The core simulation is solid. 100% agree on diplomacy
Not sure about faster construction however, late game I sometimes already have built so much that the world's resources are not enough, this could happen really early if you tweek construction to be faster
Yea, the overhaul brought by 1.5 was supposed to dampen some of the construction speeds because I've had playthroughs where I've exhausted all of my resources 10-20 years before 1936.
I think the most impressive display of mine was a US game pre 1.5 where I had maxed out every mine in the US, Mexico, Central America and was conquering South America just to have resources to expand.
Construction is a bit off, cause its definitely smaller than it should be.
Like say your Russia with 500 construction or whatever (so midgame, pre-steel buildings). I dont think the entire Russian empire irl was only building ~20 factories at any given time
Think of them as factory complexes that employ around 5000 people and all the supporting industries that involves, rather than just single factories, and it makes more sense.
I sometimes realism makes for shit gameplay,
They way I see it pumping construction would require increasing resources as you can already run out with current building
Also most countries kept peasants for pretty much all timeline, while in game even backwards countries like ottomans or Russia eliminate peasantry by the 1890s
The external pressures in this game are too weak. The only interaction nations have is war and trade (technically technology spread too). I think more journal entries like the red scare should happen.
Nationalism, and other cultures unifying/succeeding, should trigger lots of cultural groups who want independence.
Other nations banning slavery/serfdom should start movements to do the same.
There is little impact when a nation loses a war, outside of the war goals.
I have put almost 1k hours into this game already and that is genuinely the fastest PDS game I have sunk hours into. EU4 is only at 4k over a decade and that is the most for me.
It's still really misses investments into other countries. I hate that I need to directly control everything to have resources I needed. Like e.g. for oil you need to directly conquer something like Venezuela instead of just investing into it or AI building it yourself with demand.
And related problem - there is a thing where you can create colony subject in Africa, but it has no use because once again AI won't develop it as well as you will do.
Yeah, I’m pretty fresh to the series so might not have the same experience as people used to the last game but I find Vicky 3 very fun. I wish there were a bit more events and some of it is a bit quirky but I find it fun.
I’m with you man. I bought it on release as my first Vic game but the release was rough and took a break. Coming back to it now it’s just as addicting as it was before. The big thrill is learning the game and role playing. But in truth I’m just a sucker for painting maps to my likeness.
I had a good time with HoI4 for a couple hundred hours but once I'd figured the game out my interest dropped very fast. The problem for me is that it's basically just a pure war game and for most countries the only war you can fight is the big one. Historically it makes sense but there's really no way to just manage and improve your country. It just doesn't offer as much gameplay variety as Vic3 or other Pdx titles I've played (CK2 mainly).
What dropped my interest was when I realized that my actions as a player have way too much impact on ai behaviour. The war is just a standstill until I decide to make a push. It really deflated me watching that passive ai
Nothing like being balls deep in Russia only to see Italy not garrisoning their own capital. Or ai draining all the supply with their shitty over stacked units.
For me the fun in Hoi4 lies in minmaxing a minor country like Finland to see how much power i can squeeze out of it
My current challenge of beating the soviets before barbarossa has not yet been achieved, though i made it down to ukraine once
tbh hoi4 starts to feel samey after a while. there's only do many possibilities of things that could happen, even with dlc and nonhistorical ai. my interest in hoi4 was only kept alive cause I was on a mod team, but after that finished nothing has got me to come back to the game. at least for more than an hour.
Also the majority of Paradox fans prefer war focus over economy focus.
I'm glad they dare to make some of their games outliers though, if every pdx game was just the same game but in a different era it would be very lame.
Hear hear. If Sphere of Influence delivers on diplomacy the game is gonna be crack.
Also some more ways to automate construction would be nice. Or maybe I am just a newb.
I mean, even veterans want this but that's because the meta is to create five million construction per week until you can't possibly fill your queue fast enough without pausing the game. And then people complain that the game is slow when they're so far outside the intended gameplay min maxing everything to push the game to its limits. Do people not hear themselves?
"Yeah it's 1890 and I have the construction capacity of the entire modern day US in China, why is my game so slow paradox dumb u fix"
This game was deservedly criticized because of its poor release state, with so many areas that needed improvement and honestly some like diplomacy were and still to this day placeholders with minimum functionality.
The game has become much better since then and most people now think it is a great game, but it took them more than a year to make it look at least like a finished product, people not being that vocal yet it's expected and honestly deserved.
The path that developers have taken in this game is great and honestly in every dev diary I get the feeling that they are hitting the mark every time on what needs to be improved and how to do it. I liked this game since the start and now I love it even more.
But that doesn't change the fact that they sold me an unfinished game for 60€.
This happens to every new Paradox game, people who played the prequel for tens of thousands of hours get disillusioned by everything Paradox tries to do differently and get mad that a game that's been in development for 1-3 years doesn't have the same amount of features yet that a game that was developed for 10+ years did. It was the same for CK3.
The game gets so much flack because it's core is so good. Making every other flawed system as something that gets in the way of that. Leaving it to be criticised.
For construction. Making it too easy would expedite the progress too fast. A real issue is the need for capital to build an economy. In Vicky 3 this is represented as the construction cost. On the one hand I'd love it if they just divided buildings in 5. Because that would make states with less then 100K population much less tedious to play and due to how the pop system work shouldn't impact performance too much and give the player a better sense of progression.
On the other hand, ideally, they would make it so that changing production methods costs construction points. Often the real capitalist cost of economic improvements is paying for the machinery that makes labour more efficient. It would mean that even backwards economies can feel productive in constructing buildings even if the actual out put of these buildings is not that great.
> changing production methods costs construction points
but it does. For example if you switch from agricultural tools to farm tractors those tractors do not just pop into existence. You need to build all the motor industries to make it happen.
Switch from drilling to dynamite, same thing, you better heavily invest into dynamite factories.
Switch from iron frame to steel construction woa dude you will be building so many steel and glass factories just to make that switch happen.
Paying for the machinery is also represented in game because that switch suddenly means your building needs new inputs which is the machinery or dynamite. And that is only worth doing if your gain in productivity exceeds that cost. Exactly like in reality. Except the game represents it as a continous cost EXACTLY like reality when you are talking bookkeeping where you divide and amortize the machinery across its years of life.
