Recent reviews by DD

not as good as new world

sucks ass

I've played a lot of paradox games and just strategy/management/economics games. I've even modded this game. There are many better options for this game's experience.

As badly as I want this game to be fun and not frustrating and intensely unrewarding to learn thoroughly, that is not the case even after years of development. Here are the parts of the game that will never be improved due to game design:

- The UI. It's horrible. Paradox seems to think that circular buttons take up space better than rectangular ones, the right side of the screen is essentially a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ of partially important info, but mostly useless stuff. The actual map of the game looks great, but navigating the different aspects of your nation is unintuitive and poorly planned out. It seems like even with only 3 DLC's and a few major additions in terms of updates, the UI is already past its usability. Garbage is everywhere.

- The war system. 90% of the time it seems to be "working" (take this with a grain of salt, even the most knowledgeable players still get blindsided by stuff that shouldn't be happening according to the game), then suddenly troops will disappear, teleport, completely change orders at random, or just do something so stupid you'll feel like an early access tester. This is after years of development. The initial vision for the game was a highly autonomous war system which requires "less micromanagement". I can say wholeheartedly that this is the opposite of the truth. Not only do you have to manually manage each individual leader's orders (tedious as hell when you reach 12+ generals) and each naval leader's orders, you also have to manage troops individual rations, their training, equipment, and more. In practice, Vic 3 has significantly more war micromanagement than EU4, CK3, or even Stellaris. I couldn't even imagine the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ of trying to play this game in multiplayer.

- Performance. For the first 20 years of the game it runs amazingly. Once pops start change, move around, and work though, the game takes a massive ♥♥♥♥. The sheer amount of computing power needed to process assimilation alone makes me think this game has a memory leak. The lategame is not at all optimized, nor is the AI even trained to use what it has in the game. I think a large part of these issues are due to the game changing a LOT right before release. Looking at early development screenshots, it's clear they had some issues with AI, UI, performance, and the war system and had to make quick changes. As a result, the game works best the closer you are to the starting date.

I could ramble on about:
- AI not making reasonable decisions
- Workers refusing to work, would rather be unemployed (this comes up as a bug constantly due to the wonky system in place for pops deciding where to work)
- The peace deal system just straight up not working
- 80% of the naval system promised before launch literally doesn't work, what they have in place right now is a short-term fix (game has been out for over 2 years btw)
- "Arable land" being one of the most important metrics in the game, and yet has no real world basis. Some parts of the world that should be incredible arable are desolate wastelands, whereas asian nations have their arable land artificially boosted in order for the game to run because their system does not make sense in the real world

I really could keep rambling, but I've already wasted too much time reviewing this ♥♥♥♥. I didn't even touch on the horrible DLC policy combined with the fact that this game is essentially an early access title. Don't buy this game, and don't assume it's going to improve.

Not as good as warband overall, but still decent to good.
with mods could be great

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non-consensual organ arbitrage

i s h i i t my pants while playing this game

pee nise

this game sucks

slap