cheaper, decreasing your expenditure. Additionally, your increased GDP and Pop incomes will increase your budget revenues. This leads to a higher surplus, which means you can sustain more construction sectors, which means you can build more wood/tools/iron, and so on and so forth. This is fundamentally how you build up the economy in the early game.

While you work on the construction loop, your private construction queue will take care of consumer goods and food. Whenever the construction goods are around base prices but the budget cannot allow for more construction sectors, you can instead build consumer goods, expand the military, and build universities.

MAPI (Market Access Price Index)

Market Access Price Index (MAPI) is one of the most important modifiers in the game, and also one of its least understood concepts. MAPI effectively functions as a money-leaking transport cost and can be intuitively thought of as determining how much it costs to move wares from one state to another. For each good there are actually two prices within a state: the actual market price within the market, and a state price that is only calculated from buy and sell orders within the state. These are combined to create an actual local price which is a weighted average of the two, with the weight of the market price being the MAPI modifier itself.

Buildings and POPs always use the local price. Because of this, MAPI will always reduce profits between interstate commerce. If you have a number of iron mines in Tohuku, then Tohuku will have a lower state price of iron than market price (as there are relatively more sell orders in the state). If you then have a number of construction sectors in Kansai, Kansai will have a higher state price of iron than market price (as there are relatively more buy orders in the state). This monetary difference completely vanishes into thin air: your producers will earn less than they actually should and your consumers will pay more than they actually should. As such, having a lower MAPI is always a bad thing.

The base MAPI is 75%. The main way to increase MAPI is through tech. This is why Stock Exchange is one of the most important early-game techs to unlock. The law Traditionalism decreases MAPI by 15%, making it one of the worst laws in the game. It is possible to get to 100%, but only in the very late game.

Even if you did not understand the math, the purpose of MAPI is effectively to make you think about 'vertical integration'. Placing buildings that produce a certain output good and buildings that use it as an input good will generally be more economically efficient. This is why building tall industrial bases rather than spreading out your industry widely is a better option, and it also applies with other loops such as with  fertilizer and  sulfur.

MAPI also affect consumers. Having all your staple goods (food, clothing, furniture) in a few states, makes it really expensive for your working class (without anybody profiting from their poverty). This is counteracted, however, by the fact that having more levels of a building in the same state increases throughput, so it is a balancing act.

Other things to note

Of course, you shouldn't just build the construction loop like a robot with no further thought. There are other things to pay attention to, and it's okay to take things slow and not go overdrive in the loop because of other concerns.

National revenue: Unlike many other strategy games, the national revenue isn't the be all end-all in Victoria 3. Although as a beginner you still want to not run into too much debt (especially not as an unrecognized country), your goal shouldn't be to maximise revenue at all costs. A stockpile of gold does not have any advantages except making it possible to run at a deficit for a while. It's much better to run small surpluses and/or small deficits (and, as you get better at the game, debt spending) to instead stimulate the economy.

Infrastructure: It's important to make sure you aren't going too much over the infrastructure cap before you've researched Railways, since they are the main way to increase infrastructure. Each building in a state takes up a certain amount of infrastructure. When building, the UI will tell you how much infrastructure you have. If it's a coastal state, you can always increase infrastructure before Railroads by building Ports, but this tends to be very inefficient. The road maintenance decree can also be used as a makeshift solution. States with insufficient infrastructure can't buy and sell their local goods on the wider market efficiently, making both people in that state and outside much poorer.

Bureaucracy deficits: Make sure to keep an eye out on your bureaucracy capacity. If it goes negative, you will receive a tax waste malus, which decreases your revenue and may quickly get out of hand. Be vigilant in construct  Government Administrations if bureaucracy decreases and keep a small buffer. It's also a good idea to treat  Paper (the input good for Government Administrations) as a sort of construction good and to build  Paper Mills to keep its prices low, as the government directly pays for Paper. Do keep in mind though, that it is possible that the additional cost of expanding the government administration can be higher than the taxes gained, making the whole point moot.

