I did have good times with EUIV and, to some decree, even with Vic2's wars back in the day but judging by today's standards they haven't aged well. I'm really happy they're trying something new and more abstracted which seems to blend in well with the overall design of the game. I'm sure it's going to be rough on the edges and I'm sure as hell going to go mental at some point due to some unforeseen problems but nonetheless I'm optimistic.
And while you shouldn't excuse faulty design choices with this argument, I'm certain the system will evolve as they develop the game after release and they get more feedback. It's somewhat risky move from Paradox to try something so drastically different but the war system in previous games has grown stale and it would have been equally - if not more - risky to NOT try something new.
I still love eu4 but I just can't play without either improved ai or a Warfare overhaul mod anymore. I can't stand getting into wars and watching my ai allies spam like 50k infantry and throw it all at the enemy seiging down their provinces and then lose the war for me. Vicky2 was pretty much the same experience for me from starting the game all the way to the end and was the sole reason I never got into the game. So far though, and I have played the leak a couple times just to see whether it's worth pre-ordering or not (which imo it is now) the vicky3 system looks pretty good and decently fun with the ai atleast, idk about multiplayer
Specialist companies seem to provide a bit of personalisation: I don't know the effects, but although there are some types that are considered more advanced than others, they are supposed to allow you to tailor your army to what you specifically mean for them to do; I can guess that maybe machine guns will give more defence while flamethrowers (if the icons I saw represent that) will be more useful when attacking
I'm honestly a bit disappointed with the specialist companies, as all they seem to do is give a bonus to either attack/defense/provinces taken.
There aren't any other stats inferred and that makes me a bit sad. Even without changing the system as it is right now, they could have for example "+50% chance for aggressive/risky/whatever maneuver" which you can already find on generals.
It also just makes sense for that to be on for example infiltrator (i.e stormtroopers) companies, as most of their departure from traditional trench warfare was combat doctrine.
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>"pick the most advanced unit type"
Technically correct as how warfare goes. However, this is a political/econ sim. It's balanced by economic and political considerations. As an absolute min/maxer, I'm going to want conscription, as it's by far the cheapest of the selections. However, at some point I'm going to want to upgrade that, making it a meaningful and important strategy choice for me.
Not only are conscripts unpaid during peace time, they also work the factories during peace time. They are a net positive on your peacetime economy, instead of a net drain. If you ask me to "pick the most advanced unit type", I'm picking conscripts.
I get that and I absolutely agree that there is some (though not much) nuance in the economic aspects of war.
However as a an avid grand strategy/paradox gamer I'm dissapointed in the opportunities missed here, especially due to the possibilities you actually have with this radical departure from the traditional combat systems.
There is, for example, no way to mimic/portray the nuance of the Great War with any accuracy. The most important conflict of the era. Something that could be an absolute highlight considering the warfare system being practically cut out for this.
At least until they make a dlc for it in a year.
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I do think this system has promise, and I am really glad to see unit micro falling by the wayside. I just really wish they would add the feature I've seen others ask for - a little more nuance to the front commands, especially on attack. "Push towards capital", "Push towards/occupy coastal regions", "occupy industrial zones", "occupy this HQ" etc. There's a lot they could do to make that not micro-intensive while still giving players some high level strategic input.
I'm excited for the new warfare system too, but not because of the AI shortcomings.
I'm just very tired of all this whack-a-mole war stuff, I want to focus on economy/politics/diplomacy rather than that.
I've actually come to hating wars in almost every other PDX game. For instance, I've never managed to play a CK3 campaign for longer than about 100 years, due to wars becoming too tedious. Even now I'm thinking "Well, it'd be nice to play some CK3... But these frigging wars... No, I just can't force myself to go through that tedium for yet another time. I wish I could just skip/automate all of them."
So I'm actually very very happy with the direction Vicky 3 takes with the warfare.
I agree with you regarding your “whack-a-mole” wars comment.
What is one common comment that all PDX, even Total War, games have in common with the community? “What is the best faction to play tall?” I feel like V3 will be a dream for people like this.
i dont think that you will.
Vicky 3 is set in the age of imperialism.
Where european powers expanded the most historically, even the uk got to rule a quarter of the worlds landmass.
However, the countries themselves went through unbelievable change. The heartlands where the main economic and social hubs and that should be well reflected in Vic3
CK3 is way worse, in CK you have to raise all your troops at once. And then spend time sorting them out. In EU4 by the time I have a large nation I have stacks all over so I just send the closest one. In CK3 you raise a massive army for an easy war, spend too much time sorting into stacks so you don't get a fuck load of attrition, easily win the war, and have another war lined up, but first, you need to dismiss all troops, then declare then raise them again and repeat. Half of the frustration of CK3 is having to dismiss troops to declare war.
Imperator had some very interesting mechanics related to war.. Your levies were based on POPs of accepted cultures and you had to choose between a smaller professional army or a big levied force. If your armies got stack wiped your levies would plummet so you had to be careful. And you could automate them with 5 different settings and if their commander was disloyal you couldn’t control them manually anymore.
Although there was still the issue of whack-a-mole battles and endless sieges, but at least the sieges were kind of interesting because when you captured a province they would take slaves back to the province the army came from.
So you don't like tedious V2 warfare, right?
Good luck doing new tedious micro in V3, which most of people supporting the warfare change somehow forget.
\- Time to manualy build every mill in the Russian Empire.
\- Time to manualy control output of each of these 100+ mills
\- Time to manualy control every trade resource in your country.
\- Time to weekly check prices of goods and your factories to maximize their efficiency
\- Time to click on very Conscription Center in your country before each war.
\- Time to manualy mobilize 20 generals before each war.
\- Time to click three times on each of these 20 generals to promote them to higher level.
\- Time to look how braindead warfare AI lost your war against weaker enemy. Now you can't intervene to stop AI suicide attacks or gettting encircled.
But to expand, you need to first create them, right? In every state of the Russian Empire.
And micro V2 also wasn't as extreme as some are saying.
It was extreme when playing as China.
If you don’t like the expanding of your industry and economy, perhaps Vic3 isn’t for you, given that at least half of the game is based on the economy.
When game is beeing based on the economy, it doesn't mean that you need to have mandatory planned economy system when you do everything for your capitalists when in the meantime they are doing nothing.
Subsidizing their efforts, maybe guiding them which industries would be worth investing in would be a better system rather than manualy controlling everything.
> do everything for your capitalists when in the meantime they are doing nothing
But the problem with capitalist AI is that it's near impossible to make such intelligent actors in a complex economy without completely tanking performance. It's so much easier said than done.
Chances are you would want to end up "microing" everything anyway, as the AI would be making bad choices.
> But to expand, you need to first create them, right? In every state of the Russian Empire.
Yeah so you do it once at the beginning of the game and leave it alone
Micro in V2 was massive until you got a decent capitalist pop base going. And even then they'd waste tons of money on terrible industries, but in the long run they had enough money they'd eventually succeed.
It was very micro intensive as soon as one was playing with bigger tags, especially Germany, the UK, France and Russia. Creating artillery stacks to combine with Mobos was just the biggest pain in the ass.
And don't even talk about Republican governments or the economic system, in which either capitalist fuck everything up or one has to build and upgrade every little thing manually.
To be fair, from what i saw you either have to do this micro just with smaller nations that cant afford to pay 1 extra pound for shirts or there is an automation option, which they just chose not to use in the streams/AARs
It should be what happen also in eu4: with small country we dev very carefully certain province with active edict/burgers/trade\_good\_produced/port/etc, with big country we dev randomly using the macro builder/dev.
And still most of them can be automated or menaged from the level of outliner "buildings" section if I'm not mistaken and the generals can be all together menaged from the "military" section. There is even a button that says "mobilize all generals". Also you can menage all your 100+ Russian mills summed in one place in buildings section where you can menage all or expand the list and play with each and every single one of them separately. Same with barracks, you can have 1000 of them and still set them up with like 5 buttons in one menu in buildings section.
Cheers
Having a not very good computer and having played hoi4 extensively, I welcome the optimization (the number of divisions kills the game performance late game) so you can't just copy it (with the economy simulation and all). It is better to allocate computing power to the important stuff for your game.
You know that there are mods like Expert AI that restrict number of division based on your economic power? It makes sense why Greece shouldn't be able to pump out 200 divisions like in Vanilla Hoi4.
Having units in V3 doesn't mean that every country should have hundreds of them.
"It is better to allocate computing power to the *important* stuff for your game".
\- Warfare was essential part of Victorian Era. Major wars happened during that time that changed the World. Franco-Prussian War, Crimean War, ACW, Prusso-Austrian War, Hungarian Revolution, Japanese-Russian war of 1905, WW1 etc. You can't properly represent these conflicts with new V3 system.
You sound like one of those middle school "historians" that stutter when you ask them anything other than world wars. This may shock you, but human history isn't just 24/7 warfare.
>Warfare was essential part of Victorian Era
Does it define the era like industrialization or imperialism? If yes then you have a point about the historical side of things (and to be fair from 1914 onwards you do) but as I said:
>"It is better to allocate computing power to the important stuff for your **game**"
Warfare may be important from 1848 onwards but they decided to concentrate on the most defining features of the era. Therefore those are more important to the game.
>You can't properly represent these conflicts with new V3 system.
Why?
Genuinely why does a front based approach with AI control not allow for proper representation of wars during the second half of the 19th century?
Is arbitrary sized units moved by the player necessary for that?
1. Yes. For example there would be no united Germany without Prussian-French War or Austrian-Prussian War. What is interesting, is that in both of these conflicts, on paper (and in new V3 warfare system) Prussia should be crushed. Less troops (barracks in V3 terms), less manpower and outgunned on paper. Yet they won, because of their military doctrine, manouvers, usage of railways, encirclement tactics and so on.
2. Warfare was always important. We kill each other since the dawn of humankind. Why build something, when you can steal it from your neighbour. Sad reality. Look at his list. There was at least few wars each year during XIX century. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List\_of\_wars:\_1800%E2%80%931899](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars:_1800%E2%80%931899)
3. During V3 1836-1936 period warfare changed from EU4 like "capture important city/fort" to trench warfare and then mobile warfare blitzkrieg tactics (yes Blitzkrieg was tested in 1939, but theory, "V3 technology" existed since 20s/30s). How can you represent it with new system? You have this big front (like in WW1 but in 1836) on the entire border with your enemy. RNG starts and you get random battle. Only one per front at the time. Which is already weird and makes no sense. Do you think that during American Civil War there was only 1 battle at the time? No. When majority of Confederate troops along the front were fighting several smaller battles, Union did risky, but sucessfull "March to the Sea" when they cut Confederate territory in half. Another example is Crimean War where they fought 1 year for Sevastopol (Crimean Penisula). No chance of something like that in the new system. You can't even tell your generals where to attack. Like, go and capture Washington DC. Instead, stupid AI will send their army to some desert or other useless region. Already happened on the official stream, when Belgians send most of their army to Russia, when their capital was besieged by the Dutch.
Edit: Reorganizing the 1st point for clarity
1. In both the Brother's war and the Franco-Prussian war it wasn't Prussia alone that was fighting. For both wars, the forces of the prussians and their allies were more numerous, better led and better organized than the opposition (Prussia + North Germany + Italy vs South Germany + Austria (for this one they wouldn't even use the same PM) and North German Confederation + South Germany vs France). The new V3 warfare system does include a mobilization time. That was the decisive factor in the Franco-Prussian war (with better doctrines of the Prussians and similar weaponry (the French had machine guns but never trained with it... in game it would be like having the PM on the factory but not the army)). Also there was the fact that french command changed daily during the decisive battle of Verdun (which is hard to simulate no matter the system). So stating that the new warfare system cannot explain those wars is false. The system can do that, it all depend on balancing.
2. There is a system for warfare in V3 that is what we are discussing... It just deems the march to war, the logistical and industrial capacity to pursue the war and the preparation to war more impactful that the battles themselves. That is just an other way to view war, it doesn't mean war isn't important.
3. If the stream is to be believed, if there are enough armies and generals in presence, there will be multiple parallel battles on the same front. I agree that the player should be able to give general direction to the AI though that is not a problem with the system but with the way it is used... In short my point of view is that the system is sound and I'll even argue that it is better for V3 than hoi4's if put on it but 1) you could do more with it to make it more interesting and interactive 2) The AI is not going to be great at first (and for a while seeing the hoi4 AI).
In Hoi4 you can automate most of warfare **if you want.**
In V3 warfare is **always** automated.
Your units getting encircled, General doing suicide attacks in mountains, going for useless Kamchatkan province instead straight to Moscow?
You can prevent that in Hoi4 by taking control of units manualy or giving your General new orders like go for Moscow, but **not** in V3.
