Some advice for 1.3, listen to the ramblings of an EU3 player

scholar · Oct 31, 2010

(if you want to)

First I'd like to say that I never played Victoria. The only other game I played from Paradox is EU3 HttT, so... take what I have to say anyway you like. It's just I wanted to make that clear. The reason why I'm making this topic instead of posting in the "Why I won't play Victoria 2 anymore" is because I like this game. I think it's a fun and interesting thing. I look forward to not only playing the game straight up, but possible mods and even conversions from EU3 to Victoria. There are just some problems, which are major, that need addressing in the latest patch. I also have some suggestions, which is entirely up to you to ignore or implement. I don't really expect much from this statement, but I can't help but try.

First thing I'd like to say is rebels. Not even 2% of the population would never be able to implement armed revolts over the entire country numbering in the dozens of thousands every four to five months. I know 1.2 made some rather big changes to that, and they are better. I also know the rebels are a little bit tougher now than they were before. (Before it didn't take much to have one three unit stack go through five provinces of 2-3 stacks of rebels.) The thing is though, they are far too numerous. Rebel groups were active in countries during the Victorian Age, but they had reason and proper catalysts. There is no reason what so ever for a country with a relatively liberal government, numerous reforms, very stable, and rich, with all it's populations meeting their life needs and a lot of luxury needs to suddenly devolve into utter chaos. It's unrealistic and it's disgusting. It shouldn't matter if Taxes are at 100% for everyone, if they are happy, if the country is progressing, and if all is right in their little worlds there is no chance for support for rebels to go outside maybe a handful of radicals spread around the country.

So, stop it. If you don't I'm not saying that I'll stop playing. I'm just saying that people will get annoyed. The game won't be a game anymore it will become a chore. How many millions of rebels will I have to kill as a non-expansionist Denmark? It will become tiresome and soon the only thing keeping interest in the game alive is the occasional wars and some rather nice alternate history. There needs to be some sort of system to the rebels. There should be rebels. I'm not saying get rid of them. I'm just saying don't make them a continuous nuisance. Because that's all they are to the player. A minor inconvenience that takes up 90% of the game time. The real problem in the rebels is for the AI countries. I've seen Russia get completely taken over by rebels. I've seen the main British Isles taken over but British India expanding into China. This would never happen and it makes the game ridiculous.

Rebels should become a reaction to a problem. Not the cause. When a nation is in heavy debt, there should be a revolt risk. From recently conquered territories there should be a revolt risk. When you lose a war there should be growing unrest among the populous. When none of your people are getting their needs there should be revolts. There should be some pattern, some warning. You should have events of building unrest when a country is on the decline. So revolts end up appearing as a byproduct of it. When political reforms are stifled there should be a growing militancy.

So let me stress this again. Revolts are a product of a failing economy, a tremendous loss of war, and people not being properly fed. This is how things were there. The only times revolts actually even occured was because of something going on in the country. Facism took hold in Germany because of the heavy defeat in WW1, but there was more. It wasn't spontaneous. There wasn't a million rebels taking over the country in a year enforcing their demands on the country. It was a slow process. The country was in dire straights. The people had nothing. Prestige was at an all time low. The people were galvanized through decades of rallies and protests. It took decades for the German Federation to become the Third Reich. Russia didn't become Communist because there was a lack of liberal reforms and a growing amount of education among the populous. It was simply because Russia was failing miserably at the war, the economy was failing, and none of the people got any of their needs. That's how revolutions formed. Not because some people got smarter than the average bear and suddenly said "Viva La Revolution!". Get rid of this ridiculous system and rework it with a varying array of modifers. When they meet their life needs things are neutral, when they get luxury goods militancy should be reduced significantly, when their lives are only partially fulfilled there would be a want for reform, but not enough to cause revolts, and finally when they do not get their needs at all there should be building militancy for revolt. And even still there should be events prompting the change in militancy warning the player or the country of the problems for the people and give decisions to help reverse the trend. It's only when all else fails that revolution should happen.

Also, countries should not be able to grow to a fairly large size and then be mostly taken over by rebels. The rebels should not be able to take over a large portion of a country without causing problems. Now Russia has all but fallen to rebels, all of Siberia, and most of what's west of the Urals was claimed by rebels but the capital was never taken. Now the country should collapse into smaller countries, not remain a super power of the industrial age. A country that is losing badly to rebels should take heavy prestige losses. A country that's provinces are taken over by rebels should lose a significant portion of their industry. It's down right hilarious that Russia can be an industrial superpower with very little actual control outside it's capital and have very high prestige. Most importantly a nation that's even a third covered by rebels should immediately lose GP status no matter what it's ranking or even that it should be lowered to a point that it's no longer a GP.

1.3 needs to rework this entirely. I hope what I said doesn't fall on deaf ears.

There are some other things that aren't as important, but are pretty important. Among them is the lag. Now I know there may not be much you can do about this, but... Let's look at it this way. The first fifty years of the game can be played at maximum level time in about the exact same time as just ten years of the early twentieth century. I understand that there is an inevitable amount of lag build up, but the fastest setting shouldn't only go as fast as the middle setting in the end. There are games in which I just got bored dealing with rebels popping up in droves and the time not going by fast enough for me to stay involved. The lag needs work, sadly I can't exactly say how to help this. Maybe by merging most of the Indian tags. They serve very little purpose. make it like Africa. There were dozens of countries that could be involved in Vicky, yet we only have one that's not on the coast (except Ethiopia) and that's Sokoto. You could easily merge India to three or four tags. If the players want more, we can make more.

