Victoria 3 - Dev Diary #64 - Post-Release Plans

[Cruxador]

I think you guys also need more tutorialization, too. The main tutorial had the how and why buttons but they're missing from the other three goals. And some of the general journal entries definitely need them — how am I supposed to deal with the God-Worshipping Society as Qing? The game does not provide this information whatsoever. The AI also doesn't seem to know, since absolutely huge Taiping rebellions are pretty common across playthroughs.

There also absolutely needs to be a clear way, from the interactions menu, to get an idea of how to unlock the plays you want.

 

[StyXz1]

Reverse Swaying is a top one. Definitely crucial to the game, and sometimes just by getting a country to be neutral (not even swaying to your side), the other party could get scared and cancel the war.

The "obligation" though is quite unefficient one. I've got a couple of obligation from smaller nations but I'm not a super warfare focused player, so never had to call them in a war. Then the game gave me a prestige booster to be "asked" from an obligation. A MUCH smaller nation, would just have to say thank you to show the world how benevolent my nation was (we also had the biggest army in the world). they were just like "nah" and that was it. obligation lost. That should be worked in a way.

In warfare, the biggest issue to me wasn't even micromanagement. Yes, it would be nice to know more of what's happening, but my number one issue is the fact that you can only attack with a certain amount of soldiers. I mean, I had around 600 batallions agains a country with like, 8. But every small battle was like 10x8 max. I lost that war in a stupid way in a war where that country should've been crushed in seconds. I get the "being fair" on the chances, especially in multiplayer games, but let's be honest, war is NEVER fair. So if that could be reworked, that would be even better for the game.

Despite my long comments, love the game and spent 38 hours STRAIGHT into it in the first weekend haha. I still need to recover from that session.

 

[wilcoxchar]

If you want a tactical game with micro and moving toy soldiers around on a map, those games are a dime a dozen. Paradox has not taken those games away from you, and you're free to also play those if you want. But until now there was nothing for people who didn't want that and instead wanted a game that actually revolved around the economic and societal part of strategy, without toy soldiers getting in the way and taking up the player's attention. So please don't try to take this away from people who want it just because one game finally exists that does not cater to the toy soldier crowd.

 

[Rhel]

Something for everyone I think!

 

[TempestM]

If you want a tactical game with micro and moving toy soldiers around on a map, those games are a dime a dozen. Paradox has not taken those games away from you, and you're free to also play those if you want. But until now there was nothing for people who didn't want that and instead wanted a game that actually revolved around the economic and societal part of strategy, without toy soldiers getting in the way and taking up the player's attention. So please don't try to take this away from people who want it just because one game finally exists that does not cater to the toy soldier crowd.

Again this patronizing tone. Being able to tell your generals "stop fighting for this backwater mountain, go for enemy capital right here" would NOT take away economic part of the game. Grand strategy can have both

 

[pevergreen]

Any thoughts on a wargoal that lets me take an enemies state but release it as a puppet? Austria vs Ottomans, I want to take Bosnia but not eat the conquer state penalty to just release it.

 

[jmansuper08]

"The AI is so bad that you don't have to micro your armies" doesn't mean the micro is optional.

It means the AI is bad.

Well, the problem seems to be that the AI in vic3 is bad too, and this system was partly implemented to try and alleviate the incompetence of the AI, yet I can still beat 3 majors at once 10 years into the game as a pre german prussia. The AI is bad either way. Its not about the way you interact with the AI, its about the way you can or cant interact with the game itself.

 

[RaccoonCity]

The game has a lot of bugs, but overall I like the game mechanics. Besides bugs, I'm going to mention what I think needs to be improved ASAP:

1. The game lacks so much historical content. I find really sad that the game doesn't have any non-generic events Vic2/EU4 style. The game really lacks A LOT of historical flavour. Everything seems very generic. I understand that this kind of content is something you add to the game after you polish the base mechanics of the game, but I'm getting the feeling that you don't plan to add any of this in the game in the future. At least I expect lots of journal entries are added to all the Great Powers, Major Powers and Minor Powers in the future. Also the historical detail of the map needs to be improved.
2. No mention about adding a little bit of colonization railroading, or at least more realistic alternative outcomes. I would like to see in most games historical borders for Argentina and Chile, or the British not rushing the Western Sahara in every game.
3. Assimilation and Cultural Laws need to be changed. I know its a delicate matter, and you want to avoid certain politically incorrect mechanics. But it's a 19th century simulator, and I really think multiculturalism shouldn't be the meta. I think an interesting approach would be to add the need to assimilate foreign cultures to maximize the benefits of immigration. Having immigrants from all over the world should be a good thing in general but only if they assimilate to your primary culture. This adds a challenge for the player and makes multiculturalism a more challenging option: the Government needs to be strong enough to assimilate the waves of immigration. For example, as Mexico, it shouldn't be a good idea to have a lot of Texan/Yankee/Dixie immigrants if they are not assimilated into the Mexican culture.
4. Economic Laws are awful. The concept of an Investment Pool is nice, but it seems to have very low impact, even in a Laissez Faire economy. I can accept that the player manages the private industry, but please, make it feel like you are playing as the capitalist too. Right now I have the feeling is always the Government who build things. All Economic Laws have this "I'm playing as the Soviet Union" feeling, even Laissez Faire. I think there needs to be a Public budget and a Private budget, with a higher differentiation between both of them.
5. The player has too much control over the Government composition. The player needs to have situations where you feel you are loosing control over the Government. I don't know how this could be done, because the current Government mechanics don't seem to leave any room for making this possible. Probably this will need a major overhaul in the future.
6. Subject interactions is terrible, specially colonial subjects. They act as allies, not as colonies. Please consider making some of them directly owned unincorporated states instead of subjects (as I've mentioned many times in this forum, the representation of Spanish Cuba and Spanish Philippines is awful).

 

[PatrykCXXVIII]

When it comes to military system I have couple of comments:
1. It would be cool to represent military high staff of different countries. Like for example USA having better generals on average because they actually have to have qualifications and they had to to army stuff to get in the leading seat. Unlike Austria where you have to be a noble and... that's basically it. Sure, right know you have only two options, but they are randomly generated so it doesn't represent those kinds of things well.
2. Represent main strategies better. By that I mean IRL some military innovations took pretty long to introduce due to higher ups thinking they know better. (Stuff like British military finding submachine guns "not honourable" until Germans showed them how useful they are during WW2.) And change of tactics that were pretty rapid during wartime, but very slow during peace. (Like France in 1914.)
3. I think that the equipment if too abstract. And with how it's now represented doesn't allow to have weird scenarios that happened IRL (Like Austria-Hungary equipping some units with black-powder guns.), or the British strategy of keeping it's subjects weapons one generation lower than it's own after some rebellions in India.
4. Some sort of chain of command would be pretty nice even if completely fictional. Mainly so if a general dies in battle or during war his army got immidietly a new one. (TBH. I have no idea what happens in current build in that situation, but I just guess that the battalions teleport back to HQ.)
5. Let us move armies between HQs, even at cost of attrition or more infrastructure cost to represent supplies from HQ.
6. Infrastructure should affect how fast the army can move and during movement the army should occupy some of if. (Like c'mon it should take some effort to move an army from Poland to China, and then return back. Not just teleport it!)

 

[bl00dw01f]

I don't know if this was mentioned before in any great deal, but what I want, would be some sort of autonomous economy growth system. Basically, as long as my country has industrialists and capitalists, or any other large class of people with money, those people will probably want to build and establish their own factories and plantations. Maybe there would be a split between industries that are state built and owned versus industries that are privately owned and managed. And then I, as the state could either subsidize or buy out privately owned companies to take direct control, or invest into them to make them grow faster and make me more money in terms of taxes and investment returns.
While I like the idea of manually building all the factories and micromanaging your nations economy, it doesn't make sense that I'd always have to do it, especially if I'm playing as a modern industrialized nation with Laisse Faire economic approach and laws.

 

[TiagoJRToledo]

Doubling down on the new war "system" that a large chunk of the community dislikes, and completely dismissing the requests for more tactical features and control, sure is an interesting tactic. Let's see if it pays off.

Also, not even a consideration about performance issues? Talk about a rough start.

 

[awmobile367]

Sounding good from my end, a quick way to get information on unemployment figures both nationwide and statewide would be appreciated.

