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idhrendur posted:I at least have an answer to that. Vic2 saves screenshots as bmp files, which get washed out on imgur. You have to manually convert them to jpg or png before upload for them to come out right. 1861 now and I finally figured out to raise more troops I need to have, you know, soldiers. So I've been building up my troops in preparation for whatever future war comes my way - I looked up a guide on army composition, and I'm setting up my armies in stacks of 30 - 5 infantry and 5 artillery. I'm pondering building a separate cavalry stack for scouting purposes, but I don't know how useful that would be. I also discovered what happens when you build a bunch of factories and subsidize them all, encouraging craftsmen to work. I had a comfortable bank of 120K, and near the late 1850's my economy just tanked. The subsidy payments went through the roof and I had to scramble to stabilize it. I'm currently at 30K and falling slowly, with about 30,000 unemployed craftsmen. I'm guessing this won't be good for long term stability. GrossMurpel posted:You know that as a monarchy, you can just kick out whatever party won the elections and install the one you want, right?
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Feb 11, 2018 23:32
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Lucas Archer posted:Fantastic, thanks. Yeah, it's been a while since I played V2 so I wasn't willing to comment too much earlier, but subsidizing factories heavily is a BAD thing - it allows an inherently unprofitable factory to keep on trucking instead of closing it down for something that actually makes money. That being said having a lot of factories going, even unprofitable ones, are probably all that's giving tiny little Bavaria the industrial score needed to compete as a GP, so, uh, cost of doing business really. Try to check what caused the economy to tank - are your factories not selling what they're making? Are they not getting the input they need to produce what they're trying to sell? The odds are that the problem is probably the former, in which case what you need to do is to secure markets for yourself. This is done by either conquering new territories to add to your population (colonialism!) or adding new territories to your sphere of influence, which puts them in your internal market and forces them to buy their poo poo from you before anyone else (as well as selling to you before anyone else). Competing for the low-population, heavily-contested states of Germany might be an issue - try looking further afield at low-tech, high-pop nations elsewhere and plan to unify Germany by war later (or, y'know, just go to war when you think you have a chance and unify Germany and its markets by force). It might also be worth noting that tariffs actually affect your economy - if you have high tariffs and a tiny sphere, that means everything that your factories need which needs to be imported gets slapped with a swingeing tariff, making their production more unprofitable. Depending on how high your tariffs are, you might actually see an economic boost if you lower your tariffs. That being said you'd need to make up your budget shortfall by raising taxes, and if your sphere is small and you rely mostly on selling to Bavarians, you may well be taxing your population's ability to buy into your economy, shooting it in the foot via another avenue. Re: Cavalry, no, cavalry is basically useless on its own. Its only value is having one or two per stack to add recon bonuses and flank a little bit, which is important but you've never really got any reason to have a full army of them. Also changing governments by fiat DOES actually increase militancy somewhat for the various pops involved. Not a big deal if you do it once or twice, but if you do it regularly you might find yourself staring down Communists or something in the near future. Edit: Damnit, now I'm reinstalling V2. Tomn fucked around with this message at 00:52 on Feb 12, 2018 |
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Feb 12, 2018 00:18
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I've never been able to figure out how many people here use the game converters, but EU4 to Vic2 just had an update allowing it to support the last two EU4 versions. It has some other features too, but that support is the big one.
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Feb 12, 2018 01:53
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Freudian posted:It's released on March 15th, and you can read the Dev Diaries here.
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Feb 12, 2018 02:32
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Tomn posted:Yeah, it's been a while since I played V2 so I wasn't willing to comment too much earlier, but subsidizing factories heavily is a BAD thing - it allows an inherently unprofitable factory to keep on trucking instead of closing it down for something that actually makes money. That being said having a lot of factories going, even unprofitable ones, are probably all that's giving tiny little Bavaria the industrial score needed to compete as a GP, so, uh, cost of doing business really. Try to check what caused the economy to tank - are your factories not selling what they're making? Are they not getting the input they need to produce what they're trying to sell? The odds are that the problem is probably the former, in which case what you need to do is to secure markets for yourself. This is done by either conquering new territories to add to your population (colonialism!) or adding new territories to your sphere of influence, which puts them in your internal market and forces them to buy their poo poo from you before anyone else (as well as selling to you before anyone else). Competing for the low-population, heavily-contested states of Germany might be an issue - try looking further afield at low-tech, high-pop nations elsewhere and plan to unify Germany by war later (or, y'know, just go to war when you think you have a chance and unify Germany and its markets by force). As for unifying Germany - this is where my lack of geographical knowledge gives me hell. I have two German Empire decision - the one to unify all of Germany, and a Southern German Pact of some kind. For both, I have to either own or have a sphered country own the German provinces, right? Is there an easier way of figuring out which ones those are other than individually looking at each country in the map view? quote:It might also be worth noting that tariffs actually affect your economy - if you have high tariffs and a tiny sphere, that means everything that your factories need which needs to be imported gets slapped with a swingeing tariff, making their production more unprofitable. Depending on how high your tariffs are, you might actually see an economic boost if you lower your tariffs. That being said you'd need to make up your budget shortfall by raising taxes, and if your sphere is small and you rely mostly on selling to Bavarians, you may well be taxing your population's ability to buy into your economy, shooting it in the foot via another avenue. Thanks for the advice!
