After 1.1k hours of Victoria 2, 2.7k hours of EU4, 1.1k hours of CK2 and 400 hours of CK3 I can confidently say that this is by far the worst Paradox game i have ever played.
It disappoints in every aspect and there is absolutely nothing here that wasn't done better in Victoria 2.
Many are saying that this is some complex deep Economy/Society builder games. Seeing those comments i really have to wonder if they played more than 10 minutes.
Let's talk about the game's most important feature, the economy, which also happens to be its core gameplay mechanic.
If you click on the market tab, you can see the supply/demand of goods in your market.
Sort this by demand and then build the buildings producing high demand goods, or import them.
Rinse and repeat for the entire ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ game because that is all there is to do.
Low iron? Let's build some iron mines! Low grain? Let's build some grain farms! Low infrastructure? Let's build railways!
That is literally all there is to do economically in this game, mind numbing building micro tedium.
Click trade tab --> check demand --> build high demand goods --> repeat.
Another fun economic mechanic is that it is literally impossible to go bankrupt because of a bug. Being in default (= maxed out loans with negative balance) gives severe stacking penalties to your nation, but these penalties randomly reset back to 0.
One thing i really like about the V2 economy is that it is as micro intensive as you want it to be. You can manually build the most optimal factories, you can sphere countries that produce goods you need, you can build factories producing said goods in your spherelings, you can check the trade screen for global demands and goods produced in your sphere, or you can just put a laissez-faire party in charge and ignore it the entire game.
When you go to war you subsidize the economy and focus on your military. If something really demands your attention you just pause the game.
I never felt that warfare in V2 detracted from my enjoyment of the economy.
But what about society? If you click on your government tab, you can see reforms you can pass. Go ahead and put the interest groups that support the reform you want into the government, then start passing it.
There isn't really a limit as to who can join the government. Which party wins an election doesn't matter because you can just invite the opposition into your government anyways.
When passing reforms, the most important thing is RNG. You will be spammed with events (Wickedness must be stamped out!) that either lower or raise pass chance. Initial pass chance doesn't matter. I passed a reform that had 10% chance to pass which eventually increased to 50%. I failed to pass a reform with 25% chance (it dropped to 0%).
In Victoria 2, you can clearly see who votes for what. High militancy will make your Upper House more likely to vote on stuff. Not a perfect system but at least you're not spending 20 years as the USA trying to pass universal suffrage.
As Korea i also saw some interesting time frames here, such as the game predicting a reform will be passed in 36000. Well at least the God Emperor will be happy that the Koreans have embraced Agrarianism.
Diplomacy doesn't seem to work well. When playing as Korea, i was unable to get any allies or help in diplo plays even though the relevant countries had attitudes that made them want to cooperate with me.
I tried allying japan who had very high relations and according to tool tip wanted an alliance or defensive pact. But no,
their ruler's focus on defending their borders made them not want a defensive ally for some reason...
Same with the USA, i was unable to do literally anything diplomatically because every AI kept saying no.
The diplomacy is comparable to EU4 on very hard difficulty, but at least the EU4 AI will ally you if it's friendly toward you.
As the USA, i started a diplo play to annex my vassal, the indian territories. For some ungodly reason France, who had good relations with me, joined the Indian territories in their war against me.
After that, despite improving relations, they kept hating me and eventually took a treaty port in Virginia. I was unable to retake the treaty port because the USA apparently has no claim to Virginia.
V2 had dynamic diplomacy with often changing alliances, and an actually somewhat intelligent diplo AI that would seek out
beneficial allies. You'd have Germany and Italy allying against France and Austria, France and Russia allying against Germany, UK and Germany allying against France etc.
On topic of AI behavior, I noticed some interesting things. Italy forms in 1840 without Modena and Lucca, and the just sits there doing nothing and not conquering any of their cores. This happened in both games i played and also in every YT video on Victoria 3 I saw where the player doesn't interfere in Italy. The NGF isn't formed in 1870 and a bunch of random North German minors are still independent. Austria never collapses or loses any territory because of their massive army.
