AAR Thread

[JesterInYellow]

But the president can be a member of a completely different party than the majority in congress.

Yeah okay?

Not to mention we’re talking about interest groups, not political parties.

Political parties are the basis of elections in Victoria 3. We've been told that it is possible for democracies to exist without parties, but we've never seen it and it wasn't the subject of discussion.

[the rest of this post that for some reason decides to poorly describe IRL politics]

That'd be some real insight if we had any idea what "government" means when the game says government, or what "votes" mean when the game says votes, or what "election results" mean when the game says election results. Unfortunately it's extremely unclear what any of these terms and mechanics are supposed to be representing. I mean in your very post you reference congress. Congress does not exist in this game. Neither chamber. There's no upper or lower house. There is no judiciary. And we don't know how the executive is elected.

Now I can only assume that "in government" means that they have the legal power of holding government offices, because it's ludicrous to me to think of anything else (this disqualifies "lobbyists", by the way), and though the entire rest of the system is suspect, this means that the "elections" and "votes" have seemingly no bearing on who is holding office in the country, which means to me that the "elections" and "votes" make no sense at all, and the entire system of elections in Victoria 3 is arrayed against itself in a nonsensical fashion due to its overgeneralizing vagueness.

 

[Pyoro]

I suspect - but obviously don't and can't know - that this has to do with early dev comments about player agency, and about how nobody ie likes Regencies in Europa Universalis, where you then "couldn't do anything". Having a party elected you don't want to, disallowing you to pass laws you want, that's near enough the equivalent of a EU-Regency, thus the game was designed in such a way that the player can always avoid it. And whether that's entirely realistic or makes all that much sense, eh, that's secondary ...

 

[Atalvyr]

I suspect - but obviously don't and can't know - that this has to do with early dev comments about player agency, and about how nobody ie likes Regencies in Europa Universalis, where you then "couldn't do anything". Having a party elected you don't want to, disallowing you to pass laws you want, that's near enough the equivalent of a EU-Regency, thus the game was designed in such a way that the player can always avoid it. And whether that's entirely realistic or makes all that much sense, eh, that's secondary ...

I think you a properly right. If you look at old Vic2 boards, there are a ton of discussions with people being frustrated that the country they are playing does not have a political party that lets them set up their country how they want to, since the parties are fixed in what policies they will allow. Along with discussions of how to game the systems to get the "good" party in a certain country into power so you can do the things you want to do.

In Vic3, you are free to make a government consisting of the interest groups that align with your chosen path for your nation. In a monarchy/autocracy, there are limited consequences, since the ruler has wide authority to put the people in charge he/she wants and you can just use your high authority to compensate for lacking legitimacy. In a more democratic nation, you can still have a minority government attempt to rule, but because you no longer have a lot of authority to push through laws, you get stuff like we saw in the AAR where laws take years to push through a hostile parliament.

As the devs have said, Vic3 is all about letting you do stuff, but also providing consequences for taking shortcuts. As long as the consequences are well balanced, you can make up whatever headcanon you want as to why the Shogun decided to kick his own faction out of government (madness, intrigue, scandal or all of the above), or why a minority party was allowed to form a government, even if their low legitimacy makes them unable to actually rule, which has happened multiple times through history in a great many democracies. For example the US has had de facto minority governments under many presidents, due to how midterm elections tend to shake out.

 

[JesterInYellow]

but because you no longer have a lot of authority to push through laws, you get stuff like we saw in the AAR where laws take years to push through a hostile parliament.

It took around 30 years to turn the nation into a liberal utopia the world should not have seen for another 100+ years. By the time he actually got to the point where he could ignore election results, there were only a handful more laws possible to change--which he could do easily because he still had 55% legitimacy.

As the devs have said, Vic3 is all about letting you do stuff, but also providing consequences for taking shortcuts. As long as the consequences are well balanced

They're not and we still have no idea whether the devs know that they're not, or if they're just okay with the fact that there's no meaningful pushback to anything the player does.

I just still am unsure if the devs know there is a middleground between "You are not allowed to play a free-trade, interventionist, secular country in Belgium because Reasons" and "You can make funny kidney stone man take over the country and institute a socialist utopia with skyrocketing GDP and no problems at all in a decade, because you can do Whatever You Want"

 

[Atalvyr]

I just still am unsure if the devs know there is a middleground between "You are not allowed to play a free-trade, interventionist, secular country in Belgium because Reasons" and "You can make funny kidney stone man take over the country and institute a socialist utopia with skyrocketing GDP and no problems at all in a decade, because you can do Whatever You Want"

To be fair to the devs. These crazy AAR results have been largely set-up for the explicit purpose. They stated in the Siberia AAR that they started out by console commanding in a bunch of tech to allow Siberia to released to begin with, which they also showed made the world go wonky pretty quickly as the modded tech spread to other nations.