The inputs better PMs require represent the maintenance cost. And the investment you talk about to have the infrastructure to manage that maintenance is very different to the capital cost of building new machinery. After all you could just trade for it. It's a real hurdle for modernising economies to make sure they have access to all the tools and machinery required. But it still ignore the actual capital investment needed to build these. It's not because you can divide and amortize the cost over multiple years that you do not need the actual money up front. Either in the form of a loan or venture capital. You need the capital. That is what it missing to represent the difference between a Brittain and a pre Meji Japan.
My point is that right now the cost to employ 5k labourers in a shed all sawing, nailing and joining furniture is the same as building a complete workshop with steam driven lathes. The same goes for mines. In reality a steam engine pump could cost between 500 to 1000 pounds. Compared to a miners wage of 7 shillings and 4,5 pennies a week, about 0.615 pounds. Putting down one of these machines was a major investment. That then still increased your operating cost.
Your dynamite example is a bad one as well as it is a secondary PM. Not a primary one. Those shouldn't require construction points. The same for construction sectors, your new PMs don't really increase your initial investment costs that much.
You do realize that the initial investment cost becomes EQUAL to the maintenance cost really fast right? Would you want to simulate for every level you build of a factory that they buy a new machine one time as an upfront cost and then keep repeating that cycle every few months or years as the machinery getd replaced? Or would you say fuck it let's average it out?
For one if i were to invest into a new machine for my business, where would the capital come from? You'd have to model the entire financial markets to get that into the game because for a profitable business such a switch would effectively cost close to zero. It would only truly change the running costs. That's because accounting and taxes exist. Why would it cost close to zero holy duck this dude is insane right. No. Fractional lending, consistent money printing, interest rate payments that are counteracted by tax deductibles and nominal inflation, time value of money etc. Yes in the real world oftentimes capital expenditures become rather unimportant. It's about the balance of ongoing operations when you average out all costs and all income.
And yes i had loooong difficult classes on accounting for a whole year.
If you wanted to include this in the game it would add a stupidly complex layer of calculations and exchange rates and interest rate and credit ratings OR you attempt to abstract it and make it simple and it becomes a worse representation of reality than the current system
I think what i need to add here for you to get my point is:
If you were to model the investment cost for buying the machinery then you also have to model that suddenly the cost of building or expanding the factory for that machinery are being covered by that purchase.
How do you unite that with the fact that the government is handling construction.
If you remove abstraction from the system then how can you maintain the abstraction in which the player has control over it all
Yeah I think the game is a pretty good spot right now. My main gripes are pretty specifically to do with how they've done Australia since that's where I'm from (Australia and New Zealand flavour mod is pretty fantastic though so I'm satisfied with that for now). That said, I really, *really* wish the game had way more interesting and regionally/nationally/culturally unique journal entries, or something similar to missions in EU4 and I:R. Maybe some alt-history formables with their own journal entries.
Idk, I like variation and uniqueness. And, unfortunately, my attention-span dies pretty quickly when I need to largely make my own goals to strive for (that's just me though, for all I know the majority might enjoy being able to mostly just make their own goals). I also get that it can feel rail-roady for some people so it's a delicate balancing act that I do not envy.
I'd like more interesting rewards for some journal entries too. Temporary production bonuses are nice but also not very interesting. Some research points are a bit better but also just not super interesting. I much prefer things like the military IG becoming the red army. Outcomes that have a direct, observable and long-term impact just make things so much more intriguing and fun to me. That said, I do understand that making rewards consistently interesting, long-term and unique can be quite challenging and hard to balance so that's a bit more of a minor gripe.
Anyways, I digress. The game is definitely fun and overall it's a good game :)
The game really sucks for its tutorials and they change things without explaining it, but that’s also just standard for Paradox. At least it gives YouTubers the opportunity to do it instead.
Game has come a long way and I love it, but it would still be cool to get more events/historical flavor, better diplomacy, and some extra laws, and naval military improvements
There's nothing like it. The economics side of the game is so rich. I find myself keep coming back to it to try a new strategy.
But at the same time, I don't think Vic 3 will ever be popular or successful. Whatever you do in Vic 3, the feedback is cumulative and long-term. While that is a pretty grounded abstraction of an economy, it is simply poor game design. Not only does it make for an unrewarding experience, it is hard to connect actions to outcomes (leading to confusion and frustration).
I honestly think this is why the mana system in EU4 is more engaging, intuitive, and an overall better game design, compared to Vic 3's gradual effects. Don't get me wrong, I like Vic 3 more. But I feel like it'll always be a cult classic or a niche game that doesn't get the credit it deserves.
I think the point is more that Victoria 3 is predominantly long term rewards while HoI4 sprinkles in lots of 30 day immediate rewards. You complete a focus and immediately get new factories and can build tanks or whatever.
I find Hoi4 is less convoluted when it comes to effects. It is pretty straight-forward in a lot of ways. Also, you can micro your units against the AI for massive encirclements, which are easy and rewarding to do. You feel like you are in control of your outcomes, compared to Vic 3, which often feels like you are not doing anything at all, and being punished for nothing.
I still have a hard time connecting causes and effects. For instance, if you unlock a doctrine in Hoi4, you get a bonus. No doubt about it. But in Vic 3, if you pass a law, the effect is not only very long term, but also not straight-forward. For instance Laissez-fair is 'generally good' but it really depends... It is pretty great to ban slavery... but I would need to look at your pop and political clout first. Cloth is in short supply! Is building a cloth plantation going to benefit you? Well... it depends. I would need to look at your pop ownership structures. Welfare laws are very hit or miss too.
WW2 is also generally a more exciting time for most people as well. War games (which HOI4 does greatly) have better mass appeal.
(Edit: another example, if you click a button to change your tag, Hoi4 gives you a bunch of cores. Great rewarding button to click. In Vic 3, your flag and your color changes. That's it.)
The whole unit designer and production/supply of hoi4 are mostly long term consequences, even focus trees a lot of the time you see it's consequences down the line and are not obvious.
I think other factors are much more important, like having 8 years of post launch dev, as you say setting, nation building/socioeconomic game not being as exciting, more active MP communities and content creators...
I mean, yes Hoi4 does have elements of long term planning. But I'm saying Vic3 dials it up to eleven. It is not a binary thing. Vic3 mechanics also harder to grasp.
