Victoria 3 Confirmed - It already sucks

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gangweedfan said:
I know that stratgey games are supposed to be deep and tactical and all that shit dont get me wrong. I really love stuff like the dune RTS games and xcom. But paradox interactive games always seem like a way for r/politicalcompassmemes users to self insert themselves into history and live out a fantasy of how they wish history unfolded, especially with commies playing russia. The game itself is just a spreadsheet simulator that doesn't even accurately represent how the economy works.
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I’d argue that paradox embracing the revaunchism/larper side of the community is one of the worst problems with nu-paradox. Naturally, this pandering has become almost exclusively geared towards a certain side of the compass. Like all products on the market they will evolve to be softer overtime so rotten-tooth coomsoomers have a easier time chewing/swallowing.

There's no strategizing, you becoming enserfed to a predatory DLC system that masturbates your pathetic fantasies.

10 years ago every paradox game was about making super Germany, now it's going to be about forming super Soviet Union. Neither are fun, it's all cringe.
whatever I feel like said:
Well over 100 playable countries, but not all countries are playable. Most of Africa, parts of inner South America, and a few surviving native tribes in North America (including the Lakota, Dakota, and Cree) were not playable. These are "Decentralized Countries." Post-launch, they want to make them playable eventually. But they want to do them right because the gameplay experience should be significantly different. All the Decentralized Countries have names and governments. There are no "uncolonized" provinces, but you can colonize on top of a Decentralized Country without declaring war.
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playing as a "decentralized nation" sounds like such a colossal waste of time, you'd probably get more out of a suicide sim.

>Hunt tonkas for a decade
>Yankee gives me beads and tells me to sign paper
>Game Over.
 
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There's already a modding civil war and panzer is getting followed by TNO tards and people who hate him. Who would've guessed?!

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vulgar said:
lol

it’s like the Scramble for Africa or the Great Game, theyre already drawing lines in the sand and fighting over modding territory.
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Oh the autistic larp is bad. They have at least 10 admins rn
 
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vulgar said:
lmao

they're implementing a racial discrimination system
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Communism is now modeled as a wealth distribution system rather than a market control system
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:optimistic:
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hmmmmmm bros I don't know

If I had to guess it's going to be like how authoritarian governments are in Hearts of Iron, in VickyII they'll present Communism as the ideal form of government/market management.
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Racial discrimination is incredibly based, though culture groups being gone is a little iffy. I actually really like the idea of what they're doing, in the sense that accurate culture trees would branch out too much. I think it would sound amazing if we could have extremely granular cultures, like provincial-level, but you can represent that, for example, an Appalachian and a "Dixie" are both Southern, but they also share with a Yankee that they're American, share with Scottish that they're Anglophone, share with Cosmopolitan French that they're Western but also share (exclusively) with Danes that they're Northern European, and so on...

Communism sounds spot on, because yes, command economies are not the same as communist societies unless the command economy makes some pretense of equality. And I don't even disagree with the last part in spirit, although I think their take is massively exaggerated. The idea that a rich man with a mansion and fleet of servants would be poorer than a typical Soviet worker is absurd, but technology makes such a massive difference in productivity; I'm pretty sure the late Soviet Union had more wealth than the early United States, for example. But they need to, and probably won't, represent the fact that command economies just. aren't. efficient. The quality of a command economy is that, for the central planner, that have absolute control. Strategically, it's about ability to build large versus ability to build controlled.
 
Ughubughughughughughghlug said:
Racial discrimination is incredibly based, though culture groups being gone is a little iffy. I actually really like the idea of what they're doing, in the sense that accurate culture trees would branch out too much. I think it would sound amazing if we could have extremely granular cultures, like provincial-level, but you can represent that, for example, an Appalachian and a "Dixie" are both Southern, but they also share with a Yankee that they're American, share with Scottish that they're Anglophone, share with Cosmopolitan French that they're Western but also share (exclusively) with Danes that they're Northern European, and so on...

