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PC|MAC Victoria 3

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PC|MAC Victoria 3

Unread postby icycalm » 25 Oct 2022 20:42

Latest Paradox disaster is out: https://store.steampowered.com/app/529340/Victoria_3

I have to say it looks good in screenshots and I almost bought it. Looks like you can zoom in to see individual houses.

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Overall review rating is Mostly Positive, so so far, so good.

But then I looked at the actual reviews, and all the positives were stupid one-liners, and the negatives looked like this:

https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/765 ... ded/529340

Kitsu wrote:This is not Victoria 3, but some kind of an ugly mix of imprerator + EU4 + Vic2
In short:
1.The market and production part got both overcomplicated AND simplified at the same time. Stockpiles were removed and the "international trade" stockpile for goods are artificially unlimited. No longer can you buy the most needed resource to make it harder for other nations to develop. On the other hand, the compact building tab from VIC2 was replaced with an atrocity of an UI, which honestly makes it harder to navigate.
2. Wars and military are completely different from other paradox games and are annoying and clunky, there was literally no point in replacing standard units with these semi-automatic dummies. The main argument of the devs and supporters of this system was "This is so devs could focus more on economics", but as I've mentioned before - the economics degrated too, they are NOT simulated like in Vic2.
3. Map is UGLY. It is unbearable, the moment you zoom out a bit it goes into fullpaint no opacity colours mode, I can not understand how could one go from ideal complex and simultaneously simple map overlays of Victoria 2 to THIS. It is unbearable and confusing.
Yes,
4. Lots of useless tabs that copy each other's functions which only adds to the confusion and makes you waste time on thinking "what is this thing for if you can do the same thing in the other tab?"
5. Bugs. It is all about bugs. I got involved into the Egypt vs Ottoman Empire crisis and when the war broke out it showed that I am suddenly both the attacker and the defender, instantly crashing the game.
6. Colonization is actually better than in VIC2, but is still broken. The moment I colonized a region with 9k population it went into turmoil (which is expected, but) now out of the sudden all of my well fed and happy citizens from my capital join radicals IN 300K NUMBERS DAILY, because of a worthless piece of desert on the other half of the continent having some problems with the living standarts.
7. About "muh racism is bad!!" and other stuff - I don't freaking care if I am being "offensive" towards a random nationality that existed 150+ years ago, but I don't **** understand why should I get -5% factory output debuff for refusing to hire 7K people IN A 700K POPULATED REGION WITH UNEMPLOYMENT IN IT. It is literally the most annoying event ever - you either make your overwhelming, major population unhappy or get a -5% debuff on factories despite the discriminated group not even being workers but freaking peasants.
8. Playing as Japan, 1836 be like:
-Somehow already have european level guns and conscripts, including latest artillery
-Can invent railways in just a few years, has already freaking paddle steamers.
-Shogunate being nasty isolationists? Don't care, Meiji restoration is not needed
-Went and destroyed Russia in a few clicks because my conscripts are somehow on par with top 3 military power in the world.
All of this while playing as "primitive nation", no need to westernize or do any political manipulation, just click a few time and BAM you have modern army in a few year.


https://steamcommunity.com/id/Commander ... ded/529340

Brave Sir Robin wrote:I PLAYED IT SO YOU DONT HAVE TO - HUGE congratulations to Paradox for creating the worlds very first Strategy game that for some reason has no Strategy in it!

- Very little Replayability
- Embarassing lack of flavor
- Repetitive Gameplay
- Dumbed down Warfare (seriously whoever suggested this system should be fired)
- Dumbed down Economy
- Worst Paradox AI so far despite removing Units
- AI Actively annexes territory it doesnt connect to like Hoi IV upon release
- Decentralized Nations such as in Africa cannot be played at all
- Painfully small amount of Decisions to choose from
- Dumber Diplomacy, no more joining an ongoing war
- Map Painting is easier than any game ive ever played despite promises by the devs to the contrary (Now i guess we know why they showed as little warfare in their streams as possible)
- Tedious Trade Mechanics (and for that matter Tedious game altogether)
- Event Spam worse than Victoria II
- $50 for an unfinished and frankly barebones Game
- 99% of the game is queuing buildings
- I cant even consider this a strategy game, as no actual Strategy is included within the gameplay
- There is genuinely a huge lack of content, Gameplay from the first 10 minutes to first hour in does not change at all as all of the huge changes dont actually alter anything
------ This one goes out to all the People that decried and insulted everyone who had concerns with this pile of trash before it got released
+ Soundtrack is fantastic
+ I do genuinely like the map and new graphics
+ Easier "Focuses" compared to Victoria II, aka i can easily promote migration or national values in a state
+ Unlike Victoria II i can tab out without issue
+ It gave me the motivation to actually write a lengthy review
+ It was mildly more interesting than looking out of a window

