Victoria II impressions.

[Serious_Business]

I've played it fairly extensively by now. Here's some more points -

-I don't like the Circle of Influence mechanics. Since the gains you make are not permanent, it feels like too much of a pointless hassle to me. I'd rather just conquer Spain instead of having them smugly remove the carefully-planted influence I spread around Italy.

In other words, the CoI system is the most inducing thing I've seen in a while in a Pdox game. It's possible to manage it more intelligently than I did of course, but still, I don't like it very much - it could very well be automated.

-Trade is a bit simplified, but overall is the same - altough the lesser control can make things puzzling at times. You can't upgrade your pops which bothers me, but feels more natural I suppose. As always, beware a Laissez Faire economy, but even more so than before - the AI doesn't know what the fuck its doing. But then, I always felt like managing your own factories and so on was a bit of a cheat.

-One thing that they need to fix is that you're able to create regular divisions out of freshly-conquered niggers. Yeah right, like those tribals would have the discipline to join proper european divisions.

-If you go for the cultural techs that give you Plurality, it gives you a big boost to research. Sure you get some more rebels, but shit, I was generating 30 research points or something by 1840.

-Some countries need to be tuned down. Austria is too strong and will never colapse. Mexico is over the top. Some countries like Spain and Russia industrialize too easily. China has the biggest military strength - just no (most is rubbish of course, but still they have a huge score).

-Others need to be boosted though. GB lost both Scotland and Ireland in my game - too much rebels problems. Prussia doesn't do jack shit. Not sure how Italy will form either.

-Not sure how the alliance system works, or more specifically not sure how great powers are going to make alliances. I wanted an alliance with Russia as France, as I always do (seperate Europe in 2, or at least divert the prussians long enough to enable me to rape them), but they wouldn't accept it. So I'm not sure how we're going to get WW1 scenarios where one declaration of war can just make the whole place go nuts. It was already problematic in V1 I suppose though.

-It looks fucking awesome, especially when you wheel back to look at the map. Nothing more satisfying to see things like "French Algeria" and so on. The interface is great as well.

-Overall it seems a bit too easy as it was mentionned, but of course playing as a great power with plenty of pops will do that... still, as France in a V VIP game, GB was always on the top of my game unless I pulled my shit together, now it seems too easy to have a good economy going.

Well, I approve of this effort. V1 is still better, but to me this is already better than EU3 with all expansions, although of course I'm not too much of a fan of that one, but yeah.



For the people who can't get into Pdox games - well, I'd say a lot of it also depends on your interest in history. It will really pump you for the game if you have interest in an era, know its characters, wars, culture, all that good aristocratic shit. Otherwise you will only see colors and numbers, and that's not very enthralling. You have to wonder about "what if" scenarios about history, and then try them in the game. That's how I see it at least. Civ is unsatisfying when you have that state of mind.

 

[Chef_Hathaway]

Until the liberals win the elections. Then the capitalists will manage to fuck up your economy royally and you can't do nothing about it.

Yes, its great when they build nothing but fertilizer factories and hemorrhage money out the ass.

-One thing that they need to fix is that you're able to create regular divisions out of freshly-conquered niggers. Yeah right, like those tribals would have the discipline to join proper european divisions.

This pissed me off more than anything. Seeing GB with an enormous horde of Indian regulars ready to strike on any of it's borders is quite ridiculous.

 

[Malakal]

Some more impressions from me:
1. Rebels are bugged and way too often AIs collapse to rebellions - Scotland can be seen many times.
2. Capitalists do properly calculate needs for goods (using supply and demand) but demand itself is broken - POPs demand goods they cant afford! This is why a lot fertilizer factories go bankrupt.
3. Italy is way too hard to form and impossible for AI. Same with Germany, AI needs tweaking since its not quite easy...
4. Colonial military is broken and so is imigration to colonies.
5. Factories requiring machine parts are bugged.

And thats it probably. Some tweaks for economy, supply and demand especially, for rebellions and for AI. Otherwise perfectly working reelase and defintiely enjoyable.

