Paradox Interactive today revealed all-new details for Victoria 3's first expansion: Sphere of Influence. In Sphere of Influence, rapid technological and societal changes of the Victoria Era allows empires to compete in new lands ?and with new means. The expansion has a handful of new features including the ability to create your own Power Bloc and then bully, bribe, or befriend other nations to get them to join.

The Great Game

Sphere of Influence also focuses on The Great Game, a 19th-century rivalry between the British and Russian empires over influence?? in Central Asia. Players can use Prestige to become a Great Power and create their own Power Bloc, from which they can dominate other nations in diplomatic arrangements or use the bloc to pursue common economic or ideologic?al goals.

Players also have the opportunity to play as any of the powers central to The Great Game conflict, including Persia and Afghanistan. The map has been redrawn? to highlight the ma?ny competing interests during The Great Game.

Other features of Sphere of Influence include Foreign Investments, Nationalization, Subject Interactions, Interest Group Lobbies, and many more systems built around the new Pow??er Bloc feature.

I've got about 30 or so hours in Victoria 3so far and have been waiting for an update like this to jump back in. The ability ?to ccreate a Power Bloc will really change up the strategies you can use to effectively grow your empire, and I'm excited to see how it all works.

To celebrate the news, a Trains Bonus Content Pack with ten new 3D models for trains from the early days of steam to the golden age of rail is available to download for free for anyone who owns Victoria 3.

Victoria 3: Sphere of Influence is set to release on PC on May 6, 2??024 for $??29.99.

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Paradox Interactive has revealed a new region pack is on the way for Grand Strategy title Victoria 3. In the Colossus of?? the South region pack, players will face ??challenges as they seek to lead Brazil through a rise of power after being freed from the domination of Europe.

Build a New Hemispheric Power

Launching alongside the DLC pack is update 1.5. The massive update will rework warfare, companies, and how local prices works in Victoria 3. According to the video for the DLC, this is ??the biggest update to military, economy, and diplomacy in the grand strategy title yet.

The Colossus ?of the South region pack is a narrative-driven pack centered around the Amazon River as South America enters the Victorian Age.?? Features of the pack include:

• Reign of Pedro II: Historical actions highlighting the reforms and ambitions of Brazil’s Emperor Pedro the Magnanimous, including the abolition of slavery and the modernization of Brazil’s economy.
• The Old Republic: The power of Brazilian landowners and the emergence of the Positivist revolution against the monarchy.
• Populism: Challenges to the agrarian oligarchy in Brazil from anti-government bandits and the populist Integralist movement.
• National Awareness: Development of a unique and diverse Brazilian culture, as well as expansionist goals in Paraguay, South American unification from Gran Colombia, and Pan-National movements of the Federation of the Andes and Rio de la Plata.
• Amazonian Riches: Exploit the riches of the Amazon while avoiding international conflict and national disorder.
• New Historical Characters: Coup leader and general Deodora da Fonseca, populist dictator Getulio Vargas, and more.
• More content for South America: New events and journal entries and flavor for many countries in the region!

I played Victoria 3 when it originally l?aunched and while I enjoyed it, I really had a hard time figuring out some of the things that were going on. Appar??ently a lot of that has been fleshed out since, so this region pack seems like a great time for me to jump back in and give it another shake.

Victoria 3: Colossus of the South releases on November 14 for $5.99. Players who purchased the Grand Edition or have a subscription to the Victoria 3 Expansion Pass will be ab?le to access the region pack at no additional ?cost.

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PC indeed

As someone who heretically prefers to play games on a controller, PC may not always be my first choice. But even I have to admit that it's a platform that has some of the most compelling releases of the year, every year. When it's easier for small, independent teams to publish to platforms like Steam or itch.io, the ?cream usually tends to rise to the top, so that PC is always one of the most stacked "best of the year" categories, in my opinion. 2022 was no exception, because this banger-filled list is making it really difficult to try and decide which game is gonna take my vote.

First you've got Signalis, which is not only an awesome tribute to classic horror games like Silent Hill and Resident Evil, but also one of the most ????????????????????????????stylish and heart-wrenching games I've played in a long time. Everything from the art style to the soundtrack to the puzzle design elevated the creepy, slow-burn atmosphere, and it's a game I've been left thinking about weeks after having put it down.

