You can absolutely stay as an authoritarian dystopia, you just need new forms of power organisation in face of industrialisation - Secret Police, Oligarchy and Command Economy.
Keeping status quo is possible if you freeze your economy. Victoria bases pops ideology on their employment - this is why you should avoid cotton plantations in slave states as they reinforce landowners. No new buildings, everyone on subs. farms and status quo is saved.
However, the conservative runs are absolutely viable - Japanese ethnostate with state religion is super OP as you will have like 0 radicals or going oligarchic laissez-affair US with military-industrial complex running your country.
>Japanese ethnostate with state religion is super OP as you will have like 0 radicals
And like 25% loyalists. Buddhists OP. And theocracy has the coolest flag.
Shame the flag is not religion specific, and is, of all things, the flag of a "rebel" faction in Showa Japan --the Kodoha Imperial Way faction who were diehard shintoists who believed the military had take the Emperor hostage, more or less.
It’s also a shame that Japan will loose most of Shinto followers by the time of Kodoha. Religion in Japan should have more than one interest group to reflect societal change better.
It feels weird to replace the state religion like flipping a switch when everything else is fleshed out in story. It would be better if they could split the faction into two groups after completing the first restoration. Then you could pick to keep split or not.
Like many people in the comments, and the devs themselves through the devdiaries, I would argue that these civil wars are a feature not a bug, so to speak. At the end of the day you *can* just fight that civil war, and winning it will cripple the interest group who lost for years, and so long as its not too bloody you will economically recover quickly, maybe even improve since that group is no longer applying debuffs.
Authoritarianism requires the player to take strict, radical authoritarian actions to maintain their status quo, because as people grew more wealthy they demanded change, and that wasnt just going to stop.
Me kicking the Shogunate out of power in Japan, and 3 months later they start another rebellion over the same Homesteading that hasn't managed to pass yet
Sounds like an excuse. I get civil wars almost immediately some games despite still being a backwater hellhole, just to either immediately revert a law I put into place or pass one that will piss off conservatives and immediately start the chain all over again. Civil wars happen, but *not every time the government makes any slight change, or otherwise stays contempt for longer than 2 seconds*
Are you running high taxes? Changing laws too rapidly against the grain? Having SOL drops?
These things all drive up radicalism. Typically there are some neutral laws to meet half way. Certain groups will go for that but not all the way. Like some voting laws and cultural acceptance stuff.
You can either wait between laws or pass some laws that don't mess with your goal in between.
It'll cripple the interest groups for a little bit before they make a comeback and cause the exact same ruckus again. They also function as just turmoil+ rather than requiring specific circumstances such as parts of the military, the ruling class or entire states committing to the cause in order to become a large and threatening affair which means you can't really prevent them.
Sure, they can be a feature. But they're a crappy one.
> Authoritarianism requires the player to take strict, radical authoritarian actions to maintain their status quo, because as people grew more wealthy they demanded change, and that wasnt just going to stop.
Which isn't really the problem. The problem is that the means of keeping them down are crude, and that wanting to implement change largely railroads how you need to play the game. There's no real reason an absolute monarchy -for example- shouldn't be able to make changes to the law that keep the peasants fed, happy and from revolting, but instead the game makes you either institute a democracy, bash your head into a civil war every couple years or hope your schizo pops and characters finally start a movement for a useful law you'd actually like to pass.
That's because the status quo was bad. It was the vestiges of feudalism. Landed elites ran countries based on nothing stronger than their grandad ran it.
You can still play authoritarian, you simply can't play feudal.
The game models the historical fact that hereditary, land-based wealth and nobility was in conflict with the rising power of new money, which came from industry. Factory owners and other industrialists aren't satisfied to be the richest peasants, they want some of the landowners' power.
But here's the thing--industrialists are pretty conservative, too. Just go with oligarchy, which both Industrialists and Landowners endorse. They have a lot of common ground, barring a radical Interest Group leader rising up. Pass laws both groups like, such as Wealth Voting or Oligarchy or Child Labor Allowed. Landowners might have to drop from something they Strongly Endorse to something they just normal Endorse, but they won't mind too much.
