Really want to get into Victoria 2, but I'm struggling to enjoy it

[Swakers]

Hey guys, as the title says I really want to understand and enjoy Vicky 2; especially since 3 is coming out so soon! But for the life of me I don't understand what I'm meant to do and how to 'get gud'. I truly cannot grasp the military, I feel I get the premise of the economy in building factories in the correct RGOs. I don't understand the budget and where my money comes from, at times the projected daily budget is negative yet on the tab in the top left I'm earning money.

I would love to understand this game and enjoy it, to play and appreciate something different than EU4. If anyone has a series of tips, or any useful advice I would love to hear it. Also, I would appreciate a series of countries to play so that I can understand the game more. I feel like that would help motivate me.

Thanks a lot guys!

[Lembley42]

There's alot here. There are also many answers. Guides, Tutorial Videos, "just play", the Wiki...

As I am myself not a fan of guides/tutorials (others will soon supply links no doubt), I can offer to video stream and explain the basics and ideas of the game in a call.
Got next few days not super much to do, so if you're interested, add me on Discord (Lembley42#8849). Just explaining though, no coop.

[Swakers]

That would be a great help thank you! I'm currently busy atm however I will message you when I'm free and we can work out a time

[bri]

One simple thing to answer one of the questions you seem to have...

The budget screen is a "what if" display that assumes:

1) the price of the goods you need stays the same
2) you are able to purchase every single good you want to on the current day
3) there are also assumptions about the tax and tariff income but I'm not sure exactly what those entail

In most situations the assumptions turn out to not be true as the cost of goods almost always changes a small amount and some goods don't have sufficient supply available for every nation to buy every good it wants to. Pops expected to work and thus get paid and buy goods (tax and tariff income generators) may also be laid off due to a factory not getting enough inputs to run and so on.

As for other issues, don't be shy about asking specific questions as you encounter them. People here are generally more than happy to provide answers.

[The Vault Dude]

The best way I learned to play was following a lets play blog that showed exactly what the person playing was doing and what effect it had. After following almost a full campaign (10 hoursish)I got gud

This was the LP: https://lparchive.org/Victoria-II/Update%2001/

[MoldyPickle]

economy wise i just move the dials till the number goes up and with military i just move the units where the enemy is and that somehow fixes the war so just try that i guess

[OwlRaider]

Yes, Victoria 2 is pretty tough to get into, but as someone who has EUIV experience it shouldn't be impossible. Here are some tips on the specific points you mentioned to help you get going. When it comes to the military, it's actually quite similar to EUIV in that there are 2 rows, the front and back lines if you will. Like in EUIV the ideal scenario is for your front line to be filled with infantry and cavalry and back line with artillery. Victoria 2 also has engineers(for back line) and tanks and airplanes in the late game as well as guards as an infantry alternative but lets leave those alone for now, a solid infantry+cavalry+artillery core like in EUIV will serve you well from start to finish without getting overly complicated.

Like in EUIV, your combat width determines how many regiments occupy each row and that is determined by your technology. Unlike EUIV, in Victoria 2 the higher tech you get into the lower combat width gets so you gotta keep that in mind. Whereas in EUIV with most nations, especially in late game, you tend to ignore cavalry completely as their stats are getting worse and worse compared to their infantry equivalents, in Victoria 2 there is a recon statistic that only cavalry and airplanes have. Recon is a very important statistic as it both increases movement speed and province occupation speed.

You may be asking yourself what, as you'd expect artillery to do that not cavalry, like it does in EUIV, and you'd also be correct, in a way. Victoria 2 also has forts, and forts do increase province occupation time like they do in EUIV, so artillery reduce the penalties enemy forts give you. Yet recon reduces the base occupation speed. So a stack with just infantry and cavalry will occupy non fort provinces extremely quickly but having forts will reduce this speed significantly, so you add artillery to reduce(or outright negate) the penalty of enemy forts.

Thus with that in mind, the basic template for all civilized nations in Victoria 2 is ideally as such: 4 infantry, 1 cavalry and 5 artillery. Which brings us to the 3 different types of cavalry in this game: Cuirassiers, Dragoons and Hussars. Cuirassiers have 0 recon and as such are basically infantry upgrades in the very early game until techs improve infantry to the point where they're utterly useless. Dragoons only have 1 recon so they're ok to have but since recon doesn't stack it's not ideal either for recon purposes(which is the main reason to have cavalry in your armies to begin with. Which leaves us with the Hussar, with 2 recon, being the ideal cavalry choice. Now there are of course stat differences too and different technologies affect different units but as a general rule of thumb, without getting too complicated, you want 4 infantry, 1 hussar and 5 artillery. Of course in larger battles with lots of reinforcements you want to have more infantry to refill your front line, but that's typically where mobilization comes in.

When it comes to the budget, the main thing to keep in mind is that your tax efficiency early on is abysmal. So even when taxing all your population at 100% you'll barely get 20% of the amount. That's why the first move before you even unpause the game, with every nation, the first thing you do is raise taxes for everyone to 100%. Tax efficiency gets improved a bit with admin efficiency but mostly with tax efficiency techs and inventions. Now some nations begin with Laissez Faire parties which only allow up to 50% taxes, if you start with such a party either switch out of it manually(as long as your government is not a full democracy you can manually switch ruling parties) or suck it up and try to compensate elsewhere(but expect a rough economic start).

