Paradox Interactive Games Thread

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

1921 seems too early for the game to end. It should run through WWII at least. Still worth checking out.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

BUT...

It sounds like this game would allow me to Protestantize Ireland!

[The Mikado]

1921 seems too early for the game to end. It should run through WWII at least. Still worth checking out.

1936, actually.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

Sounds like an interesting game if I had the time for it.

[Orser67]

Victoria 2 is probably my favorite Paradox game, though imo it has the most difficult learning curve. I also recommend the HPM mod for Victoria 2, which can be found here.

[7,052,770]

I really hate the "chess with Death" event...

[Bacon King]

Cool, just got it.

Mikado makes a very good point, the two DLC vastly improve the game (I bought all three so long ago I've forgotten entirely about the DLC). If you can get them before the sale ends, they are $5 and $10 dollars respectively. And if you miss it, just wait ten days and they'll probably be at a similar price again during the big steam holiday sale.

[dead0man]

I don't know why I'm so bad at these games.  Played as USA in first game, did nothing for my military and did nothing to appease the slavers, so the CSA rebelled a decade before I was expecting them to and I wasn't ready...at all for it.  So the plan was to see how the early war played out and if it went bad, just let them go.  As it's playing out (and not well because I have no idea what I'm doing), Mexico decides they want Oregon.  So I make peace with the CSA and then go about getting my ass handed to me by Mexico.  So I quit and start another w/ USA, balance my tech better, and I still got my sh**t pushed in.  Not as bad, but uggg...I had the same problem with HOI4 for the first 40 games or so, just not playing well.  I suspect it's because I basically ignore large parts of the game because I don't understand them, am I supposed to be doing something in the Trade section?  'cause I'm not.  I get to like 80% liberal, but I'm still electing Democrats?

[FEMA Camp Administrator]

I always see these things too late.

[I Can Now Die Happy]

Ha, I didn't even realize that so many of you would be Paradox Interactive fanatics. I probably have close to 1000 hours combined on Crusader Kings II, Hearts of Iron IV, Hearts of Iron III, Europa Universalis IV, Europa Universalis III, and Victoria 2.

I forced myself to stop playing video games not too long ago, but will probably renege on that ban when Imperator: Rome comes out.

[Bacon King]

I don't know why I'm so bad at these games.  Played as USA in first game, did nothing for my military and did nothing to appease the slavers, so the CSA rebelled a decade before I was expecting them to and I wasn't ready...at all for it.  So the plan was to see how the early war played out and if it went bad, just let them go.  As it's playing out (and not well because I have no idea what I'm doing), Mexico decides they want Oregon.  So I make peace with the CSA and then go about getting my ass handed to me by Mexico.  So I quit and start another w/ USA, balance my tech better, and I still got my sh**t pushed in.  Not as bad, but uggg...I had the same problem with HOI4 for the first 40 games or so, just not playing well.  I suspect it's because I basically ignore large parts of the game because I don't understand them, am I supposed to be doing something in the Trade section?  'cause I'm not.  I get to like 80% liberal, but I'm still electing Democrats?

First off, Mikado definitely knows the ins and outs of the game more than me, and probably more than literally anyone else on the entire internet, so I definitely defer to anything he might have to say. That said though, let me offer some general tips (none of these are universally applicable and are far from optimized, but work well as general rules of thumb for pushing things in the right direction)

1. You can safely ignore literally everything in the "trade" section and be fine. Steam says I've played 520 hours of Victoria II and I still have no idea what half of the page even means, let alone how to properly manage it. By default it's automated by the AI. Don't unclick "automated" for anything and you'll be fine.

2. When you start a new game (or load a saved game), unpause and let the game run for about a week before doing anything related to the budget/economy/industry/etc. This is because it takes a few days for the international economy to synchronize the supply and demand of everything.

3. The two important ways to interact with your nation are national focuses and the budget. You should set these up as soon as you repause the game.

