I'm pretty new to victoria 3, and I'm looking for some advice. What are some fun countries to play as while still being a beginner? Also, what are the best mods I should get?
127 posts and 42 image replies omitted.>Beyond Rice and Salt>In this alternative history mod you will see what the world would look like if instead of a third of Europe dying in the black death, 99% did. With no Christian Europe to colonize and subjugate the rest of the world, it leaves the Chinese and Muslims to take up the slack. This timeline led to a much later colonization of the new world, late 1600s into the 1700s. China has hegemony over much of the world, and has colonized the west coasts of the new world. The Mughal Empire falters with a Sikh rebellion and the Travancori Indian League upstart in South India. The Ottoman Empire’s control over the Eastern Mediterranean, Black Sea, and Red Sea is absolute, but may be at it’s zenith. The western Muslim powers of Andalusia, Morocco, and Mali are colonizing the east coasts of the new world. The steppe hordes to the north are quarreling over tribute; could one of them unite the tatar lands and reform the Golden Horde? The natives of the new world are besieged on two sides; and with help from a subjugated Japan they are mobilizing to resist colonization, conquest, and disease.
>The world uses the Muslim solar calendar (essentially the Gregorian calendar minus 621 years), thus the game begins in 1180 (1801 AD) and ends in 1280 (1901 AD).
>This mod is based on the great alternative history narrative The Years of Rice and Salt by Kim Stanley Robinson. Many liberties have been taken to fill in gaps for a more interesting game play and narrative experience.>https://steamcommunity.com/workshop/filedetails/?id=3337303984Thoughts on the mod?
>>38489pol be like 'just like real life hurhur amirite'
but seriously thats funny, I feel like the basic mechanics of vic dont really account for how a country can have both a ruling culture (not just a ruler of a different culture but a whole cultural apparatus built around foreign and local elites) and a popular culture
>>38489At least they finally fixed collectivized agriculture. Finally can nationalize all of the sector without having to stay on tenant farmers or commercialized.
Though I find it hard to break the landlords in the newest version; Used to be you would just force a rev by banning slavery or getting tid of serfdom, now things are a bit tougher; University, gov. admin & construction spam are also too expensive early game. So I think the trick is state farms + logging + food ind.
>>38510How does collectivized agriculture work now? All subsistence peasant-owned, but newly built farms are state owned and can be collectivized, or what?
Haven't played the latest versions, but what's this shit about foreign collectivization? Do you seriously just like invest into other countries' pops owning buildings now? Cooperative ownership sounds hilariously bad now, to stay on par with porky economies you'll have to hike taxes to the max and micromanage all construction on top of that. In comparison, command economy will allow you to straight up abolish taxes and live off factory profits put directly into budget, and then you just put min wage laws to the max to achieve high standard of living
>So I think the trick is state farms + logging + food ind.Last time I played, it didn't work already. Always work towards fixing imbalances. Unless you can trade surpluses off, but technically speaking all it does is it is pushing low prices in your nation up to restore profitability of low profit factories, so it's better to focus on shortages in your nation instead of trade.
>>38650>>38640I mean just plain state ownership in the minimal sense of the word is apparently so op they had to artificially handicap the hell out of it with dividend efficiency & scale economy penalties. Its pretty funny actually.
Honestly I think they should have just slspped a high bureaucracy cost on each state-owned building level and left it at that.
>>38659Youtube personalities did calculations that say that laissez faire is the best, because it gives the most money through taxes, but in my experience, state ownership is really good (but is not automated, and comes too late anyway). There's a whole argument about how deletion of money is destroying the economy (government dividend efficiency straight up erases a fraction of factory profits when these are moved to treasury). But, like, isn't this what capitalists are doing? They just consume a fraction of profits for no output, and on top of that demand you producing for them luxury goods. Erased money is probably gets to the same ratio as capitalist investment ratio (part of POP income, before expenditures, that gets sent into the investment pool to be invested into the economy).
I think it's just balancing issues. Devs want to make all playstyles viable. For example, even slavery has a crazy flat bonus of having 50% workforce participation ratio for slaves
>>38661I am not against balancing, I just think the way they did it was silly. The main trade-off should be that state ownership requires much more bureaucracy to administer effectively (perhaps lowered a bit for command economy).
I think the tradeoff for public education & healthcare is much better designed.