Another major problem is standing armies. In the beginning this is kept under control, but nearing half way through the game it get's ridiculous. I don't like seeing Britain... it's just sad what happened to them. They had no where near the resources to afford that even during WW2. Instead, I propose something else. Most countries of rather small size should only be able to afford up to about ten-twenty units, depending on how many territories they control and their population. Medium countries such as Italy should be restricted to forty units. France and Germany about sixty. Russia at about seventy. going over fifty units should increase the maintenance of the units by 200%, going over 100 should increase it by 1000%. This should restrict anything like what we normally see late game with as many as twenty units per province in India. This really has to be fixed, if it's not then the end game just becomes tedious and unwanted. The fun factor officially drops off at around 1880. Restrict army sizes. There should be no multi-million man engagements. Even engagement in the forty thousand range should be minimal, unless, of course, you're china.

Next up we have assimilation and western immigration. This is a huge problem, but so far it ranks four. It's not as big of a deal as others make it out to be and it sure as hell is not a game breaker. It is, however, an unrealistic annoyance. British people should not be the majority of India under any circumstance. Most colonies should only have a small European population. Assimilation should be a slow process and mainly restricted to the upper class with some small spillover into the middle class. It should rarely be above 10%, period. However, a slow and steady build of 1-2% a decade is acceptable. So, British India should be able 12% British by the time WW2 comes around, and even that is probably way too much. You should be able to restrict or encourage assimilation. It shouldn't just randomly occur because you took over the province. Japan shouldn't make Brunei 60% japanese in just a little over a decade of conquest. Now assimilation should also depend highly on culture. Northern Italians can become southern Italians far more quickly than Kanuuji Indians to proper British people. Immigration should depend very highly on the state of a country. If you are a prosperous nation building up industry and expanding steadily immigration should be good, no matter if that country is France, Greece, Sokoto, or Honduras. The United States should not attract people if it's experiencing heavy revolts. The United States should not attract people from countries that are more prosperous than it. And the United States should not attract people nearly as much if it fails to reach the Pacific Ocean or get Texas. Immigration should only occur in countries that encourage it and only from countries that are in dire straights. This needs some heavy reworking, but nothing a few modifiers can't fix.

Diplomacy. The Victorian age deals heavily in diplomacy. Where wars were between big countries and a network of alliances protected countries. This doesn't happen in the game. GPs and their spheres are okay, but secondary powers and other countries break alliances and forge them every month. Countries rarely back each other up. I've seen the Ottomans form an alliance with Austria but break it when Austria decided to go to war with Venice. It's a pathetic web of meaningless dribble that doesn't matter at all in the game. It seems some fine tuning, otherwise there's no point in ending the game at the dawn of WW2 because there will never even be a ww1.

Finally some things to get rid of. Pan-national rebels. There is no need for them as they operate highly unrealistically. There's literally no point in Pan scandinavian rebels as they rarely ammount to anything. Also the movements during that time for such a union were very very small. I highly doubt they could raise 3000 troops to form a single unit unless Denmark and Sweden were allied and had very good relations. Pan american rebels are god awful. There's literally no point in having all of the different possible American countries as they all collapse back into the United States. New England forms? GREAT! A decade later all what's left is boston and the rest is the USA. The Confederacy wins the civil war because you assist them? Perfect! Five years later half of the country is back in the good old US. Remove them and maybe the tags will be worth something, because if you don't then you might as well remove them. Pan German rebels? The most historical, but also were still rather minor. In the game they end up consuming entire nations that end up having pan German rebels taking over territories that have no German people. I've seen most of northern italy overrun by them. And don't get be started on the ahistorical nature of pan italian rebels. No one gived a damn about a pan italia. In fact Italy had no big movements, but rather it was used by Piedmont to create nationalism, not go along with it. There are no need for pan italian rebels because there was no such thing, the only ones wanting an italy were the elite class in charge of the countries. Pan Russian ones are even more of a joke. Russia was built to collapse into smaller nations, not have territories break away from the Ukraine to join Russia. Get rid of pan-national rebels. They have no real place in the game.

Some scripting. The United States should instinctively go to take over Mexico immediately. This is such a rare event that it's completely pointless to even have the American Civil War because it was brought on by a limiting of slave states brought on by that very war and California wanting to be a free state despite of it's position. The civil war should only occur if the Mexican war happens. Alaska should only be purchased if the United States succeeds in both the Mexican and civil wars. And the Confederacy shouldn't be such a joke. Make them more powerful, I mean... The United States was on the verge of annexing all of Mexico creating a huge and powerful state. What we see now is pathetic.

Scandinavia should be a 1 in 20 event. It comes on far more likely than that. Italy should form in about 1 in 3 games, yet it rarely does. The North and South federation should appear in some form in every game. Prussia and Austria's forces should battle each other senselessly, which they do, with their federations. Now Germany itself should be a 1 in 3 game thing. North and South should normally just bash each other but the formation should still occur rather regularly. Japan should modernize once every two games. China and Siam should modernize once in every 10 games, as there were active movements for modernization and China was no where near irreversibly corrupt at the game start date and Siam was very good at playing France and Britain off of each other.

Now this is something extensive that I think would do rather well if implemented. I'm not saying the game is bad, it's not. There are just some flaws that make the game less fun and more stressful. The game should feel like the Victorian age and this just feels like an age of mindless randomly spawning rebels without a cause and massively ahistorical armies wandering pointlessly. I love Victoria 2, so I hope what I say will be listened to and not just be dismissed as another naysayer that can't appreciate the game for what it is instead of focusing on making it what it was meant to be. Thanks for reading this novel of a suggestion,

scholar.

TAoD · Oct 31, 2010

This is well written and I read it all, and hopefully the devs will too, instead of posting comments like "I dunno whats wrong with 1.2". :/

You sir know whats wrong with the game.

naggy · Oct 31, 2010

1.) Check the fixpack in the bugreports forum to fix the jacobin rebels bug - there's a typo there that makes them always appear.

