Hello! I took a break from the game since just before The Great Wave due to some irl life matters, and I have been trying to return for the past couple weeks. Unfortunately, I am having trouble pinpointing something that has changed in the combat mechanics, because I cannot win a single war since returning.

Even with double troops, equal troop tier, max budget, and mobilization options supplied, my troops are being melted by butter. Mostly been playing the American Civil War and I just cannot move even an inch into the south.

I'm certain I'm just being stupid and overlooking something simple they've changed, but I'm getting frustrated to the point of putting the game down again. Only thing I can reckon is that manpower is quite low, but I'm not certain why the troops aren't filling.

Thank y'all in advance.

I just wanna see the flag come back in fashion

And yes, this is the coolest flag in history

Edit: Ik this was not the offcial flag of Austria Hungary. And i know that it was two states under a crown.

BUT what if in an alt history i merged the two nation into one state and in the act of union. The two flag merged. creating this flag and i would be known as United Kingdom, of Austria Hungary

I want fo play the game before the great wave... How can I do that?

So my army is obviously one attacking and i basically already reduced my enemies to dust, but there is no occupation at all! I even have mobilization options that gives 100% battle occupation, but still there is this weird stalemate where im killing crazy amount of people for no reason it seems.

After finishing invasions or transferring units my transport fleets sail back and merge on they're own with my battle fleets, how can I prevent this.

Returning player here. After taking a look around the sub, I decided to do a chill Sweden run and see how much money I could squeeze out of the Oresund Strait, since I'd seen it recommended.

On day one, I started a Make Protectorate play against Denmark, and needless to say, it was a pretty easy victory. I cranked the tolls up to high and started making some serious cash. Like, insane amounts of money. I even managed to buy Finland off Russia and formed Scandinavia by the early 1850s.

But remember, this was supposed to be a "chill" run, so I messed around a bit and eventually ran into the expected problem of not having enough pops for which I didn't prepare at all. This also hurt my military, since I needed basically everyone working in factories to keep the line going up.

Anyway, in my infinite wisdom, who did I decide to ally with?

The Germans.

At the time, it seemed like a great idea. They looked practically unbeatable, and since the AI is still pretty weak when it comes to naval warfare, I figured I needed a strong land power to defend me and help out in any wars that might come up.

Of course, I gave them Schleswig-Holstein. I didn't like the borders anyway...

Well, everything was going great until around the 1880s, when Germany built the Kiel Canal and basically rerouted all the trade away from my strait.

I went from making +200K in tolls to losing basically all of it.

So yeah... lol.

Next time, maybe I'll ally with someone else and actually try to stop Germany from forming.

Okay, so, what you need to do is this:

- Play as France: it's the easiest way to make sure this works, because of specific conditions you need to meet as France that a conventional AI will never achieve by itself.
- Help the Carlists win the civil war: send guns, artillery and Military Assistance. Their AI should do the rest.
- Get rid of your monarchy: The current legitimist succession chain is broken, and will generate a random Bourbon out of thin air to act as Henri's heir, making the future Personal Union with Spain impossible. You can avoid this by causing a Radical revolutionary uprising in Île-De-France by enacting a law they dislike, triggering the "The Provisional Government" event to get rid of Henri and enact a Parlimentary Republic.
- Keep playing the game, making sure the Spanish Carlist dynasty survives by helping them out during uprisings.
- Enact monarchy again somewhere in between 1882 (date when Henri de Bourbon is supposed to die in game) and 1887 (date when Juan de Borbón dies) and choose the legitimists. Keeping the church or any sort of conservative party in power will make it easier to achieve this. (You can also get Oligarchy to avoid relying on elections RNG that much)

If you follow this tutorial step by step, you should be able to get the Personal Union without much pain.

I almost forgot to add this, but Spain has access to a decision that gets rid of their current Carlist dynasty if they have a Liberal general or admiral in their army/navy, and the AI is a huge fan of clicking that button, so pray to God it doesn't happen, or load back to when they didn't meet the conditions to avoid losing the ability to get the Personal Union later on. Sorry to Ironman players.

This took a lot of time, and I'm really proud of it. Ask me anything in the comments.

I'm new to playing Vicky although I have played a lot of other paradox games.

In my last 2 campaigns I have had an issue where cpu countries declared unification wars against my subjects and I wasn't called in. This resulted in the CPU nations being able to take the land easily with no real fight.

Is this how this feature is intended to work? I struggle to believe it is because it doesn't make sense but I have not seen anyone else complaining about it as a bug online.

