VioletZer0 posted...
"This game was criticized for being too realistic"
I believe that was Victoria 3 and it was criticized for making Communism overpowered.
It's actually overpowered in Victoria 2, because the capitalist AI is notoriously terrible and constantly builds useless garbage
capitalists builds a glass factroy ad infinitum while you have no machine parts
and communism gets rid of that faff and lets you manually build actually useful factories. This is especially hilarious, because apparently the lead designer was a die-hard Thatcherite.
...of course, you're going to develop carpal tunnel manually building railroads in Russia, so it may not be as much of a win as you might think initially.
Victoria 3 is a little more balanced now, is my understanding. Laissez Faire essentially creates money out of the ether(by increasing private investment efficiency) and government-controlled industries have a penalty to dividends (of course, that's still money flowing directly into your treasury instead of simply going to enrich capitalist pops- or worse, going to
aristocrat pops
). However, Cooperative Ownership is better for your overall standard of living which helps drive consumption which creates overall more demand, IIRC, so it's a good option if your investment pool is full of cash. Not sure about Planned Economy, I usually don't play long enough to actually go communist, and it's actually really hard to get it off the ground sometimes.
especially in countries with dumb party set-ups, like the US.