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=4KFiOp2o4L8

Citizen Sleeper is yet another innovative title that released in 2022 among a swath of other games that are moving the m??edium forward. Its focus is on a tabletop-inspired, dice-centric narrative, and it executes that premise with all of the polish you can imagine. What it is able to achieve in unique yet somehow familiar gameplay, it also wins you over with its stories, even after leaving us with some mysteries to explore on our next adventure.

For all the shoot 'em up fans out there, Vampire Survivors has you covered. The game has minimalistic art and gameplay design, but with good reason �the gameplay loop is so well-designed and lean, it doesn't need any of the extra fluff. It's one of those games that's perfect to sit down and play in little bouts, but every time you do, you know you're gonna have a blast. Vampire Survivors snuck up on me for sure, but it did indeed turn o?ut to be one of the highlig?hts of 2022.

Trombone Champ is the obvious stand-out of the year. At a glance, it's not a game I think any of us would have expected to appear on a list like this, but when you look more closely, it's all there. It's simply a well-designed rhythm game (going so far as to actually imitate how it feels to play a real trombone with a scary amount of accuracy), the visual style is downright hilari??ous, and the soundtrack has?? the perfect lineup of songs that you're either super familiar with, or make you go "I know this song but I never knew what it was called."

It was one of those ideas that the team would make or break in its execution, and they absolutely nailed it. If nothing else, the entire gaming community's reaction to Trombone Champ is enough to warrant its place on this list, I think, ??because there was something magical about seeing a game collectively bring all of us joy upon its release.

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=NpQ8a3c7EAQ

If you're not a speedrunning person, you will be after playing Neon White. While you can really take or leave the story, the gameplay alone is enough to land Neon White on this list. It's bombastic, it's creative, and of course fast-paced, and it'll make even the most tepid players (aka me) twitching to set a new record. This title is really able to capture the raw, tactical fun that only tightly-designed gameplay can really deliver, and is maybe the best game to do so since the release of Hades.

Then there's NORCO, which is easily one of the weirdest games of the year, in the best way. It's a Southern Gothic point-and-click narrative set in the marshlands of New Orleans, and let me tell you, it is one wild ride. NORCO has absolutely beautiful prose and breathtaking pixel art, and then you'll encounter one of the most strange set pieces you've likely seen in a game in a while. I foun??d the game incredibly moving, and easily one of the best narrative games of the year. If nothing else, it simply deserves more eyes on it, because it was an absolute delight to play.

Last but certainly not least, we have Victoria 3. It may not be for everyone, but for those who are fans of grand strategy games, the newest release from Paradox Interactive is considered a truly great title. The cult following of the Victoria series has been long-awaiting the series' third installment, as Paradox themselves call it "one of the most anticipated games in Paradox’s history." The general consensus is that Victoria 3 did in fact live? up to the hype, making it one of the best grand strategy? games to come out in recent years, and certainly in 2022.

Here are the nominees for Destructoid’s Best PC Game of 2022:

• Signalis
• Citizen Sleeper
• Vampire Survivors
• Trombone Champ
• Neon White
• NORCO
• Victoria 3

The post Nominees for Destructoid’s Best PC Game of 2022 appeared first on Destructoid.

And also Anthony Marzano

Paradox Interactive has proudly announced that the grand strategy sequel Victoria 3 has sold over half a million copies since its release back in October on PC and Mac?? platforms.

"We want to thank all Victoria 3 players!" exclaimed Paradox Interactive in a celebratory tweet. "With 500k games sold since its re??lease a little over a month ago, this is one of the most successful Paradox launches ever!"

//twitter.com/PDXVicto??ria/status/1597636507107348480?s=20&t=s3mDK2_UKNTFHrcAjPAwGA

Launched on October 25, Victoria 3 is the latest entry in the incredibly deep world history simulation series. The new sequel follows the path forged by its celebrated predecessor Victoria 2, which was released way back in 2010, and thus it has been quite some wait for mouse-clickers everywhere. In fact, much like Half-Life 3, Victoria 3 had become something of an in-joke to the dedicated community, constantly referenced as a title that was wanted, but ?seemed unlikely to come into existence.