2.) You're spot on about the unit issue - I think it's part (but not all) of the lag problem as the game goes on. The core problem seems to be that soldiers are the one pop that have no limitation in number. All other pop types have a percentage ceiling in the # of jobs (Bureaucrats/Clergy), a hard ceiling (Clerks/Craftsmen/Farmers/Laborers), a flexible ceiling (Capitalists/Aristocrats) or are dissuaded from promotion (Artisans). I played a game as China using the healthcare exploit, and had 2286 possible brigades by 1865 - despite never putting military funding over 60%.

3.) I'd love more clarity into the alliance issue. Occasionally, alliances will work out, then other times, everyone just bails for no apparent reason.

4.) Not sure I agree with you about the Civil War only occurring if the Mexican Cession does. The ball was already rolling. You are right that the US seems to never take its cores, but I think part of that is because UK spheres Mexico due to Belize giving it a neighbor bonus. That results in the US not fighting hard enough to shake Mexico loose from the sphere and keep Britain from intervening in a Mexican war. It's also caused because AI nations don't go for the jugular to grab all their cores in one war if they are winning.

Your point about Siam also shows off one weakness in the SoI system - there's no current way for nations to play off nations against each other. It's especially frustrating for players trying to play a minor.

anomanderus · Oct 31, 2010

I disagree with the part about Scandinavia. Scandinavia no longer forms at all, in any of my games. Because even in Denmark or Sweden becomes a GP and gets the other in their sphere, Prussia or Austria will already have eaten parts of Jutland with Scandinavian cores, making the formation of Scandinavia impossible.

Also I think pan-national rebels exist mostly because of Germany, in the same way America gets the Civil War and Britain has things like the Doctrine of Lapse. Of course because while the Doctrine of Lapse and the Civil War are specific to Britain and America, the pan-national rebels affect all union countries. What I would propose is making Germany and Scandinavia the only union countries, thus making rebels only spawn there. Unions don't seem to have the same kind of unifying effect as they do in EU3, since you can just assign a country accepted cultures and it becomes the same effect as a union. The only thing unions seem to do is spawn pan-nationalist rebels.

scholar · Oct 31, 2010

anomanderus said:
I disagree with the part about Scandinavia. Scandinavia no longer forms at all, in any of my games. Because even in Denmark or Sweden becomes a GP and gets the other in their sphere, Prussia or Austria will already have eaten parts of Jutland with Scandinavian cores, making the formation of Scandinavia impossible.

So far I've played 2 games in Victoria 2 1.2, one as two sicilies and the other as spain. Scandinavia formed in my two sicilies game. Maybe it's become far less likely. How do you feel about the other things I've said?

scholar · Oct 31, 2010

naggy said:
1.) Check the fixpack in the bugreports forum to fix the jacobin rebels bug - there's a typo there that makes them always appear.

Thank you for the reply and for telling me about the jacobin bug. I found out about only a few minutes after making this topic. That said, there was a lot more to it than just jacobins. There's the utter pointlessness of pan-national rebels and their negative effects on the game. What did you think about the possible modifers I suggested depending on the status of the populous, as well as the negative effects I stated to nations that are falling to rebels? I also said a bit about a build up of militancy through steps. I'd be more than interested in hearing what you have to say.

naggy said:
2.) You're spot on about the unit issue - I think it's part (but not all) of the lag problem as the game goes on. The core problem seems to be that soldiers are the one pop that have no limitation in number. All other pop types have a percentage ceiling in the # of jobs (Bureaucrats/Clergy), a hard ceiling (Clerks/Craftsmen/Farmers/Laborers), a flexible ceiling (Capitalists/Aristocrats) or are dissuaded from promotion (Artisans). I played a game as China using the healthcare exploit, and had 2286 possible brigades by 1865 - despite never putting military funding over 60%.

Thank you.

naggy said:
3.) I'd love more clarity into the alliance issue. Occasionally, alliances will work out, then other times, everyone just bails for no apparent reason.

In my two sicilies game I got in a war with the Papal states, all three of the papal states allies, including Sadina piedmont, refused to come to their aid. Watching wars between secondary powers unfold you can easily see nearly all of the allies of the defending force anbandoning them if they are outnumbered in terms of military force even though that combined the allies would be stronger as a whole. I've also seen Austria and the Ottomans get into an alliance only to break it over a war with a relatively minor power when neither of the countries were in rough shape. The diplomacy between the secondary and great powers needs a lot of work. There are even nations breaking alliances now and then. I've seen a number 8 GP portugal break an alliance with Great Britain for no apparant reason. The only alliances that are solidified are those between satallites and spheres of influence.

naggy said:
4.) Not sure I agree with you about the Civil War only occurring if the Mexican Cession does. The ball was already rolling. You are right that the US seems to never take its cores, but I think part of that is because UK spheres Mexico due to Belize giving it a neighbor bonus. That results in the US not fighting hard enough to shake Mexico loose from the sphere and keep Britain from intervening in a Mexican war. It's also caused because AI nations don't go for the jugular to grab all their cores in one war if they are winning.

The main reason for the kansas-nebraska act, the thing that ended up causing much of tension to eventually explode came from the fact that the missouri compromise was no longer working because of the expansion of territory in the west. California also became a free state even though it was supposed to become a slave state by the defining articles of the compromise. This ended up causing a large amount of conflict. The Mexican War didn't cause the civil war, but it led to a series of events that allowed for the confederacy to form. Though, perhaps, instead of it being a requirement, it instead only makes it more or less likely depending on whether or not it takes place. If the Mexican War happens it's likely, but if it doesn't the odds of the civil war happening drops by, say, 75%?

naggy said:
Your point about Siam also shows off one weakness in the SoI system - there's no current way for nations to play off nations against each other. It's especially frustrating for players trying to play a minor.

