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Grand Strategy Victoria 3

Space Satan

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The week since releasing 1.7/SoI shows an increase from 7-8k to 20k of the daily peaks of concurrent players in steamcharts. Looks like they are turning it around
If you look at the trend, the in between months with no content releases, they have definitely been growing the loyal base steadily. Maybe enough to keep churning out DLC.
They jumped between massive sale to patch to sale and latest dlc had influx of players because SoI is the last DLC included in grand edition for free. Meaning they exhausted their credit of game viability with latest dlc. Two or three months will show how playerbase will decline.
 

Fedora Master

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How fucking shit do you have to be to not manage to have events properly tied to characters, in a PDX game? The head of the Bourgeoisie just held a "rousing speech" in favor of a law his party opposes.
 

Deflowerer

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CKIII is also trending upwards. Stellaris and EUIV are slowly starting to trend downwards, so that probably signals for new releases. HoIIV continues to pull insane numbers and growth.

EUV already announced in all but name.
 

Fedora Master

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So yea, I played around a bit, mainly Switzerland.
The game is still fundamentally broken on various levels.
The AI is shit.
The UI is shit.
The basic gameplay loop is okay but has too many hurdles associated with it.

As Switzerland you're already one of the most progressive countries in the game, so optimizing laws is unnecessary.
You're landlocked (Yea I know I could take Piedmont but lets stay historical for a sec) and your neighbors are too dumb to provide enough material like sulfur to run your industry. They're also all extremely unstable so routes get disrupted constantly. France being a hotbed of revolution I'll accept, but I saw America fracture in three parts more often than not. And I don't mean the Civil War, I mean "American Aristocratic Revolt" vs "CSA" vs "United American Synods". For some reason I also had massive issues providing grain for my nation, the prices always remained extremely high regardless of how many farms I built.
Power Blocs don't matter at all, are a net negative to minors that join and a hassle to the leaders.
 

AwesomeButton

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CKIII is also trending upwards. Stellaris and EUIV are slowly starting to trend downwards, so that probably signals for new releases. HoIIV continues to pull insane numbers and growth.

EUV already announced in all but name.
My bet is they won't call it EU. First, it will be deemed too "colonialist", second, the timeframe is too different. Maybe they haven't decided on a name yet.
 
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thesecret1

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CKIII is also trending upwards. Stellaris and EUIV are slowly starting to trend downwards, so that probably signals for new releases. HoIIV continues to pull insane numbers and growth.

EUV already announced in all but name.
My bet is they won't call it EU. First, it will be deemed too "colonialist", second, the timeline is too different. Maybe they haven't decided on a name yet.
Universal Europa, here we go
 

whydoibother

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The AI is shit.
The UI is shit.
The basic gameplay loop is okay but has too many hurdles associated with it.
I thought the AI and UI are okay for a game of this type, and the basic gameplay loop is dull. You can easily automate it (probably why the AI is decent).
Its just make construction goods cheap, build more construction, make construction goods cheap, build more construction, upgrade construction when you can, make the new construction goods cheap..... and if you are playing a regular optimal game, try to change production types away from landlords and towards capitalists. Import landlord associated goods, export capitalist associated goods, pass reforms.
Like Dwarf Fortress, the game is easy, and the only actual difficulty comes from the player getting bored, and getting reckless, and overextending on something.
 
Vatnik Wumao
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Its just make construction goods cheap, build more construction, make construction goods cheap, build more construction, upgrade construction when you can, make the new construction goods cheap..... and if you are playing a regular optimal game, try to change production types away from landlords and towards capitalists. Import landlord associated goods, export capitalist associated goods, pass reforms.
1yHF2Vt.gif
 

AwesomeButton

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How fucking shit do you have to be to not manage to have events properly tied to characters, in a PDX game? The head of the Bourgeoisie just held a "rousing speech" in favor of a law his party opposes.
If his party is in government he will support laws which are against his interest group's ideology. Typical behavior of a politician.