I say this, but I also disagree with calling agrarianism, industry banned, coop ownership, etc. economic system. There should simply be a seperate category for "industrial policy" where all the bonus & maluses are found with econ system strictly reserved for what the player can and can't do and to what degree (eg. have it so that interventionism allows between 25 & 75% state construction allocation, but with each 10% above 25 costing extra authority, bureaucracy, etc. and needing time to implement).
>>39979I'm just saying the whole chain of effects in such a complex game make it impossible to learn especially if they keep changing the rules.
I did another Haiti playthrough. I took someones advice and spammed tobacco plantations with no construction industry early game and it worked. I even paid off the debt to france by 1860 something but then I started just losing money like crazy I don't know how. It says my governent exspenses were through the roof even after setting them to the lowest and I only built gov to cover my trade with 0 institutions. You can only declare a single interest as Haiti and I set it to Brazil for tobaccy because they were offering insane money. I always end up with 0 unemployment and I can't do shit to attract migrants and can't get enough people to work my industries. If I subsidize one, it just pilfers workers from another lol.
>>39996Just ally with France, join their bloc and use their resources to industrialize.
You should avoid building gov admin in general but especially until you research better PMs for them.
I wouldn't build agriculture either, that empowers the landowners and rural folk
As for migrants, being a part of a larger market helps with that if your SOL is high. I believe there's a minumum # of states that you need to be eligible for mass migrations so expand a little. Ran into this problem during a Luxembourg run
>>40000You'll want military techs for defence, economy techs for infrastructure and better PMs and society techs for better PMs and laws, especially multiculturalism
>>40001>You'll want military techs for defence, economy techs for infrastructure and better PMs and society techs for better PMs and laws, especially multiculturalismMil is useless as haiti unless ypu are going to invade. I did a playthrough where I cancelled the debt and France blockaded me until they gave up but were too pussy to invade. Other than that it is useless. It was way easier to pay it off by 1850.
>>40001>Just ally with France, join their bloc and use their resources to industrialize. Could join any bloc, why France? I guess it might help with migrants because they speak French? But Spain has countries in the carribean.
>>40001>I wouldn't build agriculture either, that empowers the landowners and rural folkWhat would you build then? Haito has no resources and starts with no literacy.
>As for migrants, being a part of a larger market helps with that if your SOL is high. I believe there's a minumum # of states that you need to be eligible for mass migrations so expand a little. Ran into this problem during a Luxembourg run Yeah but expand where? Lol. Every cpuntry is part of a bloc that can stop me. I had an idea to do the Haitan naval power run.
>>40004>Mil is useless as haiti unless ypu are going to invadeWhich you should if you want any meaningful amount of migration. I looked it up: "Each country has an attraction score which equals the average migration attraction of all its eligible states. Countries with fewer than 4 eligible states receive a penalty of 20% for each fewer state, up to 60% penalty for a country with only one eligible state."
If you don't want to expand, defence is important too. I'm surprised that France didn't invade. Even still, what about later in the game? It's not an either or thing anyway, you can get deep into all three tech trees by the end of the game even if you don't build universities.
>Could join any bloc, why France?France often forms a Trade League bloc which lets you into their market. The US often does as well. Otherwise only Prussia starts the game with one. This may be less relevant if you have the DLCs, I do not.
>What would you build then? Haito has no resources and starts with no literacy.I believe they have some lumber, no? Should be good for tools, furniture, paper, and glass. With so few pops it should be enough to delete the peasants and tide you over till you join a Trade League.
>>40004>Yeah but expand where?Anywhere. S. and C. America are close, or you can get cheesy and start taking valuable states in Africa/Asia
>>40007> I looked it up: "Each country has an attraction score which equals the average migration attraction of all its eligible states. Countries with fewer than 4 eligible states receive a penalty of 20% for each fewer state, up to 60% penalty for a country with only one eligible state." That's stupid, arbitrary, and how would anyone figure that out lol?
>If you don't want to expand, defence is important too. I'm surprised that France didn't invade. Even still, what about later in the game? It's not an either or thing anyway, you can get deep into all three tech trees by the end of the game even if you don't build universities.No France will not try to invade unless you cancel the debt and even then it's easy to make a larger army than they will try to land with. The problem is they will blockade you until they get bored.
>France often forms a Trade League bloc which lets you into their market. The US often does as well. Otherwise only Prussia starts the game with one. This may be less relevant if you have the DLCs, I do not. I do have the power bloc DLC.