I know. The thing is nations who are in a position of competing sphere's of influence should be able to choose which one to support or maintain an indefinite state of competing interests allowing for the nation to remain relatively free while two or more GPs diplomatically have a tugawar over who get's a say in the affairs of that country. Or something like that. What do you think?

ZechsMerquise73 · Oct 31, 2010

Yes, the whole rebel thing is ridiculous. I doubt people in the United States would revolt, even if you took their football away. It should be like EU3, where if you are all cored and culture-accepted and religiously accepted, revolts should be rare. Not this "oh, you have to have anarchists every few years". Many times, people shifting to the political extreme should be enough.

Also, they really need to get rid of the "no war on people in your sphere" thing. That is certainly the silliest gameplay feature I've ever seen.

Sternness · Oct 31, 2010

scholar said:
Rebels should become a reaction to a problem. Not the cause. When a nation is in heavy debt, there should be a revolt risk. From recently conquered territories there should be a revolt risk. When you lose a war there should be growing unrest among the populous. When none of your people are getting their needs there should be revolts.

You sound like you might have liked Victoria 1 more. It has all of that. That said, I like the new system better, except that I feel like I have less control now when it comes to driving up militancy and causing my own revolution. In my mind that's instrumental when playing when playing a country like Argentina or Peru, which starts as a Dictatorship and it's only feasible game plan is to become a democracy and attract immigrants. Really, when it comes down to it, I'd like to think that revolts have more causes than the ones you listed: failing economy, tremendous loss of war, people not being fed.... That's a bit cut-and-dry, don't you think?

There are some other things that aren't as important, but are pretty important. Among them is the lag. Now I know there may not be much you can do about this, but... Let's look at it this way. The first fifty years of the game can be played at maximum level time in about the exact same time as just ten years of the early twentieth century. I understand that there is an inevitable amount of lag build up, but the fastest setting shouldn't only go as fast as the middle setting in the end. There are games in which I just got bored dealing with rebels popping up in droves and the time not going by fast enough for me to stay involved. The lag needs work, sadly I can't exactly say how to help this. Maybe by merging most of the Indian tags. They serve very little purpose. make it like Africa. There were dozens of countries that could be involved in Vicky, yet we only have one that's not on the coast (except Ethiopia) and that's Sokoto. You could easily merge India to three or four tags. If the players want more, we can make more.

It's an idea, but I don't think I'd support it. I could never say yes to cutting back on the 1836 world model they have going, just for the sake of the last 30 years. It's not like this game needs a 20th century ending in my mind (but, then again, I've got no interest in HOI).

If you are a prosperous nation building up industry and expanding steadily immigration should be good, no matter if that country is France, Greece, Sokoto, or Honduras. The United States should not attract people if it's experiencing heavy revolts. The United States should not attract people from countries that are more prosperous than it. And the United States should not attract people nearly as much if it fails to reach the Pacific Ocean or get Texas. Immigration should only occur in countries that encourage it and only from countries that are in dire straights. This needs some heavy reworking, but nothing a few modifiers can't fix.

You're talking as if every immigrant in the game has a consciousness of 10---or 11. It's not all about logical prosperousness, it's about that idea of a new start, which is something the Americas championed, and that the immigration bonus models well enough---alongside the immigration-minded political parties, that is.

Actually, maybe the solution to the immigration and assimilation problems should center more on each country's citizenship policy. Leave the full-citizenship-like assimilation to countries with full-citizenship parties. The UK doesn't have one of those at game start, does it?

greendevil · Oct 31, 2010

naggy said:
Your point about Siam also shows off one weakness in the SoI system - there's no current way for nations to play off nations against each other. It's especially frustrating for players trying to play a minor.

That's not even hard to imagine/try to script in. It was something happened during the period, the isolation from the western presence by some nations.

naggy · Oct 31, 2010

scholar said:
What did you think about the possible modifers I suggested depending on the status of the populous, as well as the negative effects I stated to nations that are falling to rebels? I also said a bit about a build up of militancy through steps. I'd be more than interested in hearing what you have to say.

I definitely think that GPs getting beaten horribly by rebels should cause a huge prestige hit. I also think that nationalist rebels should come out of the woodwork if a nation starts getting torn by rebels. Not sure about the rest, offhand. One problem now is that once you get a decent amount of prestige, it's almost impossible to lose enough to get knocked out of the GP slot. There is simply no way for the UK to lose 5000 prestige, even if the UK gets knocked back to just being London.

In my two sicilies game I got in a war with the Papal states, all three of the papal states allies, including Sadina piedmont, refused to come to their aid. Watching wars between secondary powers unfold you can easily see nearly all of the allies of the defending force anbandoning them if they are outnumbered in terms of military force even though that combined the allies would be stronger as a whole.

This is pretty much the problem. Also, once a major nation mobilizes, no one will even think about joining an alliance with you to help you, because they take into account their pre-mobilized military.

The main reason for the kansas-nebraska act, the thing that ended up causing much of tension to eventually explode came from the fact that the missouri compromise was no longer working because of the expansion of territory in the west. California also became a free state even though it was supposed to become a slave state by the defining articles of the compromise. This ended up causing a large amount of conflict. The Mexican War didn't cause the civil war, but it led to a series of events that allowed for the confederacy to form. Though, perhaps, instead of it being a requirement, it instead only makes it more or less likely depending on whether or not it takes place. If the Mexican War happens it's likely, but if it doesn't the odds of the civil war happening drops by, say, 75%?

The overriding problem was that the South's political strategy rested solely on the ability to keep parity in Congress by having the number of slave states equal the number of free states. Anything that threatened to upset that tenuous balance would have caused the same problem. I think that balance being maintained is pretty much the least likely scenario.

