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Grand Strategy Victoria 3
- Thread starter Multi-headed Cow
- Start date
Space Satan
Arcane
It is not worth -90% discount.
If you keep in mind that wars aren't the way to paint the map. The fun way to paint the map could be with a Power Bloc, if you are interested in invading markets with your commodities. It's still too easy to achieve grossly implausible results for my taste.
The game is fun to play in the honey moon period where you learned the basics, but haven't learned the advanced mechanics. That's where you will fund your fun.
At the start, its too confusing and you ruin your country without knowing how or why. At the end, you are too proficient at gaming the systems, and you so reliably are able to summon a market reforming liberal by raising grain prices by deleting farms and exporting grain, so you can change the trade law... you might as well just input the console command. But between these two states, when you are the average median player, you will have fun.
Meh, you can break mostly any game by minmaxing, and you can RP to the extent you decide and the game permits.
It's still too sandboxy for my taste, to summarize my impressions once again. Some countries are more interesting than they used to be thanks to custom made content like France, Russia and the UK (Great Game mechanics). Power blocks were an overall improvement, you jo longer spend your time just looking at the construction queue. But there is still much room for improvement.
BTW the exploit of summoning Interest Group leaders will be over with then next update at the end of this month.
I most recently did a Persia run, with the Great Game stuff. I "roleplayed", as in I played Russia and Britain off each other, joined in Egypt-Ottoman wars to get Iraq and Arabia liberated so I can influence them in my orbit, I conquered my strategic zone, I reformed and got recognized, and betrayed Russia to get Central Asia under my state.
Okay, that's half the game. Now what? There's very little "roleplaying" to do at that point, because I am now basically playing as France or Germany, except in Asia. I need rubber and coffee, so I need to colonize Africa. I need to defend my colonies, so I have to build a navy. I can't be an opium and luxuries economy, because I need cheap steel to do all of that stuff. Now I am no longer playing Britain and Russia of each other, now I am a rival of both, and have to fight both, by becoming both.
This is similar to my previous playthrough, which was Ottomans. You roleplay for a bit, then your role is done, and now you are just A Great Power, and you play the same game Britain is playing. Same as my previous previous game, as Ethiopia - I just became Egypt, and then became Ottomans, and then became Great Britain. Only my very early game was spent playing as Ethiopia in a roleplaying sense. I can't play as Ethiopia after that. If I just sit in the horn and develop, I will be surpassed and destroyed. Or just straight up bored. The whole point of Victoria 3 is that you have to keep expanding at all times in all ways, and the fact is that if you do that succesfully you just end up as playin Great Britain with a different color.
I know what you mean by all countries converging on the same playstyle eventually, and this has a lot to do with the fact that their economies and societies don't differ enough under the hood. This video does a good job highlighting this problem: ("How Specialization is BROKEN in Victoria 3 (and How This Fantasy Mod is FIXING It)") https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r5CWaVKLAoE
I would say your bar for roleplaying is lower than mine. For me to be able to roleplay I actually research a bit the country in the period in question. This usually leads me to being dissatisfied and taken out of the immersion once I start playing. Glaring example from my France campaigns - the ridiculous idea that making the military IGs happy will strengthen support for Louis Bonaparte (I don't have time now to get into why this is a ridiculous notion but in fact it would have done the opposite). So if I was playing Persia, and I was roleplaying, I'd likely be intentionally playing very inefficiently by powergamer standards to simulate the inefficient leadership. My ideal guide for roleplaying is the guide for playing Rome in Europa Barbarorum. I mean roleplay means expand where and when it historically happened and also manage your country as historically accurate as possible.
While you are right that any country ends up playing the same if minmaxed, Victoria 3 never requires of us to minmax. The game seems designed to be very indifferent to the kinds of goals we would set for a campaign. My gripe is that it often doesn't do enough to simulate the real-life challenges to running a country in this transformative 100-year period, because if it was, it simply wouldn't be possible to run Persia or Ethiopia so well as to make them into major powers/great powers. But if that wasn't possible, then what challenges does the game throw at the player, to make the time with the game interesting? Sadly, none at present. Playing with Britain and managing the empire (even just managing India) should have been a daunting task, filled with dilemmas and presenting decisions with unforeseeable consequences. However, playing as Britain you can be pretty much AFK for 50 years and you will still be the top great power. That's what makes Victoria 3 feel incomplete, regardless of what intricate details they add to the economic model.
I would say your bar for roleplaying is lower than mine. For me to be able to roleplay I actually research a bit the country in the period in question. This usually leads me to being dissatisfied and taken out of the immersion once I start playing. Glaring example from my France campaigns - the ridiculous idea that making the military IGs happy will strengthen support for Louis Bonaparte (I don't have time now to get into why this is a ridiculous notion but in fact it would have done the opposite). So if I was playing Persia, and I was roleplaying, I'd likely be intentionally playing very inefficiently by powergamer standards to simulate the inefficient leadership. My ideal guide for roleplaying is the guide for playing Rome in Europa Barbarorum. I mean roleplay means expand where and when it historically happened and also manage your country as historically accurate as possible.