Spanning a century between 1836 and 1936, Victoria 3 offers players the opportunity to pick up the role of one of 100 countries, shaping the people, politics, and technological and economical growth of this era-defining period in human history. As you might expect, matters do not always transpire smoothly, and while the new sequel angles on the side of diplomacy, sometimes matters must be settled on the battlefield. Victoria 3 received high praise from critics and fans, including our own strategy fiend Anthony Marzano, who awarded the title a hefty 9.5 out of 10. Check out his review right here.

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Victoria approached me, with a fire in her eyes

I've been waiting for Victoria 3 for about as long as I've been interested in grand strategies. I'm a certified economics and international relations nerd. I also loathe most politicians as they have all sold us out for their own profit, but I still find politics fascinating. I'm essentially the person that the Victoria series is made for but try as I might, I was never able to get any more than skin deep into Victoria 2. So I waited patiently, for my turn in the pool.

I even got deep into Hearts of Iron IV for a bit, but it still wasn't my precise cup of tea. Finally, last year, Victoria 3 was ann??ounced and even though it didn't have a release window it was like the clouds had parted and I knew my time was coming.

Hype is a very dangerous thing, but Victoria 3 has lived up to everything I wanted it to be and even? surpassed expectations in areas I didn't think would work.

Victoria 3 (PC)
Developer: Paradox Development Studio
Publisher: Paradox Interactive
Released: October 25, 2022
MSRP: $49.99

Victoria 3 is th??e latest entry in the long-running library of grand stra?tegy games from Paradox Development Studio. Whereas Hearts of Iron focuses on all-out war, and Crusader Kings puts lineage at its forefront, the Victoria series is more interested in the finer things of international relatio??ns: politics and economy. Starting in 1836, you take over as leader of one of the 200 nations with a ?centralized industry at the time. From there the choice is yours as to the world you will build. It's escapism in its purest, nerdiest form and at times like these, I can't get enough of it.

If Victoria 3 were to have a key defining base element, it is the population mechanic. You control the politics and industry of your nation, but you are kept in check by the populac?e of those you rule. Each of the citizens of your game world is simulated on characteristics such as education, religious and political beliefs, ethnicity, and profession. It is your job to improve the lives of your citizenry and keep them happy. Pops are considered to be happy when their income is high enough that they can afford their basic needs such as clothing and food, with higher-class citizens requiring more lavish goods.

The goods you produce and their supply and demand dictate their price in your market. If you can't produce a good that ?your pops demand, you must trade for it using trade routes. If your citizens can't afford the items they need or their political goals aren't being realized, they'll get upset and begin to revolt. It's this economic and political ouroboros that defines the Victoria 3 experience in a nutshell.

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ftmdd1g4hE

If this all seems confusing on paper, fret not because there is an honest-to-goodness tutorial mode included with Victoria 3 and it works fantastically. Whether you're starting out on you??r first grand strategy or are coming over from one of the many other Paradox series, nearly all concepts that you will come into contact with during your time in Victoria are explored through journal entries.

These journal entries can either point you?? in the right direction for how to accomplish your task or l??ay it out plainly step by step what you need to do. In addition to tutorials, Victoria 3 comes with interactive guides for the different ways to achieve success in the mid-19th ce??ntury. Be it through hegemony, economic dominance, or even as a beacon of liberty in the era of fledgling dem??ocracy. It's a very clever way to guide you into which countries fit the Victoria 3 model of gameplay, even though you are free to choose any o??f the available nations. 

Even beyond the basic concepts you need to simply start the game, every simulated calculation, keyword, and concept is able to be expanded upon using what is called Nested tooltips. Simply hover over the word and a brief rundown of everything that goes into the concept is laid out onscreen. This peak behind the curtains works to both show you the nuts and bolts of how the game ??works, but also gives you an insight as to what you can do to improve your standing in the world. I sp??ent a decent portion of my initial preview time with the game exploring these tooltips and it did more for me than 2?0 ho??urs of Victoria 2 Youtube videos could ever do. So i??f you're like me and struggl?ing to get deep into Victoria 2, this is a fantastic place to start.

