Grand Strategy Victoria 3

[HeroMarine]

So it's just as shitty as I always imagined it was going to be, but for a moment all the dev diaries and the propaganda from influencers gave me a sliver of hope.

That's my impression from having played zero hours, watched zero videos and just analyzing this thread.

 

[Tyrr]

Stellaris is still pretty crap though. Basically only good for LARPing

Well, that's true for all Paradox games. Unless you go for some crazy achievements.
Don't play them for the challenge, play them like a RPG.

 

[Stavrophore]

I think laissez faire economies should not be able to make direct trade deals or set import/export duties[duties are already true], there should be civilian economy doing that automatically. Interventionism countries should also not make direct trade deals -leave that to civilian economy, but set import/export duties and trade deals with other countries, lowering import/export duties for said countries. Command economies should be the one that can directly set what to import/export.

I can smell the economy DLC coming, like they did with war in eu4 with art of war.

 

[Stavrophore]

You can, actually. Check the market screen sell orders. That's how much of a good you're producing. Hover over it for a breakdown

So i have to go to market tab every month and hover or click over all of the goods to see how much i produce, instead of having a convenient table where it's all shown with +/- signs, or color coded like green/red for increase or decrease? Instead of these stupid lenses at the bottom, they could had gave us actual wealth of data.

 

[Stavrophore]

You can, actually. Check the market screen sell orders. That's how much of a good you're producing. Hover over it for a breakdown

So i have to go to market tab every month and hover or click over all of the goods to see how much i produce, instead of having a convenient table where it's all shown with +/- signs, or color coded like green/red for increase or decrease? Instead of these stupid lenses at the bottom, they could had gave us actual wealth of data.

This doesnt work if you are in someone else market, like playing cape town and being in british market.

 

[RobotSquirrel]

this games logic. Naval invade, somehow rolling 0s to natives, suffer 1000 deaths.
Win war somehow without invading because of war exhaustion on their end.
How? What? Why? I don't get it?! what even is this system?

 

[Raghar]

Stellaris is still pretty crap though. Basically only good for LARPing

Well, that's true for all Paradox games. Unless you go for some crazy achievements.
Don't play them for the challenge, play them like a RPG.

Actually Stellaris degraded, it become more limited simpler, and when a modder tried to fix it, Paradox banned the white only mod.

Since then, people are basically expecting Distant Worlds 2 to eventually become what should be Stellaries, but Distant Worlds has its own issues.

 

[darkpatriot]

I’m having trouble with the terrible expense of construction, even using the basic production method. Is this by design or am I doing something wrong?

I had the same problem in both my games so far.

In general building is meant to be really expensive, especially for a poorly developed economy. Industrialization is meant to be significant and take quite a bit of time and money. Initially I thought that making a bunch of construction offices was the way to go to industrialize faster by building factories quicker. But you actually just want to only build new construction buildings as you have the economic capacity to support the additional construction costs. I would recommend building at most 1 or 2 construction officers at first, and it may be best to not build any initially if your economy is small enough.


There are two sources for the costs for construction, the wages for the employees and the costs of the materials.

The costs of the materials is a little easier to manage as it is fairly static and just based on resource prices/availability. The more of that resource you produce or can access the cheaper it is, and the cheaper your construction costs will be. You only want to transition to the more advanced production methods once you have enough of that resource floating around. And to help make the transition smoother you can switch over 1 construction office at a time to the new method while you are still ramping up production of the resource needed. That is one reason there is a benefit to having several states you build construction offices in.

The second source of the cost, wages, is a bit harder to manage. I noticed in my playthroughs that my actual income wasn't going up for much of the early to mid game even as I was massively improving my economy. In fact at times it was decreasing even though I wasn't actually building any new government managed buildings. I was having increased expenses from the continued wage growth of my existing government employees being faster than by tax income growth.

The reason for that is that your government employees are paid based off a calculation of the average wages. So as I was improving my economy and the quality of life, my government wages were skyrocketing as the wages for everyone were rising. So part of your construction being so expensive problem is paying the workers, but it is also probably partially that the government employee wage expenses are growing in general and causing you budget issues. Although, I wonder if there is some kind of strategy out there for growing your economy while keeping people poor with low standards of living to keep government wages low.

I only really got out of that by switching over to the per capita tax law which gave me a much higher tax income. Although I didn't have the option of playing with tariffs much (I was initially isolation and then free trade, so I can't manage tariffs), so maybe tariffs can be a good source of additional tax income for you depending on your trade situation.