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Feb 12, 2018 03:01
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AAAAA! Real Muenster posted:I lost all interest in the game when I saw the happy-go-lucky looking robots running around building poo poo. Is it a childrens game?!? Yeah, and the big magical force field domes is a real bad look as well. I'd love a more hard-scifi / realistic looking mars building game.
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Feb 12, 2018 03:11
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Baronjutter posted:Yeah, and the big magical force field domes is a real bad look as well. I'd love a more hard-scifi / realistic looking mars building game.
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Feb 12, 2018 03:55
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Deceitful Penguin posted:Yeah, it felt super dumb; why wouldn't you build underground, at least partially, when you have a planet wracked with hideous storms?? They specifically mention this in a DD that realistically the habitats would all be at least semi-underground and more bunker-like but they thought the domes looked more fun and happy so went with that 
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Feb 12, 2018 03:57
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idhrendur posted:I've never been able to figure out how many people here use the game converters, but EU4 to Vic2 just had an update allowing it to support the last two EU4 versions. It has some other features too, but that support is the big one. Anyone know of any Eu4 to HoI4 converters?
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Feb 12, 2018 04:24
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Kaza42 posted:Anyone know of any Eu4 to HoI4 converters? Yes: Victoria 2.
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Feb 12, 2018 04:29
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Kaza42 posted:Anyone know of any Eu4 to HoI4 converters? Arrhythmia posted:Yes: Victoria 2. I can say with a great deal of confidence that there is no EU4 to HoI4 converter. However, we do have EU4 to Vic2, I'm working Vic2 to HoI4, and one of the other regulars recently created an HoI4 to Stellaris converter.
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Feb 12, 2018 06:34
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idhrendur posted:I can say with a great deal of confidence that there is no EU4 to HoI4 converter. However, we do have EU4 to Vic2, I'm working Vic2 to HoI4, and one of the other regulars recently created an HoI4 to Stellaris converter. Really, there's so much that happens between EU4 and HOI4 that sets the stage for what is supposed to happen in HOI4 that there'd really be no point; you might as well just manually hand craft a scenario.
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Feb 12, 2018 07:00
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Yeah Surviving Mars got me hyped when the concept was first announced but then I actually saw a trailer and the visual style killed it for me. It's petty, I know, but I just can't get into the gritty frontier survival when it looks like the Jetsons.
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Feb 12, 2018 07:39
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Crazycryodude posted:Yeah Surviving Mars got me hyped when the concept was first announced but then I actually saw a trailer and the visual style killed it for me. It's petty, I know, but I just can't get into the gritty frontier survival when it looks like the Jetsons. I can see that, I think the game looks cool but I also wish for more gritty survival games and less hopeful optimism in my space games. Civ: Beyond Earth did the same thing where they wanted to be like SMAC, without being like SMAC apparently, and ended up with something in between that was unsatisfying to everyone. Frostpunk looks good though, child labor!
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Feb 12, 2018 07:46
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optimism is cool and good and as much as i love me some grimdark not every game has to have it imo
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Feb 12, 2018 08:03
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I'm fine with optimism, I don't necessarily require my Martian colony to be full of people freezing to death as they go blind at 40 from UV-induced cataracts. I would at least prefer that they also not live in 50's white suburban America and spend precious building materials on bars that are 3 stories tall and seat 10 people. Like, Surviving is literally in the title, act like you're actually trying to survive a harsh environment. Just dig a goddamn hole and hide in it like an actual smart human. I guess the TL;DR is that, for me at least, the art style fundamentally doesn't mesh with the hardscrabble frontier struggle it's supposed to be and I can't reconcile them so all immersion is broken.
