Victoria 2: Grand Duchy of Finland + Russian Empire mod

[Vaarna_Aarne]

So in Merk's recent Victoria 2 LP, I briefly talked about the stuff I was working on to better portray the position of Finland within the Russian Empire, and the various balance fixes I've been doing. Anyway, I recently finished testing the second tier of additions to Finland, and stuff is working out well.

I've also done a few fixes here and there to improve the base game and balance things out, which I'll include.

But now I started doing a big one, being the improvement of the presentation of the Russian Empire within Vicky 2. No more easy industrialization for Russia! No more barely represented autocracy! No more not at all represented serfdom, nationalist groups and Russification!

Basically, I'm just trying to keep things simple and use decisions and modifiers to better reflect the various internal events of Russia during the 19th and 20th century. I'll also incorporate thing from the New Nations mod, since compared to Austria-Hungary Russia is almost entirely barren of nationalist rebels, which is considering the civil war there completely absurd. Similarly, I'll be removing all of Russia's accepted cultures, so you don't end up with silly things like Skyway in Kola, but I'll add a modifier that makes assimiliation impossible without the use of the line of Russification decisions (which will be where nationalist rebels start coming in), which will have three stages where the first two negate the existing assimilation penalty and the last one gives a +25% bonus to assimilation, but each of them comes with an increasing militancy and consciousness modifier for un-accepted pops.

As usual, I'm trying to keep the stuff compatible with other stuff and multiple patches.


More as I get shit done. Creative input welcome.

 

[Malakal]

Russification was horribly ineffective so you may want to limit those assimilation modifiers. Polish nationalists never considered Russia as a threat to Polish nation as a whole, this is why they allied with it against Germany.

Russia itself needs reworking and the introduction of serfs as a POP type would greatly help there. Or simply replacing them with slaves until a law freeing them is passed, that would work well too.

 

[Merkwürdigliebe]

Sounds interesting, I'm thinking a similar solution for France might work to make their power more historical for the time frame rather than the number unstoppable number one nation in the world that they are currently. Splitting up the single French culture into at least a couple of other sub cultures to better represent the cultural differences with in the country before they were homogenized through out the 19th century.

 

[Krash]

Sounds really cool. How about a changelog?

 

[ironyuri]

grandy duchy? more like duchy.

m i rite?




bcos findland isnt grand

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

Russification was horribly ineffective so you may want to limit those assimilation modifiers. Polish nationalists never considered Russia as a threat to Polish nation as a whole, this is why they allied with it against Germany.

Russia itself needs reworking and the introduction of serfs as a POP type would greatly help there. Or simply replacing them with slaves until a law freeing them is passed, that would work well too.

Oh don't you worry, the Russian assimilation rate starts at -200%, and it takes all three decisions before it goes to 25% (-200% -> -100% -> -50% -> 25%) and all of them come with an increasing militancy modifier for everyone in the Empire who isn't Russian (+0.10 daily at the final stage) and increasing badboy modifier. If I can ass myself to do it (or one of you assholes does it), I'd increase the percentage of non-Russian pops like Tatars, Siberians, Ugrians and so on as well. Presently I've only fixed Karelian and Ingrian pops.

I agree on the Serf POP type being needed. However, I disagree with a lot of things that are being done in PopDemand mod, since a lot of their stuff done in the name of "making budgets realistic" end up making the game unfun for many GPs, and unplayable for minors and uncivs. And they still haven't implemented a Serf POP last time I checked.

Sounds really cool. How about a changelog?

Finished doing the stuff I planned on implementing for starters without additional creative and historical input. All of the stuff are either modifiers triggered by decisions (and of course, an initial set up event) or history file changes:

Serfdom modifier from start-up, significant penalties to just about everything except Consciousness and poor strata Needs. Notable ones being: 200% Factory Cost, -50% Factory Output, -100% Research Points. The decision to remove this modifier is time-locked and cannot be done before 1861.

Serfdom Abolished modifier is a significantly better state to be in than having the Serfdom modifier. The only negatives left are the militancy modifier, -25% Factory Output and -50% Research Points.

