Victoria 3

[Richard Hakluyt]

The entire period c1650 - 1815 is not covered properly by Paradox given that a EU4 game is generally resolved and boring by some time in the early 17th century.

[Richard Hakluyt]

...and I agree with Tamas. Vic3 costs some pittance or other and I'm eager to see what they have done. I will, of course, laugh cynically when Belgium conquers the USA after a successful amphibious invasion; but there it is.

[grumbler]

And especially with the warfare model they show me they tried to innovate, and put coherent design over marketability. There will be no end of "omg war sucks where are my units" comments and Steam reviews. Nobody has played the game yet and there have been tons of such comments already.

War is too important to be left to the player.

[Syt]

The thing about warfare in Paradox games is that usually it's possible to outplay the AI, even if you're in an inferior position, by min/maxing your troops composition and movement and gaming the system hard. A more abstract, hands-off system like this might even the odds a bit more.

[DGuller]

If there is a one game to abstract away war micromanagement, this sounds like it.  The fact that you can tactically run circles around the AI, literally, lessens the challenge of any game.  Wars during the Vicky period in particular were industrial wars, decided by economic strength and technology rather than strategic or tactical ingenuity.  Make wars abstract focus the challenge back to the main feature of the game.

[Tamas]

Yes, once again One Proud Bavarian put it well in his summary video a month or so back: by being able to game the system and run circles around the AI in other Paradox games, you are able to compensate for mistakes made in the other game systems which were meant to feed into your ability to wage war, making them inconsequential.

So especially this game needed an abstracted war system, pretty much for the reason DGuller wrote.

[Tamas]

[Sheilbh]

[HVC]

The spiffing Brit exploits Vicky 3

https://youtu.be/aN9FwQ6SGSY

[Tamas]

I haven't watched the full video yet but apparently OPB as Austria quickly neutered Prussian market access by improve-relationing away the German minors into a customs union making Prussian economy and then prestige plummet and then eventually diplo-annexing the now-not-great-power Prussia as part of the German unification decisions. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hlShF6op21o

[Tamas]

So I kind of fast-forwarded the video, seems like he converted his Austria into a literal medieval society, but still powergamed through everything once he annexed Prussia and the rest of the Germans.

And apparently its a Paradox-sponsored video where they gave him the challenge of forming the (territory) of the HRE. Things will grow obnoxious quickly if the Paradox marketing team will approach Victoria 3 like CK3 i.e. doubling down on every bit of meme factor they can find.

[Tamas]

A less insane Brazil quick video, this guy make it look like an EU4 playthrough just ignoring/not showing any events and politics or economics, just starting wars and conquering stuff.

Hype level: in deep dive

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iNGpXQIyWms

[Tamas]

I kinda' like this 10 minute summary of an MP game though, by the sound of it the Austrian player was facing the exact challenges he was supposed to: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KqCVfW2ju2M

[The Minsky Moment]

The spiffing Brit exploits Vicky 3

https://youtu.be/aN9FwQ6SGSY

It should be possible for possible for a smaller country to profit through trade but this clearly highlights a problem with trade convoys ad port construction and maintenance.  ANY arctic port should suffer from significant inefficiencies to take account that it has to be closed for much of the year.  And the cost in terms of money and manpower to construct and MAINTAIN the kind of port facilities needed to maintain that level of import and export trade should be far beyond the capacity of Jan Mayen.

[The Minsky Moment]

Actually makes sense for Pdx to encourage early players to exploit and break things; it's a good way to for them to identify balance items to fix.