While you are right that any country ends up playing the same if minmaxed, Victoria 3 never requires of us to minmax. The game seems designed to be very indifferent to the kinds of goals we would set for a campaign. My gripe is that it often doesn't do enough to simulate the real-life challenges to running a country in this transformative 100-year period, because if it was, it simply wouldn't be possible to run Persia or Ethiopia so well as to make them into major powers/great powers. But if that wasn't possible, then what challenges does the game throw at the player, to make the time with the game interesting? Sadly, none at present. Playing with Britain and managing the empire (even just managing India) should have been a daunting task, filled with dilemmas and presenting decisions with unforeseeable consequences. However, playing as Britain you can be pretty much AFK for 50 years and you will still be the top great power. That's what makes Victoria 3 feel incomplete, regardless of what intricate details they add to the economic model.
- Joined
- Sep 1, 2020
- Messages
- 1,496
This is just like Victoria 2, though. However, if you restrict yourself to a 50 year playthrough(more or less, depending on the country), it can be extremely engaging.
Interesting channel
But yes, its easier to do this in a fantasy game. In a historical setting, you don't want to slap some huge modifier that guarantees Persia is the rugs and drugs people, and America is the cars people. Dats raycis! On the other hand, making gnomes the machine people and orcs the battleaxe people is seen as acceptable, since fictional racism is less raycis.
Also, in a game with more meaningful comperative advantage, you'd get Hearts of Iron, where its just lame to play as Ethiopia or Finland, and you need unrealistically big focus tree bonuses to justify it.
Its a difficult dilemma, realism both gets in the way, but is also kind of the point of these games. Or at least authenticity.
But I don't want Victoria 3 to fail in the same ways Victoria 2 failed, I want it to be better.
I think it was not their original vision, but the game has been moving in that direction - companies, nation-specific laws, nation-specific IGs and IG traits... National flavor will naturally lead to racism, it is inevitable
I bought it on deep discount a while back and have put 72 hours into it, which is nothing I know for a map autism game, but enough to give a fair assessment.
No, not really. It's not quite the woke commie fan fiction I thought it would be based on the dev posts, but it's easily the worst Paradox Grand Strategy game if you don't count Sengoku.
Multiculturalism being the best government is extremely offputting, but given they have been deepening country-level differentiation and given their current direction, I don't think it was like that on purpose.
This has always been the case as more workers was always desirable in Victoria games. Its a number goes up type of game hence grabbing China always worked.
It's just like centralisation in EUIII
My point is that PDX seem to be moving away from the "it's a number goes up game" by adding things like gradated racism/acceptance. Maybe that was not their intention.
Heroic Liberator
Arcane
- Joined
- Oct 2, 2018
- Messages
- 19,826
Same shit as with EUIV to the detriment of the game.
The line between "every country feels the same once you reach critical mass" and "the racial skill of the swede is that his fire breath does +20% nature damage and he has 15% increased frost resist" is thinner than you'd think.
We've been over this argument. I want RP and plausible alt-history. Victoria 3 still has a long way to go. Anyone can make a numbers go up game. If your map is the real world and you claim to be making a historical game I better not get the society of magical negroes if I play with India.
I'm with you, I'm just saying I don't want the difference between France and Ethiopia to be like that between protos and zerg.
Ironically, very ironically in fact, but I've been thinking that mechanics like the focus trees and frontlines of HoI 4 would suit Victoria 3 perfectly. Imagine focuses only available if you have a certain laws and government configuration.
Isn't that the intention behind the journal system? And like focus trees, only some countries really have it, and DLC spreads it to others.
The Great Game added decisions and bonuses to Persia which kind of act like a focus tree.
Heroic Liberator
Arcane
- Joined
- Oct 2, 2018
- Messages
- 19,826
The HoI IV national foci system would be the worst thing possible to implement. It's railroady in the worst way possible and completely detached from the gameplay (which works in the case of a war-focused game like that since it serves as a substitute for other systems like proper trade and economy, proper governance and administration etc). Journal system is a much better alternative to softly push various tags in different directions. And if you want something more railroady, then a reiteration of the mission system from EU or Imperator.
It's too little, after first 20-30 years all the journal stuff homogenize. They should go away from "play as any country" design and focus on 15-20 nations and stuff as much personalized systems as possible.
They can work together, and it's true you could code a network of Journal Entries just as you could National Focuses. What the Journal Entries system lacks is pretty icons, immrshun, etc.
I think the journal idea is good, however:
1. It needs to be longer. As I wrote earlier, only in the first third of the game you are playing as a unique country, after that you are just playing as Great Britain. Journal needs to add more stuff when technologies are discovered, or interest groups flop around in power, or you lose a war, etc.
2. More countries need to get that initial 1/3 starting journal treatment. Right now I think only Brazil has it in South America, only China and Japan in Asia, etc.
1. It needs to be longer. As I wrote earlier, only in the first third of the game you are playing as a unique country, after that you are just playing as Great Britain. Journal needs to add more stuff when technologies are discovered, or interest groups flop around in power, or you lose a war, etc.
2. More countries need to get that initial 1/3 starting journal treatment. Right now I think only Brazil has it in South America, only China and Japan in Asia, etc.
What it adds however is that you can ignore it and move past it. Its not a gate you have to go through to get to the other side, and do the other focuses. The common Corn laws event can be used to liberalize, or can be ignored and powered through by building more farms for your slaves to die at.
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