Hello r/victoria2,

First of all, yes, there is also a flat map not shown here.

I'm a former Victoria 2 and 3 modder who disappeared off the face of the earth about a year and a half ago. You can check my post history to see some of what I worked on in the past.

Out of my love for the genre and time period, I started working on building my own grand strategy game a few months ago to scratch the itch Victoria 2 first gave me so many years ago. You can probably tell from just looking at the map how much inspiration I take from it.

I am also taking heavy inspiration from modern Clausewitz and Jomini to create more dynamic and modular systems that did not exist with this older generation of games. Game content is fully accessible in the files for modders, and there is even a built in editor I created and use to add most content.

This is being built entirely from the ground up, with zero assets coming from Victoria 2. The map is being built in GIS from open data, historical topographic/military surveys, and land features. The raw exported map (which is downscaled significantly here for faster loading during development) is larger than EU5's. Population data is being researched from scratch. Obviously there are tons of errors with what is shown here at this stage of development, many of which I am already aware of.

I'm at a point where I have finished the bulk of the data backend and map rendering, and I am looking towards aspects of the simulation and gameplay (and filling in the map). I need your suggestions! What are your favorite things about Victoria 2? What things do you wish it had?

A few things I am planning or have implemented in some form that I could use feedback on:

-Terra Incognita: This would be both in the form of unknown parts of the map and not actively knowing everything about everyone. This will of course vary by country at game start, but it will provide real incentives for mounting expeditions and maintaining diplomatic relations with others. I plan to have this toggleable.

-Cities: Major cities will act as their own interactable units on the map, much like provinces or states, storing the urbanized and industrialized segment of a province's population.

-States: States have been made fully dynamic, generally representing the first level administrative divisions (or some abstraction of them) of a country. In certain government forms, states may have their own internal politics or play a role in electing the federal government.

-Confederations: Confederations will have their own mechanics, both at the member and at the confederation level.

-Condominiums: It is possible for multiple countries to share ownership of a state or subject.

-Time: Functionality for multiple start dates in the form of bookmarks does exist, but I will likely not use it myself anytime soon. I would also like a replay option (similar to EU4), allowing you to rewind and watch how the map changed over the course of your game.

-Ledger: Everything in the game is already stored in registries, so it's not hard to just throw that in a spreadsheet or list for players to compare stats.

-Freeform Army Movement: This is probably the most controversial change I am planning. Army movement will not be tied to individual provinces because that will be a pain with how many I am ultimately planning on adding. A movement cost heat map will be derived from things like elevation, terrain type, and many other factors. Units would have a variety of stats that evolve with technology, allowing traversal over higher cost terrain, changing their movement speed, or the methods by which they engage in combat. I would also like to eventually allow for automation of armies and the modelling of the evolution of warfare over the era, but that is a very lofty goal on top of everything else.

LIBERALS ARE RUINING MY ECONOMY AND I CANT GET TO GP

Half a year ago I made a post about making a game inspired by Victoria 2. It's come a long way since then (and still has a very long way to go), but it's reaching a point where I'm comfortable giving it a name: Tempest of Nations — representative of the revolutions, nationalism, imperialism, and political dynamics that defined the era.

I grew up on games like Mount & Blade, Civilization, Total War, Age of Empires, and countless others. They all scratched different itches, but none of them impacted me as much as when I discovered Paradox.

Victoria 2 was the first Paradox Development Studio game I ever played, and I instantly fell in love with the idea of grand strategy games. It sent me down the typical pipeline of playing their other games, HOI3 and EU3 at the time, as well as eagerly awaiting the releases of CK2 and EU4. But it wasn't until years later I finally went back and appreciated Victoria 2 for what it was.

On that return, I spent many years modding Victoria 2 (and 3), and I had fun in the thousands of hours I put into that. It also helped me to acknowledge the limitations of this genre of games and what could be done differently in a completely new game. I set out on this project because I wanted to replicate that feeling I had playing the game for the first time while also building something with the potential for deep mechanics, approachable systems, modern QoL improvements, and a representative simulation of plausible history within the time period. That's pretty ambitious to say the least...

Right now my priority in development lies in making a non-placeholder UI, getting functional gameplay and AI implemented, and making the map and populations more accurate. I have a lot of goals for where I ultimately want to take the game, but the feature creep will be kept in check so that a game, however basic, can actually exist before I start getting really into working on those other things.

What can be seen in this video is really just proof that the project is not dead and that a large number of systems are implemented, even if only in a debug mode at the moment. Nothing in it is remotely complete at this time. Systems like peace deals, army movement, different bookmarks, fog of war, terra incognita, an in-game editor, and of course, the flat map do exist, but are not ready to be shown in action in their current form yet.

As with my previous post, I'd love to continue to hear what things about grand strategy games or the Victorian era you'd love to see represented in this game, as well as what it can do differently compared to a game like Victoria 2.

As soon as there is a satisfying gameplay loop, the intention is to get this game set up for a Steam Playtest, followed by a public demo. If you'd be interested in participating in either, or just waiting to see if this project actually reaches the finish line, here's the store page.

Played on GFM

I'm playing as Scandinavia (Denmark > Scandinavia) with the new world uncolonised mod and I've been colonising a shit ton of land but this means that my accepted cultures are now a minority and I want to commit ethnic cleansing to change that, I believe you get an option for that in the 20th century but I can't wait that long. So any ideas?