Victoria II

[Thorn]

At last, downloading the full game now. This looks to be a great weekend!

 

[Justo]

You'd squash me, dude. I've seen Luckymoose play, and you can keep pace with him? I mean, damn son.

LOL Luckymoose learnt from me.

But Vikky 2 is definately much different. I think it will take some time to learn. Tutorials are overrated.

 

[shortguy]

Full game downloaded.

Let's do this.

Out of curiosity, how large was the download?

 

[Justo]

From memory around 680mb.

 

[Thorn]

I've played most of the day. This game is so much fun. Thank you Paradox Interactive!

 

[NBAfan]

Looks much more stable then HoI 3 was.
To bad I can't afford it yet.

 

[madviking]

Ok, first game as Belgium, not so bad. But Europe is really not getting centralized at all (1866AD)

 

[Munch]

I've had all of 5 minutes to explore the demo. The zoomy-outy bit where the country names are superposed over the block-coloured countries is by far the highlight so far.

 

[madviking]

#6 in the world

 

[cardgame]

That looks really awesome

 

[madviking]

Someone needs to tell me how to industrialize quicker...my capitalists and liberal party aren't helping (see screenshots thread for more details)

 

[Tee Kay]

Someone needs to tell me how to industrialize quicker...my capitalists and liberal party aren't helping (see screenshots thread for more details)

Paradox Games has a conservative bias.

 

[Polycrates]

Good fun! And a Paradox game that's pretty polished out of the gate!

The issue with capitalists, they've acknowledged that capitalists are a bunch of idiots and that they're planning on fixing their AI in the upcoming patch. But yeah for now I think you get a lot further with State Capitalism.
The other thing is that crasftsmen and capitalists have some really wacky needs, waaaaay above all your other pops, so craftsmen keep demoting and have trouble promoting to clerks and capitalists are often bankrupt.
I think you can sort of help your capitalists build stuff by lowering rich taxes and tariffs, as well as manually buying the necessary resources from the market and allowing your pops to buy from your stockpile. Also you can use National Focus points on promoting basic industry or railroads where you want them.

Err so yeah there's a bunch of balance issues still but nothing fundamentally broken that a quick patch can't fix, I think. Clearly they've learned their lesson from HoI3. And there's already fixes in the mod forum for capitalists and craftsmen, as well as one for the crazy revolts and difficulty of reform.

 

[madviking]

The issue with capitalists, they've acknowledged that capitalists are a bunch of idiots and that they're planning on fixing their AI in the upcoming patch. But yeah for now I think you get a lot further with State Capitalism.

So I guess that means returning back to Belgium or try a new country, like Sicily, which isn't so micro-intensive.

The other thing is that crasftsmen and capitalists have some really wacky needs, waaaaay above all your other pops, so craftsmen keep demoting and have trouble promoting to clerks and capitalists are often bankrupt.

Yep, I've noticed that.

I think you can sort of help your capitalists build stuff by lowering rich taxes and tariffs, as well as manually buying the necessary resources from the market and allowing your pops to buy from your stockpile. Also you can use National Focus points on promoting basic industry or railroads where you want them.

This was my tax setup in 1887 with Prussia
Poor - 5%
Middle - 0%
Rich - 0%


The rest of my income came from gold (Koenigsberg and Metz) and tariff (shouldn't that encourage industrialization, at least in rl?)

 

[Kan' Sharuminar]

Got it as well and had a playthrough as Belgium in a kinda hands-off game, just to get to grips with it. Worked pretty well - more accessible than the first game, I think I'll get to grips with the economic/production stuff far more quickly and it's interesting to have non-scripted events, even if the American Civil War/German Unification occurred 20 years early.

As for my Belgian game, I got far too cocky by the 1860's after I brought the Netherlands down to size. They responded by bringing Britain into a war with me, and I was looking at several 40+ stacks of armies going up against my puny forces. Fun times.

 

[Polycrates]

This was my tax setup in 1887 with Prussia
Poor - 5%
Middle - 0%
Rich - 0%


The rest of my income came from gold (Koenigsberg and Metz) and tariff (shouldn't that encourage industrialization, at least in rl?)

I think the problem with high tariffs is that if you're getting your factory-building needs from abroad (cement, iron and machine goods) then your capitalists are paying a bomb for them. Also means that your capitalists are spending a lot more on fulfilling their needs rather than investing. I guess if you buy up a stockpile of factory-building goods and allow your people to buy them, then maybe you can bypass the tariffs for your capitalists to build up their resource stockpiles. Also they borrow from the national bank, so if you repay any loans to the bank, you might have more money for them to play around with.

 

[GoodGame]

Is the tech tree anywhere online?

What's the quickest way to get a Needlegun?