The Autocracy line of modifiers don't actually effect anything except reducing pop consciousness (though the first one, Decadent Autocracy, makes your Leadership gain 25% worse). The actual effect is that they block Vote Franchise reforms. Before the use of the Unshakeable Autocracy decision, no Voting Franchise is allowed, and before October Manifesto only Landed Only voting is allowed and with October Manifesto it is still limited to reaching Wealth Voting. They also block Political Party reforms, with each step allowing more leeway up until Gerrymandering with October Manifesto. This means Russia can never become anything except Absolute Monarchy or Prussian Constitutionalism without a revolution.

Slow Industrialization modifier is a nerf designed to reflect the slower process of Industrial Revolution in Russia. Factory Cost is 200% higher and Factory Output is at -25% (these are combined with Serfdom modifiers for full effect).

And finally you have the Russification modifiers described above.

I've also implemented elements from the New Nations Mod that affect Russia, which means a much larger amount of nationalist rebel groups and nations to free.


Future things to consider:

- More interaction between Grand Duchy of Finland and the Russian Empire through interlocked events and decisions.
- Increasing Communist Rebel buffs in Russia.
- Lower Russian Tax Efficiency?

EDIT: Oh yea, the other stuff.

Grand Duchy of Finland:

- Added Finland as a satellite of Russia, to reflect the historical autonomous status of Finland as the Grand Duchy of Finland.
- Population Boom modifier that approximately reflects historical rapid growth of Finnish population.
- Should you fail to have the right technologies by a certain date, you'll get the Nälkävuodet event that kills 8% of the population in a famine, as per history.
- Changed Ugrian pops in Karelia to Finnish, as I could not be assed to create a Karelian pop culture.
- Added Finnish cores to all of Karelia, I might add a decision in the future where the cores can be relinquished for diplomatic benefit.
- Added Finnish, Estonian and Ugrian pops to coastal Ingria.
- Added an event for Finland, where in case of indepedence a new monarch or democracy is chosen. Monarchs of foreign nationality give diplomatic boosts and an alliance (can be veeery helpful), Finnish monarch gives a 10 year positive modifier that increases RGO efficiency and pop growth, while democracy gives a permanent and extremely powerful modifier to reflect the rapid development of Finland following independence.
- Added a decision similar to Reichsland Elsass-Lothringen, which changes the names of the states in Karelia to their Finnish versions. Also gives a temporary provincial modifier to increase population growth and assimilation.
- Added Greater Finland decision, which works similar to Megali Idea and other irredentist decisions, except gives cores on Ingria and Estonia and adds Estonian as an accepted culture. Requires at least Secondary Power status, Nationalism & Imperialism and the possession of Karelia.
- Modified the Russian decision to move Capital to Moscow. Now it is allowed either in case Viipuri is held by a non-satellite, or if the historical date for moving the capital has passed.


Balance stuff and some shit:
- Leave Sphere of Influence decision added.
- Declare Independence decision for satellites and dominions. Former master can either let them go or fight a war with Conquest casus belli. The newly independent country gets a hefty military bonus to help them out.
- Civilized non-GPs gain the Pro Patria modifier, which gives bonuses to military matters. This is to make them stand a fighting chance against Great Power aggression.
- AI's ability to annex satellites removed.
- British India mod incorporated.
- Canada mod incorporated.
- Lots of tweaking in the main defines.cfg, meaning increased soldier->pop casualties to 100% without tech and so on.
- Tweaked Military Hospital inventions to work with the 100% casualty ratio without them.
- Laissez Faire now allows subsidies, but max tax is 25%. Feels good man, now that you don't have to reset subsidies all the fucking time.
- Mobilization significantly lowered, no more crashing! Well, at least not as often.
- National Values reworked.
- Military policies reworked, Anti-Military and Pacifism now speed up Badboy loss.

Last but not least...

POTATOLAND!
- Austria can no annex Krakow if it's an AI country and in their sphere after 1846.
- Krakow can form Poland by owning Krakow and Warsaw, and one neighbouring Polish state to Warsaw.
- If a monarchist Poland (Absolute Monarchy/Prussian Constitutionalism/HM's Government) is in possession of any provinces with Lithuanian cores, they can add Lithuanian as an accepted culture. If anyone can be assed, they can create a new tag and flag for them following this.




EDIT2: Anyway, I'm going to test this stuff and see if the game explodes or works.

