Victoria 2 Guide For Just About Everything.

Overview

Intro Covering almost all of the games contents for all situations. Generally recommend hitting CTRL F and searching for particular contents if you just rushed in head first and got stuck, or need more information on a topic. Any remaining questions can be asked in the comments and I will answer them.

Disclaimer

I will be incorporating some use of other individual’s guides on particular subject matters. These pertain to more niche concepts or not up front necessary to play the game. These guides do well in their respected area and I have no intended purpose of imposing myself upon that, as I only wish to offer a player the knowledge they will need in order to pick up and play the game as it seems to baffle loads of new players. However I digress, contents of linked guides are not anywhere near copy and pasted, instead the knowledge is provided as readily available to the viewer, and I only delve on topics that may be included as a necessity towards playing the game. Links to the individual guides and their makers are supported at the bottom, and I have no interest in receiving credit for them. Please contact me if you are the owner of one of the following and have any complaints, comments, or concerns.

The Production Tab, The Budget Tab, The Technologies Tab, and The Politics Tab.

The production tab is the first tab on the left most side. It says production on it, and under production it shows 5 resources, those are your top 5 produced resources. Under that is a hammer, factory, and a man holding a hammer.

• The hammer will glow green if the player is currently making factories, if the player isn’t, it will not glow at all.

1. The factory will glow red if the player has factories that have gone bankrupt, not able to operate, and in turn will just stop working. A way to stop them from going bankrupt, if doing poorly, is to go into the production menu, find the factory and there will be a little box under it’s icon and if you click it will send up a check, this allows operations to continue and wages paid under government expense. However only certain forms of governments can do this option, by going to the Politics tab and hovering over the governments it will tell the player with it’s policy on factory subsidies. This is good for early game since the player will not have as many workers. If a factory is struggling to make ends meet.
2. The final one, the man with the hammer, if glowing red means that there are unemployed people in a state or region. If it’s not glowing red there are no unemployed people in the country.

• There are pros and cons to have unemployed people. Unemployment leads to people not being able to get their needs, they get angry at the government and will become rebellious. On a minor level this is negligible. On a more desperate level pops will rebel outright, and you will see many socialist or communist wanting to take control of reforms and government. However if it is minor it leaves a constant stream of potential workers for factories that are doing well and expanding or new factories in that particular region.
• Only certain government types can allow the player to make factories, other times the player must rely on a certain population type called capitalist which will make factories if they have enough money. Luxury factories produce the most industrial power, however are not very useful for countries that are Communist or Socialist, they’re mostly for standards of living for the wealthy.

The budget tab comes right after the Production tab. To the left is taxes, and loans at the bottom, to the right is government spending, and daily income at the bottom.

1. Usually the player wants to tax your rich the least early game, especially in government types where the player can’t make factories, seeing that the rich include capitalist and capitalist make factories with their own money, so the more money they have the better. However taxing to much or little of certain wage groups can cause unrest, and all economies are different so eye ball it out. Generally shoot for for the lowest taxed amount while still making some significance of profits.
2. National stockpile, is how much factories cover producing items, and these sliders in the budget tab are how much the government budget goes to playing the military, navy, and construction goods. Cheapness is determined by how much the industry can cover items versus out sourcing those resources. So to keep the army fit pay around 50%, and 81% to 100% when at war.
3. Below it is education, the higher spent on this the more smart the people become, and faster, and can help with research points through literacy, so try to keep this maxed.
4. Below that is administration, the more spent on that, the more secure the country becomes (police basically), and products move about more efficiently (cheaper), try to keep this high.
5. Below that is social spending, this is for paying for social programs, like money for people to old, money for unemployed, etc. However this only becomes a thing when doing specific social reforms.
6. Tariffs are generally misunderstood, they determine the price of buying products from foreign markets, This is why Sphere’d nations earn next to nothing from this. Higher the tariff the more expensive it is for your people/industries to buy abroad.
7. And finally below that is Military spending, this directly comes into how much you pay for your militaries wages. However when the get paid enough they get a chance to get promoted. Once they get promoted they don’t go back, while this does provide buffs soldiers who fight are lost. This can cause issues with smaller nations who don’t have a large population. I personally recommend keeping this at 50%-60% at peace, and make it higher the more desperate a war is to incentivize people joining.

