Victoria 2 - The Review You Need After Reading the Other Reviews

Reviewing a game like Victoria 2 is like reviewing the Internet.  I could play this game for a year and still be learning something new. I won't even try to comprehensively cover all features of this game. Instead, I will take a stab at a few Victoria 2 features that at least for me were crucial to keep the game in my hard drive.

Queen of the Hill
When you have achived so much, it's hard to best yourself. Ask Tiger Woods! Victoria 2 has a steep hill to climb before reaching the heights of popularity of its predecessor (Victoria: An Empire Under the Sun).

The first obstacle in the climb is the widespread "look and wait" stance that many gamers have after the serious performance and interface issues of Paradox's Hearts of Iron III upon release. Victoria 2 runs smoother, loads faster and has far less crashes than that first version of the other game. Also, this is the best presented game from Paradox in a long time. The interface is clear and functional. The tutorials are outstanding, almost to the point where you can skip reading the manual (just kidding, this game is deep, read as much as you can). We can safely say that the first obstacle has been passed.

The second obstacle is not exclusive to Victoria 2 and has been the cause of many grand-strategy veterans to steer clear from anything Paradox after Europa Universalis III: a sandbox game design  with no date-triggered historical events dumped into a virtual world that may have strayed more or less dramatically from real history. In Victoria 2, Paradox introduced back some historical events but now they are triggered according to what's going on in the virtual world. This new middle ground of game design works great for certain in-game timeframes and countries but feels deterministic for others. Sorta like "scattered clouds but it hadn't rain in a while, so let it pour now" instead of "it's humid, hot and cloudy, it's gonna rain".  A great example of this is the American Civil War: you can delay it, but you can't avoid it. The question of why and when important events and wars happen in the real world is fascinating and I don't posses the intellectual stature to point fingers at Paradox, but this new design results  in a perplexing game experience. If increasing the historical flavor of the game engine was an issue, Paradox could have introduced  historical scenarios where you start at a certain date with a world already tuned to what history books say. Even when I like the sandbox, non-deterministic approach or all other Paradox games, I'm craving to fight the Austro-Prussian War, the Franco-Prussian War, the Crimean War, the Balkans War, the Triple Alliance War, the Russo-Japanese War ... (damn, so many wars) ... with a decent order of battle and not the mess of armies I end up building. Alas, the only possibility is to start your games at 1836. So, please fellows, I will accept your kind donations of save-games of different countries at different game dates ...

Whether Victoria 2 achieves the heights of popularity of the previous Victoria or not, Paradox is being proactive pushing itself towards the high ground and I'm ecstatic that they don't strand themselves into design stagnation. Making a living out of games is complicated and other developers who stick to perceived winning formulas are starting to get into my nerves. Kudos to Paradox for their will to experiment in their designs.

Raising Leviathan
With Victoria 2, Paradox introduced a brave new model of so-called POPs (short for populations, collective units that represent population segments with a common culture, religion and profession like officers, aristocrats, artisans, etc). These POPs have been there since the previous Victoria, but now in Victoria 2 the flux of people between POPs is automatic and dependent on what each POP is experiencing (education, income, daily life needs). More realistic and one thing less to micromanage. But don't put your guard down: watching out for the needs of your people is crucial to play Victoria 2.

Even when there is a separate tab/screen for population, politics, trade and budget, socio-politics and socio-economics are networked through the POPs. Everything in Victoria 2 seems to flow from the bottom (POPs) up (politics and economics). The virtual world of Victoria 2 is fascinating to watch, almost like a living creture that breathes and tests your seemingly solid strategy with a thousand tiny kicks. How is you Hobbian experiment going to hold against "the butterfly effect" mentioned in Victoria 2's user manual?

