Victoria 3 - It's happening!!

Is Vic3 fun yet? My kid got it for xmas last year and hoped the game would be good by now

Having played it at launch, then long enough after launch that they'd fixed the most glaring brokenness in the economy, then for 6-7 hours since 1.5... eh.

It's playable. It can be addictive in the same sense that any nation building game is, in that there's an infinite timeline of things you're wanting to do which keeps you saying "one more thing..." Prioritizing different interest groups in your nation to get laws passed is interesting.

I still feel like there's not a ton of super interesting interaction or trade-offs- it still feels like you're mostly just sitting in a box by yourself queuing up construction. I continue to think the game is a couple of major DLCs behind being interesting- it needs a couple more areas of the game to be fleshed out to add more depth to the experience. I think a lot will hinge on the first one that's coming up that focuses on diplomacy between nations, which is majorly lacking at present.

It's also probably safe to assume there's some jank with the complete military rework they did for 1.5 lurking around, if that will bother you. That just dropped and it's a lot of changes.

If you're into this sort of thing and getting your hands on Victoria 3 isn't going to put a noticeable dent in your gaming budget, I'm kind of like "well, why not try it?" Paradox strategy games are rarely good, IMHO, but they're interesting and ambitious and it can be fun to check in on them every couple of years and see what's happened since you last checked. The game is past the "it just launched and it's stupidly on fire" phase, IMHO. If you're the sort of person who plays Hearts of Iron, Crusader Kings, and Europa Universalis, here's some more of that sort of thing. On the other hand, if you're someone who has a limited gaming budget, is merely genre curious, or will never come back if it's not a good experience, I'd say wait until at least six weeks after whatever the next major DLC following Sphere of Influence is, check in with players as to the state of the game, then maybe grab yourself a bundle over the holidays or something and treat yourself to a more complete and finished product.

My concern is that Vic3 will get the Imperator: Rome treatment. Get some improvements, but not enough to pique the interest of the map games community and Paradox just kills it. It’s a pity since Vic2 was such an interesting economic simulator.

Delor said:

If you're the sort of person who plays Hearts of Iron, Crusader Kings, and Europa Universalis, here's some more of that sort of thing.

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Your whole review was brilliant, but this line in particular had me LOLing. So fair, understated, and yet gently damning at the same time.

Granny bought my kid Vic3 so nothing to lose in trying it. That said, as much as I love strategy games, I always felt HOI and EU were more work than fun. I never seemed to stick with it long enough to get past that first 10-15 hours of learning curve.

Wasn't actually intended to be damning, but I'm glad it amused. I think the four games offer materially different experiences, but they also noticeably scratch the same sort of brain itch in a way that few other big-publisher games do. They also, to one degree or another, require a tolerance for the same sort of failings.

I continued my post-1.5 game and threw another 11 hours at it. It's been better than the first few hours. I am still mostly sitting in a room queuing construction, but I've gotten to the point where there's a lot more stuff I'm building towards, with somewhat more interdependency. I've also gotten to the point where I actually can't move towards the laws I want without putting some inconvenient groups into power or passing other prerequisite laws I don't really want to, which is nice. There's also been two or three wars in my areas of interest that I've participated in, which didn't happen for the first 10-ish hours of the game. Hopefully Sphere of Influence will add a lot more lower stake diplomatic conflicts to keep things going more actively. I'm fairly well amused, overall, and I can't say it's not addictive to play when I'm in the moment- it's absolutely toxic to my sleep schedule to play in the evening.

Most things military still feel really confusing, jank, and poorly supported by the UI. I'm also not sure if the AI can fight wars intelligently. My one "real" war was when I went to war with the Netherlands to stop them from annexing some African territory next to my African colony. I had twice their army but effectively no navy, so I split my army in two and kept half in mainland Spain (me!) and half in the bit of Africa we were fighting over. I figured that meant they couldn't invade me and I could control my colony, the contested land, and their colony next to the contested land. As for my other overseas holdings... hope they didn't invade them, I guess? It worked fine- they tried to invade mainland Spain thrice to massive casualties and then surrendered. Nothing says successful military campaign like "attempt an amphibious landing in a single location with slightly fewer men than are defending that location". I also had no problem sailing boats and men around wherever I wanted despite, again, them having a navy and me effectively not.

