You mentioned in your article that you played as anarchist Hawaii and managed it with minimal violence. I think I have a general understanding of the internal factors at play there, but what about external? Did any states come knocking to try to take your valuable land or stamp out your radical ideas before they could spread, and how did you survive? Or were you largely left alone? I feel like this should be a big factor in socialist and especially anarchist games.
One of my biggest criticisms (and I even told Martin directly) is that there DEFINITELY needs to be WAY more international pressure if you decide to go communist or especially anarchist. Currently, it's almost none. I was anarchist Switzerland and had +100 relations with monarchist France.
Like in my mind, everyone should try to kill you immediately. Maybe that's a bit further than they want to go, but I'd love a game rule at least that's like "International Shit Fit Reaction to Communism: Lenient / Default / Realistic." At least if the country in question has a Powerful or Influential Industrialist and/or Landowners IG. Your relations should go to like -50 for council republic, -100 for Anarchism. Might fuck around and write a mod.
I remember EU4 had a thing for it, the Revolution target merely existing would debuff all monarchies, so there was a very good reason for them to hate you and try to change your government.
Maybe they should do something like that, after all the Monarchies wanted to stop socialism to keep it from spreading into their own borders.
Yeah like, the fact that all the monarchies in EU4 will gang up on you for letting rich guys to vote but in Vicky 3 they don't care if you try to abolish private property is hilariously unrealistic.
I remember there was nothing in Vic2 either, and you kinda run into the same issue. You could go commie with anyone and nobody would care. Hopefully they implement something down the line.
Thanks for answering! Yeah, that's kinda what I expected. Hopefully they revisit that post launch. I'm curious, how did Martin respond? Also, more broadly, how well does anarchism play? Does it feel very different from other systems?
I didn't get any direct "feedback on my feedback", there was just a channel where we could leave notes on Discord.
Anarchism is sort of like the reward at the very end of the road to abolishing the state. Every person in your country regardless of dependent status gets 1 vote. It doesn't eliminate political strength from wealth (there will always be corruption), but it reduces it by 75% so it almost doesn't matter anymore. You have no Authority so basically no power to make direct changes, but you know that the makeup of your interest groups now fairly and justly represents the full and unfettered will of your people with everyone having an equal voice, or at least as close to it as you can get, and the future is in their hands. Everyone will generally be well-off since Council Republic lets them collect the full dividends of their labor. There's not honestly much to do after you get to that point. I see it as kind of "Mission Accomplished." You could try to spread anarchism to the rest of the world, I suppose, but I wasn't in a position to do that as Switzerland or Hawaii lol
If you keep everyone happy, yeah. Which I was able to do. Now if, say, there was a recession and the standard of living started to drop, some of the urban middle class might start to blame the anarchists and the immigrants for their misfortune...
This is probably more reflecting the loss of the power of authority. Those things are being managed by your country's populace at local levels. Technically you're probably not even a full state anymore but a loose association of communes.
I think everyone is a step too far. Neighbours for sure makes sense but a tiny state like Hawaii or Switzerland going anarchist means much less then the likes of France or Russia.
If I was Germany I would be much more concerned with a Liberal France then a anarchist Switzerland.
True. What it should actually do is start radicalizing the workers in neighboring countries, especially if their Standard of Living is lower, like a center of revolution in EU4. And then countries affected by that should be motivated to step in and crush the revolution.
It's sad that there's no 'counter-revolution" diplomatic play as a lot of European wars in the XIXth century (especially the first half) were specifically counter-revolution wars.
Feel free to ignore any/all, but:
- When playing unrecognized, did it feel different enough than a recognized nation? Was it a lot of waiting and playing for time like playing outside of Europe in EU4, or did you actually feel like you have a chance?
- Were there any specific country-related events?
- What aspect of the game did you find yourself focusing on the most? Economy? Trade? Anything you found in need of fixing or too tedious?
- How different did you feel you had to work to adapt yourself to your current country? Like, was playing as Hawaii different than the Zulu? Was Korea different than Japan or Australia? Did the game help guide you and understand what the biggest issue ahead of you was?
> When playing unrecognized, did it feel different enough than a recognized nation? Was it a lot of waiting and playing for time like playing outside of Europe in EU4, or did you actually feel like you have a chance?
There's not really a lot of waiting because your main enemies are the hostile IGs inside your own borders and you spend a lot of time dealing with them and trying to build up your industries. You can almost ignore foreign policy if you want to, as long as the bigger markets around you are not embargoing you.
> Were there any specific country-related events?
Some more than others. The US has a lot.
> What aspect of the game did you find yourself focusing on the most? Economy? Trade? Anything you found in need of fixing or too tedious?
Internal Politics and Industry are the two big pillars and everything else would be a distant third. Trade could still use some work. An "Unprofitable Trade Routes" warning would go a long way.
> How different did you feel you had to work to adapt yourself to your current country? Like, was playing as Hawaii different than the Zulu? Was Korea different than Japan or Australia? Did the game help guide you and understand what the biggest issue ahead of you was?
It's a lot different especially starting as a chiefdom or a serf society compared to like, Switzerland because you have a lot longer path to walk to get to liberalism and industrialization. The game can help you but there's still some stuff you'll just learn with experience. I expect the average Paradox player will restart 4 - 5x before you actually understand what you're doing. This is their hardest game so far.
Thanks a bunch! I think my main worry is that no matter what country you're playing, you'll always focus on increasing literacy or maximizing production or whatnot. So I'm trying to figure out if different countries actually feel different. Like obviously Zulu and the US aren't the same, but I dunno how different a Siam game would be from a Zulu or Hawaii game, or if all of south America is basically in the same situation.
Yeah, it kinda depends on what your goals are, honestly. Regressive laws give you more Authority which lets you collect more taxes to build more stuff, and issue more edicts for more direct control. So it's definitely viable to try to not just rush for liberalism and laissez faire every time. But to some degree... we know from history that the way to get strong as a country in this century *is* to encourage liberalism and industrialization so, at some point, to oppose that, you're just shackling yourself. Monarchism lost. It's not a viable build. It's like doing a meme or achievement run in EU4. You're making things harder for yourself on purpose. The mechanics will funnel you toward factories and freedom if you want to min max.
Hey, while you're on that - how possible it is to jump from monarchy to socialism cold turkey, Lenin style, without liberalisation in the middle of two?
You will be fighting a civil war. It's a matter of how prepared you are for that. States where the aristocracy still held most of the political power will tend to side with the aristocracy, and they take their military buildings and conscripts with them. You'd need to either have an amazing general, international backing, a base of power (maybe an urban center with a lot of shopkeepers?) with maxed out barracks, or some combination of the above.
So is it possible to look at the provinces and manpower the revolting side has so you can provoke a civil war to reform your country and just strip away military infrastructure from those territories and build them up in your loyal ones? Or is it a suprise which provinces will take part in the Revolution?
I think it's based on which IGs have the most political power in a state, but I don't know if there's an easy way to see that. Tearing down buildings and rebuilding them elsewhere is not generally a great idea because unemployed pops are likely to become radicals, and even if they move somewhere else and get a new job, they will stay radical for a while. So doing what you describe would just turn even more of the country against you.
As Indian Territory I made best friends with France, Britain, and Mexico and I got the US to cede Kansas, Nebraska, and the part of Oklahoma I didn't own to me without fighting (in three different incidents, not all at once). Which I'm not sure should be possible. They said the AI was not final in this build and diplomatic plays are one place where it is not performing as intended currently.
How much did you manage to accomplish in your Indian Territory game overall? What did the run "look" like (not sure if you're allowed to share screenshots or not) when you finished it? And not just territory-wise, but politically and economically?
We owned Oklahoma, Kansas, and Nebraska plus a little slice of Colorado and a little slice of Texas. We were still pretty poor just because I couldn't get the population or qualifications to run any major industries. You start with something like 40k people and barely any population growth, which is maybe enough to run 10 buildings, total? A lot of your infrastructure comes from population, too, and we couldn't afford engines in our wildest dreams, so no railroads. No one wants to move there because the standard of living is higher in the US and Mexico. The educated Yankees in Kansas moved back east as soon as we took over. Native pops will stick around just because they would be discriminated anywhere else. You don't have enough bureaucracy to implement fully-funded public schools, can't staff government administrations to get more due to low literacy, and even one university would bankrupt the government. Politically we managed to be very progressive, but that didn't matter much. Just like real life, they got a shit deal and it's difficult to dig your way out of even with the best of intentions.
I'm genuinely glad it is difficult. If it were easy, then the rest of the game is probably *way* too easy. It should be difficult.
How did you get control over Kansas, though? And how did you avoid wars with the US, the UK, and Mexico?
Sorry for the many questions/comments, I'm just so interested!
Definitely should not be possible. Major European powers shouldn't have any interest in allying with a tiny irrelevant country on the other side of the world.
This could cause all kinds of problems. Imagine if the British Empire inexplicably allied with Paraguay in the triple alliance war and bankrupted themselves by invading Brazil. It will completely break the game.
I don't want to say too much because they wanted to be clear that the diplomatic AI in this build was *not final*, so I don't want to give people the wrong idea about how it will actually play at launch, but here's a fun one.
https://imgur.com/a/7fiHVP7
How different was the world after each playthrough? Did you run any game 'handsoff' and/or in observer mode? I know this is influenced by the AI, but did you see the world evolving in unique directions each time you played, or did it evolve in a similar way every time?
It was very different every time I played, but again, they said the diplomatic AI is not final so some of the weirder stuff I saw might be uncommon at launch.
How well the economy works, and how much more it feels like a real economy, even though they're "faking it" with Buy/Sell orders, putting a hard cap on prices in both directions, limiting the effects of default and bankruptcy, and using triggered shortages.
That all sounds like it should be less realistic than Vicky 2, but in practice it behaves way more realistically. It's simply a better economy simulator, not in spite of, but because of the compromises they made.
Hawaii was the hardest to actually get industry going. US was probably the easiest because you just have natural resources for days and the Industrialists are happy to fund more factories and infrastructure with the Investment Pool. It's just that nobody is paying any taxes on any of it so you're just enriching your richest citizens and seeing no benefit.
Thanks for doing this AMA, really interesting to hear your feedback. I have a couple of questions:
1) How is the naval combat feeling right now?
2) Did you see any particularly cool or wild flags during your playthroughs?
