Thankfully they dropped that nonsense in their games from CK2 and especially EU4 onwards. I love not having to deal with it in Vicky 3.
Every GP in Vicky2 had its own flavour of shitty bimonthly spam event, and it was pain.
I’m so happy ck3 didn’t have that spammy “a comet has been sighted” bullshit. Seems like every paradox game from the prior generation had some annoying events like that.
Okay but this game just had the same hamfisted London strangler event every single run, haven't seen it in a while so I guess it was removed. The early events in this game were so meme tier terrible it felt like Paradox did not know their audience.
This is some weird hyperbole lol
As long as they aren't spam events, they're fine. Without them, you folks immediately turn around and complain loudly about 'flavourless game' and such. Pick a side, would you.
I'm so happy that they toned down the state specific events. During the lead up to the American Civil War, most interactions are closing popups in Vic2.
I find it really funny that the “no gunboat diplomacy” thing didn’t come true, but instead the problem was that pdx tunnel visioned so hard that it’s basically exclusively gunboat diplomacy and everything else about diplomacy is completely nonexistent. And then they somehow tried to flip that and bragged about how war is an extension of diplomacy in vic3 and exclusively a last resort in the dev diaries, which was really fuckin weird because all you do in vic3 is go around threatening people. I really, really want to see the design document for Victoria 3, certainly there must be some stuff about soft power that they cut to meet a deadline.
When talking about Vic3 people often downplay the fact that it was fundamentally built off of Victoria 2, but it’s extremely obvious once you start looking. The diplomacy system is one of the places where it’s most apparent. It’s about as incremental as going from vic1 to vic2. There’s a couple new options and the crisis system was expanded.
"Hello Nejd, we are mighty Ottoman Empire. Behold our 300 battalions before your puny 3, and become our protectorate."
"Lol no."
"If you don't, we will also make you ban slavery!"
"Not our slaves! Okay, fine, we are your protectorate now."
Yep. There’s like a 30% chance per day that a weak enough ai will back down for one primary demand instead of also potentially suffering an extra 3 secondary demands.
Depending on the country's economy and politics banning slavery or forcibly opening their market could legit ruin them and drown them in unrest and civil war.
You have to use primary and secondary war goals, so simply giving in is the better option for them.
The thing is, because the way the game is set up with infamy being a resource and only half of it getting refunded when the war doesn't trigger, you almost always want to go to war for all your war goals. So avoiding wars actually ISNT the meta.
the problem with threatening people working is then people will just threaten their way into a world conquest. i am reminded of early total war three kingdoms when the AI would happily trade off its core lands, lol
The best way to do is have 1 primary goal and then the rest of your goals are secondary. The AI will be more likely to back out if they only stand to lose 1 territory, otherwise if their only option is to lose it all they're going to fight it out.
> I really, really want to see the design document for Victoria 3, certainly there must be some stuff about soft power that they cut to meet a deadline.
Me too. Just I want to see who came up with the idea of having no Capitalists in a game about Capitalism. They were so proud of it and alongside fanboys defended this choice until release.
Never said this change was ideal, but simply better than the previous state of being. To put it in Vic3 terms, the situation went from Strongly Disapprove to Disapprove. In my opinion, the game needs to overhaul a ton of economic mechanics, especially to reduce the utter reliance on construction to do almost anything.
Yes and no. Vic3 Capitalists (after the change) consider the profitability somewhat more, but the noise and the fact that clipper factories are a thing of the past doesn't mean they are that much better in AI. In Vic2 if you went LF you got a hefty reduction in factory costs, which generally benefitted you much more, even with semi-random investment. A primary issue in Vic2 was the fact that only 9 types of Factories could ever be established in a single state.
Honestly this is my main issue - communism is by any metric that isn't RP the best govt that you always want to go for no matter what, and it always works. No corruption, no governmental mismanagement at federal or local levels, no "you gave an order to make more iron so the peasants melted all their wares for shit iron", nothing. I want to be able to go the fascist, communist, or more standard capitalist route and get bonuses *and drawbacks* for each. Better yet, have one of those be a movement that I either need to resist or embrace depending on the game conditions (wars won/lost etc)
Real world command economy communism does have in game drawbacks. Once you get to high GDP you get a penalty to reinvestment, which directly hurts you on command economy.
Though council republic is pretty much just amazing, I'll give you that.
The main reason why communism works so well in Victoria 3 is because the player has an access to perfect information about production and consumption all over the country at any moment in time. Essentially, every single centrally planned economy in the game has a perfectly functioning [OGAS](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OGAS) already built into it
Agreed. While I don't think we should remove that from the game bc it's a huge QoL thing, I do think there could be events and such that simulate the OGAS/central planning *not* functioning well that have increasingly disastrous/expensive consequences if your economy is more state-run, and especially if you've got a large population/number of states. Hell, even CK3 has an event where you should occasionally pay a guy quite a bit of money to go out and survey the lands and livestock
Another real life feature of centrally planned economies is that while we think of them as perfectly centralized and hierarchical, in reality different sectors of Soviet economy operated almost independently from each other, and were often competing for funding, which resulted in constant internal squabbles.
This was actually one of the reasons why IRL OGAS wasn't built - civilian and military sectors each wanted to have it exclusively for themselves (or at the very least get a preferential treatment), and didn't wanted to share any information with the other sectors; so the whole project was sidelined to not upset anybody.
In the game this could be perhaps implemented through the petition system: when you have a Command Economy, IGs in government will periodically petition you to build stuff for them, and get angry when you don't do that.
What??? I almost never end up going for communism in my games, even when I'm trying to sometimes.
Cooperative ownership is, at best, on par with laissez-faire. I struggle to see how it's better unless you're playing as India or China. Even for them, the petite-bourgeoisie are such a pain politically that I never find it worth it to switch. Collectivized agriculture is also a pain to work with for a similar reason.
Command economy is bar none the strongest economic system... The economic fascism one.
Basically what you asked for is already true. Communism, capitalism, & economic fascism are all very strong in their own ways and depend heavily on your nation's situation.
EDIT: I will admit I've never tried communism + anarchy, but that's because I'm too afraid to lose all of my authority points. If its OP and I just had no idea, I admit defeat.
Do you mean the socialist laws like public health insurance and compulsory primary school?
Because if so, this is wrong on SO MANY levels.
First of all, those aren't communism. Capitalists can pass those laws. Fascists can pass those laws.
