I had assumed it was for multiplayer, and I’m really not sure how useful it would be there–all my wars seem to involve a lot more bouncing around trying to balance numerical superiority with supply limits than grand gestures that can be mapped out with lines and arrows. It did bring to mind the WWII documentaries I used to watch with my grandpa, though, and that was quite literally the only other thing I could think it would be useful for.
Well that would be cheating, wouldn’t it? I have one oil supplying colony (Borneo), and I’m trying to keep the Netherlands sphered because there’s a bunch of oil in Dutch Indonesia, but they keep bouncing in and out of GP status. I do have tons of rubber (maybe 6 “we struck rubber!” announcements in the last 6 years or so), which is a guess necessary for tanks and planes, so that’s good.
Also had my first Great War (a bit early–1890s). And boy, was that a slog. I mean, I guess that’s historically accurate, right? It was me (France) and Austria vs UK and NGF. (I guess that makes us the Central Powers?) True to form, the USA comes in after the hard fighting is done (well, halfway through it), but they spend all their time pussyfooting back and forth across the Canadian border. I guess it probably tied down some British troops, but I couldn’t really tell.
It was truly a world war, which was pretty neat. Armies from British India advanced on French Indochina, and from South Africa into Spanish (central) Africa. My African armies quickly picked up British Liberia, etc, then occupied South Africa and spent most of the war chasing the lone British Army in the jungles and savannahs (they got around) of Africa. Finally they caught up with it, liberated the Spanish posessions, and then were shipped to Indochina to turn the tide there.
In the main theater there were basically two fronts–I made steady process through western (north) Germany while Austria and the NGF did the usual AI dance around eastern (north) Germany. But the real scene were the various cross-channel invasions. The naval battles were a bit tough, mainly because the UK had so many ships–all men’o’war and commerce raiders (maybe a couple ironclads thrown in, didn’t make a difference), maybe a hundred all told, hundred fifty with the NGF fleet. They could just beat down my four battleships and eight cruisers through weight of, well, wood. Not that they ever sank them–my fleet could always retreat easily because it had (far) superior speed. So I would sink maybe 20 or so, “lose” the battle and retreat to port, and repair. Eventually I had boated my African and Asian armies around enough that I could bring my 20-30 ironclads and monitors to the channel, and together with maybe 30 Spanish galleons (er, men’o’war) the jig was up. England was blockaded.
Meanwhile, the UK never really stood a chance of making it in France–I just had them outnumbered there. When I managed to control the channel I did get about two hundred thousand guys across, plus 100k from my Spanish/Italian/Swiss allies, and did pretty well occupying south-eastern England. But then, damn–the UK just had so many troops. I was repeatedly beating down stacks of 50-80k–there must have been hundreds of thousands of lives lost on both sides in the trenches (I imagine) of England. Eventually my allies were exhausted and I was losing two men for every one killed–I’m not exactly sure why, but I think my army supply funding was too low. I had to retreat, but at this point I had the naval situation in hand, so I went back across the channel. I then cut my naval funding and increased my army funding and realized that I would have been doing a whole lot better if I had done this earlier–turns out my armies can reinforce during war!
The eastern front was a mess, by this point, as the NGF had somehow found the will to summon more troops and a couple British armies landed there as well. I managed to bring Russia in, and perhaps that pushed them over the edge–Africa was secure, the battle was won in southeast Asia, resurgent French armies and fresh Russian troops were moving preparing for the coup de grace in Germany–and they surrendered.
I made the mistake of not looking carefully at the peace terms. Turns out the infamy penalty in Great Wars is Greatly Reduced. I had annexed Baden early on (really guys, what did you expect, it was trivially easy for me to occupy your four or five counties), and added wargoals for more of Germany and British Vietnam, and a bunch of my allies had added various wargoals on the NGF and Ottomans as well (oh wow–I forgot all the drama in the middle east as well–too bad the post is already way too long). I accepted the terms because they had all of what I wanted, but I don’t think they had all the wargoals of my allies. I should have at least watched my prestige to see how much of a hit I took for that. Honestly though, I was tired, France was tired, there was about 250k of debt to be paid, so that was that.