4. Putting a national focus on a state can do many things, but a good thing to do when starting a new game is to "encourage bureaucrats" and "encourage clergymen" in your more heavily populated states

5. Both of those two POP types have a specific number you'll want to hit, in terms of their share of the total population. Once you set your national focus, you can easily see this number (and the status of any other focus you've set) in the liner on the right edge of the screen. Change the focus if one of these numbers turns red -- after that point, continuing to increase the share of that POP type in that state will give no further benefits.

6. Bureaucrats determine how effectively your government is run, both nationally and within their own state. They determine your "administrative efficiency" which determines how effective your government is at doing things in your state (I don't know the full list of what it effects but it's a lot). The population share to aim for is 1.0% but you don't need to keep focusing all the way to that number in a given state because it's better to have good efficiency in many states instead of perfect efficiency in a few.

7. Clergy does three important things (but for now you only need to concern yourself with one of those things). The important thing to know right now is that they generate your research points. They also improve literacy and reduce consciousness for all POPs in their state, so keep that in mind for later. The magic number for clergy is 2.0% nationwide because they don't generate additional research beyond that point. (They continue improving literacy at a higher rate, up to 4.0%, but your starting literacy in the US is high already. 4% clergy is basically only necessary if you're playing somewhere uncivilized)

8. Like I said above, the budget is important and has a huge impact. First off, something to note is that when you make changes, they only go into effect once you close the budget screen. But now I'll post images for reference and briefly explain what each thing does and some rules of thumb



First, let's go over the expenses panel here, top to bottom. The top line is for "industrial subsidies" but don't worry about that for now.

The national stockpile is much simpler than it looks. It determines how well-maintained your military is. The first slider is for purchasing stuff the army needs, the second slider is the same but for the navy, and the third slider is for buying materials necessary for construction that you ordered (stuff like forts and ports but also manually-built railroads/factories). Maximum maintenance funding for the military is really only necessary when you’re doing things with them. If you’re at peace and your population isn’t angry then you should cut funding, but just keep in mind that for the lower you reduce funding, the longer it takes your military to become fully combat-ready when you do increase it. It’s not really a drastic difference, just don’t station your totally unfunded army right on the border with a potential enemy! The third slider only determines how long it’ll take to build stuff – you buy the same materials either way but max funding will buy as much as possible as quickly as possible, lower funding will just space out the purchases longer which helps manage your finances I guess.

Oh, also – if your budget total is wrong this is why. If the national stockpile needs something but the market supply is too low, it’ll still count the full amount here on the budget screen but you’ll only pay the actual value of what you bought. Like if you need 5 steel to build a railroad but only 1 is available on the open market, then the full price of all 5 is what’s counted here on the budget screen, but once the budget goes into effect you only pay for the amount you actually bought. So if your budget screen shows a huge deficit but afterwards see on the top of the screen you’re actually running a surplus, it’s because the “national stockpile” is trying to buy something but there’s a shortage. Only bringing this up because for years I thought the budget was somehow glitched but only recently realized what was actually happening)

Education spending determines how well your nation’s clergy are paid, whether other POPs will convert to clergy, and how effective your clergy are at doing stuff. You want this slider as far to the right as possible at the start when you’re trying to reach that 2.0% number.

Administration sets how well you pay your bureaucrats and whether other POPs will become bureaucrats. Spending as much as possible on administration is probably the most important thing to do with the budget until bureaucrats reach 1.0% of your population. BUT once you do reach that, you’ll need to reduce this slider to around 50% or 60% because once you have 100% administrative efficiency it’s just a waste of money to keep hiring more bureaucrats.

Social Spending won’t matter for a long time. No need to worry about it now. But basically once you have welfare programs, extra funding keeps the lower class content, politically apathetic and supportive of the status quo. Under-funding programs, on the other hand, makes them angry and very and opposed to the current government.