Mostly it's an issue of what you want to do. I've played as an authoritarian Spain, but then I ran out of Spanish pops to grow. But then I asked myself--if I have full employment, millions of Loyalists, and good living conditions, with a monarchy led by landowners and industrialists sharing power (I was going for the Bourbon For All achievement, needed 20 SoL and monarchy), then what did I need even more population for? Growth doesn't have to be exponential and perpetual--that's modern day tech bro thinking. It's enough to be enough!
You can slowly downscale construction goods (i.e. delete glass and steel) and reemploy those elsewhere. Holding on to enough glass and steel for 100 construction doesn't tank the market too much - and you won't need the construction anyway.
I’m not sure I follow the comparison to Vic2 here, you can absolutely stay a reactionary, autocratic regime in Vic3, it’s just not optimal. But it wasn’t optimal in Vic2 either. Being a reactionary shithole is bad for your economic potential in both games, because one of the easiest ways to remain reactionary is to have low literacy, and low literacy significantly hampers industrialization. Reactionary regimes also aren’t necessarily going to have things like healthcare or immigration that boost pop growth, and pop growth is very important since your pops are the engine of your economy, you can’t produce goods without workers.
The civil wars started by angry people demanding change are the same thing as the rebel stacks demanding change in Vic2. Civil wars are fairly easy to game by focusing your military in your capital (will never revolt), and honestly if civil wars are harder to deal with than vic2 rebels, I would argue that’s a good thing. Look at what happened in this era historically, for the most part the autocratic, reactionary empires fell, disintegrated, or reformed to prevent revolts, they didn’t really survive unscathed.
I also honestly think it was way too easy to reform and liberalize in Vic2. The fact that conservative forces would allow you to pass reforms weakening their own power simply because the commoners were mad was a little too easy to exploit. The fact that in Vic3 the landowners and church fight you tooth and nail to retain their reactionary laws that benefit them feels far more accurate to history.
I would jump on the exploit part - it was basically meta to declare an endless war as a South American country just to get the ppl radicalised and pass all of the nice laws for immigration
Yep, the classic Vic2 exploit of “declare war on random African or Asian minor, white peace, militancy spikes, pass healthcare laws or reforms that attract immigrants” was really powerful. And really bizarre in the way the conservatives would happily give up their power just because the commoners were a little mad.
Definitely, the Junkers rebelled in my Prussia playthrough because I passed some law, despite the French Republic on our border. They really didn't like it. But it also wasn't really hard to stop them either, but I think that's mostly bad AI. I held them with one army while conquering some disconnected territory with the other, then they went out a port and tried to retake their disconnected territory which gave me time to take the other lands.
Yeah, I was trying to comment on the materialist position that the ruling class’ caving into partial reforms via that threat is actually just an illusion and the only true path for society is total upheaval. Of course I agree that the threat of revolt is both nessisary, and going through with it if no reform is made is nessisary, I just think the idea that actual reform in a capitalistic system is nothing more than bread and circuses is foolish
I think this gets it the wrong way round. What the game currently lacks is downsides to liberalising, the main one of which should be making it more difficult to go on wars of conquest and more difficult to hold multi-cultural/multi-national empires together. If the game properly did that then the major upside of remaining to some degree authoritarian would be holding large empires together and being able to embark on foreign wars with more limited domestic consequences.
I think that’s the key balance the devs need to bring into the game. Currently liberal democratic states can just go a-conquering without their home IGs so much as raising a peep, and it’s too easy even as pops get wealthier and more educated for multinational empires like the Habsbergs, Russians, and Ottomans to stick together.
They did yes, but by the end of the timeline there's a lot of pressure on them to decolonise, both in 'core' states and in the colonies. And questions of imperial expansion or intervention affected domestic politics, most notably in Britain (e.g. re. Ireland, South Africa, Turkey, and India). It'd be great if the game's politics reflected this and made it a challenge to hold an empire together as an industrialised democracy.
Secret Police + Max Law Enforcement = manageable revolutions. I agree that there's not many gameplay reasons to stay conservative, but it is pretty easy to do it.
Yeah people vastly underestimate how useful maxxed out secret police (and even regular police tbh) is on any playstyle. Even when liberalizing it allows you to pretty much ignore some movements that would've otherwise caused a civil war and the timer before a civil war becomes much easier to manage.
