Victoria 2

[METALMAN]

I never buy games anymore really but it looks like I might have to make an exception for this.

Beautiful.

and

is a little song to get you in the mood!

[stokeriño]

This will probably go down as one of those games that I won't prioritise to buy, but may well consider if I feel I've run out of other games I want to play...

...And then I'll not bother playing this game either, but that's the way it goes.

[Skummy]

A colonise 'em up? A white man's mischief simulator? Exactly what I need in my life.

[METALMAN]

yes!

or you can go the Africans and try and fight them off!

but why would you do that?

[stokeriño]

So, tlmn (clearly the only relevant person on this forum for this): have you bought this yet?

I get tempted by little things when I look at this, but suspect that there are big parts of the gameplay that I won't enjoy at all. For example:

YAY:

- personalising your nation's social and political development

- ridiculously large tech tree (so I'm told)

- colonisation

BOO:

- micro-managing absolutely anything to do with the economy (MINE COAL HERE, BUILD 2 X COTTON MILLS HERE, CHECK SUPPLY AND DEMAND GRAPHS, etc. etc.)

- all the different types of population units. Seriously, how the fuck are you supposed to keep track of all those?

The 'boo' points are partially taken from the 3 minutes I spent attempting to like Victoria 1, an endeavour which entirely failed to get off the ground.

And of course, it costs £35.

But...it looks pretty in a twee way, and there's something about a World Map which has St. Albans, of all places, on it that makes me feel all warm, middle class and Home Counties-ish.

So, yeah. I haven't bought it, but I get paid in 6 days and I suspect my will may be weak. I shall first have to find out what kind of graphics engine it uses though, since my computer couldn't run HoI3.

[rocksta]

Yah I want this I'd love to hear how someone think it is.

[Dan]

I have managed to acquire this game.

I shall report back.

[METALMAN]

So, tlmn (clearly the only relevant person on this forum for this): have you bought this yet?

I get tempted by little things when I look at this, but suspect that there are big parts of the gameplay that I won't enjoy at all. For example:

YAY:

- personalising your nation's social and political development

- ridiculously large tech tree (so I'm told)

- colonisation

BOO:

- micro-managing absolutely anything to do with the economy (MINE COAL HERE, BUILD 2 X COTTON MILLS HERE, CHECK SUPPLY AND DEMAND GRAPHS, etc. etc.)

- all the different types of population units. Seriously, how the fuck are you supposed to keep track of all those?

The 'boo' points are partially taken from the 3 minutes I spent attempting to like Victoria 1, an endeavour which entirely failed to get off the ground.

And of course, it costs £35.

But...it looks pretty in a twee way, and there's something about a World Map which has St. Albans, of all places, on it that makes me feel all warm, middle class and Home Counties-ish.

So, yeah. I haven't bought it, but I get paid in 6 days and I suspect my will may be weak. I shall first have to find out what kind of graphics engine it uses though, since my computer couldn't run HoI3.

I did buy it. Got it for £24.99 off Amazon. The micro-management really isn't too bad. Admittedly it was fairly awful on Victoria but now it's not too bad at all. It's not you that mines coal or builds factories. It's the capitalists in your country that do it.

Only problem is I doesn't have multi-core support so it's struggling a bit on my computer. After tweaking it about a bit it doesn't seem so bad.

[stokeriño]

Hmm. May be the spec requirement that's the clincher then.

Not exactly sure what it was about HoI3 that my computer couldn't handle, but I presumed it was the 3D engine or something else graphics-associated. Do you know if V2 is the same sort of thing, or is it more like EU3?

I could just give in and get a new computer like I've been semi-intending for at least a year.

[METALMAN]

I've not actually tried HOI3 but Victoria 2 seems to be the same as EU3 is with all three expansions added. It's a bit of a pain that they can't support multi-core processors actually because my computer's actually not that bad. Providing both processors are actually being used.

[stokeriño]

It can't cope with more than one core? Aren't most new processors dual core, minimum? :/

[METALMAN]

Exactly. Apparently it's always been like that but I've only really started to notice as their games become more resource intensive.

I'd always wondered why EU3 works fine on my rubbish desktop computer but struggles on my good laptop.

[stokeriño]

So...if you've got a 2.6 GHz dual core, it's effectively running on 1.3 GHz?

(*doesn't actually know how multi-cores work*)

Maybe it is a better idea to try it on my older desktop first then...

EDIT: *has since read up on how multi-cores work, and realised they do not work like that at all* >_>

[MalaCloudy Black]

What specs does your PC have, stokey?

[stokeriño]

Bear in mind this is a 4 year old desktop that only cost around £600-£700 at the time:

Windows XP

3.0Ghz Pentium 4

1GB RAM (bless it)

ATI Radeon 9600

Plus, you know, hard drive and stuff.

I actually thought I had more RAM than that, but apparently not. Guess I probably can't use this desktop then, because the memory would likely implode under the stress.

Edit: Oh, and conversely, Stokerina's Toshiba laptop has this:

Windows Vista

1.9 GHz AMD Athlon X2 Dual-Core

4GB RAM

ATI Radeon 3100

Hmm. That seems more like it. Wiki says the minimum spec for Victoria 2 is:

Windows XP/Vista/7

Intel Pentium 4 2.4GHz or AMD 3500+

2GB RAM

nVidea GeForce 8800 or ATI Radeon X1900

Not sure about the processor, though.

