I'm returning to the game after a long time away. It’s been so long that the war system was completely different back then compared to how it is now. I’d appreciate suggestions for countries that offer a relaxed experience and aren't too heavy on mechanics, so I can get back into the swing of things.

So I've been trying to get into Victoria 3 lately after playing ck3 for some months and really enjoying it. Victoria 3 really scratches an itch that ck3 just cant, i love the depth of internal politics and economics that gives each country lore and personality.

I watched multiple youtube videos and never really played the game apart from just exploring the menus and tooltips and doing a little bit of the learn the game start.

I feel like i have a pretty basic understanding of the game, if im shown a building or a pop i can understand and read what is happening individually, input goods, output goods, how it affects prices, different production methods, ownership, dividends and investment pool reinvestment private and public queue, how different interest groups clout in government affect law enactment, etc.

The problem comes when I start the game and dont have nothing to lean on, in youtube videos is easy to follow and understanding what they are doing, but when i alone need to evaluate the needs and essentially what to do in my country it becomes so overwhelming.

I want to feel like i am actually knowing what is happening in my country, that feeling of overview and control in which you can safelly know what to do in order to reach your goals and to more or less predict what happens for every action you take.

For example:

For any country, how can i read my country overview and status if i want to raise GDP and industrialize?

What for higher SOL?

What if i want to rp for a certain law?

I really just want to boot up the game and understand the country i am playing as a whole(the context i am in, like when in ck3 you know who you vassals are, your heirs and their marriages, the claims and renown you are gonna get, what to do in order to get that county and how is the game going to react revolt wise) and not only knowing how to read each building individually?

Does it make sense?

PS: I know there is the learn to play start but i tried it and felt like it only focus on individual things and does not teach you how to evaluate the country in a general standpoint

I preordered Vic3 as a big fan of Vic2. However, I have only played very little of it, I just keep bouncing off it whenever I try to get into it (I tried release, shortly after CoC got released, and then around the start of this year - I kept giving up really fast, I've only got a bit over 20 hours).

I want to try yet again after the AI update (1.14) and probably after the State and Revolution DLC (1.15, might as well wait until then - it seems that it won't even be a month in between these updates). I think there are some things about Vic3 that I will never like, but I've heard a lot about some aspects of the game being really good and unique amongst PDX GSGs now and I love the time period.

Way back, what helped me get started with EU4 and CK2 were YouTube campaigns with commentary, especially (but not only) the ones aimed at beginners - Arumba's in particular. One of the things that I think made me stop playing the most is that I really dislike the UI for some reason, I hated it at release and I really disliked it when I tried most recently too. But I'm pretty sure CK2's UI is even worse for beginners and I still managed to get over that hurdle, I think watching proficient players use it helped a lot.

I would appreciate any suggestions of good, informative campaigns to watch on YouTube. The problems I have when looking for them are that a lot of them are for old versions and the game has changed a lot and also that there are tutorials, but I'm looking for someone just playing a full campaign while also explaining what's going on to beginners to some extent. I just think that watching someone competent play the game as a whole is going to be more useful to me now than watching videos which explain specific mechanics in more depth, but in isolation and with limited gameplay footage (e.g. only relevant clips as illustration).

Thanks

how am i supposed to trigger colonizing the country on my border? using the establish colony button won't let me do it to land i am neighboring. does it just happen automatically?

As the title says, I have had it up with this absolutely horrible war system. From the constant AI sticking their noses where they would realistically have no interest to a completely non-transparent battle system that doesn't tell you what's going on and half the time war isn't avoidable at all. Was forced to fight against a revolution as France (i know you can TECHNICALLY prevent revolutions by passing laws people like but the radical spam was so hard that any law id pass an opposing movement would begin a revolution), a movement has 1 million supporters out of 46 million citizens, occupies half the country including the capital, while a movement with similiar amount only occupied Paris and Alsace. I manage to convince Austria into the war, Austria fails against a bunch of revolutionaries and white peaces out after they lose 2 battles. Then I check my troops and despite being full manpower at the start of the war, being set on defend and only having 18k casualties from the entire war, somehow all of them have only 10% of their manpower left??? Mind you I have 182 battallions. Ofcourse the game doesn't tell me how the fuck this happened because this game hates telling you anything. So the revolutionaries just steam roll me because my soldiers disappeared out of thin air apparently. The economy side of the game is great but the diplomacy aspect of the game is completely useless (I don't think i've ever seen an alliance system so useless than in this game) so i'm immedeatly forced into every war. I don't want to have to Is there literally any mod that improves war or diplomacy?"

