Victoria 3

[crazy canuck]

Even more problematic for me is that the game turns into a slide show by 1870.  It's unplayable.

One thing I have found that helps is changing the lens.  On some lenses the game speeds back up.  Not ideal of course, but a bit of a work around.

[Syt]

Haven't played much apart from the first 30 hours after I bought it. Life happened and my rare game time turned to other, more accessible games.

Is the consensus now that Victoria 3 is a failure as is?

I think it has a very good basis and design ideas, but needs balance, bugfixing, better AI, tweaks and more flavor. I think it's less in a better shape than Imperator at launch but worse than CK3. And despite the issues it is still fun to play around with (though would recommend Anbeeld's AI mod).

[grumbler]

Even more problematic for me is that the game turns into a slide show by 1870.  It's unplayable.

One thing I have found that helps is changing the lens.  On some lenses the game speeds back up.  Not ideal of course, but a bit of a work around.

Thanks.  I'll try that.

[Tamas]

So with diplomacy effectively broken, Paradox have taken it on themselves to... drastically rework the economy, pop investment to be specific.

[Syt]

OPB made a good point that it will probably make reforming fast harder, because if e.g. you start with an agrarian economy, the POPs will put more money into agrarian businesses, which will make it harder to break the power of the landholders.

[Syt]

Also, this is the first diaries of more to come. Wizz has said in other threads that they look at diplo and aim that historical outcomes (Japan, US, Italy etc.) are much more likely to occur.

[Tamas]

Also, this is the first diaries of more to come. Wizz has said in other threads that they look at diplo and aim that historical outcomes (Japan, US, Italy etc.) are much more likely to occur.

[Syt]

Teaser from Twitter:



They said there'd be more of an overview of 1.2 dev diary coming today; curious about it.

At this point I've definitely gotten my money's worth out of the game in terms of play time and enjoyment, but I find even with mods there's some underlying balancing/fixes that need to happen for me to return.

I think a big part of that (besides the current issues in balancing the economy, need for better diplomacy, etc.) is also that I've been reading The Pursuit of Power: Europe 1815 - 1914. It's part of Penguin's History of Europe series - the series is generally good at getting an overview of periods, and has some excellent entries (e.g. Inheritance of Rome, covering 400 - 1000 CE or The Pursuit of Glory covering 1648 - 1815) that give a quite comprehensive overview of the respective eras and providing entry points for topics to delve deeper into afterwards.

I'm on the final chapters, and since the book covers so much ground it makes me yearn for the game to better capture many of the issues covered within it. Political extremism/violence, the struggle within movements, changes in culture, more visible scientific advancements, and systems to better reflect oddities in some countries - e.g. I feel Austria-Hungary post-compromise might be better shown via a personal union between Austria and Hungary, instead of having a less discriminatory centralized state - both entities started to diverge during the time and other minorities were still repressed by the dominant Germans and Hungarians, respectively. Not to mention constantly shifting coalitions in countries like France or Russia or monarchs dissolving parliaments on the regular.

It's amazing what the game already covers and that it works at all, and any game will have limits in that regard, but there can always be "more".

[Syt]

Dev diary came out yesterday, derp.

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/developer-diary/victoria-3-dev-diary-73-open-beta-and-update-1-2-overview.1566832/

New Features
Autonomous Investment system
Strategic Objectives for planning military campaigns
Customizable notification settings
In-game music player
Key rebinding

Improvements and bug fixes
Performance optimization
Improved AI handling of economy and military, including port management
Greater differences in economic systems
More realistic modeling of trade route profits and GDP
Worldwide Arable Land revision and migration balancing
Mega-parties limited by tweaks to party formation logic and ideology

Interface
Trade panel overhaul for easier route management
More clarity on Pop Needs, Convoys, Radicals and Loyalists
Visual upgrades to mapmodes and lenses, such as showing Infrastructure and employable Pops when expanding buildings
Outliner enhanced with pinnable market goods and characters
Reduced notification spam

Open beta to start 8th Feb (though it will have some features not implemented fully), for I guess two weeks or so? After that they take the beta offline, and get it ready for release with target date of 13th March.

[Syt]

Started a game as Russia with Anbeeld's mod.

It's 1848. Thanks to political movements, I have abolished serfdom, enacted landed voting, introduced freedom of conscience, reduced discrimination and moved from traditionalism to agrarianism. I also introduced per capita taxation and and a professional army. I've annexed Kazakhstan, Persia, and puppeted Khiva. Oh, and I took some provinces from the Ottomans and had them transfer overlordship of Moldavia to me. Meanwhile, I've been building my economy like crazy and have yet to feel any financial pinch. 

[mongers]

Started a game as Russia with Anbeeld's mod.

It's 1848. Thanks to political movements, I have abolished serfdom, enacted landed voting, introduced freedom of conscience, reduced discrimination and moved from traditionalism to agrarianism. I also introduced per capita taxation and and a professional army. I've annexed Kazakhstan, Persia, and puppeted Khiva. Oh, and I took some provinces from the Ottomans and had them transfer overlordship of Moldavia to me. Meanwhile, I've been building my economy like crazy and have yet to feel any financial pinch. 

You think this is where Putin gets his 'ideas' from? 

[Syt]

Maybe.

I've managed to enact wealth voting (trying for census voting). I've taken Basra from the Ottomans, and have puppeted Afghanistan, Oman and Kalat.

Oman is a funny case - they have lands in East Africa, in Arabia, and in Persia. Depending on which part you right-click, countries will be able to intervene. E.g. if Britain has declared interests in Africa and Arabia, but not Persia, they can intervene if you right click => launch diplomatic play on Omani lands in those areas, but not if you to so in Persia. Seems like a bit of an exploit.

I've also started colonizing bits of Africa, so that I may have access to rubber later.

I kind of look forward to the next patch. Reforming the country will be a lot harder if you have less direct control over what gets built - if the landowners keep building agricultural production and thus keep their economic influence high, it should hopefully be less trivial to oust them from power.

[Syt]

Big oof is still subjects. Dominion and Puppet diplo plays cost the same in infamy, but Dominion is worse in most cases - the subject can still do its own diplo and transfers less money to you.

I wish the different levels of subjectness ( ) would give you progressively more influence on their laws, let you reform their governments, set economic priorities etc.

[Syt]

It's 1865-ish. I've annexed Oman, puppeted Trucial, Bahrain, Nejd. Instituted Census Suffrage, Interventionism, and after next elections I'll see if we can get rid of the Tsar, because he's hindering my infamy decay (Bandit). My economy, while expanding rapidly, is only 1/4 of leading Britain (150M vs 600M), and I've noticed that almost half my income (allowing for big surplus) is coming from import taxes (almost 200k), so I might want to be careful about damaging that source of income, because I'd have to raise taxes if I ever start dropping those ... 

[Syt]

Dev diary for UI changes:

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/developer-diary/victoria-3-dev-diary-74-ux-improvements.1567815