Game: Victoria 1.03 + V.I.P. 0.3
This is my first AAR of my first Victoria game.
After reading part of the Vicky Wikki (thanks to its authors) I decided to start a game with a South American country as this area of the planet is regarded as a "sandbox" for game learning.
This won't be an elaborated AAR, I'm just going to post some end game pictures and a short description on how I got there. Also, it is going to have just one post (as I’d rather all writaars to do the same).
But first, for those oblivious to the Victoria Improvement Project mod, let me tell you that it's main goal is to create an historical game (which didn't happened in this case) by, e.g., increasing the cost of railroads, reducing the availability of certain resources, etc and thus, increasing the difficulty of the simulation.
If you like reading, suit yourself, if you like nothing but screenies (in which case you won’t have read this far I assume, so writing this is pointless) scroll to the end of the page
So, on with the AAR.
Disclaimer: Misa don’t speaka anglish too well.
Argentina starts the game in a very similar situation as today, in 1836 it is nothing but a barren desert, with a small population and a low density, their budget is a nightmare, they lack any industry, their army is a joke, their navy is non existent, it has bad relationships with it’s neighbors and technologically it is... not suitable for a major world power to say the least.
But… it has some potential advantages:
- First, it has a nice amount of starting cash (€ 2500)
- Second, it has some nice colonies at the south which can give her some prestige (fundamental for an early industrialization) all you need to do is build 1 more colonial building. (In vanilla Victoria there are two colonies but in the VIP there’s only one, I guess they want to reduce the prestige this country can make so a-historically early)
-Brazil, my most fearsome and gigantic neighbor is fighting a civil war (thanks VIP) so we can slow their economical (and thus military) development.
So first things first, we are loosing money. It is time for a short term solution, the military are founded at the lowest possible until they reduce the size of the divisions to 1900 men, after this, we increase the level of military expending (which is lower than at the start) to keep a steady influx of prestige. In either case, our manpower is negative and our leadership is non existent.
Now all I need is a long term solution for my deficit. I quickly realize (aka “duh!”) that we have a low population hence a low production and therefore a low income. How to solve this? Importing people of course… did I just refer to humans as tradable goods? Well, what would my public relation assessors say if I hadn’t killed them months ago.
What’s that? How do you arbitrary kill people as if they were cattle? Well, it’s not easy, you must become a dictator first of course… Now that I think of it, that might be the reason why people don’t like this place, it’s ruled by a mad man… Let’s give these natives the false sensation of choice… WE ARE NOW A DEMOCRACY!
Good use to my starting € (yes, considering that my keyboard doesn’t have the pound symbol, I believed that it was more appropriate to use the € than the $).
Now, look to all those Germans flock into town, thank god for the European wars. But they are not enough, Argentina still feels hungry… hungry for manpower.
In the mean time, our army was fighting (as expeditionary forces) among side the Piripatini (or whatever they called themselves) Republic to aid them in their war of independence from Brazil, keeping the “carioca” armies at bay. This means we don’t share a border (with Brazil) so we look at our only neighbor that is weaker than us: Uruguay.
Since it’s independence from Argentina, following a war against Brazil, in which the Argentinean army defeated a numerically superior Brazilian one, the lack of resources forced the Platinean government to release Uruguay. Therefore their existence is as insulting for us as Norway is for the Swedish (not much, actually, but that was a dramatic description, now wasn’t it?).
So, seizing the advantage of the Brazilian civil war, we declare war on Uruguay. Our puny army of 3800 infantry men and 1900 cavalry overwhelms the even punier (does that word exist?) army of 1000 “Orientales” (people born in Uruguay), and we proceed with the annexation.
At this point an event triggered (thank you VIP) saying that Brazil was threatening us with war if we didn’t release Uruguay. We took our chances and (call it luck of any sort) they didn’t dare to attack us, at least not while at civil war.
The next years were peacefully, too peaceful if you ask me. Just a small “started by event and ended by event” war with Bolivia (yes, in the VIP, Bolivia gets its independence, which you would seldom see in vanilla Victoria).
We spent the following years researching, receiving immigrants and most important, saving money. This allowed us to have excellent relations with Brazil, USA, Chile, Bolivia and the UK, this also make possible the claiming of the “Patagonia” giving us a lot of badly needed prestige. Argentina was among the top 15 nations in the planet (pathetic, I know).
By 1880, lots of technologies allowed us to start industrializing. Using our flocks of immigrants that located themselves in La Rioja (west of the country) we opened our first factory, a lumber factory.
The goal here was to make a “vertical integration”. Let’s see, how many of you can spell the word m-a-n-a-g-e-m-e-n-t? This means that we produce every single item of the chain of added value. Starting with timber (RGOs north of the country), next is lumber (timber + workers), followed by furniture (lumber + workers + timber) and in the end… Luxury Furniture (Furniture + timber + tropical wood).
What? We lack tropical wood? Doesn’t matter, Paraguay has some, so WAR WITH PARAGUAY.
After reinforcing our meaningless three divisions to half it strength (God, we are pathetic) we invade the Northern nation, encircle and destroy their only division in their capital, Asunción, (I learned that in Hearts of Iron) and followed with the conquest of the rest of the country. We got all their provinces but their capital, five years later, they would be completely annexed, with a steel factory (yippee!).