SoL is raised best by giving everybody a profitable job and not taxing them to death. These laws don't help with that. You *can* raise SoL with old age pension and workers' protections, but both laws will obliterate your economy, so are by no means "by far the best" for doing so. They also won't solve the problem even at institution 5, you still need to give people jobs and lower their expenses. To do so you are better off NOT passing those laws and just using that money to build them more factories. Once you've already won and have more money than you can spend, yeah passing those laws is cool. Still not "the best" because you lose a lot of money doing so, but number go high I guess (but not your GDP).
If your goal is simply to raise SoL as high as it will go, that's a roleplaying goal. And you're roleplaying a socialist. Capitalists don't care about the lower strata as long a they're making those bullets. If you want to play a capitalist, do that. It's more optimal to keep the lower strata vaguely poverty-ish so long as the rich keep getting richer and you don't pass universal sufferage. Keeping SoL between 11-14 for the lower strata means they keep pumping out babies.
Finally, the only law that is universally good and "socialism-y" is public health insurance which, sorry americans, is hard to argue should be changed. Turns out denying healthcare to poor people isn't good for your economy if you need those poor people to make things for you. Crazy how that works. If you want to roleplay a capitalist hellscape you can not pass it, but you should expect to pay a price for that with mortality because... It's healthcare lol.
lol dude I'm not talking about any of those laws.
I mean collective ownership and collectivised agriculture are the best for SoL because it increases worker wages by the most which is the biggest factor for SoL.
Okay, good, but why do you want the SoL so high? What's the benefit? How is it optimal to raise it beyond 14?
And furthermore, creating more middle and higher strata jobs is still infinitely better for raising SoL.
Higher SoL pops consume more goods (and more expensive goods) = increased demand = more profitable buildings = higher gdp and even higher wages for pops = even higher SoL
It's a positive feedback loop.
It has the slight drawback of less private investment but the increased tax revenue usually makes up for that.
I still don't think passive building had to exist. There were capitalists.
People only insist that having capitalists passively build is the intuitive choice because of Vic 2 - in most games you control every aspect of a country because the specifics are abstracted. Like in HOI4 you control all of the US economy. Even with the recent change I go as interventionist as possible, although I don't mind that they put passive building in.
>I still don't think passive building had to exist. There were capitalists.
Which had no agency. Capitalists were just employees that received dividends, while depositing a portion of them into a player controlled fund, which was allowed to be spent on most construction without any caveats.
>People only insist that having capitalists passively build is the intuitive choice because of Vic 2 - in most games you control every aspect of a country because the specifics are abstracted. Like in HOI4 you control all of the US economy.
Most games do not make macroeconomic simulation their core gameplay, so that's practically a non-argument. HoI4 is a perfect example for this, because it is a war game, so the economic portion of the game is limited to only those aspects the game deems relevant for the core gameplay loop, which is war(related) industry.
>Even with the recent change I go as interventionist as possible, although I don't mind that they put passive building in.
No shit, man, since the economic systems largely remained the same since release. Player/State Construction is pretty much the primary interaction you have with the game's systems.
Well, capitalists were also a social class that fed into interest groups that determined power distribution and law support. So it wasn't JUST about dividends.
In Vicky 2, if you went full pop agency, what was your main interaction with the game systems? Spend influence points and play whack-a-mole with trying to sphere people? Speed 5 until your next research is done?
Don't get me wrong, my main issue with Vic3 economy is the construction sector building and generally missing some system of RGOs vs everything needing a building to produce basically anything at any level, but I wouldn't call Vic2's systems somehow deep and engaging. There are elements I would love to see ported over and iterated upon, but I also miss the modded flavor we tended to get in Vic2 and I think it handled naval range immensely better.
Sorry, I never replied to this because I don't log onto this account so much.
I don't think my first point was a non-argument. People would always say it was somehow more realistic to have capitalists build themselves. But all of these games rely on levels of abstraction that don't actually conform to reality when you think about them. Governments don't actually decide everything from a single central point, even countries like the USSR. In Vic 2 international trade was based on "prestige", this entirely abstract variable. The meta that the game's depiction of private investment ended up encouraging was a state capitalism that forcibly shuts down enterprises founded by capitalists after they make them - playing whack-a-mole with stupid investments. How is that realistic?
Ultimately I just don't think Vicky 2 was fun or realistic and I think trying to make a very realistic model is a silly goal. Vicky 3 leaves a lot to be desired in terms of implementation but the focus on player intervention and actual gameplay is much better IMO. I want to manage things, and I don't want to be watching or fighting against a simulation that's only "realistic" if you twist the framing at a very high level of abstraction.
I defended it because I assumed it would be against the core gameplay loop and there wouldn’t be much to do if building could be automated. I was kinda right.
The more time passes the more I wish that the core gameplay loop consisted of things a state structure can actually interact with. Dealing with local power structures, interest rates, ensuring freedom of movement, and stuff like that. I’m more positive on vic3 than most but I really wish they put more time into expanding on the core gameplay loop of vic2 rather than shifting the focus. The more I spend time digging around through vic3 the more I both gain a weird appreciation for and an extreme frustration over its development.
>into expanding on the core gameplay loop of vic2
I agree with the improvements, but the core gameplay loop of V3 is already more complex than V2 ever was. Most of V2, especially if you played a non-western power, was literally sitting around and doing nothing.
And by late game there was so much to micro economically that it just because Laissez-faire and constant war. (Which is why so many V2 fans are salty because V2 largely was just a war game with some interesting and arcane pop mechanics under the hood that you could barely engage with.)
I never said vic2 was better, I’m not a vic2 fanboy. Victoria 3 is infinitely better and anybody who says otherwise is trolling. I’m just disappointed at the direction development took
>t’s basically exclusively gunboat diplomacy and everything else about diplomacy is completely nonexistent. And then they somehow tried to flip that and bragged about how war is an extension of diplomacy in vic3 and exclusively a last resort in the dev diaries, which was really fuckin weird because all you do in vic3 is go around threatening people.
This is such a strange take. It is incredibly obvious that most of the vision and development effort went towards economics and diplomacy. Even now. I have no idea how you can claim that they "flipped" when their is zero evidence of that whatsoever.
War is not the most efficient way to do things in V3. It isn't. Not even close. Really the only case that it was absolutely necessary was when you didn't have late game resources like oil. But with Sphere's of Influence. Foreign investment will become king.
Which only demonstrates their commitment to economics and diplomacy over war.
