My Theory on why Vic 3 is so difficult for some people.

[John2Lionheart]

Use Great Rework mod and problem solved folks.

 

[PikeStance]

Well for me Vic is generally hard overall. I'm 18 and I have around 1k hours in Hoi4 where economy is basic. I don't fully understand english economic terms nor do I fully understand IRL economy. It is really hard for me to even get my country to progress or function properly. I get laws and political side but for example as Chile I have very high taxes, lowest wages, I even decreased the levels of some buildings ans yet I am getting negative income, with no explanation on why that is so. It is a much better improvement with the tutorials in comparison to vic2, but they still don't explain a lot. I get tasks like build railways alright cool I build them but oh whats that suddenly I get negative income with no explanation or a fix. Thats my main problem with vic3 I just dont understand how the game works. Now I have around 100 hrs in stellaris and I can say I'm fairly good at economy in stellaris because 1. there aren't 100000 different goods and 2. you know which buildings and pops consume what whereas in vic3 the amount of different pops, buildings and goods and resources gives me a headache

To be honest, you really do not need to pay too much attention tot he pops. With pops, I click on the pop icon on the side and I look at how their SoL is and what they are spending their money on.

The first mistake you may make is building too many construction buildings too early. use the building lens to see which types of building will lead to higher income. You also want more than you need admin buildings. It can gain more taxes, but more importantly, more trade. If you have a small country, this is important because you will not be able to produce everything. (If you play as France or Great Britain, you can produce everything, but you would still need to trade because demand will be higher). As long as you do not have free trade, you can generate income via tariffs on imports and exports.

Another hint is that the first tab in the trade items (I think it is barrel) that is mostly stuff consumed by lower strata. The diamond is luxury items. For people, clothing, food and furniture are things that will increase SoL. I also avoid any type of welfare in the early game. I never give the pops anything until they start demanding it and they do not start to demand it until later in the game.

If you have the resources, then improving production methods is another means to increase your income. Be sure to do the requisite tech to do so.

Ultimately do not be in a rush to build construction. That will suffocate your economy. In my four playthroughs, I have never had to reduce the level of a building.

 

[zilla737]

This whole completist vs. whatever player type argument is absurd. The game is not finished. For me, it was a $70 pre-release. Get a mod, indeed... I'd expect and accept that in a $20 pre-release from an indy studio. Don't get me wrong, I'm having fun with it, despite that, but what kind of people play and enjoy the game now compared to who will play a working as advertised vanilla release (2.0?) will probably be drastically different. The "they don't like it cause they're playing it like EU4" ie a map painter argument is absurd as well. I would suggest that those are the people that are having fun, but complaining about not enough micro in war. I would also suggest that the players that have gone (at least until rework) are the ones that had the expectations I did when they bought the game. They're waiting for the economy to work.

The zero sum part touches on this, the idea that you must blob to be the biggest blob and thus be able to beat the other blobs, but Victoria favors playing tall instead (Barring colonialism). When most people think of going to war they mostly seem to think conquest but they would be better of thinking treaty port. Or if they are afraid f a neighbour thinking about forcing him to release soemthing to independence. The latter being a very suboptimal play in most cases in eu4 (I've even heard EU4 players ask why it's even a thing, what sane person would ever do it).

To respond to @TheDungen (not trying to single you out, just a useful quote) Treaty ports... would be great if you could get any goods from the AI that doesn't develop itself. I don't play map-painters, and was sold this game based on it not being a map-painter, but rather an economic simulator, but the only economy is mine. Once you realize that, the game loses it's gleam even from numbers go up perspective. I release stuff from rival countries quite a bit, so I can get to the resources in the first, or released country without overcapping infamy. But I'd rather not have to war at all. Be cool if a trade route was an option.

