New to Victoria II/Grand Strategy Games in General

[Neon Knight]

Trawling through my steam collection, I recently discovered that own a base copy of Victoria II. While I have on occasion watched streams of mapgames both Paradox and non-Paradox. I had a couple of inquiries relating to the game, its DLC, and possible other entries into the grand strategy genre.

1. Is Victoria II a good entry point into the mapgame genre? I like the historical era and theme well enough, and am not attracted to any different setting, so the main concerns here are the accessibility and quality of the game. If it isn't, what would be a more suitable title with a similar theme?

2. I have gone ahead and done all the tutorials for Victoria II, which seemed to acceptably explain some of the basic concepts without really giving a feel for the gameplay or illustrating what sort of strategies are viable. I'm looking for new player advice, chiefly a) good nations for a new player to start as, b) any tips or "10 things I wish I'd known before playing Victoria II" type sentiments you'd be willing to share.

3. I do not own either of the two expansions; how worthwhile are they? With Christmas close at hand it makes sense to wait for a sale to pick them up, but I'd appreciate some views on how much they enhance the experience.

[Gwyn chan 'r Gwyll]

Ok I will be straight with you. Vicky 2 is a fantastic game. It's also probably the worst place to get into the genre. You want to start with war-and-geopolitics games, something like, for Paradox games, EU4. The focus of Vicky 2 is domestic politics and economy, and both are INCREDIBLY indirect and obtuse.

Sometimes your economy will crash. You won't know why, but your people will be poor and you'll be running a deficit. Then your economy will recover, but you'll have no idea why. It's a complex economy, but not one you directly influence. You don't have a lot of direct influence over the core aspects of the game. Lots of people will try to bring in communist parties just so they can get direct control over what factories to build, rather than trust the sometimes stupid capitalist class to build for them.

Now, some, like me, we love that sense of lack of control, of riding the whirlwind. A leader pushed along by their society. But Victoria 2 isn't a super popular title, and that's why. I would recommend Europa Universalis 4 as a better starting point; it has a greater focus on geopolitics and warmaking that make it an easier introduction. Crusader Kings 2 is also a pretty popular beginning game, mixing RPG and Grand Strategy elements in an almost seamless manner.

If you do, I'd highly recommend both expansions. A House Divided has the honestly boring 1861 start date, but more importantly has a whole pile of economic, political, and diplomatic features;
a) railroads are now capped by terrain, so that it's easy to build a highly advanced railroad across the Great Prairies, but super expensive to build even a simple railroad across the Rockies.
b) the ability to make up your own Casi Belli, to try to manufacture causes for war rather than hope you legitimately get one
c) party loyalty for democracies, where regions will become loyal to certain ideologies, in a "my father and my grandfather always voted Conservative!" way.
d) A more dynamic route to Westernization for "Uncivilized" countries
e) Popular movements that can be appeased or suppressed, but risk becoming revolutionary movements
f) China is broken up into multiple warlords, instead of being one superpowerful nation.
Heart of Darkness has a Colonization overhaul in which powers can compete in a race to colonize a single state, and an International Crisis system which is fantastic, in which various areas become "hotspots", that if no side backs down, become a magnet for all of the Great Powers to get involved; Crimean War, and WW1 being the major examples here. Plus lots of combat changes, a whole new naval combat system, and Newspapers which are just fun fluff.

As for starting nations, you generally want to go for second-tier powers. Brazil is probably an easy bet; it's the strongest South American country, so you don't have to worry about getting destroyed while you learn, the economy is fairly simple for that nation, and if you play your cards right, you can jump into Great Power and learn some Great Power politics in the late game.
Otherwise, Sweden is relatively safe (just look out for Russia!), you can pretty easily dominate Scandinavia, and learn about Unification as you can form a unified Scandinavia. Japan is the classic Learn-to-Westernize nation, and Belgium is the classic Learn-to-Industrialize nation, you just have to fight of the Netherlands at the beginning of the game, and then play Prussia and France off each other, or pick one side and hope to god you picked right. France itself is the easiest Great Power, lots of room to colonize across Asia and Africa, or meddle across Europe and the Mediterranean, just watch out for Prussia turning into Germany.

USA can be ok as well, but their unique Civil War chain can complicate things, as no other country has to worry about it. UK may seem safe because they're so big, but that just makes them complicated, and difficult to understand.