War reparations were 3,000 a turn. Holy smoke–no worries about the debt, then! Perhaps if I hadn’t brought in Russia (or the US) I could have got a bigger share? Doesn’t really matter, with demoblization and reparations I upgraded just about every port, fort, and railroad in all of France and its posessions. (Well, maybe not so many forts.) Currently there is a massive communist revolution in the NGF (well, tiny compared to the war, but way to big for them to handle). Perhaps the UK will become fascist (as long as we’re sticking to “history”)? The NGF is no longer a great power, the Netherlands are out as well (replaced by Switzerland, somehow), and China has westernized and shot up to great power status, annexing its former satellites. That’s a scary prospect. There were various revolutions in the Italian states, as well–I couldn’t really tell what was what–red shirts, red guards, citizen guards, and on and on–but in the end Italy managed to unify (and is still in my sphere). There are communist and reactionary revolutions in South America and central Asia, and the old spheres of influence are rapidly changing.
So, let’s see: hundreds of thousands dead in trench warfare on a previously unheard of scale? Check. Massive battles of maneuver on the eastern front? Check. Major battles on every continent? Check. Grevious war reparations and post-war communist revolutions? Check. Major realignment of the balance of power and world influence? Check. And nobody even invented tanks, airplanes, or poison gas.
Holy crap that was way longer than I intended. I guess the whole 100-years-ago-this-month thing got to me.
Are there any must-have mods here? just finishing all the tutorials and now watching a couple of let’s plays before starting my first full-blown game as either the Dutch or Belgium.
One thing I’d love: an interface mod that does a better job of scaling text size. Tiny tiny text on my big monitor!
I thought the vanilla game was fine. I didn’t have any problems with the text but of course your monitor may vary.
I was meaning to go back to the game and try a more challenging country than the #2/3 (France) but didn’t get around to it. Have fun! In both the games I started Belgium was declared on by the Dutch pretty soon after starting (maybe 10-20 years)? Once they lost and once they won. In the game I played out, the Belgians remained independent, and eventually were contesting with the Dutch (and the Chinese and Japanese) for the last two world power slots (though largely because I had seriously cut down many of the others–after a Great War all bets are off).
Vanilla after the last expansion is a fun, playable game. That said, I think the Pop Demand Mod adds a lot to V2. More resources, more factories, more events, more nations, more unit types, more everything. The mod is also complete, so you won’t have to worry about it changing mid-playthrough. It’s got its own sub-forum in the official mod forum on the Paradox site.
I should add that you should definitely listen to people other than me on this! A quick read up-thread will convince you that I am no expert.
Every game on this engine (CK2, EU4) is in massive need of a text scaling system. I once made the mistake of trying to play CK2 on a 1080p TV and the entire game felt like trying to do the bottom line in an eye test. It’s my number one problem with these game (aside from some game mechanics), and I’m glad I don’t have any significant eye problems as it feels like the games would be completely inaccessible to me.
Yeah, so I’ve discovered with the text font. Paradox seems aware of it, and mentions that because of it being tied to bitmaps that it simply is what it is for now. Sounds like they’re trying to make scalable fonts part of the next gen with the engine.
As it is, I’ve been able to go to 1920x and it’s been much better.
Also, thanks for the recommendation, Dave! I actually remember others in this thread back a few pages talking about it. Once I’ve managed to run Belgium into waste a few times with vanilla, I think I’ll switch.
I was mostly just making sure there weren’t any cosmetic cleanup must-have mods. Remember not touching any Civ 4 mods for years and then finally installing stuff like BAT and Blue Marble and it was like “I could’ve been playing with the game looking like THIS all this time??!!?”
- Starts Victoria 2
1a) Remembers WW1 - Plays as Ottomans
- Conquers all Balkans because those guys
- World cheers
Please report back on how you do. I’m curious as to how it plays out being in a tough spot like that, and I’m also hoping I won’t be the only one to make tons of rookie mistakes. (Why is everyone invading me… oh, what’s this infamy thing now?)
Well actually, I decided to play as the Dutch. Thought I was doing well. Consolidated and really built up my colonial holdings in Oceania/southeast Asia. Industrialized decently, built a decent army and good navy.
