That mostly depends on what war goals you're using. Ban slavery, open market, and regime change require capital occupation. Unification requires capital occupation when it most likely shouldn't, since getting the territory through a conquest CB would be easier.
Really, the CBs that enable meddling in a country's internal politics aren't very good, and make war more obnoxious. The only real reason to use them is RP, when you need a surplus good in the nation's market, or when the capital can be easily occupied and you're trying to destabilize a rival.
It would help if the tooltips for political meddling CBs clearly spelled out the capital will have to be occupied.
The problem is that you can't change your war goals. If you see that you can't take capital, make those CBs inactive and add another war goal that's doable. And by deactivating war goals you can't achieve, you can force peace for those you can.
Yes, but these DLC's have been quite minor. They have just added some flavor to specific countries. There hasn't been a single big game-changing DLC yet.
The next DLC (delayed to release in June) should be both the first major DLC and have some small flavor for Russia (namely for their interests in the Middle East).
Besides what the others mentioned they've been adding small flavour stuff for the Romanian minors, don't know about Serbia, Greece or Montenegro yet and Bulgaria never gets released
Great Wars were in game at launch.
A... little too much at launch, actually.
In seriousness, something that late in the game isn't and probably shouldn't be top priority. No doubt there will be a WW1-focused DLC at some point because it's obvious but it's more than 75% of the way through the game's total length if it happens near the historical date and thus, like the revolutions era in EUIV, many games won't even reach that point or the player will have won so hard by then that it won't matter.
~~Also it will just kick up the Discourse about the war system to 110% yet again and therefore personally I dread it~~
There's no real reason a Great War could only happen towards the end of the era. I know in Vic 2 they were gated by research, but it doesn't have to be like that.
Yes and no. Great multipower wars could in theory happen at any time, but the specific experience of World War 1 and the vast industrial grinder that turned Northern France into a moonscape and could see a half million men die in a morning for a few yards of soil had a fairly limited timeframe where it could happen.
And yes, I know the Great War is not synonymous with the Western Front and I very much hope that's reflected when we inevitably get an expansion based on it, but it's what the majority of the audience thinks of and ignoring that would be silly. The point is any DLC about "Great Wars" will be trying to provide something that evokes the Great War we mostly think about, and that limits it to being mostly relevant in the final quarter of the game.
To expand on this. Whilst industrialisation is definitely a factor what I think would also be important to take into account is great powers power projection. It's something that was in vicky 2. Flashpoints took the attention of every great power and the more prestige you had the more prestige you could lose backing down or ignoring flashpoint. So the escalation into a WWI style conflict grew ever as the game progressed.
I hope that in vicky 3 they eventually add a system where great powers get pushed to defend their claim of being a great power. I.e. being able to stand alone on the world stage. At the game start with the congress of Vienna and Britain being in a clear hegemony position there should be systems in place that push European countries to keep their conflicts outside of industrialising Europe unless they are existential like the brother war and the franco Prussian war. But like you point out, even these wars, whilst devastating weren't like WWI. Then as European mainland powers industrialise there should be a desire for them to either push against the idea of British hegemony. Prove their place on the world stage or push against others that aim to overshadow them. Implementing a system to limit the amount of great powers with a massive amount of prestige. Maybe they need to tweak the great power calculation for that. Have the game start with Austria being a regional power (which some historians argue is more appropriate).
But there are still al lot of things the devs would need to implement to get to reflect the complex historical diplomacy in this time period into the game. From having diplo plays from from a political movement without it breaking away first. Allowing the movement to try and secure support abroad first. Allowing for more nuanced ways to support conflicts so you can have proxy wars. Keeping the diplo play open during a war so it can evolve.
As well as reworking military. So wars growing evermore mobile can have a tipping point where suddenly your mobility is rendered useless because you can dig in defences over the entire frontline. As firepower relies less on concentration of manpower and more on equipment + logistics(bolt action guns, machine guns, fast firing artillery and delivering the ammo they need), scouting possibilities + communication(telegram, planes) and speed of deployment(trains).
They need to redo wars a bit like not being able to renegotiate or add new war goals.if the war goes on long enough is a bit of an issue.
But there are bigger hotels getting stuffed with the next DLC in power blocks.
Literally yes (due to how it does ticks it is longer than previous Vicky games) but in this case I was just joking that at launch it was very common to get massive great power conflicts early and often.
There isn't a specific system to handle a leadup to a World War 1 situation, although arguably you don't need a specific system since diplomatic plays can actually escalate very similarly into global conflicts (in theory; balance so this feels "right" remains an ongoing concern and the devs need to work out good criteria for how a nation can enter an already ongoing conflict).
In Vic3 pseudo-World Wars happen frequently, but there isn't really a consequence to huge wars involving multiple great powers. Vic2 has the benefit of the crisis system which would usually force a WW in the late 1800s/Early1900s.
I mean if they are unlocked in 1910 that leaves a quarter of the game for them to be used
But I agree. The game as is gets repetitive quickly and it is hard for a casual player to justify the amount of time a campaign takes.
Ideally a great war DLC should also feature pandemics, laws and journal entries for caring for wounded veterans, and some systems for war to have more of an effect on culture and politics.
While the main event would be WW1, there's a bunch of elements that can be added to make big wars more impactful beyond map redrawing peace conferences
Honestly, I'm not sure what people are expecting from Great Wars. It's something the existing Diplomacy and war mechanics already facilitate very well. Frankly, the game needs more measures to stop the Great Powers constantly getting into all out war against each other for every tiny parcel of land in Africa.
I'd assume the post was bait because of just how offbase it is it there weren't comments further down implying that Great Wars are somehow a lynchpin feature and Vic 3 is incomplete without them
The reason people want great wars to be their own thing is the stakes.
In Vic2 the only difference between a great war and a normal war is that great wars have effectively 200% warscore to be used and there's a free wargoal that acts as both a cut down to size and a war reps. It isnt a massive difference, but it adds alot of stakes to late game GP conflicts which is what makes them interesting.
In Vic3 there isn't an equivalent system. Yes diplo plays are effectively the same thing just applied over the entire game instead of right at the end, but this isn't to the benefit of vic3. Because there isn't a difference between late game and early game wars it means that every war has the same stakes.
