1.7 dilemma

[Aliquam]

Imagine creating the game about victorian era, where one of 2 main contestants of the world leader is not attending

What

How do you feel about US winning almost 100% wars against Mexico?

Yes.

Are you ok with Japan or Russia never modernizing?

Yes.

See, few centuries earlier thinking that a great country of Poland-Lithuania being completely erased from the map is something unthinkable, but it took one catastrophic invasion of Swedes and then ambitions of three surrounding great powers and it became reality.

Similarly, if stars align differently than they did in reality, the outcome should be different than historical. The concept that history just had to follow the route it took is a very faulty one for me.

 

[Hansatron]

I feel like you’re overselling what the autonomous queue does. Most people play with it and it’s not like our economies get bricked every game.

Just empirically, it’s not the disaster you seem to think even if it’s not absolutely perfectly optimal; but if you care about building placement so much, don’t commit the cardinal sin of direct queue players: picking Laissez Faire. Then you can rebuild buildings wherever you want.

Construction is mostly in the hands of the player - every law but LF gives the player at least half control of construction *assuming the investment pool can keep up.* We have crazy control over the economy with auto queue even with LF because we control the commanding heights.

 

[47pik]

It’s so easy to get caught in the trap of thinking that just because something happened historically, that it was likely.

I won’t speak on the likelihood of German unification as I don’t honestly know too much German history but I highly doubt it was a foregone conclusion

 

[OKE DOKE]

What

Germany and USA were the main contestants of British economic power, and German imperialism was the reason WW1 happened, also they did not allow British to invest in themselves which was one the reasons brits were moving towards this war.

All you write has its right to be, but it seems that you are not playing this game, because if you do - you will notice that Japan is dead nation, Russia has serfdom in 1935. Luhansk with arguably the best company ingame has 0 coal 0 iron mines. I dont mind it happening once, twice, even in half of the games, but it happens every game. I am not saying that Belgium should colonize Congo 99% of the time, but sometimes it should, whereas now belgium never expands. The only reason this is happening is braindead ai.

If having UK #1 GP 100% of the time is fun, than we probably have different views on what is fun and challenging and what is not.

 

[Life is Comedy]

I am still curious about people still building 51 factory levels early game. Like you just are making it expensive everywhere else in the country and as soon as you have a revolution (assuming you don't play for high legitimacy/ loyalist) it can complete destroy your country.

People whoo play MP, do you do this in MP ? Or is it just asking to be invaded for that specific state conquest/liberation ?

 

[Dragnar]

It’s so easy to get caught in the trap of thinking that just because something happened historically, that it was likely.

I won’t speak on the likelihood of German unification as I don’t honestly know too much German history but I highly doubt it was a foregone conclusion

This is the main crux all historical games struggle with. Do you model what happend or what was most likely to happen? Because a lot if real life history was a fluke and "regular" mechanics to model the times would often make historical outcomes highly unlikely.

 

[47pik]

Ideally the AI should have some kind of “ambitions” it works toward, and whether or not something happens is dependent on if the AI was powerful enough to achieve its ambition.

I wish I could give a German example, but again, I can’t since I know next to nothing about Prussia and Austria-Hungary and whoever else was involved, but presumably some actors wanted to see a unified Germany and some didn’t, or at least had a different vision of what that looked like. As long as somebody is striving to make Germany, I’m happy, I don’t need it to happen all, or even most of the time, depending on how the relative power levels of the involved actors are.

 

[OKE DOKE]

It’s so easy to get caught in the trap of thinking that just because something happened historically, that it was likely.

I won’t speak on the likelihood of German unification as I don’t honestly know too much German history but I highly doubt it was a foregone conclusion

As I said i do not want to discuss probabilities of what has or could have happened, the game is about victorian era and about countrywise competiton in military/economy/ideas etc. I dont mind german unification not happening because player has done specific actions to prevent that or Prussia/Austria failed because of some weird events, but removing one the main competitors at the time is terrible for gameplay.

A lot of people are complaining about static/uneventful world, however on the other hand they dont want railroading, whereas how Japan or Russia should modernize ingame without railroading. So you either compromise with the game as it is, where you can make Persia #1 GP by 1880, or you need railroad certain countries in the first 30 years in order to make the game more challenging in the second part. Otherwise it would be dismantle GB/France simulator with replayability close to 0

 

[OKE DOKE]

Ideally the AI should have some kind of “ambitions” it works toward, and whether or not something happens is dependent on if the AI was powerful enough to achieve its ambition.

I wish I could give a German example, but again, I can’t since I know next to nothing about Prussia and Austria-Hungary and whoever else was involved, but presumably some actors wanted to see a unified Germany and some didn’t, or at least had a different vision of what that looked like. As long as somebody is striving to make Germany, I’m happy, I don’t need it to happen all, or even most of the time, depending on how the relative power levels of the involved actors are.

Exactly, but those ambitions would be based on what? Leader ideology? Or country specific? Because if country-specific than we go back to railroading, if ideology based, than politics should have a major rework. See you in 2 years then.

 

[Ivashanko]

4. Just no, there should be a high chance of opium wars, but not the certainty. Or do you argue that the UK could not have elected to act differently? Same with unification, the AI should have a high probability to do it, not certainty.

I genuinely believe that in an infinite number of parallel universes that all have their point of origin in 1836, at least one German state takes concrete steps to unify Germany in literally all of them.