Edit: Other advice; play with taxation levels. Taxing the poor gets you tons of money, but it keeps them poor, and stops them from promoting. You want lots of Clergy and Bureaucrats to get your Research up, lots of Craftsmen to get your industry started, and later lots of Clerks to increase your industrial efficiency. If you overtax people, sure you have lots of money to keep a large army, but all of your nation will be Farmers and Labourers and Soldiers, but you might not even have the middle-class Officers to properly lead your army, and will quickly find that you won't be able to create enough Artillery and Small Arms to actually build your army.

Late-game army wise, I'll have an elite standing army, and then in the centre of my nation armies consisting entirely of Artillery and Cavalry. You always want at least 2 cavalry units, one for each flank, and ideally almost as much Infantry as you have Artillery. Late-game big wars will involve Mobilizing your populace, and for large nations that can be hundreds of thousands of poor infantry, so I have these Arty+Cavalry half-armies to provide the support for those mobilized reserves. Mobilized units like that are always Infantry, and they will always lose to Regulars in an equal fight, plus soldiers who die in battle won't go back to the factories and farms later, so don't throw them away into the trenches without good reason.

[Gwyn chan 'r Gwyll]

I know the tutorial doesn't really go into what the different Pops really DO so I'll do that quickly.


Pops:
Lower Class

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Farmers and Labourers.
They're your basic unskilled workers. They don't need much to be happy, but they rarely make enough to get what little they need to be happy. They only get paid a small fraction of what their province makes, but you can improve this by a) starving the Aristocrats, and b) enacting a high Minimum Wage. There's very few differences between them; Farmers work in provinces with crops and animal resources, Labourers in mining provinces. Both are more attracted to Liberal ideologies, but Farmers also tend to be Conservative and a little Reactionary.

Slaves.
Slaves can never vote, never promote demote or migrate, only ever have their life needs fulfilled (and thus tend to be very Militant all the time), cannot earn money, and only work in RGOs, your basic provincial Resource Gathering Operation. They're more efficient than Farmers or Labourers, but have a cap to the number of slaves that can work in a province. They tend to ALWAYS be liberal, because that's how they get freed.

Soldiers are your fighting men. You need 3000 soldiers of a single Culture in a province to create a unit, except for the first unit in a province which is only 1000. When a unit takes casualties, the Soldiers it is linked with also die. If a Soldiers pop becomes radicalized and joints a movement, the Unit they're linked to will also radicalize. I like to challenge myself using this, for example, to make sure all Confederate secessionist units are in the future Confederacy before the US civil war, otherwise the Confederacy loses the vast majority of its trained army right away. Soldiers balance their Liberal lower-class sentiments with the Reactionary army culture. Soldiers are paid directly based on your Military Spending slider; if you don't pay them emough, soldiers will quit and go back to other lower-class jobs. If you pay them well, more people will want to be Soldiers, and maybe even will grow to be Officers.

Lastly, Craftsmen. Craftsmen are unskilled factory workers. They are to industrial centres what Labourers and Farmers are to the countryside. They tend to be less conservative, and more liberal and even socialist. Similar to Farmers and Labourers, they're paid a tiny fraction of their factory's profits, improved by a Minimum Wage, or getting rid of Capitalists. Problem with getting rid of Capitalists, is that Capitalists are needed in almost all economies to create more factories in the first place.

All of the lower class can be mobilized into large armies of weak units, excepting Soldiers who are already used as reinforcements for existing units.

Middle Class
[spoiler]
This is where things get complicated.

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Artisans are middle-class guild-members, basically single-man Factories. In the beginning of the game, Artisans create most manufactured goods, until they get out-competed by Factories. If you overtax the middle class, or there's a recession, they have a large tendency to drop down to lower class workers, because if they can't afford the raw goods resources to create their goods, they're doomed. Artisans tend to be Liberal.

Bureaucrats are generally your administrators, tending to be liberal. On a local level, the number of bureaucrats aids in social mobility, and helps make Colonies into full States in your country. On a national level, they make your entire economy more efficient; your people require less goods to be happy, your tariffs will be more efficient, and you won't get as many negative crime modifiers. They are paid directly from your Administrative Spending, so you can control how well you want to pay them, same as Soldiers. They tend to be slightly Liberal.

Clergymen are your educators and teachers. They lower political Consciousness of your pops, making them less likely to get Militant about issues, but mostly add to your Research both directly, and indirectly by increasing your countries Literacy rate. Their ideologies are incredibly sensitive to the situation of their country, much more so than any other class. They are paid directly from your Education Spending slider.

