I'd really like to see return of some Victoria 1 features.
Victoria 2 was generally a vast improvement over Vicky1, but
seriously dumbed down many aspects of the game.
- The division-based military system was much better than utterly stupid and arbitrary "EU" like 3,000 man brigades, implemented in the game so that unsophisticated lazy masses from EU3 (back then the biggest Paradox game) could be invited in and play with their simplified armies.
- The ability to rename brigades and ships was, for some insane reason, removed. How damn revolutionary. Seeing "39th Rome Ironclad" really enhances my immersion, Paradox.
/s 
- Manual pop promotion was tedious indeed. But it did make sense for the two government-run pops i.e. Soldiers and Bureaucrats, not for other pops. So now that Paradox engines are far more capable and playable, how about having a mixed system for the next game? Automatic Pop promotion/demotion like Victoria 2 would continue, but player would sometimes be allowed to draft lower class into army. Or demobilize them back
That would also fix the issue where you recruit soldiers from, say, Edinburgh, and 3 years later 2/3 of those soldiers turn into factory workers and you suddenly can't keep the unit up. You could recruit colonial line infantry, who'd then desert you to turn labourers a few years later. It was very arbitrary, an illogical issue created by game's illogical mechanism. With return of manual soldier/bureaucrat drafting, you could keep up a class of soldiers at your expense.
- Did I mention the military system was far better, closer to early HoI games? You recruited divisions (the actual unit used in that era, even non-European nations had close equivalents), and you could attach bonus brigades to some of them. You recruited ships, and instead of brigades you attached squadrons to them (torpedo boats, minelayers/minesweepers, small corvettes). All that would factor in battle, and did not require the pip-based EU style battles. You also had ability to design your reserves in a much better way than pressing one button and mobilizing the farmers randomly. Divisions even had a quality rating, so they weren't monotone drones.
Heck I bought Victoria 1 solely to play with that military system, not the obnoxious simplified garbage that came in the second game.
- Victoria 2's diplomacy was heavily dumbed down compared to Vicky1 when it comes to features (and even when it was ramped back up, features never returned). You could trade tech, provinces (yes, that game didn't arbitrarily restrict you to weird "state" borders that devs created), guarantee nations like EU4 (instead of having to spend years trying to sphere them to help them defend themselves)...and actually had expeditionary force feature - which meant allies would send divisions to allies and colonial puppets would actually hand their troops over to the lord nation like in real life, not sit around because they can't board transports like in Vicky2.
- The politics were better in that they didn't have arbitrary nonsensical restrictions. Players could ban parties (and anger their supporters), or allow them to exist, at will. Being a monarchy didn't automatically permalock certain parties out of the nation - how you decided to play politics was up to you.
- Vicky1 had you actually transport goods using ships from overseas (or so the manual says), a simple form of convoy system. You had to assign clippers and steamers you built to the convoys. Resource transport in Vicky2 happens instantly because FTL travel was discovered in 19th century.
- Vicky1 had
submarines.
- Vicky1 had shore bombardment from ships. Seriously, how much did they actually dumb the military system down to attract those casuals?
- Vicky1's colonization was very tedious, but it had one major feature - it required actual resources. The four colonial buildings (fort, mission, trading post and such) actually used resources to build. This was again, dumbed down entirely and replaced with
colony mana in Victoria 2 even if it is easier and colonizes the entire state (and making things like British Somalia impossible) because it would be too complex for the casual kid.
- Vicky1 usually displayed the entire population. This meant that if your population was 50 million, it actually was 50 million. Vicky2 dumbed this down to 1/4 and tried to rationalize it with "one man and his family" representing each person. It also meant that when you had a full-sufferage universal democracy, all people voted in Vicky1...while Vicky2 again dumbed the women's suffrage down to some stupid modifiers that cut votes for upper class but expanded it for lower class.
- Victoria 1 allowed all accepted pops to vote equally. Victoria 2 instead had this utter pathetic, idiotic "feature" which made only primary culture able to vote all the time, but also relegated voting rights to party policies (who the heck thought this was intelligent design?). Which meant in Victoria 2 half or more of your nation could be kicked out of voting rights every 4-5 years for no reason (didn't even make sense in places like Germany, Italy, India and China), while Victoria 1 allowed more realistic and stable voting.
- Railways didn't form arbitrary "lines" that never interconnect unless they were built together or looked really ugly as in Victoria 2. Vicky1 in fact didn't have any visible railways on the map, but the infrastructure map gave you a very clear idea of rail routes,
because they interconnected.
- Ability to "expand" the RGOs should be implemented again. Vicky2 simplified it to "More pops = more goods" thing.
I don't know which dev decided removing so many features and dumbing others down was a good idea, how drunk he was at that moment, and why he was even allowed to go on.
On the other hand, even after losing features Victoria 2 was a great game, if a bit restrictive. And it introduced some very necessary improvements and made a smooth, enjoyable game (Victoria 1 is nightmare to play unless you are familiar with old-style Paradox UI, I only managed to play because I play CK1 and Darkest Hour). Yet Victoria 1 remains fun enough to play if you can handle it, simply because it has more immersion and some more features.
If there is indeed Victoria 3 one day, there is a whole lot of things devs could introduce and
reintroduce.
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