Victoria II impressions.

[Trash]

Thanks to tacticular cancer I've gotten my filthy paws on the review version of Victoria II and decided to post some impressions for those interested.

Aesthetically this is by far the prettiest Paradox game I've seen. Glad to see they finally spend some time on making the map and presentation look nice.

The musical score is excellent, although you'll always get the same orchestral score no matter wether you play as a fledgeling asian nation or a western power.

The game seems relatively bug free for an initial release from Paradox. Sure, when you look hard enough plenty of stuff turns up but I've found nothing game breaking or really glaring. Seems that Q&A department is a worthwhile addition. It also feels a lot more polished than other releases in terms of game mechanics and events.

Game runs a lot smoother than HOI3 and also loads within a very short time. It seems they really managed to optimise the engine.

Speaking of polished, this is the first Paradox game which actually has a worthwhile tutorial. It really is great and lets you yourself pick wether you just want basics or a deep and detailed explanation on the subject of your choice. Big thumbs up!

It's once again an historical sandbox game, so people who want to see history follow its course will be disappointed. Still, it's entirely possible you'll see an American Civil War or unification of Germany. Though don't look surprised if you see Japan invade Australia.

The game is like Victoria I once again focused solely on the issues of western societies. As anything else you'll have to westernise in order to even be able to go beyond the status of uncivilised and thus neutured state and play any kind of role.

A particular niggle of me is that the research items still lack descriptions. You just get their listed effects and a little picture as in all Paradox games. Is it that hard to write a short but informative text on for instance railroads? It would add tremendously to the atmosphere in the game. Alas.

Am I having fun? Kinda, to be honest. Juggling populations and industrialising my country is not something which I massively enjoy and that is what VII is in a nutshell all about. Fighting wars and all is pretty neat but feels a whole lot like the other Paradox games. So far it's not as addictive as say, EUIII but does seem to offer a very good (and quite alike but with better graphics and interface) game for those who liked VI.

 

[pocahaunted]

Game runs a lot smoother than HOI3 and also loads within a very short time. It seems they really managed to optimise the engine.

This was my main worry about the game, if it's properly optimized this time around then I'm pretty sure the game will be worth it at release.

 

[Muty]

I got my copy yesterday and after playing for a few hours, I have to agree that a QA team really paid off. No crashes or ugly game breaking bugs and it runs like a charm.

If you liked the first Vicky, you are going to love it. The economy model is absolutely beautiful. Money do not show up out of thin air(they actually come only from gold mines, unlike in eu3) the simulation of the common and world markets works great and I bet that this will really shine in mp games.

A very nice change from vicky 1 is the automatic promotion/demotion of pops. Everyone that has played it knows what a pain in the ass promoting pops was when you had a big country with hundreds of provinces. Now pops get promoted, demoted or migrate to another region depending on social conditions.

One thing that bothers me is the new map. It looks great in the default mapmode, but is waay to colorful and glossy in the others. For example in the political mapmode it is sometimes really hard to see the borders of the provinces from all the details underneath. Maybe some people like it that way but I really prefer the simplistic look of the magna mundi mod map(or the old para titles).

And one more thing I really love is that they added a call ally option in the diplomacy screen(one of the biggest anoyances left in eu3, they tried to fix that with the alliance casus belli in httt but the stupid ai never uses it).

In the end it is a game about economy and politics and I'm having a blast playing it. It is obvious that Paradox learned their lesson from HOI3 and tried to make the game actually interesting to play and not a horrible bugfest.

 

[Fuck_The_Banks]

Just got the game a few hours ago, and have dabbled in the demo over the last few days.

Overall, its a pretty good release from Paradox. Seems a lot more playable out of the box than some of their recent releases. I'm able to run the game on a slightly under-spec computer. I liked Vicky 1 for its empahasis on economic / social development, rather than the usual Paradox "conquer the world" fare. If you liked Vicky, you will almost certainly like this, although some may rankle at some of the automation in game. But I for one feel a bit liberated from having to micromanage my POPs.

To me, it looks pretty good. Bit annoying that you cant see the position of your troops / fleets when you are zoomed out a long way - pretty essential if you play a far-flung Empire, but I understand this feature is in the next patch.

Some people also complain about the "generic" nature of some of the events, leading to ACW in late 1840's / early 1950's, or early partial unification of Germany. Guess this is the result of a loss of strict historical accuracy over a playable game. This will be annoying to some, whilst others will see it as a chance to guide their nation through history without being straitjacketed.

