I am tempted by the expansion, but after seeing how totally broken ACW is I might give it a miss for now.
I abolished slavery in the 1840s. It was easy. No rebellion - the planters actually remained more loyal than radical. I hadn’t done anything cheesy like keeping them in government or anything.
It’s just broken.
Ooh nice catch. I think a first expansion focused on diplomacy is the right call .
There are other countries you can play :)
Oh I know, but it kind of showed how the political layer is just smoke and mirrors. TI guess they’e changed it in 1.3 though.
I don’t know if it shows it’s all smoke and mirrors or if it’s more that it isn’t fully dialed in and maybe doesn’t fully represent how entrenched IGs were motivated(making it too easy to work around them). I like the ambition of trying to avoid specific things to force the ACW but it seems like they’ll have to go a little further down that road to really make it work for the player. FWIW AI America almost always ends up with the ACW happening in my games.
Maybe I should just get the expansion and try a France game, but France is so strong that the only real challenge will probably be navigating the broken GP diplomacy.
I think I will wait for the diplomacy expansion and then give it another go.
Wow, this had a huge update. I can’t resist the expansion, and I’m loading it up now. Viva la France!
One Proud Bavarian is very much not a fan of this update or DLC
It seems his main complaints are that the AI doesn’t do well with the new systems, agitators are hard to keep track of, and Luddites are treated a historically. the second is the most concerning to me, but I have not yet worked up the energy to dive back into the game.
Agitators are hard to keep track of and are unbalanced. Both of those are pretty bad for a headline system. I’m disappointed that the French content seems underwhelming as well. The journal system is hugely powerful but they don’t seem to have figured out how to really design interesting content to use that system yet. The base game’s journal entries are all pretty underwhelming too.
And yes, he spends a lot of time complaining about the luddites and Industry Banned, which whatever. I do think his suggestion for a better replacement is good but he’s probably over emphasizing the impact of the issue.
I do play with his Victoria Tweaks mod as my base for Vicky 3. It doesn’t do anything over the top but generally takes what he(and his co-creator) are frustrated with in the base game and improves/tweaks it. It looks like he’s going to mod Industry Banned to be more in line with his suggestions in a future update, for example. And he released a new version that coincided with VotP that decreases the power of agitators and the like. Helps to get early access to content!
Thanks for pointing me to his mod!
It’s really well done and I’m always a little surprised when I realize some part of it isn’t actually base Vicky 3 because it all feels like it should be.
Haven’t kept up on any of the more ambitious mods other than Anbennar, but I’m excited to see where those all go too. Maybe journal setups that clever modders come up with can inspire Paradox to make theirs more engaging.
I think his comments are self contradictory throughout the video. “1.3 patch is good, I’m glad they didn’t paywall these features” and “DLC is light for the price, feels like bad value” - when these two are closely related. My take: the DLC supports the patch, the two should be reviewed as a whole, and if you think the patch was ok you should buy the DLC (now or eventually).
My sense on the PDX forums is the main criticism is not the contents of this patch, but what the overall dev priorities are. It seems many are upset (since 1.0) about the war, diplomacy, and economic systems (in that order). In some cases the demands are extreme - tear it all out. In others far more reasonable - give one more button here or there to make this workable.
But the complaints around the DLC seem to stem not from the DLC itself, but rather bad will because core complaints elsewhere in the game are neglected. And now there is a DLC pipeline a year out that doesn’t really address those concerns.
My own view - the base game is a good one, and worth the money. The patch and DLC are good, and worth the money. I enjoy the game, and will get my money’s worth out of it - just with Sweden! I agree with some of the community complaints, but can still enjoy the game as is.
There is a vindictive nature to some of the complaints that would be called “toxic” in nearly any other situation - work, social, romantic, etc. If you dislike a game, leave your review and walk away from it - don’t hang yourself on a cross for months or years on its forums. But this starts to veer into “old man yells at cloud” territory…
I’m shocked, shocked to find toxic behaviour in the paradox player community.
Yeah, this has been a problem with DLC reviews in Paradox games across their titles. I’ve seen fans rage no matter what they do: if important it desirable features are part of the DLC, they rant about the paywall. It’s much of it is provided for free for all players, they rail about the DLC being a ripoff for that price.
Happy to see Paradox trying to fix the biggest complaints with the Voice of the People content. They clearly know that they still haven’t figured out how to design engaging Journal entries and I’m glad they’re willing to throw out what isn’t working and try some different approaches.
Martin Anward is the guy with the guts to rip out the multiple FTL systems in Stellaris and rework the entire economy and Pop system. He’s definitely not afraid of taking a hard look at what’s not working and tear it all down
In a perfect world/game this would all be sorted at 1.0, but to their credit they keep plugging away on improving their games.
Oh indeed, but a game this complex is never going to come anywhere near to that kind of perfection. I always laugh when people blame it on Paradox’s approach to DLC or ongoing development or whatever and bring up how back in the good old days games had to be perfect at 1.0 because patching was either a difficult manual process or impossible. But of course that’s those rose tinted glasses that completely forget how back in those days games would come out with major flaws that you would just have to live with because the cake was baked at that point.
Yeah, I agree. My favorite Paradox forum whine is “This is a slap in the face! Features XYZ should have been in the base game!”, when they’re talking about stuff being added to EU4 a decade after release. :)
I mean, EU4 was a terrific game at release. If all these expansion features “should have” been in the base game, it would be going on 12+ years of development without any return in revenue. Good luck with that!