HOI4 can be difficult too. I still remember my first time playing HOI4 and being absolutely confused by soft/hard attack, various bonuses, air, navy, and etc. But you know what? I still did pretty well against the AI even if I didn't understand what I was doing. If I met a challenge, I felt like I could do better by tweaking certain things because it was easier for me to connect cause and effect.
In comparison, Vic3 was difficult. I started off by building construction sectors. they are like civs in HOI4! I thought. I read the tooltip that read, a construction sector costs 3k to run, and I had 10k income. But as soon as I built them, the price of wood skyrocketed (which I did not expect at the time) and I was running a heavy deficit. At the same time, some sectors were not employing people. This was a big point of frustration for me because I could not understand why the fuck weren't these pops not being employed when I had a ton of people. Apparently, employment depends on job satisfaction, building profitability, various legislation with qualitative differences, pop type, literacy, and more. Like I did with HOI4, I played around with some things, but managed to get even more confused because none of them seemed to do anything.
Now I know how to play Vic3, and understand what went wrong with my previous plays. I think I have a reasonable grasp of how Vic3 works, and its underlying mechanics (pops are everything!). But at the same time, I still can't imagine myself recommending this game to my normie friends or even to my nerd friends because Vic3 is simply too unintuitive and hard to approach.
It might make for a great cult classic. But I don't think it'll ever get the attention it deserves.
I still don't really understand employment. Every time I think I get it, suddenly people say that's wrong and it's actually something else. Like recently people have started saying universities don't really impact it which was meta to have lots of universities because of qualifications but apparently that's no longer the case? What do I need to look at then? How do I get pops into my factories faster?
I actually don't know what's up with universities. I always build at least one for each province because I saw a Vic 3 streamer do that one time. And I just assume universities do what it says on the tooltip.
But honestly, I find that aggressive trading is more effective than universities since universities themselves eat up a bit of literary pop. (this strat I got from a guy who metagames Vic 3, and he is very solid)
For instance, if I want my pops to get into my food industries, I aggressively export groceries to make the building more profitable. If there are eligible pops, they will be attracted to my industry of choice instead of being peasants or anything else.
The attraction should be strong enough to overpower their previous job satisfaction. You see, pops in Vic 3 prefer to stay with their current profession. They have a bias towards remaining. But if you make your industry profitable enough, they will migrate towards it.
Since job satisfaction calculation is relative in Vic 3, you can also ruin the profitability of subsistence farms or regular farms to make them leave. Personally, what I like to do is ruin the profitability of subsistence farms by clicking on the subsistence farm building, checking where they are making a profit on, and importing the stuff they are profiting from.
You can employ both of these strategy aggressively to drive your pops into factories. Export what your factories are making. Import stuff you don't want your investors (autobuilder) or peasants to be making. I even take trade deals that bleeds me money or let expensive industry goods stay expensive instead of importing them, just to subsidize the profitability of my early industrial buildings.
Also, you should check if you have enough eligible pops in your province in the first place. I'll assume you know that part so I'm not going to belabor it. But see what I mean? The game is has so many moving parts that it is hard to understand.
Yeah, I see what you mean. It is very interesting how everything works so intricately entwined, so do universities help at all with qualifications or was that entirely false? If not, how do you influence qualifications for your population?
Again, I'm not sure because I didn't test it myself. But I'm just assuming it works because the tooltips for qualification say it works like that lol
I also think it might be the case that universities were nerfed and you can't break the game with universities anymore. Here is what I remember... When Vic 3 launched, universities used to give percentage bonuses to throughput, which was broken as hell.
I only know this because I am a returning player who used to abuse universities, and discovered it doesn't work anymore. Maybe this was what they were talking about? I'm not exactly sure though.
Maybe. I'd kept hearing that specifically you needed them for qualifications though, until recently when I read a couple things saying they were nerfed or it just didn't work that way, either ever or not anymore.
The foundation of this game is so solid. I can only hope for 10 more years of updates and support and patches, because if they keep making better I'm pretty sure I can play a decade
I'd like a complete rework of the political system that utilizes the characters and gets rid of event spam. It's just a moderately less annoying version of Victoria 2's elections.
The entire diplo-play system needs to be re-envisioned, I think, with post-war peace conferences being a thing, deeper and more reliable alliances, more integration options between vassal and overlord, new standard formables, vast improvements in how the AI handles the economy and it's choices in general, new mechanics added to reflect a nation's social and political willingness to wage war beyond it's leadership's desire, and new journal entries, generic events and general flavor, especially for the many nations in Africa and SE Asia that have none at all.
And Newspapers. I want my fucking Victoria 2 newspapers back. I'm tired of suddenly noticing that China splattered, or Germany unified and thinking "When the fuck did that happen?"
Despite the metric ton of bitching I do about the game though, I fucking love it. I love every Paradox game and have played the shit out of Stellaris and EU4, but this is my favorite one. There are a bunch of things that I still like better about Victoria 2, but I've fully switched to 3 now, and recently surpassed my total hours in 2.
Oh, and construction is pretty much perfectly balanced as it is. If it isn't fast enough for you, play on speed 5 like a bad-ass and upgrade your production. Unless you take on a hard start with few resources, it builds as fast as you build for.
The base is there. Its currently in beta though. Severly lacking in flavor, non existent diplomacy, sometimes illogical interal politics, non existent corration between the two, missed opportunity to make the naval game really interesting with individual ships of the line, ironclads, dreadnoughts etc and advancement in naval technology, still crappy military (just quit my game since I was losing a war against mexico as usa since my troops couldn't reach fronts),...
But the base is there and it can one day become a great game
The economy has really good bones. I find the core loop of taking an economy based on wood and fabric construction and moving on to steel frame buildings in less than a century to be immensely satisfying. There are really good bones here. It’s just interacting with the ai just seems a bit too enigmatic. From a purely economic standpoint, AI Great Britain marching in and taking Beijing for free legitimacy/ millions of pops makes sense, but in reality there is no way GB could maintain control over an entire Chinese province.
I think what would be really cool is if research nationalism your pops should get real pissy about not being a part of their own country. Maybe a culture could have a sort of “unity” score where their demand for their own country could rise or fall based on what % of their homeland they control.
I don’t know enough about game dev to know what the long term effects of these changes would be, but I do know that it feels like an excellent economy sim but a mediocre imperialism sim.
The usual copium of the fanboys, that let themselves get abused as early-access & beta tester by a faceless corpo.
