Will each countries have a specific bonus or mechanic?

[天皇の神風]

As for the starting status, as some are richer, more populated or more industrialized than others.
Will each country have some kind of habilities or mechanics that makes them unique? Like que traditions in EU4 for exemple.
In Vic 2, if you were a civilized nation, there wasn't much of a difference if you played as France or Austria aside from more of less technology and population, and that's why i wonder if there will be any peculiarity regarding each country.

Edit:
People, I'm not suggesting for countries to have artificial buffs, i was only asking...
But i like the idea that each country played different based on its pops different culture and religion. That sound more fun and elegant than EU4s traditions.

 

[Marcus Pica]

Indeed, given that Vic is a game with probably the least tags of all the orher games, the tags really have to be made unique. We need serious historical flavour for at least every major power.

 

[Nelfe]

They said they won't give artificials bonuses like "+15% naval damages" for UK because the Royal Navy was the strongest navy at this era or "+5% chemicals production" to Germany because Germany was the leader in chemicals technologies at the end of the XIXth.
There'll be some consumption bonuses/maluses to represent for example british love for tea or alcohol prohibition for muslims countries, but that's all.

 

[Gilbert95]

There may not be. The way the devs have talked about similar things is that they want the play to be emergent and not based on pre-scripted elements. I think what they want is for the differences to be seen in the pops themselves - their culture, religion, their interest groups, Etc. The pops in France will be very different than the pops in Austria. There would also be differences in government and other institutions which will help differentiate.

 

[Polarisan]

I hope not. Countries are made out of their pops and land, that's what's lovely about victoria because it accurately represents that which other games have to abstract.

Meddling with that to arbitrarily give buffs takes away from the experience.

Also, I love the fact that I could read your name in kanjis, learning japanese is an experience.

 

[Buttons12345]

Please no. Nation specific bonuses are so gamey and artificial. Pop preferences for jobs or political ideologies (Americans tend away from authoritarianism and collectivism, cossacks tend towards being soldiers and officers for example) I'm fine with but I would hate to see "Russian cavalry gets +10% damage" or "America makes buildings and ships faster while at war" or "Germany gets access to a unique ability that lets their armies move faster while their enemy isn't fully mobilized."

 

[alain1995]

Please no 10% discipline/morale because the Prussian/French flag is magical and make soldiers perform better

 

[Arizal]

No, or at least not as it is implied in the posts. No TAG in this game should have special mechanics or advantages. Everything should come from the game mechanics.

Even pop-based advantages/qualities should be handled very carefully. I heard that British would like tea more than others. I guess this is fine and accurate, but such preferences should still not be innate and there should be ways to encourage different approaches.

 

[wilcoxchar]

There shouldn't be. Out of all Paradox's games, Victoria is by far the one that is most thematically and mechanically suited to modeling cultural characteristics arising in a bottom-up fashion from the masses and not making top-down assumptions pretending a country is innately suited toward something. This is also the time in history where you really first start seeing things like relatively cheaply available global travel, true economic globalization and cultural exchange on an immediately noticeable scale, and (more or less) voluntary mass cultural migrations. There could be some historical flavor, but it should be rather light and heavily dependent on every aspect of the demographic makeup of your country. There's no reason that the ideas from the historical Karl Marx could not have been done by a Charles Marks in Ireland or Canada or a Carlos Marquez in Mexico or Peru in another version of the past.

 

[Meanmanturbo]

What was stated was that interest groups being a bit different for different tags. Prussian Industrialists being very monarchist while American undestandibly are not. So interest groups will make up some differnces as to what reforms will be easy/hard to get through.

 

[EntropyAvatar]

What was stated was that interest groups being a bit different for different tags. Prussian Industrialists being very monarchist while American undestandibly are not. So interest groups will make up some differnces as to what reforms will be easy/hard to get through.

Yeah, I think this has some scope to add some character. Does the dominant church in the nation support education? Is it opposed to immigration or in favour of it? Does it accept other religions easily? What are the inclinations of the military leadership? If interest groups in each major nation have a somewhat unique character, they can have a strong influence on your choices and overall strategy.

 

[Arizal]

What was stated was that interest groups being a bit different for different tags. Prussian Industrialists being very monarchist while American undestandibly are not. So interest groups will make up some differnces as to what reforms will be easy/hard to get through.

As long as interest groups can change their stances with events, I’m fine with that. I would suppose the pro-monarchy thing would be an « issue » or a position the group takes that can change based on the situation.

