Oh boy, update is out on Monday? I have Monday and Tuesday off of work for a “spring break” kind of mental recharge but my plate was already full of Wo Long and Last Epoch’s multiplayer launch. Can I squeeze some Vicky 3 in there as well?
There’s not enough hours in the day or days in the week for all I want to play right now! I’m still meaning to get back to Distant Worlds 2 and give the last couple DLCs of Stellaris a spin.
The 1.2 update came out today, which means I’m finally going to see about tackling the Ottoman Empire and see if I can make them thrive in the 19th century. Also interested to see how much better late game performance is now that I have a modern CPU.
And my expectation that they’d release their first DLC with 1.2 turned out to be true! They stealth released a music pack along with the patch today! Normally I’d not care, but the music in Vicky 3 is really pleasant and this is more of that.
Stayed up too late playing my Ottoman Empire game last night. Took a few restarts to manage the Tanzimat Reforms in time. Once through that the OE is in a really strong position. You’re able to get claims on a good chunk of Egypt and all of the Aegean(if you take that option after Tanzimat) and those basically let you avoid infamy for taking a bunch of territory. Then you have access to a bunch of unrecognized countries in Arabia and Africa that are pretty easy to gobble up to get some of the resources you won’t otherwise have. I need to remember to launch the game with Auto HDR off so I can grab some screenshots. China completely fell apart, which is fun, except they were a good distraction for Russia. The US Civil War happened at some point and apparently the CSA won? The USA is now some of New England, Washington DC, Florida(ha), and parts of the Plains and Pacific Northwest. Mexico still holds much of the Southwest. Right before I finally shutdown for the night I had an event about the Communist takeover in the Confederate States of America. Wacky shit.
1.2 Observations:
What a lengthy list of changes! I only made it halfway through.
I’ve been impressed with what they’ve been able to accomplish since launch. Sure, in hindsight the game should have been delayed, but I feel like it’s moving to where it should a whole lot faster than CK3. Not one of their all-time greats yet, but I don’t know that Paradox has ever had an all-time great within 6 months of launch. At least not since something like EU2 or HOI2.
I’m also impressed by the speed and breadth of the changes. I fired up Brazil, which I think is going to be my standard country to try new major releases. The QOL improvements were noticeable, private investment seemed to being working as designed. Overall economic expansion seemed slower, which could have been me or WAD not sure.
I also found out the hard way, you have to weaken the damn landowner, before you attempt to get rid of slavery in the 1840s. The civil war was interesting but ultimately I want to get to 1900,so I reloaded.
Sadly, I don’t think Vic 3 will ever be a great game, because you don’t get immersed in the experience. I found myself scanning the market screen while watching my build screen and somewhat randomly improving relationships with other countries and very slowly trying to change laws… Ultimately there isn’t that much to do and its not that much fun.
I kind of felt this way about EU4 at launch, it very quickly just became about fighting easier and easier yet more and more tedious wars. It kind of still does after a 200+ years when all there is to do is expand endlessly and your location no longer feels relevant and you’re too strong to be worried too much about the diplomatic side, but all the stuff added since release makes those first couple hundred years amazing with some very distinct challenges depending on who you’re playing as.
CK3 still has this problem too. You start to get the same events and everything starts to feel the same.
I’ve said it a few times in this thread, but there is certainly a lack of connection with your country and people in Vicky 3. It’s an area where I think the game is a step back from Vicky 2 where I always felt much more worried about the make up of my population. And then things like major characters dying or your alliances breaking being minor footnotes you’ll likely miss further take you disconnect you.
I made it to 1936! Ottoman Empire(now Turkey) ended up as the #2 ranked power in the world after France spent the last decade in a series of civil wars. Unfortunately, my last aggressive war against Russia had the British Republic join in and I couldn’t get out of my truce in time to try to win a humiliation war against them before the end and move to #1. Behold!
Congrats!! What were your impressions of 1.2 and the game overall?
My 1.2 thoughts from a few posts above held up til the end. I think they accomplished what they tried to do with this patch. By the end I had a socialist government that finally went to Presidential Republic(hence switching to Turkey) in the last two years of the game, but it was a struggle to get past the landholders. A smaller issue was breaking the Sunni clerics stranglehold on religious/schooling matters. Similarly, I managed to just move past state religion and religious schooling in the last few years. So that’s all really good.
Wars, for the most part, were far less goofy than previously, and having the Strategic Objectives was nice in bigger wars, such as my wars with Russia.
In the second half of the game the economy is far less interesting and is mostly just mass-building things with prices that have gone too high. Private economy made that a less constant necessity to fiddle with, so that was excellent. And buildings felt more balanced now, even if it’s hard to put into words how. Outside of continuing reforms and land grabs, I was pretty much just coasting past 1900. It’s a Paradox game, though, and the last 33% of all of those games are never great. The conversion to oil is a somewhat interesting piece of the end, but tech slowdown in this patch actually made it less of a thing as I never got a lot of the oil techs. I’d love if they leaned into other things like the dreadnaught race and things like that to add some spice to the endgame.
