Victoria 3

Despite i think the flaws that I think most people say (which I think most of them are exaggerated) I think Victoria 3 fills in a niche within the Paradox game set. And I think it's important to set the expectations straight for people who want to buy this game: Victoria is NOT: A war game (like Hearts of Iron) A world conquest game (like Europa Universalis) A in depth politics about interpersonal relationships (Like Crusader Kings) Victoria 3 is a simulation of economics and society, set and themed in the Victorian Era. It's focus on demographic and societal change is something that you wouldn't be able to get form any other game, and honestly really love the game for it. If you're looking for a straightforward strategy game where you can just paint the map after stacking modifiers, this game probably isn't for you. it's potentially a niche game, but if economics and society simulation sounds like something you'd like. Then I'd highly recommend this game!

Do not play the tutorial to learn the game. It forces you to complete arbitrary objectives that like randomly starting a war without giving you a reason to do so, or telling you lower the cost of fabric without letting you know that in order to do so you'll need to build up your construction sector beforehand so you don't end up staring at the screen for ages waiting for the fabric producing buildings to finish construction because you start off with such few construction points. Go watch a youtube guide instead.

I love Hearts of Iron IV, Europa Universalis IV, and Crusader Kings III is great too. But this game just isn’t finished. They've been working on it for more than three years after launch, yet it still lacks depth. The economic simulator is fun to manage, and they’ve improved a lot of the UI since launch, but trade is broken. it simply doesn’t work. Trade is an essential part of the game; it's like the equivalent of combat in HOI4. And speaking of combat, it’s extremely boring and unbalanced. Naval combat is as basic as it gets. I don’t understand how Paradox has been making games for decades, with so many titles to draw ideas and lessons from—and yet they didn’t seem to learn anything. At least I’m looking forward to EU5. That dev team actually listens to the community. I would like to come back to Vic3 when the game is finnished, but if i need to spend 150 dollars to buy all the dlc only to have a playable game, i think that is absolutely wild.

This game makes me so mad. It has all the potential to be a good game, but fails at almost everything. Nearly every country plays out the same, nothing to differentiate between each other, perhaps one journal entry which you finish the first 10 years. In each country you build and pass the same laws in the same order every time, some countries are just futher along the same path. Now this wouldnt be too bad if passing laws wasnt up to total rng, you can have 70% chance to pass and 7% to stall, but then get super unlucky and now you have to wait for 10 years just for it to fail, wasting your time. The war system is so broken, and has been talked about extensively, Being forced to capitulate, even if you are winning, armies teleporting away for no reason or just leaving and going to another front. Armies attacking a state that has no war goal and does nothing to help the war. Armies taking weeks to arrive to a newly created front that split from the origianl, casuing you to lose land and maybe the war. I know the game isnt about war, but come on. And lets not talk about the performance, when you start to enter the endgame it becomes a slog to play, the last few years take as much time as the 70 years it took to get there. Not that it matters too much, because by the time the performace starts to tank, you have already achieved all your goals, you have the strongest economy, army and navy. You have all the lands you want. There is nothing left to do when you reach number one. I really want to like this game but it is really impossible to, and Paradox isnt going to do anything about it, not without putting the solution behind a overpriced dlc, casuing you to spend huge amount of money just to fix something that shouldnt have been a problem in the first place.

I fucking love it when my spreadsheet is better than my opponents spreadsheet

I've been so worked up by the needless complexity of Victoria 3 that I have decided to write my first review. To summarise, the game from my perspective is stupidly complex and the learning curve is frankly impossible to get into as a new player to the Victoria franchise and is not nearly as fun, gripping or entertaining in comparison to other Paradox games while (attempting in my case) learning the game. I spent nearly 35 hours of my in-game time trying to learn and understand HOW I am supposed to play this game in any form. If you are a new paradox player I do not recommend purchasing Victoria 3 unless you enjoy reading the essays of each tutorial tab to understand the game, or frankly enjoy the hyper depth of the economy and challenge of learning Victoria 3. However for me and I imagine the majority of new players to the Victoria franchise, many of the mechanics appear needlessly and frustratingly complex to the point I regret purchasing this game. With this said, I'm sure there are elements within this game that players who have mastered Victoria 3 will feel are incredibly rewarding in contrast to my own experience with this game. However for me the only elements I enjoyed from this game were not from the gameplay mechanics, and instead the artistic and thematic approach to this era of history, the music and art of Victoria 3 really set the tone for the turn of the industrial revolution and the rise of the empires and modern nations we now know today, it's just a shame the soundtrack is only around an hour and a half long. To conclude, if you are coming from another Paradox game such as Crusader Kings III, Europa Universalis IV or Hearts of Iron IV do not expect to find any similar elements of these Paradox Games in Victoria 3, it is simply its own game and its mechanics are far more complex than anyone going blindly into the game can imagine, so much to me that it has completely killed my enticement to learn the game. If you are into the difficulty of trying to comprehend how to play this game I wish you my best of luck! Though if you decide to buy Victoria 3 and aren't enjoying it I highly recommend refunding if still possible.

