Victoria 3

[FunkMonk]

Playing Austria with the patch for comparison's sake.

The thing about more political movements and the fact that revolutions start "charging up" from 50 radicalism (but won't trigger before 100) are easily noticable.

The aristocrats were already pretty miffed when I just launched a campaign to switch to appointed bureaucrats. What happened was that they already had a political movement to introduce agrarianism on low support and radicalisation, that the latter jumped to critical when I started going with the the bureaucracy thing, and the revolution "charge up" started, so I gave up and things calmed back.

I just restarted a Spain game with the new patch. I removed the landowners from government and replaced them with the industrialists and started to enact the slavery ban. The landowners immediately began a movement to block the ban and became radicalized. Within two months their revolution began, centered in northwest Spain. The war lasted a year or so until Portugal and I destroyed the power of the landowners in Spain forever.

Quite cool and fun 

[FunkMonk]

So yeah, the diplomatic and economic AI needs a little work but I've read that multiplayer is actually pretty stable.

So with the bones of the game really quite good, this might be a really good multiplayer game. Imagine like ten humans building out their empire's economies and squabbling over colonial scraps in Indonesia and Africa

[Syt]

With trade centers being overpriced I thought I'd give Japan a go.

I immediately went for Colonization tech, but before I finished, the Russians were already on Hokkaido.  I'm not sure what a good mechanical solution would be for this, but it's rather annoying that this happens every game.

In terms of annoyances that are not gamebreaking but still peeving me it ranks up there with the US never taking that bit of Colorado from Mexico, or Italy never trying to take Lombardy, South Tyrol, Istria & Venetia from Austria.

I've not dabbled with gameplay mods, but I've installed a number of UI mods - e.g. the states in outliner showing # of peasants & unemployed, the IGs in outliner showing approval rating, some more condensed trade screens etc.

[Syt]

In the case of Italy, they should really get an irredentism mechanic where they will try to take all Italian homelands if possible.

[Syt]

The V3 province map: https://i.redd.it/eccslaknxlx91.png

[crazy canuck]

With trade centers being overpriced I thought I'd give Japan a go.

I immediately went for Colonization tech, but before I finished, the Russians were already on Hokkaido.  I'm not sure what a good mechanical solution would be for this, but it's rather annoying that this happens every game.

In terms of annoyances that are not gamebreaking but still peeving me it ranks up there with the US never taking that bit of Colorado from Mexico, or Italy never trying to take Lombardy, South Tyrol, Istria & Venetia from Austria.

I've not dabbled with gameplay mods, but I've installed a number of UI mods - e.g. the states in outliner showing # of peasants & unemployed, the IGs in outliner showing approval rating, some more condensed trade screens etc.

Playing as Russia, the very first move is to colonize the three Uzbek territories, Sakhalin and Hokkaido.

[The Minsky Moment]

Obvious solution is to make all of Hokkaido an unincorporated state of Japan at game start instead of having a colonizable piece.

[Tamas]

I guess I wasn't playing optimally last night as I was a bit distracted, but in my Austria game it took me until the mid-1860s to oust the Aristocrats from the government without dramatically tanking my legitimacy. This way I can start decreasing their clout via Authority so they should be on their way out.

But they would still make a lot of trouble if I wanted to go to racial segregation, and I am still stuck on Land voting.

In fact, the Rural Folks are so strong, they had a "lets close the borders" movement going on Medium popularity and radicalism for a while and I was "yeah right" but then my bloody radicals kept creeping up and turmoil was spreading everywhere, and then I realised that hey actually my economy kinda' stinks is it really that bad if my people can't leave? So I succumbed to the movement had Closed Borders pass and the radicals radically decreased.

The point is that this is very nice in the game, that going liberal (which rightfully is the best for your economy and politics) can be a challenge and depending on your societal makeup it might be better to not rock the boat and roll with the Make Austria Great Again people.