The Technologies tab is self explanatory in the most part. The green rectangles is researched, orange ones are what can be researched, and grey ones are too advanced to research.
The only thing that I can stress is the military tech trees. The littlest underdeveloped then the opponent’s and the player will start to get tossed around. Other then that navy is close to useless in single player and just depends in multiplayer.

• I strongly recommend always keeping your philosophy up to date because of the massive buff. (It’s the second row under the culture tab in the research area).
• Keep up your Social Thought under Culture to improve literacy, in turn research speed.
• Invest in Political Thought for more national focuses, keep in mind that the amount possible is based on core population. (shown on the population tab section)
• Industry research is good, but always make sure to have the Commerce research to back it up.
• As a beginner, it’s probably smart to look at all the technologies and get an idea for them all. I delve harsher into industry and commerce research in the how to grow your economy section.

The government types and what they all do can be summed up really well by this one guide Party’s, Policies, and Government in V2. It’s very well done, all questions will most likely be answered by it. However if you do have a question don’t be afraid to ask me or him on the guide’s comments.

Quick what’s happening
• The left of the screen is the ruling party, and it’s support. You can click on the party and change it depending if your not in an election or the right type of government.
  Reform section
• Reforms are all over the right side. Read them and form your own opinion but a lot of the time people get angry and try and rise up for those reforms.
  Movements
• What rebellions might pop up, how likely and how strong they are, and what they are advicating for.
  Decisions
• Special events for a country that can only be done under certain requirements, not all are smart like reforming the education, at least generally aren’t smart.

  Release Nations

• These can become fully independent, or become satellites up to you. I will explain satellites in the Dominions, Satellites, and Substates section because there is a little more to them as you are releasing an entire country.

Sub Section, RGOs, Industry, GROWING ECONOMY!

I should have added this in a while ago when I actually finally understood how to grow an economy. But here I am now to give a quick explanation of why your economy may be crapping itself and only surviving off of subsidization.

• You can check what RGOs get produced where by hitting the A key, clicking on one of them will show how great that particular one is by a shade from Red to Green.
• The production of an RGO is determined by the players, Throughput and Output, as the base is only changeable in the game files or certain events.
• Metallurgy & Power technologies effect Farming and Mining RGO outputs. Infrastructure, railroads, is a general modifier that’s really nice to build and grab technology for. However Aristocrats, and the workers in the province have some of the least effects on the production unless the player is dealt a desperately bad hand, I’ve never run into a situation like this.
• Nations without specifically needed RGOs or not enough of them in their borders will be forced to buy them off of the global market.
• For reference, complex goods are just goods that require more then just an RGO, requiring actually manufactured items in order to produce something else.
• Vertical integration is a must in victoria 2. This describes building top down industries. This is done by producing a base factory which is based on the RGOs inside the state, then building more complex factories in that state based on the base factory/s.
• Horizontal industry, described by base factories across state/s, is capable of maintaining a head factory that produces more complex goods, however there is penalties for moving goods across states and is only of full use in a more industrialized economy. Basic economies should focus on vertical industry as much as possible (as described above).
• Taking a look at the trade tab, do this to especially capitalize on expensive products.
• Because of Victoria 2’s lack of representation of how Communism would affect small businesses and individual rights, generally shooting for parties like this (full control over industries) are never a bad idea because the Capitalist very rarely get anything right when it comes to building factories and the player can be much better off without them.
• Misconception is that Capitalist are useless unless the player is lazy, this is very untrue, a wealthy nation with wealthy capitalist can spit fire factories (especially myself who has factories set to 200/300 days of building). This way the capitalist can eventually get the right product out, generally if a player get a strong economy like that, it makes no sense to need to micro manage the whole thing unless there is a truly desperate fight for dominance.