BTW its sphere of influence and WAD. Conquering shit is just not as BB effective and viable as simply getting China into Your sphere. Nothing like 500M market...

 

[Muty]

3. Italy is way too hard to form and impossible for AI. Same with Germany, AI needs tweaking since its not quite easy...

I just did it with Sardinia-Piedmont yesterday. France got me in their SoI, I waited for the next inevitable Austria-Prusia war. Then I dowed Austria and dragged France in the war. After that I just watched the fun as France raped Austria. From the states I received and from the decision that unlocks after I got lombardia I became a great power. From then on it was just a matter of time until I got all the italian states in my SoI. I think I did it around 1865, but yeah it is impossible for the AI to do something like that. And Austria is waay too overpowered....

Also a post from the devs on their forums regarding the next patch:

The patch will obviously contain a lot more, but these are some headlines we think you'll like to see:

Improved AI handling of rebels.
The Diplomatic AI have gotten an overhaul and the AI is more likely to intervene, and also will form alliances with other GP's.
Mid and endgame economy have been tweaked, and the capitalists should understand more what is profitable or not.


More news to come, like the date of the release and more fixes of course.

 

[Garm]

Some more impressions from me:
2. Capitalists do properly calculate needs for goods (using supply and demand) but demand itself is broken - POPs demand goods they cant afford! This is why a lot fertilizer factories go bankrupt.

Actually that sounds like it accurately simulates a real life free market quite well.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

Yea, in my first campaign as Austria-Hungary I've started to notice the capitalists are total dipshits when it comes to managing the economy. Around the time when I checked the rankings and noticed the UK had an Industrial Power of 1600 while I was still moving in 190. At least I have such a large population I survive with tax dorra. Oh well, at least the Socialists are close to winning the elections (which are also pretty fuck up man, the Conservatives have won every single time so far even though only 30% of the voters support them).

The AI doesn't seem to handle colonization that well either, I'm making quite a bit of headway into Africa thanks to nabbing Suez Canal.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

My second campaign as Austria-Hungary is going much better. Though I still let the Jacobins succeed in the 1880s because reforming is just way too goddamn hard in this game even with HM's government.

 

[Demnogonis Saastuttaja]

A sequel to one of my all-time favourite games, and it looks good, too, especially autopromoting pop's. That was tedious as fuck.

Are there still historic events, or only generic ones? Several ways to unify Germany, Conservative Empire and the others?

 

[Malakal]

Yes, few ways to unite Germany (Three Hurrays, liberal revolution, Grossdeutschland with Austria) and a lot of flavor events for big countries (Victoria, slavery in USA, Napoleon in France etc) but no forced wars or other 'historical' events. Some decisions too - Emsk dispatch for example.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

Found one thing annoying above all else in the game, and that ties in with the nigh-impossible task of making the reforms you need: The Communists. Anyone whose played this probably knows why Communists are the single worst thing about the game.

 

[AlaCarcuss]

Though don't look surprised if you see Japan invade Australia

Why would this be a surprise? It's not like they haven't tried...

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

Got tired of putting up with this rebel and reform shit, so I downloaded a fanmade patch. Hallelujah! Until I realized the game gets fucked after cars and other advanced industry start rolling in. The grain RGOs are so underpowered the world will starve in short order, the population never actually gets more money to spend, which means your only venue of economic growth is making the same shit (Steel, Cement, booze, Machine Parts, Wine) over and over again (though Electric Gear and Telephones are also cheap enough for pop purchase) and expanding it to hell. The goods prices and manufacturing costs need some work, and RGOs need to be way more productive (well, grain and tobacco really, almost everything else works fine) and most of all the average paycheck needs to increase over time for all pops.

Also, getting a socialist ruling party and socialist majority of the people is like the best thing ever for you. State Capitalism is like a steroid version of all other economic policies, and socialists vote yes for almost all reforms. Though I think the voting mechanics might be slightly fucked, since I keep getting over 70% total votes for Reactionaries, despite only 2% of the population being reactionary, just because they have Jingoism.

Also, I find it pretty funny that the Rich Strata is the one who can't even cover their Life Needs completely.