Military Spending determines how well your soldiers/officers are paid and how likely other POPs are to convert to soldiers/officers. Rule of thumb is 50% keeps the number of soldiers stable (only affected by population growth and net migration). Higher funding means other POPs convert to soldiers, lower funding means soldiers convert to other POPs. Only crank this up to 100% if you’re trying to rapidly grow your army. For your purposes anything between 50% and like 75% is fine – perhaps a bit higher after a costly war, to replace the dead and ensure there’s enough soldiers to support your current army.

Tariffs: for the first few decades (if not longer) you’ll want to keep it low, between 0% and 5%. A higher rate will hurt you more than it helps at this point. (Note that you can make the tariff negative, where you subsidize anything your POPs or factories purchase from abroad. Never do this.



Here’s taxes! In the early game you should tax the rich absolutely nothing. This is because, for most of the game, your ruling parties will have policies that allow capitalists to build factories AND keep you from building them manually. Capitalists behave like this with their money: what they have left after taxes they spend on all the goods they need/want – this is the same for all other POPs. Uniquely for capitalists, however, is that they spend the remaining money building railroads and factories. Taxing the rich means less factories, which means a weaker economy, which means less tax money for you. This is especially important when you can’t build factories of your own, which you can’t.

Don’t hesitate to tax the hell out of poor people – that should be the biggest source of your money right now. They’ll be fine, don’t worry: hover over this part of the page and you’ll see a rate of 100% will only have an “effective rate” of probably like 20%, which is how much they actually pay you. You mostly increase the effective tax rate with technologies but iirc having a higher administrative efficiency works too.

With no tax on the rich and all tax on the poor, the middle class tax rate is the only one to adjust for you right now. Ideally you’ll want it fairly low but it’s fine to raise it really high if you need more money to pay for stuff. This is especially true at the very beginning, when you’ll have both administration and education funding at ideally 100%. Clergy and bureaucrats are both in the middle class, so they’ll be getting paid well anyway, and high taxes on other middle class POPs means more convert to those jobs, too!

Finally, to move away from the budget:

9. For right now “economic policy” of the ruling party is the only thing to care about because it will heavily influence your industrial development.

Laissez-faire means you’re entirely at the whims of your nation’s capitalists. They alone decide what to build, what to upgrade, and which unprofitable factories to close (fortunately this economic policy also provides the largest boost to industrial efficiency). Capitalists can sometimes be very bad at decision-making, but the bright side is you don’t need to look at the “Production” page when you have a laissez-faire government, since there’s nothing you can do there anyway.

Interventionism gives you some influence, but capitalists still exclusively decide which factories get built. On the “Factories” tab of the Production page you can: pay to expand existing factories, pay to open factories that capitalists have closed, and you can click to give industrial subsidies to any number of factories you want. Subsidized factories will hire enough workers as possible and produce as much goods as possible regardless of current price (capitalists will incrementally hire/fire people based on profitability if it’s up to them). Also, on the “Projects” tab of Production, you can see what factories and stuff capitalists are currently raising money to build, and you can help them pay for it.

State Capitalism: Capitalists can still do all the things – but you get to build your own factories too! If you’re in a monarchy that can freely change ruling parties, it’s a great idea to pick a state capitalist party to build up your industries the way you want and then switch to one of the previous types, where capitalists are more efficient at running them.

Planned Economy: No capitalism allowed, comrade. This is a Soviet-style economy where you micromanage everything yourself. Not available until much later in the game, most of the time.

10. An easy way to manage the economy under an Interventionist economy in early game: click the green button in the upper right of the factories tab to subsize all factories by default. Periodically go to your budget screen and hover your mouse over the “industrial subsidies” line which shows you all factories you’re financially supporting, sorted by how much. Note the factories that you’re paying way too much for, then go back to the Factories page and remove the subsidies for those specific factories. Also, periodically check the Factories page and click the little + sign on factories that are in the green and close to employment capacity.

