Victoria 3

[Syt]

Well, I don't use "flavor" mods much, because they often seem "a bit" broken.

Did another observer game while doing some chores yesterday. Checked in in 1893, watched for another 10 or 15 years while reading before going to bed.

Austria in firt game ended up stable Austria with Hungary as vassal. In this game it exploded - Republic of San Marco, big Serbia, Hungary as Great Power ... later parts of Galicia broke free from Rest-Austria into a duchy ruled by a Wittelsbach Duke. (Meanwhile, Greece had concquered much of Anatolia and mainland Greece, but lost it to a Turkish uprising.) Germany included Denmark, the Dutch coast, Bohemia, and a bit of Southern Sweden. Alsace-Lorraine, Bohemia, Poland kept revolting, but Germany kept putting them down. The Dutch were on high obstinance. The South Swedish province (the one north of Skåne) rebelled, too, but Germany never took it back and it reverted to Sweden.

Which points to an issue that seems to have returned - AI sucking at naval landings. Germany never took their Swedish province back, despite having 1000 units and a 300+ fleet. France declared war on Egypt to take Tripolitania and chunks of Egypt proper. No one aided Egypt, but France never made a move - no naval invasion, no military access through other countries. The list goes on.

I did like that Britain apparently at some point extended Hong Kong to its full province, but lost it in an uprising. It was later pirkced up by the Philippines.

Besides the lack of naval assaults (they happen, but ones that should be easy are not ... at a hunch I fear that the AI's armies are larger than any navy and they can't figure out how to organize them into invasion-capable sizes? it seemed smaller nations with less resources were more likely to use naval invasion; but not enough data to verify) - landlocked nations still suck at getting market access (and it's worse if part of a country is landlocked, like the remainders of Austria). Some get transit rights from neighbors, but many don't, tanking their economy (e.g. Switzerland if their contract with France ends, Paraguay when they move off isolationism, plenty others). Switzerland got solved when they went Socialist and Sardinia-Piemont went in to change their regime and make them their protectorate.

I generally like that end game wars with nations that have high cultural fervor will generally last a lot longer because it makes them much more reluctant to end the war (waiting for World War 1 flavor pack .... ). However, it leads to situations where the Confederate States have Kentucky as an exclave surrounded by the USA. Kentucky goes into revolt and the war persists for 20 or so years, because neither can fight the other, but they also can't give up. (And of course, KY has no transit rights with the USA.

I feel for the US, there needs to be events/journal entries for after a successful civil war or for integrating breakaway "rogue" states. Especially if the CSA also abolishes slavery at some point. Make it a reconciliation journal entry or something that can lead to unification (or permanent split).

(Also, Mexico owned California, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas ... I assume they had someone helping them, but didn't see the war play out. )

One thing is for sure, though - Europe, and esp. the Balkans, are MUCH more alive.

[Norgy]

I would say there is some weird stuff happening in Vic3.
In one of my "let's do the impossible and unite Italy", Norway basically conquered Sweden (with the help of the British Empire), but was still in the personal union.
So the senior partner was sitting with two provinces, and Norway was well beyond what could be called a natural (and defensible) border.

The Ottomans never have failed or fallen in my games. Until Italy took them on. Sorry, we need Crete and some islands, olive supplies are running low.

I don't know whether or not be scared when Russia with 1200 brigades interferes in South American affairs. My Brazil had 52, along with our power-bloc members Chile and Bolivia, we were a bit... underpowered. My mistake, won't try to puppet Venezuela again. Could you please go back to pan-slavism, Russia?

More often than not, I see the CSA survive well into the 20th century.
Mexico often becomes a great power and has its own power bloc.
I am sure someone could write some great alt-hist about that. No need for a wall here.

[Tamas]

One Proud Bavarian is right about the Austrian Journal Entries being a bit opaque on when they can trigger or go away. I was working on federalisation when I switched from Wealth to Census voting which a) triggered some new JE about solidifying respect for the Kaiser but also b) making the federalisation JE disappear without a note or message or anything. Probably a bug though.

Norgy with the latest patch the Ottomans are much more vulnerable. Although in my current game they won the Balkan Wars and apart from Bosnia and half of Bulgaria they are back to their original European size.

[Tamas]

I think as Austria if you want to keep Hungary around as a vassal you better make sure you dominate them militarily and otherwise make sure to minimalise their liberty desire in whichever way because it's been really a pain to have them by the late game effectively stronger than me, never knowing if they are going to follow me into war or backstab me.

[Sheilbh]

Salutary lessons from the Habsburgs for a happier Europe

[Tamas]

  


In general, I feel like the new mechanics are so good that they make it very obvious that they (understandably) are missing one important "coping mechanism" employed by the Balkans to address their problems: ethnic cleansing.

