That’s great to see especially for a Vicky title. I was worried it would sell poorly and go down the Imperator road of no improvements or future patches. I hope we get 1.1 before they head out on their winter break.
The downfall of the monarchy was not brought about by the wave of radicalism sweeping Europe, but by the Free State Question. “Why should one man be able to treat a country like it was his own house?” A few short years* after Leopold of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha unilaterally took the heart of Africa for his own, the Congo Free State–which was anything but–was reincorporated into Belgium at the behest of the international community. The momentum could not be stopped and soon thereafter the monarchy was abolished and the United Belgian States proclaimed. The former king persuaded the Rexists of Wallonia and the Hausa states to secede, but they folded, despite the ex-monarch’s expertise with the machine gun**, without violence when Belgium’s allies (Austria, Scandinavia) refused to recognize their independence play. The remaining monarchists were pacified with the revocation of the national guard and introduction of guaranteed liberties***, leaving only the long-marginalized landowners and church advocating for a return to despotism. Their time has passed, and a glorious future awaits the free people of Belgium–European and African alike.
*though they felt much longer
** I put him in charge of the armies to try to get him killed, but it didn’t work and he got an event that made him a machine gun master. I would have sent him on the Antarctic expedition and left him there, but I couldn’t. [I also have no direct evidence he was behind the monarchy restoration movement, but come on.]
*** For some reason.
Speaking of Kings, meet the King of Colombia, Su Majestad Real Católica, Rey de la Nueva Granada y Rey en Colombia, Hilario I.
He is descended from a noble European family that once held fiefdoms in Liguria, France, Spain and Italy, and his ancestry can be traced to Charlemagne.
So why a king? Interesting story. So playing Colombia (then Nueva Granada) we had Debt Slavery which was just impossible to shake off due to the political dynamics. It was keeping us agrarian, stifling growth, etc. along with the obvious moral objections. So I figured if I changed to Monarchy, it would keep the landowners on-side if I ended Slavery; maybe even make it possible. As well, the Church was all for it. But the radicalization of the trade unions and the intelligentsia that followed was leading to revolution brewing as the change in government was being approached. I bolstered the Intelligentsia; to no avail! Until…it reached 60% and just stagnated.
And then, we get Hilario up there in 1845. A MEMBER of the Intelligentsia along with a British-style Parliamentary Democracy. The Intelligentsia LOVE him (though he’s kind of a corrupt tax-stealing bastard). And the resulting Legitimacy and ability to bring the Intelligentsia into coalition and we ban slavery toot-sweet.
An interesting country to play. The French have showed up in 1867 and offered me +30 income for 10 years for a Canal Zone. I say, OK. France is far away, and not close like the USA. Its currently paying for my industrialization.
We’ll see what happens when his son, who is in with the Landowners takes over…
That might not happen. There was a bug that let rulers live to 100+ years old — not sure if it’s been patched out yet or not.
Well my Shah in Persia sure kicked the bucket at 80 I think.
I think that’s a 1.1 fix
Next Monday is 1.1
And looks like it fixes a lot of the issues people were having(Old Age! Circular Trade! Ahistorical USA!). No mention of a fix for the issue where migration targets don’t expire. That sucks as it ruined my last game. One thing I really liked was a couple mentions of changes made to a couple UIs that are based on mods. Glad Paradox is paying attention to what mods are doing with the UI.
The Ripper can no longer be a child or toddler
Boo hiss!
You know, the Ripper was one of the most annoying things about Victoria 3. I know why it’s there mechanically, it’s a “challenge” for an institution and other institutions have similar event chains. But it’s too specific and memorable, and it basically happens every game you play.
I’ve played two campaigns to completion and have not seen this event chain.
Well I guess that’s the randomness for you. It was in two pre-release games I watched and it was in 3 games I’ve played.
I’m curious if it would be better for it to be an event chain that likely happens each game, but only to one country? And if it’s not your country then you maybe get an event or two about it? I like when you can feel a little more connected to what’s going on in other countries.
That reminds me, there was a note in the patch notes that they moved several notifications to be the kind that show up in the middle of your screen rather than hidden down in the event log. Assuming they chose the right notifications that should be a big improvement! Would still like the option to make notifications do pop-up and pause like in their old games.
I haven’t interacted much with the war system in the game, but my experiences last night were pretty confusing.
I played Austria and did the cheese tactic of separating the western part of the Prussian market from it’s market center. By the time the war started, Prussian barracks in the eastern part were at a 45% penalty due to lack of ammunition. In my head, this penalty would offset my being behind a level in infantry tech, and then numbers (mine and my Russian friends) would let me win.
Didn’t seem to work out that way. Every battle I was heavily outnumbered and took higher casualties. I made zero progress against Prussia proper (only minor allies) and when I switched over to defence I was also outnumbered in every battle, taking higher casualties and losing territory.
My understanding is that the side with worse stats can bring more battalions to the battle, with overall number of battalions on each side of the front line mattering little except to put a cap on the number you can bring to any one battle. However, it seemed to me that I always brought half as many battalions but only equal stats at best.
I think one factor is that the damn Swedes had a 35-battalion army on the front that had higher tech and didn’t have a arms-shortage penalty. So I think I had a stat advantage across the whole front versus the under-supplied Prussian barracks, which gave the enemy a bonus to how many battalions they could bring to the battle. But since the Swedish leader was the only enemy general on the front, he always brought his full stack of higher-tech battalions with no penalty while the Prussians sat in their barracks and laughed.
Overall the mechanic of giving the lower-stat side an advantage in numbers in every battle (even if they are at a disadvantage in numbers overall) is pretty garbage. Numbers you can bring to battle should probably be driven by logistics on each side, doctrine and commander ability.
The other weird thing about the war - despite taking massively fewer loses, Prussian suffered much more rapidly from war-weariness. Not that it mattered, since I can’t press any goals if I can’t advance on their territory.
Maybe it shouldn’t be quite like that, but I’m betting Prussia was hit economically pretty hard, which will get worse with labor shortages, and also Sweden, especially if they couldn’t rotate their troops.
The forever stalemate is pretty bad and pretty easy to fall into such a war. Now the deeper into debt they go the more they’ll be likely to accept some kind of peace agreement. And at some point Sweden will probably be willing to peace out assuming they don’t actually have any war goals on the line.
I have no idea how conscripts work. I.e., how they are assigned to generals. The war system is really very weak.
Once you mobilize them they’ll get assigned to generals from that regions HQ who have command space for them in ratios dictated by the generals rank.