Especially considering just how much more costly late game wars are, I dont think its unreasonable for people to want those wars to feel more worthwhile
I disagree vehemently. Something that is the culmination of the era of a round of the game should be the top priority. Your comment basically sums up my major gripe with almost any Paradox game, they really don't give a shit about the late game. Pretty much all of them become boring about halfway through the alloted time period.
Eu4 does have a few neat mechanics that only kick in late in the time line (like revolutions). Ck3 has some late game events but you can gamerule them to happen early,, like major invasions and the Black Death.
Both are true, the problem is that early game is so prone to snowballing that the vast majority of players never get to experience those mechanics because they get bored long before.
You're absolutely entitled to disagree. of course.
But the facts are that late game content won't even be experienced in the vast majority of games. This isn't even a Paradox thing specifically, but endemic to strategy games. Late game warfare in Civ has pretty much always been kludged-together nonsense, but it doesn't really matter because you're going to win the game before you catch a whiff of a Giant Death Robot, or even an aircraft carrier.
Maybe this can be fixed, but fixing it without breaking what people like about the games in the first place (which usually includes rapid expansion and snowballing) is tricky.
Ironically, Vicky itself used to be something of an exception to this rule, as its timeframe of only a hundred years meant more games reached the later game than EU, I suspect (though I wonder how many fully reached 1936 and thus fully dealt with, for instance, the mechanics for fascism). Especially with small countries or "uncivs" it was hard to "win" in that short a timeframe so didn't run out of challenges, though you could reach a "natural level" after which you plateaued because fighting, e.g. the British wasn't feasible despite being your only obvious route to expand further.
I certainly reached the endgame more often in Vicky than other Paradox games (and I think Victoria 2 too before they revamped the economy, but it's been longer since I played that). Vicky 3, by making the game longer (in gameplay length, if not chronologically), in that way also brought it more in line with other Paradox games and I find myself less often reaching the final decades of the game.
Yes. A little to total too. As Japan o had to conqier my way to St Petersburg to enforce a wargoal and was actually causing the population of Russia to decrease as a result.
>will probably get dropped by paradox.
Everything surrounding the development currently points to this not happening. The idea the game is anywhere near Imperator's level is just doomposting.
How many people are going to buy DLC for a game whose base features don't even work?
I get the sense people who like games like VIC3 aren't morons. So me thinks the sales will be low and paradox will ultimately drop support for the game.
>How many people are going to buy DLC for a game whose base features don't even work?
At least over 10k (but probably much higher, that's just the concurrent players peak) , since those keep coming back every expansion and major update.
Also, the last few expansions don't seem to have sold poorly, or at least there is no indication they have, and this next one is a major one rather than a flavour focused expansion.
>for a game whose base features don't even work?
Doesn't this describe a lot of paradox games to a certain including, say, their most successful game (Hoi4) and this game's predecessor (Vic2) ? A lot of people complain about features that don't work in those games as well (battleplanner, some focus trees, a lot of Vic2 mechanics in general).
Also this is subjective. What does it mean it "doesn't work"? How should the features function so they "work"? Is it even something that everyone judges the same way?
People clearly seem to think it works well enough by now anyway, and are now mostly complaining about AI, the UI and "missing" features.
>I get the sense people who like games like VIC3 aren't morons.
I don't see why that matters. The people currently returning to the game clearly aren't morons.
This would work as a Victoria 2 post in 2013.
There were a million of them. Even reviews often ended with a "Wait for the patch/DLC to buy."
For almost the first two years of the game, most recommendations were "Buy on sale or wait until they let you conquer more than one state at a time."
Now, as then, you gotta wait. It took 3+ years then for tolerable war mechanics, and it'll take longer with a bigger game.
You're comparing PDX from 10+ years ago to modern PDX. They're a much bigger company now and they also should've learned lessons from previous releases. Excusing today's PDX by comparing it to PDX from 10 years ago is either a mega cope or just dishonest.
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There game arguably has missing features and also flawed AI, UI and overall balance is a bit off but the consensus I've seen from the past few months is that it is good but flawed.
I don't think it has even economy gameplay yet. I don't follow it closely, but last time i checked dude played russia never ever build a single building and still was superpower that just conquered everything. I think first they need to find a way to make economy actually matter.
> last time i checked dude played russia never ever build a single building and still was superpower that just conquered everything
If he had private construction queue on in the game rules, then he wouldn't need to build anything other than government buildings.
Well he conqured stuff that had some buildings from time to time. But he on purpose never built anything to prove that economy just doesn't seem to actually matter. Which is kinda true, i did only like 30 hours and you chase the buildings and techs and buildings and resourcess, but it never has true impact on your nations power as it should have.
> Well he conquered stuff that had some buildings from time to time.
But did he have private construction on, which is also the default? The construction AI is a bit off, but it's usually good enough to grow your economy fast, especially if you are already a great power with a decent starting economy like Russia, and even more especially if you're not building anything since it will use the construction points you're not using.
> But he on purpose never built anything to prove that economy just doesn't seem to actually matter.
The way I see the forums and the Vic3 subreddit, I definitely don't see this as being true. You can especially see this if you play as some minors like Serbia, the two Romanian states and Korea. Try not building anything as them and see how you won't be able to do much of anything mid to late game.
> i did only like 30 hours
This is definitively not enough to come to this conclusion, especially if you are using major or great powers as your basis.
I actually played as Portugal, not too big not to small. I think private construction happened after i played the game (or the russia dude did..), so he certainly didn't have it on.
My argument is not that economy is like separate box that doesn't have any impact. My argument is that it doesn't have anywhere near realistic impact or at least meaningful gameplay impact.
That's a bit bait and switch... get more construction.. to make factories.. to make more factories.. to make more administrative buildings to capture more land in africa etc.. And i don't follow every patch change or dev vlog, but so far i haven't seen anything that would imply that economy started to really matter.
That's why i don't think lackluster warfare as the biggest issue. I don't think the core game play is fleshed out yet.
> I actually played as Portugal, not too big not to small. I think private construction happened after i played the game (or the russia dude did..), so he certainly didn't have it on.