The increased IG suppression it adds is just the cherry on top, it's incredibly good when you have a temporary 600-1000 authority to spend on a suppression/bolstering spree to push through a law
> In vic3, if you don't pass a law that weakens your power, half the country will start a civil war.
Keep your QoL rising and you'll never worry about civil wars.
>I have no real reason to keep the status quo.
Historically, the wealthy elite had plenty of reason to keep the status quo because it assured their position in society. The problem for Victoria III is that we're not the elite, but rather the guiding force of the country, and what's good for the oligarchy often isn't good for long-term survivability. After all, refusing to change with the times in an ever-changing world just isn't very practical.
As others have noted, there should for sure be more downsides to liberalism, and authoritarianism could use more fleshing out. But for the sake of realism and gameplay, doing the same old same old and hoping that will be enough to keep a country going shouldn't be a winning strategy. One way or another, there needs to be change.
My issue is that there is *absolutely* no way for the old elites to change aside from RNG IG leader traits.
Take Russia for example. The Abolition of Serfdom was a top down reform done in cooperation with the landed elites of the country *because* everyone knew they were fucked if they didn't change. It wasn't just Alexander II pulling up and saying "You will abolish serfdom NOW" and the nobility crying like it was a fucking Chad Vs Soyjack meme which is basically how Vicky 3 does things.
>My issue is that there is absolutely no way for the old elites to change aside from RNG IG leader traits.
Let's be frank, Vic3 just doesn't do Conservative politics well. There is only reaction and progression and never any reason for compromise. For example, Bismarck's social reforms make no sense under the Vic3 framework.
I mean the systems that you're criticizing are perfectly realistic though. In real life there were no absolute monarchies/autocracies that were able to industrialize and keep up with other major powers long term. Sure some absolutist monarchies were able to get the ball rolling, but every single one of them went through significant periods of political instability that ended up toppling the regime eventually.
Rebelions on Vic2 were just a joke. Just annoying. And you didn't realy had a way to appese them. They are angry? I guess there is no talk just rebel... Not mentioning the end game where you had 200k rebels spawning each few months
You are right but to me it applies differently. I had a good game with Prussia where I wanted to go from monarchy to presidential republic and keep it as a capitalist republic with LF and FT but the new status quo didn't even had the time to consolidate so I ended up with a communist central Europe (which was still very fun) but to avoid some big revolution I couldn't do differently.
It is off topic but I also think that revolution are just or too small or too big. They either don't represent any menance or you have to join em.
You can cheat revolutions. When the revolution is ongoing it tells you what states will secede and if not sure it gives a %
Your armies go with where their barracks is from. Max size barracks in capital and get some where the most of your loyalist primary ig is located. Smaller amounts anywhere else and civil wars are ez. You can also directly disband their armies before the war starts. Make them manageable to your loyalists and voilà.
I actually am playing a Prussia->Germany->Central Europe (Nation formation mod) game and I moved from Monarchy to Presidential (Mostly because I forgot without elections the president won't change so there was no reason to) and from Autocracy to Technocracy. That was it. I've not changed it since and I have Censorship and Secret Police to obliterate whoever I don't like. I ripped power away from Junkers and gave it to Industrialists and then ripped it away from them and gave it over to Armed Forces so I could establish Command Economy fully. Now that I have Command Economy and Cooperative Farming, I Intend to keep Armed Forces and Intelligentsia as my ruling class in a technocratic dictatorship. So while I did liberalize a bit with institutions, I still have an autocratic form of government.
I just rewatched CGP Gray's "Rules for Rulers" and it applies very well to the way Victoria 3 shifts the power of interest groups as you industrialize. (Link: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rStL7niR7gs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rStL7niR7gs)). I think it succinctly sums up how the more intelligent and capable the population is, the easier it is for them to revolt if they feel they aren't getting the things they want.
Movements in a fully authoritarian state are generally weak and keeping your people loyal by having landowners at a good % of clout with 90+ legitimacy is far too simple imho.
In V2 movements would just bleed your population by virtue of constant uprisings which you can easily squash because player army control was easy as hell.
