After much heartache and heavy cost, the brave warriors of the Union of Social Democratic Tribes of Oceania have bought their freedom from the Perfidious English, liberated their comrades in Polynesia and Australia, and created a land where everyone from Freed American slaves to Flemish Refugees to Chinese Socialists can join together. Soon the Parliament will be dissolved in favour of a Council Republic.

Two problems remain

  1. Taking most of Australia somewhat suddenly means that now I have tanked my economy and standard of living having to provide Public Healthcare and Education to a few million starving semi-literate anglos.

  2. The Fucking French! HAAATTTTTEE!

  • AllCatsAreBeautiful [he/him]
    ·
    2 years ago

    For all yall who played it, do you think Vic 2 was substantially better than 3 in its current form? All the negative reviews I see begin with "I have 9001 hours in Victoria 2 and 1337 hours in EU4 and this is the worst game I've ever played"

    • Mardoniush [she/her]
      hexagon
      ·
      2 years ago

      I think. right now, Vic 2 is slightly better. But Vic 3 will be better in a patch or two. They both have natural strengths.

      They've simplified the economy in some ways, but now it behaves much more like an economy. You really, really feel the material conditions, so with NZ for example, I just didn't have the population to go agrarian, so I had to coddle the industrialists and develop mining and industry tech ASAP. There is no way to press the Socialism button before you've developed enough productive forces, and if you're a high pop nation like South Africa farms are way more viable.

      Even now, a sexist asshole running the Trade Unions is fucking over me giving the vote to women.

      The one weakness is that there is no direct military control. You assign fronts and hope for the best (see, the French drubbing me in my second war for the South Island.) but it's clearly a placeholder mechanic.

      • AllCatsAreBeautiful [he/him]
        ·
        2 years ago

        it's clearly a placeholder mechanic.

        I think I remember one of the devs saying that they simplified warfare so they could focus on the economics aspects.

    • LeninWalksTheWorld [any]
      ·
      2 years ago

      Yes I think it is definitely better than vic2 and I have a good amount of experience with that game. A lot of people think they dumbed down the economy somehow in Victoria 3. This is incorrect, they just made it actually understandable. A lot of people are confusing the opacity of Victoria 2's economics with complexity. Vic2's economics honestly sucked, like it was better than most other games, but there were many fundamental errors. Prices didn't even move with supply and demand correctly, which is kinda the basis for how a market works. Let alone all the weird hacks mods had to use to fix issues like money being destroyed (not spent, just vanishing), capitalists being brain dead when it came to industrial expansion (also a vital thing to get right for the era).

      Most of these issues come from the fact that one (1) guy made the entire economy code for Victoria 2 and then left the company. Not even the other developers knew how it worked so they couldn't fix it even if they wanted to.

      Victoria 3 has functional supply and demand. Trade that you can actually direct instead of just praying for. Dynamic political groups. It's an overall improvement in every aspect... even (controversially) warfare in my opinion. I always found the Victoria 2 warfare to be excessively tedious and disconnected from the rest of the game. It was fine, but it felt like the Europa Universals series. In Vic3 war is very much a sideshow for the economy, it even tells you how much the war has cost you. It's definitely simplistic and I'm sure they will expand on it, but I do not have any problem with the new fronts system at its core.

      • ClimateChangeAnxiety [he/him, they/them]
        ·
        2 years ago

        My only experience with paradox games is playing HOI4 for a couple hours and being totally confused, especially by the warfare. Vic3 it makes way more sense enough that I can at least just point my generals at the enemy’s borders and it seems to mostly work

      • Farman [any]
        ·
        2 years ago

        I havent played 3 but in 2 the prices do move with suply and demand its just tbat the way it is calculated is very convoluted. There are several mechanisms the game uses for this and some are really wierd.

        As for the war thing. In 2 it was often the only way you could get an advantage over europeans or the us. How am i suposed to beat the us as mexico in the starting year, so bad i teiger a civil war in the early 50s without micromanaging the military?

    • Sen_Jen [they/them]
      ·
      2 years ago

      It's worth considering that paradox are allergic to releasing finished games, so in a year's time it will probably be much better (after some stupidly expensive dlc). Also as much as I enjoy Victoria 2, I always play with HPM to the point that I forgot how boring the base game can be after a while

      • Farman [any]
        ·
        2 years ago

        Ae an hpm player do you know if the sepoy rebellion events are still around? During the last game i beat the british in a war before the triger date, but it never trigered even after i killed all their regular units. I was playing afghanistan so i rage quit after that.