Victoria 3

[Tamas]

At the same time, I could not convince the Russian AI to send generals to an uprising of theirs that had zero troops defending, and when I switched countries, ordered a Russian general there to attack, switched back to Spain, just to watch Russia swiftly conquer the uprising than white peace out. to be fair though, the latter might be due to my modding.

The US AI, in the meantime, made headways into Mexico, but possibly because of a war it got into with France over a random African tribe, it peaced out, taking California and relinquishing Texas

These do make me think a significant portion of problems with the game is the braindead AI.

[Josephus]

The notification settings are hilarious. There is of course the mass migration target pop-up, but when a great power launches a diplomatic play against me, it just humbly appears on the top right corner the same way a diplo play I am not involved with in would.

Yeah, this needs to be worked on. The pop migration one is especially irritating.

[Tamas]

For some reason the makeup of the Ottoman Empire really doesn't work with the migration system. e.g. Austria seems to largely keep its ethnic makeup intact or at least within the realm of possible, but by the 1880s Bosnia is out of Bosnians, Turks are majority on most of the Balkans, there are significant African minorities on the Balkans as well, and the Slavs are dispersed around the world, emptying their homelands. I guess it must be the combination of shitty economy and being discriminated, but it just feels wrong.

[grumbler]

Maybe make it so that struggling pops cannot afford to migrate?

[Syt]

Migration (esp. migration events) seems to have some issues. In some cases there can be a huge migration wave that can basically depopulate whole swaths of land - this should be toned down, I guess; or maybe make it a % of population if it isn't already, so that small countries (1M or so) don't lose 50-60% of their population in months.

And it can hurt you even when you keep them happy. Let's say Culture A is living in your country and also in the neighboring country. On your side of the border, pops are happy and have a great standard of living. On the other side, people are starving, turmoil etc. and a migration event triggers => this targets all pops of Culture A in the area, including yours.

[Tamas]

Migration (esp. migration events) seems to have some issues. In some cases there can be a huge migration wave that can basically depopulate whole swaths of land - this should be toned down, I guess; or maybe make it a % of population if it isn't already, so that small countries (1M or so) don't lose 50-60% of their population in months.

And it can hurt you even when you keep them happy. Let's say Culture A is living in your country and also in the neighboring country. On your side of the border, pops are happy and have a great standard of living. On the other side, people are starving, turmoil etc. and a migration event triggers => this targets all pops of Culture A in the area, including yours.

I wonder if I effectively turn off cultural mass migrations, will that screw with the countries depending on such migrations? It would be trivial to make extra migration pull from those events zero in defines.

[Syt]

You could nerf the big migration events, and up the "normal" migration a bit? Might be tricky to balance, though. And I feel that "big" migrations (like the Irish IRL) should still be very notable.

[Tamas]

You could nerf the big migration events, and up the "normal" migration a bit? Might be tricky to balance, though. And I feel that "big" migrations (like the Irish IRL) should still be very notable.

Yeah probably not something worth bothering trying to balance on my own. I have already nerfed it a bit, but it still a sizeable thing. I'll also try changing the homeland pull multiplier from 0.5 to 1. I assume they halved the homeland pull to avoid pops yoyo-ing between homelands and actual good places to live, but it feels a bit counterintuitive that "oh that looks like a nice place to live.. oh wait no that's where my people are from, no way".

[Syt]

Adjacent to migration, I'm not sure I get the mechanical reasoning for assimilation. Only pops of an accepted, non-discriminated culture can assimilate. I don't quite get what the point of that is, in game terms, because if they're accepted, any negative malus they might have for not being assimilated is already gone. In gameplay terms, it would be much more useful to get non-accepted cultures to be assimilated. (Which version of assimilation is more realistic, is for a separate, political debate, I suppose )

Either make it so non-accepted pops can be assimilated, or have accepted, non-assimilated cultures still have a drawback. Which comes back to ethnic animosities not being modeled - if Irish or Chinese immigrants in the US are accepted, but Yankee and Dixie pops still hate them, it would create more friction and reason to drive up assimilation. I guess you would need to have something like the citizenship laws, but on a culture of pop level. State is multicultural, but Dixie still is into Racial Segregation, driving up radicalism (which might be hard to balance to not wreck games, or at least you'd need a way to counter balance that or influence your cultures to change their culture).

[Solmyr]

I'm not clear on whether it matters where you build construction, other than having enough people to employ. Is building in a state somehow affected by whether there are construction facilities there, or is all your construction capacity nation-wide?

[grumbler]

I'm not clear on whether it matters where you build construction, other than having enough people to employ. Is building in a state somehow affected by whether there are construction facilities there, or is all your construction capacity nation-wide?

Construction is nation-wide, which is just another of the major problems with Vic3's construction model.  The ranchers in Texas have to wait for the construction workers from Illinois to finish building the glassworks in Vermont before they can come down to Texas and start on the ranch.  Absurd.

[Syt]

I believe construction also gives a local bonus to construction speed.

[garbon]

I'm not clear on whether it matters where you build construction, other than having enough people to employ. Is building in a state somehow affected by whether there are construction facilities there, or is all your construction capacity nation-wide?

Construction is nation-wide, which is just another of the major problems with Vic3's construction model.  The ranchers in Texas have to wait for the construction workers from Illinois to finish building the glassworks in Vermont before they can come down to Texas and start on the ranch.  Absurd.

Yes, that is rather odd.

[grumbler]

I believe construction also gives a local bonus to construction speed.

At steel buildings the bonus is 1.7% per level.  Completely submerged in all the other bonusses and maluses.

[Syt]

On nice mods to recommend, I'd add miniature world and miniature clean roads. The former scales down the size of city buildings, bringing it more in line with e.g. trees and farms (though not quite), while the roads scale down, too, and make it so buildings can't spawn on roads. That means that instead of a cluster of houses into which the roads disappear, you get cities that build "around" intersections etc. It just looks a bit nicer. I'd also add the "diverse architecture" mod which mixes up the buildings for Europe, so that in later game you don't have uniform towns of green roofs (copper roofs with patina), and a mod (forget the name) that switches the mediterranean buildings in Europe from Middle Eastern to Carribean.

Secondly, brushing up on my 19th century history, I feel that famines are a bit too mechanics driven at the moment. Expensive Food => People can't afford food => SoL drops => famine & migration. So far so good. But there seem to be few events that can additionally drive food prices/negatively affect output, short of flood or volcano.

Like, dunno ... the weather (early frosts, failed harvests)? Or crop/livestock blights. Those were still a major concern in the mid-century in many parts of Europe, and in some well into the late 19th century and were only later alleviated by better agricultural methods and infrastructure (and trade laws, allowing easier import of foreign grain, for example). The late 1840s saw sharp increase in mortality and decrease in birth rates across much of Europe after various blights and failed harvests. Additionally, I feel early urbanization should drive up mortality in cities, or lead to cholera/typhus outbreaks in heavily urbanized areas until certain techs are researched sewers, medicine advancement, health institutions ... (If I feel particularly motivated I might look into how to mod events for that. Or if they exist, improve on them. I know that such "act of god" events suck for player agency, but seeing most regions growing on an exponential curve mostly undisturbed feels just as wrong.)

And where, oh, where are my Work Houses?