Sub-Section, Colonization

• You have to use national focuses in order to colonize land, a tip would be delving into the national focuses research if you plan on being a major colonial power.
• Having troops placed on the states that you are currently colonizing speeds up the colonization rate.
• Having 2% of the population in a colonized state being Bureaucrats allows you to turn it into an official state, getting rid of the debuff it weighs down on your available colonial power
  With the DLC
• Ships = Colonial Power, bigger the navy the more you can colonize
• Colonial Power is checked by looking in the bottom right of the little section by your flag (which is in the top right of the top menu). Example to know if your looking in the right place -> The United Kingdom starts with a Colonial Power of 212 / 1241 (Available of 212 out of 1241).
• Having 2% of the population in a colonized state being Bureaucrats allows you to turn it into an official state, getting rid of the debuff it weighs down on your available colonial power
• Generally 80 or 100 Colonial Power is needed for each state that you wish to colonize.
• Big Tip save your Colonial Power up, when you win over a colony through time and such they become part of your realm. You can then immediately turn that colonized state into a protectorate, wait to do this till your done colonizing in general as to save your Colonial power. Mostly worry about that when colonizing large chunks of land at a time (like a lot of Africa).
• Ironclads and Monitors give by far the best stats.
• You will need a lot of ports and to research into leveling up your ports for more ships.
• Better leveled ports are also required for higher level ships.
  Ships, Colonial Power, Supply Weight, Colonial Power per Supply Weight
  Ship

  Colonial Power

  Supply Weight

  Power / Weight

  Frigate

  2

  1

  2

  Man’o’war

  5

  2

  2.5

  Commerce Raider

  8

  3

  2.66

  Ironclad

  12

  3

  4

  Monitor

  10

  3

  3.33

  Cruiser

  16

  20

  0.8

  Battleship

  15

  50

  0.3

  Dreadnought

  22

  60

  0.366
• Produce as many Ironclads as possible, however they are much more expensive than Monitors so try to cut as few corners as possible.

• Pre-1850s and 1850s technology that you need

1. Medicine
2. State & Government
3. Breech-Loaded Rifles

• When researching many technologies it will allow you to discover “Possible Inventions”, of this you need

1. Prophylaxis against Malaria, discovered without the need for additional technology researched.
2. Mission to Civilize, need additional technology researched.
3. Colonial Negotiations, need additional technology researched.

• Mission to Civilize, what you need to research (1850s technology)

1. Nationalism & Imperialism
2. Market Regulations
3. Naval Statistics

• Each one of these researched acts as a stacked modifier, only one is required to give you the chance to discover it, but the more you research these techs the more likely you are to discover Mission to Civilize.
• Colonial Negotiations, only one of these is needed to be researched (1870s technology)

1. Machine Guns
2. Economic Responsibility
3. Naval Logistics

• Each one of these researched acts as a stacked modifier, only one is required to give you the chance to discover it, but the more you research these techs the more likely you are to discover Colonial Negotiations.
• if any Great Power, and if any neighbor has Colonial Negotiations, it will boost your chance of discovering Colonial Negotiations yourself. However, this automatically means you’ll be late to the colonial boom.

The Population Tab, The Trade Tab, and The Diplomacy Tab.

The population tab is pretty self explanatory, it tells you how many people are doing this in that and it can even say for specific states. However on the tab icon itself (The tab you click to go to the population menu) you will notice 4 things.

1. The current adult population, which is the numbers right below the word Population. this just tells you how many adults are in your country, the higher generally the better. Hovering over this can tell you the whole population. And the number in parentheses next to it is your population growth for the day. If it’s going down not good, going up is better.
2. Below that is a circle with an arrow. This is national focuses. You get 1 max national focus for ever 1 million core population you have. Let’s say you play as the UK, british will be your core population, and for every million british people in your country you gain 1 national focus. National focuses are well what they say they are, national focuses. You can use them by clicking on a province in a state, going towards the upper right of the pop up when clicking on one of your provinces in one of your states. You will see the national focuses icon in a brown box, click that. It will bring up a new menu and if you just hover over all the icons in that menu it’s self explanatory.
3. Right below that is a fire. This is the militancy of your population. This is how likely they are to rebel. The cap is 10 militancy. This can be lowered by enacting certain reforms, lowering taxes, and other things depending on the dominate issues which can be found by clicking population tab, and then looking for the dominate issues pie chart near the top.
4. Finally to the left of militancy is the consciousness, or the head with brain icon. This caps at 10 and the higher it is the less likely they are to change their opinions. So the higher it is the harder it is to change government types if your democratic. Or the higher it is the more angry people get when change the government type forcefully.

