I remember that great Ken Burns Documentary "The Diplomatic Play" about the events of 1861-65. The episode where Robert E Lee sat on a glowing red line managing his building slots whilst Lincoln dealt with numerous Ashkenazi Language incidents was truly revolutionary and won numerous awards.
When Bismarck said “It’s Bismarcking time” and then convinced all the German nations to be under Prussias power with nothing more than a letter asking them to be was awesome
@@howitzer4041 "Not through speeches and majority decisions will the great questions of the day be decided-that was the great mistake of 1848 and 1849-but by iron and blood." - Bismarck "Not through unit composition and tactics will the great questions of the day be decided - that was the mistake of Victoria II - but by a bunch of random numbers being thrown around in Angola for some goddamned reason" - PDX
@@howitzer4041 Dont forget when Napoleon visited him personally to democratically hand over Alsace-Lorraine to the Germany, truely one of the event ever done
30:12 - You know peak idiocy has been reached when you're threatened with physical violence and called a _'racist bigot'_ for disagreeing with a new mechanic in a video game.
The Victorian age maintained war as a legitimate form or diplomacy, economic management, and politics. This was an Era where old ideas and new ones merged. War was still seen as glorious, you can look at all the pomp and circumstance of the militaries with their ceremonies, uniforms, and marches & anthems to see that it was a major aspect of societal thought. Until the horrors of WW1 killed the noble image.
Always remember what Bismarck said too: "Not through speeches and majority decisions will the great questions of the day be decided-that was the great mistake of 1848 and 1849-but by iron and blood"
@@kayt9627 Having a peak at your channel I can tell you have a keen interest in military history. It's a lot of fun to learn about battle tactics and speculate on how things could have gone. But I think the pop history you consume on youtube, while meaningful and important, has warped your perception on what it was actually like to a draftee on the field. Especially in a war as meaningless, brutal, and mechanized as World War One. I suggest you read any history or memoir on the subject. Or if reading's not your thing the newest rendition of "All Quiet on the Western Front." may be a healthy reminder.
Damn i guess the spring of nations, the hungarian revolt, the opium wars, the meiji restoration, the brothers war, the american civil war, the crimean war, the spanish civil war is peaceful @@ulture
@@doggerlander It was more like several dozen wars and it can go up to hundreds if you count every single one of them. From German-French War of 1870 to Italian Unification Wars in Western Europe, Russo-Turkish Wars to Balkan Wars in Eastern Europe and Sino-Japanese War to Taiping Rebellion in Far-East. There are also countless revolts, uprisings and revolutions. Victorian age was anything but peaceful.
Also, not having experienced multiplayer in Paradox games: what a bizarre Decision to remove an ingame chat system. Minimizing direct communication between players in combat MP games is a great way to combat toxicity: restricting communication to gestures in games like Soulsbournes and FO76 (yes, I know it’s shite, but that was a legit good call-the ingame community is probably the most polite and helpful I’ve experienced) But in a PDX grand strat game, I doubt you’re getting a lot of abusive pubbys queuing for hotseat MM, in between CoD maps yelling racial slurs over Xbox live. so it’s just bizarre to cut it.
Yeah, like, it includes WW1? and like, the taiping rebellion, US Civil War, Franco-Prussian War, War of the triple alliance, all the US wars of expansion, all the colonial wars Europe fought, the Russo-Japanese war, the wars of italian unification, the Crimean war, etc
Devs at Paradox are incompetent, who could have guessed, you know its bad when they hire freelancers to work on their game engines because all the good devs left the company.
@@supereero9 Even if that's 100% true, the solution to the war system being clunky was absolutely NOT to completely remove the war system. That's like trying to fix a broken arm by amputating the arm - the "cure" is worse than the illness.
I remember learning about the Franco-Prussian diplomatic play. It was truly magnificent how Bismarck fooled France into diplomatically losing Alsace Lorraine.
@@stanislavkamenicky8694 they had to imprision the french head of state and then besiege the capital for almost a year while the provisional republic was busy deciding whether or not they wanted to fling shit at the walls or the roof. Not extremely handshake-y
@@stanislavkamenicky8694 But that's exactly what everyone has been saying. The game shouldn't solely focus on war, but also not solely on diplomacy. I think we should see war more as an extension of diplomacy instead of a seperate thing.
@@ShiftySheriff2 So the approach to war should be similar to how automated diplomacy is no. Not like you have to micromanage what your diplomat says. You ask them to say this, they negotiate the actual deal based on hard parameters.
the Sims 5 basically got announced recently and people were criticizing them for not spending the resources on more Sims 4 DLC. The ideal Paradox audience.
@@Hunter-ww9rd Vic2's framework is solid and did not need a fundamental overhaul. There were a lot of rough edges and archaisms, like the inability to simply transfer land peacefully to another nation, but people loved the core gameplay, they just wanted it to be made smoother and less tedious.
When I first heard about the new "War system" I imagined it would be a "General Staff" sort of thing: an improved system à la HoI4 where you decide front lines, you assign generals and choose war objectives (capture that province, capture that fort, capture that supply hub, go to that river, etc.). If you want to add a bit of complexity, maybe the new techs and tactics could alter the amount and composition of your armies, which could increase the cost and force you to adapt your economy. That could've also influenced your politics: maybe they could implement an officer promotion system like they have done in BBA and then that newly promoted officer could become the leader of an interest group/party and force you to limit him politically. As of now is a bit disappointing and lackluster (maybe once I play the game it will be different, who knows). It also feels like the minor nations will have a harder time of asserting themselves than in the old Vic2 or in other PDX games.
@@luigicampo4008 Prussia did, the Netherland did, Sweden did, Austria did, Moscovy did, Asturias did, Rome did. History is full of minors that grew into large powers or punched above their weight.
@@Perrirodan1 Spain and Portugal both started as a county in the mountains and a minority in Hispania, conquered the region and then dominated the world for centuries. Africa has had so many examples of a previously unremarkable state completely pulling the rug it's not even funny.
The real problem not addressed in this video isnt just that war is automated - it is that there are no ‘units’ on the map at all. army strength on individual tiles afaik is not modeled at all whatsoever. So when people suggest things like ‘automated generals making decisions like prioritize attacking enemy armies / their capitol’, the problem is that there are no enemy ‘armies’ to prioritize, or maneuver towards or around. Combat is basically just dice rolls of unit strength calculated across the entire front. So there are no ‘concentrations of units’ or ‘armies’, there are just two big sets of numbers dice rolling each other across the entire frontline at the same time. I dont even know how a ‘normal’ war system with individual armies moving between provinces could even be modeled with this.
Yeah that makes the Dev Comment of "We worked really hard on this" even more suspect. Now this next one is a pure schizo theory, so grain of salt, but I could see this happening: They actually worked on a huge military system that is what we wanted, but right before announcement or shortly after, they're told to cut it out for use as DLC by Corporate (or Marketing), then they can release it for more profit later. And if it flops? Rush it out right away for damage control, and frame it as "we listen to our fanbase!" They've been losing support through DLC shilling for years now, it would be a huge boon for their business model.
Not sure how it was coded but you might be able to mess with the basic coding to have this shared frontline calculation individualized to each specific province and then have a separate decision making (possibly in the hands of the player) that choses how much of the global manpower, guns, and more is given to each province from that pool every month tick (Imagine it as a more complicated version of how Hoi4 has those sliders to determine whether new equipment and manpower goes first to occupation, units in the field, or training units). From there when a province's frontline "war" is done that province switches hands and a new "war" forms in each location where that province touches an enemy province. This would essentially be restructuring a large segment of the war coding and might require rebuilding from the ground up to avoid lots of unforseen bugs.
Yeah, its pretty bare bones, i dont think its without promise but as of now it is dead simple. I think the ai might at least be able to manage to use this properly. Long term i hope they add enough to make it fun... but thats not an excuse for its launch state. And looking at it, the unit style combat took forever to get interesting so i think we'll be waiting a while for the new system to get good too
@@soderfraga Ah yes, the Concert of Europe, which was famously successful and did not literally collapse 10 years later with Greek War of Independence (famously not an armed conflict) It totally prevented all wars in Europe and kept the map unchanged. The German states were never unified and the unifiers did not engage in any wars. Austria also famously never had to find any wars to keep its lands and influence in Germany or Italy. Russia, France and Britain were also extremely peaceful, only engaging in the small scuffle known as the Crimean War that only resulted in an estimated death toll of 600k (most of them soldiers.)
@@S0me0ne353 Carlist Wars, Crimean War, Russo-Turkish War of 1877, Italian Wars of Independence, German Unification Wars, Balkan Wars, and of course World War I. Need I go one. This era (1836 - 1936) is home to some of the bloodiest and most destructive conflicts in Human history. Every continent experienced one or more extremely deadly wars. These none European wars include Paraguayan War, American Civil War, Taiping Rebellion, Sepoy Mutiny, Russo-Japanese War, and the Second Boer War. Pax Britannia is a bit of a misnomer, to say the least.
@@S0me0ne353 Wtf? The Crimean War was just a small skirmish and did not lead to 600k military casualties, being one of the bloodiest conflicts in Europe before WW1 only surpassed by the Napoleonic Wars and the 7 years war as far as military casualties are concerned. It was all diplomacy and politics.
As someone who plays mainly singleplayer one of my disappointments was that vic3 removed the detailed province based culture map, it was one of the most fun things to watch the culture map change as the world progressed, and that it still has the ugly vanilla vic2 base map, alsace-lorraine looks distorted, belgium owns eupen-malmedy, the german minors have weird shapes, it doesn't makes me want to play it because i can make a nicer looking country in vic2 (hfm).
That is a good point, which is often overlooked by the war "debate". By moving the POPs to the state level, you have made the socio-economic/socio-political aspects less dynamic and in some regards simplified.
I never really understood this argument. I mean, everything in Victoria 2 is technically ACTUALLY done on a state level. Buildings are on a state level, taxation is done on a state level, admin is done on a state level. I FULLY understand why they didn't go this way with Vicky 2 OR Hoi4, because that means not having to track down every single person who lived in one province of siberian russia at the time. Yes, I do miss the fact that the culture map looks like shit in Vicky 3, but it doesn't do any actual gameplay difference, since it was all done at a state level in older games anyway. The only thing I can think off was actually based off the province level was rebels and soldiers, both of which I think is a good thing that they moved to the state level.
@@AlienTreeGuy I think the main point there is not about gameplay, but how this change inpacts negativelly the roleplay and imersion aspects of the game for some.
@@AlienTreeGuy In Victoria 2, resources are on province level, buildings like forts and railways are on province level, pops are on province level. The point is that you would expect a game released 10 years after its prequel to be more detailed and granular, not less.
A friend of mine made a wonderful point about how Victoria is in an amazingly unique period of time as far as warfare goes, rapidly evolving from big pitched battles to the long lines of trench warfare. The idea spudgun mentioned of having innovations slowly unlock the ability to form lines would have been perfect. Force micro on them in the early and as the tech evolves, slowly unlock ways to make the micro easier without removing the option entirely.
this is a good idea in theory but how would you actually implement that? how would a nation thats discovered frontlines and machine guns face off against their enemy who hasnt that just seems like ai exploit fodder tbh
Sounds nice but any micro at all means you must micro, that's how these types of games work. Like in hoi4 even against the AI if you're trying to do any remotely difficult achievement then microing is an absolute necessity regardless of frontlines. There really wasn't a middle ground here, you either want to micro or you don't.
If you can't micro in SP where you can pause any time you just suck. It is only hard with multiplayer when you can't pause especially on higher speeds and on another games of course
I think HOI4's success is actually part of the reason why the developers went on this divergent path. If you look at the large Paradox youtubers for each of their games, there is very little overlap; EU players play EU almost exclusively, CK players play CK. HOI players tend to also play Vic though, essentially seeing it as a less sweaty HOI game with multiple wars and peace periods throughout. Seems like the devs saw this and wanted to give Vic3 a more unique identity and pigeonhole it in a way so each franchise captures a different niche audience than the others. If you read the pro-Vic3 camps comments you see this as well, most of them don't seem to be longtime players they are new players drawn in by the marketing of an econ-sim.