[Syt]

Btw, I've not fought all that many wars so far in V3, but what I have seen so far seemed pretty reasonable for the conflicts I've been involved in, in terms of results. There's a bit more decision making involved than it looks at first (trying to stabilize a front that's collapsing, debating whether to mobilize conscripts when things look esp dicey, wondering whether to split up one senior general's big stack into smaller stacks by adding generals, so you can cover more fronts when the lines of combat get too fractured), and the ouctome of combat has generally been not too outlandish.

One thing I noticed is that if you fight an enemy with a large/weird border on multiple fronts and they have limited troops they often leave some areas unguarded where you can then put small armies that can advance unimpeded, quickly shifting the balance of the war in a fairly gamey way. This might get addressed, though, as they said they want to look at how new fronts are generated (because some conflicts just become a huge mess after a while).

[Tamas]

Yeah agreed, it's the diplomacy AI that really causes issues with wars. I had Prussia stuck in a war with a minor it didn't border for a decade. Then it somehow violated the neutrality of the country between them (got an event popup if I wanted to help the poor guys) but I don't know how that goes.

[Syt]

Yeah agreed, it's the diplomacy AI that really causes issues with wars. I had Prussia stuck in a war with a minor it didn't border for a decade. Then it somehow violated the neutrality of the country between them (got an event popup if I wanted to help the poor guys) but I don't know how that goes.

In such cases I now switch to one of the warring parties (tiny countries with revolutions also get stuck a lot) and do something that gets them moving again (might be one side still has 1 division they can mobilize vs the enemy's 0). Worst case I have one of the sides capitulate

I have seen big wars freeze and become unstuck again after a few years, but it's quite rare. I feel that the AI needs to learn how to resolve it themselves, and a "ticking clock" where the war will just end after X amount of time without battles (similar to white peace mechanic in EU), regardless of whether they think they still have credit reserves to continue.

[garbon]

Yeah agreed, it's the diplomacy AI that really causes issues with wars. I had Prussia stuck in a war with a minor it didn't border for a decade. Then it somehow violated the neutrality of the country between them (got an event popup if I wanted to help the poor guys) but I don't know how that goes.

There's a diplomatic play to violate the neutrality of a third party - though it looks like you can only do it if your relations are low with the third party.

[Syt]

Yeah agreed, it's the diplomacy AI that really causes issues with wars. I had Prussia stuck in a war with a minor it didn't border for a decade. Then it somehow violated the neutrality of the country between them (got an event popup if I wanted to help the poor guys) but I don't know how that goes.

There's a diplomatic play to violate the neutrality of a third party - though it looks like you can only do it if your relations are low with the third party.

It would be helpful, though, (and IMHO quite reasonable) if you could ask a friendly country for military access, too.

[garbon]

Yeah agreed, it's the diplomacy AI that really causes issues with wars. I had Prussia stuck in a war with a minor it didn't border for a decade. Then it somehow violated the neutrality of the country between them (got an event popup if I wanted to help the poor guys) but I don't know how that goes.

There's a diplomatic play to violate the neutrality of a third party - though it looks like you can only do it if your relations are low with the third party.

It would be helpful, though, (and IMHO quite reasonable) if you could ask a friendly country for military access, too.

Yeah, I only learned about that play as I was trying to figure out how to avoid repeating failed naval invasions of Tuscany. I then had a pop up telling me Etruria had peace demands enforced on it. When I finally looked it was my puppet in same space that had been Tuscany.

[Valmy]

The V3 province map: https://i.redd.it/eccslaknxlx91.png

Ok one more bit of history nerd rage: Saint Pierre and Miquelon are on the map. They are right there off the coast of Newfoundland...yet they are not part of France but part of the UK? What? Why have them even on the map then? Just leave them off if they are not important enough to be given to the correct country. I am all for just pretending they don't exist if you want to do that, but come on. They are  important enough to exist but not important enough to exist accurately?

Especially as this is an economic game and they were part of France for fishing interests, economics. Seems like something Victoria 3 would care about.