Victoria 3 is all about micro-managing your state from the macro level to the micro level. As your nation progresses, you will soon be facing a bunch of challenges that a country faces. Amongst these challenges is the threat of turning your population into Radicals which, if gone unchecked, could lead to a Revolution. How can you reduce Radicals in Victoria 3, let us find out?
You can reduce Radicals in Victoria 3 by focusing on the following ways that hurt your population:
- Standard of Living
- Political Movement
- Fired from Buildings
- Discrimination
Radicals in Victoria 3
Radicals come into existence within a nation if some groups of the population become unhappy with the government’s actions, be it the law it has passed or how it has reacted to a certain tumultuous event. They can also increase if the standard of living of the nation has become poor or if they are facing discrimination of some kind.
If these Radicals are not dealt with proper counteractions then their increasing number could band up together and start causing turmoil in the country. They can also penetrate the government by forming political parties and start impacting the policies of the state. The worst they can do is start a revolution and overthrow the current status quo.
Needless to say, Radicals are to be heard and given proper attention in the decisions of the state to save your nation from total disarray.
Reducing Radicals in Victoria 3
There are 4 main criteria to focus on when trying to reduce Radicals in Victoria 3:
Standard of Living
Standard of Living is the most important part for Radicals (Lower Strata) and should be the one you want to focus on the most. To view the overall Standard of Living you need to go to the population map mode from where you can see the entire population.
Then you hover over each standard of the living sector and you can see how many people are mad about their standard of living. As you can see from the picture above, only 2.2% of Pops in that area don’t like the standard of living.
If you click the “pay average of” link then it will open up the Pop Needs windows from where you can figure out what you need to decrease in price. As you can see these are all the pop needs and you can decrease the price.
You also want to pay attention to the things at the bottom of this list as a lot of these things are usually high-quality standards of living if you don’t have them like Wine and Opium. So if you decrease the price of say Wine and Opium then the lower levels of the population are more likely to buy them easily.
However, you should decrease the price of the things at the top of the list because it’s what the population usually spends the most money on and that will certainly increase their standard of living.
You do need to be careful as each area has a different amount of standard of living and the higher-end or Upper Strata’s standard of living usually has a bigger impact on your radicals. This is because the Upper Strata is more involved in the policies of the nation.
You also have to be careful about increasing the standard of living and then causing it to be lowered later on. You have to keep the standard of living high. The reason why the population is radicalized here is that you raised the standard of living and then some decisions of yours lowered it.
So you want to make sure you maintain a high standard of living. If you increase it to a point then you shouldn’t decrease it anymore as decreasing it, is what gets the pops mad.
Political Movement
Another way to get the population to like you is by passing Political Movements that they would like to see.
You may see political movements on the right side of your screen. As you can see in the picture above, there’s a movement to “Enact the Right of Assembly”, if you can enact this then it will probably increase the popularity of a lot of people however it may also decrease the popularity if it’s not a popular law.
Taking the same example as above, as you can see 22% support this while 21% will become radical because of it. So considering this you will have to pick your battles and balance your choices to see what will be radical or not.
Fired from Buildings
Another big reason for Radicals to increase is because of Buildings i.e. people getting Fired from Buildings. This happens when you change your technology.
Let’s examine this with the Food Industries. If you look at this building any changes here will have a lot of impacts when you change its technology. For example, if we change the Distilleries to Pot Stills, doing so will fire a whole bunch of people (as seen in the Decreased Employment) of a different word class. This portion of the population will be mad and in turn, radicalized as your actions have led to their unemployment.
Every time you change how exactly a building works, you’re most likely going to fire some people and those people will most likely become radicals. How do you prevent this? Well, you can’t really, as you will have to succumb to progress sooner or later and this is part of the game structure.
You can, however, micro-manage your advancements to not do it rapidly and fire a huge chunk of the population but take steps steadily so that you could deal with the negative impact at a manageable pace.
Discrimination
Discrimination is also a cause for Radicals. These are the people in your country that do not belong to your culture or religion. As a result of this, they are getting paid less and have less political strength amongst other things. This essentially means that they are part of your nation but don’t have rights.
To fix discrimination, you have to go into Politics then switch to the Laws tab, and then go into Citizenship law/option.
If you are a “National Supremacy” nation then it means that if the population does not belong to your culture, you are essentially against them, although your decisions can tackle this a bit it can get quite crazy. “Multiculturalism” is the most inclusive law and will probably stop people from being mad about discrimination.
Other Laws and Policies
Although we have covered the major reasons for Radicals to appear, there are some laws and policies that you can enact to control them:
- Militarised Police Force and Dedicated Police Force both provide bonus reductions to Radical gain from Standard of Living decreases, which is perfect if your economy is about to start faltering.
- The Law Enforcement institution, also provides the same bonus as the last, increasing as you put more points into it.
- National Guard and Secret Police laws reduce Political Movement Radicalism increases, allowing you to stave off a revolution for longer.
- Guaranteed Liberties is a powerful law as it reduces Radicals that are created from the Standard of Living decreases, while also increasing Loyalists that are created by Standard of Living increases.
- Home Affairs institution, provides the same bonuses as Guaranteed Liberties, increasing as you put more points into it.
Four reasons have the most impact on Radical gain and among them, the Standard of Living is on top. In reality, the conscience effort is more about not making radicals than getting rid of radicals. Getting rid of radicals happens naturally as long as you make the right calls and consider the demands of your population.