[h1]Tl:dr[/h1] The game has good bones and currently has the mechanisms in place to be a game better than Vic2 with its own flair like CK3 is to CK2; There are some glaring issues with the game, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t space to grow. The war system, economy, and politics are a double edged sword being both a blessing for being very economical and efficient with how you CAN play but the poor implementation of these designs fails to make these processes more streamlined. I don’t want a simplified version, I want a version that doesn’t fall victim to poor RNG, odd design choices, and lack of access to information. You will spend more time staring at menus and in-game spreadsheets than you will actually playing this game. [h2]Economy[/h2] The economy in this game has opened Pandora's box (only accessible through DLC by the way) in what it is that the game does compared to many other games on the market and especially Vic2. There are a plethora of factors you have to account for when building an economy when competing with other great powers both in your domestic and foreign market. It requires planning into the long game to secure yourself politically and economically. One glaring problem is the AI doesn’t always think that way and instead thinks in simple step-by-step actions as opposed to thinking about long term consequences; “quick cash for political collapse”. Experienced players will know what I mean, but for newer players it means that nations will build their economy in such a way that has a mass majority of their population being a laborer pop group in the lowest strata possible. Peasants will have a higher Standard of living for most of the game (with the exception of the UK as most input goods come from subjects) and peasants are usually going to encompass 50-80% of your population while being commonly politically unaffiliated (excluding high literacy pop). Most nations will max out their infrastructure and raw resources, and when that is done they'll start moving towards only building industrial buildings resulting in a death spiral of larger laborer pop groups with low standard of living that will want to constantly revolt over 5 different reasons. Major and minor nations both fall victim to this. One personal complaint is the lack of competition with foreign markets and a forced autarky upon every nation. I really hope the next large update addresses some of the glaring problems that the international economy has concerning genuine applications of economics in certain cases, like the fact that some places are just better than others at producing certain things. Brazil is very good at producing large amounts of coffee, meat, and hardwood in the game, yet when it comes to international trade and the price of these items is 50% of their base price, Brazil can barely make a dent in how much they can export. Every nation feels they have to run an unprofitable forestry mill that produces just enough to get by when it would be more economically beneficial for both parties for Brazil to just export cheap hardwood and the other party can produce normal lumber as they’ll consume more of that. Plus if my nation produced a lot of meat and fruit, my people shouldn’t just decide to literally starve themselves because they didn’t get enough grain, why can’t my population supplement their hunger with meat or fruit when it’s half the price of grain? This also completely makes convoy raiding to a degree useless if every nation is producing everything on their own and the AI will have so many convoys in reserve for their armies and shipping lines that a war will be over before you can even think of sinking half the convoys that are supplying armies that have invaded your country from across oceans (the devs fixed this with shipping lines recently, now their efficiency decreases from just raiding not from how many convoys you have.). And omg the lack of access to information, I just want to figure out what is an expensive housing good for a shopkeeper of a lumber mill in my capital. It takes about 7 clicks, 4 different UIs, and a huge mental toll on actually caring about what to produce more of in the future to increase the standard of living of my population more efficiently. [h2]Politics[/h2] I will admit I have a hard time playing base game Victoria 3 with their current political system, literally everything is a roll of the dice and you’ll have a better chance of getting a royal flush in Texas hold em’ than you will passing laws to ban serfdom. Now you can influence those odds greatly, one of those ways being through the ways you build your economy but also through random events that decide the fate of your nation at random points. [h2]War[/h2] This one is everyone's big kerfuffle and probably what feels like the greatest stab in the back felt by the community, or at least a (very loud) small part of the community feels this way. People feel they have been scammed and wronged because they can't walk a unit on tiles around enemies and use cheesy tactics against their enemies as they did in Victoria 2. Like baiting the AI into a mountain tile with a small army then dumping a death stack of armies 10x their size into the battle getting defensive and terrain bonuses. I was annoyed with the tediousness of it in Victoria 2 and was happy to see how war was implemented in Victoria 3, but first. War originally sucked, everyone should be forced to play release build British East India Company and Prussia for 1 hour before playing the current game to understand a little bit in where we have come (and are hopefully going). Wars are treated on a frontline basis and I like that, but it definitely needs some fixing with more unified frontlines and a better understanding of what the hell is actually happening in battle and with my units. Why am I winning this fight but losing this fight? Sometimes those things aren’t always clearly explained and it gets a bit annoying. You should not be able to just walk over every nation you come by, war should be something that runs you into debt and can cause severe problems for your country like it did during this time period. In fact in 1719 (100 years before game start date) the British Empire was racking up a total debt of 50 million pounds for Britain and at this point was estimated as £64.4 million GDP with most of those debts coming from wars. Plus wars should be reflected on the home front, when Europe goes into its yearly death war the deaths in combat should be reflected in your actual population (there is a mod called “war rework” which changes this and I love it). It should make weighing the decision of going into full conscription be a hard thing to do, as you may secure your sovereignty in the moment but result in having a low working population leading to not enough people being employed in factories. Wars should be economical, they should be deadly, and not always be something instantly gone towards by nations when it should have drastic effects on your nation. But to a certain extent this game greatly encourages you to go to war especially if you want to compete with great powers as certain territories are 1000 km away yet simple to conquer. Yet there is 0 reflection of this in a game wherein war is supposed to be the clashing of economies and seeing who can tough it out longer than their enemy. War isn’t punishing, it’s rewarding. I don’t think war should be devastating in a game about imperialism, but the game should not be handing you free stuff because you just have the ability to naval invade China with 200,000 British troops in 1836 by sea… Edit: Typo

