Playing Paradox's Victoria 2 with the Shattered World Mod

[Julius Seeker]

I'm not even going to try to explain this game in any great detail, and hope everyone reading just picks it up as I go along. As a high level description, it's a sandbox grand strategy in the same genre as Crusader Kings 2, except with a focus on "Pops" instead of characters. Like Crusader Kings, its "Victoria" branding is only talking about one small part of the actual world. It runs from 1836 to 1936 - so the Industrial era sim - it covers events such as: The American Civil War, the Colonization of Africa, the rise of socialism and fascism, communist revolutions, World War 1, the Meiji Restoration, etc...

SO HERE'S MY GAME IN MOTION!


The Shattered World mod breaks apart all the major Empires. Canada split up into: Canada (Ontario, Maritimes, Saskatchewan, and Alberta), Columbia (British Columbia), Metis Confederation (Winnipeg), Newfoundland, and Quebec. The US didn't split apart as much, and most of the small states (California, Manhattan, Northern Maine, Texas, and Utah) were conquered in the first 10 years. I declared war on Newfoundland as soon as I could, and quickly (well, not really, it was REALLY long war) defeated them, bringing Newfoundland into Canada. I also built early railways across Canada, built a glass factory in the Maritimes, and liquor factories (which use glass) in other parts of Canada. We are a booze empire! I've also poured tons of money into the military, because the US has been looking at us.

What I did was focus on the Maritimes, building up railways first in every county. But then I shifted to military, which chokes up most of my income output (as you'll see).

This is my world:




As you can see, Canada is split apart, Quebec is independent... for now... I have an infamy of about 14, it can't go above 25 or the whole world gets a CB against me for being a bastard. It depletes over time, and then I'll conquer them. The main reason for this is neither Quebec nor the US is allowing me to move over their lands, so I need to use military to make a straight path to the Atlantic, and then I will be declaring war on some place in Africa where I will carve out my Imperial Canadian Utopia (the opposite of what those bastard Belgians did), also, I want first dibs on rubber. There are a few nations that can be conquered in Africa, most is empty and won't be able to be colonized until 1870 techs start unlocking (like machine guns).

Now onto my pops. I've snapped a shot of Barrie, because it's a bit interesting. Think of the game as something like Sim Tower or Dwarf Fortress where you don't directly control anyone, you just do things that they then react to.




SIZE
Pretty straight forward, the number of people this pop has. People can transfer between other pops if they become to educated to be a farmer, they might become an artisan or a clerk, and even more, a bureaucrat. Rich people (intelligent and stupid alike) can become capitalists - capitalists can build things within your lands like railways and factories, and they make money off of them which they can then spend on other things - but I'm getting a bit off topic.

TYPE
So there are various types of pops, they're shown by pictures
Artisans - they're the ones at the top, the little cloth next to them means they're making cloth, this can be sold for use in clothing factories or used by other artisans who make clothes.
Farmers - the ones with the pitchforks, they do all the mining, fishing , lumberjacking, and are the cornerstone of the economy. When stuff gets produced, it is then sold to people who will use it somewhere in the world. Different counties produce different raw materials; in this game, not only nations use it, but individual people as well. It is a finite economy, it doesn't just disappear into the aether. In Barrie, the resource is grain, so all our farmers produce grain.
The Clergy - the effeminates with the cowboy hats are Clergy and help teach people to be literate and such,
Clerks - The baseball capped guys, they work in factories, but I guess they are more administrative types.
Officers - The ones with the ship captain hats. these are military leaders
Craftsmen - The guys with the hammers, they work in factories. Ontario (which Barrie is in) has a booze distillery being built, they will work in it when its construction is complete.
Soldiers - Note, my biggest pop, 5460 are all soldiers, that's because I am running Canada as a ridiculously militaristic nation. We have the US just next door! And we're actually fairly close in power to them, although still a far cry from the massive Prussian, French, and British armies over in Europe. 68.1% of the population of Barrie is in the military.

NATIONALITY
Where the pops come from. Note, our biggest ones are Anglo_Canadian. The total Anglo-Canadian population is 85.2% of Barrie - you can see that on the pie chart above.

RELIGION
Same as nationality, except with stuff that people believe is real, very abstract. Our Cree people are animist. The Ashkenazi follow the Jewish religion - as depicted with the star of David.

