Recent reviews by Pylori

When looking at Victoria 3, it's important to understand what the game is and what the game isn't. In understanding this, you can decide whether this game will be of interest to you.

Firstly lets look at the core of the game and what it truly is. This game is primarily an economic simulator with political simulation second and diplomacy/warfare third. The game has loose comparisons to games such as Tropic and Anno but on a grand strategy scale in the world map. The meat and potatoes of the game are looking at your economy, or 'internal market' to see what you need, what you have a surplus of and using this information, you will build buildings. These range from primary industries such as agriculture and mining to manufacturing industries to produce goods like furniture, clothing through to more advanced goods such as weapons, engines and battleships. What you build will depend on a wide range of factors and also on what kind of nation you want to build. You will also establish and adjust trade routes e.g. by importing essential resources such as wood from a nation like Russia who has an endless supply to fuel your industry, or you can choose to build faster building lumber mills to build your own domestic supply to fuel your industry and focusing on exporting those finished goods. This is the heart of the game. If you think you will enjoy this, consider buying the game, if not, don't buy it.

Everything beyond this are the additional mechanics you will engage with from time to time. First among these is internal politics. Every nation starts with its own set of laws and influential political groups in power. Now, in theory you could maintain the status quo but it will be in your interest to engage with and slowly bring about changes which will be made easier as the political power of groups such as industrialists rise due to your growing industrial base. There's a decent amount of choice here in shaping your society and thematically this system ties very well with the core economic system creating a very intertwined link. Now at launch, it seemed too easy to pass laws and reform your country. Now, with the release of their first patch, the powerful opposing factions are pushing back and I've had to cancel and delay my reforms a few times and focus on other laws.

The next system is diplomacy. The way this works is depending on how powerful your nation is, you will have a pool of diplomatic points that you can invest or take back at any time. You can spend it to improve relations with your neighbour and great powers, you can spend some to maintain a trade agreement making trade less of a government burden (which ultimately leads to increased govt expenses), and you could also obtain defensive allies or regular allies. There are also more hostile forms of diplomacy. You can trigger an event which is essentially 'give me this or I invade' to which the target nation can try to gain support from other nations to defend them (or you bring nations to your support) and additional demands may be made in the lead up. Once everything is locked in, both sides have a final opportunity to back down but if not, then war begins.

Warfare in this game is very simple, there is no micro you can do or way to influence the battles themselves. Your job is to recruit the generals and recruit/arm the army with as good quality gear as possible beforehand and ensure you can maintain the financial expense as well as equipment for your soldiers. You just simply tell them to defend or attack one of the fronts and allocate generals to each one. Now this section draws a very disproportionate amount of criticism. some of it is justified, the UI for this system is a bit of a mess, it's really hard to know what is going on or figure out how to manage your generals and get the desired amount of troops where you want. The other criticism is in this design of warfare itself. They want to control individual armies. The thing is, most of a players time is spent managing their nation, there's no time to be managing armies. It all comes back to what the core of the game is. Imagine some settlement survival game and you tell your villager to go out and explore some ruins, but you have to then play a separate mini game to manage them whilst handling the rest of the game. So if micro in your warfare is an essential requirement, don't play this game (this is at the heart of most of the controversy and backlash imo).

Lastly, I want to cover some of the general issues the game has. At release there was a bug crashing my game frequently on saves, this only occurred on one of my computers but since the current patch, this has now been fixed. I don't personally experience any crashes on either computer. Late game lag is a known issue that game up late in development due to an ai change apparently but it will be fixed in time. The UI has pro's and cons but just be prepared to struggle to find what information you need at times until you get a hang of the system. Improvements can definitely be made here. That's pretty much it as far as I'm aware. Just one last thing, watching your land get populated with farms and mines is so enjoyable. The game looks absolutely gorgeous!

With all this said, for what the game is, it's incredibly enjoyable and I'd easily triple my playtime if I had more spare time and with the prospects of ongoing support and development for as long as the game is popular it's an easy game for me to recommend. If you want an economic simulator and nation builder with a political twist and diplomatic game play, then this game, check out a video on it and if the basic building, trading, market game play loop looks appealing, consider picking the game up. If you want warfare and controlling vast armies, don't pick up this game.

EU4 is a grand strategy game in which you can control any nation and guide them however you see fit through nearly 400 years beginning in 1444 till 1821. As hinted by the name, it tends to be more centered around europe with the richest content and detail in gameplay given to these nations but this difference is not so great that playing other nations is not fufilling in its own right, except perhaps maybe some native american regions such as brazil which are left entirely uncolonised (as a worst case scenario of the disparity in detail). You can play as a peaceful colonist, entrepreneurial trade dominator, world conquerer, diplomat seeking powerful allies and peaceful integration of nations and vassals, or focus on developing your own nation infrastructurally.
If the idea of spending dozens of hours gradually building the nation you desire alongside the potential for alternative history scenarios (eg: what if russia heavily colonised the americas?) appeals to you then perhaps watch a few youtubers to see if it's right for you?
Lastly, this is not a game you rush, at least, not without penalty. For example, rapid expansion can lead your nation culturally, politically and religiously divided internally and with angry neighbours uniting externally to end your imperial ambitions.