@@concisecipher1 I mean that the automated warfare appeals to me more than the traditional stack management of Vic or EU. I'm definitely more of the braindead battleplan frontline only part of the hoi4 community.
@@wakemeup6318 Even if the south had better generals they would have lost anyways, they lagged behind in everything. Men,railroads,industry. I seriously can't imagine a realistical scenario where the south wins unless a foreign power joins in.
@@wakemeup6318 Also don't get me wrong, in my opinion this war system is a good idea but they should have implemented more orders, you should be able to give orders to for example attack a weak point or something else. But no micro as in for example hoi4 is a good thing in my opinion.
@@__prometheus__ No go one further: Vic 3 is IP: R DLC That's what Alex Jones calls a 360 win. You instantly leap from that sad lame screen at the end of IP:R and just leap ahead about 1900 years to play about 100 years much slower. I do wonder how overseas invasions and so forth work.
Hell Imperator had pops, classes and trade resources. Why they didn't use Imps Stack automation + front lines from hoi4 while using Imperator as a framework for vicy3 is beyond me
@@gemjuwel5823 tbf the entente and allies did win due to germanys lack of people skills, they prolly wouldnt have managed to get half the globe into their alliances otherwise
@@pyroparagon8945 Vic2 combat is messy but still satisfying. Marching across Russia as Germany, manually encircling enemy units. Choosing to be defensive on certain fronts while offensive on others. Better than just a shitty AI doing combat behind the scenes.
The biggest issue with Victoria 2's war system was the fact that it become more dysfunctional as time went on. It was clearly designed primarily for Napoleonic and post-Napoleonic warfare. Once you reach the late 19th century, however, warfare (especially between great powers) explodes in scale, and becomes extremely difficult to manage. A single gap in your line will be exploited by any enemy nations, so you're forced to maintain a continuous line of armies along the front. The front line system could be adapted in such a way to make this easier to manage, but I think there isn't really any way to get around this without severely curtailing player agency.
I know where you are coming but I have always enjoyed the late game wars. On narrow fronts such as between France and Germany or Austria and Italy the initial rapid movement will bog down into brutal grinding trench warfare. If you want to make progress you need either to fight huge costly battles eventually leading to a breakthrough or find an alternative. Naval blockading, tech rushing gas, armour and planes when you can or just opening a second front. In this sense Vicky 2 has the most realistic warfare simulation than any modern PDX game.
@@adammackintosh430 I think the fact that that happens was the best part of Vic 2 war simulation. It nearly FORCED an adaptation of trench warfare due to technology and army sizes, and of course the crazy military strategies to avoid it. The fact that strategy must change, rather than just numbers was awesome. The only problem was just that there was too much of a time commitment to managing it, the actual developments are beautiful to watch. I mean hell, what other game do you get the big multiplayer guys going on about "Shape, strategy, and the economic position of a nation" Remember how many battles happened at Verdun, repeatedly attacking a single critical position to either attrit or gain a strategic position IS WW1 warfare, contrasted with the much wider eastern front, where no one had the numbers to do so.
To me it seems that many of the aspects of the random large front line seems more retarded for 1830s Napoleonic style warfare with the historic reality of having large concentrated armies moving to take exact cities and ports than late game. You are right with the actual gameplay disfunction with late game. Gameplay disfunction seems to be the main highlight of Victoria tycoon.
Yeah, the deranged hype around Vic 3 really reminds me of the Fallout 76 subreddit back in the day. On one hand you had a minority of old guard RPG fans concerned about the removal of core game mechanics (i.e. roleplaying), on the other hand a critical mass of Redditors easily swayed by the promotional material. The Redditors would fill in the gaps and inconsistencies with their own imaginations and angrily lash out at dissenting opinions. The record was finally set straight when F76 released and the free market had a say. I’m willing to bet Victoria 3 has a similar outcome.
Redditors are one of the lowest forms of life, truly. With upboats and downboats, the entire website is built around censoring dissenting opinions, and promoting the party line. It drives people into a state of constantly wanting to one up other people in how much they really like [POPULAR THING], and every thread just becomes a circlejerk of asskissing, with dissenters being more and more outlandishly attacked by shills who are trying to be the most vicious voice, in order to harvest the most upboats.
76 died due to bugs, Todd being Todd, and even what was promised on the ads not being realized so even the supporters at first were gone. Also being a multiplayer game without much players, the game is pretty much caput. If Vic 3 is not a buggy mess then maybe the new players will stick despite the old players not getting it. Cyberpunk 2077 and even No Man's Sky got back on their feet despite the deranged hype and launch failure, even Imperator Rome has a niche. Singleplayer games have more resilience from dying.
big difference Fallout was a well loved series. Victoria II while i love it was not. Paradox will sell more copies to poeple who've only heard of Victoria II because this game has a 3 in the title than people who care about a game mechanic.
Yeah so JumboPixel released a video where he conquered most of South America in a few years and Spiffing Brit became the 11th largest economy as Jan Mayan… Reddit is predictably coping and doubling down, but there’s been a genuine shift in attitude on the Paradox forum.
@@inquerion8867 The thing I just don't understand is... why? These Reddit drones seem like they're brainwashed. Where's their vitriol coming from? Why so much hate? Assuming they've got what they wanted, and that Spudgun really is an old dinosaur that ought to be ignored - why can't they just ignore him? Why does he live rent-free in their heads so much?
Idiotic youtube commentators want every single paradox game to be HOI4 and want no attention payed to the actual purpose of the game or the games theme.
@@jamesmcpherson8599 Not everyone wants copy of Hoi4. And V3 pays no attention to the purpose of the game (beeing GSG) and the game theme (Victorian era GSG) because we got simplified version of Factorio mixed with Anno set in fantasy version of Victorian era.
@@Joleyn-Joy In my opinion the economic, diplomacy and political system of Vickey III are way superior to Vickey II and wouldnt be really possible with Vickey II. All I would say they should have transported from Vickey II is the war system, as it was actually more interessting then EU IV and then have a technoligy that turns it into frontlines like HoI IV. And have it so the pops are province based instead of state based.
@@Kaiserboo1871 Thats like the entire point of vickey II and III... an industrial sim, with diplomacy (also being just as major a theme) and on the side warfare, but in vickey II warfare wasnt that major either, that system sucked ass aswell, sure better then Vickey III and EU IV, but still sucked arse. I want to have more involvement in war aswell, as now you just have nothing to say basically, making it frustrating to lose and unsatisfying to win, but dont ignore the fact that Vickey has always been about an economic sim with building factories and managing pops, with diplomacy following second and then only war.
I’m leaning toward giving it a fair chance but I also tend to agree that shifting to a HOI4 style front line system with templates doesn’t actually sound that bad. I’m down for some innovation and tbh I HATED fighting wars in V2, but we’ll see how things go over the next few weeks
Before Victoria 3 was announced, I doubt any pdx fans ever seriously considered removing micro, considering how just about all pdx strategy games have micro.
I actually feel HOI3 combat system would actually be more Ideal. What I like about HOI3 is that your divisions are made of regiments but what's special is you can have divisions or regiments be tagged as mobilized unit. These divisions would be at not fighting strength till mobilization has been enacted. With this mobilization system in place it will greatly increase quality of life for you don't have to move your mobs division all around. You can have your mobilized armies be more complex than infantry and you can control where they group.
That sounds perfect actually to keep the two separate strategies of all professionals or mobos protecting artillery. Perhaps that’s what really hurts here: we don’t get to choose. It is what it is.
@@inc0mingr0flc0pter have you played HOI3? Division design isn’t the problem, I love Hoi3 but troop control and commander assignment is micro hell. Hell I’ve spent an hour just organizing OOB for the Soviets before clicking the play button at the start of the game
Never forget the glorious dice roll by Bismarck at sedan that secured victory. After rolling a 9 against napoleons 2 Bismarck embarked on a mastery of building slot management to secure victory and capture paris. Truly genius level dice rolls. 🎲
@@krokuke he didn't just sit around managing diplomacy and waiting for his generals to do fucking dice rolls in order to win either. He was actively involved in decision making, appointing new commanders, and outlying strategies etc etc.
My headcannon is some people who paradox hired to make vic3 played vic2 and lost horribly so they thought "I cant be wrong game is wrong" and removed war system
@@deeznoots6241 Yes but it could be greatly improved. And it's not always bad, I really like defending myself against France and Russia at the same time as Prussia.
Personal theory (pull out your tinfoil hat guys): i believe that Paradox has decided to make their games as different to each other as possible in order to avoid competition between them. Few years ago basically every game shared the same warfare system as EU4 (CK, IR and ViC 2 basically) but after what happened with IR they decided to make every game feel different. They could have just picked the warfare system from Hoi4 and change a bunch of things to make it fit but someone must have thought that it would have created a competitor for one of their own best game so VIc 3 warfare had to be different. TLDR: paradox is afraid of making their own games compete with each other so every game must be different and they can't copy\imitate\learn from each other.
doesn't make sense, you would just piss off your fans. players jumping from a game to the other means more money, not less. lol, how could NOT wanting your playerbase to buy your new game be beneficial?
CK3 still had a similar traditional warfare system even when it was released after IR. You could say it was already in development when IR was botched on release, but CK3 was a success and the botched IR wouldn't have swayed much changes with Vic.
@@jamesmcpherson8599 you do know right that RUclips commentators will rush in and reply to your comment with a full on essay sooner or later. Also I saw your other comments, full on death wish. Also here's the essay you are looking for: it's not that people want Victoria 3 to be like hoi4, they want Victoria 3 to be more fun. Victoria 2 even though they had a mediocre war system left many ways to improve itself, you would think in a sequel that they would improve things, not basically removing it. As time progress, The Victorian era saw warfare from massive open pitch battles to grueling frontline trench warfare, it was an interesting time indeed, with new ideas being made and merged with old ones. Also, the Victorian era was also not as peaceful as you think, a lot of wars like the American Civil War and franco-prussia war were waged, and of course the history changing ww1. Late game Victoria 2 basically forced you to do frontline trench warfare, a game were you could progress the tech tree to progressively open the frontline mechanic would have been excellent, and more realistic. We just simply want a feature, we want more, not less. No matter how you slice it.
I was reading some reddit threads about Victoria 3, and someone called you a "racist and sexist". I immediately knew I had to check out your channel, because people called those words by insane redditors are usually entertaining and informational channels to watch. subscribed.
Lmao the redditors have been calling everyone who doesn't suck off Vic 3 a racist nazi pos, they did it to TommyKay too and he's probably one of the more left-leaning paradox youtubers. Redditors are unironically disgusting human beings
Really well thought video. Yea the QoL improvments would change the victoria 2 problem that was making the stacks and reorganize your army all by yourself. Also that one guy idea of different warfare system depending on the technology would be really innovative in this genre.
Can't believe people would get so mad over someone wanting something else, when it isn't something ridiculous. I appreciate you do your best to be objective about things in your videos, hopefully the war system eventually gets into some balanced version of what everyone wants.
Problem is that without war Victoria 3 is a boring "game" with nothing to do other than waiting for your construction queue to finish. The economic aspect is weak and there isnt really much in terms of society. It feels like we have been sold a different game from what is advertised.
The person who wrote that people who play Victoria III should focus on economy diplomacy is an idiot. I’m surprised to see how paradox a company makes games the base on history hire people who doesn’t have any knowledge of history. Even now when people mention of world war 2 some still call it the continuation of the Great War. When does the Great War happen? I don’t think the employees of Paradox even know. If I really had a chance to interview them I would really like to ask “What in the world is going through your mind when you bring a game that have in it the German unification war, American civil war and the Great War a game for diplomacy and economy? “
Why are half the people defending a bad game mechanic calling the people who don't like it "nazi" like holy shit--you're a nazi because you want a fleshed out game mechanic??
I was planning on pre-ordering Victoria 3 as soon as it was announced because of how much I love Victoria 2. The new war system made me change my mind. It's just not what I want when I think of a sequel to Vic 2, many said when it was announced that if the system was bad, broken or just boring they would most likely improve on it with DLC, the main issue I have with this is the fact that Imperator exists. When Imperator was released many of the mechanics where broken or boring and PDX promised they would fix the game to make it the game they promised us, and they did begin to fix it with time, to the point where they had a game that could be improved upon with DLC. They then told us that it had flopped and because of that they where no longer going to keep developing it. So, that brings us to today where they are now gambling again one of my most beloved IP's by experimenting with a core feature of the game without consulting the playerbase, and as Imperator showed us, if the game flops they most likely won't fix anything and will just cease development. So why bother with this game?
