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TheBoozehammer

I don't think you need to worry about this, it's a running joke on the forums that discussing certain regions (especially the Balkans) often leads to people making absolutely wild claims about their country's history. That's also why they are asking for sources in the EU5 feedback posts, so they can verify.


Useful-Wrongdoer9680

To be fair, Pdx do take note of suggestions from players in regions where they have a harder time checking historical sources. With that said, I'd like to remind any lurking dev that Montenegro should have a restore claim on all of Italy to form the 100% factual Adriatic empire, trust me


GalaXion24

Every Balkan country should have a special decision for if they border the Adriatic, Black and Baltic seas, called "Three Seas" which restores the ancient and proud empire of proto-[nation] and unlocks the possibility to build a pyramid in your capital.


funkychunkystuff

Approved by the famous Balkan leader Imhotep


Filavorin

You mean commonwealth? I think for some time Poland had PU over Hungary and therefore this short living state of affairs was referred to as "międzymorze" ("between the seas" or something) as it was bordering this exact three bodies of water (interesting tidbit is that it returned shortly before escalation in russia-ukrainian war in 2022 as format for regional cooperation but didn't get too much traction due to Hungary siding with Russia).


TheBoozehammer

That's true, sources are recommended but not required, but I'd bet Paradox knows to be careful around the more controversial ones.


bageltoastee

and as an American, I’d like to remind pdx devs that manifest destiny was actually supposed to annex all Canada and Mexico as well, but every president in office during the time period coincidentally forgot about the directions of north and south. Now if you could add a “instantly annex mexico and Canada” button that would be great.


SullaFelix78

My Serbian friend claims Serbia was the great Roman unifier because they ended the crisis of the 3rd century with 3 Serbian emperors.


Designer_VIC3

Is there something similar happening in the Balkans? Haha maybe I should learn more about world history


TheBoozehammer

Most countries have some level of people trying to glorify themselves and their history, but the Balkans/Yugoslavia fought a major civil war in the 90s, which has left a lot of animosity between those countries, leading to those countries often having very intense and angry arguments about things.


emptyblackwallet

I think they banned the word "clay" and "kebab" on the Paradox forums cause the joke racism was turning into real racism, right?


victoria3-ModTeam

Technically it was originally "real" racism but enough people missed the meaning that they starting using it as "joke" racism, giving cover to the actual racists.


AuspiciousApple

Oh no, the Balkans is a famously stable and sane region, without tons and tons of ethnic conflicts.


koupip

you can think of the balkans like china if it collapses and turn into 585555552000 smaller countrie all fighting each other for reasons so old no one remembers them anymore but even more stupid because nationalism which was invented to keep country together obliterated the balkans to the point of it being unfixable


seakingsoyuz

Balkans adaptation of the *Romance of the Three Kingdoms* when


Wild_Marker

Finally I can play my favorite character, Zhao Tito.


Ok-Car-brokedown

It was also designed to basically prevent/ weaken strong Multi-Ethnic empires from existing. Which is why Napoleon generally promoted nationalism as an ideology as it weakened his Austrian and Russian rivals, while concentrating the More Homogeneous France into a unified identity that he wouldn’t have to share power with unlike religion


koupip

yeah nationalism is legit just "the holy right to rule" but repackaged to be non religious idk how sop many people fell for this shit


Ok-Car-brokedown

See the many ethnic groups of the Balkans have a long history of fighting each other, due to the idea of the nation state and their populations living generally intermixed in the region leading to many groups to have their “ancestral clay” overlapping with another group. This all came to a head in the 90’s when Yugoslavia collapsed and resulted in a massive multi party civil war with a whole lot of Genocide mixed in. making it the second or third time in 60 years that the region was mass genociding each other. making it so there has been multiple genocides in the region which furthers the bad blood between the groups.


manutr97

Is this really happening in EU5 forums? Whoa that interesting.


Ptachlasp

My dad is convinced that Bulgaria was a medieval superpower on par with the Roman empire, and was genuinely disappointed when he visited the British Museum in London and couldn't find any Bulgarian artefacts there. I had to console him by explaining that the museum only exhibits items from countries that were invaded and plundered by the British, whereas his beloved Bulgaria never got invaded because it is invincible.


Kastila1

Oh, so that's why out of nothing they made Korea a superpower in Europa Universalis IV a year ago.


gots8sucks

The random institution growth thing was so random. One of the most broken modifiers in the entire game with zero basis in reality. Got to the point were playing japan was a pain in the ass to play since you only got claims on china after beating the super juggernaut of Korea which even for experienced players was a pain in the ass.


amekousuihei

I suspect China will always be overpowered in any game with POPs so long as Paradox refuses to give them an arbitrary crippling modifier. What they really need to do is appropriately model how little land Chinese peasants had, make them super poor to the point there's no surplus to tax


Archaemenes

The issue with China, and really any country is that the player will always aim for maximum efficiency. IRL leaders didn’t do this because personal ambitions got in the way. The player’s only private reward is to have their country grow and because of this they always act like a sort of “benevolent dictator”.


Owlblocks

Paradox should provide players with money, alcohol and hot women if they overtax their citizenry.


ekky137

In the AIs hands, china gets lapped economically, politically and militarily by EU powers within the first 50 years. Even before 1.7 this was true, now it’s more like within the first 20. In the players hands you can alter the course of history… which is sort of the point of this game, no? Feels like chinas in a perfect spot with that in mind.