I know. The thing is nations who are in a position of competing sphere's of influence should be able to choose which one to support or maintain an indefinite state of competing interests allowing for the nation to remain relatively free while two or more GPs diplomatically have a tugawar over who get's a say in the affairs of that country. Or something like that. What do you think?

I think that it should only work out if the nation can manage to stay relatively cohesive. China's internal troubles are precisely why they couldn't manage it - Siam's lack of them over the period are why they could. It should be unlikely but possible. There's currently only one event (that I know of) now that throws someone out of your SoI - that one leads to either a Cut Down to Size war or loss of prestige for the GP. More events like that should exist.

scholar · Oct 31, 2010

Sternness said:
You sound like you might have liked Victoria 1 more. It has all of that. That said, I like the new system better, except that I feel like I have less control now when it comes to driving up militancy and causing my own revolution. In my mind that's instrumental when playing when playing a country like Argentina or Peru, which starts as a Dictatorship and it's only feasible game plan is to become a democracy and attract immigrants. Really, when it comes down to it, I'd like to think that revolts have more causes than the ones you listed: failing economy, tremendous loss of war, people not being fed.... That's a bit cut-and-dry, don't you think?

No, I wrote a lot explaining why but I hit the wrong "post reply" button and lost three paragraphs of text as well as the ones following it. Simple fact: Revolutions rarely have high minded ideals that are championed only by those who succeed for propaganda. Citing French and Russian Revolution.

Sternness said:
It's an idea, but I don't think I'd support it. I could never say yes to cutting back on the 1836 world model they have going, just for the sake of the last 30 years. It's not like this game needs a 20th century ending in my mind (but, then again, I've got no interest in HOI).

This is how I see it. In EU3 I love playing the game so much I'm sad when 1821 shows up, because it always shows up too soon. When I play Victoria 2, however, it seems like the end never comes. It get's so slow and that doesn't do the game any good.

Sternness said:
You're talking as if every immigrant in the game has a consciousness of 10---or 11. It's not all about logical prosperousness, it's about that idea of a new start, which is something the Americas championed, and that the immigration bonus models well enough---alongside the immigration-minded political parties, that is.

Actually, maybe the solution to the immigration and assimilation problems should center more on each country's citizenship policy. Leave the full-citizenship-like assimilation to countries with full-citizenship parties. The UK doesn't have one of those at game start, does it?

No, not even close. A new start? Most immigrants to the United States came to the United States seeking opportunity because their homes were suffering from famines and wars. Let's look at our major demographics, avoiding the English who started the venture. The Irish came to America mostly because of the Irish Potatoe famine and years of oppression under GB. The Germans came to America fleeing Prussia's wars that lead to millions of displaced peoples and widespread famine. Italians came over because of the four different Italian Independence wars, named mostly that way for propaganda. In the 1800s the only ones heading west were those doing so because their homes were becoming horrible places to be.

I apologize if this seems curt, but it's frustrating losing everything you wrote because you hit the wrong button!

scholar · Oct 31, 2010

naggy said:
I definitely think that GPs getting beaten horribly by rebels should cause a huge prestige hit. I also think that nationalist rebels should come out of the woodwork if a nation starts getting torn by rebels. Not sure about the rest, offhand. One problem now is that once you get a decent amount of prestige, it's almost impossible to lose enough to get knocked out of the GP slot. There is simply no way for the UK to lose 5000 prestige, even if the UK gets knocked back to just being London.

I would significantly reduce the amount of prestige one could obtain. There should be a decay rate and prestige should rarely go higher than 500. That's just me though, but it does just seem ridiculous to have the prestige scores some GPs have late game simply for being GPs and spending 250 every few months for a century.

naggy said:
This is pretty much the problem. Also, once a major nation mobilizes, no one will even think about joining an alliance with you to help you, because they take into account their pre-mobilized military.

Which I think needs some fine tuning and making alliances more secure. Now no one's suggesting that if Great Britain decides to take Holstein that Oldenburg should aid them, but in most wars there should stable alliances. Not just those between the GP and their armies of pawns.

naggy said:
The overriding problem was that the South's political strategy rested solely on the ability to keep parity in Congress by having the number of slave states equal the number of free states. Anything that threatened to upset that tenuous balance would have caused the same problem. I think that balance being maintained is pretty much the least likely scenario.

The thing is, it's not really the number of states, though that was important, it had to deal with population. Now they didn't really care about much of the northeast prairie land becoming free states because their population would still allow the south to maintain a very strong presence in the house and the electoral college. So the status quo would most likely have remained if there wasn't an upset to the balance currently in place at the beginning of the game.

naggy said:
I think that it should only work out if the nation can manage to stay relatively cohesive. China's internal troubles are precisely why they couldn't manage it - Siam's lack of them over the period are why they could. It should be unlikely but possible. There's currently only one event (that I know of) now that throws someone out of your SoI - that one leads to either a Cut Down to Size war or loss of prestige for the GP. More events like that should exist.

China's internal troubles aren't set in stone in 1836, so it's possible for them to resist the europeans just like Siam, but it should not happen very often. I definitely agree there should be more events dealing with Sphere of influence.

Arizal · Oct 31, 2010

scholar said:
The game should feel like the Victorian age and this just feels like an age of mindless randomly spawning rebels without a cause and massively ahistorical armies wandering pointlessly.

:rofl:

Yes, a guy who is articulated and know what he want, what is wrong and that this game has a great potential, if only we correct some things.

I can say that I agree with most of your comments, except when you talk about static and arbitrary limits, like for the armies. For me, it could just be more expansive. I've read a book write by a certain Kennedy some years ago, which said that great empires felt because they were negecting theirs economies to built a strong army while another power rises.

