Victoria 3

I hope you are punished by enthusiastically clicking on 1000 Qt3 threads for games that turn out to be in early access!

@Scotch_Lufkin I played through Vicky II earlier this year using this guide and it was a very smooth experience. I had had the game for ages and wanted to try it out in advance of 3, to see if I was interested in picking it up. Even you don’t want to pick up 2 for a couple of bucks, the first few pages of this guide give a good introduction to the concepts. I was able to understand the dev diaries for 3 based on reading/playing this guide. And I found the UI much simpler and more playable than EU or Crusader Kings (where I could never get past the UI).

The only thing was that after my game, I wasn’t convinced that a second game would play out hugely differently (in the broad scope of things) even if I chose to play Britain or France. I’d still be trying to get my literacy up, get my pops to 2%, deal with these whackamole rebellions from the communists etc. So while it was a fascinating experience to play through, I’m not even 100% sure if I’ll get 3.

Happy to be corrected on that (no doubt) ignorant assumption that different nations might play very same-y. ;)

But the guide is really good; check out the first couple of pages and see if it’s your jam.

For anyone looking for the trailer in question, it’s here:

I’ll counter that with a recommendation to pick up Imperator Rome instead. Should be even easier to get into than EU4, far easier to purchase the complete experience for, and it even has a pop system! Before Paradox ditched the game they got it to a really solid point. The Imperator Invictus mod is an easy recommendation to go along with that too as it’s primarily focused on fleshing out all areas of the map and doesn’t change much feature wise.

Yeah, Imperator Rome is the closest game to Victoria. EU4 is much more of a board game filled with abstractions and not a lot of friction or inertia if you know what I mean.

I will get this if I can be Ukraine and kick Russia in the balls.

Thanks for the tips everyone - though to be honest, what appealed to me the most was the time period, so while Imperator Rome has actually been on my wishlist for some time, and it may play similar to Victoria 3, I’ll just hold off and wait for the release, and check out some “beginner” videos. I was thinking it was coming out today, so I was in a bit of a rush to get some research in, but if it’s a ways out yet I’ve got plenty on my gaming plate to keep me busy until then!

I don’t think it’ll be releasing before fall. If the time period is the thing, and it’s a big draw for me for sure, then not sure what to recommend for Grand Strategy but Vicky 2. However, even as a fan I struggle to go back to that game for long. Paradox GSG have just come so far in the last decade it’s tough to go back.

It was a releasable nation in Vicky 2 and I’m sure it will be in Vicky 3 as well. The real question is how do you want to bring Ukraine into existence before playing them? Start as Russia and release them? Kick Russia’s ass as another country and force them to release Ukraine?

Kind of new to this party but I didn’t realize the game had such a global scale. For whatever reason I thought it was just Europe. Silly me. Interest++

Crusader Kings and Imperator both have more limited scope(Europe, North Africa, Near East + part of India) but the other Paradox games all have a global scale. Traditionally the more detailed content has been focused on Europe but they’ve been trying to break away from that some with game features designed to work more broadly as well as DLCs that focus on flavor for other parts of the globe.

This is spectacular.

So glad it’s coming out tomorrow, although I didn’t see the trailer until today, so that means it will be a June 14 release for me, whereas the rest of you who saw the trailer yesterday have already got the game. Damn!

It won’t. PDXCon is where they say it will be first time people can play it, and that is in October. My guess is Early December.

It’s actually September 2&3. I’m hopeful that means an October release is feasible. I can’t imagine they’d release later than November since December is a deadzone for games and Paradox is closed for a couple of weeks at the holidays so they wouldn’t want to risk putting a game out into the wild right before that.

“Release sometime in 2022” means “we’re going to push the release until February 2023,” and we all know it.

Again, I don’t think they’re going to change the policy of only letting outsiders play the game (non-scripted) near release. Alas, there’s a lot of downsides to that with a significantly loud portion of their fanbase.
So, probably October.

Considering they had said nothing about release timing until now I really hope that means they are confident they’ll get it out the door this year.

@tomchick is the worst kind of tease isn’t he? :)
As you see, it’s not coming out til fall.

I am looking forward to the game, although both Victoria and Victoria II eluded my ability to play them. I normally like complicated games but I never clicked with either of the two earlier iterations. I hope third time is the charm.

I think you are probably right in the IR system seems closer to what Vic 3 will be. However, the problem with IR is just not very much fun. I’ve fallen asleep playing the damn game more than once.