Clerks are your skilled factory labour, and your factory overseers. They increase factory efficiency, and also research points. The ideal factory will be 20% clerks, and 80% Craftsmen. They tend to be slightly Liberal. They get paid from the factory same as Craftsmen, but get better wages.

Lastly, Officers increase your Leadership points, allowing you to get more Generals and Admirals, get paid through your Military Spending slider same as Soldiers, and just like Soldiers tend to be Liberal or Reactionary.

Upper Class

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Capitalists and Aristocrats.
Aristocrats are your landowners and general blood-sucking parasites, you generally start with a decent amount of them. They provide a bonus to the output of the resource gathering in their provinces, but take the vast majority of the profits of the area. They tend to be liberal and reactionary. Off with their heads! Your people will make more money, and you'll be able to industrialize sooner. Russia is lousy with them.
Capitalists will build Factories and Railroads for you, unless you're Commies in which case you don't need them. They do make Factories more efficient, but they take the vast majority of the profits. They're also really really dumb, and slow to react to the changing economy. Up against the wall with them! They tend to be strongly Liberal, and are very against Communism and Socialism.

I was going to do Units as well, but turns out I'm only really familiar with the units of the mod I use, the fantastic Pop Demand Mod and its successors, which are fairly different, (and highly recommended) so I'll leave that for later.

[Neon Knight]

Thank you very much for your detailed and exhaustive reply. I appreciate the effort you've taken to explain your viewpoint, and this is the exact sort of information I was looking for. In following up on your reply, I have also found out that I already own a copy of Crusader Kings II (it is somewhat disconcerting to realize that the contents of one's steam account have become too large to easily keep track of by memory).

While it isn't a sure thing, I think that Victoria II as you describe is at least interesting enough to give a try. I think I'll start up a game as Brazil and see how well I can steer the ship of state (or rather, keep my balance from its ungainly lurchings.) I'll probably dip into Crusader Kings II, at least to check out the tutorial, although the amount of DLC that title has available is intimidating. I'll play both games vanilla until I'm sure I'm hooked and by then, any potential sales will be close at hand.

One more question for the road: I've got about 250 hours in Company of Heroes + Company of Heroes II, so the WWII theme is something I know I can dig. Is Hearts of Iron any good?

[Eldan]

The thing about paradox games is that you can usually ignore a large part of the DLC unless you like the game a lot, and that a lot of it is usually specialized for a small group of nations, so if you don't play those, don't buy it.

[Cespenar]

I think Hearts of Iron would be a nice entry as well. Crusader Kings II, while being awesome, can get a little overwhelming when you should have remembered that your second uncle's grandfather's spymaster had the "arbitrary" perk.

I'd put Hearts of Iron on par with Europa Universalis, probably, ease-of-entry-wise.

[Gwyn chan 'r Gwyll]

HoI IV isn't my cup of tea personally, so I can't speak on that.

As to CK2, most DLC can be safely ignored unless you want a game themed around that specific DLC. All of the Coat of Arms, Portrait, and Music DLCs are obviously to your taste. I'll do a quick review of the other DLCs for you though.

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In order of release, and thus usually price:
Sword of Islam; only buy if you want to play as Muslims.
Legacy of Rome; Definitely buy, lots of later things are balanced assuming you can use the Retinue standing armies, also offers a pile of Byzantine Empire stuff.
Sunset Invasion; only buy if you want Aztecs to invade from the Atlantic.
The Republic; only buy if you want to play as a Merchant Republic like Venice.
The Old Gods; Only buy if you want to play as a Pagan, a Zoroastrian, or starting from 867 AD. The only other things you'd miss are better rebellions, and younger sons and claimants starting big adventures to shake things up.
Sons of Abraham; It unlocks Jews as playable, but also adds a whole pile of mechanics around the Papacy, forcing people to become monks, Sunni schools, and a holy order overhaul. I'm lukewarm on this one.
Rajas of India; Only join if you want to play as a Buddhist, Hindu, or Jain.
Charlemagne; Only buy if you want to play starting from 769 AD. Only other thing you miss is the Viceroy system, and custom kingdoms and empires, really.
Way of Life; I love this one, it adds a whole pile new RPG options. Strongly recommended.
Horse Lords; Only buy if you want to play as a nomad. Conclave; This one is pretty divisive. I personally love it, as it adds a royal council who can end up dominating a weak King, and makes domestic politics 300x more interesting. Strong vassals will demand a spot on your council even if they're not the best Marshal you have, and then you have to balance the personalities on your council itself because they might be able to vote on certain of your actions. Others hate it because they see it as suddenly making the game harder for no reason. I strongly disagree, but different strokes. Personally, highly recommend.
Reaper's Due; Epidemics! Diseases! Prosperity and depopulation! Honestly, I'd call this a "must have", if only because the Black Death actually finally becomes a THING.
Monks and Mystics; Eh, personally not a fan. It mostly adds Societies, some of which are historical religious societies, some of which are fantasy demon worshippers. You do miss out on some fun Artifacts for the Treasury system though, so no chance to go hunt out the Shroud of Turin.
Jade Dragon; not released yet, but I'm super excited for offmap interactable China. Probably will only be worth getting for games in the East though.