Second, they stated that when you play a tiny nation in a huge market, you can make a very unbalanced economy and not instantly starve your population. Because the rest of the Russian market was busy making grain, Siberia could focus on becoming a mining colony where the only people with wealth (and thus power) were the Intelligentsia. Had he been forced to actually produce food for his pops, he would have had to employ Aristocrats which would make the Landowners even harder to unseat. Instead he just spammed mines and government administrations while jacking up government wages. He even avoided building a military so the Armed Forces would be a non-issue.

I hope the Netherlands stream will show us an actual, balanced playthrough of a major-ish power, because most of the AARs we have gotten so far have been the EU4 equivalent of Ulm into 100-dev province and Ryukyu into infinite merc spam type games. Which are fun and all, but also give the impression that the game is all meme-runs. Thank god the Krakow faction did not win the vote for the coming stream.

 

[JesterInYellow]

To be fair to the devs. These crazy AAR results have been largely set-up for the explicit purpose. They stated in the Siberia AAR that they started out by console commanding in a bunch of tech to allow Siberia to released to begin with, which they also showed made the world go wonky pretty quickly as the modded tech spread to other nations.

I don't think simply having the tech should make the world so memey; if that's the case, then every game will be a meme by 1900.

Second, they stated that when you play a tiny nation in a huge market, you can make a very unbalanced economy and not instantly starve your population. Because the rest of the Russian market was busy making grain, Siberia could focus on becoming a mining colony where the only people with wealth (and thus power) were the Intelligentsia. Had he been forced to actually produce food for his pops, he would have had to employ Aristocrats which would make the Landowners even harder to unseat. Instead he just spammed mines and government administrations while jacking up government wages. He even avoided building a military so the Armed Forces would be a non-issue.

I think I said this before somewhere else, but my problem is that all these things are the case, and I don't know if they're supposed to be the case or not. The fact that it's possible to so easily become an absolute meme and drain the game of all seriousness or challenge is worrying to me. It feels like all the effort that's been going into the simulations in the game are a complete waste. At this point the game might as well just give you buttons to say "Choose what law your country has, now type in how much money you want to be making every day", and drop the whole economic and political simulation entirely.

I hope the Netherlands stream will show us an actual, balanced playthrough of a major-ish power, because most of the AARs we have gotten so far have been the EU4 equivalent of Ulm into 100-dev province and Ryukyu into infinite merc spam type games. Which are fun and all, but also give the impression that the game is all meme-runs. Thank god the Krakow faction did not win the vote for the coming stream.

I hope so too!

 

[Atalvyr]

I think I said this before somewhere else, but my problem is that all these things are the case, and I don't know if they're supposed to be the case or not. The fact that it's possible to so easily become an absolute meme and drain the game of all seriousness or challenge is worrying to me. It feels like all the effort that's been going into the simulations in the game are a complete waste. At this point the game might as well just give you buttons to say "Choose what law your country has, now type in how much money you want to be making every day", and drop the whole economic and political simulation entirely.

I think this is a problem that most Pdox games grapple with. On one side, you have people who want WW2 to start on September 1st 1939 by event, since anything else would be immersion breaking. Or that colonization of the Americas must no be possible before the year 1500. On the other side, you have the people that want to play Tibet and have something to do rather than build 1 factory every decade and instantly submit to China once they declare war on you. Hopefully Vic3 can strike a balance like most other Pdox games do, where you can do memey stuff if you want to cheese the systems, but if you don't then the AI will keep the world in a state where you can play a more realistic game interacting with its systems in more "normal" ways.

 

[Kaspar Osraige]

Guys by the way did anybody notice they gave Don/Kuban to a non-Ukrainian state(probably Cossacks) and added Kalmykia? I saw the Siberia AAR and thought that was the biggest highlight of it. Props to devs for listening to feedback.

 

[Fletz]

I am also afraid that the vanilla release version of Vic3 will be a bit to memey and the game will not feel sooo realistic so that the average user can try out whatever he wants... for the average user this probably provides most fun... i can understand it and accept it and just hope for a real dope Vic3Realism- or Balance-Mod which raises the difficulty- and realism-level.

