Victoria II stealthily nears release

[Stormwaltz]

For Lum and...

Um.

Well, somebody else must care.

Preorders started today, release is the 13th. Yes, of this month. Less than two weeks from now. I guess they didn't think a hype train would help this one.

http://www.gamersgate.com/DDB-V2PRE/victoria-ii-pre-order-bundle

[JWIV]

For Lum and...

Um.

Well, somebody else must care.

Preorders started today, release is the 13th. Yes, of this month. Less than two weeks from now. I guess they didn't think a hype train would help this one.

http://www.gamersgate.com/DDB-V2PRE/victoria-ii-pre-order-bundle

Yes, but isn't the rule for Paradox is you have to wait until 1.2 for it to be playable?

[Lum]

Actually Hearts of Iron 3 is on 2.0 (ie first expansion pack) and still has major, major issues.

I'ma gonna wait a while on this one.

[tmp]

I the settings but well, Paradox.

[Ingmar]

I'm optimistic that it will be more playable than the first Victoria!

[Speedy Cerviche]

I haven't bought a Paradox game since Victoria it was such a piece of crap.

[tmp]

demo is out

First impression -- how does one manage to make a strategy game which doesn't show locations of your military units on zoomed out map (to be included in patch 1.2) and with territories dividied/grouped into "states" but then have the game never show you the names of these states on said map *and* not include them in the handy "find the province" search... 

[Mavor]

They pulled out most of the automation features from hearts of iron 3 and put more complicated systems in place, forcing you to micromanage shit every day. My empire fell into complete disarray when I forgot to look at my budget for three months...

Don't know why they went backwards with their automation/ai system.

[tmp]

Hmm it actually seems mostly automated from what i saw. There's no more of dicking around with manual promotion of the people stacks, supplies acquisition and the trade can be left running on auto if you wish so. It can be very much hands off, especially when you have government which doesn't allow direct messing with the economy and such.

There's some reports on official forums about some issues (craftmen have supposedly 10x as much needs as it makes sense, and past certain point most countries start to suffer from social revolutions which tear them apart in some unending spiral because even when the rebels win they don't introduce the reforms they demanded) but it's supposedly about the least bugged Paradox game shipped ever. And micromanaging every day doesn't seem to be mentioned.

[Ingmar]

bullet = bitten

wtf it has an intro movie

also... 25 tutorials and I am totally not kidding

EDIT: On the plus side, the tutorials for this one are not narrated by comedy Hitler.

[Modern Angel]

I fucking love it and can't put it down.

[Teleku]

God damn you assholes and your mixed signals.  I liked the first one despite its massive bugs and balancing issues.  I'm tempted by this, but Paradox really doesn't have a good track record lately.  And now I can't get a straight "it sucks"/"its great" reaction across the board.  Help me out here people!

[brellium]

I've been having fun with it.

There's a number of major changes:

No more random techs, you can now research any technology from any tree at any time.  There have even been changes to the Academa. now they just give bonuses to research trees 10% to foci and -10% to everything not a focus.

Historical events are no longer random, you can now trigger them if you meet the prereqs.  These show up in your politics screen on the bottom right with little check boxes which light up when they are eligable.

There is now a state limit on the number of factories you can build (8), however you can still expand them as you see fit (I even saw the capitalists expand them on their own which was something I rarely saw in Vicky 1).

Military units are now recruited at the brigade level (this really doesn't change anything for me as I just stack them as a division + brigade attachment).

Diplomacy has changed as there is now spheres of influence.


The game is rather stable for Paradox and seems to run smoothly. The only glaring bugs I've seen are just dialog boxes with UNKNOWN_STRING. (which any comptent QA department should have caught, and worries me a bit)

[Baldric]

God damn you assholes and your mixed signals.  I liked the first one despite its massive bugs and balancing issues.  I'm tempted by this, but Paradox really doesn't have a good track record lately.  And now I can't get a straight "it sucks"/"its great" reaction across the board.  Help me out here people!

Honestly, I would wait until the next patch (next week, hopefully).  The game is great until waves of revolutions destroy the AI players.  In my opinion, all that needs to be done to the game is some balancing of the pop demands, cultural assimilation, and revolution triggers.  It is lightyears beyond the quality of their recent releases and gives me hope that they have learned their lesson from HOI3. 

[brellium]

God damn you assholes and your mixed signals.  I liked the first one despite its massive bugs and balancing issues.  I'm tempted by this, but Paradox really doesn't have a good track record lately.  And now I can't get a straight "it sucks"/"its great" reaction across the board.  Help me out here people!

Honestly, I would wait until the next patch (next week, hopefully).  The game is great until waves of revolutions destroy the AI players.  In my opinion, all that needs to be done to the game is some balancing of the pop demands, cultural assimilation, and revolution triggers.  It is lightyears beyond the quality of their recent releases and gives me hope that they have learned their lesson from HOI3.  

THIS

I bought it thinking, "Ok, this might be pretty cool, worst case scenario I end up with a copy of Victoria Revolutions tied to my steam account."