11. All army units you build are associated with one specific soldier POP. The size of that POP determines how many brigades you can build from it. When those brigades take casualties, the population in that POP decreases accordingly. Every POP has one specific culture assigned to it, so for example as the United States you can build both Yankee and Dixie units. If the symbol of a brigade turns yellow, it means the POP no longer has enough members to support all the brigades built from it (e.g. a POP of 5000 Yankee soldiers in Pittsburgh can support 3 brigades, but if the population falls to 4500 then it’s only able to support 2 with that number. All three existing brigades will continue existing but reinforcements will be slower for them). A brigade symbol turning red means the POP has fallen to less than a thousand, too low to support even a single brigade. When you pick troops you have the option to delete all yellow/red divisions but honestly I keep using them until the units cease to exist. Note that POP population can also just be changing from those soldiers getting other jobs or moving to a different states. Hover over the icon to see the pop of the POP and if it’s not that low you can just regrow the pop by raising military funding.

12. General rule: your starting navy is expensive and useless (except possibly the transports). A wooden navy becomes completely obsolete as soon as ironclads are invented. As the US you won’t need a navy until ironclads are invented anyway. You will want to build your army as much as your population allows, though. Maybe limit the number of Dixie regiments you build though (or at least keep them stacked with enough Yankee units to overwhelm them in a battle) because they’ll usually join their home states when they secede.

13. My preferred composition for each army stack is one dragoon, two/three cannons (an engineer in place of the third cannon once you have them researched), and 6 infantry. Feel free to experiment though, I’m not the best at combat.

14. In no particular order the most important early techs for you to research are medicine (prevents epidemic events, much less army attrition, higher population growth), the next in the political thought branch of Culture techs (provide additional national focuses), the next in the Philosophy branch of Culture (gives direct multiplier for research points), market structure (iirc important for early factory success)

15. The Civil War triggers when your average national consciousness is 7.0 or higher. You’re provided with lots of ways to reduce consciousness through decisions and periodic events. Many of them affect free states and slave states differently, increasing consciousness in one while decreasing it in the other. There are two typical ways to handle it. First, you can delicately manage national consciousness by balancing the consciousness of both the north and south. If you can make it to (iirc) 1876 without the Civil War happening, you’ve made it. You are then free to end slavery the next time a political reform is available.

The other option is to deliberately trigger the civil war as fast as possible. Build only Yankee soldiers and station them all in the South (or on the border). Make sure every new state is admitted to the union as a free state to keep the confederacy as small as possible. Provoke the South at every opportunity and smash them as soon as they rebel. Cheesy, but effective. Note also doing the opposite is also possible if you want to make the future CSA as strong as possible, in case you want to play as them once the Civil War happens.

16. Just like all paradox games, you can learn so much by hovering your mouse over something. Also try clicking on all sorts of stuff – for example, when you click on a POP icon it shows you how likely that POP is to start converting to some other POP type (along with an overwhelming amount of other information) and from there you can hover over the conversion percentages to see all the factors that affect it, etc. An extraordinary amount of information is actually available in the game, it's just buried in weird sub-menu tooltips like that




This ended up being SO MUCH longer and more detailed than I intended it to be, but I’ve actually been intending to write a beginner’s guide to Vicky II for a couple of years now, so once I hit my stride I just kept on going

I feel like I’m definitely forgetting something so if you (or anyone else) have any questions then don’t hesitate to ask, and experienced players please correct any mistakes I have made!

[diptheriadan]

Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion is free on steam for the rest of the day. https://store.steampowered.com/app/204880/Sins_of_a_Solar_Empire_Rebellion/

[Badger]

BK. Thank you so much for this in-depth guide! I've long been a super fan of paradox games and all such Uber complex planning / strategy slash statistical analysis type games. And yet the few times I have tried Victoria, one or two, even I felt completely overwhelmed and wasn't sure what the hell was happening or how the hell to make things work. This totally gives me a starting point at last. Thanks again!

[Bacon King]

BK. Thank you so much for this in-depth guide! I've long been a super fan of paradox games and all such Uber complex planning / strategy slash statistical analysis type games. And yet the few times I have tried Victoria, one or two, even I felt completely overwhelmed and wasn't sure what the hell was happening or how the hell to make things work. This totally gives me a starting point at last. Thanks again!