The Tai Ping rebellion happens in North West China where the muslim minority is even though it was caused by a christian sect. ACW is nonsensical with states like NY joining the CSA.
Egypt, just like in the official paradox stream, made some bold choices during the peace negotiations with the Ottomans, such as conquering Istanbul and central Turkey.
Forming Germany in V3 is worse than in V2. In V2 you fight Denmark for Sleswig-Holstein, then Austria to get all German minors in your sphere, and finally France for Alsace-Lorraine. This is pretty much how Germany formed irl.
Meanwhile in Victoria 2 you just passively annex German minors with high relations and can form Germany without even fighting any wars. It makes for a much less engaging experience than V2.
The war system is horrible, you have no control over your armies. Fronts will split up randomly, there is only ever one battle per front, said battle can have dumb numbers like 30 vs 5 brigades even if both sides have large armies, said dumb battles aren't reinforced so you lose territory because of bad RNG.
For example with Korea, i lost a battle against China which split the front. Since i only had one general i had no way of defending the second front.
Said fronts where on the Korean-Manchurian border, so all of it was connected.
Navy doesn't seem to do anything, i set my Navy to patrol coast yet still got naval invaded without a naval battle happening, i did my own naval invasion and it just never happened for some reason.
A warfare system without the ability to move armies on the map offers some interesting possibilities such as having multiple armies in the same province without them fighting a decisive battle, which would finally allow for asymmetric warfare in a paradox game.
Of course paradox hasn't taken advantage of any of these possibilities. After all, you're supposed to micro your buildings...
But I'm sure there will eventually be a 30$ DLC to address these concerns...
To summarize, this game is horrible with the only somewhat developed mechanic being the very basic and boring economy 'gameplay'. It fails in every other aspect and makes for a much worse experience than Victoria 2 with GFM, HFM, CWE, DoD or similar mods or even vanilla.
LE: I`m starting to think that management actually chose as their strategy for this game to just make the most barebones mechanics and throughout the coming years based on community feedback to start adding DLC`s based on what people are asking for the most $$$.
10 years of waiting for the biggest cashgrab, that`s what this game feels ATM.
It disappoints in every aspect and there is absolutely nothing here that wasn't done better in Victoria 2.
Many are saying that this is some complex deep Economy/Society builder games. Seeing those comments i really have to wonder if they played more than 10 minutes.
Let's talk about the game's most important feature, the economy, which also happens to be its core gameplay mechanic.
If you click on the market tab, you can see the supply/demand of goods in your market.
Sort this by demand and then build the buildings producing high demand goods, or import them.
Rinse and repeat for the entire ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ game because that is all there is to do.
Low iron? Let's build some iron mines! Low grain? Let's build some grain farms! Low infrastructure? Let's build railways!
That is literally all there is to do economically in this game, mind numbing building micro tedium.
Click trade tab --> check demand --> build high demand goods --> repeat.
Another fun economic mechanic is that it is literally impossible to go bankrupt because of a bug. Being in default (= maxed out loans with negative balance) gives severe stacking penalties to your nation, but these penalties randomly reset back to 0.
One thing i really like about the V2 economy is that it is as micro intensive as you want it to be. You can manually build the most optimal factories, you can sphere countries that produce goods you need, you can build factories producing said goods in your spherelings, you can check the trade screen for global demands and goods produced in your sphere, or you can just put a laissez-faire party in charge and ignore it the entire game.
When you go to war you subsidize the economy and focus on your military. If something really demands your attention you just pause the game.
I never felt that warfare in V2 detracted from my enjoyment of the economy.
But what about society? If you click on your government tab, you can see reforms you can pass. Go ahead and put the interest groups that support the reform you want into the government, then start passing it.
There isn't really a limit as to who can join the government. Which party wins an election doesn't matter because you can just invite the opposition into your government anyways.
When passing reforms, the most important thing is RNG. You will be spammed with events (Wickedness must be stamped out!) that either lower or raise pass chance. Initial pass chance doesn't matter. I passed a reform that had 10% chance to pass which eventually increased to 50%. I failed to pass a reform with 25% chance (it dropped to 0%).