>I believe they have some lumber, no? Should be good for tools, furniture, paper, and glass. With so few pops it should be enough to delete the peasants and tide you over till you join a Trade League. Not much lumber at all. Hmm I guess I did forget lumber goes into tools and glass, but still it's a useless thing to get into because things like tools and whatever will be useless to trade to big countries, and small countries, you turn on the trade when it says +12 and in 2 months it will be -3. The small countries that need the advanced shit won't need them for long, they'll be satiated quite fast.
>Anywhere. S. and C. America are close, or you can get cheesy and start taking valuable states in Africa/AsiaI found they gang up on my when I do invasive stuff. It was hard enough as Brazil taking unalligned states in South America and also colonization is useless with no population. I guess I could setup micro colonies just to get past the immigration debuff. That's so fucking cheesey.
>>40008Just started a Haiti run (2nd time a leftypol post has prompted me to do this) and the situation is much worse than I thought. You have a lot more peasants than I assumed, maybe more than the limited amount of lumber and relevant industries can provide for.
So far I maxed out taxes, bottomed out the gov expenses and deleted my army. This put me in the black/tiny defivit. Will see if industrializing is viable but I can definitely better understand your train of thought now
>>40009I think it was also me last time. I've only been playing the smaller nations because I figured it would be easier to learn with less to manage. So far I played: Haiti, Persia, Ethiopia(Shewa), and Brazil.
Maybe we should do weekly challenges or something. That'd be fun. See who can get the farthest in a given nation, I'm thinking on vanilla. I guess I can also disable my DLC to make it fair, but you should get the Power Block one. I think it's one of those essential Paradox DLCs.
>>40010Debts paid off in 1847. Other than 2 livestock ranches, a rice farm and a dye plantation I only built resources and factories. All demand was satisfied domestically. One advantage of this approach, as far as paying off the debt is concerned, is that since I'm not reliant on trade I can downgrade the PM on the ports which saves quite a bit of money in government wages.
If I was to continue, I'd be able to take the newly freed up money and put it into construction, allowing me to keep the industrialization train going a bit longer, but at this point I'm definitely needing to either expand or join the trade league blocs that both France and the US have formed. I'd also be gunning for better economy and society techs for better PMs (higher SOL) and multiculturalism (more pops) respectively
>>40012I found this collection in steam workshop for vic 3 collect mods related to communism.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3002033678I am pretty sure if you use all of them combined your game will crash. Maybe there is a mod that makes almost all of them compatible, but i don't know, it has been so long since i played vic 3. The blocs thing confused me a lot.
>>40017>I didn't manage to pay off the debt Hmm. Besides what I already mentioned (deleting army, max taxes/minumum wages, downgraded port pms), adding consumption taxes (I put them on services, tobacco, luxury clothes and furniture), cancelling trade routes that I didn't need (not sure if this makes a difference but I ended the game with just the tobacco export that you start with) and researching banking might have made the difference. I also get charity schools/hospitals ASAP but again, don't know if that will make a difference.
Nice GDP tho, easily clears me and ya like I said without joining a larger market or making more demand largely through construction sectors the economy isn't exactly thriving.
>>40018Yep, super important. I'll run it on the most populous states until well into the game on most countries. I also add greener grass campaign on as many states as possible and a road maintenance on whatever state I'm building in for the construction efficiency. Nice run.
>>40019Ok now I need to attack New Grenadine, they're unalligned, not that strong, and have coal and iron. After failing at invading one time, trying to invade through Antioqua, I managed to successfully invade through Panama. Problem is my cash flow ended up so negative even deleting my whole military couldn't save me. Goddamn this mil thing is so hard. I read that the best for a naval invasion is an even lancer infranty mix so I tried that. It take forever to train the damn navy so next time I build up my mil I'm definitely going to start with the navy. I just don't know how I go from crazy positive money every turn, to removing every subsidy and deleting the military does nothing. It will turn green for a second then just immediately start dropping down to red.
>oh and one more thing, I set stuff to privatize stuff as soon as I build it. gotta monetize that investment pool somehow while you don't have any construction sectors. i don;t think much of it sold but every little bit helpsYeah I think I'm going to start doing that too. I tried doing it when I needed it but it didn't give me any moneys.
Unique IPs: 21