Victoria 2 Guide For Just About Everything. UPDATED 2025

Intro

Covering almost all of the games contents for all situations. Generally recommend hitting CTRL F and searching for particular contents if you just rushed in head first and got stuck, or need more information on a topic. Any remaining questions can be asked in the comments and I will answer them.

Disclaimer

I will be incorporating some use of other individual’s guides on particular subject matters. These pertain to more niche concepts or not up front necessary to play the game. These guides do well in their respected area and I have no intended purpose of imposing myself upon that, as I only wish to offer a player the knowledge they will need in order to pick up and play the game as it seems to baffle loads of new players. However I digress, contents of linked guides are not anywhere near copy and pasted, instead the knowledge is provided as readily available to the viewer, and I only delve on topics that may be included as a necessity towards playing the game. Links to the individual guides and their makers are supported at the bottom, and I have no interest in receiving credit for them. Please contact me if you are the owner of one of the following and have any complaints, comments, or concerns.

The Production Tab, The Budget Tab, and The Politics Tab.

Production Tab

The production tab is the first tab on the left most side. Under production it shows 5 resources, those are the top 5 produced resources of your nation. Under that is a hammer, factory, and a man holding a hammer.

• The hammer will glow green if the player is currently making factories, if the player isn't, it will not glow at all.

1. The factory will glow red if factories have gone bankrupt, no longer operating. A way to stop them from going bankrupt, is to go into the production menu, find the factory and the little box under it's icon, clicking this will send a check for government subsidies, continuing operation on government expense. However, only certain government parties can do this option, by going to the Politics tab and hovering over the parties it will state which can subsidize (generally everything but liberals). Early game many factories may need subsidies to make ends meet.
   
   
2. The final one, the man with the hammer, if glowing red it means that there are unemployed people. If it's not glowing red there are no unemployed people in the country.

• There are pros and cons to having unemployed people. Unemployment leads to people not being able to get their needs, they get angry at the government and can become rebellious. On a minor level this is negligible. On a more desperate level, pops will rebel outright, mainly socialist or communist wanting to take control of reforms and government. However, if kept minor it leaves a constant stream of potential workers for factories that are expanding or new factories in that particular region.
  
  
• Only certain government types can allow the player to make factories, other times the player must rely on the pop type capitalist, which will fund factories and railroads. Luxury factories produce the most industrial power, however only improve living quality for the wealthy, and not particularly useful for Communist or Socialist.

Budget Tab

The budget tab comes right after the Production tab. To the left is taxes, and loans at the bottom, to the right is government spending, and daily income at the bottom.

1. In capitalist economy, tax the rich the least so they keep funding growth.
   
   
2. Taxing any pop too high will cause unrest, as they can’t get their needs or wants. The pie charts will tell what percentage of those pops are getting what quality of living, so find a balance between happiness and profits.
   
   
3. National stockpile, is how much factories cover producing items, and the sliders determine the amount of the budget is allocated to paying the military, navy, and construction goods. Cheapness is determined by how much the industry can cover items versus outsourcing. To keep the army/navy fit, pay around 50%, then 81% to 100% when at war. 81% being the minimum for good strength.
   
   
4. Below it is education, more spent means more pops are educated monthly, recommended to be maxed out. Pops being allowed to promote and demote has a couple of factors with education/literacy being a central factor across the board.
   
   
5. Below that is administration, the more spent on that, the more secure the country becomes (police basically), and products move about more efficiently (cheaper), and widespread crime in certain regions will be less likely.
   
   
6. Below that is social spending, paying for social programs, like money for old people, money for unemployed, etc. However this only becomes a thing when doing specific social reforms. Usually my experience has taught me that after doing a social reform, leave this maxed. As the people tend to get very militant over social spending even being a hair away from 100%.
   
   
7. ---Quick tip ---No matter the level of pensions or unemployment the player can almost always, and entirely tax them bone dry out of what they gain without facing the militancy debuf from not paying for social programs. Meaning these programs will help raise standards of living while still getting the money straight back through the taxes of what they buy to raise their standards of living.
   
8. Tariffs determine the price of buying products from foreign markets. Higher the tariff the more expensive it is for your people/industries to buy abroad. Being sphere’d also means you make next to nothing from tariffs.
   
