Victoria 3

I love this game and its economics, but the political/government system still makes 0 sense to me.

Keep in mind that the game is still in active development, but it is still much MUCH better than release versions.

Please fix war system Paradox, I will my as many DLCs as it will take

Victoria's original release and its subsequent year of updates and fixes was terrible. Now it is in a stable and playable state and really feels like the Victoria series again. The UI and calculations going on in the game are the best so far from Paradox. The army, navy and overall war system could still use some work though, but even the developers said this game is supposed to be about economic and political dominance, war is supposed to be a secondary thing. So I would say its good so far.

After around 2 years id say the game is actually really good. Still requires a few tweaks but very fun otherwise.

Much improved since launch. Wish the goods and production lines were easier to track, a lot of vital economic information is hidden in sub-menus that should be top level, but game feels better and looks to be improving

I love this game but it is VERY nerdy and its a lot more spreadsheets and numbers than soldiers and conquest so if that sounds appealing to you id recommend the game

I have a lot of fun in this game. I love the economic simulation aspect of this game. Staring at a map and watching the "line go up" is peak entertainment. It has it's flaws it is true (looking at you warfronts), but it is a game I keep coming back to and I hope will get a lot of content in the years to come.

Horrible mess of crashes and slowdown. You'll need MORE than 16 GB of RAM on your PC in order to run this travesty of inefficiency, lest the game crash every time you try to save your progress.

Vicky 3 started off slow, and for a while was less capable of being the econ sandbox we all wanted than Vicky 2. However, with the new power bloc mechanics, partial/foreign ownership of industries, simultaneous plays, new subject interactions, even better music, the game has gotten SO much better. From a wobbly 6/10 to a consistent 9/10. Would strongly recommend to any Vicky 2 lovers who were holding out.

I haven't managed to play a single game until the end where the game wouldn't crash or bug to the point of unplayability. Either it completely crashes in some year regardless of what I do or some very major bug happens that can't be fixed either - in my longest game my private contruction queue just stopped working altogether around 1900.

This has been an interesting project and the game engine, setting all feel good. But the one thing I just cannot stand anymore are the constant changes to systems and updates that confuse casual players like me right now. Mods that are essential to make this work for a player like me are therefore useless and frankly this bottled approach to releasing and updating a product is kind of the major disappointment here. From my angle therefore I just cannot suggest anyone to buy this at the current state - come back in three years and maybe this product is in an acceptable and stable state.

Its RNG is so bad, that you cant predict anything, even the basic events are random, like krakatoa exploding. You just cant prepare any strategy.

This game is advanced slot machine, if you want that, go for it, otherwise its just infuriating.

I cannot bring myself to enjoy this game because the warfare system is idiotic. Teleporting armies, frontlines that move way too much for a human player. Rest of the game is great for me. Will come back once warfare is reworked, again.

Paradox continues is downward spiral straight into hell, with horrible customer support, arrogant developers, extortionate DLC prices for minimal content, and incomprehensible and inexplicable in game mechanics and computer player decisions. Further they, like everyone else, use "toxicity" arguments to silence criticism by long time paying customers who are sick of their shit.

Just tried the game again after a two year pause. Its still a terrible game. The military aspect is fundamentaly broken, both naval and land. This is a shallow game in terms of what Vic 2 was. Poor Design Team choices will keep this from becoming a more polished game. Paradox is no longer run by strategy game designers.

Despite getting much hate in the early release, this game has become one of my favorite games, and is certainly the best paradox game in its portfolio. I love the economic and political system as it allows for much more flexibility in how you develop your nation, which i prefer more versus the map-painter and event driven gameplay of other historical grand strategy games. With new and regular free updates, and fantastic dlc's like spheres of influence, I would definitely recommend this game.

As with all paradox games, the base game isn't that good, but it keeps getting better and better with each DLC.
As of time of writing, I really love playing a run from time to time and seeing the number go up.
Truly one of Paradox games of all time.
9/10

good game, could use a better war system, perhaps borrowing from eu4 and hoi4, hell it would not be too bad if they just used v2's system.

the game is in a significantly better state than it was at launch is it perfect hell no but its improving

2 years in, the game still feels like it's in beta. A promising beta, but still, a beta.