[Nerd-o-rama]

1. Is Victoria II a good entry point into the mapgame genre? I like the historical era and theme well enough, and am not attracted to any different setting, so the main concerns here are the accessibility and quality of the game. If it isn't, what would be a more suitable title with a similar theme?

The game itself is very fun but as far as accessibility it might be the worst thing to happen to user interface since Clippy. Like, honestly, I love it, but my first dozen hours with it were learning the interface and the nuances of How to Be Successful that the game does not give you.

2. I have gone ahead and done all the tutorials for Victoria II, which seemed to acceptably explain some of the basic concepts without really giving a feel for the gameplay or illustrating what sort of strategies are viable. I'm looking for new player advice, chiefly a) good nations for a new player to start as, b) any tips or "10 things I wish I'd known before playing Victoria II" type sentiments you'd be willing to share.

a) If you insist on going with this and not switching to a simpler game, my recommended nations are Japan, if you want to learn about takking a nation from Uncivilized to a Great Power, Brazil, if you want a fairly easy sandbox to play in as a developed nation, or Prussia, if you want to learn the intricacies of war, diplomacy, and industrialization all at once.

b) oh...you sweet summer child. Really, there's a ton of tricks you want to learn to be successful, and it's hard to compile them into a good list. I'm by no means an expert at this game, but I'm still learning new things several hundred hours in. If I had to make an easy recommendation, I'd start with every article linked on this page (not just the beginner's guide) and then the entire rest of the wiki.

I'm serious, it's AP European History: The Spreadsheet: the video game. You picked a live one for your toe-dipping.

3. I do not own either of the two expansions; how worthwhile are they? With Christmas close at hand it makes sense to wait for a sale to pick them up, but I'd appreciate some views on how much they enhance the experience.

I'd still wait for a sale, but I also wouldn't bother playing the game without them. They have important bugfixes and balance changes that were not applied to the base game.


Also, CK2 is good and fortunately, most of the DLC is "oh hey this sounds neat" rather than being vital game mechanics (looking at you, EU4) or complete game overhauls (Vic 2 and apparently Hearts of Iron 4 soon). It's kind of a hybrid of RPG and strategy game in that you play a succession of individual people with specific traits and abilities, rather than a "nation", since those didn't exist in the modern sense in the middle ages, and that narrower focus, I feel, makes it a much easier entry point.


Also, since Gwyn didn't get it, armies are easy. Pay your soldiers, build as many units as you can, and sort them into blocks of 4 Infantry, 1 Hussar, 1 Engineer, and 4 Artillery. Don't bother with anything else unless you're uncivilized, or you want to leave off all the Infantry so you can attach 4 mobilized Infantry units instead, just be aware Mobilizing messes up your workforce. I honestly don't think it's worth it, but it does get you a bigger overall army. This also only applies in non-modded games, since as Gwyn mentioned, Pop Demand Mod makes Mobilized units lesser. Also: never attack across a river or into mountains unless you have way more reserves to send in than the other guy, and try to defend as much as possible late-game (after Machine Guns). I'm sure you've read enough about World War I to understand why.

[Neon Knight]

Thanks for your recommendations, Nerd-o-rama. I've definitely started taking a look at Crusader Kings (and since we have a thread, I posted there) and I think I'll take it slow with Victoria II, and keep an eye out for discounted DLC.

[Aotrs Commander]

As someone who got in PDX grand strats in the last cople of years, some thoughts:

The wikis are your best friend. With Vicky 2, the advantage is the game is complete, and thus the information is up-to-date.