Also, the way the game calculates Industrial Power also seems to be fucked up, since Great Britain is impossible to beat due to them getting massive Industrial Power out of nowhere.

 

[Malakal]

Uhh no and no.

GB gets industry in India due to out-of-control assimilation of population there - check Yourself and see how India becomes a leading world industrial power under the british guidance.

Socialists only vote for social reforms not political so they are not that good actually.

And You must be doing something wrong - in all my games my POPs were actually WAY too rich: could afford luxury goods about 75% of time (almost 100% for the rich and laborers/farmers) only artisans starve as always. And thats with patches included. I made a whole lot of money with liquor, cement, wine, steel, clippers and steamers, probably some other goods too dont remember right now.

Main problem for me right now (after fanpatching) is too much money in circulation and effectively game being too easy for the player.

 

[Chef_Hathaway]

Industrial power has something to do with how much money your industry makes, so Britain is pretty powerful early, but in my first serious game, America outproduced everyone by about 1870 and had a score almost in the 10,000's when I stopped.

Britain is still ridiculous because of the ability to recruit regular army brigades out of Indians and position them everywhere in the world, I mean I loaded in as them and they had 48,000 man armies on every single colonial province they owned, and had stacks of over 100k men in the home islands. Seriously, native troops should just be irregular unless they are an accepted culture or you get the Gurkha event.

EDIT:

...out-of-control assimilation of population

Oh god, I forgot about this. I colonized Egypt really early as Austria, and when a I stopped playing in 1906, there were about 40 million South Germans living in Africa, compared to about 20 million living in Austria proper, which i might add, no longer had any Czechs, Slovaks, or Hungarians living in it. Assimilation seems a bit too easy.

 

[Muty]

...out-of-control assimilation of population

Oh god, I forgot about this. I colonized Egypt really early as Austria, and when a I stopped playing in 1906, there were about 40 million South Germans living in Africa, compared to about 20 million living in Austria proper, which i might add, no longer had any Czechs, Slovaks, or Hungarians living in it. Assimilation seems a bit too easy.

I remember reading a post from one of the devs mentioning that they accelerated the assimilation rate of colonies to avoid late game lag from too many pops with different culture.

 

[Malakal]

Yes, armies are too cheap. And navies. Everyone and their mother has 300+ battleships. Well me too - nothing else to spend on my 10 000 000 pounds with 0% taxes...

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

Well, social reforms seem far more important than political reforms, and you can always just let the Jacobins take your capital for free political reforms in exchange for 5 prestige.

It's also just my Rich pops, Capitalists to be precise, who don't seem to have any money. 90% of the Farmers can afford luxury goods.

I suspected the British secret was India, but what about the USA? They have less population than me, less provinces and less factories, but they still out-industry me.

Also, am I doing something wrong with technology, or is it really a matter of choice, since I don't have anything to spare for naval research?

What fanpatch are you using btw?

 

[Fuck_The_Banks]

Well, social reforms seem far more important than political reforms, and you can always just let the Jacobins take your capital for free political reforms in exchange for 5 prestige.

It's also just my Rich pops, Capitalists to be precise, who don't seem to have any money. 90% of the Farmers can afford luxury goods.

I suspected the British secret was India, but what about the USA? They have less population than me, less provinces and less factories, but they still out-industry me.

Also, am I doing something wrong with technology, or is it really a matter of choice, since I don't have anything to spare for naval research?

What fanpatch are you using btw?

What are you taxing your rich POPs? It is usually the middle strata (esp craftsmen) who are stoney broke. What is your tax efficiency? You might have too many bureaucrats? Also be aware that non Laissez-Faire economies cost the capitalists more money to set up production / factories, so perhaps this is a factor.

As for research, I usually research the techs that boost plurality (from the culture tree) pretty much off the bat. Plurality boosts research speed enormously. Also research the techs that give you extra national focus - lets you fine tune the AI as to what POPs to promote / factories to build. As Austria, I imagine you need to research Army professionalism really soon, or the Prussians will twat you. I wouldn't worry about a navy too much - just concentrate on forming Germany and taking stuff off Russia / Ottomans.

