Victoria 3

[Syt]

Hotfix:

Balance
- Reduced the stability gain from low liberty desire subjects in the Unstable Raj Journal Entry by 50%
- Buildings will no longer include the impact of taxes on expected Standard of Living when setting wages, so that increased taxes don't automatically lead to increased wages (or vice versa)


Bugfixes
- Subsistence farms will now set much lower wages and aim to return as much profit to their owners as possible (this was causing world starting GDP and GDP growth to be significantly depressed compared to 1.7)

[The Minsky Moment]

(I wish Imperator had seen this kind of commitment after its lackluster launch , but I feel this is more of a personal pet project for Martin which is why it keeps getting this kind of investment )

Weren't sales of Vic 3 pretty decent, notwithstanding the steam reviews?

[Syt]

I'm seriously not sure.

[Syt]

The new IG overview menu:

[Solmyr]

Hah, nice, once it becomes playable after a couple of hotfixes, this is going to be a great patch.

But obviously I am going to run my standard Austria game to check out the new politics stuff.

You should be happy with this

[Tamas]

Hah, nice, once it becomes playable after a couple of hotfixes, this is going to be a great patch.

But obviously I am going to run my standard Austria game to check out the new politics stuff.

You should be happy with this

[Syt]

I love V3's soundtrack. However, it's always bothered me that it would frequently be interrupted by events stingers and events sounds regularly.

Turns out the fix is easy. The soundtrack is defined in several .txt files. Each track has a line "Can be interrupted" - just switch the setting from yes to no - et voilá: no more interrupted music tracks. Now just reduce/disable the volume of music stingers and sound effects - done. (Ambient and UI sounds are separate from Sound Effects which, I think, only play on events.)

[Syt]

Confusing tooltips after the new patch.

Dutch vs. Dutch Revolt ... in Gran Colombia.



Seems there was a Radical movement going into revolution to change immigration laws, and only Dutch Guyana actually rebelled.

[Syt]

I've finished a run as Austria => Germany => HRE (Central Europe).

The new discrimination mechanic needs some balance passes, I believe, to make some stuff actually doable. Example:

The Dual Monarchy journal entry requires Hungarian to be on acceptance level 5 (full acceptance), or a minimum 80 acceptance score.

However, with cultural exclusion (or racial segregation) and total separation of church/state (= no religious discrimination; shouldn't affect them as catholics, but you never know) I can only get them to 60 max. I don't think the requirement of the entry should be lowered, but rather that there needs to be an additional pass on cultural heritages etc. to tweak who jumps up the chain or not. Apparently, Reconstruction in the USA is facing a similar issue for acceptance of Afro-Americans (insert wry comment about US politics here ).

I also felt the national movements never affected me much. The only ones who were a bother were the Sorbs in Saxony for some reason who kept rising up - more out of "general" radicalism than anything else. The others never amounted to much of a stumbling block.

The only movements that were causing issues were the Radicals at first, then later the Royalists and Fascists. The Royalists would throw a hissy fit every time I wanted to get rid of the monarchy. I liked that their revolution (if I hadn't cowardly backed down) would have triggered in the old Austro-Hungarian territories of my country ("Get rid of OUR Kaiser??"). The Fascists were a problem with 30% support in the population (*looks at Austrian election results ... *). Their high radicalism didn't help, so I had to make some concessions to keep them quiet and pass other laws.

I did exile the Petite Bourgeoisie's leader (Ethno-Nationalist), to neuter them a bit. Result was that he was replaced by a Fascist who triggered a "March on Vienna" event. I had the option to support the thing, a slap on the wrist or exile him. I exiled him and he was replaced by a moderate (phew). Fascists still had a lot of support, but were a lot less radical.

Some people moan about the economy being harder. I found it largely ok. Apparently, building owners pull out as much money as they can from their businesses, thus depleting cash reserves. Could be; I usually don't even pay that much attention. I will say, though, that no matter what I did, I could never produce enough clothing for my market.

Law progression was a bit slow - having a Landowner Emperor (and therefore affecting viable governments, even when Landowners were marginalized) had an effect IMO, and it become easier once the latest heir (in the late 1920 or early 1930s) was a member of the Intelligentsia.