I'm not entirely sure what navies are for at the moment besides the fact that performing a naval invasion requires parking a navy outside of the landing destination and the invasion can be stopped if the enemy drives a fleet over and beats them up. I recall in earlier editions of Vic3 there was some convoy raiding, but that was turned off for 1.5 development and I'm not sure they've got it working and turned it back on yet. Certainly, I didn't suffer any consequences I noticed or receive any warnings about the enemy raiding me. The Netherlands did sail a single ship out to the Straight of Gibraltar which seemed like a blockade move or something, to no impact. I sent my tiny collection of boats out to fight it and drove it off. I then told my ships to go home, and they refused to go home anywhere except a port whose closest sea node was mobbed by enemy ships, but that didn't seem to stop them from just sailing through anyway. The single Dutch boat of non-blockade returned at some point so I sent my fleet bravely back out through the enemy armada to engage. They exited port without incident, went back to Gibraltar, and... sat there without engaging? I watched them for a couple of months and then shrugged sent them back home (through the enemy armada, thrice now) as having the Netherlands park a fleet(/ship) in Gibraltar didn't seem to matter anyway.

I gave the last 1.5 Beta a go a couple weeks ago, and did a Persia run.

Persia usually is a good test, because it has good resources but backwards politics, and hence makes for a good case of what should be Vicky3's core strengths. This goes double in 1.5 than before, because while 1.5 Persia is even better resource-wise -- on a per-capita basis it is without the most goated start in the entire game -- but oh boy do those laws are hopelessly backwards.

It's actually much more fun -- tho keeping Delor's quip in mind this is coming from a person that likes EU IV and HoI, sooooo ... -- now, which requires much more finesse than before:

• You have immensely powerful landholders -- due to Local Police, Slavery and Tenant Farmers -- who back a hopelessly backwards Traditionalist economic system that reduces private sector investments and also locks you to land based taxation. Without breaking landowner power the country has no future beyond Manoral subsistence farming.
• You have a State Religion, so your only options to have some sort of school and health system will boost already substantial Ulema power ...
• ... which kind of is okay, because Ulema often gives you Absolutionist leaders or agitators, which you can use to abolish slavery, tho that may also/will likely lead to a civil war.
• At whose end you will still have the same set of economic laws, and only slightly less powerful landowners.
• Ulema in general do not have a stance on economic laws, so they do not help to pass them, and are at best neutral, at worst a hindrance because they absorb political power that now isn't held by people who actually have a stance on the economic system.
• Meanwhile all other groups that do have a stance on the economic system will lead to some sort of conflict:
  • Anything that supports the Intelligentia will be costly, create conflict with the Ulema, and also reduce your tax revenue (because you're still stuck on land tax).
  • Anything that supports the Industrialists will erode your tax base -- land tax, natch -- even quicker, will set you up for some sort of Oligarchy that will be hard to break later on -- Wealth Voting is relatively easy to pass early on even without a civil war, but good luck changing to a different type of suffrage later --, and their preferred economic system -- Interventionism -- will further reduce relations with the landholders.
  • Lastly the Rural Folk will not reduce your tax base. They will support an economic system -- Agrarianism -- and they will support an economic system that is more palatable to the Landowners -- and hence may be passable without civil war -- while still allowing some sort of tax reform, until you get around to the tax reform you will end up with more economic radicalization because the land tax is, well, mainly paid by the peasantry. They also do not give a crap about the suffrage, so will not be helpful in reforming power structure laws at all.
• You are also stuck in a very bad workforce crunch, so at one point you would like to move off of Legal Guardianship to Propertied Women, which will piss of the Ulema, whom you have happened to boost so you can have schools and hospitals

You will probably have a number of civil wars. If Russia or the Ottomans are friendly you can win that war reasonably easy via Defensive Pacts, but in the aftermath you will always have a difficult choice between either using the period of reduced landowner power to change powerstructure laws (which you will probably prefer), or reforming economic laws (which you might have to do in order to prevent complete collapse of the state budget). Speaking of Russia, it is the more reliable of the two partners, but you will likely backstab each other sooner or later. You have some Russian claims, and if you want to get recognized beating up Russia is usually the easiest way. Meanwhile, Russia may also find some of your land tasty. Especially if you went after the Stans, and its very hard to industrialize without at least some of the Afghan workforce.