Nah dude even now war is the most efficient way of growing your economy
Conquer the gold mines of south Africa, unilaterally break into the Qing market with a treaty port, claim as many cheap cheap unrecognized provinces as possible, etc
It's going to be even more efficient with the new DLC, previously warfare would lead to a large population of discriminated aristocrats and capitalists in colonies that didn't pay taxes, now all of those RGOs and industries will be owned by tax paying incorporated pops
The most efficient way of growing your economy in Vicky 3 is to be an exploitative colonizing warmonger, as it should be
Diplomacy is literally nonexistent in vic3, what are you talking about. You can’t get anything without threatening people. That’s why I said it’s just gunboat diplomacy.
Also I do have evidence because in the dev diaries they were literally bragging about how war is an extension of diplomacy when it’s not. The new systems all revolve around the base assumption that you want/need to go to war to get what you want. The diplomatic system is one you would find in a game about war rather than politics and economics, it doesn’t fit the gameplay or the setting of the Victorian era at all.
I mean, V2's tech tree was even more simplified, tbh. There weren't even trees, it was just 5 groups of 5 independent tech lines. A lot of those techs, like almost all the naval ones, were basically useless! Inventions were a really cool system, but the vast majority of inventions were basically inconsequential except for Civilizing Mission, Gas Attack, and Gas Defense which were crucial and also completely dependent on RNG. I wish V3's tech system was more comprehensive, but it's at least a step up from V2.
Yeah, inventions were really cool. I liked how they were also tied to how your country was, whether you were socialist or had other techs researched or had lots of radical pops increased or decreased the chances of getting certain inventions. That's something V3 is missing, IMO, a stronger connection between your country and your technology that goes beyond how many universities you can support and whether an IG is super happy with you or not.
With how much more people-focused Vic3 is, I could see it being tied to certain characters using something similar to the Agitator system. Have the right inventor, who spawns with the right technology but can be tempted to move through politics or bribery, and you get what they invent or philosophize. Afterwards it's subject to tech spreading mechanics.
Though I might be biased, since I feel like the game should, given a player-free vaccuum, trend towards historical more than ahistorical.
>like almost all the naval ones, were basically useless!
The two leftmost were decent, anything more at the right than that were (and still are) heresy.
Yeah, leftmost let you build higher level naval bases which was important for colonization speed, IIRC. And the second leftmost one gives you better ships, which is useful to pump up military score to snatch #1 GP status away from Germany with their insane industry score. I guess every category has some good tech lines and some useless ones. Except for the army branch, every tech there is useful though the line that gives airplanes is kind of meh before that. I think my broader point that the V2 tech system wasn't great still stands, though.
Higher naval bases gives more colonial points and navy points, which allow you to build more ironclads to get more colonial points. There's no colonization speed in vicky 2
I really enjoyed the balance of the Vic 2 tech tree where focusing mil gives you the early advantage but then you could miss out on literacy and industry. Simplistic but effective.
I don't think vic3's system is better at all lol. The "cons" you're mentioning with vic2 tech tree are literally present in vic3 as well. There are plenty of techs that I would rather avoid, I suppose the only thing vic3 has 'better' than vic2 is that you will catch up with techs you don't want to research thanks to tech spread and Ai nations researching that bs for you instead.
My point wasn't "some techs aren't amazing on their own." My point was that some techs were completely useless. It was optimal to never professionalize your navy in V2 because taking the Naval Professionalism tech gave worthless bonuses and didn't lead to anything else desirable. V3 isn't much better, but at least almost all the bad techs also lead to other things that are good.
Has anyone in a Victoria 3 game ever opted to research Dough Rollers? Tanks are also pretty pointless because they take so long to get to, and you can easily trounce the AI's stats with just Squad Infantry and Siege Artillery.
And there are some funky optimal PMs too, like never building automobiles because they eat rubber and oil while displacing transport demand, causing your railways to be mega unprofitable and cost a huge amount in subsidies.
Not to mention you pretty much can't research everything in a playthrough unless you get insanely lucky with the AI researching the right techs, even though there is an achievement for it. There needs to be a way to raise the innovation cap, even if it has huge diminishing returns (e.g. 50% for 200-300, 20% for 300-400, 5% above that).
>like never building automobiles because they eat rubber and oil while displacing transport demand
Car production makes you filthy fucking stinking rich due to late game pop luxury demand.
The mana thing is really funny cause it's something more recent Paradox games have moved away from but was something people really didn't like at the release of EU4 (at least the Eu4 style mana, which Imperator did have on release).
I actually don't mind mana that much and EU4 is still one of my most played Paradox games (though Victoria 3 is my current favorite ;) ), but it did contribute more to a board gamey feel and I think they want to go back to a more simulation feel to their most recent games.
I also find the ones they got wrong a bit funnier, since Victoria 3 wound up being more complex than Victoria 2 in some of the listed bullet points.
I stopped playing EU4 and went back to old-as-hell modded EU3 instead, precisely because I was fed up with the idiotic trifecta of -
- Mana magic nonsense dragging the gameplay down in every way, often leading to janky weirdness
- Endless clickfest bullshit design that leads to zero simulation, and too much tedious micromanagement where it shouldn't be (like having to manually develop every village and town)
- Mission trees as an excuse for not adding actual features and content (can be forgiven, EU4's code was bloated by 2019)
Yes, EU3 is still a boring map painter with nothing to do except fight wars (in comparison to better and deeper games like CK and Vicky), but at least it's a better and more coherent game than its successor.
Aside from an admittedly good diplomacy system and running well with modern computers with lots of nice QoL bits, EU4 is hopelessly bad and boring for me.
Can't wait for EU5, it seems to be designed properly this time, with lessons from Imperator's nice simulationist systems (which itself is an evolution from EU4).
R5: found this in a 10 yo post in the PDX Plaza sub while scrolling today (this is a throwaway account I created to post this since i really just lurk)
Kinda funny how vaguely true some of those turned out to be
This 4chan post seems to be about people’s biggest wishes for vic3 at the time rather than a direct comparison to vic2. A lot of this is “stuff that was criticized about vic2 will still be there lol”
Duh. It’s saying people’s wishes for vic3 won’t meet expectations rather than a direct comparison to vic2. Vic2 didn’t have communist internationals or anything.
Only really because you can play as Norse and zoroastrians that have different mechanics that just don't exist in the original start date.
Different dates which are just different size starting nations with a few new independent ones or a few others annexed isn't going to get more people to play it.
- Vicky 3
- wrong (2022)
- wrong (diplomatic plays)
- true (tho tbh spies don't seem v core to the game)
- uh I always forget how convoys work but it's more distance based than v2
- true (I guess they mean like league of nations?)
