Victoria 3 - Dev Diary #140 - 1.8 post-release thoughts

[SolarSailor19]

Easy Solution to military system. Abolish fronts and all the nonsense in the current system that is opaque, temperamental and engaging and go back to a system of units like Vic 2 or CK3 or EU4. A unit could still be tied to a building and require pops to fill out, and maybe even be raised from their buildings in wartime, but would much rather have a discrete set of stacks, with discrete naval units to embark them on and everything that entails than the current system. War as it is majorly holds the game back. By all means play with an entrenchment system and unique ways of dealing damage that comes with tech to let us play with how warfare did change in the time period, but I don't think anyone is having much fun with the current war system and, despite grumbles about doom-stack's, the other war systems are at least navigable and fun-enough for most players.

 

[Danechka322]

Honestly idk what problem developers just copy vic 2 military system because it's really good and interesting mechanic(that realy work well) without overthinking yourself. (exept mb fort and militarisation system)

 

[marmot01]

Honestly idk what problem developers just copy vic 2 military system because it's really good and interesting mechanic(that realy work well) without overthinking yourself. (exept mb fort and militarisation system)

There are some peculiarities of the 19th century that reflect on the military and its applications, which I don't think are easy to model properly in any game, and I don't think anyone ever has attempted it. Paradox's current approach is far too abstracted.

First off, this is the era of the European Concert. There is a massive disparity in power between the Great Powers and anyone else. The very deployment of a military force or the mere threat of that would be enough to give pause to smaller powers and affect their political stances. It's very hard to portray this in a videogame while keeping the game balanced and interesting for the player if he is this minor power. But - wink, wink - maybe that's where power blocs can become useful for minor powers? Get your GP big brother to intervene when you are having a problem with another GP?

Second, the means of application of military forces varied quite a lot - it was asymmetrical warfare in the colonies, jungles, deserts, mountains, etc. But it was symmetric warfare when it came to the wars in Europe, the Crimean war, the First World War. Depicting asymmetric warfare properly would flat out require a different ruleset and an alternative system, call it "Warfare 2.0". At least I'm having a hard time imagining it any other way. Maybe the implementation would look something like the occupation in HoI IV accompanied by attrition, emergent events, some specific other mechanics?

Third, we need an implementation ingame of the concept of limited wars - limited in terms of the theatre of war, and also limited in terms of the size of the forces involved. And the AI needs to abide by that. If we are having a spat with Russia in Afghanistan, this shouldn't have to end with me landing St. Petersburg, as the rest of the Great Powers are silently watching on.

These are all just broad strokes, and I can't give you the magic pill in one small post. But we all agree here that the current implementation of warfare is often absurd.

Edit: the Crimean war was a crazy outlier of GPs fighting amongst each other. For the most part, conflict between GPs should be resolved behind the scenes, maybe with a system similar to The Great Game, where one power gains an advantage in one area of the world, and another player gets an advantage in another part, to preserve the balance of power. This however has to be turned from a scripted progress bars thing into a generic system where various states of the game's systems can be quantified and attached a numerical value of "advantage" provided to this or that country. This needs further brainstorming.

 

[ENFP]

There are some peculiarities of the 19th century that reflect on the military and its applications, which I don't think are easy to model properly in any game, and I don't think anyone ever has attempted it. Paradox's current approach is far too abstracted.

First off, this is the era of the European Concert. There is a massive disparity in power between the Great Powers and anyone else. The very deployment of a military force or the mere threat of that would be enough to give pause to smaller powers and affect their political stances. It's very hard to portray this in a videogame while keeping the game balanced and interesting for the player if he is this minor power.

Second, the means of application of military forces varied quite a lot - it was asymmetrical warfare in the colonies, jungles, deserts, mountains, etc. But it was symmetric warfare when it came to the wars in Europe, the Crimean war, the First World War. Depicting asymmetric warfare properly would flat out require a different ruleset and an alternative system, call it "Warfare 2.0". At least I'm having a hard time imagining it any other way. Maybe the implementation would look something like the occupation in HoI IV accompanied by attrition, emergent events, some specific other mechanics

Third, we need an implementation ingame of the concept of limited wars - limited in terms of the theatre of war, and also limited in terms of the size of the forces involved. And the AI needs to abide by that. If we are having a spat with Russia in Afghanistan, this shouldn't have to end with me landing St. Petersburg, as the rest of the Great Powers are silently watching on.

These are all just broad strokes, and I can't give you the magic pill in one small post. The current implementation of warfare is often absurd.

This is why we really need something resembling a war escalation system, we need smaller wars in victoria 3 AND bigger ones like World War One. The current system of not being able to join ongoing wars or add war goals is just completely insupportable for the long term. I totally understand if this is something the devs are grappling with, but it would be great to hear that something resembling it was on the way. We need a Great War mechanic in the game that takes place in its time period... right? This would also play great into the simulation of Vic3, some IGs or political lobbies might prefer smaller or larger wars... with different consequences based on your margin of victory/defeat.