Can't say I've had too many problems with revolts so far (but I'm only in the mid 1850's as France, and most people complain about them in the 1870's / 1880's). Just one generalised reactionary revolt and a few Jacobins. After the revolt, just enact the reform that most people want and their militancy will drop. Also note that if you put a government in place that is not supported by the electorate, that will also cause problems. The only countries I've seen so far crippled by rebels are those that fight constant wars, which destabilise their economy. Had a fun time in my game destroying Belgium. Prussia was in 3 wars - 1 v Russia, 1 v Austria and allies, then Belgium and Denmark demanded the Rhineland. I intervened against the Belgians and took Wallonia and all their juicy factories off them. Belgium then fell into civil war, and Flanders became independent, leaving Belgium consisting of Brussels. Austria probably has problems because its population is so balkanised - impossible to keep all the people happy.

I'm pretty pleased with this game. It has bugs, but they seem to be more of the tweaking kind rather than SC2 GPU-frying variety. The game is very, very stable (no ctds so far). There seems to be a problem with colonial migration - POPs desert your cores to go to the colonies, and a problem with bureaucrats in the same (makes it hard to form a state from colonies if you can't promote core POPs to bureaucrats). Not yet convinced about the revolt "bug", at least as far as players are concerned (though the AI may have problems handling revolts), but I'll reserve judgement until I've got a bit further in my current game. On the Paradox forums, it seems to be full of posts going "well, I was conquering the world, and now I can't get rid of these dammn rebels....".

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

The Rich were broke even during the early-mid game when I had 20% taxes for everyone and 0% tariffs. Same with Craftsmen.

No, the revolts go out of hand in the late game, especially by the time the Communists arrive at the scene.

And yea, I always get the Plurality techs immediately after Medicine or even before it since they happen to be required for the Austro-Hungarian Compromise event that I consider mandatory for the Austria experience.

 

[Fuck_The_Banks]

The Rich were broke even during the early-mid game when I had 20% taxes for everyone and 0% tariffs. Same with Craftsmen.

No, the revolts go out of hand in the late game, especially by the time the Communists arrive at the scene.

And yea, I always get the Plurality techs immediately after Medicine or even before it since they happen to be required for the Austro-Hungarian Compromise event that I consider mandatory for the Austria experience.

Try setting the rich / middle taxes to zero, and bump the poor taxes well up. You can set them to 100% early game, so long as your bureacracy is low. The pops are not losing 100% of their income, only the percentage of the bureaucrat efficiency.

Maybe also choose the techs that boost RGO production early on - will tend to make the economy as a whole richer, not just the aristocratic scum!

Interesting to see what you say about the Bolsheviks. Noticed that some of the mid / late culture techs boost demand for social reforms. Maybe this is causing the revolts? If you have a conservative / reactionary type government you'll be in trouble...Don't know if this will help, but find the most numerous unhappy, rebellious pops, and see what is pissing them off. Then, after the next revolt wave, grant them the reforms, or pick choices that will put socialists in power (so you can enact social reforms yourself)

 

[Serus]

Has anyone played past 1900 ? It seems that the game has serious performance issues after 1890~1900. Many people claim that the game is unplayable in the 1900s because of this.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

The thing is, communists alone seem to have the ability to subvert your military units, and when they start doing it they have a bad habit of doing that to entire stacks at once. Now consider that without fixing, the Communists are the single most attractive rebel faction for all ideologies, which results in millions of members for Communists on top of the millions of members Anarcho-Liberals and Jacobins will have.

And yea, the game can't handle itself after 1920's. The performance drops to a quarter, and the economic model shits itself in global famine and shortage (seriously, you'll see this even earlier on, since NO ONE can support their own country with its own grain) as well completely unenjoyable combat. I'm talking about year-long battles of organization attrition between opposing stacks of hundreds while the losses are only in thousands (seriously, it gets ridiculous even before that, I don't know if it's the Military Tactics that makes battles completely bloodless).

