Issues with unmodded Vicky2 in Steam

[Nuclear Elvis]

Not sure what's changed, but nearly everytime I play Vicky 2 in Steam, file(s) are being corrupted and I have to "Verify Integrity of Files" -- and then Steam downloads at least one or more file, along with the "Steamworks Common Redistributables" file from Steam. Again, I never have played Vicky 2 with a mod (if such even exists), so it appears that some update to either Steam or Windows or something on Paradox's end has changed or not updated that is causing a conflict. I've had Vicky 2 games crash unexpectedly once I get midway into a play-through especially, and then nearly every time I save the game and close it out, I have to verify integrity of files (with yet another update).

Didn't want to initially post this in the Bug Reports, as I'm just trying to verify if others in Steam are seeing this same issue (more players watch this thread).

 

[Bunnytob]

Probably not a helpful thing to hear, but I can say that I haven't been having these issues.

Also yes, Victoria 2 mods do exist. I don't think most mods are posted on the forums anymore, but as far as I can tell almost nobody plays Vanilla.

 

[Nuclear Elvis]

Probably not a helpful thing to hear, but I can say that I haven't been having these issues.

Also yes, Victoria 2 mods do exist. I don't think most mods are posted on the forums anymore, but as far as I can tell almost nobody plays Vanilla.

Worse - a player in Steam posted that the modded Vicky 2 seems broken, and it probably ties into the core problems that I mentioned here. I've noticed that Steam's new Client gets reinstalled after "verify integrity of game files" along with a DirectX reinstallation of something in the C++ realm, along with corrupted Vicky game file(s) as well. The Vicky 2 games seem to get corrupted after game saves also, which I think leads to some issue between the new Steam Client, existing Vicky 2 game, and file management on the cloud. It will be easy for both sides to point fingers at the other (Valve/Steam vs Paradox), and the one thing that changed was Steam's Client, which in the face of that - there is always the debate about whether Valve should have made things more adaptive to their code, rather than publishers getting a game updated, but I'm thinking that's exactly what Paradox would have to do - update Vicky 2 to be fully compatible with the new Steam Client. It's just like MS/Windows upgrades that force the hand of game developers to update their games for a new OS, and sadly - many old games get "left behind" in these processes. We definitely don't want Vicky 2 to be unplayable for Steam users, as it's still a great introduction to the series.

 

[CdePlatter]

You can launch Vicky 2 without steam even being logged in, if you just make a shortcut from the victoria2.exe file in your install folder. Probably would be a good idea to try that after making a clean install. Could also try turning the steam overlay off and disable automatic updates.

I know its probably not helpful to say this but I've been playing Vicky 2 (bought from steam) at least once a year since like 2011 and I've never had this kind of issue so it definitely must be a steam thing, the game itself still runs fine, at least on Windows 10.

Also yes there are tons of mods, though none in active development as far as I know. Most of the major ones are stickied in the User Modifications subforum here and some other major ones are on moddb and some other places. Some of the most popular ones include HPM, Pop Demand Mod (PDM), and the Cold War Enhancement Mod all of which can be found here on the forums. That last one is a favorite of mine and it's definitely a very different experience from vanilla. Some of these are more taxing on performance than others but all three of these at least are mostly stable and definitely not broken by any stretch. Hope this helps!

 

[Bunnytob]

Also yes there are tons of mods, though none in active development as far as I know.

GFM (misleading name; many additions are far more than just flavour) was last updated in July, and I know that TGC (misleading name; it does a whole lot more than just combining mods) is also actively being worked on. I would imagine that DoD is also being updated because that seems to be the alt-history mod for V2.