The game is pretty good!
I was quite surprised on the class consciousness of the game, although I found some weird takes, such as the communist party of my country being composed only of the military, and the social democrats being the ones composed of the trade unions. But putting that aside, although the game doesn’t explicitly say “communism good” you can see that the interest groups (such as the landowners, trade unions, the clergy and whatnot) only think of their own interests, which necessarily means that the only ones that fight for the interest of the majority are the trade unions, the socialists.
I really like the war mechanics, unlike EU4 or HOI4 you just have to mobilize divisions, assign them to generals, and tell them “ayo push/defend this frontline” and that’s it. There’s barely any micromanagement and I love it.
I also really like the economy mechanics. It has some weird things such as buildings that you very clearly need being projected as unprofitable, but overall I think it’s excellent. Also, you are the one who builds the shit! No more liberals ruining the economy with cement factories, yay!
In Vic3 supply and demand modifies the price of goods from -75% to +75%, and having way too little of a good needed for factory inputs triggers a shortage, which reduces the output of the factories that require that thing, maybe? idk I didn’t do the tutorial, and I don’t really remember what the shortage warning said.
Overall although the game has some unpolished aspects, it has, in my opinion, rock solid foundations. Thanks for reading!
Also, rate my living standard inequality:
I have played quite a bit now and all I can say is that it does an okay job of letting you manage a planned economy. But other than that I find it to be very mediocre and in some areas lacking significantly.
Every country feels exactly the same, there are barely any unique events if you’re playing as Chile, Russia, or China. I think China and Russia have 1 each, which if you’ve played Victoria 2 its appalling.
The warfare is both dumbed down and also poorly explained, you are only allowed to fight in one war at a time while the AI is allowed to do multiple diplomatic plays. And on the topic of the AI, it is so hilariously incompetent its sad. Especially when it comes to colonization, you’ll see Russia colonize north Japan and Australia while the US occupies Patagonia before it even takes Texas.
But my biggest issue with the game is how it fails to show the difference between different economic models, in Victoria 2 if you had a liberal laissez faire economy, your population’s capitalists would automatically build and grow factories without any input from you, building factories based on what is profitable and not on what the economy needs, this often leads to economic crashes, unemployment, social agitation etc.
In this game, no matter what. YOU have control over everything, regardless if you are feudal, socialist, the literal east India company, doesn’t matter, you get to decide what is built/shut down/ grown in your land.
Not to mention, the game has a weird obsession with reformism. If you want to create a socialist/communist society, its done by appointing vanguardists into your government and boosting their popularity, then changing laws one by one until suddenly you are socialist. Effectively, you push the communism button. This is probably the least realistic thing you could do in the game, but also the most poorly represented aspect.
Sorry for the wall, I was looking forward to this game a lot, and it left me disappointed in the places I was hoping it would do well.
Yeah same, I bought it (on discount) after seeing someone play the tutorial, it seemed much bigger in scope.
You’re gonna have to wait for a year of patches and DLCs (of course) to get anything with depth.
Maybe this will get people to play Vic2. I have it in my steam library.
CK3 is still blegh after 2 years. No meaningful additions in DLCs and no big patches. I wouldn’t get your hopes up.
What if I gave you no choice but to get my hopes up?
Man, thinking about CK3 is just depressing. I really hope Vicky 3 doesn’t go down the same road but it seems like its going to.