LOCATION, the FIRE, and the BRAIN
Just shows the location, pretty straight forward. The fire shows how rebellious they are, and the Conscientious means how much they care about being activists toward their causes.

IDEOLOGIES and ISSUES
Those are the pie charts beside everyone. Ideologies are like Conservatism, Socialism, Liberalism, Reactionary, Fascist, Communist, etc... Each ideology has stuff attached to it, but the labels mean different things than 2020s North America - what Americans call "Libertarians" is not really libertarianism but Anarcho-Liberalism, and Liberalism basically means they support Capitalism, Free Trade, Interventionalism (capitalist economy where the government props it up), Pluralism (like many religions), quality of citizenship, and anti-military; the Anarcho-Liberals are pro-military, and favor Laissez Faire capitalism instead of interventionalism. Communists are much like socialists, except they believe in seizing the means of production and overthrowing the government.

Issues tie into ideology, but they're the broken down components of ideology, and this pie determines which issues are the priority for that pop, the higher the percentage the higher the priority.

DAILY INCOME
This is the pounds-sterling symbol. As you can see, my people literally make pennies a day!

LIFE NEEDS, DAILY NEEDS, LUXURIES
That's the next three columns, it's what the pops are buying, if you hover over each you'll see a list of commodities that the pops demand. These are the commodities mined, farmed, and made in factories. Everyone except my Craftsmen are getting their life needs, that's because they don't have a factory to work in yet. Some are getting all their daily needs (booze), and some are getting their luxury needs partially fulfilled (red wine).

REBEL FACTIONS
No one is in a rebel faction (if they are, my military will shoot them!)
POPULATION CHANGE
The arrows, the arrow will point up if the population is growing, no growth happened today. Population changes via breeding and immigration.
LITERACY - How literate people are. As you can see, aside from the people from Denmark, and the Anglo-Canadians, my people cannot read a word!


So, that's about what I have after 10 years. This game moves slower than CK, a day means a lot more. The first three decades move fairly quickly, but once 1870 hits and the scramble for Africa happens, then it slows down a lot as stuff happens. Same with later eras with all the political upheaval, government toppling, and all the jazz around World War 1 and the period leading up to World War 2. But even in this early era, Canada climbed up from rank 75th or so up to 19th in 10 years (largely thanks to all the railways and military I built). In the next 10 years, Quebec will fall! (assuming they don't bring in allies). With my shattered worlds mod, the world might end up looking very differently than it should. Here's Europe in 1846



If you actually read all this, thanks and congratulations. Really I'm just procrastinating, and since the announcement of Victoria 3, I figured I'd drag out this old game, which is IMO one of the best games ever made. If you like Dwarf Fortress, this is a good one. Of course, like DF, there's a lot to learn and I don't think anyone knows quite everything about it, but there are at least a few thousand of experts (I like to imagine myself among them - as I have played hundreds of hours, easily my second most played game on Steam next to CK2). I am less of a fan of Hearts of Iron and Europa Universalis, as I prefer the more sandboxy type games like CK/Vic.

If you read this post and are confused about what Victoria 2 actually is, I'll post more with different focuses! And maybe, just maybe after 3 or 4 posts it'll become more clear

[Julius Seeker]

I forgot to mention. Periodically, you get a Newspaper that tells you what's going on in the world. It's really cool. I liked this feature in SimCity 2000.

Also, you learn about new technologies being invented. In this game, you learn a tech via a very normal tech tree, but under that tech are up to 60 or 70 inventions that people in your society can invent or learn. There are 150 techs to learn - they become available at certain dates (you pick 1 at a time from 5 categories), and a few thousand inventions that result from those techs. Each invention will give a bonus/modifier or unlock some kind of new product you can trade or build for your military. Some "inventions" are societal, and will result in new types of ideologies as well. The funniest (and darkest) one I recall is domestic violence, "Your scientists have invented domestic violence" the headline says, or something like that.

But anyway, the news for December 15, 1845

[Julius Seeker]

So I played WAY too much of this game over the last day. Luckily, it's one you can multi-task with since it's kind of like a Will Wright game or Dwarf Fortress where you just do a bunch of stuff and then watch how your people will react. The only time you have to take direct control is when fighting wars, even rebellions you can automate your commanders to take care of them on their own, but wars are a bit more tricky. Luckily, the game pauses on declaration (if those are your settings) and when it happens you won't miss it. War is also less common in Victoria 2 than any other Paradox grand strategy as it is your state and its people that are the focus. It CAN be a big part of it, but war is used for many more things than just land conquest.