I highly recommend this game, however it will NOT appeal to everyone. This is actually underneath the surface a very nice and complex simulation of what it would be like to be the grey eminence behind a 19th and early 20th century country. Yes, there are still some annoying parts of the game, and I understand that it was a little underdeveloped when it was released, but it seems to me to be much better now. I'll go into the wells and betters below, but for me the real joy of this game is finding the hidden complexities and interrelationships between seemingly unrelated numbers at first. Now onto my feelings about various aspects of the game. WAR - I know there is a portion of the community that actively dislikes (well ok, hates) the warfare aspect of this game. BUT, this is a simulation of being in the capital sending the generals off to battle set up as well as you can and hope boozy Grant doesn't decide that attacking a smaller and technologically inferior Mexican defending force in a forest with exhausted men is a good idea (not only that but then he led his men into mud (ask the French knights at Agincourt how much fun mud was)!! and the defending general happened to be a woodlands combat expert) - turning what should have been a ROFLstomp into a nasty loss wrecking a large portion of the American army - only to be saved at the end by Mexican morale breaking and barely snatching victory from the jaws of defeat. I understand now how Lincoln must have felt after every battle of the first two years of the Civil War complaining to Mary Todd at night about Hooker, Burnsiide, McClennan and Meade, or how the German general staff must have felt as they watched their beautiful plan disintegrate into a 3 year stalemate because the generals wouldn't make their men triple time it to Paris. I call it "General's going to do what General's going to do." Yes, there are some problems with fronts - but it looks like they may be addressed with Charters of Commerce. And there is nothing more fun than seeing Longstreet's diversionary (but should have failed) invasion of St. Petersburg succeed beyond your wildest dreams because he pulls the perfect tactics out of the hat, causing the Tsar to get his underwear in a bunch and strip the front of half his battalions to try to crush the beachhead - and all of the sudden a potentially long and expensive war becomes a mop-up operation. If your're looking to move brigades, divisions, and corps around the battlefield, this game will NOT be for you. But, remember this is pre 1939 war, there is no OKH, OKW, SHAEF etc. This is 19th century war, and you're not supposed to be a general in the field, and "General's going to do what general's going to do - sometimes the gods of war (ie the rng) are going to favor you, and sometimes they will leave you hanging. DIPLOMACY - this is a bit simpistic too, nut not bad. Again it looks like Charters of Commerce (CoC) is going to flesh it out. Right now its pretty basic, I offer the Scandinavians one thing for one other thing (no two for the price of one to get a deal I really want, but it looks like maybe CoC lokks like it may implement). The AI seems to be well enough programmed not to accept really stupid deals. However, there are some idiotic issues - like puppets not wanting you to get an obligation on them for absorbing their debt (I'm looking at you Greece and Haiti - you already have to jump when the President says jump - I just don't want your revolt of the decade to happen after you declare bankruptcy again right before my large European war ends so I have to spend millions because I cant demobilize until I clean up your inability to manage finances!) ECONOMY - this is where the game shines. The first time I played it I approached it like HOI3, spam construction and universities to build a mega industrial base, but then as I watched the underlying supports collapse. So I dug into guides and nested tooltips to figure out where I'd gone