Victoria 3

[Syt]

Started a new game as Sikh Empire. It's an interesting start. Way behind on tech. Powerful elites that resist all change. Serfdom and National Supremacy. Traditionalism in economy and only Land-Based taxes available. In resources, you have silk, tea, opium, lumber, a bit of coal ... but no iron, no coast access, no sulfur, no lead, and lacking 1100+ taxation capacity in Punjab. You're wedged between Persia, British India, Qing, and Russia.

But you start with 100k professional soldiers.

Unfortunately, there's no way you can balance your budget. Oh, and you're unrecognized, so your interactions are a bit limited (vassals instead of puppets etc.).

So my plan was to grab some neighboring states for resources and sea access and join the British market so I can build up my economy. Step one went well. Baluchistan and the coastal province next to it gave up without a fight. I was in the middle of taking the Eastern part of Afghanistan (which has iron) in a war when the East India Company came knocking and "asked" me to be their puppet. I tried to hold them off in a war, but ultimately had to accept. Since then it's been a slow march to modernization, with constant bankruptcies, because the only way I could balance my budget would be to disband my military. Not going to happen. It's a long march to get to the point where I can change my economic and tax laws, but once we get there things should start looking up considerably.

[The Minsky Moment]

Ok, so I think I'm grasping the economics of the game. So moving on to military. I'm playing as Two Sicilies, and just for fun I decided to join France in their war against Kongo, which is in the interior of Africa. Now I've mobilized one of my generals but I can't seem to give it orders. Both "advance" and "defend" don't have any fronts available.

You may have to give a naval invasion order to a fleet assigned to that HQ, no?

[The Brain]

How do you load armies onto ships?

[The Minsky Moment]

Sokoto has been a fun game, challenge to manage development and political reform in a tricky diplomatic environment with lots of big Euro powers sticking fingers into the regional pie.  An early UK war declaration helped me get rid of slavery easily, although at some prestige cost.  Otherwise, I stayed on good terms with Big Red, and conquered Ashanti, the nearby coastal provinces, and some other neighbors with culture accepted people; vassalized Bornu. Beelined to colonization but by the time I got the laws and institutions in place, the UK was well under way.  I was to close the incorporating the old imperial capital at Gao but the Brits grabbed it first .  I did get Niger and now slowly pushing south (seems unfair that a native power gets the full malaria penalty, WTF?)

Sokoto has awful starting laws and little starting economy to speak of but does have access to resources, including good amounts of iron, coal, dye, sulfur, and eventually rubber, so lots of development opportunities.

[Syt]

Ok, so I think I'm grasping the economics of the game. So moving on to military. I'm playing as Two Sicilies, and just for fun I decided to join France in their war against Kongo, which is in the interior of Africa. Now I've mobilized one of my generals but I can't seem to give it orders. Both "advance" and "defend" don't have any fronts available.

You may have to give a naval invasion order to a fleet assigned to that HQ, no?

Depends. If the French already a front, you should be able to just assign units there. But yes, otherwise it requires a naval invasion order for one of your fleets (I had to try landing in Haiti 5 times yesterday - only worked after I fired the generals and admirals involved - not sure it did something, but I felt like I had contributed )

Worst case would be if the target is landlocked with no war participating countries bordering it. In which case you just can't fight them. (Could you try a violate sovereignty play in such a situation? Haven't tried yet.)

[The Minsky Moment]

Worst case would be if the target is landlocked with no war participating countries bordering it.

I took advantage of that early in my Sokoto playthrough.

[Tamas]

This is something I was thinking about modding in just no idea what parameters to use:

It's teaser time again! One of the things we're looking at in upcoming @PDXVictoria patches is balancing cultural/religious tolerance laws by having more restrictive laws increase the loyalty of accepted pops, so there is an actual trade-off involved.

[Josephus]

Ok, so I think I'm grasping the economics of the game. So moving on to military. I'm playing as Two Sicilies, and just for fun I decided to join France in their war against Kongo, which is in the interior of Africa. Now I've mobilized one of my generals but I can't seem to give it orders. Both "advance" and "defend" don't have any fronts available.

That option wasn't available either.
You may have to give a naval invasion order to a fleet assigned to that HQ, no?

[Tamas]

Started another Sweden game to test this popular (and only) AI mod that's mostly about the economy plus some smaller national tweaks as  I understand.