Overall I enjoyed my run, though. Performance was really good for me in vanilla. Some general observations:

- It's still too easy to get protectorates. "Oh you have a (civil) war? Happy to 'protect' you if you know what I mean ... '
- East India Company collapsed fairly early. I didn't pay much attention to the colonies, so not sure what happened. France took a huge chunk out of Burma, though.
- Some countries had repeated collapse cycles; usually smaller ones. I'm generally ok with some countries just being strife-ridden hell holes, but not sure if intended.
- France and UK were very active in colonizing Africa
- CSA split off early from the USA. However, where in previous games the CSA would often abolish slavery at some point, in my game they stuck with Slave Trade till the end. However, they were also an Anarchic Parliamentary Republic, with Multiculturalism, and Cooperative Ownership of production. I guess it's that talking point of, "(African) People should be free to become slaves if they wish. " (though slaves in 1930s were only a fraction of the CSA population, <1%)
- I like the movement mechanic, in general, and how it's giving a bit more life to politics, i.e. what laws a group supports/rejects
- Also liking that taxes affect the expected Standard of Living. Lower taxes => expected SoL drops slightly (more for higher stratas), whereas higher taxes lead to higher expected SoL ("What am I paying all these taxes for??"). Kills some cheesy "raise taxes to max" strats a bit if suddenly your people all drop below poverty lines.

Some end of game screenshots.

My laws - note I never got to Laissez-Faire or Free Trade. Admittedly I never made a conscious push for it, but in previous games it would always come up "naturally".





My government. Been a while since I saw the Trade Unions do, uhm, anything. They never seemed to pop up in earlier patches.





My Political Movements 1936:





The goods lacking in my market. That's with 140 maxed out, automated textile factories, all super-profitable. None of the product is going out of the market.





The world map. I had started to dismantle Russia (still #as GP, still autocratic monarchy), but mobilizing armies with their advanced mobilization options (mechanized! machine guns! planes!) gets really expensive. And every time my infamy went >25, members of my Power Bloc jumped ship.





The Power Blocs. When Italy formed and I lost most my bloc, I started over as a Trade League. I found it useful to adjust non-core Tenets regularly to react to situations. Need some critical law passed? Better implement Creative Legislature. Need a boost to SoL? Go for Food Standardization! Low on infrastructure/market access? Go for Transportation buff. It helps you can save up mandates for later use, so you can replace one tier 3 boon with another tier 3 boon right away.





Overall had a lot of fun, though some more balancing of the movements/discriminations is required IMO. Bunch of people were crying about it being harder to grow your economy (especially as smaller countries), but I'd argue that there's better constraints on some cheesier strategies now (esp. max taxes early on).

[Syt]

Side note - they gave cultural names to some provinces and to change when owner changes. So as Austria, Istria is called "Küstenland", and Ljubljana is Laibach; Venetia is "Venezien" etc. Cool.

All nice, but ... Styria is Sytria instead of Steiermark, South Tyrol isn't renamed to to Südtirol, and Vienna and Munich are not renamed to Wien and München by default. Seems inconsistent, but fortunately you can change that manually now in game (and I'm sure there'll be mods).

[Syt]

Oh, and using right-click to send mobilized armies to fronts, or fleets to see nodes - very nice. Except that the "front markers" (the ones that show the advantage/disadvantage at a front in green or red numbers) are often hidden behind army markers if you already have armies there, and either you use the old fashioned way to send the army, or you zoom in far enough (almost ground level) so that the front marker is visible again.

[Tamas]

Nice one Syt, thanks for the summary.

[Syt]

One more thing. I like transportation and electricity being local goods.

But they need to make managing it a lot easier. Transitioning your industry to more advanced production methods can be quite the pain. Generally, it will tell you if you lack a good when switching, but then going over to expand the power plants in the state is a bit of a journey through menus (unless I miss something ). Best way I've found is changing the production method for an industry, then check the goods screen for transport or electricity, then expand from there. I feel adding an "expand rail/electricity in state" button in the building screen of, say, engines factories would be quite useful.

[The Minsky Moment]

Thanks Syt
Looking forward to trying out 1.8 once I finish up some papers in a couple weeks.

[Tamas]

Accidentally left my Austria game unpaused while forgot to turn the PC off so it ran from 1850-ish to 1928 without me doing a thing. Wow what a letdown. As far as I can tell I didn't suffer any revolutions. Two or three ethnic movements were getting close to revolt, that's it. NGF and Romania formed and Africa was very heavily colonised, those were the only big border changes since I stepped away that I could notice.