In my opinion Imperator rome has been fixed ,it has a distinct Identity and makes fun for me .The problem is that because it has a very bad general opinion since the launch and very few streamers/ youtubers covered the new updates the playerbase is too low and doesnt earn paradox enough profits to contine developing new features
@@thezelution8459 That's my point though. I play Imperator but there's no more content for it so I have no reason to play it anymore, I expected Paradox not to abandon it and treat the same way they do CK, EU and HoI. Instead I bought a game that was broken, and a DLC pass that gave me enough DLC to fix the game.
The core demographic Victoria 3 is catering to is players who hate losing (as I am one of them, slowly been deprogramming myself after playing city builders as I frequently used many tools to harm my cities), something that many video games have taught is that losing guarantees a game over: In Skyrim, anyone you end up fighting will always game over you with a death - in Hearts of Iron IV you can only lose by capitulating and losing literally everything and a lot of the new generation of strategy gamers (Civ VI and HOI4) have been made to associate any losing with anti-fun.
loosing should be part of every strategy game, my favorite paradox game crusader kings 3(although in comparison to ck2 still pretty bland) you can easly lose a war by your ruler dying and the heir being a 3 year old without alliances with most vassals not liking you anymore, but that wouldn't destroy an entire game, it is actually a good tool to stop players steamrolling and being an powerhouse in comparison to any other. you would loose the war, loose prestige, your claim and your economy would be crushed for a couple of months or years, but you recuperate, same if someone conquers you, you can play on unlanded, convince someone to fight a war for you to get your lands back and then you*re back in business. and onlike most paradox games, they can't annex everything but you have to set what you claim before the war, so if you fight for a specific province, you only get that and presige for the win, not anything other because it wouldn't make sense.
The fact that people keep saying this convinces me that no one has read the Dev diarys. Great wars have no special mechanics but emerge organically from other mechanics.
Can’t wait to diplomatically talk Austria into giving me Lombardy and Venetia to peacefully convince other Italian nations to join my dream of an Italian nation.
i have an idea to make wars in Vic3 even BETTER. Just make a calculation when you declare war involving some factors like industry tech etc that automatically determines the result. No time wasted and 0 microing at all, I feel like this would make vic3 such an amazing deep and engaging game.
Strictly in terms of PDX's vision for the game it actually would "improve" it to being more focused on what they want. Would probably have saved them a lot of time too, so they could work on the parts of the game they actually want people to engage with.
15:46 If I remember correctly, Imperator Rome had some useful mission settings for your armies. You could set objectives for your generals without having to micro all of them. Perhaps such a system could’ve been in Vicky 3 before frontlines became dominant.
@@athingwhichexists yep, when a general became disloyal he would march his troops elsewhere (iirc I believe to a province where the governor was also disloyal or of his family) and even recruit troops if they had personal wealth.
I think there is no better exemplar of the fact that the games evolve so unrecognisably over the first few years and after much time and DLC spending and yet still be abandoned, than Imperator. Let that be a warning for if Victoria fails to learn from those lessons.
Also, if the idea is “modeling innovation and progress”, then you CAN’T leave out war. Most of the scientific discoveries, especially in this era, came from “wanting money to pay for an army”, “wanting to be dead less” or “wanting to make the other guy more dead more better”
I'm very out of the loop on Vic3 at this point. very interesting video (and not because you cited my video). Your video here shares much in common with a video I was thinking about making regarding the Civilization series. I played the Vic leak. Despite being somewhat underwhelming, I went ahead and pre-ordered Vic3 on Steam just because I said I would. I'm not expecting much when the full version goes live tomorrow. I'm expecting a whole lot of "meh", and eventually it'll become a worthwhile game with DLC. I don't really see Vic3 MP supplanting Vic2 MP at this moment.
Spudgun made an interesting point regarding the DLC issue. To make that business policy viable, people have to buy the game on release so that there’s a player-base to then buy the DLCs. If people don’t pre-order garbage, barely finished games, then their DLC policy becomes impossible to maintain. New players won’t buy the base game plus 60 dollars of DLC when they can spend less money for better games elsewhere.
they could do what theyve done for HOI4, which is have a subscription system. Also with recent hoi4 dlcs (BBA and the Russian one) the updates that coincide with the dlcs are still pretty substantial. The problem is the teams behind each game vary so much in quality. We're getting some of the bets content ever put out with HOI atm, with more frequent updates, a dev team more actively taking on what the community says. You have Stellaris with its big updates, caretaker team to do bugfixes and minor updates in between bigger releases. Then you have CK3, which has been kind of sinking, IR which fell pretty hard then was abandoned, and now this with Vicky 3. I dont play a lot of Vicky 2, and only singleplayer, but as much as I am looking forward to V3 and its economic systems and diplo, Ill be sad that we never got a ho4 combat system. What can ya do I guess
Im a longtime eu4 player and old vic 2 player and I really need to see unbiased people playing the game wether its actually fun and interesting to fight wars in Vic3, idm a whole new system if its done well like in Stellaris but I have to be convinced its fun and interesting before I consider buying it. I think a big problem with these kind of big changes is that all the mechanics are very closely related. For example in eu4 diplomacy the key aspect of the game but without a good war system the diplomacy wouldnt be as good (peacedeals, allies, favors, wargoals etc). And that is problem vic3 might face, how good are war mechanics to support the economy and politics mechanics in the game, if its too shit it might go down like imperator rome.
Yeah as another long time Eu4 player Vic III's war system looks very boring. I've only ever played small VIC II MP games but having army stacks seems so much better and more logical.
When I first heard Vic 3 announcement, the first thing that I imagined was cool Victorian unit models with Hoi4 like combat, division designer and assigning generals and army generals, only difference from hoi4 would be lesser maneuverability and less encirclements to fit the time period. Also ship designer, secret societies, etc.
@@Phantomz. Not sure if HoI 4 could be modded to have Victoria style economics and politics. I do like the things like culture, religion and leaders that they added in Vic 3, not everything is bad. But so far, the warfare - for the sake of gameplay - is the main thing and should be the main thing for a geopolitical grand strategy game, it's the climax, it's just how games found a way to be fun and worth playing despite of the limitations of technology, for that satisfying feeling of defeating an opponent that is menacing. Also what worries me is the game optimization because I seen that when zooming in or out in Paradox livestreams there is a noticeable stutter, maybe I'm wrong.
@@mike7671 I mean they gotta. Waging wars and map painting are half the reason people play these games. I mean sure building economies is fun and all, but people will demand war.
Looking forward to the eventual Paradox post explaining how they did their best but the people just didn't buy it so they had to can the series. It'll be a fantastic schadenfreude and I say this as someone who played all their games since EU2. They really deserve this along with the cult which calls itself fandom.
Remember how proud they were with the Imperator mana system and how all those „Fans“ supported it. And then a few weeks later most people had moved on or were complaining about it killing the game in the process. I fully agree with the DLC part. Well they said: If you dont like it dont buy it. I am doing that. XD
@@inquerion8867 Maybe I did not word it correctly, but that is exactly what I meant. Some even pointed the problem out before launch and were mocked for it. We all know what happened next.
The problem with PDX wanting to focus less on the war as 19th century is more about "economy and society" is that although the wars in 19th century are less in numbers compared to other centuries, it had way more impact on both the economy and the society of the nations both in the 19th century and the afterwards that we still live through to this day.
I almost feel like they purposely made the war system so dumbed down so they can do a DLC for it. In reality they probably made it so simple because their AI will probably be compete shit like usual.
If their using the same multiplayer system as in CK3 then it won't be good: CK3 multiplayer has a serious issue for a long while of people losing connection for a small period of time, which kicks them out of their paradox account and prevents them from playing multiplayer at all. That has been fixed (somewhat, many people still have the issue, more like the community has found a way to work around it by giving the game priority in your Firewall and praying you can reconnect to your account fast enough), but that was only the beginning. If you can connect to a game then your good, but some peoples accounts (mine included) were just broken permanently. By bad luck you can end up having your account be given a bad port on paradox side which prevents you entirely from being able to play multiplayer. I had that issue, was forced to contact paradox and it took them 6 months to fix it alone, had already uninstalled the game at that point. There is plenty more issues with it, but practically all the issues boil down to: Paradox trying to be the one that runs the multiplayer servers and not the clients. The worst part of this is that multiplayer straight up won't work once paradox stops supporting the game without any real workarounds like in vic 2. As for the communities thoughts: We have mixed feelings. On one hand CK3 is amazing and in multiplayer it is an absolute blast, on the other hand no one defends the multiplayer system and we are forced to work around it heavily. There is no "serious" or RP CK3 games or servers of significant size because each new person you add significantly increases instability, and there is no systems (such as in game chat) to allow for more serious gameplay.
Any suggestions of CK3 Multiplayer videos? I assume the diplomacy and fun of that level multiplies with the complexity of Medieval political systems of marriage and such.
To add on to something you said, you'd mentioned that by sticking to vic 2's war system but improving on it in a way that appealed to the whole community that they would save development time, and I agree; but another benefit is that they're not isolating part of the community and thus it will be more successful over time.
@@GoofusPlays My prediction (and quite frankly my hope) is that the game is going to be absolutely massive on launch, and then within a month or two die very hard and bomb similarly to imperator. Regardless of how vic3 goes, the vic2 multiplayer community will most certainly still be going.
PDX confuse QoL and simplification. HoI4's air system is better than HoI3's, but having planes actually go on missions was really good, range from airport was really important. Having a player control planes like HoI4 (with more depth available) but having planes actually run like HoI3 would be the best of both worlds.
@@pyroparagon8945 there are some insane people but the only thing I have ever heard from Vic 2 players is how the worst part of the game is unit organisation. The existing system but with army templates that spare/new units will automatically slot into would be amazing, no bullshit teleportation but also no micro required
I have 3,000 hours in Victoria II, I am not buying Victoria III, and it's for the reasons laid out in this video. I very much like building up an economy, building up spheres of influence, and so on, but there's simply not a point in doing any of that if you're not then going to pit everything you've got against the enemy, and in a grueling, horrible death struggle. I've had wars in Victoria II that went on for 15 years, and resulted in the complete depopulation and deindustrialization of entire countries. Is this even possible in Vicky III? No. It isn't.
I remember the incredible diplomatic play where the Russians tricked the ottomans into giving up Istanbul only for France and Britain to economically prevent Russia from doing that in the glorious Crimean Not War of the 1850s.
it's pretty funny how hard they missed the nail on what made vic2 an interesting game, and then still manage to put out some deeply illogical economic system
It's nuts right. As soon as the Devs mentioned that there's no representation of laissez-faire capitalism in the game I switched off completely. From what I can tell playing a communist nation with a command economy plays no differently than a capitalist one. You just get different bonuses.
I want to express my opinions on why I am in favor of the new warfare, but honestly I couldn't find a single part of this video I overwhelmingly disagreed with. Realistically they could have gone with a way more compromised system like you said and I feel more people would be happy. What they did kind of just caused people who are into micro get disappointed, and if they made it more in the way that you suggested in the video, the people who support the current system wouldn't be upset at all. You are right, the macro style is not something people actively wished for. They are only excited because it has been presented to them. That being said I am still excited for a more macro system personally. I kind of like the idea of war not being so much in my control. I know this totally depends on balance and ai, but losing a war because my generals suck or I wasn't able to support higher production levels in my barracks sounds appealing to me. I personally don't feel I need control of my units to enjoy warfare in a grand strategy, but that doesn't mean being able to control your units isn't fun. What I know we all can agree on, micro or macro, is that not even having unit models on the front lines or something is extremely extremely disappointing. I love seeing the troops change uniforms and weapons over time.
>, but losing a war because my generals suck or I wasn't able to support higher production levels in my barracks sounds appealing to me This was already a thing in Vic2, its also a thing in Eu4, Imperator and Hoi4. Your generals and your production are an extremely important part of those games war systems.
