A Quick Beginner's Guide to Victoria 2!

[Carr1]

I know there are a lot of great tutorial series out there that go over this game's detailed mechanics in complex depth, but I wanted to try and make an accessible guide to Victoria 2 to help those who are completely new to the game on just getting started without requiring multiple hours of viewing. The reason I strove for brevity in this guide is to help hook those who are turned off by the initial learning curve, mistakenly believing you have to read a manual just to play a game like Victoria 2.

Preposterous!

Any feedback would be great.

I already made similar videos for HoI4/CK2 but I plan on possibly redoing them as more DLCs become available. EU4 will be a difficult game to tackle and I want to do that one right!

 

[grimkm]

I've been wanting to give you some feedback for awhile now and I hope you appreciate what I am about to write.

Firstly, great short intro that doesn't drag on forever. My observations are, a good quick intro to set up for the very first intial few years up to about 1840 really..after that, you are on your own. Good way to learn by all means.

However, I feel it misses a few key things.

National focus research. It gives added plurality..this gives added reasearch bonus. You say idealism is important to get for research bonus..and here are free extra bonus points you missed..maybe something to research in between medicine and 1840?

Industry..You didnt even enter the commerce tab and talk about the input bonuses you can get which are crucial especially for a small country with limited rgo's.

military tech I think you covered well..but perhaps a little more reasoning for your choice of stack, as its not one I'd subscribe to.

Also, call me a fossil..but I have no clue when you compare combat systems to eu4..never played it.

Admin efficiency..you can get the "rght" number of crats, but unaccepted cultures dont equate to the same..again..commerce tab and improve admin efficiency for the multicultural countries like SP or Austria per say.

Economy: Tax the shit out of the poor I dont agree with. I find you miss the point of pop promotion and demotion. Poor bastards will demote..not promote. Also, the poor being the largest group of people with the most needs..lower their taxes to increase demand for basic industry like booze and clothes and furniture..the rich can survive..Seriously, my games where I promote this lovely swedish social democracy idea, is when my industry is the best.

Other than that, thumbs up and glad to see people giving this game some good loving!!

I hope this is viewed as a critique, and not me being an arse. Seriously, your input is highly appreciated and hopefully people view it and learn! Perhaps others more knowledgeable than me may have a few words to input too. I also take into consideration the time limit your under and trying to cover things..and I am always on the look out for videos like yours..and I think I will employ one or two of your points..others I already agree with, and as above, some I don't. Look forward to seeing more of your stuff..and I have subbed your channel!

 

[Carr1]

I appreciate the helpful commentary. I have no issues with your criticisms because honestly I find that knowledge on Victoria 2 is highly limited due to its age and complex mechanics that the wiki fails to explain in great detail. I was bound to get a few things wrong with my explanation, though I found that even other major YouTubers have a very limited knowledge on V2. Many Steam guides have the same problem, and after creating the video I've received good feedback on army compositions for instance from Reddit that after testing helped me exponentially.

If I had to make the video again (which I might), I'd like to touch on some of your points:

NF research/plurality: You are definitely right about plurality, though I find that's a minor detail and may not be something worth mentioning in a brief Victoria 2 beginner's guide. I often find plurality events to be far and few in between as it is. You can squeeze another tech between Med/Empiricism, though not always depending on your nation, and generally it's a tech you may not start off with from tier 1 such as experimental railroads. If I had to make a guide focusing directly on tech, I'd definitely give a comprehensive step-by-step guide.

Industry: Understandable. I find industry in Victoria 2 to be a little inconsistent, and as it was a beginner's guide I didn't really want to give a small country beginner's guide. I find industry capacity of smaller nations to just be bad no matter how much you tech them. Again, I'd focus on this had I'd been focusing on smaller countries or even uncivilized nations.

Admin: I have never been able to promote Bureaucrats from unaccepted pops. You can increase unaccepted/uncored provinces with tech, that's about it in my experience. I'm not sure I quite understand.

Econ: I had someone say the same on Reddit, telling me to tax the middle class to demote pops into Craftsmen. I probably should have went into more detail here as my goal was not only to get pops to middle class as soon as possible but also give the player some starting cash. Definitely could have been better here, though admittedly I hear a lot of different opinions on economy so I'm always a bit perplexed myself. By middle and late game I tend to just let my eyes glaze over on tax anyways and let Tariffs carry my economy once Africa opens up.

Definitely appreciate the feedback, friend. In the future I will probably redo these videos as they're some of my first commentaries in a very long hiatus from YouTube.

 

[grimkm]

Glad you appreciated them. I should maybe one day put my money where my mouth is and do a video myself. haha..It is tricky and I am probably a little jaded having played the game since vanilla days. There have been some really useful guides..and I have amalgamated that knowledge into my playstyle..as you point out, for everyone who makes valid points they normally have a downfall elsewhere. It is a little mystical in its inner workings.

As far as being right or wrong..I have failed and succeeded in various ways in my campaigns. There does seem to be certain things that will work. i.e When industrialising..liqour and glass will go forth into space no matter what. Steamers generally are a good earner. Furniture and luxury furniture if you have some access to woods of the two types usually win. Military supplies are a bit hit and miss..and I have found that only by keeping your military spending high, will these be successful in perpetuity. Its effectively the only industry you can really subsidise in the game. But the input efficiency is crucial if you dont have a large internal market.

But again, thanks for giving this game some love and I wish you all the best with future content and I'm looking forward to catching it.

 

[D.IrIsH]

Helped clarify a lot of things for me and straight to the point.. very much appreciated

 

[Kovax]

Depending on which country you play, it seems to vary whether you should tax the rich or the poor, or switch from one to the other at some point.

