1Ī lot of the game in turn is defined by the tension on the one hand between the tremendous, beginner-unfriendly complexity of what the game is trying to simulate and the strenuous, omni-present efforts by the designers to both make that simulation work (it does work, to a degree that VickyII never did) but also to be understandable to the player. While the game runs just from the 1830s to the 1930s, I found myself playing it much more slowly and carefully than other Paradox games (except perhaps for Hearts of Iron), so don’t let the short time frame fool you: this is a full length Paradox game experience. Those interlocking goals generally means the player is always doing something. The player is at any time likely to be pursuing parallel interlocking goals in all three pillars, with diplomatic activity often focused on securing resources to support economic activity which reshapes society in ways that make desired political changes possible and so on. Paradox has in the past struggled to make their games as interesting in peacetime as in wartime Victoria III at last I think succeeds completely at this. Both of those genres (production games and grand strategy games) have reputations for being really hard on beginners with a high barrier for entry Paradox has put in a lot of work to make this game beginner friendly and they do as well as anyone could but if you are new to these sorts of games, you should go in expecting to tank your economy or tip your country into revolution at least once.įundamentally Victoria III is built around three interlocking pillars: geopolitics (war and peace), economics (industrialization) and politics. ![]() I’m going to talk about this game as a historical project in the next section, but as a game it presents a really capable mix of the traditional strategy of most Paradox games (the diplomacy, scheming, resource allocation, etc.) married to the sort of joy that comes from a lot of production games like Factorio or Satisfactory, that delightful feeling of creating a machine (in this case, a national industrial economy) and then watching it work. Overall, I think Victoria III is a remarkable success at what it sets out to do, albeit one that, like most of Paradox’s games, probably won’t have universal appeal. Hiring this general made me laugh pretty hard and the list of traits – popular commander, expert defensive strategist – seem about right. Subscribe! May the Luigis Cadorna of the world quake with fear, Svetozar Boroevi ć is here, complete with his diacritical mark. And if you want updates whenever a new post appears, you can click below for email updates or follow me on twitter ( for updates as to new posts as well as my occasional ancient history, foreign policy or military history musings. Finally, these are my impressions having put about 80 hours into the game I’ve played a mix of Colombia (into Gran Colombia), Austria (into Austria-Hungary) and Spain (into more Spain), in each case focused more on political and industrial than military aims, though none of these were by any means ‘pacifist’ runs, so I’ve engaged with most of the game’s systems.įinally, it is worth remembering that I am singularly responsible for bullying Paradox into announcing Victoria III, so I both accept your accolades but also this game as the war reparations I demanded.Īnd of course if you want to proactively send me war reparations, you can do so via Patreon. Then a long section discussing how the game modifies or builds on the historical perspective taken by its predecessor, Victoria II (which I am henceforth going to call VickyII so that it’s easy to see which game I mean without counting the numerals, so Victoria III but VickyII), which we’ve already discussed.Īnd of course for the sake of disclosure it seems worth noting that I received an early review code from Paradox and also owned the game already via the PDXCON2022 conference goodies (where I was a paid speaker), so I do have something of an existing relationship with Paradox, though those of you who have read the Teaching Paradox series will know this does not stop me from criticizing their games, sometimes quite stridently. First, there’s going to a be a brief section of my own first impressions this isn’t a review per se, but I suppose as close as I can get to one. This post is going to proceed then in two parts. This week’s post is coming to you all a bit early, as the folks at Paradox Interactive were kind enough to send me a review code for Victoria III – Paradox Interactive’s long awaited historical grand strategy game set during 19th and early 20th centuries – so I could have something to say about it at launch, so I thought I would move this post up in the week to coincide with the end of the review embargo.
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