Victoria 3

[Syt]

On the farmers leaving the government - How was the radicalism of their supporters? Since radical POPs give approval penalties to the IGs they support, it might affect their opinion enough to push them out of government, e.g. through SoL drops or similar?

What I have noticed, though, is that there seem to have been no changes to government setups at the start of the game to take into account the mechanical changes, so pretty much any country you start with now requires a government reform before you unpause.

Personally, I play with the Better Interest Groups Attraction mod:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2881590888

Better Interest Group Attraction adds a significant amount of depth to how pops choose which interest groups to join. In base game Vicky 3, pops mostly align with interest groups according to fixed ratios based on their profession, which is then modified by IG leader popularity. This makes pops far too static and lifeless, blindly supporting an interest group based on their profession with little regard to what's actually happening in your country. Moreover, even the fixed values Paradox implemented can lead to weird results, such as the Southern Planters being weaker than the Rural Folk in Virginia at game start.

This mod adds a large number of modifiers to interest group attraction based on factors such as the type of building a pop is employed in, how wealthy the pop is, and what laws are currently active. It also adjusts several base attraction values to fix some bugs and poor design choices that Paradox failed to correct before release.

The result is that pops align with interest groups based on their actual interests, and will react to the way you play the game. Thrust multiculturalism upon your uneducated populace? Watch them flock to the populism of the Petite Bourgeoisie. Build up a large arms industry and declare a bunch of rivals? Don't be shocked to see a massive Armed Forces IG lusting for war. Refuse to enact even token economic reforms? Looks like everyone's joining the Trade Unions. In general, the game should feel more realistic and harder to cheese, with your pops sorting themselves into interest groups based on what's important to them.

[Syt]

the assumption that all democracies are parliamentary coalitions, with parties and IGs freely able to join or leave the governing coalition.

This has been a problem from the beginning.  The game does not attempt to model presidential systems.

I hope that in the future we will see a more granular political system, with proper parliamentary make ups, different voting laws (fptp, proportional system etc.), different styles of executives and distributions of power e.g. between head of government and head of state. But that will probably more of a DLC type of thing.

[Tamas]

That mod sounds promising Syt, but I wonder if the more basic vanilla version can be wonky how possible it is to balance the level of depth it implies.

[Syt]

A fair concern, and he may be overcompensating at this point. He buffed armed forces attraction in latest update, and in 1860s France I have 50+% clout for the military (I have a fair number of generals and barracks, but it still feels extreme ... however Louis Napoleon also adds a lot of strength to them at the moment, so might be WAD? ).

On the plus side, he's one of the few modders who actually does proper change notes for his mod; you can check them here: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/changelog/2881590888

[Tamas]

Still, I like how the political situation can develop and how you can manage it. Realism can be improved sure but its still a bit of a first in grand strategy games I think.

e.g. I was facing a revolution by the armed forces over me having introduced universal rights in lieu of secret police. I had to placate their radicals somehow, so checking what laws they wanted I start enacting democratic republic. Sure, like a year later things got bad enough to see a conservative revolution boiling over this so I cancelled and the armed forces hasn't returned with their own revolution yet, but its still something.

And now my bulwark of progress, the Intelligentsia, has received an Anarchist leader and they have left the decades long Progressive IG coalition to form their Anarchist Party, turning into the main opposition force while the Progressives remain in government, constituted by the Rural Folk and the Armed Forces (most leaders are Reformers still thanks to the 1848 events firing then years ago in the 1860s).

BTW I have just seen the first ever AI-formed Germany, although I (Austria) didn't do anything to resist it forming. Also Russia had a fascist revolution in the mid-70s and now a presidential dictatorship.

But the speed is atrocious I am just about ready to give up. Hopefully they'll fix this in next week's update.

[Syt]

I had a look around Europe in my 1870s Europe game. Almost all countries have political movements pushing for liberal reforms - more progressive voting rights, right of assembly, worker protection, minimum wages etc.

In my country, the industrialists (in opposition) were demanding Laissez Faire and were actually ready to start a revolution over this.

(It was very welcome, with Military and Church/Landowners locked into power there was very little I could do to move laws forward )

[Syt]

BTW I have just seen the first ever AI-formed Germany, although I (Austria) didn't do anything to resist it forming.

I've been waiting for an opportunity to snatch Lombardy & Venetia from Austria, but then this happened:



(I had forced Austria to release Bohemia previously.)

The world is a bit of a mess:



Yes, Peru-Bolivia is a Russian puppet (they also have Venezuela and Denmark as protectorates). Britain turned Republic in the 1870s.

I'm in 1891 and the game is starting to slow down. I've been chasing GB to become #1 in ranking, but now Germany has jumped handily past both of us. I'd work towards destroying Germany, but everyone hates me (even though I have only 20 infamy at this point).

(Been playing with Anbeeld's AI mod and better IG attraction.)

[Tamas]

I won't play seriously before next week's next hotfix, but I was running an observer game into late 1860s to test re-introducing some of my earlier modding, reducing the prereqs for secession movements and somewhat even more restrictions on migrations - the ethnicity shuffle between the Asian and Balkan parts of the Ottomans seem noticeably less severe in 1.1.1 than before but still mighty annoying.

Anyhow, one thing I noticed is the AI is having fewer provinces in turmoil, in Prussia's case I think it's because their berserk behaviour seems totally gone, but other countries have notably fewer as well.

My earlier observation continues that diplomacy, or rather diplomatic AI is by far the weakest thing in the game. Its simplicity (despite how nice the diplomatic play mechanic is) and the AI's absolute stupidity is in glaring contrast of the other systems. Plus it's kind of ringfenced from the other systems by not being linked to internal politics.

