You hit the nail on the head, and I completely missed this nuance. "The spirit of the nation" is the most enlightened of centrists, you are beyond politics altogether, they do not affect you at all and all you care about is, at the end of the day, maximizing some numbers. The country could be anarcho-monarchist for all you care. But it just so happens that one of those two number (the other being state revenue, through taxes, tributes, war reparations, foreign aid and what have you) is material conditions. You're trying to increase material conditions (and literacy) for as many people in your country as you can. This makes you a communist from first principles. You don't want to be a leftist, you just want to increase material conditions for the many, not the few.
Reminds me of Timberborn, a city builder with no objective beyond maximizing your population's happiness. Beavers don't have a capitalist economy, they have rational central planning and share the same working hours across the board - and you make them happier by first securing survival and then increasing the availability of luxuries and free time.
Yeah, I should have probably made it clear that "the spirit of the nation" can refer to other paradox games or simulation games, not just Vicky 3. EU4 (in)famously has its mana/monarch point system, which is much more abstracted compared to Vicky 3's pretty functional economics. I'm glad to see that in Vicky 3 people's usual strategies or gameplay styles don't work because of more realistic economics, which is leading to posts like OP where the gamers are realizing class consciousness.
You hit the nail on the head, and I completely missed this nuance. "The spirit of the nation" is the most enlightened of centrists, you are beyond politics altogether, they do not affect you at all and all you care about is, at the end of the day, maximizing some numbers. The country could be anarcho-monarchist for all you care. But it just so happens that one of those two number (the other being state revenue, through taxes, tributes, war reparations, foreign aid and what have you) is material conditions. You're trying to increase material conditions (and literacy) for as many people in your country as you can. This makes you a communist from first principles. You don't want to be a leftist, you just want to increase material conditions for the many, not the few.
Reminds me of Timberborn, a city builder with no objective beyond maximizing your population's happiness. Beavers don't have a capitalist economy, they have rational central planning and share the same working hours across the board - and you make them happier by first securing survival and then increasing the availability of luxuries and free time.
Yeah, I should have probably made it clear that "the spirit of the nation" can refer to other paradox games or simulation games, not just Vicky 3. EU4 (in)famously has its mana/monarch point system, which is much more abstracted compared to Vicky 3's pretty functional economics. I'm glad to see that in Vicky 3 people's usual strategies or gameplay styles don't work because of more realistic economics, which is leading to posts like OP where the gamers are realizing class consciousness.