Grand Strategy Victoria 3

[Heroic Liberator]

Only thing that I don't want is nationally-specific features that make no sense in being restricted like that. Sure, it creates more national specificity in gameplay, but it just ends up being awkward and bloated if EUIV is anything to go by (e.g. shit like only the UK being allowed to pick which colony good spawns in EUIV). As an example in the case of Vicky3, what I don't want to see is a million tag/region specific ideologies while the basic ideologies remain static and few. Just give us more modularity, man.

 

[whydoibother]

Only thing that I don't want is nationally-specific features that make no sense in being restricted like that. Sure, it creates more national specificity in gameplay, but it just ends up being awkward and bloated if EUIV is anything to go by (e.g. shit like only the UK being allowed to pick which colony good spawns in EUIV). As an example in the case of Vicky3, what I don't want to see is a million tag/region specific ideologies while the basic ideologies remain static and few. Just give us more modularity, man.

Good:
>poor people in persia are more likely to buy opium
>rich people in persia are more likely to buy luxury clothes

Bad:
>every textile factory in great britain always procudes 10% more clothing per raw resources input
Literal magic.

 

[AwesomeButton]

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

In many ways, the differences in government are of comparable magnitude to protos vs zerg. Any system designed so abstract as to provide a common set of rules for playing as both European and undeveloped nations, will be too abstract to satisfy the RP requirements.

My vision is that for the player to get really immersed in the historical and social-political context of country X in that time period, the game needs to inform him about the political and social background of the society and also the current agenda.

I've read two 200-odd page books on France during the July Monarchy, and I know that the country was simultaneously exhausted from the Revolution, and repulsed by the Restoration. By the 1830s, the memory of the Empire had faded away just enough for a populist nostalgic air to take hold of the masses. The mood was very much "Today's politicians are all sellouts, if only the Emperor was here, he used to show them all how it's done, let's make France great again!". And my expectation is that with this kind of starting setup, I wouldn't be able to, like, go for "Compulsory schools" and "Multiculturalism" right off the bat.

But the game can't immerse the player and drop him into the political and social realities of Orleanist France at this level of detail, or into those of Nikolai I's Russia. Instead, the game can send me to build glass factories and whatnot. Without a solid amount of reading, so you can larp things in your mind, the game is just too bland on its own.

 

[thesecret1]

They should go away from "play as any country" design and focus on 15-20 nations and stuff as much personalized systems as possible.

Exactly, and this sentiment applies to all of Paradox GSGs. One of the main complaints levied against Imperator and V3 is the lack of flavor (ie. content designed specifically for a given country/region) and each time Paradox comes with a DLC bonanza, they try to sate this demand by flavor packs (which usually suck dick because they tend to be merely cosmetic).

A good example of the flavor-driven approach is Anbennar, which IMO brought Paradox's design approach in EU4 to its natural conclusion - nation-specific systems (usually repurposed from other countries, but in a way that makes them more than just a reskin), entire narratives in the mission trees (oftentimes with branching paths depending on player decisions), and region-specific events, disasters, and mechanics. Anbennar then periodically updates with new nations with mission trees (ie. nations that habe flavor to them) and thus gradually fills out the map with more and more narratives that may or may not come in conflict with each other.

There is an argument to be made about such an approach being railroady, but that's largely due to the implementation of the mission tree (which is by no means the only way to handle it) and easily solvable with things like decisions in DH or V2.

 

[AwesomeButton]

There is an argument to be made about such an approach being railroady, but that's largely due to the implementation of the mission tree (which is by no means the only way to handle it) and easily solvable with things like decisions in DH or V2.

The argument that a game is "irailroaded if there is too much custom content" is a childish one, and one coming from children who neither read their history books, nor have any experience with strategy games. It falls apart in moments, when you ask a couple of simple questions.

