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Falconhurst

Tibetan Admiral
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Feb 23, 2004
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As a dedicated fan of EU2 (I think it is one of the best strategy games of all time), I am very impressed with Johan and the Paradox group. I've been thinking about buying a copy of Victoria, but I've also noticed some mediocre reviews of Victoria on a variety of sites noting bugs, CTDs, and excessive complexity. On the other hand, I'm very impressed with the support and continued development of these games even long post-release by Paradox, and think it is likely that many of the issues criticized by some of the initial reviewers have either been addressed in patches or are actively being addressed. I'd be interested in your honest opinion of Victoria compared to EU2...what do you like the most about the game, and what do you think are the major outstanding issues/problems? As a big fan of everything about EU2, would I likely be impressed or frustrated with Victoria?

Thanx.

Falconhurst
 
I remember when I bought EU1 it was buggy and they stuck with it and fixed the bugs. I've been very impressed with the support and developement of Paradox games also. Being a big fan of EUs and having just received Vick last week, I think it compares very well with EU2. If you recall many of the reviewers called EU2 and HoI too complex also. Vick is much more complex, so expect to do much more micromanaging. This task does not seem boring or repetative though, it still manages to be fun you just have more to do than EUs. The game is more like a society simulator in some ways that a startegy game. The music is very good like EU2. The graphics are the same (almost none). The added provences and state makes for more options in expansion. It seems difficult to play a minor power and be successful, altough I thought that a first with EU also. I enjoy Vick almost as much as I enjoy EU2 and I expect Vick to be on my hard drive along with EU2 (wait is Paradox taking over my comp. ;) hope so!). As for the CTD, I downloaded the 1.03 patch and have not expereinced on crash or glitch. I would recommend Vick to anyone that enjoyed EU2.
 
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Here's a thread from old that compares Vicky to EU2 (and other games): http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&threadid=115159

Vicky at 1.03 is a quite bug-free, most enjoyable game. Only real biggie that needs resolving is the POP income bug, but they're looking into that, and there are workarounds.

Biggest charm is the endless possibilities. You can warmonger if you like, you can be an industrial magnate, and there are assorted nations that make for vastly different games.

:) Rafiki
 
I loved EU2. Vickie is a great game if you can surmount the learning curve. The biggest difference to me is that sometimes in EU2 I would get bored during peace time, while in VIC I have games where I never fight any wars and am never bored! I bought VIC the day it came out and have played it extensively with each of the patches and with out patches and have never experienced a CTD.......just call me the luckiest VIC player :p .
 
porterswentzell said:
The biggest difference to me is that sometimes in EU2 I would get bored during peace time, while in VIC I have games where I never fight any wars and am never bored!

That pretty well sums it up.

I actually prefer Victoria to EU2, which is saying something. Victoria is more complex and challenging. The military, diplomacy and economic models are better. And, as portswentzell says, I find that there's simply more to do - more startegic choices - in Victoria.

No CTDs for me, and I've played the game since it came out. Version 1.03 is a very good game.

I think the negative reviews reflect, in part, the steep learning curve. The game had some flaws when released, as did EU, but I think the reviewers (and many fans of EU2) were scared off just because Victoria is tough to get a handle on. It really does require some initial effort, but the ultimate payoff is more than worth it - better than EU2 for me.
 
same here, just one thing bothers me
short period of time, alredy in 1900 you lose intrest in doing anything bcs of end in 1920 and also you probably couldnot do evrything you wanted
In eu you at least have 500 years of gameplay thats something

maybe if they divide days into half or more whit same cyclus so that you reasrech tech for half year and not whole year and same stuff
 
porterswentzell said:
I loved EU2. Vickie is a great game if you can surmount the learning curve. The biggest difference to me is that sometimes in EU2 I would get bored during peace time, while in VIC I have games where I never fight any wars and am never bored! I bought VIC the day it came out and have played it extensively with each of the patches and with out patches and have never experienced a CTD.......just call me the luckiest VIC player :p .
My copy of Vicky arrived last saturday. Well, needless to say I fired up a GC immediately, and not with the easiest nation. I chose Austria.