The other thing is about scripting. Are you suggesting there is no ACW if USA doesn't conquer Texas? But in doing so, you just go to a deterministic history. It's not that I don't think a less powerful CSA would have formed if they knew they had no chance, but give them a chance. I think we should try to give a structure to the game that can let happen the majority of historical events, but without forcing it.

I said that, but I defititely like your opinion about revolt. We do revolution when we are poors and have nothing to lose, not when we are rich and want more. If we want more, we will do riots and strikes (if we are allowed), but we will definitely not destroy half of the country... Wait, have I said that the rebels destroyed the country? No, the rebels don't do any damage at the country economy, like you said, and they won't even die properly!

Someone suggested that you liked better Victoria I because in this game, we had most grip on the country, but I don't think so. In my case, I would like to have even less power, but seing things happening that make sense, not the British Worker's Commonwealth everytimes or the Russians having borders with Egypt without any worries from other GPs. I like this game, me too, but I would really like to see more emphasis put on the diplomatic screens, aside of the other things you said.

Congratulation for your post, it's far greater to read this than to read "this game is c***, or there is no hope, or just another angry forumer. At least, you proposed something. I can't do the same because my complains are about dilpomacy... All I have to demand is Congress, forums, different types of alliance, secret agreements and more depht in relation (like this one earlier who proposed to reform the SoI system by putting more realism in it).

So, Paradox, we are not angry rebels with nothing, we are just partially fulfilled history lover (mostly) gamers and thus we want reforms put in this wonderful game.

naggy · Oct 31, 2010

scholar said:
The thing is, it's not really the number of states, though that was important, it had to deal with population.

Not true. The South had 83 of 237 house seats in the 36th Congress (last before the ACW). They had fallen behind in population years ago, and had no hope of catching up. The Senate was the sole area of parity.

scholar · Oct 31, 2010

naggy said:
Not true. The South had 83 of 237 house seats in the 36th Congress (last before the ACW). They had fallen behind in population years ago, and had no hope of catching up. The Senate was the sole area of parity.

It wasn't really the south, but the democratic party, which maintained the status quo, though over a third seems to me to be a strong precense. If Abraham Lincoln wasn't elected over the Democrat then the civil war would have been postponned 4 years. I'm also interested in knowing if the south you are referring to includes the northern slave states (border states) that remained with the union as well as mentioning how many representatives came from california. Again, I'm not saying that the civil war shouldn't happen just because the mexican war doesn't happen, just that it shouldn't be as likely to happen. I am a strong believer that the civil war should not be a predetermined event, but rather something that can be avoided by both the AI and player depending on events that take place during the game.

Looking through wiki, during the 36th congress there were more democrats than republicans. Democrats were the south's main ally and had a large array of support all around the country. It was 38 democrats to 23 republicans. In the house things weren't so clear, 82 democrats, 15 know nothings (mixed support), 16 Opposition party (south supporter), 8 anti-lecomptan democrats (southern alligned, but mostly independent), 6 Independent Democrats (Southern alligned), and 113 republicans. So the south had about 50/50 in the house.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/36th_United_States_Congress

OHgamer · Oct 31, 2010

Let's keep the discussion to game mechanics. If you want to discuss the historiography of the causes of the US Civil War, please take the discussion to the History Forum where it properly belongs.

scholar · Oct 31, 2010

Frederic III said:
I can say that I agree with most of your comments, except when you talk about static and arbitrary limits, like for the armies. For me, it could just be more expansive. I've read a book write by a certain Kennedy some years ago, which said that great empires felt because they were negecting theirs economies to built a strong army while another power rises.

That's what I suggested. Not really static limits, those numbers were merely those that I believe that such a nation could easily afford, not just be restricted to that. Having more units than 50 should increase their maintainable cost by 200%, more than 100 should do so by 1000%. This should keep numbers down and only really large countries can afford more than a hundred units in their armies.

Frederic III said:
The other thing is about scripting. Are you suggesting there is no ACW if USA doesn't conquer Texas? But in doing so, you just go to a deterministic history. It's not that I don't think a less powerful CSA would have formed if they knew they had no chance, but give them a chance. I think we should try to give a structure to the game that can let happen the majority of historical events, but without forcing it.

Not really, though it seems like that. I really mean to suggest that it would become unlikely. The mexican war makes the civil war more likely to happen. I believe that the war should be avoidable, but I think there should be modifiers catapulting it along or slowing it down. It's entirely plausible that the civil war wouldn't happen until during the early twentieth century.

Frederic III said:
Congratulation for your post, it's far greater to read this than to read "this game is c***, or there is no hope, or just another angry forumer. At least, you proposed something. I can't do the same because my complains are about dilpomacy... All I have to demand is Congress, forums, different types of alliance, secret agreements and more depht in relation (like this one earlier who proposed to reform the SoI system by putting more realism in it).

Thank you. We have a congress, it is just only one house, which is disappointing. It would be great to see both a senate and a house in some governmental elections. I want to be able to directly influence the people that I'm supposedly ruling, but not outright control them. Some random events during elections just doesn't seem like enough to me. So I'd say there is a lot more to be said to improve Victoria 2, but I think that's best kept for an expansion.

scholar · Oct 31, 2010

OHgamer said:
Let's keep the discussion to game mechanics. If you want to discuss the historiography of the causes of the US Civil War, please take the discussion to the History Forum where it properly belongs.

I apologize if this seems out of line in any way, but the causes of the US civil war directly relates to the game. It would be impossible to have a discussion on how to improve the civil war in it's representation in Victoria 2 without actually discussing the causes of the civil war, especially if we want it to be preventable. Again, I apologize if this is out of line. It's just something that I feel strongly about. Besides, we're talking about events and how they would influence the civil war in game. Modifiers and scripting events. It's not a purely historical discussion.