Communism sounds spot on, because yes, command economies are not the same as communist societies unless the command economy makes some pretense of equality. And I don't even disagree with the last part in spirit, although I think their take is massively exaggerated. The idea that a rich man with a mansion and fleet of servants would be poorer than a typical Soviet worker is absurd, but technology makes such a massive difference in productivity; I'm pretty sure the late Soviet Union had more wealth than the early United States, for example. But they need to, and probably won't, represent the fact that command economies just. aren't. efficient. The quality of a command economy is that, for the central planner, that have absolute control. Strategically, it's about ability to build large versus ability to build controlled.
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I agree, something lacking in VickyII was pop to pop interaction, it was all state to pop. Ethnic tensions sounds like an interesting mechanic, I just hope they don’t moralize too much about it in a colonial strategy game.

In the same vein, government organization sounds interesting and it’s neat to see that ideology will have an impact on pop organization/distribution of capital rather than just determining government spending.

My fear, though, is that the game will present communism as some objectively ideal goal that every state should build themselves towards, that every campaign should see their state end with communism as some sort of meta. It’s not like I want the game to unnecessarily punish the player for going commie either, it just feels like the game will be filled with personal ideological tinkering and fuckery.

Generally, this is my main problem with a new Vicky game getting made in the current year. I suppose it would be disingenuous to argue a game like this be absent of ideology and political lecturing regardless of when it was made, but in the current climate I imagine it’ll be a critical level.
 
vulgar said:
lol "unrecognized nation"
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Literally nothing wrong with that. It does seem like they're massive pussies about language - changing Spheres (a neutral word used even now) to Markets is faggy - but it sounds like their new system is just a more detailed, realistic version of the old one. That is, it's your fundamentals that determine your capability for change, but your reputation determines how you interact with the world. I mean, that's exactly what you see with places like Japan. In Vicky II, Japan had to have special mechanics to portray its rapid industrialization. In Vicky III, maybe things like Jap central authority, high literacy, urbanization, etc. will allow it to Meiji faster than places like, say, Vietnam without having to give it artificial advantages.
vulgar said:
I’d argue that paradox embracing the revaunchism/larper side of the community is one of the worst problems with nu-paradox. Naturally, this pandering has become almost exclusively geared towards a certain side of the compass. Like all products on the market they will evolve to be softer overtime so rotten-tooth coomsoomers have a easier time chewing/swallowing.

There's no strategizing, you becoming enserfed to a predatory DLC system that masturbates your pathetic fantasies.

10 years ago every paradox game was about making super Germany, now it's going to be about forming super Soviet Union. Neither are fun, it's all cringe.

playing as a "decentralized nation" sounds like such a colossal waste of time, you'd probably get more out of a suicide sim.

>Hunt tonkas for a decade
>Yankee gives me beads and tells me to sign paper
>Game Over.
Click to expand...
Playable or not, having actual Indians to actually fight the Indian Wars against would be great as the US. Yeah, it was a lost cause for the Indians, but when I play as the USA (or CSA, or Texas, or any other such) I want to see Comanches/Sioux/Apache/Navajo tearing my settlers a new asshole. And when I play a Civil War scenario, I want to watch Indian Territory burn itself down in infighting. I'd play a Comanche game, probably hate it, but people have World Conquered as Zulu before. Imagine taking Comancheria and turning it into the Mongol Empire of North America. Even if you're doomed without cheesing, you can always view it as a game of "how long can I hold out"/"how many can I take with me."

All else you said hits hard. I don't own any HOI4 DLC - I just play Kaiserreich and sometimes Millennium Dawn, and not much of either because my gaming computer can barely run - but I've noticed how they want to sell very clean pre-packaged stories, mostly meme bullshit, where you just press the buttons and then have to fulfill the goals to advance the plot, like a linear action game.

It's a shame because they show a lot of knowledge about WW2-era politics to how things could change, but it seems like most of the effort goes into "lol central powers," "lol monarchy," and (for the US) "lol rebel." And yet the basic structure of the game is still shallow. If they fleshed out the economy and politics enough, it could be the basis for a Cold War or modern game.