1. Is geography also railroaded? Because the map is the same every time, and natural resources are distribured the same every time.
2. Suppose you play 10 games with the same starting state, same country, ending on the same date. How much more "different" was the experience - on game one you finished first with 200 million GDP, and on game ten you finished first with 400 million GDP? Now suppose you played a carefully scripted game and as a result of a decade-long political strategy, you averted tne Franco-Prussian war, or you beat the British to building the Suez canal. Which kind of experience is more memorable and which was more samey - the "railroaded" one or the "sandbox" one.

Dumb kids. Back when there were no casuals in the community, no one was complaining that historical events in EUII would hit on the exact date.

 

[BlackAdderBG]

There is an argument to be made about such an approach being railroady

Even that is not a good argument as otherwise the whole game is railroady, you game the systems no matter if you are Prussia or some 1 region country. You end up playing the same no matter what- the ultimate railroad.

 

[AwesomeButton]

Narrowing the scope is the other option if you want a game to be more historical and scenarios more plausible. Of course nobody does this because having a huge timeframe and "play as any country" is an important selling point for the aforementioned dumb kids.

There is a decent strategic wargame called "To End All Wars". In the beginning it allows you to choose historical and alternate strategic plans and OOB before the start of WW1. It's something I really like as an approach and when the scope is "smaller" - it's "only" WW1 - it's not that much work.

 

[Heroic Liberator]

The longer the chronological length of the game, the worse it is to implement railroading narrative content. Too many historical factors that some handcrafted events by the devs can't account for which in turn makes the experience less immersive (since those events become nonsensical) than a more sandbox-y one without as much nation-specific content. In my opinion, I think that a much better way to make the game feel less samey from playthrough to playthrough is to make the game harder in general and the starting conditions particularly harder to influence. A small tag shouldn't be able to become a great power in most circumstances, a tag with whatever strong IG shouldn't be able to easily uproot it and so on. Have the fun be more about small victories that taken together might lead to a bigger one and that towards the end of the game.

 

[Average Manatee]

Bad:
>every textile factory in great britain always procudes 10% more clothing per raw resources input
Literal magic.

Unfortunately this is what people pay Paradox for, because its the "wow look how much clothing I produce in this min-maxxed youtube video" that sells their games now.

 

[Heroic Liberator]

So this just released,

 

[whydoibother]

So this just released,

All of the negative comments are in chinese, except two (which are in russian). The fuck?

 

[Heroic Liberator]

So this just released,

All of the negative comments are in chinese

Jason Liang, can you check what's up with that?

 

[AwesomeButton]

Google translate the page, through chrome. They are complaining about the price, "too little content", and a crash on startup. I think there is already a hotfix for the latter.

 

[Fedora Master]

 

[AwesomeButton]

You think you're the only one who knows useless Paradox games youtubers? Watch this:


Feel fee to join the comments:

Autodisliked for shilling merchandise before even saying hi, as if I'm supposed to know who you are with your 27k subs channel. Double-disliked for droning on for two minutes about how much of your farts you've managed to huff without passing out. Triple-disliked for irrelevant game suggestions. Quad-disliked for the absolutely terrible pronunciation, stop talking in pretend-male voice and straining your vocal apparatus, it's painful to listen to. Quintuple-disliked, clicked "Do not recommend channel" for your pseudo-intellectual drivel that follows. Stop recording this self-demeaning cringe.

 

[AwesomeButton]

Here is where I make the claim that getting in the shoes of a souless spreadsheet administrator working for the East India Company, is the most fitting form of roleplaying for a game like Victoria 3. Subtle trolling and sincere brofisting of the narrative team:

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...-pack-vic3-has-had-yet-with-a-caveat.1719699/

In this context, this immersion pack had me roleplay my country for the first time, and the first run I had in 1.8.0 was glorious. As an East India Company administrator, I was completely ok with managing a spreadsheet describing millions of people I don't know much about, and pulling levers of government without entirely realizing what the vested interests would prefer. I could be a detached spreadsheet manager, as a play style.