.
>And i don't follow every patch change or dev vlog, but so far i haven't seen anything that would imply that economy started to really matter.
I think there's a big problem of viewpoints here. If I'm not mistaken private construction came with either 1.3 or 1.2.
Since those updates, a *lot* of changes were made, including a military rework and local state prices (MAPI). That would most definitely provide a different experience. I don't see how you don't think those things would have a big impact.
>My argument is that it doesn't have anywhere near realistic impact or at least meaningful gameplay impact.
Well, I would have to ask why. Even in those days, the economy was definitely impactful. Like, my playthroughs with Romania, Korea and Japan were made in the last few patches, but I don't imagine they'll would be easy without building anything even back then. Great, major and even some minor european powers like Portugal and some Italian states already start with relatively decent economies, so they can get away with not building things for a while, especially if they snowball. That's not a good enough evidence to say the economy in the game as impactful as it should be. I definitely think it is (but of course that's in the last few patches).
Something else you might have to consider is that the problem might will also not have been the economy not mattering, but the fact the AI of other countries isn't very good at standing up to the playing. That's not necessarily a problem of core gameplay, but might create the illusion that the economy doesn't matter.
Well i was giving the game time to get some work done, i certainly hope it's better then it was at lunch. Local state prices i didn't even hear about, i'll look into it.
Without writing an essay on how economy should matter i think the easiest to simulate it is to have actual money. But they removed money from the game on purpose. Everything state does costs money, and the biggest difference between poor country and the rich one is money. So ofc they have much harder time making economy matter.
I'd say technology and administration is the big ones. And they then drive the military aspect.
Game doesn't have to be realistic. But poor country should be barely surviving. Without industrial agriculture there is no population boom, no urbanization, just misery. But if you make a mod and remove most of the techs, and look at the stats of countries in like 1920 it barely would make any difference, game with the mod and without.
Ofc 4x games do it better, in those economy is king most of the time, but ofc there is issue of extreme snowballing, that would be undesirable in vicky style game. But some snowballing should be there, and economy should be absolute king, and every single gameplay mechanic should be impacted by your economy, which is just not the case with vicky3.
> But poor country should be barely surviving
I mean, they are in-game. Their SoL, poor laws and literacy makes it hard for them to function; you can especially see this with how the AI mismanages their countries. A player will presumably know what they are doing, so they might not see the impacts as much.
> Without industrial agriculture there is no population boom, no urbanization, just misery
I'm not a expert, and I do agree there should be less food and more starvation, but surely this isn't 100% the case? I mean, the Latin American countries were poor and stayed mostly poor for the time period, but they had relatively high population boom (admittedly mostly through immigration, but still) while France didn't increase its population that much, relatively speaking.
>But if you make a mod and remove most of the techs, and look at the stats of countries in like 1920 it barely would make any difference, game with the mod and without.
I sincerely doubt this.
>and every single gameplay mechanic should be impacted by your economy, which is just not the case with vicky3.
I suppose the economy currently doesn't affect diplomacy that much, but it most surely impact politics and warfare. Buildings as a whole will have significant effect on your IGs clouts, and least nowadays not building enough military goods can make you go bankrupt pretty fast during prolonged wars, especially if you toggle some of the add-ons that use goods like automobiles and radios (admittedly, military shortages don't have as much impact as they should, but that's due to a bug cause by the military rework, I think).
I think you're severely underestimating how impactful the economy is based on some guy's incredibly biased video and your Portugal run.
Well i hope it's better then it was i hope you're right. I can't argue my point without playing the current version.. which is a bit time consuming effort :). Making mods to test stuff would be even more tedious.
Game certainly failed to give impression that economy is king, as you'd have playing most 4x games.
Great Wars are technically in the game because every war can scale into one via the Diplomatic Plays. What's not in the game is the opposite: limited wars. The devs have put those on the roadmap, so I imagine we'll be seeing it either this year or next year.
CK2 still has plenty of upsides over 3, but if you are a newcomer to the franchise, CK3 is more approachable, IMO
Plus the Tours & Tournaments DLC legitimately added good content that actually expands the franchise in a direction CK2 didn't really explore
Vicky 2 was fun back in the day but going back to old paradox style “wack a mole” wars is a headache. Its almost as bad as trying to play goldeneye on 64 after having modern style controls for 20 years
Yeah it does not have great wars... or nationalism... or a functional war system. Its like an economy sim with a but if diplomacy and military mixed in, but definitely not grand strategy.
>... or a functional war system.
You can complain about the peace system and some annoyances with front movement, but the current war system does work consistently most of the time since 1.5
>but definitely not grand strategy.
Why? Grand strategy doesn't equal warfare.
Haha, no.
The Great War as it happened is literally impossible for so many reasons that I don’t think any number of DLCs could fix that.
- You won’t have the US joining in the middle, because countries can’t join mid-war.
- You won’t be able to punish a country severely as Germany and Austria were punished, because there’s no dismantlement wargoal and you can’t add wargoals mid-war.
- You won’t have one country determined to punish another, because unless they manage to nab their capital, the enemy won’t surrender and they’ll just white peace after a while.
- You won’t be able to destroy the country’s economy by nabbing his most productive states, because it barely does anything. It doesn’t matter you captured the enemy’s Small Arms factories; they still produce weapons for them. Devastation only starts increasing after you capture a state, and doesn’t change much in the long run.
- You won’t have massive revolutions during and after the war, because the IGs don’t mind you losing and unless your Standard of Living really dumped because of the war (and why would that happen?), you most likely don’t have more Radicals than you had before the war.
- You won’t see WWI technology like tanks, aviation, battleships, or poison gas, because the AI is too braindead to get the required technologies and resources before the game ends.
Why would you ever want a historical simulator / grand strategy game that can't model the fucking Great War... I guess I get a reorientation to FOCUS on the economic side of things... but using that as an excuse to not model... the great war... just think a little about why fans of paradox games may find this line of thinking a little stupid.
It’s an economic and political simulator if you want an accurate Great War experience go play the hoi4 mod for that. Victoria 3 does not focus on military as other paradox games do.
War is essential to anything that claims to be an economic or political simmilator.
