The Game Design that killed Victoria 3
- Thread starter Kallar
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With all due respect, and without wanting to seem impertinent, but exactly when did the Ottoman Empire and the Soviet Union attempt multiculturalism, before or after the genocides they caused to ethnic groups within their territories?
Aside, OP point remains valid regarding laws and/or institutions that find little place in the game, chronologically speaking. I also add that, personally, I am disappointed by the "the more liberal, the better" system. There are some laws, such as Serfdom, that seem to unequivocally suggest that changing them for more liberal options is always the best choice. This is not only fundamentally anachronistic—can it be said that Tsarist Russia was not a superpower in 1861? Yet it abolished serfdom only then, and the imperial Austria only in 1848—but it also imposes playing in the same way, always, regardless of your nation. Another point on which I am sorry to admit that the OP is right. Why can't I be a slaveholding power that relies on cheap labor to build and enrich itself? I think our passion for Paradox games has always been the possibility given to us to interact with the game world and decide whether to repeat history or rewrite it to our liking. A title that imposes a "meta" not in a specific context but in the entire way of approaching the game itself takes away much of that wonder. That said, I hope for the best for Vic3
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Before, in case of Ottoman Empire. Ottomanism was an attempt at trying to bring various ethnicities and religions under same monarchist banner with legal discriminations being removed during early part of tanzimat reforms. It didn't quite work out but a second attempt was also made with second constitutional era and the elections which gave minorities representation in the parliament as well. After a series of political crises and a disastrous defeat in Balkan Wars radical Turkish ethnonationalists took over and the genocides took place in Anatolia during WW1.
It can be considered a failed attempt at multiculturalism and it does make sense when multiculturalism fails ethnic tensions can culminate to ethnic cleansing and even genocide in the aftermath, especially in conjuncture with political crises and military defeats. That should be represented with game mechanics since basically nationalist movements aren't simulated at all.
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I agree with you. You are absolutely correct about this, and yet there is a greater point you may be missing.
Vic 3 needs players at the moment, and it's not really attracting them nearly enough.
So, for instance, what if the majority of Paradox players likes, at various degrees, to micromanaging troops around?
A practical example of what I'm saying? It's 10 o'clock on a Monday night, and here's how Vic3 compares to a title almost 11 years old and the other Paradox siblings. It makes me wonder, what if the audience that wants Vic3 as a mere economic simulator is (and probably always was) the minority?
Vic3 needs players first and foremost, and without them, I don't know where the game will end up.
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Victoria 3 obviously won't have as much players as HoI4, which is a WW2 era war game so it's popular by its setting. Victoria 2 wasn't particularly popular compared to HoI3 and Eu4 to begin with even when it had exactly same war system as the other two. It's era and its focus on elements other than war obviously pulls a different and apparently more niche audience.
It had decent 10k players for a few weeks after the release of the patch and minor DLC. That is no small numbers and it actually even is similar to how HoI4 was doing before its major DLCs even. So the argument that it has to have exactly same war system as other paradox games or it will die out seems a bit premature. Moreover having the troop micromanagement on the map obviously didn't save imperator from being gutted either.
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I’ve said this before and seen it re-iterated multiple times. It’s not the right clicking little troops around that people are missing in the war system. It’s literally everything else.
There’s just offense defense and two relevant unit types in Vic3 at the moment.
If you added everything else, corp designer, order of battle, forts and army academies/army capacity. The current war system would feel much more engaging.
watching two people have an argument and manpower lines on a chart decrease is the part that’s not engaging.
Having a graphic showing the battle unfold and having different stats factor in would make it much more engaging.
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God please no. Please let us have one grand strategy game where combat takes the secondary focus instead of trying to shoehorn wargaming being the primary focus into every single game even where it does not belong.
Not every game needs to be a wargame.
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I don’t understand how giving us better war and flavor would be making this into a war game.
First off it’s not mutually exclusive, better war doesn’t mean the economic gameplay diminishes, if anything it gives it more purpose. None of what I’ve proposed with a corp designer will make the gameplay much more complex. You’ll need to design some corps and select some doctrine, but this also feeds into the economic gameplay because you need to make more trade off between economy and military, which actually what happened in period. It also enhances diplomatic and colonial gameplay.
Secondly, war DLC will sell and do a lot of good for Victorias player count which will in turn ensure that the game has a long life and give the devs breathing room to tackle something like Victoria era finance. The majority of complaint threads regarding Victoria are still regarding war and navy.