@@spcsandbag6517 In Vic 2 a battle was lost because I decided to move the units I chose into the province I chose against the enemy units I chose at the attrition level I decided I was comfortable with. The general only helps or hurts some stats. In Vic 3, a battle is lost because the ai general decided where to attack, when to attack, and how much men to attack with. Obviously this is very dependent on whether this is actually implemented well or not. Could just play like crud. I can't really justify why this is appealing to me, but I don't have to really. This part of the macro system and the macro system as a whole just appeals to me. If I can't directly control but only influence my interest groups and pops, I am okay with the same idea for my military. And there are so many different possible reasons troops won't be properly supplied with the newest tech because of the different levels of industry in Vic 3. No other games come close.
I fully understand removing physical units on the map, automating their movements always just led to the AI doing very silly things (Hoi4 battleplan into the Maginot let's go), by abstracting it they remove the problem entirely, it's also essential to the idea of war being costly that you can't just micro well around it, as long as little men in their uniforms appear on the map with tech and country appropriate models as a battle takes place and shoot in the general direction of each other I will be happy on that front, I personally never liked managing unit movements and any automation tool is always just objectively worse in combat performance then manual control, I am very excited for Vic3 in large part because of the war system, a lot of people worry about the ability of minor powers to "punch up" but there's still a lot of capacity for that on the economic and political side, as well as the macro military moves, sure Jan Mayan isn't going to beat the UK but they never could regardless without some serious cheese.
@1:49 "conquer though blood" the spelling mistake on the box is a great example of how Paradox works. Unfinished, and untested at launch and then modders have to step in to fix almost everything while Paradox releases the smallest dlc's.
its odd that the people who whine about eurocentrism turn around and claim the victorian era was relatively peaceful, when that was only really (somewhat) the case in europe, while in africa, the middle east, india, east asia, and south america, this was a time of intense turmoil and conflict, in quite a few cases due to the actions of european powers.
The whole point of getting a stronger economy is so you then have the power and ability to impact global politics via both diplomacy AND war, just like in real history.
I think a lot of people have been gaslighting themselves into thinking the current war system is what they wanted all along. I on the other hand have recognised that it is something that paradox will have to fix after release.
I know I'm kinda late to the party, but I don't get it. Paradox have EU4 and HoI4 on the same engine and this game should be a transfer between two. What I expected was battle system from EU4 that progresses into battle system from HoI4 the more you research. Like at the start you have stacks from EU4 that are formed from individual units manually controlled by you with generals assigned to them. But then you research division designer, you build your industry like in HoI4 to support divisions, you unlock frontline system for an easy control. It was made in other games and they spent a lot of time to just get rid of it
Victoria 3 fell into the Sid Meier's Civilization trap - emphasizing peace and prosperity over war. But at least in Civilization death and destruction are still present.
@@anyoneatall3488 There is not enough priority on the important aspect of history that is war. Although, after I tried a warmongering playthrough in Civ6 I might disagree with my 7 moths ago self.
It really is remarkable how many people are repeating the line, "If you want a war game, play HOI4." They are incapable of grasping that some people prefer Vicky 2's war system to HOI4 (like Spud), that HOI4 is not "the war game" but in fact dumbs down some concepts from older titles, or that by their logic EU4 and CK3 are "war games." Furthermore, even in Victoria 2 you didn't have to go to war if you didn't want to as some countries, you could build tall, get prestige and colonize peacefully. I'm at a loss for what indoctrinated them to think this way. And yes, I say indoctrinated because they don't use original arguments but repeat what others have already said.
Have not been paying attention to the development of the game. Decided to do some research since it is coming out in a couple of days. Ty for this video dude. I will not be getting this game with this ludicrous war system
They spent a ton of time developing the under-the-hood war and AI stuff because Vic 3 will be terrible and unplayable without competent conducting of war. Instead of making it easy/streamlined for players to control the military they just made it all automated, which probably took way more work than making a good war UI. My best guess is they don't want Vic 3 to compete with Hoi4, and you can tell their strategy worked in some way because almost every reply to people who complain about the lack of war involvement for the player is "Go play hoi4 if you want that." Personally I still am excited for Vic 3 just for the eco and politics, and yes I play Hoi4 and it can scratch some war itch, but I think Paradox is missing out on a huge chunk of players who already like their games, I seem like an exception from what I can tell. Vic 3 with more Hoi4 like war mechanics would probably appeal to 90%+ of Paradox players, but maybe this new demographic of casuals they're trying to rope in with Stardeus and Vic 3 will make them more money or something. Whatever. I'm just hoping for good war mods ASAP.
Imagine being so fanatically anti-war irl that you shoehorn your ideology into the 19th century WAR and diplomacy simulator Victoria 2, completely ignoring historical accuracy and the other Paradox games fun aspects.
I dunno its kinda weird that a key portion of the game is automated (warfare), who wants to just build an economy for an ai general to throw. If they wanted to make a civ management game just remake Democracy 4 with an economy. Weird game design overall.
@@aureliusmarcusantoninus3441 This. Part of the fun of managing the economy was that when you finally used it to do something like wage war or assimilate pops, it worked out. What's the point of having an economy simulator if you can't actually do anything with the economy?
You can tell that these people probably suck at combat micro. Meanwhile with less than 100 hours in EU4 i'm stack wiping 40k stacks of brits to control all the cloth.
It does feel this way. Would still prefer to not have to micro manage individual units, but not at the cost of meaningful wars. Players deserve agency.
I remember that great Ken Burns Documentary "The Diplomatic Play" about the events of 1861-65. The episode where Robert E Lee sat on a glowing red line managing his building slots whilst Lincoln dealt with numerous Ashkenazi Language incidents was truly revolutionary and won numerous awards.
Dont forget about the economic turmoil, when atleast every few months some country went bankrupt.
"A house with not enought administrative power can not stand" what a great quote.
I mean there were a lot of political attempts to stop the civil war from happening including the great compromise
its a video game, you wanna run a country for real? run for president.
@@adamvifrye2690 cope paradox paid shill
The event were Queen Victoria said “It's Victorianin Time” then diplomatically Victorianed all over Africa and Chîna was truly an event ever made
When Bismarck said “It’s Bismarcking time” and then convinced all the German nations to be under Prussias power with nothing more than a letter asking them to be was awesome
@@howitzer4041 "Not through speeches and majority decisions will the great questions of the day be decided-that was the great mistake of 1848 and 1849-but by iron and blood." - Bismarck
"Not through unit composition and tactics will the great questions of the day be decided - that was the mistake of Victoria II - but by a bunch of random numbers being thrown around in Angola for some goddamned reason" - PDX
@@howitzer4041 Dont forget when Napoleon visited him personally to democratically hand over Alsace-Lorraine to the Germany, truely one of the event ever done
Don't forget about how japan used its epic discussion skills to diplomatically convince china and russia to give them their stuff.
@@YourLocalYummyPasserby Or when Franz Ferdinand was shot and the Austrians convinced the Serbians to be annexed
30:12 - You know peak idiocy has been reached when you're threatened with physical violence and called a _'racist bigot'_ for disagreeing with a new mechanic in a video game.
The Victorian age maintained war as a legitimate form or diplomacy, economic management, and politics. This was an Era where old ideas and new ones merged. War was still seen as glorious, you can look at all the pomp and circumstance of the militaries with their ceremonies, uniforms, and marches & anthems to see that it was a major aspect of societal thought. Until the horrors of WW1 killed the noble image.
Always remember what Bismarck said too: "Not through speeches and majority decisions will the great questions of the day be decided-that was the great mistake of 1848 and 1849-but by iron and blood"
“Horrors of ww1”
soy, ww1 was glorious
@@kayt9627 Having a peak at your channel I can tell you have a keen interest in military history. It's a lot of fun to learn about battle tactics and speculate on how things could have gone. But I think the pop history you consume on youtube, while meaningful and important, has warped your perception on what it was actually like to a draftee on the field. Especially in a war as meaningless, brutal, and mechanized as World War One. I suggest you read any history or memoir on the subject. Or if reading's not your thing the newest rendition of "All Quiet on the Western Front." may be a healthy reminder.
@@kayt9627 I highly recommend reading "all quiet on the western front" I think it will teach you some important lessons on war. Especially WW1
@@kayt9627 TRUE INSANITY
Paradox
>”The Victoria Age was actually quite peaceful.”
The Victorian Age
>Literally half the world conquered by colonial powers.
exactly, it was peaceful because it was the Pax Britannica, and when that peace broke down it caused wars like the world had never seen
Damn i guess the spring of nations, the hungarian revolt, the opium wars, the meiji restoration, the brothers war, the american civil war, the crimean war, the spanish civil war is peaceful @@ulture
@@athalarahmanjauhari4135 lmao at least google 'Pax Britannica' before commenting
@@athalarahmanjauhari4135 only 10 or so wars in a whole century does sound pretty peaceful
@@doggerlander It was more like several dozen wars and it can go up to hundreds if you count every single one of them. From German-French War of 1870 to Italian Unification Wars in Western Europe, Russo-Turkish Wars to Balkan Wars in Eastern Europe and Sino-Japanese War to Taiping Rebellion in Far-East.
There are also countless revolts, uprisings and revolutions. Victorian age was anything but peaceful.
Paradox: “The period it’s set in was actually very peaceful”
Taiping Rebellion: “what, is 20-30 million Chinese dead a joke to you?”
Also, not having experienced multiplayer in Paradox games: what a bizarre Decision to remove an ingame chat system.
Minimizing direct communication between players in combat MP games is a great way to combat toxicity: restricting communication to gestures in games like Soulsbournes and FO76 (yes, I know it’s shite, but that was a legit good call-the ingame community is probably the most polite and helpful I’ve experienced)
But in a PDX grand strat game, I doubt you’re getting a lot of abusive pubbys queuing for hotseat MM, in between CoD maps yelling racial slurs over Xbox live.
so it’s just bizarre to cut it.
@@okonkwojones engine doesn't support and they're lazy.
Yeah, like, it includes WW1? and like, the taiping rebellion, US Civil War, Franco-Prussian War, War of the triple alliance, all the US wars of expansion, all the colonial wars Europe fought, the Russo-Japanese war, the wars of italian unification, the Crimean war, etc
@@okonkwojones If you can't handle the heat, get out of the kitchen.
@@geoDB.is a Chinese death any less tragic than an American death
When Paradox said "we don't understand why people like Victoria 2" they really meant it...
Paradox hasn't touched that game for a long time now. It's the modding community that made the game alive til this day.
Devs at Paradox are incompetent, who could have guessed, you know its bad when they hire freelancers to work on their game engines because all the good devs left the company.
War was tedious and boring in that game, it WAS the econ and population simulations that made the game stand out
@@supereero9 Sounds like a skill issue
@@supereero9 Even if that's 100% true, the solution to the war system being clunky was absolutely NOT to completely remove the war system. That's like trying to fix a broken arm by amputating the arm - the "cure" is worse than the illness.
" The great questions of the day will not be settled by means of speeches and majority decisions but by iron and blood."
- Bismark
I remember learning about the Franco-Prussian diplomatic play. It was truly magnificent how Bismarck fooled France into diplomatically losing Alsace Lorraine.
I mean you joke - but that is almost literally what happened
@@stanislavkamenicky8694 they had to imprision the french head of state and then besiege the capital for almost a year while the provisional republic was busy deciding whether or not they wanted to fling shit at the walls or the roof. Not extremely handshake-y
@@ultra-papasmurf I was refering to the fact that the war basically started due to bismarck dissing napoleon with a letter
@@stanislavkamenicky8694 But that's exactly what everyone has been saying. The game shouldn't solely focus on war, but also not solely on diplomacy. I think we should see war more as an extension of diplomacy instead of a seperate thing.
@@ShiftySheriff2 So the approach to war should be similar to how automated diplomacy is no. Not like you have to micromanage what your diplomat says. You ask them to say this, they negotiate the actual deal based on hard parameters.
the Sims 5 basically got announced recently and people were criticizing them for not spending the resources on more Sims 4 DLC. The ideal Paradox audience.
I mean people are just wanting vic2 to be updated even though its over a decade old now
Doesn't Sims 4 have like a $1000 worth of DLC already? Has anyone actually bought all of it?