A Glorified Spreadsheet (and that's OK)

The long-running joke for all grand strateg??y games is that they are basically spreadsheets with fancy GUIs and Victoria 3 is without a doubt the most spreadsheetiest of t?hem all. Every choice you make affects something in your economy and that effect is usually presented in percentage form with an estimate of how it will affect your bottom line. It's this simplified number go up or number go down presentation that makes decisions easy to make as you can see immediately get an idea of how they will affect your ec??onomy.

It's also this presentation that can sometimes be a little misleading. Say you want to work on expanding your available trade routes. In order to do that you have to increase the number of boats you have available? and then increase the size of your ports. The nested tooltip for these expansions will make it look like they will do nothing but lose you money. In reality, the expansion will more than likely make you money, so long as you are man??aging your market prices and keeping an eye on the available workforce.

Further hammering in the ongoing spreadsheet joke is the fact that Victoria 3 has the bes?t base GUI in any Paradox game I've seen at launch since well...forever. Anyone who has tried to crack Victoria 2 will know that GUI was a mess of square boxes and bland menus. Victoria 3 uses superb design to draw your eyes and attention to the parts of the menus that are most pertinent with all relevant information presented in a concise and easy-to-read manner. I get similar feelings to playing around with a Microsoft Power BI dataset while browsing menus and gathering information to make decisions.

Additionally, there are lenses through which you c??an focus on particular aspects of your world like production, politics, and diplomacy. These lenses both offer quick information and the ability to act on them right on the world map. There are even line charts! I told y??ou this was escapism at its nerdiest.

All of the fun of politics w??ithout ??some horned dude playing the fiddle at your side

While economics plays ??a huge ??part in the gameplay loop of Victoria 3, politics is what drives your population's wants and needs. You inherit your country's politics and a lot of the time there will be some things in there that you'll want to change immediately. You won't be able to do it alo?ne, you'll need the help of fellow like-minded individuals to work on passing the laws you put in place. It's becaus?e of this that the politics of the games can feel a bit more restrained but it's this restraint that really drives home the politician simulator feel of the game.

Even in a Monarchy, you will need to form a government made up of bureaucrats and politicians all belonging to differe?nt parties, each with differ?ent demands. Depending on how their demands are being addressed, they will either give you benefits or detractors to show their appreciation. You can't please everyone and sometimes you need to put people in power that you don't like, simply to progress your agenda. It's a fantastic moral dilemma that the game places you in and I love the constant pulling on your moral compass.

Let's say you want to change your voting process from landed voting to wealth voting in a long-term attempt to bring true democracy to your nation. In order to do this you will need to bring industrialists into your government makeup which will boost their popularity in the general population over time, helping to keep them in power. When the time comes to enact census suffrage, the industrialists will turn on you and work hard to keep their law in place, with events potentially occurring while the law is being enacted that c?ould have long-term effects.

This event m?echanic is very similar?? to the role-playing elements of Crusader Kings and feels a lot more weighty than any of the other decision-based prompts that I've seen outside of the Crusader Kings series. At one point I tried to push a law too early and it wrecked my favored party because of a blunder they pulled on the campaign trail that caused them to lose face for f??ive years.

It's the politics of the game where you really have to set a goal and work towards it in everything you do. It will take time but there's a genuine sense of joy when a long-term goal comes to fruition. Take for example my long-term goal to get the trade union politician to a point where they were politically viable. In my game, they started with a popularity of less than 5%, which meant they were marginalized and therefore their needs didn't come into account in the grand scheme of my nation. By using some of my authority I was able to bolster their support over a few years to the point where they entered the political sphere. From there they were off to the races as their power only grew thanks to me being able to work them into my government and enacting laws they wanted. It's the weirde?st way to get serotonin but I'll take it.

War has changed

Your politics don't have to stop at your borders. You are given a certain number of political spheres that you can interact with based on your trade policies and the amount of power you wield on the international stage. In these political spheres, you can bolster or hamper your relations with ?the nations within, join customs un?ions or trade agreements, and even declare rivalries. The larger you get, the more regions you can interact with and the further you can spread your influence. If politics isn't working, it's time to break out the diplomatic plays.

