So, I think this might be a first for me: I've actually officially finished a Paradox Grand Strategy Game! I've been playing these games for well over a decade, and feel like I've "won" quite a few of them; but typically you get to a point where you're the Undisputed Lord Of Everything, and it gets too tedious to just run out the clock until you reach the artificial end date.
Victoria 3 has a few advantages in this regard. It is objectively a "shorter" game, "only" covering the 100 years from 1836 to 1936 as opposed to the centuries of Europa Universalis or Stellaris. My total Steam time on the game is currently 150 hours; that includes my training Sweden runs, an early aborted Belgium run and some time left idling on the pause screen. I'm pretty sure this game ended up north of 100 hours, but that's still much less time than a completionist Europa Universalis campaign would take.
Besides the shortness, I think some of the mechanics of Victoria 3 keep things feeling more engaging in the end-game. Stellaris kind of does this with the Crisis, but once you beat the Crisis there's even less motivation than before to keep going. Victoria 3 doesn't necessarily pull you into a Great War (although that's certainly a possibility), but the dynamism of the game meant that, at least for me, I had to keep on my toes and not get too complacent. Smaller powers are still at the mercy of larger powers. If you are a large power, you're extremely unlikely to have actually conquered a large chunk of the map: rather, you may have grown your direct territory somewhat, but most of your influence is in the form of "soft power" through political alliances, power blocs, economic imperialism, control of markets, and so on. You do not directly control all of these things. So, for example, in my game I might see, say, France trying to conquer Madagascar, which is an independent nation but a part of my Trade League. I could decide to just let that slide, or threaten to escalate that conflict into a major war to keep the nation and its natural resources available for my own capitalist enterprises.
Internal dissension is also a compelling factor. For me, early in the game these felt more fraught, as when monarchists threatened a civil war or when the labor unions organized against our adoption of a laissez-faire economy. Later in the game I was mostly facing indigenous uprisings by native Africans in my colonies. These are far less of a threat to the nation as a whole, because they are tiny; but it does still require a response. In the short term this means marshaling troops, in the longer term checking the causes of the uprisings to try and prevent future ones. In my case, while these populations were doing extremely well by indigenous standards, they were also significantly poorer than the average standard of living in my country, which fed immense discontent. So the solution is to make them richer - not just employing people in rubber plantations and oil fields, but also making automotive factories, art academies and glassworks.
This particular mechanic was really interesting to me. For much of the game I used Colonial Exploitation in my African colonies, and for many decades the situation seemed fairly stable. I reached a point where I was having a hard time increasing my extraction industries' productivity: these states had a ready supply of laborers, but too few mechanics and engineers. As colonial wages were low, people in the metropole were reluctant to migrate there for jobs. So I started constructing local Universities to increase the Qualifications of the locals so they could take those jobs. That seemed to gradually help a bit. I eventually realized that as these (completed) colonies were all Unincorporated States, they didn't actually get any of the advantages from my Institutions, particularly Public Education. So I started the process of incorporating them. This increased education access, which increases their literacy... and literacy, in turn, increases their expected standard of living. So, basically, they were learning more about the world, and realizing how much better they could have it. Anyways, I just love this kind of dynamism in the game. More education and literacy is good - it increases innovation and qualifications, helping your technology spread and productivity - but it also potentially increases social unrest, which can destabilize a region or entire country. It's complex, just like history! I love it!
For a long time I thought I was way ahead in tech and worried that I would run out of things to research, maintaining expensive universities for little purpose, so I stopped building additional universities once I maxed out a stack of 50 in my capital and had an additional one per state for qualifications. I ended up getting nearly all the techs but not quite, with I think 5 undiscovered at the end, 1 which I was researching and 2 which were spreading to me. From some light online research, it sounds like the meta-strategy is to accept the "ahead of time" penalty and omit researching tech from earlier tiers while you focus on later tiers. This helps you avoid getting into the situation I encountered, where I would go for long stretches without any Tech Spread because I already knew everything everyone else did.
This does raise a recurring issue I've encountered with playing Paradox grand strategy games: the core mechanics for these games change significantly over time, so any time I Google for strategy advice or mechanics explanations, even if I find something that was accurate at the time it was written, it's very likely to have changed by now. This ended up being particularly impactful for this game because they had just released a brand-new update, "The Great Wave", that includes a DLC (which I haven't bought) but also a major reworking of naval combat and minor updates for many other things. Even when reading contemporary information on Reddit about, say, the ideal composition of ships in a fleet, that information would be based on bugs in the current game, which were patched during the course of my playthrough, tossing that initial analysis out the window.
But one silver lining is that in 2026 it does seem like it's easier to find info in text-based venues like Reddit, the Steam Community and the Paradox Plaza forums. A few years ago when researching EU or Stellaris it seemed like most information was buried in YouTube videos, which I am never going to watch.
Going into my actual campaign:
I think my last post ended in the early 1900s. The last few decades generally felt a bit slower than the start of the game, as I was larger and had my finger in more pies, but as noted above it did generally feel "faster" than EU or Stellaris. After forming the United Netherlands I mostly focused on expanding my African colonies, picking up a few minor powers in Europe to join my Trade League but for the most part ignoring continental politics.
I had a couple of dust-ups with the United States. They declared on me to seize the Panama Canal, and there were multiple wars where they would declare on Mexico; Mexico would then call in Great Britain and myself and absolutely mop the floor with them. During our last war, a Proletarian Revolt broke out in the US so they were fighting (a second) civil war while also fighting the entirety of Central America, South America and Europe. The Proletarians were able to win the civil war, whereupon they immediately capitulated in the world war so they could focus on their new worker-oriented nation. So it ended up being almost exactly like Russia turning into the Soviet Union during World War 1, just with America this time. I thought that was pretty neat! We stayed friendly after that.