On the icon below the word trade the red arrow is your top 3 exports and the green arrow is your top 3 imports. This information can be used to know what factories you should build to stop spending so much on imports. Other countries are more likely to trade with you the more prestigious you are, and the more powerful you country in general is, bringing in more of an imported item. So if your country has like 5 prestige and isn’t that powerful like top 50, it will be very hard to get resources in general and almost impossible to get rare ones. However if you have like 1000 prestige and are the strongest country in the game you will be able to trade without issue. But generally prestige goes a lot into determining your section of the trade pool.
A good guide for the rest of the information is Trade window, how it work.

On the icon tab itself there are 3 important things.

1. The at peace words below Diplomacy. When a country flag pops up there that means you are now at war with them
2. The Weird circular symbol thingy mabobber. If that glows that means you can do relations type stuff with other countries, or sphere other countries. Sphered countries are forced to trade first with who ever sphered them, then to trade with other countries. You can only sphere countries if your a great power.
3. The star with the arrow will glow depending on whether you are losing your great power status (So going from at least 8th strongest country to below 8th strongest) or becoming a country that is 1st-8th strongest in the world. However this only works on civilized countries. In the diplomacy tab by your countries name it will say whether you are civilized or not.Civilized countries are very weak countries. They usually have very low accessibility to the market making trade very hard for them. It’s easy and cheap to attack them because they are for the most part under developed. In order to civilise you after to meet the requirements for a certain decision.

• An important tip, while having a nation selected in the “Show wars” section of the tab you can see who’s all at war but if you have a selected country you can see it’s allies, and it’s troop and ship count. Hovering over the numbers you can see the number of things they’ve researched on military and navy, corresponding.
• When declaring unjustified war you get a debuff called infamy penalty. When this goes above 25 other countries get an event that lets them declare war on you since you’ve been declaring to much war. A way to get around this is to wait for events to happen that can call for justified reasons to declare war on random countries. Infamy also the higher it gets causes more conscious your people become, and makes countries less likely to ally you are want anything to do with you.

Subsection Dominions, Satellites, and Substates

Satellites are like having two spheres on the same country. Satellites basically only work for you, however can be a leak in your economy. For short term usage I will be describing Dominions, Satellites, and Substates as just Satellites because it shortens to length, and there is no discernible difference between the 3 as they all carry out the same task.

• Satellites are released from either countries the player has conquered or from nation cores owned by the player at the start of the game.
• Africa works a tad bit differently, while the above still applies, the player, and AI, can release African Satellites that had no previous cores on the map and the land was grabbed through colonization instead of conquering.
• Satellites are almost always forced to be your trade partner and forced to be your ally through thick and thin.
• Satellites get a research buff of 50% if the mother country has already researched it. They do not provide any buffs to the mother country if they research something the mother country has not researched. Non westernized Satellites also get a major leap in tech when they westernize, depending on what the mother country has researched and except for the Chinese area as they become free from China upon westernization.
• Now the value of them depends on their job. As they can not simply be clicked back into the mother country, at lot of unfortunate mistakes would have to take place in order for them to be separated, independent, and then the mother country would have to conquer them.
• Satellites can be released through a war goal, falling to a rebellion(some not all though), the mother country falling to a rebellion, the Satellite becoming a great power, or in the case of China that is becoming westernized.

• Con – The player does not have direct input on the country other then controlling the units it puts out. For this reason I would strongly suggest the player does not release strategic areas, or areas worth a lot of money. Especially areas that have valuable metals in them (gold mines and the such).
• Middle ground – Satellites can trade with other countries if they are sphere’d by someone other then yourself. While they do still view you as the main trade partner, for a Great Power this can lead to a leak in a particular kind of economy, i.e. communism. However additional sphering power is given to the mother country to maintain it’s Satellite. Then for minors this can be nice as it allows a country not getting all the resources it needs from the global market to open up another shop to hopefully push the demand a little more.
• Pros – Satellites through colonization or just on uncolonized land will free up colonial power tied to them. They also take away 5 infamy upon release. Colonial power being all tied up is how the player may see places like Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and African countries birthed into existence.
• Pros – Large amounts of Africa is purely useless, as you can get the RGOs better from somewhere else, or the population there is too much of a drain on social services. Making a puppet maintain that instead can save a drowning economy and put the problem onto a country that is a lot less industrial, meaning they can actually use the goods a lot better then the mother country could, and still deliver surplus to the mother country. This will also help maintain a Satellites power as they can’t grow an industry, making their freedom a lot less plausible.
• My personal usage – Personally if I manage to snag large quantities of Africa I will strategically release several countries, so one does not have too much power, so they can guard Africa. Because while states are the only thing in war that are represented in the war counter for who’s winning, colonial land still provides RGOs and being sieged for too long will cause all out rebellions. For some reason countries like France and the United Kingdom will send 100s of divisions to Africa, and having AI controlled African nations to manage them out is a lot easier then worrying about another front.

