Victoria 3 Full Review

[tenthousandimmortals]

Victoria 3 is a fun game. It is a complex and seemingly deep experience. However, if you spend time exploring the game, you realize that complexity and depth are not the same thing. Victoria 3 is very complex, but often this complexity offers frustration rather than a pleasant experience.

Note: The purpose of this review is to give you NEW info on Victoria 3. I know the war and diplomacy in Victoria 3 are bad. I want to talk about all the other stuff.

TLDR: Even if they fix diplomacy and warfare, this game is still trash.

EDIT: I have around 76 hours in this game at the time of writing

The GOOD:

1.) Line go up. Seriously, watching your economy grow is extremely engaging. Its a lot of fun to change production and see your country get stronger. This is probably the first game that gives a good feeling of what industrialization is like.

While other games can capture the feeling of growth or advancement, this is the first game I've seen that really makes it feel as though you are taking a primitive society and emerging an industrialized juggernaut.

2.) Focusing on the economy as the main driver of fun is not a bad game idea. As your economy grows, you require more resource. This leads to development but also expansion, both colonial and through continental wars.

3.) Trade and markets are actually important. Unlike other Paradox games, the world-wide nature of trade is actually represented and makes a significant impact on your games.

4.) You can get achievements with mods. Enough said.

The BAD:

Unfortunately, the game has an almost never-ending amount of shortfalls. Every point in the "Good" column above (except for #4) is limited by the implementation. Furthermore, this is a Paradox game. This means that all the same issues that Paradox games have are present.

The BAD and OLD:

1.) The game is slow. No really, the games takes many more hours than any of Paradox's other titles like HOI4.
This is not bad per say, but it means you cannot get a good experience playing for only 2 hours. You need to play for 10.

Furthermore, this means that youtubers will interact with this content a lot less. Each video they will make on Victoria 3 will require them to work much longer and harder and thusly will be avoided. (See new FeedbackGaming video for proof)

2.) The game is slow. No really. Wait, don't look away. This isn't an an accidental copy and paste of the above. In addition to the game experience itself being slow, the game itself is slow.
Since wars are automated, and micromanaging the economy comes in bursts, there is a lot of waiting. The game basically looks like this:

First, look at your market.
Then build what you need. (This is added to your build queue)
Wait until everything is built.
Then repeat.

You don't have to be a genius to figure out that waiting will be a large part of the game. Unfortunately, this really is catastrophic. This is because the fastest speed you can set the game too is just too slow. This is a problem that plagues other Paradox titles as well.

3.) The game is slow. But it gets worse. When playing HOI4, the lategame gets extremely laggy. The computer needs to do many calculations and it can't keep up.

Victoria 3 is worse because lategame is the whole point. In HOI4, you get done what you wanted in the early years of the game. In Victoria 3, many countries (like Japan) only get good later during this time period. This means that playing the lategame is kind of the whole point.
By 1880, my game could not keep up with 5x speed. So I was forced to play at 4x. By 1890, even that was too much. Now I was at 3x speed. Let me tell you, playing the game at 3x speed is excruciatingly slow. Its actually torture. Playing any faster speed has the game stutter like it was having a seizure.

4.) Crashes. They don't usually happen. However, often the computer does not have time to run all its calculations at 5x speed and when a war breaks out it causes the whole game to crash.

Over a gaming session of around 15 hours I had somewhere around 6 crashes. Not great but not the worst. Still should be fixed though.

5.) Remember how in HOI4 the game mechanics really ♥♥♥♥♥♥ you over sometimes? Yeah? Well, welcome to Victoria 3! Its the same stuff all over again. If your state rebels, you enter into a war with it. However, if it splinters internally (i.e. has a revolt of its own), that part just leaves.

Example: You own Oman. Oman rebels from you. You land your troops in Oman. Oman splits into Oman and Revolutionary Oman. You subdue Oman.