Through diplomatic plays you can force your views on other nations, but be wary of wannabe Teddy Roosevelts, nobody likes being bos?sed around. It works like this, you approach a nation and demand a change in its policies. It can be something as simple as giving up control of a region or port, to something more technical like changing their trade policy. 99% of the time, the country will tell you to F off and now you're locked in a political standoff that has a time limit until it becomes war.

As the clock ticks down, you can make more demands and recruit other nations to your side while also doing a bit of saber-rattling by calling up your armies. You can even force nations that you have previously helped to join your side. The two sides will pivot and jockey for all the support they can get, trying to get one side to back down. If one side does back down, the?n ??the other side's primary goal is automatically enacted. But if both sides don't back down, the diplomatic play quickly descends into war, and then it's up to the generals.

Unlike my time with the preview, I made sure to dig into the war mechanic a few times to see how it works as this change is probably the biggest departure from the typical Paradox formula. Whereas the tactical aspects of war were controlled directly by the player in pretty much every Paradox game before Victoria 3, you only control war from a high-level perspective by assigning your generals or admirals to different fronts. Each of your officers comes with their own personality and that dictates how they will fare on the battlefield. In my first attempt, I stupidly assigned a defensive general to an offensive front and he immediately got wiped out, despite having a numbers advantage. Whoops. I fared better in later attempts but it's the type ??of thing you need to read into or else you're going to have a bad time. You can also assign your admirals to damage the supply and trade network rou?tes of your enemies, weakening their economy and cutting into the war machine.

For a lot of veterans of?? the Paradox Grand Strat library, this change is a controversi??al one. While I understand their concerns, after having played with it for a while, I don't think a game like Victoria 3 needs the tactical war mechanic. It's a game about politics and economy, and you are the head of state, not a general. Yes, some leaders of the time were known for their military prowess but to me, it's not a deal b??reaker. The long-standing belief is that the tactical war element will be brought in as DLC in the future, but I really don't want it. If I want to play general I have Hearts of Iron IV, but today I am a politician (blech).

The loss of autonomy also for??ces you to treat war as a last resort. When I lost one of the wars I waged, I lost hard. Gone was the only port that drove my trade routes and kept my population clothed and happy. I was also humiliated on the world stage and had to repay war reparations. I was, for all intents and purposes given a ceiling and I shan't break through it. It reminded me of how costly war is in the board game Twilight Imperium, where even winning hurts. For some, this?? may be a turnoff, but for me, it only deepened the political simulation.

A Grand Tomorrow, because I spent all night playing it

Victoria 3 is very clearly not for everyone. It's a lot of all menu navigation and long-term planning that sometimes amounts to watching bars progress on-screen. But for those that respond to that type of gameplay loop, Victoria 3 will provide countless hours of megalomaniac entertainment. Even for those that are new to the genre, I've yet to see a launch that is as inviting and welcoming to new players, while still maintaining the m?echanics of previous games for returning veterans. Yes, the war mechanic might be considered "missing" b?y some, but in the interest of making a politician simulator, I do not think it is needed.

What is here though is a deep simulation where every aspect of your nation interweaves with itself telling a story that ?you built. I've never been this in love with a strategy game before. I finally found the one for me, and I won't need another one for quite a long while.

_{[This review is based on a retail build of the game provided by the publisher.]}

The post Review: Victoria 3 appeared first on Destructoid.

Become a politician; without selling your soul

Ever since Paradox Interactive announced Victoria 3, I've been in a state of semi-disbelief. It was a strategy game in-joke for so long that I couldn't believe it was really happening. I was provided a preview build of the upcoming socio-econ?omic grand strategy game thanks to Paradox. To quote Sidra Holland and Jackie Chiles, it's "real, and it's fantastic." And soon, you too can politic?k to your heart's content when the game releases on October 25, 2022.

For those of you present who aren't cool enough to know what the Victoria series is all about, an introduction is in order. Victoria is a grand strategy game series aptly set during the Victorian era. Whereas other entries in the Paradox family of grand strategy games focus on war or lineage, Victoria's focus lies in economics and the changing political landscape of the dawning Modern age. Starting in 1836, you control a country and all of its economy and laws while trying to improve the lives of your citizenry. You know how you always scream at your screen that you "can do better" whenever some talking head politician messes everything up? Victoria allows you to put your mon??ey (or national credit) where your mouth is.