I'm glad I could help and please ask any further questions you might have! Vicky 2 is one of my favorite games and I love helping people overcome that initial sense of overwhelming confusion.

There's a lot of stuff I didn't cover and the game's learning curve is extremely harsh, so you're definitely still going to find yourself not knowing how to do things, not understanding why something's happening, and will certainly come across most of the several dozen notable game aspects/concepts that I wasn't able to cover in the brief guide. Honestly, I'd appreciate if you could ask about those sorts of things as you run into them. That way I'll know what else to add to my guide before I share it elsewhere

[dead0man]

My third game with the US is going much better (I had a game with Brazil in the meantime, it wasn't a complete sh**t show).  Easily won the Civil and Mexican wars.  I've got all 50 states, plus the three most northern Mexican states and Belieze!  I got Belieze and the rest of Alaska 'cause the UK keeps declaring war on me and I beat their ass the first two times.

...

This thid time war is not going so well.  It's 1902ish, the UK has several giant stacks of doom roaring around Canada taking back all the land I grabbed early in the war, and have moved hard into New England.  I'm just starting to build up the navy and have had mixed success jumping the UK's blockaders, I've cleared most of the eastern Pacific, but once I clean out a chunk of Atlantic ocean of 4-10 UK wooden ships, they refill the chunk with 5-8 steel ones.

but that's not important.  I think my issue this game was not making any friends and not keeping my Army and Navy on top things during peace time.  I'm trying to make friends with France, but I think it's too late.  I can give up Alaska or NE and get peace, but I worry about for how long.


The important thing is for me to learn from it.  Is the UK attacking me so much becuae I was a bit of a bully towards Mexico?  Or just because I'm "doing better"?

[Bacon King]

My third game with the US is going much better (I had a game with Brazil in the meantime, it wasn't a complete sh**t show).  Easily won the Civil and Mexican wars.  I've got all 50 states, plus the three most northern Mexican states and Belieze!  I got Belieze and the rest of Alaska 'cause the UK keeps declaring war on me and I beat their ass the first two times.

...

This thid time war is not going so well.  It's 1902ish, the UK has several giant stacks of doom roaring around Canada taking back all the land I grabbed early in the war, and have moved hard into New England.  I'm just starting to build up the navy and have had mixed success jumping the UK's blockaders, I've cleared most of the eastern Pacific, but once I clean out a chunk of Atlantic ocean of 4-10 UK wooden ships, they refill the chunk with 5-8 steel ones.

but that's not important.  I think my issue this game was not making any friends and not keeping my Army and Navy on top things during peace time.  I'm trying to make friends with France, but I think it's too late.  I can give up Alaska or NE and get peace, but I worry about for how long.


The important thing is for me to learn from it.  Is the UK attacking me so much becuae I was a bit of a bully towards Mexico?  Or just because I'm "doing better"?

Awesome! You're doing very well, beating the UK twice is impressive. Also by being able to take Hawaii, that probably means you've been able to figure out on your own about the Great Power "spheres of influence" mechanic (is something I'll include in the "part two" of my guide).

First off, keep in mind that that just like in every other paradox game, continuing after a big defeat (at least once your have a solid grasp on how to base the game ) can be a very fun and rewarding experience so don't necessarily quit and start a new game because you lose a harsh war -- that said, though, Vicky 2 is the game where it does make the most sense to abandon a game after a catastrophic loss, especially if you don't want to find yourself ruling a fascist dictatorship (the game measures something called "revanchism" created by major defeats and loss of territory that encourages extremists. Basically simulating what happened IRL to Weimar Germany).