@@Hunter-ww9rd Vic2's framework is solid and did not need a fundamental overhaul. There were a lot of rough edges and archaisms, like the inability to simply transfer land peacefully to another nation, but people loved the core gameplay, they just wanted it to be made smoother and less tedious.
When I first heard about the new "War system" I imagined it would be a "General Staff" sort of thing: an improved system à la HoI4 where you decide front lines, you assign generals and choose war objectives (capture that province, capture that fort, capture that supply hub, go to that river, etc.). If you want to add a bit of complexity, maybe the new techs and tactics could alter the amount and composition of your armies, which could increase the cost and force you to adapt your economy. That could've also influenced your politics: maybe they could implement an officer promotion system like they have done in BBA and then that newly promoted officer could become the leader of an interest group/party and force you to limit him politically.
As of now is a bit disappointing and lackluster (maybe once I play the game it will be different, who knows). It also feels like the minor nations will have a harder time of asserting themselves than in the old Vic2 or in other PDX games.
I was too thinking something like this, but with the realization that in reality it is null, my fiscal interest in Victoria 3 has dwindled to soot.
One could argue that historically minor nations didn't really get to assert themselves.
@@luigicampo4008 Prussia did, the Netherland did, Sweden did, Austria did, Moscovy did, Asturias did, Rome did.
History is full of minors that grew into large powers or punched above their weight.
@@luigicampo4008 one could argue that video games are suposed to be fun
@@Perrirodan1 Spain and Portugal both started as a county in the mountains and a minority in Hispania, conquered the region and then dominated the world for centuries. Africa has had so many examples of a previously unremarkable state completely pulling the rug it's not even funny.
The real problem not addressed in this video isnt just that war is automated - it is that there are no ‘units’ on the map at all. army strength on individual tiles afaik is not modeled at all whatsoever. So when people suggest things like ‘automated generals making decisions like prioritize attacking enemy armies / their capitol’, the problem is that there are no enemy ‘armies’ to prioritize, or maneuver towards or around. Combat is basically just dice rolls of unit strength calculated across the entire front. So there are no ‘concentrations of units’ or ‘armies’, there are just two big sets of numbers dice rolling each other across the entire frontline at the same time. I dont even know how a ‘normal’ war system with individual armies moving between provinces could even be modeled with this.
Yeah that makes the Dev Comment of "We worked really hard on this" even more suspect.
Now this next one is a pure schizo theory, so grain of salt, but I could see this happening:
They actually worked on a huge military system that is what we wanted, but right before announcement or shortly after, they're told to cut it out for use as DLC by Corporate (or Marketing), then they can release it for more profit later. And if it flops? Rush it out right away for damage control, and frame it as "we listen to our fanbase!" They've been losing support through DLC shilling for years now, it would be a huge boon for their business model.
Not sure how it was coded but you might be able to mess with the basic coding to have this shared frontline calculation individualized to each specific province and then have a separate decision making (possibly in the hands of the player) that choses how much of the global manpower, guns, and more is given to each province from that pool every month tick (Imagine it as a more complicated version of how Hoi4 has those sliders to determine whether new equipment and manpower goes first to occupation, units in the field, or training units).
From there when a province's frontline "war" is done that province switches hands and a new "war" forms in each location where that province touches an enemy province.
This would essentially be restructuring a large segment of the war coding and might require rebuilding from the ground up to avoid lots of unforseen bugs.
People were already complaining about the dice rolls deciding battles in EU4 and Vic2, they sure doubled down on that aspect
Yeah, its pretty bare bones, i dont think its without promise but as of now it is dead simple. I think the ai might at least be able to manage to use this properly.
Long term i hope they add enough to make it fun... but thats not an excuse for its launch state. And looking at it, the unit style combat took forever to get interesting so i think we'll be waiting a while for the new system to get good too
@@madensmith7014 I hated the dice rolls, the tactics system in Hoi with initiative and whatnot is much better. RIP any hopes for Vicky 3 being good.
Napoleon was a master of diplomacy
Ah yes, that’s why he lived a long and prosperous life as the Emperor of France, with no hiccups whatsoever.
Well Napoleon is out of the Victoria 3 timeline and after the era of Napoleon political rules in Europe changed drastically
No I am
Maybe if Talleyrand wasn’t such a sneaky rat he might’ve been lol.
@@soderfraga Ah yes, the Concert of Europe, which was famously successful and did not literally collapse 10 years later with Greek War of Independence (famously not an armed conflict)
It totally prevented all wars in Europe and kept the map unchanged. The German states were never unified and the unifiers did not engage in any wars. Austria also famously never had to find any wars to keep its lands and influence in Germany or Italy. Russia, France and Britain were also extremely peaceful, only engaging in the small scuffle known as the Crimean War that only resulted in an estimated death toll of 600k (most of them soldiers.)
The Victorian era was such a peaceful period.
If you didn't live in Asia, Africa, America or Oceania.
or Europe
Paradox developers live in Antarctica confirmed.
@@S0me0ne353
Carlist Wars, Crimean War, Russo-Turkish War of 1877, Italian Wars of Independence, German Unification Wars, Balkan Wars, and of course World War I. Need I go one.
This era (1836 - 1936) is home to some of the bloodiest and most destructive conflicts in Human history. Every continent experienced one or more extremely deadly wars. These none European wars include Paraguayan War, American Civil War, Taiping Rebellion, Sepoy Mutiny, Russo-Japanese War, and the Second Boer War.
Pax Britannia is a bit of a misnomer, to say the least.
@@S0me0ne353 Wtf? The Crimean War was just a small skirmish and did not lead to 600k military casualties, being one of the bloodiest conflicts in Europe before WW1 only surpassed by the Napoleonic Wars and the 7 years war as far as military casualties are concerned. It was all diplomacy and politics.
Or Italy
I can't watch a lot of Victoria 3 videos atm because they're all ads basically.
Vic3 videos are basically "THIS VIC3 DEV DIARY IS AMAZING AND HERES WHY"
@@crazehsmile For real, lmao I think everyone is getting paid or is trying to get paid. I just wanna know what the game is like 😭
Thank you Dino for staying free from Paradox’s money
@@onecertainesquire486 I'll remain one of the honest map painters 🎨
Victoria 3 Prussia No-War Speedrun when?
As someone who plays mainly singleplayer one of my disappointments was that vic3 removed the detailed province based culture map, it was one of the most fun things to watch the culture map change as the world progressed, and that it still has the ugly vanilla vic2 base map, alsace-lorraine looks distorted, belgium owns eupen-malmedy, the german minors have weird shapes, it doesn't makes me want to play it because i can make a nicer looking country in vic2 (hfm).
That is a good point, which is often overlooked by the war "debate". By moving the POPs to the state level, you have made the socio-economic/socio-political aspects less dynamic and in some regards simplified.
I never really understood this argument. I mean, everything in Victoria 2 is technically ACTUALLY done on a state level. Buildings are on a state level, taxation is done on a state level, admin is done on a state level. I FULLY understand why they didn't go this way with Vicky 2 OR Hoi4, because that means not having to track down every single person who lived in one province of siberian russia at the time. Yes, I do miss the fact that the culture map looks like shit in Vicky 3, but it doesn't do any actual gameplay difference, since it was all done at a state level in older games anyway. The only thing I can think off was actually based off the province level was rebels and soldiers, both of which I think is a good thing that they moved to the state level.
@@AlienTreeGuy I think the main point there is not about gameplay, but how this change inpacts negativelly the roleplay and imersion aspects of the game for some.
@@AlienTreeGuy In Victoria 2, resources are on province level, buildings like forts and railways are on province level, pops are on province level. The point is that you would expect a game released 10 years after its prequel to be more detailed and granular, not less.
Facts
A friend of mine made a wonderful point about how Victoria is in an amazingly unique period of time as far as warfare goes, rapidly evolving from big pitched battles to the long lines of trench warfare. The idea spudgun mentioned of having innovations slowly unlock the ability to form lines would have been perfect. Force micro on them in the early and as the tech evolves, slowly unlock ways to make the micro easier without removing the option entirely.
this is a good idea in theory but how would you actually implement that? how would a nation thats discovered frontlines and machine guns face off against their enemy who hasnt that just seems like ai exploit fodder tbh
@@botchamaniajeezus About the same way they did irl.
Absolute slaughter.
Sounds nice but any micro at all means you must micro, that's how these types of games work. Like in hoi4 even against the AI if you're trying to do any remotely difficult achievement then microing is an absolute necessity regardless of frontlines. There really wasn't a middle ground here, you either want to micro or you don't.
If you can't micro in SP where you can pause any time you just suck. It is only hard with multiplayer when you can't pause especially on higher speeds and on another games of course
I think HOI4's success is actually part of the reason why the developers went on this divergent path. If you look at the large Paradox youtubers for each of their games, there is very little overlap; EU players play EU almost exclusively, CK players play CK. HOI players tend to also play Vic though, essentially seeing it as a less sweaty HOI game with multiple wars and peace periods throughout. Seems like the devs saw this and wanted to give Vic3 a more unique identity and pigeonhole it in a way so each franchise captures a different niche audience than the others. If you read the pro-Vic3 camps comments you see this as well, most of them don't seem to be longtime players they are new players drawn in by the marketing of an econ-sim.
Hoi4 player here, I don't even bother looking at other paradox games but stumbling on this video, the war system looks really appealing lmfao
That's STUPID. those econ players should go play factorio. Best planned economy simulator on the planet.
I feel like the redditization of Vic 2 by bokeon and isorrow definitely contributed to this
@@xenosfur it looks like it was implemented very poorly and is bare bones
@@concisecipher1 I mean that the automated warfare appeals to me more than the traditional stack management of Vic or EU. I'm definitely more of the braindead battleplan frontline only part of the hoi4 community.
i really liked it when lincoln used diplomacy and managed his economy better than the CSA to win the Civil War.
Actually the North was way more industrialized, which allowed them to win.
obviously the north won because they had a bigger economy than the south :^)
@@littlefinger4509 wars may be fought with materials but they are won with strategy and COMMANDING your armies lol.
@@wakemeup6318 Even if the south had better generals they would have lost anyways, they lagged behind in everything.
Men,railroads,industry.
I seriously can't imagine a realistical scenario where the south wins unless a foreign power joins in.
@@wakemeup6318 Also don't get me wrong, in my opinion this war system is a good idea but they should have implemented more orders, you should be able to give orders to for example attack a weak point or something else.
But no micro as in for example hoi4 is a good thing in my opinion.
They should’ve use the army system from Imperator: Rome. Still has stacks but you can automate them.
They should’ve just built vic3 on the old imperator map with the features
@@__prometheus__ deadass.
@@__prometheus__ Steampunk Boii?
@@__prometheus__ No go one further:
Vic 3 is IP: R DLC
That's what Alex Jones calls a 360 win.
You instantly leap from that sad lame screen at the end of IP:R and just leap ahead about 1900 years to play about 100 years much slower.
I do wonder how overseas invasions and so forth work.
Hell Imperator had pops, classes and trade resources. Why they didn't use Imps Stack automation + front lines from hoi4 while using Imperator as a framework for vicy3 is beyond me
RIP to those who fell victim to the Great Taiping Diplomatic Crisis of 1850-1871
Fallen heroes of The Great Diplomatic Play of 1914 always in our memories R.I.P.
R.I.P victims of World Diplomatic Crisis II, featuring such Diplomatic Plays as Operation Barbarossa and the Final Solution
Alas the Entente had the people skills
@@gemjuwel5823 tbf the entente and allies did win due to germanys lack of people skills, they prolly wouldnt have managed to get half the globe into their alliances otherwise
I don't really understand these jokes. WW1 indeed was the result of diplomatic foreplay.
Vicky 3 combat system is a game killer for me.
Vic2s combat system was nearly a game killer.
@@pyroparagon8945 What? I mean Vic2 system is flawed, but it´s not terrible.
@@danubeisreallypeculiarrive7944 it's pretty micro-heavy to do minor stuff, only HOI4 is worse really.
@@pyroparagon8945 Vic2 combat is messy but still satisfying. Marching across Russia as Germany, manually encircling enemy units. Choosing to be defensive on certain fronts while offensive on others. Better than just a shitty AI doing combat behind the scenes.
