Played until 1891 with Afghanistan and I'm not sure if I have it in me to continue. I conquered Baluchistan and blobbed into Sindh (for those sweet sulphur mines), and with the united might of those shitholes, managed to become a major power, one with 4th best living standard in the world (first place was some savages in Indonesia... Really, Paradox?) one of the highest GDPs, and terminally bored. Here's my impression of the game:
Economy: Probably the most micro in any Paradox game to date. It's actually fun at the beginning, when you have a shithole that has fucking nothing, and just industrialize it from the ground up. That stops being true after a while as techs open up more and more products to juggle, and your pops become wealthier and wealthier and demand more shit. Also the bigger you get, the worse it gets, naturally. You're stuck in a micro hell that's pretty trivial to do well in (just build factories for whatever goods you are lacking the most. Duh!) but is incredibly repetitive and later needs optimizing when you run out of labour force or achieve a major technology breakthrough, etc. Joining someone else's market to get a reprieve from all this crap might be a good idea – while microing your own autarky will inevitably lead to creating a paradise for your pops, the price of boredom is steep. As for money, there's this super cool pro gamer move to get as much of it as you want! It's: 1. industrialize 2. change your tax law to per capita. That's it, you're done, you won't have to worry about cash from here on out. If you wish to obtain wealth beyond measure (outlander), upgrade it later to whatever-it's-called that has the highest income tax. With that in place, I was soon able to put taxes at the minimum and pay my troops and bureaucrats highest possible wages, and still be in the green, despite aggressive building strategy. Yeah, it's that fucking easy because with your pop becoming wealthier due to your microing (very easy to do), they get much, much higher wages, which directly translates into much, much higher income tax.
There is a nice distinction between the private and public sector that I actually liked – you pay government employees, buy resources needed for their work, pay for your armies' gear and wages, etc. while just taxing the private sector. That's good, that's how it should be. Sadly, that's also the extent of the good things there. Lassiez faire doesn't exist in this game, you're gonna be in a command economy from start to finish. Do the people need more grain? You will have to go and actually click the button to create another grain farm, and pay for it with tax money. And if you later decide you need that workforce elsewhere... you will just destroy it. It even turns the actual owners of the farm radical (no wonder!) so I can only assume that what occurs is you send in the troops, chase the workers from the fields, and salt the earth or some shit. It's ridiculous. Fucking CAPITALISTS are handled as EMPLOYEES of the fucking farm. You literally need to HIRE CAPITALISTS to have the farm working at full capacity. The retardation is off the scales with this one. Naturally, it also means there is no way to avoid the micro. You can't just let some retarded AI handle your economy once it gets boring, no, you'll be stuck at it throughout the whole game. On a lighter note, it's not like there's anything else to do in this shitfest anyway, so there's that.
War: What a fucking joke. I told you back when they announced the whole thing in dev diaries it was gonna turn out shit, I warned you! It's chock-full of absolutely infuriating bullshit, crammed with RNG, and trivial to game if you know what you're doing. Basically, if a war starts, put all your troops and conscripts to the best equip you can (even if you cannot afford it and shit. Doesn't matter, just eat the cost while the war is on, then revert it all after), and attack. Done. Numbers don't really matter all that much since the RNG will usually put you into battles of roughly equal forces. It's retarded like that.
Diplomacy: Somehow dumber than in EU4 and the like. Everyone also has a massive stick up his ass and refuses to agree to any deal unless you thoroughly dick-suck them prior to it, unless it's massively and overwhelmingly in their favour. Anyway, you don't really need it that much in the first place. The AI is mega passive for whatever reason. For example, Russia just decided it didn't wanna play the Great Game this time around, and left Central Asia be. Brits, likewise, just politely watched me conquering my neighbours in Pakistan without doing anything. US didn't even manage to gets all the land from fucking Mexico... Really, the map is mostly the same in 1891 as it was in 1831. Which brings me to the next point...
Historicity: There isn't any. None. Zilch. Great Game? What's that? Scramble for Africa? Maybe Brits and French will grab one of two states there, but that's about it. WW1 will be entered with 80% of Africa uncolonized, probably. USA is some kinda small-dicked little cuck sitting in the corner, with living standard worse than most middle eastern shitholes and a shit economy, and doesn't even dream of things like Manifest Destiny. Russia enters wars with Prussia here and there but nobody really cares who wins as land never changes hands. I assume they're fighting for sport or some shit. Revolts are rare, and only seem to concern absolute and utter shitholes. Spring of Nations? Nah man, I'm happy, I get to work in this neat little sweatshop the king built for me (...and he actually is, because the sweatshop wages make him mega rich in a very short amount of time!). Long story short, it's an absolute clusterfuck no matter how you look at it.
Mana: This is actually a positive. The game sort of doesn't have mana, unlike other Paradox titles of the last decade. Bureaucracy, Authority, and Influence are capacities, rather, that don't stack and are usually only increased by laws, buildings (hence money), or international prestige and stuff like that. They're still way, WAY too abstract and often don't make much sense (why does a bit of bureaucracy suffice to set up schools across the country and educate the population? Shouldn't I, you know, actually fund that shit? No? Okay.... Not like literacy actually matters in this game anyway), but it's still a pretty big step in the right direction for modern paradox.
Pops: Don't matter. Just don't. Do you lack highly educated work force to work this specialized factory? Doesn't matter, as an inbred peasant from Congo will turn into an esteemed academic within the week. I've never had any issues with jobs – I don't claim to know how exactly it works in the game, but I do know I had a population of literally only illiterate Pashtun peasants, and they could take on ANY job within the week. Culture, religion, etc. also doesn't matter because any dissent born out of that will be countered by the fact you're making them all massively wealthy through the economy micro. The only thing that seems to have any relevance in pops is their actual number, as you can industrialize so much that you won't have enough bodies to throw at your factories.
Now, their average wealth level, on the other hand, does sorta matter. The wealthier they are, the more shit they want, and the higher wages they demand. That means that if your population is particularly wealthy, you can find your factories running into issues, as even though they're creating high demand goods, they are still not profitable, as your pops demand such a massive paycheck that it still doesn't pay for it. It's a nice problem to have, however, because the higher paycheck they have, the more income taxes they pay, and who cares that there's a shortage of dildos or whatever going on when you have essentially infinite money?
Characters: I don't understand why they're even in the game. Utterly pointless and irrelevant. More pointless than in Imperator, even.
UI: Dogshit. Looks like it's made for tablets, a pain to work with, and all the important info is buried and scattered (and sometimes even hidden in fucking tooltips!).
Flavour: There is none!
Summary: What a sorry excuse for a game. Paradox has been doing this for a while, releasing what's basically an early access skeleton of a game at full price, and then jewing you on the DLCs, but they really outdid themselves with this one. It's basically just the fucking economy micro. That's the gist of the gameplay loop and the only thing that seems to actually matter. This is gonna be another case of them re-making the entire fucking game in various patches until they come up with a 2.0 that's (hopefully?) actually playable. They learned nothing from the Imperator fiasco, it seems.
