Unfortunately, Victoria 3 is rather unfun due to a number of fundamental flaws. The trade system is even more tedious micro than HoI4's trade system. Plus, the simplifications to the economic simulation introduced (chiefly infinite supply and complete lack of stockpiles) remove most fun mechanics (and a sense of realism). In Victoria 2, a very strong strategy as an early industrializer is to stockpile machine parts to delay other countries from industrializing. Victoria 3 simply has no analogue intentionally. Heck, Victoria 3's embargoes can't even be country-specific, they're good-specific and not even absolute! To top it all off, the developers are very explicitly encoding their political biases into the game's balancing. There is simply no reason to not be woke in Victoria 3. The only benefit that you receive for not being extreme lib-left is the ability to magically make more infrastructure appear with more "authority" mana, but the amount gained is insignificant.

I'm sure mods will make the game somewhat more fun and I'm probably going to buy the game for that reason, but after playing the beta I have absolutely no faith in Paradox's ability to live up to Victoria 2 despite it being a heavily flawed game that ended up being mostly a commercial failure. The worst part about all of this is how much effort they're spending on completely inconsequential things, like replacing the icons for POPs with horrendously ugly, anachronistic 3D characters. Something tells me that it was just an attempt to recoup losses from CK3's development. But don't worry, I'm sure Paradox's newfound console audience will enjoy Import-Export Trade Deal Manager 2022 and keep the company afloat.

Well that's a bummer. Thanks for the info