Don't be afraid to not play on ironman, at least at the start. (Or, if you are like, me, ever.) The games' RNG can be deeply frustrating unless you are a particular fan of being randomly screwed. (I am not myself.)




Any PDX game will take a long time to play.

My first game of Vicky 2 was with France (as recommended to me by other folk) and 53 hours in, I'm about 2/3rds of the way through (I think I just hit about 1900 or something).

CK2 and EUIV can be much longer. The two games I've played of the latter were 200 hours, and the former is at 336 hours on my first game. (Where, because I am insane, I started as the Bzantines.)




Vicky 2 specific thoughts: Be aware, the rebels and revolutions can be quite overwhelming and nasty in the mid-late game. Make sure you park a good stack of troops on your capital if that occurs (communist rebels being one, and I'm told facist rebels later). as so long as your capital remains under control, you'll bascially be dealing with a bg nasty mop-up, not a sometimes-catastrophic change of government.

Your regional focusses are best set to clergy to start with until at about 2% (for research and literacy).

Philosphy is the single most important tech (because it increases your amount of research points), to the point you are best halting research a year before trhe next tech is due to come and save up for it.

You can ONLY save up to a year's worth of Research Points as a stock (that's a mistake I won't repeat!)

At the game start, feel free to whack the taxes and trade duties right up high (in fact, you more or less will have to), as unlike a lot of games with taxes, this isn't immeditately popularity suicide or something.

Don't try fighting a civilised power of similar or larger size without using moblisation, otherwise you will get pretty badly stomped.



Final note: Your timing is spot-on. Jade Dragon is out tomorrow, and that is almost always accompanied by a sale of all the various games. (The release of a DLC was how I got started.) You can likely pick up Vicky 2 complete collection for often about crazy-low prices (-75% on a good day), which might be cheaper than buying the DLC seperately; have a nosey. (Sometimes, they even reduce the cost of a bundle by the content you already have, too.)

[Artanis]

I would suggest reading this LP. I found it to be both entertaining and quite informative.

One caveat about it though: I believe he plays it with both expansions installed, so some things may be different if you don't have the expansions.

[Neon Knight]

As a bit of an update, I ended up giving it a go and liking the game quite a bit, and purchased the expansions when they went on sale. I'm currently early in a Brazil game, working on figuring things out. It's slow going and I don't have too many opportunities to play, but I appreciate everyone who steered me right in this thread.

[Neon Knight]

I'm still pretty early in my Brazil game, only a couple of years past the start date, and I feel like I'm making some progress. I think my big concern is with Brazil's low literacy rate; I've been focusing on the Cultural tech that boost research points and education efficiency, and have set my national focuses to Clergy, but I'm having a hard time affording running the Education slider at 100% while paying for everything else, even with taxes on all my demographics at 100%. Any advice for essentially teaching an entire nation to read? I have gotten my Clergy count to around 1.5% of my population and my literacy is almost 10%, but I've nearly emptied my treasury doing so and still have a lot of techs to work on.

[IthilanorStPete]

I'm still pretty early in my Brazil game, only a couple of years past the start date, and I feel like I'm making some progress. I think my big concern is with Brazil's low literacy rate; I've been focusing on the Cultural tech that boost research points and education efficiency, and have set my national focuses to Clergy, but I'm having a hard time affording running the Education slider at 100% while paying for everything else, even with taxes on all my demographics at 100%. Any advice for essentially teaching an entire nation to read? I have gotten my Clergy count to around 1.5% of my population and my literacy is almost 10%, but I've nearly emptied my treasury doing so and still have a lot of techs to work on.

Aim to get Clergy at 2% of your population in your major states; once you've done that, push for 4%. Keep researching those cultural techs, keeping an eye out for Biologism in 1850; it has an invention that grants a huge 50% increase to education efficiency. As for affording it, I'd cut your military and bureaucracy funding. Your military shouldn't be needed after the initial wars for your cores; you're too big for any of the neighbors to really declare on you. As for the bureaucrats, their effects are fairly marginal, especially compared to the importance of literacy.

[Kurgan]

I'd highly suggest getting some mods, specifically the Pops Demand mod (I think the latest version is called Pops of Darkness) and the submod for that called Divide By Zero. Both mods vastly improve the game via balancing out the tech trees better, adding more events, and giving options on how to build - including giving some basic resources like grain a purpose with bakeries, etc.

I haven't played the game without those two mods in years, and it is all the better for it. It has its own subforum in the viki 2 mod forums, though you need to register the game to your paradox account first to view it.