Dominatus · Oct 31, 2010

scholar said:
(if you want to)

First I'd like to say that I never played Victoria. The only other game I played from Paradox is EU3 HttT, so... take what I have to say anyway you like. It's just I wanted to make that clear. The reason why I'm making this topic instead of posting in the "Why I won't play Victoria 2 anymore" is because I like this game. I think it's a fun and interesting thing. I look forward to not only playing the game straight up, but possible mods and even conversions from EU3 to Victoria. There are just some problems, which are major, that need addressing in the latest patch. I also have some suggestions, which is entirely up to you to ignore or implement. I don't really expect much from this statement, but I can't help but try.

First thing I'd like to say is rebels. Not even 2% of the population would never be able to implement armed revolts over the entire country numbering in the dozens of thousands every four to five months. I know 1.2 made some rather big changes to that, and they are better. I also know the rebels are a little bit tougher now than they were before. (Before it didn't take much to have one three unit stack go through five provinces of 2-3 stacks of rebels.) The thing is though, they are far too numerous. Rebel groups were active in countries during the Victorian Age, but they had reason and proper catalysts. There is no reason what so ever for a country with a relatively liberal government, numerous reforms, very stable, and rich, with all it's populations meeting their life needs and a lot of luxury needs to suddenly devolve into utter chaos. It's unrealistic and it's disgusting. It shouldn't matter if Taxes are at 100% for everyone, if they are happy, if the country is progressing, and if all is right in their little worlds there is no chance for support for rebels to go outside maybe a handful of radicals spread around the country.

So, stop it. If you don't I'm not saying that I'll stop playing. I'm just saying that people will get annoyed. The game won't be a game anymore it will become a chore. How many millions of rebels will I have to kill as a non-expansionist Denmark? It will become tiresome and soon the only thing keeping interest in the game alive is the occasional wars and some rather nice alternate history. There needs to be some sort of system to the rebels. There should be rebels. I'm not saying get rid of them. I'm just saying don't make them a continuous nuisance. Because that's all they are to the player. A minor inconvenience that takes up 90% of the game time. The real problem in the rebels is for the AI countries. I've seen Russia get completely taken over by rebels. I've seen the main British Isles taken over but British India expanding into China. This would never happen and it makes the game ridiculous.

Rebels should become a reaction to a problem. Not the cause. When a nation is in heavy debt, there should be a revolt risk. From recently conquered territories there should be a revolt risk. When you lose a war there should be growing unrest among the populous. When none of your people are getting their needs there should be revolts. There should be some pattern, some warning. You should have events of building unrest when a country is on the decline. So revolts end up appearing as a byproduct of it. When political reforms are stifled there should be a growing militancy.

So let me stress this again. Revolts are a product of a failing economy, a tremendous loss of war, and people not being properly fed. This is how things were there. The only times revolts actually even occured was because of something going on in the country. Facism took hold in Germany because of the heavy defeat in WW1, but there was more. It wasn't spontaneous. There wasn't a million rebels taking over the country in a year enforcing their demands on the country. It was a slow process. The country was in dire straights. The people had nothing. Prestige was at an all time low. The people were galvanized through decades of rallies and protests. It took decades for the German Federation to become the Third Reich. Russia didn't become Communist because there was a lack of liberal reforms and a growing amount of education among the populous. It was simply because Russia was failing miserably at the war, the economy was failing, and none of the people got any of their needs. That's how revolutions formed. Not because some people got smarter than the average bear and suddenly said "Viva La Revolution!". Get rid of this ridiculous system and rework it with a varying array of modifers. When they meet their life needs things are neutral, when they get luxury goods militancy should be reduced significantly, when their lives are only partially fulfilled there would be a want for reform, but not enough to cause revolts, and finally when they do not get their needs at all there should be building militancy for revolt. And even still there should be events prompting the change in militancy warning the player or the country of the problems for the people and give decisions to help reverse the trend. It's only when all else fails that revolution should happen.

Also, countries should not be able to grow to a fairly large size and then be mostly taken over by rebels. The rebels should not be able to take over a large portion of a country without causing problems. Now Russia has all but fallen to rebels, all of Siberia, and most of what's west of the Urals was claimed by rebels but the capital was never taken. Now the country should collapse into smaller countries, not remain a super power of the industrial age. A country that is losing badly to rebels should take heavy prestige losses. A country that's provinces are taken over by rebels should lose a significant portion of their industry. It's down right hilarious that Russia can be an industrial superpower with very little actual control outside it's capital and have very high prestige. Most importantly a nation that's even a third covered by rebels should immediately lose GP status no matter what it's ranking or even that it should be lowered to a point that it's no longer a GP.

1.3 needs to rework this entirely. I hope what I said doesn't fall on deaf ears.

There are some other things that aren't as important, but are pretty important. Among them is the lag. Now I know there may not be much you can do about this, but... Let's look at it this way. The first fifty years of the game can be played at maximum level time in about the exact same time as just ten years of the early twentieth century. I understand that there is an inevitable amount of lag build up, but the fastest setting shouldn't only go as fast as the middle setting in the end. There are games in which I just got bored dealing with rebels popping up in droves and the time not going by fast enough for me to stay involved. The lag needs work, sadly I can't exactly say how to help this. Maybe by merging most of the Indian tags. They serve very little purpose. make it like Africa. There were dozens of countries that could be involved in Vicky, yet we only have one that's not on the coast (except Ethiopia) and that's Sokoto. You could easily merge India to three or four tags. If the players want more, we can make more.

