Victoria 3

I noticed today you can get an average Standard of Living for interest groups.

But yeah, there’s a lot to be desired about summarising pop information. In particular, average isn’t a very useful measure: what I usually want to know is how badly-off the poorest are, and how many people are below their expected living standard.

Country-wide. A power plant in Tokyo will power factories in California.

Railroads work similarly. The infrastructure they provide is local, but the transportation resource is global. Not sure how you provide INFRA to non-coastal states before railroads are invented.

Road Maintenance authority action and… that seems like about it?

One thing I get from reading about army logistic from ACOUP is that pre-railroad, the options for areas that don’t have a coastline or navigable river really are practically non-existent on an industrial scale. The old problem of the draft animals rapidly eating what they could pull.

I’d like to see a better model for lakes, rivers and canals than a flat bonus though.

Completely agree. It’s potential is actually amazing for replay value and deep play, but it needs a lot of work, polish, and further development or creation of mechanisms get there. But to cut them some slack, I completely get it regarding how the game isn’t there yet. Its a very complicated and detail-dependent ask. I am impressed at the lack of technical faults and what is already baked in. It’s a substantial achievement, just incomplete.

Yeah, I think they had the priorities right. Victoria 2 never worked. First they need to make sure the mechanics are there, they function together, and there’s interesting ways of interacting with them. Basically, dial in the core game experience for 1.0. A lot of replayability isn’t there yet, but I had quite a bit of fun in my playthroughs (mostly as Persia). I like the game, even though I’m not chomping at the bit to experience new nations since they’re not distinct enough.

Given their post-release development model and how Paradox is wanting to shift to selling flavor as opposed to mechanics, it makes sense. If the core game is good, they can have the content team get to work on making major nations and different regions interesting and distinct in their own ways. Package those up, sell them for $10 or $15, while the core team continues to improve existing systems and build out new ones that everyone gets.

I’m happy with my purchase and I feel like the game is pretty solid. There are definitely areas I want to see improved, but overall I think their design works well and that’s not an easy task for a game with this many interlocking systems. I’m looking forward to seeing them build it out from the foundation that they have.

New Dev Diary. First 1/2 is on changes to make battles happen faster by making Morale drop faster. The rest is all sorts of random changes — updates to what government and military wages do (less impact on Interest Group approval) a few extra side effects, making government coalitions harder unless partners are somewhat aligned.

Full patch notes promised for next week’s Dev Diary, so I assume that means release is not that far off.

Had they shown off the other changes to the military interface? That breakdown when showing off the morale changes had bunch of different stuff I’ve never seen before that wasn’t morale related. Glad they are adding more info there!

I haven’t heard anything about changes to military for 1.1 before this Dev Diary. I think the general suspicion is that military and diplomacy will be a focus on 1.2. They sure do need to update the battle interface though to show the number of troops in the battle on the main screen though. From what I’ve seen that’s confusing an awful lot of players.

Canals. Although there are a lot of limitations there, and the canal era was alreadying ending at the start of the Vicky time period.

Less of a concern for acoup as I dont think they were ever a serious concern in military logistics.

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History PhD from UNC Chapel Hill who likes Paradox Games, uses them on occasion in his classes, and has a History Blog named “A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry” — aka ACOUP. Here’s his blog post on Victoria (previously posted upthread by @Mark_Crump)

Yeah I should have mentioned canals. They are definitely in an awkward place for a Victorian era game.

I don’t know much about canal history outside the UK. Was anywhere outside western Europe at the right level of development to build them before they were obsoleted by railways?

I figure the easiest way to represent them would be a small localised infrastructure bonus for provinces with historic canals until railways take over. May not have been worth bothering with.

The big one I know of is the Erie Canal in the US which was completed a decade before the game starts. A quick glance at Wikipedia indicates the peak year for it was 1855 so well within the game’s timeline. I already think it’s a bit ridiculous that the great lakes have a lower infra bonus than rivers.

I love his blogging, and this post finally convinced me to buy the game, I think. I was going to buy it eventually, but was trying to hold off.

Thanks for posting the link.

I picked up the game and I’m at somewhere around 1900 as Belgium. Gotta say, I’m really loving it. I understand how different nations might end up being pretty samey but I’m nowhere near there yet (I mean, obviously, since I’m only halfway through one game).

However, it does seem a little… easy? Maybe that’s just Belgium, though. I started with a pretty big gold reserve and went fairly deep into debt in the first decades of the game just massively industrializing, and now I’m just super rich. (Or I was, until I decided that the poor need welfare, for some silly reason.) Belgium is #3 right now, and honestly I’m not sure if I’m going to be able pass the UK (#2, though I just beat them in a war without too much trouble) or France (#1, close ally).

I cheated a couple times and reloaded when France or England sided against me in early diplomatic plays. It’s kind of confusing to work out what they’re going to want. For some reason England was really keen on opening up the Ashanti market; they’re a subject of mine, and since I usually have a trade agreement with the UK my understanding is that they basically have access to Ashanti goods anyway.

Speaking of opening up markets, the US was busy faffing around with Texas and Mexico (took them a long time to come out on top, and Mexico still has a Coloradan enclave) so I set about opening up Japan. They got the UK on their side but my siege artillery just absolutely smashed their peasants while British regulars tangled with Belgians and well-trained and equipped Nigerians (more or less) in deepest Congo. Japan capitulated out and I had basically fought the British to a white peace, but I figured I’d let them open the Ashanti market because maybe then they wouldn’t be so keen to oppose me anymore. So now the Ashanti have free trade, just like that, when it took me decades to finally get a set of party leaders who made it barely possible, and even then needed some help from the King.

And after like a hundred thousand dead and a hundred million spent, AFAICT I’m getting bupkis out of the Japanese market–I wanted oil but it’s just whale oil which isn’t going to run an assembly line, I think. Oh well, seemed like the thing to do at the time.

So to make up for it I actually cheated (considering the other reloads as “learning experiences”) and looked up where oil might spawn and it looks like the Belgians are heading for Borneo next.

I do have a few questions/frustrations:

  1. How the hell do you figure out who’s going to be in a battle and who’s going to win it? If there are 100 Belgian regiments and 50 British ones on a front, the makeup of a battle seems to be just randomly chosen numbers of 3-10 on each side, and it feels like I’m always outnumbered despite having the bigger army. And then I have a higher offense compared to their defense (or vice versa) and inflict more casualties and still lose the battle.
  2. I somehow got a whole bunch of radicals (25%) in Flanders. Is there a way I can figure out why? I’ve tried looking at some pops but haven’t been able to figure out the rhyme or reason, and of course there are way too many. And how can un-radicalize them? I guess change the laws or improve SoL? It’s already top of the world and if I do manage to boost it it’s just going to come down, probably.

An amusing parody, a nice “stream”.