As to balance problems, haven't played enough to make a judgement. I'd be suprised if there aren't any. Seems that Craftsmen POPs are very hard to promote in the early game, and some people report problems retaining Clergy (helps with literacy). Too early to say if this is an algorithm problem that needs adjusting, or due to inept noob playeres - I suspect the former needs looking at, but exacerbated by people not understanding the rules. But for me, the economy seems to do largely what I want it to, though.

I've noticed a few minor bugs, but nothing that can't be fixed and nothing that ruins the game.

Overall, it's pretty polished, runs well, and seems to be fun. Far less ironing out that any unfortunate soul who bought HOI3 could ever dream of having. So far, I've seen nothing wrong with V2 that won't be solved by a bit of head-scratching and a patch or so, but it seems perfectly playable and enjoyable as is. I've heard they made this game as a bit of a "labour of love", expecting to lose money. If my initial impressions are accurate, I hope they at least have enough money to buy themselves a few beers. At the very worst, it will prove to be a "slow-burner" like Distant Worlds.

 

[astrosmurf]

How is the AI? Good? Aggressive? Inert? Cheating?

 

[Serious_Business]

I'm just getting this of course, although it won't be as good as Vicky 1 with expansion and mods... so there's not much point. It seems to be essentially the same game, with some graphical and interface tweaks, which isn't such a bad thing I guess, and I appreciate the effort. I just tried it, it runs fine on my PC, whereas HoI3 ran like shit and I never could play it.

If you look at some of the AARs on the paradox forums, it seems to be pretty much playable, and fuck the banks said, a lot more solid than what you'd expect from an early paradox release, although the conclusion is as always "will get better with patches, expansions and mods". There's a Japan review AAR you can check out, the guy managed to pretty much conquer all of China with Japan, admitedly with some difficulties, but I don't think it'd have been so easy in the original Victoria. All Pdox game become pretty easy when you know what you're doing though, but yeah, they'll probably be fixing the revolt rate and so on in the future.

Anyway, time to put on monocle and top hat and exploit some natives in the name of reason and progress, hellz yeah

Edit : well, the lack of historical events kind of piss me off, but we'll see how it goes.

 

[Erzherzog]

Does it seem kind of...easy to you guys?

I'm playing as Austria and in the 1840's I have the second best economy in the game world by far (just behind you know who...)

I might restart already though. Every diplomatic move I make is a second too late and the way Germaany works now....it's very interesting. In Vic1 Austria + South German minors were always overmatched by Prussia + North Germany, but now Austria is capable of swaying some of the German states her way.

 

[Chef_Hathaway]

Does it seem kind of...easy to you guys?

I'm playing as Austria and in the 1840's I have the second best economy in the game world by far

I noticed the economic thing, I blew past everyone as Austria, except GB, and I didn't even have railroads.

 

[Malakal]

I read that later in the game You are going to face great economic depressions coming from overproduction of goods and not enough demand. But yes, seems ratehr easy. Play weaker nations - Denmark is hardcore.

 

[Serious_Business]

Wtf is wrong with the pop counts? France is at 9 mil when game starts, I reckon it was at 35 mil by 1836, what is that?

 

[Zeros]

Because the actual population is 4x the number you see in teh number. You see the amount of adult males in a country.

 

[Erzherzog]

Because the actual population is 4x the number you see in teh number. You see the amount of adult males in a country.

Essentially. A pop is a 4 person nuclear family in Victoria, of which the adult male is the only useful person to the state, mwahaha.

 

[Muty]

I read that later in the game You are going to face great economic depressions coming from overproduction of goods and not enough demand. But yes, seems ratehr easy. Play weaker nations - Denmark is hardcore.

We played a multiplayer game with 8 ppl this morning and exactly this thing happened to me as gb. I was getting millions of factories built when I reached the point where I was producing a lot more shit then what as needed. Factories started loosing money, I had to close many of them and my production plunged , pops became jobless and started revolting. I took me maybe 5 years the stabilize that shit.

 

[Takeda Kenshi]

Does it seem kind of...easy to you guys?

I'm playing as Austria and in the 1840's I have the second best economy in the game world by far (just behind you know who...)

I might restart already though. Every diplomatic move I make is a second too late and the way Germaany works now....it's very interesting. In Vic1 Austria + South German minors were always overmatched by Prussia + North Germany, but now Austria is capable of swaying some of the German states her way.