However, Revolutionary Oman is not Oman. Revolutionary Oman is an independent country who doesn't need no overlord. Remember how Dobby was freed by Harry Potter? Well yah, same thing here. Revolutionary Oman has clothes and is now free and there isn't anything you can do about it.

(Note: You can attack them, but by now they have their own allies and you get a diplo penalty for taking back your own territory. Great work Paradox!!!)

6.) Yeah no. This is just #5 but again. Lets say you are defending Afghanistan (you own) from an Indian invasion. Lets say Afghanistan rebels. Yeah, your troops are immediately teleported back to your home country.

Yeah, your entire army was in Afghanistan, but no one cares and you lost the entire territory. Thanks Paradox.

7.) Navy still sucks. I mean, its really doesn't have a point. Ironclads should be immune to wooden ships but aren't.
You should be able to blockade a country but you can't. (You can raid a node, but not surround a country).

Naval battles have no meaning whatsoever. The fleets just regenerate and do it again. Since everything in Victoria 3 is production and no storage, it means that the fleet has the same upkeep no matter what.

In other words, your fleet getting wiped out means nothing since it has no military value and does nothing bad to your economy. Your fleet will be back in action in a few weeks without any impact at all. There does not seem to be warscore associated with fleets either btw.

8.) War diplomacy sucks. I invade Korea (as Japan) and need to fight China. I win. I invade Vietnam, have to fight China again.

Big sigh, why can't we have something like in EUV where you can stop a country from
meddling in your affairs? If I beat you completely, you should not then challenge me 5 min later.

The Ugly:

The BAD and the NEW

9.) The UI is absolutely awful. There aren't lenses like in HOI4 and you don't always know where resources or countries are.

The view is dynamic, meaning that being in the military tab gives you a different view depending on what else you have open.
This is theoretically great but really just makes everything confusing.

10.) By far the worst part of Victoria 3 is that they don't tell you anything. For example, if you complete a few objectives then you get the "Meiji Restoration Event".

What does the event entail? Who knows, they won't tell you.

So much of this game is stupid guesswork. Did you know that China starts off with a huge debuff due to the addiction to opium? Yeah, I didn't know that. Its a small icon in one of the many menus. You don't know its there till you read a wiki.

You know how to fix it? You have to launch the "ban Opium" decision. Usually you would go the decision tab and click it. Unfortunately, Vic3 doesn't have a decision tab.

I looked for hours on where the decision is. The game doesn't tell you. The wiki doesn't tell you. Apparently, decisions are a sub-menu in the journal tab. Well ♥♥♥♥ me silly.

(example)
When you have a war, you can bring 500 troops and your enemy 300. When the battle begins, the battle has 20 of their troops fighting 12 of yours.

Why 12 and 20? No idea. Why do they outnumber you in the battle? No idea.
How many tiles do you lose/win during a battle? No idea.
Why do you sometimes take tiles when you defend? No idea.
If I have two generals on a frontline, which one fights? No idea.

So much of this game is garbage guesswork.
The build queue doesn't tell you which regions you are building in.

The migration edict (per province) seems to work but does not show its effect in the provincial population tooltip. Is it working? No idea.
How effectively is it working? No idea.
Where are migrants coming from? No idea.

The private health institution decreases mortality. By how much? No idea.
The tooltip literally says -0%. Since it doesn't show the decimal, you literally cannot see its effect at all in the tooltip.
How about when it gets to a whole number. Well, then you get -1% less mortality per wealth.
What does "per wealth mean". Well ♥♥♥♥ me if I know.

This game is absolute trash at telling you the important information.

11.) The (trade) Economy. (Starts screaming) Paradox. PaRaDoX! PARADOX!!! Its so trash. Such a steaming turd.

Lets say you have the closed economy law. This means no trade. Many factories produce 2 things at once.

For example, an armament factory produces both guns and artillery. However, the prices of both goods have their own market prices.
This means that you can end up in a situation where guns are highly values but not artillery.
This is a huge problem because if these can't be independently toggled, then you might be producing too much of one good and not enough of another.

