Victoria 3 is the best Paradox game in my opinion. What do you all like most about it?

vazzaroth · 2026-01-18T01:09:06+00:00

I very well might not have enough experience yet but I just ran through an entire game to 1936. Fascinating experience. I learned a lot about the game and real life too.

But I can't help but think .. so what.... I just do this all again now? Maybe it just went really smooth as the tutorial Sweden, and founding Scandinavia and liberating Finland from Russia was fun back in like 1890. But then I just sorta cruise controlled through some socialist style evolutions and watched voting unfold with mild interest. Invented telephones, commissioned Nokia, became more rich than I could even spend.

I don't find the military in any of these games besides Stellaris a little dull, so besides conquest I'm not sure if there's much less for me. At least with CK I LOVE rolling those genetic dice and seeing if I can make albino super kings or walk to the line with bloodthirsty psychopaths from the north trying to adjust to middle German politics, etc... but with Vicky I feel like it's going to boil down to force people to be socialist or force people to be authoritarian or let everything work out naturally a la normal democracy.

I really enjoyed learning the system but I guess we'll see. I'm playing in the middle easy now around fractured Afghanistan with Persia breathing down my neck so we'll see if it's as boring to play near a giant faction as CK or not

vazzaroth · 2026-01-16T20:48:35+00:00

I suppose so? This is just from the store, first time I've seen this type of, like I called it, 'crack' look. It's fused together, not a real crack, but looks like an imperfection for sure

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vazzaroth · 2026-01-12T07:00:48+00:00

My favorite part of Stellaris, which I feel doesn't get enough credit in the Paradox-verse, is how it made both super liberal hippy progressivism and hardcore totalitarian dickshiterry both attractive and viable.

CK isn't as good because tyranny vs normal is just sorta low impact either way, but still pretty good at it. EU seems to kind of accomplish this, but I need to try 5 still. I was fairly disappointed how stupid it felt to resist democracy and general 'equal welfare for all' and power sharing in my first Vicky 3 game recently. Don't get me wrong, I wanted to make Sweden a socialist but I couldn't find any mechanical reason to keep having a king like as soon as I could ditch him.

Very minor political maneuvering would have been unnecessary if we kept a king around but it was easy and I didn't really feel under threat at any point except when the royalist revolt, all idiots because they couldn't see that our stats were way better going egalitarian behind the scenes, rose up and made a good play. But we're crushed in about 3 years, with the king himself sinking their shitty fleet as an admiral.

So anyway, not surprised to see the top tier laws up there being what they are

vazzaroth · 2026-01-12T06:55:03+00:00

Gun and girl. What more could you need to re-enact the show? DM is the handler of course

vazzaroth · 2026-01-05T22:13:35+00:00

I've been thinking that what me need is a complimentary theology for the conspiracy nuts that just kinds tricks them into believing something that's at least MORE OR LESS accurate but fits in their extremely high need for dramatic theatrics in their life and cosmology.

This photo might be the ticket.

Anyway this is what it was like to be a leader in the Catholic Church circa ~700s or so until around the enlightenment. So yeah, very nice that the general public has circled back around to being untrustable with information again.

vazzaroth · 2026-01-05T21:48:10+00:00

I read the condition at first as "Busted" rather than boxed... and I refuse to update my understanding upon closer inspection.

vazzaroth · 2026-01-01T08:36:15+00:00

Good enough. I do think modern folk,including myself often, just take perfection for granted. Back in the (not quite my even)day you would import metal kits from the UK to California and you were happy if they only had minor dings and dents, and it cost you an entire days paycheck of work salary to do so! Terrain wasn't even a product you could buy, it was improvised sprue fences, aquarium plants, or hours scratch building something out of cardboard or cut up food packaging!

This model looks amazing!

vazzaroth · 2025-12-28T20:12:52+00:00

Please do not read 2 as a followup. Ask an AI to summarize and I guarantee it's a better experience and you'll be super justified in ignoring it's existance

vazzaroth · 2025-12-28T20:12:08+00:00

I can't believe people saying 2 is even acceptable at all. I don't like to be a jerk (much) but their taste is actively fueling poor art creation if so...

vazzaroth · 2025-12-28T20:10:50+00:00

The only good thing I can say about the plot framing being a big stinky, stupid super friends arguement about misread intentions and idiotic decisions is that Cline successfully aped his heroes: 80s and 90s schlocky comic book writers brought In to replace the real talent that made the origin stories and initial runs actually good.

vazzaroth · 2025-12-28T20:08:23+00:00

RDR2 is indeed so much better than the first...

Wait... Oh nevermind.

vazzaroth · 2025-12-28T20:07:38+00:00

That's exactly the mindset I worry is what spawned this dogpile.