The problem with the Victoria series is that we've been devoid of a new entry since 2010 and the last entry is a notoriously hard nut to crack for various reasons. From the Version 0.1 build that I played, I can safely say that Victoria 3 is well on i??ts way ??to addressing many of the barriers to entry that its previous entries had.

Bringing the Modern Age into the Digital Age

The first improvement that stood out to me was the UI/UX design, even compared to games as recent as Imperator: Rome. At a closed-door press demo, game director Martin Anward emphasized that while Victoria 3 would be easier for new players to get into, it wou?ld not come at the expense of complexity but through streamlining how information is presented. Your basic menus where you take the various temperatures of your nation are all still present, but sorters and filters have been given big buttons to help you get to what you need quickly.

On top of menus, important overlays of the map have also been given big buttons at the bottom of the screen to show you the big picture of how your empire (and anyone else on the map) are do??i?ng in regards to metrics such as production and consumption, quality of life, what have you.

Additionally, nearly every term, metric, item, and country has been given what is called a nested tooltip. Those who have played Crusader Kings III will recognize the feature as it is used in the base release of that game as well. By hovering over a color-coded word in a menu, you will get both a breakdown of what it means, as well as a look at how well you are doing in terms of said metric. After a few seconds of hovering over the term, the tooltip window will soft lock on your screen and you can then navigate to a nested tooltip within your nested tooltip. I think I maxed out at three tool?tip windows as I was delving deep into my economy. It did start to get a bit crowded for simple mouse movement, but I had all the information I needed, and it didn't require going to the Official Victoria wiki.

I know what you're thinking, "menu design, what a place to start for a preview" �but all of your decisions and actions will?? be m?ade through menus, so it's nice to see that a concerted effort has been made to streamline the intake of information for a topic as complex as economics and how that affects your populace. But fine, if you want something juicier than menu improvements, how about an actual developer-made tutorial mode?

Ooooh, teach me, Amadeus.

With nearly every previous Paradox grand strategy game, you were given a very base tutorial that mostly entailed how to navigate menus and complete actions. Past that point, you were left to your own devices to figure out how to succeed which at the time meant digging into double-digit hours of YouTube videos. Victoria 3 has not only a tutorial mode ??but also an objective mode that guides you with completing nations such as a hegemonic ruler or? an egalitarian utopia.

In said tutorial mode, you are given a breadcrumb trail that acts as an interactive Econ and Poly Sci 101. Various objectives such as "grow your GDP" or "make a political party that doesn't like you happier" are presented to you and you are given the option of being shown why you should do that, and if you want to be truly handheld, how you can go about it. However, sometimes the objectives were a bit redundant. It got annoying when they were trying to make me placate a social group that stood in staunch opposition to the policies I was trying to enact. But the game never yelled at me for ignoring it. Even with the redundancy of one or two objectives, I was able to get my economy into working order thanks to training mode. Before this in Victoria 2, I had considerable trouble achieving it.

It could be easy to handwave away something as simple as an objective or tutorial mode, but when it comes to the Victoria series, it's incredibly welcoming to players who don't have an established knowledge of something as complex as statesmanship (i.e., most people). This addition is not only huge for the Victoria series, but also for the greater Paradox grand strategy ??library. Is a tutorial also not doing it for you? How about a map improvement?

The map is alive with the sound of social upheaval

Also new to the Paradox grand strategy library as a whole is a new "living ??map."

Previous entries of the map interface were pretty much just colors and lines akin to political maps. In Victoria 3, the map has received a major update to show how your country is evolving through visual cues. You can now see new cities and factories popping up along with infrastructural changes such as ?trains running in your states. The neat thing about this new feature is that it isn't just arbitrary additions on the map �you can see that new building you built on the map. It's a little touch but it helps in helping drive home the connection between you and your populace.

While the ad??dition of the living map is nice, it did adversely affect performance on my Ryzen 7 3700/RTX 2070 Super build. The development team did assure us at the conference that it was a preview build of the game and improvements would be implemented before launch, but i?t was still noticeable enough to lead to brief slowdowns and even a crash once.

War, (HUH), what is it good for?