Another major problem is standing armies. In the beginning this is kept under control, but nearing half way through the game it get's ridiculous. I don't like seeing Britain... it's just sad what happened to them. They had no where near the resources to afford that even during WW2. Instead, I propose something else. Most countries of rather small size should only be able to afford up to about ten-twenty units, depending on how many territories they control and their population. Medium countries such as Italy should be restricted to forty units. France and Germany about sixty. Russia at about seventy. going over fifty units should increase the maintenance of the units by 200%, going over 100 should increase it by 1000%. This should restrict anything like what we normally see late game with as many as twenty units per province in India. This really has to be fixed, if it's not then the end game just becomes tedious and unwanted. The fun factor officially drops off at around 1880. Restrict army sizes. There should be no multi-million man engagements. Even engagement in the forty thousand range should be minimal, unless, of course, you're china.

Next up we have assimilation and western immigration. This is a huge problem, but so far it ranks four. It's not as big of a deal as others make it out to be and it sure as hell is not a game breaker. It is, however, an unrealistic annoyance. British people should not be the majority of India under any circumstance. Most colonies should only have a small European population. Assimilation should be a slow process and mainly restricted to the upper class with some small spillover into the middle class. It should rarely be above 10%, period. However, a slow and steady build of 1-2% a decade is acceptable. So, British India should be able 12% British by the time WW2 comes around, and even that is probably way too much. You should be able to restrict or encourage assimilation. It shouldn't just randomly occur because you took over the province. Japan shouldn't make Brunei 60% japanese in just a little over a decade of conquest. Now assimilation should also depend highly on culture. Northern Italians can become southern Italians far more quickly than Kanuuji Indians to proper British people. Immigration should depend very highly on the state of a country. If you are a prosperous nation building up industry and expanding steadily immigration should be good, no matter if that country is France, Greece, Sokoto, or Honduras. The United States should not attract people if it's experiencing heavy revolts. The United States should not attract people from countries that are more prosperous than it. And the United States should not attract people nearly as much if it fails to reach the Pacific Ocean or get Texas. Immigration should only occur in countries that encourage it and only from countries that are in dire straights. This needs some heavy reworking, but nothing a few modifiers can't fix.

Diplomacy. The Victorian age deals heavily in diplomacy. Where wars were between big countries and a network of alliances protected countries. This doesn't happen in the game. GPs and their spheres are okay, but secondary powers and other countries break alliances and forge them every month. Countries rarely back each other up. I've seen the Ottomans form an alliance with Austria but break it when Austria decided to go to war with Venice. It's a pathetic web of meaningless dribble that doesn't matter at all in the game. It seems some fine tuning, otherwise there's no point in ending the game at the dawn of WW2 because there will never even be a ww1.

Finally some things to get rid of. Pan-national rebels. There is no need for them as they operate highly unrealistically. There's literally no point in Pan scandinavian rebels as they rarely ammount to anything. Also the movements during that time for such a union were very very small. I highly doubt they could raise 3000 troops to form a single unit unless Denmark and Sweden were allied and had very good relations. Pan american rebels are god awful. There's literally no point in having all of the different possible American countries as they all collapse back into the United States. New England forms? GREAT! A decade later all what's left is boston and the rest is the USA. The Confederacy wins the civil war because you assist them? Perfect! Five years later half of the country is back in the good old US. Remove them and maybe the tags will be worth something, because if you don't then you might as well remove them. Pan German rebels? The most historical, but also were still rather minor. In the game they end up consuming entire nations that end up having pan German rebels taking over territories that have no German people. I've seen most of northern italy overrun by them. And don't get be started on the ahistorical nature of pan italian rebels. No one gived a damn about a pan italia. In fact Italy had no big movements, but rather it was used by Piedmont to create nationalism, not go along with it. There are no need for pan italian rebels because there was no such thing, the only ones wanting an italy were the elite class in charge of the countries. Pan Russian ones are even more of a joke. Russia was built to collapse into smaller nations, not have territories break away from the Ukraine to join Russia. Get rid of pan-national rebels. They have no real place in the game.

Some scripting. The United States should instinctively go to take over Mexico immediately. This is such a rare event that it's completely pointless to even have the American Civil War because it was brought on by a limiting of slave states brought on by that very war and California wanting to be a free state despite of it's position. The civil war should only occur if the Mexican war happens. Alaska should only be purchased if the United States succeeds in both the Mexican and civil wars. And the Confederacy shouldn't be such a joke. Make them more powerful, I mean... The United States was on the verge of annexing all of Mexico creating a huge and powerful state. What we see now is pathetic.

Scandinavia should be a 1 in 20 event. It comes on far more likely than that. Italy should form in about 1 in 3 games, yet it rarely does. The North and South federation should appear in some form in every game. Prussia and Austria's forces should battle each other senselessly, which they do, with their federations. Now Germany itself should be a 1 in 3 game thing. North and South should normally just bash each other but the formation should still occur rather regularly. Japan should modernize once every two games. China and Siam should modernize once in every 10 games, as there were active movements for modernization and China was no where near irreversibly corrupt at the game start date and Siam was very good at playing France and Britain off of each other.

Now this is something extensive that I think would do rather well if implemented. I'm not saying the game is bad, it's not. There are just some flaws that make the game less fun and more stressful. The game should feel like the Victorian age and this just feels like an age of mindless randomly spawning rebels without a cause and massively ahistorical armies wandering pointlessly. I love Victoria 2, so I hope what I say will be listened to and not just be dismissed as another naysayer that can't appreciate the game for what it is instead of focusing on making it what it was meant to be. Thanks for reading this novel of a suggestion,

scholar.

Very well written post, I agree 100% with all

unmerged(154589) · Oct 31, 2010

I'm pretty sure OP sums up the feelings most players have about V2:
Decent game right now, shit ton of work left to make it good, with rebels being the biggest issue.
Congrats on having the willpower to type that all out though. I sure don't, but I agree 100%. With everything. Especially merging Indian and African minor cultures.

Some advice for 1.3, listen to the ramblings of an EU3 player

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