I'm hoping Vicky is given a MUCH improved WW1-era military system so modders can make worthwhile Cold War game. Really, what it needs is a HOI4 naval and air missions system, and some way to represent the difference between active combat versus sitting on trench lines skirmishing with each other.
 
vulgar said:
I agree, something lacking in VickyII was pop to pop interaction, it was all state to pop. Ethnic tensions sounds like an interesting mechanic, I just hope they don’t moralize too much about it in a colonial strategy game.

In the same vein, government organization sounds interesting and it’s neat to see that ideology will have an impact on pop organization/distribution of capital rather than just determining government spending.

My fear, though, is that the game will present communism as some objectively ideal goal that every state should build themselves towards, that every campaign should see their state end with communism as some sort of meta. It’s not like I want the game to unnecessarily punish the player for going commie either, it just feels like the game will be filled with personal ideological tinkering and fuckery.

Generally, this is my main problem with a new Vicky game getting made in the current year. I suppose it would be disingenuous to argue a game like this be absent of ideology and political lecturing regardless of when it was made, but in the current climate I imagine it’ll be a critical level.
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I think it's gonna be exactly that, just like Vicky II acts like social liberalism is a natural end state. Though at least it has an excuse that the "winners" of the 19th Century did become social liberal democracies, so it's natural to build a historical game to incentivize developing that way.

One thing I really wish they'd do, if they keep it anything like the old reform system, is relabel Social Reform to Economic Reform and add Social Reforms as a category representing modern Western cultural values. Then change the ideologies so that modern ones that aren't Conservative support Political Reform, extremists support extending Political Reform when it will increase their control but support revoking it when it will reduce their control, and then moderates are only interested in extending/opposing Econ/Soc Reforms but radicals will be willing to revoke reforms they don't like.

Then have it work like a Nolan Chart with moderate and radical variants of each: Conservative/Reactionary, Liberal/Radical, Socialist/Communist, Populist/Fascist for Anti Econ/Anti Soc, Anti Econ/Pro Soc, Pro Econ/Pro Soc, Pro Econ/Anti Soc. But maybe more ideologies than that could be used, like distinguishing Social Liberals, Socialists, and Classical Liberals.

I wouldn't mind seeing representation of Anarchists, particularly as a terror threat, but I'm afraid of them playing in to the HOI4-type crowd and making Anarchist states (lol) actually viable/common, if they do that...

I'd also like it - I have no idea what they plan to do with this - if they'd represent the facts that serfs were basically just Russian slaves, and allow for slaves to be used in industry. There's a misconception that slavery prevents industrialization when in reality it's more that places which had good fundamentals for industrialization also just lacked conditions to develop slave societies in the first place. There's no reason my Vicky 3 Confederacy shouldn't move from working Blacks to death in the cotton fields to working them to death in the coal mines/steel mills.

And I want to see it possible to change religion/culture of a Pop by event! I want to see Mormonism and the Taiping rebellion religion appear! If the Taipings win, China should become their own weird branch of Christian.
 
Ughubughughughughughghlug said:
I think it's gonna be exactly that, just like Vicky II acts like social liberalism is a natural end state. Though at least it has an excuse that the "winners" of the 19th Century did become social liberal democracies, so it's natural to build a historical game to incentivize developing that way.

One thing I really wish they'd do, if they keep it anything like the old reform system, is relabel Social Reform to Economic Reform and add Social Reforms as a category representing modern Western cultural values. Then change the ideologies so that modern ones that aren't Conservative support Political Reform, extremists support extending Political Reform when it will increase their control but support revoking it when it will reduce their control, and then moderates are only interested in extending/opposing Econ/Soc Reforms but radicals will be willing to revoke reforms they don't like.

Then have it work like a Nolan Chart with moderate and radical variants of each: Conservative/Reactionary, Liberal/Radical, Socialist/Communist, Populist/Fascist for Anti Econ/Anti Soc, Anti Econ/Pro Soc, Pro Econ/Pro Soc, Pro Econ/Anti Soc. But maybe more ideologies than that could be used, like distinguishing Social Liberals, Socialists, and Classical Liberals.

I wouldn't mind seeing representation of Anarchists, particularly as a terror threat, but I'm afraid of them playing in to the HOI4-type crowd and making Anarchist states (lol) actually viable/common, if they do that...