Near the end of the game I started taking subjects in Africa from diplomatic plays. Typically I would oppose a European power that was trying to subjugate an Unrecognized power in my Trade Union, and as a condition for joining the Play I would demand their colony or transferring an African subject. I also did this with the United States and Liberia. The colony transfers (like taking the rest of Angola from the Portuguese) went smoothly and let me get some complete states. Subject transfers proved trickier: subjects seem to be pretty terrible at managing internal revolutionary movements, secessions and uprisings, so every few years you're dragged into putting down a rebellion. The AI might be able to handle it on its own, but not always, and it's always fastest to send your own army to the front.
In, say, Europa Universalis it's almost always better to let subjects manage their own affairs, as they accept local cultures and will face fewer uprisings. That may be true at the start of Victoria 3 as well, but by the end-game I had secured hard-won legislative victories to enact Multiculturalism and Total Separation, which respectively significantly lower the cultural acceptance maluses from different ethnic backgrounds and religions. If you combine that with my significantly richer economy, welfare, and being a human being who knows how to play the game, I now think that I should have tried to integrate those late-game subjects ASAP instead of playing whack-a-mole for them.
I've mentioned in previous posts that I had shifted from always promoting left-wing parties to instead alternating between the Socialist and Conservative parties in power. This helped with getting the specific laws passed that I wanted, like Laissez-Faire from the Conservative union; I also made a multi-party alliance with the Intelligentsia specifically to pass Total Separation. But by the end of the game I had settled back into just pumping the Socialist party as much as I could and keeping them in power. Single-interest-group parties have a big advantage by not having ideological differences. Even if, say, the Conservatives got 50% of the vote and the Socialists got 40%, the Socialists would inevitably have much higher Legitimacy, so I'd rather the Socialists get 45% than the Conservatives get 55% since I end up with a higher Legitimacy at single-IG 45%. Even if a multi-interest-group party manages to align on ideology, there's a very high chance that a new leader will take over an interest group during their term, which causes your Legitimacy to instantly drop.
Other than the occasional Diplomatic Play and even more occasional shooting war, my gameplay in the last few decades was entirely focused on construction and economic expansion: I had all the laws I wanted, was diplomatically secure and only used diplomacy to try and finagle independent nations into my Trade League. My rough (government) building priority level looks like:
- Expand Construction Sectors if the Private Investment Pool has untapped capacity.
- Addressing Market Access issues - building at-capacity Railroads and Ports, or making cheaper goods that are inputs to those.
- Expanding Government Administration to collect available taxes.
- Expanding at-capacity industries that produce Government or Military goods that are currently expensive; or making cheaper the input goods to these that keep those buildings from hiring.
- "Starter Package" for new colonies: Trade Center, University, Railroad, Power Plant, Art Academy, one food-producing Arable Resource.
- Addressing starvation or low standard of living by building food or job-producing buildings.
- Only if running a consistent surplus: More construction sectors or military or universities.
- Strategic investing in specific foreign nations that I am trying to coerce into my Trade League.
- Expanding the highest-Productivity at-capacity buildings, up to size 50.
- Expanding lower-Productivity at-capacity buildings or starting new industries if all domestic ones are at 50+ size already.
When building in foreign nations, I focus on raw goods (crops and resources) and local services (railroads, ports, trading centers and electricity). My thinking has been that once that nation is in my market, I want my own pops to be making the high-value finished manufactured goods, and I want their pops to be supplying cheap natural resources. I want to buy their cheap stuff and sell them my expensive stuff. I haven't crunched the numbers or researched that strategy, though. In particular, it is common for industry buildings to be significantly more profitable than resource buildings, so if my primary goal is to get enough influence to drag them into my trade league, it might make more sense to, say, build three factories instead of ten farms.
While dipping into the community, I've seen Victoria 3 repeatedly described as a "Line Go Up Simulator." I chuckle at that - it's very true! For me it's very satisfying to see wealth, population, literacy and more steadily ticking up in response to your gardening of the nation. I've also heard people say that the game is called Victoria because she is the final boss. Again, that's pretty apt. The game is named that for the Victorian Era, but also she is the monarch of Great Britain for most of the time, and Great Britain starts as the overwhelming #1 greatest power. Unlike Europa Universalis, where Ming starts off as #1 but is doomed to fall off, or Stellaris, where the Fallen Empires start off very powerful but are doomed to stagnation, in Victoria 3 Great Britain is almost certain to advance in power, expanding its influence even more around the globe. All that to say, while conquering the world in this game seems like a very tall and not-very-fun order, outperforming Great Britain is a fantastic goal.
And, I did it! In the last decade of the game I eventually surpassed Great Britain as the #1 Great Power in the world. We actually switched places back and forth a few times. I think this is because, when I was at war I would mobilize my armies, which would add to my Army Power Projection enough to push me above them, then drop back when when we demobilized. But I kept chugging along, eventually surpassing one BILLION pounds in GDP and permanently securing my position on top.
So, yep! This game was a lot of fun. I don't have immediate plans to replay, but also the idea of replaying this feels far less daunting than Europa Universalis (or even Hearts of Iron). As with EU it could be fun to just set a specific achievement challenge, like turning the UK Anarchist or forming Yugoslavia. But I can also see myself doing another "completionist" campaign with a less easy start than Belgium - starting in Southeast Asia or South America or something could be pretty entertaining. We'll see if and when I revisit!
No comments:
Post a Comment