Most buildings are really good with this. For example, livestock has the ability to independently control meat and fabric output.

However, some factories don't work like this. The shipyards require you to be building
steamships to build ironclads. You cannot control them independently.

This means that you can produce too many steamships and not enough ironclads. Lets say you really need the ironclads, because you are in a war.

Well you are ♥♥♥♥♥♥.
Workers only work in a factory if it is making money. However, the steamship output is making the average profit from the factory to be negative so workers refuse to work in the factory.
There is no way for you to increase ironclad production. What you need to do is subsidize the whole operation. You basically "buy" the extra steamships. This is extremely expensive. I was running -224k in subsidies during my last war. Its absolute trash.

Why did my example above use the example of the closed economy? Well, because trade is trash too! Your population lives on what you produce.

So, if your clothes are expensive, they riot as they can't clothe themselves. Okay, you say, just produce more clothes. Well, last game I was playing as Austria. I was producing 11k in clothes. 6k of that was going to Prussia ALONE as trade.

It was literally impossible to make my population happy. As soon as my prices fell, another country came to take my stuff.
I was making money from that, but tariffs of 10k are not enough to have wasted half my economy on making clothes only for my population to hate me anyway.

The tariffs on goods are capped at 20% (I checked) and you can only embargo countries. If I want everyone to stop buying my clothes there is literally nothing I can do but embargo everyone or have a closed economy.

(by the way, 20% is considered "protectionism")

(Edit) I forgot to mention that if you build all of your factories in one province, then the toggles apply to all of them. You cant have half working on soft wood and the others on hardwood. You can have this if you have two provinces since toggles are province specific.

12.) Brain Dead AI. I mean, not a new problem, but I'm more concerned with the other parts of the problem.
Namely, trade is always worse for you. Say you produce a lot of opium, everyone will buy it.
Say you want to buy opium. Well, you are out of luck.
Opium only occurs in poor countries and they are technologically behind and don't develop.

Therefore, they will never get the economy or technology to really export in bulk. Want rubber? It a tech deep in the tech tree.
You aren't going to see any small country selling it. You have to go get it yourself.

I can't just vassalize Siam. I have to take that territory myself and then build rubber plants as otherwise no rubber will ever appear in the market in large quantities.


In conclusion, the game can be fun but really stinks when you get into it.
The game slows down and crashes the more you play. The longer you trade, the worse it gets for your population. The more developed your economy, the worse trade is as precious resources never appear on the market. If you are an eastern country, it takes forever to abolish serfdom and therefore catch up to the West. You constantly encounter things that aren't ever explained. The entire economy turns into a grindfest of just putting things in the build queue after looking at the market. The countries have little flavor. Your populace will hate you always, especially for things not under your control. This game really need a lot more work.


BTW: everything I see in the active topics is the same for me. Like why the hell is opium required for medicine?

EDIT: I get the historical aspect of opium. I'm more concerned that you need thousands of the stuff and the 200 opium produced by Afghanistan is not going to cut it. Even as the UK you probably won't India producing enough for your own needs.

[Zero, Dark Knight]

I agree with the opium stuff, debuffs to nations, "favourite items by pops" etc, it's all too hidden and the devs do a horrible job at making this game showcase its features.
Not only that but the fact many items are required by higher techs, but aren't actually that available, opium as you mentioned at the bottom.
State rebels are a problem which I think they're working on, so is the AI.

Navy... absolutely, it doesn't seem vital for this game.

Crashes will be fixed, give it time.

I noticed you didn't say how many hours you have on this game total, can I ask how many?

[Kimlin]

Is HOI4 the only other PDS title you’ve played? This game is extremely short compared to CK2, CK3, EU4 or Stellaris.

[tenthousandimmortals]

Originally posted by Kimlin:

Is HOI4 the only other PDS title you’ve played? This game is extremely short compared to CK2, CK3, EU4 or Stellaris.

