RANT: Things I dont like about Victoria

[Ryan]

let it be said that there are alot of things i like about victoria. from what i can tell it isnt like to ever surpass eu2 though.

i realize that some of these things can and will be corrected in future patches but here you have it:

although eu2's merchant-trade system left something to desire the economic aspect of eu2 was outstanding compared to the hellhole of micro-management that is victoria. besides money, the economy is very ressource-specifik with its 20+ different ressources each of which servers a purpose besides import/export. in eu2 each province produced a certain type of good and that was about as far as it went (apart from the tricks with grain and manufactory-specifik ressources). the point here is that it adds flavor and dept to the game when the dutch produce fabrics, the colonies in america produce tobacco etc. instead of just "creating money". but in victoria this is vasty overdone thus leading to unnessesary micro-management.
about micro-management: if you thought that promoting tax collectors all over america as spain involved alot of mouseclicks you aient seen nothing yet! as announced by paradox you manage the construction of facories from regions, not in specific provinces. but in a specifik province you manage railroad, rgo, and fort construction as well as micro-management of your pops in that province. all in all it takes alot of mousecliks and alot of time to make your nation run optimally pop-wise. some call this depth. i call it tedious.

another problem is the ability to stockpile money. in eu2 money is always precious but with vickly it is like in hoi where you easily amassed 99999 of every ressouce but rubber, you can quickly hoard a rediculous amount of money as soon as your luxurious industry is up and running. playing as france, i was able to max out the budget in every field, as well as maxing social reforms and still earn something like 1000£ a day.

another thing is the warfare. its so undynamic! i understand how ww1 was fought and it would be unhistoric to make the combat system attack based. however this IS a game and fighting a war where the front is unbreakable (even before ww1) just isnt that fun! sometimes the ai seems to do fairly wellin forming a counterfront when attacked but as a rule of thumb the ai is poor at forming fronts. this results in messy, messy wars when the AI fights itself. another thing is, i have not seen an ai able to mount a proper offense yet. oh yearh and deploying units takes alot of mouseclikcs as well

there are also a number of annoying random events. the most prominent is the cycle of event which destroys 100 of a specifik ressource in your stockpile which would be okay in and of itself if it was not because of the fact that it is fairly annoying to have these event all the time - i would rather have one event which ruins 1000 goods than eight events that ruin 800. also, some of the explanations given dont make sense at all. like the one where you loose luxury clothes. it says that a new fashion has appeard and thus the aristocracy rushes out to get new clothes. by getting new clothes they apparantly rob the state depots! blue blood or not, nobody is THAT desperate to be fashionable.

this has been one mans honest oppinion. i know you are all estatic about a new paradox release but do try not to fry me completely if you should feel inclined to flame me.

i love paradox and eu2 stands head and shoulders over any of game in my books but why o why do you always rush your releases, paradox? we die-hard fans on the forums will survive until the patches arrive but what about the average consumer who does not check for patches or might even not have internet access?

[UnionBuster]

Could the trade system be compared to Imperialism? Easier, harder, different?

[Ryan]

well the trade system works in a different manner all together (world market)

but resource management, convoys and conversion of pop is handled very much like imperialism

[Sir Humphrey]

Fairs fair, old boy! Although quite a number of people haven't played the game (including myself) these seem to be relatively minor complaints. Always set new challanges for yourself then!..

[John_Keats]

They seem like fair criticisms, honestly. I haven't played the game yet but I don't think anyone's going to crucify you for thinking of some relatively well thought out criticisms.

[Drakken]

Originally posted by Ryan
i love paradox and eu2 stands head and shoulders over any of game in my books but why o why do you always rush your releases, paradox? we die-hard fans on the forums will survive until the patches arrive but what about the average consumer who does not check for patches or might even not have internet access?

Too bad if you hate a few features of Victoria, but let me correct a common fallacy here: the game was definitely NOT rushed. Paradox doesn't always equal rushed games, and they do learn from their earlier mistakes. The game is ready, stable and tested beyond hell for the gold release. All features are functional and we worked our ass off to make sure that a first patch would be available to continue the improvement. That's not a game not ready for release...