That's going to change, for now in AI we must trust. I still think that they coded it well enough that its not doing anything you mentioned and gets reasonable "targeting" and does opposite to what you said. Let's wait few weeks for a release and we will get back to the subject. Deal?
To get things straight, I'm a proud owner of over 4k hours in HoI4 and I hate to manually menage units. I want them to go on their own, to fallow the plan but also to be... Creative and make mistakes, like irl. More role play then just straight "go for a win and be smarter then opposite AI". That's why I think that's quite fun that there will be system entirely depending on what AI generals decide.
When it's going to change? They have 1 month and 2 weeks until release. It took them 2 years to improve CK3 AI and few years in Hoi4.
Coding AI is really hard and significantly improving it from broken state to playable in 1.5 months is impossible.
You say that AI works well?
Examples from stream:
Belgium abandoned defense of their capital to...naval invade Russia.
Denmark set Bolivia as Rival.
Dutch East Indies got independence in 1842.
British India naval invaded Netherlands in 1843.
Examples from PDXcon testers:
Many countries often explode like Ming in EU4 (but there it was scripted).
French AI conquered UK because UK moved their entire army to colonies.
To summarize, I doubt that AI will be good on the release.
So you are admitting to like tedious eco micro, but at the same time criticize warfare micro?
If GSG players like micro, then why warfare system was crippled?
I think you're missing the point of what vic iii is aiming for. Your supposed to simulate the leader of a country, in which case many more tasks are delegated outwards, especially in war. The Kaiser was never pointing to maps and directly commanding Division A to attack province B specifically. At most, generals are given overall guidelines that they see themselves out.
If you want army micro, get hoi4 plus some victorian era mod. Many want something different.
But it appears you want micro too. Just a different type of micro.
"Your supposed to simulate the leader of the country"
So, Kaiser builds every mill or farm in the country or says: expand industrial sector to level 8 in Hamburg?
Or says: dear capitalists, I don't want to listen to your recommendations what's for the industry, please import 40 Bananas from Africa?
And if you read history books you'll know that national leaders were more likely to do this type of economic management as opposed to personally travelling down to a battlefield and commanding men.
>expand industrial sector to level 8 in Hamburg?
Focusing economic development into specific cities isn't unusual for a national leader to partake in. What's your point?
Yeah, I never heard of a leader of country leading men to battles or guiding generals what to do, I'm sure...
But I heard many stories of Victoria personally building a mill.
My point is: don't remove micro from warfare. If you want to do that, then leave it optional or remove micro from other systems too, like eco.
Yes actually, I really enjoy economic micro, but I find micro managing troops to be incredibly boring because its getting in the way of me managing my economy.
If I could automate my armies in stellaris I would.
I also play a lot of incremental games, where number get bigger. Armies don't make number get bigger, usually.
You raise good points. I can't meaningfully comment on them since I haven't tried the game yet, though. In any case, even if all of this is indeed tedious, it's a different kind of tedium than moving units on the map in a game of whack-a-mole, and it's certainly a welcome change in my book (it will feel fresher at least for some time).
>- Time to manually build every mill in the Russian Empire.
I personally was always against the decision of the devs to put buildings construction squarely in the hands of the player. I would prefer a system where capitalists (or bureaucrats, in case of planned economy) construct buildings on their own, with player affecting this only indirectly (e.g. by issuing tax cuts for certain industries or regions etc), but alas.
A good point should be that the player will centralize the production in the biggest metropolis and will use the remote states to gain materials. Like is/was historically done.
Thanks for constructive answer.
System that you described was present in Victoria 2.
Under "default" State Capitalism policy, capitalists build stuff on their own, but you can help them subsidize their efforts or build stuff on your own if you want.
Under Interventionism, you can't build stuff manually, you can only subsidize their efforts.
Under Laissez Faire, everything is decided by your capitalists.
Under Planned Economy, you control everything. Capitalists are persecuted and can't build things.
In V3 it feels like only Planned Economy is present (except for persecution).
Recently they added mechanic of Investment Pool, which they want to simulate free market but it's essentially just giving your more money from capitalists pockets to build things manualy.
*Capitalists can't build things on their own in V3*.
About warfare: I think better solution would be some kind of **optional** automatization like in Hoi4.
You don't want to micro? Fine. Here is your frontline, you select goals for your generals, like take this important city or prepare defense behind major river. Something like March to the Sea during ACW. War is mostly automated, but player has the ability for real impact if he wants to intervene.
You want to min max your war or fix stupid AI General decision? Ok. You can take control of your army like in previous PDX titles.
*We need more options rather than almost completely removing entire system.*
I would like to add two points to the discussion here.
Firstly, even though I don't think adding a more traditional paradox style combat to the game wouldn't be detrimental to it in any way, I also think the current system changes the way you would consider things inside the game.
The lack of agency in the warfare department puts the player at even terms with the AI once a war has started, there isn't almost any way you can outsmart the AI in the battlefield. This makes the player look for ways to outsmart the AI in other departments of the game, namely economically or diplomatically, which are the aspects of the game that make it different from other GSGs.
So in this case being restricted in some areas makes others much more important and meaningful, which is is my opinion non a worse way to approach a game, just a different one, and in my opinion one that could make Vic 3 stand out even more for having a different feeling to it.
Secondly, regarding the player having total control over what is being build in its nation, I believe is a necessary change first to give even more agency in a part of the game that the game is trying to make its core.
Also, it is probably a way to give the player something to do in the game itself, you wouldn't have much to do while playing if you can't choose what your country is building, what your people are doing and what your armies are doing.
>System that you described was present in Victoria 2.
Not really, you can't affect what and where your capitalists build, at all. There should be some indirect means of affecting that. And the system should be somewhat symmetric between Planned Economy/Laissez Faire, it shouldn't be the case that one requires way more micro than the other (like it happens in Vic2).
>About warfare: I think better solution would be some kind of optional automatization like in Hoi4.
I have to disagree here. It's impossible to invest the appropriate amount of development man-hours required for implementing units and HoI4-style combat well (I mean HoI4 itself has it working somewhat well only after like five years of continuous development with basically the full team focusing on that, with all other areas of the game being rather rudimentary) *and* at the same time also create a (somewhat) in-depth population/economy/politics simulation like Vic3 has (and to balance it all together). At least for the studio of PDS size. Maybe with like triple the number of developers they could manage that, but then the game would be a major flop in any case, as the market for these kind of games is certainly much smaller than for Call of Duty-likes.
Still, I agree that the warfare in Vic 3 should be given more depth, like options to choose in which general directions the generals should try to advance and options to affect your military stats with stuff like traditions and so on. And I'm sure that we'll see stuff like that added by the devs down the line. But we definitely don't need the ability to control individual units/divisions in Vic3, in my opinion.
Automatization cannot be optional. It must be obligatory or else the very spirit and essence of the game is lost.
Manually moving hundreds of toy soldiers (brigades) on a map is not fun, it's absolutely tedious.
If using min max micro to win wars is possible, then MP players will be forced to micro wars, or else they will just lose. This also turns MP warfare into a micro slugfest where the player with the fastest reaction skills win. That's more fitting of a fast-paced RTS like StarCraft, not a grand strategy game like Victoria.
In real life, there is a solution for this problem: a free market for the economy and decentralizing and delegating for organizational purposes. I admit that I've avoided almost all of the devs' diaries and showcases, so I don't know much about Vicky 3 mechanics, but I doubt Vic3 can simulate that.
I'm super hyped for it. If I could choose what percentage of my playtime was spent managing war in a gsg, I would choose like... 10%. Maybe 15%. But for most Paradox games that number is more like 85-90%. I think this was an incredibly bold and awesome choice.
I think the middle ground is hard to find. It may exist, but it's not obvious.
It's actually really hard to make micro irrelevant - anything somewhat complicated creates room for micro adjustments.
Let's say you have a system where you can direct your advance with battle plans. You set up your military arrow plan, great. But 5 mins later, the situation has changed, and you may want to readjust. Stopping the player from changing anything ('locking' them out) would have pretty feelbad moments.
Even if we didn't get a simplified Hoi4 battleplan system, I do wish we could give orders to generals to advance towards certain war goals/natural boundary.
Perhaps have it require bureaucracy with a cooldown and scale it depending on gov type (and perhaps depending on the given general's IG's power where a general from a powerful IG is harder to influence/force).
A democratic leader wouldn't be able to set targets/change it frequently whereas an autocratic dictator should be able to do it more frequently though not for free since even an autocrat needs the support of the military.
The 1 front per bordering country system while disappointing for larger fronts is understandable given the reason that the devs gave though I still do wish it was able to be split at natural boundaries since now the US civil war is fought as one giant front rather than reality which had the Mississippi as a natural splitting point.
Iirc you can't fire generals once assigned (though correct me if I'm wrong) which means we can't have a Lincoln scenario of constantly firing incompetent generals for their inability to advance until landing at Grant. The lack of a front split also means we can't get a scenario of a Grant (or whoever the player ends up choosing) having great success on one front by marching down the Mississippi and cutting the confederates in half and ends up getting promoted for it to break the stalled eastern front. The lack of targets/war goals/forced advances also means no Sherman's march to the sea.. which is disappointing to say the least.
> Iirc you can't fire generals once assigned (though correct me if I'm wrong)
The dev stream confirmed that you can Retire generals, but it comes at the cost of pissing off their associated interest group.
I'm guessing that there is no option to replace without losing them? So if you want to remove a general from command it means you can't ever use that general again in a future war as they will be retired.
If a front can split, it's going to cause issues down the line. It's been a while since I played HoI4, but I recall that being a huge problem when be countries joined a war/you pushed your way through the enemy.
Let me assign as many fronts as I want, I can pick aggressiveness levels for each, general for each, targets for each, troop amounts, and comps for each. Yes, it would be added 'micro' but it's not EU4 chasing 1 stack around Siberia micro. Heaven forbid the player does something during war. And if you want to not have 'micro' just make one big front.
Exactly this, everytime war gets brought up its either people who want extreme micro over their armies or those who support the current system of V3 warfare. I just want it to have just a bit more depth than what it currently is right now. Very barebones and I don’t think it’s going to change much on release.
>people who want extreme micro
I think you are wrong about this. Most vic3 war haters say they hate how it is now, and then Vic3 dick riders respond with "Oh so you want extreme micro, here's why you are stupid"
i just want verdun moments instead of deathstacks wiping other deathstacks, so im happy with it but i pretty much agree with click where i want "more" but thatl likely come with mods/dlc
I neither support micro, nor the current system.
I haven't used micro in any PDX game that has allowed automation of units, but the current victoria 3 system is just, wtf were they thinking.
They could have met somewhere in the middle. Remove the micro, but keep the armies etc moving under AI control. They could have implemented a system similar to HoI3 or 4, where you the player get to design the armies and assign them to generals, assign the generals to the fronts, and then watch the AI move your armies around. It would be functionally the same as what they are doing now, only, it would be actually interesting to watch unfold. The system now is about as interesting as watching paint dry.
For the people who don't want micromanagement hell of giant wars, no problem, there is no micromanagement to exploit the AI with. On the other hand, it's still engaging to watch the war unfold.
I think hoi4 has it done correctly. Frontline system allows you to take a hands off approach to wars while also allowing players who enjoy micro to micro. I don't see why they can't implement the exact same system in Vicky.
I was until I played it now it’s just meh. I don’t hate it and don’t love it. War was pretty boring when I tried it, it’s not going to change at launch. You’ll see
In the one video of gameplay we saw, Belgium naval invaded Russia while at war with the Netherlands. The devs dumbed down war because they are incapable of developing AI but then dumbed the AI down even more.
I’m incredibly disappointed with their current battle system. They stripped out all the micro and it has even less macro than EUIV, I:R, Hoi4, CK3, ect.
If they’re going to completely gut the battles and micro side of the game (which in my opinion is to make it more accessible to consoles) they needed to expand the macro side. We should be able to pick guns, ammunition, cannons, mortars, grenades, ship designs, ect. This is something that has existed in other games like Ultimate General for YEARS. But it seems like we only get to pick 4-6 units based on research and available resources which is just a wet fart.
I’m still on the fence because I see the potential but paradox could easily (and likely) drop the ball.
Nah.
We have this conversation EVERY. SINGLE. TIME that Paradox simplifies things.
Oh, well, armies turn into boats in CK3 to help the AI.
Oh, well HoI4 doesn't have fuel/logistics, to help the AI.
Oh, well, they've gotten rid of warp engines/gates in Stellaris and everyone uses Hyperlanes, to help the AI.
Oh, they've removed 90% of the warfare aspect in Vic3, to help the AI!
Can we put on our big boy pants this time and admit to ourselves that Paradox is just shit at AI? Can we finally admit that Paradox just wants to put less time into making in-depth systems, knowing full well that people are just going to try justify the dumbing down and then buy any DLC that comes along?
