Its absolutely embarrassing how broken this game still is, the devs need to postpone any more DLC before they have fixed the basics.

[Mr.Chappy]

I'm struggling with if you're arguing in bad faith or just being purposely obtuse.

 

[AlexNereča]

just being purposely obtuse.

Well I initially wanted to know why you had interpreted my reply as having nothing to do with yours when it in fact did and you wanted to pivot to talking only about the warfare system, but I guess let bygones be bygones; agree to disagree.

I don't care either way for which specific suggestion should be implemented into the game, I don't think I'm competent enough to make an argument that would be convincing to any or all sides of the warfare systems argument.

 

[kingsword]

Private Investment is expected to do this so unless they balls that up it shouldn't be a problem in that specific regard if country AIs make stupid construction decisions

Well I suppose this might happen, though outside the usual suspects with addictions we'll have to see how autonomous trade by the private buildings will deal with intoxicant imports.

Private investment can't do it when there is extremely limited income in those pools and building materials are worth more than gold for a good 50 years into the game when the game is 100 years long. Most countries have like enough funds to make 3-4 building per year for a good while and they use those to build up vineyards when wine costs like -30%. Iron will be like +75% and they'll never build an iron mine even if their lives depended on it.

"An iron mine?! I wouldn't be caught dead owning one! I'd be the laughing stock of the country club if I made by millions selling iron! Start another vineyard, Henry!"

Heck, even in 1920 after passing commercialized agriculture, my capitalists are building up tea farms in markets when tea is like -60% and they absolutely won't build factories for goods that will literally print money instead. It was a harsh lesson to me, never passing that law ever again.

 

[AlexNereča]

Private investment can't do it when there is extremely limited income in those pools

This is going to be enhanced by trade centres so we simply don't know how to anticipate the state of the investment pool.
Maybe this will also incentivise getting treaty ports in loads of markets if relying on AI of either sort to increase trade capacity is such an issue.

But ultimately the devs would have all their eyes on how everyone in the game is doing with trade centre construction, it's not something that they can afford to overlook given they always have to check if every facet of the system they code in is even working to make informed game design decisions.

 

[kingsword]

I'm almost fairly certain that AI will either:

- not build trade centers or not be able to supply the trade centers it builds with the required goods so it won't profit
- waste its trading capacity trading all the wrong things

Why am I this pessimistic? Because the AI is absolutely godawful in how its plays the game in every area it governs. How it spends its money, how it passes (or won't) laws, how it can't run diplomacy etc. After several years, it's still inept beyond belief and there's no signs of Paradox actually signaling they're working on it. Like, it'll start with fantastic laws (let's say France) and it'll regress those because it never rejects propositions by interest groups in the government. It'll turn the country into Afghanistan even if it causes a civil war for that.

So yeah I'm not holding my breath for auto-trade fixing its shortcomings before seeing it myself. And I'm definitely not keen on keeping bailing out the AI doing all the crucial strategic good supply myself and then actually doing the transportation for it. The DLC is supposed to be about unequal treaties and here I'm saying "what unequal treaty, I'm giving stuff for free to build its own country and it rejects it via tariffs!"

 

[AlexNereča]

- waste its trading capacity trading all the wrong things

Maybe you already know this but to clarify: governments cannot use trade capacity, only trade centres. So this is gonna be about private decisions by each building on what to import rather than AI country decisions.

So we basically have to posit that this private AI is gonna be rubbish at what it does in terms of imports, which may not be the case because they can look at real prices every week to make a decision instead of what the private investment AI fails to do which is to anticipate how a new building in a weeks' time is going to affect the productivity for a building to add later in the queue.

I've also already explained how it's impossible for the devs to completely miss this type of issue (although whether it is easy enough to solve before the release is another question)

 

[kingsword]

Government can however build trade centers. My prediction is that it won't because it doesn't build anything except barracks the big majority of the time. Private sector won't build because there won't be funds for it and whatever funds will go to building vineyards or art academies. So auto-trade's capacity will be limited to building those trade centers. AI can build shipyards so I'm not worried on that part, one of the rare industrial goods that AI won't shy away from building. Maybe trade centers will be the same but I'm skeptical. Will AI build it up or will it look at present ones not profiting that much and decide not to build? Probably won't because government AI will set tariffs and it LOVES to put tariffs on most everything. It would do 245% if it could.

So there are multiple hoops to go through that trade centers are built and utilized properly. If current AI had a grasp on very basic build-up stimulation, I'd be more optimist but it plays like someone who never played a Paradox game before and just started playing Vic3. We're in 1.8 and it still cannot build iron mines (obviously no reason to build up a resource that's constantly fluctuating in its use because private sector doesn't have a stable flow of money and government abruptly will stop building all the time) at this stage. I hope EU5 AI has vastly improved or else that game will have similar problems.