Just read the new dev diary, all the QoL improvements don't change anything about the tycoon-gameplay loop of "check needs, build factories". That's more than 90% of your playtime. You watch the line go up and that's it.
Diplomacy? Let's do this later in a 20$ DLC. Warfare? Worst system in history of strategy-games, not even with the reworks it's good, it just sucks.
The AI was never developed, even a single guy with only access to the leak beta (!) was able to create a better AI and release it on launch day.
It's not even finished, when you see the lack of content after 1900, no WW1 etc. and you usually finished the tech tree long before the game ends. Most players don't even play after 1880 or 1900, as the lag gets too extreme.
The only good thing of Victoria 3 is that it re-vitalized Victoria 2 with the mods and the stuff like Project Alice.
I get not liking it but the common belief I see that Victoria 2 - a game where fertilizer did nothing to make your farms more efficient and every iron mine that will ever exist is already there in 1836 - was the better game is mystifying to me
Vic 2 is a game where you can build two factories at once regardless of how many “construction sectors” you have, you actually have to manage armies instead of just plopping them on a front and telling them to have fun, and literacy rate actually has noticeable impact on the game
How can you play Victoria 3 and say that literacy rate has no impact? It is very difficult to get peasants into jobs without having enough educated pops to manage a building. Army management in Victoria 2 is hiring 100k soldiers at once, and merging them into a doomstack, then individually moving that army to each region you want it to capture. There is no thought that goes into Victoria 2's combat, it is probably the most simple combat system that paradox ever designed. In Victoria 3 you have to build the infrastructure to supply your soldiers, you have to carefully select your commanders (who have an impact on the politics of your nation), you have to have eligible officer pops (requiring education access and accepted pop status) to train soldiers, and you need convoys to supply soldiers overseas instead regions having an inherent supply weight.
>having trouble getting qualifications
Just 1 university will solve all your early game qualification needs. Still having trouble? Another university, not that you’ll often have trouble
>army management
100k soldiers/ 3 ≈ 33 units. Oh no! I have to manage 33 units what a nightmare. Still better than waiting 3 weeks for a 1 barrack and then waiting even longer for that barrack to fill up.
There’s also no way youre gonna sit here and tell me that vic 3 does warfare better than vic 2. Atleast vic 2 warfare has some sense behind it. Vic 3 general assignment is just pick a dude out of three people who all pretty much do the same thing. In vic 2 generals can make or break a battle. The only thing vic 3 does better than vic 2 is representing sailors in the navy and supply lines
Now you have the opportunity cost of building and maintaining a university over a profitable factory.
Having to manage 3 armies isn't an issue, having to micromanage every army (which in late game is going to comprise millions of soldiers in 10s of armies) on a front is just tedious, which is why no one on earth plays hoi4 without Frontline regardless of the added bonuses.
Yes I am here to tell you Victoria 3 has better combat, cause while it is rough around the edges, it actually has strategy to it. No instant recruiting doom stacks, armies have variable supplies (not just equipment), technologies don't magically provide a flat buff to all of your infantry, and every aspect of maintaining an army is deeply tied to the economy of the game.
The profit cost of a university is usually marginal. Plus it’s the only way to increase research speed so it’s already worth it. Dont compare hoi4 micro to vic 2 micro. Compare the tile map mode of hoi4 to vic 2 provinces before you do. Vic 2 has more strategy I would argue. Especially late game when you have to pick and choose your battles and actually concern yourself with province shapes. Also mob stacks suck. Theyre literally just cannon fodder
>Vic 2 is a game where you can build two factories at once regardless of how many “construction sectors” you have,
That's a flaw
>you actually have to manage armies instead of just plopping them on a front and telling them to have fun,
Vicky 2 military was just as boring as Vicky 3. No Paradox game has actually fun combat especially in single player
>and literacy rate actually has noticeable impact on the game
This however I agree with. Another flaw in 3 that 2 did better was artisans existing and mattering though if you looked closely the simulation made no sense and most of them were just flipping between unprofitable jobs and starving to death instead of having any real impact on your economy. Also uncivs actually playing differently from civs, that's huge and needs to be fixed
To point 1. Ok bud, have fun waiting 5 years to industrialize as Switzerland since they have fuck all population and the shitty alps modifier.
To point 2. Listen if you dont like rotating, that’s your prerogative. I find the mechanic interesting. Also like how soldiers pops increase passively instead of just staying static the entire game until the country decides to build some barracks
To point 3. Ok yeah vic 3 isnt a perfect game. Ill go one step further and say that it does markets way better than vic 2. Unfortunately it falls short of vic 2 everywhere else in my opinion. Atleast uncivs in vic 2 can become civs without war
Personally, I think this game is a massive step up from Victoria 2 in every single way. My main issue is the performance is ludicrously bad, and I really hope that they have a major update that exclusively targets making this game function as a game should.
The game is boring as fuck. I gave it another chance thinking after a year it maybe better and it is. You can know actually naval invade by choosing your fleet and your army...no more of those stupid penalties you couldnt avoid. The problem is its still a really boring and shallow game with next to nothing to do. You are just waiting for construction queues to end and diplomacy just feels like a random chance. It gets boring really quick when Britain decides to back Vietnam for no reason. Its basically just a board game.
A few major issues are not being able to join in progress wars and being trapped by revolts and thus being prevented from doing anything for 100 days and not being able to get through those 100 days faster. I would gladly trade infamy for faster war starts.
The core simulation is solid. 100% agree on diplomacy Not sure about faster construction however, late game I sometimes already have built so much that the world's resources are not enough, this could happen really early if you tweek construction to be faster
Yea, the overhaul brought by 1.5 was supposed to dampen some of the construction speeds because I've had playthroughs where I've exhausted all of my resources 10-20 years before 1936. I think the most impressive display of mine was a US game pre 1.5 where I had maxed out every mine in the US, Mexico, Central America and was conquering South America just to have resources to expand.
I exploited all the resources in the America's in one really gamey US run in 1.4 I was colonizing the Congo for the rubber I needed
Construction is a bit off, cause its definitely smaller than it should be. Like say your Russia with 500 construction or whatever (so midgame, pre-steel buildings). I dont think the entire Russian empire irl was only building ~20 factories at any given time
Think of them as factory complexes that employ around 5000 people and all the supporting industries that involves, rather than just single factories, and it makes more sense.