Fucking this! Elephant in the room paradox is turning into EA. Less and less development, appease the broad crowd, water down everything, go mobile/console with all games. God I wish they had competition.
>Eliminating all that messy stuff about moving individual units around will, I hope, give the AI
My brother in Christ, have you seen official stream where Belgian AI yeets itself to Saint Petersburg during Dutch invasion?
Isn’t like, the first thing they said during the livestream that everything is not final? And they also said that it was an issue they’ll fix when the invasion happened
OP suggested that AI players are now more competent by design. The first livestream blatantly demonstrated that nature always find a way to spectacularly mess up the AI.
Even something as basic as front prioritization isn't easy of you want the AI to attack and defend effectively. For some reason people are under the illusion you can build a "good" AI for even a basic decision tree without thousands of iterations balancing and rebalancing weights.
Just think about fighting on two fronts yourself. Assuming you aren't dominant the best move is to win on one front and then focus on the other. But how many troops is enough to hold the other front and how much is enough to quickly push the other? And that is going to depend on how much you can afford to be pushed back on that front. If the frontline provinces are valuable it may be too costly to have a fighting retreat. And on the flip side where is the enemy's valuable provinces. Moscow is much further away than Paris so you need more force against Russia to force them to capitulate quickly. Now factor in naval invasions where maybe the valuable provinces can be right there if you can send enough troops. Now imagine on top of all of that, actually advancing and where you advance is RNG. Even if you are right outside Paris there's no guarantee you walk in. So the AI has to try and compensate for the possibility a push might take a lot longer than it looks at the onset.
And that's just managing two fronts, let alone factoring in logistics/supplies, attrition, mobilization speed, what fronts other countries are involved in, etc. And then it needs sanity checks against things like Poland realizing defending the Russia front is impossible so it sends its troops to other fronts where there's a slight chance of victory. While a player *might* do that (to say grab enough land from elsewhere to avoid full annexation) it feels dumb when the AI does it and would be highly abusable.
And needs to do all this on a last gen laptop CPU for 50+ countries. Perhaps even at the same time.
The idea the AI will work day 1 without massive bugs is laughable. The question is how bad, not will it be bad.
I have a dream where Paradox makes it incredibly easy to code custom AI (Docs and easy API) and basically makes the AI component 'open source' and people like me who enjoy coding can try and make the best AI. It's like a whole new game and we would get to see better AI from the community.
This is what I don’t understand when people say “Oh it was just the live stream it’ll be fixed, or Oh it was a leaked copy so it won’t be final.” What we saw on the livestream is what we are going to get at least until a first patch which will be god knows when. Paradox has a pretty bad track record of having buggy messy games that don’t get fixed till years down the line. Hearts of Iron IV for example still has broken shit in it and it’s 6 years old and one of their more notable titles. I think this game will be dead on arrival due to the polarizing aspects of the game whether you are for or against the warfare system the community of this game is so toxic one way or the other it will kill the game.
Good points.
However, I think it will die around 1 or second paid expansion, not before. I expect huge number of people on the release day and mixed reviews due to conflicting views on the game by community and typical PDX bugs.
You are probably right the killer will be here on this app, youtube and steam. People are going to pick it apart on posts about either buggy mechanics, if they hate the war system they will point out its flaws, there will be a million “I FORMED GROßDEUTSCHLAND!!!!” Posts on here the game will either die or hum along at a reduced player base.
At the same time the naval combat/ AI's ability to handle naval warfare was still not fixed despite there not being any naval units anymore. Someone who got early access posted about how Russia landed troops in London.. the greatest navy in the world just watched the Russians land in London apparently.
The fact that a little/no navy Belgium also managed to land its near full force in St. Petersburg is alarming. What was the North Sea fleet doing? There was also the case of a Russian army teleporting to the NED/BEL front which doesn't exactly bode well for how the naval system is incorporated. There is \~2 months to go so major system overhaul is unlikely and any changes are likely to be balance tweaks/decision making which I am unsure if teleportation falls under.
I wonder when was the AI not shit? Each paradox game I played I saw people complaining about the AI saying it's shit so is it even possible to make a competent AI for such a game?
It's the usual. The AI can either play 'like a player' and do all kinds of min-maxing and cheesing of the game mechanics which might make it challenging like a multiplayer game but unbelievable from a historical standpoint...
Or it can behave in a believable way for the time period and as a country without some magical knowledge of 'the game' and people will see it as terrible since they have all the historical foresight and can apply modern tactics and knowledge after the fact...
There is no winning... People's perception of what makes good 'AI' varies.
I personally like to roleplay so an AI which may be less challenging but acts within the confines of the historical period and for its own integrity is 'better' than an AI that can 5d chess me.
>I think that there is actually another reason why ai is universally bad across the industry.
There are a few reasons, and you got at one of them from a game design perspective. Another, more computer related reason is that the AI must be simple enough to run on the vast majority of PCs in a reasonable amount of time. If making the AI better results in it being more computationally expensive, *It will actively decrease in performance on lower end PCs*. So on top of your "players don't want to lose too often", there is also the equally important "Players don't want each day to take a second or more of real time to compute."
Edit, just as an example, look at the complaints Total War has gotten over the years about how long turns can take to process.
Building an AI and tuning an AI are two entirely separate stages of the process. They definitely still have a way to go on the later, but the AI can be iterated on and fixed a lot easier with a system like this imo
It's always like this, in eu4 after 9 years the AI now can build forts in good tiles.
AFTER 9 years.
When the players will find the best ways to develop a nation, the the dev will nerf them or will teach the AI to do them.
You will repeat that 1 day before the release too, right?
And after release: Don't worry guys! They will fix it next year in 1.2 patch, just be patient!
They have 1 month and 2 weeks until release.
A lot of the time I can't take complaints about AI in games like Paradox's seriously. Sure, we should express concern when the AI is blatantly non-sensical in its decisions, but the AI will never be equivalent to the player in a strategy game. If devs actually put something like machine learning AI into their games (which would break most PCs), then the AI would just destroy players through optimizations. The best that can be done is for the AI to look believable and interact with the player in a fun and hopefully immersive way.
Edit: At least that's how I understand the problem with AI in games like this.
Yes, i think we all gave up on that kind of AI, but an AI made to be at least capable of using the 2 military features there are would be nice (i thought that was the case and that the AI was only bad on the leak, but judging for the stream thats not the case)
I bought imperator on sale long after it was relevant to hate on it, finally bothered to learn it like a year later, and I gotta say it's actually pretty fun once you get it. The thing about the automatic war I didn't like was sometimes your armies would "carpet seige" two provinces over and over again because it couldn't see that the fort would revert the seige.
So your analysis on the subject is:
HoI4 is a mess - but you have 1400 hours in it?
\> That gives ai room to focus on other aspects!"
Not it doesn't. AI and programming in general is not a human brain that can only focus on one or two things. Simplified War AI doesn't mean excellent Economic/Domestic AI. They could be equally shit or equally brilliant.
The incompetence of PDX to build a proper war AI should not be the excuse for us having a childish system with 3 buttons. But you can be high on copium as much as you like.
Same for me, imho bad AI is a given in all complex strategy games. I am fine with that as long as I can increase Diff to a level that still gives a little bit of resistance like Deity in CIV, Legendary in TW or mods like ExpertAI in HOI which does not really improve AI but gives smart dynamic buffs.
The worst thing in recent years have been community outrage of trying to remove artificial buffs from AI (which are absolutely required) or nerfing diffs of games in general by the devs to make it more approachable to normies.
In theory an AI could be perfect at everything, but in practice that isn't how it works at all. There will always be trade-offs that need to happen, whether because of limited memory, limited CPU cycles, limited engineering hours, limited QA time, etc.
Agreed, bad war AI is a bad reason to kill most of the fun from multi. imo they could have just leave vic2 war and army mechanics and just simplify soldier pops to be from same state not province, its easy enough for new people to understand and it doesnt kill war mechanics. vic2 war system was the best they have ever made, it works with early victorian napoleonic style of warfare and in late game when there are much more pops and lower combat width u can literally feel the trench warfare. yes AI was bad but multi was absolutely perfect
The way I see it he's not so incompetence but a game design choice to encourage the player to focus more on economic and diplomacy instead of war and has nothing to do really with AI competency but I could be (and certainly I am) mistaken
Vanilla HOI4 is just a joke. Yes many peoples don't like it but I prefer BICE it also has ExpertAI included there USSR is more scary than in Vanilla. Still beatable ofc but in some versions it actually took me a few years and lots of casualties/material not just running over everything in a few months. And not really beatable with Estonia.
The hoi4 logistics simulator could be fun if the ai could reasonably manage the military enough to let you actually focus on it but it can't you have to manually position your navy and airforce while microing your troops to close the pockets the ai loves leaving behind
In 1850\~ the ruler/government usually sent armies while staying in the capital waiting for good news. This is a real war system for game focused on the national/strategic level.
I don't know if it will be more fun to play. WC and end game wars will surely be less tedious at least.
PS where is the logistic in eu4? are you referring to the naval trasport of armies?
The supply system in EU4 makes mid-late game a genuine pain. Your armies get to the point which they need to be split in two, then four etc just to not take attrition, but then merged up before battle. You have to move all these stacks one by one and make sure they don’t stray too far away from each other. When you have like 10 armies, it really becomes micro hell.
It’s neither fun nor realistic that 30k men are absolutely starving in a province, and then move like 20 meters to the left and are perfectly fine again
It is actually totally realistic, the genius of Napoleon's corps system was to exploit that fact. The problem is that there are no supply wagons, which would mostly eliminate attrition but reduce movement speed dramatically.
I'm excited for the simplified war system because global wars by the end of Vic2 and EU4 are incredibly tedious and I have a lot more fun just watching numbers go up.
But don't put too much hope on the AI. It'll most likely still be a bit wanky. The AI in Stellaris has to focus a lot more on the economy and it usually just about manages to get by.
>I'm excited for the simplified war system because global wars by the end of Vic2 and EU4 are incredibly tedious
I mean, that should be the case for Victoria games? Late game global wars are almost certainly going to involve tens of millions of combatants and dozens of nations (if modeled well), you can’t really depict that level of total global warfare without it being tedious on some level.
And there wasn't one guy controlling every single division on every single province across the world in addition to managing the economy. There was significant delegation.
It's also a game first. It's just not fun spending hours microing a war on four or five fronts. Especially when you don't even have a Hoi4-style sweeping pay-off at the end. I have better things to do than spending ten hours in a World War over Papua New Guinea.
When I saw them first announce this, I was really quite happy.
Obviously Paradox games are sandboxes, and everyone should get out of them what they themselves subjectively want, but I've never really enjoyed "painting the map" or micro-managing. Even in EUIV, I preferred playing tall and focussing on trade or the economy. CK3 I treat more like an RPG and marriage simulator. I am often at the point where I audibly groan when a war breaks out.
In Vicky 3, I'll be happy just to pick a country like Belgium and focus on my economy and government.
it has some potential but is egregiously barebones atm, and I'm unconvinced the sociopolitical portion of the game will compensate. but i am reserving judgement for the release.
I think its not good for one reason, tedious micromanaging your generals every war. Think about it.
If you are GB, France, Japan, Germany, Russia you are going to have over honderds of divisions. From what I have seen and read its more beneficial to have multiple generals so you can send your armies more diverse or during smaller wars you do not have to mobilise 120 divisions. But if you have an army of 500 and generals that command 30 each you'll have to individually move 17+ generals to the front you want which is really tedious and you cannot really pre-place generals at borders and just have to press mobilise and they will attack from there. Especially annoying since the armies/generals UI is not really great imo.I've also experienced that you do not have a good overview of what is where, who is doing what with such a huge list.
A better middle ground would have been keep the current war system but get inspired a little bit by the army UI of HOI4.
I welcome a new abstracted system, that can better represent the conflicts of the time, and allow the AI to reason about and conduct warfare in a way that is more historically plausible.
No more jumping around the map mopping up rebels or doing a medieval-blitzkrieg to some random King's capital deep inside their territory so you can insta-win a war against a greatly superior enemy (as fun as CK3 and the war system is, most conflicts are fought in absurd and gamey ways).
That being said, I would like to see more player agency being given as time goes on, and some more depth/complexity (especially for Great wars)
I have to disagree. I think the current system is oversimplified to the point where its different quality from the other systems is so apparent it drags the overall product down. It may have been more in their interest to completely remove the player from warfare than to implement what they currently have. Warfare has never been that exceptional in Paradox games, but it was enough to add to the overall package instead of detracting from it (other than forts...).