That said though, let me touch on infamy which is similar to the "aggressive expansion" penalty in EU4 or the "badboy" modifiers from older Paradox titles. When you have a war justification discovered early, or when you add a new war-goal mid war, that adds infamy to your nation. The total is measured up at the top of the screen towards the middle of the upper toolbar. However over it and you'll see the effects of your current infamy level and the rate at which it decreases. One of the most important things to remember for Victoria 2's foreign policy is never go above 25 infamy. In fact if you have, say, 11 infamy, if you look at the tooltip it will say "11/25" showing 25 as an upper limit. That doesn't mean infamy stops at 25, but rather, the penalty of surpassing that limit are catastrophic. With more than 25 infamy the world suddenly sees you as, essentially, "Napoleon reborn", hellbent on military expansion at all costs. You will lost many allies, all great powers get a free casus belli to "contain" you, (which they will probably use), and unless you can fight off the rest of the developed world simultaneously you WILL find yourself forced into some extremely difficult punitive measures. Half your income siphoned away to the nations that beat you, destruction of your fortifications, a limit on the size of your military, and probably suffering the loss of so much prestige that it falls into the negatives.

HOWEVER, if you don't cross that threshold of 25, nobody cares at all about your expansion, which admittedly is a bit silly (which is why for example in EU4 they replaced infamy with "aggressive expansion" added to each country based on how much they specifically are threatened by your actions, and only someone has more than 50 AE against you can join a punitive coalition against you -- only making this aside to explain what I meant when I said Vicky 2 was "half a generation" older than the other current titles, as it lacks some of these innovations present in CK2/EU4/HOI4/Stellaris)

So ultimately that was all to say, the UK wasn't concerned about you 'being a bully' unless you did cross that 25 threshold. They were probably motivated to attack you because your military strength had fallen behind + they wanted some of your territories + they probably absolutely hated you on account of their two previous defeats.

The fact that this war was taking place in 1902 is especially important, because there are some very important technologies that become available for research in 1900. One of them, IIRC, is chemical warfare. If you look at modifiers to your units during combat, you might see "gas attack" -- which is very deadly if your nation hasn't invented "gas defense" and/or the technologies to fully use that defense with high efficiency. That's just a single technology, though, and there are several others like that you'll want to research quickly. Fortunately there are like two decades there (iirc it's 1876 to 1899) where almost no new techs become available, so you'll have a bit of a grace period to catch up on important tech areas you've been neglecting.

As far as alliances are concerned, they are very helpful during war, but even more importantly are crucial for dissuading potential attacks on you, because the AI considers the strength of all your allies when it decides whether attacking you is worth the risk.

As a Great Power one of the easiest ways to accumulate allies is to add more nations to your sphere of influence. I can explain this system if you'd like. but for now just know there are two big benefits to growing your SOI:

A. Nations inside it are very likely to accept an alliance with the leader of the sphere they're in -- in fact, your spherelings often will request an alliance with you before you even need to propose it yourself (if they're hesitant to ally you, get them up to +100 relations because IIRC that's the barrier before they're guaranteed to accept it

B. the other key benefit is that nations within a sphere will form a bit of a common market, eliminating all trade barriers with each other, and nations will always make trades with each other before trading on the full international market with the rest of the world. In practice this means you get first dibs on anything the nations you sphere will produce, allowing you to import from them and use their resources just like they came from your own territory. So for example, if your capitalists build a luxury furniture factory (which requires tropical wood to build), the factory will become much more profitable if you sphere a country that produces lots of tropical wood so its availability will be guaranteed (and more affordable). The "common market" also means that your spherelings will always buy your exports before seeking stuff on the global market, meaning your industries now have many guaranteed customers even when other nations are flooding the markets with stuff

You're right to seek alliance with France, they're the best European power for the US to have close ties with, especially because extremely high relations with Fance are required for some very beneficial USA events like the Statue of Liberty, which provide some insanely high bonuses for immigrant attraction AND migrant assimilation rates, meaning your constant flood of immigrants will grow EVEN HIGHER than it already is naturally.

