Victoria 3

[Tamas]

I've read that Grey's mod series improves the game a lot, although apparently it tweaks a lot of things from vanilla.

At this stage I am skeptical of overhaul mods. The whole Paradox team have been struggling to balance this complex system, I doubt a lone modder or couple of modders could do significantly better.

[Syt]

Agreed. Many popular mods seem to either push hard in one or other direction (to the point of railroading AI in what they research and build when and where), or undo certain changes to gameplay (like making transportation and electricity global goods again - the current system isn't ideal, but I'd rather not go back to AI Britain powering their Empire with a massive stack of power plants in the Falklands as they did in some of my games ).

Political Overhaul seems still popular, though I think that it's a bit superfluous? It splintered the IGs into many times the original number to reflect what (I think) movements are meant to represent.

Though ultimately it comes down what's fun for you. Not meaning to yuck anyone's yum.

[grumbler]

Had some time to finish my Japan game ( turned out to be fun, but not much happened internationally for Japan) and then started a GB game to explore the diplo system.  The diplo system was okay, but the naval stuff was ludicrously bad.  The #1 mission for fleets in this era was blockade/counter-blockade, and what mission is completely missing in Vic3? Blockade. Enemy fleets and transports just sail right by one's own ships (probably with a mutual dipping of the flag) so sea control is useless.  Even convoy raiding and protection are essentially meaningless.  Naval invasions were incredibly rare in that era, but invasion/counter-invasion is pretty much all that fleets do in the game.

I also had to laugh at the UK AI continuing to build shipyards when every shipyard in the UK was losing money, and some were closing down.  The American investors were meanwhile building coal mines in the UK, which was the smart way to go.