   
9. Military spending, or militaries wages. More they get paid the higher the chance of a promotion. Once promoted they won't go back. This provides buffs for getting more generals, but lose soldiers who actually fight in the field. Smaller nations who don't have a large population may suffer from not getting enough soldier pops. I personally recommend keeping this at 50%-60% at peace, and raising it according to how costly a war is to incentivise joining the army.

Politics Tab

The government types and what they all do can be summed up really well by this one guide Party's, Policies, and Government in V2. It's very well done, all questions will most likely be answered by it. However if you do have a question don't be afraid to ask me or him on the guide's comments.

Quick what's happening
• The left of the screen is the ruling party, and it’s support. You can click on the party and change it depending if your not in an election or the right type of government.
  Reform section
  
• Reforms are all over the right side. Read them and form your own opinion but a lot of the time people get angry and try and rise up for those reforms.
  Movements
  
• What rebellions might pop up, how likely and how strong they are, and what they are advicating for.
  Decisions
  
• Special events for a country that can only be done under certain requirements, not all are smart like reforming the education, at least generally aren’t smart.
  
  Release Nations
  
• I will explain satellites in the Dominions, Satellites, and Substates section because there is a little more to them as you are releasing an entire country.
  
• Selecting Play As is the only way to release as independent, will want to tag switch if you actually want an independent country.

Sub-section Reforms

• Nuance here is that all reforms are locked behind majority approval based within the upper house, the upper house consisting of allowed parties representing people allowed to vote. Therefore direct division of these votes held by the upper house can be construed by changing the political reform for the upper house, and a lesser degree of impact can be achieved by reforming voting laws.
  
  
• For the most part all reforms are better for the nation as you go from the top (little to no amount of impact) to the bottom (maximum reform, maximum impact).
  The caveat being work related reforms mostly only benefit reducing pop militancy at the cost of peak production, they do however offset by reducing needs, meaning that for what is taken away by the reform (production efficiency) is then healthily offset by reduced needs of the pops themselves. This is not factored 1:1, so these reforms will hurt industrial growth more than they wont.
  
  

  Civilized nations

  
  
• Civilized nations will all want to follow a fairly direct path of reform that involves peak healthcare reform and education as a primary goal. That being health care and school system
  Arguably health care being the most important. More pops, more workers, more factories, more money.
  School systems come at a close second. Education efficiency improves literacy, better literacy is better educated pops. Allowing for dynamic pop types to suit more educationally demanding roles. So more useful pops, more assimilation, more profitable, and most importantly more research points.
  
  Avoid slavery
  Slaves are terrible
  Slavery abolished should be your primary goal if you have slaves
  
  
• Civilized nations will want to avoid slavery at all costs. Slave pops as an entirety are utterly useless. Slave pops work RGOs, any pop could work RGOs, slaves just do it for free, they also don’t demand many goods. (pops wanting goods drives more goods production, meaning better economy). Most importantly they CAN’T be taxed or assimilated. Taxation driving early game economies, their inability to do factory labor greatly hampers mid to late game economies.
  
  

  Uncivilized nations

  
  
• Nuance here, for the most part, all non-european and western nations are considered uncivilized, that is why within the reforms screen you “Westernize” to become civilized.
  
  
• Reforms significance greatly depends on current location. That be it plenty of easy to conquer neighbors or seclusion. The tree is split between Military and Economic reforms. Military reforms for conquering neighbors and Economic reforms for seclusion or the inability to conquer neighbors.
  
  
• Objectively the fastest way to civilize is through military reforms. Military reforms provide bonuses when conquering states. Meaning when conquering, per each reform, an even greater amount of research points is awarded, allowing for a spiraling amount of research point gain bonuses.
  Once Westernized all reforms within the uncivilized tree cease to exist, and technology is introduced, along with the civilized reform tree.
  