 

[Erzherzog]

Did you hear about the new substate mechanic in AHD?

Sounds like it's worth looking into for situations like Sweden-Norway, Austria-Hungary and the Grand Duchy of Finland

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

Well that's then. For now, this is what I can work with.

PS: Tests finished, everything seems to be working properly. Gonna compile a zip for you bros soon.

 

[Krash]

Sounds p neat, as long as the Russia nerfs aren't too crippling. I'd love to see some similar stuff for Austria also, considering all the unrest they had (which isn't really modeled properly in the game). Another nice thing would be to lower France's pop growth, historically they had lots of problem after Napoleon and grew very little compared to Germany and England.

Keep the nice work coming!

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

I'm not going to get into Austria, since they're pretty well-balanced for the game otherwise. I'll add a pop growth modifier for France before I'm done. -0.04% seems good.

Also, Russia tech penalty is now permanently 50%, meaning most of the game they'll just be effectively one Philosophy tech behind the curve.

 

[Erzherzog]

To model Austria correctly, you need to have a nation with immense potential saddled with many very difficult issues.

All the various minorities would have to wreck hell but at the same time you have to properly play all the minorities off on each other. How can you model that in game fairly?

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

Personally, I think Austria is perfectly fine as it is. They've got tons of foreign cores on them, leading to nationalists galore if you don't keep the population pacified, they have many enemies (most notably Prussia), they have low literacy, and their population and number of states isn't nowhere near enough to give them a great advantage over the others.

The problem with Russia was that they had enormous population (most of whom are accepted), a ridiculous number of accepted cultures (they have more accepted cultures than any other GP, and I think the only country that can have more is if Scandinavia is formed), and a shitload of provinces, which lead to them having #1 industrial score until the Kwa uses their OP Homestead Act decision (assuming British India mod is in place), and they have no problems when it comes to technology. And of course, their immense, easily defended and connected landmass coupled with massive population means that in player hands (or AI vs AI) they can become invincible in land war.


Also, I forgot to mention a few modification I made:

First, I tried to stem the ridiculous thing with Soldier pops cropping up in colonial states in huge numbers and eventually all your soldiers being colonial. I tried to actually eliminate colonial soldier pop promotion, but it doesn't seem to work as well as I intended.

Secondly, Mobilization is 1% of its normal size at the start. This makes the game a lot more balanced (since Mobilization leads to ridiculous things, and all Mobilized troops should be Irregular if you ask me but I can't do that) and makes France a lot less powerful throughout the game.

Thirdly, I'm on the fence on restricting the number of brigades non-accepted pops can be used for. Personally I think the method used by Realism mod, making accepted pops the only pops that can be other than Irregular, is utterly retarded (it utterly nerfs Austria into an unplayable condition when combined with their no-assimilation approach, for example). What I'm thinking about is restricting the 20th century unit types to accepted pops, and maybe limiting cavalry options for non-accepted pops.


PS: Before compiling a zip for you bros, I've got one last thing to consider:

Should Izhorians be classified as Finnish, Estonian or Ugrian from the game's culture options? The reason why I'm asking is because I was pondering the matter and wondering if Ugrian was best used as the culture for the various Finno-Ugric peoples found outside of the Baltic region in Russia, from Nenets to Mordvins and so on. And that if Izhorians would not be Ugrians, would they better be classified as Finnish or Estonian?



Also, should I add in a Sami state, now that there are actual Sami pops?

 

[The King of Comedy]

Also, should I add in a Sami state, now that there are actual Sami pops?

Has the Lapps ever had a state of their own to begin with?

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

Nope. Though they do have special representation and notable autonomous status here in Finland for example.

It'd be more of a what-if thing you can play around with using the Free People casus belli. It wouldn't affect nationalists much, seeing how Russia has barely a thousand of them at the game start, and everywhere else they're at they're also very few and accepted pops.

 

[Krash]

Considering the limited influence they had, you could just as well skip them.

 

[GarfunkeL]

Well, there were tensions between them and the "invader" populations throughout the history. Their situation only improved during the 20th century.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

And Vicky 2 has all kinds of what-if states anyway, like the Native American states littering the Kwa and Canada.