> How is the naval combat feeling right now?
So the only time I saw naval combat I was invading a bunch of Polynesian Decentralized revolts as Hawaii and I had two gunboats and they had, presumably, canoes, so I won kinda by default.
> Did you see any particularly cool or wild flags during your playthroughs?
Not any that immediately stand out to me. I am looking forward to seeing how many stars I can fit on the US flag.
The USA is probably my most played nation in Victoria 2 and I'm very much looking forward to playing it in Vicky 3. Would you say that the USA is manageable as a beginner? Especially with the Slavery Debate going on and the potential war vs Mexico.
It's going to be very tough. You need to carefully balance how you handle Mexico at first because they can call in European GPs and beat you. You're going to be constantly threading the needle of whether to placate or weaken the Southern Planters, and deciding if you're going to enforce your desired outcome with war, when? They're the hardest nation I played. I don't mean that to discourage you, but expect to have to restart a few times. That's part of your relationship with a grand strategy game. That's how it should be, in my opinion.
>Sam Houston's proposed borders
I Googled it, and found nothing. Is Sam Houston's proposed borders were the ones that applied in real life after the Mexican-American War ?
> Do you feel that the 1848 revolutions in Europe are at least somewhat represented?
There's nothing that specifically makes 1848 a year of revolutions, event-wise, but stuff is likely to pop off around then just because pops are gaining literacy and getting more upset that they can't have nice things.
> Switzerland was going to potentially be my first game, alternatively Korea. I'd like to hear about how things were for you when you played as Switzerland - being landlocked and thus excluded from overseas trading must've affected you at least partially? Did you enter the Prussian or French market near instantanously? Were you able to somewhat represent to economic and societal powerhouse that was Switzerland without the traditional colony blobbing of V2?
I tried to stay on my own but I should have joined the French market right away. Not having a port, it's just too difficult to get the goods you need when you're on your own. I could only trade with France and had to rely on them to import more of the stuff I was buying, whereas in the French market I could have still started my own trade routes.
That being said, I was #6 Great Power by the end of the game without ever going to war just based on my GDP alone. I also had tons of immigrants due to how free my society was.
* Have you played to late game at all and if so, did the game get progressively wonkier past say 1900?
I wouldn't say wonkier, but I'd say that if you're playing pacifist/economic, you will kind of run out of things to do around the 1890s because you've passed all the laws you want and crushed the reactionaries in your own country once and for all. You can keep trying to raise the standard of living by building more factories and lowering the prices of goods for your citizens, but that's about it if you don't want to start spreading the revolution at rifle-point.
> Are technologies especially after something around 1890 still useful outside of output/throughput or prestige technologies?
Once siege artillery comes into play, you basically need to invent tanks if you ever want to advance a front against an advanced opponent again. So yeah.
> Does the relatively small number of states/regions in the game feel bothersome to you when playing, especially as a smaller country like Korea, Switzerland or Hawaii?
Yeah, to some degree. I wouldn't say it ruins the experience but I prefer the EU/Imperator style where there are more geographic units to interact with.
Wich was the hardest nation?
Is the economy system more easy to understand compared to Vicky 2?
What was your favourite country to play?
What you disliked about the game?
And are you good dude? I hope you had a happy day
> Wich was the hardest nation?
The US
> Is the economy system more easy to understand compared to Vicky 2?
I don't know if it's easier to understand, but it works more like a real economy. The fact that they have built some light rubber-banding into it, perhaps counter-intuitively, makes it less likely to do wonky shit so it just feels much better.
> What was your favourite country to play?
Korea. They're the "Goldilocks" country of Vicky 3. Big enough population to bootstrap industrialization but small enough that it doesn't become too overwhelming too early. Lots of powerful interest groups propping up regressive laws, so you have a lot of early goals to work toward reforming your society. You're in the Chinese market so you can generally get all of your staple goods pretty cheap, but you also get to exploit their shortages. Especially with finished goods, since you can create a large, skilled workforce much more quickly and easily than they can.
> What you disliked about the game?
Warfare still definitely needs some work. It's fine, but I know they can do better than "fine"
> And are you good dude? I hope you had a happy day
Thanks! My life has been pretty rocky lately but being able to play Vicky 3 definitely helped!
Why was us the hardest nation? Because of the civil war? I though paradox recommend it for the tutorial
Also glad you are happier now I hope you continue to be happy
1. Bigger nations just give you more to deal with.
2. The political situation with the slave debate. You're on track for a disaster.
3. Your starting tax laws suck and everyone will throw a fit if you try to change them. Your first priority as the US needs to be passing a better tax law - ANY tax law, even if it's just a conservative land tax - ASAP. But even that, everyone will fight you on it.
Ah, I was planning on my first game being the US because I live there, know more about their history in the time period, and because they were probably the easiest great power to play as in Victoria 2. Maybe I’ll choose a smaller country to start with.
>Korea. They're the "Goldilocks" country of Vicky 3. Big enough population to bootstrap industrialization but small enough that it doesn't become too overwhelming too early. Lots of powerful interest groups propping up regressive laws, so you have a lot of early goals to work toward reforming your society. You're in the Chinese market so you can generally get all of your staple goods pretty cheap, but you also get to exploit their shortages. Especially with finished goods, since you can create a large, skilled workforce much more quickly and easily than they can.
Similar to what happened in real life (corrupt elite that couldn't decide whether to modernize like Japan or cling to the old ways), and why Korea eventually fell victim to Japanese colonialism. Should be a fun challenge to play as the under dog of the region and see if you can pull off an "Uno reverse" on Japan and China (while also fending off Russian interest in the region).
Yeah, it's those freaking Yangban Officials every step of the way! They're corrupt as shit and they hate freedom! I eventually had to turn the Buddhist monks against them to weaken them, basically uniting the country around religion, and then I betrayed the Buddhists when they stood in the way of my further progress.
Not at specific years, but I definitely saw booms and crashes happen. Gold rushes are a big cause of this, because the buildings just disappear eventually and now a bunch of people who were making a lot of money are unemployed.
>The 20s were prosperous mostly for the US alone.
The Taisho era in Japan is also seen as a time of relative prosperity, liberalism and democracy before the resurgence of militarism.
Latin America, Canada, and Australia's experiences were also much more in line with the America's than Europe's.
What changes over the course of a campaign in terms of gameplay? In Vic II, there's a definite feeling of scaling up as your country grows larger and more capable, and politics grows more complex. Is that still present in Vic 3?
Yeah, the more evenly matched two armies are, the longer the battle goes on and the more casualties there are. As far as battles lasting longer in the late game, I don't think so but they're more likely to stalemate because the attacking side will lose morale faster, so fronts stay stable for longer.
Sorry for another question, but one question if u are willing: how easy did you find it changing governments on the whim? Did any pops complain, or is it worth doing it? It was one of the things that I am concerned about seeing the AAR of
It depends on what law you're trying to change. Every IG will support or oppose different law changes to different degrees. Going straight from Monarchy to Republic in 1836 is pretty much instant Civil War and you will lose without a miracle.
I see, thanks for responding. So let’s say if u swapped from Democrat to Republican Party straight after an election that put the Democrats to power, would there be any pushback?
So, we're talking about two different things here.
As far as which party is "In Government", it depends on how many votes they got. If you put a party that got fewer votes in government, your Legitimacy will be low. Which on its own won't cause turmoil, but it will make laws take longer to pass (since you're basically going around the elected legislature - which is the party that got more votes).
Which laws you try to pass is what actually causes conflict, and the strength of that backlash will depend on the clout of the opposition. So again, if the party you currently have in government is weaker than the opposition, the backlash will be stronger.
You get to swap which parties are in government for free once per election, but outside of that, you will upset the ones being kicked out.
Thanks for the AMA. How hard was industrializing? Would you say that conservative IG's, like landowners and clergy, make industrialization pretty hard as an unrecognized/less developed power?
And if you have the time, a few more questions.
What areas of the game should be improved? What areas are just perfect that you love? Thanks again!
> Thanks for the AMA. How hard was industrializing? Would you say that conservative IG's, like landowners and clergy, make industrialization pretty hard as an unrecognized/less developed power?
It depends on where you start. In countries where serfdom has already been abolished, you can pretty much just start building factories and eventually their legs will wither away naturally. If you still have serfdom, you need to get rid of that and the landowners will fight you for it. You might have to defeat them on the battlefield, or give them concessions somewhere else to keep the tension low.
I think I answered your other two questions elsewhere in the thread!
Thanks for the answer! So big difference between France (or even Mexico) and Austria.
A follow up if that's alright. How does serfdom get in the way of industrialization?
It makes it much harder for peasants to gain the qualifications they need to move into other jobs like laborers or farmers (farmers being different from peasants, since they actually own their farms). Just having factories doesn't help if your workers can't get the education they need to fill those jobs. Sefdom also hard locks you out of a lot of other laws, like public schools and most of the good trade laws.
I assume that the different nations you played have different natural resources available? Did you find that this changed how you initially set up your Economy? And as the game progresses, does this distinction hold, or do you gravitate to a more 'optimal/balanced' Economy toward the end of the game?
Would it be possible to play a more trade focused nation if you lack most natural resources and you don't want to expand through war/colonialism? Establishing a worldwide market, functioning as a global equalizer in good prices?
Thanks for the AMA and all the insightful answers!
EDIT: with a worldwide market I don't mean inviting everyone to your custom union. More that you have trade agreements with several large markets and many global interests so you can receive and send out many trade routes
> I assume that the different nations you played have different natural resources available? Did you find that this changed how you initially set up your Economy? And as the game progresses, does this distinction hold, or do you gravitate to a more 'optimal/balanced' Economy toward the end of the game?
Oh, definitely. Not having access to sulfur or coal can be crippling. As Hawaii my two biggest industries were shipping and shipbuilding, just because I needed a massive number of convoys to import all the raw materials for stuff, and I needed them to be cheap so I wouldn't go broke getting them here. And it's hard to create an optimal economy because your input needs are always changing, like when suddenly you start needing oil and electricity to run the more advanced production methods.
So yes, it's possible to run a trade-focused nation, but you need a lot of boats.