[stokeriño]

Bought it. Installed it (on Stokerina's laptop). Works fine. Flicked through the tutorials then had a random start with Belgium (since, as the tutorial pointed out, it's a small and simple nation that's also quite good) to try and get a feel for things.

Making money seems to be ridiculously easy, though this is probably entirely down to my lack of much to spend it on. Even after pumping my Education and Administration budgets up a lot, I typically flick around +15 per day, which adds up fast to a healthy balance. A lot of this is down to my Cement and Steel factories being awesome, and I've already upgraded them both to Level 3. Annoyingly I can't build any new factories, but this is because of my government type/policies I think? Some of the stuff in the tutorials I barely glanced over.

Do not want to touch the Trade screen at all. Ever. Luckily my bank balance is so good that I've not had to worry about stockpiling goods in advance for when I want to build stuff like Railways or Factory Upgrades - taking a few days' hit of -50 or -100 income to auto-purchase it when I set the build going is easy enough.

Technology is chugging along at a decent rate. So far I got Experimental Railroad and Clean Coal (lol, "clean"), and have started researching Ideologies, or whatever that Culture tech is called.

Diplomacy has had mixed results. My industrial advancement bumped my score up enough to shift me from 9th to 8th in the global rankings, thus transforming me into a 'Great Power'. My self-appointed mission was to try and get a nation in my sphere...which I initially tried with Luxembourg, but France were dicks and kept getting my embassy thrown out just when I was getting close to having enough influence to do it. The devious swines.

Unfortunately Spain started doing something that got them a massive prestige bump, and they knocked me off my 'Great Power' perch (and opened up a 20 point gap in the process, gits). I suppose what I need to do is to get some prestige of my own...but I don't know what to do.

Can't colonise, because my Range is shit (it's only 100, and the nearest possible colony spot in north-west Africa is 189 away), and researching tech to help that will take a number of years yet. There's no obvious warfare path that could get me anywhere (the Netherlands have double my armed forces and my military pops are at their limit). Can't make any social or political changes as yet, because my Upper House is currently too full of Conservatives/Reactionaries to let anything pass (although the number of Liberals is slowly growing year-on-year).

So...yeah. What's to be done? :/

[ONO]

I've never actually played this game, but when I was looking for new games it looked very interesting. I must admit I am finding it very difficult. I really don't know what to do. =/

Are there any guides out there that I could use?

[METALMAN]

there's a FUCKING MASSIVE strategy guide you can download from the forums. It's very good and very thorough.

http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/showthread.php?t=491140

[ONO]

Awesome. Thanks!

[cmb211087]

Bought it. Installed it (on Stokerina's laptop). Works fine. Flicked through the tutorials then had a random start with Belgium (since, as the tutorial pointed out, it's a small and simple nation that's also quite good) to try and get a feel for things.

Making money seems to be ridiculously easy, though this is probably entirely down to my lack of much to spend it on. Even after pumping my Education and Administration budgets up a lot, I typically flick around +15 per day, which adds up fast to a healthy balance. A lot of this is down to my Cement and Steel factories being awesome, and I've already upgraded them both to Level 3. Annoyingly I can't build any new factories, but this is because of my government type/policies I think? Some of the stuff in the tutorials I barely glanced over.

Do not want to touch the Trade screen at all. Ever. Luckily my bank balance is so good that I've not had to worry about stockpiling goods in advance for when I want to build stuff like Railways or Factory Upgrades - taking a few days' hit of -50 or -100 income to auto-purchase it when I set the build going is easy enough.

Technology is chugging along at a decent rate. So far I got Experimental Railroad and Clean Coal (lol, "clean"), and have started researching Ideologies, or whatever that Culture tech is called.

Diplomacy has had mixed results. My industrial advancement bumped my score up enough to shift me from 9th to 8th in the global rankings, thus transforming me into a 'Great Power'. My self-appointed mission was to try and get a nation in my sphere...which I initially tried with Luxembourg, but France were dicks and kept getting my embassy thrown out just when I was getting close to having enough influence to do it. The devious swines.

Unfortunately Spain started doing something that got them a massive prestige bump, and they knocked me off my 'Great Power' perch (and opened up a 20 point gap in the process, gits). I suppose what I need to do is to get some prestige of my own...but I don't know what to do.

Can't colonise, because my Range is shit (it's only 100, and the nearest possible colony spot in north-west Africa is 189 away), and researching tech to help that will take a number of years yet. There's no obvious warfare path that could get me anywhere (the Netherlands have double my armed forces and my military pops are at their limit). Can't make any social or political changes as yet, because my Upper House is currently too full of Conservatives/Reactionaries to let anything pass (although the number of Liberals is slowly growing year-on-year).

So...yeah. What's to be done? :/

About the building factories, I am also Belgium and my capitalists built them for me! Just make sure you check though because subsidising them is set to on as default. I am currently 7th in the ranks with the 4th best army and the 6th best industry, with nearly all research done for army and industry. Tried taking out austria and prussia but they kept begging me for peace, and as I hadnt taken any land I just decided to accept until I get my tanks built.