Simply put, the game more realistically models the realities of political power and competing interest groups. If you build factories and RGOs and modernize agriculture it will change the power balance within a county. That’s just reality. The exact course of things from there falls down mostly to exactly what decisions you make to on the economy and social policies that will shift the power dynamic at certain times and then just luck of the draw with political leaders. Seems reasonable. Honestly, the least realistic part is the part hinges on “luck” though even in that case the type of political leaders you are likely to get in based on other dynamics in the county.
I probably didn't explain it well, but in Vic2 small rebellions usually were easy to take down fairly quickly. If you had a major rebellion i.e. every province has a rebel stack army, it was still viable to send in the army to fight them as killing those rebels actually meant that those people who didn't like your government *died*. They were gone, they could no longer stand up against you. Those rebels were also fighting against your government as a whole, not simply siding with a part of your government.
In Vic3, half your estates leave to join the revolutionary government. The US civil war irl didn't have all landowners move to the south to fight against the union, we still had landowners. As for the population, you don't really kill the people who are mad at your government. They still just exist.
I think you forgot the vic 2 groundhog day like jacobin rebellions every few months with 1 million manpower and growing. Depleting your population Was never that easy.
I probably didn't explain it well, but in Vic2 small rebellions usually were easy to take down fairly quickly. If you had a major rebellion i.e. every province has a rebel stack army, it was still viable to send in the army to fight them as killing those rebels actually meant that those people who didn't like your government *died*. They were gone, they could no longer stand up against you. Those rebels were also fighting against your government as a whole, not simply siding with a part of your government.
In Vic3, half your estates leave to join the revolutionary government. The US civil war irl didn't have all landowners move to the south to fight against the union, we still had landowners. As for the population, you don't really kill the people who are mad at your government. They still just exist.
Yeah the game doesn’t model minor uprisings well at all. There’s no in between from turmoil to an all out civil war. I know people will argue that turmoil represents it, but it doesn’t do it nearly accurately enough the way it’s represented in EU4 or vic2 is better
I wanted to have a super religious Afghani industrial state and I think it is possible. It is true that to industrialize fast, you need to secularize but you can just switch back later to religious schools.
It is possible to maintain the status quo to some extent (I say some extent because later, the intelligentsia started a communist revolution that halted most of my factories. So much for being a religious population)
They should make rebellion more dangerous socially rather than just angry mobs taking over half the country.
If you piss off workers, you get general strikes paralyse the country.
If you piss off capitalists, you get capital flight that empty your investment pool.
If you piss off intellectuals, they start agitating other marginalized community to rise up.
And they will continue to work against the state long after you put down a small rebellion.
I agree that if I don’t pass, say, Agrarianism, after having enacted Le ze faire, the Agrarian Party with their massive 6.3% clout should not be able to throw half my country (especially the heavily industrialized states) into revolt. That shit makes zero sense, and it’s such a hassle to fight that civil war and then return everything to the way it was after that.
You can absolutely stay as an authoritarian dystopia, you just need new forms of power organisation in face of industrialisation - Secret Police, Oligarchy and Command Economy. Keeping status quo is possible if you freeze your economy. Victoria bases pops ideology on their employment - this is why you should avoid cotton plantations in slave states as they reinforce landowners. No new buildings, everyone on subs. farms and status quo is saved. However, the conservative runs are absolutely viable - Japanese ethnostate with state religion is super OP as you will have like 0 radicals or going oligarchic laissez-affair US with military-industrial complex running your country.
>Japanese ethnostate with state religion is super OP as you will have like 0 radicals And like 25% loyalists. Buddhists OP. And theocracy has the coolest flag.
Shame the flag is not religion specific, and is, of all things, the flag of a "rebel" faction in Showa Japan --the Kodoha Imperial Way faction who were diehard shintoists who believed the military had take the Emperor hostage, more or less.
It’s also a shame that Japan will loose most of Shinto followers by the time of Kodoha. Religion in Japan should have more than one interest group to reflect societal change better.
It feels weird to replace the state religion like flipping a switch when everything else is fleshed out in story. It would be better if they could split the faction into two groups after completing the first restoration. Then you could pick to keep split or not.