wrong, made a second attempt and partially succeeded until my pops got angry about being abused laborers making jack in the steel mills, lumberyards and coal and iron mines. And then I really started digging into nested tooltips and the wiki and began to understand the interrelationships between various semmingly unrealated numbers (like SoL, MAPI, Literacy, educational access and how seemingly unrelated numbers are intertwined) I got a much deeper appreciation of what is behind the interface. This is not for the faint o heart if you want to master the economy aspect. Yes there are problems with economy balance that show up in the later game, and every major market seems to be awash in the same few things (tools, fabric, fruit, sugar and dye for example). There are mods out there that try to address the demand aspect, but they run into a problem. Paradox had to keep the number of calculations down (so the game would be runnable on less than a $2500 (USD) high end system) so under the hood the experienced programming community can't do what they want. So while the economy aspect imho is really quite good, it still needs some balancing. UI - all the information you need to dig into the game is there, but you have to be willing to go into tabs of tabs or read two or three nested tooltips. Again, its not for the faint of heart if you really want to maximize (as much as possible) everything. In the game settings you can tweak how long tooltips take to load and stay up which is nice. Just like the rest of the game the UI seems fairly straightforward on the surface, but has more hidden layers than an onion. I would love to see the ability to not have to dig so deep to be added to the UI, but not too much so it doesn't turn into a spreadsheet simulation. PERFORMANCE - I'm running the game on a midrange gaming laptop from early 2024, and I see a little slowdown at the highest speeds post 1880, but nothing major. I can only imagine what would happen if Paradox hadn't made the decisions they did to limit calculations. Overall I find this game a lot of fun. I like the layers of complexity and I like the fact that I can bring out my inner 19th century capitalist on pops who are just bits and bytes so they don't really suffer from little flesh wounds like a few crushed fingers or a lost hand in unsafe machinery, or the deaths caused by a little violent suppression to keep radicals creating turmoil in line. Maybe in my next playthru I'll use a few bright shiny new monitors and ironclads to try to disabuse Emperor Pedro of the notion that since he is allowed to claim he is a major power that he can try to modernize Brazil instead of accepting Brazil's rightful position as America's personal lumber, coffee and eventually rubber supplier and America will be happy to turn those raw materials into manufactured goods that we will sell back for a reasonable (from the American view) profit. What quaint notions he has! Before any Brazilians get offended by the last two sentences, please understand they were written with my tongue so far in my cheek that it bulged. I do plan on doing a playthru to see if I can help Pedro and his descendants achieve the dream of seeing the continent of Brazil on world maps, because those caudillos running those other countries are making their pops cry out for Brazilian enlightened leadership into the 20th century! I love the fact that I can make my inner 19th century leader come out in different ways with different countries that I'm interested in as (very) amateur 19th century history interests dictate. Yes Mexico, once I really master more nuances, I plan on seeing if I need to deport those poor yankee immigrant pops who illegally crossed the border (at the Mason/Dixon line) into the prosperous Mexican Republic that is recognized as a great power! (WINK) Finally, this game will not appeal to everyone (but what game ever does), but it seems to have come along nicely and I am having a lot of fun with it.

