Victoria 2's "Great Power Problem:" Accessibility Across Great Power Ranks

[lowdias]

Well, the first thing to achieve GP status for any country would be population, then ressources then industrial base. The only south american country that can approach GP status is Brazil followed by Venezuela . Warfare should be costly, very costly it should be a GIGANTIC pain in the A** even for Brazil to conquer south america, so supply lines and attrition/terrain should be a lot more punishing than in other paradox games like CK3 where supplies are basically a joke.
Warfare should be very hard for countries that do not have the proper industrial base , ammunitions, long shelf life foods, oil/coal for maritime transport, all this ressources should not be available in big quantities except for countries that have a proper industrial base. Supplies in someones own country should be different and rely on basic agricultural products even outside your country there should be a foraging/pillaging value where soldiers take agricultural products from POPs and the more prefessional your army is the less it relies on foraging and more on canned/supplies from mainland.

 

[Meanmanturbo]

Economic game in Vicky 3 is looking to be much more interesting. Spheres are gone and repleaced by getting others into your market, voluntairly or otherwise. And outside of joining markets you can also negotiate diplomatic trade deals for specific good, hopefully making industrialization as a nation that lacks resources more viable.
Other then that, it should be hard to become a GP as Chile.
Nation building mechanincs are looking like managing a smaller nation without becoming a big boy also will be more compelling in Vicky 3.

 

[Antediluvian Monster]

Well, it depends, but Tsushima was far from a turkey shot, most Japanese accounts actually show that. You might argue it either way, how exactly much of their "combat power" Russian fleet actually lost in a voyage, and how much of that is contribution of voyage itself, as opposed to Russian general condition, and quality of ship design in general. However suffice to say, that if Combined fleet had a few pre-dreadnoughts less, Russian might have beaten a decent navy, half an earth away, and Russia was far from being main naval power, with enough supply ships, bases and potential merchant marine to mobilize.

The conventional view of Tsushima in West tends to come from the Japanese side since that's where the British observer (or observers) were. The account which most influenced my view of the battle comes from Peattie, who largely worked off Japanese sources.

But yeah, I suppose you could say Japanese would have won anyway. Even if we compare it to the relatively better performance of the 1st Pacific Squadron, you could put it down to better crews and more modern ships. I think fouling is pretty tangible effect though since the greater speed of the Japanese fleet is widely regarded as decisive (including by themselves). Ships that spend time in water, particularly around tropics, accumulate marine growth in their bottoms. This can notably reduce speed: 2-3 knots easily. Getting rid of that needs periodic visits to drydock so that their bottoms can be cleaned.

USN did actually try to quantify this stuff later, it was something akin to fleet loses 10% combat power every 1000 nm it's deployed from it's base.

If Japanese had had a few battleships less I think they would have tried a bit different approach more focused on attritional warfare than daylight battle. Well, Akiyama Saneyuki's plan for the Tsushima campaign did have significant attritional component already, calling for multiple days of daylight battle followed by night torpedo attacks. It's hard to say how well the Russians would have fended off the Japanese night attacks, the performance of torpedo craft was still iffy but Russian performance at Dogger Bank and the actual torpedo (and mine) attacks that followed Tsushima don't inspire too much confidence. Lastly, it's worth emphasizing how different this scenario is to the counterfactual Chile one. Russians do have a major naval base at Vladivostok and it even has land connection, no matter how thin, to their heartland. What happens when the Russians don't have naval base and Japanese simply evade battle? They can't exactly hope to stick around.

Well, yes, lack of effort for most navies

? As I already wrote, USN's power projection capability at end of WW2 was unprecedented in world history. What we are talking about here is more similar to Japan attacking Hawaii or West Coast in WW2.

The US successfully invaded the Philppines at the end of the 19th century, so they did have the power projection to take on a declining colonial empire on the other side of the world.

The heartland of the said empire itself being half the world away.