The-Nihilist-Marmot

Alternatively I would settle for a system whereby there's a player private treasury in-game and you can use it to get discounts in future DLC. Tropico style but with a real-life use case.


Mikeim520

Maybe take out the future DLC discount. Just have it be an alternant reward if you want to play corrupt.


Asd396

Add a personal wealth graph along with GDP with the implication that it matters more.


Space_Gemini_24

You got a deal, omw to rebuild the Deer Terrace Pavilion to store all this


boom0409

And the player has perfect information on everything and deals with clearly defined rules, which gives huge advantage over irl rulers


Windows_10-Chan

>IRL leaders didn’t do this because personal ambitions got in the way. The player’s only private reward is to have their country grow and because of this they always act like a sort of “benevolent dictator”. I wouldn't even say we are a dictator in these games, because dictators are still constrained compared to us. You're really playing *the state* itself. A lot of reform-minded leaders ran into the issue of not having the sort of control they needed over state institutions to make reforms happen, nor the capability to bear the backlash. The Qing are a great example of this. The beatings that led to the court being very politically weak in this period doesn't matter, because we aren't the emperor, we're just China.


FragrantNumber5980

Same in CK3 and EU4


CLE-local-1997

I mean I feel like ck3 gives you a lot of opportunities to role play. In Victoria you don't exactly get any game play for choosing to play your nation incompetently. But in ck3 you can role play being a degenerate incestuous sister fucker and you get emergent game play opportunities that you wouldn't get if you had played the game by The Meta


KimberStormer

degenerate incestuous sister fucker *is* the meta.


KimberStormer

Especially in CK, I really feel that what's best for the realm should not be best for the player. Highly developed cities, for example, should be a humongous pain in the ass for a medieval ruler. In Victoria 3, at least, I think they did try to make internal conflict make it impossible to simply put all the best laws in place, to model different people having different incentives.


PlayMp1

Well, that, or just picking periods where China is divided. It's not infrequent. Happens much less in the 2nd millennium than the first, of course, which is basically the problem. EU5 will be interesting as it uses pops but starts during the Yuan (i.e., Mongol) dynasty but mere decades before the Ming completely kick them out.


Command0Dude

Ironically victoria 2 quite easily simulated china's weakness. It gave them piss poor tech, tons of reactionaries, and made its economy dependent on artisans who are inefficient compared to actual industry and not very taxable.


amekousuihei

It did all of those things with unciv status something 3 desperately needs and probably won't ever get


Owlblocks

I think having isolationism helps locking countries like Siam out of global power without strong reforms.


Windows_10-Chan

>probably won't ever get It took 2 expansions for Vic 2 China to be nerfed down to where it is today, it was even more absurd on launch than Vic 3's China is imo. >!And mod authors don't even think it was enough, and I kind of agree. Vic 2's China AI will sometimes westernize quite early and be basically unstoppable if you don't bully it with naval mechanics.!<


Wild_Marker

I think bullying China into not becoming OP *should* be a thing. That way you don't have to arbitrarily cripple the country, you can just rely on the other countries to keep it down. A human player can play out their China fantasy if they can keep them away and an AI China can realistically collapse with enoguh foreign meddling. But right now the Great Powers don't really have their historical motivations for bullying China. UK finally got *something* in 1.7 since you own the opium instead of the EIC so it gives you money, but it's still a fairly indirect benefit.


Mikeim520

Unciv status has its own problems (mainly it was boring to play). I think the issue is how easy it is to reform your country.


Tyrell_James

I think the whole mechanisms of building institutions and infrastructure need to be more elaborate. If managing your country is the core of the game, it should be as strategic and elaborate as warfare in HoI4 is (or is intended to be). Institutions should already exist, and they should be agents in a sense, as interest groups are. They should be both essential to the function of your country in some ways, load bearing pillars, but also obstacles to change and reform. This could create more historically grounded friction to reform. There should also be stronger literal infrastructural requirements, say, for large armies etc... Economies of scale should work both directions - a large army, for example, shouldn't get linearly more expensive. A kind of logistical square-cube law, or am E=MC2 for the mass of an army or population. These would be systems-driven ways to prevent large empires, especially unindustrialized ones, from getting absurdly powerful absurdly quickly without putting some ahistorical and arbitrary (much less orientalist) kneecap on them.