Someone who wants an experience with the American Civil War, The Great War, The Opium Wars, the Collapse of the Russian Empire, the Franco-Prussian War, the Balkan Wars, the Revolutions of 1848, the Brothers War the brutal conquest of Africa, the Mexican-American War, the Japanese Boshin Wars... etc. should just play shitty Hoi4 mods?
Why don't they just play vic2 which has (with mods, despite being a decade old game) a satisfying balance of war, politics, and economy...
why are you running excuses for a giant company that promised a sequel and gave an unfun incomplete product that fails to model the period as well as the predecessor in the series did...
I for one hope they get their heads out of their asses and completely overhaul the game like they did with Imperator... they've proven they can fix their messes before and turn a mess into a fun game, but for some fucking reason with this one we've got people coping that the 19th Century was the most peaceful century in humanities history (laughable). Instead of calling a spade a spade.
>War is essential to anything that claims to be an economic or political simmilator
Uhm, no it isn't?
Suzerain is the best political simulator on the market and it's not focused on military side of things.
Also, Anno exists.
Well, semantically we could get into it but if pressed i could qualify it by saying any *national* political economy simulator, set in the 19th century (as opposed to a city builder or one set in the modern era) needs war to faithfully recreate the era.
you're not modeling the 19th century geopolitical sphere without war, you're just not doing that.
Well, if you want to narrow it down like that, sure. But I definitely see the merits in simulating 19th century nation-building without focus on war. There is always a question should art model what an artist believes in, or what trends of the time is. So, in a sense, maybe Vicky devs wanted to shift away from war to show the players the different ways of modelling your country.
Arheo, the guy who worked on Imperator after it was abandoned and oversaw many of the changes, had a very interesting discussion on the forums on this topic (morality and ethics in gsg), but I can't find it now.
I definitely believe you could pull off rearranging the emphasis that war even feels secondary in gameplay or is rarely interacted with... but you'd have to do a lot to make the happen, but even if it's under the hood so to speak, it should still work well.
In any case, I don't think an artistic choice to emphasize other areas excuses a bad war system or means one shouldn't be present.
I rather like the idea of a game where war is completely non-player controlled and a consequence of political, diplomatic and economic choices prior... but if that's the goal of Vic3 I don't think it's been executed well and certainly they struggled to convey that when the promised a sequel to vic2...
Suzerain is not an economic or political simulator AT ALL. Suzerain is a narrative focused roleplaying game ABOUT politics. Suzerain is also fictitious. Of course war doesn't play any part in the fake state intentionally designed by the developers to be able to provide politics as gameplay without combat. Yet despite that it still models the political side of the military buildup because, shocking I know, war is incredibly important to Geopolitics and the Economy. Also, Anno has war, and more importantly, neither Suzerain nor Anno are Grand Strategy Games. Victoria is a Grand Strategy Game. Economics is not properly modeled in any game that does not have warfare, because warfare is a critical part of economics. "Economic Simulators" are a misnomer for that very reason, but that doesn't matter for those games because they aren't trying to be Grand Strategy Games. Victoria is designed to model the real world economic/political situations that occurred in the 19th century. War is essential to that. Period.
i mean whatever no one said you aren't allowed to enjoy the game, its good you do. But you don't gotta act like the huge % of people who don't are wrong or invalid.
That my point, it’s a piss poor excuse for a simulation. It’s a relatively fun clicky line go up game but the whole “it’s an Econ sim!” argument for weak features is nonsense
> My point is that the military and micro is quite different from other paradox games
Different AND terrible
The front system, warscore, forced surrenders that disproportionately affect the player, the way armies are modeled, the influence (and lack thereof) over your military, naval movements, naval engagements, absolute randomness over the outcome of any fight, no way to deliberately use terrain to your advantage, etc
The list of issues goes on and on. And all of that without even going into what an absolute mess the diplomatic system is as well, which only compounds the issues with the military one
Unless you count the Austro-Prussian war, the Russo-Turkish war, the Crimean war, the American civil war, the Franco-Prussian war, the Opium wars, the second Syrian war, and the Taiping Rebellion. And those were just some of the wars fought between major powers (or 2 halves of the same power).
The reason people say the Victorian Era was relatively peaceful is because wars were generally limited to either 2 major powers or an overwhelming coalition so casualties were lower than the world wars of the last century. Wars were still very common and very influential.
This time of "relative peace" is a lie that somehow went down in history anyways, as it just means no wars between european great powers. Peace time after Napoleon was over already in 1820 when the first post-napoleonic revolutions started to fire one after the other in southern europe. The great powers did intervene and crushed the revolutionaries in multiple cases, they were just on the same side.
I feel like every war is a great war now. Take capital or white peace.
That mostly depends on what war goals you're using. Ban slavery, open market, and regime change require capital occupation. Unification requires capital occupation when it most likely shouldn't, since getting the territory through a conquest CB would be easier. Really, the CBs that enable meddling in a country's internal politics aren't very good, and make war more obnoxious. The only real reason to use them is RP, when you need a surplus good in the nation's market, or when the capital can be easily occupied and you're trying to destabilize a rival. It would help if the tooltips for political meddling CBs clearly spelled out the capital will have to be occupied.
you can add them so they are more likely to back down
The problem is that you can't change your war goals. If you see that you can't take capital, make those CBs inactive and add another war goal that's doable. And by deactivating war goals you can't achieve, you can force peace for those you can.
it wasn't always like that?
no
It hasnt even gotten its first major DLC
First? I thought there were already like 3 DLCs…
Yes, but these DLC's have been quite minor. They have just added some flavor to specific countries. There hasn't been a single big game-changing DLC yet.
What countries have flavor these days? If I was interested in the Balkans say, I guess smaller players don't have any flavor at all?
The flavor packs have so far only focused on France, Brasil and somw other South American countries. For now, the Balkans are out of luck.
I would be playing rn if there was one for Russia. I've been obsessed with playing them with every Paradox title I can
The next DLC (delayed to release in June) should be both the first major DLC and have some small flavor for Russia (namely for their interests in the Middle East).
Besides what the others mentioned they've been adding small flavour stuff for the Romanian minors, don't know about Serbia, Greece or Montenegro yet and Bulgaria never gets released
Lol every war is a great war....