 

[HZguy]

Just like in real life: some nations were lucky to have good heritage, like Western European countries, some were lucky enough to fit in good place like USA, some were lucky enough to be in good climate, so there can be hundreds of millions of them, like the Chinese, some were lucky enough to have useful resources, as Persian Gulf countries, and some got their status because of good management, like Singapore.
If you were not lucky with geography, you can only do it in a hard way of management...

 

[mursolini]

The conventional view of Tsushima in West tends to come from the Japanese side since that's where the British observer (or observers) were. The account which most influenced my view of the battle comes from Peattie, who largely worked off Japanese sources.

But yeah, I suppose you could say Japanese would have won anyway. Even if we compare it to the relatively better performance of the 1st Pacific Squadron, you could put it down to better crews and more modern ships. I think fouling is pretty tangible effect though since the greater speed of the Japanese fleet is widely regarded as decisive (including by themselves). Ships that spend time in water, particularly around tropics, accumulate marine growth in their bottoms. This can notably reduce speed: 2-3 knots easily. Getting rid of that needs periodic visits to drydock so that their bottoms can be cleaned.

Yes, but you still have to actually out-fight the enemy, which, if you lack firepower, numbers, armor, ex, you can`t. Bad condition of Russian navy might have sealed it`s fait once they lost the battle, but they had to lose it first.

If Japanese had had a few battleships less I think they would have tried a bit different approach more focused on attritional warfare than daylight battle. Well, Akiyama Saneyuki's plan for the Tsushima campaign did have significant attritional component already, calling for multiple days of daylight battle followed by night torpedo attacks. It's hard to say how well the Russians would have fended off the Japanese night attacks, the performance of torpedo craft was still iffy but Russian performance at Dogger Bank and the actual torpedo (and mine) attacks that followed Tsushima don't inspire too much confidence.

I don`t think there actually was a successful attritional strategy employed in large naval wars, despite jeune ecole being popular go-to strategy.

Lastly, it's worth emphasizing how different this scenario is to the counterfactual Chile one. Russians do have a major naval base at Vladivostok and it even has land connection, no matter how thin, to their heartland. What happens when the Russians don't have naval base and Japanese simply evade battle? They can't exactly hope to stick around.

It is not, because fleet arriving at the coast of Chile has to have a mission, and it is, by necessity, amphibious invasion. Also worth pointing out, that invasion fleet has a major element of surprise and mobility advantage on it`s side, since fleet moves a lot faster then army on roads, and unless there is very dense rail network, it will take a lot of time for defenders to maneuver large force into counter-attacking landed troops.

As I already wrote, USN's power projection capability at end of WW2 was unprecedented in world history. What we are talking about here is more similar to Japan attacking Hawaii or West Coast in WW2.

Unprecedented in what way? Don`t use words, use figures. If Britain invade China and win an opium war in 1840s, and US can invade Japan in 1945, that is a difference in quantity, not quality.

The heartland of the said empire itself being half the world away.

What difference does it make? You either can muster enough local forces to overwhelm potential invaders, and thus rule out invasion, or can`t, and you are open to it. Invasion capacity, in many ways is a soft cap, how many transport ships can you muster for arrival and resupply.

 

[Rubidium]

The US successfully invaded the Philppines at the end of the 19th century, so they did have the power projection to take on a declining colonial empire on the other side of the world.

The US defeated the Spanish navy in the Philippines with the forces they already had on-station in Asia. The large presence of American merchants, whalers, and missionaries in the Pacific meant that for most of the 19th century the US kept a decent-sized squadron bouncing around between various ports in China and Japan to protect American interests. Once the war broke out with Spain, this squadron was ordered to proceed to the Philippines and sink the poorly trained and equipped Spanish fleet there, which it did.

The initial land forces were mostly local Filipino rebels against the Spanish government, as well as the small Marine detachment that accompanied the American fleet. Once the Spanish were defeated, the US could send troops there and defeat their former Filipino allies.