  
• If faced with isolation or inability to conquer neighbors, the economic reforms branch is the default path. This path is fairly mundane and lackluster.
  The key note being education reform in this situation should be taken as soon as possible to boost research point gain (as reforms within uncivilized nations are based upon research point amounts and NOT pops).
  The most useless being early industrialisation and industrial construction. As briefly mentioned in a previous section, uncivilized nation status hampers it significantly on the global market. Meaning RGOs required to drive industries almost entirely must be found within the borders of the current uncivilized country for the industry to have any access to it’s required RGOs. So at the great cost of detrimental research points, it's better spent “wastefully” (within this circumstance) on cheap military reforms to get the country westernized.
  

Technology Tab

Technologies Tab

Self explanatory in the most part. The green outline is researched, orange is available for research, grey is unresearchable until a certain time or previous research has been met.
The only thing that I can stress is watching military tech. The littlest bit underdeveloped then the opponent and the player will start to get tossed around.

• I strongly recommend always keeping philosophy up to date because of the massive buff (It's under the culture tab).
  
  
• Keep up your Social Thought under Culture to improve literacy, Biologism being the goal because it unlocks Darwinism, a 50% buff, after that can put Social Thought research aside.
  
  
• Invest in Political Thought for more national focuses, keep in mind that the amount possible is based on core population. (shown on the population tab section)
  
  
• Industry research is good, but always make sure to have the Commerce research to back it up.
  
  
• As a beginner, it's probably smart to look at all the technologies and get an idea for them all. I delve into industry and commerce research in the how to grow your economy section.
  
  
• Not to teach anyone how to play, but from experience, for a civilized country opening moves should look something like grabbing Enlightenment Philosophy, Freedom of Trade, or Medicine. Medicine being most important as it provides inventions that increase population growth and limit soldier pops actually dying and not just returning to the population pool. Followed by Enlightenment Philosophy, then Freedom of Trade. Chances are a civilized country that starts with 1-2 of these already.
  
  
• If playing uncivilized, look towards getting training methods, foreign weapons, military constructions, and officer training in that order if capable of declaring several wars early on. If not jump to education reforms to get literacy going to increase research points. Both routes will grab each other eventually and then climb down land reform, transportation, and finally finance to increase profitability of RGO's as no industry, or navy built as a uncivilized will truly matter/be able to matter.
  
  
• Uncivilized countries that are puppets, who do civilize while still being a puppet will grab upwards of all the 1850s technology. Depending on what the mother country has research, I believe it has to do with the mother country researching 1-2 technology above 1850s tech or even 1840s. Also Chinese puppets do not apply for this. Not entirely sure how this mechanic works, have only seen it in action, and I doubt many will ever know as this is truthfully doesn't change enough to warrant all the digging. I suppose food for thought.

Sub Section, RGOs, Industry, GROWING ECONOMY!

• You can check what RGOs get produced where by hitting the A key, selecting a province will show how great it's production is from Red to Green in reference to every other of the same type globally.
  
  
• All RGO’s have a base value applied to them uniquely, which is determined in the game files, that is only modified through technologies, pops, and events. So out of any given resource not all the same resource RGO’s are created equally.
  
  
• Metallurgy & Power technologies affect Farming and Mining RGO outputs. Infrastructure, railroads in a state, determine the transportation effectiveness of goods across that state and to the neighboring states.
  - You will almost always have sufficient enough Aristocrats and Laborers. Aristocrats being close to useless as they only provide statewide RGO buffs based on their population percentage in said state. Figuratively having 10% of the population being Aristocrats will only provide a 10% buff, which is far worse than the minimum 2% (to run the RGOs) when considering technology buffs can exceed +100%.
  - Aristocrats provide ONLY a 1:1 population to percent output boost. Aristocrats beyond 2% are wasted potential for capitalist, which will pipeline the profitable potential of an RGO.
  
  
• Laborers, miners, farmers pops work for RGO’s, producing the resources that are sold outright, either to the global market or the countries industries, with the countries industries being the primary.
  
  
• Nations without a specifically needed RGOs or lacking production will be forced to buy them from the global market.
  
  
• For vocabulary reference, basic goods industries produce with RGO inputs exclusively. Complex goods industries require input from a culmination of either basic goods, RGO’s, or even other complex goods.
  
  
• Vertical industrial chains are the most desirable industrial path in Victoria 2. This describes building top down state industries. Accomplished by having a basic factory, based on the RGOs inside the state, then building complex factories in that state with inputs requiring said basic factory/s. This foregoes transportation debuffs, which are only ever increasingly mitigated by higher level railways.
  Transporting goods across states will always be at the cost of efficiency (profits).
  
