Thank you, sir!
Pre-orders are also up for people interested in that. This is one of the few games that I’ll still preorder.
Two hours into this stream and they’ve made it to 1839 and are about to take a dinner break. Can’t wait to play this game, but I doubt I’ll watch many streams of it.
Addendum: This has been really interesting to watch though. The Netherlands are lacking in a ton of industrial resources so they’ve been struggling to with their production capabilities and keeping their economy in good shape. Also interesting that they made the decision to downgrade the production method for their fisheries recently to reduce demand/cost of ships. Sure seems like different countries will play drastically differently!
I broke down and pre-ordered it as I am sucker for Paradox. I still don’t like the changes to war after watching it in action, but will give it a try as the rest seems great.
Whereas I’m super excited to have a Paradox game where I don’t have to move stacks of units around. The only thing I don’t like about those changes are that they seemingly the thing that killed the NoCB podcast, which was a podcast I quite looked forward to each week.
I’m not familiar with the podcast. Are you saying they stopped making the podcast because they don’t like how war works in V3?
One of the three remaining( was originally four people but Leana Hafer quit earlier in the year for unknown reasons) members quit the podcast because he lost all interested in Vicky 3 because of those changes, and didn’t have any other PDX games he was interested in anymore(he was a big fan of Imperator so that game ceasing development was already a blow for him). Once they were down to two members they gave up on doing regular shows. They are supposed to do some occasional special episodes but those have yet to materialize.
Interesting. Aside from Hearts of Iron, I’ve never had any interest in the marching-armies-around part of Paradox games. I always found it tedious and mostly just chasing armies in circles or playing whack-a-mole, even with partially successful tools like Forts in EU4 (which had their own issues). I can’t imagine losing interest in a Paradox game because that part of the game is gone, even if it’s something I generally enjoyed. Except for HOI, it’s just not a core part of the games.
Agreed! Especially considering that often the most optimal thing to do is to split your army up and carpet siege a country. That’s just a bunch of tedium that I hate. Even in Imperator, which I think solved a lot of the optimal army cheesiness, war got old pretty fast.
lol, I watched some of that video, and I enjoyed the great Belgian invasion of Russia. :)
But yes, like you guys, I don’t really care for the military engine in Paradox games other than HOI. I play these things for the economic and political simlutions, not to mention the engaging soap opera of games like Crusader Kings 2.
I thought it was more Leana was tired of managing it with all her other responsibilities, and then it quickly folded after that with Lambert I think being upset about the unit change. I think it was pretty much a done deal when Leana stepped down.
Oh I have no doubt that was the beginning of the end. But those three had vowed to soldier on until Lambert quit because he was upset about the war changes in Vicky 3.
My biggest concern is that it appears to all come down to who has the better/bigger army and not who is better at using their army. Half the fun of EUIV and Vic 2 for me is playing the underdog and using terrain or other advantages to beat a bigger AI. I am willing to give it a try, but fear that smaller nations won’t be worth playing if they can’t compete militarily or economically.
Made it about 90 minutes into the Stream, definitely looks like a very meaty deep economic game. The streams lack some excitement though.
I really wonder how they are going simulated free market capitalism. Ideally, the market decides that it is time to build a tooling factory, fishing wharf or cannery. It is not a government function, although the government can nudge in the right direction.
Nearly 12 years exactly since Vic2. Not quite as hyped for this as I was for that one - but still great this is coming out.
Preordered the grand edition over at greenmangaming where it is 15% off, couldn’t help myself.
7 weeks!!
Certainly there is a risk for wars being too uninteresting in this setup, but I’d also argue it’s likely to generate more realistic outcomes in this period. Most wars weren’t decided by who could lure the other side into just the right terrain or perfectly timing ordering troop movements just when the enemy army got locked into movement.
I’ll be interested to see how much player selection of generals and other high-level considerations end up mattering. One thing they hinted at on the stream was that it’s very possible to get yourself into a situation where the army rebels or disbands due to economic/pop issues. Having your WW1 go the French mutiny route or Russian route would be neat.
The other big risk with this one is that wars all start with diplomatic plays and you can end up with things spiralling out of control from there.
But yeah, I could see war being something they don’t truly get right as an interesting mechanic for a couple of years.
They abandoned having independent capitalists choosing what to build in Vicky 3, the player will choose everything that gets built.
Vicky: Revolutions and Vicky 2 were really cool for attempting a more realistic style of governing based on the government in power, but the capitalist AI just couldn’t handle it. I do wish they would have just tried to improve on that for 3 but they decided to go the more traditional route. Now all capitalists really do is pour money into an investment pool that you can use to construct things. Maybe in the future they can meet in the middle where the capitalists will only put up money for certain projects?
Between that and getting rid of the invention system in favor of a standard tech tree, they have certainly lost some unique gameplay systems.
Oh gosh, maybe I don’t want to read these developer diaries after all…
Ok ok, but the rest of the changes are all soooo good and the design feels very cohesive and really leans into what actually made the series special. And I think it’ll lead to more diverse playthroughs, whereas Vicky 2 always felt like trying to push towards the same sort of industrial/liberalization path.
Also, instead of inventions you unlock new production methods that basically fill in a lot of the inventions. But implementing those production methods actually takes time(inventions just immediately provided big buffs) and change the input requirements for their industries. So you may actually have to improve your economy to implement the state of the art production methods. So new tech may not actually benefit your country much if it’s not actually ready for it yet.