 

[Fletz]

@Atalvyr , why do you disagree? I see it the same way as you... its just that I totally understand why the dev wont release a too sophisticated challenging vanilla version of vic3... the same counts for CK3... nothing wrong because Pdx wants to have a lot of sales of Vic3 and this is the right way to accomplish this. I just think that many other user may need a appropriate mod to get more fun out of V3.

I wish V3 and the devs all the best and I guess I will be quite happy with the release of V3... I guess it wont be as memey as HoI4 and so it will be fine.

 

[mikhail321]

This. HMs goverment should allow to choose goverment regardless of the results, a presidential republic with universal suffrage shouldnt..

It has a nice side-effect of making monarchies and republics more distinct from each other, rather then just giving IG clout bonuses

 

[mikhail321]

Second, they stated that when you play a tiny nation in a huge market, you can make a very unbalanced economy and not instantly starve your population. Because the rest of the Russian market was busy making grain, Siberia could focus on becoming a mining colony where the only people with wealth (and thus power) were the Intelligentsia. Had he been forced to actually produce food for his pops, he would have had to employ Aristocrats which would make the Landowners even harder to unseat. Instead he just spammed mines and government administrations while jacking up government wages. He even avoided building a military so the Armed Forces would be a non-issue.

That’s a very good point. Ideally, this should be balanced with overlord having a say in some of your internal politics. I don’t think autocratic Russia would just stand by and watch Siberian animist aristocrats they trusted to run Siberia for some inexplicable reason being deposed by upshot nihilists. They should launch change government or re-integration play, or if they can’t, kick them from the common market at least. You can think of many additional mechanics of how overlords or even just powerful allied or domineering GPs could mess with internal politics of smaller states. I’m pretty sure it should be on dev’s radar, maybe to expand upon after release.

 

[Shahanshah Khosrow]

Political parties are the basis of elections in Victoria 3.

This is just blatantly untrue though. We know political parties are a late addition to the game, and we know that elections functioned mostly the same without them. Indeed I would argue that most of the problems people have with the system stem from the fact that political parties were violently inserted into it at the last minute without regard for what it will do for immersion.

 

[FleetingRain]

Man, I gotta say this AAR was disappointing and I just skimmed through part 2. It's all the same, it feels the same as every other AAR.

 

[Atalvyr]

@Atalvyr , why do you disagree? I see it the same way as you... its just that I totally understand why the dev wont release a too sophisticated challenging vanilla version of vic3... the same counts for CK3... nothing wrong because Pdx wants to have a lot of sales of Vic3 and this is the right way to accomplish this. I just think that many other user may need a appropriate mod to get more fun out of V3.

I wish V3 and the devs all the best and I guess I will be quite happy with the release of V3... I guess it wont be as memey as HoI4 and so it will be fine.

I disagree because you are making this out to be the devs dumbing down the game because they dont want to release "a too sophisticated challenging vanilla version of vic3".

It falls into the trap of assuming that complexity equals depth. Stuff like BlackICE chases this to the extreme, where complexity becomes the entire point and playability becomes a distant memory. The complexity and opaqueness of its systems becomes the challenge, instead of the opposing players. There is an elegance to designing something that is complex enough to be deep, but not making something that requires a 100 page manual to get through the first hour of play.

Vic3 has real potential in this regard, with markets especially having a good degree of auto-correction while still providing a very complex system to explore. Likewise, having minor nations that have very different political and strategic situations only matters if there are systems for them to do something other than die. The Great Game only works if you have minor nations to manipulate, but in far too many Pdox games where minor nations are railroaded by history, they just get gobbled up by the nearest big nation. Because the AI does not care for such small things as morality or public opinion - it sees clay it wants and it takes it. Making minors more powerful than is perhaps realistic serves to both make them stick around as they did in history, when played by the AI, and make them at least somewhat viable nations for the player to play.

 

[unmerged(760025)]

That’s a very good point. Ideally, this should be balanced with overlord having a say in some of your internal politics. I don’t think autocratic Russia would just stand by and watch Siberian animist aristocrats they trusted to run Siberia for some inexplicable reason being deposed by upshot nihilists. They should launch change government or re-integration play, or if they can’t, kick them from the common market at least. You can think of many additional mechanics of how overlords or even just powerful allied or domineering GPs could mess with internal politics of smaller states. I’m pretty sure it should be on dev’s radar, maybe to expand upon after release.