So, that was fun.

The autonomous construction pool is now also much more useful than before. You can now use the state-controlled construction pool for strategic developments and let the autonomous pool with the fine tuning. You will have to be very carful with the subsidies, tho, as private investment will happily build more building levels that only make economic sense due to the subsidies (railways are really bad for this)

(for whatever reason the post got truncated and trying to post the rest gives me a http 403)

(fixed now. Forum software sometimes gets confused by certain words being put in parentheses)

Yeah, as Spain that sounds familiar in many ways although we're not so anti-intellectual. My top priority was breaking the power of the landowners and church so I could get reform through. (a problem many nations will have) The church rolled over, but I did have to put down a couple of landowner civil wars.

Now I'm in the spot of having the intelligista and industrialists in power, with the industrialists deeply entrenched. That got me a lot of the reform I want, but now the industrialists hate everywhere I want to go next and the intelligista are a mixed and not particularly enthusiastic bag at best. I need the industrialists out of power and to at least temporarily get a lot more petite bourgeoisie and armed forces in power.

ramases said:

You will have to be very carful with the subsidies, tho, as private investment will happily build more building levels that only make economic sense due to the subsidies (railways are really bad for this)

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It's nice to see they haven't abandoned historical accuracy...

Well, Vic3's 50% off now on Steam if anyone was waiting for a sale. Of course, you can figure that'll probably be matched again in a month when the Christmas sale happens so it's totally not worth FOMO over...

Looks like Victoria 3 is the headline item for this months Humble Choice.

Been a while. I have to say, I kind of like Vic3 post 1.5/1.6. It still feels like an awfully lonely experience- I still feel like I'm sitting alone in a room mucking with my economy rather than competing for something on a stage with other players- but I had a lot of fun last month picking some smaller economies like Two Sicilies, Egypt, or the Sihk Empire and learning about their state of play. I also discovered Generalist Gaming and learned just how wrong I've been running my economies, just in time for 1.7 to render a lot of what I've learned obsolete.

I'm actively excited about seeing how 1.7 and Spheres of Influence goes. Three Moves Ahead still tells me the game sucks and EU5Project Caesar will do everything it does better, but I'm really not mad at the game anymore. It's got some really interesting dynamics and simulation going on versus how most strategy games work economically.

Expect follow-up posts on 1.7/SoI next month!

Started a game as Egypt. Stuff's already happening on the international stage involving me but without my initiating it, which is a huge step up from literally every other Vic3 game I've played. Also, I feel like relying on foreign import to supply your demand is working a bit better? At least, I'm getting pretty much all my wood from Russia and in the past I feel like I didn't see trade routes scale up as easily as this. Relatedly, I'm glad that customs unions are now locked behind a power bloc principle because more opportunities to trade instead of flattening down markets into big blobs is good for a game like this.

The Ottoman Empire tried to take back some land from me, to which my armies and my French allies said "nope" and got them to give up claims on some of the border states and pay me reparations, as well as humiliating them as a French ask. As a thank-you, I helped France take Constantinople over the objections of Austria, at which point France proposed that I give them foreign investment rights.

This is a bit of an unknown for me. If I grant it they'll build stuff for me, but they keep all the profits from the buildings. Not really something I would want happening if I were even remotely industrialized, but at the moment I don't even have really basic stuff like coal being produced locally and I only just finished my first iron mine. My construction output is so weak it takes me a year to build a single tooling factory. It might be worth letting France get their hands in the till in exchange for having more than almost nothing but agricultural goods being produced in my market, and make getting my land back a problem for tomorrow Egypt. I might just say "yes" on the general principle of getting a feel for how the new mechanic works.