I'd also like it - I have no idea what they plan to do with this - if they'd represent the facts that serfs were basically just Russian slaves, and allow for slaves to be used in industry. There's a misconception that slavery prevents industrialization when in reality it's more that places which had good fundamentals for industrialization also just lacked conditions to develop slave societies in the first place. There's no reason my Vicky 3 Confederacy shouldn't move from working Blacks to death in the cotton fields to working them to death in the coal mines/steel mills.

And I want to see it possible to change religion/culture of a Pop by event! I want to see Mormonism and the Taiping rebellion religion appear! If the Taipings win, China should become their own weird branch of Christian.
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VickyII was made in a very different time than now, and even after The Recession many still operated under a Fukuyamaist notion that neoliberalism was the ideal "end goal" state. lol.

The endorsement of Syndicalism is pure cringe, it would be acceptable (even fun) if VickyIII took a more absurdist approach to the period (a la CK3) but it looks like, at least from what we've been shown, that they're going for a mostly serious tone that will remove a lot of the more tongue in cheek humour present in the previous installment. I love the idea of Joseph Smith leading an army of Mormons like it's MadMax.

It seems like the devs will pick and choose what works and what doesn't to avoid bad press for glorifying unsavoury ideologies. They will penalize you for maintaining chattel slavery as an institution, even though there's really not much more separating chattel slaves from the de-facto slaves of industrialized labour.

It's purely optical, developing a Victorian Colonial sim in the current year shows their affinity for thin ice.
 
Super interesting that, according to Reddit, capitalists are going to feed into an Investment Pool. I both love and dislike this.

What I dislike is that I think it'd be more simulation-y to build an AI that profit-maximizes, the best it can, and if it fucks up and crashes your economy that's what we call "the business cycle."

What I love, though, is that if you're NOT going to do that (and Vicky's AI just never was good enough), you need to make it so the player doesn't have a free hand to do whatever with the cash. I've thought about a system like that before as a way for board games (where there is no AI) to represent capitalist economies, that you get to make the decisions but are restricted to what you can do with private output.

I REALLY want to see a financial sector represented, and proper trade routes.
 
In Vicky II Southern Democrats were State Capitalist and Republicans were Laissez-Faire because Liberals are laissez-faire and Reactionaries are interventionist, amirite?

In Vicky III, different Interest Groups (I guess Political Parties may be out the window?) will actually have different names and aspirations in different countries. Like that China has "Scholar-Gentry" while America has "Plantation Owners," and an Industrialist in America has different goals than Prussian Industrialists.

Good stuff. Hopefully fluid enough to allow for breaking from a nation's traditional culture, though. I think it should be possible to make an American monarchy and nonsense like that if you can create the conditions for it.
 
vulgar said:
lmao

they're implementing a racial discrimination system
View attachment 2190668

Communism is now modeled as a wealth distribution system rather than a market control system
View attachment 2190669

:optimistic:
View attachment 2190671
hmmmmmm bros I don't know

If I had to guess it's going to be like how authoritarian governments are in Hearts of Iron, in VickyII they'll present Communism as the ideal form of government/market management.
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Haha haha lol.
Distribution of wealth and political power in communism .
Yeah that looked like something like this dear leader and his cronies 90%
Rest of party 9% plebs 1% . Complain and you get shot.

By fact that you oversimplify something you will not make it untrue.
Communism Is when goverment used to do things, but after murdering enough"enemies of people" and indoctrinating population for long enough . Everything runs on autopilot So goverment voluntary disolved itself.

But as Great Leech Marx wrote before Communism there needs to be period of soycialism . When goverment does things and more it do more soycialistier it is and closer to communism it is.
Read your own fucking theory Paradox.

Also give me Paradox one example when communism was established by your own definition.
 
Imperial Citizen said:
I like the mechanics I am reading over on the Reddit page. I never played Vicky 2, but I find a lot of what I am reading about Vicky 3 interesting. The managing of various political factions, the discrimination system, player interaction with the country's economy being a mirror to a command economy. It sounds like a sandbox strategy game of the 1800s with plenty of opportunity to go wild with history.

