[Victoria 3] Victorial 3 Mod Tutorial – Modifying Maximum Building Capacity for a Single Building

2023-07-08 / Modding / 365 views

[Victoria 3] Victorial 3 Mod Tutorial – Modifying Maximum Building Capacity for a Single Building

When playing Victoria 3, if you’re dissatisfied with certain values in the game, you can customize them using the method described in this article. Of course, many things have already been modified by mods, so before you decide to do it yourself, you can search for relevant content. For example, I found it frustrating that there’s only 20 construction power for one building per week, which limits the early-game economy of small countries. Therefore, I wanted to modify the maximum production power of a building. Here’s an example of the process:

First, right-click Victoria 3 on Steam and open the game folder:

The folder \Victoria 3\game\common contains the relevant data of the game, and you can directly modify these data. However, it’s recommended to create a mod, as it allows you to avoid having to modify the files every time the game updates.

The parameter for construction power that we want to modify is in \Victoria 3\game\common\defines\00_defines.txt. If you want to modify other parameters, you can explore on your own. Open the file:
Inside, you’ll find various game data parameters. You can determine their functions based on the English entries and the comments following them. The entry we’re interested in for this article is MAX_WEEKLY_CONSTRUCTION_PROGRESS, and you can locate it by using the ctrl+f search function. Here’s the code snippet you’ll find:

NEconomy = {
    MAX_WEEKLY_CONSTRUCTION_PROGRESS = 20               # Max construction progress per week on a single project
    MAX_WEEKLY_CONSTRUCTION_ALLOCATION = 20             # Max construction points allocated to a project per week
    MIN_CONSTRUCTION_EFFICIENCY = 0.05                  # Construction efficiency cannot go below this amount

    # The number of times the initializewealth function is run during setup
    # The more times you run this the more accurate setup will be for Pop wealth compared to income 
    NUM_TIMES_TO_INITIALIZE_WEALTH = 10                 
    COUNTRY_GDP_MODIFIER_DIVISOR = 1000                 # Scale the country_gdp static modifier 
......
}

MAX_WEEKLY_CONSTRUCTION_PROGRESS = 20 is the default value in the game. If you don’t want to use a mod, you can directly modify this value. The following section explains how to create a mod.

Create a new folder named "Building speed plus" in the directory My Documents\Paradox Interactive\Victoria 3\mod\. This folder will be your mod folder, and you can choose any name you like. Inside the folder, create two more folders named .metadata and common. Additionally, add a file named thumbnail.png, which will serve as the preview thumbnail for your mod.

The .metadata folder will contain basic information about your mod, such as its name and version. Create a new file called metadata.json inside the .metadata folder and open it with a text editor. Here’s an example of its contents:

{
  "name" : "Building speed plus",
  "id" : "",
  "version" : "",
  "supported_game_version" : "",
  "short_description" : "",
  "tags" : [],
  "relationships" : [],
  "game_custom_data" : {
    "multiplayer_synchronized" : true
  }
}

If you’re creating the mod for personal use, you can leave the rest of the fields blank. The corresponding English terms should be self-explanatory.

Note that the folder common you added here should correspond to the location of the file you want to modify. In this article, we’re modifying the file \Victoria 3\game\common\defines\00_defines.txt, so the folder structure should be common\defines\00_defines.txt. This tells the mod where the file to be modified is located. Inside the Building speed plus\common folder, create a subfolder named defines, and finally, create a text document and rename it to 00_defines.txt.

Copy the field you want to modify from the previous section and adjust the data. In my case, I only modified MAX_WEEKLY_CONSTRUCTION_PROGRESS = 35, which changes the construction power limit of a building to 35 per week. (Click on the image to enlarge it)

Save the file and close it. Now, open the game and see the results. Remember to enable the mod. Here, you can see our newly created mod and enable it.