Paradoxically (no pun intended), when it comes to socio-economics and socio-politics Victoria 2 is both too transparent and too opaque. The stats of the POPs at every corner of your empire are updated instantly and showed to you as they change, a luxury that even modern world leaders don't have. I know it's just a game, but a little "fog of POPs" would add a lot to the game experience. Since the POPs and their changing stats influence so much politics and economics, it would be great if Paradox had provided some sort of interface explaining to the player how those changes in stats contributed to the current state of affairs. Otherwise, mainly when your country is going to the dumpster thanks to general revolt, that feeling of watching a living creature that I mentioned before is replaced by a feeling of looking at the capricious color changes of a kaleidoscope.  In other words, it would be great to have less info on "what" is happening with the POPs and more info on "why" things happen because of the POPs.

Post-Napoleonic Warfare is Pretty Much Very Napoleonic
I had a chuckle when one of the techs in Victoria 2 ("Post-Napolenic Thought") showed the picture of Clausewitz. In the scale of Napolenic thought, Clausewitz is second only to Jomini! Anyway, during most of the 19th century a great majority of generals regarded Napoleon as their guide through the battlefield. The problem with that was the size of the armies and their firepower were increasing dramatically. Command, control and communications became an issue. No longer a general could place himself on the top of a hill and command his entire army from there. The high operational mobility of the foraging Napolenic armies was replaced by the lightning strategical mobility provided by the railroads and by the operational stasis that resulted from huge supply vans slowly moving beyond the railhead. Only a handful of generals dealt with these problems succesfully. One of them, Moltke, would influence the German military thought all the way through World War II. Last but not least, this period of history saw the birth of modern warfare, somewhere in South Africa. The 19th century is a great period for war gaming.

Unfortunately, warfare is not Victoria 2's forte. One could argue that the historical period is so diverse in terms of warfare that is difficult to model, but Victoria 2 doesn't even try. The units available are pretty generic with the most variety of units available for the cavalry arm. This is a combat arm whose principal role (shock by charge) was becoming historically obsolete right from the start of the game, so the variety is a bit disturbing. Land units move from province to province  and combat is ensued when two opposing forces are in the same province. There is a tiny bit of enjoyable operational art in Victoria 2, but the back and forth lightining swing of forces between provinces starts to feel gamey very quickly. Tactical combat is resolved automatically, with factors like terrain, frontage, cohesion, reserves being considered in the final resolution. Once a tactical battle has started, the player has no influence at all on it, which is fine as this is a grand strategy game. Naval warfare in Victoria 2 scores a bit higher than land warfare and the variety of naval units is of great use for a game where a naval empire is the premiere attraction. The ability of building better units of any type is pegged to the status of each nation's research activities. I personally never liked this "research/tech" type of things in strategy games, and in Victoria the correlation between researched techs and units available feels a bit odd.

Again, this is a grand-strategy game and the military features of it make an overall decent work. All you have to do is not to look too close. I was hoping for more warfare goodies from Victoria 2, but Vainglory of Nations is around the corner ...


In summary, this is a solid grand-strategy historical game set in a great period of history. Rich in features and more accessible for the beginner than ever, Victoria 2 is a game that has secured some serious time in my gaming calendar. Paradox's designers have not lost their mojo and I am happy to see that there are still companies out there not willing to sacrifice quality historical gaming in the altar of popularity.

Cheers,

Real Blogging to Resume Soon!

What a summer!
My business traveling is coming to an end within a couple of weeks. I expect to resume my normal posting by then. Thanks for visiting the blog during this summer!

Cheers,

Victoria 2 Released Today

Paradox Interactive released Victoria 2, the sequel to the 2003 Victoria: An Empire Under the Sun.

I got my review copy past week and I did everything I could to write up a review by today. Unfortunately both my business travel and the complexity of Victoria 2 didn't help. I'm going to take a couple of days more to complete the review. On the meantime, a byline of the game and a few screenshots.

Victoria 2 is a grand-strategy game that focuses on socio-politics, socio-economics, diplomacy and trade. Surprisingly, it has very short legs when it comes to land warfare modelling.

Cheers,

Coolest and Greatest Gift Ever

I just sent a couple of games to a friend early this year when he was in the sandbox and he sent me this awesome gift. An Iraqi flag signed with the names of all his squad. Also note the two hands imprinted with sand. I have never received so much for so little ... I salute you guys, and thank you for your service to the country!

The posting of this picture without covering the names in it has been approved by the US Army.