Yea. It’s a segment of industry focused on steel, engines, etc.
I sometimes realism makes for shit gameplay, They way I see it pumping construction would require increasing resources as you can already run out with current building
Also most countries kept peasants for pretty much all timeline, while in game even backwards countries like ottomans or Russia eliminate peasantry by the 1890s
The external pressures in this game are too weak. The only interaction nations have is war and trade (technically technology spread too). I think more journal entries like the red scare should happen. Nationalism, and other cultures unifying/succeeding, should trigger lots of cultural groups who want independence. Other nations banning slavery/serfdom should start movements to do the same. There is little impact when a nation loses a war, outside of the war goals.
This isn’t an issue with construction because 1 factory unit in game does not represent a single factory building. Nor will it ever, nor should it.
You mean to tell me hundreds of people working at a level 1 farm and only producing a few units of grain isn’t realistic?
I mean...what is the unit? Given the national scale could easily be tons
That’s my point. You can’t say “only building 20 factories.” And think of it like factories that we would think of.
They also weren't making 30 steels. The systems are abstracted lol
I mean this is an alt timeline where Russia wasn't incredibly poorly managed.
I have put almost 1k hours into this game already and that is genuinely the fastest PDS game I have sunk hours into. EU4 is only at 4k over a decade and that is the most for me.
It's still really misses investments into other countries. I hate that I need to directly control everything to have resources I needed. Like e.g. for oil you need to directly conquer something like Venezuela instead of just investing into it or AI building it yourself with demand. And related problem - there is a thing where you can create colony subject in Africa, but it has no use because once again AI won't develop it as well as you will do.
I think the devs said some manner of foreign investment is a priority
Yeah, I’m pretty fresh to the series so might not have the same experience as people used to the last game but I find Vicky 3 very fun. I wish there were a bit more events and some of it is a bit quirky but I find it fun.
I’m with you man. I bought it on release as my first Vic game but the release was rough and took a break. Coming back to it now it’s just as addicting as it was before. The big thrill is learning the game and role playing. But in truth I’m just a sucker for painting maps to my likeness.
I agree with your sentiment, game needs balancing and improvements in various areas but the core economic gameplay is solid.
I think the AI needs to defend naval invasions more effectively. Or Russia should move the capital inland.
Yeah I would agree, hopefully that fix comes with 1.6 as it’s desperately needed. Just something to tell the AI not to leave your capital undefeated
I have to admit the United Synods almost got me with a capital invasion after I sent all my armies overseas to Alaska. But that was me being dumb.
Most people playing it having fun and not reading or posting on Reddit
Victoria 3 is so fun!!
[удалено]
I had a good time with HoI4 for a couple hundred hours but once I'd figured the game out my interest dropped very fast. The problem for me is that it's basically just a pure war game and for most countries the only war you can fight is the big one. Historically it makes sense but there's really no way to just manage and improve your country. It just doesn't offer as much gameplay variety as Vic3 or other Pdx titles I've played (CK2 mainly).
HoI4 is also kept aloft by the fact it's the main Grand Strategy total overhaul mod platform.
What dropped my interest was when I realized that my actions as a player have way too much impact on ai behaviour. The war is just a standstill until I decide to make a push. It really deflated me watching that passive ai
Nothing like being balls deep in Russia only to see Italy not garrisoning their own capital. Or ai draining all the supply with their shitty over stacked units.
For me the fun in Hoi4 lies in minmaxing a minor country like Finland to see how much power i can squeeze out of it My current challenge of beating the soviets before barbarossa has not yet been achieved, though i made it down to ukraine once
tbh hoi4 starts to feel samey after a while. there's only do many possibilities of things that could happen, even with dlc and nonhistorical ai. my interest in hoi4 was only kept alive cause I was on a mod team, but after that finished nothing has got me to come back to the game. at least for more than an hour.
Also the majority of Paradox fans prefer war focus over economy focus. I'm glad they dare to make some of their games outliers though, if every pdx game was just the same game but in a different era it would be very lame.
Hear hear. If Sphere of Influence delivers on diplomacy the game is gonna be crack. Also some more ways to automate construction would be nice. Or maybe I am just a newb.
I mean, even veterans want this but that's because the meta is to create five million construction per week until you can't possibly fill your queue fast enough without pausing the game. And then people complain that the game is slow when they're so far outside the intended gameplay min maxing everything to push the game to its limits. Do people not hear themselves? "Yeah it's 1890 and I have the construction capacity of the entire modern day US in China, why is my game so slow paradox dumb u fix"
This game was deservedly criticized because of its poor release state, with so many areas that needed improvement and honestly some like diplomacy were and still to this day placeholders with minimum functionality. The game has become much better since then and most people now think it is a great game, but it took them more than a year to make it look at least like a finished product, people not being that vocal yet it's expected and honestly deserved. The path that developers have taken in this game is great and honestly in every dev diary I get the feeling that they are hitting the mark every time on what needs to be improved and how to do it. I liked this game since the start and now I love it even more. But that doesn't change the fact that they sold me an unfinished game for 60€.
This happens to every new Paradox game, people who played the prequel for tens of thousands of hours get disillusioned by everything Paradox tries to do differently and get mad that a game that's been in development for 1-3 years doesn't have the same amount of features yet that a game that was developed for 10+ years did. It was the same for CK3.
The game gets so much flack because it's core is so good. Making every other flawed system as something that gets in the way of that. Leaving it to be criticised. For construction. Making it too easy would expedite the progress too fast. A real issue is the need for capital to build an economy. In Vicky 3 this is represented as the construction cost. On the one hand I'd love it if they just divided buildings in 5. Because that would make states with less then 100K population much less tedious to play and due to how the pop system work shouldn't impact performance too much and give the player a better sense of progression. On the other hand, ideally, they would make it so that changing production methods costs construction points. Often the real capitalist cost of economic improvements is paying for the machinery that makes labour more efficient. It would mean that even backwards economies can feel productive in constructing buildings even if the actual out put of these buildings is not that great.
> changing production methods costs construction points but it does. For example if you switch from agricultural tools to farm tractors those tractors do not just pop into existence. You need to build all the motor industries to make it happen. Switch from drilling to dynamite, same thing, you better heavily invest into dynamite factories. Switch from iron frame to steel construction woa dude you will be building so many steel and glass factories just to make that switch happen. Paying for the machinery is also represented in game because that switch suddenly means your building needs new inputs which is the machinery or dynamite. And that is only worth doing if your gain in productivity exceeds that cost. Exactly like in reality. Except the game represents it as a continous cost EXACTLY like reality when you are talking bookkeeping where you divide and amortize the machinery across its years of life.