That doesn't mean they should succeed, but it does mean the current AI is too passive when it comes to unification.

The Opium Wars were less inevitable, and I'm not sure why the OP thinks the two were equally inevitable. Sure, a war between the UK and China was likely, but it sure as heck wasn't a foregone conclusion.

 

[OKE DOKE]

I genuinely believe that in an infinite number of parallel universes that all have their point of origin in 1836, at least one German state takes concrete steps to unify Germany in literally all of them.

That doesn't mean they should succeed, but it does mean the current AI is too passive when it comes to unification.

The Opium Wars were less inevitable, and I'm not sure why the OP thinks the two were equally inevitable. Sure, a war between the UK and China was likely, but it sure as heck wasn't a foregone conclusion.

The thing about german unification is already railroaded, but it fails all the time because after winning in leadership war neither Prussia or Austria declare on Denmark to conquer/liberate Schleswig Holstein. The event is already railroaded to happen, but it can not because of the broken mechanics/ai or just not railroaded enough.

Regarding opium wars and its inevitability, when you have a largest producer of opium and a largest consumer, when the latter bans import i would say it was 100% inevitable, but the outcome was not and military in this game con not fully represent blockades, as it was the main way this war was going, Britain fielded only 4000 troops, but superior fleet and artillery made the day.

 

[Hansatron]

Regarding opium wars and its inevitability, when you have a largest producer of opium and a largest consumer, when the latter bans import i would say it was 100% inevitable, but the outcome was not and military in this game con not fully represent blockades, as it was the main way this war was going, Britain fielded only 4000 troops, but superior fleet and artillery made the day.

The opium wars are probably the most railroaded event in vic3 - China has no reason to ban opium, there’s no IGs that care about this. They just slap a non-decaying penalty worse than bankruptcy on them and have the AI on both sides do what they need to do.

I really dislike this implementation. It’s about on the level of “we give Prussia +50% offense and defense for 10 years after they research nationalism so they can win the war on Austria.”

This really should be much more a of an internal political pressure on Qing - like say the landowners and devout demand a ban- than the insanely heavy handed setup we have now. Just start the two nations in a diplo play and be done with it. But I’m sure an eventual content pack for each region will come in eventually.

 

[Blaze86420]

I agree that the AI in its current form is too weak. Considering Paradox had to rewrite parts of economic AI anyways to work with the new ownership rules, I hope they took the opportunity to generally improve it.
The optimistic outlook is that we didn't get serious AI improvements in 1.6 because they were already working on the 1.7 ownership AI and didn't want to do work that would be obsolete within 3 months.
Fingers crossed.

The AI is generally quite bad at growth and seems to not prioritize construction industries as much as the player could. I also think part of the problem is that Paradox designed the AI to invest into industries and enact laws based on IG clout. An undeveloped country with strong landowners will usually have the conservative agenda and invest in agriculture agenda. Which means its construction industry is always smaller than it could be in the hands of the player, and the AI never seems to try to move away from traditionalism and serfdom.

One way to mitigate this problem is to have IG clout be affected by external factors. For example, if an undeveloped country led by the landowners IG suffers a military defeat, that should significantly reduce the landowners IG clout for a while. This would simulate the loss of legitimacy of the establishment (which obviously can’t be trusted with defending the country), and provide an opening for potential capitalist reform and industrialization.

 

[Hansatron]

The AI is generally quite bad at growth and seems to not prioritize construction industries as much as the player could.

Look at the great powers (using tag switching) in the mid-late game. It’s pretty common for England to have well over 1,000 construction points available.

Some AI nations are told to not develop; Qing is in this category, forbidden from making more construction at all.

I’m not sure why the AI can’t push towards something like GB having a GDP > 500M, but that is getting more into production method usage than building.

 

[Woifee]

Imagine creating the game about victorian era, where one of 2 main contestants of the world leader is not attending. How do you feel about US winning almost 100% wars against Mexico? You want to remove country who had 16% of world GDP by 1900? Show me the fun then. Are you ok with Japan or Russia never modernizing? Thats like another 15% of world GDP. This game is about competition, for colonies, for ideas, for world leadership etc. And you want to make this competition easier for you, I don't. In EU4 you have to make specific moves to counter Ottoman from blobbing early on. Is it railroading? It is. Does it make game worse? It does not, in fact, it gives a player extra challenge, because it is quite hard to fight Ottoman/France blobs in 1550-1700. By the way, the problem is not the tendency, as Prussia declares leadership war in 100% games, the problem is that it stops afterwards, so Germany, a place with most coal-iron states on the map, is just a bunch of OPMs

Actually what Japan achieved in RL is incredible. If it would not have happend people would say such a thing could never have happend in the 19th early 20th century. Such an Idea would be considered fantasy or even heretical.

And neither Germany nor Japan were in the Race for World Leadership in this games time period or ever. At best regional Leader.



The problem with Prussia in Vic 3 is not not starting the war but not winning it by acting stupid. Prussia adds conquest war goals and by doing so incentivize Russia and France joining in. Sure. King Willi wanted to conquer Bohemia in RL but Bismarcks stubbornness prevented it. But in RL he suggested it during the war when victory was ensured. In Game all the Wargoals have to be presented before the war and then, obviously, other Great Powers are pissed.


AI Prussia needs to do one thing. Not adding conquest War Goals to the Leadership play. Not matter if it is Bohemia, Moravia, Tyrol or Bavaria.