Welcome to the experience of Isma'il Pasha.

Figuring that since I have this huge army and no infamy I may as well flaunt it, I snagged one of my tiny neighbors to the south and tributary-ed one of their neighbors that helped defend them.

The Ottomans promptly took a second swing at me, so I set up counter-war-goals to make them give up claims on another border state, re-up their reparations, and completely liberate Cyprus. Tripolitania backed them, so they're next on my list once my infamy decays. Spain eventually joined in too, so I bought the French participation by promising them an Ottoman treaty port as a war goal. However, right as the war started France began the first of undoubtedly many revolutions and suddenly didn't have much to contribute at all, leaving me with the short straw in terms of manpower, barely.

Opening moves went well and I grabbed a tiny bit of land, but soon Spain landed about as many brigades as my entire army in Ottoman territory, and better equipped as well. I switched my offensive army to holding the line and prayed for the French situation to wrap up in a timely fashion. (Hmmm, but looking at it Spain has a bunch of brigades but they're only at 20% strength? That seems like a failure of the AI... switching back to attack mode)

My new (and culturally discriminated against) conquests to the south opportunistically took up arms against me to, the suppression of which initially rated higher than "trivial"... but only barely. Unfortunately, my tributary joined them and this increased the force to a quantity that would be manageable if I weren't fighting a larger foe but is significantly inconvenient while I am. Worse, they have claims to the territory that is uprising and I think they might be able to unify it into a larger state if they win. My land grab is starting to look a bit ill-advised. Trusting in the undermanning of the Spanish divisions defending the Ottoman empire, I pulled my main army down to crush that.

Conveniently, at this point I look over and see that the French have unified into a new republic and are putting pressure on the Spanish border, which doesn't bode well for the Spanish armies in the Ottoman recovering any times soon. As my main army marches down to crush the uprising, my tributary decides that discretion is the better part of valor and backs out of the diplomatic play. The enemy ranks are larger than expected and my smaller anti-uprising force starts slowly losing ground, but with my main army on the way, Spain capitulating, and France on the way to invade the Ottoman the outcome is inevitable.

In an odd note Spain- gracious in defeat- celebrates their withdrawal from the war and war reparations to us by guaranteeing our independence. Curious, but the more the merrier. Cyprus, meanwhile, seems not only disinclined to shower me with gifts or accept protectorate status after I liberated them but immediately adopts a "belligerent" attitude towards me even though I've also guaranteed their newly acquired independence. Oh well- see if I help them again. At least Turkey's down a state.

The year is 1856, and after twenty years Egypt is finally ready to focus its full efforts on industrialization. We've built up our construction industry enough to spend all of our tax income, expanded our government administration enough to give us adequate bureaucracy, established a small sawmill-driven lumber industry with the forests available to us, and upgraded our farms to fertilizer production so that our starting agrarian production base is a little more efficient. We've got a small quantity of the basic mines of industry- iron, coal, and sulphur- in place and running the atmospheric engine and they're feeding a small all-iron tool production line. Income from multiple war reparations have helped fuel expansion- they just ended and painful cuts were necessary, but we've found a road forward to remain solvent without pausing government construction. The state of political reform is a bit slower than I'm used to, but at least we've started to chip away at the landowner's power and got some basic useful institutions in place like a national guard, dedicated police force, and colonization.

Next step, boom iron+coal+tools and feed it into making more iron+coal+tools so that we can accelerate the rate of our economic development with more modern industries and production methods.

P.S. As advertised in the dev diaries, internal migration under closed borders works now! I probably should have just established it in Eritria or Palestine where the starting population was larger, but experimentally I built up the Sinai and started a small clump of iron mines there despite it almost immediately reaching full employment by using the Greener Grass campaign to pull in new workers from other Eygptian states.

One major annoyance on top of the minor annoyance of them adding garbage to your build queue: while a revolution holds your states you can generally expect them to dismantle a bunch of your government infrastructure- certainly universities and construction centers. I had an agitator start a revolt to switch to state religion that kept gaining steam even after my exile timer cleared and I gave him the boot. After an extended struggle, the revolt kicked off and grabbed most of my non-urbanized states and when the revolution ended my entire construction industry had been dismantled. Literally 80% of it had been erased. Guess I'm loading my game and going over to state religion, because that seems crippling.