Some of the main powers of the time are pretty easy to play. Sardinia-Piedmont gave me a good challenge; you have France and Austria hemming you in on both sides and all of the Italian minors are guaranteed by Great Powers. During one of my excursions south to unify the peninsula, France decided to back door me with about 300k worth of troops. Not pretty. I also had problems with Tuscany since it was allied with Bavaria and Austria, both of whom had considerable tech and military power. I ended up playing this game for 6 or 7 hours yesterday, loved every minute of it. No crashes, no ridiculous slow down, and not having to split pops was actually a welcomed addition. The most complete, well polished Paradox game in quite some time. Also, the makers are busily working on a 1.2 patch that should be out sometime soon, which should help tweak the balance of gameplay a bit.

With an expansion or two, and some mods, this game will be unbelievable.

 

[oscar]

A particular niggle of me is that the research items still lack descriptions. You just get their listed effects and a little picture as in all Paradox games. Is it that hard to write a short but informative text on for instance railroads? It would add tremendously to the atmosphere in the game.

Victoria I had quite descriptive tech descriptions.

Any changes in the research system?

 

[Erzherzog]

A particular niggle of me is that the research items still lack descriptions. You just get their listed effects and a little picture as in all Paradox games. Is it that hard to write a short but informative text on for instance railroads? It would add tremendously to the atmosphere in the game.

Victoria I had quite descriptive tech descriptions.

Any changes in the research system?

Barely

You're no longer restricted to 5 choices at a time, everything is open provided you have the required tech researched and it's past the minimum required year. Still same 5 categories with the same 5 sub-categories and the same 6 research items per sub-category.

 

[fizzelopeguss]

How do i balance a budget, i want to make texas into a regional power.

 

[Zed]

I want to like these epic 4x games so much but I just can't. I tried Victoria II. I played the tutorial. Then when I load up a scenario I have no fucking idea what I'm supposed to do. I normally love freedom and empire building. And management and warfare. But I feel no sense of direction at all. Same thing when I tried to play Crusader Kings. Oh well, can't like everything I'd like to, err, like, I suppose.

 

[Burning Bridges]

Personally I could never get into this realtime thing either. But I will keep trying and those Victoria II screens look great!!

 

[Quilty]

Yeah, I found it difficult to get into real time, but once I did I fell in love with it. It does lack a sense of direction, but that's something you add yourself. Let's say you play as USA, you might make it a mission to conquer Mexico, or play as Switzerland and try to maintain your neutrality or something along those lines, though it is LARPing, essentially. EU3 gives you missions, so I guess it has more direction.

 

[Malakal]

Unfortunately I encountered serious bugs. AI cant handle rebellions and there is WAY too much of those thats one. Then POP promotion isnt exactly perfect and Your nation ends with way more aristocrats than craftsmen. I hope they fix it in 1.2 as everything else is more or less excellent.

 

[MasterSmithFandango]

I want to like these epic 4x games so much but I just can't. I tried Victoria II. I played the tutorial. Then when I load up a scenario I have no fucking idea what I'm supposed to do. I normally love freedom and empire building. And management and warfare. But I feel no sense of direction at all. Same thing when I tried to play Crusader Kings. Oh well, can't like everything I'd like to, err, like, I suppose.

I had the same experience with EU:Rome and HoI2.... and then I played EU3. It kept me up until 7am.

 

[Zed]

I think one of my problems with Victoria and most (all?) paradox games are that you have your land predefined. Sure you can conquer enemy territory but you can't build your own cities and stuff. I want to start with a capitol or just a worker and then create my own empire. Guess I should stick to Civ4/Elemental.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

Yea, it'd be nice if there was a strategy game with a start like that, the combat of Hearts of Iron 3 and everything else from Victoria 2. Yea, my impressions so far is that it's pretty awesome, though overwhelming. At least the AI can handle the market for me. And teching starts deceptively slow.

 

[Carlos' Bitch1]

The economy thing sounds exactly like the original Victoria. I quickly learned that you could become an economic powerhouse manufacturing Luxury clothes and Luxury furniture.

How is the micromanagement of armed forces this time? The British could be a little tedious in the first game due to this.

 

[Muty]

How is the micromanagement of armed forces this time? The British could be a little tedious in the first game due to this.

Much better. You have an option to autopromote and assign generals. Also there are fewer units compared to vicky revolution(20/48 or something). They could really add some of the stuff from hoi3 like the OOB designer and some people are complaining that there is not much change from EU, but I find the combat fun, much better then vicky 1. I'm playing UK in a multiplayer game right now and I don't have any problems managing the armies without any pausing.

The economy thing sounds exactly like the original Victoria. I quickly learned that you could become an economic powerhouse manufacturing Luxury clothes and Luxury furniture.

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.