Victoria 3

[FunkMonk]

One of my biggest criticisms (and I even told Martin directly) is that there DEFINITELY needs to be WAY more international pressure if you decide to go communist or especially anarchist. Currently, it's almost none. I was anarchist Switzerland and had +100 relations with monarchist France.

Like in my mind, everyone should try to kill you immediately. Maybe that's a bit further than they want to go, but I'd love a game rule at least that's like "International Shit Fit Reaction to Communism: Lenient / Default / Realistic." At least if the country in question has a Powerful or Influential Industrialist and/or Landowners IG. Your relations should go to like -50 for council republic, -100 for Anarchism. Might fuck around and write a mod.

[The Brain]

People complaining about the AI seem to have forgotten about the French attack on Prussia in 1870. It's realistic and WAD.

[Tamas]

One of my biggest criticisms (and I even told Martin directly) is that there DEFINITELY needs to be WAY more international pressure if you decide to go communist or especially anarchist. Currently, it's almost none. I was anarchist Switzerland and had +100 relations with monarchist France.

Like in my mind, everyone should try to kill you immediately. Maybe that's a bit further than they want to go, but I'd love a game rule at least that's like "International Shit Fit Reaction to Communism: Lenient / Default / Realistic." At least if the country in question has a Powerful or Influential Industrialist and/or Landowners IG. Your relations should go to like -50 for council republic, -100 for Anarchism. Might fuck around and write a mod.

I mean, one of my gripes with Victoria 2 was that the cleanest, universal, and really quite easy, way to dominance was to beeline toward a modern Scandinavian-style social democracy. I don't dispute the superiority of such a system, but rather the fact that there were a lot of countries in the 19th and early 20th century, where if you tried to do that, they would had fallen apart (Austria-Hungary, Russia, to name a couple) or would had seen a lot of upheaval from vested interests and the like both internally and externally. Whereas in the game you just had to decide to go for it and it was fine.

[crazy canuck]

Pre-purchased through steam

[Josephus]

Pre-purchased through steam

Yeah I caved too.....

[Tamas]

Very interesting summary of main systems and the iterations they went through. I am now properly hyped: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/developer-diary/victoria-3-dev-diary-57-the-journey-so-far.1540349/

[Valmy]

I am glad to see the military aspects more hands off. War was definitely the weakest link in Victoria 2.

[Habbaku]

CDKeys somehow has a 31% discount now. 

https://www.cdkeys.com/victoria-3-pc-steam

[grumbler]

CDKeys somehow has a 31% discount now. 

https://www.cdkeys.com/victoria-3-pc-steam

I did jump on that one.

[Solmyr]

Same. 

[Tamas]

Being caught on the hype train I looked back at dev diaries to see if the new concept of Homelands for cultures will stop India turning British mid 1850s and Hungary becoming German in a similar timeframe. Turns out yeah, it should:

This leads us to cultural assimilation. The conditions for assimilation are a little more complex than conversion, and in some ways operate by the reverse logic. In order to start assimilating, a Pop must already be culturally accepted. After all, if they can't get citizenship, can't vote, can't participate in politics, can't get paid a fair wage on the basis of who they are, there simply is no way for them to assimilate - by which we mean, integrate themselves into a primary culture such that they are both accepted as such by others and genuinely consider themselves part of that culture. Renouncing one's religious beliefs and practices can be a very practical and concrete choice, but adopting and being adopted by a different culture is not a utilitarian decision.

In addition, Pops will never change culture if they live in a state they consider their Homeland. A Franco-Canadian in Ontario might over time adopt the ways and tongue of their Anglo-Canadian neighbors, but a Franco-Canadian who resides in Quebec?! Plutôt mourir!

(And of course, if a confederated Canada has been created with both Anglo- and Franco-Canadian as primary cultures, none of those types of Pops would be changing cultures in the first place.)

