Victoria 3

[FunkMonk]

Seems like the best bet is to wait a year for patches and mods

[Zanza]

I will play it on release day. I am not a min/max player, so I don't care if there are exploits.

[Tamas]

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.

Yeah but to pay them to publicise that before release?

Like Zanza I am not too worried about the artic trade empire, there bound to be edge cases where mimmaxers can do silly things.

I am more worried about the HRE and Brazil videos where the diplomatic AI seems extremely passive, and more importantly where - hopefully only because of the very short duration of the videos-the gameplay is shown as some very dumbed down EU4 - both players seem to be at most mildly inconvenienced by internal mechanics which are supposed to be the game's primary focus.

I am still going to play it on day 1 and I await the videos from the supposed big MP session today and the streams tomorrow, to hopefully show yesterday's barrage of crap was a collection of outliers.

But I am suddenly finding garbon's expected CK3 nature of this game  more realistic than my previous enthusiasm.

[FunkMonk]

Quill18 is doing a Canada run on YouTube right now and it's much better than the meme marketing videos.

[The Minsky Moment]

Yeah but to pay them to publicise that before release?

The memey nature of the gameplay is probably seen as a plus for attracting casual players.
They figure suckers like you and me already preordered.

[Tamas]

Quill18 is doing a Canada run on YouTube right now and it's much better than the meme marketing videos.

Indeed, much better. Game may still be broken but at least by going through the details and explaining his train of thought, he shows there are other things in there than clicking declare war and painting the map automatically.

[Tamas]

Yeah but to pay them to publicise that before release?

The memey nature of the gameplay is probably seen as a plus for attracting casual players.
They figure suckers like you and me already preordered.

Fair point.

[Josephus]

Quill18 is doing a Canada run on YouTube right now and it's much better than the meme marketing videos.

Indeed, much better. Game may still be broken but at least by going through the details and explaining his train of thought, he shows there are other things in there than clicking declare war and painting the map automatically.

I always find Quill one of the best when it comes to explaining thigns.

[Tamas]

I am watching OPB play Bavaria. To be fair he marked it as an "RP" session so he isn't doing his game-breaking min-maxing, but it seems like he is definitely having some challenges. His drive toward South German Federation is being interrupted by the Prussian AI  (in late 1840s) starting a series of wars to eat up and vassalise the German states, one side-effect was that Prussia force-vassalising Wurttemberg destroyed the customs union market that he setup and what sustained his growing economy, forcing him to downgrade some of his factories.

Looks fun.


Also the PC Gamer review said the internal politics and the economy and market systems are great, but diplomacy (especially AI activity they say) and war are lacklustre.

[Valmy]

Prussia conquered German states and the mighty German Confederation did not do anything about it? Huh.

Maybe the fine print allows Prussia and Austria to vassalize them.

[FunkMonk]

Prof Devereaux, our second favorite historian, has posted his thoughts after playing 80 hours of the game

https://acoup.blog/2022/10/24/miscellanea-victoria-iii-confirmed-first-impressions/

[Syt]

Overall initial opinions seem to be "awesome economics/political sim, needs work on diplo and war."

I'm very fine with war being abstracted, but from what I've seen in previews it could do with more interactivity - some decisions the player can take to influence outcomes a bit, tying it into the political management (unsuccessful generals making demands for more resources or peace talks, successful generals getting overconfident and pushing for more wargoals, having to deal with bad generals whose attitudes have become "outdated" or who you had to appoint for political reasons ...).

[Syt]

Myself, I will play the tutorials first, and then likely Austria-Hungary to see if I can reform it into a progressive federated industrialized state. Maybe Argentina after that.

Thankfully I will not return to work till next week Wednesday.

[HVC]

So, it's the 25th. Anyone playing yet?

[Syt]

Not unlocking till 5 or 6 pm CET tonight