I'm sorry Paradox, but... no. I've given this game so many chances, but this is a failure. There are too many broken mechanics and bugs. And even if you manage to wade through the broken mechanics and bugs, it's been years and there are still massive gaps in the experience and performance.

You can do whatever you want, the greatest or the wickedest things imaginable, in this alternate history simulator. [h3] BUT NO, YOU CANNOT GRANT COMMAND TO A FEMALE CHARACTER!! [/h3] How dare you even think about it 💀💀 And just to be sure, we devs threw in an implicit gender check, so you can't even mod it with our fancy natural language toolset. The gameplay is solid. I’d enjoy it more if it wasn’t a sausage fest. --- btw, 1.9.0 keeps crashing and spamming errors like “Failed to read key reference: headlines_all_minor_events” and “Failed to find game concept: concept_input_goods_shortage.” Unplayable for now.

This is an economy simulator, not much else. The gameplay loop is pretty boring, diplomacy and warfare are practically redundant and the button and tool-tip maze that this game is makes it feel more like you're controlling a bloated corpse than anything else. Unless you just want to build steel mills, then its pretty chill.

a great socio-economic simulator. the scope of what it's trying to simulate is vast, but in my opinion it does a better job at achieving this than any other game there currently is, and it's not even close. i think a lot of people have different expectations for this game, as it necessarily dips its toes into areas other paradox games do better at - hoi4 is a better war game, eu4 is a better map painter, ck3 is better at storytelling. but this game allows you to enjoy a different fantasy of understanding the interconnectedness of your nation's economy, demographics, and politics. you can learn how to massage these factors over the game's 100 year timespan to achieve a multitude of goals, from achieving a wealthy utopia, economically dominating the world market, or expanding your influence and power across the globe. each major update improves the game further, and unlike other paradox games the DLCs aren't necessary and, in my opinion, feel rather redundant given the vibrant modding community which offers a vast amount of new content, mechanics, fixes, adjustments so you can really make the game how you want. the complexity isn't for everyone, and the broadly laid-back gameplay certainly makes it an almost meditative game at times, but if you enjoy graphs and spreadsheets, this game will appeal to you. also, the graphics are gorgeous but the game is very CPU-bound, so be mindful of how powerful your device's CPU is and adjust the 'pop consolidation' setting in 'game rules' accordingly.

i might be stupid, but this is the most unituitvie and unexplained game ever. 240 hours in and i have no idea what im doing...

LATEST UPDATE ALMOST BRICKED MY PC. This new update is absolutely garbage. Do NOT buy it if you use Windows. Somehow they thought it was a good idea to alienate the largest OS with a bug that crashes not the game but your computer.

One of my most favorite paradox games. If you like an economic builder but also grand strategy game than this game is for you. The time period starting in 1836 gives the player a good chance to expand but also interact with already established countries like Russia and the United Kingdom.

They finally did it. It's now a great Paradox experience; painful to learn, requires all/most of the DLCs and ultimately it's just a map and a spreadsheet but it finally feels satisfying.

[b]The new DLC is actually good — credit where it's due.[/b] The new trade mechanic is somewhat better and adds the much-needed automation to the process. But don’t let that fool you. It’s the kind of improvement that gives you just enough hope to stick around — only for the core issues to smack you in the face again. It feels less like real progress and more like a distraction from the game’s deeper problems. Because the game itself? Still plagued by [b]random crashes[/b]. And I’m not talking about a simple crash to desktop — I have to [i]hard reset[/i] my entire PC with the power button. In 2025, this level of technical failure is just unacceptable (and I have very decent hardware). On top of that, the UI feels like it was designed for a mobile game — [i]clunky, ugly, and frustrating to navigate.[/i] Even modders, who are more passionate and better at coding than Paradox interns on the Vic3 project, can’t fix it. At this point, I’ve pretty much lost hope in Paradox. They've managed to crash not just the game, but [b]my expectations too[/b]. I’m left wondering how they’ll manage to slowly ruin every one of their games.

I meet the recommended specs, but the game ran poorly even before the latest update. Now, with the new update/DLC, it’s completely unplayable constant lag, stuttering, and PC freezes that require a hard shutdown. If you're buying this game based on the recommended specs... don’t. You'll need a much stronger rig. Treat the recommended specs as the bare minimum just to get the game running.

I've been experiencing repeated crashes, consistently at the game start, with the following error spamming the log: [data_game_concept_type.cpp:38]: Failed to find game concept: concept_input_goods_shortage, did you forget to add it to common/game_concepts? I’m running the game with no mods, and this makes the game completely unplayable right now.

Victoria 3 is locking up my computer when I try to play it. Tested on two separate computers, and it freezes both PCs completely, needing a hardware restart. Based on a forum post, this has been happening to people since at least March, and it looks like paradox can't fix it. I'm glad I didn't buy the season 2 pack, because I wouldn't be able to play it anyway.