Well, given existing experience with EU/EU2, HoI, Imperialism, Sid Meyer's Colonisation (and even Sid Meyer's Civilisation and Railroad Tychoon), I had not real troubles getting my nation up and running, and producting a working economy. I'm not in the top (not even a Great Power yet), but my ranking is improving quite nicely.

It took a bit of help from this forum to figure out how to access the detailed (as in Revolt Risk) information regarding the POP's, but other than that no real steep learning curve whatoever :D I needed far, far more time to get up to speed in EU/EU2 when I got hold of those.

All in all, a great game, incorporating the best features from EU2, HoI and Imperialism, which are all games in the top of my all time favorites.

The only negative I found is that the game runs a bit sluggish on my 1.4 GHz Athlon with a GeForce 4 video board. The AI takes a lot of CPU cycles to do it's job, especially with wars raging.

Jan Peter
 
I've only CTDed with Victoria once in SP, and I have played many hours of it since. Victoria is very prone to CTDing in MP though, which is something that really needs to be fixed (although SP compared to MP in Victoria seems somewhat more fun than EU2 SP compared to the great EU2 MP).
 
Victoria: an empire under the sun.......

Indeed, the learning curve was at first, for me, murderous, insane, horrid!

But then i got it........

Suddenly, I was Metternich! fighting off the rebels, desperately trying to keep the mighty Austrian Reich together! I hardly looked at the world outside Europe, there was just so much going on in my own damn empire......

This is just one minute thought on one minute collection of seconde in Victoria. The game does have a few quirks, but what game doesn't? truely a work of art, and horribly addictive.

Anyone that gives up on this game because it is too hard, get over it and keep trying, im having a great time, why don't you join me?
 
Falconhurst said:
As a big fan of everything about EU2, would I likely be impressed or frustrated with Victoria?

Falconhurst

Victoria is a rather mixed bag. There have been some design decissions which IMHO don't add to the game experiene but only introduce complexity where it is not needed. The most noteable is the POP-system. Since you know EU2, my guess is you are used to micro management, but expect it to increase quite a bit (for my taste too much).

As already mentioned there is a bug which doesn't make the game unplayable but still removes quite some fun from it (at least for me) and that's the income bug. Your population does not earn enough money (no matter what taxes you demand) to afford quite a range of goods. Since these goods have no demand, there is no real world market price for them (price is very low; precious metals and opium for example). furthermore when you promote farmers for clerks, they quickly are downpromoted to farmers again since they can't afford their life style.

It is a situation you can handle when you adapt your playing style to it and modify your expectations (in case an event gives you precious metal you need to complain instead of being excited).

As it stands now, Victoria is a game for die-hard fans of complex strategic simulations (which I am, my point is that I don't see the need for the complexity in some of the areas). The economy and income system needs some more tweaking (will happen for sure).

I went back to EU2 with the 1.08 patch and have to admit, it is much more exciting.
 
The thing about Victoria which quite a few people don't seem to like is that you can't do it all. You have to cut your cloth to the size of your nation.

There are times when a perfectly good game can be completely wrecked because you make a certain choice. The alliance system is like a spiders web and you can suddenly find yourself fighting half of Europe instead of a minor country ripe for annexation. Bit like WW1 really.

Similarly, conquest is not generally the way to win the game. Conquest is generally too expensive and struggles to break even on a prestige count.

You can get to a point in 1900 where you think to yourself "Just what can I do next without touching off the next Great War?". You can normally coast to 1920 and finish in the top 12 nations or you can try to amass a few more points to make it into the top 4-5. Sometimes the game decides for you and you have to fight. At which point your lack of diplomatic prepartion in terms of alliances can be fatal.

To summarise - if you want a world conquest game don't buy Vicky. I'm pretty sure that a world conquest game would end up with a lower score than a peaceful game in any case due to the loss of prestige declaring all those wars (unless BB helps you out). If you want to walk an economic, social, political and militaristic tightrope for 84 years - buy it. It's great fun - honest!
 
Mediator said:
Victoria is a rather mixed bag. There have been some design decissions which IMHO don't add to the game experiene but only introduce complexity where it is not needed. The most noteable is the POP-system. Since you know EU2, my guess is you are used to micro management, but expect it to increase quite a bit (for my taste too much).

