What would you want in Victoria 3?

So if Paradox even makes Vicky 3 what exactly would you want to see improved or added to the game?

Personally something I would like is if two of your spherelings go to war against each other you can try and meditate a peace between the two. For example lets say as Germany you've created Yugoslavia and have them and Bulgaria in your sphere. If they go to war you could try and meditate a peace between them along the lines of Bulgarian gives up a state/region/province to Yugoslav while Yugoslav pays Bulgaria some coin for the land. If you can't meditate a peace before the war ends then you get a relations hit with both of them and loose 50 influence with them.

Fix that damn sleeping ai bug!

I just closed my game again because of that.

MrHaakwood said:

Fix that damn sleeping ai bug!

I just closed my game again because of that.

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I've heard that you can fix that by switching to the AI and moving their troops manually. Just make sure to save and reload the game instead of switching back as that is also a cause of it.

In no particular order:

• Make Spheres of Influence based upon region. Having SoI based on countries leads to some rather bizarre situations. The breakup of China into 'substates' was a clunky solution to this. There is really no reason why in a hypothetical sequel SoI can't be based on region, rather than country.

• More in-depth great power diplomacy. The 19th Century was the era of 'big diplomacy'—intricate webs of alliances and agreements negotiated by bearded men in smoke-filled rooms. It's kind of a let down, then, that we only have three diplomatic options: alliance, military access, and war. It would be amazing if, say, I'm playing as Japan and I open up a negotiation interface that allows me to negotiate an agreement with the United Kingdom where in exchange for favourable tariffs on British-made goods and fleet basing rights, I get a defensive alliance directed against Russia.

• More in-depth political parties. The Victoria series probably has some of the most in-depth politics of any Paradox game, but it still falls far short. More often than not democracies become the land of the 100-year Conservative Reich, not allowing for any of the depth or political change that marked the 19th century. Parties should not be static entities with set start and end dates. I know it would be really difficult to code, but it would be amazing if parties grew, evolved, and died out based on how your country is developing. For example, the way it currently is, you could loose a major war as the United States and loose Texas to Mexico and your population becomes revanchist. However, the US political parties all stay isolationist and will not change in the face of public opinion.

• More in-depth governments and cabinets. The Victoria series stands out as it is the only Paradox game where your country's leaders and ministers have no faces or names—they are all abstracted into a political party and form of government. I'd really like something similar to the Hearts of Iron style cabinet where you have individual ministers with traits and ideologies. You could even randomly generate them the way generals are randomly generated, but still have historical personalties like Bismark, Salisbury, Gorchakov, and Roosevelt in for the Great Powers. It would be fascinating, especially for AI countries, to have a Wilhelm II-like situation where a mercurial monarch is constantly at odds with their cool-headed Prime Minister, or where political instability leads to a series of assassinations and resignations that paves the way for a civil war. Speaking of which...

• Rebels are more than just units with a black-red flag. I actually like the CK2 style rebellions where sometimes they're just units that wander around the map (eg Peasant rebels) or full-fledged states that break off into their own provinces and have their own leaders (faction rebels and so on). Rebels are currently one of the weakest aspects of Victoria II and all but the largest of rebellions (such as those huge ones we got in Vicky 1.0) are easily defeated by the player. Given that we can have dynamic tags now, it shouldn't be too hard to create a full-fledged civil war system. Rebels should range from an angry mob taking over a city part (represented by a provincial modifier), a large-scale uprising (way rebels currently work), to a full-scale civil war (whole regions secede from your country and set up their own government). So you could have a ACW-style civil war for any country and not have to rely on special event flags to set up for every possible contingency. Also, rebels need to fight each other like in CK2 and EU4.

• Internal markets and trade routes. Trade needs to be not so abstract. Given the way trade works, there is currently no way to impose embargoes or blockades, which is absurd. By introducing regional markets you could also have trade agreements (as mentioned above) and the ability to customise tariff levels depending on what country the goods came from.

• Recessions and depressions. Currently, it is really really hard to knock down any of the top 4 great powers with something other than a massive war. Although this is realistic (the British Empire didn't start declining until after WWI), it can get a bit boring for a player who has industrialised and become number two by 1860. It would be interesting if, for example you consistently operate under laissez-faire economics, to have increasingly destructive boom and bust cycles that eventually lead to a Great Depression. Recessions and depressions are currently in-game (I think) but they don't lead to the sort of change that real historical recessions and depressions actually caused.

