Are you unsure on how to increase or decrease clout in Victoria 3? Here’s everything you need to know.
The most fascinating and the most frustrating part of Victoria 3 is how it deals with politics, power struggles and revolution. It boils every aspect of political power into a percentage that is called ‘clout’. Clout in Victoria 3 is the ratio of power that any political faction holds. Being aware of each faction’s current clout and how it obtains clout is extremely important to any playthrough.
How to see how much clout a faction has in Victoria 3
You can see each interest group’s clout by going to the ‘politics’ display and using the ‘government’ tab. If you hover over the clout percentage, it will break down how this percentage is arrived at.
You’ll be able to see much wealth and popular support is contributing to this political power, as well as any modifiers that are affecting this number.
Increasing and decreasing clout in Victoria 3
The most obvious way to increase or decrease clout in Victoria 3 is to change the wealth and/or popular support of each individual interest group.
Popular support is the population that belong to a chosen interest group and their level of political activeness. Some parts of your population will be torn between different groups and can be manipulated.
One way you can do this is by bolstering or suppressing the interest group’s attractiveness. (However, if you have the law ‘protect free speech’ enacted, this won’t be allowed). Some laws also increase the effectiveness of these options. You will need sufficient authority points left and you can’t suppress a group that is in government.
Another way to build on the popular support of an interest group is to create jobs that are likely to align with a particular interest group. Building universities will increase the amount of academics in your nations who most often support the Intelegencia, for example.
The relative wealth of the population can be changed subtly as well. Building jobs and increasing the standard of living for the chosen group equates to more wealth and therefore more power.
Be tactical
But instead of just increasing the population and wealth of particular groups in Victoria 3, you can change the equation. Depending on the laws in place, wealth and popular support will count for more or less. Laws can also amplify the power gained for particular types of people, such as aristocrats and military personnel. These laws are under the column of ‘power structure’ and shifting from one policy to another will have drastic changes when it comes to clout.
For example, moving from an autocracy to a democratic voting system makes wealth less influential and makes popular support of the group of greater importance. You also can dictate who is an active citizen as discrimination of culture will impact how much popular support they generate.
These power structure laws are hard to change as the current system will normally suit those with the most power. When changing these laws often the powerful interest groups get significantly annoyed and become radicalised. Depending on the clout that they possess, they might be able to start a civil war. You will get a warning and you will be able to mend relations before anything happens. But if a revolt does break out, then the more powerful these groups are, the better they’ll be at waging war. Read more about radicals and revolutions in Victoria 3 here.
There is a possibility of using this to your advantage, as a successful civil war will stomp out any clout from the rebellious factions for a decent chunk of time. You can use this to permanently change the laws of governance to restrict them ever being a nuisance again.
But this is often a difficult battle and hurts your economy for a long while after. We therefore advise to slowly chip away at those you want to wrestle control from. Take away any modifiers that are less contentious and create an economy that bolsters those you align with.
