Vicky2 guide for Vicky1 vet?

[unmerged(278448)]

I've been playing Vicky1 for years and am just starting to get into Vicky2, but I have been blown away by all the new features.
I've seen the guides for brand-new players, but is there a guide that explains Vicky2 for Vicky1 players?

 

[masteriw]

Well I haven't played much Vicky1 but I thought V2 was actually easier to play with the better interface, amount of tooltips and automatic POP promotion..

 

[Hardcore_gamer]

automatic POP promotion..

I haven't played Vicky 1, but I can only imagine that playing that game must have been complete hell if you had to manually promote/demote your pops.

Seriously, just the very thought makes me wonder why anyone would even bother with the game.

Victoria 1 could as well have been called "POP splitter".

 

[MannheimCouncil]

Well, in Vicky 1 you only had to promote each pop once and unless you were Russia, the UK or China it was quite manageable. You didn't have the incentive to make all your pops work in factories anyway.

For the OP: I really go into Vicky 2 with AHD and for another Vicky 1 veteran I'd suggest having a good look at what pops do differently now and how you can promote them. If you administrative efficiency is low for example, you'll want bureaucrats ASAP as everything else gets more expensive, less efficient without enough bureaucrats. You get them through a national focus on bureaucrats and administration spending. If you lag in literacy you need education spending and a NF for clergymen. Same with soldiers, officers (though I never had a problem there), clerks and craftsmen. The tooltips give you the ideal values, but be advised that the game will do nothing to stop you from going to 5% bureaucrats in a state, which will cost you dearly.

The other major changes are war and diplomacy. The random chance in battles is now displayed, but it has a huge effect on the outcome compared to Vicky 1. Fighting defensively on your own territory is a good idea most of the time. You can also save a lot of infamy by justifying wars and this is the only way to start a war in AHD when you don't have a casus belli. There's also the influence game when you are a great power. It's not that much fun and one of the reasons I wouldn't start as Austria or Prussia until you've learned the ropes.

Technology-wise Cultural techs have been somewhat buffed as education efficiency and research point bonuses are extremely important. Naval techs remain of lesser importance, but commercial techs are needed for efficient industry.

From your icons I see that you only have the vanilla game. I would strongly advise to get A House Divided (AHD). From my perspective Heart of Darkness is optional. I'm still having a lot of fun with AHD and mods, though you will get the typical ship spamming you know from Vicky 1.

 

[Sternness]

I'm another Vicky 1 vet, but couldn't really get into Vicky 2 until recently, when HoD dropped. (Wasn't finding it as interesting as Vicky 1 before HoD.)

The new wiki is a good place to start for sure if you haven't checked it out. (That's probably where you saw the New Players Guide though, eh?)

In addition to the advice so far on Admin. Efficiency, and Literacy, I'd recommend familiarizing yourself with the changes to the CB system from the start. There's definitely a variety of new CB's that you'll actually want to use, and the current system of having to spend time generating a CB in advance along with infamy (BB) has to always be kept in mind. In the latest version, you'll want to understand Ticking Warscore (i.e. can now occupy/defend target provinces alone and still achieve 100% warscore over time...) and how Adding Wargoals works (requires a decent score in relation to military policy to start; resets warscore to 0 in a defensive war, to the required warscore value of the original target, etc...).

I wouldn't run from Influence either; just keep in mind that the second you become a Great Power, you want to remember to set your priorities on the Diplomacy screen and start influencing someone so that you're not wasting points. (Colonial Points in HoD should receive the same treatment.) So, yeah, accumulate some points, read up on the tooltips for the actions they let you take and play around sphering who you can, I say.

Really, there's more great changes that I would go into detail about that were introduced with HoD and the latest beta patch, but I presume from your icon that you're just working with Vanilla Victoria 2?

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Of course I've got a question of my own that fits the scope of this topic too: Is there any truly effective way (be it gamey or whatnot) to really explode in terms of immigration like you could in Vicky 1 and elevate a South American underdog to potential GP status? Uruguay was great for this before with its Full Citizenship party—you just had to focus on passing social reforms early you were set.

Can you even do anything like this to guarantee heavy immigration to your banana republic in the current version? I don't even see social reforms or immigration policy listed in the wiki as affecting your pull on immigrants....