• Prestige needs to be reworked. Unlike in EU, where prestige is a scale from -100 to 100, prestige in mid to late-game becomes absurd. Event choices are often between 'choice that gives benefit but makes people angry' and 'choice that makes people happy but costs 5 to 10 prestige'. That 10 prestige is a killer in 1836, but if you're a secondary or great power you have thousands of prestige by the 1850s so a 5 point hit is laughably small. Either they need to make it so prestige is a scale like in EU, or have prestige hits and gains scaled so it's a percent of your total rather than a fixed number.

• Make the end-date earlier or rework late-game mechanics. Gameplay really starts to break down as Victoria's game mechanics do not do a good job of simulating a post-WWI world. Although it's nice to be able to play to 1936, it feels wrong not to have submarines and aeroplanes play a larger role like they should, or to still be moving individual armies around the map like its Europa Universalis.

• Bureaucrats should act like capitalists under state planning. I've seen this asked for thousands of times and I have no idea why it's never been implemented. It would save a huge amount of micro-managing and headaches for players that want to play as socialist or communist states.

• Anarcho-liberals? What? I understand why they were introduced (reactionaries are angry conservatives, communists are angry socialists, so you need angry liberals) but their whole ideology and form of government are just really off. Aside from the fact that there was no historical precedent for them, they seemed to be the most successful of rebels in-game, especially in uncivilised states. They really need to be axed in the next games.

Move the notifications off the fucking play screen! How hard can it be!

Best Regards
Grey Wolf

Beyond that, here are some

-1- Rebels should be able to form their own states, which can be recognised or not by other powers. The dominions aspect in HoD is a step towards this so it shouldn't be too difficult to develop further.

-2- If somewhere is releasable it should get released if rebels seize power there and keep it for a number of years. Having just these giant rebel-filled blobs for years on end because the AI isn't bothering to conduct anti-rebel operations is nuts

-3- Powers that have a certain standard of industrialisation etc should be able to buy ships that have been developed by other nations, and operate them. In reality, Argentina, Chile etc bought dreadnoughts but massively lacked the capacity to build them - they simply had the capacity to operate and supply them

Best Regards
Grey Wolf

In Victoria 1 the ship names of your opponent mattered more because you could see them, but now it is hard to see them unless you are in the midst of a battle with them.

Similarly, if the game can generate generals and admirals, it would not seem so great a step to generate a Prime Minister, or a king/queen etc. This would personalise the game a bit more.

Rebel leaders have names and qualities, but when the rebels seize power do these leaders become the commanders of the armed forces? I don't think so, but it would make sense especially if there is an ideological revolution.

You should be able to offer as peace terms something other than what anyone has declared as a war aim. For example as France I attack Austria for Tyrol, Saxony (a great power) defends them and we get into a long interminable war. Saxony refuses a white peace and will only accept it 2 years later when I have massively increased war score by almost bankrupting myself. It would be far more sensible if I could offer a colony or something as an incentive to Saxony to make peace earlier.

Best Regards
Grey Wolf

Some more basic starting positions would interesting. In the first game you could start at 1836, 1861, or 1914. However in Vicky II when it was first released only started in 1836 with new dates added in later DLC and expansions. I think it would be nice to see more starting dates when and if the game first comes out.

Such as the start at the The 1848 Revolutions, the Crimean War, the Franco-Prussian War, the Indian Mutiny, one of the Balkan Wars, etc.

I agree with some of the posters above such as more in depth politics

Gaius Julius Magnus said:

Some more basic starting positions would interesting. In the first game you could start at 1836, 1861, or 1914. However in Vicky II when it was first released only started in 1836 with new dates added in later DLC and expansions. I think it would be nice to see more starting dates when and if the game first comes out.

Such as the start at the The 1848 Revolutions, the Crimean War, the Franco-Prussian War, the Indian Mutiny, one of the Balkan Wars, etc.

I agree with some of the posters above such as more in depth politics

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I think the reason for just one start dates originally was considering the fact you'd only have a 100 years to play through anything else would make it too short. Only reason they even added the second was so the CSA would have a fighting chance in the US Civil War.

Tariffs should have more of an impact with domestic producers charging more for their products when they are behind a tariff wall. (Maybe have them increase what they charge by 90% of whatever tariff rate you have on the product.) That way tariffs would have a real benefit for your domestic industry (who would be able to make larger profits) but at the cost of increasing the cost of goods for all of your POPs.

You should also be able to set individualized tariff rates for each product.

Official converters for games from EU4 and to HOI4.

Gaius Julius Magnus said:

Some more basic starting positions would interesting. In the first game you could start at 1836, 1861, or 1914.