For the first time in two years, I felt like the game's mechanics fully support my player immersion, instead of impeding it. I know it's ironic and unintended, but I've never felt so good and so much in-character as I did while I was simultaneously trying to please my bosses in London, keep the locals from rebelling, and also "enlighten" them by introducing European institutions to India.

 

[AwesomeButton]

The devs have finally conceded that no, the warfare system is not "fixed" after their last attempt at patching it (I think in v1.6, can't be arsed to check).

So now they have dangled in front of the player base downtrodden masses an upcoming second rehash of the military Can't wait to learn more.

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...release-thoughts.1719463/reply?quote=30049108

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Happy Thursday everyone, it’s time for another Victoria 3 development diary. Today I’ll be talking about my thoughts on the release of 1.8 and Pivot of Empire, the feedback we’ve received, and also a bit of what’s in store next for Victoria 3.

As some of you might remember, 1.8 was actually meant to be two updates - a smaller 1.8 with bug fixes & polish, and a larger 1.9 with Pivot of Empire and the larger free features such as the Political Movement Rework and the Discrimination Rework. We ended up combining these into a single update because the release windows between the two were just too tight, and as a result 1.8 became a chonker of an update, with a lot of potential to cause bugs and balance issues.

On the whole, the feedback around the update (and in particular the Discrimination Rework) has been positive, and you seem to be enjoying the additional dimensions that the update adds to the economic and political sides of Victoria 3. However, there are a few issues and bits of feedback on the not-so-positive-side that I specifically want to address:

• On release, we had a very nasty issue introduced by a backend change in the launcher, which caused users with a non-unicode character to crash when launching the game, which unfortunately slipped past our testing due to the fact that all of our work email addresses use only unicode characters. This one actually had us pulling our hairs a bit trying to find the cause, but with help from the engine team we were finally able to narrow it down and get a fix out just before the weekend (we don’t usually make a habit of patching at 17:45 on Fridays, but in this particular case it was warranted)
• We’ve gotten a fair amount of feedback that the rework of companies to own and affect specific buildings has made them somewhat underwhelming compared to the way they worked in 1.7, and we agree that this is an issue. We have made some changes in the hotfixes since, and are continuing to read your feedback and make adjustments as needed. You can always @ Pelly directly on our social platforms for key feedback in this regard, especially on Discord, the Forums and Reddit!
• Migration ended up far too non-restrictive and Assimilation ended up too restrictive as a result of the changes made to Discrimination. Both of these issues should now have been resolved in hotfixes.

I also want to take a moment to talk about the release and reception of Pivot of Empire. We’ve gotten a lot of positive feedback about the flavor it adds to India and how much more interesting playing in the region has become, which of course we’re very happy to hear! With that said, there’s also some things that didn’t work out quite as we wanted, which has resulted in some learnings for the Victoria 3 team going forward:

• Most significantly, it’s clear that we need to spend more time testing and iterating on the balance of complex Journal Entries like The Unstable Raj before releasing them into the wild, to ensure the difficulty level and overall impact on game outcomes are where we want them to be.
• We need to rethink how we set rewards for Journal Entries so that they feel appropriate to the challenge of completing them. We also need to get better about telling the player what those rewards are going to be so they don’t have to make a guess or check the wiki when deciding whether or not to try and complete a JE.
• We need to ensure the AI can handle the content we add, particularly for complex/difficult Journal Entries.

Finally, I want to touch briefly on what’s coming next. I won’t spend too long on this, as next week’s dev diary is going to be the customary ‘what’s next after update 1.8’ which will be all about this topic, but I feel I would be ignoring the elephant in the room if I didn’t address the fact that a significant amount of the feedback we’ve gotten about 1.8 isn’t so much about what is in 1.8, but rather what wasn’t: namely, as a number of you would put it: ‘fixing the military system’.

