Victoria 2

Nice choice! I had a great game as the Ottomans earlier. Always satisfying to pull your nation out from being a backwater to the front of progress.

urrahh?

A Russian battle cry, adopted by the US Marines during their service there in the Russian Civil War. Or so I've heard it asserted.

Word on the 2.2 patch:

Paradox Interactive wrote:

We are currently hard at work on the 2.2 patch, which I hope we can release as a public beta patch during next week

More information here, but it looks like they are adding some nice tweaks. I wish I had more time in the day to play this more.

Beta of the patch is available (you need to have Vic2 registered with Paradox to get there). Some more info on it.

Neat. I totally ran out of steam on this game... I was into right after the expansion dropped but firing it up just doesn't seem appealing right now. My Paradox-ness seems to wax and wane.

Me too. CK2 has me pretty hard for my Paradox fix for the forseeable future.

I miss this game. Is the expansion ever going to drop in price? That would be exactly what I need to get back into it.

Watch for the upcoming Steam Summer Sale, if you got it through them. Otherwise, most online retailers have sales around the Steam Summer Sale, so it should be available for cheaper soon.

With all the everything that has come out since AHD was released in February(?), I kind of missed out on it. I started a new game as Germany. Man this game is good. I don't remember exactly what the changes were in AHD, so I am not sure what has changed since the last time I played last year, but it has really got me (again).

Hooray! I'm looking forward to this one.

The new colonial system with it's emphasis on navies sounds true to the period. Hopefully we'll see some real gunboat diplomacy. I'm definitely going to give this one a spin.

The horror! The horror!

Dev diary about the Heart of Darkness DLC, wherein they discuss the new crisis mechanic. I could not help but be reminded of the crisis mechanic in Pride of Nations, although the one in the Heart of Darkness DLC looks like it will be a lot less impenetrable. It seems like the Paradox-AGEOD ex-coalition has had some interesting effects.

This DLC looks like it is shaping up to be an excellent addition to the game.

Robear wrote:

The horror! The horror!

You leave his fiance out of this!

I just got back to EUIII. The expansion might be a good reason to finally give Victoria II a shot.

New dev diary (I feel like a shill) wherein the changes to naval combat are discussed. I am pretty excited about these changes; naval combat in the era was important and is pretty lackluster in the current version IMHO. These changes seem like they are making naval combat way more interesting than "spam dozens of dreadnaughts, control the seas".

shill

Last dev diary for Heart of Darkness is up. Some interesting tweaks to how industry works. My summary:

- factories now get a Throughput bonus when built in a state that produces their input goods (intended to encourage industrial clusters for similar industries)
- factories able to scale back production before firing workers if they are not making a profit (which if it works is awesome because the boom/bust cycle in non-state controlled industries can be crippling)
- Capitalists will now better remember what factories have been recently closed and avoid rebuilding them (ditto)
- Capitalists will reserve some factory slots to build factories that are invented later in the game (which if it works is great since maybe my dumb industrialists will finally build some damn tanks)
- you receive a 100% boost to influencing your Satellite and Dominion nations, which makes it a lot easier to keep them in your SoI (could be good or bad - the good part is that a large part of Vicky 2 comes down to watching the relationship scores for your SoI and fighting off the AI; hopefully this will alleviate some of that. The bad news is it seems like it will be harder to remove a country from an AI SoI using diplomatic means only. Oh well, I have an army for a reason right? )

Oh yeah, release date is April 16th!

/shill

I appreciate the updates for the next expansion tboon!

Yonder wrote:

I appreciate the updates for the next expansion tboon!

I am really excited for this. I think Vicky2 is very close to being an all-time great strategy game, certainly for the period portrayed, right up there with the Imperialisms (which is very high praise, I love those games to death).

But Vicky2 has always been a couple of things (bugs, poorly implemented features, etc.) away from that status. I hope this DLC puts it over the top.

tboon wrote:
Yonder wrote:

I appreciate the updates for the next expansion tboon!