War, diplomacy, and historical flavor are all very under baked, and frustratingly obtuse or weirdly abstracted.

However, resource extraction, economy management, and incredibly granular population dynamics are fun and easy to get sucked into. I'm struggling to think of any comparable game with this level of detail, and it makes the game more enjoyable than not (for me).

Also, I know this is Paradox, but locking core features like foreign investment behind DLC is a big yikes from me. Consider each DLC on their own merit -- none of them or worth their full, off-sale price.

700 hours later and this is the best line-must-go-up game I have played. Easily the best Paradox strategy game. I can't even really write a review because there's just so much to say. If you're considering the game at all, just go for it. It's a good time.

Victoria 3 is a really underrated game. It has probably the best UI of any Paradox game, a really well-designed economic system and in general does a really good job at trying to not just be another military map painter game.

All Paradox games take a few hours to learn the basics, but this is by far the easiest to pick up and learn. It has a UI based around underlined text that can be highlighted to reveal in-game explanations. These are tooltips and they are really well designed as one can even open up a tool tip that is within another tooltip and even go further to open up a tooltip from that tooltip. This makes learning the game a strangely seamless experience as pretty much every mechanic is explained through these tooltips. The tutorial itself is very bare bones and inadequate, but that does not really matter as the game itself is very user friendly.

The economic system of this game is just excellent. The private investor queue from Victoria 2 is back, but actually builds based on what is profitable - often even building in response to what is being queued up in government construction. All classes can invest into this at varying rates to build up wealth that becomes political influence. The value of goods is dictated by the supply of goods and people’s ability to buy the goods with their wages. This means that building an economy is more than just constructing buildings as the demand for products needs to remain high so that people can make decent wages. It also means that extracting money from the economy through taxes is also not often good as it means people have less money to buy goods. This can result in a death spiral where industries and tax bases slowly fall apart without demand for goods. Another death spiral that can form is the average wage of government employees going up and becoming a massive expenditure. Military, administration and social welfare can actually become massive costs in this game. There is a lot of depth with this system and a lot of other strangely realistic things that can happen organically.

Victoria 3 is still a map painting military game, but it does a good job at hiding that behind other mechanics. Painting the map can be a goal in of itself but the game does a good job at directing players to GDP growth, raising standard of living, political goals, and a variety of unique objective achievements. The game still has an infamy system for its diplomacy where infamy is a basically a resource that should be used but, in this game, expansion is for markets and resources instead of just tax revenue. The military system gets a lot of hate for having a relatively hands-off front system that directs players to focusing on their politics and economy instead of micromanaging units on tiles, but it works for the game as a whole as the other areas of the game demand a lot of time.

This is a really easy to learn grand strategy game that has a surprising amount of depth.

This is the absolute worst Paradox game ever. I don't understand how you can make a economic game with no stockpile system. I feels like a 2000's Xbox demo.

worse game than victoria 2 and the combat system is the biggest part of the reason why this game is so horrible

After almost 650 hours of playing this game, I believe it is time to share my thoughts here on Steam. Victoria 3 is an economic and political simulator of the 19th century, with an emphasis on the latter. You take a nation from 1836 all the way to 1936, while developing its economic forces and shepherding it to (hopefully) a very high GDP.

It is a contrived "line goes up" type of game, with an actual simulation of buildings, employed by workers, that produce goods to be used either in other buildings or consumed by some populace. All the elements mentioned are simulated and nuanced: multiple types of buildings with many production methods; populations that migrate, have needs, qualifications, their own culture, and specificities (often tied to certain goods they prefer); different geographical potential for each country; and different markets with their own prices, importing and exporting to one another seeking benefits — and it all somehow works. I cannot overstate that this part of the game, although complex, is SUPER fun if you like optimization and tinkering in games.