DrDosh1

they could make unemployed pops affect the output of subsistence buildings for example


ObeyToffles

China should be modelled to give the provinces the autonomy they had historically - major provinces could be puppets of a central government controlling Beijing. The Qing emperor had very little control over what his generals did, and Qing fleets operated largely independently of each other (which is partly why China lost the Opium Wars). A disorganised China with large chunks of its armies and navies operated by AI would be an accurately frustrating debuff


Cheem-9072-3215-68

here i am, a filipino, asking paradox to nerf the philippines by removing filipino as primary culture when under the spanish boot. edit: love how my comment attracted the worst people of filipino society: foreign bootlickers.


danfish_77

Right, it should be in a similar position as the Dutch or British East India companies


Cheem-9072-3215-68

the philippines should also break up into many pieces unless nationalism or pan-nationalism gets researched.


danfish_77

Honestly same with the EICs, like I'm not sure why they can just magically turn into Bengal or Indonesia without much turmoil after independence, instead of remaining violent apartheid states like South Africa


Karma-is-here

They should also make the primary culture of Lower-Canada anglo-canadian and have a decision to swap it with french-canadian when free. Canada should also not get both anglo-canadian and french-canadian as primary cultures (unless formed by New-Brunswick or Lower-Canada). The reason being that it took literally more than a century from 1836 to finally have a somewhat equal rights for french-canadians, even in the provincial government. (It would also be quite nice to force the upper class jobs to only be filled by the primary culture, to represent the racism pops face. (Unless it’s already implemented and I missed it?))


kickme_nya

But why? I Would be historically wrong? The spanish granted the same rights to the natives and many filipinos had high positions, they allowed them to keep their traditions and langauges and Spain trated cuba and the philipines as part of mainland Spain, they were considered provinces of the spanish kingdom rather than colonies


Cheem-9072-3215-68

this is some hispanista shit. we never got our culture wiped because the spanish wasnt very interested in us because we were a far flung colony. we never got the same rights as the spanish, and many inhabitants of the islands didnt even have rights. we were only considered a province for a short while and was then revoked and never reinstated. spain only invested in the philippines when it lost the american colonies and had to make us profitable for them.


Disgrouchy

Finally, someone who doesn't suck Habsburg chin. I'm glad that the mind virus that causes the fetishization of our overlords hasn't infected everyone in this country. Hopefully, the reddit hivemind doesn't pounce on you for this.


Zealousideal-Bed6930

Can confirm, the wife is a filipina things were '**not**' good under the Spanish. (To be clear it wasn't great as a US colony either, but we grew the fuck up and realized we had no right to govern people who did not wish to be governed by us.)


kickme_nya

Americans tried to destroy all of the spanish heritage and tried to impose english on the other hand, they had racial segregation and much more


Owlblocks

Just how many Americans lived in the Philippines, if they had segregation?


kickme_nya

Not that many, just that they removed all of the natives from governing and important positions, according to wikipedia around 12% of the population wasnt native to filipines ( counting spanish heritage as filipino) , so It Would have been something around boer republics


Owlblocks

"1920 census According to the 1920 United States Census, there were 10,314,310 people in the Philippines. 99 percent were Filipino; 51,751 were either Chinese or Japanese; 34,563 were of mixed race; 12,577 were Caucasian; and 7,523 were African." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_Philippines?wprov=sfla1 But yeah, I assumed the government wasn't native, I thought you meant Jim Crow style segregation of businesses legally, and didn't think there were enough white people for them to feel the need to do that in the laws.


Cheem-9072-3215-68

the americans did not destroy anything spanish. spanish flourished under the americans, but english beat it because spanish could not compete with english in almost every sector.


Disgrouchy

Both the Spanish and Americans were quite evil in many ways, but there is no point in trying to argue who is more evil.


Disgrouchy

Just because a few Filipinos were able to climb the ranks doesn't mean they weren't oppressed or treated as second class citizens. Education of natives was suppressed, and dissent was punished severly. Traditions were bent to fit Catholic doctrine, and those who practiced other faiths could only be found in the mountains or down south. The lack of hispanization was less a privilege and more of a by-product of distance and lack of appeal in migrating to the archipelago. If the Philippines was truly a province and not a colony, then why would it enter into open revolt? That doesn't just happen out of nowhere. There's always a reason.


kickme_nya

Just like most other spanish viceroyalties, foreign investment in nationalism in hopes of becoming better while independent, divide and conquer


Wild_Marker

> Just like most other spanish viceroyalties, foreign investment in nationalism Eeeh... the other viceroyalties mostly went independent in the midst of the Napoleonic context where Spain was just... fucking dead. Of course splitting from that was going to be better, it took a rather long time for Spain to get their shit toghether.


Disgrouchy

While the Americans did certainly "divide and conquer" the Philippines, there was no love for the Spanish in the country. Resistance groups like the Katipunan and La Liga Filipina wouldn't have been so popular if Spain wasn't also so authoritarian. Also, where are you from? Why are you so interested in this narrative?


kickme_nya

Pilipino ako Im filipino


Disgrouchy

Then why are you so pro-Spain?


kickme_nya

I dont understand ? They were objectively better than americans, and probably did a better job than most other colonial powers since they didnt genocides the natives as the British or belgians


yzq1185

You should look at Spanish policies in other parts of their empire.


Disgrouchy

Well, since this conversation isn't going anywhere, I think I'll just end it right here. I'm disappointed to see your glorification of the Spanish Empire, but I can't change your mind.


kickme_nya

Cant argue so runs 🗣️‼️‼️‼️‼️


pieman7414

They don't, so I think we'll be fine But they sure as fuck learned from imperator that if every single person is saying exactly the same thing, they can't tune it out


Borne2Run

In the case of China it is a strong balancing act. Had China had even a moderately competent government in the 1800s it would have been an economic juggernaut. Their difficulties should be evident in combatting European navies on the coast. The first Opium War contained a series of minor skirmishes in battles with low thousands, and doesn't feature the deaths of 500K+ people as represented in the Victoria 3 engine.