Technology: Technologies are researched both directly by the player and through passive spread. The average literacy of your population is key to both, as it both increases the passive spread directly, as well as limits the amount of innovation that can be produced by universities. The two most important technologies in the early game are Stock Exchange and Atmospheric Engine. Stock Exchange increases your market price access impact, as explained above. Atmospheric Engine unlocks the Atmospheric Engine Pump production method for  Iron Mines and  Coal Mines, which significantly increases their value and makes them more viable to construct.

Consumer goods: While waiting for revenues to rise during the construction loop, it's a good idea to also build some consumer goods. As your Pops leave subsistence farms, they'll consume more goods, which provides an opportunity to build profitable buildings. The best buildings to construct in this regard are  Furniture Manufacturies and  Textile Mills, which build furniture and clothes for your Pops respectively, as well as assuring that there is enough food available for everyone.

Trade: You don't have to produce everything yourself. By building  Trade Centers you can import goods from the world market. Trade runs autonomously and the main way you interact with the system is by increasing tariffs and subventions and building more trade centers. Trade centers use the good  Merchant Marine, which is produced by  Ports.

Mid game and Late game industrialization

As the game progresses and more and more inventions are unlocked, the production chains are going to become more and more complex with a larger array of different inputs needed. In the beginning the construction loop only involves  wood,  iron,  coal,  steel,  tools and  fabric. In the 20th century it will also include  electricity,  explosives and  glass, which indirectly also involves  lead,  dye,  sulfur,  paper,  fertilizer and  engines. The same is true for practically all industries.  Textile Mills goes from just using fabric to using both  fabric,  tools,  dye,  rubber and  electricity. Logging camps go from using no input at all, to just  tools, to tools,  transportation,  engines,  oil and  electricity. Additionally, inventions will also have your POPs crave these new inventions such as  automobiles and  telephones.

Not only does this mean you have to build more types of factories. Several resources, crucial to late game industries, can only be found in specific location, so you would have to either trade, colonize or conquer to get them. This is especially true of oil and rubber. Speaking of which...

Resource discovery

Some types of resources you will not find a single potential for in 1836 anywhere in the world, namely  rubber and  oil. These will instead be discovered as inventions are unlocked that allow for their exploitation. Specific other resources also have hidden deposits such as  gold. There are some techs that increases the likelihood of discovery, but otherwise there is not much to do but wait.

Companies

Companies are on of the strongest tools to build a good economy in the game, and choosing them is one of the most important decision at all. There are no downsides to picking a company, so it is purely a matter of opportunity cost. This makes Corporate Charters and Joint-Stock Companies some of the best technologies in the game.

Generally companies should be established as soon as possible, although it might be worth waiting a little while, if there is a better company that just need one more building. Flavored companies are generally the strongest, although not always.

Labour-saving PM's

Some production methods do not change or increase the output, but instead decrease the amount of workers, typically labourers, needed. The use of these are situational. Sometimes they are an absolute necessity, sometimes they are actively harmful. If it just leads to unemployment, it is not a good thing, even if it on paper increases factory productivity. Unemployed POPs don't pay taxes, and they buy less stuff, meaning other factories can't sell as many wares, and their Standard of Living drops, leading to lower birthrate. This is especially true early in the game, when countries typically has no social security what-so-ever. On the other hand, if firing 5000 workers means, you can just build a new factory, then it is (typically) a good thing.

How you should think about profitability

In most other strategy games you mostly think about buildings in terms of what they provide/produce. In Victoria 3 it is important to build towards a profitable industry. More profit means capitalists and aristocrats contribute more to the investment pool, or in more socialist societies, it contributes to the wealth of the workers. Furthermore, it increases GDP which by itself increases both the money you get from minting as well as your country's prestige.

Therefore, it is not a good thing to have all wares at really low prices, because it means that you are likely missing out on profit you could get by either getting your population to buy more or by exporting it. Having some goods be really expensive means a lot of money is being made. However there are situations where you want goods to be cheap. If you are still in the depeasanting phase, you want construction goods to be relatively cheap so you can build more construction sectors. If the working class is struggling and you have a Standard of Living below 10, you want staple goods (that's basic clothing, furniture, food, heating) to be cheaper. If you are fighting an expensive war you want military goods to be relatively cheap. But otherwise, you want wares you are producing to be expensive, so more money can be made. Thus, foreign countries importing all your goods, making everything really expensive is not a bad thing.