Anyway, speaking of war, in my latest game CANADA GOES TO WAR!!!!
But the headlines of this newspaper are MUCH more interesting.


As a note, I hope Victoria 3 cleans up the text a little so that it has less repetition.

I know I said I needed Quebec, but as it turns out I can take troops via ship out to the Atlantic from James Bay in Northern Ontario, where I have now constructed a major port for Canada. And I took them to wage war in Africa like a damned European... Canada is of a very different, far more sinister, nature this time around, but I promise to bring peace and prosperity to all the nations I brutally conquer.

The below map is Africa, just above the Congo. There is a state known as Sokoto, which I have been slowly conquering over the years, and will use this to launch Canada's campaign of colonial liberation. I figure if I get there before the Belgians, I'll prevent a lot of the evil that happens. It has nothing to do with the fact that I know there will be rubber found all over Congo in about 25 years.




As a note, most of Africa is blank because the technology required to colonize Africa doesn't unlock until the early 1870s, at that point, every European nation will be scrambling to colonize. I already have a a substantial head start, only Portugal and England have more African lands, but they're to the South of here, and Portugal doesn't have the colonial capacity that I have, so I can colonize way more and way faster. Also, in this timeline, it was the Portuguese who conquered the Zulus, not the British. I will later liberate the Zulu people... sometime after I conquer the remaining Dominions of North America, and maybe take greater chunks out of the US, as they are having problems, and my allies in Mexico really don't like them.

So, I talked about economy. Well, Capitalism is now thriving in Canada, but the capitalists see my violent nature and have begun deviating from my state plan of making Canada into the world's primary source of liquor.... we failed there. In this reality, China is the primary exporter of tea AND liquor. In fact, not only is China by far the largest producer of liquor, but the second place producer is Guangxi... which is roughly located where the Southern Song Kingdom was during the time of Kublai Khan, Jia Sidao's Kingdom, the first on earth to use a standing army armed with firearms... the Mongols defeated them because of their crazy long ranged trebuchet's, which actually had longer firepower than the Song's firearms.

Enough of historical anecdotes, China, as you saw above, has a crisis! The Heavenly Kingdom has rebelled, but the Empire of China is significantly more powerful in this timeline, having instead of ruling over a bunch of puppet states, has instead opted to brutally conquer many of its neighbours (king of like Canada).

Anyway, Canada is so militaristic, that it is building factories dedicated to producing military good, so here here for death and destruction and a continued demand for Canada's weapons of war! Long live Mars, god of war!

So Canada has been gaining power, we have risen above the 16th crank in the game giving us the ability to colonize... which we began doing immediately... some might say past our traditional lines. It is creating some very suspicious people around the world. When we hit the 8th rank in the game, we can no longer be a part of someone else's sphere of influence, we will build our own - a trade zone area of nations who ally and fight against oppressors.

Anyway, I would show the map of China, but over in North America things are looking pretty interesting by 1860...



I don't know how many people here are history buffs, but that CSA, they're a bunch of racists who decided to form their own country after seceding from the US... but something tells me they aren't supposed to be THAT large, they literally go all the way to the Canadian colony of Oregon (just south of Canadian Washington and Canadian Idaho). The US is fairly angry about my aggressive colonial expansion, they somehow believe that land should have been colonized by them --- in the gameplay mechanics, that land has American cores, which means the US has an eternal and world recognized claim on the land.

Anyway, Canada has a giant military that even the US fears... seriously, it's so huge that I tax everyone at max just to stay afloat... My war in Africa nearly bankrupt me, and I only used like 20% of my troops. It seems that Canada and the US are destined for war against each other. Currently I am in the US sphere of influence, so they tolerate me, but as soon as I become a world power, it's only a matter of time. I am making sure my land forces can challenge them. It'll be a dangerous fight since the US is the most powerful nation outside of Europe and Eastern Asia... China has a military larger than Prussia, the United Kingdom, and France combined, and roughly 10 times the size of the US... Good luck Heavenly Kingdom! (Spoiler, the Chinese Empire brutally crushed them).



Moving on. Canada has internal issues. Some of my decisions have led to my Pops becoming more conscientious. Years earlier, I took some screenshots of a political movement. Those commoners had the audacity to think they have the right to vote!