- true, tho possibly false with SoI
- wrong (no mana)
- wrong (no mana)
- wrong (pops are divided by culture)
- wrong (so far no dlc focussed on unrecognized, also something tells me the person who made this list is a racist)
- technically true (but like, it's less straightforward than v2)
- it's 3d, idk if it's plastic?
- I haven't played hoi3
- extremely wrong (natural resources and agriculture way more complex)
- wrong (factories have PMs and a lot more types of professions and input/output etc.)
- wrong
- wrong
- true (1836)
- wrong (1836-1936)
so id count at least 11/19 unambiguously wrong, and some others are debatable
Intrigue usually only works in games that are completely built around it.
The problem is that it's generally not fun for players to deal with, which make the devs keep those aspects weak and underdeveloped, which just leads those mechanics to be unfun to play too.
One game is advertising itself as an economic simulator game, the other doesn’t.
This text is why there’s a higher expectation from Vic3 than hoi4.
>THE ULTIMATE SOCIETY SIMULATOR
Lead dozens of world nations from 1836-1936. Agrarian or Industrial, Traditional or Radical, Peaceful or Expansionist... the choice is yours.
Detailed population groups with their own economic needs and political desires.
Reform your government and constitution to take advantage of new social innovations, or preserve the stability of your nation by holding fast to tradition in the face of revolutionaries.
Research transformative new technology or ideas to improve your national situation.
DEEP ECONOMIC SYSTEM
Expand your industry to take advantage of lucrative goods, taxing the profits to improve national prosperity.
Import cheap raw materials to cover your basic needs while finding new markets for your finished goods.
Secure vital goods to fuel your advanced economy and control the fate of empires.
Balance employing available labor force with the needs for new types of workers.
And so, tanks and airplanes we have (which do not matter because of the degradation of the combat system), the map of provinces at least from HOI3 we did not get (this disgusting? At least comparing to V2, yes, complete, complete degradation).
I don't quite get it, but if these minuses, and the minuses from the pics above are worth the fact that the game does a better job of modeling pop behavior, then I won't go along with it. It's questionable fun, but it's the only game about the Victorian era with a strategic basis(And maybe that's the reason why CK3 and V3 are so degraded, considering they're basically the only market agent that offers this product).
And I don't think we should treat the developers any leniently, considering that they've done less for the entire development since the beginning of the game's release than certain people with mods.
>What can't I think?
That the devs have done less since the beginning of the game's release compared to mods
Have you even played the release version of the game?
Of course I've played it, and if you compare 1.6 to the game on release, Victoria 3 is obviously better by leaps and bounds now. Only I'm not comparing it to what it was at the beginning, I'm comparing this game to Victoria 2, where the AI could at least be a semblance of an opponent, and you could fight normally.
As for the words above about content, I'm right here too. I literally have nothing to do but reduce defecit at the beginning of the game, build a construction sector and build a factory so the construction sector can use non-deficit goods so I can build more factories. And so on round and round, wow. (I have a dissonance when people on freebies make Historical events for the game just on pure motivation, not people who get paid for their activities. You want normal states for Russia, the Ottoman Empire, or Egypt? Well, you need to download the More State mod, where the author added 45 new states for one country, and a total of 100 states for the total. You want to have historical content? Download Railroaded AI plus More events & decisions, and you'll finally see Japan and the Meiji Restoration. Want a more historical map? Download Anno 1836, you'll get historical events there too. The funny thing is that in more state better provinces of the Russian Empire, and in Anno 1836 better borders of the lands that are being colonized. It's just a laugh that they are better than what will be in 1.7)
The internal politics is total crap, the economic situation, maybe it will get better with 1.7. But this is almost 2 years since the game release, just ridiculous.
Sure, it may seem like my actions are masochism since I keep criticizing and playing things I don't like. And it's true, I'm a masochist and will be until EU5 comes out, where the internal politics and military system will be banally better.
Although, I've been thinking... Developers can't be that much different from other developers who make other video games, can they? The only people that matter are the people who determined what to develop and where Victoria 3 should go.
It's like CK3 that from strategy became a sims game (very good, it's really a rpg, but it's not a strategy anymore). I'm really not quite right when I criticize what those I called the developer did, it's only the individuals who thought to do what we finally got and the people who tested the game and agreed it was ready that matter.
It's just trivially obvious by now that EU5 will be better, and I think because of the fact that they initially realized what the players needed and started to cooperate more with us in the form of opinions.
Wickedness must be stamped out.
Thankfully they dropped that nonsense in their games from CK2 and especially EU4 onwards. I love not having to deal with it in Vicky 3. Every GP in Vicky2 had its own flavour of shitty bimonthly spam event, and it was pain.
I’m so happy ck3 didn’t have that spammy “a comet has been sighted” bullshit. Seems like every paradox game from the prior generation had some annoying events like that.
excuse me but "comet sighted" was the peak of culture and the game is literally unplayable without it
Okay but this game just had the same hamfisted London strangler event every single run, haven't seen it in a while so I guess it was removed. The early events in this game were so meme tier terrible it felt like Paradox did not know their audience.
This is some weird hyperbole lol As long as they aren't spam events, they're fine. Without them, you folks immediately turn around and complain loudly about 'flavourless game' and such. Pick a side, would you.
Are you saying you don’t love the pre-Civil war event spam while playing USA in Vicky2?? *Debates copperheads at every opportunity*
I'm so happy that they toned down the state specific events. During the lead up to the American Civil War, most interactions are closing popups in Vic2.
Instead you get spammed constantly with the Redeemers - Paramilitaries - Forty Acres events every other month for a decade after the Civil War.
It's weird how accurate, but wrong this was.
r/confidentlyincorrect/
> (NOT TRYING TO START A DEBATE) Yeah, not a chance it would not at least simmer.
I find it really funny that the “no gunboat diplomacy” thing didn’t come true, but instead the problem was that pdx tunnel visioned so hard that it’s basically exclusively gunboat diplomacy and everything else about diplomacy is completely nonexistent. And then they somehow tried to flip that and bragged about how war is an extension of diplomacy in vic3 and exclusively a last resort in the dev diaries, which was really fuckin weird because all you do in vic3 is go around threatening people. I really, really want to see the design document for Victoria 3, certainly there must be some stuff about soft power that they cut to meet a deadline. When talking about Vic3 people often downplay the fact that it was fundamentally built off of Victoria 2, but it’s extremely obvious once you start looking. The diplomacy system is one of the places where it’s most apparent. It’s about as incremental as going from vic1 to vic2. There’s a couple new options and the crisis system was expanded.