One of the main concerns that arose since the announcement of Victoria 3 was the perceived absence of autonomy for war and how it is waged. Whereas every other Paradox game allowed you to wage war as you saw fit, Victoria 3 has done away with direct control of your armies and is instead leavin??g this task up to generals and admirals that you assign to your armed forces and waging war based on their characteristics. While the loss of autonomy in warfare is felt, you have other ways of interacting with foreign nations through the use of hostile diplomacy in what is being referred to as diplomatic plays.

In a diplomatic play, you can attempt to force a foreign government to change one of its policies to something that you deem more fit for your liking. At this point, a battle of the wills pops up between the two nations. Demands and possible concessions are laid out by both sides, with the opportunity for allies and even regional neighbors to get involved in the diplomatic battle. Anyone who gets involved can do anything from simply getting their toes wet with economic support, all the way up to committing troops to a potential conflict (with demands of their own to be met by the main player they are siding with). If something can be worked out, great, all parties walk away (mostly) unscathed. But if talks fai??l to reach a compromise, then the two sides will escalate to war. War is then conducted through the use of high-level strategic choices that you dictate such as assigning generals to armies and placing said armies along fronts.

The developers have essentially taken the war goal/casus belli mechanic from every other game in their repertoire and expanded it for the purposes of diplomacy. I will admit that the only action I saw in diplomatic plays was sitting on the bench waiting to be called up by a larger country as repayment for a good deed they did for me ear??lier. I did come close to forcing a change from an isolationist trade policy to an open market, but peace won.

Fun with finance (and flags)

I've been waiting for Victoria 3 for what seems like forever. By the time I returned to PC gaming in the mid-2010s, Victoria 2 was already falling out of date as Paradox refined its craft and h??ad begun to make its games more easily palatable to the uninitiated. I've always been a closet political junkie, and I'm a big enough nerd ??to love the concept of economics and international trade. So it was all about waiting for my turn in the sun. After a week and a half with the preview build, I can tell that my turn is coming.

The entire time I had with the preview, I was having a blast. The game sucked me in, grabbed hold of my attention, and refused to let go. I couldn't stop thinking about my long-term goals and would frequently boot up the game to imple?ment a policy change I thought of while doing real-world stuff. One evening, my poor partner came rushing into our computer room thinking something was gravely wrong with me because I was muttering curses at length. America had cut off my supply of small arms, and my economy took a turn for the worst because of it. I wanted America's head, and I was ready to back anyone who felt the same way but was limited by my size. I was promptly called a loser and left to smolder in my rage.

Victoria 3 is, without a doubt, not for everyone. It also has some ways to go before it is street-ready. But for a preview build, it ran pretty well most of the time. Even with the times where it stumbled, Victoria 3 was the most fun I've had with a grand strategy game ever. There is no greater joy than?? growing your economy while also increasing your infrastructure. I can't wait to get back into the big ch??air and bring my nation into a prosperous new era of social equality.

Victoria 3 will release for PC on October 25, 2022.

The post Impressions: I g??ot to play Victoria 3 and so ??can you this October appeared first on Destructoid.

No news on a release window

After years of memes and jokes and wondering if the world would ever see a sequel to Victoria II, it seems that our collective waiting now has a hypothetical end as Paradox Interactive announced Victoria 3 during PDXCON Remixed today.

Victoria 3 will send grand strategy fans back to the industrial revolution with all of its mechanical wonder and societal upheaval. The sequel to Victoria II looks to lean on the population mechanic that allowed the game to endure in fan communities for over a decade, despite using a very out-of-date engine. The population mechanic or pops hopes to create a political puzzle for players to solve by making sure that your citizens stay happy, lest they want revolution to foment in their lands. On top of the returning population mechanic, Victoria 3 aims to expand the trade with its deepest economic simulation yet as well as an emphasis on po??litical negotiation in the last age of imperialism.

While the announcement was met with a wave of excitement from me, the fact that there was no talk of a release date or even a window is a bit worrying. Although whenever the game does come out i??t will be on Game Pass day one, so any subscribers can immediately dive into the 19th-century?? simulation.

Victoria 3 will release when it's done on Steam, Xbox Game Pass, and the Paradox Store.

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