In Victoria 2, you can clearly see who votes for what. High militancy will make your Upper House more likely to vote on stuff. Not a perfect system but at least you're not spending 20 years as the USA trying to pass universal suffrage.
As Korea i also saw some interesting time frames here, such as the game predicting a reform will be passed in 36000. Well at least the God Emperor will be happy that the Koreans have embraced Agrarianism.
Diplomacy doesn't seem to work well. When playing as Korea, i was unable to get any allies or help in diplo plays even though the relevant countries had attitudes that made them want to cooperate with me.
I tried allying japan who had very high relations and according to tool tip wanted an alliance or defensive pact. But no,
their ruler's focus on defending their borders made them not want a defensive ally for some reason...
Same with the USA, i was unable to do literally anything diplomatically because every AI kept saying no.
The diplomacy is comparable to EU4 on very hard difficulty, but at least the EU4 AI will ally you if it's friendly toward you.
As the USA, i started a diplo play to annex my vassal, the indian territories. For some ungodly reason France, who had good relations with me, joined the Indian territories in their war against me.
After that, despite improving relations, they kept hating me and eventually took a treaty port in Virginia. I was unable to retake the treaty port because the USA apparently has no claim to Virginia.
V2 had dynamic diplomacy with often changing alliances, and an actually somewhat intelligent diplo AI that would seek out
beneficial allies. You'd have Germany and Italy allying against France and Austria, France and Russia allying against Germany, UK and Germany allying against France etc.
On topic of AI behavior, I noticed some interesting things. Italy forms in 1840 without Modena and Lucca, and the just sits there doing nothing and not conquering any of their cores. This happened in both games i played and also in every YT video on Victoria 3 I saw where the player doesn't interfere in Italy. The NGF isn't formed in 1870 and a bunch of random North German minors are still independent. Austria never collapses or loses any territory because of their massive army.
The Tai Ping rebellion happens in North West China where the muslim minority is even though it was caused by a christian sect. ACW is nonsensical with states like NY joining the CSA.
Egypt, just like in the official paradox stream, made some bold choices during the peace negotiations with the Ottomans, such as conquering Istanbul and central Turkey.
Forming Germany in V3 is worse than in V2. In V2 you fight Denmark for Sleswig-Holstein, then Austria to get all German minors in your sphere, and finally France for Alsace-Lorraine. This is pretty much how Germany formed irl.
Meanwhile in Victoria 2 you just passively annex German minors with high relations and can form Germany without even fighting any wars. It makes for a much less engaging experience than V2.
The war system is horrible, you have no control over your armies. Fronts will split up randomly, there is only ever one battle per front, said battle can have dumb numbers like 30 vs 5 brigades even if both sides have large armies, said dumb battles aren't reinforced so you lose territory because of bad RNG.
For example with Korea, i lost a battle against China which split the front. Since i only had one general i had no way of defending the second front.
Said fronts where on the Korean-Manchurian border, so all of it was connected.
Navy doesn't seem to do anything, i set my Navy to patrol coast yet still got naval invaded without a naval battle happening, i did my own naval invasion and it just never happened for some reason.
A warfare system without the ability to move armies on the map offers some interesting possibilities such as having multiple armies in the same province without them fighting a decisive battle, which would finally allow for asymmetric warfare in a paradox game.
Of course paradox hasn't taken advantage of any of these possibilities. After all, you're supposed to micro your buildings...
But I'm sure there will eventually be a 30$ DLC to address these concerns...
To summarize, this game is horrible with the only somewhat developed mechanic being the very basic and boring economy 'gameplay'. It fails in every other aspect and makes for a much worse experience than Victoria 2 with GFM, HFM, CWE, DoD or similar mods or even vanilla.
LE: I`m starting to think that management actually chose as their strategy for this game to just make the most barebones mechanics and throughout the coming years based on community feedback to start adding DLC`s based on what people are asking for the most $$$.
10 years of waiting for the biggest cashgrab, that`s what this game feels ATM.
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