I'm not sure what this says about power projection in general, beyond the importance of local allies and basing rights.

 

[Guedes]

To the OP: everything regarding spheres in Vic 2 (talking solely about vanilla) isnt worth the effort and should be ignored for a successful and pleasant play-through. So your critics about influence are not unfounded but, as far as i know, all this influence/SoI concept wont be present, so you shouldnt worry about it.

As for making Chile a "strong" GP, as others pointed out, it shouldn't be something easy to achieve anyways. But its still possible to make Chile #1GP in vanilla if you do things right.

 

[Antediluvian Monster]

I think this tangent has long outlived it's relevance to the thread but I'll just quickly clarify these.

Unprecedented in what way? Don`t use words, use figures. If Britain invade China and win an opium war in 1840s, and US can invade Japan in 1945, that is a difference in quantity, not quality.

What difference does it make? You either can muster enough local forces to overwhelm potential invaders, and thus rule out invasion, or can`t, and you are open to it. Invasion capacity, in many ways is a soft cap, how many transport ships can you muster for arrival and resupply.

What I mean by unprecedented is that USN at the end of WW2 had ability to park it's fleets almost anywhere on the planet and live off the sea so to speak, for prolonged duration while maintaining a high state of combat readiness. It did this by legion of floating drydocks, repair ships, hospital ships, ammunition ships, bakery ships, fleet oilers et cetera. Britain did not have this ability to anywhere near similar extent (and anyone besides the two to near nil), it was reliant on it's system of naval bases and the forces it did deploy in the Pacific late in the war were actually beyond it's capacity to fully support and hence partially reliant on US assistance.

The difference with the Spanish case is that they were not reinforced due to Spain's more important preoccupations and that the angry locals were arguably more threatening to the now isolated garrison than whatever US brought there. This would not have been the case had US invaded Spanish mainland.

 

[JBolt]

I'd like to preface this thread by saying that I am probably around the median skill level of those who will be playing Victoria 3 at its release. I base this off the fact that I've played Vicky 2 (in HPM), and I understand it well enough to achieve things like unifying Germany, Italy, and Japan, developing South American nations into GPs, and even defeating Qing as Korea and then westernizing successfully. I may not be the kind of insane player who can form the PLC as Krakow, but I would say I was decent.

Because of this, I believe that I'm in a good position to diagnose an issue with Victoria 2's difficulty curve, one that affects all of my campaigns. Starting as a GP is fairly easy because you already have what you need to dominate the world: strong armies, a prefab industrial base, and good enough prestige to keep your rank. However, as a non-GP, getting to the point of being an actual GP is unreasonably difficult.

I don't mean that actually getting to rank number 8 is difficult. That's incredibly easy: All you have to do is simply spam prestige techs, and when a Great War happens and someone gets dismantled, you'll shoot up and take their spot. But the player isn't an actual GP at that point. Being an actual GP means, for example, not fearing the powers in the GP slots below you, and merely having prestige isn't enough to give you that.

To illustrate what I mean, take a Chile game I was just playing. I was hovering in the secondary power zone until around 1900, when, thanks to high prestige and the fact that I was finally able to get socialists in charge to let me industrialize, I was able to crank my score up and fly to rank number 6. But I was not rank number 6, not in any meaning of the word. I had started the game with low literacy, leading to a tech deficit that I was still working to overcome. I had 73 brigades, half as many as any other GPs. I had something like five core provinces, with little room for more factories. Despite cranking up immigration by cheesing reforms early in the game, I was still hanging out at around 11 million core pop, which was, again, far less than most of the other GPs. My navy, which had started piddlingly small, was not large or modern enough to give me much colonial power, because I hadn't been able to invest in researching techs for it or in keeping my naval bases up to date. My colonial empire comprised only part of Manchuria, most of Nigeria, Gabon, Yemen, and Ethiopia.