If a Pop should be assimilating, the culture they will be assimilating into will always be a primary culture. This is because, again, this is not a practical decision that's just up to the Pop in question, but a two-way-street of assimilation into the dominant national identity. In the case of countries with multiple primary cultures, the one selected will be the Homeland of the state the Pop lives in, or in case none or several apply, the dominant one among Pops who already live there. A Czech Pop living in a unified Germany (North + South German) in the state of Silesia (North German and Polish Homelands) will assimilate into the North German culture; if they lived in Bavaria they would be assimilating into the South German culture; and if they lived in Bohemia they would not assimilate at all, since Bohemia is a not only a South German but also a Czech Homeland. If this Pop instead lived in Transylvania (with both Hungarian and Romanian primary cultures and Homelands), they would be assimilating into whichever of those cultures is more dominant in the part of Transylvania where they live.

The rate of assimilation is the same as for religion, 0.2% per month. As mentioned, the Promote National Values decree can be used to double this rate on a per-state basis. In addition, a Public School System will provide an increased assimilation rate of +12.5% per investment level, representing perhaps a less overt approach to indoctrination than their religious counterparts. With maximum effort, this means you can assimilate half of a minority population in about 18 years.

[The Minsky Moment]

The live stream looked good.  I like that fact that tech isn't simply a matter of research X and immediately get a bunch of bonuses; taking advantage of new production methods means having the necessary skilled labor and access to industrial resources, which in turn means either expanding trade, colonizing or constructing buildings, which in its own turn may mean unlocking better production methods to take full advantage - a nice little interaction.  One of the problems with Vic2 was the cookie cutter strategy for each country - get your bureaucrats up to establish admin capacity, then focus clergy/edu for literacy and tech pts, go state by state from largest to smallest, rinse and repeats.  Vic3 seems to give more meaningful and different options and starker tradeoffs; though it still remains to seen how effective it works.

The commentary around the war systems suggests that for some it still hasn't sunk in that there is a deliberate design choice to remove the operational aspect of warfare entirely.  I.e. you are a Bismarck or a Lincoln and military operations consist of putting your chips on your best generals, giving them the tools to fight, and hoping for the best; the military game is then just about managing manpower, munitions, and finances; addressing the consequences of losses and territorial damage; allocating resources across broad fronts; and management of political-military relations. 

That said it is a little concerning:
1) That even though the removal of an operational level should simplify matters for the AI, the build is still seeing obvious blunders like the Belgian amphibious invasion of Perm.
2) Generals are still  too simplistic - as I argued above, the true capabilities of a general should not be fully known to the political leadership (you) until subjected to months of real action.  Also it would be nice to see a deeper treatment of the political aspect beyond General X favors interest group Y.  Ideally it would nice to replicate the kind of interaction between Lincoln and McClellan, where McClellan first got a lot of rope to work with because Lincoln (and everyone else) genuinely believed he was a military genius and then continued to receive careful treatment even after it was clear he wasn't because of his political clout.  As opposed to what seems to be the case in game now - just pick the "best" general based on his transparently known traits and then manage the minor impact on interest group strength.

[The Minsky Moment]

I mean, one of my gripes with Victoria 2 was that the cleanest, universal, and really quite easy, way to dominance was to beeline toward a modern Scandinavian-style social democracy. I don't dispute the superiority of such a system, but rather the fact that there were a lot of countries in the 19th and early 20th century, where if you tried to do that, they would had fallen apart (Austria-Hungary, Russia, to name a couple) or would had seen a lot of upheaval from vested interests and the like both internally and externally. Whereas in the game you just had to decide to go for it and it was fine.

Right, for example, it was far too easy to reform Russia.  Just grind away building up admin and literacy for a few decades and then tech up and build out modern industries. It will be interesting to see how Vic3 models this.  The Russian market probably has sufficient industrial resources to allow for great progress in theory - the question will be how hard a political constraint the political game will impose and whether the game will impose and maintain sufficiently brutal logistical constraints on the movement of goods of resources across the country.

[HVC]

I've been burned a few times so i'll wait. I did like the original Vicky. Even hosted a Vicky Languish MP.

[Valmy]

I am all in on this game. The Victoria franchise is such a unique game series with its social and economic gameplay. And in one of the most hard core centuries in human history. I am ready for chauvinism, imperialism, reactionary fuckery, and communist nutjobs. Let's do it!

I didn't really see the need to get CK3 because CK2 was good enough. But Victoria 2 is showing its age. I am really looking forward to getting my hands on this, sure it may be heavily flawed but then so were Victoria and Victoria 2.