However, there are some hard cons to this game. It was planned from the ground up to be an incremental project at release, improving over the course of multiple DLCs. In other words, while the core of the game is absolutely fleshed out, other aspects are not and leave much to be desired. The political system, which was supposed to be as deep as the population and economic simulation systems, is VERY shallow. The warfare system, a contentious topic among the community, cannot be micromanaged like in other Paradox games and operates on an automatic system that needs to be reimagined. And I could go on and on.

Additionally, although the system requirements for the game aren't very high, it becomes very CPU-intensive as the simulation progresses. There are mods to address this, but the short explanation for why is that the game is constantly performing fractional calculations to merge small populations, determine their needs, where they are employed, etc. With a somewhat decent CPU (AMD 5600x) and some mods, the game is a bit slow in the late game but definitely playable. Even with an old Intel i5 2500, it worked fine, though it was slow.

The part I must alert anyone reading this to is that while some updates are free, most will come under Paradox’s model, with a ludicrous amount of DLC. As of October 2024, they are releasing DLC for other games that are almost as expensive as the base game and, in aggregate, cost nearly three times its price.

Although I really enjoyed my MANY somewhat unhealthy hours playing this game, the current state of the game and its business model prevent me from recommending it. If you're reading this during a big sale, where you can get all the DLC for a reasonable price, this review instantly becomes a recommendation, as the package you'll get will probably be very fun. Otherwise, it saddens me that because of how Paradox conducts business, I can't recommend such an amazing game. What a shame.

Born too late to explore the world. born too early to explore space. Born at the right time to digitally ship opium to china and beat up lesser cultures.

It can be really fun IF you take the time to learn the game and I have not spent my time improving my knowledge of this game. Also multiplayer is one of the best systems for paradox games. It is now playable after the release of spheres of influence makes it easier to make formables.

the market system is really complex or maybe that's because i refused to look up a guide but i love how much thought the developers have put into everything and it's overall a fun game but maybe no worth 70 dollars.

it's like yes this game is amazing, but not realy. this game is just so bare bones, and the mecanics being removed from base and re-aded through DLC is shamful. also game runs horibly starting in 1860 and only gets worse.

First game ever that got so absurd I had to remove it from my library so I'd stop trying. It's an economics sim that doesn't represent goods, capital or logistics, only demand and prices. it's a military sim with teleporting armies and where Germany never capitulated in the first world war because the UK decided they wanted reparations in 1914 and didn't occupy Berlin. it's a societal sim with railroaded movements and native uprisings better equipped than the average European power. in some ways it's actively insulting to the time period. just don't waste your time, stick with something from before CK3 when lazy, stupid Paradox actually had any interest in making games and wait for someone to come around and make something else decent. it's no surprise there's not even any overhaul mods for this. MEIOU, HIP, no one cares enough.

Constantly crashing, horrible battle mechanics, buggy occupation, not many options for puppets, etc. Don't buy this buggy half-broken mess.

It's a very relaxing game I must give it that, but unfortunately it lacks content and does not live up to victoria 2 all that much. Feels plenty barebones, even more so if you just play vanilla. We all know how Paradox operates and that might change in the future, but as of now, it's just how it is.

Still you'll probably get a fun game or two if you have friends to play it with, but not much more.

Tried to give it fair shot but like most paradox games you gotta wait for 5-10 years and 20 dlc for it be fun.

This game has been released almost two years ago, and in that time the developers have changed almost half the game mechanics. Despite that, the game feels very much unfinished and unpolished, almost like early beta. Might be good in 5-6 years when they finally finish it.

Paradox would rather release 3 DLC’s that do not change the glaring issues with the game, just so they can make another 15 dollars off you. A game should not take 2 years to become fun, a game should not require me to buy DLC to be fun. The core mechanics of the game are so convoluted I doubt even paradox knows how it works, much like how Paradox said they have no idea how the Vic 2 Economy works, The warfare system has been extremely subpar since launch, you will have entire armies abandon their front to cover a one inch front, leading to a complete collapse of your front because Paradox programmed the AI to play like they have no frontal lobe. The constant pop ups are there to make it seem like stuff is happening in the game when in reality it affects nothing. And if the player was not there NOTHING would happen. Nations do nothing for decades on end. If you liked Vic 2, do not pick up this game, Paradox does not respect you as a consumer

I am looking at $60.95 of DLC attached to an unfinished game. It has been 2 years. Victoria 3 still has glaring issues with diplomacy, war, naval invasions, and AI behavior.