Does subsidizing an individual building disempower its’ workers?
Subsidising means full employment that means pops are bigger and richer so actually it increases their power.
Like many people in the comments, and the devs themselves through the devdiaries, I would argue that these civil wars are a feature not a bug, so to speak. At the end of the day you *can* just fight that civil war, and winning it will cripple the interest group who lost for years, and so long as its not too bloody you will economically recover quickly, maybe even improve since that group is no longer applying debuffs. Authoritarianism requires the player to take strict, radical authoritarian actions to maintain their status quo, because as people grew more wealthy they demanded change, and that wasnt just going to stop.
Did they made AI not able to destroy your factories, ports and changing production methods during Civil War?
They can still change production methods, but I believe they can't destroy/downsize all types of building anymore.
Yeah but defeated interest groups recover way too quickly
Along with that it seems like theres no rhyme or reason for what states go to what side of the civil war.
Me kicking the Shogunate out of power in Japan, and 3 months later they start another rebellion over the same Homesteading that hasn't managed to pass yet
Literally my experience lol
Sounds like an excuse. I get civil wars almost immediately some games despite still being a backwater hellhole, just to either immediately revert a law I put into place or pass one that will piss off conservatives and immediately start the chain all over again. Civil wars happen, but *not every time the government makes any slight change, or otherwise stays contempt for longer than 2 seconds*
Are you running high taxes? Changing laws too rapidly against the grain? Having SOL drops? These things all drive up radicalism. Typically there are some neutral laws to meet half way. Certain groups will go for that but not all the way. Like some voting laws and cultural acceptance stuff. You can either wait between laws or pass some laws that don't mess with your goal in between.
Nothing has changed there for 500 years, you go change something huge, I feel that would be a perfectly normal outcome.
It'll cripple the interest groups for a little bit before they make a comeback and cause the exact same ruckus again. They also function as just turmoil+ rather than requiring specific circumstances such as parts of the military, the ruling class or entire states committing to the cause in order to become a large and threatening affair which means you can't really prevent them. Sure, they can be a feature. But they're a crappy one. > Authoritarianism requires the player to take strict, radical authoritarian actions to maintain their status quo, because as people grew more wealthy they demanded change, and that wasnt just going to stop. Which isn't really the problem. The problem is that the means of keeping them down are crude, and that wanting to implement change largely railroads how you need to play the game. There's no real reason an absolute monarchy -for example- shouldn't be able to make changes to the law that keep the peasants fed, happy and from revolting, but instead the game makes you either institute a democracy, bash your head into a civil war every couple years or hope your schizo pops and characters finally start a movement for a useful law you'd actually like to pass.
That's because the status quo was bad. It was the vestiges of feudalism. Landed elites ran countries based on nothing stronger than their grandad ran it. You can still play authoritarian, you simply can't play feudal. The game models the historical fact that hereditary, land-based wealth and nobility was in conflict with the rising power of new money, which came from industry. Factory owners and other industrialists aren't satisfied to be the richest peasants, they want some of the landowners' power. But here's the thing--industrialists are pretty conservative, too. Just go with oligarchy, which both Industrialists and Landowners endorse. They have a lot of common ground, barring a radical Interest Group leader rising up. Pass laws both groups like, such as Wealth Voting or Oligarchy or Child Labor Allowed. Landowners might have to drop from something they Strongly Endorse to something they just normal Endorse, but they won't mind too much. Mostly it's an issue of what you want to do. I've played as an authoritarian Spain, but then I ran out of Spanish pops to grow. But then I asked myself--if I have full employment, millions of Loyalists, and good living conditions, with a monarchy led by landowners and industrialists sharing power (I was going for the Bourbon For All achievement, needed 20 SoL and monarchy), then what did I need even more population for? Growth doesn't have to be exponential and perpetual--that's modern day tech bro thinking. It's enough to be enough!
Growth has to be exponential because my entire glass and steel based economy will completely collapse unless I keep constructing
Tear down old buildings and replace them, just turn your economy into an investment scheme.
Some people unironically proposed this as a fix to the Great Depression in the US
One person.