I have EU4 and HOI and Stellaris. The difference is that in HOI4 I play Japan and knock out the major powers by 1939. So long yes, but lategame HOI4 is not fun as you already won.

EU4 and Stellaris are almost as long but the focus on warfare makes them potentially shorter. In Stellaris you control the map size so it can be a small galaxy. As for EU4, that's probably the closest in length. The issue there is that if you big country, then you win. If you play as a major nation on regular mode, you can destroy most enemies pretty quickly.

Vic3 is more econ based so just sitting around building an economy is the game and not just a prelude for war like in EU4.

[tenthousandimmortals]

Originally posted by Zero, Dark Knight:

I agree with the opium stuff, debuffs to nations, "favourite items by pops" etc, it's all too hidden and the devs do a horrible job at making this game showcase its features.
Not only that but the fact many items are required by higher techs, but aren't actually that available, opium as you mentioned at the bottom.
State rebels are a problem which I think they're working, so is the AI.

Navy... absolutely, it doesn't seem vital for this game.

Crashes will be fixed, give it time.

I noticed you didn't say how many hours you have on this game total, can I ask how many?

I'm at 76 hours according to steam. Feels like more though.

[tenthousandimmortals]

Rebellions can be so stupid. As japan, I have two rebellions that are rebelling for the opposite reasons. The scholars rebel (rebellion soon notification) since I still have monarchy. When I started to abolish monarchy the military is now rebelling (progress 60%). FML

[Zero, Dark Knight]

This is a lot of information to take in, but I'm starting to get the idea.

AI needs to produce its own things.
Tool tips need to improve.
Information needs to be clear, menu locations more noticeable.
Tabs more informative.

Revolutions / rebellions need to be immune to splinting further.

Game stability.

Navy needs a more important role in-game (might be difficult.)

Game clock (not to be confused with -game speed/cpu ticks/cycles.) is too slow for you.
(I doubt they can fix this. honestly. maybe 5 speed forever later on would be good!)

-right, thank you for the read, I hope Paradox reads this too, it's pretty good stuff!

[Heraclius Caesar]

Great review, however:

Originally posted by tenthousandimmortals:

Like why the hell is opium required for medicine?

Simply put, because Opium and its derivatives are the most effective pain killers known to man.

[tenthousandimmortals]

Originally posted by Zero, Dark Knight:

This is a lot of information to take in, but I'm starting to get the idea.

AI needs to produce its own things.
Tool tips need to improve.
Information needs to be clear, menu locations more noticeable.
Tabs more informative.

Revolutions / rebellions need to be immune to splinting further.

Game stability.

Navy needs a more important role in-game (might be difficult.)

Game clock (not to be confused with -game speed/cpu ticks/cycles.) is too slow for you.
(I doubt they can fix this. honestly. maybe 5 speed forever later on would be good!)

-right, thank you for the read, I hope Paradox reads this too, it's pretty good stuff!

Sounds like a great summary. I tried to focus on the stuff that is not as noticeable. The more obvious points like that the warfare system is not great or fulfilling and that diplomacy is lacking are also important but everyone is already talking about them. For example, it is really unfulfilling for combat to have very bland images and no models. Will say that this is a common problem in HOI4 as well. Until the new update a few months ago, the japanese had the same plane model (zero) for all planes for the last 6 years. It really looked horrendous and could have been easily solved.

[tenthousandimmortals]

Originally posted by Heraclius Caesar:

Great review, however:

Originally posted by tenthousandimmortals:

Like why the hell is opium required for medicine?

Simply put, because Opium and its derivatives are the most effective pain killers known to man.

I do agree with the statement. There is an attempt in the game to somewhat adhere to reality. The bigger issue is not that the historical basis is wrong, but rather than game-wise its not the best idea. It's connected to the AI being brain dead.