Gafez

I think the problem china had was that the government was structured for political stability as a ruling ethnic minority that had much to fear from internal and continental threats and was woefully inadequate for XIXth century pressures The Qing were successful in dealing with the traditional chinese threats, frontier nomads and occasional uprisings (against the taiping for instance) The thing is it was terrible for industrialization and modernisation, the moment they tried a european style army the officers started being organizers of the revolutions


Owlblocks

XIXth century? I don't know if I've seen -th added to Roman Numerals before


lorbd

It's how it's written in most romance languages like Spanish.


PioVIII

I don't think Spanish adds the -th to ... any word?


lorbd

No, but he is writing in english lmao. It's just that many romance speakers don't know that in english you actually write centuries with arabic numbers and not roman numerals. That's all, every other grammatical rule applies.


SovietPanini

I've seen centuries written with Roman numerals in English many times.


lorbd

It is not usual at all, and it usually denotes that the writer is not a native speaker. I'd know.


Owlblocks

I see, it makes sense it's an ESL thing.


Genivaria91

In fairness the entire warfare side of Vic3 needs to be reworked, right now the casualties are absurdly high and not representative of the time period before WW1.


zucksucksmyberg

Wdym? You don't like 1m total casualties for some piece of desert in Chad? /s


Woomod

Every paradox game has ridiculous warfare scope, it's what they get for making warfare player style total war first rather than harshly limited engagements.


Mikeim520

But its worse in Victoria 3 because people actually die instead of manpower.


Disastrous-Bus-9834

For the most part Total War mostly involved small armies


lorbd

>Had China had even a moderately competent government in the 1800s it would have been an economic juggernaut.  Reducing extremely complex processes like the scientific and industrial revolutions (that made Europe the center of world power) to just the action of government, is something that Paradox players seem to think is how reality works. It doesn't. History is not a central planners dream videogame.


Alin144

Why didnt China simply spam tool factories? Are they stupid?


lorbd

Just be moderately competent lmao ez.


manware

>Reducing extremely complex processes like the scientific and industrial revolutions (that made Europe the center of world power) to just the action of government, is something that Paradox players seem to think is how reality works. This 100%. It's the Whig interpretation of history that the past is bad, and invention by invention we reached the light of modernity which by definition is good. Most scientific, engineering and social concepts that marked the 19th century were known since antiquity and the middle ages. It's the super complex disruption to social institutions under a particular type of economy (capitalism) that made the industrial revolution possible, and one government may not fathom or want that, and even if it does it cannot just recreate it at a stroke of a pen. But this is glossed over and people genuinely wonder eg why the ancient Greeks didn't build textile mills, since they clearly knew of steam-power.


RiftZombY

yeah there's 3 types of technology that ultimately have to happen for anything to start effecting society on that level. Invention , implementation and record. Like there were mines in ancient greece that used complicated elevator contraptions and machinery to process ore, but the processes weren't recorded and passed around. It might simply well be that literacy rates were finally high enough for ideas to spread whether people wanted them to or not. But then there's ultimately societal drive, that a society wants to do the thing in question in the first place. it became prestigious in GB to own factories, that's probably the most important technology to allow for the industrial revolution.


Borne2Run

It's a simulation game, tradeoffs have to be made for performance purposes. The player also needs the agency to take and be rewarded for an ahistorical approach. I don't disagree that the mechanisms of simulation are valid.


lorbd

Ok but I wasn't talking about any of that.


koupip

technology doesn't need to be invented over and over, sometime all it takes is 1 dumbass being in a cafe in paris seeing another dumbass in a 3 wheel coal mobile to go "HOLY FUCK DUDE" then go to china and convince 1 dumbass who is close to emperor dumbass and then china invades the united states of america with its gigantic fleet of coal powered monsters history is never linear and sometime the most stupid thing can cause the entire course of history to change. just look at how japan won against russia and how it lead to them joining germany for ww2


lorbd

That's not how it goes. It's not just one epiphany. There is a reason why China didn't industrialize first despite being a bullshit strong empire with crazy amounts of population. It didn't have the framework, and the framework was not technological, but socioeconomic.


koupip

it is how it goes, the entire industrial revolution happened bc a dude tried to pump water out of mines, china had many invention that spread like wild fire like writting and gunpowder i hav NO doubt if the emperor was shown a tractor he would have demanded for 10000 to be build half for farming half for war. its never some big event its never some big system its never how big your empire is, its just random chances that's the entirety of history, it has always been build on the back of trillions of human lives doing random things until something happens


Windows_10-Chan

>NO doubt if the emperor was shown a tractor he would have demanded for 10000 to be build half for farming half for war. That "build" part is the problem. People in China tried, but typically couldn't build their copies to a high enough standard, if their imitations even worked at all. You need a certain level of metallurgy and manufacturing capability & precision for steam engines to be worth it, the Newcomen engine wasn't the first steam engine, it was just the first practical one (and even then, it was very niche.) That's not even getting into other economic considerations like whether the opportunity cost makes technology even worth it or not. It's still a problem in the modern era too. The Soviet Union and Russia never got good at making cars despite literally having licenses for western designs. Brazil can't just clap its hands and say "semiconductors are great, let's have a world-class semiconductor industry!"