If your autism just wants to see numbers go up, the game is fine. If you are looking for grand strategy then look elsewhere.

I have completed my first play through and based on that experience recommend Victoria 3. I do not have experience with Victoria 2 - so I cannot make a comparison with that product. I played Stellaris as an intro to Paradox games, but Victoria 3 seemed to be the product that I was looking for as the next step for Paradox strategy. I was looking for more detailed economy mechanics, more emphasis on diplomacy and less on warfare, and finally a very complex and in-depth "lore". In that case it is hard to beat the Victorian era. So yes, in my opinion, Victoria 3 delivers on those fronts. I do understand the critiques regarding warfare as it is very abstract, but in my case I like that or at least don't mind. I played as Belgium, a recommended starter country, never went to war, and made an attempt at building an economic powerhouse resulting in the highest standard of living in the world. What really engrossed me is the interactions with markets, technology, internal politics, and finally diplomacy. For example, close to end game sourcing oil for your economy becomes an absolute strategic necessity that drives foreign policy. This game helps you understand the trade offs and decision making processes in national strategy. Should be required playing for global leaders. If I were to recommend an improvement it would be to create a naval arms race mechanic. Similar to the Stellaris ship designer and takes into account your tech tree and government. Essentially passing laws to build the navy. You will likely need to watch a couple of tutorials online and may stumble your way early, but the time invested to learn the basics is worth it. Now to go and see if I can best Bismarck.

I have some mixed feelings about the title, and while folks talk about how future DLC or updates may fix common complaints, I gotta review the game as it stands at time of review.

Excellent Economic Simulation, might not appeal to all and may be a turn off for some, but its the core of the game and it is well handled. Only real complaint for the economic gameplay is that having a separate menu for just the buy/sell orders of your nation (rather than your market) could be extremely useful for subject nations who risk market isolation or want to go for independence down the line. Honestly, the core of the game when it comes to econ and politics and how they work together is very good.

But diplomacy and warfare are so God awful so as to completely ruin much of my enjoyment of the game. Its not the war that is the problem, I honestly like not having to order armies around, and I think a stronger emphasis on diplomacy over player skill in warfare is a good choice. But, the diplomacy and diplomatic plays in the game as is cannot carry the weight that necessitates. Whether or not the AI is willing to join a play can feel arbitrary, often joining wars against the player regardless of good relations with the player or bad relations with the AI. Loading a save often results in a diplomatic play going completely differently, demonstrating just how arbitrary the underlying system is.

Some degree of randomness and variance is of course necessary, however arbitrariness is the enemy of fun in a strategy game. If a random dice roll at the start of a diplomatic play has more of an outcome on a war than any economic, military, or diplomatic choices the player made, then the heart of strategy, making decisions and watching them bear fruit in future, is completely undercut, and the player can only ask why they wasted their time.

Great economic simulator. Failed product as a strategy game. Will still play, cannot recommend

I've clocked in 91 hours and feel like I've pretty much covered everything worth covering. For a Paradox game there's very little replay value. Mainly because there's just not much to do! There's no good reason why playing the Zulus should feel the same as playing the US or Prussia. Playing as England feels identical to China, which feels identical to Russia. Everyone plays the same. You get the same interest groups, you get the same civil war issues, you get the same societal problems. Just differing levels of development (this means any country not made up of pure white europeans will lose every battle instantly). I actually really like the new direction shifting away from military micromanagement toward nation micromanagement, but a lot of the features of said nation are half-baked and really really boring. This was never exclusive to the Victoria series, Paradox just let you paint maps and move units and press the genocide button because it gave players something to do other than stare at graphs and contemplate RNG. I'm actually totally fine with losing the map painting and units and all that, but give me something else to focus on! The economics, the trade, the diplomacy, the politics, none of them are interesting enough to keep me engaged. Every country plays the same, every society has the same problems.