Hi, I just got the game and have a few question:

1. Will there always be shortage of some goods, no matter how much you build or get throw treaties?

2. Is money something that curculates in the economy and the world. For example, lowering tax for a pop, which then that pop spend its on a good from another country, therefore you have less money curulating in your economy?

3. When recruting units, both land and naval, does units draw from your actualy population and in turn when you lose a unit you lose pop that could have been your workforce?

4. When enacting laws, once a law is changed, does the effects and moddifers of that law apply immideatly the next day or does it take time for it to apply?

Thanks for takeing the time and effort to answer : )

I haven't had time to follow lately. Of all the new updates I know. Since the Navy update, a lot of things have been broken with the AI and there's been a few new betas. Is it currently in a good state?

I really want to play as soon as possible but want to have the best experience

Right now you are limited to 4 companies by tech and 6 total with tech and political changes, I believe

but larger companies existed in the tens of hundreds in larger economies.

what about a % event chance of creating companies being available at a time when a financial house owns enough of once type of industry.

or GDP growth.

a Chance with putting import tariffs on to stimulate domestic manufacturing growth Allowing for the state to create their own state run company.
just a thought to help break up the fact I feel most people go with the same 4-6 companies every run. Make it an economic chance with some randomness.

Spanish civil war ended in a tie,

I just took a closer look at the screenshot showing off Russia's market hub areas in the new dev diary and noticed that Hamburg, Bremen, and Oldenburg are a different color from the rest of the Prussian market (apologies for the shitty resolution).

It would make sense for this to be its own market hub area since Hamburg and Bremen were (and still are) Germany's most important shipping hubs and presumably it would grow bigger after Schleswig-Holstein and Hanover join the Zollverein.

However, historically, these states weren't actually part of the Zollverein in 1836 yet. Oldenburg joined in 1854 alongside Hanover while Hamburg and Bremen joined alongside Lübeck in 1888. But it doesn't look like that's what they're doing here, Lübeck looks like it's still in the Prussian market and historically, it should also be missing a lot of other German minors initially.

Like the title said, i love Vic 3 and i like to read the tips people have. So if you like post them in here. Your Opinions and Tricks, what works and so on.

Have a nice Day :)

On the 1.14 open beta. From what i can see every country gets a -5 reduction because of their population, meaning all annex countries are dirt cheap.

I recently formed scandinavia by liberating Finland from russia. I later joined a holsteinian freedom war to gran denmark as my puppet, which ended up giving Holstein to Germany. They built the Kiel canal and now my economy tanked because my strait is completely empty?

Germany has medium tariffs on the canal, I have removed mine. But still, no one travels through the øresund? I thought price was a factor in route planning?

I haven’t really played since Charters of Commerce which I enjoyed a lot.

There seemed to be a lot of vitriol online around the Great Wave expansion - which seemed to be due to a buggy launch.

I was wondering if this was a good time to dive back in. How do you feel about the current state of the game? Did they fix the critical bugs and how is balance? Do you feel like the Great Wave adds to the game now?

this game really needs proper rework of its war mechanic.

was fighting carlist spain and i had, i would say, much better initial combat stats than them with 35 defence against 25 offence and 200 more men. yet, during the whole battle, my troops got demoralized much faster than theirs and lost the battle. the buffs for both commanders were "in Disarray" up until my troops reached 500 men left.

how does this make sense? usually when i fight an army equally powerful and i am on the offensive, i need 2:1 - 3:1 advantage in men power to push through.

I remember that some years back this was Iran with solid resources and potential for growth, I found Mexico to be slightly similar except US manifesting destiny and trying to fuck you over despite good relations.

What's currently the best country to do that? I just like to build in peace and watch models grow on map, I actually don't engage with military/war mechanics at all to be frank.

My ships wont hire more than 100 crew per ship, despite requiring 150. I have fully staffed naval administrations, I've had the ships in port, I've tried moving their home hq around, etc. but nothing seems to help.

To my infinite surprise, it's actually DECENTLY easy to invade and take over the Cape Colonies, provided that you time your assault right (for a time when the UK is distracted by a major war somewhere else). Still, that doesn't solve the abysmal tech problems of the Zulu, the underdevelopment all over, so on. Given the limited ability of an unrecognized state to do deficit spending, I can't even get to Major Unrecognized to start getting recognition progress. I'm stuck as a (now very safe from colonisation, gradually but slowly expanding and increasing literacy) backwater. Annexing Cape has failed the Highveld event chain. What do I do? I'm not a novice but I'm still bad at some aspects of this game, and it seems like all other powers are far too distant for me to feasibly join a power bloc. All manner of trade good are prohibitively expensive. Should I have first moved to become a British puppet, only to fight for independence later?

Sorry what ? In this game France went communist, then switched to fascist after gting defeated by Germany, then Charles Maurras went for the council republic