Change Logs: Victoria 2

I like to think of myself as a buffer state between France and everything interesting.
P.S. don't my borders look like a guy running with a scarf on?

This will be a series where I talk about what I'd like to see done with the game if my words carried stones. This is meant as no disrespect to the creators of the chosen game. In fact, it means I carefully played the game and thought about it in depth. This isn't a "first glance" or a "review" but a thoughtful response to the design of the game.

So, for those who don't know, Victoria 2 is a grand strategy game created by Paradox Interactive (who seem to have a euphoric love of bringing nations to their knees... oh and history) that encompasses the entire world and 100 years of history during the Victorian Era (1836-1936) where (basically) every nation that existed in that time frame can have its rich history casually rewritten by the player. It is probably one of the most ambitious designs ever completed in professional video games with a robust economic and political model, interesting war mechanics, a pop (population) system encompassing all the able bodied men of the world, rebellions, "spheres of influence," colonization, and probably a kitchen sink somewhere in there too. It truly is a fun game (you know, for nerds like me who love making evil plans including conquest and kittens) and I would ask you to check it out (at least so you have some idea of what the heck I'm talking about). Since the basic design is actually quite solid, I'm going to talk about what I'd like to see in a hypothetical expansion (and why).

And I have a list (the list itself isn't that long, but why and what take a lot of space, also, I take no credit for these ideas):
1. More ability to screw with the economic model, specifically, monopolies and trade embargoes. The economic model in the game is a bit like, "Push button. Get cheese." Which factories you have matters mostly for how many points they give you and, since 1.3, the ability to avoid shortages (by producing more than your pops need). There are lots of ways to add to this system and the main reason it probably is the way that it is is because they weren't sure they were even going to get it working without overclocking a supercomputer. Allowing your government and your people to snatch up domestically produced goods and/or from bordering nations you're all buddy buddy with (or kick in the teeth until they like you) for cheap is a start, but that doesn't give players new cool doohickies to try (that's the point of an expansion, right?).

What would really give players something interesting to do would be to be able to set up monopolies and trade embargoes. Setting up a monopoly (say by producing more than X of the world's Y in your sphere) would allow you to help out your buddies while flipping the bird to other nations and opening up wormholes in the bottom of their treasuries. There are some raw materials you could conceivably do this with such as: precious metals, rubber, and oil as well as some factories that open up later in the game such as: automobiles, aeroplanes, radios (especially radios...), etc. And having a monopoly would make your trade embargoes more effective.

That brings us to trade embargoes. The ability to screw over economies is fun (go bankrupt, yes, yes!). You and your bloc (we'll... we'll get to blocs) could decide to embargo a nation (most likely a nation giving one of you a bloody nose or just one that is being naughty) forcing them to buy their goods more expensively from whoever is left... if anyone is left. The reverse is also helpful to the game. If you are embargoed, you'll have to rely more on domestically produced goods or you could lose mountains of paper. Causing you to want to build factories/get provinces which give you the goods your economy, people and government require.

I admit that monopoly and trade embargo systems would seem difficult given the implementation of the economic system in the game because goods don't have a little "Made in China" stamp. This shouldn't actually make them difficult to implement, but require what will code as a sort of backwards workaround and look to the player like exactly what they're supposed to be. I thought I should point this out.

2. Espionage. I believe espionage is truly the most obvious and enjoyable missing system in Victoria 2. Espionage would give the peace time of the game some ongoing conflict. Spies could also act as "The Great Equalizer" because they would be used more so against the powerful (who would sink quite a lump of their excess gold into rending the spy hordes). The game also has no gap closing mechanism for technology, which espionage could provide. Heck, there's very little that our favorite gun-wielding tux-wearing supermen CAN'T do (theoretically). What I think it should be able to do includes the following: foment/support/trigger rebellion (yes, Korea, fall to communism, muhaha! Too soon?), deteriorate alliances, steal research/inventions, get you in hot water from time to time (espionage should be high risk/high reward), allow you to manufacture incidents (one of many possibilities) which provide you with casus bellis (justifications for war), assassinate cabinet members (I'm all about giving previews of future paragraphs this post), and generally cause chaos (BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD!).

