Victoria's (19th Century) liberal bias

[King]

the long 19th Century (1792-1914) is the triumph of liberalism. So from that point of view Victoria 2 will have a stronger bias towards liberalism than Victroia 1 (which I feel was strongly weighted towards socialism). However we are aiming for more blocks on you simply marching towards liberalism. some places will find it harder than others.

 

[King]

Do you mean as in game mechanics and economic system, or as in socialist parties gaining power to often and having better policies?

A bit of all if you ask me. The only way to keep POPs happy in the late game was a scandavian style welfare state. To be honest that smacked of Socialism.

 

[King]

Wow - this one comment makes me look forward to Victoria 2 more than every single dev diary and preview so far (combined!). If you guys not only realise that Victoria was biased towards socialism (mind you, I'd put it more harshly - before the Revolutions addon, Victoria was just plain communist), but also want to actually do something about it, this is looking very promising indeed.

Well the thing about communism is that is very mechanistic, so from a programming point of view Marx is your friend. Let's face it Marx wasn't entirely wrong either so it was a nice thing to start with. However Marx wasn't entirely right either so we do want to move away from the hard core Marxist model.

 

[Trin Tragula]

Every grand strategy game has its bias towards some kind of political idea or mindset.

Actually I'd say every grand strategy game has a bias towards totalitarianism .

The very idea that you can control a state in the detail you can in games is quite totalitarian. Peter Englund, Swedish historian and member of the literature nobel comitee dubbed grand strategy games "Cyber Stalinism" a while back (and he was even mentioning Europa Universalis as one of his examples) and also noted that while ideologically deplorable such games are a lot of fun. Nobody wants to play a game you can't controll (as Master of Orion 3 showed) .
That aside I agree with what other's have said that Victoria rewarded socialist policies and Revolutions rewarded Liberalism. Both where, as most strategy games on the grand level are (and probably should be), obviously biased in their very structure towards a very controlling state though

I also agree that a game about this era probably _should_ favour liberalism (but there still ought to be very powerful things to try to stop such a development). It was one of the main themes of the era and is definitely a crucial part to anyone who wants to experience the spirit of that era in a game.

 

[Johan]

A bit of all if you ask me. The only way to keep POPs happy in the late game was a scandavian style welfare state. To be honest that smacked of Socialism.

But but..

aren't that the perfect state??

 

[King]

For me the whole liberal bias issue boiled down to the simple fact that other regime's-particularly the dictatorships had so many negative aspects that it was simply easier to stick to a liberal regime. They get the immigrants, plurality bonuses late game etc etc.

Even a prosperous great power that elects! a dictatorship suddenly had mass rising miitancy to deal with. It was just hard work frankly.

Obviously, people will think twice before moving to a dictatorship and liberal bonuses are fine, its just that there did not really seem to be any real advantages for getting a far left/right party in power.

That's changed

 

[King]

So King, by your "that's changed", does that mean that I can play as the USSR without it being a time bomb because of the darned militancy going through the roof even when I am providing everything that they could possibly asking for?

Also, glad to know you are looking at different angles of political economy, including ye olde Marx. Looks like the game is shaping up somewhat well.

I will get round to talking about this in a future developer diary. However the basic diea is a dictatorship is not sitting on a time bomb and screwed no matter what you do.

 

[King]

I believed that Paradox Interactive created a seperate Hearts of Iron game to sell in China that fits the tastes of the Censors, for example, removing Tibet in HOI2.

Really? No one told us.

 

[King]

I definitely would like to see all govn't types be viable in Vicky 2 as opposed to Vicky 1 where I had my glorious Communist Revolution! in Columbia but then the entire country registered to become member of the Torches and Pitchforks Reactionary Party (seriously my pie chart went from dark red to dark blue in less than a month I think)...

This won't happen.

 

[King]

Yes, that's the million dollar question. It will be a tough balance to strike, to be sure.

What I aim for is to try and make the alternatives more appealing than they already are. I may not make them as appealing, but it should allow more flexibility in play styles.