And for Paradox, there is a lot DLC to put out. My guess is that there will at least be a WW1, American Civil War, Latin American Civil Wars, Meiji Restoration, Nationalism, and Colonization themed DLCs.

Though I hope the base game lets me play as the Taipeng Heavenly Kingdom. I'm going to take over the fucking world as a nation led by a failed bureaucrat who believed that he was the younger brother of Jesus Christ!
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Not DLC, but I'm really hoping people make alternative start date mods like 1821. Concert of Europe for PDM is so much better than an 1836 start, it's a way more interesting scenario to watch the Spanish Empire collapse.
 
Boy howdy, I was theorizing what a shitshow of a game Vic3 would be since Parajew is totally infested by The Woke. Mana, no uncivs, and racial equality in the game? Not to mention the $200 of DLC it'll need to come anywhere near Vic2.

Modders may be able to salvage it, color me very doubting but with a shred of hope it'll be anywhere near as good as Vic2.
 
Ughubughughughughughghlug said:
All else you said hits hard. I don't own any HOI4 DLC - I just play Kaiserreich and sometimes Millennium Dawn, and not much of either because my gaming computer can barely run - but I've noticed how they want to sell very clean pre-packaged stories, mostly meme bullshit, where you just press the buttons and then have to fulfill the goals to advance the plot, like a linear action game.
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I find it hilarious that V2, which styles itself as "not a map painter" and "all about the systems" has to have special event trees for everything important that they want to happen (Japan, China, American expansion and civil war, etc.) because their shitty systems won't actually make things work otherwise. Almost as if history is full of twists and turns which their systems deliberately prevent from occurring. Just let the game get loose and have weird things occur. Its not bad.
 
vulgar said:
I agree, something lacking in VickyII was pop to pop interaction, it was all state to pop. Ethnic tensions sounds like an interesting mechanic, I just hope they don’t moralize too much about it in a colonial strategy game.

In the same vein, government organization sounds interesting and it’s neat to see that ideology will have an impact on pop organization/distribution of capital rather than just determining government spending.

My fear, though, is that the game will present communism as some objectively ideal goal that every state should build themselves towards, that every campaign should see their state end with communism as some sort of meta. It’s not like I want the game to unnecessarily punish the player for going commie either, it just feels like the game will be filled with personal ideological tinkering and fuckery.

Generally, this is my main problem with a new Vicky game getting made in the current year. I suppose it would be disingenuous to argue a game like this be absent of ideology and political lecturing regardless of when it was made, but in the current climate I imagine it’ll be a critical level.
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What will be interesting about Communism in Vicky 3 will be the fact that it will most likely arise in the countries it was predicted to arise in. I wouldn't doubt that there will be an achievement to have a communist revolution occur in an agrarian country because Paradox will base the rise of Communism under its theoretical conditions. Which demonstrates why Communism will act as it does in Vicky 3; concepts like Marxism-Leninism, the Vanguard Party, and 5 year industrialization plans didn't exist yet. While we can come to the conclusion that Communism would end up being an authoritarian system, that comes from the 20th century example of Communism. The 19th century Communist examples we have are smaller and on a local level, we don't have 19th century Communist state to use.

What I could see Vicky 3's Communism being is an immediate short term boost to trade unions, peasantry, and intelligentsia groups as well as working class pops, with the upper class pops, religious, and bourgeoisies groups suffering. You get more control over your country's development, but at the cost of locking yourself out of international markets outside of fellow Communist and even Anarchist countries. You can help create more Communist countries if you support more Internationalist policies, however, it will turn the major powers hostile to you. Which will force Communist countries to forgo lower class prosperity towards increased military buildup. Going along a more insular path will have countries deal with domestic power-sharing issues and those groups that do not have enough power will have the opportunity to rebel.

The theme of Vicky 3 has been shown to be positive, that humanity is growing. Though since this game goes until 1936, a WW1 event should shatter that positivity. Communism should reflect that. A utopian political ideology promising a classless, stateless, humane society becomes a rigid, territorial, oppressive society as this radical ideology requires more production and control over what is produced to keep it alive.
 
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