After about 800 hours put into it and with probably the best update this game has gotten with trade having been reworked. There is really nothing that compares to it. The worst part now is probably the military but it still does the job well enough. If you want tips for dlc- charters of commerce and spheres of influence are the important ones.

this game caused a mass hysteria and made people hallucinate into thinking vicky 2 was actually good. autists and youtubers made shit up to make it sound like vicky 2 was light years ahead of vicky 3. someone paid a handsome bull to advertise vicky 2 when vicky 3 was running ads in youtube. content farmers who never touched the vicky series farmed the outrage to make quick $$$. people came out like it was pride month and proclaimed that they actually played vicky 2. if that stupid autistic community drama doesnt impress you, mentioning this game helped me land a data analyst job.

Charters of commerce, and the 1.9 update, have made this game an excellent addition to a grand strategy collection. Trade now functions very well and countries can specialize; no more playing every country's economy the same.

On release the game just wasn't there, but 2.5 years of support later and with the 1.9 update and Chapters of Commerce it's in a really good state right now! I feel that finally Victoria is fulfilling it's promise of being more diplomatic and economic than war focused. The treaty system makes the game feel much more alive and with the addition of the world market the economy also just makes more sense. There's still some rough edges and I'd like the game to better model historical outcomes, but it's really fun to play right now.

oh geez oh my. 3 years since release and this game IS STILL lacking in historic depth and flavour. European borders rarely change, it's common to see nations keep the institution of slavery all the way till the end of the game (1936), Germany and Italy still rarely form, USA rarely achieves it's historic borders, the Qing empire almost never falls apart, nationalism has a negligible effect on your nations politics or world politics, and for a game that partly takes place in the "world war" era it is wild to me that there is still no Great War events or cataclysms. I could go on, I think anyone who plays this game eventually finds any historic depth or flavor the game has, tends to run out around 1860 or even earlier. I can only recommend this game if it's economic systems seem so appealing to you that it outweighs the fact Victoria 3 is a lackluster historical simulation. Even then, I would add that there is also not much depth to that economic system. All you have to do is build industries that provide goods that are currently expensive within your market (or just build trade depots), ensure that your provinces have 100% market access (all that takes is building railroads or ports), and occasionally over-build a certain industry because you're about to unlock a certain tech that requires more of a certain good. In fact, most of this game is just your construction queue gradually completing various constructions. Again, if that sounds appealing to you than go ahead, but might I also recommend the ANNO series instead? I regret spending the money I have on this game, between the DLCs and the grand edition I picked up at launch, I am sufficiently underwhelmed with the experience I've purchased. Victoria 3 is the quintessential Paradox game, terrible/broken launch, years of fixing the drab vanilla game play, several $20-$30 DLCs that add events and features that should really be in the base game, until 6-7-8-+ years and $150-$200+ later it finally becomes what it was promised at launch.

Honestly i cannot recommend this game at all, it has been close to 3 years since its been released and i bought it on day one, i absolutely love these types of games but Victoria 3 still has major problems. 1. Warfare doesnt work, while this isnt a major focus in this period there are so many cases where its just beyond broken, having naval supremacy and starving out another nations supply of guns does litteraly nothing to impact the army, leading to cases where you are at war for years on end unable to break a nonsensical stalemate, frontlines still dont work, supply hubs stop working 2. Growing your population can only be done one way, and "major" demographical shifts are impossible, if i as greece form the megali idea and form byzantium i am forced to go multiculturalism or face constant turmoil and revolution, even if i put the ottomans or a turkish rump state as my protectorate i cant do a population exchange or anything of the sort. 3. the optimization of the game is so bad, it becomes so slow and time consuming for so little gain later in the game. 4. so many nations i want to play are unplayable unless i do dumb unrealistic strategies the united states of central america is still under a stupid RNG mechanic for collapsing where you can spend years in-game trying to stabilize the nation, only for one state to break away causing unrest in the remaining states, dooming you to re-conquest and hoping your neighbors dont deciede to join for a random obligation. 5. Recource distribution is so bad in certian parts of the world, like there are absolutely no sulphur in the entire southern half of africa, wich becomes a big problem if youre trying to play as the boer states

Played the free version all weekend with no problems, then I buy the game and it crashes every 30 minutes? Like, how does that even work? Big Paradox fan, but hard to be positive when I can barely even get past the country selection screen.