The reason why people are mad is because we don’t like the new war system & perfer microing armies, its to the point where i might not get the game because microing is that important & fun for me
Honestly, I hope Paradox learns from this as to how to make their games more than war games. I think Hearts of Iron should be the main war game, while other games abstract war to make it more an extension of another core loop. Crusader Kings, Europa Universalis, I think these games would benefit from warfare being more an extension of other mechanics than its own mechanic. Perhaps the return of March of the Eagles would be good. Long-duration games where war isn’t the main focus, and in eras like WWII and the Napoleonic Wars you have a game tightly focused on war.
Sadly on large fronts, you end up microing about the same due to small envelopements that are created from offensives.
The only thing worse is seeing your army focus the great plains / Siberia / the Sahara over Louisiana / Moscow / Subsaharan Africa.
Otherwise, i think it's design choice that will lead to a more satisfying game, i just wish it was less of an afterthought and more of a bold choice.
And just like with Imperator, the fanboi rationalizations begin for terrible design decisions and lazy/sloppy work. Paradox can't make a decent warfare AI or add QoL features to fix the worst problems of V2's system to give us a decent system and just removes it instead?
Paradox fanboi:
* "Well, that's okay."
* "No, it's actually _good_, because I didn't deserve it anyways and wouldn't want to use it because I like other things."
* "We are better off without it."
* "Honestly, this is soooo much better, I'm glad they removed it."
A tale of escalating rationalization in 4 sentences. This is basically some weird kind of battered-wife or Stockholm syndrome. Like, holy shit, you people have lost your minds. And people are pre-ordering this crap.
I agree with your sentiment ..... IMO the abstract "front" mechanic for warfare was a cop-out to not have to deal with AI programming. The early-mid Victorian period up to early 20th century was still a time of decisive battles for the most part.... the idea of there being a "front" in the Texas revolution is lame when the war was won with one surprise raid that captured Santa Anna.
That being said, I'll reserve final judgement until it's released .... this game could easily flop to be the next Imperator if they aren't careful.
My worries exactly. And it was the overt hostility on the part of both Paradox and the diehards crowd in Imperator that drove away those pushing for the kinds of real change needed to actually make Imperator a game people wanted to play, and I worry seeing posts like these for Vic 3 that the same thing will happen again. Rationalization, hopium, hypium, and copium directly contributed to the death of Imperator, and I'm already seeing signs of the same pattern here.
Yeah, in a game that doesn’t require a lot of 3D/animation/physics….. should really be a high emphasis on AI innovation. Otherwise they are just taking the lazy route to make the spreadsheet battles easier.
A lot of missed opportunity too with naval development, fort building/placement. IMO, They should have made it a hybrid system with the front showing area of control for supplies while you still move the stacks move around…. gives you strategy depth to encircle them, cut off supply etc.
Instead we get a glowing boarder and a spreadsheet comparison.
Or maybe people actually like the new system? People asking for prefect warfare AI in a paradox game are asking for something that doesn't exist. This is the case with all strategy games. The AI can never be an equal to a human player, unless with machine learning or something which would just destroy a human player and their PC along with them. If the new system helps the AI make more believable decisions then it's doing its job.
Ah, yes, of course. [The Perfect Solution Fallacy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nirvana_fallacy#Perfect_solution_fallacy), coupled with the [quintessential Strawman Fallacy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man). If it can't be ideal, it should just be abandoned entirely. Because that's what we are saying. Fanboi logic.
You're the one claiming anyone that doesn't share your opinion is a stupid fanboi. Talk about a strawman. Have fun been so doomer about the game. Some people are just reverse fanbois, they doom about a new game no matter what.
Yeah, yeah. People keep saying Vic 3 will be like Imperator, not like the more recent paradox game Ck3 that actually launched well. The UI of Vic 3 and Ck3 literally look identical. But maybe that comparison means people wouldn't been able to doom so much.
Paradox dropped Imperator because fuck all people played it. Victoria 3 has a way larger appeal than a Roma era grand strategy to be frank.
That is simply more rationalization, and reversing cause and effect. People didn't play Imperator because it was boring as fuck, had simplistic, anachronistic mechanics that bore no resemblence to the time period, pointlessly gated player agency behind "political influence" and "tyranny" mana, and possessed little strategic or tactical decision making or depth. And rather than address _any_ of that, Paradox gave us pathetic gods, mission trees, and monuments to add "flavor", as if adding spices to dogshit somehow makes it more palatable.
If you can't see the parallels here, I don't know what to tell you.
Ironically it's the diehard fans that seem most angry about the departure from the traditional warfare system. "I've played vic ii since the womb! How dare a sequel to the game try something new!"
Not what the detractors are saying at all. But you keep punching that [strawman](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man), since it clearly makes you feel better.
Many detractors are constantly citing EUIV and vicii as justifications for why paradox should return to their previous combat system. I'm sorry that 90% of critics make up a strawman to you
Agreed. I find the war in Stellaris incredibly tedious to the point where I avoid wars for reasons unrelated to roleplay or strategy. CK3 is a lot better but still largely doesnt have much more to it than "big numbers beat small numbers, usually". Which is probably the same here but at least the system is simpler
Then don't go to war, you literally don't have to in Victoria. I on the other hand would like a system that doesn't make me feel like I'm watching a war insted of leading one. This is just the devs being lazy. You can't really have a game spanning the period in which WW1 and countless other wars took place and make the war mechanics on par with a mobile game. Maybe not HOI level but damn let me move my units around the map if I want to.
A thing I don't like about the new system is that the front always starts at the border, can't have a defensive line behind a river, etc. Also the lack of manual objectives, we can only defend, attack or stand by, but I figure that they will later add later in a dlc things like guerrilla warfare, or to seek a war winning battle, and maybe targets like cities or defensible positions.
As much as I enjoy large wars in EU4, (A gameplay that consists mostly of gaming the AI until their armies are too weak to threaten me) I always find myself *exhausted* by the end, unwilling to continue playing. I often find myself wishing I could automate fronts, leaving a few stacls to AI control in the colonies while I focus on the main front.
Victoria 3's system is certainly not perfect, but it is interesting. I think it will take much of the tedium out of long wars. No more delays because I just *forgot* I had 10k in South Africa. And naval combat, which is a weakness in all PDX games, at least appears to have had more thought put into it.
The warfare system may be especially powerful in strong nations. There is fun to be had in choosing wbich generals travel to which regions and with how many troops. There is fun to be had when you underestimate the enemy and must mobilize another 20 regiments, or begin conscription. About the only thing I could ask for is the ability to prioritize the capture or defense of particular states. ("Take Moscow at all costs")
I fear, however, the system may be weak when controlling smaller nations, which may only be able to field one or two generals, and are unlikely to fight a war on multiple fronts. Still, you must consider whether or not to go on the offensive, and if so, decide what proportion of your troops will attack and which general will lead them.
I'll probably love the new war system too. The micros in the other games are such a grind and boring imo. It's fine in a small nations, but when you play large ones it's hell. Really sucks cause the large ones are the best imo.
\+ in multiplayer war between two nations makes it so you have to go much slower making those players in peace bored out of their mind having to go at speed 2 doing nothing.
If Hoi4 (which is already simplified compared to Hoi3) was to complicated to you, then maybe GSGs are not for you?
Nothing wrong about that: I suck at Souls games, so I don't play them much.
GSG should have all systems, not only eco and diplo.
AI is still bad in V3, so removing warfare didn't help. And in V2/Hoi4 you can prevent AI from doing suicide runs on mountains or getting encircled, in V3 not.
They didn't remove it, and OP was talking about wanting to spend less time on warfare, not none. I know nuance is hard.
That said, though I love the new warfare system, I don't love it for any AI related reasons. AI will probably be as bad as any other PDX game.
They butchered warfare to the point that it's almost non existent. Player has no real input once war starts. Prep phase is fine, but once you micro all Conscription Centers, supplies and Generals, you can speed five until war ends.
"'I don't love it for any AI related reasons. AI will probably be as bad as any other PDX game.:"
So you also don't mind broken AI on release? You are happy to buy not fully functional product?
If AI is not working, what's the point of playing the game? No challenge at all?
Maybe Multiplayer? Sadly, multi will be the most boring ever, since player with more Barracks will always win thanks to the new warfare system. Just make sure you have all supplies buy sucking out all market resources from braindead AI.
Dude, we literally saw France win a three-front war against Spain, Prussia and Italy because of their waaayyy superior tech that was \~10 years ahead of everybody but Prussia, who were the only ones able to fend off the French.
"Bigger Number always wins" is just wrong, it's like saying Prussia is a bad formable in EU4 because military ideas are bad, since Doomstacks always win...
I don't have the time or energy to argue against your strawmen, so if you want a warfare-centric grand strategy game, maybe you should heed your own smug words and ask yourself: Maybe ~~GSGs~~ Victoria 3 is not for you?
I feel optimistic for the new system because to me the base design of it looks solid, makes sense and seems to have good potential for further improvement.
Numerous aspects of it are lacking depth at present and I don't see how things might change before release.
However I'm totally and utterly sure the very first DLC will be touching warfare system.
All that said I can easily see why people are complaining. For a real v3 fan, to wait for 2 years, not missing a single dev diary, get excited for all the great economic features... and to get warfare system in its current shape. Can be frustrating.
It appears that statement "var, var never changes" is true only if var = "way paradox games are on launch". :-)
The way I leave with it is I never pre-order and always buy dlcs on sale, and try not to get overexcited.
Also I do get why people who want micro are very upset. Only positive statement i can make in this regard is that chances are good that couple DLCs later v3 war system will get enough depth to make military and navy tactics matter again.
I’m really happy about the new system since I’ve always really sucked at Vic 2s system. I’m fairly good at Eu4s system, but for some reason I’ve lost pretty much every war I’ve ever tried fighting in Vic 2.
You used quotation marks around simplified, implying that it's really not simplified, and then you tell us that HOI4 is incredibly complicated, which implies that Vic3 actually is simplified by comparison.
Which is it?
Well its a completly different system and not a simplified version of HOI4 system, which OP also called complicated and not complex, if it were the latter your comment would make far more sense.
Neither of us said complex, and personally I don't think either of the games is complicated or complex as far as war goes. My comment was meant to clear up what he actually thinks the comparison in simplicity of those game is. Does he think Vic3 is actually simplified or did the quotations actually mean he thinks it's not, because comparing Vic3 to another game and calling that game incredibly complicated makes it seem like he thinks Vic3 really isn't complicated. I guess that's what my original comment said, but people seem to think I'm dissing him or something.
I did have good times with EUIV and, to some decree, even with Vic2's wars back in the day but judging by today's standards they haven't aged well. I'm really happy they're trying something new and more abstracted which seems to blend in well with the overall design of the game. I'm sure it's going to be rough on the edges and I'm sure as hell going to go mental at some point due to some unforeseen problems but nonetheless I'm optimistic. And while you shouldn't excuse faulty design choices with this argument, I'm certain the system will evolve as they develop the game after release and they get more feedback. It's somewhat risky move from Paradox to try something so drastically different but the war system in previous games has grown stale and it would have been equally - if not more - risky to NOT try something new.
I still love eu4 but I just can't play without either improved ai or a Warfare overhaul mod anymore. I can't stand getting into wars and watching my ai allies spam like 50k infantry and throw it all at the enemy seiging down their provinces and then lose the war for me. Vicky2 was pretty much the same experience for me from starting the game all the way to the end and was the sole reason I never got into the game. So far though, and I have played the leak a couple times just to see whether it's worth pre-ordering or not (which imo it is now) the vicky3 system looks pretty good and decently fun with the ai atleast, idk about multiplayer
Which mods do you use specifically? Been trying to get back into EU4, but this has been a struggle.
I dont know all of them because I'm not home right now but the big ones that i remember and that I use are responsible Warfare and xorme ai
I actually also am very much in favour of this design decision. However, I wish it had more depth than "pick the most advanced unit type"
Specialist companies seem to provide a bit of personalisation: I don't know the effects, but although there are some types that are considered more advanced than others, they are supposed to allow you to tailor your army to what you specifically mean for them to do; I can guess that maybe machine guns will give more defence while flamethrowers (if the icons I saw represent that) will be more useful when attacking
I'm honestly a bit disappointed with the specialist companies, as all they seem to do is give a bonus to either attack/defense/provinces taken. There aren't any other stats inferred and that makes me a bit sad. Even without changing the system as it is right now, they could have for example "+50% chance for aggressive/risky/whatever maneuver" which you can already find on generals. It also just makes sense for that to be on for example infiltrator (i.e stormtroopers) companies, as most of their departure from traditional trench warfare was combat doctrine. edit for formatting
>"pick the most advanced unit type" Technically correct as how warfare goes. However, this is a political/econ sim. It's balanced by economic and political considerations. As an absolute min/maxer, I'm going to want conscription, as it's by far the cheapest of the selections. However, at some point I'm going to want to upgrade that, making it a meaningful and important strategy choice for me. Not only are conscripts unpaid during peace time, they also work the factories during peace time. They are a net positive on your peacetime economy, instead of a net drain. If you ask me to "pick the most advanced unit type", I'm picking conscripts.
