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Introduction
(Max Steiner - The Charge of the Light Brigade 1936 Main Title)
Victoria: An Empire Under the Sun is a 2003 grand strategy game made by Paradox Entertainment back before they sucked and produced garbage games that are all clones of Europa Universalis 3 with even more nonsensical mechanics. In my opinion it’s the best Paradox game ever made, and I will fight you.
Victoria takes place from 1836 to 1936, spanning roughly the period of the Victorian Era (depending on how precisely you want to define it). Players take the role of one of the hundred or so countries on the map with the goal of building (or expanding) a colonial empire. The game is markedly different from the EU series in that it has a more involved colonization system where territories can become disputed between multiple powers, populations are largely fixed with some exceptions, and there is a very, very involved and complicated population system that tracks ethnicity, religion, political ideology, social status and level of trade skill. History inevitably gets fucked up even if the player doesn't do anything. Come on, you know how this works.
On top of that there is a massive economy built into the game. There are forty seven separate resources, only some of which are naturally produced by your territories. The rest must be manufactured by factories, which you have to oversee the construction of yourself. Provided you don’t end up in an economy type where you have no control over who creates the factories in your country! Yes, if you embrace capitalism you have to bow down and kiss the feet of your capitalist population and hope they build the factories that you want, but most of the time they will build what they think are profitable, good luck!
Say you want to run your own country without having to bow down to those Capitalist pigs. Lucky you, there are Socialist and Communist government types to take over, as well as classic State Capitalism if you don’t want to drink the red Kool-Aid. Have fun BUILDING EVERY RAILROAD, FACTORY AND FARM EXPANSION MANUALLY, BY HAND, ALL 100-2000 OF THEM. Good luck, comrade!
Not all countries in Victoria are created equal. Infact, many of them are totally unable to defend themselves against their neighbors, let alone the ten or so colonialist empires that have a fair chance of declaring war on them. There are autistic AARs of this game where the player started out as like, Honduras and ended the game with an empire that spans all of South America, but I’m not skilled enough at this game to pull off anything like that.
I can, however, take a few mundane nations and forge them into unlikely empires with a bit of luck and elbow grease. Which I hope to do, with your help, dear reader.
I will be playing on the second lowest difficulty, Easy; because you should know by now that I’m terrible at videogames. However the AI will be set to maximum aggressiveness so hopefully we’ll get the map to change. I’ll up the difficulty if we happen to be playing a country that’s quite easy to wipe the game with, like the hilariously broken USA.
Where do we come in?
Reader, you will be my Council/Congress/Parliament/Inner Party/etc, and I will present the following prompts to you every 10 years (I may change this interval depending on how much it slows the game down):
Country: Shortly after this introduction I will present the thread with a list of countries I’m willing to give a shot. I’m not including every country in the game because I don’t want you clowns telling me to start as the Zulu Empire or some shit that I just can’t work with no matter how much I try to dick with the game. You can expect around 12-16 choices for countries, of varying difficulty. I’m not going to include any nations I think will present us with obvious difficulty until we’ve played a few easy games first so everyone knows how this goes.
Ruling Party: Ruling parties generally lean one of five ways: Liberal, Conservative, Reactionary, Anarcho-Liberal and Socialist. There are things like Fascist and Communist governments but the chances of us getting those will be limited at best. Ruling parties have a stance on Economy, Trade, Religion, Minorities and War that in some cases can drastically affect our options. I will explain these as they become relevant.
Where to Expand?: Simple enough, where shall we conquer/colonize next!
Who is Our Enemy?: Sometimes this will overlap with Where to Expand?, but this will select our main rival who’s empire we will try to dismember at every turn, or at least neutralize by turning them into a puppet government.
Who is Our Friend? When applicable, this will give me a target country to focus our diplomatic efforts on. Expect this to only show occasional results though.
Economy: This one will come up when I only have the time and resources to devote to either doing something with the economy or planning our next conquest. And/or if I feel the need to ask the thread what manufacturing sector you guys think I should focus on. The overwhelming majority of time the options will be clear only to me so don’t expect this issue to come up a lot unless I see a good time to offer it.
Other: Events in this game will come up that are unique to each country and most of them have multiple choices. I will use my extensive wasted years playing this game to explain the effects of those choices or in some cases obscure them from the thread for fun.
I will go with the options that achieve a plurality of votes, and generally give the thread two days (or so) to discuss the options. Again this timeframe is subject to my whims because I’ve never done this before and I’m not sure how much time is too little or too much. If there are any ties I will use my vote to break them.