 

[exi123]

You do not even have to bring up future content to argue for bad ai. Have you ever seen the ai using rail carts pm`s on railways? They do not, transportation is always expensive for them. Just do the math of how much economic potential is lost just with this single error. These things really, really anti-snowball the longer a campaign is running.

-> Ai can ot use railcarts
-> Ai can not switch to labour saving pms
-> Ai can not lift as much pops as it should to better jobs after de-peasanting
-> Ai has always less demand for consumer goods
-> Ai has less factories and capitalist
-> Ai has stronger traditionalist clout for longer

It would be nice to have metrics how just such a minimal fix, maybe with decoupling infrastructure from employment in railways, would buff the Ai in the later years of the campaigns.

 

[AlexNereča]

funds for it and whatever funds will go to building vineyards or art academies

I think we are really underestimating how lucrative private investors will find trade to be. Easy to overestimate, also, so we both have to keep in mind.

Probably won't because government AI will set tariffs

It's a bit of an oversight for them to not have explained anything in any dev diaries about how they changed how AI sets tariffs but it would be a very big oversight for them to change literally nothing in behaviour (especially as you can now spend money to achieve the opposite result of tariffs)

So there are multiple hoops to go through that trade centers are built and utilized properly.

I'd imagine there'd be specific weightings to encourage trade centre construction if trade capacity is maximised so that could skip the whole profitability hoop they'd otherwise have to jump through. I'm speculating basically as much as you are though.

 

[Prob32]

But if they don't accept, you're dragged into a war with the awful mechanics! Which is what this thread is about. The unbearing jankyness of the war system and how they need to do something about it, like focusing dev time to it. I don't even want moveable stacks, I just want something else. Within the confines of the system they have now I really struggle to come up with solutions, which is clearly the same as the devs as they're still fighting this god awful system.

I happen to agree with OPB about this, it seems we aren't getting ANY major changes to the war system this year. Which in my opinion (and many others if even positive steam reviews are to go by) isn't good enough. The war system is what stops this game getting a decent player count and the unhinged delusion from a minority of people saying "it'll get better, they're going to improve" after nearly 3 years is frankly laughable.

I mean there's two issues to the war system as I see it- the first one the dev's have said their addressing in 1.9: Mainly the front splitting, army formation jumping bugs. This is probably the most commonly cited issue which leads to so much obvious player frustration.

The second issue is even when it is working- it's not that fun because there's not much as a player you can do to interact with it beyond pre-war generals, barracks and mobilization options. This is the more difficult issue because the 'solve' is actually more the just content like re-working combat stats or general staff cabinet, though this would help.

The issue is the fundamental lack of logistics impact where Japan can join a war for recognition in 1840 and just send an army across the ocean to help assist France beat up Spain. There's not strategy involved with building up naval stations for range and efficiency, building out merchant fleets, having internal trading costs increase.

As Japan you can almost never get a relative strength advantage against Russia in the east despite the fact any fight in Siberia needs to cross hundred of miles away from their supply bases.

 

[lo24681]

I love Vic3 a lot, but am really pulling for a full-scale warfare rework with Logistics and stuff next year, hopefully coming with a Great War expansion to sweeten the deal.

 

[BlazeKnight_]

Yeah I totally agree. I like keeping tabs on this game and the fact that it is actually getting updated to be better (unlike I:R), but progress is just way too slow and conservative. A lot of the problems of Vic3 are just like Eu4 where the game cannot fundamentally answer certain questions due to lacking the mechanic or having some really bad mechanic exist.

For instance, this game still cannot answer why most major civilizations have their capitals in areas with large farmlands on the coast, as opposed to the middle of the mountains where mineral ores are typically found. I mean I can yap about a billion issues but stuff like this outlines how egregious Vic3's core systems are. Like the entire MAPI thing is just a half-baked solution and spawns a billion other unrealistic problems. To this day, there are 0 negative incentives to moving your capital to the middle of nowhere & making a hyper-industrialized megacity because that state is a mountainous area with a bunch of good raw resources.

The real solution is to just finally add some actual level of stuff on the map and have at least some representation of transport that is not abstracted to a flat static number. War & pretty much all other bad mechanics (tech, etc.) have the same issue of not really caring about the map. Just banish a bunch of micro-states, hell merge cultures together, if it means there will finally be digits tied to the map rather than the TAG.