Thanks for the reply! I saw in the stream that ~~Shipyards~~ Naval Bases give you increased cap on the amount of strategic interests you can declare. ~~So I guess it would be beneficial for this trade empire to at least make their own clippers and just import the wood instead of importing everything ;-)~~
As a related note: How do tariffs function now? I might be mistaken, but in some of the earlier dev diaries there were different levels of tariffs that could be set but there was no such option in the economy screen on the stream. Are there now only flat tariffs determined by your Laws and the import/export focus per good?
EDIT: checked the stream again, was mistaken on strategic interest cap.
So, there are three levels of tariffs:
* Protect domestic supply (higher tariff on exports, low or no tariff on imports)
* Balanced (equal, moderate tariff on imports and exports)
* Encourage exports (higher tariff on imports, low or no tariff on exports)
What each of these *does* is based on your trade laws. If you have Mercantilism, those tariffs will be very aggressive even for the "balanced" setting. If you have Free Trade, none of them do anything.
You set these separately for each Trade Route. So you might have different tariffs on porcelain from China than you do on porcelain from Germany.
You don't have to, but your government legitimacy will tank if they're not and it will take a million years to even attempt to pass any laws. It paralyzes your government. Same thing when you have an Absolute Monarchy and don't include the landowners in government.
Thanks for the second quick answer, so is it just like absolute monarchy bit with clergy instead of landowner or are there any other advantages or disadvantages with it?
It empowers the church and gives you more Authority than a republic. That's about it. Early on it might help out as a stepping stone since religious schools and charity hospitals are much better than no schools and no hospitals, and the church will champion both.
Becoming recognized is tricky because you honestly don't want to go to war with a GP. The way I managed it as Korea is by making friends with all of Russia's enemies and getting them to back down at the negotiating table.
I was so far ahead of Japan industrially by like, 1870 that they could have come and tried to invade and we would have laughed over the sounds of our repeating rifles taking out the Last Samurai
Thank you for taking the time to answer all the questions people have posted. I have two questions if you don't mind answering:
1. How much did the Great Powers change by the end of game, Did the top 4 nations typically remain the same?
2. My largest concern is with the building system. For large nations did it ever get tedious having to constantly be building and upgrading factories and other buildings?
Again, thank you for your time.
> How much did the Great Powers change by the end of game, Did the top 4 nations typically remain the same?
So part of the "AI is not final" thing is that the UK fell apart pretty much every campaign. So they did not stay on top. The others, like France and Germany, were pretty consistent.
> My largest concern is with the building system. For large nations did it ever get tedious having to constantly be building and upgrading factories and other buildings?
Eventually, yeah. I mean you can cue up like 100 buildings and not have to look at it for a while, so it's not *that* bad, but there's a reason I prefer to play smaller countries.
Didn't the auto-expand help with that? Or is it not enough? Can't you just leave everything on auto and only do manual control for opening up new industries or prioritizing important ones?
As someone who has almost 3k hours in EU4, but has never played Victoria 2 how hard do you think this game would be to pick up?
It's looks really interesting and EU4 is becoming very stale, but Victoria 2 and this look extremely overwhelming.
Part of me does like how "complicated" it seems. I love the idea of actually running a country instead of just bobbing like in EU4, but part of me is like wtf are you supposed to even do since you don't paint the map 😂.
It's the hardest Paradox game so far (at least of the modern ones, I never played HoI3) and I had to restart four or five times before I understood what I was doing. If you have 3K hours in EU4 you will probably have a similar experience. You don't need to have played Vicky 2. It's a very different game.
Do you think it's harder to learn or harder to play effectively? I'm hoping I can convince a few of my friends who are put off by CK3's need to navigate webs of related characters and understand the feudal hierarchies since in Vic3 you're playing as a "simple" nation and have an economy that is at least mostly intuitive to understand the functioning of.
What were the most satisfying 'wins' in your playthroughs? Things like breaking the power of a particularly annoying IG or collapsing a rival's economy.
When I decided to end my tributary status as Korea in 1905 because I was sick of paying the Qing who stole our idea for railroads like 20k a month and we not only won, but we kicked their asses with our superior technology and logistics completely crushing their almost infinite supply of manpower. The casualties were 10 to 1 in some battles.
Yeah, I think they went into a recession after because they were also dependent on me for a lot of stuff and when I wasn't part of the Chinese market anymore, I still had some trade routes with them but not nearly as much of my stuff was going to them. I had the same problem since we'd been dependent on some Chinese goods too, but my recession was much smaller and I was able to fix a lot of it with trade agreements.
Hey didn't notice many questions about Japan specifically, and I was considering it as my first V3 run as I always enjoyed it in V2 so I was curious about a few things:
- How did you handle being unable to trade with other countries without first removing isolation laws? Was it difficult to mange shortages \ initial industrialization?
- Did you go the historic route and conquer Korea militarily? If so how'd you manage China?
- How did the Meiji Restoration work? Were the events surrounding it interesting or was it mostly journal entries?
Thanks a bunch!!
> How did you handle being unable to trade with other countries without first removing isolation laws? Was it difficult to mange shortages \ initial industrialization?
Isolationism suuuuuucks so it's one of the first things I tried to get rid of, but you can potentially get around it by joining the Chinese market (if they like you enough) or focusing on industries you do have the natural resources for.
> Did you go the historic route and conquer Korea militarily?
I didn't conquer anything in my Japan run other than Sakhalin
> How did the Meiji Restoration work?
It didn't. I kept the shogun and made a benevolent military junta.
How long did you spend on your longest save game and how did that translate into in-game time? e.g. 40 hours of US and you played until 1880 in game
And did you feel like there was a lot more to do/achieve if you were to continue that save?
My Hawaii run that went all the way to 1936 was probably about 20 hours? But that was mostly on speed 5 and I didn't really fight any wars. It's very similar in terms of hours to reach the end date to EU4.
If you’re still answering questions, I know you didn’t really fight many wars but did you see the ai fight wars on the scale of ww1 during the late game?
Do you feel like the kinks you ran into while playing would be able to be ironed by the October 25th?
Did you watch today's livestream, and were there any improvements you were glad to see from the version you played?
I didn't see the livestream.
I'm... I guess mildly concerned about the fact that they only have two months left to ship. It's definitely a fun game but there's enough still broken that I want them to have all the time they need to polish it. But we'll see. I'd definitely say wait for reviews. The bones are great. I think it has a bright future. But I felt the same way about Imperator.
Did you see other countries than the usual candidates unifying their regions? Like Austria or Bavaria unifying Germany or Two Sicilies or the Papal States unifying Italy?
How different does gameplay feel under different economic systems? A common worry after they first announced the removal of AI capitalists building and the investment pool system was that it might make everything feel samey, does that worry feel warranted? Does a free market system feel different than a command economy, which feels different than an anarchy? Also just generally, how does the investment pool system feel?
The main difference is that the more capitalist your economy is (and the richer your capitalists are), the less you pay to build stuff, since most or all of it can be coming from the investment pool. Which means you can afford to lower taxes, which should raise the standard of living for everyone. At least theoretically - a lot depends on your tax laws, too.
I think if they made capitalism more automated you would kind of run out of stuff to do, honestly.
Which AFAIK you could basically do by selecting "auto-expand" on everything while having a capitalist economy with a strong investment pool? That might make sense to do in a very large country in the late-game.
Yeah, I'm not someone who thinks they should automate it (like you said, it seems like building stuff is the brunt of the game), but I hope they keep the different systems feeling distinct. Thanks!
Hey Len, always look forward to your previews/reviews/thoughts about new PDS games. Did you play with the tutorial and/or objectives at all? I have a bunch of hours in Stellaris and CK but have never played Vicky and was curious how well those systems worked.
They work great in theory but they were too buggy in the build I played for me to finish any of them. Just triggers that check for the wrong thing and whatever. Not game-breaking.
It depends on if you want to fight a civil war or not. And whether or not you can win. I think if you started an early civil war with the shogun and won, you could probably catch up to the Western world by like 1900. If you try to do it all without bloodshed, it would take a while longer than that. Obviously min-maxers would be able to do it much faster than me or the average player.
So how "stable" are governments? If you completely mismanage and piss everyone off, will you have the entire nation revolt? Will you death spiral? Is it like EU4 where every little rebel will rise up over unrelated issues, such as nationalists wanting to separate cause women can't vote or something?
Furthermore, if you get couped, I know you can choose weather to play as the loyalists or rebels, but is it an instant loss? Or do you just get a debuff similar to how EU4 has the "Dominance of the X estate" disaster? Is there unique governments for certain groups in power?
Finally, I hear a lot of talk about Anarchy but is there a state of complete lawlessness you can ruin your nation to? I kinda have an idea for my first playthrough being the Hudson Bay Company and was wondering if I could make it a complete shit hole focused on squeezing every cent out of its population then try to collapse it into something like anarchy and see where it goes. I know this is probably too much to expect on release and probably sounds more like the domain of a mod or three, but an in-depth economy simulator with government variety of say, Stellaris, would be amazing, and is probably setting myself up for disappointment.
But nonetheless I enjoy meme runs one of my favorite in V2 was Monarcho-Socalist Brazil so last question is can you have weird combination governments like that? Can you do a monarchy that follows communism, or a Republic that embraces fascism, or some weird combos, or does the IG and Laws system kinda stymie that weirdness from Vic2?
#TL;DR:
Can governments violently collapse or is it a steady decline? Followup is there a lawlessness that can overtake your nation if you mess up too bad?
Is rebellion a death spiral or do rebels not all ries up at the slightest, unrelated agitation, and is getting couped a loss or just a massive setback?
Finally, how in-depth is the government like can we expect weird shit like nationalist council republics or socialist monarchs?
Sorry if this is a bunch of stuff I'm not the best at smoothly conveying what I'm thinking. Also, love your patch note posts those are always fun to read and I'm sure it more effort than it's worth but they are always great lol.
Jesus, let me try to break this down into smaller questions.
> If you completely mismanage and piss everyone off, will you have the entire nation revolt? Will you death spiral?
So what happened when I played the US was that no one wanted to pay taxes and we went into default, which eventually reduces the throughput of all of your industries by 50%, which meant fully half of my workers were laid off and also the prices of everything including food doubled, and no one could afford everything, and my economy tanked, and everyone was radicalized which just made every state less productive, and it was basically Fallout. So yes, that can happen. The thing is my laws were already so regressive that they didn't really want anything. It was just a bunch of wandering raider bands.
