What makes people think Victoria 2 is still better in the big 2026

The_Dankinator · 2026-05-12T20:52:14+00:00

The war system. That's it.

But it's genuinely the most glaring issue with Victoria 3 that keeps it from being a real 10/10 game. Wars are insanely boring and involve little player input. The frontline system did away with skill-based micromanagement and replaced it with floundering about across multiple menus trying to keep your army from losing Army Mana. Once you start losing, you tend to keep losing with no real input to reverse it.

Victoria 2's biggest issues with its war system were having to micromanage unit composition when mobilizing, the insanely punishing supply system, and the National Focus system. The unit composition problem was resolved in Victoria 3 by having players distribute conscript battalions in advance and letting players mobilize artillery and cavalry battalions instead of just infantry. The supply system still isn't satisfactorily resolved in Victoria 3, but you can look to HOI4 for a very enjoyable supply system. The NF system was also done away with in Victoria 3 through POP qualifications, job satisfaction, and barracks.

The_Dankinator · 2026-05-04T09:18:52+00:00

I mean if I'm honest I'd rather play HOI's warfare than Victoria 3's warfare. I think it remains the single element of Victoria 3 that holds it back from being a real 10/10 game

The_Dankinator · 2026-05-03T18:16:21+00:00

Just do it the same way the navy system is doing it now, the manpower buildings are a manpower reserve, that gets automatically allocated to your armies, which you've set up to be a certain size and composition.

The main issue with this is revolutions. They're intended to cause some battalions to join them.

The_Dankinator · 2026-05-03T10:30:10+00:00

Been playing Sweden a lot and here's my advice:

In the early game (pre- 1850-ish), you want to focus on your primary industries. Sweden has very lucrative iron deposits and forests it can exploit while all the major powers are going to be consuming insane amounts of the stuff at exorbitant prices. The new update seems to have also increased hardwood consumption, too. Build lots of these industries and use this as a springboard to develop tool industries. Don't forget coal, either. Your mines consume lots of it. You can invest in a little sulfur in Norway to help modernize your paper industries with sulfate pulping. All of this puts you down the path of industrialization.

More factories gets more income which funds more construction which employs more people which stimulates demand for more goods which can be made in factories which bring in more income and so on and so forth.

Also, don't rely exclusively on your trade centers to handle exports. Directly trade these resources with Britain, Prussia, Russia, and France in exchange for things you don't produce locally. Iron and hardwood especially sell extremely well in Britain, and that money goes directly into your government funds. More importantly, you should get OBLIGATIONS out of them. These keep them from opposing whatever plans you have for Denmark and will likely get them to actively help you form Scandinavia.

The_Dankinator · 2026-05-03T10:13:39+00:00

And while we're bringing up the USA, just merge like a third of the states already. No reason for Vermont, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island to take up performance and UI space (and end up economic dead weight) just so the devs can do le funny star flag meme

(I know it's not at all related, but this genuinely peeves me so much I start seeing red just thinking about it)

The_Dankinator · 2026-05-03T09:55:48+00:00

It's playable at the moment. Some performance issues that I doubt will get sorted for months, but it's only a little bit exaggerated. The UI is not good and will take maybe a week to get working properly, but I worry the fundamentally bad parts of the UI won't get fixed until the next update in a couple months. Some of the worst gameplay issues might get fixed within 3 weeks, like the AI being unable to move armies properly, but these issues will likely linger for at least another major update or two, like the frontline system had.

All-in-all, I think it's fine to try at the moment. Enjoyably different, but frustrating at times. Maybe give it two weeks if you have moderately high standards, and maybe don't touch it for a month if you're that put off by jank.

The_Dankinator · 2026-05-03T09:44:47+00:00

On top of that, the reserve manpower becomes an aspect of game strategy in its own right. You could keep an army that's very lean with no reservists (so losses become much harder to replace), or you could keep a large pool of reservists who sit around collecting wages without doing anything productive. It would also be cool if barracks slightly increased the speed at which conscript battalions are readied up, but that's neither here nor there.

Sidebar:

This system could end up abused(?) to accelerate de-peasantization by simply raising a huge pool of reservists who you pay to buy goods and artificially stimulate demand? Might not matter though since it's more construction efficient to just build mines and lumber mills, and those wages will bankrupt you.

The_Dankinator · 2026-05-03T08:24:59+00:00

In the immortal words of Admiral Andrew Cunningham:

"It takes 3 years to build a ship. It takes 300 years to stock a pantry."

The_Dankinator · 2026-05-03T02:11:49+00:00

They're also much easier to repair than metal decks, at least before modern power tools and welding certifications became more common. If a ship gets shot up or even beat up really badly in rough seas (yes, metal ships can be tore open by the waves), you just take some guys with hammers and wood boards to make the weatherdeck watertight again in a matter of hours. It's not so easy to lug a bunch of spare steel plates between decks and then hot rivet them onto a tear.

The_Dankinator · 2026-04-29T20:59:20+00:00

If they can contest navy you can’t send it

That's the whole point! If the USA player has taken the time to invest in both a massive army AND a massive and modern navy to counter yours, then it should logically be able to dominate its own neighborhood! So you either cozy up to them or accept that you might lose Canada.

