What would you want in Victoria 3?

Gaius Julius Magnus

Gaius Julius Magnus

One thing that would interesting is for royal marriages to play more important roles in countries where the monarch has more authority but if the country liberalizes the less alliances through marriages hold importance.

Also the "free people" war goal mechanic is interesting but I think an interesting thing would be for countries only being able to "free people" if they are of similar or the same nationalities. Such as Russia can only invade Austria-Hungary to free Slavs and form a Slavic state not a Hungarian state, whereas maybe more democratic or liberalized states can do a blank check on "free people".
 

M.R.L

More irredentist decisions with a proportional gain in infamy, such as a 54-40 or fight decision for USA or one that fires when Mexico is occupied to annex it for a large aggressive expansion/ relations penalty.

Also colonies should receive adjacent colonial provinces even if they aren't cored. I can't count how many times I've seen the British release Canada but keep Washington or Idaho.
 

Rhand

Banned
M.R.L said:
More irredentist decisions with a proportional gain in infamy, such as a 54-40 or fight decision for USA or one that fires when Mexico is occupied to annex it for a large aggressive expansion/ relations penalty.

Also colonies should receive adjacent colonial provinces even if they aren't cored. I can't count how many times I've seen the British release Canada but keep Washington or Idaho.
Click to expand...

Vickymod adds "54-40 or Fight". I chose "Fight" this game, and my troops fought 3 in the frigid plains of North Dakota and Columbia against the Redcoats and their Spanish cronies. It was fun.

It's not worth it to dramatically retard your development just for some snowy wasteland with nothing but wood in it (no offense to people in British Columbia), but it's more about sending a message to Europe, I think.


I too would like to see an annex Mexico event chain, IIRC some southern expansionists in OTL floated around the idea, hoping for an influx of slave states. If you were to annex Mexico, then you would get an alternative civil war where Northern abolitionists, tired of bleeding for the gain of Southern planters, declare their freedom.

________________

Vis-a-vis the main point, this was reposted from my statement on Reddit:

Vic3 could be dramatically simplified and changed without sacrificing much depth. The problem right now is that there are a lot of cases where there's pretty much one correct way to go about things. And everything else is pretty much there to frustrate the player with needless complexity.

For example, National Foci: Bureaucrats --> Clergy --> Craftsmen, with Clerks and Capitalists as necessary, is the best way to go about it. The other Foci might as well not exist.

Another issue: State Capitalism is categorically the best way to start off the game. Laissez Faire is pointless and indeed deleterious at the start of the game, and pretty much exists to fuck over the player (though it can be useful lategame when you've built up factory infrastructure and a capitalist class). This is particularly bad for USA and CSA players, who can get stuck with the 100-year Conservative Democrat Junta (Whig for CSA) unless they use the rather gamey Election Spam (itself a problem).

Maybe the United States needs to have a difficult start to make up for its amazing lategame, but the CSA doesn't, and we can make the USA weaker without needlessly frustrating the player.

Another issue: conquering large Uncivs (Egypt, Abyssinia, Korea, China, Vietnam, etc) is categorically the best way to expand. Vickymod tries to fix this by adding some small states in West Africa, but it's still pretty bad. I groan when I see the British Empire taking both Egypt and Abyssinia, and France taking Vietnam, because then all that's left are table scraps. And it happens every game.

If I were Paradox, I would forbid all expansion into China beyond treaty ports. Regarding large Uncivs like Iran and Egypt, I would have players start with them as a satellite, and slowly extend their tendrils into the nation and turn them into a protectorate. To give other players counterplay against this, I would allow them to fund nationalist movements against the imperialists. This is [exactly what happened IRL](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Egypt_under_the_British) with Britain, Egypt, and Germany.

This way, the player has to choose between quickly grabbing the low-hanging fruit, or investing time and effort into large but profitable colonial endeavors. And this way, it's not gg for the German Empire once the British get Egypt/Abyssinia/Iran and start profiting ridiculously off the resources and millions of pops.

Another issue: Army composition: it's tedious as hell to always build and then assemble the correct amounts of Infantry/Artillery/Cavalry. There's pretty much one right way to build armies: fairly even amounts of Inf/Arty, with Cavalry on the flanks. So why not automate this, with an option for micromanagement-minded players to build their own armies? Or give the player the option to set the relative amounts of soldiers of each types in an army division?

TL;DR: Vicky2's problem is that in a lot of cases-national foci, economics, imperialism, military, etc there's frequently one correct option. In those cases, Paradox should either scrap it and focus their energy elsewhere, automate it, or add other viable options.
 