Additionally, to prevent myself from getting a massive headache, please post in the thread at least once before you vote on anything so I can add you to a list of names for Council members. When it comes time to vote, I will @ everyone who I’ve noticed in the thread, indicating that you can vote. If I just allow people to vote the moment they become active in the thread I can tell already I would easily lose track of that shit so please bear with me on this somewhat janky idea.
When voting, participants will be asked to place this
icon in their posts.
How many people do you think you will need?
Ten sounds like a good starting number, but I will include everyone who I’m able to see on the Council. Unless this thread gets featured on the front page or something and like 100 people ask to be allowed to vote, then I’ll probably cap it somewhere.
I've never played this game before/played this kind of game before, can I still vote?
Yes, certainly. I'll accept votes even from people who have no idea how the game works. If there's an option to vote for that will ruin the game, I definitely didn't put it there without knowing its potential, so there's really no way the audience's ineptitude can fuck up the game too much. I will also of course explain things as I go along. Don't sweat the actual mechanics though, that's what I'm here for.
Will you override stupid votes?
If an option is too idiotic for me to consider then I’m just not going to include it. Voting for an option I didn’t make available will obviously be ignored.
What is the victory condition?
Essentially be ranked #1 world power, which is decided on a combination of Prestige, Industrial Score and Military Score. Note that the size of your empire or how much money you have do not count at all towards your ranking. The overwhelming majority of the time we’re not gonna hit the #1 spot because I’m not quite enough of an uber at this game to outpace either the USA or UK AI (I have a tendency to rely on tariffs to gain the money I need to fund my giant army which stifles Capitalists from building infrastructure). Even if we don’t hit the #1 spot, it’s not like we don’t get the satisfaction of building a fun empire.
What happens if we lose?
The only way to get kicked out the game completely is for your country to get totally annexed. It’s pretty rare for this to happen, but if you’re considered threatening enough your enemies will be limitless and you’ll face a major war every four years until they have successfully dismembered your empire. At which point, yeah, you’ll still be on the map, but you’ve basically lost.
Will you play Hearts of Iron 2 after this?
Yes. Every country that makes it to 1936 without being entirely crippled I will convert to Hearts of Iron 2: Armageddon using the save game converter. The save game will convert about 90% of the time, but it has a serious issue with fortifications if territories merge which can corrupt the file. If that happens, that’s all she wrote. I’m not hand-editing this piece of shit to remove over a hundred fortifications just for the novelty of going into the WW2 era.
Will you be save-scumming?
Maybe. Most of the time if you end up in a position you need to save-scum in, you’re already fucked anyway. For the purposes of this LP I will accept major losses without save-scumming for the chance that the government could turn into some kind of Fascist-Revanchist state.
Will you be save-editing or adding custom events?
Probably not. I’ll take a crack at custom events some time though because they would add a lot of dynamics to the game.
How many different countries are you planning to play?
I’m thinking four times around is a good number for now. If this thread is really popular I can be persuaded to do it perpetually, but I do really want to get to XPiratez one of these days.
Will you be playing any scenarios?
Probably not, they’re no fun and they afford you reduced time to actually build an empire.
Will you be doing a Mega-LP?
Absolutely not. I have only even managed to get a single country from 1066 in Crusader Kings all the way to Hearts of Iron 2 without the Paradox Curse (conversion corruption) claiming my game. I may do an intermission where I show off my various attempts at mega games I’ve made over the years.
Where can I get it?
Victoria is still available on Steam, GOG, Gamersgate, I think the Paradox store and to be honest, you can just go pirate the damn thing. Note that Victoria Revolutions is the latest version, I just think An Empire Under The Sun is a much more kickass title.
Here are my previous two LPs on the forum because I'm sure this thread will be filled with in-jokes related to them:
Sign-up and join the Council today! Glory to the Empire!
(First vote on the countries will come in a bit, I want people to actually read the op first before I get started)
(Max Steiner - The Charge of the Light Brigade 1936 Main Title)
Victoria: An Empire Under the Sun is a 2003 grand strategy game made by Paradox Entertainment back before they sucked and produced garbage games that are all clones of Europa Universalis 3 with even more nonsensical mechanics. In my opinion it’s the best Paradox game ever made, and I will fight you.