Over-taxing the rich reduces (or eliminates) their occasional (or frequent) construction of railroads and factories at no cost to you. The importance of this varies greatly with your industrial policies, and can be essentially irrelevant with "Planned Economy", in which case you can milk them for every last dime.

Over-taxing the middle class makes it harder to maintain and grow Bureaucrats, Clerics, Clerks, and Officers, each of which is essential for some element of your society (unless you don't build factories so you don't need Clerks). In most industrialized countries, I'll generally reduce their taxes to something lower than rich or poor, at least until bureaucracy and education are at the levels I want, and keep it "reasonable" throughout the rest of the game to allow for increases in Clerks.

Over-taxing the poor reduces or even stops promotion into those middle-class occupations, and has a drastic effect on how many goods are purchased. This can have a major impact on the profitability of any factories you build, as the poor will typically be their most prolific consumers, income permitting.

There are several overall long-term economic strategies that can work, and your allocation of the tax burden will be highly dependent on that strategy. A simplistic "do this" tutorial only covers some the standard cases, and may be the wrong answer for others.

 

[KevinG]

Over-taxing the rich reduces (or eliminates) their occasional (or frequent) construction of railroads and factories at no cost to you. The importance of this varies greatly with your industrial policies, and can be essentially irrelevant with "Planned Economy", in which case you can milk them for every last dime.

The "free" stuff they build isn't actually free if you don't tax the rich. As long as you don't outright build factories/railways yourself and you only use the invest function to build factories/railroads, you get the same discount that capitalists do when constructing things. When buildings railroads for instance I still tax the rich at 100% but I use the money I get from them to invest in their railroad projects instead of building my own on the map. You end up getting literally the same thing for the same price that way, so it makes no difference whether you let your capis build it or you take their money and build it for them. When it comes to factory building though, I will spend the extra money to build my own instead of investing in AI projects because the AI always picks the most unprofitable factories.

 

[Matheus Morijo]

Thank you very much! It helped me a lot to understand some mechanisms of the game.

 

[luitzen]

Depending a little bit on the circumstances, but your first tech should be Ideological Thought, Idealism and THEN Basic Chemistry/Medicine. Especially when you still need Basic Chemistry, this means you'll spend a lot of time researching Medicine while passing up on research speed.

 

[luitzen]

The "free" stuff they build isn't actually free if you don't tax the rich. As long as you don't outright build factories/railways yourself and you only use the invest function to build factories/railroads, you get the same discount that capitalists do when constructing things. When buildings railroads for instance I still tax the rich at 100% but I use the money I get from them to invest in their railroad projects instead of building my own on the map. You end up getting literally the same thing for the same price that way, so it makes no difference whether you let your capis build it or you take their money and build it for them. When it comes to factory building though, I will spend the extra money to build my own instead of investing in AI projects because the AI always picks the most unprofitable factories.

I think you're totally right. Depending a bit on which country your playing, but all in all you long term goals should be:
1) strong research
2) high population to support your armies with 5% soldier pops (not just through expansion)
3) strong economy to support your army and industry score

Unless you start a game as the UK or another high literacy country there's a couple of things you need to fix first. You lower spending on the military, land and naval stockpiles and the administration. Then you'll max out education spending and max out taxes and tariffs to get your economy in the green again. If that's enough, you can then go to promote clergy up to 2% and then up to 4% in as many states as possible (if there's a serious population disbalance than focus on getting clergy up to 4% in your most populous states first). If you're still in the red, you will have to promote bureaucrats first though and probably switch from time to time between bureaucrats and clergy. If you got all your clergy up to 4% you'll probably switch to bureaucrats unless it takes so much time to get your clergy up that your bureaucrats went up by themselves.

For research, you first take Ideological Thought, Idealism, Medicine, culture techs and then you're finally allowed to take Freedom of Trade if you didn't start with that tech. Only exceptions is that you really need freedom of trade to keep your clergy financed, then you're allowed to take it earlier.

Taking Freedom of Trade will usually fix your economy so that you can start saving money for your first factories, usually cement, glass, liquor or wine. Don't lower your taxes, keep all on max. If you have the ability to switch parties, keep a party in power that supports the military, lets you subsidize factories, but has otherwise as little involvement in the economy as possible. When you have money to build factories, switch parties to one that lets you invest in the economy directly, then switch back.

Manpower is usually out of balance in the beginning and will go down a lot. If you have irregulars (and are able to build regulars) destroy all of them that are not red and build as many infantry as possible. If you don't have enough money to construct new units, that is okay, just lower the third stockpile slider till you can afford it. This way when your manpower goes down and you're not able to support your units anymore, you will still have them and are able to use them in a war (or pretend to be stronger than you actually are).

Once you've taken these important first steps try to find an ally (such as the UK) to invade weak targets (such as Tunisia or Johore) for you. If that's not possible, attack yourself. The sooner you start justifying your first CB, the quicker you start burning infamy (burning as much infamy as possible during the game is very important).

Once you've fixed your economy, clergy levels, researched important techs, built your first factories, reformed healthcare you'll see that your situation improves. Promote craftsmen and clergy for a while, then get your soldiers to 5% in all states and get a tech lead in military tech. If you have money to spare, first increase your military stockpile so that you can have all your units ready to fight at any time, then increase military spending to increase manpower and maybe increase administrative spending to around 11% or 21%.
Next goal will be to lower your tariffs. Tariffs hurt your economy by making goods for your factories more expensive. Keeping high taxes helps you do healthcare reforms. Once you got your healthcare and education reforms through and you still have money left, lower the taxes on the poor since they will be the most affected by taxes. Never ever lower taxes on the rich. They will pay a lot of taxes and will still be able to start any construction instantly.