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That is "just" making the most in-depth war system of any game, including (debatably) HOI. Potentially worth it, but not exactly something that can be done in a month.
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No it would have to be a major DLC for sure. I disagree that it would be more complex than HoI- it wouldn’t include stockpiles, unique weapons, unique units, air battles, preferred general traits, HoI supply, volunteers extc. HoI is a full on war simulator so it would not be close to that.
A corp designer would be nice because it would just be a general UI improvement as it’s more logical to move around corps as unit groups instead of battalions and could help with front splitting.
An order of battle graphic and more complex combat, + doctrinal interaction with technology would be unique war elements for Victoria but I don’t think it would become a war game because of these additions.
I also think this is a middle ground between the “we need little men folks” and “no more war dlc it’s an economy simulator folks”.
You are literally asking for a unit designer and orders of battle. That's not "improving flavor", that's turning what should be an economic and society management game into a wargame.
And you say it's not mutually exclusive. Except it is when you're talking about which parts of the game are taking up a player's attention and focus. And military micromanagement, whether it be moving soldiers around or tinkering with what specific size barrel your rifles have, takes up a lot of player attention. Which for wargames is fine because that is by design the primary focus of the game. But for other games, like economic management games, city builders, and other non-wargames, those kind of things take up far too much of a player's attention for where the game is designed for the player's attention to be focused on.
Every game needs to manage the balance of a player's limited attention with the level of detail of its mechanics. If you're a wargame like HOI, that means making a high level of detail on the military management aspect while limiting the detail on other things like the economic management, which for HOI means only having two types of factories. For an economic management game like Victoria, it means having very detailed economic mechanics while having less detailed military mechanics. This is not a bad thing, this is just the basics of game design.
Again, not every game needs to be primarily a wargame and it's okay for a strategy game to have its primary player focus be somewhere else like managing the economy.
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I enjoy having one map game I can boot up and not order dozens of tinmen around the map. Not to say a more detailed combat system would be unwelcome, I’m much more happy with subject interactions being fleshed out than with yet another frontline manager. The current tools for customizing barracks and armies is more than I would have asked for.
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I have zero interest in tinkering with barrel sizes, I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone suggest that.
Currently you have to tinker around with getting your ideal composition between artillery, infantry and horses into the right ratios at a per battalion level and then make sure than when you split those units off you also get the right ratios by using sliders.
That is tedious micro management in my book. Creating a corp designer, and splitting off entire corps gets around this by front loading it onto a player before the war starts. I also think you could have the game give you an “auto best” template as well. So I think it’s safe to say that piece of the suggestion would be a net good for both war and non war camps.
Also no-one is saying Victoria needs to become a war game, just that when you do get into wars it’s not satisfying and not fun. Which is where the order of battle displays come into play.
Academies are just a way of increasing and representing economic costs as well.
Lastly you mention player capacity, I’m not sure about you but I certainly feel like I have a lot of spare capacity while playing Vic3 MP on 4 speed, so much so I’m typically watching YouTube or chatting with someone about how to split up Africa.
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I fell in love with Vicky 2 because of how all the mechanics tied together in terms of economics, politics, war, etc. It feels weird to me that people are still arguing that Vicky 3 should somehow de-emphasis war. And somehow any sort of discussion about adding depth to war brings a bunch of people out of the woodwork to claim that means stacks. And almost always they say they don't want Vicky 2 stacks as if there is a binary choice of Vicky 2 war and current Vicky 3. PDX trying to claim this is an economic sim was quite funny...
War is a component of Grand Strategy Games. How players interact with the war system can vary a lot from different mechanics. I suspect that Vicky 2 with Imperator QOL features (specifically war related) would greatly reduce the complaints people had about the system. Vicky 2 battles and how the tech modeled front width, gas attacks/defense, and stats was actually pretty good. It was how you controled the stacks and formed armies and such was the biggest issue. It is super frustrating to deal with. I say this as someone that still plays Vicky 2 every couple of months. I actually never really wished for all that much more depth from the warfare side of Vicky 2 (and in terms of what I would want in a sequel). It was always wanting more depth from the economic side of things in like trade on map and such. PDX games struggle with power projection in holding certain parts of the map being super valuable such as Gibralter.
The thing is though, even if the warfare system was great, the rest of the game is very lacking in what made Vicky 2 "click". Warfare discussion is a red herring imo. I don't think Warfare is the reason the game has low player numbers, rather it is everything else. For an economic sim, the game really lacks a lot of depth in the economy.