No idea how different the economy is so far, but first time ever I am seeing a huge Austria civil war against their "radical" version which is the same political system just different IGs ruling. It's 1847 so that's also a neat timing -if only it was a liberal uprising- and Russia plus France also helping the "legacy" side.

[Tamas]

Started another Sweden game to test this popular (and only) AI mod that's mostly about the economy plus some smaller national tweaks as  I understand.

No idea how different the economy is so far, but first time ever I am seeing a huge Austria civil war against their "radical" version which is the same political system just different IGs ruling. It's 1847 so that's also a neat timing -if only it was a liberal uprising- and Russia plus France also helping the "legacy" side.

Aaaand with the original Austria annexed by the revolutionaries (who are now Austria proper) the war is an endless one as France and Russia re bug-stuck into fighting Austria over the wargoal of Austria annexing Austria. I switched countries to them but even manually I cannot close it down.

Sigh.

[Tamas]

Having reached 1866 I'd say that this "Anbeeld's Revision of AI" mod probably yields better results than vanilla.

But a big problem is that because it relies on extra checks and lines of script in AI code, in 1866 I am already in 1900s level of slowness with the game. I dare not think how slow it is going to be around 1900 and later, and probably won't bother to keep using the mod.

[Sheilbh]

Playing a placid little game in Latin America. Then look over to Europe to see that after the French absolutely decimated the British convoy fleet over some Pacific islands that the UK is now fighting Welsh secessionists (backed by Germany) and about to face a war against a revolutionary trade union republic

[Syt]

No idea how different the economy is so far, but first time ever I am seeing a huge Austria civil war against their "radical" version which is the same political system just different IGs ruling. It's 1847 so that's also a neat timing -if only it was a liberal uprising- and Russia plus France also helping the "legacy" side.

In my games so far Austria has always been hit with civil wars (often multiple ones), except when I was playing them. Though it's been rare that the "original" one lost. Germany/NGF/Prussia had civil wars, too, and they see regime change more often (I've seen different noble families take over, and one communist Germany).

What I'm sorely lacking is flavor. That's one the one hand making countries more unique (that can be something as simple as renaming IGs, or giving them more unique traits depending on country), but it's also bring out what's already in the game.

A main sticking point for me in Vic1 and 2 was that there were no "leaders" - i.e. in a game called Victoria, the queen herself was not represented. Now we have all those characters, faction leaders, generals - and that's great stuff. I thought it would be cringe, but I actually enjoy that aspect. Problem is, I don't really pay attention to them. Now, I don't need a CK3 RPG style gameplay here. But some way to make these people more prominent beyond the occasional event pop up. For 95% of my play time I don't pay attention to who is leading which faction (or even my country) beyond the IG marker and their traits. Them often dying without me noticing because the notification got buried doesn't help - which can be crucial, though, because their leader traits can drastically change what an IG does and doesn't like.

I know nations often have unique entries in their journal. And that helps somewhat ... if you remember to check your journal regularly. Some stuff will go to your outliner, but a lot of things just don't - which really sucks. So you end up scrolling through the long list of potential entries at the start and hope to remember key ones later (esp. since you can't look at inactive ones or add an alert to when they become available, like CK3 decisions allow you to do).

Similar with the world at large. I have NO idea what's going on around the world unless I pause and zoom in on nations. Oh, Canada is communist now. Oh, this nation has left my customs union? There's a weird ruler in Britain, I wonder what happened? It would be nice to have event logs, or at least be able to define countries of interest where I get more event notifications of what's happening with them.

Also, I really hope they fix nations getting stuck in endless, non-fighting war. In my recent game I ended up switching countries to give conflicts a push. It's often smaller nations in civil war with neither side having any troops left, but also still thinking they have resources to keep fighting. E.g. in Western Australia a conflict was frozen for 20 years. I checked - one side still had 1(!) division. I mobilized it for them and sent it to the front and the war was resolved moments later. And then I did the same for six other wars.

In my latest game (as Sikh - I need to redo this, because I never managed to get my economy "fixed" by 1890) there was actually a very distinct lack of war and diplomatic plays by major powers (except the occasional taking over of an African micro state).

[Syt]

 

[Tamas]

 


Agreed on lack of focus on what's going on in the world, Syt, and yeah I think high AI aggression is necessary in vanilla at the moment to make things happen.