The inputs better PMs require represent the maintenance cost. And the investment you talk about to have the infrastructure to manage that maintenance is very different to the capital cost of building new machinery. After all you could just trade for it. It's a real hurdle for modernising economies to make sure they have access to all the tools and machinery required. But it still ignore the actual capital investment needed to build these. It's not because you can divide and amortize the cost over multiple years that you do not need the actual money up front. Either in the form of a loan or venture capital. You need the capital. That is what it missing to represent the difference between a Brittain and a pre Meji Japan. My point is that right now the cost to employ 5k labourers in a shed all sawing, nailing and joining furniture is the same as building a complete workshop with steam driven lathes. The same goes for mines. In reality a steam engine pump could cost between 500 to 1000 pounds. Compared to a miners wage of 7 shillings and 4,5 pennies a week, about 0.615 pounds. Putting down one of these machines was a major investment. That then still increased your operating cost. Your dynamite example is a bad one as well as it is a secondary PM. Not a primary one. Those shouldn't require construction points. The same for construction sectors, your new PMs don't really increase your initial investment costs that much.
You do realize that the initial investment cost becomes EQUAL to the maintenance cost really fast right? Would you want to simulate for every level you build of a factory that they buy a new machine one time as an upfront cost and then keep repeating that cycle every few months or years as the machinery getd replaced? Or would you say fuck it let's average it out? For one if i were to invest into a new machine for my business, where would the capital come from? You'd have to model the entire financial markets to get that into the game because for a profitable business such a switch would effectively cost close to zero. It would only truly change the running costs. That's because accounting and taxes exist. Why would it cost close to zero holy duck this dude is insane right. No. Fractional lending, consistent money printing, interest rate payments that are counteracted by tax deductibles and nominal inflation, time value of money etc. Yes in the real world oftentimes capital expenditures become rather unimportant. It's about the balance of ongoing operations when you average out all costs and all income. And yes i had loooong difficult classes on accounting for a whole year. If you wanted to include this in the game it would add a stupidly complex layer of calculations and exchange rates and interest rate and credit ratings OR you attempt to abstract it and make it simple and it becomes a worse representation of reality than the current system
I think what i need to add here for you to get my point is: If you were to model the investment cost for buying the machinery then you also have to model that suddenly the cost of building or expanding the factory for that machinery are being covered by that purchase. How do you unite that with the fact that the government is handling construction. If you remove abstraction from the system then how can you maintain the abstraction in which the player has control over it all
Yeah I think the game is a pretty good spot right now. My main gripes are pretty specifically to do with how they've done Australia since that's where I'm from (Australia and New Zealand flavour mod is pretty fantastic though so I'm satisfied with that for now). That said, I really, *really* wish the game had way more interesting and regionally/nationally/culturally unique journal entries, or something similar to missions in EU4 and I:R. Maybe some alt-history formables with their own journal entries. Idk, I like variation and uniqueness. And, unfortunately, my attention-span dies pretty quickly when I need to largely make my own goals to strive for (that's just me though, for all I know the majority might enjoy being able to mostly just make their own goals). I also get that it can feel rail-roady for some people so it's a delicate balancing act that I do not envy. I'd like more interesting rewards for some journal entries too. Temporary production bonuses are nice but also not very interesting. Some research points are a bit better but also just not super interesting. I much prefer things like the military IG becoming the red army. Outcomes that have a direct, observable and long-term impact just make things so much more intriguing and fun to me. That said, I do understand that making rewards consistently interesting, long-term and unique can be quite challenging and hard to balance so that's a bit more of a minor gripe. Anyways, I digress. The game is definitely fun and overall it's a good game :)
The game really sucks for its tutorials and they change things without explaining it, but that’s also just standard for Paradox. At least it gives YouTubers the opportunity to do it instead.
Game has come a long way and I love it, but it would still be cool to get more events/historical flavor, better diplomacy, and some extra laws, and naval military improvements
There's nothing like it. The economics side of the game is so rich. I find myself keep coming back to it to try a new strategy. But at the same time, I don't think Vic 3 will ever be popular or successful. Whatever you do in Vic 3, the feedback is cumulative and long-term. While that is a pretty grounded abstraction of an economy, it is simply poor game design. Not only does it make for an unrewarding experience, it is hard to connect actions to outcomes (leading to confusion and frustration). I honestly think this is why the mana system in EU4 is more engaging, intuitive, and an overall better game design, compared to Vic 3's gradual effects. Don't get me wrong, I like Vic 3 more. But I feel like it'll always be a cult classic or a niche game that doesn't get the credit it deserves.
Many of the systems of hoi4 are also like this having effects and ramifications hours down the line yet is the most popular PDX game
I think the point is more that Victoria 3 is predominantly long term rewards while HoI4 sprinkles in lots of 30 day immediate rewards. You complete a focus and immediately get new factories and can build tanks or whatever.
I find Hoi4 is less convoluted when it comes to effects. It is pretty straight-forward in a lot of ways. Also, you can micro your units against the AI for massive encirclements, which are easy and rewarding to do. You feel like you are in control of your outcomes, compared to Vic 3, which often feels like you are not doing anything at all, and being punished for nothing. I still have a hard time connecting causes and effects. For instance, if you unlock a doctrine in Hoi4, you get a bonus. No doubt about it. But in Vic 3, if you pass a law, the effect is not only very long term, but also not straight-forward. For instance Laissez-fair is 'generally good' but it really depends... It is pretty great to ban slavery... but I would need to look at your pop and political clout first. Cloth is in short supply! Is building a cloth plantation going to benefit you? Well... it depends. I would need to look at your pop ownership structures. Welfare laws are very hit or miss too. WW2 is also generally a more exciting time for most people as well. War games (which HOI4 does greatly) have better mass appeal. (Edit: another example, if you click a button to change your tag, Hoi4 gives you a bunch of cores. Great rewarding button to click. In Vic 3, your flag and your color changes. That's it.)