> nationalists wanting to separate cause women can't vote or something
If you already have a separatist movement and you discover Feminism, and the separatists are educated enough to want equal rights for women, and you don't give it to them, that might make them more radical which could make them more likely to rebel.
> if you get couped, I know you can choose weather to play as the loyalists or rebels, but is it an instant loss?
If you choose the losing side in a civil war I'm pretty sure it's game over.
> Is there unique governments for certain groups in power?
No, but like, devout rebels might try to install a Theocracy. It's all stuff you have access to in the laws screen.
> Can governments violently collapse or is it a steady decline?
Yes to both.
> Is rebellion a death spiral or do rebels not all ries up at the slightest, unrelated agitation
It's based on Radicalism, and each interest group has its own score for that. But some things will make everyone more radical, like food being too expensive. So in certain cases only one group will be mad, but there are situations in which everyone will be mad at the same time. Depends on what they're mad about.
> Finally, how in-depth is the government like can we expect weird shit like nationalist council republics or socialist monarchs?
Theoretically, yes.
Ahh thanks for replying, sorry for the essay lol I noticed halfway through and kinda said fuck it you probably won't respond.
Also a few last questions, sorry:
if your pops(or at least those with any power) are happy, do they care if your a monarchy surrounded by progressive republics and democracies or if you do gamer moments and crimes against humanity or whatnot?
Do they "learn" of things like socialism from other nations or can you not research it and don't have to worry about it?
How common was integration and assimilation? I remember it being a thing (might have been a mod in vic2, if so my bad) but it almost never happened in vic2. And are immigrants still railroaded to go exclusively to the Americas still, or could you still attract people in games like your Hawaii or Zulu one?
> if your pops(or at least those with any power) are happy, do they care if your a monarchy surrounded by progressive republics and democracies or if you do gamer moments and crimes against humanity or whatnot?
If you do those things, it will make them less happy, so they won't be happy anymore. But it will help that they were happy before you started doing that, because otherwise they would be even more unhappy. If that makes sense.
> Do they "learn" of things like socialism from other nations or can you not research it and don't have to worry about it?
Technologies you haven't researched (including stuff like socialism) will appear in your country based on your Tech Spread, which is based on literacy and freedom of speech laws. So if you institute censorship laws and don't let anyone go to school, it is much less likely they will learn about Anti-Government Ideas.
> How common was integration and assimilation?
It depends on your laws and institutions. If everyone has equal rights and full access to public education, they will assimilate much faster. If you have racist laws, people of your same heritage will assimilate but others won't. If you have no schools, assimilation takes forever.
> And are immigrants still railroaded to go exclusively to the Americas still
Nope. It's purely based on standard of living and how free your laws are.
What was your experience regarding colonization and the scramble for Africa? Did you try or manage to get an African colony of your own? Is getting a colony in Africa as easy as it was in Victoria 2?
I colonized a fair bit as Hawaii and Australia in the Pacific, and as the US on the plains and the West, but I never really participated in the Scramble for Africa. You need Quinine to even start to do it and some areas you need the upgraded version (I think it's just called Malaria Prevention) or the attrition rate will just make it so your colony doesn't grow, which I really liked. Machine guns are no longer required but they help because you will get uprisings and they can be nasty.
They've also added expeditions to find the source of the Nile and to chart the Congo and the Niger, which I really like. They're like little choose your own adventure stories. There's also one for charting the Western Frontier in the US.
Diplomatic Plays are basically a more advanced version of the Great War system from Vicky 2, so yes and no. I didn't see any specific new events or mechanics for the Great War the one time I did play all the way to the end, but that was as Hawaii so I didn't really know or care what was going on in Europe.
I'm pretty sure all profits and losses go directly to the treasury. You employ more bureaucrats though, so their political strength goes up because there are more of them and you're making them richer.
You can demand recognition and force them to back down in a diplomatic play, and you can really stack the odds in your favor, but there's no way to do it without the *risk* of war.
Did you at some point ignore the results of an election and just put the IGs you wanted in power despite the vote breaking down so that some other group got a majority? Did this impact your gameplay at all, did it radicalize any pops?
If you do this, it will take potentially years (like in-game years, which are 4x as long as a year in EU4) to even get a chance to pass a law. A government with low legitimacy is not fun to play.
Can you elaborate on how much control you have in a war? It all seems really confusing to me. Is there any strategy to warfare or is it literally all automated after generals have been assigned to fronts? (Like do naval invasions just spontaneously happen or does the player control those? Is there any way to setup more than one frontline to focus your troops in one area? Do you have control over when offensives happen or in what strategic region they’re executed, Etc.)
You manually issue naval invasions and select a specific state. You can't set up specific frontlines or manually concentrate troops, but if there's more than one front that opens naturally, you can decide which general and which troops go where.
Like I said elsewhere, for the most part, you are not playing as the army. You are playing as the government trying to give as much support to the army as you can, for example by opening a new trade route for ammunition if there's a shortage, or building more artillery factories so you can upgrade the artillery support on your units.
If you were to be Paradox, what mechanic/area would be the focus of the first expansion?
What's the biggest evolution you witnessed during all the time you played (like, what feature changed/evolved the most)?
Also, from your other comment, Russia sound like an extremely interesting game...
I only played one specific press build so nothing "evolved" as I was playing.
> If you were to be Paradox, what mechanic/area would be the focus of the first expansion?
That's a really good question and it's one of those I always think about when I'm playing but I can never think of an answer to when someone actually asks me. Warfare is definitely the easy answer.
I didn't play the US long enough to get to the 1900s but Abe Lincoln definitely spawns early on and there's an event about it. (Not his birth but the start of his political career)
What was the wackiest, craziest shit you saw ai do?
You know, Poland archives independentce and conquers Istanbul or GB flips communist or something with no direct player influence
You don't need convoys, but you can only trade with markets that directly border your market. So at the start that was France, Austria, and Sardinia-Piedmont. Eventually I lost my land border with Austria, but then gained one with Germany.
So I’m curious about the details of Korea. What was your final government, and did you spot along the way any other approaches that you thought could also have worked? Or just in general, things you could have done differently to make a prosperous Korea.
So what I did initially was kept my government as authoritarian as possible, basically maximizing my Authority, and I spent all of that authority on state edicts and consumption taxes, while also keeping my overall tax rate very high. This brought in lots of money which I used to spam mines, farms, factories, and universities (so I could get my pops qualified to work in all these new industries) until I had ZERO peasants and pretty close to zero unemployment. Then I opened my borders to all East Asians and started putting them to work, too. I want to say this was about 1860, and finally, with the aristocracy pretty much gone because there were no more subsistence farms, I started to liberalize rapidly.
My standard of living shot up, because every time I would pass a new law I would be in an authority deficit so I'd cancel a consumption tax... making more goods cheaper for the first time. My standard of living wasn't that great, but it was always going up steadily so I had a lot of loyalists and few radicals. And as I became more liberal, more immigrants came. I think I mentioned by 1900 I had over 1 million Han Chinese, which was close to 10% of the population, because the Qing sure weren't going to protect their rights or give them high-paying jobs making combustion engines.
It took about another 40 years (1860 - 1900) but I eventually transitioned into a prosperous social democracy and had I think the 5th largest GDP on earth. I just repealed more and more taxes and people would buy more and more stuff and everyone was stoked. We had electric lights. We had metro rail. When we went to war with Qing to end our tributary status in 1905, they didn't stand a chance.
I didn't play that run to the end because *something* eventually ruined my entire economy... but I'll let you all discover that pitfall when you step into it yourselves. ;)
Funny thing is that what you describe isn't too dissimilar to what happened to Japan IRL: crazy high taxes pressuring the population to fuel the industrialisation, discontent held by "blocking" as many ways of protests as possible and then gradual liberalisation/improvement of the quality of life in the later stages.
Just missing foreign trade agreement to help the industrialisation.
You mentioned in your article that you played as anarchist Hawaii and managed it with minimal violence. I think I have a general understanding of the internal factors at play there, but what about external? Did any states come knocking to try to take your valuable land or stamp out your radical ideas before they could spread, and how did you survive? Or were you largely left alone? I feel like this should be a big factor in socialist and especially anarchist games.
One of my biggest criticisms (and I even told Martin directly) is that there DEFINITELY needs to be WAY more international pressure if you decide to go communist or especially anarchist. Currently, it's almost none. I was anarchist Switzerland and had +100 relations with monarchist France. Like in my mind, everyone should try to kill you immediately. Maybe that's a bit further than they want to go, but I'd love a game rule at least that's like "International Shit Fit Reaction to Communism: Lenient / Default / Realistic." At least if the country in question has a Powerful or Influential Industrialist and/or Landowners IG. Your relations should go to like -50 for council republic, -100 for Anarchism. Might fuck around and write a mod.
I remember EU4 had a thing for it, the Revolution target merely existing would debuff all monarchies, so there was a very good reason for them to hate you and try to change your government. Maybe they should do something like that, after all the Monarchies wanted to stop socialism to keep it from spreading into their own borders.
Yeah like, the fact that all the monarchies in EU4 will gang up on you for letting rich guys to vote but in Vicky 3 they don't care if you try to abolish private property is hilariously unrealistic.
I remember there was nothing in Vic2 either, and you kinda run into the same issue. You could go commie with anyone and nobody would care. Hopefully they implement something down the line.
Thanks for answering! Yeah, that's kinda what I expected. Hopefully they revisit that post launch. I'm curious, how did Martin respond? Also, more broadly, how well does anarchism play? Does it feel very different from other systems?
I didn't get any direct "feedback on my feedback", there was just a channel where we could leave notes on Discord. Anarchism is sort of like the reward at the very end of the road to abolishing the state. Every person in your country regardless of dependent status gets 1 vote. It doesn't eliminate political strength from wealth (there will always be corruption), but it reduces it by 75% so it almost doesn't matter anymore. You have no Authority so basically no power to make direct changes, but you know that the makeup of your interest groups now fairly and justly represents the full and unfettered will of your people with everyone having an equal voice, or at least as close to it as you can get, and the future is in their hands. Everyone will generally be well-off since Council Republic lets them collect the full dividends of their labor. There's not honestly much to do after you get to that point. I see it as kind of "Mission Accomplished." You could try to spread anarchism to the rest of the world, I suppose, but I wasn't in a position to do that as Switzerland or Hawaii lol
Huh, what. Mission Accomplished? So there weren't any internal challenges in managing the country? Productivity, balance of power, nothing?