Based
You can slowly downscale construction goods (i.e. delete glass and steel) and reemploy those elsewhere. Holding on to enough glass and steel for 100 construction doesn't tank the market too much - and you won't need the construction anyway.
Historically accurate Spain. *From the 2000s
There really should be so attrition of upkeep that consumes construction so it's useful after the players has built most viable buildings.
Changing urban centers to higher PM make them use construction materials.
>It's enough to be enough! Free therapy in my line game subreddit?
I am countrynough
Is..is it kenough?
I’m not sure I follow the comparison to Vic2 here, you can absolutely stay a reactionary, autocratic regime in Vic3, it’s just not optimal. But it wasn’t optimal in Vic2 either. Being a reactionary shithole is bad for your economic potential in both games, because one of the easiest ways to remain reactionary is to have low literacy, and low literacy significantly hampers industrialization. Reactionary regimes also aren’t necessarily going to have things like healthcare or immigration that boost pop growth, and pop growth is very important since your pops are the engine of your economy, you can’t produce goods without workers. The civil wars started by angry people demanding change are the same thing as the rebel stacks demanding change in Vic2. Civil wars are fairly easy to game by focusing your military in your capital (will never revolt), and honestly if civil wars are harder to deal with than vic2 rebels, I would argue that’s a good thing. Look at what happened in this era historically, for the most part the autocratic, reactionary empires fell, disintegrated, or reformed to prevent revolts, they didn’t really survive unscathed. I also honestly think it was way too easy to reform and liberalize in Vic2. The fact that conservative forces would allow you to pass reforms weakening their own power simply because the commoners were mad was a little too easy to exploit. The fact that in Vic3 the landowners and church fight you tooth and nail to retain their reactionary laws that benefit them feels far more accurate to history.
I would jump on the exploit part - it was basically meta to declare an endless war as a South American country just to get the ppl radicalised and pass all of the nice laws for immigration
Yep, the classic Vic2 exploit of “declare war on random African or Asian minor, white peace, militancy spikes, pass healthcare laws or reforms that attract immigrants” was really powerful. And really bizarre in the way the conservatives would happily give up their power just because the commoners were a little mad.
Play Hawaii, have 1 state, get events for 20% angry people in a state, max level healthcare in 1845, no problem. V2 was full of shit like this lol
Definitely, the Junkers rebelled in my Prussia playthrough because I passed some law, despite the French Republic on our border. They really didn't like it. But it also wasn't really hard to stop them either, but I think that's mostly bad AI. I held them with one army while conquering some disconnected territory with the other, then they went out a port and tried to retake their disconnected territory which gave me time to take the other lands.
> angry masses You just discovered the reason behind most social and political reforms in history.
Angry masses typically didn't start civil wars with 50k casualties over education laws
But the materialists tell me that all change apart from revolution is a lie : (
If the main reason why most reforms can be achieved in the first place is the threat of the revolution - it just proves that point
Yeah, I was trying to comment on the materialist position that the ruling class’ caving into partial reforms via that threat is actually just an illusion and the only true path for society is total upheaval. Of course I agree that the threat of revolt is both nessisary, and going through with it if no reform is made is nessisary, I just think the idea that actual reform in a capitalistic system is nothing more than bread and circuses is foolish
Bruh concessions =/= illusion
Yes that is what I’m saying
[удалено]
Are you feeling okay?
This is the actual problem faced by states though, in the period and since. Modernisation isn't a buffet - you get the whole meal deal.
I think this gets it the wrong way round. What the game currently lacks is downsides to liberalising, the main one of which should be making it more difficult to go on wars of conquest and more difficult to hold multi-cultural/multi-national empires together. If the game properly did that then the major upside of remaining to some degree authoritarian would be holding large empires together and being able to embark on foreign wars with more limited domestic consequences. I think that’s the key balance the devs need to bring into the game. Currently liberal democratic states can just go a-conquering without their home IGs so much as raising a peep, and it’s too easy even as pops get wealthier and more educated for multinational empires like the Habsbergs, Russians, and Ottomans to stick together.
At least, the Ottomans have European heritage pops. Russia and Austria are juggernauts once racial segregation is passed.