Now after having a large number of clerks (around 20% of our pops) we have already reached 15 Commercial techs and 11 Industrial ones, while having the starting 4 Cultural and Navy techs and 6 Army ones (traded for with the US) and… we are running low on prestige.
Can anyone say the word RUSH!? Yup, I rushed for all the culture techs, by 1890 I was the third most prestigious nation of the planet, so I achieved my World Power status.
Now, I continued my industrialization with the clothing industry (all of them) and steel and machine parts (for railroads only) and buying some (very) expensive railroads. One of the main problems of this country as I’ve said, is their low population density, so factories need to be built in different regions (you can’t concentrate everything in one) and therefore, railroads need to be everywhere… a real pain in the @$$...
This part was very tiresome. Getting money slowly, buying railroads, saving, transforming farmers into capitalists, saving again, expanding a factory. This process was slow, I only had 20 € per day, taxing my pops at 49.22 %, having no social reforms and having a laughable army.
In the mean time, the “Paraguayan/Uruguayan free fighters supported by Brazil” events (you got it, rebels… and lots of them) started triggering every time I loaded the game, so eventually I disabled them but to counter that, I focus on having excellent relations with Brazil (200 all the time).
Now, my goals were to learn a bit of warfare and still meet the deadlines so… after some patient rearmament program, my ten reserves divisions (mobilized), my 5 artillery divisions (newly raised), my two infantry divisions (that started with me, I lost the cavalry to some rebels) and my two new generals, declared war against Bolivia.
Somewhere during my war against Paraguay, an event triggered that turned 10% of my farmers into soldiers, this devastated my income but in the long term was proved useful.
By 1914 I had annexed Bolivia and nothing more significant happened.
By the end of the game, I could have researched (with great effort) all the tech tree (I believe that only the US did that) as I was earning over 3 research points per year, so the VIP community did a great job there.
Most of my railroads were early but almost half were experimental. I had the biggest and most advanced railroad network in Latin America. Only the Americans had a bigger one consisting of Early railroads too (as the British had in London) so the VIP community was successful once more making the game more historical.
The only setbacks were that Germany didn’t born, Italy became a super power and WWI never happened.
That was all, now to the screenies:
Final stand:
Railroads:
Europe:
South America:
Africa:
I hoped you enjoyed this short and very poor in details aar.
One question though, at the end I didn’t finance Crime fighting in the entire game, do “corruption buildings” have any effect or they are as useful as negative tariffs?
This is my first AAR of my first Victoria game.
After reading part of the Vicky Wikki (thanks to its authors) I decided to start a game with a South American country as this area of the planet is regarded as a "sandbox" for game learning.
This won't be an elaborated AAR, I'm just going to post some end game pictures and a short description on how I got there. Also, it is going to have just one post (as I’d rather all writaars to do the same).
But first, for those oblivious to the Victoria Improvement Project mod, let me tell you that it's main goal is to create an historical game (which didn't happened in this case) by, e.g., increasing the cost of railroads, reducing the availability of certain resources, etc and thus, increasing the difficulty of the simulation.
If you like reading, suit yourself, if you like nothing but screenies (in which case you won’t have read this far I assume, so writing this is pointless) scroll to the end of the page
So, on with the AAR.
Disclaimer: Misa don’t speaka anglish too well.
Argentina starts the game in a very similar situation as today, in 1836 it is nothing but a barren desert, with a small population and a low density, their budget is a nightmare, they lack any industry, their army is a joke, their navy is non existent, it has bad relationships with it’s neighbors and technologically it is... not suitable for a major world power to say the least.
But… it has some potential advantages:
- First, it has a nice amount of starting cash (€ 2500)
- Second, it has some nice colonies at the south which can give her some prestige (fundamental for an early industrialization) all you need to do is build 1 more colonial building. (In vanilla Victoria there are two colonies but in the VIP there’s only one, I guess they want to reduce the prestige this country can make so a-historically early)
-Brazil, my most fearsome and gigantic neighbor is fighting a civil war (thanks VIP) so we can slow their economical (and thus military) development.
So first things first, we are loosing money. It is time for a short term solution, the military are founded at the lowest possible until they reduce the size of the divisions to 1900 men, after this, we increase the level of military expending (which is lower than at the start) to keep a steady influx of prestige. In either case, our manpower is negative and our leadership is non existent.
Now all I need is a long term solution for my deficit. I quickly realize (aka “duh!”) that we have a low population hence a low production and therefore a low income. How to solve this? Importing people of course… did I just refer to humans as tradable goods? Well, what would my public relation assessors say if I hadn’t killed them months ago.
What’s that? How do you arbitrary kill people as if they were cattle? Well, it’s not easy, you must become a dictator first of course… Now that I think of it, that might be the reason why people don’t like this place, it’s ruled by a mad man… Let’s give these natives the false sensation of choice… WE ARE NOW A DEMOCRACY!
Good use to my starting € (yes, considering that my keyboard doesn’t have the pound symbol, I believed that it was more appropriate to use the € than the $).