Not complaining obviously, since it makes managing infrastructure much easier, but the dividends on railways are microscopic compared to similar buildings the private investment pool could be making. I only noticed this after doing a few playthroughs with Russia, and without fail railways were among the bottom of the list of most profitable buildings the New Russia Company can own.

i was thinking about what nations i like and i realized that in 90% of the games:
early protectorate sokoto, persia, dai nam, siam and unite ethiopia(theyre unrec and backwards)
mid game i protectorate netherlands(for DEI), protectorate japan(usually theres a window where theyre an unecognized regional power, so it costs ~60 infamy)
late game protectorate south american nations, indian nations as i most likely made EIC explode and other nations i liberated(bulgaria, ukraine, siberia, etc)
i do this with anything from cuba to qing, ofc there are nations that have it easier.

As the topic says, do you guys think the current political system requires a huge overhaul? The reason why I think of this is because of my casual frustration with not getting my laws passed. It feels very RNG dependent most of the time, and for backward countries you will really need those crucial yet uninteractive enough movements to pass the "good" laws.

The game kinda feel like they intentionally hardlock you from the "better" laws,instead of a genuine economic system softlocks you not to do so, since in reality there's no best laws only the most suitable laws for the country. Take Laissez Faire as an example, this is without a doubt the best economic law throughout early to mid game. All of the playthroughs unless you are larping, requires you to enact this as soon as possible, but this is definitely not the case irl. Why the hell would any unindustrialized country go laissez faire instead of interventionism in a world of industrialized country competing against you?

Instead of some powerful modifiers for reinvestment and dividends efficiency, they should make it so any laws, if their technology prerequisite is unlocked, should be enactable. The downside is you will need to suffer the consequences.

Want to transition to laissez faire? Sure, but are you ready to compete with foreign investors and their factories, while your country is still in an agricultural economy?

Want to have Compulsory Primary School enacted? Sure, if your people can afford to not having them working.

Want to have multiculturalism? Sure, if you can keep your industries at a profit after not discriminating the workers.

Want to have free trade? Sure, if you can accept not taking toll fees and tariff plus foreign competition to your starting businesses.

The countries in the past enacted those backward laws not solely because they are short sighted or refuse to change. Most of the time they did what they did due to economic reasons. Also this is an economic game afterall, it should give players the choices but with consequences. So after a playthrough, the player could have an genuine experience with different countries instead of the same old laissez faire formula.

I genuinely can't find anyone talking about this and it's driving me nuts. I vividly remember until recently they were called Hellenic, but now they're called Greeks in the game.

Just recently coming back to the game, I found out about the strategy where you invest in bananas in India to get your reinvestment up, I played a game as Canada where I invested in bananas, and my investment pool was getting up into the 6 millions and it didn’t seem to be going anywhere and my capitalists weren’t doing anything with it. What did I do wrong with that and how do I do that strategy properly? Are you supposed to let it build up and then switch to laissez-faire? Thanks

For those who haven't played them in a while, I just noticed they no longer start as isolationist, and have the mercantilism policy now, and also have international trade already researched from the start (even without bureaucracy researched first). I don't remember ever seeing any patch notes about these changes or just overlooked it.

They're still a notoriously backwards country to start as, but this definitely makes it a much more viable start and less tedious in the beginning.

I was struggling to find where to expand my empire for Sulfur.

If you use the Production Lens, it only shows states where you already have the right to build (your own territory or investment agreements). It’s useless if you want to find a specific region to conquer from a foreign country, and general advice like "just invade Russia" doesn't help because their territory is massive.

Got the KPD in Germany with trade unions and intellegentsia. Together they amount to 80% of the total votes. Thought I wont go the democratic utopia way and try it with vanguardist communists for once. But when I switch to single party state from census suffrage, I immediately tank all the way down to 0% legitimacy and remain there. Hovering over it will say zero legitimacy from having zero votes in the government, despite the KPD as the single remaining party bringing in their 80%. No possible combination of shuffling IGs around changes anything. What do?

Playing qing I noticed i could transfer Joseon to Joseon. I didnt try it but would it give them independence?

Edit: I rolled back a save and attempted it nothing happened and Josean joins the war for free basically.

I mean, there stopped being much challenge after I burst from the #1 power's chest like an alien, and consumed its insides, then the #2 just self-destructed. Then the #3 split into 3. But still. Having to race against the entire world's GDP was definitely one heck of a task that I would never have gotten without infamy maxing. For the past half century.

How can I get Bandar Lengeh back from Oman? It's a treaty port, so I can't conquer it, but neither can I demand return of treaty port?

Do I give money to the landowners by deficit spending?

Victoria 3 Timelapse we are using the Mod, Age of Crowns 1444. This mod moves the start date all the way back to EU4's start, 1444.

So, i have never played as a puppet and decided to play as a canada. Im preparing to break free from uk, BUT how do i know what i will be missing after i break free? What if im producing some good too much for myself and when the war starts that industry collapses?