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Grey Wolf

Grey Wolf

Donor
I don't like it when a game focuses too hard on trying to mimic how things went in reality. It makes modding a nightmare, but it also imposes a straightjacket on normal game play. When I play I am not trying to create a realistic alternate 19th century but a FUN one, as FUN a one as can be managed. Its like the weird argument that stories such as 'The Man In The High Castle' should not be televised because they are unrealistic. I don't care. Its all about the fun

Best Regards
Grey Wolf
 

Rhand

Banned
Grey Wolf said:
I don't like it when a game focuses too hard on trying to mimic how things went in reality. It makes modding a nightmare, but it also imposes a straightjacket on normal game play. When I play I am not trying to create a realistic alternate 19th century but a FUN one, as FUN a one as can be managed. Its like the weird argument that stories such as 'The Man In The High Castle' should not be televised because they are unrealistic. I don't care. Its all about the fun

Best Regards
Grey Wolf
Click to expand...

I don't think the two are mutually exclusive. Players only go for ahistorical routes because they are categorically superior to the other options. The Belgium player annexes Hainan and Korea because 1) it's much better than the Congo, and 2) with HoD's colonization mechanics he can't colonize the Congo anyways. The Greece player invades Johore or Nigeria in 1836 because it's the only way he can jumpstart his economy if he wants to form the Byzantine Empire.

If we were to rebalance the game, then not only would the world become more historically plausible, but also it would give players multiple viable options rather than a few optimal strategies. It would create fun gameplay scenarios (like Britain investing and profiting handsomely off a large colonial empire and Germany trying to undermine it) that have some basis in reality.

That said, I see the appeal of achieving massively ahistorical outcomes (like Man in High Castle). To accomodate that, I think we could extend the timeline a bit...to 1789, perhaps. This gives more time for players to go crazy and have fun.
 

Gurroruo

Secret alliances
And being able to offer someone a province of a region (western balkans) to become you ally or join your war.
 
Grey Wolf

Grey Wolf

Donor
Some important requirements

1) Prestige should be a strong modifier against militancy. The game should not be some Whig wankfest where only one type of political endgame keeps the people peaceful. Look around the world today! Look at Russia, China, even North Korea. If you are high in prestige and standing in the world, then you should not suffer continuous rebellions. Rebellions make the game fucking unplayable anyway, and are just fucking stupid if you are number one in the world, within the Infamy limit.

2) There needs to be the ability to have specific diplomacy - eg the ability to negotiate a treaty as Britain with Austria that is only relevant against France. This does not break the alliance if as Britain you go to war with Zanzibar and Austria does not want to join in, because your alliance is only specific to France.

3) All states should be releasable as puppets, like how dominions are created in HoD. This allows for things you see all the time in history - the self-ruling puppet whose foreign policy is controlled by the master country. Nobody would have predicted that this was possible to do today with Donbass, but it was. In the past many instances seem now to be "inevitable" or "logical" when at the time they were wholly surprising, simply because we are looking backwards at them. The game as written writes these "obvious" ones in, but does not write in those which did not happen, even if in many cases they almost did or could have done.

4)There needs to be much greater opposition to "Crown from the Gutter". If a country has no internal rebellion, then its internal political state should decide its response - for example a stable monarchical Saxony should never agree to join a Germany created by a revolutionary democratic Prussia. The monarchies valued their individual identities and the monarchs hated revolutionary and democratic ideals. Why destroy yourself because a piece of code says you should?

Best Regards
Grey Wolf
 

Rhand

Banned
In general, I would like Vic3 to focus on adding multiple gameplay paths, I think this is something we all agree upon. In terms of political policy, social policy, economic policy, national foci, warfare, colonialism, there's pretty much one right way to go about things. That needs to change.

Now, these next few things might be a bit controversial:

1) Start Date:

Move the start date to 1789. If the game begins with the struggle between monarchy and republicanism, why wouldn't you include the French Revolution? Or alternatively, start right after Waterloo.

2) Expanded American Civil War:

Some mods try to address this, but the ACW system needs to be more robust and balanced. Here's how I would do it. The idea is to give the player multiple different paths he can choose, each with its own different outcomes.

1) Historical Path: Basically what happened in OTL, nothing to change here. However, they need to buff the South to give it a fighting chance against the Union. How I would do this:

-Make CSA as strong as it was historically, as opposed to being less than half as strong as the Union.

-If CSA warscore passes a certain threshold, then CSA obtains European recognition and war ends.

-If USA fails to pass a warscore threshold by 1863, consciousness and militancy builds in the Union as the population wants to end the war.

-If USA fails to pass a (higher) threshold by 1864, the Democrat Party win the election and USA signs a peace treaty.

This won't matter to a human Union player, the Civil War will still be a minor speed bump for him. However, it would make playing the CSA more fun, as opposed to being the horrible reload orgy it is now.

Regarding Alternative Civil Wars:

2) Give the USA an option to annex all of Mexico. If it does (and then makes Slave States out of the land), then the South will be happy, because it gets lots of Slave States. The North won't, and Northern abolitionists will form the Free States of America and lead them into a rebellion.

3) Ostend Manifesto: if the USA declares war on European powers to take their Caribbean holdings and make Slate States, then the same thing will happen: Northerners, tired of bleeding to expand the power of slaveowners, will declare independence...and they will have European support, given that you have made enemies out of all the European empires.