[Modern Angel]

What Baldric said. This isn't remotely in HOI3 territory. I've been a pretty rabid fan of Paradox ever since EU1 was announced, much less released. I hopped on the bandwagon way early in this case. However, I was starting to despair quite a bit with the release of EU: Rome and HOI3; I think HTTT was in between those two but as an expansion pack it wasn't a new thing entirely. Vic2 is easily better than anything since EU3, probably better than EU3 at release.

Most of the complaints I see are due to what's deemed the opaqueness of the economic system. I'm just not seeing it. It's not like Victoria1. Most of it is under the hood but there's an absolute ton of soft control you can exercise to get POPs doing what you want, how you want and when you want. A little more like an actual government, a lot less like a micromanagement smorgasbord.

[Ingmar]

So much less  than the first one

[Teleku]

Ah, thanks everybody.  Guess I shall be purchasing this after all!

[Ingmar]

My capitalists suddenly LOST THEIR MINDS - they tore down a couple level 5 hugely profitable factories and are now in a cycle of building factories for goods that don't make any money and immediately tearing them down and rebuilding some other terrible factory. Meanwhile I now have like 160,000 unemployed dudes going "you know revolution is sounding pretty good right about now" and my cash stores are plummeting.

WTB planned economy party to win an election plz

[Modern Angel]

That's one of the issues solved in the 1.2 patch that's likely out this week.

[Sir T]

My capitalists suddenly LOST THEIR MINDS - they tore down a couple level 5 hugely profitable factories and are now in a cycle of building factories for goods that don't make any money and immediately tearing them down and rebuilding some other terrible factory. Meanwhile I now have like 160,000 unemployed dudes going "you know revolution is sounding pretty good right about now" and my cash stores are plummeting.

WTB planned economy party to win an election plz

Hey, welcome to the 21st century! 

[brellium]

So much less  than the first one

Oh, the first one was fun once you got the hang of it. Seriously China with a 35000 industrial power rating in 1936 was . I mean I was bringing on industry equivalent to what the US would start HOI2 with every 18 months.

I did NOT import that game in HOI2, my Japan game ended with me having 12k industry and it took the first year to stablize my economy.

[Stormwaltz]

The guys at Flash of Steel did their most recent podcast on Victoria II. After a long period dissecting the detail level in the game, and how difficult it is to make informed decision and enact policy changes in it, the following was said:

"...allow me to make the most heretical statement I will ever make about a strategy game on this podcast - which perhaps may generate so much hate mail I will never be invited back. With all of these things in the corners, and with the recognition that there is clearly a lot of intelligence and thoughtful design that has been put behind this, this game reminds me of nothing so much - in my personal experience - as a Serek Dmart game."

[Modern Angel]

Yeah, fundamentally disagree. Very much so. I might say that about HOI3 but not this.

[Ingmar]

They're mental. Victoria 2 is one bugfix patch away from being in my top 3 Paradox games with EU2 and Crusader Kings.

[Teleku]

Are there really no other time period start choices other than the default Grand Campaign?   

[Ingmar]

Yeah, I did find that a little odd.

[Trouble]

lol from Wikipedia:

The decision to create Victoria II was influenced by voting on the Paradox Interactive forums and debate within the company. The CEO of Paradox Interactive, Fredrik Wester, publicly announced his belief that the game would never see a profit while other members of the company such as Johan Andersson were confident it would be profitable. To this end Wester promised that if the game did indeed make a profit he would shave his head and post the pictures onto the forum. This belief stemmed from the first game's lackluster sales numbers. It was revealed in a German interview with Frederik that 70,000 copies would need to be sold in order for Victoria II to be profitable. On 17 June, Jessica Chobot from IGN shaved it off for him.

[brellium]

BIG PATCH

Updates to Victoria II have been released. The updates will be applied automatically when your Steam client is restarted. The major changes include:

New Features
Difficulty is back, with lots of different effects.

Added a sphere overview to the outliner

Added flags in zoomed out mode to represent armies and navies on the map.

When releaseing a nation you are now able to select that you want to continue playing as them. (singleplayer only, but will not make them a satellite.)

New Countries

Added Israel, South Rhodesia, Congo Free State & Iceland as releasable countries.

You can now form the Byzantine Empire if you play as a greek state and achieve a few goals.

Playable Babylon added as a free DLC integrated in the patch.

[Stormwaltz]

You can resurrect the Byzantine Empire.

I... I have little anime sparkles in my eyes.

[Ingmar]

Added a decision 'Miskatonic University' for NEN

[brellium]

Added a decision 'Miskatonic University' for NEN

I didn't see that, I just scrolled down and said 

[NiX]

Don't care for the game, but that's a monster patch.

[Lum]

The Babylon thing is actually a dig at Civ 5.

Don't ever change, Johan.

[Modern Angel]

Yeah, there went my day. Game feels good on my game as Prussia. Feels as though there are too FEW rebels so I think that needs to be tweaked. Capitalists aren't retarded about what factories they build.