  
• Horizontal industrial chains, described by base factories across multiple states, with a potential of maintaining a complex factory within any of the states.
  - While being least desirable, most endgame economies will be forced to devolve into these chains as no given state has the RGO capabilities to produce every industry.
  - Early game these should be avoided, technological improvements to infrastructure, trains and transportation, is what makes horizontal industries viable.
  - RGO’s by themselves can/will be transported across states, however, as mentioned above, this comes at a significant cost only subsided by improved railways.
  
  
• The trade tab immediately shows high demand goods required by pops and industries, while also displaying highest profitability goods being produced. This can be used to gauge potential interest, whether better technology, more focus on a particular good, or growing the borders to have more access.
  
  
• The two basic conflicting sides of industrial management are command based economies vs laissez-faire based economies with potential management somewhere in between, all determined by the current political party. As the names suggest it’s fairly straight forward. The point of contention is had at the basic game mechanics.
  - Victoria’s communism is a weird Marxism, everyone works, no arbitrary quotas allow for peak production (profits) in a capitalist sense. Everything is still based on market (and global trade) pricing however to introduce demand into the system. Victoria's communism doesn't make much sense in when compared to reality but grasping the effects the party sets for the country is sufficient enough.
  - Laissez-faire capitalist fund industries based on high demand goods, which is pop driven, meaning it will not usually fund industries for more niche goods, typically military goods, all of which spanning many states and even in sub-optimal states where required RGO’s aren’t even there.
  - Command economies, or at least economies similar, are typically great early to mid game, allowing for complete focus state side to build vertical industrial chains, however from mid to late game this nuance is typically lost as your country (hopefully) expands and the economy scales far beyond direct control.
  - Theres not always a correct answer but typically interventionism is the most desirable policy, as it allows for both ends of the spectrum.

Sub-Section, Colonization

Without the DLC

• You have to use national focuses in order to colonize land, a tip would be delving into the national focuses research if you plan on being a major colonial power.
  
• Having troops placed on the states that you are currently colonizing speeds up the colonization rate. The amount of troops does not matter, 3,000 or 30,000 will both provide, if I recall correctly a 2% bonus to colonial occupation time.
  
• Having 2% of the population in a colonized state being Bureaucrats allows you to turn it into an official state, getting rid of the debuff it weighs down on your available colonial power
  

  With the DLC

• Ships = Colonial Power, bigger the navy the more you can colonize
  
• Colonial Power is checked by looking in the bottom right of the little section by your flag (which is in the top right of the top menu). Example to know if your looking in the right place -> The United Kingdom starts with a Colonial Power of 212 / 1241 (Available of 212 out of 1241).
  
• Having 2% of the population in a colonized state being Bureaucrats allows you to turn it into an official state, getting rid of the debuff it weighs down on your available colonial power
  
• Generally 80 or 100 Colonial Power is needed for each state that you wish to colonize.
  
• Big Tip save your Colonial Power up, when you win over a colony through time and such they become part of your realm. You can then immediately turn that colonized state into a protectorate, wait to do this till your done colonizing in general as to save your Colonial power. Mostly worry about that when colonizing large chunks of land at a time (like a lot of Africa).
  
• Ironclads and Monitors give by far the best stats.
  
• You will need a lot of ports and to research into leveling up your ports for more ships.
  
• Better leveled ports are also required for higher level ships.
  

  Ships, Colonial Power, Supply Weight, Colonial Power per Supply Weight

  Ship	Colonial Power	Supply Weight	Power / Weight
  Frigate	2	1	2
  Man’o’war	5	2	2.5
  Commerce Raider	8	3	2.66
  Ironclad	12	3	4
  Monitor	10	3	3.33
  Cruiser	16	20	0.8
  Battleship	15	50	0.3
  Dreadnought	22	60	0.366

• Produce as many Ironclads as possible, however they are much more expensive than Monitors so try to cut as few corners as possible.
  
• Also for reference Monitors and up is what's available for research by the 1870s, the time of colonization in base game.

