Victoria 3

[Saxo Grammaticus]

I am a little surprised not to see anything over here with the new release. Is there so little overlap between CFC and the game's player base? Whether you are playing, cannot stand it, will live and die by Victoria 2, etc. I am curious about CFC consensus.

 

[Quintillus]

I haven't picked it up yet, but will at some point. Currently playing through an EU4 campaign, which has a chance of making it to 1820 and might get converted to a Vicky II game, and also started a HOI4 Belgium game, which is not likely to last much longer.

In large part I'm in "wait for the first few patches" mode, which I tend to do for any Paradox expansion or new game. EU4 1.34? Wait for the bug fixes, now it's great. First-version EU4? Pick up at release, play a couple months later. HOI4? I think it was on 1.4 before I picked it up. Now that Vicky III is at 1.06, it's probably fine, but they just put out a teaser for the upcoming 1.1 patch which promises to make things more fine... so maybe that's the right time to pick it up? It does sound like it was generally okay at launch, but I'm not an early adopter in general.

All that said I'm sure I will pick it up relatively soon, and I doubt I'll be going back to Vicky II after I try it, just as I haven't gone back to EU3. I think Vicky II is the one that Johan described as "the UI God forgot", and there's such a huge difference in UI quality between it and CKII. Specifically in the "can I learn to play this game without having the Wiki/manual available all the time?" sense. But Vicky II also does a poor job in general of surfacing information about the economy and politics, so if Vicky III does a halfway-decent or better job at that, it would be really hard to go back. There are so many things I learned only by intuition, cumulative experience, and peering through the fog of Wiki articles in Vicky II.

I'll probably play Prussia or Austria first, I haven't played Austria since AHD, and Prussia is the most major power that I never played all the way through in Vicky II.

 

[Thormodr]

I am really enjoying Victoria 3. While by no means perfect, it had a pretty good launch and it has a solid foundation. Definitely has great potential.

The Victoria series have always been my favourite Paradox games.

 

[Kyriakos]

Where do you find the time, guys?...

Besides, after (once) becoming #3 as great power with Greece, in VicII, I have no desire to play again. This game is at the same time too brief to actually change your starting situation (due to ethnic population) and too long to repeat without being bored.

 

[Saxo Grammaticus]

Where indeed? Makes it easier for me to wait on new titles.

 

[Akka]

Played a full game.
So far, it's a pretty enjoyable and rather deep economic simulation (never played the previous entries so I can't comment if it's dumbed down or refined compared to them). Had a lot of "one more turn"-equivalent with it.
It highlight very well the mechanisms of economical colonialism and the importance of grabbing resources, as well as the wealth coming from high-added-value economics.

On the downsides, a lot of it is really, really obscure and leaves you scratching your head if you don't get explanation on the Web, the warfare is absolutely dreadful (and the navy part is beyond abysmal) and the UI is pretty lacking. Bets are open if Paradox will manage to fix the gaping holes before crushing the main game under their usual pile of tacked-on DLC mechanisms or not.

 

[W|M]

I played a few games up to around 1890-1900ish. Some feedback:

While my computer isn't the best, it does run most games pretty well, and Victoria 3 is not one of them. Even on the lowest graphics settings, it struggles like a steam train climbing a too-steep grade. Some of the decisions taken by the developers seem to unnecessarily hit performance, like the day/night system, which is completely superfluous.

There's virtually no country-specific flavour (except for France now), and for that matter very little flavour in general. What this means is that every game plays largely the same no matter what country you pick.

It's both too railroad-y and not railroad-y enough. Your industry always modernizes in more-or-less the same way every time, but there's always weird border gore

There aren't enough constraints on player overexpansion, and the constraints that do exist are too opaque: For instance, if I'm Brazil and want to attack Argentina, there's no way to have any idea if Britain would intervene or not without risking getting hit with a big financial penalty.

War is too hands-off and navies in particular are a huge mess

The politics system feels somewhat lacking and party formation can be predictable but there is a good base to build on there

The trade system is weird and, while not as bad as it was on release, still has too much micromanagement.

The declared interests system is a neat idea but it gets really annoying when you're constantly gaining and losing one.

Early-game construction is too slow

The UI is confusing for a first-time player and has quite a few redundant elements

The map system is a mess, just go back to how it worked in Victoria 2 (this also applies to CK3/CK2)

For some reason the game didn't come with a way to change hotkeys without burrowing through the files, which was particularly annoying considering:

It takes an eternity to start up

 

[Quintillus]

Vicky III is on sale for half off for the next week and a half or so, and between that and the 1.5 patch which appears to finally be addressing some of the navy/warfare/lack-of-info-on-army-location concerns, I'm considering picking it up.

They've also mentioned that some changes to birth rate and death rate should reduce pop count by about 10%, which should have a quadratic effect on performance, so let's say 20%-ish better. And the average review score seems to finally be ticking upwards.

I'm curious what those who have played it think. Is it better than it was in July? Is it compelling compared to Vicky II? I was always in the camp that all they really needed to do was improve the user interface and add more flavor to Vicky II, and maybe add a couple more political/economic options, and they'd have a good sequel, but they went and changed enough in a way that was poorly-received enough - for reasons other than just "it's different" - that I've yet to buy it, but did play some more Vicky II last winter.

I want to see the game get to that point but I'm not sure if 1.5 is that point, or if it needs a 1.6/1.7 to really be worth playing over its predecessor and the strategy catalog in general.

 

[Civinator]

Where do you find the time, guys?...