Victoria 3

[Syt]

https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0104231/

[Razgovory]

Never even heard of that film.

[garbon]

Never even heard of that film.

Same. I'm not sure that would be common knowledge.

[Tamas]

[Barrister]

Says a lot about this place that you have to post to confirm knowledge of a big Hollywood star vehicle, but it is just assumed that references to an obscure failed 19th century ruler and an army chief of staff of a defunct polity from a century ago will be understood as a matter of course.

I did not understand the reference.

I think the point was that a fairly popular movie from the 1990s starring a huge movie star is a more common reference to make that referring to leaders from 19th century Austria-HUngary.

[DGuller]

I feel like my C programs often do: I don't get the reference.

[Syt]

I've been playing a Russia game into 1920. Been using the Unofficial Patch Mod, kAI mod (which doesn't go overboard but mainly helps the AI with constructing more sensibly etc.) and a mod that reduces some of the trade micro by making it that trade routes aim for highest profitability rather than biggest size (which in my experience frequently leads to the seasaw of dipping into negative convoys one week, trade routes shrinking a bit for next week, then growing again in the following week .... ).

The game feels far too easy. Now, Russia has always had the issue due to its huge resources (the amount of gold mines is ABSURD). But it feels it's even easier now. No movement (be it nationalist, religious, or political) was ever an issue. Sure, I hardly ever change my laws (I did get Free Trade/Laissez-Faire, though, thanks to your second scripted monarch), but no voting, no religious tolerance, and I only moved from National Supremacy to Racial Segregation in the 1910s (not that there was any pressure for it). Meanwhile I gobbled up protectorates and puppets through opportunistic wars or through my Power Bloc. Persia, Japan, Iraq, Trucial States, Arabia, the entire Balkans, Galicia, Pommerania, Danzig, Denmark, Norway, and most recently Portugal who I "protected" in exchange for aiding them against newly independent India who wanted to take their colonies.

In a twist of irony, Hungary is friendly but steadfastly resists becoming a member of my sphere.

I even managed to keep up my admin capacity and have fairly decent institutions. In a recent war against Prussia, I nationalized 160 buildings they owned in Russia (and my protectorates, maybe? unsure), making sure the income stays at home going forward.

UK was fairly aggressive during most of the game, taking India to Vietnam and a province or two from China (plus Albania and Western Anatolia -I took the Balkans part from them later), and much of Africa. France was doing ... ok? USA achieved historical size, but I think it's mostly because I decided not to meddle in the Americas (except helping them defeat the CSA secession in the 1870s), whereas AI Russia currently supports Mexico from early on - the Pacific Coast strategic region needs to be cut in half, I think, to prevent that.

In 1920 I'm swimming in money (thanks, puppets) with zero taxes and well over 1000 construction while having 300 ships and 500 soldiers. I don't have telephones/radios yet, but realistically I can take on anyone as long as I fight them seperately or in pairs. But if I were to attack Austria, I would face Italy, Spain, France and Prussia on top, for a total of 1500 or so troops. Maybe doable, but would probably wreck my income for a bit.

My previous game as Spain (which died to a repeatable CTD in 1890s) was a lot harder, because for long stretches I had to be very judicious about alliances and not getting into wars with, say, France or England while competing with the Dutch East Indies in Indonesia. But there, too, political change was very slow. I guess unless you bolster a political movement they won't often do much (I never got to get rid of slavery, for example).

[Syt]

In the latest dev diary, they hinted at another patch, maybe this week:

Beyond 1.8.3, we're planning to do at least one more hotfix, tentatively scheduled sometime next week, and we're not ruling out the possibility of additional patches beyond that, as we want to leave the game in a good place before the Christmas holidays begin. In no particular order, these are some of the things on our radar for 1.8.4 and beyond, based on the feedback we've been getting from you since release:

• Continue to improve the balancing of the EIC content and revising some parts of the Unstable Raj journal entry
• Review the rewards of the Pivot of Empire Journal Entries to ensure they feel worth the effort to complete
• Look into the issue with too many frontlines being created in India due to the many small nations
• Evaluate building wages to see if the changes we made in 1.8 made building owners too stingy for their own good
• Find a more comprehensive solution for how acceptance should tie into migration
• Remove the heritage/homeland restrictions on assimilation when it makes sense for pops to assimilate regardless
• Evaluate companies and ensure they do not feel underwhelming as a result of no longer being country-wide
• Doing a balance pass on subject payments, particularly for Chartered Companies

This is of course not even close to being an exhaustive list, and we will continue to collect your feedback and make adjustments and fixes as a result. For now though, that's all for today, so please join us again next week for the proper post-release thoughts on Pivot of Empire and update 1.8. See you then!

Though currently I feel that movements lack a bit of "kick" on their own. Neither as Austria, nor Spain, nor Russia I felt much pressure or pain from them.

[Tamas]

Yeah ironically Austria feels more stable than ever despite the dozen or so cultural political movements.

[Sheilbh]

Yeah ironically Austria feels more stable than ever despite the dozen or so cultural political movements.

That seems accurate for most of the period

[Tamas]

Omfg with today's patch they have turned off the assimilation ban on homelands so we are back to Victoria 2 where Hungarians effectively disappeared from the world in a matter of decades and where Indians mass assimilate into Englishmen.

Stupidest change ever.

[Crazy_Ivan80]

Omfg with today's patch they have turned off the assimilation ban on homelands so we are back to Victoria 2 where Hungarians effectively disappeared from the world in a matter of decades and where Indians mass assimilate into Englishmen.

Stupidest change ever.

Putin, Erdogan and Xi complained I guess?

[Tamas]

This and politics becoming super easy because of how inconsequential movements really make 1.8 a massive letdown. Going to take quite a bit of balancing to recover from this.

[Syt]

Omfg with today's patch they have turned off the assimilation ban on homelands so we are back to Victoria 2 where Hungarians effectively disappeared from the world in a matter of decades and where Indians mass assimilate into Englishmen.

Stupidest change ever.

I think the mechanics, as a concept are great. But yes, balancing is going to be tricky. With tuning the raw numbers, you're likely to get some part of the world "right", but it will throw another part out of whack. At the same time you don't want to create too many "special solutions" for outliers that will be hard to maintain down the line when more mechanics get added. Similarly, adding more variables to the mix will affect performance, complexities etc.

Haven't tried new patch yet, but I think allowing homeland assimiliation is not per se wrong. There were plenty campaigns (conscious/subconscious) to turn those pesky minorities (and some colonials) into proper good English/Hungarians/Russians/French/Canadians etc. I guess you'd call it cultural erasure these days. Though I think maybe culture/religion as is can't handle all complexities of the era. I'd argue for something like the hybrid culture system in CK3 (anglicized Bengals, Germanized Hungarians, Hungarified Croats, Russified Tatars ... ), or for pops to have two cultures with a percentage attached. ("25% German, 75% Hungarian). Of course no matter what, it would have its drawbacks - the most obvious being that it would add tons of new pops in various stages of cultural hybridization (plus tracking an additional status for each of them).

Maybe phenotype could be a separate attribute from culture? So you could be, say, Dixie, but also be black. Or English, but also South Asian. Under cultural exclusion you would not be discriminated, but under Racial Segregation you would be. Though it opens an ugly can of worms on where to draw the lines, and whether or not for example East, West, South, or North Europeans should all be different phenotypes, or how much some outer appearances are linked to their cultures (you can't be Bantu if you're white, you can't be Scottish if you're East Asian or whatever).

Maybe we need more complex laws for citizenship?

If anything, the trying to build this mechanic proves that humans across history are endlessly creative in creating in-groups and out-groups based around languages, appearances, shared histories etc.

Perhaps the label "homeland" needs to be more fluid. If a homeland is occupied by a power that discriminates against that culture, the "homeland" factor could diminish over time, slowly allowing local pops to change culture, instead of being on or off.

[Tamas]

Or they can just prevent assimilation on homelands.