When you are choosing where to build a new building you can see a projected profitability. This is a guideline and a prediction, but should not be seen as gospel. It is inaccurate as it doesn't factor in potential increased export or decreased imports, POPs changing jobs, decreases in welfare spending or POPs changing their buy package (for example choosing to buy  wine over  coffee if you just built your first  Vineyard). It also doesn't factor in other buildings you have queued up or PM's you intend to change because you now have access to a new resource. For example if you build your very first coal mine, it will likely predict a relatively low profitability, but you know that you will just change iron mines to atmospheric engine and you have a steel mill as the next building coming up, so obviously it will not stay that way. Observe the projected profitability, but think for yourself.

Note that there are a few exceptions; buildings that will for long periods will not be profitable, but you still want them solely for their output. You generally don't really think of them as industry as such, and they likely have to subsidized by the government. These are typically electricity plants and munition plants. Railways and ports can sometimes fit this description too, depending on production methods and the price of transportation and merchant marines, respectively.

When building consumer industries, you should like with the construction loop think about the natural resources each state has.  Textile Mills are best placed in states that also produce  fabric,  silk and/or  dye,  Paper Mills are best placed in states that produce  sulfur and  wood etc due to their input goods and MAPI. It is however a bit more complicated than with construction, since textile mills are also best if they are placed close to where your consumers are, and paper mills are best placed in states with large universities or government administrations, where they provide the required input goods.

Foreign investment

Both getting foreign investment rights in a another country and giving it away is a double edged sword. The benefit to giving foreign investment is obviously that you might get buildings for free using another country's investment pool and  construction points. The downside is that the profit is taken out of the country, removing the money from your economy. The benefits to getting investment rights is the inverse. Your private construction (or government for that matter) will not be all used to provide employment in your own country, but profit from elsewhere will be send back.

For large countries with minuscule industry and lots of  peasants such as Russia or China, it is very beneficial to give investment rights away, while smaller, but richer countries like Sweden or Belgium, it is beneficial to get investment rights elsewhere.

When choosing who to give investment rights, you should consider which companies they have, especially the ones with prestige goods, but also consider the diplomatic ramifications.

Lastly, it is very beneficial to give investment rights to a country, that you expect to later annex in a unification, such as Prussia giving investment rights to Bavaria, since all the ownership will end up in Germany anyway, and when a unification happen, the smaller countries' investment pools will be lost of anyway.

Politics

The main way politics is interacted with is through the 8 Interest Groups (IGs) representing different socioeconomic sections of society. What exactly each IG believes in varies from country to country, but there is always some overlap.  Landowners are always for No Workers' Rights and against Homesteading,  Devout are always in favour of State Religion, etc.

The power of each interest group is called Clout, and it is mostly defined by how many and which POPs support them. Clout is a zero-sum game: the sum of all IGs' Clout adds up to 100%, meaning strengthening one is also weakening all the others. Different Pop types tend to support different interest groups: officers tend to support the  Armed Forces and labourers tend to support the  Trade Unions. Additionally, richer Pops have higher Political strength than poorer Pops and accepted POPs have higher than foreigners. Essentially, the clout of each interest group depends on which buildings are in the country, who is working in them, and who owns them, so choosing what to construct is also choosing who you support politically. The exact relation between POP support and political power depends on the laws of the country. For example under autocracy, wealth is the by far biggest contributor to political power. Under universal suffrage, a large part of how much power each group has depends on how many votes each party gets. Since everyone can vote, wealth matters relatively less.

There are also laws that directly increases the power a certain interest group, for example Local Police Force increases the power of the landowners by 25%. Events and negotiations can also change the clout of an IG.

Enacting laws

When you enact laws, interest groups will either be opposed to or support the change. The power of each interest group that opposes defines the stall chance, while the power of each interest group in  government that supports the new law, increases the enactment chance.

As the happiness of opposing groups go down, passing many laws in a row that is unpopular with the same group can be difficult, and even in the best case scenario it is creating  radicals and activates the interest group's negative trait. Therefore it can be a good idea to take turns in which interest group you are trying to make mad. When an opposing interest group is really happy, it is often the best time to enact a law.