 

[Fanstar1]

I'm quite excited for the road-mapped changes to diplomacy, particularly reverse-swaying.

 

[xendor93]

All this stuff should have been in 1.0, not announced a week after the release. Good news most of the issues are being addressed, but let's be honest: we paid a full, hefty price for a late-stage beta.

 

[wilcoxchar]

that a large chunk of the community dislikes

People really need to stop pretending they speak for the entire community like this.

 

[Fanstar1]

Compromise seems like the obvious solution. Even if that compromise comes later rather than sooner. But to hear it from some people moving stacks around a map has been the bane of their lives, and that having the option to do so in this game would somehow take away from the rest of the game rather than adding to it

I think people are seriously underestimating just how much work would go into implementing and maintaining such a system when it's not at all clear that most people would even opt to use it.

 

[TempestM]

But until now there was nothing for people who didn't want that and instead wanted a game that actually revolved around the economic and societal part of strategy, without toy soldiers getting in the way and taking up the player's attention. So please don't try to take this away from people who want it just because one game finally exists that does not cater to the toy soldier crowd.

I've found a game for you: Anno 1800. It's even in the same era! You're welcome

Really, those who disagree should check it out. Definitely no "toy soldiers", just pure Victorian economy. Meanwhile people who wanted actual Grand Strategy that combines all of those elements into one actually had no other series but vicky

 

[Herr B.]

Yeah I've got a few outstanding notes to myself to see what I can do to address that but not make it a painful process as a result. Don't want to just nerf tech spread into the ground though, need to find that middleground. But I am keeping eyes on it, and if you don't see it in the next few patches thats because I'm working on a few other things first.

Please consider just adding more techs, both inbetween and also at the end of the current tech tree.

 

[jmansuper08]

I agree with your opinion of the war system foundation, besides the annoying quirks and sometimes very frustrating battle unit numbers etc.. I prefer it to Vicky 2. but it’s not constructive to tell everyone with a different opinion to go kick rocks.

Warfare is by far the main focus of Hoi4 though, with equipment design and production second. Yes you can forgo 90% of micro in Hoi4, and put in Vicky 3 levels of player input via battle plans, but there will not be much else to do, and the game will be very boring.

A chief complaint about Vicky 2 was the sheer whack-a-mole warfare micro, as well how trivial it was to outmaneuver the AI to the point that AI nations were never intimidating to the player. You could always pull some matrix Neo Ninja moves and defeat them.

So why bother playing a smart or cautious diplomatic game, when warfare was always an objectively better solution. It devalued the core diplomatic mechanics of the game, that is the reason they went in this direction, not for no reason as you suggest.

Now of course it’s still very possible to outmaneuver the AI diplomatically and economically to the point of minors like Afghanistan being untouchable juggernauts by game’s end but such is life. You can disagree with the developers opinions, and implementation of warfare, but the idea of it is consistent with their stated goals of accentuating the importance of the non warfare based mechanics.

I dont think reintroducing eu4/vic2 style warfare would be a good thing. I love eu4, and I actually enjoy warfare in it, but this game is much more time consuming in different ways and wouldnt allow for that type of play. In response to the diplo play type of game, I wish that was a reality in this game, but as it stands there is no good reason to play that way. The devs said early on that war would be expensive and bad for you, but in reality due to the realism of their economy its the opposite. If you properly build a domestic arms industry and dont mobilize the nation your eco stays completely fine. I think diplomacy can be powerful but not as it is now.


All I specifically want is a way to tell generals to assult an area because as it stands now they dont think about anything. I fought a 10 year was with Mexico for coastal flat provinces because the AI generals decided they wanted to go for their capital in the mountains. That is unacceptably stupid and nearly ruined the campaign. I dont necessarily need direct command, I want a way to redirect my generals when they are making obvious mistakes. I would like to see armies fighting and trenches on the fronts eventually but all of that is extra and unnecessary of course.

 

[Larkh]

Any thoughts on a wargoal that lets me take an enemies state but release it as a puppet? Austria vs Ottomans, I want to take Bosnia but not eat the conquer state penalty to just release it.

That would be an excellent idea. This type of action was in fact quite common at that time period (Cyprus, Bosnia, etc.). The problem would be to decide what kind of vassal the liberated nation would be.