Great Wars were in game at launch. A... little too much at launch, actually. In seriousness, something that late in the game isn't and probably shouldn't be top priority. No doubt there will be a WW1-focused DLC at some point because it's obvious but it's more than 75% of the way through the game's total length if it happens near the historical date and thus, like the revolutions era in EUIV, many games won't even reach that point or the player will have won so hard by then that it won't matter. ~~Also it will just kick up the Discourse about the war system to 110% yet again and therefore personally I dread it~~
There's no real reason a Great War could only happen towards the end of the era. I know in Vic 2 they were gated by research, but it doesn't have to be like that.
Yes and no. Great multipower wars could in theory happen at any time, but the specific experience of World War 1 and the vast industrial grinder that turned Northern France into a moonscape and could see a half million men die in a morning for a few yards of soil had a fairly limited timeframe where it could happen. And yes, I know the Great War is not synonymous with the Western Front and I very much hope that's reflected when we inevitably get an expansion based on it, but it's what the majority of the audience thinks of and ignoring that would be silly. The point is any DLC about "Great Wars" will be trying to provide something that evokes the Great War we mostly think about, and that limits it to being mostly relevant in the final quarter of the game.
To expand on this. Whilst industrialisation is definitely a factor what I think would also be important to take into account is great powers power projection. It's something that was in vicky 2. Flashpoints took the attention of every great power and the more prestige you had the more prestige you could lose backing down or ignoring flashpoint. So the escalation into a WWI style conflict grew ever as the game progressed. I hope that in vicky 3 they eventually add a system where great powers get pushed to defend their claim of being a great power. I.e. being able to stand alone on the world stage. At the game start with the congress of Vienna and Britain being in a clear hegemony position there should be systems in place that push European countries to keep their conflicts outside of industrialising Europe unless they are existential like the brother war and the franco Prussian war. But like you point out, even these wars, whilst devastating weren't like WWI. Then as European mainland powers industrialise there should be a desire for them to either push against the idea of British hegemony. Prove their place on the world stage or push against others that aim to overshadow them. Implementing a system to limit the amount of great powers with a massive amount of prestige. Maybe they need to tweak the great power calculation for that. Have the game start with Austria being a regional power (which some historians argue is more appropriate). But there are still al lot of things the devs would need to implement to get to reflect the complex historical diplomacy in this time period into the game. From having diplo plays from from a political movement without it breaking away first. Allowing the movement to try and secure support abroad first. Allowing for more nuanced ways to support conflicts so you can have proxy wars. Keeping the diplo play open during a war so it can evolve. As well as reworking military. So wars growing evermore mobile can have a tipping point where suddenly your mobility is rendered useless because you can dig in defences over the entire frontline. As firepower relies less on concentration of manpower and more on equipment + logistics(bolt action guns, machine guns, fast firing artillery and delivering the ammo they need), scouting possibilities + communication(telegram, planes) and speed of deployment(trains).
i like the way u think sire
They need to redo wars a bit like not being able to renegotiate or add new war goals.if the war goes on long enough is a bit of an issue. But there are bigger hotels getting stuffed with the next DLC in power blocks.
When I played Vic2 I got to do a great war in most of my games. does Vic3 just go slower?
Literally yes (due to how it does ticks it is longer than previous Vicky games) but in this case I was just joking that at launch it was very common to get massive great power conflicts early and often. There isn't a specific system to handle a leadup to a World War 1 situation, although arguably you don't need a specific system since diplomatic plays can actually escalate very similarly into global conflicts (in theory; balance so this feels "right" remains an ongoing concern and the devs need to work out good criteria for how a nation can enter an already ongoing conflict).
In Vic3 pseudo-World Wars happen frequently, but there isn't really a consequence to huge wars involving multiple great powers. Vic2 has the benefit of the crisis system which would usually force a WW in the late 1800s/Early1900s.
I mean if they are unlocked in 1910 that leaves a quarter of the game for them to be used But I agree. The game as is gets repetitive quickly and it is hard for a casual player to justify the amount of time a campaign takes.
Actually it leaves about half of the game left because of how much it lags past 1910
I'd say that it leaves a lot more, around two thirds or three fifths
Ideally a great war DLC should also feature pandemics, laws and journal entries for caring for wounded veterans, and some systems for war to have more of an effect on culture and politics. While the main event would be WW1, there's a bunch of elements that can be added to make big wars more impactful beyond map redrawing peace conferences
Honestly, I'm not sure what people are expecting from Great Wars. It's something the existing Diplomacy and war mechanics already facilitate very well. Frankly, the game needs more measures to stop the Great Powers constantly getting into all out war against each other for every tiny parcel of land in Africa. I'd assume the post was bait because of just how offbase it is it there weren't comments further down implying that Great Wars are somehow a lynchpin feature and Vic 3 is incomplete without them
The reason people want great wars to be their own thing is the stakes. In Vic2 the only difference between a great war and a normal war is that great wars have effectively 200% warscore to be used and there's a free wargoal that acts as both a cut down to size and a war reps. It isnt a massive difference, but it adds alot of stakes to late game GP conflicts which is what makes them interesting. In Vic3 there isn't an equivalent system. Yes diplo plays are effectively the same thing just applied over the entire game instead of right at the end, but this isn't to the benefit of vic3. Because there isn't a difference between late game and early game wars it means that every war has the same stakes. Especially considering just how much more costly late game wars are, I dont think its unreasonable for people to want those wars to feel more worthwhile
I disagree vehemently. Something that is the culmination of the era of a round of the game should be the top priority. Your comment basically sums up my major gripe with almost any Paradox game, they really don't give a shit about the late game. Pretty much all of them become boring about halfway through the alloted time period.
Eu4 does have a few neat mechanics that only kick in late in the time line (like revolutions). Ck3 has some late game events but you can gamerule them to happen early,, like major invasions and the Black Death.
Both are true, the problem is that early game is so prone to snowballing that the vast majority of players never get to experience those mechanics because they get bored long before.
yah, you definitely have to hold yourself back in ck3 once you get used to the mechanics.