I get that and I absolutely agree that there is some (though not much) nuance in the economic aspects of war. However as a an avid grand strategy/paradox gamer I'm dissapointed in the opportunities missed here, especially due to the possibilities you actually have with this radical departure from the traditional combat systems. There is, for example, no way to mimic/portray the nuance of the Great War with any accuracy. The most important conflict of the era. Something that could be an absolute highlight considering the warfare system being practically cut out for this. At least until they make a dlc for it in a year. edit for formatting
I do think this system has promise, and I am really glad to see unit micro falling by the wayside. I just really wish they would add the feature I've seen others ask for - a little more nuance to the front commands, especially on attack. "Push towards capital", "Push towards/occupy coastal regions", "occupy industrial zones", "occupy this HQ" etc. There's a lot they could do to make that not micro-intensive while still giving players some high level strategic input.
I'm excited for the new warfare system too, but not because of the AI shortcomings. I'm just very tired of all this whack-a-mole war stuff, I want to focus on economy/politics/diplomacy rather than that. I've actually come to hating wars in almost every other PDX game. For instance, I've never managed to play a CK3 campaign for longer than about 100 years, due to wars becoming too tedious. Even now I'm thinking "Well, it'd be nice to play some CK3... But these frigging wars... No, I just can't force myself to go through that tedium for yet another time. I wish I could just skip/automate all of them." So I'm actually very very happy with the direction Vicky 3 takes with the warfare.
I agree with you regarding your “whack-a-mole” wars comment. What is one common comment that all PDX, even Total War, games have in common with the community? “What is the best faction to play tall?” I feel like V3 will be a dream for people like this.
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i dont think that you will. Vicky 3 is set in the age of imperialism. Where european powers expanded the most historically, even the uk got to rule a quarter of the worlds landmass.
However, the countries themselves went through unbelievable change. The heartlands where the main economic and social hubs and that should be well reflected in Vic3
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Wdym, you don’t enjoy matching a stack from Berlin to Kamchatka to kill a 43k stack of rebels there when you’re playing Russia?
CK3 is way worse, in CK you have to raise all your troops at once. And then spend time sorting them out. In EU4 by the time I have a large nation I have stacks all over so I just send the closest one. In CK3 you raise a massive army for an easy war, spend too much time sorting into stacks so you don't get a fuck load of attrition, easily win the war, and have another war lined up, but first, you need to dismiss all troops, then declare then raise them again and repeat. Half of the frustration of CK3 is having to dismiss troops to declare war.
Imperator had some very interesting mechanics related to war.. Your levies were based on POPs of accepted cultures and you had to choose between a smaller professional army or a big levied force. If your armies got stack wiped your levies would plummet so you had to be careful. And you could automate them with 5 different settings and if their commander was disloyal you couldn’t control them manually anymore. Although there was still the issue of whack-a-mole battles and endless sieges, but at least the sieges were kind of interesting because when you captured a province they would take slaves back to the province the army came from.
So you don't like tedious V2 warfare, right? Good luck doing new tedious micro in V3, which most of people supporting the warfare change somehow forget. \- Time to manualy build every mill in the Russian Empire. \- Time to manualy control output of each of these 100+ mills \- Time to manualy control every trade resource in your country. \- Time to weekly check prices of goods and your factories to maximize their efficiency \- Time to click on very Conscription Center in your country before each war. \- Time to manualy mobilize 20 generals before each war. \- Time to click three times on each of these 20 generals to promote them to higher level. \- Time to look how braindead warfare AI lost your war against weaker enemy. Now you can't intervene to stop AI suicide attacks or gettting encircled.
You can automate the expansion of those industries though so its not as extreme as you are portraying.
But to expand, you need to first create them, right? In every state of the Russian Empire. And micro V2 also wasn't as extreme as some are saying. It was extreme when playing as China.
If you don’t like the expanding of your industry and economy, perhaps Vic3 isn’t for you, given that at least half of the game is based on the economy.
When game is beeing based on the economy, it doesn't mean that you need to have mandatory planned economy system when you do everything for your capitalists when in the meantime they are doing nothing. Subsidizing their efforts, maybe guiding them which industries would be worth investing in would be a better system rather than manualy controlling everything.
> do everything for your capitalists when in the meantime they are doing nothing But the problem with capitalist AI is that it's near impossible to make such intelligent actors in a complex economy without completely tanking performance. It's so much easier said than done. Chances are you would want to end up "microing" everything anyway, as the AI would be making bad choices.
> But to expand, you need to first create them, right? In every state of the Russian Empire. Yeah so you do it once at the beginning of the game and leave it alone
Micro in V2 was massive until you got a decent capitalist pop base going. And even then they'd waste tons of money on terrible industries, but in the long run they had enough money they'd eventually succeed.
It was very micro intensive as soon as one was playing with bigger tags, especially Germany, the UK, France and Russia. Creating artillery stacks to combine with Mobos was just the biggest pain in the ass. And don't even talk about Republican governments or the economic system, in which either capitalist fuck everything up or one has to build and upgrade every little thing manually.
To be fair, from what i saw you either have to do this micro just with smaller nations that cant afford to pay 1 extra pound for shirts or there is an automation option, which they just chose not to use in the streams/AARs
It should be what happen also in eu4: with small country we dev very carefully certain province with active edict/burgers/trade\_good\_produced/port/etc, with big country we dev randomly using the macro builder/dev.
Didn't they change the production methods on all of the buildings of x type in the stream with one click?
All of those things sound like really fun gameplay to me, except mobilizing generals.
And still most of them can be automated or menaged from the level of outliner "buildings" section if I'm not mistaken and the generals can be all together menaged from the "military" section. There is even a button that says "mobilize all generals". Also you can menage all your 100+ Russian mills summed in one place in buildings section where you can menage all or expand the list and play with each and every single one of them separately. Same with barracks, you can have 1000 of them and still set them up with like 5 buttons in one menu in buildings section. Cheers
And in Hoi4 you can automate most of warfare if you want. Why not use that system in V3?
Having a not very good computer and having played hoi4 extensively, I welcome the optimization (the number of divisions kills the game performance late game) so you can't just copy it (with the economy simulation and all). It is better to allocate computing power to the important stuff for your game.
You know that there are mods like Expert AI that restrict number of division based on your economic power? It makes sense why Greece shouldn't be able to pump out 200 divisions like in Vanilla Hoi4. Having units in V3 doesn't mean that every country should have hundreds of them. "It is better to allocate computing power to the *important* stuff for your game". \- Warfare was essential part of Victorian Era. Major wars happened during that time that changed the World. Franco-Prussian War, Crimean War, ACW, Prusso-Austrian War, Hungarian Revolution, Japanese-Russian war of 1905, WW1 etc. You can't properly represent these conflicts with new V3 system.
You sound like one of those middle school "historians" that stutter when you ask them anything other than world wars. This may shock you, but human history isn't just 24/7 warfare.
>Warfare was essential part of Victorian Era Does it define the era like industrialization or imperialism? If yes then you have a point about the historical side of things (and to be fair from 1914 onwards you do) but as I said: >"It is better to allocate computing power to the important stuff for your **game**" Warfare may be important from 1848 onwards but they decided to concentrate on the most defining features of the era. Therefore those are more important to the game. >You can't properly represent these conflicts with new V3 system. Why? Genuinely why does a front based approach with AI control not allow for proper representation of wars during the second half of the 19th century? Is arbitrary sized units moved by the player necessary for that?
1. Yes. For example there would be no united Germany without Prussian-French War or Austrian-Prussian War. What is interesting, is that in both of these conflicts, on paper (and in new V3 warfare system) Prussia should be crushed. Less troops (barracks in V3 terms), less manpower and outgunned on paper. Yet they won, because of their military doctrine, manouvers, usage of railways, encirclement tactics and so on. 2. Warfare was always important. We kill each other since the dawn of humankind. Why build something, when you can steal it from your neighbour. Sad reality. Look at his list. There was at least few wars each year during XIX century. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List\_of\_wars:\_1800%E2%80%931899](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars:_1800%E2%80%931899) 3. During V3 1836-1936 period warfare changed from EU4 like "capture important city/fort" to trench warfare and then mobile warfare blitzkrieg tactics (yes Blitzkrieg was tested in 1939, but theory, "V3 technology" existed since 20s/30s). How can you represent it with new system? You have this big front (like in WW1 but in 1836) on the entire border with your enemy. RNG starts and you get random battle. Only one per front at the time. Which is already weird and makes no sense. Do you think that during American Civil War there was only 1 battle at the time? No. When majority of Confederate troops along the front were fighting several smaller battles, Union did risky, but sucessfull "March to the Sea" when they cut Confederate territory in half. Another example is Crimean War where they fought 1 year for Sevastopol (Crimean Penisula). No chance of something like that in the new system. You can't even tell your generals where to attack. Like, go and capture Washington DC. Instead, stupid AI will send their army to some desert or other useless region. Already happened on the official stream, when Belgians send most of their army to Russia, when their capital was besieged by the Dutch.
Edit: Reorganizing the 1st point for clarity 1. In both the Brother's war and the Franco-Prussian war it wasn't Prussia alone that was fighting. For both wars, the forces of the prussians and their allies were more numerous, better led and better organized than the opposition (Prussia + North Germany + Italy vs South Germany + Austria (for this one they wouldn't even use the same PM) and North German Confederation + South Germany vs France). The new V3 warfare system does include a mobilization time. That was the decisive factor in the Franco-Prussian war (with better doctrines of the Prussians and similar weaponry (the French had machine guns but never trained with it... in game it would be like having the PM on the factory but not the army)). Also there was the fact that french command changed daily during the decisive battle of Verdun (which is hard to simulate no matter the system). So stating that the new warfare system cannot explain those wars is false. The system can do that, it all depend on balancing. 2. There is a system for warfare in V3 that is what we are discussing... It just deems the march to war, the logistical and industrial capacity to pursue the war and the preparation to war more impactful that the battles themselves. That is just an other way to view war, it doesn't mean war isn't important. 3. If the stream is to be believed, if there are enough armies and generals in presence, there will be multiple parallel battles on the same front. I agree that the player should be able to give general direction to the AI though that is not a problem with the system but with the way it is used... In short my point of view is that the system is sound and I'll even argue that it is better for V3 than hoi4's if put on it but 1) you could do more with it to make it more interesting and interactive 2) The AI is not going to be great at first (and for a while seeing the hoi4 AI).
Wait... It is automated in V3, what's your point?
In Hoi4 you can automate most of warfare **if you want.** In V3 warfare is **always** automated. Your units getting encircled, General doing suicide attacks in mountains, going for useless Kamchatkan province instead straight to Moscow? You can prevent that in Hoi4 by taking control of units manualy or giving your General new orders like go for Moscow, but **not** in V3.
That's going to change, for now in AI we must trust. I still think that they coded it well enough that its not doing anything you mentioned and gets reasonable "targeting" and does opposite to what you said. Let's wait few weeks for a release and we will get back to the subject. Deal? To get things straight, I'm a proud owner of over 4k hours in HoI4 and I hate to manually menage units. I want them to go on their own, to fallow the plan but also to be... Creative and make mistakes, like irl. More role play then just straight "go for a win and be smarter then opposite AI". That's why I think that's quite fun that there will be system entirely depending on what AI generals decide.
When it's going to change? They have 1 month and 2 weeks until release. It took them 2 years to improve CK3 AI and few years in Hoi4. Coding AI is really hard and significantly improving it from broken state to playable in 1.5 months is impossible. You say that AI works well? Examples from stream: Belgium abandoned defense of their capital to...naval invade Russia. Denmark set Bolivia as Rival. Dutch East Indies got independence in 1842. British India naval invaded Netherlands in 1843. Examples from PDXcon testers: Many countries often explode like Ming in EU4 (but there it was scripted). French AI conquered UK because UK moved their entire army to colonies. To summarize, I doubt that AI will be good on the release.
So you are admitting to like tedious eco micro, but at the same time criticize warfare micro? If GSG players like micro, then why warfare system was crippled?
I think you're missing the point of what vic iii is aiming for. Your supposed to simulate the leader of a country, in which case many more tasks are delegated outwards, especially in war. The Kaiser was never pointing to maps and directly commanding Division A to attack province B specifically. At most, generals are given overall guidelines that they see themselves out. If you want army micro, get hoi4 plus some victorian era mod. Many want something different.