 

[marmot01]

This is why we really need something resembling a war escalation system, we need smaller wars in victoria 3 AND bigger ones like World War One.

Yeah, I'm thinking of something like the World Tension meter in HoI IV but instead of being National Focus-driven, it has to be driven by the emergent game state.

Regarding the limited war theatres - what if when starting a diplomatic play, we get to draw, on the map, the strategic regions or provinces which we want to include in the war theatre? And then the more valuable the provinces, the higher the World Tension goes.

All out war should be impossible to achieve, made impossible through systemic limitations, not scripted limitations, at least not before a certain level of industrial development has been reached, and after it has been reached - should be truly devastating to the economy of the countries whose territory was affected. I'm talking serious destruction, not like the current devastation modifier. Those provinces should be flat out unusable for the next 5 years or so. France needed a comparable amount of time to recover from WW1 that Japan needed after WW2, to put it in perspective.

I would bet that one of the biggest problems, from game dev perspective, is having the AI consider and plan for long term effects like that.

 

[Meneye]

I'd like to humbly suggest that values are not the core problem here. I understand why cross-heritage was blocked, as it's very strange and immersion breaking to see pops change facial features and even skin colors when they adopt new cultural practices, but I also understand why it was removed. I think both off and on are extremes here, and a new solution is needed.

I think the game's performance has gotten good enough now that you could afford to consider the idea of dynamic hybrid cultures that unite an entire heritage as a new culture linked to the new country. South-East-Asian-English, Middle-Eastern-French, Euro-Chinese or what have you. It would need to have significant requirements, say, a minimum 10% of the country's population being from that heritage, the country itself being at least a major, and having had a cultural community there for at least some years to even start, say 10-20 or so. Ultimately though, I don't think it would need to cost much performance to have a new culture for each heritage in each of the major countries, it may actually cost nothing or even increase performance by allowing pop groups to combine in these new hybrids.

Please consider it. I know that it might take some significant changes to allow cultures to assimilate into a culture that isn't a primary, and I'm honestly not sure what to do with colonial nations like the EIC, where presumably some Indians would combine into Indo-English people, and then not know what to do with themselves after independence, but I think solving these problems would be worth it. It would add some more depth to the new acceptance mechanics (as presumably hybrid cultures would be at least a little more accepted), and it would also add immersion, as well as making the existing culture mechanics work better in the end.

For the Indian-British problem, that actually happened. They were called Anglo-Indians, were culturally English but had an Indian race, and were given more opportunities than other Indians. Right now, they're disappearing and declining in population because more of them have assimilated to the mainstream Indian culture after independence, which would be in line with the game mechanics.

I really recommend you adding your post to the suggestions forum if you haven't done so already. This is one of the most accurate solutions here, and can simulate groups like American Latinos and Black British people.

 

[Dr BAMF]

For the Indian-British problem, that actually happened. They were called Anglo-Indians, were culturally English but had an Indian race, and were given more opportunities than other Indians. Right now, they're disappearing and declining in population because more of them have assimilated to the mainstream Indian culture after independence, which would be in line with the game mechanics.

I really recommend you adding your post to the suggestions forum if you haven't done so already. This is one of the most accurate solutions here, and can simulate groups like American Latinos and Black British people.

Good idea. I posted it here:

Assimilation: It might be time to think about hybrid cultures.

I'd like to humbly suggest that values are not the core problem with assimilation. I understand why cross-heritage was blocked, as it's very strange and immersion breaking to see pops change facial features and even skin colors when they adopt...

forum.paradoxplaza.com

Paradox people never seem to check when they are quoted, now that I think about it, so it should be there now if someone hasn't already had this idea.

 

[BrotherJonathan]

Good idea. I posted it here:

Assimilation: It might be time to think about hybrid cultures.

I'd like to humbly suggest that values are not the core problem with assimilation. I understand why cross-heritage was blocked, as it's very strange and immersion breaking to see pops change facial features and even skin colors when they adopt...

forum.paradoxplaza.com

Paradox people never seem to check when they are quoted, now that I think about it, so it should be there now if someone hasn't already had this idea.

IIRC one of the devs did address the idea of hybrid cultures awhile ago. It sounds like one of those "we'd love to but we're worried it would tank performance" situations.

 

[Hidler201]

We need to be able to change our goals in war

 

[ingenieux]

Edit: the Crimean war was a crazy outlier of GPs fighting amongst each other. For the most part, conflict between GPs should be resolved behind the scenes, maybe with a system similar to The Great Game, where one power gains an advantage in one area of the world, and another player gets an advantage in another part, to preserve the balance of power. This however has to be turned from a scripted progress bars thing into a generic system where various states of the game's systems can be quantified and attached a numerical value of "advantage" provided to this or that country. This needs further brainstorming.