The next thing to understand is how your income is generated. There are 3 sources if income in this game: taxes, tariffs and exports. You can view tariffs and exports as EUIV's production and trade values but they're rather different mechanics. Early game tariffs are a great revenue source while industry is all but impossible for most nations as you need a certain percentage of literacy for POPs to promote into craftsmen to work in factories. Later on towards the mid or late game depending on your nation, you ideally want 0% tariffs to not burden your industry, which becomes your main source of income, both from taxation of craftsmen and clerks who generate higher salaries than farmers and laborers and from exports.

This post is already incredibly long and only covered the absolute basics of the military and budget that you mentioned struggling with. I would gladly offer more tips on specific topics if you want, as there is a whole lot going on under the hood that is rather poorly explained in-game.

[Jager]

Originally posted by OwlRaider:

Yes, Victoria 2 is pretty tough to get into, but as someone who has EUIV experience it shouldn't be impossible. Here are some tips on the specific points you mentioned to help you get going. When it comes to the military, it's actually quite similar to EUIV in that there are 2 rows, the front, and back lines if you will. Like in EUIV the ideal scenario is for your front line to be filled with infantry and cavalry and your backline with artillery. Victoria 2 also has engineers(for backline) and tanks and airplanes in the late game as well as guards as an infantry alternative but let's leave those alone, for now, a solid infantry+cavalry+artillery core like in EUIV will serve you well from the start to finish without getting overly complicated.

Like in EUIV, your combat width determines how many regiments occupy each row and that is determined by your technology. Unlike EUIV, in Victoria 2 the higher-tech you get into the lower combat width gets so you gotta keep that in mind. Whereas in EUIV with most nations, especially in the late game, you tend to ignore cavalry completely as their stats are getting worse and worse compared to their infantry equivalents, in Victoria 2 there is a recon statistic that only cavalry and airplanes have. Recon is a very important statistic as it both increases movement speed and province occupation speed.

You may be asking yourself what, as you'd expect artillery to do that not cavalry like it does in EUIV, and you'd also be correct, in a way. Victoria 2 also has forts, and forts do increase province occupation time like they do in EUIV, so artillery reduces the penalties enemy forts give you. Yet recon reduces the base occupation speed. So a stack with just infantry and cavalry will occupy non-fort provinces extremely quickly but having forts will reduce this speed significantly, so you add artillery to reduce(or outright negate) the penalty of enemy forts.

Thus with that in mind, the basic template for all civilized nations in Victoria 2 is ideally as such: 4 infantry, 1 cavalry, and 5 artillery. This brings us to the 3 different types of cavalry in this game: Cuirassiers, Dragoons, and Hussars. Cuirassiers have 0 recon and as such are basically infantry upgrades in the very early game until techs improve infantry to the point where they're utterly useless. Dragoons only have 1 recon so they're ok to have but since recon doesn't stack it's not ideal either for recon purposes(which is the main reason to have cavalry in your armies, to begin with. This leaves us with the Hussar, with 2 recon, being the ideal cavalry choice. Now there are of course stat differences too and different technologies affect different units but as a general rule of thumb, without getting too complicated, you want 4 infantry, 1 hussar, and 5 artillery. Of course in larger battles with lots of reinforcements you want to have more infantry to refill your front line, but that's typically where mobilization comes in.

When it comes to the budget, the main thing to keep in mind is that your tax efficiency early on is abysmal. So even when taxing all your population at 100% you'll barely get 20% of the amount. That's why the first move before you even unpause the game, with every nation, the first thing you do is raise taxes for everyone to 100%. Tax efficiency gets improved a bit with admin efficiency but mostly with tax efficiency techs and inventions. Now some nations begin with Laissez-Faire parties that only allow up to 50% taxes, if you start with such a party either switch out of it manually(as long as your government is not a full democracy you can manually switch ruling parties) or suck it up and try to compensate elsewhere(but expect a rough economic start).

The next thing to understand is how your income is generated. There are 3 sources of income in this game: taxes, tariffs, and exports. You can view tariffs and exports as EUIV's production and trade values but they're rather different mechanics. Early game tariffs are a great revenue source while the industry is all but impossible for most nations as you need a certain percentage of literacy for POPs to promote craftsmen to work in factories. Later on towards the mid or late game depending on your nation, you ideally want 0% tariffs to not burden your industry, which becomes your main source of income, both from taxation of craftsmen and clerks who generate higher salaries than farmers and laborers and from exports.

This post is already incredibly long and only covered the absolute basics of the military and budget that you mentioned struggling with. I would gladly offer more tips on specific topics if you want, as there is a whole lot going on under the hood that is rather poorly explained in-game.

I'd love to get with you whenever you are free to go over more if you don't mind.

[Mazzini]

i add another thing to the mentioned, a third element, since i relied on these for vicII and for other paradox's same way. i summon the two things people told:

I) ° main menu tutorial page is essential. you see three pages, base, medium, professional. you may cut the 'base' page if you have hurry (not good), yet at least medium is essential.

II) ° as for all paradox, online 'wiki' is a great work for humankind. read it freely. you will pass many hours on it with your iphone, or pc, on the relevant wiki page (not in a single 'eat')

the third element, which in my opinion is essential, that i wish to add, and that people often does not consider:

III) ° when you ignore the dynamics, 'have faith' in paradox's dynamics. act as in 'good sense' and hope vicII does what it shall be. often paradox is good and outcome makes sense.

for this last, you may also go and read real history of century, paradox often portraits that, in the sense that what specific countries made historically pays and is good for your match.

[Machiavelli]

This is the best paracuck gaem. You would do best to be reselient and get past the filter, and enjoy the 19th century larp. I recommend you just play the game and refer to guides.

Latch on quick because vic3 does not look to be a amazing successor. oh nvm this is necro...