It's not the first time someone mentioned the lack of intervention of an overlord into its subject affairs as a problem and I 100% agree. The fact that a canadian colony can turn communist or an australian one can enact debt slavery without the UK having any say in the matter makes Victoria 3 looks incredibly gamey. Same for a subject of tsarist Russia becoming democratic, I'm not saying that someone playing as a subject nation should have the ability to pass laws lock off, no you should be able to pass any law you want, however if what you decide on is in direct contradiction with your overlord general ideology then the threat of military intervention from them should be a serious possibility. The game shouldn't treat subject nations as is they were completely free when it comes to their political organization.

I also agree with you about Great Powers being inclined to interfere when a country has gone through some radical changes. For example if in the middle of the 19th century Belgium had turn into a communist state, a military intervention from the UK, France or Prussia to put the king back on the throne would have been a real concern to them.

 

[Shahanshah Khosrow]

It's not the first time someone mentioned the lack of intervention of an overlord into its subject affairs as a problem and I 100% agree. The fact that a canadian colony can turn communist or an australian one can enact debt slavery without the UK having any say in the matter makes Victoria 3 looks incredibly gamey. Same for a subject of tsarist Russia becoming democratic, I'm not saying that someone playing as a subject nation should have the ability to pass laws lock off, no you should be able to pass any law you want, however if what you decide on is in direct contradiction with your overlord general ideology then the threat of military intervention from them should be a serious possibility. The game shouldn't treat subject nations as is they were completely free when it comes to their political organization.

I also agree with you about Great Powers being inclined to interfere when a country has gone through some radical changes. For example if in the middle of the 19th century Belgium had turn into a communist state, a military intervention from the UK, France or Prussia to put the king back on the throne would have been a real concern to them.

It's actually even worse. Had there, say, been a revolt to overthrow the Canadian Communist government, the UK would automatically side with the government, as we saw in the Australia AAR, if nothing else the overlord should be able to pick a side or arbitrate if one of their subjects falls into a civil war or revolution.

 

[Spartakus]

Agreed on the lack of an overlord oversight being the problem here.
If you look at the population numbers from the beginning and end of the AAR it's actually OK that there is little internal pushback. Siberia is a haven for immigrants and the 47K mostly discriminated Aristocrats from 1836 have been drowned in literally millions of immigrants that quickly assimilated into Siberian Culture (a mechanic I wish someone would finally explain in depth).

But Siberia is a puppet in name only.
If the Russian overlord would from time to time intervene in the laws or even just put a party/IG they like in the government Siberia could only do this by declaring independence and going to war over the matter. Which it can't do because it is utterly dependend on the Russian market and has no military to speak of.

 

[Duzgun]

To my knowledge, Occitania was a cultural (mostrly literay movement owned to frédéric Mistral and a few others, linked to a sense of commonality of disparate languages and cultures form the south of France that only have in common a "langue d'oc", but never imagined a *political* movement .

Occitan "renaissance" movement during the XIXth century was similar to its catalan counterpart but didn't enjoy the same success (for many reasons).
It is possible to imagine an alt-history where things would have gone differently.

These people were fully French and never imagined being another country.

Things are not so clear for historians. Data on tax payments, desertions, revolts frequency etc tend to show there was a specifical occitan situation at that time.
Of course this doesn't mean there was a national consciousness (there wasn't), but situation was clearly different from french regions...

 

[unmerged(760025)]

It's actually even worse. Had there, say, been a revolt to overthrow the Canadian Communist government, the UK would automatically side with the government, as we saw in the Australia AAR, if nothing else the overlord should be able to pick a side or arbitrate if one of their subjects falls into a civil war or revolution.

You are correct but that's a completely different problem.
From what we saw so far, when a civil war happens inside a subject nation, the revolt is automatically considered an independent nation so in practice they are also revolting against the overlord. In my opinion there should be a distinction made between secession and revolutionary movements (as they were presented in developper diaries) when it comes to their attitude towards the overlord.
To retake the Australian example, if the australian pop is revolting against the australian government to force them to abolished slavery then it shouldn't translate to them revolting against their status as a subject of the UK and the UK should have the ability to pick their side and still keep Australia as a subject at the end of the war. However if the revolt is about the aboriginal australian pops wanting to establish their own nation then yes their opposition probably extend to the UK.