 

[Dachs]

Research breech loading rifles immediately after the tech becomes available in, what, 1850? Silly IMO, the Dreyse gun was Model 1842, but whatever.

 

[madviking]

I think the problem with high tariffs is that if you're getting your factory-building needs from abroad (cement, iron and machine goods) then your capitalists are paying a bomb for them. Also means that your capitalists are spending a lot more on fulfilling their needs rather than investing. I guess if you buy up a stockpile of factory-building goods and allow your people to buy them, then maybe you can bypass the tariffs for your capitalists to build up their resource stockpiles. Also they borrow from the national bank, so if you repay any loans to the bank, you might have more money for them to play around with.

Really the only trick to industrialize is not to be in a liberal government. Playing as the US, I got to almost 500 industry in 1877. The only thing different is that I can manually upgrade factories and subsidize them. Subsidizing makes a world of a difference as you can pretty much pay people to work in such-and-such of a factory. So clearly liberal governments are broken.

Rant - rebellions are broken. Seriously? A twenty something army Jacobin rebellion in the US in 1877?!?

It's not that they're OP, it's just they're randomly annoying and annoyingly large.

Hope both get fixed in the patch...

 

[Polycrates]

Really the only trick to industrialize is not to be in a liberal government. Playing as the US, I got to almost 500 industry in 1877. The only thing different is that I can manually upgrade factories and subsidize them. Subsidizing makes a world of a difference as you can pretty much pay people to work in such-and-such of a factory. So clearly liberal governments are broken.

Rant - rebellions are broken. Seriously? A twenty something army Jacobin rebellion in the US in 1877?!?

It's not that they're OP, it's just they're randomly annoying and annoyingly large.

Hope both get fixed in the patch...

Seems like there's three problems here:

First is that rebels gain too fast, don't die off enough when you suppress them, and it's too hard to get reform through the upper house to appease them. That's an easy fix, and there's already quite a good mod for that in the paradox mod forums.

The second is that capitalists are dumb. They need to be able to consider potential profitability of a factory before they commit to it, and probably need to raise more capital before building so they won't go bankrupt before it has time to get on its feet. Then I think you'll see laissez-faire governments start to do a lot better. (By the way, another thing you could try to help your capitalists is if they're actually buidling a potentially profitable factory, to put your national focus to craftsmen in that area before it's built, and buy up the raw resources it needs and sell from your stockpile so the factory isn't paying tariffs).

The third and biggest is that supply and demand are really way off - more and more every time I look at it. To model the increased demand for goods in more industrialised societies (without increasing demand in agrarian societies), they've just put all the needs onto craftsmen and capitalists. It's even more nuts than you would think:
This is the needs of a labourer:

everyday_needs = {
timber = 2.0
coffee = 1.5
tea = 4.0
tobacco = 2.2
coal = 4.0
liquor = 1.0
glass = 1.0
fabric = 1.1
steel = 1.0
}

life_needs = {
cattle = 1.5
wool = 2.0
fish = 2.0
fruit = 2.0
grain = 4.8
}

luxury_needs = {
opium = 1.5
silk = 0.5
tropical_wood = 0.5
regular_clothes = 2.0
furniture = 1.0
wine = 1.25
paper = 1.25
telephones = 1.0
automobiles = 0.5
radio = 0.5
}

And this is the needs of a craftsman (from the same social stratum):

everyday_needs = {
timber = 96
coffee = 48
tea = 200
tobacco = 128
coal = 96
liquor = 48
glass = 48
steel = 48
}

life_needs = {
cattle = 64
wool = 96
fish = 96
fruit = 96
grain = 224
}

luxury_needs = {
regular_clothes = 36
furniture = 50
wine = 24
paper = 24
telephones = 0.8
automobiles = 0.4
radio = 0.4
}

For most goods, including their basic food requirements, the needs are FORTY-EIGHT times higher. And it's similar for capitalists. So they're going to be angry as hell all the time - hence all your revolts. But they need to be that high to keep demand up, to help stop crazy midgame depressions where supply vastly outstrips demand and everyone has their money stuck in the banks. Although the midgame crashes could also have something to do with half the world's superpowers being ground to their knees by jacobin rebels....

And then clergy have such a small margin of luxury requirements that they're always turning into aristocrats if you increase your education funding so you'll always haemmorhage clergy. And artisans spend most of their time starving to death because the market crashes in the first six months and they can't buy supplies and won't really change craft en masse. And good luck ever seeing a clerk...
There's someone on the paradox forum mucking around with these values, and I've tried dabbling myself, and it looks like massively increasing the everyday and luxury requirements of the pops is a better solution, but the economy is so complex that it's clearly going to be an iterative solution that develops over a fair amount of time.

Errrr so yeah essentially it's still a paradox game.....