Now, look to all those Germans flock into town, thank god for the European wars. But they are not enough, Argentina still feels hungry… hungry for manpower.
In the mean time, our army was fighting (as expeditionary forces) among side the Piripatini (or whatever they called themselves) Republic to aid them in their war of independence from Brazil, keeping the “carioca” armies at bay. This means we don’t share a border (with Brazil) so we look at our only neighbor that is weaker than us: Uruguay.
Since it’s independence from Argentina, following a war against Brazil, in which the Argentinean army defeated a numerically superior Brazilian one, the lack of resources forced the Platinean government to release Uruguay. Therefore their existence is as insulting for us as Norway is for the Swedish (not much, actually, but that was a dramatic description, now wasn’t it?).
So, seizing the advantage of the Brazilian civil war, we declare war on Uruguay. Our puny army of 3800 infantry men and 1900 cavalry overwhelms the even punier (does that word exist?) army of 1000 “Orientales” (people born in Uruguay), and we proceed with the annexation.
At this point an event triggered (thank you VIP) saying that Brazil was threatening us with war if we didn’t release Uruguay. We took our chances and (call it luck of any sort) they didn’t dare to attack us, at least not while at civil war.
The next years were peacefully, too peaceful if you ask me. Just a small “started by event and ended by event” war with Bolivia (yes, in the VIP, Bolivia gets its independence, which you would seldom see in vanilla Victoria).
We spent the following years researching, receiving immigrants and most important, saving money. This allowed us to have excellent relations with Brazil, USA, Chile, Bolivia and the UK, this also make possible the claiming of the “Patagonia” giving us a lot of badly needed prestige. Argentina was among the top 15 nations in the planet (pathetic, I know).
By 1880, lots of technologies allowed us to start industrializing. Using our flocks of immigrants that located themselves in La Rioja (west of the country) we opened our first factory, a lumber factory.
The goal here was to make a “vertical integration”. Let’s see, how many of you can spell the word m-a-n-a-g-e-m-e-n-t? This means that we produce every single item of the chain of added value. Starting with timber (RGOs north of the country), next is lumber (timber + workers), followed by furniture (lumber + workers + timber) and in the end… Luxury Furniture (Furniture + timber + tropical wood).
What? We lack tropical wood? Doesn’t matter, Paraguay has some, so WAR WITH PARAGUAY.
After reinforcing our meaningless three divisions to half it strength (God, we are pathetic) we invade the Northern nation, encircle and destroy their only division in their capital, Asunción, (I learned that in Hearts of Iron) and followed with the conquest of the rest of the country. We got all their provinces but their capital, five years later, they would be completely annexed, with a steel factory (yippee!).
Now after having a large number of clerks (around 20% of our pops) we have already reached 15 Commercial techs and 11 Industrial ones, while having the starting 4 Cultural and Navy techs and 6 Army ones (traded for with the US) and… we are running low on prestige.
Can anyone say the word RUSH!? Yup, I rushed for all the culture techs, by 1890 I was the third most prestigious nation of the planet, so I achieved my World Power status.
Now, I continued my industrialization with the clothing industry (all of them) and steel and machine parts (for railroads only) and buying some (very) expensive railroads. One of the main problems of this country as I’ve said, is their low population density, so factories need to be built in different regions (you can’t concentrate everything in one) and therefore, railroads need to be everywhere… a real pain in the @$$...
This part was very tiresome. Getting money slowly, buying railroads, saving, transforming farmers into capitalists, saving again, expanding a factory. This process was slow, I only had 20 € per day, taxing my pops at 49.22 %, having no social reforms and having a laughable army.
In the mean time, the “Paraguayan/Uruguayan free fighters supported by Brazil” events (you got it, rebels… and lots of them) started triggering every time I loaded the game, so eventually I disabled them but to counter that, I focus on having excellent relations with Brazil (200 all the time).
Now, my goals were to learn a bit of warfare and still meet the deadlines so… after some patient rearmament program, my ten reserves divisions (mobilized), my 5 artillery divisions (newly raised), my two infantry divisions (that started with me, I lost the cavalry to some rebels) and my two new generals, declared war against Bolivia.
Somewhere during my war against Paraguay, an event triggered that turned 10% of my farmers into soldiers, this devastated my income but in the long term was proved useful.
By 1914 I had annexed Bolivia and nothing more significant happened.
By the end of the game, I could have researched (with great effort) all the tech tree (I believe that only the US did that) as I was earning over 3 research points per year, so the VIP community did a great job there.
Most of my railroads were early but almost half were experimental. I had the biggest and most advanced railroad network in Latin America. Only the Americans had a bigger one consisting of Early railroads too (as the British had in London) so the VIP community was successful once more making the game more historical.
The only setbacks were that Germany didn’t born, Italy became a super power and WWI never happened.
That was all, now to the screenies:
Final stand:
Railroads:
Europe:
South America:
Africa:
I hoped you enjoyed this short and very poor in details aar.
One question though, at the end I didn’t finance Crime fighting in the entire game, do “corruption buildings” have any effect or they are as useful as negative tariffs?
