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
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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.
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The Fucking French! HAAATTTTTEE!
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.
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
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?