Victoria takes place from 1836 to 1936, spanning roughly the period of the Victorian Era (depending on how precisely you want to define it). Players take the role of one of the hundred or so countries on the map with the goal of building (or expanding) a colonial empire. The game is markedly different from the EU series in that it has a more involved colonization system where territories can become disputed between multiple powers, populations are largely fixed with some exceptions, and there is a very, very involved and complicated population system that tracks ethnicity, religion, political ideology, social status and level of trade skill. History inevitably gets fucked up even if the player doesn't do anything. Come on, you know how this works.
On top of that there is a massive economy built into the game. There are forty seven separate resources, only some of which are naturally produced by your territories. The rest must be manufactured by factories, which you have to oversee the construction of yourself. Provided you don’t end up in an economy type where you have no control over who creates the factories in your country! Yes, if you embrace capitalism you have to bow down and kiss the feet of your capitalist population and hope they build the factories that you want, but most of the time they will build what they think are profitable, good luck!
Say you want to run your own country without having to bow down to those Capitalist pigs. Lucky you, there are Socialist and Communist government types to take over, as well as classic State Capitalism if you don’t want to drink the red Kool-Aid. Have fun BUILDING EVERY RAILROAD, FACTORY AND FARM EXPANSION MANUALLY, BY HAND, ALL 100-2000 OF THEM. Good luck, comrade!
Not all countries in Victoria are created equal. Infact, many of them are totally unable to defend themselves against their neighbors, let alone the ten or so colonialist empires that have a fair chance of declaring war on them. There are autistic AARs of this game where the player started out as like, Honduras and ended the game with an empire that spans all of South America, but I’m not skilled enough at this game to pull off anything like that.
I can, however, take a few mundane nations and forge them into unlikely empires with a bit of luck and elbow grease. Which I hope to do, with your help, dear reader.
I will be playing on the second lowest difficulty, Easy; because you should know by now that I’m terrible at videogames. However the AI will be set to maximum aggressiveness so hopefully we’ll get the map to change. I’ll up the difficulty if we happen to be playing a country that’s quite easy to wipe the game with, like the hilariously broken USA.
Where do we come in?
Reader, you will be my Council/Congress/Parliament/Inner Party/etc, and I will present the following prompts to you every 10 years (I may change this interval depending on how much it slows the game down):
I will go with the options that achieve a plurality of votes, and generally give the thread two days (or so) to discuss the options. Again this timeframe is subject to my whims because I’ve never done this before and I’m not sure how much time is too little or too much. If there are any ties I will use my vote to break them.
Additionally, to prevent myself from getting a massive headache, please post in the thread at least once before you vote on anything so I can add you to a list of names for Council members. When it comes time to vote, I will @ everyone who I’ve noticed in the thread, indicating that you can vote. If I just allow people to vote the moment they become active in the thread I can tell already I would easily lose track of that shit so please bear with me on this somewhat janky idea.
When voting, participants will be asked to place this
How many people do you think you will need?
Ten sounds like a good starting number, but I will include everyone who I’m able to see on the Council. Unless this thread gets featured on the front page or something and like 100 people ask to be allowed to vote, then I’ll probably cap it somewhere.
I've never played this game before/played this kind of game before, can I still vote?
Yes, certainly. I'll accept votes even from people who have no idea how the game works. If there's an option to vote for that will ruin the game, I definitely didn't put it there without knowing its potential, so there's really no way the audience's ineptitude can fuck up the game too much. I will also of course explain things as I go along. Don't sweat the actual mechanics though, that's what I'm here for.
Will you override stupid votes?
If an option is too idiotic for me to consider then I’m just not going to include it. Voting for an option I didn’t make available will obviously be ignored.
What is the victory condition?
Essentially be ranked #1 world power, which is decided on a combination of Prestige, Industrial Score and Military Score. Note that the size of your empire or how much money you have do not count at all towards your ranking. The overwhelming majority of the time we’re not gonna hit the #1 spot because I’m not quite enough of an uber at this game to outpace either the USA or UK AI (I have a tendency to rely on tariffs to gain the money I need to fund my giant army which stifles Capitalists from building infrastructure). Even if we don’t hit the #1 spot, it’s not like we don’t get the satisfaction of building a fun empire.
What happens if we lose?
The only way to get kicked out the game completely is for your country to get totally annexed. It’s pretty rare for this to happen, but if you’re considered threatening enough your enemies will be limitless and you’ll face a major war every four years until they have successfully dismembered your empire. At which point, yeah, you’ll still be on the map, but you’ve basically lost.
Will you play Hearts of Iron 2 after this?