And the austro-prussian war. And the franco-rrussian war. Maybe the Italian unification against Austria with France on the italian side.

 

[marmot01]

Good idea. I posted it here:

Assimilation: It might be time to think about hybrid cultures.

I'd like to humbly suggest that values are not the core problem with assimilation. I understand why cross-heritage was blocked, as it's very strange and immersion breaking to see pops change facial features and even skin colors when they adopt...

forum.paradoxplaza.com

Paradox people never seem to check when they are quoted, now that I think about it, so it should be there now if someone hasn't already had this idea.

Too busy to check the forums, too understaffed to fix warfare in 2 years since release.

 

[marmot01]

And the austro-prussian war. And the franco-rrussian war. Maybe the Italian unification against Austria with France on the italian side.

Is this sarcasm, please? I'm obviously aware of them. And which one was the first? Yes, the Crimean war. Hence I said "was a crazy outlier". The Austro-Prussian war was very a small-scale conflict compared to what total wars between GPs look like in the game, I hope you'll agree. That's also part of my argument.

 

[FeelsAmazingMan]

For people interested in hybrid cultures that deal with cross heritage assimilation, there's actually a mod on the workshop that does exactly that. Look up "Hyphenated Cultures".

 

[Nconstruct]

It's great to hear about focusing on military, but please, for the love of Wiz, think about reducing some micro. Building an army one regiment by one, keeping an eye on units ratio in every army, issuing orders individually to each of dozens generals, constantly switching trade routes/production methods in armament factories between peace/war time economy, predicting from a crystal ball how much resources my armies will need after I manually mobilize them... it's a chore. It's not fun. I believe front system was designed to reduce unnecesary micro and shift players attention to some "grander scope" of things. However it only changed where the micro is.

For beggining maybe add some army planner. Allow us to make and copy army/fleet templates and build them with one single click like in Stellaris. Allow us to give orders to whole fronts. Abolish individual army generals and make something like "general staff" and allow us to manually choose generals for only 3-4 countrywide posts (like Stellaris council), but with greater impact on internal politics and overall army effectiveness.

I would hope that you can only change the production method of state owned buildings, everything else get changed automatically, by the corresponding owner

*financial centers* want to maximize profits in general
[Always automaticly change to the most profitable production method]

*companys*: invest in the production of low cost materials to maximize profitability of their core business
[like cheap iron but very profitable small arms]

*manor houses*: want to invest to minimize the living cost of the aristocrat's
[like make luxury goods instead of common goods, since how cares if the poor are naked as long as I can have my suite]

*Worker owned*: want to maximize wages and will refuse to cut staff
[they won't change a production method to one with less workers, unless the building already has to few workers s.t. noone loses their job.]

(But they all can only use the possible production method the corresponding country it is build in are researched)

Then furthermore have government reforms like interventionallism have the possibility to chance the production method of non state building but radicalizing the ownes (manorhouse, financial district, company)


If you need help with that I'm studying mathematics and can write some code since I'm specializing in optimization.
I mean I do it for free but it would be nice to know if you want that since I don't want to waste the work.

 

[Maxeon09]

Honestly I'm at the point where I think we start ripping out cultures and religions and other pop mechanics I don't interact with to get the logistics system and go from there. That's just me though.

At that point just go play HoI4

 

[Maxeon09]

The positive feedback:

View attachment 1226638

When its not outright been broken its frustrating and lackluster.

When are steam reviews for DLCs ever good? People usually only bother to rate DLCs if they find them bad.

 

[marmot01]

When are steam reviews for DLCs ever good? People usually only bother to rate DLCs if they find them bad.

I will rate this good, but I've rated the game bad.

 

[ingenieux]

Is this sarcasm, please? I'm obviously aware of them. And which one was the first? Yes, the Crimean war. Hence I said "was a crazy outlier". The Austro-Prussian war was very a small-scale conflict compared to what total wars between GPs look like in the game, I hope you'll agree. That's also part of my argument.

It's not sarcarm, the crimean war cannot be an outlier of war between great powers if there are 3 more afterwards.
I agree the all total wars in game are bad.

 

[marmot01]

It's not sarcarm, the crimean war cannot be an outlier of war between great powers if there are 3 more afterwards.
I agree the all total wars in game are bad.

It was an outlier at the time because it was the first war between Great Powers since 1815. I can't spell it out any more than this.

 

[BrotherJonathan]

When are steam reviews for DLCs ever good? People usually only bother to rate DLCs if they find them bad.

I find that Steam reviews generally aren't that good of a metric period. Most of the time positive reviews are just one-sentence jokes or memes, and negative reviews are page-long tirades that often devolve into complaints about something not really related to the quality of the game (too expensive, not localized in my language, don't like the perceived political stance of the devs, etc.)