 

[Malakal]

I disagree with portraying mobilized troops as irregulars. They were almost as good as professional ones. Also limiting the size of mobilization pool seems ahistorical as well since most armies of the time relied on those.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

I'm doing it because the present system is retarded and too CPU-draining, not because of history.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

Here's the first version, should work as far I can tell:

http://www.mediafire.com/?134439eik7b6c82

You'll have to manually mod your defines though, I didn't want to go around sending out the modified .lua yet, first I decided to write down the changed areas so I can modify the .lua when the expansion comes out.

 

[Krash]

You'll have to manually mod your defines though

I'm not good with Vicky mods, please explain.

EDIT:

You didn't lie about Russia being mean fuckers. Nr 1 in industry by a shitload in my current game.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

It's easy, just use Notepad or some other editing program and search for the the first ALL CAPS word_word in each of the segments and make the changes after that.

The reason why I'm not including my .lua as it is, is because I wanted to memorize the changes first, since my game is 1.3 beta, and the expansion will probably change the .lua as well.

 

[ironyuri]

And Vicky 2 has all kinds of what-if states anyway, like the Native American states littering the Kwa and Canada.

Fucking cultural imperialist.

Maybe the Lapps/Sami consider the Finns to be the same kind of brutal imperialists as you consider the Russians. You ever think about that, Vaarne?

You know you Finns deny them their indigenous land rights? Motherfuckers.

And yet you call the Russians out for doing it to Finns.

You should be ashamed.

I am going to make a Sami mod for Victoria II so that they can reconquer their homelands and liberate themselves from you filthy imperialist dog Finns. I'll mod it on top of yours. Fuck you.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

Though in all seriousness, Sami people in Finland today are one of the most well-treated minorities on Earth, with government programs for language and cultural preservation, semi-autonomy, special representation in the government, services in Sami language and so on.



Anyway, here's a hotfix to replace the current event modifiers:

http://www.mediafire.com/?1mrun790w6iicx4

The previous factory cost modifiers were too much for the AI to handle, and I lowered the factory output penalty as well.


Anyway, in my present test campaign running with that stuff, things have gone in the most bizarre direction I've ever seen in Vicky 2. So, I'm playing as Finland, testing how the AI handles the new modifiers. Things are going really well and everything seems to be working out perfectly, and then something mind-blowing happens. Russia goes insane and adds Conquest casus belli against three German minors when they help France curbstomp Prussia and retake Alsace-Lorraine. So now Russia has 65 badboy. I'm like "what the shit is going on" while I spend twenty years preparing for a war of independence, and THEN like in Luzur's wet dream Austria and France come to fight Russia with the Containment casus belli. So I decide to declare early (and test if the independence decision ends pre-existing wars on the master's side), and lo and behold, when Austria and France are done with them and I'm sitting comfortably at the frontline of my occupation zone with no battles yet, I face a Russia with a grand army of... 29 brigades total and no more coming in five years.

By now I have four armies, each 3 Guard and 2 Artillery brigades. I swiftly destroy the Russian armies with extreme prejudice (since they can't make more as long as the Contain CB is in effect), with great success due to concentrating forces, superior quality on my part, and stackamole. So now Russia is facing several years with no army of any kind... So I decide to embark on some Evil Imperialism (tm) and take as much shit from them as I could (thanks to the length of the war, I got to use Acquire State four times). And so did apparently everyone else in the world, alternating between Containment wars and retaking Cores (ie, China and Primorye). So essentially it's playing out like Luzur's wet dream. Well, almost. In his wet dream it'd be Sweden doing all this.

Other things:

Prussia is a weak power, barely worth notice. Their army never recovered from the buttfucking Russia and France gave them, and is currently at 19 brigades total. Prussia originally took Alsace-Lorraine in 1839 (!).

Intervention in the American Civil War by France, so CSA is around.

Mehico is a steady GP that hasn't lost anything to America, and has conquered United States of Central America (with the exception of Guatemala).

Hamburg was conquered by Russia, and they still hold it.

Curiously, no revolt has yet occurred in Russia despite skyrocketing militancy. Then again, revolution is that country's only hope now so they get rid of Contain (I gotta check if revolution can be made to drop badboy to zero too).

Austria is kicking ass left and right, which is rather unusual for an AI Austria in my experience.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

Feedback, can I has it bros?