There's a frustrating mix of genuinely clever ideas that improve upon the framework left behind by Victoria 2, and an overall experience that is just glaringly half-baked. The player is given a lot more fine tuned control over the economy now, regardless of economic laws, with the result that every country plays out the same repetetive loops of construction queues. The AI economy seems insensitive to the profit potential of critical commodities, with the result that the mechanisms of indirect economic hegemony feel useless; You need to directly invade and occupy territory to make sure oil rigs and rubber plantations are actually built. AI nations will attempt to pursue their relevant ambitions, but if they hit a speed bump they can't figure out how to recover or develop a backup plan, and fall into holding patterns for the rest of the game. The Balkans never destabilize, China never collapses properly, there's never a proper World War, and none of the alternate histories these outcomes entail are lively or dynamic. And so on.

I do genuinely like the war system. This kind of indirect strategic control, where preparation is key and the national government doesn't directly command the movements of every soldier, is exactly what I wanted from this game in general. It's baffling to me that they reigned in player management on the war system only to give us direct control over where every infrastructure building in our nation goes.