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Post 04 Jan 2011, 1:39 pm

Bought this last week as a late Xmas present to myself (along with Spore, as I've been waiting to see what's so wrong with it). It came as v1.2 so I assume that the patch being mentioned is already included.

Having tried EU2, I find this much better. My dutch king has within 15 years conquered Belgium and expanded the Far East possessions to grab some gold and opium sources, gained beachheads in East Africa and is a Great Power at the expense of Prussia. The Jacobin revolts of 1848 are all pretty quickly quelled, and my capitalists are busy setting up factories and building railways.

Mind you, it took a few false starts to do it. As the tutorial uses Belgium, and as I read the guide here - http://www.paradoxian.org/vicky2wiki/Country_Guides - I tried to do as suggested: Attack and conquer bits of the Netherlands. But each time I failed and figured why not do it the other way around. Having an absolute monarchy and a conservative populace who like Order makes it easier...
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Post 05 Jan 2011, 6:29 pm

Thx for the post. I've been playing Empire Total War and Napoleon Total War of late--my Lithuania has conquered Europe and the Americas and is starting on India. I've also been killing time with Mount & Blade, which is mindless but extraordinarily addictive.
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Post 06 Jan 2011, 10:23 am

Vicky2 is good fun at first, but having played it a bit now there are a number of massive flaws which are real gamebreakers. The biggest of these is the way that the UK is essentially unbeatable. What always happens is that they get totally unfeasible levels of immigration and assimilation in India which allows them to convert all their colonial provinces into states. As soon as these become states they get to industrialise them, creating a ludicrously overpowered industrial behemoth that can never be competed against. Also, because population growth is unrealistically high they (and other high pop nations) start to eventually get exponential pop growth which leads to an explosion in soldier pops, to the extent that by the time 1900 rolls around UK has enormous 50k army stacks on pretty much every Indian province, and often into China too since in roughly half the games I've played they tend to invade China early and gradually swallow up big chunks of it. The net result is that by the last few decades the map is filled up with far more armies than are remotely feasible historically. This is a problem partly because it's totally unreaolistic and silly but mainly because it leads to horrific lag problems. By the end of the game the fastest speed is running about as quickly as the slowest speed runs in the beginning, which makes the game almost unplayable.

The next patch has to do something pretty drastic to solve these issues because otherwise the game won't be viable.
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Post 06 Jan 2011, 10:43 am

A few hints ands tips btw.

You're right that absolute monarchy is very useful at first. it allows you to choose your governing party, which is extremely handy for kickstarting industry. Choose a state capitalist party so that you get to build your own factories (cement and wine are best for startups, but never build fertiliser or canned foods). Once you get a few profitable factories up and running you can more or less leave it to the capitalists, but if you begin the game with a laissez faire government it can often take decades before you industrialise. However, there are advantages to liberal governments too. Generally they tend to favour full citizenship, and this is good because with a full citizenship government you get faster rates of assimilation to the main culture, which is very useful in all kinds of ways (ie, it allows you to turn colonies to states, recruit guards units, get more national foci etc). Unfortunatelky they're also usually LF, but as I said, once industry is up and running properly this is not really a concern. A word of warning about keeping your monarchy though, you'll find later on that it becomes more problematic. As the decades go by your pops will become more liberal and then eventually more socialist, and they'll start to demand political and social reforms. If you've maintained your absolute monarchy then you won't be able to trigger any of these reforms, so what you'll find is that revolts will grow more frequent and more virulant. They're not too difficult to suppress but it's still really annoying to have to do it, especially if half your country rises up in revolt in the middle of a major war or something.