The game does have the investment fund from capitalists and other rich people to help cover the materials cost for construction. But my second game has gone to 1870, and I have like the 13th highest GDP or something like that but the investment funds I get still only cover like 10%-15% of the building costs at most. I am not sure if it will ever become a significant source of funding for construction. I am not sure if it is just the way I am playing (I build constantly) or due to the starting conditions of my country (Siam) that give me such miserly rich people.

 

[thesecret1]

This doesnt work if you are in someone else market, like playing cape town and being in british market.

Yeah, I assume that's because it stops mattering who exactly produced what if you are in the same market... Up to the point you actually want to leave it. I can only assume paradox simply didn't test for this scenario or something. Retards.

 

[Fedora Master]

Ah yes, that famous Iranian wine

 

[Joggerino]

Stellaris is still pretty crap though. Basically only good for LARPing

Nah man, disregarding the lame combat and late game performance, Stellaris is a really good space 4x.

 

[Space Satan]

View attachment 29798

Ah yes, that famous Iranian wine

Well...

Wine drinking was prominent in Classical Islam, from Al-Andalus in the west to Khorasan in the east.[5] The Iranian Saffarid and Samanid rulers, the first to look for autonomy from their Abbasid suzerains, were known, as Matthee explains, "for the gusto with which they and their entourage indulged in wine-drinking."[5] The 11th-century Qabus-nama, written by Keikavus of the Ziyarid dynasty, explicitly records that the Quran prohibits wine consumption, yet also states advice (same goes for Nizam al-Mulk's Siyasatnama) on what the proper fashion is for drinking wine while also taking it for granted that wine will be served at feasts.[6]

The English traveller and writer Thomas Herbert wrote in 1627 about the difference between wine consumption of the Ottomans and Iranians.[7] According to Herbert, the Ottomans, who, although were prohibited to drink wine by law, still drank it covertly.[7] The Iranians on the other hand, Herbert asserted, since a long period of time, drunk wine openly and with excess.[7] According to the French traveller Jean Chardin, who was in 17th-century Safavid Iran, drinking was mainly done in order to get drunk fast hence the appreciation of Iranians for strong wines.[8] Echoing Reinhold Lubenau's writings on late 16th-century Ottoman Constantinople (modern-day Istanbul), Chardin reported that "Iranians would recoil while drinking, treating alcohol like a medicine to be swallowed rather than enjoyed".[8] Matthee explains that the goal of getting drunk quickly stemmed from the fact that alcohol in Islamic culture was "not synonymous with sociability".[8] As alcohol is considered a forbidden substance in Islam, alcohol could never become fully integrated into the idea of a proper life.[8] Unlike the ancient Greek symposium tradition, where alcohol was considered a substance to brighten up the ambiance, it was firmly entrenched as part of the lifestyle of the elite.[8] Nevertheless, even there alcohol remained a "forbidden fruit, and thus could not escape furtive embrace amid public disavowal".[8] In the Islamic world, the drinking of alcohol never became part of the overall food and drinking culture, in the way of "enhancing the convivial atmosphere of the meal, the way it did in Mediterranean and Christian/European culture".[8] Meals in the Islamic world were usually eaten in silence with a glass of water.[9] After that, the host and the guests would engage in discussion with coffee and tea with the water pipe, and usually in a different room.[9]

According to Matthee, social class was also important in the assessment of alcohol consumption.[10] People who drunk alcohol were usually from higher social ranks, the elite (khass), whereas abstemiousness was most prevalent among the middling classes, who were simultaneously known for their piousness.[10] The upper classes drunk as they believed they were entitled to, that is, enjoying alcohol as a 'right', a privilege traditionally bestowed upon the elite in Islamic lands.[10] Abstention from alcohol belonged to the commoners, the avvam, who were unable to restrain themselves.[10] The lowest social classes usually used other drugs, most prominently opium (which is not condemned in particular by the Quran or the hadiths).[10] They generally used it, as Matthee explains, to while away boredom, to gain stupefaction from their troublesome lifes, and especially as a form of self-medication.[10]

Common people who drunk in those times were associated with subcultures of subterfuge and furtiveness, Matthee explains.[10] These people would usually sneak off to taverns in back-alleys of the predominantly non-Muslim inhabited parts of cities and towns, which were run by Jews and Armenians.[10] Taverns were deemed as "disreputable" in Islamic lands, and were associated "with the seamy side of life, and the tavern owner occupied 'roughly the same place on the social scale as the prostitute, the over homosexual, and the itinerant entertainer'".[10]

Alcoholic drinks were commonly drunk amongst the elite, and Muslims often visited the taverns; however, alcohol was "formally outlawed", hence it could not operate in the reality of everyday life.[10] Thus, in turn, as Matthee explains, the drinking of wine "became a metaphor for the ardent feelings of the lover for the beloved in the imaginary world of (mystical) poetry"

 

[thesecret1]

Stellaris is still pretty crap though. Basically only good for LARPing

Nah man, disregarding the lame combat and late game performance, Stellaris is a really good space 4x.