Beyond that point, I was stuck. All the other GPs had much larger armies than I did, and much larger industrial bases as well, so I couldn't defeat anyone else in a head-to-head contest. I realized that rising further in the GP rankings would entail simply joining Great Wars on the winning side and hoping that I could steal the scraps of the losers' colonial empires; otherwise, there was no way for me to raise more troops or secure more resources. When my allies, Japan and Germany, didn't invite me to their carve-up of the British Empire, thus removing my main opportunity to get more colonies, I knew that I didn't have the will to play any longer.

What are some of the problems I encountered? Among the most irritating was influence. My industrial base relied on, among other things, Colombian and Peruvian coal, Venezuelan oil, and iron from all over the place, but even keeping those few nations in my sphere was more difficult than it should have been. The AI plays the influence game much better than the player because it has all the information it needs at all times and can do a thousand things at once, whereas I only checked the influence screen once every few in-game months or years, only to find that my embassy had once again been banned from Bolivia. The outliner contains limited information about influence, in the form of tiny green and red numbers that tell you about half of what you need to know, but it was difficult to pay attention to that when there were other things demanding my attention as well. How can Britain manage having half the globe in its sphere, if I couldn't even get half of its second-least-populous continent? I just felt like I was trying to play a game a computer would have been far better at, and that just wasn't fun.

The same thing went for colonization. Even focusing the resources needed to build up a navy was difficult, between tech, naval bases, and simply clicking the buttons for more ships every few months. But the colonial races presented the same problem that influence did; it was hard to focus on them all. Because they were visible on the map, it wasn't quite as bad, but I still found myself thwarted at every turn. I did get a few colonies, but most of "Chilean Africa" was the result of my justifications on uncivs, not on colonization.

Lastly, wars were almost impossible to fight. When I did join Great Wars to try to get some nice colonies, I constantly found myself overwhelmed. All of a sudden, troops were swarming all over my far-flung holdings; everywhere I turned, I would be losing ground. In some areas, I gathered my troops for an offensive and managed to gain ground, but would then find that I had lost more to the AI in other corners of the globe than I had gained in my little theater of war. Navies added a whole new dimension of pain, because ship stacks that were too large ate too much supply to be refitted in low-level naval bases, meaning that I had to use many smaller stacks that were, again, almost impossible to micromanage effectively.

Some reading this might say that I simply needed to "git gud." To which I say: Well, fair enough. If I was a better player, I would be able to handle to handle these problems more effectively. But how many of these better players are there? Vicky 2 averages about 1300 players on Steam. That means that there are, say, 50,000 people who boot up the game at least occasionally. I'm better than many of these players, meaning that the number of people who are willing to handle the level of pain Vicky 2 can bring is actually very small. If Paradox wants to find a wider playerbase with the sequel, they'll need to solve some of these issues.

I'm not talking about massive things, either. Influence needs to be reworked so that it's a bit simpler and easier to manage every few months, rather than continuously and extremely carefully. The way colonization works will, I'm sure, be completely overhauled. And wars would be a lot easier to manage (although not necessarily easier) if there were alerts for naval invasions and land and sea battles like in HOI4, as well as maybe tech bonuses for techs that, say, five of the eight GPs had already researched, which would help low literacy nations catch up later on if their literacy improved – historically, this did happen to an extent. Paradox games have gotten more accessible recently, and for a game as complex as Vicky 3 will be, accessibility is critical.

TL;DR: Some mechanics in Vicky 2 make the game a nightmare for human players and favor the AI because they are so hard to keep track of for a player of reasonable skill. Vicky 3 should improve on this.

It’s hard to start as Chile, a tiny South American country, and compare yourself to France and the UK and the US and think you should be equal in ranking. You should be a secondary power, and if you made it to 8th place be struggling to hold on. That’s actually quite entertaining to try and keep your place, it gives you something to do. Influence though I give you, because Vic2 AI influence is crazy and dumb. I love spheres and the sphere system, but the influence mechanic is a bit bungled on how the AI knows everything immediately.