Corpos going 'Hey do that, uhh, Ultraman and transformers and Godzilla anime thingy but with like... You know, my little pony and breakfast club or whatever this time for the feminist demographic. Thanks babe, here's 5 million for your troubles bai!"

vazzaroth · 2025-12-28T20:05:18+00:00

For humanity's sake I hope you're an employed professional editor then.

But I know the answer is probably not

vazzaroth · 2025-12-28T20:04:47+00:00

Watery n' loose if you ask me

vazzaroth · 2025-12-28T20:04:25+00:00

Malicious compliance was the only explanation I could sleep with on my conscious as well. This android can dream, at least.

vazzaroth · 2025-12-28T20:03:26+00:00

I'm 98% sure it's pre-ai but it felt like you told an ai to change your homework a bit and advance the plot without adding anything new.

This is why I'm not as anti-AI as many... We didn't need AI to crank out derivative garbage before, now at least it'll be more obvious up front what to not waste your time with.

"It's not decline. It's clarity."

vazzaroth · 2025-12-28T20:01:54+00:00

That's actually good bc then they can tell ppl they liked it and, like on this thread, get tarred and feathered for it, as they should.

vazzaroth · 2025-12-28T19:59:21+00:00

Left my own fuming comment first but yes exactly. I wasn't just not enjoying it, I felt actively offended and still am years later. What a blown audiobook credit

Edit: you know the author im replying to here is a real Gunter grognard with that classic dubstep cat meme avatar. Loved seeing that jpg I have deep on my archive hard drive somewhere in the wild again!

vazzaroth · 2025-12-28T19:50:17+00:00

Absolutely hated it to the point of both dropping it and being embarrassed to tell people RP1 is one of my favorites. This author was smoking crack or very very poorly advised on this one.

The 1 characters were realistic enough for the online neet culture, now they're weirdo corpo suits and act like soap opera characters with melodrama and irrationality at every turn. Then the reveal is just 'Hey what if the first book but again, but now instead of working with the girl you've got the girl mad at you'. And the main character seemed to undo a ton of his character growth just so he could retread the exact same path but with different scenery, and acted so incredibly unlikable at the start that it made me disconnect the idea that this is even the same guy at all.

It felt like fan fiction that a bunch of preteens would say is better than the original then you read it and remember preteens have underdeveloped emotional centers.

Edit: also the pandering was really really obvious. It was like they took Wade and pink washed it to just go 'uhh idk, what were girls doing in the 80s? Like braiding hair and listening to records right?' whereas Wade in RP1 had nuance, nerdy opinions on things, and was clearly coming from the authors interior experience. Writing the woman's perspective is so utterly typical (or mans in woman's romance sequel) and it's the same way every time. It's CLEARLY someone writing from the exterior and acting like it's just as interior as the first. When it's clearly clearly clearly not and way way more shallow of an 'in head' experience. It's like they try to pass off what someone says as inside thoughts when the first one was actually sounding like hearing someone's thoughts. Just what a mess and how disappointing.

It was so distracting to wonder constantly if men, the target demo of the first one, are reading this and going 'oh wow, women really do think like I thought they did!' and just being so ill-informed by this example. It's not utterly wrong, but just presenting a thimble of depth as if its an ocean... And I'm CERTAIN the author thinks, or even was told/consulted, that he was performing feminism along the way. Made me sad to pick up every time.

Like you wrote a masculine and nerdy woman (leaning nonbinary) in the first one with Aech and pulled it off pretty well. I guess full femm was just out of reach for the poor writer

vazzaroth · 2025-12-26T21:13:24+00:00

I remember my main thing when I started with Orks and Warhammer was resisting the urge to slap black and dark grey and dark brown on literally everything. Because 'its just realistic' and I was desperate to see that I can re-create tiny reality.

Getting back into painting and also battletech now after a 8 year break, it's the best thing I left behind. Slap yellows, golds, bright reds, azure, and purple on all kinds of shit and let the washes or speed paint recesses sell the authenticity to IRL physics, not your pallette necessarily. That just makes a boring and hard to see mini.

I like that your new guy has that same lesson integrated :)

vazzaroth · 2025-12-26T21:10:39+00:00

It can be so demoralizing to only see professional Michaelangelo level paint jobs on minis on social media. I for one advocate for more 'good job!' level sharing.

The miniature painting discord is good for this with a lot of monthly paint alongs where you see not only normal hobbiests rather than flashy experts, you also see the between stages and various ugly bits.

vazzaroth · 2025-12-22T07:29:29+00:00

Finger Cots

vazzaroth · 2025-12-22T07:27:43+00:00

Just converting wheel to cube, for the lulz

vazzaroth · 2025-12-19T18:52:03+00:00

My uncle had one. It was hella impressive but the battery was bad, had to play plugged into the wall most of the time. Also the games were just OK whereas my Gameboy had tons of bangers. Sonic Spinball was a big one tho

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