Like I said, too bad if you don't like the design or the result of our collective effort. Paradox innovated with Victoria and these innovations are not fit for everyone, I guess. But I appreciate your honesty to come on this forum and express your opinion publicly in a calm and respectful manner. Not like the so-called "serious" and "mature" grognards bitching and moaning like brats on the Wargamer forum because they hated HOI and the fact that Paradox still uses RTS for their games, fouling Victoria without even having played a second of it.

Things are still to be improved, but we do our best to bring you the games with the best quality possible. But of course, we may not satisfy everyone. Still, your suggestions and comments, even negative, are appreciated and, if possible, relevant and making the game even more fun, always taken in account.

D.

[Syt]

When I read "RANT", I braced myself for a few flames spewing here, but it turns out that they don't. Instead we get cal arguments what you'd like different or would desire changed. Thanks for that.

Micromanagement was a major issue during beta test, and Paradox has listened to and implemented many suggestions in that area. E.g. there are right click menus on the map and esp. in the ledger. In the ledger you can right click the province, select "expand RGO" and that's it. The same goes for educating POPs in the ledger and many other things, I hope that helps you out.

As for random events, IIRC the damages to stockpiles should be graded according to how many you actually have, i.e. the more the have, the more you lose (noiminally), and if you have a smaller stockpile, you lose less.

[David Comnenus]

From what I've heard, that would be good. I've also heard some cries for saftey regulations reducing the frequency of such accidents. I don't have the game yet, but I will say that if everything I have heard is true, we are slowly reaching the point where the player may need to hire cabinet ministers to manage departments. Games are just getting so detailed that this is becoming necessary. And for pushing this envelope, I actually applaud Paradox...it's impressive.

[XieChengnuo]

Originally posted by Sytass
E.g. there are right click menus on the map and esp. in the ledger. In the ledger you can right click the province, select "expand RGO" and that's it.

:O you caveman ! with the new Streamlined Vicky Interface (tm), you don't need a mouse... just follow the shortcuts!!

< r < r < r < 0 r < r < r < r < r < 0 r < r < r < r

at least i think it's 0... but wow!! now all of your countries are building railroads!!

< e < e < e < 0 e < e < e < e < e < 0 e < e < e < e

now all your provinces are expanding their RGOs!! AMAZING!! beautiful!! ... these shortcut keys should be in the manual, actually... actually i don't know if the "e" key actually works, because i think it automatically expanded my RGOs for me, and I never had to use it... but i'm sure there EXISTS a hotkey that expands for you.

As for educating POPs... if you find it tedious, then that means you are micro-managing your POPs too much... a real nation didn't go around forcing everybody up and down the social strata

Of course that is only my humble suggestion, you can do what you please with your POPs..

[AlexanderG]

Is it realy that easy to stockpile money ?

And, question to betas/stuff, whats the deal with the rapid industrialization that people keep doing. Is there a way to slow that down and still have the game fun ? K

[Shadow Soldier]

Well the game isnt for anyone with the attention span of an eight year old. Not saying anything about the thread starter, just making a joke. Its complex, giving you utter control. Who doesnt like that?
-SS

[Icecold]

I guess it depends on what your looing for in the game - all your issues seems OK to me and in fact make we want it even more (if that were possible).

Only my view of course.

Cheers, Ice

[XieChengnuo]

Originally posted by AlexanderG
Is it realy that easy to stockpile money ?

And, question to betas/stuff, whats the deal with the rapid industrialization that people keep doing. Is there a way to slow that down and still have the game fun ? K

Well.. sort of...

like if you're a great power, and you do everything that great powers do except spend money on things like war, colonization, diplomacy, etc. then of course you're going to end up with a lot of money in the end...

but usually i find myself spending a lot of it declaring war, making sure that no one else gets too big, and colonizing...

[Xyrix]

playing as france, i was able to max out the budget in every field

And this is different from playing France in Eu2 because?