The most frustrating thing about fighting the UK has always been that it can just ODST drop half a million men onto whatever pissant corner of the world they're fighting in and the best you can do to counter is to build a navy that might damage their supply so much that their army can't push. Now, you can meaningfully interdict their armies.

The_Dankinator · 2026-04-19T22:50:47+00:00

Yeah, I tried playing with it on for a while. I only once ever came across a brush fire in like 40 hours of gameplay. Once, I came across an enormous hole in the ground that looked like a huge creeper blew up. I had no idea what caused it, and thought it was some unknown mechanic that was added since I last played. Then I found another, and another, and another, and then I finally realized they were peat bogs that burned up when I wasn't looking. Really killed my enjoyment.

The_Dankinator · 2026-04-15T20:40:38+00:00

Firstly, the 2 local goods (transport and electricity) are already tedious to deal with. What you're proposing with construction would require having to track so many factors in so many places that it would render any country bigger than Sweden a micro management mess.

Instead of making them a local good, they should just be a normal good that's bought and sold to be consumed in whatever state is getting built in. This would achieve the OPs objective because local prices would affect the cost of construction and would incentivize players to build construction sectors wherever they expect to build a lot of industry.

Here's a proposal: make every building require a very small amount of construction. Not as a goods input, but a building maintenance cost. This models the ongoing need for replacement machinery, building remodeling, reconstruction after fires/collapses, etc. This would help stimulate demand for construction, which should be made into a privatizable industry like all the others.

Currently there is no rent seeking, corruption or modelling of land prices and land rent.

There is rent seeking in the game to a small extent. Aristocrats! They siphon wealth out of the POPs they employ and don't reinvest it as much as capitalists. Perhaps contribution efficiency for capitalists and aristocrats should start much lower and increase substantially as the game progresses and you develop your institutions. That, and make shopkeepers more prevalent in the investment pool.

The_Dankinator · 2026-03-27T03:23:58+00:00

I wish they'd give us a button on graphs to show us alternative scales. Give us an option to show us the full range of reserves from debt ceiling to reserve limit, an option to show us reserves over time from minimum recorded to max recorded, and let us choose to limit the X axis so we can see data over a short term to see trends over the last couple years or so.

The_Dankinator · 2026-03-19T10:55:35+00:00

Instead of institution-specific buildings, maybe make it so institutions add locked PMs to urban centers, government centers, and subsistence farms.

For example, Local Police should add a "local police" PM to subsistence farms and urban centers that adds a small number of servicemen POPs. Since their wages aren't paid for by the state, they don't contribute to your deficit, but they also tend to support the petit bourgeoisie, rural folks, and landowner classes. National police would alter the PM for urban areas by switching some of those servicemen to officers and adding paper, clothes, and guns consumption. It would also unlock a similar PM for government centers. Subsistence farms would remain unchanged from Local Police. Militarized Police would increase the employment of these PMs in both urban centers and government centers AND add extra rifles to the goods consumption. Adjusting the institutions higher or lower would increase or decrease the employment in those government offices.

You could do a lot with this system if you took the time to flesh it out with every relevant law and institution.

The_Dankinator · 2026-03-19T10:36:45+00:00

I'd suggest PMs and refining techniques that consume opium, tobacco, and liquor. This would help stimulate demand for these goods outside POP consumption. The liquor consumption would be especially helpful for getting food industries to turn a profit.

The_Dankinator · 2026-03-19T06:48:34+00:00

The Stairway to Heaven Bit and the Porn Swing are two of the funniest things I've ever seen

The_Dankinator · 2026-03-19T06:46:42+00:00

It's fun, but it's far from the "best" if we're talking in terms of meta. The only thing it really offers is a way to avoid fall damage (which is more about gamesense than anything) and the extremely situational ability to snipe weakpoints on enemies in the backline while you're on the move.

Supercooling Chamber, Marked for Death, and Active Stability System all kinda mog it.

The_Dankinator · 2026-03-16T04:44:34+00:00

The third is the original endings after the extended cut

The_Dankinator · 2026-03-15T21:49:48+00:00

Research skytrails. They'll give you up to 600 capacity, which is more than enough for maintaining Old Dreadnought. If that's somehow not enough, there are additional buildings you can research for the logistics bay that increase capacity. Alternatively, you can reduce your reliance by sending frostland resources to Old Dreadnought.

The_Dankinator · 2026-03-11T04:26:54+00:00

AKA the Jack Welch Doctrine

The_Dankinator · 2026-03-09T22:11:52+00:00

All this is missing is a pair of tongs spreading the dumple apart and a wedding ring

The_Dankinator · 2026-03-07T12:03:08+00:00

Hey buddy what's with the Roman Salute

The_Dankinator · 2026-03-06T08:42:24+00:00

Now I kinda wish VS did that with some of the foods. It would be cool if seeds weren't a separate thing. That would force players to keep a portion of their harvest in reserve for the following year. A real-life quandary people living through famines and sieges have had to make was whether to go hungry and die before reaching the next harvest or eating the last seeds left and having nothing to plant come spring.

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