4) 54'40" or Fight: War with the British Empire for Oregon Territory, and if the USA wins it makes Free States out of the land (given that British Columbia is a cold desolate wasteland anyways, I don't see any slaveowners setting up shop there). The South will get angry and rebel...and they will have British support in doing so, given that you've made an enemy out of the British Empire.

So there we have it, 4 different possible Civil Wars based on the player's decisions. If the player blobs everywhere, then we'll leave it up to the current system to decide which side rebels.

Speaking of which...

We should take it out of the player's hands to decide if states are Free/Slave, that just lets the player do gamey crap like making everybody one way or the other. Instead, we should base it on immigration numbers, or just automate it to execute historical or plausibly ahistorical patterns.
 
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kodak

kodak

I'm a defender of the infamy system in-game, but I think it should have tiers. For example, let's say Colombia gets 20 infamy. At this point their sphere leader, good ole US of A, gets a cassus belli to contain them. The USA turns a blind eye for now. Now Colombia gets 25 infamy and the community gets worried. In addition to murica, all of Colombia's neighbors can declare a containment war. Now Colombia goes on the warpath again and gets 30 infamy. At this point it is obvious to even the high and mighty imperialists in Europe that Colombia is bent on world conquest and step in.

I also don't care about the countries and flavour events. Modders can add those. Modders can fix countries. They CANNOT fix a broken trade system.

Technology should be more complex. I'll intentionally be vague here.

I want to see the ability to sell/exchange land in a crisis or cash deal (Gadsden purchase and Alaska purchase are two examples, although they only apply to the USA). If Britain wants France's colony and threatens war, France could give it to Britain in exchange for another colony. If I don't want my useless pacific islands, I can sell them and buy someone else's islands.

Although for trades like that to work, money would have to be reworked.

Core spreading should be reworked, and core removal added.

Reduce the number of regions to prevent the massive late game industrial lag and make conquest easier.

Fix airplanes so they function like airplanes instead of cavalry.

Change blockades so submarines and aircraft carriers become feasible late-game (maybe add merchant ships?)

And I want to see a camera RGO in the late game, even if it serves no purpose besides consumer goods.
 

Rhand

Banned
IMO the Infamy system is beyond saving. Under it, Great Britain cares nearly twice as much about Johore annexing 2 OPM UnCivs than it does about Germany rampaging across Northern France.

In any case, more possible thoughts I had, concordant with my themes of increasing player choice and plausible ahistorical outcomes.

1) Brothers War Outcomes
There should be two or three player's choices for the Brother's War on Prussia's side. 1) The historical choice: in a quick war, Prussia kicks Austria out of the Germanic states, but has otherwise lenient peace terms. 2) A more protracted war involving the player taking land from the southern German states. 3) The Prussian player fighting a total war to annex all German-speaking Austrian lands and dismantle the remainder of the Austrian Empire.

To balance it, I would do the following:

Choice 1: War ends after a minor warscore increase, large loss of Infamy, +200 to relations with Austria, Austria becomes an ally.

Choice 2: Player takes an Infamy penalty, player gains a free "Acquire State" wargoal on Austria, war continues as normal.

Choice 3: Player takes a massive Infamy penalty, sizable relationship penalty with other European powers, France gets a free CB on player. In return, player gets a "Restore Order" CB on Austria that lets it take all the German-speaking lands from it and unite all Germans into a GDR if he wins (and the Alsace-Lorraine requirement is waived).
 

Deleted member 67076

Make it easier to assimilate cultures in the Old World.

Also, more African countries.
 
kodak

kodak

The problem with Africa is that

1. Most Pre-colonial uncivs would be boring if they're realistic.
2. Post-colonial nationalism didn't start until after world war 2 in most places, and the borders of post-colonial nations are mostly arbitrary ones determined by the colonizers.

I would love a way to gain accepted cultures.

Other ways to fix infamy:

Uncivs should receive half as much infamy when attacking other uncivs.
Releasing a Satellite should give more infamy reduction than releasing a dominion.
The population of the dominion/satellite should also affect the infamy loss and prestige loss.
Upon the end of a containment war, the country that exceeded the infamy limit should have infamy set to below the limit. I hated getting 20 successive containment wars declared and being unable to lose any infamy.
Certain reforms (press rights, public meetings) should affect war justification speed.
 

Rhand

Banned
Eh, Vickymod gives us the Toucouleur Empire as a formable African nation with some free CBs, it adds a lot of fun to the sub-Saharan Africa game. That's historical, and could appeal to players who want to lead a pan-African Empire against European interlopers.
 
Grey Wolf

Grey Wolf

Donor
I would like to see a variance on war aims - for example let's say Italy has both Sicily and Malta, this makes up the state called 'Sicily'. As Britain I should be able to say I want to take it all, take just Malta, or take Malta and work for an independent Sicily. I know you could say make Malta its own state, but that makes it impossible to have the "take it all" option.

Basically, you should be able to choose to annex just a province or two of a state and not the whole state, and of course get less infamy for choosing that aim

Best Regards
Grey Wolf
 
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