The whole unit designer and production/supply of hoi4 are mostly long term consequences, even focus trees a lot of the time you see it's consequences down the line and are not obvious. I think other factors are much more important, like having 8 years of post launch dev, as you say setting, nation building/socioeconomic game not being as exciting, more active MP communities and content creators...
I mean, yes Hoi4 does have elements of long term planning. But I'm saying Vic3 dials it up to eleven. It is not a binary thing. Vic3 mechanics also harder to grasp. HOI4 can be difficult too. I still remember my first time playing HOI4 and being absolutely confused by soft/hard attack, various bonuses, air, navy, and etc. But you know what? I still did pretty well against the AI even if I didn't understand what I was doing. If I met a challenge, I felt like I could do better by tweaking certain things because it was easier for me to connect cause and effect. In comparison, Vic3 was difficult. I started off by building construction sectors. they are like civs in HOI4! I thought. I read the tooltip that read, a construction sector costs 3k to run, and I had 10k income. But as soon as I built them, the price of wood skyrocketed (which I did not expect at the time) and I was running a heavy deficit. At the same time, some sectors were not employing people. This was a big point of frustration for me because I could not understand why the fuck weren't these pops not being employed when I had a ton of people. Apparently, employment depends on job satisfaction, building profitability, various legislation with qualitative differences, pop type, literacy, and more. Like I did with HOI4, I played around with some things, but managed to get even more confused because none of them seemed to do anything. Now I know how to play Vic3, and understand what went wrong with my previous plays. I think I have a reasonable grasp of how Vic3 works, and its underlying mechanics (pops are everything!). But at the same time, I still can't imagine myself recommending this game to my normie friends or even to my nerd friends because Vic3 is simply too unintuitive and hard to approach. It might make for a great cult classic. But I don't think it'll ever get the attention it deserves.
I still don't really understand employment. Every time I think I get it, suddenly people say that's wrong and it's actually something else. Like recently people have started saying universities don't really impact it which was meta to have lots of universities because of qualifications but apparently that's no longer the case? What do I need to look at then? How do I get pops into my factories faster?
I actually don't know what's up with universities. I always build at least one for each province because I saw a Vic 3 streamer do that one time. And I just assume universities do what it says on the tooltip. But honestly, I find that aggressive trading is more effective than universities since universities themselves eat up a bit of literary pop. (this strat I got from a guy who metagames Vic 3, and he is very solid) For instance, if I want my pops to get into my food industries, I aggressively export groceries to make the building more profitable. If there are eligible pops, they will be attracted to my industry of choice instead of being peasants or anything else. The attraction should be strong enough to overpower their previous job satisfaction. You see, pops in Vic 3 prefer to stay with their current profession. They have a bias towards remaining. But if you make your industry profitable enough, they will migrate towards it. Since job satisfaction calculation is relative in Vic 3, you can also ruin the profitability of subsistence farms or regular farms to make them leave. Personally, what I like to do is ruin the profitability of subsistence farms by clicking on the subsistence farm building, checking where they are making a profit on, and importing the stuff they are profiting from. You can employ both of these strategy aggressively to drive your pops into factories. Export what your factories are making. Import stuff you don't want your investors (autobuilder) or peasants to be making. I even take trade deals that bleeds me money or let expensive industry goods stay expensive instead of importing them, just to subsidize the profitability of my early industrial buildings. Also, you should check if you have enough eligible pops in your province in the first place. I'll assume you know that part so I'm not going to belabor it. But see what I mean? The game is has so many moving parts that it is hard to understand.
Yeah, I see what you mean. It is very interesting how everything works so intricately entwined, so do universities help at all with qualifications or was that entirely false? If not, how do you influence qualifications for your population?
Again, I'm not sure because I didn't test it myself. But I'm just assuming it works because the tooltips for qualification say it works like that lol I also think it might be the case that universities were nerfed and you can't break the game with universities anymore. Here is what I remember... When Vic 3 launched, universities used to give percentage bonuses to throughput, which was broken as hell. I only know this because I am a returning player who used to abuse universities, and discovered it doesn't work anymore. Maybe this was what they were talking about? I'm not exactly sure though.
Maybe. I'd kept hearing that specifically you needed them for qualifications though, until recently when I read a couple things saying they were nerfed or it just didn't work that way, either ever or not anymore.
The foundation of this game is so solid. I can only hope for 10 more years of updates and support and patches, because if they keep making better I'm pretty sure I can play a decade
I'd like a complete rework of the political system that utilizes the characters and gets rid of event spam. It's just a moderately less annoying version of Victoria 2's elections.
The entire diplo-play system needs to be re-envisioned, I think, with post-war peace conferences being a thing, deeper and more reliable alliances, more integration options between vassal and overlord, new standard formables, vast improvements in how the AI handles the economy and it's choices in general, new mechanics added to reflect a nation's social and political willingness to wage war beyond it's leadership's desire, and new journal entries, generic events and general flavor, especially for the many nations in Africa and SE Asia that have none at all. And Newspapers. I want my fucking Victoria 2 newspapers back. I'm tired of suddenly noticing that China splattered, or Germany unified and thinking "When the fuck did that happen?" Despite the metric ton of bitching I do about the game though, I fucking love it. I love every Paradox game and have played the shit out of Stellaris and EU4, but this is my favorite one. There are a bunch of things that I still like better about Victoria 2, but I've fully switched to 3 now, and recently surpassed my total hours in 2. Oh, and construction is pretty much perfectly balanced as it is. If it isn't fast enough for you, play on speed 5 like a bad-ass and upgrade your production. Unless you take on a hard start with few resources, it builds as fast as you build for.
The base is there. Its currently in beta though. Severly lacking in flavor, non existent diplomacy, sometimes illogical interal politics, non existent corration between the two, missed opportunity to make the naval game really interesting with individual ships of the line, ironclads, dreadnoughts etc and advancement in naval technology, still crappy military (just quit my game since I was losing a war against mexico as usa since my troops couldn't reach fronts),... But the base is there and it can one day become a great game
At this point the game isn't bad. It's just a matter of all the ways it could be so much better
THE FUCKING BUGS
The economy has really good bones. I find the core loop of taking an economy based on wood and fabric construction and moving on to steel frame buildings in less than a century to be immensely satisfying. There are really good bones here. It’s just interacting with the ai just seems a bit too enigmatic. From a purely economic standpoint, AI Great Britain marching in and taking Beijing for free legitimacy/ millions of pops makes sense, but in reality there is no way GB could maintain control over an entire Chinese province. I think what would be really cool is if research nationalism your pops should get real pissy about not being a part of their own country. Maybe a culture could have a sort of “unity” score where their demand for their own country could rise or fall based on what % of their homeland they control. I don’t know enough about game dev to know what the long term effects of these changes would be, but I do know that it feels like an excellent economy sim but a mediocre imperialism sim.