Seeking a great/secondary power ally as the US is extremely beneficial in the mid-late game, but not recommended until after you win the Civil War (the same applies for involvement in international crises) because foreign entanglements are at point just a distraction for you. European allies are especially beneficial if the Spanish-American War event chain triggers and you decide to follow it. Speaking of diplomacy though, keep in mind that you can only save up 9 points at a time so it's a waste not to be regularly using them. I recommend to spend them in the early game by improving relations with strong European powers. This means you're more likely to immediately find willing allies as soon as you're ready to find them, Another very important thing to note however is that a nation sharing high relations with you is unable to declare war on you. If you're unprepared for a war with the UK just use your diplomacy points to gradually bring them up to +100 relations, at which point you're completely safe from them. Of course this applies to you as well, so if you want to attack a friend you'll need to click "decrease relations" until it falls low enough that you're able to justify a cassus belli and attack them.

Also note that before you click to "call allies" when you declare a war, if you hover over the checkbox a tooltip will list each ally and how likely they are to accept the request to join. If a particularly powerful ally who you don't want to lose will reject your call to arms, then instead of clicking the "call allies" button you can just DoW and then go to the diplomacy page of the other allies willing to join you, where there will be a button to call them individually in the war (that doesn't even cost diplomatic influence to use). Even if an ally never actually helps you in war they're still very useful to keep around because the existence of the alliance itself is a powerful deterrent. For example, if you're distracted in a big war, an uninvolved nation might take advantage of your distraction to launch its own war against you. But remember like I said earlier, the cost-benefit analysis that the AI does when deciding if it should attack you includes assessing the military strength of ALL your allies so even a lazy-but-powerful ally will still prevent attacks against you that you wouldn't be able to handle.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Bacon King: how do you shift from dictatorship to democracy? Or from an absolute to constitutional monarchy?

[nerd73]

Bacon King: how do you shift from dictatorship to democracy? Or from an absolute to constitutional monarchy?

I'm not Bacon King, but I can answer that question:

Transitioning from a dictatorship to a basic democracy requires passing these 3 political reforms:

Voting: At least landed (top 1%) are able to vote. (anything other than No Voting)
Parties: Opposition parties are allowed. (anything other than Only Underground)
Upper House: Upper House can be of a different party than ruling party. (anything other than Ruling Party Only)

It doesn't matter if the resulting "democracy" is still rather authoritarian (so you can still outlaw opposition press, etc) as long as it has these 3 reforms.



Transitioning from Absolute to Constitutional Monarchy is a 2-stage process.

The first stage is transitioning from Absolute Monarchy to "Prussian Constitutionalism" (aka something similar to the system used in the German Empire, where the monarch still held large amounts of power but had constitutional checks on that power), the only thing that is required for that is passing a voting reform other than "No Voting", so unlike dictatorships you can still have Only Underground parties and a completely ruling party upper house.

The second stage is transitioning from Prussian Constitutionalism to HM's Government (which is considered to be more like a British-style parliamentary monarchy), required for that is
passing at least "Non-Secret Ballots" for party reforms.


There is no mechanism to transition back to Prussian Constitutionalism from HM's Government, but both systems can change to an Absolute Monarchy by passing "No Voting" and not having an Anarcho-Liberal, Communist, or Fascist ruling party. 
To change from a Democracy to a dictatorship one must pass No Voting, Only Underground parties, and a Ruling Party Only upper house.

The other method to do all this is having your government overthrown by rebels, in which they match with this table:



* 3.04 only. In 3.03 and earlier Jacobin (Liberal) rebels will change a Prussian Constitutionalism into an HM's government.

[Bacon King]

^ thank you nerd73

The only thing I can add is that it's actually easy to "allow" your party to be overtaken by rebels - just let them hold your capital for a few months (iirc 6?)

Advanced strategy for quick government change
The easiest way I've found to trigger a large revolt is, when you're able to pass a reform, only enact reforms nobody wants. People want a free press and an expanded franchise? Change the election system from FPTP to Jeffersonian. Upper House feeling enough pressure to pass another reform immediately afterwards? Change it from Jeffersonian to PR. Keep doing this and the POP militancy will skyrocket, they will join militant revolt factions, and then you only have to wait for the ideology of your choice to rise up and just let them win. Voila, your dictatorship is now a democracy (or your democracy is now a Dictatorship of the Proletariat)!