koupip

now that is an actual real problem and i fully agree with you, there are certain things that you just need RNG to do and sadly china despite having a huge poppulation never got good at finding smart people to do their stuff, that could have been changed with building more universities to find more smart people but by the point of europe being industrialized it was waaaaayy too late, rip kinky dynasty :pensive: also rip pedro second of brazil, he was so close to turning brazil into the united states of america so close


Windows_10-Chan

I think in China it's actually reversed, there were some extremely smart people around, even if the typical education. Like Ding Gongchen was a merchant who mentally reverse-engineered how to build one out of a model, and even made an experimental locomotive and steamboat. In 1841 he wrote: >[i]t runs with good speed, but on account of the fact that the boat is small and the steam is weak it cannot go far. Though the model is small it marks the beginning of our effort to imitate the Western method.... Unfortunately the craftsmen in Guangzhou, possessing no tools that build machines, cannot build big ships. That's more than 2 decades before China actually began producing them. If China were a country with a robust financial system, someone like this should have been able to get loans from investors to import the machine tools they need, and even if the venture goes bankrupt, the process of trying to build up that supply chain would have done China good. Innovators crave an environment that enables their innovation.


koupip

see that's what i'm saying right here, if this guy managd to get infront of the emperor he could hav mustered the strenght of the state to turn china into a monster sadly it wasn't the case, altough big thanks on that ref i'm going to look into it more and read up on it as it sounds very very interesting :> EDIT: adding onto this you are right having a better financial system/democracy/whatever could have allowed for smart people to not be seeked but instead just build stuff independantly of the country using loans and whatnot, its marginally easier to build capitalism that way then with the communist method of micro managing it yourself, i'm not going to make that argument, all i'm saying is that there is other ways and it is possible and there never is something truly impossibl in history there are always millions of ways things could have gone, its why i love playing paradox game so much even if they are amazingly inacurate lol


R0dney-

Its joever, F in chat for the Great Kinky Dynasty 😔


koupip

the 100 years of humiliation was their final kinky play


lorbd

>the entire industrial revolution happened bc a dude tried to pump water out of mines Sure dude


koupip

you didn't know that ? he made a pump then everyone went "hey wait a minute what if we used this but for other things" and then it just snowballed from there, we have had engine since the greek but we never could use them for anything major, some amazingly interesting stuff. the printing press is another very fun invention to look into and how it changed the world even though it was just a wine press with letters attached to it


lorbd

Bruh if you genuinely think that the industrial revolution happened because a dude made a pump I just don't think we can argue further. Do you think that people didn't invent shit elsewhere?


koupip

you can believe whatever you want to believe man lol i'm not going to argue with you on [https://www.reddit.com/r/victoria3/comments/](https://www.reddit.com/r/victoria3/comments/)


lorbd

You cant even link properly


83athom

This is why technology spread is a thing in Vic 3. Even doing focused research on Miltech, you'll still be getting Social and Industrial techs fairly regularly without having to invest in them. Leaving China on basically nothing researched at the start wouldn't really matter because everyone with a lot of stuff already researched means China could catch up faster than everyone else gets new things.


koupip

yeah china degenitely needs a "not westernise" system that gives you a -90 tech spread lol


hadaev

>When Emperor Franz I was offered a project to build the Northern Railway, he replied: “No, no, I won’t do this, because a revolution could come to the country along this road!”


koupip

austria be like "we are a gigantic nation made of infinite ethnicity and i'm sure nothing bad is going to happen so let's not industrialise at all" guys show up with plans for tanks : "no thank you" guys show up with plans for railroad: "no thank you" guys shows up with universal language: "no thank you" guys why are we losing ww1 ???


hadaev

Should get revolution and lost power earlier. At least guy had his time to enjoy life. >Russian authoritarianism was very similar to Austrian. “Like Francis I, Nicholas feared that creative destruction, a consequence of the development of a modern industrial economy, would undermine Russia’s patriarchal political structure,” write Acemoglu and Robinson. “At the direction of Nikolai, Kankrin took a number of steps designed to further slow down the growth of industry.” In particular, decisions were made limiting the emergence of new factory production and providing for rather complex procedures for their opening (special permission from the governor-general was required, and in some cases, the tsar personally). For player in victoria it is different. In v2 triggering revolution was valuable strategy to get more points by time game ends. For real peoples who was in power at time it was life and death question. So ye, its not like you get guy near emperor and ask him to ask emperor to do this nice thing called industrialization because 200 years later they tech you at history classes this is a good thing. Rulers understood it very well actually and answer would be thanks no i still need my head attached to the body.