The amount of opportunity for history larp still differs a lot between countries and is still insufficient. They still have a lot of work ahead of them until playthroughs are acceptably historical. I think they've done a good job giving France an individuality, with the JE "Divided Monarchists". Individuality is fine, but the problem is that the JE's conditions are very anti-historical, and really teach fake history. It could have been realized a lot better and still provide good gameplay, which I'm trying to do. I guess the same applies for other big JEs.

The countries are starting to feel different, with Britain, Russia, Germany, the Ottoman Empire and France leading the way. The USA and Austria are still in a shameful condition though.
 

AwesomeButton

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Just an update, as I was still thinking on that subject - it was Independence day two days ago, and from Facebook I learn that there are people out there sharing memes and actually believing (some of them) that the war for indepenence started because some American colonists poured tea on the ground and this enraged the British. That's the kind of history Paradox games teach, but it wasn't always like that.
 

whydoibother

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Americans will never accept that their holy war for independence was a proxy conflict between England and France (or even an internal power struggle within English parliament).
Bulgarians on the other hand readily accept our holy independence struggle was a proxy between Moscow and Istanbul. Cynical bitter eastern Europeans once again proving to have superior understanding of real politics. We should make the next Victoria type game.
 

Fedora Master

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Its just make construction goods cheap, build more construction, make construction goods cheap, build more construction, upgrade construction when you can, make the new construction goods cheap...
Try that with a state like Central America, where you're dirt poor and can't even really get the basic loop up. The best way to deal with the fracturing by the way is to do NOTHING, lower taxes to minimum and hope and pray.
 

AwesomeButton

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Americans will never accept that their holy war for independence was a proxy conflict between England and France (or even an internal power struggle within English parliament).
Bulgarians on the other hand readily accept our holy independence struggle was a proxy between Moscow and Istanbul. Cynical bitter eastern Europeans once again proving to have superior understanding of real politics. We should make the next Victoria type game.
Hence Americans became who they are, and Bulgarians, well, they have good salads. Constructing a positive national mythology is a sign of a nation's vigor.

The UI is shit.
That's trying a bit too hard. Tooltips within tooltips are a leap in UI, and a huge positive.
 

whydoibother

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Its just make construction goods cheap, build more construction, make construction goods cheap, build more construction, upgrade construction when you can, make the new construction goods cheap...
Try that with a state like Central America, where you're dirt poor and can't even really get the basic loop up. The best way to deal with the fracturing by the way is to do NOTHING, lower taxes to minimum and hope and pray.
I haven't played with the microstates there, but I did make Ethiopia the #1 GDP neoliberal empire, and there's barely any iron in that region.

Hence Americans became who they are, and Bulgarians, well, they have good salads. Constructing a positive national mythology is a sign of a nation's vigor.
Yes, but we aren't talking about positive national mythology. We are talking about common sense understanding of political realism.
Of that, Bulgarians have much more than Americans. Though as suggested by BlackAdderBG, the sovok variety of bulgarian are themselves into a certain national mythos, and its not even their own.
 

Axioms

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Americans will never accept that their holy war for independence was a proxy conflict between England and France (or even an internal power struggle within English parliament).
Bulgarians on the other hand readily accept our holy independence struggle was a proxy between Moscow and Istanbul. Cynical bitter eastern Europeans once again proving to have superior understanding of real politics. We should make the next Victoria type game.
Hence Americans became who they are, and Bulgarians, well, they have good salads. Constructing a positive national mythology is a sign of a nation's vigor.

The UI is shit.
That's trying a bit too hard. Tooltips within tooltips are a leap in UI, and a huge positive.
Jon Shafer's theory of dynamic/recursive tooltips was genius. Paradox's actual implementation of his theory is a C-.
 

whydoibother

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Jon Shafer's theory of dynamic/recursive tooltips was genius.
Absolutely. One of my favorite innovations in video games.
Paradox's actual implementation of his theory is a C-.
Why? I think its fine. The UI in general is okay. It maybe needs more search functionality on long lists, maybe needs more icons/color coding on some keywords. That's honestly about it.
I wish I could change production methods of individual buildings, but this isn't a UI problem, its a game logic problem.
 

