Victoria 2

Hey I think my literacy outreach program to the Brazilians did pretty well, considering at the start of the game it was right around 6%. Goal for 1920: 50% literacy! With your tax deductible donations, we can make it happen! Send checks to:

Our Imperious Leader
1 Bourgeois Dictatorship Way
São Paulo

As for you war-mongering ways, know this: Brazil only desires peaceful co-existence with our neighbors. At least until I can figure out how to make them co-exist inside Brazil. Much more peaceful if we are all on the same side, right?

What's a good country for a new player to Vicky II? Whenever I first try a paradox game I'm always trying to find that balance between a nation small enough that it doesn't require tons of management so I can explore all the systems, but one that's big enough it doesn't get wiped out right away.

A House Divided is on super-duper sale (75% off) right now direct from the Paradox Webshop (beta). It's a Steam-redeemable key for $2.50, which is far and away the cheapest I've ever seen it. The base game is on sale for a similarly never-before-seen price of $5.

Tunnel_SnakeOG wrote:

What's a good country for a new player to Vicky II? Whenever I first try a paradox game I'm always trying to find that balance between a nation small enough that it doesn't require tons of management so I can explore all the systems, but one that's big enough it doesn't get wiped out right away.

I found Japan quite nice to start with. As once you get westernized you jump up to the second tier and can get to the first tier quite easily. And since you are far from England/France you do not have to worry too much about stepping on their toes until a bit later.

Tunnel_SnakeOG wrote:

What's a good country for a new player to Vicky II? Whenever I first try a paradox game I'm always trying to find that balance between a nation small enough that it doesn't require tons of management so I can explore all the systems, but one that's big enough it doesn't get wiped out right away.

That consideration is one of the reasons I first chose Argentina, and I thought it was a good size.

The US is actually pretty new player friendly I think. Away from the scramble of Europe with some interesting challenges but a huge margin for error. The only semi-challenge is the Civil War and even with that, if you make a mistake and the CSA wins, you can fix it later. Ditto for anything to do with Mexico, colonizing the west, etc. You also have some interesting colonization choices.

Anything in South America except Bolivia is new player friendly. There's no pressure to do anything really so you can do what you want as you figure out the systems. The only problem with a South American start is that some of the game's options are hard to get to (you have to understand the game pretty well to get a SA country to Great Power status, for instance, which opens up the sphere mechanic).

If you want to live a bit more dangerously, the Ottomans are fun to mess around with. You have a nice immediate goal (Retake your ancestral lands from Egypt) and is a good exercise in modernizing a powerful but backward nation. There's quite a few long-term goals open to the Turks too, like taking big chunks of Africa and the middle east by force or just setting up a trade cartel in the region, and building the Suez canal. You can even play an important role if a Great War comes up, depending on how the cards fall. Just be careful with your alliances; You'll need powerful friends. Russia is constantly looking to take you down a peg, and if the UK takes an interest in your neighbors, like Persia for instance, they can absolutely shut down any chance of conquest.

Interesting user review for Heart of Darkness. As far as I can tell, the guy who wrote that is just a (very dedicated, to be sure) poster on the Paradox forums who got early access to the expansion from Paradox. He might be marketing shill; if so, he is effective because he certainly does not write like one.

tboon wrote:

Interesting user review for Heart of Darkness. As far as I can tell, the guy who wrote that is just a (very dedicated, to be sure) poster on the Paradox forums who got early access to the expansion from Paradox. He might be marketing shill; if so, he is effective because he certainly does not write like one.

Is that link failing to load for anyone else?

Yonder wrote:
tboon wrote:

Interesting user review for Heart of Darkness. As far as I can tell, the guy who wrote that is just a (very dedicated, to be sure) poster on the Paradox forums who got early access to the expansion from Paradox. He might be marketing shill; if so, he is effective because he certainly does not write like one.

Is that link failing to load for anyone else?

Yep, for me. I had assumed it was because I was trying to access it from my phone. I was going to try it at home later.

DanyBoy wrote:
Yonder wrote:
tboon wrote:

Interesting user review for Heart of Darkness. As far as I can tell, the guy who wrote that is just a (very dedicated, to be sure) poster on the Paradox forums who got early access to the expansion from Paradox. He might be marketing shill; if so, he is effective because he certainly does not write like one.

Is that link failing to load for anyone else?