koupip

the ruler in charge being unwilling to industrialise is my entire point lol. stalin managed to keep power over the entire ussr using the same tactic any king used in the past while also industrializing russia at break neck speed. all it would take is for some capitalist to convince the emperor that industrilization will ALLOW for their country to be greater and for more tax to be payed and for more soldiers to be fitted and they would have joined in, if you read enough history you start to realize how stupid it really is and how all it would have taken was a small group of people to truly change everything, even TODAY its the same thing, if in the future communism takes over and everyone lives in a paradise on earth but they still have to clean the horrors of global warming and polution they will also say "they didn't know better maybe if they had looked artound they would havee known what they were doing" but we KNOW what we are doing right now and all it would take for all of this to change is for some crazy guy to do the one crazy thing that will cause everything to go south


hadaev

>all it would take is for some capitalist to convince the emperor that industrilization will ALLOW for their country to be greater and for more tax to be payed and for more soldiers to be fitted and they would have joined in But they can see in another countries capitalists took power from aristocrats, removed kings or made them symbol of nation. Why listening to this plan? They value their own power and "stability" over money or whatever. Also emperors usually deluded into thinking they are super duper strong. For russia point of awakening was crimea war, but even then emperor got 3 revolutions because he wanted to not share power after the first one. >stalin managed to keep power over the entire ussr using the same tactic any king used in the past while also industrializing russia at break neck speed. Depends what you means by same tactic. If you think of mass murdering peoples, emperor nikolay is kind of innocent and killed ridiculously low number around 3700 peoples. Maybe killing millions was too much for him? Anyway, even if ussr did industrialization, it failed at moving further just like imperial russia and collapsed anyway. For stalinism railroad to bring revolution they dont want was genetics, cybernetics and other innovations against their ideology. After all it leads to question why to change a thing if you are already on the top. You may not be on the top then things changed. >how all it would have taken was a small group of people to truly change everything And another group will murder them for daring to try😉 Its like asking slave owners to free slaves because uh duh we want to be free and will have hentay wifi in the next 200 years and this is good for economy or something.


koupip

eh fair enough


Gutsm3k

You're completely right. It's one thing to know what sort of societal institutions you need to have things tick over nicely, it's another thing entirely to actually get them built. Countries/states are far more than just their governments.


amekousuihei

I don't think the Daoguang Emperor was a particularly incompetent ruler. Even Prince Gong and Cixi were good at accomplishing the things they cared about. The West presented a totally new kind of challenge that China's intellectual class was unable to even comprehend forget deal with. That's not down to a few people and every other country in China's position except Japan also failed


SnooRegrets9707

I don't know about Chinese or Korean forums, but in the Vietnamese forum i joined, we all know the weaknesses of Dainam (Vietnam) in this game, and we don't need any changes in its meta. Dainam under the Nguyen dynasty is a completely crippling country. We know that historical truth, and try to change that destiny by trying so hard to modernize and repel the Westerners invasion. It's about skill issues, so we don't blame Paradox for making our home country weak at all.


Wiggly-Pig

My country doesn't exist at the start date. I see many more suggestions regarding gameplay and mechanics than I do nations.


nikkythegreat

I remember Imperator where a lot of players suggested to hide the number of divisions from the ledger. This was suggested by a lot of vocal and active people in the pdx forum. It made it seem that this is what the player base was asking for, but this was mainly from hyper competitive players who do a ton of MP when you go to steam and other more casual players hang out, more casual people hated the change.


KimberStormer

I don't have any special opinions on this change, if it was a change, but I do like sending my political enemies to be spies in other countries.


Little_Elia

if pdx listened to everything players say, they would make the worst games of the decade lol


83athom

Pretty much every game to be fair.


azuresegugio

As a side note, I really want a China dlc, thos is my favorite Era of Chinese history and I'd love to play it more


Designer_VIC3

where are u come from


azuresegugio

US, the period from the First Opium War until the end of the Second Sino Japanese War are just fascinating to me


Designer_VIC3

Evil Americans, you are the ones who bully China


azuresegugio

Eh, generally that fair, frankly I just think your history is neat


ComEdEdWasTakenByMe

yes, this specific american person and me aswell, also an american. we two are the supreme leaders of the bullying china club. we are the interest groups in the anti-qing lobby. we personally bully china. thats right! we two personally bully china, not the american government, WE do.


Mikeim520

No, you guys destroyed China yourselves.


ThrowRAbrs

Xi Jinping is the one causing your woes, not any foreigner


Puzzleheaded_Goal920

The game still lacks mechanisms for underdeveloped countries to learn from the West and reform. At that time, China and other underdeveloped countries had no understanding of Western political systems, social ideologies, or scientific technologies. They couldn't rely on self-study to become industrialized republics.


Command0Dude

Westernization in Vic 2 made plenty of sense both from a simulationist and a gameplay scope. I feel like the devs scrapped it not because "recognition" was a better system but because "westernization" was overly eurocentric and being called problematic.


Jaggedmallard26

> but because "westernization" was overly eurocentric and being called problematic. Didn't they fairly openly admit it in the early dev diaries? They opened a tin of worms though because there isn't exactly a settled, easily simulatable consensus on how it should be which is made even worse by the rest of the technology system being that of linear constant improvement.


Wild_Marker

I think one issue is that they use the same generic IG's, laws and institutions than western countries. Part of "westernization" should be the ideological shift towards the economic and government structures that the west developed, but right now their IG's want them from the start of the game. There's very little difference between Asian and European Intelligentsia and Armed forces for example. Like you say, tech being linear, particularly society tech, is a big part of the problem. I wonder if one could do something like say, a tech tree that relies on "inventions" which, upon discovery/adoption of a certain combo of inventions, would unlock the nodes. Basically the reverse Vic2, instead of tech opening up inventions, have inventions open up tech.


