r/victoria3

Ok, I've been playing a little modded but it should still be something that falls under normal mechanics

I've been playing as Venezuela, and it seems that God has had a personal falling out with the Venezuelan west Indies. Like he said "f*ck them and f*ck them good" and I don't know why

First of all, this state is a slave state of about 23k people, mostly slaves and workers. It produced virtually nothing of my gdp, not even 3%

So, first what happened, the flavor text literally made it seem like the apocalypse. A, and I quote "mega earthquake". It caused about 65% devastation in that state alone.

What followed was starvation. It literally says 100% of the states population is suffering severe starvation.

Then, typhus.

Then, yellow fever.

And then, and I don't fucking Shit you, and I quote a "mega volcano eruption" that the flavor text called "Krakatoa equivalent".

So, for 10 years now, whilst I've been trying to somehow fix Venezuela, one of my states completely disintegrated and I couldn't do anything about it. Now my economy is somewhat running... And the poor west Indies.

Their population is only 13k and starvation is still at 100%. It produces a total of 300 gdp (0.3k gdp), which is about 0% of my gdp. Turmoil is at 99.2%, devastation is still at 47% and market access at 0%

Like, don't get me wrong, but I seriously don't know how to fix this or if it is even possible. Not to mention that the entire population is radicals... As you can imagine

Looking for some insight.

I'm playing as France, current patch, currently 1908.

I've noticed that some of the provinces in France proper as showing a bunch of unproductive buildings and I cannot figure out why.

Specifically looking at my Paper Milles in Champagne. I have 255K peasants, 389K total jobseekers and qualifications is checked. Prices of input goods are all average, seemingly no shortages at all yet the building has been at 0 productivity for so long??

I've subsidized/nationalized/privatized and played with all the various PMs but nothing really makes any difference. I switched to debug mode to see if there was any other useful info or a wait to kickstart it but couldn't see anything.

Am I doing something wrong?

https://preview.redd.it/3fne03888pbh1.png?width=742&format=png&auto=webp&s=37e69de0e0aba326729264421e7fbf786221c6a9

https://preview.redd.it/w6atz2og8pbh1.png?width=847&format=png&auto=webp&s=72128a388f5c7a6eede44b40463735c62e295137

You see questions about the best for a new player or the hardest or the most interesting, but what's just plain the easiest?

The USA is pretty easy, but you have to get the west coast in a war and the civil war has been made more challenging. I'm playing Russia for the first time right now and even considering some of the hella backwards-ass laws it's probably the easiest game I ever played. Once you get off Traditionalism you have an overabundance of resources and a massive private investment pool that was built up before the switch.

The only challenge I've had is that when you build ships the game seems to randomly distribute what shipyard they spawn from and since your Black and Baltic Seas fleets can't get out of their respective straits you wind up with whatever ship wherever. Otherwise it's been far simpler than any USA game.

In EU4 or CK3, once you are big enough, the game stops being difficult. It can be tedious in EU, can be random roleplay in CK, but the content is what you choose to make it. In Vic3, the game forces you to play.

Of course if you start poorer, you can feel like the time frame is not enough. I spent a whole 100 years as Persia chaining traditionalists in command until 1925, and if I managed to grow economically, I could never reach the true potential of the nation. Or if you choose to stay small as Belgium you won't face much of it.

But if you start or become large, for example build a French Empire that rivals the British one, you will face real struggles. Large separatists revolts when they become educated enough, subjects start to have their own revolts and be less servile, workers will ask for rights, etc... To solve that you have several tools, you can choose oppression, maintain a costly military and make sure to always be on the right side of revolution, or build a utopia with large redistribution, welfare and multiculturalism. But there is agency, there is content, there is skill involved.

Quite a mystery to me that a feature present in pretty much every paradox game is still not present in this one after all these years. They have the violent suppression decree, but that feels quite arcadey, clumsy and like it's trying to limit the player's options through authority. Institutions are pretty passive and don't work in unincorporated states. It is ridiculous that a revolt at 80% radicalism of 5k people can lock my country of 100 million people, with the biggest military in the world for five years and I can't do anything about it. It would cost money to mobilize your army, and it could gradually generate infamy for using the army to suppress unrest. This would also reduce the revolution spam in AI countries every five years. The only concerning part is the balancing, but that's a topic in itself.

I've played three games so far - Sweden, USA, and now France - and I find myself spending a lot of time with the speed on max waiting for construction to finish or a timed journal entry to progress or a war to finish or whatever. I feel like I spend the majority of the game time waiting, and very little actually doing anything. So far I haven't finished a game because by the late 1800s I've finished most of the journal entries and passed all the laws I wanted to LARP with so I don't really have anything to do but watch the line go up. Is this really it, or am I playing wrong?

I'm playing Dai nam and the only way for me to expand right now is by sea, so I'm planning on invading Brumei, but the ship system isn't clear. Can someone clarify it simply? Which ship is best for a ground invasion?

I've tried several games now but each time I try to do the restoration I can never do it peacefully and it devolves into a civil war. At which the restorationists are either too weak, or if they stronger, Korea decides to get involved for no reason and they tip the scales to the shogunate.

I'm searching for a Persian play, but I need advice for the reforms. Thanks.

Like, if I already own the land Hong Kong, there should be a simple way for me to make that land a treaty port again, rather than needing to get a different port in a different state.