Played some VicIII. Wow.

[Kyriakos]

This is one terribly awful game
And it looks like Paradox won't even be able to go its usual route of fixing it incrementally through 20 DLCs costing $20 each, due to the current outrage.
War system is beyond pitiful, of course, but I didn't like the changes to the trade/economy either.
Imo this is a huge step back from VicII.

[Dismounted Feudal Knight]

That's a shame to hear. Anyone else play it and have an idea?

I haven't followed Paradox very closely but I know it's about as close as currently exists for competition so they really have a chance to pick up the ball and it would be a shame if they're missing.

[Søren]

I had completely the opposite experience. I thought it was excellent, enjoyed a lot of the new mechanics, the overall feel and recreation of the period, and general gameplay. But, development and DLC release has been slow, which has hurt it as it needs more differentiation between different nations and cultures to have real longevity and replayability. That said, while not at the pace I'd hoped for, the changes they have made have improved it - especially the major overhaul of military mechanics currently in beta.

[Kyriakos]

"Major overhaul" may be a hyperbole, though it can be approached in another way and not be: the war system was so ridiculously bad that even now (when you can at least see individual boxes as armies) it is an improvement. But the armies still warp (eg your distant ally will move its troops to your front instantly, as if it uses quantum phenomena) and there is no ability to micromanage anything (only give general orders for where to move if you win the opening battles).
The economy... is a version of HOI, with the analogue of civic buildings. Let alone that the game does not allow you to micromanage that part either, due to construction ability being automatically set by invisible parameters (bureaucracy, construction ability etc).

Personally, I doubt VicIII will ever get to a stage where it will have an actual fanbase. Of course Paradox will fight far harder to keep it alive, than it did with Imperator, but unless it actually changes things massively, I do not see a future for this game.

[MoLAoS]

V3 is a cookie clicker with a map, literally. Which is fine. EU4 was a different variety of incremental game and it was fun if you played it that way and didn't give it too much credit. Very fun even.

The question is whether Gilded Destiny or other competition can drive some wedges into the fan base. Grey Eminence unfortunately already went on hiatus due to finances. But GD is much more well scoped.

Then you have the open source V2 clones which are slowly coming along as well.

For me personally V3 and CK3 have the same issue. Immense focus on the production values and optimizing for DLCability for pleasing the execs and also failing to understand the core "specialness" of their predecessors.

CK2 but with more character depth and focusing on improving non-feudal options, plus the CK3 advanced modding and some of the multi-threading improvements would have been great. Sadly memer streamer fans and Sims4 players were correctly assessed by Paradox as a larger target market so here we are.

Victoria 3 turning the factory mechanics into cookie clicker instead of focusing on improve diplomacy and population politics was also a step back for me, and of course while removing military micro and making combat more political and population focused is good in theory, their horrendous execution in vanilla really hurt them. If they had put out the 1.5 version of military mechanics in vanilla I think they'd have *way* more good will with the community as far as giving them time to improve stuff.

[Kyriakos]

Imo the entire reason for Vic2 existing (instead of having the era modded in HOI or EU) was that there you could actually make calculations about factories and production, which while numerous (in the tens, concurrently, for a basic strategy) they are feasible, due to seeing the result and easily choosing what to upgrade or downgrade. With Vic3 you only have the stupid option of endlessly upgrading "factories" (not really factories either, just 1d level up buttons). For a game which (strangely) tried to not be about war or be as little as possible about war, they took all the fun out of the non-war part too.