There is of course a broad range of opinions on what exactly this phrase entails, but from my perspective, these are most significant issues we see with the Victoria 3 military system as it stands:

• Front splitting causing wars to become unmanageable or frustrating
• Units suddenly teleporting away when their front disappears
• Supply isn’t impactful enough and armies win battles they should really lose when facing critical equipment shortages
• Lack of a proper military access system, i.e. Prussia having to naval invade to reach Denmark
• Troop allocation to offensive vs defensive battles causing unexpected outcomes (for example, a general using all local troops to defend against one naval invasion causing another naval invasion to just walk in unopposed)

For the next update (1.9), our ambition is to take a crack at all of these issues and in particular try to find a proper solution for the front splitting and troop teleportation woes once and for all. Finding good solutions for these issues is going to be a fairly major undertaking, so you might have to wait a while for 1.9, but I promise we’ll try to make it worth the wait!

With that said, we’re done for today. Join us again next week as I continue to talk about what’s next in updates 1.9, 1.10 and beyond. See you then!

 

[Space Satan]

Retard still adamant in refusing to admit autowars was is and will be a shit concept

 

[AwesomeButton]

Yes, they seem like much more trouble than than it's worth by now. I was like, what the hell, try it out, at the time. But now it's too late to chage itk too much sunk cost.

 

[Fedora Master]

They could at least use the battle plan system from HoI or something. Let people draft an operation that the AI will try to execute. Isn't this the era of the Grand Battle Plans anyway?

 

[whydoibother]

They could at least use the battle plan system from HoI or something. Let people draft an operation that the AI will try to execute. Isn't this the era of the Grand Battle Plans anyway?

Battle plan + supply system, but without the ability for the player to directly micro units. Keep the game about strategy, not tactics.

 

[AwesomeButton]

They could at least use the battle plan system from HoI or something. Let people draft an operation that the AI will try to execute. Isn't this the era of the Grand Battle Plans anyway?

It's so obvious that I think they may be keeping it for a Christmas surprise. Given that HoI IV already has fronts and battle plans, I thought they would just do that in Vic 3, but they went even more ambitious. I wish they would scale back.

Crossposting my own rough design concept:

There are some peculiarities of the 19th century that reflect on the military and its applications, which I don't think are easy to model properly in any game, and I don't think anyone ever has attempted it. Paradox's current approach is far too abstracted.

First off, this is the era of the European Concert. There is a massive disparity in power between the Great Powers and anyone else. The very deployment of a military force or the mere threat of that would be enough to give pause to smaller powers and affect their political stances. It's very hard to portray this in a videogame while keeping the game balanced and interesting for the player if he is this minor power. But - wink, wink - maybe that's where power blocs can become useful for minor powers? Get your GP big brother to intervene when you are having a problem with another GP?

Second, the means of application of military forces varied quite a lot - it was asymmetrical warfare in the colonies, jungles, deserts, mountains, etc. But it was symmetric warfare when it came to the wars in Europe, the Crimean war, the First World War. Depicting asymmetric warfare properly would flat out require a different ruleset and an alternative system, call it "Warfare 2.0". At least I'm having a hard time imagining it any other way. Maybe the implementation would look something like the occupation in HoI IV accompanied by attrition, emergent events, some specific other mechanics?

Third, we need an implementation ingame of the concept of limited wars - limited in terms of the theatre of war, and also limited in terms of the size of the forces involved. And the AI needs to abide by that. If we are having a spat with Russia in Afghanistan, this shouldn't have to end with me landing St. Petersburg, as the rest of the Great Powers are silently watching on.

These are all just broad strokes, and I can't give you the magic pill in one small post. But we all agree here that the current implementation of warfare is often absurd.

Edit: the Crimean war was a crazy outlier of GPs fighting amongst each other. For the most part, conflict between GPs should be resolved behind the scenes, maybe with a system similar to The Great Game, where one power gains an advantage in one area of the world, and another player gets an advantage in another part, to preserve the balance of power. This however has to be turned from a scripted progress bars thing into a generic system where various states of the game's systems can be quantified and attached a numerical value of "advantage" provided to this or that country. This needs further brainstorming.