In a Nutshell - Unless you like sitting around doing nothing all game then dont buy it until a huge Stellaris-like overhaul which changes the entire game to something worthy of the designation "game". I dont know why Paradox insists on removing the gameplay from its games but this felt like a queuing simulator no matter who i played as and it was quite honestly the blandest experience i have had in any video game to date. The Game screams identity crisis to me, on the one hand it wants to be an economic and society simulator and yet ultimately what you get is this really content-poor experience where the economy is somehow less fleshed out than Victoria II and in fact feels more a cheap knockoff of the Anno 1800 system. Despite removing the biggest black hole for Paradox AI (Warfare) the AI is in no way improved over any previous title and in fact i would argue it is a lot worse given the AI makes bizarre choices to send its entire Army to some obscure country while losing to a major power. The game lacks content, it lacks love and above all it lacks any resemblance of a strategy experience. Overall it feels like a Paradox game where they removed half the content, made the other half harder by getting rid of important features and then slapped a major pricetag on it because its a game most of us never expected to get made. IF this was not a Victorian era game, IF this was not made by paradox, IF this was not part of their grand strategy series then maybe i could accept this actual lack of content and purely lazy design.

Lets kick off Warfare by quoting Bismarck, one of the most famous German leaders of this period : "...it is not by speeches and majority resolutions that the great questions of the time are decided but by iron and blood."

WARFARE - If like me you were looking for a continuance of the Victoria Series or indeed the typical Economy/Warfare balanced game you get accustomed to with Paradox then you came to the wrong place friend. In fact i would argue you couldnt be further from what you are looking for since this has perhaps the least warlike system of conflict i have ever seen in any Strategy game that i own. First the good news, a baby could understand it. Now the bad news, a baby would cry if you handed him this pile of crap because warfare is boiled down to 3 buttons and constant monotonous dice rolls in which you have no influence whatsoever. No i am not exageratting, in their quest to make the worst war system in any strategy game to date they have removed ALL player inputs into warmaking. Your AI General chooses the worst possible terrain to fight in and sends his smallest army against the enemy? Well guess you lost because your number is smaller than the enemy one. Conflict can quite simply be boiled down to who has more Barracks and thats virtually it, if there is in fact deeper mechanics at play well then call me sally because i sure cant see it. One huge issue i saw in the first 10 minutes was that if you occupy a colony the original owner can continue to colonise new provinces meaning you have to constantly come back to occupy them. The Peace System which they patched in Hearts of Iron over a year ago is still fresh in mind here as the AI will annex territories that make no sense, like Egypt annexing Macedonia from the Ottomans within 5 years of the game start. America decided to visit Africa with a vengeance and within 10 years had conquered around a third of west africa.

This is actually one of the unique times where i can point to Imperator Rome as an improvement because they actually had a system that pandered to both philosophies here. You could either let the AI run around and fight for you, or you could micro and decide precisely where he goes. Rather than do any of that they claimed to have spent the majority of their time creating a system that in simple terms mimics a mobile game. You click your army, you click on the enemy country and if your number is bigger than them well there you go you won thats all there is to it. Risk, Civilization and as already mentioned Anno 1800 all despite not carrying the same clout as a "paradox grand strategy game" somehow does better than whatever this junk is. I dont even think its insulting to call it that either because clearly little to no actual effort went into this system, it genuinely feels like it was designed and programmed in one single day by a game named Steve that they pulled in off the street. Let this be a lesson to any game studio making a similar title, the removal of warfare is not an acceptable replacement for a sufficiently programmed AI. I will admit though i should have seen the warning signs when the legions of youtubers throwing out positive praise of the system at conveniently the same day and same time of day no doubt due to the stipulations in their agreement with paradox for pre-release copies.

Diplomatic plays were touted as a great alternative to war but they are not tense whatsoever because without the threat of a challenging war as something to occur if it fails, it makes it nothing more than a formality that seems cool at first but the more you do them the more you feel its really hollow. They are also painfully easy, the puppetry system for example as long as you puppet a non great power you can annex them within 5 years. This is a problem because Spain for example is a power that loses its great power status and as say France you can puppet and then annex them in an extremely quick fashion which definitely should not be the case. By simplifying things and removing the risk from warfare they have gone in the completely opposite direction by making map painting easier.
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icycalm
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