Yunnan province in China had the ability to have something like 222 opium plantations. It could singlehandedly provide opium for most of the world. Unfortunately, it will never be properly developed by the AI and if you don't directly invade and take that territory, then Opium will never appear in the right amounts for it to be useful. If I have a 400 man army, then I need several thousand opium. And thats just for my army, not including that the population will want 800-1k. So, AI Afghanistan's 10 opium plantations will not be enough.

Historically, the Indian subcontinent produced a lot of opium. As Britain however, you don't directly control that land either (its a vassal) and thus you won't get that opium production even if its technically "yours". So, unlike historically, you won't be using opium for your masses.

[VoiD]

I liked the game, but the performance and crashing issues were far too terrible for me to want to replay it.

But yeah, I can't really disagree with the points you've made.

[Rainer Steiner]

+1

Thank you for taking the time to write down what needs to improve.

[tenthousandimmortals]

Originally posted by Steiner v10.0:

+1

Thank you for taking the time to write down what needs to improve.

Thank you for reading it! I was just really annoyed with my last game and thought that a lot of points are not getting attention. Like, its bad that warfare sucks, but I literally cannot play at faster than 3x speed in 1900 as the game stops working.

[Rainer Steiner]

Originally posted by tenthousandimmortals:

Originally posted by Steiner v10.0:

+1

Thank you for taking the time to write down what needs to improve.

Thank you for reading it! I was just really annoyed with my last game and thought that a lot of points are not getting attention. Like, its bad that warfare sucks, but I literally cannot play at faster than 3x speed in 1900 as the game stops working.

Haven´t gotten that far yet. But Lag is bread and butter for PDX-games^^ I prefer to achieve my goals before it gets crazy :D

[Heraclius Caesar]

Originally posted by tenthousandimmortals:

Originally posted by Heraclius Caesar:

Great review, however:



Simply put, because Opium and its derivatives are the most effective pain killers known to man.

I do agree with the statement. There is an attempt in the game to somewhat adhere to reality. The bigger issue is not that the historical basis is wrong, but rather than game-wise its not the best idea. It's connected to the AI being brain dead.

Yunnan province in China had the ability to have something like 222 opium plantations. It could singlehandedly provide opium for most of the world. Unfortunately, it will never be properly developed by the AI and if you don't directly invade and take that territory, then Opium will never appear in the right amounts for it to be useful. If I have a 400 man army, then I need several thousand opium. And thats just for my army, not including that the population will want 800-1k. So, AI Afghanistan's 10 opium plantations will not be enough.

Historically, the Indian subcontinent produced a lot of opium. As Britain however, you don't directly control that land either (its a vassal) and thus you won't get that opium production even if its technically "yours". So, unlike historically, you won't be using opium for your masses.

Funny, you make it sound like this "economic simulator" forces the player to go forth and conquer to take what they need, which so many have vehemently stated is "NOT" the purpose of the game.

In all seriousness that's so stupid that the AI is that incapable. And I get it, Vic 3 is a sandbox and blah blah blah, but at the very least the game aims to be historically accurate at the start date. Well, by the start date Morphine was already commercially available, and as you mentioned the poppy fields in the East and Far East were pumping out many tons of Opium, so it's really nonsensical for the devs to not investigate and fix the Opium supply issue that so many face in this game.

[tenthousandimmortals]

Originally posted by Steiner v10.0:

Originally posted by tenthousandimmortals:

Thank you for reading it! I was just really annoyed with my last game and thought that a lot of points are not getting attention. Like, its bad that warfare sucks, but I literally cannot play at faster than 3x speed in 1900 as the game stops working.

Haven´t gotten that far yet. But Lag is bread and butter for PDX-games^^ I prefer to achieve my goals before it gets crazy :D

I totally understand that. Thats how I love to play in HOI4.
However, I was playing Vicky3 Japan. It takes literal ages until I could repeal serfdom and without that you literally cannot do anything. The education institutions, institutions in general, require no serfdom. Combine that with Japan (and other asian countries) being far behind technologically and you get a really really late start.