I'm heading now to the frame shop. This one is going to be the central piece of my war room.

Cheers,

The Red Pill - Choose Your Weapons

An impressive display of weapons handling routines now up at Warfaresims.com.

That map is a beauty. Will take some time to learn to focus in the actual combat.

There is a big attrition component in the naval combat calculus and correct modelling of weapons handling is its foundation.

Thanks Dimitris Dranidis for the heads up!

Cheers,

Achtung Panzer Kharkov 1943 - The Infantry Game - Bring a (Better) Gun to a Gunfight

Two very well known 3D tactical war games have a weak spot and that is infantry modelling. The Panzer Command series (Matrix) has come a long way since their first title, but the way infantry is modeled continues to be disappointing. The Combat Mission series has evolved from its abstracted squads to an explicit 1:1 representation but unfortunately Battlefront has downgraded other features of the engine (like the so-called "tactical AI", the one that used to oversee the overall performance of the computer-controlled troops) to an extent that negatively affects the whole combat experience.

I recently resumed playing Achtung Panzer Kharkov 43 (APK43) and I am focusing on infantry combat. I don't expect these infantry-oriented series of entries that I start today to be very popular. We all prefer the fast pace of armor combat against the slug-fest of infantry combat. But ... Ey! You don't drop by this blog for visceral game play stories, don't you?

So here is what happened. Me as the Germans commanding a full company of dismounted panzer grenadiers against computer-controlled Russian infantry. I am giving orders with a single click to whole platoons  at this time. My point platoon approaches one of those villages with a single row of houses leaning on one side of a road. The point platoon comes under fire from the odd and only house that is on the other side of the road, at the opposite extreme of the village. Great position, awesome field of fire, great job by the Russian AI. I command the point platoon to put the whole village between them and the nasty Russian defensive position. The fog of war doesn't allow to determine which type of Russian unit is firing at us. I want suppressive fire on the enemy so I command the whole point platoon to put some fire into the Russian position.

All by themselves, a few grenadiers get out of the cover offered by the houses and cross the road into an open field. It's like in Close Combat (a fire order will result in soldiers moving to a location where they can see the target)! But that's not just it: the first grenadiers that moved out to provide suppressive fire were carrying MG42s! All of this with just one click.

These grenadiers crossed the road to get a better field of fire. In the foreground, two MG42s and one submachine gunner. In the background, one additional MG42 is about to join the fun.

Cheers,

Commander Conquest of the Americas - Where is the part in which I actually conquer something?

This is a nice trading game and the naval component has me intrigued. The byline of the game's title is a bit unfortunate: you don't do too much conquest (no land warfare) and "the Americas" are limited to (gasp!) a portion of the actual continent.

Yet I want to see if the naval battles hold some water (no pun intended). They look pretty, though.

More about this coming in the future.

Cheers,

The Long Way Home - Book Mini Review

Please note: all books I have in the queue (thanks authors and publishers!) are worth a full-blown review. Unfortunately, my free time is being rather scarce due to business travel and other work obligations. I will resume full-featured articles and reviews sometime after the summer. 

The Long Way Home: An American Journey from Ellis Island to the Great War

by David Laskin

Hardcover, 416 pages

Harper Collins Publishers

In a time like this, of protracted wars and rushed immigration debate, David Laskin's "The Long Way Home" invites us to look for wisdom in our collective past. Laskin, a well known writer/scholar with the intellectual appetite of a renaissance man, appears not to be that much into any type of politics. But his story-telling manages to ring all sort of bells in the ears of whom are reading beyond his words.

"The Long Way Home" follows the story of 12 immigrants that landed in the US right before World War I and were drafted or volunteered to serve in all branches of the US Armed Forces. Laskin has researched throughly and written each story with exquisite detail and with the literary skill that only gifted writers can deliver. The stories themselves are heartbreaking and sometimes is difficult not to break a tear at the miseries and struggles these men had to endure even before becoming teenagers. The accounts of the immigration process (embarkation, travel and reception in New York) are the best I ever read in any book. I could almost hear the chit-chat of nervous immigrants worried about being turned back to their home countries. Laskin's superb narratives of the Great War took me by surprise. To my knowledge, this is the author's first book dealing with a military subject and he doesn't depart from the tone or depth he started with. Off course there is not an analysis of every battle he refers to, but there is enough context to understand it. The battle narratives had me thinking about these men for days. This book deserves to share the same shelf with other WWI military history books.