What you will need for both the DLC and non-DLC versions

• Pre-1850s and 1850s technology that you need

1. Medicine
   
2. State & Government
   
3. Breech-Loaded Rifles

• When researching many technologies it will allow you to discover “Possible Inventions”, of this you need

1. Prophylaxis against Malaria, discovered without the need for additional technology researched.
   
2. Mission to Civilize, need additional technology researched.
   
3. Colonial Negotiations, need additional technology researched.

• Mission to Civilize, what you need to research (1850s technology)

1. Nationalism & Imperialism
   
2. Market Regulations
   
3. Naval Statistics

• Each one of these researched acts as a stacked modifier, only one is required to give you the chance to discover it, but the more you research these techs the more likely you are to discover Mission to Civilize.
  
  
• Colonial Negotiations (1870s technology)
  
  
• Machine Guns
  
  
• Unnecessary but increase the chance of getting Colonial Negotiations
  
  
• Economic Responsibility
  
• Naval Logistics
  
• if any Great Power, and if any neighbor has Colonial Negotiations, it will boost your chance of discovering Colonial Negotiations yourself. However, this automatically means you’ll be late to the colonial boom.

The Population Tab, and The Diplomacy Tab.

Population tab

It shows what percentage of people are doing what from nationwide down to region wide. However on the tab icon itself (The tab you click to go to the population menu) you will notice 4 things.

1. The current male adult population, the numbers right below the word Population. The higher generally the better, more workers more soldiers ect. Hovering over this shows the whole population (4*male population). The number in parentheses next to it is population growth for the day.
   
   
2. Below that is a circle with an arrow. This is national focuses. 1 is given no matter the population, getting more is based on technology and the amount of core population. You can use them by clicking on a province in a state, going towards the upper right of the pop up will be a little brown box, selecting that you can apply a national focus that will affect the whole state. Hovering over all the icons will describe what they do and is self explanatory.
   
   
3. Right below that is a fire, or militancy of the population, also giving an idea for the likelihood of rebellion. The cap is 10 militancy, and can be lowered by enacting certain reforms, lowering taxes, and by solving dominant issues which can be found by clicking the population tab, and then looking for the dominant issues pie chart near the top.
   
   
4. To the left of militancy is the consciousness, or the head with a brain icon. This also caps at 10, the higher this goes, the more likely pops are to have ideas and be firm on them. Being democratic means you might be stuck on a particular party for a while.

Diplomacy Tab

On the icon tab itself there are 3 important things.

1. The at peace words below Diplomacy. When a country’s flag pops up that means you are now at war with them.
   
   
2. The weird circular symbol thingy. If glowing means you can increase sphering progress with other countries, or sphere them. Sphere’d countries are forced to trade first with whoever sphere’d them as the primary export route. Only great powers can sphere, and can only sphere non great powers.
   
   
3. The star with the arrow will glow depending on if you’re losing great power status or gaining it (takes a year). Only civilized countries get this option. In the Diplomacy tab it will say whether you are civilized or not. Uncivilized don’t have much, if anything in terms of research. Very low access to the market making trade very hard. It’s easy and cheap to attack them because they are for the most part under developed. Uncivilized countries have a reform system in order to civilize.

• While having a country selected, clicking the “show wars” tab will show information about troop count (red if mobilized), navy count, and hovering over it will show technological advancements on military and navy correspondingly.
  
  
• When declaring unjustified war you get a debuff called the infamy penalty. If this goes above 25 other countries will almost immediately declare war on you to stop your warmongering ways.Wait for justified events, don’t be a warmonger, or save scum the justification time. Also higher infamy means more concusiness and more undesirable you are as an ally.

Trade tab section.

Trade Tab

On the icon below the word trade the red arrow is the top 3 exports and the green arrow is the top 3 imports. This information can be used to know what factories to build in order to stop spending on imports.
• Receiving goods is based on prestige and rank world wide, being #1 with the most prestige will mean that you will be the first to receive goods then 2nd place will get what you don’t grab, and so on. If #1 is ranked only in power and #2 has the most prestige than goods will be split between the 2, both acting as #1 receivers. This makes it hard for countries at like rank 50 and below to even receive goods.
  