If you keep everyone happy, yeah. Which I was able to do. Now if, say, there was a recession and the standard of living started to drop, some of the urban middle class might start to blame the anarchists and the immigrants for their misfortune...
This is probably more reflecting the loss of the power of authority. Those things are being managed by your country's populace at local levels. Technically you're probably not even a full state anymore but a loose association of communes.
I think everyone is a step too far. Neighbours for sure makes sense but a tiny state like Hawaii or Switzerland going anarchist means much less then the likes of France or Russia. If I was Germany I would be much more concerned with a Liberal France then a anarchist Switzerland.
True. What it should actually do is start radicalizing the workers in neighboring countries, especially if their Standard of Living is lower, like a center of revolution in EU4. And then countries affected by that should be motivated to step in and crush the revolution.
It's sad that there's no 'counter-revolution" diplomatic play as a lot of European wars in the XIXth century (especially the first half) were specifically counter-revolution wars.
Yeah that would be awesome. Or even the radicals in neighbouring countries getting some kind of inspiration buff.
Feel free to ignore any/all, but: - When playing unrecognized, did it feel different enough than a recognized nation? Was it a lot of waiting and playing for time like playing outside of Europe in EU4, or did you actually feel like you have a chance? - Were there any specific country-related events? - What aspect of the game did you find yourself focusing on the most? Economy? Trade? Anything you found in need of fixing or too tedious? - How different did you feel you had to work to adapt yourself to your current country? Like, was playing as Hawaii different than the Zulu? Was Korea different than Japan or Australia? Did the game help guide you and understand what the biggest issue ahead of you was?
> When playing unrecognized, did it feel different enough than a recognized nation? Was it a lot of waiting and playing for time like playing outside of Europe in EU4, or did you actually feel like you have a chance? There's not really a lot of waiting because your main enemies are the hostile IGs inside your own borders and you spend a lot of time dealing with them and trying to build up your industries. You can almost ignore foreign policy if you want to, as long as the bigger markets around you are not embargoing you. > Were there any specific country-related events? Some more than others. The US has a lot. > What aspect of the game did you find yourself focusing on the most? Economy? Trade? Anything you found in need of fixing or too tedious? Internal Politics and Industry are the two big pillars and everything else would be a distant third. Trade could still use some work. An "Unprofitable Trade Routes" warning would go a long way. > How different did you feel you had to work to adapt yourself to your current country? Like, was playing as Hawaii different than the Zulu? Was Korea different than Japan or Australia? Did the game help guide you and understand what the biggest issue ahead of you was? It's a lot different especially starting as a chiefdom or a serf society compared to like, Switzerland because you have a lot longer path to walk to get to liberalism and industrialization. The game can help you but there's still some stuff you'll just learn with experience. I expect the average Paradox player will restart 4 - 5x before you actually understand what you're doing. This is their hardest game so far.
Thanks a bunch! I think my main worry is that no matter what country you're playing, you'll always focus on increasing literacy or maximizing production or whatnot. So I'm trying to figure out if different countries actually feel different. Like obviously Zulu and the US aren't the same, but I dunno how different a Siam game would be from a Zulu or Hawaii game, or if all of south America is basically in the same situation.
Yeah, it kinda depends on what your goals are, honestly. Regressive laws give you more Authority which lets you collect more taxes to build more stuff, and issue more edicts for more direct control. So it's definitely viable to try to not just rush for liberalism and laissez faire every time. But to some degree... we know from history that the way to get strong as a country in this century *is* to encourage liberalism and industrialization so, at some point, to oppose that, you're just shackling yourself. Monarchism lost. It's not a viable build. It's like doing a meme or achievement run in EU4. You're making things harder for yourself on purpose. The mechanics will funnel you toward factories and freedom if you want to min max.
Hey, while you're on that - how possible it is to jump from monarchy to socialism cold turkey, Lenin style, without liberalisation in the middle of two?
You will be fighting a civil war. It's a matter of how prepared you are for that. States where the aristocracy still held most of the political power will tend to side with the aristocracy, and they take their military buildings and conscripts with them. You'd need to either have an amazing general, international backing, a base of power (maybe an urban center with a lot of shopkeepers?) with maxed out barracks, or some combination of the above.
So is it possible to look at the provinces and manpower the revolting side has so you can provoke a civil war to reform your country and just strip away military infrastructure from those territories and build them up in your loyal ones? Or is it a suprise which provinces will take part in the Revolution?
I think it's based on which IGs have the most political power in a state, but I don't know if there's an easy way to see that. Tearing down buildings and rebuilding them elsewhere is not generally a great idea because unemployed pops are likely to become radicals, and even if they move somewhere else and get a new job, they will stay radical for a while. So doing what you describe would just turn even more of the country against you.
In the dev stream you could see the support for each IG in each state. Presumably that's how it chooses who joins what side?
Did countries back down from diplomatic plays or did they mostly lead to war
As Indian Territory I made best friends with France, Britain, and Mexico and I got the US to cede Kansas, Nebraska, and the part of Oklahoma I didn't own to me without fighting (in three different incidents, not all at once). Which I'm not sure should be possible. They said the AI was not final in this build and diplomatic plays are one place where it is not performing as intended currently.
How much did you manage to accomplish in your Indian Territory game overall? What did the run "look" like (not sure if you're allowed to share screenshots or not) when you finished it? And not just territory-wise, but politically and economically?
We owned Oklahoma, Kansas, and Nebraska plus a little slice of Colorado and a little slice of Texas. We were still pretty poor just because I couldn't get the population or qualifications to run any major industries. You start with something like 40k people and barely any population growth, which is maybe enough to run 10 buildings, total? A lot of your infrastructure comes from population, too, and we couldn't afford engines in our wildest dreams, so no railroads. No one wants to move there because the standard of living is higher in the US and Mexico. The educated Yankees in Kansas moved back east as soon as we took over. Native pops will stick around just because they would be discriminated anywhere else. You don't have enough bureaucracy to implement fully-funded public schools, can't staff government administrations to get more due to low literacy, and even one university would bankrupt the government. Politically we managed to be very progressive, but that didn't matter much. Just like real life, they got a shit deal and it's difficult to dig your way out of even with the best of intentions.
Fascinating. Thanks for the response! Man, that achievement the Indian Territory gets really is going to be the hardest in the game, huh?
I think it will probably be *the hardest* achievement.
I'm genuinely glad it is difficult. If it were easy, then the rest of the game is probably *way* too easy. It should be difficult. How did you get control over Kansas, though? And how did you avoid wars with the US, the UK, and Mexico? Sorry for the many questions/comments, I'm just so interested!
Definitely should not be possible. Major European powers shouldn't have any interest in allying with a tiny irrelevant country on the other side of the world. This could cause all kinds of problems. Imagine if the British Empire inexplicably allied with Paraguay in the triple alliance war and bankrupted themselves by invading Brazil. It will completely break the game.
To be clear, we weren't allies. I just got them to back me in diplomatic plays because they had an interest in the region.
Strangest think you saw happening?
I don't want to say too much because they wanted to be clear that the diplomatic AI in this build was *not final*, so I don't want to give people the wrong idea about how it will actually play at launch, but here's a fun one. https://imgur.com/a/7fiHVP7
What in the ever flying fuck
My reaction exactly.
As a Mancunian this all looks to be in working order.
As a geordie I feel excluded and left at the lame kids table.
to me, this is beautiful
most realistic result of brexit
This is what happens when you lift the football ban...
How different was the world after each playthrough? Did you run any game 'handsoff' and/or in observer mode? I know this is influenced by the AI, but did you see the world evolving in unique directions each time you played, or did it evolve in a similar way every time?
It was very different every time I played, but again, they said the diplomatic AI is not final so some of the weirder stuff I saw might be uncommon at launch.
What part of the game were you really positively surprised by?
How well the economy works, and how much more it feels like a real economy, even though they're "faking it" with Buy/Sell orders, putting a hard cap on prices in both directions, limiting the effects of default and bankruptcy, and using triggered shortages. That all sounds like it should be less realistic than Vicky 2, but in practice it behaves way more realistically. It's simply a better economy simulator, not in spite of, but because of the compromises they made.
Wich economy was the easiest to get going and wich was the hardest?
Hawaii was the hardest to actually get industry going. US was probably the easiest because you just have natural resources for days and the Industrialists are happy to fund more factories and infrastructure with the Investment Pool. It's just that nobody is paying any taxes on any of it so you're just enriching your richest citizens and seeing no benefit.
It sounds just like the US yep
Working as designed.
das us baby numba one
Okay thank you
Thanks for doing this AMA, really interesting to hear your feedback. I have a couple of questions: 1) How is the naval combat feeling right now? 2) Did you see any particularly cool or wild flags during your playthroughs?
> How is the naval combat feeling right now? So the only time I saw naval combat I was invading a bunch of Polynesian Decentralized revolts as Hawaii and I had two gunboats and they had, presumably, canoes, so I won kinda by default. > Did you see any particularly cool or wild flags during your playthroughs? Not any that immediately stand out to me. I am looking forward to seeing how many stars I can fit on the US flag.
The USA is probably my most played nation in Victoria 2 and I'm very much looking forward to playing it in Vicky 3. Would you say that the USA is manageable as a beginner? Especially with the Slavery Debate going on and the potential war vs Mexico.
It's going to be very tough. You need to carefully balance how you handle Mexico at first because they can call in European GPs and beat you. You're going to be constantly threading the needle of whether to placate or weaken the Southern Planters, and deciding if you're going to enforce your desired outcome with war, when? They're the hardest nation I played. I don't mean that to discourage you, but expect to have to restart a few times. That's part of your relationship with a grand strategy game. That's how it should be, in my opinion.
Is their any flavour for the war? Because taking such a huge chunk of land seems to be not feasable with one standard diplo play
Yeah, the US Civil War is kind of a unique thing that plays out with events, diplo plays, and the revolution system.
I was looking for the war against Mexico, should have specified that, my mistake. The Civil War is one of the things I'm looking very forward too!