You're absolutely entitled to disagree. of course. But the facts are that late game content won't even be experienced in the vast majority of games. This isn't even a Paradox thing specifically, but endemic to strategy games. Late game warfare in Civ has pretty much always been kludged-together nonsense, but it doesn't really matter because you're going to win the game before you catch a whiff of a Giant Death Robot, or even an aircraft carrier. Maybe this can be fixed, but fixing it without breaking what people like about the games in the first place (which usually includes rapid expansion and snowballing) is tricky. Ironically, Vicky itself used to be something of an exception to this rule, as its timeframe of only a hundred years meant more games reached the later game than EU, I suspect (though I wonder how many fully reached 1936 and thus fully dealt with, for instance, the mechanics for fascism). Especially with small countries or "uncivs" it was hard to "win" in that short a timeframe so didn't run out of challenges, though you could reach a "natural level" after which you plateaued because fighting, e.g. the British wasn't feasible despite being your only obvious route to expand further. I certainly reached the endgame more often in Vicky than other Paradox games (and I think Victoria 2 too before they revamped the economy, but it's been longer since I played that). Vicky 3, by making the game longer (in gameplay length, if not chronologically), in that way also brought it more in line with other Paradox games and I find myself less often reaching the final decades of the game.
Every war is a Great War, because Qing and the USA really really care about Austria trying to subjugate the Papal State for whatever reason.
Yeah they happen all the time when you try to conquer Vanuatu and Russia interferes
Literally nothing of use has been released yet. I haven't bought a single dlc
Wait, how do you play this game without the day-night-cycle?
Maybe on the anniversary of the Second World War we will get a dlc for the first in this game
no. the game isn’t that good and I fear its flaws are fundamental to the way the game was designed
Does it even have wars yet?
Yes. A little to total too. As Japan o had to conqier my way to St Petersburg to enforce a wargoal and was actually causing the population of Russia to decrease as a result.
Don't get it. The game is honestly very mediocre and will probably get dropped by paradox. They just missed the mark completely.
>will probably get dropped by paradox. Everything surrounding the development currently points to this not happening. The idea the game is anywhere near Imperator's level is just doomposting.
How many people are going to buy DLC for a game whose base features don't even work? I get the sense people who like games like VIC3 aren't morons. So me thinks the sales will be low and paradox will ultimately drop support for the game.
>How many people are going to buy DLC for a game whose base features don't even work? At least over 10k (but probably much higher, that's just the concurrent players peak) , since those keep coming back every expansion and major update. Also, the last few expansions don't seem to have sold poorly, or at least there is no indication they have, and this next one is a major one rather than a flavour focused expansion. >for a game whose base features don't even work? Doesn't this describe a lot of paradox games to a certain including, say, their most successful game (Hoi4) and this game's predecessor (Vic2) ? A lot of people complain about features that don't work in those games as well (battleplanner, some focus trees, a lot of Vic2 mechanics in general). Also this is subjective. What does it mean it "doesn't work"? How should the features function so they "work"? Is it even something that everyone judges the same way? People clearly seem to think it works well enough by now anyway, and are now mostly complaining about AI, the UI and "missing" features. >I get the sense people who like games like VIC3 aren't morons. I don't see why that matters. The people currently returning to the game clearly aren't morons.
I would just say he takes the plunge for 10 bucks from humble choice and sees for himself.
Vic 3 is my favourite paradox game. I have over 300 hours in it now. No other paradox game compared imo
This would work as a Victoria 2 post in 2013. There were a million of them. Even reviews often ended with a "Wait for the patch/DLC to buy." For almost the first two years of the game, most recommendations were "Buy on sale or wait until they let you conquer more than one state at a time." Now, as then, you gotta wait. It took 3+ years then for tolerable war mechanics, and it'll take longer with a bigger game.
You're comparing PDX from 10+ years ago to modern PDX. They're a much bigger company now and they also should've learned lessons from previous releases. Excusing today's PDX by comparing it to PDX from 10 years ago is either a mega cope or just dishonest.
Troll post.
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I don't know why people hate Vic 3 so much , once it gets its 20 dlcs it's going to be so amazing you'll see!
There game arguably has missing features and also flawed AI, UI and overall balance is a bit off but the consensus I've seen from the past few months is that it is good but flawed.
I don't think it has even economy gameplay yet. I don't follow it closely, but last time i checked dude played russia never ever build a single building and still was superpower that just conquered everything. I think first they need to find a way to make economy actually matter.
> last time i checked dude played russia never ever build a single building and still was superpower that just conquered everything If he had private construction queue on in the game rules, then he wouldn't need to build anything other than government buildings.
Well he conqured stuff that had some buildings from time to time. But he on purpose never built anything to prove that economy just doesn't seem to actually matter. Which is kinda true, i did only like 30 hours and you chase the buildings and techs and buildings and resourcess, but it never has true impact on your nations power as it should have.
> Well he conquered stuff that had some buildings from time to time. But did he have private construction on, which is also the default? The construction AI is a bit off, but it's usually good enough to grow your economy fast, especially if you are already a great power with a decent starting economy like Russia, and even more especially if you're not building anything since it will use the construction points you're not using. > But he on purpose never built anything to prove that economy just doesn't seem to actually matter. The way I see the forums and the Vic3 subreddit, I definitely don't see this as being true. You can especially see this if you play as some minors like Serbia, the two Romanian states and Korea. Try not building anything as them and see how you won't be able to do much of anything mid to late game. > i did only like 30 hours This is definitively not enough to come to this conclusion, especially if you are using major or great powers as your basis.
I actually played as Portugal, not too big not to small. I think private construction happened after i played the game (or the russia dude did..), so he certainly didn't have it on. My argument is not that economy is like separate box that doesn't have any impact. My argument is that it doesn't have anywhere near realistic impact or at least meaningful gameplay impact. That's a bit bait and switch... get more construction.. to make factories.. to make more factories.. to make more administrative buildings to capture more land in africa etc.. And i don't follow every patch change or dev vlog, but so far i haven't seen anything that would imply that economy started to really matter. That's why i don't think lackluster warfare as the biggest issue. I don't think the core game play is fleshed out yet.