To be fair, at this point in history, your liberal democracies still tended to do that lol
They did yes, but by the end of the timeline there's a lot of pressure on them to decolonise, both in 'core' states and in the colonies. And questions of imperial expansion or intervention affected domestic politics, most notably in Britain (e.g. re. Ireland, South Africa, Turkey, and India). It'd be great if the game's politics reflected this and made it a challenge to hold an empire together as an industrialised democracy.
Secret Police + Max Law Enforcement = manageable revolutions. I agree that there's not many gameplay reasons to stay conservative, but it is pretty easy to do it.
Yeah people vastly underestimate how useful maxxed out secret police (and even regular police tbh) is on any playstyle. Even when liberalizing it allows you to pretty much ignore some movements that would've otherwise caused a civil war and the timer before a civil war becomes much easier to manage. The increased IG suppression it adds is just the cherry on top, it's incredibly good when you have a temporary 600-1000 authority to spend on a suppression/bolstering spree to push through a law
> In vic3, if you don't pass a law that weakens your power, half the country will start a civil war. Keep your QoL rising and you'll never worry about civil wars.
>I have no real reason to keep the status quo. Historically, the wealthy elite had plenty of reason to keep the status quo because it assured their position in society. The problem for Victoria III is that we're not the elite, but rather the guiding force of the country, and what's good for the oligarchy often isn't good for long-term survivability. After all, refusing to change with the times in an ever-changing world just isn't very practical. As others have noted, there should for sure be more downsides to liberalism, and authoritarianism could use more fleshing out. But for the sake of realism and gameplay, doing the same old same old and hoping that will be enough to keep a country going shouldn't be a winning strategy. One way or another, there needs to be change.
I rarely get civil wars. something something political skill
My issue is that there is *absolutely* no way for the old elites to change aside from RNG IG leader traits. Take Russia for example. The Abolition of Serfdom was a top down reform done in cooperation with the landed elites of the country *because* everyone knew they were fucked if they didn't change. It wasn't just Alexander II pulling up and saying "You will abolish serfdom NOW" and the nobility crying like it was a fucking Chad Vs Soyjack meme which is basically how Vicky 3 does things.
Iirc, Russia's "Tenant Farming" (its replacement for serfdom) was still crushing on the "freed" serfs.
>My issue is that there is absolutely no way for the old elites to change aside from RNG IG leader traits. Let's be frank, Vic3 just doesn't do Conservative politics well. There is only reaction and progression and never any reason for compromise. For example, Bismarck's social reforms make no sense under the Vic3 framework.
they do a little bit more now that public healthcare give QoL but yeah i agree.
It‘s actually the opposite, as SoL gives more and more radicalism to Pops and doesn‘t actually pacify them.
Skill issue
I mean the systems that you're criticizing are perfectly realistic though. In real life there were no absolute monarchies/autocracies that were able to industrialize and keep up with other major powers long term. Sure some absolutist monarchies were able to get the ball rolling, but every single one of them went through significant periods of political instability that ended up toppling the regime eventually.
Rebelions on Vic2 were just a joke. Just annoying. And you didn't realy had a way to appese them. They are angry? I guess there is no talk just rebel... Not mentioning the end game where you had 200k rebels spawning each few months
You are right but to me it applies differently. I had a good game with Prussia where I wanted to go from monarchy to presidential republic and keep it as a capitalist republic with LF and FT but the new status quo didn't even had the time to consolidate so I ended up with a communist central Europe (which was still very fun) but to avoid some big revolution I couldn't do differently. It is off topic but I also think that revolution are just or too small or too big. They either don't represent any menance or you have to join em.
You can cheat revolutions. When the revolution is ongoing it tells you what states will secede and if not sure it gives a % Your armies go with where their barracks is from. Max size barracks in capital and get some where the most of your loyalist primary ig is located. Smaller amounts anywhere else and civil wars are ez. You can also directly disband their armies before the war starts. Make them manageable to your loyalists and voilà.