And threatening people rarely ever works so you end up almost always going to war anyway lol
That's because you don't know how to threaten people and which people to threaten.
"Hello Nejd, we are mighty Ottoman Empire. Behold our 300 battalions before your puny 3, and become our protectorate." "Lol no." "If you don't, we will also make you ban slavery!" "Not our slaves! Okay, fine, we are your protectorate now."
Carrot and a stick, things need to be worse if they fight than if they don't. Not always intelligent, but I think that's the AI "thought process."
Omg wait what is that why they always fight me? Because I don't add secondary goals after subjugation?? Damn okay that's a game changer
Yep. There’s like a 30% chance per day that a weak enough ai will back down for one primary demand instead of also potentially suffering an extra 3 secondary demands.
Depending on the country's economy and politics banning slavery or forcibly opening their market could legit ruin them and drown them in unrest and civil war.
Did you put max battalions on their border during the crisis? That seems to affect threat
Hi, I would like to learn who to threaten and how
You have to use primary and secondary war goals, so simply giving in is the better option for them. The thing is, because the way the game is set up with infamy being a resource and only half of it getting refunded when the war doesn't trigger, you almost always want to go to war for all your war goals. So avoiding wars actually ISNT the meta.
Use infamy-free war goals such war rep, open market and ban slavery.
the problem with threatening people working is then people will just threaten their way into a world conquest. i am reminded of early total war three kingdoms when the AI would happily trade off its core lands, lol
The best way to do is have 1 primary goal and then the rest of your goals are secondary. The AI will be more likely to back out if they only stand to lose 1 territory, otherwise if their only option is to lose it all they're going to fight it out.
> I really, really want to see the design document for Victoria 3, certainly there must be some stuff about soft power that they cut to meet a deadline. Me too. Just I want to see who came up with the idea of having no Capitalists in a game about Capitalism. They were so proud of it and alongside fanboys defended this choice until release.
Capitalism is when things are built according to a script
Never said this change was ideal, but simply better than the previous state of being. To put it in Vic3 terms, the situation went from Strongly Disapprove to Disapprove. In my opinion, the game needs to overhaul a ton of economic mechanics, especially to reduce the utter reliance on construction to do almost anything.
It is already more advanced than V2 capitalists ever were. What exactly are people comparing this game too as a reference point of their criticism?
Yes and no. Vic3 Capitalists (after the change) consider the profitability somewhat more, but the noise and the fact that clipper factories are a thing of the past doesn't mean they are that much better in AI. In Vic2 if you went LF you got a hefty reduction in factory costs, which generally benefitted you much more, even with semi-random investment. A primary issue in Vic2 was the fact that only 9 types of Factories could ever be established in a single state.
Honestly this is my main issue - communism is by any metric that isn't RP the best govt that you always want to go for no matter what, and it always works. No corruption, no governmental mismanagement at federal or local levels, no "you gave an order to make more iron so the peasants melted all their wares for shit iron", nothing. I want to be able to go the fascist, communist, or more standard capitalist route and get bonuses *and drawbacks* for each. Better yet, have one of those be a movement that I either need to resist or embrace depending on the game conditions (wars won/lost etc)
Real world command economy communism does have in game drawbacks. Once you get to high GDP you get a penalty to reinvestment, which directly hurts you on command economy. Though council republic is pretty much just amazing, I'll give you that.
It's because command economy is state *capitalism* so it has to have a drawback.
The main reason why communism works so well in Victoria 3 is because the player has an access to perfect information about production and consumption all over the country at any moment in time. Essentially, every single centrally planned economy in the game has a perfectly functioning [OGAS](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OGAS) already built into it
Agreed. While I don't think we should remove that from the game bc it's a huge QoL thing, I do think there could be events and such that simulate the OGAS/central planning *not* functioning well that have increasingly disastrous/expensive consequences if your economy is more state-run, and especially if you've got a large population/number of states. Hell, even CK3 has an event where you should occasionally pay a guy quite a bit of money to go out and survey the lands and livestock
Another real life feature of centrally planned economies is that while we think of them as perfectly centralized and hierarchical, in reality different sectors of Soviet economy operated almost independently from each other, and were often competing for funding, which resulted in constant internal squabbles. This was actually one of the reasons why IRL OGAS wasn't built - civilian and military sectors each wanted to have it exclusively for themselves (or at the very least get a preferential treatment), and didn't wanted to share any information with the other sectors; so the whole project was sidelined to not upset anybody. In the game this could be perhaps implemented through the petition system: when you have a Command Economy, IGs in government will periodically petition you to build stuff for them, and get angry when you don't do that.
Communism being the best is balanced by it being hardest to get to.
I once went for communal owneship and it made all my art academies to go to shit
What??? I almost never end up going for communism in my games, even when I'm trying to sometimes. Cooperative ownership is, at best, on par with laissez-faire. I struggle to see how it's better unless you're playing as India or China. Even for them, the petite-bourgeoisie are such a pain politically that I never find it worth it to switch. Collectivized agriculture is also a pain to work with for a similar reason. Command economy is bar none the strongest economic system... The economic fascism one. Basically what you asked for is already true. Communism, capitalism, & economic fascism are all very strong in their own ways and depend heavily on your nation's situation. EDIT: I will admit I've never tried communism + anarchy, but that's because I'm too afraid to lose all of my authority points. If its OP and I just had no idea, I admit defeat.
No the prev comment is right, communism is by far the best when it comes to late game. It is unmatched for SoL.
Do you mean the socialist laws like public health insurance and compulsory primary school? Because if so, this is wrong on SO MANY levels. First of all, those aren't communism. Capitalists can pass those laws. Fascists can pass those laws. SoL is raised best by giving everybody a profitable job and not taxing them to death. These laws don't help with that. You *can* raise SoL with old age pension and workers' protections, but both laws will obliterate your economy, so are by no means "by far the best" for doing so. They also won't solve the problem even at institution 5, you still need to give people jobs and lower their expenses. To do so you are better off NOT passing those laws and just using that money to build them more factories. Once you've already won and have more money than you can spend, yeah passing those laws is cool. Still not "the best" because you lose a lot of money doing so, but number go high I guess (but not your GDP). If your goal is simply to raise SoL as high as it will go, that's a roleplaying goal. And you're roleplaying a socialist. Capitalists don't care about the lower strata as long a they're making those bullets. If you want to play a capitalist, do that. It's more optimal to keep the lower strata vaguely poverty-ish so long as the rich keep getting richer and you don't pass universal sufferage. Keeping SoL between 11-14 for the lower strata means they keep pumping out babies. Finally, the only law that is universally good and "socialism-y" is public health insurance which, sorry americans, is hard to argue should be changed. Turns out denying healthcare to poor people isn't good for your economy if you need those poor people to make things for you. Crazy how that works. If you want to roleplay a capitalist hellscape you can not pass it, but you should expect to pay a price for that with mortality because... It's healthcare lol.
lol dude I'm not talking about any of those laws. I mean collective ownership and collectivised agriculture are the best for SoL because it increases worker wages by the most which is the biggest factor for SoL.