 

[Nnorm]

i agree they should focus on fixing/reworking current mechanics rather than adding new mechanics (or even flavour). but unfortunately using dev time require some income aswell (so DLCs),

i would unironically pay for a "fixing current systems DLC"

Im questioning the system as a whole after im seeing how much money Paradox lost on Lamplighters League or probably on many more recently canceled games. They also sponsor Gimnastic Tarragona on Segunda Division. It is absurd to keep supporting this system in which we have to pay more and more so maybe after few years some bugs will be fixed.

 

[Rhel]

Logistics is really the biggest part here. I'm perfectly happy with, and strongly prefer, Vicky 3 having a fairly hands off warfare system. I don't want to be forced to manage which regiment marches where in this game. And just because there's always a smartass: Yes, if they add the option to micromanage you are effectively forced to, or you will just straight up lose to anyone who does. Just like it is in Hoi 4.

But making sure your armies actually get what they need, that you control the necessary sea lanes to supply them, that sort of thing? That absolutely needs a lot more gameplay and, also, is very much the kind of thing an actual government might have to concern itself with.

 

[Bisonmask]

I just want to share a very normal situation in this game:

You pick Prussia, one of the "main characters" of Victoria 3, and want to complete the Slesvig Holstein Question.

To beat the mission you have to directly own at least 1 of the provinces 2, and Denmark much have no control anymore.

*or* I'm not entirely sure how you missed this but you can just free both countries. This is actually part of the strategy for the Ottomans if you're having trouble with Austria and Russia. Missing this bodes poorly for the rest of this post

To do this you then have to start a conquer state diplo play against one of the vassals (there is no transfer vassal diplo play). Since the other vassal for some reason is not automatically dragged into this war and you can't add war goals for subjects not in the diplo play, all you could do is to add the liberate subject war goal to at least remove the other vassal from Danish control. I would have preferred to take both states, but the game doesn't support this. That,s already the first issues with Vic3 and the game has barely begun.

I'm not 100% sure what the issue is here but I'd guess you have overly high relations with one of Denmark's subjects. You can check to see why you can't use a particular CB against a country in the diplomacy window for that country (pretty sure the tutorial tells you this)

I have Sweden, Russia and Austria on my side. I added Sweden since I can't ask mecklenburg (or any nation) for military access, and I can't force access as this is only possible when the country borders both war leaders. They unfortunately only border Holstein. So the only option was to go through Sweden. Another way this game is broken.

Annoying but this is getting fixed. We're it not fixed you could: ally, or vassalislze and enforce access on, Mecklenburg or build a navy

Neither Austria or Russia bothered to deploy any troops to the front, so while Denmark and GB where greatly outnumbered on paper, they managed to easily hold the strait and then eventually start pushing into Sweden. This now the third way this game is fundamentally broken.

View attachment 1298009

Unusual but kind of hilarious, this is the kind of thing a player would do. You're complaining because Austria and Russia won't torpedo their economies to win land for you? Why is that bad? Both countries sent armies (Sweden isn't that whole blue stack) they just didn't send their whole armies to fight over Danish subjects

Also you're already at war with GB just violate Hannover's sovereignty, the threat of your land being captured generally wakes up the AI

Also as a general rule why are you fighting GB when you aren't sure you can beat them with moderate support from your allies? Too much CK3 may be building poor habits

I ask what the point of all the changes from Victoria 2 is when it all works much worse. War, especially for the AI, was supposed to work better without micro. Instead my allies are worse than in Victoria 2. Units also don't consume from a stockpile anymore, so the AI can support massive armies with no real production of weaponry. They just take the +50% cost and thats it. Its probably cheaper overall than building that whole supply chain and wasting opportunity cost for the construction sectors.

Your issue is a macro problem not a micro one. The AI and properly built player economies get crushed by running that hot for too long. It isn't cheaper unless your army is not big enough to do what you want (see your current situation). Shortages reduce offense/defense and other stats. Proper supply penalties and stockpiles are also being introduced next patch

When I look at this game's Steam page and update history I am shocked how they have spent so much time adding tons of gimmicky DLC features while basics like this still don't work.

Look at the free patches, they've spent most of their time giving free updates and attaching them to optional dlc

And again, this is just what you meet a few years into the game as a major player.

To be clear this is happening because you don't understand the game systems and you're also expecting the AI to win your wars for you. A few years in is worse because you've had years as one of the strongest countries in the game to plan this war. It's not like you're playing Madagascar and you need to use exploits to eat Portuguese Africa, this should not be difficult. Try playing through the "learn the game" starts or turn down the difficulty

This game has a lot of real problems but the ones you've raised are being fixed and they aren't the reason you're losing this war