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Feb 12, 2018 08:11
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Crazycryodude posted:I'm fine with optimism, I don't necessarily require my Martian colony to be full of people freezing to death as they go blind at 40 from UV-induced cataracts. I would at least prefer that they also not live in 50's white suburban America and spend precious building materials on bars that are 3 stories tall and seat 10 people. Like, Surviving is literally in the title, act like you're actually trying to survive a harsh environment. Just dig a goddamn hole and hide in it like an actual smart human. It's not a frontier struggle, it's basically set in the near-future, and things just haven't gone wrong as usual, why would we built some crappy horror story base on Mars as our first interstellar colony, why would it be so horrible anyways? Bright future, as used to be.
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Feb 12, 2018 11:36
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Lucas Archer posted:Also, is there any other way to make my influence with surrounding nations grow faster? My goal is to form Germany, but Prussia and Austria keep kicking my ambassadors out of my neighbors - I've gotten a couple of a nations to friendly, but every time I get close to 100 influence to remove them from a sphere or add them to my own, the other two GP's either ban my ambassadors or poo poo talk me to my allies. It's infuriating when I have 98 influence with say, Saxony, and suddenly Austria gets me kicked out. Tomn posted:Also waiting until the last minute to boot you out is just pro play, it forces you to waste as much time and influence possible so that the controller can maintain their grip with minimum cost and effort. The AI kinda has an unfair advantage in that regard since unlike a human player it won't accidentally forget to boot you out at the last moment.
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Feb 12, 2018 11:57
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Lucas Archer posted:After taking a quick glance, it looks like I didn't have enough materials to make the stuff in the factory. In any case, I've decided to let my capitalists run the factories for now - I have enough that they've been opening them on their own. That's probably the South German Confederation - it's basically a stepping stone to becoming Germany, allowing you to annex all the South German states to give your country the boost it needs to finish the job of unification. I don't really know if there's a better way of checking which states you need other than plain clicking and checking, though. Also, really, you're short of materials? That's actually kinda new to me - might be a bigger issue if you're using stuff like luxury furniture factories that rely on rare tropical wood, though. In any event, the solution is pretty much the same: Identify where the resources you need come from, and either conquer or sphere them. Demiurge4 posted:I can see that, I think the game looks cool but I also wish for more gritty survival games and less hopeful optimism in my space games. Civ: Beyond Earth did the same thing where they wanted to be like SMAC, without being like SMAC apparently, and ended up with something in between that was unsatisfying to everyone. The problem with Beyond Earth had less to do with optimism and more to do with the fact that their writers suuuuuuucked. A better writer could have done a lot of interesting things with fundamentally optimistic, yet competing transhumanist visions. Instead we get as a leader quote "Robots build better than humans? Then build more robots!" (only slightly paraphrased)
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Feb 12, 2018 13:25
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One of Beyond Earth's problems was their bizarre choice of where to focus their mechanics. You're on a strange new alien world, and your people are changing with it, becoming something bizarre and weird. What do you spend most of your time doing? Managing trade routes.
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Feb 12, 2018 13:34
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Lucas Archer posted:After taking a quick glance, it looks like I didn't have enough materials to make the stuff in the factory. In any case, I've decided to let my capitalists run the factories for now - I have enough that they've been opening them on their own. You need Baden, Wurttenburg, and the province owned by Prussia down there. I don't remember if you need Austria, or if they're just a (very) nice to have.
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Feb 12, 2018 13:34
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On Vicky 2, note the single Prussian province in Southern Germany that will prevent you from forming the South German Federation unless you (1) take it from Prussia in a war or (2) have Prussia in your sphere, in which case you’re close to forming Germany anyway. Forming Germany as anyone but Prussia is kind of a pain in the rear end.
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Feb 12, 2018 15:19
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Your aim should be to create Großdeutschland and nothing less.
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Feb 12, 2018 16:09
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Star posted:Your aim should be to create Großdeutschland and nothing less. All those extra South German Catholics can stay tied to Hungary, thank you very much. They're not needed in a proper Germany.
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Feb 12, 2018 16:14
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Star posted:Your aim should be to create Großdeutschland and nothing less. and do it as Luxembourg
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Feb 12, 2018 16:15
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Raskolnikov38 posted:and do it as Luxembourg Top tier formable, you can incorporate the French too!