whydoibother

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I wish I could change production methods of individual buildings
But you can do this on individual buildings. Do you mean building levels?
Last I played, I could change it on individual STACKS of buildings, in the given province. Can I do it on actual individual buildings?
If I have 10 textile mills in Lower Nile province, can I make that 5 normal clothes, 5 luxury clothes focused?
Maybe the UI is bad after all and I didn't figure it out :D
 

AwesomeButton

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Can I do it on actual individual buildings?
That's called "building levels" in their language, and no. This is in effect setting a percentage of the output to be produced using one production method and another percentage in another? I think it would make sense to have it, esp. in cases where you have all your production of a good concentrated in the same state, which is to say in one "building".

Related to my ranting about historical accuracy and JEs here is a post that does a good summary:
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...24-whats-next-after-1-7.1693531/post-29746204
Considering that improving Journal Entries appears to be a key plan going forward, I have some suggestions from my own experience playing the game:

- Please improve the EIC's Journal Entries. I've made a forum post about it but I categorically do not like the way forming India as the EIC works - I think an independent India should be created via revolution or via a separate JE, not by declaring independence as the company. The "success point" of the EIC should be transitioning from an apartheid state into a dominion with Home Rule that has all the indian cultures as accepted, I think.

- I feel like the Austro-Hungarian compromise should be a little bit more of a loss state for Austria - ideally, they'd probably be aiming for a more pluralistic state without massive compromises to powerful Hungarian landowners. Obviously, I don't think the player should be encouraged to go ahead with their germanization policies as a "victory" state.

- Reconstruction in the US needs to be easier. 20% loyalists is actually insanely difficult to accomplish, let alone with the radicalism you get in the region - it's actually easier to make African-Americans a primary culture and get black presidents in the 1850s than it is to successfully reintegrate southerners into the union, which is crazy

- Countries need to have actual incentives to go against the Risorgimento. As it stands, pretty much every italian AI nation will declare support for unification, and as a result a player who wants to make use of the mechanic to foster radicalism in non-unifying Italian states will almost always be unable to.

- The "River of Coffee" JE for Brazil is absurdly difficult because the game mechanically does not create enough demand for coffee at the moment, even if the price of it is at literal rock bottom. This also makes it really difficult to complete the Brazillian National Identity JE without a massive amount of warfare

- Any JE that gives you assimilation as a reward should have this reward removed, because assimilation is almost useless right now - the "Conquest of Algeria" journal entry, for instance, will give you assimilation in the algerian coast. The problem with this is that assimilation literally cannot work in a minority group's homeland state, so this bonus does nothing except for foreign populations that do mass migrations to Algeria, which is clearly not its intended purpose. Either that, or Assimilation as a mechanic should be fundamentally reworked

- It is absurdly difficult to make the Boxer Rebellion happen. If you're doing well, it won't happen, and if you're doing badly you'll probably splinter before it happens.

- The Meiji Restoration operates on the assumption that the Shogunate are outside of the government but the Shogun is still in power. It makes it seem like the shogunate is abolishing itself, which doesn't make a large amount of sense. Outside of that, I'd say the Meiji Restoration is one of the better JEs, so less complaints here

- The "Earning Recognition" JE operates on standard of living and GDP per capita, which are ridiculously difficult to increase for countries with very large populations - I don't think this makes a lot of sense, considering that a few great powers frequently won't have GDP per capita and SoL in the top 50, which will frequently be dominated by random tiny british protectorates. I genuinely believe it makes more sense for this to be changed to total GDP, rather than GDP per capita. Literacy rate certainly makes sense, but I also think technological progress should count towards earning recognition. This JE was added to try and make earning recognition diplomatically more of an option, but right now it seems like not only do the diplomatic maluses to recognition count more than the diplomatic bonuses, it also seems like earning it through warfare has gotten harder, too.


Lol:
Reconstruction in the US needs to be easier. 20% loyalists is actually insanely difficult to accomplish, let alone with the radicalism you get in the region - it's actually easier to make African-Americans a primary culture and get black presidents in the 1850s than it is to successfully reintegrate southerners into the union, which is crazy

Swede's reaction to this complaint: :troll:
 
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