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There was also a scenario with a starting date of 1881, but you're right, some more of those would be nice. What I found most annoying was that there was no way to accurately play the Balkan Wars or the Russo-Japanese war; a scenario starting at, say, 1901 after the death of Queen Victoria would be really cool.

more start points that dont require modding

Admiral Halsey said:

I think the reason for just one start dates originally was considering the fact you'd only have a 100 years to play through anything else would make it too short. Only reason they even added the second was so the CSA would have a fighting chance in the US Civil War.

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Also for each start date they have to rework the POPs, which is a lot of work for something most people won't take advantage of (iirc the majority of people play from 1836, even after they introduced the 1861 start date in V2).

I think they should fix the tariff system, I mean if your protectionist, then you can put it up all the way to 100%, and when I played, there was no negative repercussions, I would think that there could be just a certain percentage and they would stop trading with you. An example of this could be, the US is trading cotton and would trade it with you if the tariff was only say 45%, and if your tariff was say 50%, the US would just stop trading with you.

A better way of addressing infamy, such as EUIV's system where it's localized rather than the entire world deciding that you're an immediate threat to the global balance of power because you stole 5 worthless desert provinces from Egypt. The flaw in current infamy is also inherent in that without an event system specifically designed for it the USA should get 50-60 infamy for the land gained in the historical Mexican-American war, I understand that most GPs didn't care very much IRL, but I shouldn't get 60 infamy for taking the USA's frontier as Mexico when they get 0 for taking mine.

I'd like to see more social reforms such as those available in many mods (women's rights, segregation, ect). So that the player can try to make social progress very fast with realistic consequences. It would be a good challenge to get near modern social reforms in a 19th century nation or enforce equality in every colony (which should be difficult) .

I agree with others that 1821 makes sense as a start date (even if you can't indusrialize for decades).

Also, just a minor point, satellite nations (but not dominions) should have a lighter tinted version of the mother nation's color to reflect their status in the rest of the world (British Egypt is often depicted as light red, for example). I'd also like to see more little options, like naming provinces or moving capitals (even if the latter is somewhat ahistorical).

I had a dream about playing Victoria III and it starts with a voice-over on loading the saved game, telling you what the current situation is. It was clearly in beta as it said 'Lithuania' when it meant 'Lotharingia' and 'to the right' when it meant 'to the East' but it was quite a cool idea, describing the current state of the country of the saved game being loaded, and its place in the world.

Best Regards
Grey Wolf

Another thing it did in the game was to label more of the areas held by the player's country. For example, the country I was playing had several enclaves around so it gave those a label on the overview map.

Best Regards
Grey Wolf

I would like to have some features from Crusader Kings. Of course we can't play as dynasties because that makes no frighing sense, but what if we play instead as political parties or movements, which can change ovef time?

We can take the example of Prussia:

We have 4 movements to start with, each has a few attributes:
-Conservatives (Strongly Monarchist, Protestant, anti-Democratic, anti-Austrian, Slightly pro-German)
-Nationalists (Slightly Monarchist, Christian, anti-French, anti-Polish, Strongly pro-German)
-Liberals (Slightly Republican, Christian, Slightly pro-German)
-Socialist (Strongly Republican, Agnostic, Slightly pro-German, Internationalist)

At the beginning we can choose one of these factions. Let's say we start with the Conservatives. The Conservaties are the rulling movement of Prussia.
You play as State Council President "Carl von Wilych und Lotum" (what a f$#*king long family name).
You have two goals: get more power and keep Prussia stable.
To gain more power you can either plot to force the king to give you more legal powers, but other conservatives wouldn't like that at all and you might be removed from power.
Another way to increase your power would be to reorganize your movement. You can form your movement into a party, which would move it slightly in the direction "pro-democratic" (just a tiny tiny bit). Forming a party gives you more power of the movements direction but some will people will break with you and start different parties instead. After forming your party you can give it a name, let's say "Prussian State Party". You can now step by step open up to other idrologies. Maybe you want to appeal to the Polish minority more and open up towards Catholics, or you want to appeal to Nationalists and turn anti-Austrian instead.
A third way to increase power is to gain the kings friendship and trust. If you manage Prussia well the kings trust will automaticly increase, but if you mess up you might get removed.

Getting removed from power is not the end of the world. If the king (or later the parliament) still favors your party or movement you will just continue as Head of Goverment but with another character, if you fall out of favor your new party-leader has to work his way back into goverment.

You can interact with other important party members, with the royal family, with other parties, with foreign powers and the military.