My biggest desire for their first big focus patch/DLC would be diplomacy. More options for dealing with subjects and rivals and more engagement in diplo plays. Player should be able to offer to join based on adding a wargoal or two of their own, for example(the AI can already offer this to the player). Would love for the scope of diplo plays to be able to grow when bigger powers enter and some way to have countries enter a war late. On the flip side, limited colonial wars should absolutely happen. And unstable countries should actually fall apart. China has extra stuff that makes it possible to happen there and obviously the US civil war lets the USA split in half with New Africa often forming at some point based on something. But countries that keep having revolutions should have secession movements all try to capitalize on that and gain independence. Let instability really snowball if people are pissed off.
Thanks for the update. I still haven’t been inspired to resume my Brazil game, perhaps this weekend.
Better diplomacy could really help the engagement factor. But I’m generally not sure what I’m suppose to do with diplomacy other than stay of expensive wars, and probably get more people in my market.
Right now there isn’t much more to do with diplomacy. And actually, probably the biggest thing they need to change with diplomacy, even more than the additional interaction options I want, is to tie it into the political system. It’s already weird that relations aren’t affected at all by how similar or not two nations politics are. The fact that the UK doesn’t care(and can’t do anything about it anyway) if its dominions go communist is weird. And on the flip side, it’s weird that parties and IGs don’t care about diplomacy/international relations one way or the other. Isolationist IGs should push for you to cut alliances and trade agreements, not just push for a switch to an Isolationist trade law. Free traders the opposite. Landowners may want you to cut ties with nations that have liberalized too much. There are lots of things you can do there!
Also, more shipping Lenin to Russia in armored trains, please.
EDIT: So many places to go with this! This could actually help justify out of the way colonization or colonial wars as your populace pushes you to not fall behind a rival in the prestige race.
I understand this desire to have internal politics transfer into external ones. However, I think devs are afraid that game would feel too auto-pilot-ish. With the economics, it’s quite easy to be reactive and for now it’s enough to build economic dominance. If you can get away with building your diplomacy on desires of your people then you might feel like a middle manager just clicking stuff you’re told to click. Of course it’s all a speculation, plenty of ways they can do that.
Definitely needs to be done in a way where it just adds more dynamic ways you’re interacting with your IGs rather than letting them pilot the ship. It should all feel like your making tradeoffs and balancing the varying concerns in your country. So if you pursue some of the Industrialists diplomatic policy you’ll need to find a way to throw the Landowners a bone internally to keep them happy. Or, in return for your support in these liberalization measures, Armed Forces, we’ll launch that war to retake Azerbaijan you’re desperate for.
One thing I’ve been wondering about is the system for passing laws. It’s basically a seige model, where passage of the law can either go quickly or slowly. One thing I don’t like is the consequences of failing seem to be pretty low - stop trying to pass the law, try to pass another reform and take a swing at it again in a few years.
I’ve been thinking for a while that it would be more engaging if the model for passing a new law was more like a war. So you basically create an internal “diplomatic incident” and try to sway interest groups to staying on the sidelines or not. The interest group leaders are basically generals that fight a few “battles” with attached events and dice rolls modifiers. If you can drive the opposition forces into retreat you can pass the law.
It would also be interesting if there were serious consequences for failing to pass the law. Maybe some persuadable pops switch support to the conservative groups, entrenching their power for a generation. Groups who did support the failed reform become radicals, etc.
I agree. And some form of being able to barter or make compromises to sway those interest groups as part of that. The current system is very passive once you’ve started trying to pass it and there is no real feel of a push and pull or politicking to get stuff passed. It’s just hope the dice rolls go your way.
Exactly. I was thinking they already have kind of a framework for bargaining in the diplomatic incident “sway” mechanic. So you kind of attach extra goals to the legislation to get groups where you want them. The main interest group opposed to the change would also be trying to sway the other groups and getting their own “wargoals” locked in.
I’m disappointed their goals with diplomacy aren’t more ambitious in the near-term, but overall I think this is a good indication that they understand where the game needs to improve within the scope of the initial vision. Note that all the stuff listed there is for base game patches. Still no indication on what plans they have for DLC.
Looks pretty solid to me, particularly for base-game patches. That seems like quite a bit on the plate, I’m curious what kind of timeframe they’re looking at.
I’m still concerned they aren’t addressing the fundamental problem of the game, which is that main activity of the player is to construct buildings. While, which buildings to build and where to build them are pretty interesting questions, it gets old fairly quickly. The other activities like say passing laws, are very much in the hope and pray for good die rolls category.
I’m with you I feel very disconnected from the Pop, not better and possibly worse than Victoria 2.