Right now you either provide your minorities with a fairly tolerant country and a decent standard of living, or face constant revolts, at least in states where a neighbour can promote the nationalism of their people. If one of those positive options is not available, you are stuck. Historically this conundrum was resolved by various violent means of course.

[Tamas]

Having another fun hotfix-difference testing run with 1.10.3, obviously as Austria.

Based on my last couple of attempts I was ready to reject Hungary's liberal reforms and annex them in their war, but the AI opted to back down after my rejection. It triggered a revolt within vassal Hungary but it never had a chance.

just after the Springtime of Nations troubles a looming revolution gave me the event that let me fast-track to Universal Suffrage (from Wealth Voting). This has stabilised an aristocrat-church-petite bourgeois coalition and I have been rolling reforms out slowly. Overall things feel reasonably prosperous compared to my other playthroughs BUT you can notice that I am having to constantly suppress 2, sometimes 3, national movements. The North Italians and Czechs especially have too many downtrodden people to remain quiet. And this is with level 4 Policing and Level 2 secret police. And the Italian states have been pretty timid so far, none have started sponsoring national upheaval in my borders.

So this feels quite properly Austria-flavoured - a reasonably docile macro picture has a lot of discontent simmering and growing underneath. I am not too sure it'll ever go past that though, will see.

The game is much more fun now in this region.


photo hosting sites

[Tamas]

Lol so I just have had to start a new game because I got sick of how ridiculously OP Power Blocs are (there's a simple mod that turns them off, I might look at creating a mod for myself that just nerfes them seriously).

In this game, I accidentally managed to be historic Austria, I guess.

So, it's the mid-1860s, and I was having it good. No major shortages in the economy, and after some hairy revolutions in the 50s I was actually quite stable with autocracy (you need to invest into admin buildings and up policing and sercet service). Heck, I even force-puppeted Piedmont (although I don't think it stopped them from supporting separatism in my country so there was little point).

Prussia was weaker than usual and they kept begging me for an alliance, me and my vassals had a much bigger army, so I was thinking: why shouldn't I beat them for German Leadership and form the South German Confederation? Even with most German states supporting Prussia I had a stronger force.

So declare war I did. I am not sure why (maybe the AI spent on more mobilisation options) but I actually couldn't make any headways into Prussia and started losing. Then Piedmont gave me an ultimatum, give them independence or else...

Now, losing German Leadership wouldn't have mattered too much, it was only a nice to have. HOWEVER, Prussia was demanding this bit of Silesia (or whatever) that linked my western territories with the eastern one, it's a strip of land north of Slovakia that is VERY strategic if you have Hungary as a vassal - if you lose that strip and Hungary rebels, Galicia is cut off from your market.  So I decided to let the Italians go since I really had to avoid having to give in to all Prussian demands.

It would have worked if it wasn't for my meddling ally Bavaria... they did not agree to a peace based on German Leadership until my front collapsed and I was force-kicked from the war with me losing that strip of land. the North German Federation formed immediately, the AI with the same momentum just declared a unifying war on France and beat the hell out of them, so in like a couple of years I went from "let's kick weak's Prussia's ass and take half of Germany" to looking at the German Empire.

Almost right after that surrender, Piedmont declared war on Parma to puppet them. I was guaranteeing Parma and I thought with Russia a friend, truce with Germany, and France just roflstomped by the German-Spanish alliance, what could possibly go wrong if I actually defend Parma and humiliate Piedmont in the process.

Well, the bad thing that happened was that Hungary sided with Piedmont to get more autonomy from me. And I am not sure why, again, but my troops were absolute shite. At the end, Piedmont took Milan and Hungary got their more autonomy, the latter which made try to improve the situation by forming the Dual Monarchy and giving them all of Croatia and Istria to perhaps cut back on their liberty desire.

[Norgy]

Never underestimate Vic3's ability to make you want to pull your hair out. 

[The Minsky Moment]

Did you look at your troop stats? 

Prussia spawns von Moltke who has great leader stats.  They have a few military focused companies which give military bonuses on their own, plus the prestige goods they generate give more. It's possible for them to stack military bonuses pretty high with the right tech choices and mobilization options

[Tamas]

Did you look at your troop stats? 

Prussia spawns von Moltke who has great leader stats.  They have a few military focused companies which give military bonuses on their own, plus the prestige goods they generate give more. It's possible for them to stack military bonuses pretty high with the right tech choices and mobilization options

Ah.

The only thing that went well was my decades-long assimilation effort in Czechia has seen a slight German majority (something like 44% vs 42% or something) in the two main Czech provinces. Whether that's realistic is a different question. But I have stopped the directives for now (early 1880s) as I want extra taxes to get out of the debt spiral I almost entered.

[Norgy]

Those Krupp guns give a rather hefty bonus to Prussia/Gernany.