On the subject of social reforms, they're basically all bad except for healthcare, which is unbelievably awesome. Any chance you get to enact healthcare reforms you should jump at straight away. In fact, it's often a good idea to deliberately lose a few wars in the early years to drive up militancy, because once it gets above a certain level the upper house will agree to pass social reforms, so you can force through healthcare. Yes, healthcare really is that good. If you have acceptable or good healthcare reforms enacted then you get explosive population growth. It takes a few decades to really kick in but the effects are cumulative so eventually your pop starts to skyrocket. Population is far and away the most important thing in this game. With a high pop you get way more soldiers, way more craftsmen, way more income and basically become way more powerful. Any chance you get to boost your population growth should be jumped at as early as possible to give yourself an edge (going for the medicine tech at an early stage is also a must, for the same reason).

There are loads of other things I could add here that I've discovered, but tbh I can't be bothered. Feel free to ask though.
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Post 06 Jan 2011, 12:57 pm

Well, when I played as Belgium, which is a Constitutional Monarchy with a population who are pretty liberal (so my upper house was usually 50-50), but elections, I found out pretty quickly that laissez faire is really annoying when you want to invest in the economy.

I'm led to believe that if I want to change from Absolute Monarchy, I should wait for a revolt of the right type, and allow it to take my capital (while removing all other revolts and maintaining full control of other provinces) - after a year, you have a coup/revolution. Sounds tough to do though.

I did get the impression that the people would move towards reformist and other ideas over time, how fast determined by your actions as much by other factors. The rebellions I faced were a combination of Jacobins, Reactionaries and Belgian Nationalists, which means I'd manage to provoke three different groups at once.

I went for Railroad and Medicine early, as well as the culture tech that gives you additional National Focus and Stock Exchange which seems to improve tax efficiency and leads to a number of innovations. I see that Nationalism is a good idea for converting colonies into States.

Only problem is that the laptop I was using has just developed a fault (looks like the same hardware fault that the manufacturer 'fixed' nearly a year ago!), so I can't get back to it and keep playing.

Looking at the PI forums, and at the wiki I linked to, it seems you can do all kinds of things, such as restart a saved game as a different country (a cheat seems to be to switch over in times of war to get opponents to propose peace the AI wouldn't accept), which would be how to take on released or newly arising countries. There's a guide on the wiki on how to end up as the South in the US Civil War (and how to arrange it so you don't get mashed by the Union).
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Post 06 Jan 2011, 1:21 pm

If you want to cheat then you can access the console and type commands in to trigger certain events, or just switch tags to a different country. On my keyboard I can open it by pressing the button immediately below escape and above tab (it gives the ` symbol). You then type in certain commands to enact the various cheats. For example, if you want to switch control to UK you type 'tag ENG'. I don't really like to do this kind of thing too much really, but there is one event that I like to trigger if I'm playing as a very small country with low population, which is 'event 3006'. This triggers an event which allows you to choose an option which gives you acceptable healthcare. It's actually a 'negative' event which normally only fires if you have good healthcare, but if you fire it at the beginning of the game then it doesn't really have a downside. there are obviously loads of other events you can trigger if you look trough the game files and work out the relevant codes, but I don't normally bother. I guess it would be possible to script your own as well, but that would require a fair bit of work to figure out all the syntax properly.

The only other reason i'd have for 'cheating' is to solve certain really annoying tendencies that always seem to happen in the game. For example, Austria almost always seems to conquer Shleswig-Holstein in the first 6 months of any game, which is not only very silly but prevents the AI Prussia from being able to form Germany later. To prevent that I've gotten into the habit of switching tag to Prussia, immediately declaring war on Denmark with a goal of taking S-H then switching away again. Similarly, Russia always colonises Oregon, preventing the USA from getting access to the Pacific, so I like to switch to USA and set a colonisation focus there to prevent it. I guess therse things are not really that important, but somehow they just annoy me too much.

