Grand Strategy The Victoria 2 thread

[Gilius Thunderhead]

There's lots of discussion of this game scattered around, but all the Vicky 2 threads I found were quite old.

Anyway, what are your favorite mods? What are your favorite countries to play as? Do you like to recreate historical developments or is infamy just a number for you?

I like this guy's videos (the level of autism can get hilarious):

 

[Gilius Thunderhead]

I'm basically a HPM player and have been playing with HPM Plus, which has some features I like such as not needing jingoism to add war goals and ability to choose different colonial policies by region, so you can focus your emigration into a specific region.

One thing I don't like is the railroading that comes from the inevitable(and ahistorical) war between Prussian and France in the... 1840s, which I believe comes from the "natural borders of France" incident which gives the German nations a free Humilliate Casus Belli on the French. Prussia usually wins, but if you want to take out either France or Prussia this is very explotable.

My favorite nation to play and my most recurrent playthrough is Austria. It's the one that offers the most complete Vicky experience, imo. You're a big nation with a huge potential, but your main pop is only 20% of the population. Furthermore, you have a complicated strategic situation and two time bombs in your hands, which are the German and Italian unifications. There are many options available: German super state, Austrian autarky, multiethnic empire, etc. You can blob into Italy, the Balkans or Russia. I've even become a colonial empire once, taking most of North Africa. Since your pops are always pissed off, you get a lot colonial migration.

I want to try Crimea Mod, since I heard good things about its AI. It avoids the bloat of other mods(which I think is good overall), although some decisions are certainly a bit questionable (Spanish Galicians are Portuguese, no Ukrainians or Belarussians, only one Subsaharan African culture, lol). The mod's description on moddb.com is priceless:

The mod includes: an extra tech row, an improved crimean war, bourgeois dictatorship being an actually viable government form, decisions to dynamically enslave unaccepted cultures (no matter what culture they are) and to restart the trans-atlantic slave trade, much better ai, genocide which actually works and let's you pick what cultures you want to kill, a special decision to genocide turks if you're a christian balkan country, good economy, the ability to create a new union culture as Scandinavia, less event spam, an uncivilized china that is a bit stronger, more fun uncivs, intra-european migration if the pops are of the country's primary culture, games often having different but plausible results, an alternative German Confederation formed by Austria and more.

 

[Space Satan]

There are, like, three mods that could be called a real MODs.

 

[Demo.Graph]

Anyway, what are your favorite mods?

Divergencies.
- Because vanilla Vicky is painfully bad at representing 19 century, while for me Divs are fantasy enough to suspend a disbelief.
- Because all countries have enough natural enemies and obstacles for development so that you don't doze off after 15-20 ingame years.

I've used to play PDM 8-10 years ago, but its later versions are meh.