I mean, is it? It's laughably easy because the AI is just so bad, and serves more as something to do in between bouts of events taking you on railroaded trips through sci-fi tropes. I don't finish my playthroughs all the way to an end game crisis because I just get so insanely bored with the core gameplay loop. It desperately needs a serious AI overhaul, and some systems to give you something challenging to do.

 

[Joggerino]

Stellaris is still pretty crap though. Basically only good for LARPing

Nah man, disregarding the lame combat and late game performance, Stellaris is a really good space 4x.

I mean, is it? It's laughably easy because the AI is just so bad, and serves more as something to do in between bouts of events taking you on railroaded trips through sci-fi tropes. I don't finish my playthroughs all the way to an end game crisis because I just get so insanely bored with the core gameplay loop. It desperately needs a serious AI overhaul, and some systems to give you something challenging to do.

You just need to up the difficulty so it's more challenging. The ai could be better certainly.

 

[whydoibother]

What's a realistic way to get Ethiopia to be able to trade? All the statelets that can form it are isolationist, and everyone who lives there wants it to remain isolationist. I can't properly industrialize like that, its too poor. Even when I manage to unite the entire Horn while Egypt is busy conquering Constantinople or whatever, I can't do anything after that, because I am stuck with a small economy and can't trade.

View attachment 29798

Ah yes, that famous Iranian wine

Scythians can't resist it!

 

[thesecret1]

Playing Afghanistan feels like an autarky simulator. None of that filthy trading is needed, it offends Allah. Afghanistan can produce almost anything on its own... and consume it on its own. Opium? It belongs to the people! Not sure how the game fares as a victorian era simulator tho.

 

[darkpatriot]

What's a realistic way to get Ethiopia to be able to trade? All the statelets that can form it are isolationist, and everyone who lives there wants it to remain isolationist. I can't properly industrialize like that, its too poor. Even when I manage to unite the entire Horn while Egypt is busy conquering Constantinople or whatever, I can't do anything after that, because I am stuck with a small economy and can't trade.

I had a similar problem with Siam, although I produced all the natural resources I needed for industrialization, so it wasn't as big an issue to be isolationist.

I am not sure what conditions have to be met to be able to pass a law to end isolationism (I had been trying to do that, but wasn't able to), but I got lucky and was able to do it as part of a war. I got in a war where I had East India Company on my side but Britain joined the other side. Which I thought was odd, especially since the East India Company was still part of Britain's dominion after the war.

But as a result Britain had been promised a war goal of opening Siam for trade. So we managed to fight the war and win (The East India Company did almost all the heavy lifting, tbh) and as part of the peace agreement I generously conceded opening up Siam for trade. I wasn't really trying to engineer that though and got kind of got lucky. I am sure it depends on even having a European power that wants to open your market in the first place.

Although, ever since my markets opened I haven't been able to provide cheap opium for my people since China gobbles up most of the opium I am able to produce, no matter how often I expand my opium farms.

 

[Heroic Liberator]

Put the game on hold for the moment since I'm dissatisfied with the diplomacy of it (among other things). Like really, not even the option to start wars in your subject's name or to grant states to a subject? I like my map painting and not being able to manually tweak borders both for me and for my subjects ruins it. Same thing with calling allies in wars since they seem to be swayed only by obligations rather than by conquest in most cases (even when they have claims on the enemy's states and/or the enemy has states which are part of their homeland).

Also, terrible UI is terrible. And besides the complaints of Stavrophore pertaining to it with which I agree, I also wish that this game had normal map modes to select from rather than this zoom in - zoom out nonsense. Not to mention that there's no proper map mode for displaying state borders besides the resource ones which have very thin borders (and you can't zoom in too much, otherwise you switch out of that map mode).

 

[whydoibother]

My biggest issue so far is that 1 province nations who get a revolt seem to enter an eternal war. Since there's only 1 tile, and its occupied by both the rebels and loyalists, they are just stuck at a 50% battle, with 0 soldiers each. And if this happens where you can't reach it, for example because of a protectorate and you lost sea access or something, you are stuck in an eternal war too, and you have to capitulate to 0 soldier rebels in your 1 province puppet.