Btw, you could have solved your Belgium roblem fairly easily because HM Govts can switch ruling parties without waiting for an election. You could just choose a state capitalist party, build up a few factories and then let them lose power again next time an election is held. it causes a militancy hit but that's not a big deal at the startof the game.
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Post 06 Jan 2011, 1:25 pm

Oh, one more thing. it can be fun to release nations from existing ones and play as them. I had a great game where I started as UK and released Ireland as an independent nation, then switched to play as them. I ended up conquering Japan, Korea and Vietnam to create the Irish Empire....
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Post 06 Jan 2011, 1:41 pm

On governments, yeah, I know now that I could have just chosen a different party to rule - I was worried that if I picked a minority party I'd get all kinds of social problems as a result. As it happens, my Holland has Interventionist rather than State Cap as the ruling party, but when I conquered Belgium I got quite a few of the factories I wanted and then started a National Focus to improve industry. I'll see how that goes.

On cheats - I intend to avoid them as a much as possible, although as a way to swap nations as you did it looks pretty fun.
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Post 07 Jan 2011, 11:39 am

you may wanna look at this http://www.paradoxian.org/vicky2wiki/Main_Page

Victoria 2 is very different from HOI2 as is more focused on colonial expansion, balance of power and economy, while the latter is pure strategy and war.
Fun none the less, a bit boring when coping with lesser states but it has its challenges, just make sure u save the game every now and then :)

Wish my laptop could play the newer versions of Total War. best game ever!
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Post 07 Jan 2011, 12:00 pm

I've never played the HOI titles. I have EUII, but I found it really tough to understand. Mind you, after a bout of Vicky, I think I understand EUII better, and will now read a few guides on the PI site and that wiki to get some depth before I try again. I do find Vicky easier to grasp though.

Oh, but I agree on TW. Empire is great, and Med2 is far better than the original, but my favourite is still Rome.
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Post 07 Jan 2011, 12:04 pm

By the way, anyone ever played the boardgame Command & Colors?

I had a go the other day at my gaming club on the Ancients set and although I was pulverised twice, it's a pretty good game that reflects the strengths and weaknesses of particular types of unit, and like the Total War and Paradox titles is about gaining victory by forcing a retreat as much as by complete massacre.
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Post 08 Jan 2011, 4:14 am

I played EUII to death a few years back. Even got to the stage of creating my own scripted events so I could create utterly ludicrous non-historical scenarios to play around with.Great game, but I couldn't play it again. I do fancy trying EUIII though, that's supposed to be a lot better.
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Post 08 Jan 2011, 11:37 am

danivon wrote:By the way, anyone ever played the boardgame Command & Colors?

I had a go the other day at my gaming club on the Ancients set and although I was pulverised twice, it's a pretty good game that reflects the strengths and weaknesses of particular types of unit, and like the Total War and Paradox titles is about gaining victory by forcing a retreat as much as by complete massacre.


I really enjoyed C&C when it came out, and then got heavy into Battlelore. Alas, the magic in Battlelore made the game too haphazard and "luck"-driven; but both games suffered from Ambush cards that you would get to play out of turn and not once did that make me or the other player groan and deflate most of the fun out of the game. I played at least 5 different players and the result was always the same: mood killer! :punch: :cry: :ill:

Then Battles of Westeros came out and that game ROCKS!!! If you're looking to get into the C&C-system, definitely pick up BoW! I posted my review on Boardgamegeek:

http://www.boardgamegeek.com/article/5288036#5288036
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Post 08 Jan 2011, 11:48 am

Well, I tend to avoid fantasy/magic anyway. Our club is big into minatures under various systems (although I'm more of a board-gamer), but C&C:Ancients seems to bridge the gap. C&C:Napoleonics has just come out here and it looks interesting.

The 'Ambush' cards don't seem to be too much of an issue. It's more that when you have five 'move two in x section' cards and need something more heavy that the cards seem a bit unfair.
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Post 09 Jan 2011, 5:39 am

To be honest Vicky2 really needs the next patch to be released in its current state its a very very crash prone multiplayer game.

Tere a regular ongoing games of EU3 Divine Wind however.... And it is superb.

I give vicky 2 a few more months before its worth playing in MP