Oh and the US AI with its front allocations and such really is terrible.

[Syt]

I decided to keep playing my France game and actually went through some butt-clenching moments. I wanted to puppet Wadai (Chad) in Africa. 5 infamy, and I had 19 infamy, so safe, right?

Germany decides to side with Wadai. So I'm locked into a long war of attrition against Germany. I had 500+ divisions and mobilized another 500+ conscripts, just to hold the line. Eventually I managed to force a peace where they ceded Venetia and Lombardy, after I landed troops in Holstein and Dalmatia.

However, in the meantime, some decentralized nation started an uprising, so I couldn't demobilize my 1150 division (you can imagine what my budget looked like at that point ... ). And when that affair was wrapped up, the US was in a play against Mexico ... whom I had a defensive alliance with. I wanted to abandon them, but US had declared wargoals (liberate Corsica & Tuscany) against me, so I couldn't. So I shipped 1,000 divisions over (keeping a few in Africa, because there was ANOTHER uprising). I had unlocked some new techs, but didn't want to use them because of the new equipment penalty.

The war in the US dragged forever. Mexico sucked, I went bankrupt, and Mexico had to capitulate. USA was still not ready to white peace me. So I decided to go and invade their shores a bit. While waiting for the landings, I got an "undefended front" warning ... bloody Yanks had landed in Southern France and had 600 divisions on shore. I managed to push them back and make some bridgeheads in Florida/Alabama to eventually white peace them before having to declare bankruptcy again.

We have peace at last, but my weekly budget is still 400k negative per week (before the war it was 80k positive).

Oh during the war I got a movement to switch to parliamentary republic, but I had to stop it because it was fostering a revolution.

[Syt]

I really hope they sort out performance, though. Again. Around 1890 the game slows down notably, and playing from 1900 - 1913 was quite the slog.

[Syt]

Finally stopped my France game in 1920. Besides the game becoming slow, the UI became incredibly sluggish, even when paused, and restarting the game didn't help. Running Anbeeld's AI mod sure didn't help. I had a GDP of 2B, and was in 4th place behind USA, Britain and Super-Germany.

I started getting into the micro with my economy in the end game, though. I had a number of industries that were not productive, even though their goods were in high demand. Lowering the minimum wage alleviated that a bit, but I also had run out of bodies for the factories. So it became a game of balancing industries between optimal resource usage and keeping excess production low (if there were no export markets), while also keeping automation high enough to keep manpower usage low, plus managing exports/imports. Of course some goods shortages were due to my goods being exported away (I had free trade, and I tried to change back to protectionism twice, but the industrialists were radicalized each time and started revolutions, so I backed down).

Not sure if it was due to the mod, but my radicals & turmoil were kinda hard to manage. With factories becoming profitable/non-profitable there was a constant churn of people getting radicalized for:
1. drop in SoL.
2. being fired.
3. being fired from a company they held shares in.
Meanwhile, you can only compensate by increasein SoL - people don't seem to lose radicalism when they get back into a job, or get shares in a company.

So, despite having 31 SoL across the nation, the highest in the world, people would constantly radicalize over this. I came to see <15M radicals out of 90M as "low"; I was frequently >30M. Also, I never had enough wine, no matter how many farms with vineyards I built (demand was 25k while producing/importing 15k; no exports).

I hope trade and tariffs will get more detail. Currently your trade policies applies to all products, with a uniform tariff applied and just generic "protect domestic production" or "encourage exports" settings. I hope we will get granular per-product settings at some point, with approval bonus/penalties tied to the respective POPs (change tariffs on grain => POPs in grain farms are affected). Because this could be micro hell, it needs some robust automation and quality of life features, and that's where I'm really worried.



Afterwards I started a vanilla observer game where I released every country's subjects and any territories they could release, switched AI aggression to high and sat back. And not much happened. The "usual" suspects did their thing (Prussia going after Germany territories, US going after West, etc.), but other than that ... nothing much. I had half expected to e.g. Spain go after Andalusia, Navarra, Galicia or Catalonia, but nope. They all built their stuff, created customs unions, occasionally created a protectorate. But unless they had a country setting for expansion in certain areas they just puttered along.

I feel the game has the opopsite issue to what turned me off EU4 a lot - in EU4, countries will be aggressively expanding if they can and exploit pretty much any weakness they see. I'm glad V3 tries to be different, but it may be overcorrecting. I don't want the US to conquer all of North America all the time, but seeing it occasionally would be fun. This rigidness is, funnily, what I would have liked for HoI4 which has gone all in on its alt-hist stuff.

I also hope they soon sort out peace deals at some point. Too often, the war lingers on, even though no war goals are unpressed, esp. in civil wars. E.g. Austria fights rebels, and Prussia aids the rebels. Austria crushes the Rebels and annexes them back. No war goals left to press (since Prussia can't add their own wargoals against Austria and vice versa in case of civil war). Yet they still keep on fighting, killing hundreds of thousands until one of them finally backs down.

And I really hope we'll get more flavor. Just events would be fine. Like, if you have arts academies, add a chance (per productive academy) to get an exceptional artist, or writer, or (when having film) director or something. Get some scientist events from your universities. (Ideally, later have a system where these are actual characters in game.)

[Tamas]

Nice one Syt


Re. the radicals, did you use a mod to get around the bug when sometimes a high legitimacy government gives you tons of radicals until you reform it?

[Syt]

I did not, but I also did not get (m)any radicals from that as I reformed a fair bit over my sessions.

[Zanza]

Currently playing a game as Spain. I enjoy it as Spain has potential, but is not overwhelming at the start. So far I took North Morocco and started some colonies.

[Syt]

You can probably nab some of your old colonies in South America.