Typical Paradox Game. Bad start but better and better with each Update. Meanwhile realy enjoyable

This game was a mediocre at release and had a lot of problems but it became one of the best Paradox games thanks to devs dedication throughout the years. It's so much fun to play now so I think they deserve a positive review.

i dont want this to be a negative review, but i gave this game almost 3 years of time and they still have not fixed the war system. Otherwise this game is great and i really love it, but the basics of warfare does not apply in this game. you dont control almost anything about combat and everything is just based on a badly created system of randomly genereated numbers and industrial power. Basically the game forces you into WW1 style combat in 1836 where industry and manpower is everthing a war of maneuver does not exist. And on top of that supplying your army seams to happen magicaly and does not care if you are trying to feed tens of thousands of your toops as spain on the other side of europe only using sail ships that have to sail through the denmark straits while the the danes are fighting along side your enemy the prussians. and dont get me started on the navy. this game should guide you from sail ships throght ironclads to dreadnoughts. but all of this is done only by changing the same 2 type of units with different stats nothing more (exept the type of resource you need to produce) so on the of chance that someone from paradox reads this. guys please fix the combat. give us control, logistics and propper navies that can actually do something

Saw this game had some new content. I got so excited. "Aw. sweet! they finally added more content. I may check it out." I got to the page and realize its all paid dlc. What a crap business model. At least finish the base game first. this is like going to a seafood store to buy clams. You buy the shells but they make you pay extra if you want a clam inside. THEN you realize that paradox also messed up CK3, Stellaris, and EU4. Im beginning to realize that, while Paradox was once a decent company, it is not now. Something changed in the past 10 years and now every game they release is bug riddled and severely unfinished. Then they try to sell you base mechanics for dlc prices. Im steering clear of paradox games for now. And you should too.

Honestly a very overhated game. Was it poorly made on release? yes. Is it's military still garbage? yes. Is there plenty more room for improvement? Yes. But is it a fun economics simulator? Yes! Although I will say this. Like with all Paradox games only buy them and it's DLC when it's on sale. Otherwise you're just wasting your money on good yet overpriced games. Vic3 easily gets a 7/10. Still flawed but they are doing good work on making the game much more fun

Excellent game! It's amazing how you can observed dependencies between areas, domains.

Wait till all the dlc is out and on sale, then you'll have the best experience. If you want a good game to mod though this is a good grand strategy to get.

this game is good, it had a rough launch but these days its pretty stacked. this recent update and dlc was probably the largest missing piece of the puzzle and they nailed it

You know, I remember when gamers would be upset when a publisher/developer launched a game with not just a mediocre game system placeholder (Trade in this case) but for the publisher/developer to sell you the actual game system (again Trade, a key component one would argue to a 1800's economy based simulator/game) to say insulting, well some people are bootlickers anymore. The worst part, it takes almost 3 years to do it.

There's a bit of a learning curve but by god, when you figure it out, it's like you see the matrix and are a friggin 200 iq mastermind. Best economics simulator to date, and definitely cheaper than a college degree in economics.

I really like this game, but there are some, let's say, interesting things with it. - Black artifacting appears seemingly at random - The game consistently crashes when using Vulkan - Several names of cities have been swapped for no reason (ex: Chania and Heraklion) Good game overall from what I've played, but I'd recommend HoI4 more, still, I don't think it's really bad per say.

Total delusion, it's more like Grand Strategy market play than a sequel to Victoria 2.

Addicting? Yes. Fun? No. Not really. Victoria 3 is a love-hate affair. (Note: Most of my "playtime" is the game being left running in my taskbar, because the game's got a decent load time and I didn't feel like waiting) Most of your time in Vic3 will be spent doing absolutely nothing, except staring at the screen. You're going to crank the game speed up to max, queue up some construction, maybe start a legislative action, and then... wait. And wait. And wait. What this game's missing that Europa Universalis has more of is, a way for you to *create the conditions* for something in-game to happen. For example, I was playing as Columbia District (Vancouver), so a British Colony. I wanted to declare independence at one point, but the UK allied with USA. What can you do about that? Nothing. That alliance will stand for the entire game. No random events mess with it. The CPU will rarely change alliances themselves. You have no tools to help them hate each other etc. There's some variability between runs; UK won't ally with USA every game. But once they do, it's sealed. There's a lot of economic complexity to the game. That is a feature, not a bug, and it adds to both the addictiveness and the frustration. Guarantee at some point in your game, you'll throw your hands up and think, "WHY AM I LOSING MONEY NOW?" The game only tells you the budget effects of your actions in a few scenarios. For the rest, you're on your own. And yet, for all its complexity, the standard "economic build" for all countries is roughly the same: Build up Wood/Fabric to afford Construction Sectors with Wood. Then work on Iron and Tools, so you can switch those sectors to Iron and construct things faster -- basically that loop: Build the stuff to let you construct more, then construct more, then build up more stuff to let you construct more etc. If you're a parent, or someone with limited time to play, I would steer clear of this. You need to be able to study to "succeed" here. And honestly the reward for "success" in Victoria 3 is basically nothing, either. It feels very abrupt and unsatisfactory when the game ends.

