r/victoria3•
JakePT

You can force ship crews to work for free

Bug

So I think I found a funny bug while looking into this post. It turns out if you downsize all Naval Administrations you immediately stop paying military wages to sailors, but the ships remain fully crewed until their fleet returns to port. This means that you can force sailors to be prisoners on their ships working for free until the fleet needs repairs.

  1. Construct some naval administrations and ships.
  2. Let the ships be fully crewed.
  3. Put the fleet out to sea.
  4. Delete all naval administrations.
  5. Crew are stuck on the ship until you return to port.
  6. No wages are paid to unemployed sailors stuck on these ships.
  7. Return the fleet to port. The crew will finally empty out.

I reported the bug in the forums already but it seem funny enough to share. I can think of a few ways this should work:

  • Unemployed ship crew jump overboard. The ship loses its crew and the pops return to the job market.
  • Unemployed ship crew start dying.
  • Unemployed ship crew migrate to the nearest state.
  • Military wages are still paid to unemployed ship crew.
  • Fleets suffer severe organisation penalties relative to the proportion of their crew that is unemployed.

Posted Aug 21, 2026, 10:51 AM UTC

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