See the stuff in red, they ALMOST rebelled, which means I would need to use my own troops to slaughter my own people. They want to vote... and elections can significantly impact gameplay mechanics. Usually they're all fun in their own way, but I prefer only to go to a more capitalistic system if I have a huge sprawling Empire (which Canada will have) because most of it is then automated, and I just sit back and watch my Pops go about their lives without my interference.

For now, I went to parliament and passed a Universal Suffrage act, and that shut the whiny people up! Anyway, here's what that screen all looks like... Oh yeah! Tool tips are a big thing in Vic 2



So anyway! Things seem to be moving smoothly along. I'll show a paper headline I got in 1860 to give a bit of a preview of things to come much later down the road.



Wow! Karl Marx looks quite old for 42 (his age in 1860). Kinda like how he looked at around 60 in our word. The other guy, Bernie Sanders, looks about the age he was in 1860.

[Julius Seeker]

I'm going to simplify my 1-draft/non-proofed writing so it's much less of an excruciating chore to read.

Next 10 years (1860 to 1870: Uninteresting to write about, little drama, waiting for infamy to decrease, expanding industry, infrastructure, technology. Everything in North America becomes more normal (except for the fact Canada owns a chunk of the American Pacific North-West and has the largest army outside of Europe and East Asian Empires.

This is the current state of North America.


Canada becomes stronger, rises up the ranks of secondary powers.

Everything is about to change.

In 1870, the Machine Gun technology becomes available.



Note, the Machine Gun Armament is the only invention this tech creates; BUT, there are other important things this does.
In the bottom left, I have a tool tip hovered over Colonial Negotiations (print Screen doesn't capture my cursor).
Colonial negotiations are needed to colonize most places, including all of Africa (each colonizable province has certain points required, those I colonized in Canada require the lowest capacity in the world, while those in Africa, Alaska, and Yukon, are the highest).
There is a 0% chance of learning that invention at the beginning of each month. But getting machine guns ups this by a tremendous 25%, which means I'll learn it in the first few months after getting machine guns.
As a note, given I'm human and the AI isn't as smart as me, I always get the jump on colonization with the earliest AI nations following a few months to a year later.
The 1870s, as is usual, are the scramble for Africa. I'm unsure how it will be with all this shatter mods as Empires are all broken apart... It actually means many countries will have MORE imperial capacity since they won't have it tied up in pre-existing colonies in Asia, Oceania, South America, and other parts of the world.
I worry that most of Canada is still using up so much colonization capacity - usually by this point the provinces have been incorporated into the country proper and my colony points are freed up. I also have fewer core provinces than usual, which means my capacity is smaller than it usually is at this point.
My colonial capacity is made up of ports in James Bay, Hudson Bay, and Nova Scotia (Quebec, BC, Newfoundland are normally a adding to this, but this mod broke them off, and reconquering Newfoundland has it as a colony, not a core province). My fleet is also smaller than usual, ships add to colonial point capacity.

The scramble for Africa will be very difficult, I predict. I won't be able to save much of the continent from the evil European colonial Empires.

Let's look at the paper...



Marx still relevant. I wonder if these guys will take off?
Seriously, my lower class workforce (which I tax the crap out of to fund my military) are drifting toward socialism.

While the economic policies of socialism and communism are about the same: planned (player controls most of the economic spending, taxation minimum is 50% of profits, factories produce more but at a lower efficiency than Laissez Faire, etc...), protectionism (maximum subsidies on imports are 25%, tariffs can be raised to 100%) difference between socialists and communists in Victoria 2 are as follows:
Socialists - Anti-military (limitations on military expenditure)
Communists - Pro-military (minimum spending requirements)

Socialists - Secular society (state is separate from all religious affairs)
Communists - Atheist society (state is against religion)

Socialists - Are popular in democratic elections
Communists - CAN be brought to power via democracy, but favour violent uprisings to seize the means of production and government. One thing the game should do is have communists work alongside the Marxist plan of a transitional state capitalism prior to socialist planned economy - which is what the USSR and China did... they just forgot the key part of it, "transitional!" - so basically, Communism in this game jumps you further ahead than China or the USSR ever got.


Next step, a rather evil period on European history: The Scramble for Africa.

[Eric]

Man that's a lot of words on paper.

[Julius Seeker]

Only like 4,000 =D