In general, why it's hard...
The UI is absolutely horrible, as has been posted about in an excellent essay that was acknowledged by the devs.
I'm watching a guy on the YouTubes play as a noob I think in 1.0.6. He's having a hell of a time, because the game teaches you nothing. He's playing China and got roflstomped in the first Opium Wars, so he restarted. The second time, he built up an arms industry before triggering the war. He spent forever at war because the AI won't peace out and NOWHERE in the game are war goals explained. His was reparations, which could have been gotten from taking ANY enemy land, but he thought he needed to take some place on the British Isles. The game could teach that. Even if it was hidden in some deep dark tooltip 10 menus in, but it doesn't. It's kind of fun to find that stuff, imo, but it doesn't exist. So it left the player frustrated and wondering why the game wasn't either timing out the war, or better explaining why war exhaustion wouldn't go below 0.
Later, as China, he had maybe 20 steel mills built, and yet he didn't have steel tools (clicking on the PM shows no steel supply) or any steel supply, because he didn't know he had to create the demand. I watched him for about a half hour build more and more stuff, but the industries wouldn't start, because NOWHERE in the game does it teach a player that doesn't know the supply chain mechanic intuitively, or hasn't spent time watching videos online how it works. He finally figured it out after getting bored and deciding to set up trade routes. The game magically had sulfur (another building he was overbuilding and not creating demand for) in the suggested exports, and then it all clicked for him when "maybe selling it will get it profitable" turned into a productive sulfur industry. And on and on, from one thing to the next, the game lacks in so many ways. It's gonna suck when I get to the part of the playlist where he finds out WWI is not inevitable, or likely unless you consider the wars over colonial rebellions that half of Europe likes to get involved in, WWI.
If the learn the game objective had anything useful beyond the gui introduction to actually teach players how to be successful in achieving their goals, it would be different, but sadly, I don't even think that's possible after I looked at the half-assed scripting language they use to drive that and evidently a good portion of the rest of the game. If I had to write a complex game like Vic3 in that language, I'd release what they did too. (That's just me, though. Apparently modders are doing what the devs should have in many areas. Kudos to them, and to the Vic3 studio for getting all the unpaid help). Conditional loops are extremely easy to write in real code (meaning time spent writing what you're thinking vs. thinking then translating to that mess, then writing), but I guess most game studios think modding scripts protect their IP, or something, so they use them to expose the games to modders. (My bad if that's some real scripting language. I saw Perl mentioned on the wiki, but the files are .txt).

I'm probably way off topic here, sorry. Long thread.

 

[AWittyName]

-snip-
But I'd rather not have to war at all. Be cool if a trade route was an option.
-snip-

If only there was a way for countries to invest in foreign nations, using their economic power to increase their sway in a minor power instead of their military might

 

[atomicsoda]

Vic 3 is a VERY different game than most of us are use to.

Before I get started I need to explain two terms I am going use. Completest and Zero-sum.

Completest is a person that wants to finish something. Think of the game Monopoly when you get the final land that gives you a Monopoly. Now you can build houses and hotels. Even better think of when you have Hotels on your property. You are done. You are complete.

The other idea is Zero-Sum. Again think Monopoly. When you pass go and collect 200 you get 200 and no one else loses 200. In a Zero-Sum game you would collect 200 only because someone else lost 200.

One of the issues I think people have with Vic 3 is it is not friendly to the the Completest and it is a Zero-Sum game. You are never done.

I, as someone who is a Completest, can deal with it, but it is not easy. I want to be done. When I research that technology I want to upgrade everything. In Vic 3 this is killer. Take Japan you would think spending some coal to improve production would be a good idea. However, it is probably better to build more tool workshops, and hire some more of your vast population, than to use coal and limit the number of employees.
This is not intuitive.

The other idea, that ties into it, is that Vic 3 is a Zero-Sum. Yes, you can do good over here, but then you will lose out over here.

This does not make Vic 3 a bad game. I am not saying that. In fact, I am greatly enjoying it. I am just saying is goes against some of the things that we have learned playing games over the years.

V3 is a super easy game, mostly due to AI being so bad that the player has no challenge once you learn the basic mechanics after a couple of playthroughs. V2 was much more difficult game

 

[doubleskulls]

Can you please explain why you 'need' to conquer these states to get these resources?

Why not just import them? So far I have not found any good that is not importable from somewhere or other, but I play slowly.

And even if's not importable, the worst that happens is that the price is high, isn't it? The good might be expensive, but there's no such thing as shortage

In vanilla the AI is terrible at developing its economy, and really does a poor job at being an effective exporter of goods it doesn't just start with or are part of the basic starting economy. Towards the mid-late game you'll rarely find it producing enough quantity of any goods other than the "basics". So you can import wood or tools, but not much requiring later tech PMs. If you are playing a great power with a large economy the AI will never produce enough rubber or oil to sate your needs.