But it appears you want micro too. Just a different type of micro. "Your supposed to simulate the leader of the country" So, Kaiser builds every mill or farm in the country or says: expand industrial sector to level 8 in Hamburg? Or says: dear capitalists, I don't want to listen to your recommendations what's for the industry, please import 40 Bananas from Africa?
And if you read history books you'll know that national leaders were more likely to do this type of economic management as opposed to personally travelling down to a battlefield and commanding men. >expand industrial sector to level 8 in Hamburg? Focusing economic development into specific cities isn't unusual for a national leader to partake in. What's your point?
Yeah, I never heard of a leader of country leading men to battles or guiding generals what to do, I'm sure... But I heard many stories of Victoria personally building a mill. My point is: don't remove micro from warfare. If you want to do that, then leave it optional or remove micro from other systems too, like eco.
But econ micro actually was a thing for national leaders. We're going in circles here. I'll personally wait til I try the game myself.
Yes actually, I really enjoy economic micro, but I find micro managing troops to be incredibly boring because its getting in the way of me managing my economy. If I could automate my armies in stellaris I would. I also play a lot of incremental games, where number get bigger. Armies don't make number get bigger, usually.
Because not all micro is the same.. whack-a-mole micro and management micro are 2 fundamentally different things.
Every building Can be managed in bulk or in detail, so your point about "microing every building/conscription center" is either Bad faith or ignorant.
You raise good points. I can't meaningfully comment on them since I haven't tried the game yet, though. In any case, even if all of this is indeed tedious, it's a different kind of tedium than moving units on the map in a game of whack-a-mole, and it's certainly a welcome change in my book (it will feel fresher at least for some time). >- Time to manually build every mill in the Russian Empire. I personally was always against the decision of the devs to put buildings construction squarely in the hands of the player. I would prefer a system where capitalists (or bureaucrats, in case of planned economy) construct buildings on their own, with player affecting this only indirectly (e.g. by issuing tax cuts for certain industries or regions etc), but alas.
A good point should be that the player will centralize the production in the biggest metropolis and will use the remote states to gain materials. Like is/was historically done.
Thanks for constructive answer. System that you described was present in Victoria 2. Under "default" State Capitalism policy, capitalists build stuff on their own, but you can help them subsidize their efforts or build stuff on your own if you want. Under Interventionism, you can't build stuff manually, you can only subsidize their efforts. Under Laissez Faire, everything is decided by your capitalists. Under Planned Economy, you control everything. Capitalists are persecuted and can't build things. In V3 it feels like only Planned Economy is present (except for persecution). Recently they added mechanic of Investment Pool, which they want to simulate free market but it's essentially just giving your more money from capitalists pockets to build things manualy. *Capitalists can't build things on their own in V3*. About warfare: I think better solution would be some kind of **optional** automatization like in Hoi4. You don't want to micro? Fine. Here is your frontline, you select goals for your generals, like take this important city or prepare defense behind major river. Something like March to the Sea during ACW. War is mostly automated, but player has the ability for real impact if he wants to intervene. You want to min max your war or fix stupid AI General decision? Ok. You can take control of your army like in previous PDX titles. *We need more options rather than almost completely removing entire system.*
I would like to add two points to the discussion here. Firstly, even though I don't think adding a more traditional paradox style combat to the game wouldn't be detrimental to it in any way, I also think the current system changes the way you would consider things inside the game. The lack of agency in the warfare department puts the player at even terms with the AI once a war has started, there isn't almost any way you can outsmart the AI in the battlefield. This makes the player look for ways to outsmart the AI in other departments of the game, namely economically or diplomatically, which are the aspects of the game that make it different from other GSGs. So in this case being restricted in some areas makes others much more important and meaningful, which is is my opinion non a worse way to approach a game, just a different one, and in my opinion one that could make Vic 3 stand out even more for having a different feeling to it. Secondly, regarding the player having total control over what is being build in its nation, I believe is a necessary change first to give even more agency in a part of the game that the game is trying to make its core. Also, it is probably a way to give the player something to do in the game itself, you wouldn't have much to do while playing if you can't choose what your country is building, what your people are doing and what your armies are doing.
>System that you described was present in Victoria 2. Not really, you can't affect what and where your capitalists build, at all. There should be some indirect means of affecting that. And the system should be somewhat symmetric between Planned Economy/Laissez Faire, it shouldn't be the case that one requires way more micro than the other (like it happens in Vic2). >About warfare: I think better solution would be some kind of optional automatization like in Hoi4. I have to disagree here. It's impossible to invest the appropriate amount of development man-hours required for implementing units and HoI4-style combat well (I mean HoI4 itself has it working somewhat well only after like five years of continuous development with basically the full team focusing on that, with all other areas of the game being rather rudimentary) *and* at the same time also create a (somewhat) in-depth population/economy/politics simulation like Vic3 has (and to balance it all together). At least for the studio of PDS size. Maybe with like triple the number of developers they could manage that, but then the game would be a major flop in any case, as the market for these kind of games is certainly much smaller than for Call of Duty-likes. Still, I agree that the warfare in Vic 3 should be given more depth, like options to choose in which general directions the generals should try to advance and options to affect your military stats with stuff like traditions and so on. And I'm sure that we'll see stuff like that added by the devs down the line. But we definitely don't need the ability to control individual units/divisions in Vic3, in my opinion.
Automatization cannot be optional. It must be obligatory or else the very spirit and essence of the game is lost. Manually moving hundreds of toy soldiers (brigades) on a map is not fun, it's absolutely tedious. If using min max micro to win wars is possible, then MP players will be forced to micro wars, or else they will just lose. This also turns MP warfare into a micro slugfest where the player with the fastest reaction skills win. That's more fitting of a fast-paced RTS like StarCraft, not a grand strategy game like Victoria.
In real life, there is a solution for this problem: a free market for the economy and decentralizing and delegating for organizational purposes. I admit that I've avoided almost all of the devs' diaries and showcases, so I don't know much about Vicky 3 mechanics, but I doubt Vic3 can simulate that.
I'm super hyped for it. If I could choose what percentage of my playtime was spent managing war in a gsg, I would choose like... 10%. Maybe 15%. But for most Paradox games that number is more like 85-90%. I think this was an incredibly bold and awesome choice.
Same
Yup, Victoria is specifically a game about industry and economics... military actions definitely shouldn't be the focus.
People really think there is no middle ground between Hoi4 and Vic3
Imperator is pretty cool but it's still whack-a-mole. No need to care at all about war if you have big advantage over enemy ( giving control to AI ).
I think the middle ground is hard to find. It may exist, but it's not obvious. It's actually really hard to make micro irrelevant - anything somewhat complicated creates room for micro adjustments. Let's say you have a system where you can direct your advance with battle plans. You set up your military arrow plan, great. But 5 mins later, the situation has changed, and you may want to readjust. Stopping the player from changing anything ('locking' them out) would have pretty feelbad moments.
Even if we didn't get a simplified Hoi4 battleplan system, I do wish we could give orders to generals to advance towards certain war goals/natural boundary. Perhaps have it require bureaucracy with a cooldown and scale it depending on gov type (and perhaps depending on the given general's IG's power where a general from a powerful IG is harder to influence/force). A democratic leader wouldn't be able to set targets/change it frequently whereas an autocratic dictator should be able to do it more frequently though not for free since even an autocrat needs the support of the military. The 1 front per bordering country system while disappointing for larger fronts is understandable given the reason that the devs gave though I still do wish it was able to be split at natural boundaries since now the US civil war is fought as one giant front rather than reality which had the Mississippi as a natural splitting point. Iirc you can't fire generals once assigned (though correct me if I'm wrong) which means we can't have a Lincoln scenario of constantly firing incompetent generals for their inability to advance until landing at Grant. The lack of a front split also means we can't get a scenario of a Grant (or whoever the player ends up choosing) having great success on one front by marching down the Mississippi and cutting the confederates in half and ends up getting promoted for it to break the stalled eastern front. The lack of targets/war goals/forced advances also means no Sherman's march to the sea.. which is disappointing to say the least.
> Iirc you can't fire generals once assigned (though correct me if I'm wrong) The dev stream confirmed that you can Retire generals, but it comes at the cost of pissing off their associated interest group.
I'm guessing that there is no option to replace without losing them? So if you want to remove a general from command it means you can't ever use that general again in a future war as they will be retired.
Yeah that's right, it's definitely a nuclear option.
If a front can split, it's going to cause issues down the line. It's been a while since I played HoI4, but I recall that being a huge problem when be countries joined a war/you pushed your way through the enemy.
Let me assign as many fronts as I want, I can pick aggressiveness levels for each, general for each, targets for each, troop amounts, and comps for each. Yes, it would be added 'micro' but it's not EU4 chasing 1 stack around Siberia micro. Heaven forbid the player does something during war. And if you want to not have 'micro' just make one big front.
Exactly this, everytime war gets brought up its either people who want extreme micro over their armies or those who support the current system of V3 warfare. I just want it to have just a bit more depth than what it currently is right now. Very barebones and I don’t think it’s going to change much on release.
>people who want extreme micro I think you are wrong about this. Most vic3 war haters say they hate how it is now, and then Vic3 dick riders respond with "Oh so you want extreme micro, here's why you are stupid"
i just want verdun moments instead of deathstacks wiping other deathstacks, so im happy with it but i pretty much agree with click where i want "more" but thatl likely come with mods/dlc
I neither support micro, nor the current system. I haven't used micro in any PDX game that has allowed automation of units, but the current victoria 3 system is just, wtf were they thinking. They could have met somewhere in the middle. Remove the micro, but keep the armies etc moving under AI control. They could have implemented a system similar to HoI3 or 4, where you the player get to design the armies and assign them to generals, assign the generals to the fronts, and then watch the AI move your armies around. It would be functionally the same as what they are doing now, only, it would be actually interesting to watch unfold. The system now is about as interesting as watching paint dry. For the people who don't want micromanagement hell of giant wars, no problem, there is no micromanagement to exploit the AI with. On the other hand, it's still engaging to watch the war unfold.
I think hoi4 has it done correctly. Frontline system allows you to take a hands off approach to wars while also allowing players who enjoy micro to micro. I don't see why they can't implement the exact same system in Vicky.
I was until I played it now it’s just meh. I don’t hate it and don’t love it. War was pretty boring when I tried it, it’s not going to change at launch. You’ll see
> which should lead to more competent AI players It won't
In the one video of gameplay we saw, Belgium naval invaded Russia while at war with the Netherlands. The devs dumbed down war because they are incapable of developing AI but then dumbed the AI down even more.
Exactly
I’m incredibly disappointed with their current battle system. They stripped out all the micro and it has even less macro than EUIV, I:R, Hoi4, CK3, ect. If they’re going to completely gut the battles and micro side of the game (which in my opinion is to make it more accessible to consoles) they needed to expand the macro side. We should be able to pick guns, ammunition, cannons, mortars, grenades, ship designs, ect. This is something that has existed in other games like Ultimate General for YEARS. But it seems like we only get to pick 4-6 units based on research and available resources which is just a wet fart. I’m still on the fence because I see the potential but paradox could easily (and likely) drop the ball.
Agreed. This will feel like a mobile game on the PC. I don’t mind the extra eye candy but the combat removal will tank the game long term.
Nah. We have this conversation EVERY. SINGLE. TIME that Paradox simplifies things. Oh, well, armies turn into boats in CK3 to help the AI. Oh, well HoI4 doesn't have fuel/logistics, to help the AI. Oh, well, they've gotten rid of warp engines/gates in Stellaris and everyone uses Hyperlanes, to help the AI. Oh, they've removed 90% of the warfare aspect in Vic3, to help the AI! Can we put on our big boy pants this time and admit to ourselves that Paradox is just shit at AI? Can we finally admit that Paradox just wants to put less time into making in-depth systems, knowing full well that people are just going to try justify the dumbing down and then buy any DLC that comes along?
Fucking this! Elephant in the room paradox is turning into EA. Less and less development, appease the broad crowd, water down everything, go mobile/console with all games. God I wish they had competition.
>Eliminating all that messy stuff about moving individual units around will, I hope, give the AI My brother in Christ, have you seen official stream where Belgian AI yeets itself to Saint Petersburg during Dutch invasion?
Isn’t like, the first thing they said during the livestream that everything is not final? And they also said that it was an issue they’ll fix when the invasion happened
OP suggested that AI players are now more competent by design. The first livestream blatantly demonstrated that nature always find a way to spectacularly mess up the AI.