Despite a rough launch, Victoria 3 has become one of my favourite Paradox games. The devs have been working hard at improving some of the weakest aspects of the game at release, and I am very optimistic about the game's future.

Patch 1.9 makes Victoria 3 feel feature complete. What actually makes me want to recommend this now is that you don't even need to buy the paid DLC Charters of Commerce to enjoy it. All the most important changes are included in the free patch and the game is perfectly playable without paying an extra dime. There's a lot to improve on but now I feel confident the base to build upon is very solid. Kudos to Paradox.

Now after years of updates and development I can with peace of mind recommend this game. Great stuff for mapgame enjoyers, please buy it.

Played since release and always felt the game was fine enough, but the patch 1.9 made some really great improvements.

Victora 3 has come a long way since release. The game released in a not so good state, and the gameplay was quite stale and same-y. Now with the latest update the game has evolved significantly. the new world market system is amazing and lets you play a smaller nation and build tall. Aswell as not having to have all the goods in your market to use them. Rather you can just import what you need, if it is available ofc. The war systems are still basic, but they got improved more with this latest patch. The fronts don't split like they used to and it is significantly easier to manage your armies and navies. The new expanded system around companies is very cool and is semi autonomous. You just select the company you want and they expand their influence and return the investment in your countries investment pool. You decide how much power you want to grant these companies though. Overall i would say VIC 3 is in a good state and is a lot of fun currently. I have played a few singleplayer games and a multiplayer game since the update and find myself loosing track of time over making the numbers go up.

Okay, now, since the new expansion "Charters of Commerce" has finally been added into the game, which brought an overall real improvement to the general gameplay and to the "Fun-Factor", i really want formulate my final Feedback. Victoria 3 was a difficult game to judge from the start, even Years later, because not only did it came out as an incomplete mess of a game with no real interesting features and also somehow felt unfinished due to a complete neglect of the military aspect of the game as well as the tedious and lackluster Excel Type of Economy, but even the "main focus", namely diplomacy, felt dry and hard to bear due to weird and generally unhistorical Ai actions. But now, after some huge and in-depth/extensive reworks on the general gameplay mechanics, the game starts to feel kind of "good" to be honest, and really "fun" to play. To summarize...it now starts to show its profound and diverse site, and that is a huge step for the detailed progress, even though the prices for Paradox "normally should be a core mechanic but give us twenty bucks" expansions is still not legitimate, but in the End, the game starts to show its good sides and real potential for the coming months.

With the release of update 1.9, Victoria 3 became a game fully worth of recommending. Just remember this its focus is on economics and politics, and military system is rather barebones. World conquest runs can be done, but they are, frankly, boring. On other hand, seeing your country and people prosper while you are manipulating economics is superb fun.

TBH every xenophobe should play this game so they can understand why immigration is such a big deal and isnt bad

I really want to enjoy Victoria 3 but there's just so little to actually do. Most of the moment to moment gameplay is watching a progress bar occasionally tick-up while you play whack-a-mole with events which represent your only real interaction points outside of clicking a policy here and there, or setting your production priorities. The supply chain game gets vastly more interesting in the mid-late game, but there is so little to do as a minor power for most of the game it just registers as dull.

I personally appricate this game for playing. HOWEVER, my game is CRASHING AND UNABLE TO LAUNCH TO PLAY AGAIN, it happend MULTIPLE times due to somewhat it said as "Previous save game on other version leads to crashed launching ... etc" WWTF is that? How can it be possible even I am not play it in long-term as EU4 on my Macbook pro Intel core chip. EXTREMELY DISLIKE THE CURRENT PHENOMENON. HOPE PARADOX FIX "VICTORIA 3". THIS IS THE LINE FOR NEW EDITED REVIEW OF MORE THAN 1 MONTH LATER, I redownload the game, previous errors are fixed, but other problem happens that the graphic is broken and completely goes smooth as my prediction. Not only awful in observation with plenty of error graphical artifacting appears whenever launching the game, black and purple pixelation all over the screen, but the loading screen also becomes unreadable, resulting in the unplayable setting. THis likely indicates a GPU issue, shader compliation error, or maybe corrupted base game files. I need more than usual updates of fixing.