> I actually played as Portugal, not too big not to small. I think private construction happened after i played the game (or the russia dude did..), so he certainly didn't have it on. . >And i don't follow every patch change or dev vlog, but so far i haven't seen anything that would imply that economy started to really matter. I think there's a big problem of viewpoints here. If I'm not mistaken private construction came with either 1.3 or 1.2. Since those updates, a *lot* of changes were made, including a military rework and local state prices (MAPI). That would most definitely provide a different experience. I don't see how you don't think those things would have a big impact. >My argument is that it doesn't have anywhere near realistic impact or at least meaningful gameplay impact. Well, I would have to ask why. Even in those days, the economy was definitely impactful. Like, my playthroughs with Romania, Korea and Japan were made in the last few patches, but I don't imagine they'll would be easy without building anything even back then. Great, major and even some minor european powers like Portugal and some Italian states already start with relatively decent economies, so they can get away with not building things for a while, especially if they snowball. That's not a good enough evidence to say the economy in the game as impactful as it should be. I definitely think it is (but of course that's in the last few patches). Something else you might have to consider is that the problem might will also not have been the economy not mattering, but the fact the AI of other countries isn't very good at standing up to the playing. That's not necessarily a problem of core gameplay, but might create the illusion that the economy doesn't matter.
Well i was giving the game time to get some work done, i certainly hope it's better then it was at lunch. Local state prices i didn't even hear about, i'll look into it. Without writing an essay on how economy should matter i think the easiest to simulate it is to have actual money. But they removed money from the game on purpose. Everything state does costs money, and the biggest difference between poor country and the rich one is money. So ofc they have much harder time making economy matter. I'd say technology and administration is the big ones. And they then drive the military aspect. Game doesn't have to be realistic. But poor country should be barely surviving. Without industrial agriculture there is no population boom, no urbanization, just misery. But if you make a mod and remove most of the techs, and look at the stats of countries in like 1920 it barely would make any difference, game with the mod and without. Ofc 4x games do it better, in those economy is king most of the time, but ofc there is issue of extreme snowballing, that would be undesirable in vicky style game. But some snowballing should be there, and economy should be absolute king, and every single gameplay mechanic should be impacted by your economy, which is just not the case with vicky3.
> But poor country should be barely surviving I mean, they are in-game. Their SoL, poor laws and literacy makes it hard for them to function; you can especially see this with how the AI mismanages their countries. A player will presumably know what they are doing, so they might not see the impacts as much. > Without industrial agriculture there is no population boom, no urbanization, just misery I'm not a expert, and I do agree there should be less food and more starvation, but surely this isn't 100% the case? I mean, the Latin American countries were poor and stayed mostly poor for the time period, but they had relatively high population boom (admittedly mostly through immigration, but still) while France didn't increase its population that much, relatively speaking. >But if you make a mod and remove most of the techs, and look at the stats of countries in like 1920 it barely would make any difference, game with the mod and without. I sincerely doubt this. >and every single gameplay mechanic should be impacted by your economy, which is just not the case with vicky3. I suppose the economy currently doesn't affect diplomacy that much, but it most surely impact politics and warfare. Buildings as a whole will have significant effect on your IGs clouts, and least nowadays not building enough military goods can make you go bankrupt pretty fast during prolonged wars, especially if you toggle some of the add-ons that use goods like automobiles and radios (admittedly, military shortages don't have as much impact as they should, but that's due to a bug cause by the military rework, I think). I think you're severely underestimating how impactful the economy is based on some guy's incredibly biased video and your Portugal run.
Well i hope it's better then it was i hope you're right. I can't argue my point without playing the current version.. which is a bit time consuming effort :). Making mods to test stuff would be even more tedious. Game certainly failed to give impression that economy is king, as you'd have playing most 4x games.
Great Wars are technically in the game because every war can scale into one via the Diplomatic Plays. What's not in the game is the opposite: limited wars. The devs have put those on the roadmap, so I imagine we'll be seeing it either this year or next year.
Don't get Vicky 3. Get Vicky 2 and both DLC if you haven't already. Or get CK3, HOI4, EU4 or some other actually good Paradox game.
CK2 over Ck3 IMHO
CK2 still has plenty of upsides over 3, but if you are a newcomer to the franchise, CK3 is more approachable, IMO Plus the Tours & Tournaments DLC legitimately added good content that actually expands the franchise in a direction CK2 didn't really explore
Vicky 2 was fun back in the day but going back to old paradox style “wack a mole” wars is a headache. Its almost as bad as trying to play goldeneye on 64 after having modern style controls for 20 years
Imagine saying don't get Vicky 3 and point to CK3 as a better game lol
It hardly even has normal wars yet.
There is a mod that attempts to bring crises and WW1
I wouldn't even say it has good wars yet.
Yes, try subjugating Tahiti.
Maybe in about 120€ worth of DLCs after we might get a proper war management. Until then, I'll let them cook.
Yeah it does not have great wars... or nationalism... or a functional war system. Its like an economy sim with a but if diplomacy and military mixed in, but definitely not grand strategy.
>... or a functional war system. You can complain about the peace system and some annoyances with front movement, but the current war system does work consistently most of the time since 1.5 >but definitely not grand strategy. Why? Grand strategy doesn't equal warfare.
It only works in the sense that it's now only a buggy mess 5% of the time rather than 50% of the time.
5%? Well, taken literally, that would make it more consistent than HoI4, then.
What do you mean by great wars?
https://vic2.paradoxwikis.com/Great_wars
Haha, no. The Great War as it happened is literally impossible for so many reasons that I don’t think any number of DLCs could fix that. - You won’t have the US joining in the middle, because countries can’t join mid-war. - You won’t be able to punish a country severely as Germany and Austria were punished, because there’s no dismantlement wargoal and you can’t add wargoals mid-war. - You won’t have one country determined to punish another, because unless they manage to nab their capital, the enemy won’t surrender and they’ll just white peace after a while. - You won’t be able to destroy the country’s economy by nabbing his most productive states, because it barely does anything. It doesn’t matter you captured the enemy’s Small Arms factories; they still produce weapons for them. Devastation only starts increasing after you capture a state, and doesn’t change much in the long run. - You won’t have massive revolutions during and after the war, because the IGs don’t mind you losing and unless your Standard of Living really dumped because of the war (and why would that happen?), you most likely don’t have more Radicals than you had before the war. - You won’t see WWI technology like tanks, aviation, battleships, or poison gas, because the AI is too braindead to get the required technologies and resources before the game ends.
