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?
143 posts and 44 image replies omitted.>>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.
>>43131My most critical wants, in order of importance, are:
1. Making goods physical with one to one penalties to output if there are shortages, & stockpiling mechanics (government & private).
2. Goods needing actual transportation to be traded within & between regions.
3. A complete end to money appearing and disappearing out of thin air (from anything except minting or potentially banks).
>>431371 is definitely a good call. Atm, it's maybe a bit too easy to swap PMs for most of your industries at once after researching a new tech, with your econ doing ok even though you're facing massive shortages (especially late-game inputs like oil, rubber, etc.)
I'm curious, how do you see transportation being used for goods? The way I see it, it's a bit of a confusing right now since it's not clear what it entails exactly. E.g. railways generate both infrastructure and transportation, ports only infrastructure and public trams in urban centers only transportation.
Imo, this reflects the idea of transportation as (primarily) a pop need and infrastructure as a state's capacity to integrate its industrial output with the wider region. But then you have labor-saving PMs like railroads for mines and logging camps that use transportation anyway. I think PDX has painted itself into a corner somewhat, since the ambiguous relationship between infra and transportation will become difficult to untangle. What do you think?
>>43168Thanks for the support on the physical goods issue. The current quasi+virtual nature of goods has bothered me since before Vic3 even released tbh.
For transportation itself, I think it could be divided into teo services: Local which brings goods to market within a region, and inter-regional which transport it from one region to the next. With the way they have reworked trade centers recently, I think this is eminently doable. It would also eliminate the beed for local proces to create/delete money, since the relative efficiency or inefficiency of local production or transport from other places would be simulated directly by extra transport costs
As far as infrastructure goes, I am not against the idea of certain of goods or services needing infrastructure capacity in order to operate (and that some level of government involvement is necessary for this).
I think it would however it might make more sense to completely detach transport (and later electricity and maybe even telecom) provision from the infrastructure that carries it. So have the railway itself seperate from the train operator (or transport logistics company). All operating companies could only expand up to the infra capacity. Basically this would simulate the eminent domain / long term infrastructure layout planning & regulation that governments do.
I also strongly believe this infrastructure should be disaggregated further (roadways, railways, waterways, ports, electricity, maybe even telecoms, irrigation & sewage later on)
>>43168Oh another smaller set of changes, not nearly as essential:
Make it possible for governments to own company HQs.
For scale economies to be limited by number of buildings owned by a given owner, rather than spill over all owners in a given region. If this is fone then there comes a potential emergent benefit from granting a company or the state s monopoly in the form of potentially higher scale economies. (And this simulates things like why infrastructure is often a government granted monopoly in real life, because multiple grids tend to be extremely wasteful duplication, triplication, or worse)
Victoria 3 is really fucking fun, here is my swiss investment fund liberal democratic market capitalism run where i try to invest everywhere to get return. Diplomacy still is horribly flawed and you have to eventually use mods to make AI german/italian unification possible and achievable, still it happens
Also i grow horribly fed with some of victoria 2 favoritism considering they tend to complain about every mechanic of the game and the political simulation, look at this clownish of review
https://steamcommunity.com/id/Coeco/recommended/529340/>>43217The new update is cracked, through treaties, investments, obligations you can buy your way to be the economic investor and hegemon without expanding, making actually viable tall playthroughs btw. Here is a calculation
National GDP: 19.6 mi
Actual GDP: 11.8 mi
FGDP: Foreign GDP
FINV: Foreign Investment
Totalized Ownership: AGDP (NGDP-FINV) + FGDP = 11.8mi + 106.8mi = 118.6 million
This means that swiss investors or capitalists own the equivalent of 118.6 million of global GDP, add it with swiss companies being the third or fourth best global competitors, owning buildings everywhere in the world. all that while annexing nothing, surpassing the french and british economies without foreign investments, and clapping the rest of economies despite being a small country! Victoria 3 has legit one of the best economic simulations
>>43131Just played for the first time since the 1.9 update. I like that they revamped that stupid trade system where you have to keep checking the trade window constantly to see which of your trade deals turned unprofitable. Although now it seems so confusing to even figure out what is going on with trade at all. Where is a window where you can just see what goods you are actually trading and how much profit each of them are making and etc.? I guess you don't absolutely need it since you can just see on the buildings which ones are more productive.
Fucking immigration seems bugged as fuck. I read that basically their is a mass immigration desirability for your country as a whole you can see in the ledger, and if any other country in your culture is more desirable, everyone will move there instead, which makes no sense. I found this made it absolutely impossible to get immigrants in my Colombia playthrough I'm doing.
It seems that Brazil is guaranteed to attack you at some point to try and reclaim the Amazona territory you control. I restarted like 2 times and I noticed that one time they did it in like the first 5-10 and then the next time like 15-20 or longer even, don't remember the exact date. France is very easy to sway to your side by just offering an obligation, and I don't think they even ever redeemed it on me, or I didn't notice. But then you can just add war goals to take as much of Brazil as you like pretty much, I spent the extra to make them all primary goals because I wasn't sure if they would capitulate before and I wouldn't get them, but since I am the war leader on my side, that''s my choice right? So I could've taken a lot more of their territories probably. The whole trick is the French need to do all the work for you. The problem is the AI will kinda randomly decide to move their troops to French Guyana a little immediately or a little later, and they may or may not decide to move them to your territory and help you defend your front. This makes all the difference, because if they don't move their troops to your front, and the AI doesn't divert enough troops away from the New Grenadine front to fight the French, they can bumrush the capital and you lose the war. So really everything in the game is extremely RNG. That's something you don't really think with all the complex numbers and systems, you think it's math, but just try playing through a war a few times and you'll see the outcome is almost completely RNG. So because I spent the maneuver points making them primary I only ended up with like 3 provinces. I think I should've just taken their best states instead of worrying about making it contiguous or spending extra to make them primary goals.
Then after that I did pretty well for myself, I never tried invading any other states. I found armies in the game to be mostly pointless unless you want to conquer, because most of the time you'll never get invaded in most countries. They're just a huge drain of resources. Only worth it if you need to push your prestige up over the next threshold.
Then in the 1900s the first Power Block asked me to join in the whole run and it was Britain, which was still number 1. I was at 20K+ plus per week in the income, then I join, and immediately my income started falling all the way to the negatives. I didn't see any increased migration either. Also all my private construction started privatizing buildings throughout the British Empire which didn't seem to do anything for me but bankrupt me. Good I saved right before I accepted the offer so I'm going to go back and not accept.
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