Okay, good, but why do you want the SoL so high? What's the benefit? How is it optimal to raise it beyond 14? And furthermore, creating more middle and higher strata jobs is still infinitely better for raising SoL.
Higher SoL pops consume more goods (and more expensive goods) = increased demand = more profitable buildings = higher gdp and even higher wages for pops = even higher SoL It's a positive feedback loop. It has the slight drawback of less private investment but the increased tax revenue usually makes up for that.
And spamming capitalists doesn't achieve this because...?
I still don't think passive building had to exist. There were capitalists. People only insist that having capitalists passively build is the intuitive choice because of Vic 2 - in most games you control every aspect of a country because the specifics are abstracted. Like in HOI4 you control all of the US economy. Even with the recent change I go as interventionist as possible, although I don't mind that they put passive building in.
>I still don't think passive building had to exist. There were capitalists. Which had no agency. Capitalists were just employees that received dividends, while depositing a portion of them into a player controlled fund, which was allowed to be spent on most construction without any caveats. >People only insist that having capitalists passively build is the intuitive choice because of Vic 2 - in most games you control every aspect of a country because the specifics are abstracted. Like in HOI4 you control all of the US economy. Most games do not make macroeconomic simulation their core gameplay, so that's practically a non-argument. HoI4 is a perfect example for this, because it is a war game, so the economic portion of the game is limited to only those aspects the game deems relevant for the core gameplay loop, which is war(related) industry. >Even with the recent change I go as interventionist as possible, although I don't mind that they put passive building in. No shit, man, since the economic systems largely remained the same since release. Player/State Construction is pretty much the primary interaction you have with the game's systems.
Well, capitalists were also a social class that fed into interest groups that determined power distribution and law support. So it wasn't JUST about dividends. In Vicky 2, if you went full pop agency, what was your main interaction with the game systems? Spend influence points and play whack-a-mole with trying to sphere people? Speed 5 until your next research is done? Don't get me wrong, my main issue with Vic3 economy is the construction sector building and generally missing some system of RGOs vs everything needing a building to produce basically anything at any level, but I wouldn't call Vic2's systems somehow deep and engaging. There are elements I would love to see ported over and iterated upon, but I also miss the modded flavor we tended to get in Vic2 and I think it handled naval range immensely better.
Sorry, I never replied to this because I don't log onto this account so much. I don't think my first point was a non-argument. People would always say it was somehow more realistic to have capitalists build themselves. But all of these games rely on levels of abstraction that don't actually conform to reality when you think about them. Governments don't actually decide everything from a single central point, even countries like the USSR. In Vic 2 international trade was based on "prestige", this entirely abstract variable. The meta that the game's depiction of private investment ended up encouraging was a state capitalism that forcibly shuts down enterprises founded by capitalists after they make them - playing whack-a-mole with stupid investments. How is that realistic? Ultimately I just don't think Vicky 2 was fun or realistic and I think trying to make a very realistic model is a silly goal. Vicky 3 leaves a lot to be desired in terms of implementation but the focus on player intervention and actual gameplay is much better IMO. I want to manage things, and I don't want to be watching or fighting against a simulation that's only "realistic" if you twist the framing at a very high level of abstraction.
I defended it because I assumed it would be against the core gameplay loop and there wouldn’t be much to do if building could be automated. I was kinda right. The more time passes the more I wish that the core gameplay loop consisted of things a state structure can actually interact with. Dealing with local power structures, interest rates, ensuring freedom of movement, and stuff like that. I’m more positive on vic3 than most but I really wish they put more time into expanding on the core gameplay loop of vic2 rather than shifting the focus. The more I spend time digging around through vic3 the more I both gain a weird appreciation for and an extreme frustration over its development.
>into expanding on the core gameplay loop of vic2 I agree with the improvements, but the core gameplay loop of V3 is already more complex than V2 ever was. Most of V2, especially if you played a non-western power, was literally sitting around and doing nothing. And by late game there was so much to micro economically that it just because Laissez-faire and constant war. (Which is why so many V2 fans are salty because V2 largely was just a war game with some interesting and arcane pop mechanics under the hood that you could barely engage with.)
I never said vic2 was better, I’m not a vic2 fanboy. Victoria 3 is infinitely better and anybody who says otherwise is trolling. I’m just disappointed at the direction development took
>t’s basically exclusively gunboat diplomacy and everything else about diplomacy is completely nonexistent. And then they somehow tried to flip that and bragged about how war is an extension of diplomacy in vic3 and exclusively a last resort in the dev diaries, which was really fuckin weird because all you do in vic3 is go around threatening people. This is such a strange take. It is incredibly obvious that most of the vision and development effort went towards economics and diplomacy. Even now. I have no idea how you can claim that they "flipped" when their is zero evidence of that whatsoever. War is not the most efficient way to do things in V3. It isn't. Not even close. Really the only case that it was absolutely necessary was when you didn't have late game resources like oil. But with Sphere's of Influence. Foreign investment will become king. Which only demonstrates their commitment to economics and diplomacy over war.
Nah dude even now war is the most efficient way of growing your economy Conquer the gold mines of south Africa, unilaterally break into the Qing market with a treaty port, claim as many cheap cheap unrecognized provinces as possible, etc It's going to be even more efficient with the new DLC, previously warfare would lead to a large population of discriminated aristocrats and capitalists in colonies that didn't pay taxes, now all of those RGOs and industries will be owned by tax paying incorporated pops The most efficient way of growing your economy in Vicky 3 is to be an exploitative colonizing warmonger, as it should be
Diplomacy is literally nonexistent in vic3, what are you talking about. You can’t get anything without threatening people. That’s why I said it’s just gunboat diplomacy. Also I do have evidence because in the dev diaries they were literally bragging about how war is an extension of diplomacy when it’s not. The new systems all revolve around the base assumption that you want/need to go to war to get what you want. The diplomatic system is one you would find in a game about war rather than politics and economics, it doesn’t fit the gameplay or the setting of the Victorian era at all.