Other stuff I imagine:
-party funding
-coup d'etat
-friends and enemies
-personal traits
-public opinion
-press campaigns
-party mergers
-coalition goverments
-open rebellion/revolution
-international party networks
-...

That are my ideas for internal politics

I have thought a bit about my ideas and would like to elaborate.

I imagine Victoria III as a game mostly focused on power struggles.

The easiest way to success and expansion is of course to start as the goverment of a great power, but I imagine that the most fun way would be to start as a oppositional movement.

All movements are influenced by following factors:

Organisation:
Ranging from "Decentral Organisation" to "State Party".
I imagine the folowing stages of development.

-Decentral Organisation: leaders more or less "pop up", their leaders are often charismatic; you as the "leader" have nearly no control over the movements directions but the movements message is simple and appeals to many. Many factions exist and will seldom break with the movement, but sooner or later they will want to centralise and found a party (or several).

-Loose Organisation: Time to choose a party name, acronyme and colour! Once you turn into a party it will be nearly impossible to turn back (I will explain that later on). You as the leader can influence and support other party members, which will be more likely to succeed you. Some members will break with you and found their own party. For example: you start as Socialist and turn into a Marxist-Socialist Party, some will break with you and found Anarchist or Christian-Socialist Parties instead.
You will get money based on the size of your party and your members socio-economic background. You can mobilize strikes and rebellions. You can spread your message through newspapers.

-Central Organisation: You can kick people out, but be careful, they will hate you for that. You have more power over who is to succeed you but you will also gain more rivals. Your rebellions and strikes will be more efficient.

-Cult of Personality: Most other parties will hate you, but your party will be loyal to you. If you are popular and charismatic your party will rise to new hights, if you are uncharismatic and unpopular your part will fall with you. This is only a option if you have a great leader, if you don't you shouldn't try this.
You can freely choose your successor, but he might be as popular as you and your former friends might turn against him, hoping to gain power for themselves. You can instead appoint a commission, which would produce a more popular, but probably weaker successor and would reduce you back to Central Organisation.

-State Party: You have to have "Central Organisation" or "Cult of Personality" and you have to be the rulling party. democracy will be abolished. Your ideology will become the state's ideology. All other parties will be outlawed but they might continue as underground organisations. You can try to surpress them and kill their leaders but that might lead to frustations in your own party. Factions in your party will turn into movements and maybe parties should you turn towards democracy again.


Monarchy

-Yes

-No

Voting System
Two different options.

-Proportional Voting System: smaller parties like this one, will reduce revolt risk but parties will split more often into smaller parties. Coalition goverment is usual.

-Plurality Voting System: The winner takes it all. The governing party will try to pass this, but will be near impossible if it is in a coalition goverment. Smaller parties don't like that and minorities neither. Parties will clinge together and seldom split but power struggles will be common.

Women's Suffrage

-Yes

-No

Suffrage

-Equal Suffrage: the name says it all. One person, one vote. Conservatives and monarchists will probably not like that, but the masses will.
-Census Suffrage: the rich get more represantion than the poor. The working class will hate you for this, but the rich will love you!

Chambers
How your parliament works.

-Lords and Commons: Only avaible as a monarchy. Nobles get their own chamber and will nearly always vote conservative. The working class will not like that.

-Two Chambers: You got two chambers, one for your realms regions. Centrists won't like that but large minorities will.

-Single Chamber: This is not a good idea if you have a multi-ethnical realm, but it makes laws pass slightly faster.

Goverment Type

-Parliamentary System: head of state and head of goverment are seperated positions. The head of state, may it be a president or a king, has nearly no power over how the country is governt. Monarchists, conservatives and charismatic leaders don't like this system.

-Dual System: Both the head of state and the parliament have influence, which leads to power struggles between these two. This works best a compromise to not upset conservatives to much and to keep the working class satisfied, if you are a republic. Ambitous monarchs will dislike this at first if you are a monarchy.

-Presidential System: only avaible for republics. Head of Goverment and head of states are the same. The parialemt is limited in influence. You will concentrate a lot of power but people might try to kill you because of that.

-Absolute Monarchy: Only for monarchies. The Monarch can ignore the parliament. Monarchists like that but most movement and parties will fight against this. Because you are a party leader you will probaly fight this.

-Dictatorship: You have all a lot of power, try to survive without getting paranoid and tyrannical. You can still have a monarchy but the monach will be as powerless as the parliament. Everyone hates you if you aren't very charismatic.

Freedom of Speech

-Free Speech

-Mild Censorship

-Harsh Censorship


... and other stuff