3. Blocs along with changes to the war goals and alliance systems. In Real History, the name of the game was secret alliances, deal making behind closed doors, and and trying to impress the big boys so that other big boys wouldn't be able to steal your lunch money as easily. A bloc system would be a loose alliance system layered on top of the "hard" alliances from the sphere system and the "medium" alliances of the normal alliance system. Ok, what would that accomplish uniquely in the game? A bloc system would be a loose enough alliance to eventually polarize much of the world into two major blocs, it would allow you to throw out an idea like, "Let's pick on Egypt cause I'd like Dumyat." and see who else would join in and what they would want before attempting to go to war (thus the change to war goals), and give you a mighty shield from powerful nations you may otherwise not be able to be friends with. Another point to note in favor of blocs is that it's okay to say no. This will not break your alliance like a normal alliance would. There should probably be some penalty, but expulsion from a bloc should generally only happen on government changes or when you've reneged on your promises one too many times.

This gets us to how blocs should be formed. Nations of the same or similar governments should tend to team up (and pull their spheres with them, if applicable). So, like HM's may be fine pairing up with Absolute Monarchies, Democracies should basically hit up everybody like, "I can has cheezburger?", and Fascists should be lonely... very very lonely (you get the idea). This could be activated from the start or researched with a tech. Who starts with these blocks? The most powerful representative of each government type most likely. Who can then start recruiting. Eventually, blocs will roll into other blocs and two major blocs will remain (the Entente and the Central Powers mayhaps). When one bloc provokes another... boy, we may just have a world war on our hands. Bringing me to my fourth point.

4. A world war should be likely to occur. It seems to be general knowledge that a world war was bound to occur in this time period for many reasons. The late game could definitely use more explosions. Not saying that it's bad, but often I have completed the goals I set out for myself and there's nothing left to do for the next 50 years; so I start a new game. Being able to take large swaths of land as an aggressor or rip apart an enemy empire as a defender could really change the dusty old world map quickly (something not possible in the current system... except when the UK eats giant Chinese death states). Whether you were instigating it, trying to stop it, being neutral to watch it unfold, or desperately trying to keep half of the world's armies out of your borders, it would be fun every time and keep me playing to the end.

5. Cabinets. In this game, nations are very impersonal, and there is little reason to change parties once you've gotten the one you want. Both of these could be revised by simply adding cabinets. A cabinet would be a group of named people that comes along with a party. These people would change from time to time and they would give you benefits and/or penalties that could have weighty consequences on a sector of your nation.

I would suggest the cabinet include: general of the army, foreign minister, economic advisor, and head of clandestine affairs. Possibly even a director of research and development to roll the "tech school" system into. Somewhere between 3 and 5 is probably a good number. They could give fairly straight forward bonuses or more sly bonuses. Some possibilities for a general of the army might include: changing stats for all or just certain units, ignoring penalties for amphibious attacks, making overseas personnel cost more, making battles quicker/shorter, messing with supply consumption, angering/pacifying certain types of pops, changing leadership point gain/maximum/officer cap, affecting mobilization in some way, or even modifying when with/against multi-national armies. Those are just "off the top of my head" ideas.

Since these people would change and be tied to parties, you would want to change parties to get their benefits as the game progressed. This would give you more reason to pay attention to elections and carefully use election events. Having a cabinet system would give you more interesting election events, anyways. Allow the developer to have events about specific people named in the game who have meaning. Selecting your party would also require some more thought, because, you will have to probably choose one part of your nation over another (is war or your economy more important to you?).

6. Now there's just the fiddly bits that will probably be added in any expansion no matter what. It'd be nice to see improved AI (AI which would surround, pay attention to combat bonuses/penalties, choose generals for specific tasks, prepare for war, coordinate amphibious attacks, care about attrition, etc). More events (they can get stale). More decisions (decisions are essentially goals and more goals is more replayability). Sprinkling in a few extra nations. Giving rebels two brain cells.

Victoria 2 is a great game with excellent potential to be added and improved upon. Such a great potential, it would be a waste to see the game not get an expansion. If the expansion is in the works somewhere, I would urge the designers not to just think, "What would be cool?" but "What would really improve our game?" This should really be your thought with any expansion pack, but especially a game like this where you literally have a world full of rad possibilities.