The Military Tab

• Right below the word Military on the main tab icon you see Number/Number. This is your current brigades out of max brigades. The first number being current and the second being the max. The first number can not go over the second number. Can’t have more brigades then soldiers. If the first number is over the second number that means you need to raise the second number because you can not add to the first number so once those brigades die off you can not train some in to replace them. You can increase the second number with national focuses as explained populations tab above.
• To the right of the brigade count you see a anchor and then a number, that’s the number of ships and the amount of supply they can receive. When those numbers turn red the following ships built wont receive supply. Simply build more docks to counteract that
• Below brigades you see 3 men standing in a line. That is how many brigades you can mobilize. Mobilizing should only be used in dangerous wars that you may lose without extra help. What mobilizing does is take random adults from the factories and puts them to war. Doing this can ruin your industrial economy however so use it wisely and carefully. It will make your income hit the fan and they’re very weak divisions on their own, especially being only infantry. Smaller nations with low recruitable brigade counts can use the mobilization to their benefits and only train artillery and horses and have the mobilized infantry fill in the gap during war time.
• Finally you see a checkered flag, that is a points system. This is used for creating generals and admirals. Generals add buffs and debuffs to the army when put to a certain brigade. And Admirals add certain debuffs and buffs to certain fleets of ships. You can set this on auto and be just fine. However a brigade is better off with any general then none.
• A great guide for understanding the art of war is Victoria 2’s Art of War.
• A great guide for understanding how to compose your army is Military Composition Guide.
• If you are to lazy or think that guide is to much an easy composition I go by is the double support rule. Always have double or more support brigades the infantry and horses. An example would be like 4 infantry, 4 Horses (Hussars are by far the most important), and 8 cannons (Adding 1 engineer would not be bad either). Usually early through late game is determined on what is researchable, and what you can produce at a significant quantity.
• Early Game
• 4 infantry, 1 hussars, 5 cannons, 1 engineer (1836-1850~)
• Mid game
• 4 infantry, 1 hussars, 5 cannons, 1 engineer (1850-1880, mid game starts when you can have a substantial amount of troops, late mid starts when you can produce and support many more troops)
• Late mid game
• 8 infantry, 2 hussars, 10 cannons, 1 engineer (1880 – when you research tanks and planes).
• Late game (If I have the production power, if not I stick with late mid game).
• 4 Cannons, 4 Planes, 4 Tanks, and 1 engineer. (Tanks become infantry, Hussars become planes).
  ————– I’m very sure someone will try and educate me on this, but this is what I’ve used for a while and it’s been very beneficial in my eyes.
• Units Info –
• Hovering over them gives you their information and stats. However you have two different types of brigades in an essence. You have main line brigades and then support. Support are constantly in the battle, while main line infantry haft to wait for the infantry in front of them to die before they can engage themselves. It’s a lot more complicated than that, but that’s just a bit of an understanding.
  Cheats
• A good guide for this is Cheats and events For Victoria 2 2014. This has literally all you need. Also the way to open the cheat console is to hit the “~” key.
  Conclusion

  This is just for people struggling to find information about tabs at the top of the screen. The guides I linked to will have a lot of information adding into how to play the game when it comes to setting up your military, how to invade, combat in general, and all sorts of nice stuff. So feel free to click on them and read through them. I will try to answer all questions I receive so please feel free to leave them. Tried not to use their material as my own so I will be following up with credit towards the guides that I provided for other’s to learn from.
  cheat Guide;
  Army composition Guide;
  Art of war Guide;
  Trade Window Guide;
  Policies and Government types Guide;

This took quite a bit of time so if you would like to support me with trading cards, skins, or whatever, I don’t care. I’m not begging or demanding for anything, so feel free to tip me off if you want to. Here’s my trade link if you want to trade me something.