A lot of the nationbuilding features feel like working a full-time job. I'm sat here, very little agency as the player, staring at progress bars ticking by, being bombarded by events. The devs made a huge deal of the diplomacy but there are generally no viable options with other nations except for invading them or trading with them. The AI likewise never seems to have any diplomacy other than outward antagonism. Obscenely ahistorical things happen all of the time leaving the experience feeling very inauthentic and gamey. Many times I'll flick my camera over to go look at Europe and it's just a mess of random nonsensical borders all over the place. Nations that should win their historical wars, don't. Nations that should reform their government, decide not to. Revolutions that should take place never happen. I've never seen the American civil war happen even once. The Canadians beat the Americans in Manifest Destiny every single time, and California usually remains Mexican well past late game. The way politics is handled feels like a good step forwards, but considering the game has been out for two years now, and in development hell for who-knows-how-long before, it's very underwhelming.

The DLC stacking is already getting old. There's barely any content at all and I'm sure whatever meager things they add will be behind outrageous paywalls in no time.

Tldr: Control is an illusion, the game plays you, not it. Go play any other Paradox game.

Victoria 3 is the "you have no control" simulator. Your country? You don't actually control its political system. Everything you do is an illusion, because like or not you're gonna end up going communist. That political party with 5% popularity is going to take 70% of your country with it when it revolts (and most of your military). Random dissidents are going to appear and ACTUALLY dictate what your country is going to do. You CAN exile them, but its on a long cooldown and a new one will just appear a second later.
Want colonies in Africa? The game encourages you to give them over to colonial administrations, which will immediately start wanting to be their own country and will just turn into an independent country without even informing you. So if you want to map-paint or have any colonies, get used to reconquering the Congo over, and over, and over again.
The war system is just HOI4's frontline system's AI. You actually don't control anything and the AI does it all. Sure you CAN make some choices, but none of them actually have any impact on the war and instead you'll spend all your time making sure your armies are on the right frontline. And heaven help you if the nation you're at war with goes into a revolution... because your armies will forget that there are any frontlines and just go home until you manually remind each one of them that you're still at war.

Look, if you read all that... then I got news for you... its not over. But if you're still going to buy the game after reading that, then you'll just have to find out for yourself. If not, then trust me. Go play any other paradox game. Its more worth your money... but most importantly, its respectful of your time. Victoria 3 does NOT respect your time. Every game turns out the same: with the game deciding on what you do.
Instead of playing a game, it feels like you're writing a spreadsheet that someone just takes over every few minutes and changes everything.

Made by people who dont play the game and is so cope pilled on what historic movements are like that it restricts gameplay. Ive tried and tried to like this game but it wont let you have fun. the revisionist political movement in this game just saps it all out making u micro manage the most boring part of the game. Especially since its jarring seeing the main movement that always spawns over and over with no variation in ideologu. yet irl coutner part literally was expelled 3 times easily before what is the end game war in this causing so many casualties it finally got legs. yet itl cat like its brimming at all times if u dare try to do any version of insert x version of a country. There is no variation on this its like wh2 chaos invasion its always the same chaos faction. only difference which is surprising lets say your die hard that real ideology it doesnt bring that mechanic in for them its a walk in the park basically an instant win. The mentality that designed the dynamics of this game are why paradox is "branching out" to games no one is gunna play and eventually hoi4 and eu4 wont have dlc and this team can not make a good new one. Very sad.

Should play if you are interested in:
Economic simulation.
Snowballing "line goes up" style progression.
Feeling of mastery understanding complex gameplay systems.
Should not play if you:
Are looking for interesting strategic gameplay.
Are looking for a quick game.
Do not enjoy micromanaging gameplay.
Your computer processor is more than a couple generations behind or lower end. (The game will become unbearably slow by late game otherwise).

