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Penta2

First Lieutenant
91 Badges
Jan 30, 2011
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OK, so.

I just got Vic 2 (and all the expansions) off Steam a bit ago. And some things about Vic 2 bug me.

1. How the heck do I skip that Blink video sequence at start? (Please note: For some weird reason, my escape key is not working. I've tried everything to fix it, but this laptop is 2 years old and not exactly worth sending to a repair shop.)

2. The Advanced Diplomacy Tutorial: OK, so. I'm supposed to Declare War on France. But there's no war justifications selectable or even displayed, so I can't declare war, so I can't continue with the tutorial. WTF?

3. Influence over countries: I'm playing as the UK. How do I increase my influence over Egypt? The whole influence thing has not yet been explained to me.
 
Yes Vicky 2 is not the easiest game to get into it. Hopefully I can help you a bit. :)
Skipping the video at start is indeed done by hitting the escape key. Though I think that if you rename the "movies" folder (in the main Victoria 2 folder) it should stop playing it.
I haven't played the tutorial, so I cannot comment on the it.
About influencing. If you go to the diplomacy screen you should see something akin to this:

(Not my image, source)
In the bottom half of the screen you can see (from left to right) a list of countries, a 'prio' column, the flags of the Great Powers, a 'sphere of influence' colomn, various rankings (prestige, industry, military, overal rank), an opinion column and a relationship column. These allow you to sort the countries.
To influence a country you need to assing it a 'priority' by clicking on the three bars under the priority column. The more priority you gave (assign bars to) a country, the more diplomatic influence you get. Under the flags of the Great Powers you can see how much influence each Great Power has in that country, while the flag in the 'sphere of influence' column displays to who's sphere the country belongs. To add a country to your sphere, you first need to turn them 'friendly' (see the 'opinion' column), which you do by clicking the 'increase opinion' button (which spends 50 of your diplomatic influence in that country). Note that there are 5 levels of opinion; hostile, opposed, neutral, cordial, friendly (and 'in sphere'). So trying to get a country opposed to you into your sphere will be difficult. Once somebody is friendly to you, and you have 100 diplomatic influence, you can add them to your sphere by pressing the 'add to sphere' button (and in doing so spending 100 influence).
The amount of diplomatic influence you get in one country is influenced by a number of variables, hover over the priority bar to see how these variables stack up. Also note that the more countries you try to influence at once will decrease the amount of influence assigned to each individual countries.
Sometimes you will be in competition with another Great Power over a particular country (Egypt, Panama/Colombia and the German and Italian minors mostly). You can spend your influence points to sabotage their actions. The 'discredit' option will reduce the speed at which 1 other Great Power gains influence in that country, the 'expel advisors' option will remove all diplomatic influence of 1 particular GP in that country, the 'ban embassy' option will remove all influence of 1 GP and prevent them from gaining any for 1 year and the 'decrease opinion' option will reduce the opinion the country has of 1 GP (so for example it will no longer be friendly, but cordial). Lastly, if a country is in the sphere of another country, you can remove them from that sphere if their opinion of you is friendly and you have 100 diplomatic influence.
One final note, any GP can join in the defensive wars of a country it is friendly with as long as its wargoal is 'status quo' (or no war goal at all).

I think that is all. Am I missing anything?
 
2 and 3. Don't play the tutorials.

Go here: http://www.victoria2wiki.com/Victoria_2_Wiki

To learn a lot of the basics, play Sweden or Brazil. They're out of the way and don't have to worry about a lot of the Great Power mechanics(like influence) until later.

To learn Great Power mechanics, France or USA make good choices. You start out a Great Power, but you aren't really overwhelmed.(I favor the USA for this, since you really can't screw the pooch unless you try.)

Germany and Britain start out as some of the most complex countries because there is so much going on. They may be inherently powerful, but they are not good choices for a first playthrough.

Edit: I recommend these countries because they make learning Vicky 2 fun. Brazil can invade her neighbors in the early game with almost no risk(and no infamy when taking certain states). Brazil is also nice for learning about political parties. Sweden is out of the way of most of the European hot zones and has a good set up for industrializing. From what I understand, if you want to play the industry game, switch to state capitalism and have fun building resource chains. The USA starts off on a good footing but can be a little overwhelming if you aren't familiar with the basic war/political mechanics. France is much the same, but it is much closer to the action, the tradeoff being France can dominate the colonial game fairly easily.

You don't have to play the entire campaign for every one of these countries to 'get it'. A few decades with any of these countries can teach you everything you need to know about Vicky 2. Beware, even in my worst campaigns I find myself adopting an attitude of "seeing it through" because of the work I've put into it. I don't think I've played a country that wasn't fun.
 
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be very careful about playing in the US, because youll get swamped with event and notification swarm spam with how many regions it has and its railroading til about 1870