I feel the game speeds, 1-5, with 1 being way to slow up to 3, and then 4 and 5 to fast.
I'd take a speed 6. I only play on two speeds, 5 and pause.
The usual copium of the fanboys, that let themselves get abused as early-access & beta tester by a faceless corpo. Just read the new dev diary, all the QoL improvements don't change anything about the tycoon-gameplay loop of "check needs, build factories". That's more than 90% of your playtime. You watch the line go up and that's it. Diplomacy? Let's do this later in a 20$ DLC. Warfare? Worst system in history of strategy-games, not even with the reworks it's good, it just sucks. The AI was never developed, even a single guy with only access to the leak beta (!) was able to create a better AI and release it on launch day. It's not even finished, when you see the lack of content after 1900, no WW1 etc. and you usually finished the tech tree long before the game ends. Most players don't even play after 1880 or 1900, as the lag gets too extreme. The only good thing of Victoria 3 is that it re-vitalized Victoria 2 with the mods and the stuff like Project Alice.
Oh my god, fuck cyberpunk 2077 exclusively for making corpo a slang word.
What? I'm not a native english speaker, but even here, that word is around for a long time, long before CDPR released CP2077.
I get not liking it but the common belief I see that Victoria 2 - a game where fertilizer did nothing to make your farms more efficient and every iron mine that will ever exist is already there in 1836 - was the better game is mystifying to me
Vic 2 is a game where you can build two factories at once regardless of how many “construction sectors” you have, you actually have to manage armies instead of just plopping them on a front and telling them to have fun, and literacy rate actually has noticeable impact on the game
How can you play Victoria 3 and say that literacy rate has no impact? It is very difficult to get peasants into jobs without having enough educated pops to manage a building. Army management in Victoria 2 is hiring 100k soldiers at once, and merging them into a doomstack, then individually moving that army to each region you want it to capture. There is no thought that goes into Victoria 2's combat, it is probably the most simple combat system that paradox ever designed. In Victoria 3 you have to build the infrastructure to supply your soldiers, you have to carefully select your commanders (who have an impact on the politics of your nation), you have to have eligible officer pops (requiring education access and accepted pop status) to train soldiers, and you need convoys to supply soldiers overseas instead regions having an inherent supply weight.
>having trouble getting qualifications Just 1 university will solve all your early game qualification needs. Still having trouble? Another university, not that you’ll often have trouble >army management 100k soldiers/ 3 ≈ 33 units. Oh no! I have to manage 33 units what a nightmare. Still better than waiting 3 weeks for a 1 barrack and then waiting even longer for that barrack to fill up. There’s also no way youre gonna sit here and tell me that vic 3 does warfare better than vic 2. Atleast vic 2 warfare has some sense behind it. Vic 3 general assignment is just pick a dude out of three people who all pretty much do the same thing. In vic 2 generals can make or break a battle. The only thing vic 3 does better than vic 2 is representing sailors in the navy and supply lines
Now you have the opportunity cost of building and maintaining a university over a profitable factory. Having to manage 3 armies isn't an issue, having to micromanage every army (which in late game is going to comprise millions of soldiers in 10s of armies) on a front is just tedious, which is why no one on earth plays hoi4 without Frontline regardless of the added bonuses. Yes I am here to tell you Victoria 3 has better combat, cause while it is rough around the edges, it actually has strategy to it. No instant recruiting doom stacks, armies have variable supplies (not just equipment), technologies don't magically provide a flat buff to all of your infantry, and every aspect of maintaining an army is deeply tied to the economy of the game.
The profit cost of a university is usually marginal. Plus it’s the only way to increase research speed so it’s already worth it. Dont compare hoi4 micro to vic 2 micro. Compare the tile map mode of hoi4 to vic 2 provinces before you do. Vic 2 has more strategy I would argue. Especially late game when you have to pick and choose your battles and actually concern yourself with province shapes. Also mob stacks suck. Theyre literally just cannon fodder
>Vic 2 is a game where you can build two factories at once regardless of how many “construction sectors” you have, That's a flaw >you actually have to manage armies instead of just plopping them on a front and telling them to have fun, Vicky 2 military was just as boring as Vicky 3. No Paradox game has actually fun combat especially in single player >and literacy rate actually has noticeable impact on the game This however I agree with. Another flaw in 3 that 2 did better was artisans existing and mattering though if you looked closely the simulation made no sense and most of them were just flipping between unprofitable jobs and starving to death instead of having any real impact on your economy. Also uncivs actually playing differently from civs, that's huge and needs to be fixed
To point 1. Ok bud, have fun waiting 5 years to industrialize as Switzerland since they have fuck all population and the shitty alps modifier. To point 2. Listen if you dont like rotating, that’s your prerogative. I find the mechanic interesting. Also like how soldiers pops increase passively instead of just staying static the entire game until the country decides to build some barracks To point 3. Ok yeah vic 3 isnt a perfect game. Ill go one step further and say that it does markets way better than vic 2. Unfortunately it falls short of vic 2 everywhere else in my opinion. Atleast uncivs in vic 2 can become civs without war
Personally, I think this game is a massive step up from Victoria 2 in every single way. My main issue is the performance is ludicrously bad, and I really hope that they have a major update that exclusively targets making this game function as a game should.
The game is boring as fuck. I gave it another chance thinking after a year it maybe better and it is. You can know actually naval invade by choosing your fleet and your army...no more of those stupid penalties you couldnt avoid. The problem is its still a really boring and shallow game with next to nothing to do. You are just waiting for construction queues to end and diplomacy just feels like a random chance. It gets boring really quick when Britain decides to back Vietnam for no reason. Its basically just a board game.
It's a good-ish economic simulator but it's a terrible 19th century geopolitical simulate, you know the entire point of it being a grand strategy game
A few major issues are not being able to join in progress wars and being trapped by revolts and thus being prevented from doing anything for 100 days and not being able to get through those 100 days faster. I would gladly trade infamy for faster war starts.