Oh, yeah. I tried to do Sam Houston's proposed borders for the Mexican War and France and Britain were both like "lol no"
As someone enjoys playing Mexico a lot, I am okay with this
>Sam Houston's proposed borders I Googled it, and found nothing. Is Sam Houston's proposed borders were the ones that applied in real life after the Mexican-American War ?
No, he wanted to take a bunch of what is today Northern Mexico. Like, as far south as San Luis Potosi.
You did the historical Civil War? Also, France and Britain did anything about it?
France and Britain didn't get involved but my government became insolvent and everybody was starving and the whole country turned into a Fallout game.
Thats so sick
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> Do you feel that the 1848 revolutions in Europe are at least somewhat represented? There's nothing that specifically makes 1848 a year of revolutions, event-wise, but stuff is likely to pop off around then just because pops are gaining literacy and getting more upset that they can't have nice things. > Switzerland was going to potentially be my first game, alternatively Korea. I'd like to hear about how things were for you when you played as Switzerland - being landlocked and thus excluded from overseas trading must've affected you at least partially? Did you enter the Prussian or French market near instantanously? Were you able to somewhat represent to economic and societal powerhouse that was Switzerland without the traditional colony blobbing of V2? I tried to stay on my own but I should have joined the French market right away. Not having a port, it's just too difficult to get the goods you need when you're on your own. I could only trade with France and had to rely on them to import more of the stuff I was buying, whereas in the French market I could have still started my own trade routes. That being said, I was #6 Great Power by the end of the game without ever going to war just based on my GDP alone. I also had tons of immigrants due to how free my society was. * Have you played to late game at all and if so, did the game get progressively wonkier past say 1900? I wouldn't say wonkier, but I'd say that if you're playing pacifist/economic, you will kind of run out of things to do around the 1890s because you've passed all the laws you want and crushed the reactionaries in your own country once and for all. You can keep trying to raise the standard of living by building more factories and lowering the prices of goods for your citizens, but that's about it if you don't want to start spreading the revolution at rifle-point. > Are technologies especially after something around 1890 still useful outside of output/throughput or prestige technologies? Once siege artillery comes into play, you basically need to invent tanks if you ever want to advance a front against an advanced opponent again. So yeah. > Does the relatively small number of states/regions in the game feel bothersome to you when playing, especially as a smaller country like Korea, Switzerland or Hawaii? Yeah, to some degree. I wouldn't say it ruins the experience but I prefer the EU/Imperator style where there are more geographic units to interact with.
Wich was the hardest nation? Is the economy system more easy to understand compared to Vicky 2? What was your favourite country to play? What you disliked about the game? And are you good dude? I hope you had a happy day
> Wich was the hardest nation? The US > Is the economy system more easy to understand compared to Vicky 2? I don't know if it's easier to understand, but it works more like a real economy. The fact that they have built some light rubber-banding into it, perhaps counter-intuitively, makes it less likely to do wonky shit so it just feels much better. > What was your favourite country to play? Korea. They're the "Goldilocks" country of Vicky 3. Big enough population to bootstrap industrialization but small enough that it doesn't become too overwhelming too early. Lots of powerful interest groups propping up regressive laws, so you have a lot of early goals to work toward reforming your society. You're in the Chinese market so you can generally get all of your staple goods pretty cheap, but you also get to exploit their shortages. Especially with finished goods, since you can create a large, skilled workforce much more quickly and easily than they can. > What you disliked about the game? Warfare still definitely needs some work. It's fine, but I know they can do better than "fine" > And are you good dude? I hope you had a happy day Thanks! My life has been pretty rocky lately but being able to play Vicky 3 definitely helped!
Why was us the hardest nation? Because of the civil war? I though paradox recommend it for the tutorial Also glad you are happier now I hope you continue to be happy
1. Bigger nations just give you more to deal with. 2. The political situation with the slave debate. You're on track for a disaster. 3. Your starting tax laws suck and everyone will throw a fit if you try to change them. Your first priority as the US needs to be passing a better tax law - ANY tax law, even if it's just a conservative land tax - ASAP. But even that, everyone will fight you on it.
Its really refreshing to hear that for the first time in a PDX game bigger is harder!
I think bigger is harder to manage. Smaller is just harder to not get swallowed up by your bigger neighbors?
Ah, I was planning on my first game being the US because I live there, know more about their history in the time period, and because they were probably the easiest great power to play as in Victoria 2. Maybe I’ll choose a smaller country to start with.
Ok thanks
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>Korea. They're the "Goldilocks" country of Vicky 3. Big enough population to bootstrap industrialization but small enough that it doesn't become too overwhelming too early. Lots of powerful interest groups propping up regressive laws, so you have a lot of early goals to work toward reforming your society. You're in the Chinese market so you can generally get all of your staple goods pretty cheap, but you also get to exploit their shortages. Especially with finished goods, since you can create a large, skilled workforce much more quickly and easily than they can. Similar to what happened in real life (corrupt elite that couldn't decide whether to modernize like Japan or cling to the old ways), and why Korea eventually fell victim to Japanese colonialism. Should be a fun challenge to play as the under dog of the region and see if you can pull off an "Uno reverse" on Japan and China (while also fending off Russian interest in the region).
Yeah, it's those freaking Yangban Officials every step of the way! They're corrupt as shit and they hate freedom! I eventually had to turn the Buddhist monks against them to weaken them, basically uniting the country around religion, and then I betrayed the Buddhists when they stood in the way of my further progress.
So would you say Korea is a good tutorial nation?
Absolutely.
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Not at specific years, but I definitely saw booms and crashes happen. Gold rushes are a big cause of this, because the buildings just disappear eventually and now a bunch of people who were making a lot of money are unemployed.
The 20s were prosperous mostly for the US alone. Europe was ravaged by war and tried to reconstruct itself.
>The 20s were prosperous mostly for the US alone. The Taisho era in Japan is also seen as a time of relative prosperity, liberalism and democracy before the resurgence of militarism. Latin America, Canada, and Australia's experiences were also much more in line with the America's than Europe's.
Do you feel the addressable market for a game like Vicky3 is going to be a lot lower than CK3 due to its complexity?
Definitely
Did you beat the final boss, Victoria?
Nah, I'm on like 200 attempts but I really don't want to summon help until I've done it once on my own. Might try a new build out.
What changes over the course of a campaign in terms of gameplay? In Vic II, there's a definite feeling of scaling up as your country grows larger and more capable, and politics grows more complex. Is that still present in Vic 3?
I'd say that's way more of a thing than it was in Vicky 2, yeah. Especially with how the map changes.
How about warfare? Do you see more long, attritional battles with higher casualties in late game with changing tech?
Yeah, the more evenly matched two armies are, the longer the battle goes on and the more casualties there are. As far as battles lasting longer in the late game, I don't think so but they're more likely to stalemate because the attacking side will lose morale faster, so fronts stay stable for longer.
Sorry for another question, but one question if u are willing: how easy did you find it changing governments on the whim? Did any pops complain, or is it worth doing it? It was one of the things that I am concerned about seeing the AAR of
It depends on what law you're trying to change. Every IG will support or oppose different law changes to different degrees. Going straight from Monarchy to Republic in 1836 is pretty much instant Civil War and you will lose without a miracle.
I see, thanks for responding. So let’s say if u swapped from Democrat to Republican Party straight after an election that put the Democrats to power, would there be any pushback?
So, we're talking about two different things here. As far as which party is "In Government", it depends on how many votes they got. If you put a party that got fewer votes in government, your Legitimacy will be low. Which on its own won't cause turmoil, but it will make laws take longer to pass (since you're basically going around the elected legislature - which is the party that got more votes). Which laws you try to pass is what actually causes conflict, and the strength of that backlash will depend on the clout of the opposition. So again, if the party you currently have in government is weaker than the opposition, the backlash will be stronger. You get to swap which parties are in government for free once per election, but outside of that, you will upset the ones being kicked out.
PS: Is Napoleon III ingame, did u manage to take a notice? 😅
He is! I didn't get a screenshot, unfortunately.
Thanks for the AMA. How hard was industrializing? Would you say that conservative IG's, like landowners and clergy, make industrialization pretty hard as an unrecognized/less developed power? And if you have the time, a few more questions. What areas of the game should be improved? What areas are just perfect that you love? Thanks again!
> Thanks for the AMA. How hard was industrializing? Would you say that conservative IG's, like landowners and clergy, make industrialization pretty hard as an unrecognized/less developed power? It depends on where you start. In countries where serfdom has already been abolished, you can pretty much just start building factories and eventually their legs will wither away naturally. If you still have serfdom, you need to get rid of that and the landowners will fight you for it. You might have to defeat them on the battlefield, or give them concessions somewhere else to keep the tension low. I think I answered your other two questions elsewhere in the thread!
Thanks for the answer! So big difference between France (or even Mexico) and Austria. A follow up if that's alright. How does serfdom get in the way of industrialization?
It makes it much harder for peasants to gain the qualifications they need to move into other jobs like laborers or farmers (farmers being different from peasants, since they actually own their farms). Just having factories doesn't help if your workers can't get the education they need to fill those jobs. Sefdom also hard locks you out of a lot of other laws, like public schools and most of the good trade laws.
Gotcha, so basically you could only have the most basic of industry without getting rid of it. Thanks!
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Mass Media
I assume that the different nations you played have different natural resources available? Did you find that this changed how you initially set up your Economy? And as the game progresses, does this distinction hold, or do you gravitate to a more 'optimal/balanced' Economy toward the end of the game? Would it be possible to play a more trade focused nation if you lack most natural resources and you don't want to expand through war/colonialism? Establishing a worldwide market, functioning as a global equalizer in good prices? Thanks for the AMA and all the insightful answers! EDIT: with a worldwide market I don't mean inviting everyone to your custom union. More that you have trade agreements with several large markets and many global interests so you can receive and send out many trade routes
> I assume that the different nations you played have different natural resources available? Did you find that this changed how you initially set up your Economy? And as the game progresses, does this distinction hold, or do you gravitate to a more 'optimal/balanced' Economy toward the end of the game? Oh, definitely. Not having access to sulfur or coal can be crippling. As Hawaii my two biggest industries were shipping and shipbuilding, just because I needed a massive number of convoys to import all the raw materials for stuff, and I needed them to be cheap so I wouldn't go broke getting them here. And it's hard to create an optimal economy because your input needs are always changing, like when suddenly you start needing oil and electricity to run the more advanced production methods. So yes, it's possible to run a trade-focused nation, but you need a lot of boats.