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Feb 12, 2018 16:30
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RagnarokZ posted:It's not a frontier struggle, it's basically set in the near-future, and things just haven't gone wrong as usual, why would we built some crappy horror story base on Mars as our first interstellar colony, why would it be so horrible anyways? Bright future, as used to be. It's a frontier struggle as in you literally show up with nothing but some robots and have to build a functioning colony out of the limited supplies you brought and whatever's lying around. You're the very first settlers in a hostile frontier, months if not years from any help, which tends to be pretty hard. Like I said, I don't want it to be a horror show where everyone dies horribly, it can be uplifting and positive, but the realities of showing up with literally nothing and 6 months later having these massive wasteful domes instead of farming potatoes in a bunker kills the feeling for me. It can be a happy bunker, with an international crew working together in harmony to build the future while everybody is well-fed and warm, but bootstrapping from "empty desert" directly into "thousands of tons of fancy glass that's 98% wasted space" breaks any sense of realism or immersion. I guess my complaints fundamentally boil down to "it's not ~~realistic~~" which is a really dumb complaint to have about video games but space stuff is like the one thing I sperg out about so 
Crazycryodude fucked around with this message at 17:34 on Feb 12, 2018 |
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Feb 12, 2018 17:06
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I think the polite term is "immersion breaking".
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Feb 12, 2018 17:41
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Tomn posted:That's probably the South German Confederation - it's basically a stepping stone to becoming Germany, allowing you to annex all the South German states to give your country the boost it needs to finish the job of unification. I don't really know if there's a better way of checking which states you need other than plain clicking and checking, though.  This is my current factory situation. About half of those I forced built in the 1840's.  My budget. My military needs is what's killing me now. I decided to go to war with Prussia since I had a score advantage and figured it would be worth a shot. However, I think I did it wrong. I never got a German unification type CB, so I justified a war goal on Prussia to take the giant chunk of Germany right north of me. Austria and France decided to stay out of it, but I'm guessing even if I did pull out a victory, they'd take the opportunity to cut me down to size.  Can't see it on this screen, but there's a stack of 60k Prussians just north in the FOW. I started the war strong, but my men were slowly whittled down. I'm guessing the Prussians waited to mobilize their reserves whilst I threw mine into the initial meat grinder.  Communism/socialism is getting much more popular amongst the poorer Bavarians. I'm pretty sure I screwed myself in this one. I'll take it as a learning experience and move on to another country for a fresh start.
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Feb 12, 2018 18:03
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Generally you want to keep factories open as long as possible to build up your industrial base -- you can slowly transition away from unprofitable megafactories when you get some breathing room. Having tarrifs that high for that long kills your industry (as a smaller power) and your populace (generally) as they can't fulfill their needs from imports. Also trying to 1v1 Prussia as Bavaria generally isn't a winning move even with a tech advantage, they've got way more manpower than you so even if you stocked up on soldier pops before the war you'd be hard pressed to get anything that wasn't Pyrrhic out of it. You also don't need to fully fund educational/admin -- in fact its often better that you don't, to prevent massive bloated sectors from creeping up. Also get both expansion packs if you haven't already, it's an old pdox game that makes them almost mandatory.
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Feb 12, 2018 18:53
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Honestly, Bavaria was kind of a brave choice for a starter country. V2 requires a fair bit of finesse to play a secondary or worse power well, doubly so if said power is land-locked and can't get easy access to overseas uncivs. Throw in the fact that Prussia kinda has the deck stacked in its favor to unite Germany, and you're looking at a real challenge for a beginner. For your next game, I'd recommend picking France, Prussia, the USA, and maybe Austria or Russia, so you can get a better idea of what success looks like. The UK is powerful, but it's also massive and sprawling and overwhelming, and the Ottomans/Spain are going to be a breakneck race to retain your GP status. Prussia in particular benefits from having a very natural progression, starting as a moderately respectable power and then provided clear paths to become stronger and stronger until you unite Germany and start thinking about challenging the Royal Navy. Also, it wouldn't really matter given that you're at war, but during peacetime, if you're not expecting any trouble it's perfectly acceptable to cut back on military national stockpiling to save money for the budget. Just remember to kick the stockpiles back to full again when you're expecting trouble. Also the military rating is a bit of an unreliable way to gauge national strength - it's heavily influenced by big fancy battleships and how many leaders you have, neither of which are really relevant for a land-locked war where you only have a few stacks. It also doesn't take into account reserves you haven't mobilized yet - a country with a large population and mobilization-increasing techs might have a small standing army and look militarily unimpressive on paper, but come a war it can drown smaller countries with bodies.
