# Victoria 3 Victoria 3 - Dev Diary #182 - The Great Wave & Update 1.13 Now LIVE!

- Product: Victoria 3 (https://whatsnew.fyi/product/victoria-3)
- Vendor: Paradox Development Studio
- Date: 2026-04-28
- Original notes: https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/529340/view/535507353628312574
- Permalink: https://whatsnew.fyi/product/victoria-3/releases/2026-04-28-victoria-3-dev-diary-182-the-great-wave-update-1

What's New is an index, not a publisher: every entry below links to the vendor's own release notes, which are the authoritative source. Entries are labelled where they are hand-curated sample data, pre-releases, or drawn from a secondary source such as a developer blog.

Reuse: the summaries, labels and curation here are © What's New. Quote freely with attribution and a link back; wholesale republication of the corpus is not permitted — terms: https://whatsnew.fyi/terms. The vendors' own release notes remain their publishers'.

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- **added** — Ship Designer that allows customization of ship loadouts with templates for different ship types and modifications to Armor, Armament, Propulsion, and Supply Capacity
- **added** — Flagships with unique status that can be assigned to ships and customized with figurehead ornaments, earning prestige from successful battles
- **added** — Ship Transfer Treaty article for composing treaties that include ships as objects
- **added** — Gunboat diplomacy that allows threatening Naval Hostilities when signing treaties, enabling hostile naval activities for 180 days if the opposing side declines
- **added** — Port Bombardment fleet action allowing fleets to fire at coastal states to cause devastation and destroy buildings
- **added** — Piracy mission for unrecognized nations to seize trade passing through sea nodes and sell it in their market
- **added** — Treaty article to enforce abandonment of Piracy
- **added** — Privateering mission available to recognized nations during war or Naval Hostilities
- **added** — Hunt Pirates fleet action to crush pirate fleets set to the Piracy mission
- **added** — Power Bloc Principle group related to the Navy
- **added** — Multiple events for the Shogunal succession crises of the late Tokugawa and proclamation of new Shoguns
- **added** — Tenpō Crisis Journal Entry with 8 associated events for Japan
- **added** — Decision and Journal Entry for the Iwakura Mission in Japan
- **added** — Journal Entry dealing with the Zaibatsu
- **added** — Numerous events related to the Japanese royal family
- **added** — Grant Peerage character interaction allowing Monarchies to make characters into nobles at the cost of Authority
- **added** — Ostracize and Patronize character interactions to decrease and increase character Prominence or Popularity
- **added** — Five new events for Japan: Letters for All, The Unequal Calendars, A Year Recounted, The Westernization of Names, and The Question of Kanbun
- **added** — Shinbutsu bunri decision and Journal Entry for Japan

Hoist sails Victorians!

_The Great Wave _and Update 1.13, ‘Matcha’, are now live! With checksum: 3c23.

Command the waves in a time of ambition and upheaval. Design mighty warships, guard the world’s straits, and employ gunboat diplomacy to bend lesser powers to your will.

Use the power of your navy in order to dominate local rivals and keep foreign threats at bay.

Guide Japan through the last days of the Shogunate, navigating turmoil at home and pressure from abroad as you forge a modern power ready to challenge the greatest empires of the day.

You can pick up _The Great Wave_ right now, on (https://store.steampowered.com/app/4314650/Victoria_3_The_Great_Wave__Expansion/), on the [Paradox Store](https://www.paradoxinteractive.com/games/victoria-3/add-ons/victoria-3-the-great-wave) or as part of [Volume 3](https://store.steampowered.com/app/4314630/Victoria_3_Volume_3/).

Enjoy the release trailer below:

And yesterday we released an overview of Update 1.13:

If you can’t get enough videos, we released a [couple of videos](https://pdxint.at/3OPxcNd) covering the narrative and mechanics of the expansion to bring you up to speed.

Of course, if videos are not your speed this handy infographic summarizing what is in _The Great Wave_:

And, before we get into the patchnotes, we have another infographic giving an overview of the update:

Moving on, before you try to load up old saves from previous updates, we want to remind you of two things; **non-updated mods most likely will not work** & **old saves will not work due to map/mechanical changes**.

And so, we have the patchnotes below updated with any that we missed!

##### Patchnotes 1.13

##### **_The Great Wave_ Features**

- **Ship Designer:**

- Added the Ship Designer, which allows you to customize the loadout of your ships. It works with templates which you can create per ship type, saving your setup for your current playthrough. The Ship Designer allows you to modify four main categories, Armor, Armament, Propulsion, and Supply Capacity. Setting values of these modifications to a higher value increases the construction cost of the ship in non-linear fashion. Additionally, most ship types can bring one or more Utility modifications which modify the ship's values in other ways, for example increasing blockade strength with Patrol Boats.

- **Flagships:**

- Added Flagships. Assign the unique Flagship status to a ship and adjust its figurehead ornament. You'll earn prestige from successful battles that the Flagship participates in, but also lose Prestige from defeats. The fleet that contains the Flagship also generates more Involvement in the region it's active in.

- **Ship purchase treaties: **

- Added a new Ship Transfer Treaty article. This targets a new type of object in treaties, Ships, and allows you to compose treaties with them.

- **Gunboat Diplomacy options: **

- Added gunboat diplomacy to the game. You can now threaten Naval Hostilities when signing a treaty. If the opposing side declines the treaty you can conduct any and all hostile naval activities for 180 days, meaning you can engage in naval battles, blockade, bombard and so on, blurring the lines between peace and war.

- **New Naval Missions:**

- **Port Bombardment**

- Added a new fleet action, Port Bombardment. It allows a fleet to fire at a coastal state to cause devastation and even destroy some buildings present in the state.

- **Piracy**

- Unrecognized nations can send their fleet to seize trade passing through sea nodes and sell it in their market, yielding money and sell orders from the pilfered goods.

Added a treaty article to enforce the abandonment of Piracy.

- **Privateering**

- Recognized nations also have access to a version of Piracy, that is only available while at war or during Naval Hostilities.

- **Hunt Pirates**

- Works much akin to Intercept or Protect Supply Lines, but your fleet will only be sent out to crush pirate fleets that are set to the “Piracy” mission.

- Added a

_[Truncated at 4000 characters — full notes: https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/529340/view/535507353628312574]_