IKEA

Another (hopefully) little post on Victoria 3. I've finished my first "training" run. With any new Paradox game, I assume the first game (or three, or five, or ten...) will be a learning experience: I'll make some dumb decisions, belatedly realize why they were dumb, see whether they're recoverable, and get an overall rough sense for how the basics of the systems work. I think I've reached that point in my Sweden run. From the start in 1836, I've played nearly twenty years, through the Year of Revolutions and many other significant events. In that time I think I've done a decent (not perfect) job at growing my economy, and I have radically reformed the laws of Sweden. It's all ended up in an amusing conflagration, though: after losing one war against Russia to defend a breakaway Finish republic, I'm now losing a much larger war against Russia and Prussia for Finnish independence (despite the best effort of my allies Great Britain and the Netherlands), and furthermore, a monarchical revolution has broken out in central Sweden, leading to me fighting on like six different fronts. I'm doomed, but it's fun!

 

Backing up a bit: as I mentioned before, one thing I really love about Victoria is that it is primarily focused on the economic and social aspects of grand strategy games, which (along with technology) are the parts I enjoy most; in other games I'll often grumble when I "have" to fight a war. There's a lot going on in Victoria, but I think the core of the game is trying to make your GDP as large as possible. That directly increases your Prestige, and also allows you to, say, operate a larger military, fund lobbies to increase your involvement, fully fund your social safety net and university researchers, and so on.

 

 

As I figured out how the economy worked, I started to smile: it's exactly like The Wealth of Nations! You're basically encouraging the specialization of your nation's workforce, coaxing peasants to leave their homesteads and take jobs in large farms or buildings in the cities. They become laborers who start earning higher wages, which they use to buy goods and services, which raises demand for more products, which creates more job openings, and so on.

 

 

There's also an element of Thinking Fast and Slow. As your country industrializes, your population's wealth will increase and their standard of living will rise. However, this won't necessarily lead to happiness! If someone was a peasant and starts to work as a laborer, then their income has increased, and they will be a happy pop: loyal to the regime, working hard, increasing their birth rate. But if someone was a clergyman and had to become a laborer because the administration is now secular, they will earn the same wage, but they will be unhappy, and more likely to become Radical.

 

 

A big part of the mechanics of the game is based on building. You, acting through the government, decide what buildings to create and where - a new Iron Mine in Svealand, a Trade Center in Gotland, a Textile Mill in Scania. However, there is also a "private construction" queue. I think the way this works is, as pops in your country gain profits (aristocrats from farms, capitalists from factories, etc.), they create an "investment pool", and then use that money to construct buildings on their own. This runs autonomously of the government. In practice they seem to focus on making profitable buildings and not necessarily ones that follow your own strategy; but these are always good regardless, as they create more jobs, provide more goods (thus lowering market prices), require more inputs (thus creating demand for other goods and stimulating production), and hopefully generate more profit, allowing the private sector to create still more buildings.

An interesting wrinkle is requesting or offering "investment rights" with another country; for example, you could allow Great Britain to build in your own country, or you could get permission to build in the Kongo. This leads to a situation where a building is in Country A, giving it the benefit of job opportunities and producing goods for its market; but the profits go to Country B. Depending on your perspective this is either symbiotic or exploitative, and there are valid reasons to pursue or deny such investments. This aligns with one of the veins of Thomas Piketty's writings in Capital in the Twenty-first Century and Capital and Ideology, and is generally a big subject of discussion through to the present day, and I love seeing it represented in the game like this. 

 

 

I really dig the technology system in this game. Technology passively spreads to you, I think if you have one or more neighbors who have researched it, and more than half of my discoveries have come that way. You can also focus your research on a specific technology; if you already had some passive spread then you will be part of the way there already. Some techs seem to take around 3 years to research, others 10 or more; I focused on the shorter ones in this case, prioritizing ones that provide passive benefits over ones that unlock new equipment or building configurations. Anyways, I like the combination of focusing and driving your priorities while also never worrying about falling too far behind in, say, military tech.

 

 

I also like how colonizing is presented here. In Europa Universalis colonizable land looks empty - there are technically "natives", but visually it's just blank space. Here they are "decentralized" territories, each led by a "chieftain". The game is still depicting the historically accurate European domination over indigenous lands (by this time period primarily African territories), but it's also very clear that there were already people there with their own society, culture and leadership, not empty lands waiting for settlers to arrive.

That said, I never figured out how to colonize in my game. I enacted a law and started a Colonizing Institution which should let me colonize overseas provinces. The thing tripping me up seems to be that you need to have an "interest" in a region to begin a colony there. I was able to get some "interest" by signing various economic pacts with some African states like Kongo, Gaza and Natal. I think that I somehow need to bring "interest" to an even higher tier, but I was never able to figure out how to do that in this game. Which isn't terrible, I didn't necessarily want Sweden to become a colonizing force, but that's the one mechanic I'm aware of that I wasn't able to engage with in this game.

 

 

While construction is probably the most satisfying part of the game for me, politics is the most exciting. This seems to generate the lion's share of events, as things will occur during election season or while debating a new law that will require you to make a decision. The system here is strong: it's primarily oriented around "interest groups", such as Rural Folk or Armed Forces. Each interest group has its own ideology, describing the laws they would favor or dislike; each interest group also has "clout", describing the total amount of power they wield.

 

 

Early in the game, the "Landowners" interest group is very powerful and tends to run the government. Let's say that, long-term, you want to put the Trade Unions in charge. This is a non-starter: while they are plentiful, they are very poor and have almost no power. However, the Industrialists and the Petite Bourgeois are interested in, say, moving from Landed Voting to Wealth Voting. You can pursue a law change to the franchise, which will shake up the factions' clout. Now the Landowners are less powerful, the Trade Unions still don't have power, but the Industrialists and Petite Bourgeois do. This can crack open the door for some other reforms, like more equitable taxation or a public school system, that will materially improve the lives of the working class. This allows them to generate some wealth and improve their standard of living, letting them get a foothold in the Wealth Voting system. Then you might be able to move towards Census Suffrage and eventually Universal Suffrage. The whole system makes sense, is historically accurate, and is basically quoting The Communist Manifesto, hence I love it!

Okay, that's it for now on the Sweden game. I think that next I'm going to try Belgium, one of the other recommended "learner" countries. Wish me luck in the Low Countries!