As already mentioned there is a bug which doesn't make the game unplayable but still removes quite some fun from it (at least for me) and that's the income bug. Your population does not earn enough money (no matter what taxes you demand) to afford quite a range of goods. Since these goods have no demand, there is no real world market price for them (price is very low; precious metals and opium for example). furthermore when you promote farmers for clerks, they quickly are downpromoted to farmers again since they can't afford their life style.

It is a situation you can handle when you adapt your playing style to it and modify your expectations (in case an event gives you precious metal you need to complain instead of being excited).

As it stands now, Victoria is a game for die-hard fans of complex strategic simulations (which I am, my point is that I don't see the need for the complexity in some of the areas). The economy and income system needs some more tweaking (will happen for sure).

I went back to EU2 with the 1.08 patch and have to admit, it is much more exciting.

The POP system is one of the things I like best about the game. It allows for relatively complex population dynamics, which I find somewhat fascinating.

I consider Victoria to be the best game I've ever played, after 30 years of playing wargames. (Starting back before PCs, when everything was paper maps and cardboard counters.)

I perceive the bottom line to be this:
If you want a world conquest game that will make you feel like Attila, Victoria is probably not what you're looking for.
If you want a historical strategy game that gives a bit of the feeling of running a living country, Victoria might be what you're looking for.
 
Theodotus1 said:
The POP system is one of the things I like best about the game. It allows for relatively complex population dynamics, which I find somewhat fascinating.

I agree. It's the pops that make playing Vic feel like ruling an actual rather than it just being a colour on the map showing how far you've extended your borders.

Theodotus1 said:
I consider Victoria to be the best game I've ever played, after 30 years of playing wargames.

I agree, although I can only claim 10 years of gaming.
 
Being only 19 years old, having played wargames since risk as a 5 year old and then starting with civ on the computer some twelve years ago, I can do nothing but agree. Best - strategy - game - ever.

It made me call in sick from work for two weeks when I got it.

And I haven't even learned stuff by playing EU/HOI before getting Vicky - still, it only took me a few hours to come to the point where it's difficult to stup even though it's 03:00 and work starts in five hours.
 
Mediator said:
I went back to EU2 with the 1.08 patch and have to admit, it is much more exciting.

Well, w/ some hesitation i have to agree w/ mediator (no offense, but it really hurts to be down on vicky). When I got Vickky I was stoked to play and did for months - survived and came to love 1.01 and 1.02 (partisans! I still have nightmares :) ) I also really enjoyed POP management and factory buildings, all the diplomatic features and The tech tree and inventions are brilliant way of doing things. The problems for me started w/ the 1.03 POP bug. In the 1.03 patch the World Market system was changed which revealed a bug in the formula for calculating POP incomes. Great work was done by members in this forum to find and isolate the bug, which as Derek says is now reported and slated for fixing. Unfortunately, for me the process was so discouraging and seeing as the bug hurts what is one of the more enjoyable aspects of the game, I 've gone back to EU2 v1.08 until Vicky 1.04.


In terms of game play, or the 'feel' of the game, I agree with this:
Theodotus1 said:
I perceive the bottom line to be this:
If you want a world conquest game that will make you feel like Attila, Victoria is probably not what you're looking for.
If you want a historical strategy game that gives a bit of the feeling of running a living country, Victoria might be what you're looking for.

The period covered by Victoria is just awesome, and the game has so much potential.

All in all, I guess my advice is play EU2 for now, as w/ 1.08 it is a more complete product (in the sense that all of its key game play features work) and get Vicky when 1.04 is ready, b/ when the POP problem is fixed (and it will be! :) ) it will be awesome. Cheers :cool: .

Edit: Spelling and bad grammar. DOH! :eek:o
 
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Personally i think eu is a decent game and all but i was disappointed with it. It was called the strategy game of the year in most places ect.It was also supposely a complex game. And about all u could do is wage war and set on your hands in the peace time. Still it was the best historical game out there so i played it. Well victoria game out and its by far the best strat game out there. Sure it has a pretty big learning curve but i can live with that. Theres actually things to do in peace time. Theres strat besides building armies for conquests. All in All i think victoria is a much have for any strat game lover.