And so Vicky decided to teach me a lesson.
It’s 1851. I’m friends with EVERYBODY. Everyone loves the Dutch! (As the Dutch, you can play an event where you finally sign the treaty that makes Belgium independent, thus giving up all those cores and claims on Belgian territory. You get a huge prestige bonus and Everyone in Europe loves you.)
I’m in a military alliance with Prussia and Sweden. Spain comes calling. Would I like to be in an alliance with them? Hmm. Sure. Maybe they can help with some of my colonial designs in Africa coming up.
- Spain comes calling. They’ve picked a fight. I look. Oh, they’ve picked a fight with France. Hmm. Powerful enemy, but what the hell. Thinking “This will be a limited war” and “I bet my navy is bigger than France’s” and thinking “I bet I can get some colonial territory out of this”, and thinking "I don’t want the prestige hit for telling Spain no thanks, I agree.
Whoops.
I should’ve checked, because apparently France was the leader of an alliance that included Belgium, Austria, France, some German states…hell, most of the Italian boot. Thanks, Spain.
Belgium and the German states invade. I can’t fight them off. Belgium announces that their terms for peace are Gelderland.
triggercut announces that he’s learned his lesson and will start anew with another country. (BTW, I had a blast getting my ass handed to me like this. Starting to grok more and more of the game as I go.)
Yeah, joining a fight against a much bigger enemy where your ally is on the other side of them… even if they hadn’t had the “rest of Europe” alliance bloc, I’m guessing you wouldn’t have come out too well, because your navy wouldn’t have gotten between their armies and yours. But good on you for trying!
So, after playing, loving and ultimately getting a bit burned out on CK2 and EU4 last year, I think I’m ready to give Victoria II (that I bought cheaply in sale since then) a try. I finished the in-game tutorial, watched https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wpmosT4WmcM and started reading http://lparchive.org/Victoria-II/ . Are there any other specific tutorials you’d recommend?
Also, I played CK2 and EU4 without pretty much any of the major DLC (only Legacy of Rome for CK2) and enjoyed them just fine. However, much of what I read seems to suggest that Heart of Darkness is pretty much required to get the full Victoria II experience, would you agree with that? And do I understand it correctly, that Heart of Darkness also requires me to have A House Divided as well? One thing I noticed is that compared to the Let’s Play above my version of Victoria II seems to be lacking useful interface elements, such as additional map modes or the ability to assign a national focus directly from the Population screen. Is that also because of the missing DLC?
Finally, is Brazil still considered to be a good starting nation for a first-time player?
I honestly don’t know, but that would be likely. Victoria II predates the new Paradox DLC model, so you’re pretty much required to get the expansions if you want any of the improvements/bug fixes/etc. They didn’t keep the base game patched up to current like they’ve done since CK2 onward.
OK, I have a question. I finished a first game as Brazil in ninth place, but lots of stuff still isn’t entirely clear to me. Now, playing as Japan for my second game, I started a war of conquest against Dai Nam. The Chinese Empire joined the war on their side. I occupied Dai Nam and made a separate peace with them, annexing them. As I still had +50 warscore from battles against Chinese armies, I decided to try to add a wargoal in the remaining war against the Chinese Empire. “Acquire substate region”, opting for Inner Manchuria, seemed like the most profitable. However, I noticed that even though I continued to crush their armies, war score from battles seems to be capped at 50 (Is that correct?) and that I couldn’t seem to get a foothold in China due to attrition. The war dragged on like that for a while, but now I noticed that I also got ticking war score against me because I’m occupying Manchuria. But as Manchuria isn’t part of the war, I don’t even seem to be able to occupy their territory. Anything I could do to alleviate that?
Has anyone heard any intelligence, rumors or hearsay on possible Victoria 3?
Chris King is back at Paradox and I’m not aware he’s attached to any of the currently known projects.
That is encouraging. Johan had that famous press conference slip, what, 2 years ago now, Kevin? Where he said “Vicky 3” and everyone rushed to gag him, almost? :) Or was it longer ago than that?
Oh man, I saw this thread bumped and got my hopes up. Thanks for that fleeting moment of happiness (before crushing disappointment) @Navaronegun.