There are very short references in this book about the influence of immigration in America's recent wars. I was expecting that to be the case. This is not a book to feed the short sighted debate the country is about to engage on. This is a book about what is to be an American by choice. I am sure that no matter where the current frenzy leads us to, after the waters settle down, this book will be one of the top ones to come back to.

Laskin has brought up in me emotions and thoughts I had forgotten for years. I am from a family of compulsive immigrants and I am an immigrant myself. I heard from my late grandfather (an Italian who immigrated to Argentina just before WWII) many similar stories than the ones I read in this book. Like Laskin's story of the immigrant mother passing to her kids pieces of stale bread rubbed on a garlic clove (so it would have some sort of flavor). I knew these stories were true, but reading them thousand of miles from where I was born it certainly strikes a chord. I had it too easy grandpa, but I promise I will become a good  American ... almost as good as you were an Argentine.

Cheers,

The Right Time to Attack is Always in the Past - Scourge of War

The game: Scourge of War (Norbsoft)
Sandbox scenario - Division against Division - Yours truly vs computer-controlled Confederates
Click on the images to see them in full-size.

I thought I had all things in place for a quick victory: my Division split in half, one brigade to skirmish against the advance of the Confederates and other brigade waiting on the reverse side of the slope of a hill, well  hidden from view alongside most of my artillery. The plan was to pop up from the reverse side of the hill with these guys and smash the Confederates below.

For a few minutes the Confederates appear to take the bait and move towards my skirmishers ... but my ruse starts to go awry when I am not able to pull out my men in due time. The Confederates overrun my skirmishers and close in with the main line. Are the Confederates charging? These are madmen! Cold steel here, and also there ... The slaughter is horrendous. Time for the rest of my boys' appearance act from the top of the hill.

What? The artillery is still not up in the hill?
The horses can't pull the cannons up to the hill  because of a crevice in the terrain. This terrain accident can be jumped over by even a small kid. Yet today, it has become as big as the canyon that separates the alive from the dead.

Then, more bad news. The Confederates are on our left flank, threatening the whole brigade that I had out of contact. My ambush has been ambushed.

I see the Confederates forming up at my left flank (see screenshot below) and I think that this would have been the perfect time to hit them with my artillery. Are my cannons coming up this bloody hill? My saber can't point my boys to victory and my mind can only think about the perverse nature of this transaction of violence we call battle.  

Cheers,

Gefechtsaufklarung - German Reconnaissance Units in Achtung Panzer Kharkov 43

I regard reconnaissance units as military elite. In WWII they went ahead of everybody, in nimble vehicles, armed with just a stick and skill ...  looking for trouble.

In Achtung Panzer Kharkov 1943 (APK43), reconnaissance units are important assets during the 2D turn-based phase. They will spot enemy units at a larger range than other regular units. The moves and spotting done by reconnaissance units during the 2D turn based phase are the last throws of what the Germans called tactical reconnaissance (link opens a pdf written by me and stored at Matrix Games). Any type of reconnaissance done during the 3D phase would have been called "battle reconnaissance" by WWII German doctrine .Battle reconnaissance came in different flavors and sizes, being more of communal endeavor of line and reconnaissance troops. With a wise mixture of armored car patrols, 4 men battle patrols and squad-sized combat patrols, the objective was to gain detailed information in order to plan the battle accordingly.

It all depends on your commanding skills!

"While scouting a woods, a favorite German ruse is to drive the leading car toward its edge, halt briefly to observe, and then drive off rapidly, hoping to draw fire that will disclose the enemy positions." Quote from this book.

Fight the good fight, but bug out if the odds are against you.

By the way, why is this guy's wingman not providing mutual support?

Don't be shy and mix your platoons!

Cheers,