I'm not sure this is in any way new- certainly I've read plenty of reddit posts about revolutions destroying all universities, although none about the construction industries- but... oooooof. Sometimes revolutions feel a bit too toothless- in my recent Sihk game they were basically a "reduce Landholder clout to 0%" button that periodically fired and cleared the way to massive liberal social reform- but this is so bad it feels like I need to build my strategy around either completely avoiding revolutions or making sure my construction industries exist in states I trust to remain loyal.
(construction centers do build quick, at least, but that's a lot of rebuilding even if nothing but my universities and construction centers burned- and I'm not confident that that was all that went away)

Unwilling to let 50 years of building up my construction industry go up in flames, I loaded to just before the revolution and threw away all my progress at abolishing slavery to start legislating a state religion. Worst case, I have to go through with it and then make my next legislative priority undoing it. Hopefully, I cancel it before it's completed and either no revolt occurs or a much smaller revolt occurs. I'm 15 months from being able to exile another dissident so I can kick out the traditionalist landowner interest group leader, so if I can do a rubbish enough job at passing this law until then this may become a much easier ask.

The most recent patch made becoming a recognized power something you can do much earlier on; shame it wasn't like that when I started my game or I could have established an embassy with France and been earning progress towards it for a while now. On the plus side, at the start of next week they'll be patching in the ability to make Power Blocs for unrecognized powers which will probably coincide with when I get enough surplus bureaucratic capacity to start one. Choices, choices- I've got a bunch of vassals now so I could form a sovereign empire and get a ton of bonus authority off of them. Alternately, I could form a trade union to get influential trade centers. I've enacted migration for non-discriminated cultures and am starting to get immigration waves from poorer neighbors in the region and the immigration attraction boost would probably help accelerate that.

Well, the unfortunate coda is that shortly after I headed off the revolution I started experiencing busted trade route behavior- all my trade routes with Russia, a major trading partner of mine, were switching ownership to Duch East Indies and largely going inactive. I could report a bug and hope it gets fixed, but who knows how long that will take and it will probably just hit "the first 'known issue' is 1.7.1 might be incompatible with 1.7.0 saves" and be discarded anyway. I could also roll back to 1.7.0- that's an option under Steam betas- but the 1.7.1 and 1.7.2 fixes sound really good. So, I think I'm binning the campaign. Hazard of playing Paradox content as soon as it drops, alas.

When 1.7.2 drops at the start of this week, I think I might give Brazil a go. Brazil's got some bespoke content so that'll be interesting to see, although it seems centered around becoming an agricultural export economy which has historically been a really bad idea in Vic3. (although it looks like it might be a bit better in 1.7.0, particularly wine- which, alas, is not Brazil's star crop)

On the whole I witnessed a few minor oddities around the new ownership model and the revolution thing I mentioned is a bit much (if not new) and kind of nonsensical. Revolutions should potentially hurt a lot, but the rebels probably shouldn't think they'll never need to construct anything ever again and should consequently just pause construction instead of deleting it if they can't pay. (and if they'd patch in the ability to partially pause construction, that'd be even better!) Still, on the whole my takeaway for 1.7 and Sphere of Influence at the moment is that it joins 1.5 and 1.6 in feeling like a solid step forward. I look forward to picking up Victoria 3 again in a few days.

It might be worthwhile to wait until the next minor patch (which I believe they said should be coming out this week) - there's currently a rather major bug where nations just don't build barracks or naval bases.

It's led to a hilarious game as Mexico, since the US only starts with 11 troops.

Yeah, 100%. Plus you don't want to repeat my (probable) 1.7.0->1.7.1 incompatibility thing but on an even shorter timescale if they break compatibility between 1.7.1 and 1.7.2, unless you're firing up a throwaway game just for the purposes of practice.

That's what I'm doing as well- wanted to play it over the weekend, but it's not worth risking it with 1.7.2 right around the corner.