Victoria 3

[Tamas]

Paradox forum seems dominated by haters. Latest complaint I read was that the map is the ugliest ever: the guy wants political paper map with cities and roads etc shown on the paper map and they aren't so the game sucks.

I hope this is going to be like the Total War games where the fanbase (on TW Center at least) routinely bash every new game in the series like it's physical torture for them to play, but of course they still buy it and spend ungodly hours playing it.

[Syt]

I generally agree and am surely the last person to min/max, but quickly seeing which states have Terra Rossa which give you  agricultural output bonuses would be nice.

[Syt]

Someone found this in the character files. For the Disco Elysium fans.

[Tamas]

I generally agree and am surely the last person to min/max, but quickly seeing which states have Terra Rossa which give you  agricultural output bonuses would be nice.

Yeah if reactions to the game were more level-headed I'd be focusing on the annoyances still need fixing, but this savage storm of 90% unfounded "criticism" has really taken me aback. If this kills the game for Paradox, we are looking at CK3 topping out the complexity level of games they'll make.

[The Brain]

They're on Mixed on Steam. How does that compare to the initial response to their other titles?

[Syt]

They're on Mixed on Steam. How does that compare to the initial response to their other titles?

The things is, if you switch the reviews to include only people who have at least 4 hours in the game (and I think that's a reasonable time to get to grips with the systems, the rating switches to 75% (mostly positive). Even at 2+ hours it still sits at 70% (mostly positive). Now, I'm not a fan of "watch this show, the first two seasons suck, but it gets REALLY good once you get to season 3" recommendations, but I'm going out on a limb that if people throw it in the bin after an hour or two it's not so much a sign of the game being broken but the game not being "for them" (which is fine, plenty games I don't like that are super popular). This game has a learning curve that one must engage with. And we might sit here in a week determining that after the initial newness has worn off and things become more familiar it's really not that great. But I feel the main brunt of the backlash is for the game being "too different."

Honestly, much of the game feels more like a blend of the Democracy series (laws, funding, interest groups) and a simplified (buildings abstracted per state) yet still more complex (far more interacting parties instead of just you and a few AIs) version of Anno 1800s economy.

The war aspect may be inspired by Realpolitiks[sic]? It seemed to have a similar abstracted war resolution:



(Looking at RP2, they seem to have replaced it with something more board game style.)

Something I enjoy is the organic front lines/colonization. When you colonize a territory, you start with a small blob of land, and if you keep colonizing, that blob expands out. I guess they subdivided every state into little "micro-provinces" or hexes?  Meaning, if multiple powers colonize a state, it's not "winner takes all" (or no one gets anything like in old Vicky), but both powers owning some territory in the state with borders depending on where they started and how much land they managed to secure within the state. I've always wanted something like this in strategy games ever since I saw the slowly expanding red blob in the old Red Storm Rising game. Less binary province grabbing and more fluid ownership of territory in games, please.

[Josephus]

Another question I came up with. Unlike Vickie 1 (never played II), I can't seem to find out what my pops need. For instance I saw I can import groceries, and when I clicked on the details I saw that all pops like groceries. But how do I know how much to import and how do I know what else is crucial for them to have? I can't seem to find an obvious spreadsheet for that.

That helps a bit. Thanks. I wish, though, there was something like there was in Vickie 1, where it says for instance: Groceries Need 347, Available 167, kind of thing. There's a lot of info here, but sometimes it seems to me, the more needy stuff is hard to find, if it's there at all

Yeah it's buried a bit.

Go to the population menu on the left side go to the SoL of the strata you want to check, there will be a percentage there telling you how much more they pay than average for the goods they want. That number also has a tool tip which will list you the goods and how expensibe or cheap they are relative to base price. That gives a guide on which goods to focus on, but usually I just keep an eye on the listed "import candidates" on the middle tab of the market screen, to spot what needs addressing.

[Syt]

That helps a bit. Thanks. I wish, though, there was something like there was in Vickie 1, where it says for instance: Groceries Need 347, Available 167, kind of thing. There's a lot of info here, but sometimes it seems to me, the more needy stuff is hard to find, if it's there at all

You kinda have that in the market screen (buy vs sell orders). Though it doesn't really tell you which pops or states are lacking/having a surplus. However, it helps you figure out what goods you may want to import or start producing. (Myself, I also check the tool tips for the income strata from standard of living to see if some are below their expected standard of living, and for which goods they have to pay a lot more than they should.)

[Syt]

From the files of "why is this not explained somewhere"?

I already knew that if you select a trade good you can highlight on the map where it's produced, consumed and where (known) potential production locations are (if raw material).

What I did NOT know is that if you zoom further in it will show you the price levels for the good in various territories (there's a sweet spot where you see both icons and the shaded map).



Also, depending on your selection on the menu in the left you can get different tool tip pop ups. E.g. if you select population, it will tell you population size, birth and death rates, expected growth and unemployment (and which pop is unemployed) for the state you put your mouse cursor on.

Similar for cultures: when you select a culture in the cultures list - it will show you where they live in your realm, and if you zoom in you can see what they consider their homeland, denoted by little flags. You can see which areas are the strongholds of interest groups that way, too.

Such context dependent map modes are cool stuff, and I had noticed some of them before. Kinda makes me wonder, though, how many views like (which used to be map modes in previous games) are hidden like that, and whether it was explained before and I've just already forgotten about them again.

[FunkMonk]

Yeah, when I discovered that the left side menu option "Map List" actually changes depending on what Lens you have open I realized that is what the Ledger is now 

It's cool and works but something about the feeling of clicking on an old paper ledger like in the old games is lost.

[Syt]

I knew about the map list and the "bottom menu" (thanks to the tutorial video), but I had missed the extra details when selecting the menu options on the left (usually because I often play zoomed out for one item, zoomed in for another, and frequently have them closed when I don't need them.

[crazy canuck]

I knew about the map list and the "bottom menu" (thanks to the tutorial video), but I had missed the extra details when selecting the menu options on the left (usually because I often play zoomed out for one item, zoomed in for another, and frequently have them closed when I don't need them.

There's a few ways to get that information actually. The way I normally do it is with the lenses in the bottom row combined with the level of zoom on the map. It's what I learned in the tutorial play through in the game.

One thing that seems common with the haters is that they seem to assume that because they don't have access to the spreadsheets that were in Victoria 2,
that this game is more simplistic.  But in fact, this game is more complex and is therefore not reducible to a simple spreadsheet which shows all information. The interactions are much more complex than the previous games.

[Tamas]

Also, depending on your selection on the menu in the left you can get different tool tip pop ups. E.g. if you select population, it will tell you population size, birth and death rates, expected growth and unemployment (and which pop is unemployed) for the state you put your mouse cursor on.

Similar for cultures: when you select a culture in the cultures list - it will show you where they live in your realm, and if you zoom in you can see what they consider their homeland, denoted by little flags. You can see which areas are the strongholds of interest groups that way, too.

Bloody hell!

[HVC]

Do embargoes not work? i've embargoed france, but they keep stealing all my wood.

[Syt]

Bloody hell!

Quite! I feel they missed a beat in their coverage by not putting more emphasis on their UI changes or highlighting somewhere prominent, "Hey, here's how you can find info!"