  
• Because of how uncivilized works in general, in my experience, yet speculative in nature, uncivilized are pooled for trade separately then civilized countries. It would appear that being the strongest power out of the uncivilized gives most market resources to that power after feeding through the weakest civilized power. Basically meaning the best leader board uncivilized gets global market goods after the weakest civilized country gets their own.
  
  
• The slider inside the window is handled by an AI at the start of the game. The AI will always grab the amount currently needed, will not exceed that.
  
  
• That number acts as a stock pile in the full DLC version of the game. If needing to constantly buy 1000 guns to help maintain the army, the AI will only buy and stockpile 1000 guns from the global market, constantly accounting for the changes below or above a 1000. They will also sell the excess of 1000.
  
  
• Taking manual control means that you can start buying and stockpiling up to however many you want, i.e. 2000, and after the stock pile of 2000 all extra will be sold. Mostly useful for military goods.
  
  
• -- For reference -- lets say Infantry take 10 guns, (they take more just easy numbers). So 1000 guns would fully fund 100 infantry brigades, meaning if the player started manually trading with a stockpile of 2000 their infantry could be decimated twice before they'd stop regrouping do to a lack of equipment. Assuming manpower and all other goods infantry need are in perfect order.
  
  
• In non-DLC Victoria 2 there is a national stockpile button in this window that is taken out in the DLC. This is absolutely broken, doesn't down right destroy the game as a civilized power, but if you play a uncivilized and turn it on, then civilize. Then the entire world will go bankrupt and you will gain loads of immigrants and money as you siphon every good in the game.
  
  
• Goods exported and sold go to a global market that acts as the middle ground. Goods aren’t exported directly between countries unless it’s between a sphere and it’s overlord or a puppet and it’s master.
  
  
• ----TIP---- I learned this while watching a Spudgun video, it's called "Shadow Funding" for the military. A little edgy but it entails manually setting the trade for military goods to 0, while still funding the military through the finances tab. This drastically reduces peace time military cost while keeping organization up on the units.
  
  
• Deeper concepts following up the what you need to know is provided in Trade window, how it work.
  
• - Also, yes I do let the AI do all the work, bar being shadow funding, it's useful for keep org while saying on equipment costs. Can only think of a handful of times I've actually manually done trade before besides that. Never the less it's helpful to know how it works and why you may not be getting the goods you need, and how to aid that.

Subsection Dominions, Satellites, and Substates

Overview

Satellites are like having two spheres on the same country. Satellites basically only work for you, however can be a leak in your economy. For short term usage I will be describing Dominions, Satellites, and Substates as just Satellites because it shortens to length, and there is no discernible difference between the 3 as they all carry out the same task.

• Satellites are released from either countries the player has conquered or from nation cores owned by the player at the start of the game.
  
  
• Africa works a tad bit differently, while the above still applies, the player, and AI, can release African Satellites that had no previous cores on the map and the land was grabbed through colonization instead of conquering.
  
  
• Satellites are almost always forced to be your trade partner and forced to be your ally through thick and thin.
  
  
• Satellites get a research buff of 50% if the mother country has already researched it. They do not provide any buffs to the mother country if they research something the mother country has not researched. Non westernized Satellites also get a major leap in tech when they westernize, depending on what the mother country has researched and except for the Chinese area as they become free from China upon westernization.
  
  
• Now the value of them depends on their job. As they can not simply be clicked back into the mother country, at lot of unfortunate mistakes would have to take place in order for them to be separated, independent, and then the mother country would have to conquer them.
  
  
• Satellites can be released through a war goal, falling to a rebellion(some not all though), the mother country falling to a rebellion, the Satellite becoming a great power, or in the case of China that is becoming westernized.

Pros and Cons

• Con - The player does not have direct input on the country other then controlling the units it puts out. For this reason I would strongly suggest the player does not release strategic areas, or areas worth a lot of money. Especially areas that have valuable metals in them (gold mines and the such).
  
  
• Con - In personal preference a vast amount of the console is typically used to shape the perfect borders.
  
  
• Middle ground - Satellites can trade with other countries if they are sphere'd by someone other then yourself. While they do still view you as the main trade partner, for a Great Power this can lead to a leak in a particular kind of economy, i.e. communism. However additional sphering power is given to the mother country to maintain it's Satellite. Then for minors this can be nice as it allows a country not getting all the resources it needs from the global market to open up another shop to hopefully push the demand a little more.
  