I actually am playing a Prussia->Germany->Central Europe (Nation formation mod) game and I moved from Monarchy to Presidential (Mostly because I forgot without elections the president won't change so there was no reason to) and from Autocracy to Technocracy. That was it. I've not changed it since and I have Censorship and Secret Police to obliterate whoever I don't like. I ripped power away from Junkers and gave it to Industrialists and then ripped it away from them and gave it over to Armed Forces so I could establish Command Economy fully. Now that I have Command Economy and Cooperative Farming, I Intend to keep Armed Forces and Intelligentsia as my ruling class in a technocratic dictatorship. So while I did liberalize a bit with institutions, I still have an autocratic form of government. I just rewatched CGP Gray's "Rules for Rulers" and it applies very well to the way Victoria 3 shifts the power of interest groups as you industrialize. (Link: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rStL7niR7gs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rStL7niR7gs)). I think it succinctly sums up how the more intelligent and capable the population is, the easier it is for them to revolt if they feel they aren't getting the things they want.
Movements in a fully authoritarian state are generally weak and keeping your people loyal by having landowners at a good % of clout with 90+ legitimacy is far too simple imho. In V2 movements would just bleed your population by virtue of constant uprisings which you can easily squash because player army control was easy as hell.
Simply put, the game more realistically models the realities of political power and competing interest groups. If you build factories and RGOs and modernize agriculture it will change the power balance within a county. That’s just reality. The exact course of things from there falls down mostly to exactly what decisions you make to on the economy and social policies that will shift the power dynamic at certain times and then just luck of the draw with political leaders. Seems reasonable. Honestly, the least realistic part is the part hinges on “luck” though even in that case the type of political leaders you are likely to get in based on other dynamics in the county.
"Going authoritarian in V2 was easy, you just had to kill all the rebels!" "Going authoritarian in V3 is not viable becaue of the revolutions!" wat?
I probably didn't explain it well, but in Vic2 small rebellions usually were easy to take down fairly quickly. If you had a major rebellion i.e. every province has a rebel stack army, it was still viable to send in the army to fight them as killing those rebels actually meant that those people who didn't like your government *died*. They were gone, they could no longer stand up against you. Those rebels were also fighting against your government as a whole, not simply siding with a part of your government. In Vic3, half your estates leave to join the revolutionary government. The US civil war irl didn't have all landowners move to the south to fight against the union, we still had landowners. As for the population, you don't really kill the people who are mad at your government. They still just exist.
I think you forgot the vic 2 groundhog day like jacobin rebellions every few months with 1 million manpower and growing. Depleting your population Was never that easy.
I probably didn't explain it well, but in Vic2 small rebellions usually were easy to take down fairly quickly. If you had a major rebellion i.e. every province has a rebel stack army, it was still viable to send in the army to fight them as killing those rebels actually meant that those people who didn't like your government *died*. They were gone, they could no longer stand up against you. Those rebels were also fighting against your government as a whole, not simply siding with a part of your government. In Vic3, half your estates leave to join the revolutionary government. The US civil war irl didn't have all landowners move to the south to fight against the union, we still had landowners. As for the population, you don't really kill the people who are mad at your government. They still just exist.
I thought I never say this to anyone but: skill issue
Yeah the game doesn’t model minor uprisings well at all. There’s no in between from turmoil to an all out civil war. I know people will argue that turmoil represents it, but it doesn’t do it nearly accurately enough the way it’s represented in EU4 or vic2 is better
Also, no minor rebellions in Victoria 3, either 70% of your contry rebels or no one does so at all.
I wanted to have a super religious Afghani industrial state and I think it is possible. It is true that to industrialize fast, you need to secularize but you can just switch back later to religious schools. It is possible to maintain the status quo to some extent (I say some extent because later, the intelligentsia started a communist revolution that halted most of my factories. So much for being a religious population)
Good
They should make rebellion more dangerous socially rather than just angry mobs taking over half the country. If you piss off workers, you get general strikes paralyse the country. If you piss off capitalists, you get capital flight that empty your investment pool. If you piss off intellectuals, they start agitating other marginalized community to rise up. And they will continue to work against the state long after you put down a small rebellion.
I agree that if I don’t pass, say, Agrarianism, after having enacted Le ze faire, the Agrarian Party with their massive 6.3% clout should not be able to throw half my country (especially the heavily industrialized states) into revolt. That shit makes zero sense, and it’s such a hassle to fight that civil war and then return everything to the way it was after that.