Victoria 3 – Capacity (Currency Guide)

Capacity Guide

Capacities are 3 of the 4 main “currencies” in the game (with the 4th one being money). Each capacity represents one specific area of the nation’s ability to govern and is used solely for matters relating to that area.

Capacities, the game’s “currencies” as shown on the top-left corner near the nation’s flag.

Generation and Usage

Currencies in Victoria 3 are rooted in the game’s mechanics as to not feel arbitrary. The resources arise and spent in clearly defined ways that are parts of the simulation with some degree of abstraction involved.

As such, unlike more “regular” game currencies, capacities are not a pooled resource and are not accumulated or spent. Instead, they have a constant generation and a constant usage, and the player should generally strive to keep their usage from exceeding their generation. For example, a country that incorporates territories left and right without expanding its bureaucratic corps may quickly find itself mired in debt as tax collection collapses under the strain!

There is an effect for each capacity which is positive if generation exceeds usage and very negative if usage exceeds generation.

Capacity Types

Bureaucracy represents a nation’s ability to govern, invest in and collect taxes from its incorporated territory. It is produced by the government administration building, where many of a nation’s bureaucrats will be employed. All of a nation’s incorporated states use a base amount of bureaucracy which increases with the size of their population, and further increased by each institution (such as education or law enforcement) that a country has invested in. Overall, the purpose of bureaucracy is to ensure that there is a cost to ruling over, taxing and providing for the nation’s population.

Authority represents the head of state’s personal power and ability to enact change in the country through decree. It is generated from the country’s laws — generally, the more repressive and authoritarian the country, the more authority it will generate — and is used by a variety of actions such as enacting decrees in specific states, interacting with interest groups and promoting or banning certain types of goods. Overall, the purpose of authority is to create an interesting trade-off between more and less authoritarian societies — by shifting the distribution of power away from the pops into the hands of the ruler, the ability to rule by decree is increased, and vice versa.

Influence represents a country’s ability to conduct diplomacy and its reach on the global stage. It is generated primarily from the country’s rank (great powers have more influence than major powers and so on) and is used to support ongoing diplomatic actions and pacts, such as improving relations, alliances, trade deals, subjects and so on. Overall, the purpose of influence is to force players to make interesting choices about which foreign countries they want to build strong diplomatic relationships with.