  
• Pros - Satellites through colonization or just on uncolonized land will free up colonial power tied to them. They also take away 5 infamy upon release. Colonial power being all tied up is how the player may see places like Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and African countries birthed into existence.
  
  
• Pros - Large amounts of Africa is purely useless, as you can get the RGOs better from somewhere else, or the population there is too much of a drain on social services. Making a puppet maintain that instead can save a drowning economy and put the problem onto a country that is a lot less industrial, meaning they can actually use the goods a lot better then the mother country could, and still deliver surplus to the mother country. This will also help maintain a Satellites power as they can't grow an industry, making their freedom a lot less plausible.
  
  
• --My personal usage-- If I manage to snag large quantities of Africa I will strategically release several countries, so one does not have too much power, so they can guard Africa. Because while states are the only thing in war that are represented in the war counter for who's winning, colonial land still provides RGOs and being sieged for too long will cause all out rebellions. For some reason countries like France and the United Kingdom will send 100s of divisions to Africa, and having AI controlled African nations to manage them out is a lot easier then worrying about another front.
  ------ Countries like Aldjazair, Morocco, Tripoli, Tunis, somewhat Egypt, and narrowly Ethiopia. As none of these countries will ever hold absolutely worthwhile RGOs, other then arguably Ethiopia but even then the Coffee isn't likely to be worthwhile.

The Military Tab

Military Tab

• Right below the word Military on the main tab icon you see Number/Number. This is your current brigades out of max brigades (current/max).If current is over max, usually you are unable to recruit. If current is over max that means theres more brigades then soldiers and you need to recruit. Brigades will tend to get dismantled in combat if current is more then max. You can increase the second number with national focuses.
  
• To the right of the brigade count is an anchor, that’s the number of ships and the amount of supply they can receive. When red that means too many ships for supply. Simply build more docks or upgrade docks to counteract that. Overseas docks don’t work as effectively however.
  
• Below brigades is 3 men representing how much you can mobilize. Mobilizing should only be used in drastic situations that your professional army can’t handle alone.Mobilizing takes random pops from lower class and conscripts them. Mobilizing puts tremendous strain on your industry. It will make your income hit the fan and they’re very weak divisions on their own being only infantry. Smaller nations with low recruitable brigade counts can use mobilization to replace infantry in their templates, however it puts the player at a disadvantage in an unprepared war.
  
• Finally the checkered flag, this is a points system used for creating generals and admirals. Generals and admirals add buffs and debuffs to the army and navy respectively, however having 1 is better then none. Setting this to auto is just fine for casual.
  
• A great guide for understanding the art of war is Victoria 2's Art of War.
  
• A great guide for understanding how to compose your army is Military Composition Guide.
  If you are lazy like myself and don’t want several different templates and just want universals I go by a double support rule. Always have double the support brigades compared to the infantry/cavalry. An examples follow below this segment. Usually early through late game is determined by what is researchable, and what you can produce at a significant quantity.
  
  -------no military tech, uncivilized, or need loads of troops early game
  
• Cavalry death stacks, especially as uncivilized China, will get you through early wars.
  
  -------Early Game/Mid game depending on troop count
  
• 4 infantry, 1 hussars, 5 cannons.
  
• 4 infantry, 1 hussars, 4 cannons, and 1 engineer. Sacrificing little power for sieging faster
  
• 8 infantry, 2 hussars, 8 cannons, 2 engineers. (I like my death stacks, power + seige).
  
• 8 Infantry, 2 hussars, 10 cannons. (Same concept as above, just more power less seige)
  
  -------Late game (Production power becomes more necessary).
  
• 5 infantry, 1 plane, 3 artillery, and 1 engineer.
  
• 5 infantry, 1 plane, 3 artillery, and 1 tank.
  
  
• Planes are grouped in with support units, that's why it turns into 5 infantry, for the 50/50 split.
  
  
• Engineers become tanks and hussars become planes, however planes are much cheaper for replacements then tanks are. Should always make an effort to replace hussars, but be selective about engineer replacement.
  