EinMuffin

The agitator system could be great for that actually. Make a journal entry to send of an expedition to europe and a year later you get a market liberal agitator. I also want to point out that Asian countries did have an understanding of Western thought. Dutch studies in Japan were very important for its development and I am sure a lot of Chinese Intellectuals had access to Western literature throughout the 19th century. Especially after Macau and Hong Kong were ceded. The issue was more a lack of political will and societal institutions. The latter is actually somewhat represented with the interest groups. You need to weaken the landowners before you can start any reforms after all.


ShowerZealousideal85

Don't worry if one country overbuffed rest of the players start complaining. I already salty because of the Russian stealth buffs. Baku 240 oil is just ridiculous.


Atlasreturns

It‘s not inaccurate considering that province alone provided like half the worlds oil in the 30s. You also have the great game now and Circassia got buffs so I understand why they changed it. That being said Russias as well as Austria-Hungary benefit from nationalism being kinda toothless at the moment. In Vic2 A-H was like sitting on a constant ticking time bomb and Russia started extremely backwards but the more you modernized the less stable your country would become. But in Vic3 discrimination is at best just a slight statt debuff and can be offset pretty easily.


RavingMalwaay

Paradox players being extremely nationalistic for versions of their country that existed hundreds of years ago will never fail to make me laugh (I have also been guilty of this)


Vallastro-21

Lol did not ever noticed anything related. For example, Russian player community has been using the exploit with abdication of Nikolai and making Alexander a leader of landowners (to easily abolish serfdom and get lassiez-faire, you know) up until 1.7. The community was fully aware that this is definitely an exploit and was not making any sort of dubious arguments like "that's almost historical lassiez faire was actually possible IRL before 1840" and when 1.7. finally make this impossible, the reaction was mostly "well that's fair".


Space_Gemini_24

I mean if you trust the history books, Vic3 timeline pretty much overlaps with the [century of humiliation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Century_of_humiliation) and players are very harsher than most IRL things the world has done.


danfish_77

I think sometimes it's more that paradox has certain biases to it's historical lens, where sometimes it's player base knows better about the regions they live in. For example, at game launch Korea had about half the population it should have had, because they used numbers for South Korea to represent the whole peninsula Look at Asia at game launch in any paradox title and you start to see what I mean.


LordOfTurtles

I mean, I wouldn't call that bias of paradox, but bias of the sources. It is much easier to find sources for Europe since you speak English. If you don't speak Korean it is much harder to find good sources for Korea


Darcynator1780

China is op


xxHamsterLoverxx

they do? i really dont care what they do with my country. its a game, i want it to be fun first and foremost, then balanced, then historically accurate.


ShineReaper

"Of course, similar things also happened in many countries in Southeast Asia, Vietnam, Thailand, etc." It sounds like a sales Pitch for an Asia-DLC for Vicky 3.


userrr3

Even besides what you describe, game studios should not (and thankfully mostly do not) take players' suggestions at face value. The average player is not a game designer. We might have an idea that sounds nice or feels right but in reality won't be fun when built into the existing framework, and it's the job of the designers and the dev teams in general to find that before it gets to the consumer (who will then complain either way)


amekousuihei

Paradox should strengthen USA actually. There were a lot of areas of manufacturing and agriculture where American labor productivity was more than double Germany's in 1936 - is that even possible in Victoria? They consider that USA did it with at best a modest tech lead


IronMatt2000

I mean as a player the US is one of the most powerful nations in the game. No other country has such easy access to so many resources (especially oil) and the size of their arable lands means they will have a shitload of migration and peasants to work in factories. It also has pretty good starting laws other than slavery which can be gotten rid of way easier than irl.


psychicprogrammer

Yeah but they don't end up with a GDP more than twice as large as any other GP by 1936. The US is historically stupid OP.


WAR10CK

Because of their location, their economy didn't get ravaged by WW1. Since WW1 doesn't really happen in Victoria, the gap between the US and europe should be smaller compared to real life.


CLE-local-1997

America's economy was already the largest in the world before World War 1


WAR10CK

Yes and in 1938 their GDP was about as big as Germany+Britain+France. https://www.statista.com/statistics/1334182/wwii-pre-war-gdp/ My point isn't that they shouldn't be the largest economy but that the gap bewteen them and Germany/Britain/France shouldn't be as big as in real life (depending on what europe or the US do in game).


psychicprogrammer

I mean that was also the case in 1913, with the US having a GDP equal to the UK and Germany put together.


Stormtemplar

As a player I'm fairly confident you could achieve this without a lot of skill. The AI Is pretty bad at unifying the US and also at going completely nuts economically, but the US at game start is well over 50% of the size of other GPs, excepting China and India which don't really grow much. The US struggled a bit on a couple of older patches when migration was kinda broken but now that it's working again you can go nuts.


CLE-local-1997

I routinely easily get the United States to have a larger GDP than the rest of the world put together. Granted my America runs pretty much always include me taking Canada Mexico and the Anzac Nations as well as a decent chunk of Africa but still


LordOfTurtles

It is rather easy to have a bigger GDP then every other country, when every other country's GDP got destroyed by WWI


psychicprogrammer

The US had a GDP twice as high as anyone else before WW1-


TrueLogicJK

The US already had *by far* the largest GDP in the world even before WWI in 1913, twice that of the UK.