@@pyroparagon8945 ??? You've clearly never played a paradox game before.
The biggest issue with Victoria 2's war system was the fact that it become more dysfunctional as time went on. It was clearly designed primarily for Napoleonic and post-Napoleonic warfare. Once you reach the late 19th century, however, warfare (especially between great powers) explodes in scale, and becomes extremely difficult to manage. A single gap in your line will be exploited by any enemy nations, so you're forced to maintain a continuous line of armies along the front. The front line system could be adapted in such a way to make this easier to manage, but I think there isn't really any way to get around this without severely curtailing player agency.
I know where you are coming but I have always enjoyed the late game wars. On narrow fronts such as between France and Germany or Austria and Italy the initial rapid movement will bog down into brutal grinding trench warfare. If you want to make progress you need either to fight huge costly battles eventually leading to a breakthrough or find an alternative. Naval blockading, tech rushing gas, armour and planes when you can or just opening a second front. In this sense Vicky 2 has the most realistic warfare simulation than any modern PDX game.
@@adammackintosh430 I think the fact that that happens was the best part of Vic 2 war simulation. It nearly FORCED an adaptation of trench warfare due to technology and army sizes, and of course the crazy military strategies to avoid it. The fact that strategy must change, rather than just numbers was awesome.
The only problem was just that there was too much of a time commitment to managing it, the actual developments are beautiful to watch. I mean hell, what other game do you get the big multiplayer guys going on about "Shape, strategy, and the economic position of a nation"
Remember how many battles happened at Verdun, repeatedly attacking a single critical position to either attrit or gain a strategic position IS WW1 warfare, contrasted with the much wider eastern front, where no one had the numbers to do so.
To me it seems that many of the aspects of the random large front line seems more retarded for 1830s Napoleonic style warfare with the historic reality of having large concentrated armies moving to take exact cities and ports than late game. You are right with the actual gameplay disfunction with late game. Gameplay disfunction seems to be the main highlight of Victoria tycoon.
Yeah, the deranged hype around Vic 3 really reminds me of the Fallout 76 subreddit back in the day. On one hand you had a minority of old guard RPG fans concerned about the removal of core game mechanics (i.e. roleplaying), on the other hand a critical mass of Redditors easily swayed by the promotional material. The Redditors would fill in the gaps and inconsistencies with their own imaginations and angrily lash out at dissenting opinions. The record was finally set straight when F76 released and the free market had a say. I’m willing to bet Victoria 3 has a similar outcome.
Redditors are one of the lowest forms of life, truly. With upboats and downboats, the entire website is built around censoring dissenting opinions, and promoting the party line. It drives people into a state of constantly wanting to one up other people in how much they really like [POPULAR THING], and every thread just becomes a circlejerk of asskissing, with dissenters being more and more outlandishly attacked by shills who are trying to be the most vicious voice, in order to harvest the most upboats.
You bringing this up has made me see the same. Hope we don't get imperator rome'dx1000
76 died due to bugs, Todd being Todd, and even what was promised on the ads not being realized so even the supporters at first were gone. Also being a multiplayer game without much players, the game is pretty much caput.
If Vic 3 is not a buggy mess then maybe the new players will stick despite the old players not getting it. Cyberpunk 2077 and even No Man's Sky got back on their feet despite the deranged hype and launch failure, even Imperator Rome has a niche. Singleplayer games have more resilience from dying.
Redditors are scum, the consoomer meme personified.
big difference Fallout was a well loved series. Victoria II while i love it was not. Paradox will sell more copies to poeple who've only heard of Victoria II because this game has a 3 in the title than people who care about a game mechanic.
Paradox: “We are going to gaslight you about history in order to make our unfinished game look more accurate to make more money. Enjoy peasants”
Yeah so JumboPixel released a video where he conquered most of South America in a few years and Spiffing Brit became the 11th largest economy as Jan Mayan…
Reddit is predictably coping and doubling down, but there’s been a genuine shift in attitude on the Paradox forum.
Reddit will keep defending the game forever. If they will abandon the game like Imperator, Redditors will blame "haters" and old "boomers".
@@inquerion8867 The thing I just don't understand is... why? These Reddit drones seem like they're brainwashed. Where's their vitriol coming from? Why so much hate? Assuming they've got what they wanted, and that Spudgun really is an old dinosaur that ought to be ignored - why can't they just ignore him? Why does he live rent-free in their heads so much?
Idiotic youtube commentators want every single paradox game to be HOI4 and want no attention payed to the actual purpose of the game or the games theme.
@@jamesmcpherson8599 Not everyone wants copy of Hoi4.
And V3 pays no attention to the purpose of the game (beeing GSG) and the game theme (Victorian era GSG) because we got simplified version of Factorio mixed with Anno set in fantasy version of Victorian era.
@Emperor bruh all those type of wars are plausible? The diplomacy system is tied into the war system.
disturbing how many comments you see even here say "just wait for the dlc and it'll be better"
"just wait for the dlc and it'll be better"
Ck3 flashbacks
not surprising considering paradox has been encouraging this mindset for the last 10 years
just pay more
Hearing about how they planned a sequel which was just an improved Vicky 2, then just decided not to go with it, broke my heart in half.
I told people that they should just update the game so it doesnt crash a lot
All Victoria 2 needed was an update and a tweak in graphics.
@@Joleyn-Joy In my opinion the economic, diplomacy and political system of Vickey III are way superior to Vickey II and wouldnt be really possible with Vickey II. All I would say they should have transported from Vickey II is the war system, as it was actually more interessting then EU IV and then have a technoligy that turns it into frontlines like HoI IV. And have it so the pops are province based instead of state based.
@@thediamondtree4027 I agree that economics are better in Victoria III,
But without a good war system it’s just an industry simulator.
@@Kaiserboo1871 Thats like the entire point of vickey II and III... an industrial sim, with diplomacy (also being just as major a theme) and on the side warfare, but in vickey II warfare wasnt that major either, that system sucked ass aswell, sure better then Vickey III and EU IV, but still sucked arse. I want to have more involvement in war aswell, as now you just have nothing to say basically, making it frustrating to lose and unsatisfying to win, but dont ignore the fact that Vickey has always been about an economic sim with building factories and managing pops, with diplomacy following second and then only war.
I’m leaning toward giving it a fair chance but I also tend to agree that shifting to a HOI4 style front line system with templates doesn’t actually sound that bad.
I’m down for some innovation and tbh I HATED fighting wars in V2, but we’ll see how things go over the next few weeks
Hello there.
Before Victoria 3 was announced, I doubt any pdx fans ever seriously considered removing micro, considering how just about all pdx strategy games have micro.
I actually feel HOI3 combat system would actually be more Ideal. What I like about HOI3 is that your divisions are made of regiments but what's special is you can have divisions or regiments be tagged as mobilized unit. These divisions would be at not fighting strength till mobilization has been enacted.
With this mobilization system in place it will greatly increase quality of life for you don't have to move your mobs division all around. You can have your mobilized armies be more complex than infantry and you can control where they group.
That sounds perfect actually to keep the two separate strategies of all professionals or mobos protecting artillery.
Perhaps that’s what really hurts here: we don’t get to choose. It is what it is.
That was Victoria I combat system.
Hell no, that is micromanagement hell
@@deeznoots6241 You just use a division designer. Click, click. Congrats, this regiment will be mobos. It’s no harder that HOI4’s designer.
@@inc0mingr0flc0pter have you played HOI3? Division design isn’t the problem, I love Hoi3 but troop control and commander assignment is micro hell.
Hell I’ve spent an hour just organizing OOB for the Soviets before clicking the play button at the start of the game
Never forget the glorious dice roll by Bismarck at sedan that secured victory. After rolling a 9 against napoleons 2 Bismarck embarked on a mastery of building slot management to secure victory and capture paris. Truly genius level dice rolls. 🎲
Knowing paradox AI generals will make wars impossible
Abe Lincoln should’ve just used diplo and people skills to win the Cvil War
He used his larger industry and manpower, he didn't micro his armies to win the war.
@@krokuke hello Lincoln microed every single division
Technically the union did cplcisted micro, neither they nor the csa just marched to the enemy capital.
@@krokuke he didn't just sit around managing diplomacy and waiting for his generals to do fucking dice rolls in order to win either. He was actively involved in decision making, appointing new commanders, and outlying strategies etc etc.
@@ffg4994 Yeah, that's what I want, the current system is barebones, and the inevitable warfare DLC will probably change that.
Paradox turning the american civil war into an SCP
and the tripple alliance, and the ruso japanese, and the war of the pacific, ect. How the fuck are thy gonna do a great war?
@@cseijifja DLC
@@hyperion3145 yeah good luck with that. It doesn't matter how many sprinkles, cherries or toppings you cover SHIT with, in the end its still shit.
You mean the American Civil Diplomatic Play.
@@ShahjahanMasood Straight facts
My headcannon is some people who paradox hired to make vic3 played vic2 and lost horribly so they thought "I cant be wrong game is wrong" and removed war system
I believe paradox hired mod developers who just write 17 paragraphs of events that no one actually wants to read. So basically TNO devs.
Ehh, its prolly just a focus on singleplayer, and quite frankly singleplayer war does suck in vic2
@@deeznoots6241 Yes but it could be greatly improved. And it's not always bad, I really like defending myself against France and Russia at the same time as Prussia.
@@MaLva500 The best thing about that is that nobody in existence thinks of Vic2 and goes "omg i loved the events"
Personal theory (pull out your tinfoil hat guys): i believe that Paradox has decided to make their games as different to each other as possible in order to avoid competition between them.
Few years ago basically every game shared the same warfare system as EU4 (CK, IR and ViC 2 basically) but after what happened with IR they decided to make every game feel different.
They could have just picked the warfare system from Hoi4 and change a bunch of things to make it fit but someone must have thought that it would have created a competitor for one of their own best game so VIc 3 warfare had to be different.
TLDR: paradox is afraid of making their own games compete with each other so every game must be different and they can't copy\imitate\learn from each other.
You can make the warfare system very different without basically removing it. So many games out there they can borrow mechanics from.
Makes sense; you don’t want to have the widest market possible and to appeal to as many players as possible.
doesn't make sense, you would just piss off your fans. players jumping from a game to the other means more money, not less. lol, how could NOT wanting your playerbase to buy your new game be beneficial?
CK3 still had a similar traditional warfare system even when it was released after IR. You could say it was already in development when IR was botched on release, but CK3 was a success and the botched IR wouldn't have swayed much changes with Vic.
The TLDR is just a longer version of the first paragraph
Spudgun and others: 'We should improve Vic3 warfare somewhat.'
Reddit: 'No.'
More like
Reddit: 'He's a fascist transphobe ableist so we'll ignore all his arguments that makes our cult look like fools.'
Spud is a proven fascist.
Paradox plaza: *Autistic screeching*
"Ah yes let us turn 1800s warfare into ww2" - RUclips commentators
@@jamesmcpherson8599 you do know right that RUclips commentators will rush in and reply to your comment with a full on essay sooner or later. Also I saw your other comments, full on death wish. Also here's the essay you are looking for:
it's not that people want Victoria 3 to be like hoi4, they want Victoria 3 to be more fun. Victoria 2 even though they had a mediocre war system left many ways to improve itself, you would think in a sequel that they would improve things, not basically removing it.
As time progress, The Victorian era saw warfare from massive open pitch battles to grueling frontline trench warfare, it was an interesting time indeed, with new ideas being made and merged with old ones.
Also, the Victorian era was also not as peaceful as you think, a lot of wars like the American Civil War and franco-prussia war were waged, and of course the history changing ww1.
Late game Victoria 2 basically forced you to do frontline trench warfare, a game were you could progress the tech tree to progressively open the frontline mechanic would have been excellent, and more realistic. We just simply want a feature, we want more, not less. No matter how you slice it.
I was reading some reddit threads about Victoria 3, and someone called you a "racist and sexist". I immediately knew I had to check out your channel, because people called those words by insane redditors are usually entertaining and informational channels to watch. subscribed.