War is a component of Grand Strategy Games. How players interact with the war system can vary a lot from different mechanics. I suspect that Vicky 2 with Imperator QOL features (specifically war related) would greatly reduce the complaints people had about the system. Vicky 2 battles and how the tech modeled front width, gas attacks/defense, and stats was actually pretty good. It was how you controled the stacks and formed armies and such was the biggest issue. It is super frustrating to deal with. I say this as someone that still plays Vicky 2 every couple of months. I actually never really wished for all that much more depth from the warfare side of Vicky 2 (and in terms of what I would want in a sequel). It was always wanting more depth from the economic side of things in like trade on map and such. PDX games struggle with power projection in holding certain parts of the map being super valuable such as Gibralter.
The thing is though, even if the warfare system was great, the rest of the game is very lacking in what made Vicky 2 "click". Warfare discussion is a red herring imo. I don't think Warfare is the reason the game has low player numbers, rather it is everything else. For an economic sim, the game really lacks a lot of depth in the economy.
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Just to follow up on this more so, during HoI I fee like all my “APM” actions per minute are taken up by managing the frontline through right clicking and what not. I think I might re-design divisions three or 4 times throughout the entire game?
And selecting tech(doctrines), especially when you can queue up techs(doctrines) is also not a big APM hog for a player
Doctrines + some sort of military academies/tradition is like one of the areas I thought they would expand for Vicky 3. Like having some sort of general staff and what not that influenced how your military fought would have been cool. It gives you agency over military without having to be super micro heavy.
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I agree that this is tedious micromanagement. A corps designer would be even worse micromanagement. This is honestly one area where I think the game was better on release and has really just been made worse by the changes over the patches, with most of those changes coming as trying to appease the wargaming crowd instead of sticking with the game's original design vision. But again, the solution for that is going back to something simpler and less invasive to the player's attention like only having the production methods determine the unit makeup, not by making things more complex with a completely separate designer interface. Place what micromanagement there is in the primary focus of the game, in this case it would be the production methods and where to build conscription centers and barracks to tie directly into the economic management part of the game and that part of the game alone. That is what should be determining the makeup of your units, not some completely separate interface that has no ties with the rest of the game's mechanics.
Getting into wars in pretty much any strategy game is never satisfying or fun. It's not fun in Victoria, it's not fun in Crusader Kings, it's not fun in Civ. And the reason it's not fun in any of those is because suddenly the game becomes entirely about managing the war and the player is no longer engaging with the intended main focus of the game because all their attention is being taken up by managing the war. Making warfare even more complex than it already is and take up more of the player's attention would not help that, and would in fact make that feeling worse.
So you're saying that in your multiplayer game, where a large part of the game is the social aspect of talking with and negotiating with the other players, you actually have time to participate in that social aspect and negotiate with other players? That just means you have a good group to play with that encourages that sort of thing in their group dynamic. That's not a problem, and if you think it is, it's a problem with that specific group, not with the game.
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I don’t understand how a corp designer is more work than individually counting and separating battalions. Especially if the game gives you an auto best. It’s work you do once vs work you do every single time you split a formation and have to get exactly right.
I think war is fun in Civ 6, I don’t mind the units and gameplay. I don’t play CK so I can’t comment there. I don’t think having war be something that’s a pain or boring is a good thing or a sign the game is focusing on the right things.
I’m just trying to make a point I have a ton of free time in Victoria and could easily manage to design a corp 4 times over the course of a 10-15 hour playthrough on 4 speed and not really feel bogged down.
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Is there disagreement on what a corps designer means here or something? Because what I think @Prob32 is describing and what I’m imagining is that a corps designer would be objectively less micromanagement, because instead of having to set the composition of every army separately you’d be templating your chosen composition and reusing that template. That should mean that both making changes is less fiddly and there’s less need to revisit it all the time.
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current unit system is awful. Units inexplicably disappear, deleting "empty" units for some reason isn't possible without just spamming the minus button on a unit type as far as I'm aware, and you have minimal control over what goes on. Which might not be as big an issue if the armies didn't do weird nonsensical things and trade incursions across the border in ways that defy logic sometimes. It's pretty much impossible to tell what's going on in wars.
Beyond that, the AI is entirely incapable of understanding how to make decent armies
Beyond that, the AI is entirely incapable of understanding how to make decent armies
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