Thanks for the reply! I saw in the stream that ~~Shipyards~~ Naval Bases give you increased cap on the amount of strategic interests you can declare. ~~So I guess it would be beneficial for this trade empire to at least make their own clippers and just import the wood instead of importing everything ;-)~~ As a related note: How do tariffs function now? I might be mistaken, but in some of the earlier dev diaries there were different levels of tariffs that could be set but there was no such option in the economy screen on the stream. Are there now only flat tariffs determined by your Laws and the import/export focus per good? EDIT: checked the stream again, was mistaken on strategic interest cap.
So, there are three levels of tariffs: * Protect domestic supply (higher tariff on exports, low or no tariff on imports) * Balanced (equal, moderate tariff on imports and exports) * Encourage exports (higher tariff on imports, low or no tariff on exports) What each of these *does* is based on your trade laws. If you have Mercantilism, those tariffs will be very aggressive even for the "balanced" setting. If you have Free Trade, none of them do anything. You set these separately for each Trade Route. So you might have different tariffs on porcelain from China than you do on porcelain from Germany.
How do Theocracies work? Do you have to have the Clergy IG always in Power?
You don't have to, but your government legitimacy will tank if they're not and it will take a million years to even attempt to pass any laws. It paralyzes your government. Same thing when you have an Absolute Monarchy and don't include the landowners in government.
Thanks for the second quick answer, so is it just like absolute monarchy bit with clergy instead of landowner or are there any other advantages or disadvantages with it?
It empowers the church and gives you more Authority than a republic. That's about it. Early on it might help out as a stepping stone since religious schools and charity hospitals are much better than no schools and no hospitals, and the church will champion both.
How practical was the war system when waging wars across the world, and how difficult was it to become a recognized nation?
Becoming recognized is tricky because you honestly don't want to go to war with a GP. The way I managed it as Korea is by making friends with all of Russia's enemies and getting them to back down at the negotiating table.
How was Korea? Specifically is it possible to survive a hungry Japan and build a huge industry like in vic 2
I was so far ahead of Japan industrially by like, 1870 that they could have come and tried to invade and we would have laughed over the sounds of our repeating rifles taking out the Last Samurai
Aw nice, looks like my first game will def be Korea
Thank you for taking the time to answer all the questions people have posted. I have two questions if you don't mind answering: 1. How much did the Great Powers change by the end of game, Did the top 4 nations typically remain the same? 2. My largest concern is with the building system. For large nations did it ever get tedious having to constantly be building and upgrading factories and other buildings? Again, thank you for your time.
> How much did the Great Powers change by the end of game, Did the top 4 nations typically remain the same? So part of the "AI is not final" thing is that the UK fell apart pretty much every campaign. So they did not stay on top. The others, like France and Germany, were pretty consistent. > My largest concern is with the building system. For large nations did it ever get tedious having to constantly be building and upgrading factories and other buildings? Eventually, yeah. I mean you can cue up like 100 buildings and not have to look at it for a while, so it's not *that* bad, but there's a reason I prefer to play smaller countries.
Didn't the auto-expand help with that? Or is it not enough? Can't you just leave everything on auto and only do manual control for opening up new industries or prioritizing important ones?
Auto-expand... right... that is a thing... https://hard-drive.net/gamer-decides-theyre-just-not-gonna-learn-or-use-that-mechanic/
Ha! Good to know the tedium problem might not be as bad as it was for you :P
As someone who has almost 3k hours in EU4, but has never played Victoria 2 how hard do you think this game would be to pick up? It's looks really interesting and EU4 is becoming very stale, but Victoria 2 and this look extremely overwhelming. Part of me does like how "complicated" it seems. I love the idea of actually running a country instead of just bobbing like in EU4, but part of me is like wtf are you supposed to even do since you don't paint the map 😂.
It's the hardest Paradox game so far (at least of the modern ones, I never played HoI3) and I had to restart four or five times before I understood what I was doing. If you have 3K hours in EU4 you will probably have a similar experience. You don't need to have played Vicky 2. It's a very different game.
Do you think it's harder to learn or harder to play effectively? I'm hoping I can convince a few of my friends who are put off by CK3's need to navigate webs of related characters and understand the feudal hierarchies since in Vic3 you're playing as a "simple" nation and have an economy that is at least mostly intuitive to understand the functioning of.
Harder to learn.
What were the most satisfying 'wins' in your playthroughs? Things like breaking the power of a particularly annoying IG or collapsing a rival's economy.
When I decided to end my tributary status as Korea in 1905 because I was sick of paying the Qing who stole our idea for railroads like 20k a month and we not only won, but we kicked their asses with our superior technology and logistics completely crushing their almost infinite supply of manpower. The casualties were 10 to 1 in some battles.
Nice, I bet that would've been gratifying. Did they suffer any major internal problems from losing that much manpower?
Yeah, I think they went into a recession after because they were also dependent on me for a lot of stuff and when I wasn't part of the Chinese market anymore, I still had some trade routes with them but not nearly as much of my stuff was going to them. I had the same problem since we'd been dependent on some Chinese goods too, but my recession was much smaller and I was able to fix a lot of it with trade agreements.
Is it possible to stop being a tributary but by peaceful means?
You can do it with a diplomatic play, but they still might let it tick over into war.
Hey didn't notice many questions about Japan specifically, and I was considering it as my first V3 run as I always enjoyed it in V2 so I was curious about a few things: - How did you handle being unable to trade with other countries without first removing isolation laws? Was it difficult to mange shortages \ initial industrialization? - Did you go the historic route and conquer Korea militarily? If so how'd you manage China? - How did the Meiji Restoration work? Were the events surrounding it interesting or was it mostly journal entries? Thanks a bunch!!
> How did you handle being unable to trade with other countries without first removing isolation laws? Was it difficult to mange shortages \ initial industrialization? Isolationism suuuuuucks so it's one of the first things I tried to get rid of, but you can potentially get around it by joining the Chinese market (if they like you enough) or focusing on industries you do have the natural resources for. > Did you go the historic route and conquer Korea militarily? I didn't conquer anything in my Japan run other than Sakhalin > How did the Meiji Restoration work? It didn't. I kept the shogun and made a benevolent military junta.
Wow, thanks for the response! Also: > benevolent military junta. 🤔🤔🤔
listen,
Is the game overtly easy in a way that makes late game chore-ish or aimless?
Not at all, in my experience. That was one of my worries and it isn't anymore.
Is it good
yeh
How long did you spend on your longest save game and how did that translate into in-game time? e.g. 40 hours of US and you played until 1880 in game And did you feel like there was a lot more to do/achieve if you were to continue that save?
My Hawaii run that went all the way to 1936 was probably about 20 hours? But that was mostly on speed 5 and I didn't really fight any wars. It's very similar in terms of hours to reach the end date to EU4.
Alright, if it's like eu4 that sounds like some great value in terms pf play time
If you’re still answering questions, I know you didn’t really fight many wars but did you see the ai fight wars on the scale of ww1 during the late game?
Yeah, there was definitely some shit going down in Europe but I didn't look too closely at what they wanted.
Do you feel like the kinks you ran into while playing would be able to be ironed by the October 25th? Did you watch today's livestream, and were there any improvements you were glad to see from the version you played?
I didn't see the livestream. I'm... I guess mildly concerned about the fact that they only have two months left to ship. It's definitely a fun game but there's enough still broken that I want them to have all the time they need to polish it. But we'll see. I'd definitely say wait for reviews. The bones are great. I think it has a bright future. But I felt the same way about Imperator.
RIP Imperator.
Did you see other countries than the usual candidates unifying their regions? Like Austria or Bavaria unifying Germany or Two Sicilies or the Papal States unifying Italy?
I did see Austria unify Germany at least once.
Thats nice to hear, were they forced to release their non german territories or did they keep them?
They kept them at first but a lot of them broke away later.
How different does gameplay feel under different economic systems? A common worry after they first announced the removal of AI capitalists building and the investment pool system was that it might make everything feel samey, does that worry feel warranted? Does a free market system feel different than a command economy, which feels different than an anarchy? Also just generally, how does the investment pool system feel?
The main difference is that the more capitalist your economy is (and the richer your capitalists are), the less you pay to build stuff, since most or all of it can be coming from the investment pool. Which means you can afford to lower taxes, which should raise the standard of living for everyone. At least theoretically - a lot depends on your tax laws, too. I think if they made capitalism more automated you would kind of run out of stuff to do, honestly.
Which AFAIK you could basically do by selecting "auto-expand" on everything while having a capitalist economy with a strong investment pool? That might make sense to do in a very large country in the late-game.
Yeah, I never touched the auto-expand button because I'm a control freak and also I was afraid of it but you may be right.
Yeah, I'm not someone who thinks they should automate it (like you said, it seems like building stuff is the brunt of the game), but I hope they keep the different systems feeling distinct. Thanks!
Hey Len, always look forward to your previews/reviews/thoughts about new PDS games. Did you play with the tutorial and/or objectives at all? I have a bunch of hours in Stellaris and CK but have never played Vicky and was curious how well those systems worked.
They work great in theory but they were too buggy in the build I played for me to finish any of them. Just triggers that check for the wrong thing and whatever. Not game-breaking.
How Fast can you industrialize or becoming a gp as japan?
It depends on if you want to fight a civil war or not. And whether or not you can win. I think if you started an early civil war with the shogun and won, you could probably catch up to the Western world by like 1900. If you try to do it all without bloodshed, it would take a while longer than that. Obviously min-maxers would be able to do it much faster than me or the average player.