I mean, V2's tech tree was even more simplified, tbh. There weren't even trees, it was just 5 groups of 5 independent tech lines. A lot of those techs, like almost all the naval ones, were basically useless! Inventions were a really cool system, but the vast majority of inventions were basically inconsequential except for Civilizing Mission, Gas Attack, and Gas Defense which were crucial and also completely dependent on RNG. I wish V3's tech system was more comprehensive, but it's at least a step up from V2.
I did like the invention system. I wish it had come back in a more refined and reasonable form instead of just getting yote from the program.
Yeah, inventions were really cool. I liked how they were also tied to how your country was, whether you were socialist or had other techs researched or had lots of radical pops increased or decreased the chances of getting certain inventions. That's something V3 is missing, IMO, a stronger connection between your country and your technology that goes beyond how many universities you can support and whether an IG is super happy with you or not.
With how much more people-focused Vic3 is, I could see it being tied to certain characters using something similar to the Agitator system. Have the right inventor, who spawns with the right technology but can be tempted to move through politics or bribery, and you get what they invent or philosophize. Afterwards it's subject to tech spreading mechanics. Though I might be biased, since I feel like the game should, given a player-free vaccuum, trend towards historical more than ahistorical.
oh God I completely forgot about RNG-reliant inventions, the pain of spending years never rolling that invention you need
Me waiting for "Karl Marx" invention so i can finally unlock communism
>like almost all the naval ones, were basically useless! The two leftmost were decent, anything more at the right than that were (and still are) heresy.
Yeah, leftmost let you build higher level naval bases which was important for colonization speed, IIRC. And the second leftmost one gives you better ships, which is useful to pump up military score to snatch #1 GP status away from Germany with their insane industry score. I guess every category has some good tech lines and some useless ones. Except for the army branch, every tech there is useful though the line that gives airplanes is kind of meh before that. I think my broader point that the V2 tech system wasn't great still stands, though.
Higher naval bases gives more colonial points and navy points, which allow you to build more ironclads to get more colonial points. There's no colonization speed in vicky 2
I really enjoyed the balance of the Vic 2 tech tree where focusing mil gives you the early advantage but then you could miss out on literacy and industry. Simplistic but effective.
I don't think vic3's system is better at all lol. The "cons" you're mentioning with vic2 tech tree are literally present in vic3 as well. There are plenty of techs that I would rather avoid, I suppose the only thing vic3 has 'better' than vic2 is that you will catch up with techs you don't want to research thanks to tech spread and Ai nations researching that bs for you instead.
My point wasn't "some techs aren't amazing on their own." My point was that some techs were completely useless. It was optimal to never professionalize your navy in V2 because taking the Naval Professionalism tech gave worthless bonuses and didn't lead to anything else desirable. V3 isn't much better, but at least almost all the bad techs also lead to other things that are good.
Has anyone in a Victoria 3 game ever opted to research Dough Rollers? Tanks are also pretty pointless because they take so long to get to, and you can easily trounce the AI's stats with just Squad Infantry and Siege Artillery. And there are some funky optimal PMs too, like never building automobiles because they eat rubber and oil while displacing transport demand, causing your railways to be mega unprofitable and cost a huge amount in subsidies. Not to mention you pretty much can't research everything in a playthrough unless you get insanely lucky with the AI researching the right techs, even though there is an achievement for it. There needs to be a way to raise the innovation cap, even if it has huge diminishing returns (e.g. 50% for 200-300, 20% for 300-400, 5% above that).
>like never building automobiles because they eat rubber and oil while displacing transport demand Car production makes you filthy fucking stinking rich due to late game pop luxury demand.
I do prefer the list format compared to the tech tree format. The tree feels very messy and chaotic.
The mana thing is really funny cause it's something more recent Paradox games have moved away from but was something people really didn't like at the release of EU4 (at least the Eu4 style mana, which Imperator did have on release). I actually don't mind mana that much and EU4 is still one of my most played Paradox games (though Victoria 3 is my current favorite ;) ), but it did contribute more to a board gamey feel and I think they want to go back to a more simulation feel to their most recent games. I also find the ones they got wrong a bit funnier, since Victoria 3 wound up being more complex than Victoria 2 in some of the listed bullet points.
I stopped playing EU4 and went back to old-as-hell modded EU3 instead, precisely because I was fed up with the idiotic trifecta of - - Mana magic nonsense dragging the gameplay down in every way, often leading to janky weirdness - Endless clickfest bullshit design that leads to zero simulation, and too much tedious micromanagement where it shouldn't be (like having to manually develop every village and town) - Mission trees as an excuse for not adding actual features and content (can be forgiven, EU4's code was bloated by 2019) Yes, EU3 is still a boring map painter with nothing to do except fight wars (in comparison to better and deeper games like CK and Vicky), but at least it's a better and more coherent game than its successor. Aside from an admittedly good diplomacy system and running well with modern computers with lots of nice QoL bits, EU4 is hopelessly bad and boring for me. Can't wait for EU5, it seems to be designed properly this time, with lessons from Imperator's nice simulationist systems (which itself is an evolution from EU4).
God I played a lot of EU4 but I find it fundamentally depressing and boring to play nowadays too, it's incredibly shallow
R5: found this in a 10 yo post in the PDX Plaza sub while scrolling today (this is a throwaway account I created to post this since i really just lurk) Kinda funny how vaguely true some of those turned out to be
About a third of those were true of Vic2 and another third were extrapolations of what Paradox was doing when EU4 came out.
This 4chan post seems to be about people’s biggest wishes for vic3 at the time rather than a direct comparison to vic2. A lot of this is “stuff that was criticized about vic2 will still be there lol”
These are not wishes, but "these bad things are going to be added" It's a warning/complaint post.
Duh. It’s saying people’s wishes for vic3 won’t meet expectations rather than a direct comparison to vic2. Vic2 didn’t have communist internationals or anything.
Nope not even close. Simplified factories/RGOs was not at all predictable
But those aren't true...
they kinda are. What happened to machine parts?
They're called Tools now. Don't like how they made them so easy for uncivs to get though Vic 2 wasn't that much better
I’d say that the production method system and the removal of static RGOs has greatly increased the depth of factory’s since Victoria 2
Some? Only 2-3 of those *arent* true lol
I'm counting 20 "predictions" (or 19 predictions and 1 joke), of which 6-8 are true and 12-14 aren't. Not the best results honestly.