 

[Woifee]

Traits given to nations would be dumb, traits given to pops of certain culture could work tough. Traits that can change over time depending on what that pops of this culture did and endured in the country they lived in. Similar like consumption preferences and can easily go along with it as well.

 

[Nirmara]

While a good part of the replayability offered by came from emergent factors such as ressource availability, geography and population, country specific content also played an important role in Victoria 2.

The popularity of mods such as HPM or HFM as well as the criticism Imperator got on release for the lack of country specific flavor are proofs that country specific content is something the community wants.

While I am not in favor of bland arbitrary modifiers, things such as events, decisions and maybe even laws or political systems definitely have their place as a way to add flavor.

 

[天皇の神風]

They said they won't give artificials bonuses like "+15% naval damages" for UK because the Royal Navy was the strongest navy at this era or "+5% chemicals production" to Germany because Germany was the leader in chemicals technologies at the end of the XIXth.
There'll be some consumption bonuses/maluses to represent for example british love for tea or alcohol prohibition for muslims countries, but that's all.

Hmmm, yes, that sound quite more elegante and i like it more if the pops could offer some different gameplay based on their culture and religion.

 

[天皇の神風]

Also, I love the fact that I could read your name in kanjis, learning japanese is an experience.

Yes learning Japanese is quite the adventure!

 

[Rubidium]

While a good part of the replayability offered by came from emergent factors such as ressource availability, geography and population, country specific content also played an important role in Victoria 2.

The popularity of mods such as HPM or HFM as well as the criticism Imperator got on release for the lack of country specific flavor are proofs that country specific content is something the community wants.

While I am not in favor of bland arbitrary modifiers, things such as events, decisions and maybe even laws or political systems definitely have their place as a way to add flavor.

Yeah, at the very least I'd hope for a lot of nation-specific events/decisions. There were plenty of those for some nations in Vic2 (and a few longer event chains, like the American Civil War).

It's all very well to say "everything should be emergent," but what you end up with is a situation where playing every tag feels the same. You don't need (or want) EU4-style national traditions, but you also don't want a situation where playing as Russia, the US, China, and the Ottoman Empire all feel basically identical, aside from a few minor details in the starting position.

 

[Arizal]

I don’t think having an gigantic autocracy with extremely agrarian pops and a geographical location where you have a lot of minorities is « a few minor details » over playing a fairly homogeneous country ready to invade Africa and to industrialize, and also under a shaky constitutional monarchy.

 

[Rubidium]

I don’t think having an gigantic autocracy with extremely agrarian pops and a geographical location where you have a lot of minorities is « a few minor details » over playing a fairly homogeneous country ready to invade Africa and to industrialize, and also under a shaky constitutional monarchy.

Pretty much everyone (including the US or Britain) starts off with mostly agrarian pops and (for large nations) plenty of minorities, even if the exact ratios differ. I imagine there are enough levers to manage that anyone can turn their nation into an industrialized/educated colonizing behemoth, so even if you start with a slightly worse ratio, you can fix that with plenty of time left over.

Paradox's track record with making countries feel unique without special mechanics is actually fairly grim: it was a major complaint about Imperator (and one that they specifically targeted with later patches, mission trees, and flavor packs) and is still a major complaint in CK3 that "most starts feel the same." Even Vic2 had tons of tag-specific content, ranging from obvious things like the American Civil War or tag-specific decisions like the Meiji Restoration, to unique events (which, in total, meant that a nation like the US would always punch above its weight in prestige due to getting bonuses from events for things like the invention of baseball) and research-bonuses (each nation had a different starting "school" for its research which would make certain areas cheaper or more expensive to research, and while you could change them, certain tags started with unique schools that were designed to send them in certain directions).

Each nation faced unique challenges and concerns that can't be reasonably modeled with generic mechanics, and that should be addressed. The US and Mexico in 1836 are both at least nominally democratic republics in the Americas, with relatively populous core regions and nominal claims/control over large areas of sparsely populated land largely controlled by native peoples, but they faced very different challenges and political situations that can't just be represented by a few different pops and maybe a slightly different set of generic starting laws.

 

[Blindbohemian]

There's no reason that the ideas from the historical Karl Marx could not have been done by a Charles Marks in Ireland or Canada or a Carlos Marquez in Mexico or Peru in another version of the past.

Well, yes and no--those latter three places are fairly rural. I don't know that Charles Marks or Carlos Marquez would have had much material