 

[Stavrophore]

Ehh i want professional military but workers party is against it, and the rest of the parties that care are too weak. In Vic 2 i would just ban the troublesome party at the cost of increased monthly radicalism, but in vic 3 i dont see how to do it. This is super cucked.

Edit: I also can't join armies, like i have soldiers mobilizing and they can't join already existing generals and armies? What the fuck.
Edit2: Seems they vanish and automatically join the generals as long as they have capacity.

Edit3: War system shows that paradox don't play their games before launch. It's a fucking travesty, i was at war against spain with france as ally war leader, spain and france peaced out, and now im left fighting greece, which i can't reach and they won't capitulate. I can't disband an army, so i lose so much money, my only way is to capitulate. Who the fuck desiged this trainwreck?

 

[BlackAdderBG]

This game is broken and retarded. Made Import Trade Route for 1700 Grain from China. For some reason you can't control the amount after you make a Trade route, it's left to the AI- if it can profit it will increase it, so now I'm importing 4k Grain, selling 2,5k to Austria and all that is taxed with Tariffs. My trade center is #1 in the world and my income went from -4k a week to +22k, my grain price is the minimum and my population Standard of Living is rising coz they can buy it super cheap.

Spoiler

 

[whydoibother]

This game is broken and retarded. Made Import Trade Route for 1700 Grain from China. For some reason you can't control the amount after you make a Trade route, it's left to the AI- if it can profit it will increase it, so now I'm importing 4k Grain, selling 2,5k to Austria and all that is taxed with Tariffs. My trade center is #1 in the world and my income went from -4k a week to +22k, my grain price is the minimum and my population Standard of Living is rising coz they can buy it super cheap.

Spoiler

The Fat Man of Europe.

 

[Stavrophore]

This game is broken and retarded. Made Import Trade Route for 1700 Grain from China. For some reason you can't control the amount after you make a Trade route, it's left to the AI- if it can profit it will increase it, so now I'm importing 4k Grain, selling 2,5k to Austria and all that is taxed with Tariffs. My trade center is #1 in the world and my income went from -4k a week to +22k, my grain price is the minimum and my population Standard of Living is rising coz they can buy it super cheap.

Spoiler

You've bought from third worldia, and then resell to europeans for premium margin. Welcome to XXI century economy in eastern europe after fall of communism.

 

[Joggerino]

I'm kinda getting used to the market and building menu.

 

[what am i doing]

So I found out the way to make Super Germany.
1. Start as Austria, beeline for Nationalism tech.
2. Improve relations with Saxony, Bavaria, and Hesse-Kassel. When Nationalism is due to be ready soon, drag those countries out of Prussia's Customs Union, offering Favours if needed, which physically cuts Prussia's eastern half out of their market. They're now fucked out of sulfur (a video showing this technique may have been posted here earlier, or it was on /vst/, I don't remember which), which weakens their army substantially and also hurts their economy and prestige.
3. Declare a Leadership play against Prussia, add wargoals to Liberate everything you can from them, try to get Russia and/or France in the war on your side or at least not against you. Beat up Prussia.
4. Prussia is now very weak. But here's the important part, don't immediately go on the Unification Play, and don't do it as soon as Prussia falls from GP status. Wait, and improve relations with them. They should go Conciliatory with you, but should rise back up to GP status at a certain point. The important thing is that now they won't be against you for unification, and they won't be one of your unification targets, which means you won't take a massive Infamy hit and your enemy war leader will be Hanover. But, Prussia should fall back down out of GP status after the play starts (because they don't have enough prestige and the game is buggy as fuck, they regain and lose GP status regularly. If possible try to time your diplomatic play so that they fall out of GP status before the war starts, because I think this is how you end up annexing them with the rest.
5. Do your war; usually I was able to get Russia on my side, Britain neutral, and France as an enemy. Prussia actually comes in as an ally this way, which is useful.
6. Conclude the main wargoal vs Hanover, you are now Austria with Super Germany borders. If you want to stay Austria / become A-H, you can do this. If you want to be Germany, click the button. And there you have it, the 70 millionen Reich, with next to no infamy, and even easier than it is in vanilla V2, in my opinion. Also, funnily enough, less of a pain than forming lesser Germany as Prussia, because doing the latter, you often get one or two countries not joining via decision and then get stuck having to start another war over them. This game was not ready for release.

By 1853 my GDP had gone up by 30% and will probably be the largest in the world within another decade.