I am really excited for this. I think Vicky2 is very close to being an all-time great strategy game, certainly for the period portrayed, right up there with the Imperialisms (which is very high praise, I love those games to death).

But Vicky2 has always been a couple of things (bugs, poorly implemented features, etc.) away from that status. I hope this DLC puts it over the top.

I get the feeling that it well. For some reason I think the expanded naval battle system is going to get it that extra military facet that people have been looking for. The other updates sound terrific as well, especially the capitalist behaviors.

I kind of "missed" A House Divided - I wasn't into the game when that one came out - but I feel like it was more on the "large patch" side of Paradox updates. This one looks like a winner!

Michael wrote:
tboon wrote:
Yonder wrote:

I appreciate the updates for the next expansion tboon!

I am really excited for this. I think Vicky2 is very close to being an all-time great strategy game, certainly for the period portrayed, right up there with the Imperialisms (which is very high praise, I love those games to death).

But Vicky2 has always been a couple of things (bugs, poorly implemented features, etc.) away from that status. I hope this DLC puts it over the top.

I get the feeling that it well. For some reason I think the expanded naval battle system is going to get it that extra military facet that people have been looking for. The other updates sound terrific as well, especially the capitalist behaviors.

I kind of "missed" A House Divided - I wasn't into the game when that one came out - but I feel like it was more on the "large patch" side of Paradox updates. This one looks like a winner!

It added a number of usability features to the UI like the ability to change national focii from the population screen, and gave a major improvement to the conflict system in the form of manufactured causus belli. But the scramble for Africa, and the opening of the far east, major features of the colonialism and imperialism of the period, always felt a bit off, even after the expansion. Hopefully Heart of Darkness helps with this. Really, if I can see the buildup of my nation's glorious navy and colonial abitions bring me prestige while sparking off international tensions, I'll be a happy gamer.

Getting ready for Heart of Darkness (out Tuesday the 16th - folks in US can use part of their tax refunds to get it! )

IMAGE(http://cloud-2.steampowered.com/ugc/560971494656515321/5DC4E343E8116BDC6597E37A1D961233E03FEB16/)

I took this right before I finished gobbing up Venezuela. Next up: Argentina becomes South Brazil!

If I can finish before Tuesday.

Reminds me of Strangeblades' classic HoI3 Brazil AAR.

Spoiler:

You were a tad more successful though. Good job!

This makes me excited for getting back into Victoria. Or finally picking up CK2, so hard to decide. Roleplaying Scramble for Africa or Great Game would be great, though I doubt that it's sophisticated enough.

If you want to roleplay in a Paradox game, then CK2 is the way to go. Vicky2 does not lend itself all that well to that.

Amusingly enough, my Victoria games have always been with me as Argentina nibbling away at Brazil.

tboon wrote:

If you want to roleplay in a Paradox game, then CK2 is the way to go. Vicky2 does not lend itself all that well to that.

I think that the other Paradox games provide for plenty of roleplaying experiences, you're just roleplaying as an invisible actor, or a set of them. For example in the Hearts of Iron games I usually get into the spirit of things as the ruler of the country I'm leading.

True, yet the bigger games (Vicky, HoI, and EU) are more constraining in certain ways that limit your ability to rolepay. For instance, in that Brazil game, I wanted to end up as a isolationist Socialist dictatorship and tried to play that way. But events kept falling into my lap such that I ended up as a continent-spanning democratic warmonger. The journey has been fun as usual, though.

Oh those poor Brazilians, never got to learn to read. I dare you to go after any of those three little countries sitting on your northern coast. They look small and weak, should be easy.

DanyBoy wrote:

Oh those poor Brazilians, never got to learn to read. I dare you to go after any of those three little countries sitting on your northern coast. They look small and weak, should be easy.

Especially the red one. Push over for sure.