Lmao the redditors have been calling everyone who doesn't suck off Vic 3 a racist nazi pos, they did it to TommyKay too and he's probably one of the more left-leaning paradox youtubers. Redditors are unironically disgusting human beings
That's kinda corny
I love how one guy called you a nazi for some reason
Dev team skill issue moment
Really well thought video. Yea the QoL improvments would change the victoria 2 problem that was making the stacks and reorganize your army all by yourself. Also that one guy idea of different warfare system depending on the technology would be really innovative in this genre.
Can't believe people would get so mad over someone wanting something else, when it isn't something ridiculous. I appreciate you do your best to be objective about things in your videos, hopefully the war system eventually gets into some balanced version of what everyone wants.
But its so fun to trigger people
The sales r gonna be bad
@@azlanadil3646
This was possibly the most passive aggressive and annoying way to phrase that sentiment.
@@azlanadil3646 the victoria 2 ui is great though
@@azlanadil3646 boris Johnson
The way he comments "sure, where do i find a time machine?" Hits hard man. 😔
Problem is that without war Victoria 3 is a boring "game" with nothing to do other than waiting for your construction queue to finish. The economic aspect is weak and there isnt really much in terms of society. It feels like we have been sold a different game from what is advertised.
Want to know another secret? The construction queue is literally just the same queue + civ factories from Hearts of Iron 4
The person who wrote that people who play Victoria III should focus on economy diplomacy is an idiot. I’m surprised to see how paradox a company makes games the base on history hire people who doesn’t have any knowledge of history. Even now when people mention of world war 2 some still call it the continuation of the Great War. When does the Great War happen? I don’t think the employees of Paradox even know. If I really had a chance to interview them I would really like to ask “What in the world is going through your mind when you bring a game that have in it the German unification war, American civil war and the Great War a game for diplomacy and economy? “
You mean the Great diplomatic incident, the American civil diplomatic incident, and the German unification diplomatic incident?
Why are half the people defending a bad game mechanic calling the people who don't like it "nazi" like holy shit--you're a nazi because you want a fleshed out game mechanic??
They hated Spud because he told the truth
>Vic 3 takes people skills!
Wheres the chat PDX!?! SHOW US THE IN GAME CHAT!!!!!
I was planning on pre-ordering Victoria 3 as soon as it was announced because of how much I love Victoria 2. The new war system made me change my mind. It's just not what I want when I think of a sequel to Vic 2, many said when it was announced that if the system was bad, broken or just boring they would most likely improve on it with DLC, the main issue I have with this is the fact that Imperator exists. When Imperator was released many of the mechanics where broken or boring and PDX promised they would fix the game to make it the game they promised us, and they did begin to fix it with time, to the point where they had a game that could be improved upon with DLC. They then told us that it had flopped and because of that they where no longer going to keep developing it. So, that brings us to today where they are now gambling again one of my most beloved IP's by experimenting with a core feature of the game without consulting the playerbase, and as Imperator showed us, if the game flops they most likely won't fix anything and will just cease development. So why bother with this game?
In my opinion Imperator rome has been fixed ,it has a distinct Identity and makes fun for me .The problem is that because it has a very bad general opinion since the launch and very few streamers/ youtubers covered the new updates the playerbase is too low and doesnt earn paradox enough profits to contine developing new features
@@thezelution8459 That's my point though. I play Imperator but there's no more content for it so I have no reason to play it anymore, I expected Paradox not to abandon it and treat the same way they do CK, EU and HoI. Instead I bought a game that was broken, and a DLC pass that gave me enough DLC to fix the game.
The core demographic Victoria 3 is catering to is players who hate losing (as I am one of them, slowly been deprogramming myself after playing city builders as I frequently used many tools to harm my cities), something that many video games have taught is that losing guarantees a game over:
In Skyrim, anyone you end up fighting will always game over you with a death - in Hearts of Iron IV you can only lose by capitulating and losing literally everything and a lot of the new generation of strategy gamers (Civ VI and HOI4) have been made to associate any losing with anti-fun.
loosing should be part of every strategy game, my favorite paradox game crusader kings 3(although in comparison to ck2 still pretty bland) you can easly lose a war by your ruler dying and the heir being a 3 year old without alliances with most vassals not liking you anymore, but that wouldn't destroy an entire game, it is actually a good tool to stop players steamrolling and being an powerhouse in comparison to any other. you would loose the war, loose prestige, your claim and your economy would be crushed for a couple of months or years, but you recuperate, same if someone conquers you, you can play on unlanded, convince someone to fight a war for you to get your lands back and then you*re back in business. and onlike most paradox games, they can't annex everything but you have to set what you claim before the war, so if you fight for a specific province, you only get that and presige for the win, not anything other because it wouldn't make sense.
You can lose in Vicky 2 and not lose everything most of the time.
Same for EU4.
Vicky 3 is just not a real sequel to Vic 2.
I don’t feel like anyone has mentioned that Victoria 3 doesn’t even have a mechanic for Great Wars
The fact that people keep saying this convinces me that no one has read the Dev diarys. Great wars have no special mechanics but emerge organically from other mechanics.
@@andrewgreenwood9068 exactly. They must have just read "no wars? Well that's it then"
31:25 is abhorrent, why does that person, as an individual, require other people's judgement on whether they should or shouldn't be excited for it?
I thought the same thing, the most soy comment there was
Can’t wait to diplomatically talk Austria into giving me Lombardy and Venetia to peacefully convince other Italian nations to join my dream of an Italian nation.
i have an idea to make wars in Vic3 even BETTER. Just make a calculation when you declare war involving some factors like industry tech etc that automatically determines the result. No time wasted and 0 microing at all, I feel like this would make vic3 such an amazing deep and engaging game.
I hope that is satire
@@GoofusPlays Finally someone with some good ideas 😈👀
@@GoofusPlays I like this idea alot, it could finally be the change this game needs!
@@shamargentle5801 no im one hundred percent serious
Strictly in terms of PDX's vision for the game it actually would "improve" it to being more focused on what they want. Would probably have saved them a lot of time too, so they could work on the parts of the game they actually want people to engage with.
15:46 If I remember correctly, Imperator Rome had some useful mission settings for your armies. You could set objectives for your generals without having to micro all of them. Perhaps such a system could’ve been in Vicky 3 before frontlines became dominant.
Didn't Imperator also have a rogue general system too? Where a general could go rogue and try to make his own nation/take over the country?
@@athingwhichexists Yeah, I think so
@@danielboone8256 Could have been cool if that was kept as well, or expanded upon.
@@athingwhichexists yep, when a general became disloyal he would march his troops elsewhere (iirc I believe to a province where the governor was also disloyal or of his family) and even recruit troops if they had personal wealth.
I think there is no better exemplar of the fact that the games evolve so unrecognisably over the first few years and after much time and DLC spending and yet still be abandoned, than Imperator. Let that be a warning for if Victoria fails to learn from those lessons.
The great war is quite literally one of the main objectives of Victoria
instead of the removing of the war system, they should remove like 2/3rds of the development team
Can't wait for the legally distinct victoria on a spud stream.
Also, if the idea is “modeling innovation and progress”, then you CAN’T leave out war.
Most of the scientific discoveries, especially in this era, came from “wanting money to pay for an army”, “wanting to be dead less” or “wanting to make the other guy more dead more better”
I'm very out of the loop on Vic3 at this point. very interesting video (and not because you cited my video). Your video here shares much in common with a video I was thinking about making regarding the Civilization series. I played the Vic leak. Despite being somewhat underwhelming, I went ahead and pre-ordered Vic3 on Steam just because I said I would. I'm not expecting much when the full version goes live tomorrow. I'm expecting a whole lot of "meh", and eventually it'll become a worthwhile game with DLC. I don't really see Vic3 MP supplanting Vic2 MP at this moment.
No dev clash, no streamers getting early hands copies, it will not surprise me if this will be the most unfinished game released by paradox.
There can't be a dev clash when it's just a bunch of people constructing buildings and clicking on the green option for events.
never played Gettysburg: Armored Warfare have you?
Spudgun made an interesting point regarding the DLC issue. To make that business policy viable, people have to buy the game on release so that there’s a player-base to then buy the DLCs. If people don’t pre-order garbage, barely finished games, then their DLC policy becomes impossible to maintain. New players won’t buy the base game plus 60 dollars of DLC when they can spend less money for better games elsewhere.
they could do what theyve done for HOI4, which is have a subscription system. Also with recent hoi4 dlcs (BBA and the Russian one) the updates that coincide with the dlcs are still pretty substantial.
The problem is the teams behind each game vary so much in quality. We're getting some of the bets content ever put out with HOI atm, with more frequent updates, a dev team more actively taking on what the community says. You have Stellaris with its big updates, caretaker team to do bugfixes and minor updates in between bigger releases. Then you have CK3, which has been kind of sinking, IR which fell pretty hard then was abandoned, and now this with Vicky 3.
I dont play a lot of Vicky 2, and only singleplayer, but as much as I am looking forward to V3 and its economic systems and diplo, Ill be sad that we never got a ho4 combat system. What can ya do I guess
@@td23asus I think they could just make it so buying latest DLC grants you all DLC before it
Im a longtime eu4 player and old vic 2 player and I really need to see unbiased people playing the game wether its actually fun and interesting to fight wars in Vic3, idm a whole new system if its done well like in Stellaris but I have to be convinced its fun and interesting before I consider buying it.
I think a big problem with these kind of big changes is that all the mechanics are very closely related. For example in eu4 diplomacy the key aspect of the game but without a good war system the diplomacy wouldnt be as good (peacedeals, allies, favors, wargoals etc). And that is problem vic3 might face, how good are war mechanics to support the economy and politics mechanics in the game, if its too shit it might go down like imperator rome.
Yeah as another long time Eu4 player Vic III's war system looks very boring. I've only ever played small VIC II MP games but having army stacks seems so much better and more logical.
I'm all for Spud's transition to becoming Paradoxes Volound
You mean a guy who has an automated system that detects if someone types his name on 4chan?
At least Volound had decent points
@@randomguy2023 go away paradox shill
even though volound has few good points nah don't be like him. Absolute insane commie
@@randomguy2023
DID YUU KNUW... OHLD TOOTAL WUR GUUD, NUU TOOTAL WUR BAD?
When I first heard Vic 3 announcement, the first thing that I imagined was cool Victorian unit models with Hoi4 like combat, division designer and assigning generals and army generals, only difference from hoi4 would be lesser maneuverability and less encirclements to fit the time period. Also ship designer, secret societies, etc.
So you wanted to play a modded HOI4
@@Phantomz. No, an enjoyable mechanic that represent well the warfare tacticts & strategies of the most peacfull era of our time
@@AbsolumentPas-o3h so basically a modded hoi4
@Dimanyak Not like if 19/20 century warfare are actually in fact a modded version of WW2 warfare.
@@Phantomz. Not sure if HoI 4 could be modded to have Victoria style economics and politics. I do like the things like culture, religion and leaders that they added in Vic 3, not everything is bad. But so far, the warfare - for the sake of gameplay - is the main thing and should be the main thing for a geopolitical grand strategy game, it's the climax, it's just how games found a way to be fun and worth playing despite of the limitations of technology, for that satisfying feeling of defeating an opponent that is menacing. Also what worries me is the game optimization because I seen that when zooming in or out in Paradox livestreams there is a noticeable stutter, maybe I'm wrong.
Very interesting bit about the scrapped old Vicky3 that we never got, shame that never made it anywhere
I wonder if the timeline matches up at all with when development for CK3 started...
My money is on the very first DLC being a complete overhaul of the warfare system.
@@Kaiserboo1871 I hope they get so fucked at release that their only option is to overhaul the whole war system as damage containment
@@mike7671 I mean they gotta.
Waging wars and map painting are half the reason people play these games.
I mean sure building economies is fun and all, but people will demand war.
Looking forward to the eventual Paradox post explaining how they did their best but the people just didn't buy it so they had to can the series. It'll be a fantastic schadenfreude and I say this as someone who played all their games since EU2. They really deserve this along with the cult which calls itself fandom.
Remember how proud they were with the Imperator mana system and how all those „Fans“ supported it. And then a few weeks later most people had moved on or were complaining about it killing the game in the process.
I fully agree with the DLC part.