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Feb 12, 2018 19:17
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Only problem with Prussia and Austria as starter countries is the influence game is ridiculous as either of them until you crush the other or Germany forms. That's several decades of tedium right off the bat and that can put you off the game.
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Feb 12, 2018 19:22
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I think Brazil is a great choice for a starter country.
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Feb 12, 2018 19:29
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Yeah, I would figure that the real starter country is either USA (clear top dog in its domain unless you REALLY piss off the UK) or France (just remember to stick your dick in Prussia's earhole early and that the Rheinland is core French territory). Prussia and Austria has the influence fuckery bar none with all those stupid tiny German states. Austria also has a situation that can lead to some real trouble during the Springtime of Nations with a ton of rebels. Russia is kind of annoying because it's just loving huge, and once you get a bad rebellion (and you probably will, rebels and being new at V2 just go hand in hand) you're going to be stuck cleaning that poo poo up for ages. You can do an interesting UK game by releasing everything you can as puppets and just concentrating on the mainland. Mainland UK is still a force all on its own, and the puppets can usually fend for themselves - and if not, who cares, they're halfway across the globe. It's like 100% the opposite of what the British Empire is about, but eh. EDIT: Oh, right, forgot about Brazil. That's a good pick, too. Added bonus, you can play along with Kersch's tutorial LP, which is a great read.
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Feb 12, 2018 19:29
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Don’t play the US unless you don’t mind events popping up all the time.
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Feb 12, 2018 19:38
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Well I was thinking either France or Prussia for my next game, but starting as Brazil seems like it would be a good learning experience. How difficult is colonization to start from Brazil? I wanted to try it from Bavaria, but alas - no naval bases. Trying to conquer any part of Italy would have brought France down on my head. Thanks for all the advice. I really do think I was just overwhelmed and excited by all the possible buttons I could push when I started. Ooh, factories! I can build those! Oh, railroads! We need the best and most modern rail system in Europe, the costs be damned! I was eventually able to sphere both Baden and Saxony, but after that it was just total defensive measures to keep them in my grasp as my ambassadors were subsequently booted out of every other country I tried to gain influence in. I got the game a few years ago with all the expansions, so I'm up to date there. I'm just way more experienced with CK2 and EU4, so I'm used to that type of gameplay/expansion possibilities. I did actually start a game as Sardinia-Piedmont before my Bavaria game, but I didn't even make it to 1845. I saw the "justify war" button on the diplomacy screen, so I figured I'd just justify a war against Two Sicilies so I have that CB in my back pocket while I did other things. I was discovered and my infamy went up by 11. I didn't know what that did, nor could I even find where my current infamy was listed (I have since discovered it). So I justified a war (conquer) versus Tunis. Got caught again with that fabrication, another 11 infamy. Whatever, I declared war and conquered Tunis. I'm doing really well! I'll justify a war on Morocco and expand my holdings! Man, Victoria 2 is easy to figure out. Got caught justifying against Morocco. Cue every single great power, one by one, declaring on me to cut me down to size. I ended up with no military for a long time, something like 90% of my income going to foreign powers, and a poo poo ton of rebel pops just ready to explode. In that way I learned how infamy works.
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Feb 12, 2018 19:50
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25.01 infamy is where the death zone starts. Don't even think for a second "oh, it'll be below the limit in a month". The entire god drat world will DoW you before that month is up. I learned that the hard way too.
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Feb 12, 2018 19:53
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Lucas Archer posted:I got the game a few years ago with all the expansions, so I'm up to date there. Huh. The reason it was suggested that you get the expansions is because you're missing expansion features - you should have separate sliders for army, navy, and construction stockpiles, colonial power, and newspapers among the more obvious visual indicators. Is China multiple smaller countries, or just one gigantic country? If the latter, you don't have the expansions active.
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Feb 12, 2018 19:57
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I think what's happening with the expansions is that HoD is missing, but AHD is there. Because if it weren't, the infamy wouldn't be displayed on the UI. "A few years ago" probably predates the HoD release.
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Feb 12, 2018 20:04
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Baronjutter posted:They specifically mention this in a DD that realistically the habitats would all be at least semi-underground and more bunker-like but they thought the domes looked more fun and happy so went with that You and I both know what we want is a spiritual successor to Outpost.
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Feb 12, 2018 20:14
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