• From experience, tanks and planes have little trade off from engineers and hussars, though I would recommend still replacing hussars with planes. Both only seem to matter against players, likely you will be just fine without replacing.
  -------Units Info
  
• Hovering over them gives you their information and stats. However you have two different types of brigades in an essence. You have main line brigades and then support. Support are constantly in the battle, while main line infantry haft to wait for the infantry in front of them to die before they can engage themselves. That's why you want a 50/50 split between mainline and support so both are adequately engaging the enemy.

Cheats

• A good guide for this is Cheats and events For Victoria 2 2014., this has loads of events and some of the console commands.
  
• There is also the paradox wiki listed here [vic2.paradoxwikis.com] for the full list of Victoria 2 commands.
  
• Also the way to open the cheat console is to hit the “~/`” key in the top left located next to the "1" key for windows operating systems.

Conclusion

For people struggling to find information about specifics. The guides I linked to will have a lot of information for the military, how to invade, combat in general, and all sorts of nice stuff. I will try to answer all questions I receive so please feel free to leave them. Tried not to use their material as my own so I will be following up with credit towards the guides that I provided for other's to learn from.
cheat Guide;
Army composition Guide;
Art of war Guide;
Trade Window Guide;
Policies and Government types Guide;

I do semi-monthly updates, at least something around that, to the guide. This is almost always to update with additional and more expanding content. Making certain sections have better explanations or better details and descriptions, and the occasional grammar fixes. Everything read today will be more or less the same thing as it was 5 years ago... god I'm old... and as it will be 5 years from now, with just more or less in-depth to it. As the plan for this guide has always been to teach the new players, and terrible ones all the facts and evidence backed speculative knowledge of the game in a format that would allow for a CTRL - F search. Also I am aware very few will read this message.

[ThatDudeWithTheLegoLocoPicture]

To better reiterate, HPM is, in all practicality, the same concept, same time period, and over-all same gameplay. Just with different wording, and a lot more of it.

[ThatDudeWithTheLegoLocoPicture]

HPM and similar are fundamentally still Victoria 2, and fundamental grasps of the base game translate to realistically any mod. To specify some what on what I can remember, I do know that HPM has different technologies specifically targeting colonization and several other key sections. However bar population reworks, that being pop counts, cultures, immigration rates, new countries, and conversion rates, HPM will work a lot like base game just with a lot more decisions and event flavors.

Are you skipping victoria 2 and just jumping straight into HPM?

[Piett]

I believe mods like HPM, TGC, etc. alter some of the mechanics a bit but is generally the same.

[winter]

Would this still all be applicable for the HPM mod, or is that a different can of worms?

[File Explorer]

lovely

[bigzthegreat]

I was playing as Spain and had tariffs 100% so the Philippines revolted and my navy (and half of my army) died to attrition

[ThatDudeWithTheLegoLocoPicture]

Lowering taxes just gives them more money to buy more goods. The big kicker with lowering taxes especially as a smaller country, or one not seeing much boarder growth, one can get a very poor population, where the player taxes them out of all their money, so they have less money to pay for goods or taxes the next day, and that keeps spiraling getting worse and worse. You should fine tune this so your basically making little to no money in order to get the ball rolling, just don't take on debt because debt cost money from pops but paying it off just sends the money to the void.

[ThatDudeWithTheLegoLocoPicture]

Feeding your population isn't really the idea. More so your population is very poor and cant afford basic standards of living. Certain technologies actually make this harder with the idea that as you industrialize you'll be able to keep up. All and all you'd need to be more specific to your circumstances. However generally I can recommend lowering tariffs, subsidizing factories, and lowering taxes in that order. Tariffs will make it cost more for your pops/factories to buy from the global market. Subsidizing factories, also increasing minimum wage helps, will help pops get jobs, keep them, and make a wage to afford goods. Craftsman and clerks are going to make more then a farmer or laborer, with an ideal balance weighing supply and demands of both parties not coming full swing till mid to late industrialization.

[bigzthegreat]

How do I feed my population? There's always a couple pops missing basic life needs that become rebellion fodder

[Cillit Gank]

No fun allowed needs to have some fun. Thank you for the guide.