Victoria vs EUII

[Nikolai]

Really, the only Paradox manual worth anything after a couple of patches, has been HoI2's. It's irritating to not have one, but really, PIF is all you need.

[chequita guevara]

They say Belgium is a good country to learn the mechanics of the game with, but it just seems rather boring to be Belgium At least with Sardinia you get to conquer and create Italy.

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by Oerdin
The problem is the 6 in 1 box didn't come with any manuals.

EU2 in the 6 in 1 box comes with a PDF.

[Spiffor]

Oerdin:
Actually, I suggst you play with Japan on your first games, as you'll be completely free of war, and will be able to concetrate on the economy.

(Besides, Japan being "uncivilised" until 1870, you'll learn how to squeeze out the maximum of your economy)

[Dinner]

I must be doing something very wrong. I just don't get Victoria at all and there is no tutorial nor is there any owner's manual that I can find. LotM said there was a PDF version of the manual but it sure isn't on the game disk any where. I took Che's suggestion and played Belgium for my first game and the intial war against Holland seemed to go well. I captured a few proviences and signed a peace treaty with the Dutch. Yaay for me.

Then I wanted to expand my economy so I built railroads in every provience and I built a cement factory and a winery but soon my country was broke. I disband all but one military unit and still I was losing money. I made sure my army was demobalized (and it was) but I was still broke so I disbanded my last unit. After that I was not making money nor losing money.

I can't find a tax slider any where nor can I easily tell what resources I have. I keep getting messages that corruption is rife in so and so but I have no units to send there nor do I really know how to deal with it. No one wants to trade me anything and I sure can't build anything. I figured I just had to let my stoke piles grow and then I'd be able to build something. Nope, that didn't work because 15 years passed and I still couldn't build anything. I did notice I could upgrade the out put in my proviences so I kept upgrading but no matter how much I dumped into it out put never seemed to increase.

I played until 1860 and then got bored since I could never do anything. I'm going to start a game as Prussia and hope that mabe I can get a better understanding of this game. Right now I'm thinking it isn't very fun.

[Spiffor]

For the tax sliders: click the crown on the upper left. You'll see many graphic buttons (production screen, trade, finances, politics, diplomacy, science). Finance is the button which has a pound symbol (£) on it.

At the beginning of the game, pretty much every country has an unbalanced budget, because every expenditure is average, and taxation is minimal. The first thing to do when one starts a new game is to tweak the taxes. For example, as Japan, I always set my defense spending (the rate at which you raise your defense potential) and my military maintenance spending at a minimum.

Also, be aware that your income directly depends of your taxation, but also of the value of your exports (basically, your income depends on how much of the stuff you produce gets sold).

For this reason, I suggest you look at the trade screen (in the "crown" menu, the button that has a globe on it). Uncheck immediately "let the computer handle trade", because the computer will buy heaps of crap that will make you further in the red.
The trade screen may look complicated, but it's actually pretty straightforward. Here's how it works:
You click on a ware (let's say, "grain") At the bottom of the screen, you'll see details appear. Among them, a ">" sign, and a bar that has values between 0 and 100,000.
At the start, grain trade is set at "> 10", which means "sell everything but 10 grain that you'll keep in the stockpile". Explanation: the > sign means "sell", and the < sign means "buy" (it's explicit in the screen). The figure after the <> sign is the amount of merchandise you wish to have in your stockpile. The computer will automatically buy or sell, so that you have as much merchandise in your stockpile as required.

At the beginning of the game, I suggest that you sell all the goods you produce, but keep a minimal stockpile. The default setting is pretty good: [i]everything[i] is to be sold after you have stockpiled 10 units. After that, look at what your factories need (you should have only a few at the beginning, so it will be easy to know their needs), and set to buy the needed natural resources that you don't produce. I suggest you set the wished stockpile to 100, so that you won't have any risk of running short.

The trade screen may look like a hassle, but it really isn't. Trade is an extremely convenient way to get what you want, even when you don't produce it yourself. And once you have set trade well enough for it to cover most of your needs, you'll rarely have to tweak it again.

An important note about trade: you don't have to stockpile stuff to cater to your citizen needs. Your citizens will buy their needed products (grain, tea, coffee etc.) in the world market. Your stockpile is only useful for your factories, and your own construction projects.

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by Oerdin
I must be doing something very wrong. I just don't get Victoria at all and there is no tutorial nor is there any owner's manual that I can find. LotM said there was a PDF version of the manual but it sure isn't on the game disk any where.

I havent installed Victoria. There may well not be a manual for Vic, afaik. I was merely pointing out that there IS a PDF manual for EU2, on the EU2 disk in the 6 in one pack.

[Spiffor]

BTW, there's a fanmade manual here. It doesn't reply to every possible technical question, but it's a serious help for the newbie.

[Dinner]

Thanks Spiffor that manual has been a lot of help. I begining to get the hang of things but I still need to work on the whole trade idea. No matter how I set my trade settings I never seem to be able to buy machine parts and end up having to cheat to get the machine parts needed to build various factories. Japan was much, much easier then Sweden or Austria because Japan's budget is relatively easy to balance while as a European ****ry I seem to lose money hand over fist.

I'm going to sit down and read that manual you linked to and hopefully it will help make things a little clearer.

[Micha]

You get machine parts according to your ranking. If you´re a superpower, you´ll get a few, if you´re a minor, good luck...

That´s what I don´t like about Vicky...

But then, just research all the techs that give free machine parts and don´t waste those precious ones on ammunition factories...

[Qilue]

Paradox games

Paradox game manuals

They are getting better though.

[Nikolai]

So true.

[Spiffor]

Originally posted by Oerdin
No matter how I set my trade settings I never seem to be able to buy machine parts

This is normal: when there is more demand than offer (which is ALWAYS the case with machine parts, because they rock), the first served is the country that has the highest prestige. As a low-prestige country, you'll have to wait for quite some time so that the rest of the world industrialises before hoping ot get parts. As Japan, I can usually buy my parts in the 1860's. In my former China game, where I had something like -200 prestige, I managed to get parts only in the 1870's

If you play with a civilized country, use your parts sparsely until you discover the "replacement parts" (or something like that) industrial tech. I mean, build the basic industries: steel, cement, lumber, and maybe cloth (of these, the steel factory is the most profitable by far).
The "replacement parts" tech brings 10 free mechanical parts. And shortly afterwards, you'll have an invention that gives you 10 parts again and the ability to build a factory for mechanical parts (don't waste these free parts by building any other factory). Once you have one factory of mechanical parts, you'll be able to industrialise exponentially. And in medium difficulty, you'll certainly be the world's economic superpower.

[Spiffor]

Originally posted by Micha
You get machine parts according to your ranking. If you´re a superpower, you´ll get a few, if you´re a minor, good luck...

That´s what I don´t like about Vicky...

Well, I like it that way. I don't know why, but as soon as I have access to the machine parts I want, I industrialise like crazy. In about one decade of unrestricted mechanical parts, I have managed to turn China and Japan as the world's economic powerhouse. I think it's useful to keep the early industrialisation slow, or else the whole economic aspect of the game would be useless (you'll have all the money you want from the beginning on)

[Odin]

Vicky has too much micromanagement too be fun, Also I never seem to have enough manpower, and supressing revolts becomes a never-ending game of wack-the-mole.