Characters

See also: Character

Each interest group has a  leader. They can add additional opinions on top of the standard opinions of that interest group. For example the Trade Unions can be either Vanguardist of Social Democrat or a third ideology depending on the leader.

Characters can also act as  Agitators, that influence politics from outside the formal system by supporting political movements.

Lastly  Generals and  Admirals also support an interest group, and hiring and promoting them increases the clout of said interest group.

It is possible to manipulate politics by inviting or exiling agitators, hiring and promoting generals, and making sure that certain desired characters takes over as interest group leader.

Diplomatic plays and warfare

See also: Diplomatic play

To start a war, you must first make a diplomatic demand which results in a diplomatic play, which is a precursor to the war. While the play is ongoing, either side can make more demands or try to negotiate with third-parties to join their side. Either side can back down during the play, meaning that a war does not start, and even if no-one does, many wars are decided before they even begin. This makes diplomatic plays inherently unpredictable in nature. The countries that can get involved are the ones that has an interest in the area, either due to owning land there or because they have declared an interest. You should try to get an overview of which countries could potentially be involved against you, either due to being unfriendly with you, or because your enemy has something that they could possibly want. Be aware that even if two countries are diplomatically at odds with each other, they can still get on the same side, because a target might trade away some of their states or their independence for support. Especially Great Britain and France have interests in basically the entire world, so they are practically always relevant.

Note that all demands must be made before a war breaks out. Your first demand is your primary demand, as well as all that has been added by swaying a third-party. All other demands are secondary. Primary demands are enforced if the opposing side backs down before a war start, while secondary demands are only enforced after a war. This means that you sometimes want the opposing side to back down, so you save lives and money, and sometimes you are hoping to provoke the war, so you can enforce all goals.

Once a war breaks out, it is important to know that the soldiers fighting are your actual POPs, not an abstraction. When soldiers die, you lose POPs. When they get injured, POPs will go from being in the work force to being dependents. Even if you win a war, it might leave you in a much weaker position.

Wars are fought with armies and navies, which are made up of barracks and naval bases; two types of buildings you can construct in each state. When your POPs take jobs in your barracks, you armies and navies will be created. You can also use conscripts to bolster the army (but not the navy). When you do so a temporary building is created, that functions much like a barracks do. It is just slower to mobilize, since you can't hire soldiers in peace time, and conscript soldiers will not have any experience, since they haven't trained during peace time. Additionally, they all become unemployed again once the war ends.

Winning wars

Each demand you make in a diplomatic play is associated with a certain war goal; something you have to achieve in order to win the war. Each type of is a specific state you have to occupy, related to the actual demand. If you haven't occupied all war goals, war exhaustion will not drop below zero and the enemy will never capitulate and very rarely be willing to negotiate a peace, where they are the losing party.

Note that occupying the capital counts as any and all war goals.

Supplies

To keep your military fit for purpose, they must have daily access to the required military goods such as  small arms,  artillery,  ammunition among others. You could import those, but that is a fragile arrangement at best due to potential embargoes, blockades etc. It is much more reliable to produce them domestically or import them via treaties from trusted allies.

Generals and Admirals

 Generals lead armies and  admirals lead navies. When you want to do something with your military, you give an order to a commander and then they carry it out. It is possible for an army to fight defensively without a commander, but it hurts their organization a lot.

Commanders have different traits, which makes them better or worse at specific things. Some traits as positive, some are negative and some are trade-offs. They also belong to an interest group, and hiring and promoting them strengthens that interest group. So you must consider both the political landscape as well as their abilities when choosing which general/admiral to hire.

Infamy

See also: infamy

Managing infamy is crucial to diplomacy, as getting it too high will have your subjects turn against you, diplomacy gets more expensive and have the (other) great powers be much more involved against you. The crucial thresholds are 25, 50, 75 and 100. Especially at 100, at which you turn into a  pariah, where every other great power gets Cut Down to Size casus belli against you. At that point you would have to be able to hold in a defensive war against practically the entire world combined.

Note that infamy decays monthly, and a near constant rate and there are only a few ways to affect it in either direction. There is also no intrinsic benefits to having 0 infamy, and the vast majority of countries start at 0. So the best opening play for many countries is to get a little infamy, so the monthly decay can actually be put to work.

References

Victoria 3