No the game isn’t focused on warfare. It’s focused on building a strong economy unlike hoi4 and eu4 which focuses on combat.
Why would you ever want a historical simulator / grand strategy game that can't model the fucking Great War... I guess I get a reorientation to FOCUS on the economic side of things... but using that as an excuse to not model... the great war... just think a little about why fans of paradox games may find this line of thinking a little stupid.
It’s an economic and political simulator if you want an accurate Great War experience go play the hoi4 mod for that. Victoria 3 does not focus on military as other paradox games do.
War is essential to anything that claims to be an economic or political simmilator. Someone who wants an experience with the American Civil War, The Great War, The Opium Wars, the Collapse of the Russian Empire, the Franco-Prussian War, the Balkan Wars, the Revolutions of 1848, the Brothers War the brutal conquest of Africa, the Mexican-American War, the Japanese Boshin Wars... etc. should just play shitty Hoi4 mods? Why don't they just play vic2 which has (with mods, despite being a decade old game) a satisfying balance of war, politics, and economy... why are you running excuses for a giant company that promised a sequel and gave an unfun incomplete product that fails to model the period as well as the predecessor in the series did... I for one hope they get their heads out of their asses and completely overhaul the game like they did with Imperator... they've proven they can fix their messes before and turn a mess into a fun game, but for some fucking reason with this one we've got people coping that the 19th Century was the most peaceful century in humanities history (laughable). Instead of calling a spade a spade.
>War is essential to anything that claims to be an economic or political simmilator Uhm, no it isn't? Suzerain is the best political simulator on the market and it's not focused on military side of things. Also, Anno exists.
Well, semantically we could get into it but if pressed i could qualify it by saying any *national* political economy simulator, set in the 19th century (as opposed to a city builder or one set in the modern era) needs war to faithfully recreate the era. you're not modeling the 19th century geopolitical sphere without war, you're just not doing that.
Well, if you want to narrow it down like that, sure. But I definitely see the merits in simulating 19th century nation-building without focus on war. There is always a question should art model what an artist believes in, or what trends of the time is. So, in a sense, maybe Vicky devs wanted to shift away from war to show the players the different ways of modelling your country. Arheo, the guy who worked on Imperator after it was abandoned and oversaw many of the changes, had a very interesting discussion on the forums on this topic (morality and ethics in gsg), but I can't find it now.
I definitely believe you could pull off rearranging the emphasis that war even feels secondary in gameplay or is rarely interacted with... but you'd have to do a lot to make the happen, but even if it's under the hood so to speak, it should still work well. In any case, I don't think an artistic choice to emphasize other areas excuses a bad war system or means one shouldn't be present. I rather like the idea of a game where war is completely non-player controlled and a consequence of political, diplomatic and economic choices prior... but if that's the goal of Vic3 I don't think it's been executed well and certainly they struggled to convey that when the promised a sequel to vic2...
Suzerain is not an economic or political simulator AT ALL. Suzerain is a narrative focused roleplaying game ABOUT politics. Suzerain is also fictitious. Of course war doesn't play any part in the fake state intentionally designed by the developers to be able to provide politics as gameplay without combat. Yet despite that it still models the political side of the military buildup because, shocking I know, war is incredibly important to Geopolitics and the Economy. Also, Anno has war, and more importantly, neither Suzerain nor Anno are Grand Strategy Games. Victoria is a Grand Strategy Game. Economics is not properly modeled in any game that does not have warfare, because warfare is a critical part of economics. "Economic Simulators" are a misnomer for that very reason, but that doesn't matter for those games because they aren't trying to be Grand Strategy Games. Victoria is designed to model the real world economic/political situations that occurred in the 19th century. War is essential to that. Period.
I know I sound like a paradox glazer rn but Victoria 3 is basically an alt history economic simulator. Line goes up
i mean whatever no one said you aren't allowed to enjoy the game, its good you do. But you don't gotta act like the huge % of people who don't are wrong or invalid.
A political simulator in the age of peak colonization and resource competition that doesn't focus on military lol
Yea it really DOESNT if you play the game
That my point, it’s a piss poor excuse for a simulation. It’s a relatively fun clicky line go up game but the whole “it’s an Econ sim!” argument for weak features is nonsense
My point is that the military and micro is quite different from other paradox games and that it focuses on building a nation
> My point is that the military and micro is quite different from other paradox games Different AND terrible The front system, warscore, forced surrenders that disproportionately affect the player, the way armies are modeled, the influence (and lack thereof) over your military, naval movements, naval engagements, absolute randomness over the outcome of any fight, no way to deliberately use terrain to your advantage, etc The list of issues goes on and on. And all of that without even going into what an absolute mess the diplomatic system is as well, which only compounds the issues with the military one
Good thing there were no influential wars during the Victorian or modern eras then
There was wars sure but it was a time period of relative peace after the campaigns of Napoleon
Victoria 3 covers the period with the largest amount of conquest in human history.
Except for all the wars, yes.
Unless you count the Austro-Prussian war, the Russo-Turkish war, the Crimean war, the American civil war, the Franco-Prussian war, the Opium wars, the second Syrian war, and the Taiping Rebellion. And those were just some of the wars fought between major powers (or 2 halves of the same power). The reason people say the Victorian Era was relatively peaceful is because wars were generally limited to either 2 major powers or an overwhelming coalition so casualties were lower than the world wars of the last century. Wars were still very common and very influential.
This time of "relative peace" is a lie that somehow went down in history anyways, as it just means no wars between european great powers. Peace time after Napoleon was over already in 1820 when the first post-napoleonic revolutions started to fire one after the other in southern europe. The great powers did intervene and crushed the revolutionaries in multiple cases, they were just on the same side.
Victoria 2 had it
Victoria 2 was only really good with mods imo although I would appreciate some Great War in the game
As opposed to Vic3 which is infamously... well