Seriously though, alot of these things seem to be features that are par for the course for P-dox games, and I wouldn't jump tot the conclusion that Vic was rushed. Of course, just thinking about having such a complex trade system makes me giddy with anticipation for this game. I think its off to another Screenshot Grand Tour for me...

[Syt]

Originally posted by XieChengnuo
:O you caveman ! with the new Streamlined Vicky Interface (tm), you don't need a mouse... just follow the shortcuts!!

I know, but I prefer the mouse interface.

[Jason]

Number of games played and difficulty level would make this sort of commentary more useful, to say nothing of a grammar.

[MegaPIMP]

The only thing(ok, maybe not only but most important) is some buttons to speed up the klicking.
Like when you are upgradeing resources in your country, you have to go to every da*n province and upgrade, why not a button to upgrade all resources in a region? and one to upgrade every province you have....

That would be VERY nice

*begs to paradox*


And one more thing that was addresed in HOI, deployment of troops can be a big pain, having to take every divison at a time.

Can't it be fixed so that I can drag box around them if I want?


And about Ryans post, I have never had any problem breaking a stalemate(does just hapen in ww1 times or when 2 sides got exactly as big armys).

[XieChengnuo]

Originally posted by MegaPIMP
The only thing(ok, maybe not only but most important) is some buttons to speed up the klicking.
Like when you are upgradeing resources in your country, you have to go to every da*n province and upgrade, why not a button to upgrade all resources in a region? and one to upgrade every province you have....

I know this isn't the same, but it takes only a little longer, as is a lot easier than the HoI-clicking-mayhem

The the new Streamlined Vicky Interface (tm)
< r < r < r < 0 r < r < r < r < r < 0 r < r < r < r

at least i think it's 0... but wow!! now all of your provinces are building railroads!!

< e < e < e < 0 e < e < e < e < e < 0 e < e < e < e

now all your provinces are expanding their RGOs!! AMAZING!! beautiful!! ... these shortcut keys should be in the manual, actually... actually i don't know if the "e" key actually works, because i think it automatically expanded my RGOs for me, and I never had to use it... but i'm sure there EXISTS a hotkey that expands for you.

[Maximilian I]

Originally posted by MegaPIMP



And one more thing that was addresed in HOI, deployment of troops can be a big pain, having to take every divison at a time.

have you tried the "deploy all to home" button? it works...

[DGuller]

I don't have Vicky yet, but this complaint confirms my fear about Victoria. I think that decentralization should be the next big thing in strategy gaming. For example, you don't command every single military unit, you have somebody running your military (Chief of Staff?). They can have leader attributes themselves, like over-cautious guys would set up unpenetrable fronts but miss opporutinites to strike at the weak spots, while over-aggressive military leader would send all his divisions attacking the trenches only to suffer pointless casualties. I would imagine that managing 20-province wide front yourself and making sure there are no gaps is quite a chore to those who don't like wars. You also would not create units yourself, you would give orders to him when you want your army expanded. Same with industry, you will have interior minister deciding what factories to build and where, based on your general orders (for example, concentrate on domestic goods, or concentrate on armaments). With regards to colonies, you appoint a minister for that job (or maybe several, one for each geographic area), and all you do is tell him to colonize New York, for example, and he manages the settlers himself, as well as the troops protecting the colonies. All the different ministers would have conflicting agendas and demands for resources/money, so it's your job to prioritize, do you allocate more money for colonization, or for building up military?

Those are just three examples of my idea. Would it be more inefficient and at times frustrating when your AI subordinate doesn't do exactly what you want? Of course, but that's what leaders have to deal with in real life. They set agenda and do their best at choosing people who make their dreams a reality. Maybe the monarchs with the better stats would do a better job of choosing the right people for the job, making your perennial overseeing of affairs less influential. This would limit the potential of countries like Lichtenstein successfully completing WC simply because human is a much better micro-manager than AI can ever be. If you start a war with your neighbour, there is actually a novel possibility that you will fall flat on your face and have to cede provinces just to make peace and rebuild the country (and dismember your military minister). To summarize, I think we're at the point where we have to cut back the role of the player, so that he only gets to make strategic decisions, and leave it up to computer to implement them with varying degrees of success.