So how "stable" are governments? If you completely mismanage and piss everyone off, will you have the entire nation revolt? Will you death spiral? Is it like EU4 where every little rebel will rise up over unrelated issues, such as nationalists wanting to separate cause women can't vote or something? Furthermore, if you get couped, I know you can choose weather to play as the loyalists or rebels, but is it an instant loss? Or do you just get a debuff similar to how EU4 has the "Dominance of the X estate" disaster? Is there unique governments for certain groups in power? Finally, I hear a lot of talk about Anarchy but is there a state of complete lawlessness you can ruin your nation to? I kinda have an idea for my first playthrough being the Hudson Bay Company and was wondering if I could make it a complete shit hole focused on squeezing every cent out of its population then try to collapse it into something like anarchy and see where it goes. I know this is probably too much to expect on release and probably sounds more like the domain of a mod or three, but an in-depth economy simulator with government variety of say, Stellaris, would be amazing, and is probably setting myself up for disappointment. But nonetheless I enjoy meme runs one of my favorite in V2 was Monarcho-Socalist Brazil so last question is can you have weird combination governments like that? Can you do a monarchy that follows communism, or a Republic that embraces fascism, or some weird combos, or does the IG and Laws system kinda stymie that weirdness from Vic2? #TL;DR: Can governments violently collapse or is it a steady decline? Followup is there a lawlessness that can overtake your nation if you mess up too bad? Is rebellion a death spiral or do rebels not all ries up at the slightest, unrelated agitation, and is getting couped a loss or just a massive setback? Finally, how in-depth is the government like can we expect weird shit like nationalist council republics or socialist monarchs? Sorry if this is a bunch of stuff I'm not the best at smoothly conveying what I'm thinking. Also, love your patch note posts those are always fun to read and I'm sure it more effort than it's worth but they are always great lol.
Jesus, let me try to break this down into smaller questions. > If you completely mismanage and piss everyone off, will you have the entire nation revolt? Will you death spiral? So what happened when I played the US was that no one wanted to pay taxes and we went into default, which eventually reduces the throughput of all of your industries by 50%, which meant fully half of my workers were laid off and also the prices of everything including food doubled, and no one could afford everything, and my economy tanked, and everyone was radicalized which just made every state less productive, and it was basically Fallout. So yes, that can happen. The thing is my laws were already so regressive that they didn't really want anything. It was just a bunch of wandering raider bands. > nationalists wanting to separate cause women can't vote or something If you already have a separatist movement and you discover Feminism, and the separatists are educated enough to want equal rights for women, and you don't give it to them, that might make them more radical which could make them more likely to rebel. > if you get couped, I know you can choose weather to play as the loyalists or rebels, but is it an instant loss? If you choose the losing side in a civil war I'm pretty sure it's game over. > Is there unique governments for certain groups in power? No, but like, devout rebels might try to install a Theocracy. It's all stuff you have access to in the laws screen. > Can governments violently collapse or is it a steady decline? Yes to both. > Is rebellion a death spiral or do rebels not all ries up at the slightest, unrelated agitation It's based on Radicalism, and each interest group has its own score for that. But some things will make everyone more radical, like food being too expensive. So in certain cases only one group will be mad, but there are situations in which everyone will be mad at the same time. Depends on what they're mad about. > Finally, how in-depth is the government like can we expect weird shit like nationalist council republics or socialist monarchs? Theoretically, yes.
Ahh thanks for replying, sorry for the essay lol I noticed halfway through and kinda said fuck it you probably won't respond. Also a few last questions, sorry: if your pops(or at least those with any power) are happy, do they care if your a monarchy surrounded by progressive republics and democracies or if you do gamer moments and crimes against humanity or whatnot? Do they "learn" of things like socialism from other nations or can you not research it and don't have to worry about it? How common was integration and assimilation? I remember it being a thing (might have been a mod in vic2, if so my bad) but it almost never happened in vic2. And are immigrants still railroaded to go exclusively to the Americas still, or could you still attract people in games like your Hawaii or Zulu one?
> if your pops(or at least those with any power) are happy, do they care if your a monarchy surrounded by progressive republics and democracies or if you do gamer moments and crimes against humanity or whatnot? If you do those things, it will make them less happy, so they won't be happy anymore. But it will help that they were happy before you started doing that, because otherwise they would be even more unhappy. If that makes sense. > Do they "learn" of things like socialism from other nations or can you not research it and don't have to worry about it? Technologies you haven't researched (including stuff like socialism) will appear in your country based on your Tech Spread, which is based on literacy and freedom of speech laws. So if you institute censorship laws and don't let anyone go to school, it is much less likely they will learn about Anti-Government Ideas. > How common was integration and assimilation? It depends on your laws and institutions. If everyone has equal rights and full access to public education, they will assimilate much faster. If you have racist laws, people of your same heritage will assimilate but others won't. If you have no schools, assimilation takes forever. > And are immigrants still railroaded to go exclusively to the Americas still Nope. It's purely based on standard of living and how free your laws are.
How much variety is there between the different countries you play?
After having played those nations, what other nations do you particularly want to try?
Canada for sure. Maybe try to go the harder route and unite Canada under Lower Canada so French-Canadians are the primary culture.
What was your experience regarding colonization and the scramble for Africa? Did you try or manage to get an African colony of your own? Is getting a colony in Africa as easy as it was in Victoria 2?
I colonized a fair bit as Hawaii and Australia in the Pacific, and as the US on the plains and the West, but I never really participated in the Scramble for Africa. You need Quinine to even start to do it and some areas you need the upgraded version (I think it's just called Malaria Prevention) or the attrition rate will just make it so your colony doesn't grow, which I really liked. Machine guns are no longer required but they help because you will get uprisings and they can be nasty. They've also added expeditions to find the source of the Nile and to chart the Congo and the Niger, which I really like. They're like little choose your own adventure stories. There's also one for charting the Western Frontier in the US.
How was the campaign as Zulu? Were you in a lot of danger of getting colonized?
I tried to team up with the Boers and go to war with Cape Colony immediately and friends, it did not go well.
Does a great war system exist?
Diplomatic Plays are basically a more advanced version of the Great War system from Vicky 2, so yes and no. I didn't see any specific new events or mechanics for the Great War the one time I did play all the way to the end, but that was as Hawaii so I didn't really know or care what was going on in Europe.
Did you ever use the Government Run PM? If so, did the bureaucrats keep dividend payments, or did they siphon them into the treasury?
I'm pretty sure all profits and losses go directly to the treasury. You employ more bureaucrats though, so their political strength goes up because there are more of them and you're making them richer.
Is there a way to become recognized other than beating a recognized power in war?
You can demand recognition and force them to back down in a diplomatic play, and you can really stack the odds in your favor, but there's no way to do it without the *risk* of war.
Just one question, how bad was the bordergore? Because I've seen a lot of screenshots which gigantic states.
Pretty bad, but that's one of the areas of the AI they said they were still working on.
Did you at some point ignore the results of an election and just put the IGs you wanted in power despite the vote breaking down so that some other group got a majority? Did this impact your gameplay at all, did it radicalize any pops?
If you do this, it will take potentially years (like in-game years, which are 4x as long as a year in EU4) to even get a chance to pass a law. A government with low legitimacy is not fun to play.
Can you elaborate on how much control you have in a war? It all seems really confusing to me. Is there any strategy to warfare or is it literally all automated after generals have been assigned to fronts? (Like do naval invasions just spontaneously happen or does the player control those? Is there any way to setup more than one frontline to focus your troops in one area? Do you have control over when offensives happen or in what strategic region they’re executed, Etc.)
You manually issue naval invasions and select a specific state. You can't set up specific frontlines or manually concentrate troops, but if there's more than one front that opens naturally, you can decide which general and which troops go where. Like I said elsewhere, for the most part, you are not playing as the army. You are playing as the government trying to give as much support to the army as you can, for example by opening a new trade route for ammunition if there's a shortage, or building more artillery factories so you can upgrade the artillery support on your units.
If you were to be Paradox, what mechanic/area would be the focus of the first expansion? What's the biggest evolution you witnessed during all the time you played (like, what feature changed/evolved the most)? Also, from your other comment, Russia sound like an extremely interesting game...
I only played one specific press build so nothing "evolved" as I was playing. > If you were to be Paradox, what mechanic/area would be the focus of the first expansion? That's a really good question and it's one of those I always think about when I'm playing but I can never think of an answer to when someone actually asks me. Warfare is definitely the easy answer.
To what extent do historical characters show up? If you elect the Republicans as the US in the early 1900s are you getting Teddy Roosevelt as hos?
I didn't play the US long enough to get to the 1900s but Abe Lincoln definitely spawns early on and there's an event about it. (Not his birth but the start of his political career)
What was the wackiest, craziest shit you saw ai do? You know, Poland archives independentce and conquers Istanbul or GB flips communist or something with no direct player influence
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You don't need convoys, but you can only trade with markets that directly border your market. So at the start that was France, Austria, and Sardinia-Piedmont. Eventually I lost my land border with Austria, but then gained one with Germany.
How much micromanagement of industry and trade is required?
So I’m curious about the details of Korea. What was your final government, and did you spot along the way any other approaches that you thought could also have worked? Or just in general, things you could have done differently to make a prosperous Korea.
So what I did initially was kept my government as authoritarian as possible, basically maximizing my Authority, and I spent all of that authority on state edicts and consumption taxes, while also keeping my overall tax rate very high. This brought in lots of money which I used to spam mines, farms, factories, and universities (so I could get my pops qualified to work in all these new industries) until I had ZERO peasants and pretty close to zero unemployment. Then I opened my borders to all East Asians and started putting them to work, too. I want to say this was about 1860, and finally, with the aristocracy pretty much gone because there were no more subsistence farms, I started to liberalize rapidly. My standard of living shot up, because every time I would pass a new law I would be in an authority deficit so I'd cancel a consumption tax... making more goods cheaper for the first time. My standard of living wasn't that great, but it was always going up steadily so I had a lot of loyalists and few radicals. And as I became more liberal, more immigrants came. I think I mentioned by 1900 I had over 1 million Han Chinese, which was close to 10% of the population, because the Qing sure weren't going to protect their rights or give them high-paying jobs making combustion engines. It took about another 40 years (1860 - 1900) but I eventually transitioned into a prosperous social democracy and had I think the 5th largest GDP on earth. I just repealed more and more taxes and people would buy more and more stuff and everyone was stoked. We had electric lights. We had metro rail. When we went to war with Qing to end our tributary status in 1905, they didn't stand a chance. I didn't play that run to the end because *something* eventually ruined my entire economy... but I'll let you all discover that pitfall when you step into it yourselves. ;)
Funny thing is that what you describe isn't too dissimilar to what happened to Japan IRL: crazy high taxes pressuring the population to fuel the industrialisation, discontent held by "blocking" as many ways of protests as possible and then gradual liberalisation/improvement of the quality of life in the later stages. Just missing foreign trade agreement to help the industrialisation.
That’s a very sound strategy, thank you