Yes. Every country that makes it to 1936 without being entirely crippled I will convert to Hearts of Iron 2: Armageddon using the save game converter. The save game will convert about 90% of the time, but it has a serious issue with fortifications if territories merge which can corrupt the file. If that happens, that’s all she wrote. I’m not hand-editing this piece of shit to remove over a hundred fortifications just for the novelty of going into the WW2 era.
Will you be save-scumming?
Maybe. Most of the time if you end up in a position you need to save-scum in, you’re already fucked anyway. For the purposes of this LP I will accept major losses without save-scumming for the chance that the government could turn into some kind of Fascist-Revanchist state.
Will you be save-editing or adding custom events?
Probably not. I’ll take a crack at custom events some time though because they would add a lot of dynamics to the game.
How many different countries are you planning to play?
I’m thinking four times around is a good number for now. If this thread is really popular I can be persuaded to do it perpetually, but I do really want to get to XPiratez one of these days.
Will you be playing any scenarios?
Probably not, they’re no fun and they afford you reduced time to actually build an empire.
Will you be doing a Mega-LP?
Absolutely not. I have only even managed to get a single country from 1066 in Crusader Kings all the way to Hearts of Iron 2 without the Paradox Curse (conversion corruption) claiming my game. I may do an intermission where I show off my various attempts at mega games I’ve made over the years.
Where can I get it?
Victoria is still available on Steam, GOG, Gamersgate, I think the Paradox store and to be honest, you can just go pirate the damn thing. Note that Victoria Revolutions is the latest version, I just think An Empire Under The Sun is a much more kickass title.
The Victoria 1 Wiki: Horrendously outdated and never completed. Includes an expanded manual that will give a new player a decent overview, but not a whole lot else.
Danimo's Texas LP: SA user Danimo takes the nascent Republic of Texas from hopeless backwater to a powerful country on the world stage. This is probably the best LP of the three greats to give any new player a general idea of how Victoria works, and its the LP that convinced me to buy the game when I was still in high school. Be aware though that the LPer did some thingsl ike modifying the USA's territorial claims to prevent the game from becoming totally unwinnable. Its still a fun read.
Fintilgin's Kingdom Come Paradox Mega-LP: A big deal when it was published, played Fintilgin on SA takes the KIngdom of Jerusalem from the 1200s all the way up to that universe's world war. Some of the images are missing, mostly from the Hearts of Iron 2 portion, but the LP is still fully readable. Probably the best LP of the three.
Wiz's Hohenzollern Paradox Mega-LP: Expands a great deal on the Victoria and Hearts of Iron 2 stages of the game. Its worth noting that LPer Wiz eventually ended up getting a job at Paradox, and its no wonder since all of the mods he did to create his custom scenario are pretty damn impressive.
Victoria's After Action Report archive on the Paradox Forums: Old as fuck, images may or may not be missing, and Paradox's forums have been redesigned like five times since most of these LPs were first posted. Big warning that these lunatics like to write. A lot.
Danimo's Texas LP: SA user Danimo takes the nascent Republic of Texas from hopeless backwater to a powerful country on the world stage. This is probably the best LP of the three greats to give any new player a general idea of how Victoria works, and its the LP that convinced me to buy the game when I was still in high school. Be aware though that the LPer did some thingsl ike modifying the USA's territorial claims to prevent the game from becoming totally unwinnable. Its still a fun read.
Fintilgin's Kingdom Come Paradox Mega-LP: A big deal when it was published, played Fintilgin on SA takes the KIngdom of Jerusalem from the 1200s all the way up to that universe's world war. Some of the images are missing, mostly from the Hearts of Iron 2 portion, but the LP is still fully readable. Probably the best LP of the three.
Wiz's Hohenzollern Paradox Mega-LP: Expands a great deal on the Victoria and Hearts of Iron 2 stages of the game. Its worth noting that LPer Wiz eventually ended up getting a job at Paradox, and its no wonder since all of the mods he did to create his custom scenario are pretty damn impressive.
Victoria's After Action Report archive on the Paradox Forums: Old as fuck, images may or may not be missing, and Paradox's forums have been redesigned like five times since most of these LPs were first posted. Big warning that these lunatics like to write. A lot.
Here are my previous two LPs on the forum because I'm sure this thread will be filled with in-jokes related to them:
Sign-up and join the Council today! Glory to the Empire!
(First vote on the countries will come in a bit, I want people to actually read the op first before I get started)
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