So where are we on this, now? I played a round as Belgium a bit after release. Thinking about trying one as Sweden, because it’s a Paradox game and they always put in some extra candy for the Swedes, right?
Do we think the game is in a good state now? Is there supposed to be a patch coming soon? I haven’t really been following.
Big update coming in November last I heard, and an expansion early next year. Those are what I’m waiting for before jumping back in.
Thanks! I’m also thinking about spinning up Shadow Empire again, as I haven’t played since the last update. Maybe I’ll give that a shot and try this after the next update.
Shadow Empire is always a good use of your time.
Victoria 3 was pretty good around mid summer, even with warts. I also set it down as the changes planned for the fall/winter sounded excellent, and I have plenty of complete games in my backlog.
I too wait for update and will probably try beta next week. Those additions sound too delicious to wait, though of course I don’t expect it to be playable and AI to use the new features properly
I wouldn’t be surprised if the November update’s final release gets pushed back a bit, but that’s simply because next weeks beta was supposed to be feature complete but still won’t be.
Turns out a major overhaul to war among other large changes is a lot. It kind of blows my mind how much they are tackling in this update, they just keep unveiling more stuff. And then the expansion on tap a few months after that.
Nov 14 just announced as the release date for 1.5, and some new DLC
Looks like the DLC is focused on South America. It has been rolled into the expansion pass / grand edition for free for anyone that owns those.
Nice surprise with the DLC. Not really interested in going back to Brazil just yet, but one of the other countries with some added content could be a good run for getting back into the game.
This is one of those games that is an auto buy for me. Including DLC. I like it’s systems most of any PDX game; all others are enjoyable but also easy to wait on a sale.
Something I struggle with when trying to play Victoria 3 is that I load up a country, see it has 2 furniture factories, one glass factory, one …, two fishing huts, three lumber camps, and so on. What do I do next? What should I build next? Should I even be building?
The only time at release that I had fun with Vic 3 (I have only played like a dozen hours) is loading up a blank slate like Haiti and going from the ground floor. I am not saying this is the game’s fault, it could very well be mine.
I was wondering if anyone had good guides to teach how to think strategically in the game? Assume I know what each button does in the interface, but how do I think about setting and achieving objectives in this game especially in regards to the building part? It could even be a good streamer doing a lets play that is good at explaining the motives for everything they do. Every PDox GSG has this same learning curve in different ways, I am just struggling with Vic 3 for some reason.
I don’t have any guides to point you, but I’ll write my thoughts here. Not that I have a vast number of games under my belt, so take this with a pinch of salt.
I tend to sort the market by price, so whatever the country is most short of comes first. Then I look among those goods for anything that has a large deficit (i.e. excluding the things you don’t produce and don’t use more than a trickle of). That should give a rough priority order, which you should bias towards raw materials then things your people need.
From this priority order, you need to consider which will be most effective to import right now, and which you should increase production of locally. (Of course you can and should change this over time.)
This should work in general terms for a good chunk of the game, with the major exception that there tends to be no demand for “new” good types as they become available through technology. I’m thinking of telephones, engines and even steel. These are all important goods though, and the demand will appear once the capacity is built, partly from new production methods becoming viable.
I think Vic3 might be deceptive in terms of economic goals cause you’re used to the idea that money good. You might be hesitant to raise taxes because it makes people sad, but otherwise it might feel like you should build a lot of profitable buildings. You often should but there are many other concerns. I’d say for most countries your initial goals are:
I’m not saying anything about military affairs here because it’s very situational. Know though, that sometimes it pays to go to war early, especially if you’re outside of Europe and the wars are predictable. Before the technology becomes powerful having more people might be enough to secure victory. Getting some infamy may disappoint your neighbors but early on it might not be important.
I am not a great player of course, just played a few games and noticed these are the things you should worry about first. Perhaps I’m wrong and for many countries it
Building construction capacity will greatly increase your demand of the basic construction materials and this can often be the biggest drain on your cash reserves. So build that up. Lumber is the base of so much of what you need early(as Aleksei said tools, paper, base construction production methods) so pin that resource and make sure it stays cheap. Iron is next after that. Once you’ve got that addressed( which includes the paper mills and tool factories) you can start to worry about food and clothing to help out your populace.
Now, if you’re going to play with the newest beta or in three weeks when the patch gets its full release, then you have to start really worrying about where you build stuff initially due to local pricing. From what I’ve seen from OPB he basically picks one state to focus on early to try to build his production chain locally up to construction sectors.
Beyond those basics, you’ll likely have a lot of authority early on, so use that! You can boost your basic resource production early in whatever state you’re investing in with one of those edicts. Plus, luxury taxes can be huge for softening your budget deficit. Save 100 or whatever it is to weaken the landowners too, if you can.
As Aleksei says, you’ll be fighting against the landowners early, so do what you can do weaken them, and try to address some of your most backwards laws. Agree that starting with the laws that explicitly boost landowner influence is the way to go as it makes passing additional laws easier going forward.
And as always in a Paradox game, be wary of anybody in the neighborhood who is stronger than you and use diplomacy to deal with that appropriately.
1.5 is out.
That may be deleterious to my productivity today.
And I was looking for something like this to get me up to speed since I haven’t played since 1.0:
Well, I ran into a pretty annoying bug so there went my lack of productivity.
Started as New Granada with a goal of seeing some of the new SA content and form Gran Colombia and beyond. First of all, despite economically being very undeveloped, New Granada has a really good set of starting laws, along with easy access to iron and coal to build out industry quickly.
Anyway, one of the journal entries involves stopping Bolivia from absorbing its Peruvian vassals. So I went to war to transfer all of those vassals to me, with Brazil joining me in return for a slice of the Amazon. Was going really well and we were well on our way to winning when Ecuador started a diplo play against Bolivia to liberate some territories in Peru. That went to a war I did not involve myself in. Somehow Ecuador was then able to take those territories I already controlled and get a peace before me, taking those territories and royally screwing up my fronts/armies to the point where I couldn’t capture any territory back. My army would travel there and then just head home. Really frustrating and led me to nope out.
I’m planning to fire it up this afternoon. But my impression is that Paradox is not very good at getting their patches right on the first time out and that subsequent hot fixes are pretty much the norm for them.
I saw a lot to like in those patch notes! I’m excited to fire it up again–haven’t played since my one Belgium game not too long after release.
I think I might wait a bit and see if we get a hotfix, though…