Newbie starting question

Of course.

However, it does depend on which country you start with, and general points won't really help anyone; they will be too vague for me to really elucidate effectively, and far too vague for you to understand. I would recommend you start with either the USA, France or Prussia, advancing depending on your level of experience. The USA really is a good country to explore some of the issues that you'll see in your average playthrough of a VicII game. It would then focus your questions, which we can then help you with.

In general, you should look at goods and production chains, and at demographics. Look at what you're doing, and how those affect and influence these things, and you'll have a good idea of the competitive pressures that you can face while playing.

If you're really noob in much things, go to South America.

You're pretty much irrelevant to the world's scenary, so pretty much no one will bother you aside your neighbours, I recommed Brazil since it's big, no one have a core there, so no annoying Argentina/Colombia/etc. attacking constantly and you start with cores in three differents countries (Bolovia, Paraguay and Colombia, assuming you're playing regular Vicky), giving a prestige boost and making cling to Secundary Power, depending of your performace you can get to a Great Power in the first 10 years, but it's hard to mantain.

Research farm-based RGO production tech and education, with NFs being on clergy, put tax at max and Clergy salary too, you don't need a actual military once you all the cores back, their former owner would be pretty scared to get them back, and you often ends up in Britain SoI (if you aren't a GP). By 1850 you're pretty much rich and should've abolished slavery, so start factories, if you're a GP, sphere Madagascar and Korea for the Coal, Bolivia have some (but not much) iron, so it's kinda good.

Try to be friends with your GP neighbours (France and the UK) or with the USA to contain them.

It's a good choice, but you can be overwhelmed, Britain often gets a CB against you in the first 10 years and Declares War, Prussia can get too cocky, be unprepared and BAH! You lose and Germany forms.

If you don't understand industrialization you can pick France too, it starts with a Laissez Fair party and pretty much no problem with that, you can surpass US/Prussia/Belgium easily and get a nice foothold in Africa for colonization.

The only issue is war anyways. Be friend to Russia or Austria.

I bought Vicky II a couple weeks ago also & havent really been able to get into it yet. I did the tutorial & played around as the USA for a little bit, but I didnt really get into it.

One thing I wasnt really getting is why the clergy are educating all your people & supposedly teaching them how to read. Did people really go to church to learn how to read in the 1800s? :laugh:

Also, its a little weird for me because I usually like to start small in games & then build up to something bigger. Like in CK2 I will also start as a single county count. There doesnt seem to really be much equivalent to doing this in Vicky II. You either start pretty big & get bigger (Prussia, France) or start small & stay fairly small. I dont really see Belgium taking over Europe by 1936, for example.

I understand that a big part of the appeal of the game is the internal conflict in your country with your POPs & controlling your economy, etc, so of course I will still keep trying to play Vicky II. It seems like a cool game, but its just gonna take a little while before it clicks with me. I need to learn a LOT more about it. I've read through most of the manual so far, & plan on starting that huge PDF strategy guide for it after that. Maybe in a few more months I'll be awesome at it. I actually do want to learn how to play Vicky II before Vicky III comes out at least.

The main concept of Vicky isn't dubbling Nazi Germany, unless you're Russia/Germany/France that have unlimited manpower and can trash coalitions.

Belgium will be a industrial powerhouse while being tiny, depending of your choices it can have a nice army (for it's size).

RX2000 said:

Also, its a little weird for me because I usually like to start small in games & then build up to something bigger. Like in CK2 I will also start as a single county count. There doesnt seem to really be much equivalent to doing this in Vicky II. You either start pretty big & get bigger (Prussia, France) or start small & stay fairly small. I dont really see Belgium taking over Europe by 1936, for example.

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Maybe that's because it doesn't get controlled by a human player in your games? ;-) AI doesn't seem to expand overly aggressively by human player might if he feels like it and there are no other human players to contain him. I would thing that in SP game Belgium can take over Europe without too much problem. Never mind Belgium, even Jan Mayen probably can

General_Hoth said:

So I'm beginning my journey in the Vicky 2 world and, like always in a good paradox game, I'm feeling a bit overwhelmed by what I have to do. I was wondering if experienced player could give me some starting tip for what they do to have a good start with a country?

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I think there are 3 major aspects to the game - industry and economy, social engineering and diplomacy and warfare. They're obviously related, but to some degree the game runs itself (though not very efficiently), so you may focus on individual areas only. For example, Brazil or Argentina are a good start - you can learn diplomacy and warfare first - it's probably easiest part to understand. Then you can learn economy. Argentina is not bad for that, the start is slow, but you're in a full control. If you want to have quicker action Switzerland is a good choice. Social engineering (meaning understanding how the pops behave and how you can shape them to your liking) is probably the most complex part. USA may be a decent choice for that since their democracy will make you pay more attention to pops since you won't have direct control. After learning those components you can try to put everything together (they obviously interact with each other) and play European country of your choice (perhaps Great or secondary power is a better choice)

I suggest first of all that you don't aim too high, for example when playing France it is possible to conquer europe (I did it in steps with allies), this however will be very hard the first time.
Instead it might be better to aim for a certain colonial goal or a political goal.
The two things I find the hardest ingame are warfare and economy.
Military because countries like russia have hordes of conscripts ready to fight you.
Economy because it can be hard to get it working, a 'poor' country can't build railroads (improve production) and factories everywhere and will have to plan their economy more.
At the start of the game you should put taxes to 100% as tax effieciency is low, through research it increases and then you may want to lower your taxes.
DON'T put soldier, clergy (teach people to write and lower consciousness and research) and bureacrat (stop crime and increase tarrif efficiency) sliders to 100% it will get you bankrupt mostly.
In peacetime (when you aren't in real danger) you can lower your national stockpile spendure (will lower max organization of units).
Never ever ever subside a factory as they only need subside when they are failling (mostly noone buys their stuff), subsides lets the failures stay and only cost you money.
With France it would be a nice goal to hold alasce lorraine, colonize northern africa, take indochina and become a liberal democracy.
Hope this helped you, if you have more questions check out the wiki.

Quebec, yes.
Create a cassus belli on the UK and crush them (the hard part) then sign a treaty that gives it to you.
Napoleon III not in an unmodded version IIRC, but I think it is in PoD.
You get France to be any government either through rebels or elections.

General_Hoth said:

Is it possible to get the Second Empire as a political system (Napoleon III) and get back Quebec?

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Napoleon III is nowhere in vanilla, you need a mod.

Get Pop demands for full overhaul or New Nations if don't like too much changes.

Quebec you need to do in the old fashioned way, justify war by getting a great deal of infamy, Quebec is divided in two regions IIRC so you need two wargoals.

A good starting country is Sweden. You got all the main rgo's for a decent industry, high litteracy rate for clerks and a good research booster, and you normally get sphered by russia, who doesn't industrialise for ages, providing you with even more resources to use. The population is quite small, but you won't necessarily be dragged into wars easily. You can form Scandinavia and create quite an empire quite easily.

Concerning expansion you have two periods, separated by the "Great war" invention. Before Great Wars it's not that efficient to expand against civilized powers (except if you already have cores or a special goals). After the invention of "Great War", you'll get cheap wargoals against other great powers, and can expand a lot, either in Europe or stealing colonies. Taking Quebec is perfectly possible then and will not cripple you with a huge infamy. Breaking the UK is always fun.

General WVPM said:

DON'T put soldier, clergy (teach people to write and lower consciousness and research) and bureacrat (stop crime and increase tarrif efficiency) sliders to 100% it will get you bankrupt mostly.

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You say that, but clergy and administration want as much money as can be had. In particular the latter promotes income as well as consuming expenditure.