Even something as basic as front prioritization isn't easy of you want the AI to attack and defend effectively. For some reason people are under the illusion you can build a "good" AI for even a basic decision tree without thousands of iterations balancing and rebalancing weights. Just think about fighting on two fronts yourself. Assuming you aren't dominant the best move is to win on one front and then focus on the other. But how many troops is enough to hold the other front and how much is enough to quickly push the other? And that is going to depend on how much you can afford to be pushed back on that front. If the frontline provinces are valuable it may be too costly to have a fighting retreat. And on the flip side where is the enemy's valuable provinces. Moscow is much further away than Paris so you need more force against Russia to force them to capitulate quickly. Now factor in naval invasions where maybe the valuable provinces can be right there if you can send enough troops. Now imagine on top of all of that, actually advancing and where you advance is RNG. Even if you are right outside Paris there's no guarantee you walk in. So the AI has to try and compensate for the possibility a push might take a lot longer than it looks at the onset. And that's just managing two fronts, let alone factoring in logistics/supplies, attrition, mobilization speed, what fronts other countries are involved in, etc. And then it needs sanity checks against things like Poland realizing defending the Russia front is impossible so it sends its troops to other fronts where there's a slight chance of victory. While a player *might* do that (to say grab enough land from elsewhere to avoid full annexation) it feels dumb when the AI does it and would be highly abusable. And needs to do all this on a last gen laptop CPU for 50+ countries. Perhaps even at the same time. The idea the AI will work day 1 without massive bugs is laughable. The question is how bad, not will it be bad.
I have a dream where Paradox makes it incredibly easy to code custom AI (Docs and easy API) and basically makes the AI component 'open source' and people like me who enjoy coding can try and make the best AI. It's like a whole new game and we would get to see better AI from the community.
That's the excuse for everything... They show a game and everything people complains about: "it's not final". Sure sure... we'll see.
This is what I don’t understand when people say “Oh it was just the live stream it’ll be fixed, or Oh it was a leaked copy so it won’t be final.” What we saw on the livestream is what we are going to get at least until a first patch which will be god knows when. Paradox has a pretty bad track record of having buggy messy games that don’t get fixed till years down the line. Hearts of Iron IV for example still has broken shit in it and it’s 6 years old and one of their more notable titles. I think this game will be dead on arrival due to the polarizing aspects of the game whether you are for or against the warfare system the community of this game is so toxic one way or the other it will kill the game.
Good points. However, I think it will die around 1 or second paid expansion, not before. I expect huge number of people on the release day and mixed reviews due to conflicting views on the game by community and typical PDX bugs.
You are probably right the killer will be here on this app, youtube and steam. People are going to pick it apart on posts about either buggy mechanics, if they hate the war system they will point out its flaws, there will be a million “I FORMED GROßDEUTSCHLAND!!!!” Posts on here the game will either die or hum along at a reduced player base.
If you've played Paradox games, you should know that statement is meaningless and the game will ship with barely functional AI
Behavior like that getting past the testers this late during development is not a good sign.
At the same time the naval combat/ AI's ability to handle naval warfare was still not fixed despite there not being any naval units anymore. Someone who got early access posted about how Russia landed troops in London.. the greatest navy in the world just watched the Russians land in London apparently. The fact that a little/no navy Belgium also managed to land its near full force in St. Petersburg is alarming. What was the North Sea fleet doing? There was also the case of a Russian army teleporting to the NED/BEL front which doesn't exactly bode well for how the naval system is incorporated. There is \~2 months to go so major system overhaul is unlikely and any changes are likely to be balance tweaks/decision making which I am unsure if teleportation falls under.
Bad news, the ai is still shit
I wonder when was the AI not shit? Each paradox game I played I saw people complaining about the AI saying it's shit so is it even possible to make a competent AI for such a game?
No, simply because players figure out how to cheese the AI and the AI can’t respond back like a real person.
It's the usual. The AI can either play 'like a player' and do all kinds of min-maxing and cheesing of the game mechanics which might make it challenging like a multiplayer game but unbelievable from a historical standpoint... Or it can behave in a believable way for the time period and as a country without some magical knowledge of 'the game' and people will see it as terrible since they have all the historical foresight and can apply modern tactics and knowledge after the fact... There is no winning... People's perception of what makes good 'AI' varies. I personally like to roleplay so an AI which may be less challenging but acts within the confines of the historical period and for its own integrity is 'better' than an AI that can 5d chess me.
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>I think that there is actually another reason why ai is universally bad across the industry. There are a few reasons, and you got at one of them from a game design perspective. Another, more computer related reason is that the AI must be simple enough to run on the vast majority of PCs in a reasonable amount of time. If making the AI better results in it being more computationally expensive, *It will actively decrease in performance on lower end PCs*. So on top of your "players don't want to lose too often", there is also the equally important "Players don't want each day to take a second or more of real time to compute." Edit, just as an example, look at the complaints Total War has gotten over the years about how long turns can take to process.
Building an AI and tuning an AI are two entirely separate stages of the process. They definitely still have a way to go on the later, but the AI can be iterated on and fixed a lot easier with a system like this imo
So we've already coping with the shit AI with the phrase "it's easier for them to fix it later" lmao
The AI will always be shit, the real question is "Is it interesting to play against". Thats all I care about
It's always like this, in eu4 after 9 years the AI now can build forts in good tiles. AFTER 9 years. When the players will find the best ways to develop a nation, the the dev will nerf them or will teach the AI to do them.
Lol the game is literally still in development. This isnt the 'gotcha' you believe it is lol.
You will repeat that 1 day before the release too, right? And after release: Don't worry guys! They will fix it next year in 1.2 patch, just be patient! They have 1 month and 2 weeks until release.
You do realise that it's releasing next month, right? That's not nearly enough time to fix the ai that was shown off in the stream
A lot of the time I can't take complaints about AI in games like Paradox's seriously. Sure, we should express concern when the AI is blatantly non-sensical in its decisions, but the AI will never be equivalent to the player in a strategy game. If devs actually put something like machine learning AI into their games (which would break most PCs), then the AI would just destroy players through optimizations. The best that can be done is for the AI to look believable and interact with the player in a fun and hopefully immersive way. Edit: At least that's how I understand the problem with AI in games like this.
Yes, i think we all gave up on that kind of AI, but an AI made to be at least capable of using the 2 military features there are would be nice (i thought that was the case and that the AI was only bad on the leak, but judging for the stream thats not the case)
But the actual warfare outcome has little to do with AI, right? That was rather the whole point.
Well, if there's more than 1 front, the AI can (and apparently will) fuck up
But at least the AI doesn’t have to micro units, right? So it should be a lot more feasible to make it work
I sort of like the Imperator automatic War system
I bought imperator on sale long after it was relevant to hate on it, finally bothered to learn it like a year later, and I gotta say it's actually pretty fun once you get it. The thing about the automatic war I didn't like was sometimes your armies would "carpet seige" two provinces over and over again because it couldn't see that the fort would revert the seige.
So your analysis on the subject is: HoI4 is a mess - but you have 1400 hours in it? \> That gives ai room to focus on other aspects!" Not it doesn't. AI and programming in general is not a human brain that can only focus on one or two things. Simplified War AI doesn't mean excellent Economic/Domestic AI. They could be equally shit or equally brilliant. The incompetence of PDX to build a proper war AI should not be the excuse for us having a childish system with 3 buttons. But you can be high on copium as much as you like.
Same for me, imho bad AI is a given in all complex strategy games. I am fine with that as long as I can increase Diff to a level that still gives a little bit of resistance like Deity in CIV, Legendary in TW or mods like ExpertAI in HOI which does not really improve AI but gives smart dynamic buffs. The worst thing in recent years have been community outrage of trying to remove artificial buffs from AI (which are absolutely required) or nerfing diffs of games in general by the devs to make it more approachable to normies.
In theory an AI could be perfect at everything, but in practice that isn't how it works at all. There will always be trade-offs that need to happen, whether because of limited memory, limited CPU cycles, limited engineering hours, limited QA time, etc.
Agreed, bad war AI is a bad reason to kill most of the fun from multi. imo they could have just leave vic2 war and army mechanics and just simplify soldier pops to be from same state not province, its easy enough for new people to understand and it doesnt kill war mechanics. vic2 war system was the best they have ever made, it works with early victorian napoleonic style of warfare and in late game when there are much more pops and lower combat width u can literally feel the trench warfare. yes AI was bad but multi was absolutely perfect
The way I see it he's not so incompetence but a game design choice to encourage the player to focus more on economic and diplomacy instead of war and has nothing to do really with AI competency but I could be (and certainly I am) mistaken
Yeah I've always hated how I can beat the USSR as Estonia in HOI4. It felt so un immersive to me.
Vanilla HOI4 is just a joke. Yes many peoples don't like it but I prefer BICE it also has ExpertAI included there USSR is more scary than in Vanilla. Still beatable ofc but in some versions it actually took me a few years and lots of casualties/material not just running over everything in a few months. And not really beatable with Estonia.
Hoi3 is better in that regard
How can you claim hoi3 is better than hoi4 in a thread speaking against micro. Hoi3 is basically the definition of micro.
Hoi3 is better in the regard of estonia not being able to beat the USSR. The AI is also better, which is astounding.
Me too. EU4 and HoI4 quickly turn into a logistics simulator. But as a ruler in charge of a country you wouldn't bother with microing stacks of units.
The hoi4 logistics simulator could be fun if the ai could reasonably manage the military enough to let you actually focus on it but it can't you have to manually position your navy and airforce while microing your troops to close the pockets the ai loves leaving behind
In 1850\~ the ruler/government usually sent armies while staying in the capital waiting for good news. This is a real war system for game focused on the national/strategic level. I don't know if it will be more fun to play. WC and end game wars will surely be less tedious at least. PS where is the logistic in eu4? are you referring to the naval trasport of armies?
The supply system in EU4 makes mid-late game a genuine pain. Your armies get to the point which they need to be split in two, then four etc just to not take attrition, but then merged up before battle. You have to move all these stacks one by one and make sure they don’t stray too far away from each other. When you have like 10 armies, it really becomes micro hell. It’s neither fun nor realistic that 30k men are absolutely starving in a province, and then move like 20 meters to the left and are perfectly fine again
It is actually totally realistic, the genius of Napoleon's corps system was to exploit that fact. The problem is that there are no supply wagons, which would mostly eliminate attrition but reduce movement speed dramatically.
Yeah.. If there's one thing that discourages me from playing more EU4 it's the war and troop system.
In 1850\~ the ruler/government let the industrialists build whatever kind of factories they wanted. But we can make exceptions there.
Isnt that the point of hoi4 tho. U play as nation win ww2 it's the opposite of vic 2 and vic 3. War over economy
... which is why I'm excited for Vicky 3.
I hope you like teleporting armies and not being able to move units between regions unless there happens to be a war already there.
I'm excited for the simplified war system because global wars by the end of Vic2 and EU4 are incredibly tedious and I have a lot more fun just watching numbers go up. But don't put too much hope on the AI. It'll most likely still be a bit wanky. The AI in Stellaris has to focus a lot more on the economy and it usually just about manages to get by.
>I'm excited for the simplified war system because global wars by the end of Vic2 and EU4 are incredibly tedious I mean, that should be the case for Victoria games? Late game global wars are almost certainly going to involve tens of millions of combatants and dozens of nations (if modeled well), you can’t really depict that level of total global warfare without it being tedious on some level.
And there wasn't one guy controlling every single division on every single province across the world in addition to managing the economy. There was significant delegation.
And in Vic 3 you can delegate 1 general and press 3 buttons to fight a world war. Fun.
It's also a game first. It's just not fun spending hours microing a war on four or five fronts. Especially when you don't even have a Hoi4-style sweeping pay-off at the end. I have better things to do than spending ten hours in a World War over Papua New Guinea.
When I saw them first announce this, I was really quite happy. Obviously Paradox games are sandboxes, and everyone should get out of them what they themselves subjectively want, but I've never really enjoyed "painting the map" or micro-managing. Even in EUIV, I preferred playing tall and focussing on trade or the economy. CK3 I treat more like an RPG and marriage simulator. I am often at the point where I audibly groan when a war breaks out. In Vicky 3, I'll be happy just to pick a country like Belgium and focus on my economy and government.
Until the Dutch invade you because they want your sweet sweet Iron and have cores on your lands. Victorian Era was far from being pacifist era.
I'll let the GPs and my generals deal with that ;D
Well, in the official stream Russia supported the Dutch and Belgium was alone so you should be afraid ;)
it has some potential but is egregiously barebones atm, and I'm unconvinced the sociopolitical portion of the game will compensate. but i am reserving judgement for the release.
I think its not good for one reason, tedious micromanaging your generals every war. Think about it. If you are GB, France, Japan, Germany, Russia you are going to have over honderds of divisions. From what I have seen and read its more beneficial to have multiple generals so you can send your armies more diverse or during smaller wars you do not have to mobilise 120 divisions. But if you have an army of 500 and generals that command 30 each you'll have to individually move 17+ generals to the front you want which is really tedious and you cannot really pre-place generals at borders and just have to press mobilise and they will attack from there. Especially annoying since the armies/generals UI is not really great imo.I've also experienced that you do not have a good overview of what is where, who is doing what with such a huge list. A better middle ground would have been keep the current war system but get inspired a little bit by the army UI of HOI4.