RGOs work just fine up until your population really starts growing and the RGOs start capping out. The -20% size events and late game population demand leaves most RGOs completely ineffective due to them producing the same they did pretty much always: Thirty something. Now, the problem is that you need about eight times that much for 1900's population in a country with lots of grain RGOs.

The actual problem with overwhelming revolt frequency isn't actually the rising demand for social and political reforms, it's the fact that all pops can join any rebel group they want regardless of ideology. I use Pelleon's pop and economy patch, which solved this entirely by limiting rebel membership by ideology and lowered the militancy needed to get Conservatives and Liberals to vote yes for reforms.

 

[Chef_Hathaway]

Has anyone played past 1900 ? It seems that the game has serious performance issues after 1890~1900. Many people claim that the game is unplayable in the 1900s because of this.

Yeah, it started getting kind of bad around then, though it may have been the army sizes. I had an enormous war with France trying to keep Alsace-Lorraine and as it progressed it got more and more laggy. It would go back to normal, though, if I quit and restarted my computer.

The Rich were broke even during the early-mid game when I had 20% taxes for everyone and 0% tariffs. Same with Craftsmen.

Well the rich have 5 times the goods demand that aristocrats do, but the most fucktarded one is the craftsmen, who demand 20-40 times the amount of goods than the other lower classes, so they can't afford all of them and starve to death, which leads to rebellions. There is a fix for both on the paradox forums, fanmade of course.

Edit:
Here are the two patches I play with:

Shauf's Rebel and Reform tweaks

Baneslave's Craftsmen and Capitalist fix

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

At least the heart period of the game (1800s) is solid gold, and with expansions and mods it'll only get even better.

Going to try Pop and Economy overhaul mod 2.7 next. EDIT: And it turned out to be FUBAR. Going back to the bugfix, getting the military rebalance mod by the same guy, and putting in those pop fixes you posted.

And just to point out, the rebels and general economy in 1800's works pretty well in the bugfix I used.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

Alright, third campaign reached 1920s, this one using Palleon's bugfix and military rebalance, those nifty readjusted needs for craftsmen and capitalists, and a little something I made for myself in the form of +200% grain production for each of the Mechanized Production inventions that improve it.

I MOTHERFUCKING BEAT THE BRITISH IN INDUSTRIAL POWER!

Other than that, each run of slight adjustments have significantly improved the game overall, which makes it extremely awesome at this point. However...

The game still can't handle itself past 1920's and the pops need to get their incomes increased over time so they'll actually be able to buy automobiles and all that. Radio invention needs to be moved to a tech worth researching (though radios are extremely profitable otherwise) or you won't research them unless you have absolutely nothing else worthwhile to get. Techs in general need balancing, rebalanced military techs excluded. You ain't going to see anyone who isn't capping out Industry, national focus path in Culture and Military, since other options are simply not worth the huge penalties you'd take for not staying on the cutting edge of Industry early game and Military late game.

There's also a massive spike in unemployment in the 1910's due to population growth rising exponentially and your factory capacity capping out if you're State Capitalist (good grief if you're not). Your RGOs will cap out way before that anyway, which is not that bad. EXCEPT that farm RGOs get fucked up because every tech advance after half game not only increases efficiency, BUT also reduces capacity by 20%.

There also seems to be a bit of an overproduction in most goods and resources (except unmodded Grain), which does make Prestige extremely valuable, but I can't imagine what it does to the economic growth of non-Great Powers.

Also, buttfucking Russia and Ottoman Empire out of their Great Power status was just about the best fun I've had with Paradox games, even if it took three long wars. In general, the wargoal system is very very damn good and peace treaties in large wars make a lot more sense now and aren't a huge ass list of provinces. In warfare, the only thing that could be done better would be the Hearts of Iron-ize it a bit to make it more strategic on the field. Technology and standing army size is more important than strategy, which is rather limited to making landfalls via sea at the moment. Actually, the original military balance was more strategic lategame due to the length and size battles for provinces would escalate to, which requires shifting of troop positions often enough, IF you aren't Mobilized, which essentially makes war a giant endurance match.

 

[fizzelopeguss]

This game is straight up broke in the later stages.