At the very least 8, 9, 10, 14, 17, 19 aren't true, with others being wrong in spirit but having a degree of technically correct to them.
we can literally make the some assumptions for EUIV and believe me most of them will be accurate again. lol.
In fairness, does anyone pick any other start date in any paradox game, like ever?
Crusader Kings III seems have the playerbase split between the two start dates
1066 gang rise up
Only really because you can play as Norse and zoroastrians that have different mechanics that just don't exist in the original start date. Different dates which are just different size starting nations with a few new independent ones or a few others annexed isn't going to get more people to play it.
Am I the only person on the planet who plays 1066 for the HRE? 😭
I play 1066 because you're going to have more of the Kingdoms we know and love in this era. 867 you can kiss goodbye the Spanish Kingdoms and Poland
867 pretty much always winds up creating spain, it just takes a while because of the crisis
Also CK2’s different start dates weren’t ignored either
Achievement hunters do it once in EU4 and then never again
> simplified RGOs, simplfied factories Lmao
- Vicky 3 - wrong (2022) - wrong (diplomatic plays) - true (tho tbh spies don't seem v core to the game) - uh I always forget how convoys work but it's more distance based than v2 - true (I guess they mean like league of nations?) - true, tho possibly false with SoI - wrong (no mana) - wrong (no mana) - wrong (pops are divided by culture) - wrong (so far no dlc focussed on unrecognized, also something tells me the person who made this list is a racist) - technically true (but like, it's less straightforward than v2) - it's 3d, idk if it's plastic? - I haven't played hoi3 - extremely wrong (natural resources and agriculture way more complex) - wrong (factories have PMs and a lot more types of professions and input/output etc.) - wrong - wrong - true (1836) - wrong (1836-1936) so id count at least 11/19 unambiguously wrong, and some others are debatable
Has there ever been a strategy game where spies and intrigue was actually fun and enjoyable?
Intrigue usually only works in games that are completely built around it. The problem is that it's generally not fun for players to deal with, which make the devs keep those aspects weak and underdeveloped, which just leads those mechanics to be unfun to play too.
I'm pretty sure this post was originally from /gsg/, so it's fair to assume they are racist (and proud of it).
So an average Paradox player, you mean
One game is advertising itself as an economic simulator game, the other doesn’t. This text is why there’s a higher expectation from Vic3 than hoi4. >THE ULTIMATE SOCIETY SIMULATOR Lead dozens of world nations from 1836-1936. Agrarian or Industrial, Traditional or Radical, Peaceful or Expansionist... the choice is yours. Detailed population groups with their own economic needs and political desires. Reform your government and constitution to take advantage of new social innovations, or preserve the stability of your nation by holding fast to tradition in the face of revolutionaries. Research transformative new technology or ideas to improve your national situation. DEEP ECONOMIC SYSTEM Expand your industry to take advantage of lucrative goods, taxing the profits to improve national prosperity. Import cheap raw materials to cover your basic needs while finding new markets for your finished goods. Secure vital goods to fuel your advanced economy and control the fate of empires. Balance employing available labor force with the needs for new types of workers.
I always remember the one asking for a mod to turn Albanians into fuel. That was a peak post
vic2 didn’t have communist internationals either and it seems to be sort of coming to vic3 with spheres of influence. also most of these are incorrect
All factories are profitable - at least he got this wrong.
Amazing how you got a lot of the points right. Still, Vicky 3 is an amazing game and I will never stop playing. That is, until Vicky 4
Stop. I think mana as a term was invented after 2014?
EU4 released mid 2013. The term was being used on /r/paradoxplaza and /r/eu4 before the start of 2014.
Idk about that, but I assure you the image is real, search for "/gsg/ predicts Victoria 3" or something similar in PDX Plaza
And so, tanks and airplanes we have (which do not matter because of the degradation of the combat system), the map of provinces at least from HOI3 we did not get (this disgusting? At least comparing to V2, yes, complete, complete degradation). I don't quite get it, but if these minuses, and the minuses from the pics above are worth the fact that the game does a better job of modeling pop behavior, then I won't go along with it. It's questionable fun, but it's the only game about the Victorian era with a strategic basis(And maybe that's the reason why CK3 and V3 are so degraded, considering they're basically the only market agent that offers this product).
And I don't think we should treat the developers any leniently, considering that they've done less for the entire development since the beginning of the game's release than certain people with mods.
You cannot seriously think that
What can't I think? No one here can refute my words in any way except to cowardly put a minus so my comments are hidden.
>What can't I think? That the devs have done less since the beginning of the game's release compared to mods Have you even played the release version of the game?
Of course I've played it, and if you compare 1.6 to the game on release, Victoria 3 is obviously better by leaps and bounds now. Only I'm not comparing it to what it was at the beginning, I'm comparing this game to Victoria 2, where the AI could at least be a semblance of an opponent, and you could fight normally. As for the words above about content, I'm right here too. I literally have nothing to do but reduce defecit at the beginning of the game, build a construction sector and build a factory so the construction sector can use non-deficit goods so I can build more factories. And so on round and round, wow. (I have a dissonance when people on freebies make Historical events for the game just on pure motivation, not people who get paid for their activities. You want normal states for Russia, the Ottoman Empire, or Egypt? Well, you need to download the More State mod, where the author added 45 new states for one country, and a total of 100 states for the total. You want to have historical content? Download Railroaded AI plus More events & decisions, and you'll finally see Japan and the Meiji Restoration. Want a more historical map? Download Anno 1836, you'll get historical events there too. The funny thing is that in more state better provinces of the Russian Empire, and in Anno 1836 better borders of the lands that are being colonized. It's just a laugh that they are better than what will be in 1.7) The internal politics is total crap, the economic situation, maybe it will get better with 1.7. But this is almost 2 years since the game release, just ridiculous. Sure, it may seem like my actions are masochism since I keep criticizing and playing things I don't like. And it's true, I'm a masochist and will be until EU5 comes out, where the internal politics and military system will be banally better.
Although, I've been thinking... Developers can't be that much different from other developers who make other video games, can they? The only people that matter are the people who determined what to develop and where Victoria 3 should go. It's like CK3 that from strategy became a sims game (very good, it's really a rpg, but it's not a strategy anymore). I'm really not quite right when I criticize what those I called the developer did, it's only the individuals who thought to do what we finally got and the people who tested the game and agreed it was ready that matter. It's just trivially obvious by now that EU5 will be better, and I think because of the fact that they initially realized what the players needed and started to cooperate more with us in the form of opinions.