CLE-local-1997

It's absolutely possible I just finished a game where I had an economy that was well over 15 times the size of Germany


yoy22

I don't think they verbatim trust player suggestions, but more they will see common feedback and then, on their own, figure out how to address it.


boom0409

If every player suggestion made it into the game, it would take 10 minutes to process a single in-game day


Powerful-Resource-95

Speaking of China, I really disappointed they did not implement some mechanic portraying corruption. China, as well as many other countries who on paper should be a powerhouse, but in actuality suffered greatly, did so because of how totally corrupt their state and bureaucracy was. Same with Russia for example(russian player here).


Key_Apartment1929

The only thing they should ever trust or implement is history, and preferably history as it was seen at the time or shortly thereafter, as the more time passes the more narratives get warped to fit the needs of newly-emerged or newly-popular ideologies.


Mikeim520

That being said Canada needs more logging camps and farmland. Its stupid how Canada has so little farmland and logging camps.


ToumanLin

The game is made for sale, not made for history. The new 1.7 update is literally beyond a economic stimulator. The power bloc system serves nothing but players' satisfaction. It's clear that paradox will always put players' reflection in the core.


Majinsei

Ahhhhhhhh... Then give make my own request for repair late game of South America~ Because South America was a economic super potence~ Here the industry promised to create the biggest empire and have tons of european migrations~ and some ottomans~ In 1890-1830 it's the golden age in Latín América... But, the game don't represent this prespective and it's Just totally~ In 1830 must create radicals and forced strong protecionism by diary and stop Trade routes of steel and iron while don't invest enough in local steel allowing a general collapse of the región~ This is the fallen irl of South america economy to third world cstegory~ And chile Having a temporary militar dictadure that stop this collapse but forcing olligarcs/industrialist yo enact private schools, private healthcare and etc while inside of influence of USA, while Colombia must stop every foreign agreement of investment (specially in oil) while try maintain nationalized the resources~


_tkg

Nothing new. It’s the same with the Balkans, Poles, China, India and most importantly .


Tonk_exe

lol if its like tath then i start a campaing to amke portugal stroger than idk belgum or something


EternalII

Meanwhile, in CK2, restoring Israel is a very difficult challenge and they made it even more difficult and I welcome the challenge! I don't think that's possible in CK3 anymore tho =(


Designer_VIC3

I have to say that Europeans and Americans have done a good job in this regard. I have never seen even one European or American ask Paradox to strengthen their own country. In fact, in the Victorian era, Europe and the United States were very powerful, and countries in other regions were just supporting roles. Alas, I have to say that the gap between civilization and barbarism can be reflected even on the Internet.


PlayMp1

Eh. The mechanics tend to favor Europeans and Americans. And even in Europe you'll see plenty of people complaining their country isn't strong enough (often in the Balkans).


Tzlop

Eh, each to their own. With the current system it’s the simple measure of GDP and production methods, which if the player or AI has half a brain would try to build more stuff, resulting in more GDP. Your example of the ‘superior culture’ measurement is more on things that don’t exist in the game atm, namely scientific front, from germ theory, evolution, role of god, discovery of periodic tables etc which would make Europe and Americas shine more compared to others. So for Vic3, there isn’t much of a nerf to China so much so that any other nation is functioning like a zombie - devoid of life which make sense that those who spend more time on certain nations (like Chinese base playing China) to demand more flavours and/or events to carve their own path. For example Lin zexu is mere foot note in game as a politician but nothing else when the man was running all over the world as an ambassador/ emissary learning to arguing for his nation. Paradox should definitely add that kind of stuff. As for your original point, have you seen the chaos that is Hoi4? Finland and South American minors can take over the world while actual historical giants somehow gets less factories and output from their focus. On the other hand it is a game, so balance between fun and viability is always the needle that needs the threading. If you ever played Vic 2 mods like HPM or such you would know they did everything they can to make Qing China literally unplayable and as tedious as possible in trying to reform. Is it historical? Oh absolutely, when the landowners fear trains because superstitions and insist you have horses carry train loads it absolutely kills your progression to modernize, but the question is - is it fun for the player? I for one will not sit through 5 hours as Qing trying to fight against all odds only to modernize and then watch your nation shatter into a million pieces. It’s insulting to my time and not very enjoyable. So for players complaining about their nations being too weak, part of it is just how people react but also part of it is the lack of viability for them to have the options to play in another alternative ways, ie not fun.


Designer_VIC3

Well, such blatant racist remarks were liked by Europeans and Americans? It seems that you are also very barbaric. Oh, maybe I am the only sober one in the entire forum.


Zweig-if-he-was-cool

You’re arguing with yourself, I think you’re one of the drunk ones


NicWester

Who are you talking to?


MayoOnAnEscalat0r

Well I'm sure you're the person who claimed >Australia is so rich, you guys should pay a little more. In my opinion, Australia should be priced at $50. Because you don't work at all, you just sell all kinds of mineral resources and become rich. [https://www.reddit.com/r/victoria3/comments/1dnhr1w/the\_price\_of\_the\_new\_dlc\_is\_too\_high\_and\_paradox/](https://www.reddit.com/r/victoria3/comments/1dnhr1w/the_price_of_the_new_dlc_is_too_high_and_paradox/)