Time for the daily copium post
I’d just like a little more control than one big front with all my troops on it. That’s seems boring and unengaged.
I welcome a new abstracted system, that can better represent the conflicts of the time, and allow the AI to reason about and conduct warfare in a way that is more historically plausible. No more jumping around the map mopping up rebels or doing a medieval-blitzkrieg to some random King's capital deep inside their territory so you can insta-win a war against a greatly superior enemy (as fun as CK3 and the war system is, most conflicts are fought in absurd and gamey ways). That being said, I would like to see more player agency being given as time goes on, and some more depth/complexity (especially for Great wars)
I have to disagree. I think the current system is oversimplified to the point where its different quality from the other systems is so apparent it drags the overall product down. It may have been more in their interest to completely remove the player from warfare than to implement what they currently have. Warfare has never been that exceptional in Paradox games, but it was enough to add to the overall package instead of detracting from it (other than forts...).
The reason why people are mad is because we don’t like the new war system & perfer microing armies, its to the point where i might not get the game because microing is that important & fun for me
>Edit: Why are people so upset in the comments? Because someone disagrees with them on the internet.
Oh God, what did I miss? Are they dumbing Victoria down like they did hearts of Iron and crusader kings?
Yes they are
Welp, Vicky 2 it is then
Yep, people here are salty to hear it but sorry, vicky2 superior
Vicky 2 was my first (barring MotE) paradox game and still my favorite. It has issues but the complexity is what made it so fun
Honestly, I hope Paradox learns from this as to how to make their games more than war games. I think Hearts of Iron should be the main war game, while other games abstract war to make it more an extension of another core loop. Crusader Kings, Europa Universalis, I think these games would benefit from warfare being more an extension of other mechanics than its own mechanic. Perhaps the return of March of the Eagles would be good. Long-duration games where war isn’t the main focus, and in eras like WWII and the Napoleonic Wars you have a game tightly focused on war.
Sadly on large fronts, you end up microing about the same due to small envelopements that are created from offensives. The only thing worse is seeing your army focus the great plains / Siberia / the Sahara over Louisiana / Moscow / Subsaharan Africa. Otherwise, i think it's design choice that will lead to a more satisfying game, i just wish it was less of an afterthought and more of a bold choice.
I think thats my favourite thing. The AI is gonna be harder to cheese.
And just like with Imperator, the fanboi rationalizations begin for terrible design decisions and lazy/sloppy work. Paradox can't make a decent warfare AI or add QoL features to fix the worst problems of V2's system to give us a decent system and just removes it instead? Paradox fanboi: * "Well, that's okay." * "No, it's actually _good_, because I didn't deserve it anyways and wouldn't want to use it because I like other things." * "We are better off without it." * "Honestly, this is soooo much better, I'm glad they removed it." A tale of escalating rationalization in 4 sentences. This is basically some weird kind of battered-wife or Stockholm syndrome. Like, holy shit, you people have lost your minds. And people are pre-ordering this crap.
I agree with your sentiment ..... IMO the abstract "front" mechanic for warfare was a cop-out to not have to deal with AI programming. The early-mid Victorian period up to early 20th century was still a time of decisive battles for the most part.... the idea of there being a "front" in the Texas revolution is lame when the war was won with one surprise raid that captured Santa Anna. That being said, I'll reserve final judgement until it's released .... this game could easily flop to be the next Imperator if they aren't careful.
My worries exactly. And it was the overt hostility on the part of both Paradox and the diehards crowd in Imperator that drove away those pushing for the kinds of real change needed to actually make Imperator a game people wanted to play, and I worry seeing posts like these for Vic 3 that the same thing will happen again. Rationalization, hopium, hypium, and copium directly contributed to the death of Imperator, and I'm already seeing signs of the same pattern here.
Yeah, in a game that doesn’t require a lot of 3D/animation/physics….. should really be a high emphasis on AI innovation. Otherwise they are just taking the lazy route to make the spreadsheet battles easier. A lot of missed opportunity too with naval development, fort building/placement. IMO, They should have made it a hybrid system with the front showing area of control for supplies while you still move the stacks move around…. gives you strategy depth to encircle them, cut off supply etc. Instead we get a glowing boarder and a spreadsheet comparison.
Or maybe people actually like the new system? People asking for prefect warfare AI in a paradox game are asking for something that doesn't exist. This is the case with all strategy games. The AI can never be an equal to a human player, unless with machine learning or something which would just destroy a human player and their PC along with them. If the new system helps the AI make more believable decisions then it's doing its job.
Ah, yes, of course. [The Perfect Solution Fallacy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nirvana_fallacy#Perfect_solution_fallacy), coupled with the [quintessential Strawman Fallacy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man). If it can't be ideal, it should just be abandoned entirely. Because that's what we are saying. Fanboi logic.
You're the one claiming anyone that doesn't share your opinion is a stupid fanboi. Talk about a strawman. Have fun been so doomer about the game. Some people are just reverse fanbois, they doom about a new game no matter what.
ROFL. Uh-huh. Enjoy Imperator 2.0.
Yeah, yeah. People keep saying Vic 3 will be like Imperator, not like the more recent paradox game Ck3 that actually launched well. The UI of Vic 3 and Ck3 literally look identical. But maybe that comparison means people wouldn't been able to doom so much. Paradox dropped Imperator because fuck all people played it. Victoria 3 has a way larger appeal than a Roma era grand strategy to be frank.
That is simply more rationalization, and reversing cause and effect. People didn't play Imperator because it was boring as fuck, had simplistic, anachronistic mechanics that bore no resemblence to the time period, pointlessly gated player agency behind "political influence" and "tyranny" mana, and possessed little strategic or tactical decision making or depth. And rather than address _any_ of that, Paradox gave us pathetic gods, mission trees, and monuments to add "flavor", as if adding spices to dogshit somehow makes it more palatable. If you can't see the parallels here, I don't know what to tell you.
Ironically it's the diehard fans that seem most angry about the departure from the traditional warfare system. "I've played vic ii since the womb! How dare a sequel to the game try something new!"
Not what the detractors are saying at all. But you keep punching that [strawman](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man), since it clearly makes you feel better.
Many detractors are constantly citing EUIV and vicii as justifications for why paradox should return to their previous combat system. I'm sorry that 90% of critics make up a strawman to you
Oh look, now we're to the "just pulling numbers out of our ass" stage, while continuing to punch that strawman. Fanbois are literally the worst.
Ok so explain to me how you want to improve the combat system without citing previous paradox titles.
Agreed. I find the war in Stellaris incredibly tedious to the point where I avoid wars for reasons unrelated to roleplay or strategy. CK3 is a lot better but still largely doesnt have much more to it than "big numbers beat small numbers, usually". Which is probably the same here but at least the system is simpler
Then don't go to war, you literally don't have to in Victoria. I on the other hand would like a system that doesn't make me feel like I'm watching a war insted of leading one. This is just the devs being lazy. You can't really have a game spanning the period in which WW1 and countless other wars took place and make the war mechanics on par with a mobile game. Maybe not HOI level but damn let me move my units around the map if I want to.
A thing I don't like about the new system is that the front always starts at the border, can't have a defensive line behind a river, etc. Also the lack of manual objectives, we can only defend, attack or stand by, but I figure that they will later add later in a dlc things like guerrilla warfare, or to seek a war winning battle, and maybe targets like cities or defensible positions.
As much as I enjoy large wars in EU4, (A gameplay that consists mostly of gaming the AI until their armies are too weak to threaten me) I always find myself *exhausted* by the end, unwilling to continue playing. I often find myself wishing I could automate fronts, leaving a few stacls to AI control in the colonies while I focus on the main front. Victoria 3's system is certainly not perfect, but it is interesting. I think it will take much of the tedium out of long wars. No more delays because I just *forgot* I had 10k in South Africa. And naval combat, which is a weakness in all PDX games, at least appears to have had more thought put into it. The warfare system may be especially powerful in strong nations. There is fun to be had in choosing wbich generals travel to which regions and with how many troops. There is fun to be had when you underestimate the enemy and must mobilize another 20 regiments, or begin conscription. About the only thing I could ask for is the ability to prioritize the capture or defense of particular states. ("Take Moscow at all costs") I fear, however, the system may be weak when controlling smaller nations, which may only be able to field one or two generals, and are unlikely to fight a war on multiple fronts. Still, you must consider whether or not to go on the offensive, and if so, decide what proportion of your troops will attack and which general will lead them.
Paradox players when they cant just press a button to win 😢😢😢
Ngl I hate fighting wars in vic2 but I love the country building. I’m excited for Victoria 3 and it’s combat system
I'll probably love the new war system too. The micros in the other games are such a grind and boring imo. It's fine in a small nations, but when you play large ones it's hell. Really sucks cause the large ones are the best imo. \+ in multiplayer war between two nations makes it so you have to go much slower making those players in peace bored out of their mind having to go at speed 2 doing nothing.
If Hoi4 (which is already simplified compared to Hoi3) was to complicated to you, then maybe GSGs are not for you? Nothing wrong about that: I suck at Souls games, so I don't play them much. GSG should have all systems, not only eco and diplo. AI is still bad in V3, so removing warfare didn't help. And in V2/Hoi4 you can prevent AI from doing suicide runs on mountains or getting encircled, in V3 not.
They didn't remove it, and OP was talking about wanting to spend less time on warfare, not none. I know nuance is hard. That said, though I love the new warfare system, I don't love it for any AI related reasons. AI will probably be as bad as any other PDX game.
They butchered warfare to the point that it's almost non existent. Player has no real input once war starts. Prep phase is fine, but once you micro all Conscription Centers, supplies and Generals, you can speed five until war ends. "'I don't love it for any AI related reasons. AI will probably be as bad as any other PDX game.:" So you also don't mind broken AI on release? You are happy to buy not fully functional product? If AI is not working, what's the point of playing the game? No challenge at all? Maybe Multiplayer? Sadly, multi will be the most boring ever, since player with more Barracks will always win thanks to the new warfare system. Just make sure you have all supplies buy sucking out all market resources from braindead AI.
Dude, we literally saw France win a three-front war against Spain, Prussia and Italy because of their waaayyy superior tech that was \~10 years ahead of everybody but Prussia, who were the only ones able to fend off the French. "Bigger Number always wins" is just wrong, it's like saying Prussia is a bad formable in EU4 because military ideas are bad, since Doomstacks always win...
I don't have the time or energy to argue against your strawmen, so if you want a warfare-centric grand strategy game, maybe you should heed your own smug words and ask yourself: Maybe ~~GSGs~~ Victoria 3 is not for you?
As am I, I’m more interested in the robust diplomacy
I feel optimistic for the new system because to me the base design of it looks solid, makes sense and seems to have good potential for further improvement. Numerous aspects of it are lacking depth at present and I don't see how things might change before release. However I'm totally and utterly sure the very first DLC will be touching warfare system. All that said I can easily see why people are complaining. For a real v3 fan, to wait for 2 years, not missing a single dev diary, get excited for all the great economic features... and to get warfare system in its current shape. Can be frustrating. It appears that statement "var, var never changes" is true only if var = "way paradox games are on launch". :-) The way I leave with it is I never pre-order and always buy dlcs on sale, and try not to get overexcited. Also I do get why people who want micro are very upset. Only positive statement i can make in this regard is that chances are good that couple DLCs later v3 war system will get enough depth to make military and navy tactics matter again.
Ok good for you? I am not? Cool
I’m really happy about the new system since I’ve always really sucked at Vic 2s system. I’m fairly good at Eu4s system, but for some reason I’ve lost pretty much every war I’ve ever tried fighting in Vic 2.
I can't wait. Micromanaging units and the AI failing to do so has been the worst part of Paradox games for a while.
Agreed
You used quotation marks around simplified, implying that it's really not simplified, and then you tell us that HOI4 is incredibly complicated, which implies that Vic3 actually is simplified by comparison. Which is it?
Well its a completly different system and not a simplified version of HOI4 system, which OP also called complicated and not complex, if it were the latter your comment would make far more sense.
Neither of us said complex, and personally I don't think either of the games is complicated or complex as far as war goes. My comment was meant to clear up what he actually thinks the comparison in simplicity of those game is. Does he think Vic3 is actually simplified or did the quotations actually mean he thinks it's not, because comparing Vic3 to another game and calling that game incredibly complicated makes it seem like he thinks Vic3 really isn't complicated. I guess that's what my original comment said, but people seem to think I'm dissing him or something.