[Bacon King]

Note the thread title! The Steam Winter sale has begun, and with it, 50% to 75% discounts on everything in the Paradox library.

This is by far the best time to buy new games and to stock up on DLC for games you already own. I own literally every current pdox grand stategy game and every major DLC for all of them -- and probably 90% of it I bought during these big Steam sales.

Two things to note, of course: first off, brand new DLCs are the only thing not on sale

Secondly: do not trust the Steam user ratings for any game made by Paradox Development Studios. They are not at all representative of the actual quality of the thing. Whenever a new DLC is released, Paradox also releases a free content update alongside it, so everyone owning the base game gets cool new features without buying anything. There's a surprisingly large number of fans who give a DLC a harsh review just because they hate some feature that was actually part of the free update for everyone (i.e. stuff you're getting in the base game right now if you buy it). Also a couple of years ago Paradox changed their DLC policy and a large contingent of angry fans attempted to "protest" it by going on Steam and giving bad reviews to literally every existing DLC.

So don't determine which DLC to buy based on user ratings. Instead you're much better off asking here for suggestions (for example if you're looking to buy CK2 DLC, earlier in this thread I wrote an exhaustive list rating all of them )

[Orser67]

The easiest way I've found to trigger a large revolt is, when you're able to pass a reform, only enact reforms nobody wants.

Another, arguably gamey way, is to purposely lose/prolong a war in order to get war exhaustion. War exhaustion is usually bad, but it raises militancy and goes away pretty quickly.

[The Mikado]

Dead0Man, as USA, have you been using the ability to influence other countries and put them into your sphere of influence? It forces them into a common economic market with you (you get to buy their goods first and they have to buy from you first), and they will become incredibly compliant with allying with you. As the United States, it's quite possible to sphere every single country in Latin America and have them all as allies. While, outside of Brazil, they're basically useless in any war setting, the AI gets a bit leery about declaring war on you in those circumstances. Also, Brazil's rubber is incredibly important late-game if you want to build any industry involving electricity.

Prior to the unlocking of Great Wars in the 1880s, the AI Great Powers follow an "only ally one Great Power at a time" rule, and AI European powers will never, ever want to ally with the USA over a power in a relevant area, but after the 1880s, they will be a lot more amenable to allying with you. The USA has a gigantic coastline (obviously) and vast wealth (obviously), and, with the appropriate tech and investment in building naval bases, can build a Navy that will put even the UK's to shame.

[dead0man]

I'm very much enjoying Victoria 2, probably the most enjoyable of the Paradox games as far as actually playing the game goes.  I still love the idea of Hearts of Iron, but actually playing it can be a chore sometimes.


So, uhhhh, anybody play the Total War games?  I'm a virgin and my son got me Total War Saga:Thrones of Britannia.  It kind of looks like Civ5/6, has aspects of Crusader Kings, but as a RTS layer that is kind of fun.  Otherwise, I'm totally confused

[Joe Biden 2024]

I'm very much enjoying Victoria 2, probably the most enjoyable of the Paradox games as far as actually playing the game goes.  I still love the idea of Hearts of Iron, but actually playing it can be a chore sometimes.


So, uhhhh, anybody play the Total War games?  I'm a virgin and my son got me Total War Saga:Thrones of Britannia.  It kind of looks like Civ5/6, has aspects of Crusader Kings, but as a RTS layer that is kind of fun.  Otherwise, I'm totally confused

I have Empire. It's not as in-depth as anything Paradox makes, which I feel can make it easier to get a handle on than Paradox games, but I've only played HOI 2 from Paradox.

Unless they changed it after Empire, all Total War games are turn-based. If it's the same as Empire, you will go first, and then the AI will go after you.

[Joe Biden 2024]

Hey guys, so as part of a Steam sale, I bought Crusader Kings II, Victoria II (with A House Divided as well), and Europa Universalis IV.

Which one should I play first, and who should I play as? I have some experience with Hearts of Iron, but much more experience with Total War.