Yep, for me. I had assumed it was because I was trying to access it from my phone. I was going to try it at home later.

... That's exactly what I was doing! Ok DanyBoy, I'll get back to work if you will.

Tested in my browser on my work PC and it works, so not broken. Still, sorry you cannot read it via phone guys....

tboon wrote:

Interesting user review for Heart of Darkness. As far as I can tell, the guy who wrote that is just a (very dedicated, to be sure) poster on the Paradox forums who got early access to the expansion from Paradox. He might be marketing shill; if so, he is effective because he certainly does not write like one.

Wow, looks great. Found a couple of interesting beta AARs that have me pretty excited.

Yeah, the run-up on the Paradox forums for this has been interesting, in a nerdy-grognardy sort of way.

So I started a new game as the Ottomans with HoD. I haven't noticed much different yet but it is still early on (mid-1841). A couple of observations though:

- Money seems tighter with the DLC, you have to be a lot more frugal.
- Lots of Dominions released by the AI. Reading on the Paradox forums, it seems like this is something that will need to get fixed as it happens far too often.
- The newspaper is interesting and provides some nice in-game commentary and sometimes useful information. For instance in 1839's edition (they come once a year I think), I discovered that Montenegro was afraid of me conquering them. So how could I resist?
- Having a separate sliders for domestic, army, and navy stockpiles means you can really fine tune supply to the different parts of your economy. You need to because money is hard to come by, at least for the Ottomans.
- The war planning stuff they borrowed from HoI3 is pretty awesome! Basically, you have drawing tools like arrows, military icons, text, lines, etc. you can draw on the map to show how you want your forces to move. There's a toggle switch to show/hide.

I haven't seen any of the naval, crisis, or colonization stuff yet but will report back with my impressions once I do. However, despite most everything working well and being an improvement, I would recommend holding off on getting HoD until they patch the AI Dominions thing unless that stuff doesn't bother you. It is not game-breaking but it feels odd to have Britain release India as a Dominion in 1836, for example.

That's unfortunate that there's bugs cropping up. I sorely tempted to grab it anyway since I've got the day off. It'll get patched eventually, Paradox is always good for that.

I'm doing very first play through of the game, playing as Japan. Didn't realize till 1906 how to influence nations (d'oh!) but it just wouldn't be a paradox game if there wasn't at least one mechanic I'm totally oblivious to for a full game.

Well the Dominions bug is the big one and as Paradox bugs go it is not all that bad. The game is certainly playable and the new additions seem pretty cool. The reason it happens is that colonies tie up colonial points and at some point you start to run out, so you can do a few things to get points back, one of which is create a Dominion from a colony. The AI seems to be incented to colonize new stuff and sees it need more colonial points and voila! New Dominions everywhere.

Also, it looks like modders are trying to adjust this somehow.

Does this bug significantly weaken the greater powers? I noticed as Japan I rocketed up to great power status within ten years of westernizing, and other countries that seem out of place like China, Bavaria and Switzerland make regular appearances in the top 8.

Not really. More colonies mean more (opportunities for) prestige and releasing Dominions adds some prestige as well I think (not sure where I read that so take that for what it is worth, i.e. nothing).

Japan almost always jumps up to GP status soon after being Westernized, it is almost set up that with: large, mostly literate population with good access to industrial raw materials. China should as well, assuming they can Westernize, although low literacy makes it harder to do. Actually none of the countries you listed surprise me; in any given game they are all good candidates for making GP status for a little while.

If you play as a small country, does *anything* happen (unless you go to war)? There doesn't seem to be a lot to do in V2. I see they took away options to manipulate POPs, so all that you're left with for first decades is watching militancy slowly rise, choosing research and waiting for factories to unlock. Am I missing something?
(I'm asking out of curiosity, had chance to play it for 30 minutes, but I don't think I want to buy it, based on what I saw.)

What do you mean by manipulate POPs? You can use National Focus to encourage growth of certain POP types in certain provinces. so if you want more clergy (for increased literacy), drop a NF on your two biggest population provinces and watch the clergy population increase.