"Victoria 3" is a groundbreaking grand strategy game that allows players to shape the fate of a nation during the tumultuous 19th century. The game's intricate systems, such as economics, politics, and diplomacy, create a truly immersive experience.

Rough around the edges, but ultimately worth playing if you're a fan of complex, systems-based grand strategy games. This isn't the ideal entry point for newcomers to the genre, as many of the game’s systems and mechanics are opaque, and the nested tooltip system falls short of providing clear guidance. Unlike Crusader Kings III, where in-game tools are more user-friendly, this game almost requires you to read developer diaries and dive into community guides to grasp how certain mechanics work. Even after 140 hours of playtime and a reasonable level of experience with this genre, I still find myself unsure of which levers to pull to achieve specific outcomes. This seems to be more of an issue with the game’s design rather than my failure to learn its systems.

The game launched in a less-than-ideal state, but the developers have been steadily reworking and refining various systems. It now feels much more playable, although there's still plenty of room for improvement. Given the game’s complexity and the extensive UI required to manage it, it’s somewhat understandable that certain aspects of the simulation remain unclear.

Improving the nested tooltips would go a long way, as they currently lag far behind the quality of those in Crusader Kings III. Some journal objectives are also unclear, again due to the lack of detailed tooltips.

Despite its shortcomings, the game can be quite enjoyable if you’re willing to invest the time to learn its intricacies and don’t mind spending on DLC. For those willing to put in the effort, it offers a deep and engaging experience that is ultimately rewarding.

the game has known issues with amd drivers and instead of fixing it they just give you a warning. So the game just causes your drivers to fail and then crashes your whole PC. its 2024 and you have games on steam that have known game breaking bugs with drivers and instead of fixing it. they give you a warning.. imagine buying a car that had a missfire in cylinder 3 and GM just told you " Yea that happens, youre just gonna have to live with it or buy another one" after you bought their car already and i cant help but think how sad it is that a MAP game has this issue, no fancy battles or awe captivating cut scenes or anything spectacular.. nope its a map with different colors has this problem

I love this game, and while the modding community is kind of still building up, it does have great potential.

victoria 3 has performance issues, the warfare system is pretty bad, and the dev team can barely make headway cleaning up its many strange bugs. but it's also pretty unique as far as games go, and pretty fun and interesting when it's not crashing or breaking. it is not really a spiritual sequel to victoria 2 and is much more about economics and politics. you'll either love it or hate it. hope you figure out which while you're still in the refund window

Its an Excel sim and its is cool when line goes up, but its so hard to tell what is going on quickly and how to solve the issues you have. War system remains absolutely horrendously terribly awful. I want to love the game so much, but I can't recommend it. Hoping future changes allow me to alter this review.

One country I had a diplomatic play against was eliminated in another war. I was left in the play with the US as the defender of the non-existent country which had been conquered by the Ai while the diplomatic play was going on. Ofc it ticks down to war breaking out and the US goes all Monroe Doctrine and invades me anyway. OORAH!

combat is unfun if they fix that id give a positive. Economic system if good

Let's go straight to the point, the recent update 1.7.6 crashes my games HUNDRED OF TIMES in the late-game(1890s on), even when I was only sipping on my starbucks matcha latte and watching my nation grow. This is SUPER annoying.(09/28 edit: I have noticed that crashes often comes right at the timepoint when diplomatic play ends and war begins, same for when other countries making peace.)

This game has been one of my dream games from the very beginning. I have always wanted a game like this focus more on economy and society instead of just pure bloodshed.Even though lots of people complained about this and that since it is published, I find the little bugs no where near affecting my gameplay negatively.

But now the constant late-game crashes are making this game unplayable and me furious and frustrated. Have tried to update to older version (1.7.3) as suggested in the community but the game still crashed after a few years of in-game time. BTW, when I tried to send report, "something happened..cannot send report" pop up every time.

I don't know what to do and what I've done to deserve all these. Still, I have faith in Paradox who never ceases to amaze me with all the strategic games of the best-kind, but for the status-quo, I am very disappointed. I will recommend this when the crash issues are fixed.