Well they said: If you dont like it dont buy it.
I am doing that. XD
Mana in small amounts isn't bad. Problem is that they overdoned it in Imperator 1.0.
@@inquerion8867 Maybe I did not word it correctly, but that is exactly what I meant.
Some even pointed the problem out before launch and were mocked for it. We all know what happened next.
Mana sucks. It is terrible. I hate mana. I don't know a game past Imperator that used mana from paradox and I am quite frankly glad of it.
@@geoDB. 7 months on but yeah: CK3 has Prestige, Piety and Renown which are mana resources and it did launch after Imperator.
The problem with PDX wanting to focus less on the war as 19th century is more about "economy and society" is that although the wars in 19th century are less in numbers compared to other centuries, it had way more impact on both the economy and the society of the nations both in the 19th century and the afterwards that we still live through to this day.
I almost feel like they purposely made the war system so dumbed down so they can do a DLC for it.
In reality they probably made it so simple because their AI will probably be compete shit like usual.
No army sprites means no sprite packs! How will paradox make that money???
If their using the same multiplayer system as in CK3 then it won't be good: CK3 multiplayer has a serious issue for a long while of people losing connection for a small period of time, which kicks them out of their paradox account and prevents them from playing multiplayer at all. That has been fixed (somewhat, many people still have the issue, more like the community has found a way to work around it by giving the game priority in your Firewall and praying you can reconnect to your account fast enough), but that was only the beginning. If you can connect to a game then your good, but some peoples accounts (mine included) were just broken permanently. By bad luck you can end up having your account be given a bad port on paradox side which prevents you entirely from being able to play multiplayer. I had that issue, was forced to contact paradox and it took them 6 months to fix it alone, had already uninstalled the game at that point. There is plenty more issues with it, but practically all the issues boil down to: Paradox trying to be the one that runs the multiplayer servers and not the clients. The worst part of this is that multiplayer straight up won't work once paradox stops supporting the game without any real workarounds like in vic 2.
As for the communities thoughts: We have mixed feelings. On one hand CK3 is amazing and in multiplayer it is an absolute blast, on the other hand no one defends the multiplayer system and we are forced to work around it heavily. There is no "serious" or RP CK3 games or servers of significant size because each new person you add significantly increases instability, and there is no systems (such as in game chat) to allow for more serious gameplay.
Any suggestions of CK3 Multiplayer videos? I assume the diplomacy and fun of that level multiplies with the complexity of Medieval political systems of marriage and such.
To add on to something you said, you'd mentioned that by sticking to vic 2's war system but improving on it in a way that appealed to the whole community that they would save development time, and I agree; but another benefit is that they're not isolating part of the community and thus it will be more successful over time.
@@GoofusPlays My prediction (and quite frankly my hope) is that the game is going to be absolutely massive on launch, and then within a month or two die very hard and bomb similarly to imperator. Regardless of how vic3 goes, the vic2 multiplayer community will most certainly still be going.
PDX confuse QoL and simplification. HoI4's air system is better than HoI3's, but having planes actually go on missions was really good, range from airport was really important. Having a player control planes like HoI4 (with more depth available) but having planes actually run like HoI3 would be the best of both worlds.
so
darkest hour
Vicky 2 players are addicted to micro, they'd like the game more if you had to play each individual air engagement in a war thunder minigamr.
@@pyroparagon8945 there are some insane people but the only thing I have ever heard from Vic 2 players is how the worst part of the game is unit organisation. The existing system but with army templates that spare/new units will automatically slot into would be amazing, no bullshit teleportation but also no micro required
I have 3,000 hours in Victoria II, I am not buying Victoria III, and it's for the reasons laid out in this video.
I very much like building up an economy, building up spheres of influence, and so on, but there's simply not a point in doing any of that if you're not then going to pit everything you've got against the enemy, and in a grueling, horrible death struggle. I've had wars in Victoria II that went on for 15 years, and resulted in the complete depopulation and deindustrialization of entire countries. Is this even possible in Vicky III? No. It isn't.
If ur war lasted 15years u are very bad at the game...
@@leroiarouf1142 Or just two equally good or bad players.
"We wanted the mobile games audience"
-Paradox Interactive™
and console!
I remember the incredible diplomatic play where the Russians tricked the ottomans into giving up Istanbul only for France and Britain to economically prevent Russia from doing that in the glorious Crimean Not War of the 1850s.
it's pretty funny how hard they missed the nail on what made vic2 an interesting game, and then still manage to put out some deeply illogical economic system
It's nuts right. As soon as the Devs mentioned that there's no representation of laissez-faire capitalism in the game I switched off completely. From what I can tell playing a communist nation with a command economy plays no differently than a capitalist one. You just get different bonuses.
@@adammackintosh430 it's absurd
Well said… well, now that we r stuck with this system, at least let’s hope they will add more details to it.
Based Loco strikes again
I want to express my opinions on why I am in favor of the new warfare, but honestly I couldn't find a single part of this video I overwhelmingly disagreed with. Realistically they could have gone with a way more compromised system like you said and I feel more people would be happy. What they did kind of just caused people who are into micro get disappointed, and if they made it more in the way that you suggested in the video, the people who support the current system wouldn't be upset at all. You are right, the macro style is not something people actively wished for. They are only excited because it has been presented to them.
That being said I am still excited for a more macro system personally. I kind of like the idea of war not being so much in my control. I know this totally depends on balance and ai, but losing a war because my generals suck or I wasn't able to support higher production levels in my barracks sounds appealing to me. I personally don't feel I need control of my units to enjoy warfare in a grand strategy, but that doesn't mean being able to control your units isn't fun.
What I know we all can agree on, micro or macro, is that not even having unit models on the front lines or something is extremely extremely disappointing. I love seeing the troops change uniforms and weapons over time.
>, but losing a war because my generals suck or I wasn't able to support higher production levels in my barracks sounds appealing to me
This was already a thing in Vic2, its also a thing in Eu4, Imperator and Hoi4. Your generals and your production are an extremely important part of those games war systems.
@@spcsandbag6517 In Vic 2 a battle was lost because I decided to move the units I chose into the province I chose against the enemy units I chose at the attrition level I decided I was comfortable with. The general only helps or hurts some stats. In Vic 3, a battle is lost because the ai general decided where to attack, when to attack, and how much men to attack with.
Obviously this is very dependent on whether this is actually implemented well or not. Could just play like crud. I can't really justify why this is appealing to me, but I don't have to really. This part of the macro system and the macro system as a whole just appeals to me. If I can't directly control but only influence my interest groups and pops, I am okay with the same idea for my military.
And there are so many different possible reasons troops won't be properly supplied with the newest tech because of the different levels of industry in Vic 3. No other games come close.
I fully understand removing physical units on the map, automating their movements always just led to the AI doing very silly things (Hoi4 battleplan into the Maginot let's go), by abstracting it they remove the problem entirely, it's also essential to the idea of war being costly that you can't just micro well around it,
as long as little men in their uniforms appear on the map with tech and country appropriate models as a battle takes place and shoot in the general direction of each other I will be happy on that front, I personally never liked managing unit movements and any automation tool is always just objectively worse in combat performance then manual control, I am very excited for Vic3 in large part because of the war system,
a lot of people worry about the ability of minor powers to "punch up" but there's still a lot of capacity for that on the economic and political side, as well as the macro military moves, sure Jan Mayan isn't going to beat the UK but they never could regardless without some serious cheese.
5:50 what is that CSA, they still fucked it up even in this game.
legit tho. I'm all for historical inaccuracy but damn
>playing the game is boring
>just put it on speed 5 and wait
>this is somehow better
@1:49 "conquer though blood" the spelling mistake on the box is a great example of how Paradox works. Unfinished, and untested at launch and then modders have to step in to fix almost everything while Paradox releases the smallest dlc's.
it means conquer, though (there will be) blood. It's saying that you should conquer despite the blood that will spill
@@SpudgunOfficial grrrr grammar grrrrr
Even before WW1 the Victoria 2 timeframe was chock-full of colonial wars, and revolutionary war in Europe
The focus on economy and politics is pretty cool, but it's not worth completely removing war from the game.
its odd that the people who whine about eurocentrism turn around and claim the victorian era was relatively peaceful, when that was only really (somewhat) the case in europe, while in africa, the middle east, india, east asia, and south america, this was a time of intense turmoil and conflict, in quite a few cases due to the actions of european powers.
The whole point of getting a stronger economy is so you then have the power and ability to impact global politics via both diplomacy AND war, just like in real history.
I think a lot of people have been gaslighting themselves into thinking the current war system is what they wanted all along. I on the other hand have recognised that it is something that paradox will have to fix after release.
I know I'm kinda late to the party, but I don't get it. Paradox have EU4 and HoI4 on the same engine and this game should be a transfer between two. What I expected was battle system from EU4 that progresses into battle system from HoI4 the more you research. Like at the start you have stacks from EU4 that are formed from individual units manually controlled by you with generals assigned to them. But then you research division designer, you build your industry like in HoI4 to support divisions, you unlock frontline system for an easy control. It was made in other games and they spent a lot of time to just get rid of it
Victoria 3 fell into the Sid Meier's Civilization trap - emphasizing peace and prosperity over war. But at least in Civilization death and destruction are still present.
What is wrong with that exactly?
I personaly find building cities more fun than fighting in civilization vi
@@anyoneatall3488 There is not enough priority on the important aspect of history that is war.
Although, after I tried a warmongering playthrough in Civ6 I might disagree with my 7 moths ago self.
It really is remarkable how many people are repeating the line, "If you want a war game, play HOI4." They are incapable of grasping that some people prefer Vicky 2's war system to HOI4 (like Spud), that HOI4 is not "the war game" but in fact dumbs down some concepts from older titles, or that by their logic EU4 and CK3 are "war games." Furthermore, even in Victoria 2 you didn't have to go to war if you didn't want to as some countries, you could build tall, get prestige and colonize peacefully. I'm at a loss for what indoctrinated them to think this way. And yes, I say indoctrinated because they don't use original arguments but repeat what others have already said.
A Paradox map game without a good war system just feels weird. I doubt I’ll get this game
Have not been paying attention to the development of the game. Decided to do some research since it is coming out in a couple of days. Ty for this video dude. I will not be getting this game with this ludicrous war system
They spent a ton of time developing the under-the-hood war and AI stuff because Vic 3 will be terrible and unplayable without competent conducting of war. Instead of making it easy/streamlined for players to control the military they just made it all automated, which probably took way more work than making a good war UI.
My best guess is they don't want Vic 3 to compete with Hoi4, and you can tell their strategy worked in some way because almost every reply to people who complain about the lack of war involvement for the player is "Go play hoi4 if you want that."
Personally I still am excited for Vic 3 just for the eco and politics, and yes I play Hoi4 and it can scratch some war itch, but I think Paradox is missing out on a huge chunk of players who already like their games, I seem like an exception from what I can tell. Vic 3 with more Hoi4 like war mechanics would probably appeal to 90%+ of Paradox players, but maybe this new demographic of casuals they're trying to rope in with Stardeus and Vic 3 will make them more money or something. Whatever. I'm just hoping for good war mods ASAP.
I absolutely loved managing my armies in Victoria 2. They killed that Vicky 3 so paradox will not be getting my money.
Imagine being so fanatically anti-war irl that you shoehorn your ideology into the 19th century WAR and diplomacy simulator Victoria 2, completely ignoring historical accuracy and the other Paradox games fun aspects.
I dunno its kinda weird that a key portion of the game is automated (warfare), who wants to just build an economy for an ai general to throw. If they wanted to make a civ management game just remake Democracy 4 with an economy. Weird game design overall.
@@aureliusmarcusantoninus3441 This. Part of the fun of managing the economy was that when you finally used it to do something like wage war or assimilate pops, it worked out. What's the point of having an economy simulator if you can't actually do anything with the economy?
Anyone who's reasonable is antiwar. Those guys? They're just stupid.
You can tell that these people probably suck at combat micro. Meanwhile with less than 100 hours in EU4 i'm stack wiping 40k stacks of brits to control all the cloth.
It does feel this way. Would still prefer to not have to micro manage individual units, but not at the cost of meaningful wars. Players deserve agency.
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