For a small country, there certainly is less to do. There are fewer events, for instance. Your country also tends to have fewer resources so industrialization can be more problematic. Literacy is usually quite low in any case, unless playing in Europe. When I play a smaller country, my goals are always to become a bigger country, so war is part of the plan. When not at war, I am using my NFs to get the people I need to progress - more clergy (increase literacy) then more craftsmen and capitalists (for factories), then more clerks (for making factories run more profitably). If preparing for a war, I will set my NFs to encourage soldiers and officers. Use diplomacy to influence nations (either for better or worse, depending on what you are trying to do).

The game goes through stages. Early in the game, things are leisurely but as time goes on become more and more hectic (not hectic in a Starcraft 2 sense but just more starts to happen throughout the world that you need to be aware of and deal with). But there are certainly time where there's not much to do. when that happens, I just crank time acceleration up to 5 and wait until I am ready to do something (usually start my next war) or something happens I need to handle. Vicky2 is best played at the middle time acceleration almost all the time, only slowing down for especially hairy wars or speeding up when nothing needs immediate attention.

I can see how some folks may not enjoy the ebb and flow in the game. But to me that's what makes it great.

tboon wrote:

I can see how some folks may not enjoy the ebb and flow in the game. But to me that's what makes it great.

I totally agree, this game pulled me in just like CK II did. Even when I'm not at war there's always another country I could be trying to pull into my sphere, or I can check out how the industry is developing in my states. Even if I'm not really effecting it beyond my national focus I like reading through the pop screen and seeing what kind of country I'm making by the people that live in it.

One question, are rebellions very common in any play style? Playing as Japan I'm running a repressive military government, and have hardly passed any reforms well into the 20th century but I'm fighting frequent rebellions. If I roll a more liberal government and pass reforms does it make rebellion less frequent, or is it like CK II and its just something you have to keep dealing with?

tboon wrote:

I can see how some folks may not enjoy the ebb and flow in the game. But to me that's what makes it great.

I totally agree, this game pulled me in just like CK II did. Even when I'm not at war there's always another country I could be trying to pull into my sphere, or I can check out how the industry is developing in my states. Even if I'm not really effecting it beyond my national focus I like reading through the pop screen and seeing what kind of country I'm making by the people that live in it.

One question, are rebellions very common in any play style? Playing as Japan I'm running a repressive military government, and have hardly passed any reforms well into the 20th century but I'm fighting frequent rebellions. If I roll a more liberal government and pass reforms does it make rebellion less frequent, or is it like CK II and its just something you have to keep dealing with?

If you have high militancy, you will have more frequent rebellions. Rebellions occur because people want something, sometimes it is conquered people wanting to re-establish or re-unite with their country, sometimes it is political (Jacobins, Fascists, Socialists, etc.). But a lot of the time it is because the rebels want a political reform. If you give it to them they will be less likely to rebel. You can check how militant the various groups are in your country in Politics, selecting the Movements tab. This will tell you what movements are getting more militant and gaining strength and which rebels are recruiting brigades.

Also, you can suppress movements to reduce militancy temporarily (costs suppression points which you gain over time) but once you stop suppressing them, they come back even more militant, so be careful. Also, the suppression I think erodes over time, but not 100% sure of that.

tboon wrote:

What do you mean by manipulate POPs? You can use National Focus to encourage growth of certain POP types in certain provinces. so if you want more clergy (for increased literacy), drop a NF on your two biggest population provinces and watch the clergy population increase.

Oh, right, didn't notice that. (Like I said, I only had few moments to look at it.)

By "manipulate" I meant that back in V1 you could convert and divide POP groups.

Ah, OK, I never played Vicky1, so not sure what the differences are. To me Vicky1 was the busted bastard step-child of HoI and EU and so never picked it up, so I was quite surprised when Vicky2 came out and it turned out I really really liked it.

It all seems quite similar, at least in terms of gameflow. Actually, POP management and this NF thing is probably the biggest difference that comes to mind.

Archangel wrote:

A House Divided is on super-duper sale (75% off) right now direct from the Paradox Webshop (beta). It's a Steam-redeemable key for $2.50, which is far and away the cheapest I've ever seen it. The base game is on sale for a similarly never-before-seen price of $5.

This expansion is now this price on steam itself. It looks like everything other than the new Heart of Darkness expansion is 75% off this week.

How can I influence the political outlook of my country other than national focus? Playing as Prussia it seems like my country was on a constant leftward slide into socialism and there was nothing I could do to stop it. Is their a good (and current) guide that anyone could link to that cover this? Also how exactly do consciousness and militancy work?