History VideoGame / VictoriaAnEmpireUnderTheSun

** China. It (and its substates in the expansion) starts out with an absolutely enormous population and huge armies to draw on. Yet, when actually engaged in battle, folds over like a paper tiger. But in hands of a human player, China is beyond the scale of game-breaking powerful.
*** In ''III'', the Qing dynasty can become a LethalJokeCharacter in player hands as the Opium War can be totally avoided[[note]]The price for allowing opium to flow freely is a debuff which only lasts for 5 years. While fighting the War removes the opium Obsession of Han pops, you have to do so while the debuff is in effect...[[/note]]. Without the Opium War's disruption, the player can slowly modernize the dynasty.

** China, provided it does particularly badly, may shatter and descend into the Warlord Era, with around a dozen military cliques rising up and seizing rule over parts of China from the central government. It can ''also'' descend into a stalemate between the Qing Empire and [[ChurchMilitant the Taiping rebellion]], with Mongolia, Sichuan and East Turkestan splitting off in the process - and ''then'' Qing still splitting into warlord cliques. At the very least, China will lose Mongolia in 9 out of 10 games in all three ''Victorias''

** China, provided it does particularly badly, may shatter and descend into the Warlord Era, with around a dozen military cliques rising up and seizing rule over parts of China from the central government.

* TakeAThirdOption: A part of the ''Colossus of the South'' DLC for ''3'' is a complex journal entry named ''Magnanimous Monarch'', which focuses on the life of Pedro II and the fate of the Brazilian monarchy. It generally takes decades to complete (as one of the conditions for its completion is Pedro II's passing, and Pedro is a child in 1836), and at its end, it either rewards the player with the Empire's survival, a buff to Pedro's heir and to intelligentsia and with IG propensity toward choosing progressive leaders or ends with the historical outcome, that is a landowner-military republican coup which brings about a very conservative republic with landed voting. There is however an event called "The Republican Proposal", which gives the player the option to pass a presidential republic while Pedro II lives (which makes him the leader of the intelligentsia and the country's first president). If the player passes the republic this way, Brazil loses its chance of reaping the ''Magnanimous Monarch'' bonuses, but on the other hand, it prevents the historical coup from happening.

** The Luddite ideology in ''3'' falls into the common pop culture trap of portraying luddites as anti-technology and in favor of banning industry, as opposed to the reality of the movement being about protesting the rapid loss of jobs that automation presented.

** North German Federation is based on North German Confederation. The federation is an unitary state that simply merges all members, their states, economies and population under single entity. The real Confederation was simply a military alliance of Prussia and other countries. Meanwhile Zollverein, an economic union of ''all'' Germanic states that was of the utmost importance for unification processes, is completely glossed over.

* TheRightOfASuperiorSpecies: In ''III'', decentralized nations don't have any rights that a centralized nation is required to respect; just colonize the place and take over. Then there's the difference between "recognized" and "unrecognized" powers. Unrecognized powers have much fewer rights on the world stage and can be conquered for much less infamy than recognized ones, so a major goal of an unrecognized power is to force the nations of Europe to recognize them as a peer.

Development on ''Victoria 2'' ceased with patch 3.04 in January 2016, without the release of a proper expansion pack covering the Great War in more detail. The reputation of ''Victoria'' for being the most complicated and least accessible series produced by a developer generally known for complex and inaccessible games kept the announcement of a third game in the series at bay for several years, but in May 2021 ''Victoria 3'' was formally announced at [=PDXCon=] Remixed with Martin Anward, previously the lead developer of ''VideoGame/{{Stellaris}}''[[note]]who added several gameplay elements ''very'' conspicuously reminiscent of ''Victoria'' to that game and who made a great show of departing to head a personal dream project which many fans (correctly) suspected to be this[[/note]], leading development. ''Victoria 3'' was released on October 25, 2022. The first [=DLC=] affecting mechanics, ''Voice of the People'', was released in May 2023 alongside patch 1.3. It adds more agitators (essentially opinion leaders who can help sway the populace to push through laws) and allows appointing them as leaders of interest groups and letting them command troops. It also adds flavour when playing as UsefulNotes/{{France}}. The second such [=DLC=], ''Colossus of the South'', adds flavour when playing as certain South American countires, including UsefulNotes/{{Brazil}}. ''Colossus'' was released in November 2023, alongside patch 1.57.

Development on ''Victoria 2'' ceased with patch 3.04 in January 2016, without the release of a proper expansion pack covering the Great War in more detail. The reputation of ''Victoria'' for being the most complicated and least accessible series produced by a developer generally known for complex and inaccessible games kept the announcement of a third game in the series at bay for several years, but in May 2021 ''Victoria 3'' was formally announced at [=PDXCon=] Remixed with Martin Anward, previously the lead developer of ''VideoGame/{{Stellaris}}''[[note]]who added several gameplay elements ''very'' conspicuously reminiscent of ''Victoria'' to that game and who made a great show of departing to head a personal dream project which many fans (correctly) suspected to be this[[/note]], leading development. ''Victoria 3'' was released on October 25, 2022.

** An event revealed in [[https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/developer-diary/victoria-3-dev-diary-98-open-beta-hotfix-update-1-5-achievements-and-additions.1602736/?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=DD98 Development Diary 98]] concerning the birth of Tsarevich Alexei Nikolaevich is captioned "[[VideoGame/TheNewOrderLastDaysOfEurope Alexei lives!]]"

* BackFromTheBrink: What the player will have to deal with if they choose to play as either Texas or Tripoli in Victoria II. Both start the game in the middle of a war for survival against Mexico and the Ottomans respectively, where defeat means instant annihilation. This is especially true for Tripoli, as they are utterly doomed if AI-controlled and only stands the slightest sliver of a chance under the guidance of an experienced player.

* HardCodedHostility: Rebels in the second game. Although they always rise up in opposition to one specific country, any army from any country that happens to run into them will be forced into a battle. It doesn't matter whether the owner of said army is allied to the government being rebelled against, neutral, or even if they and the rebels have common interests and might reasonably rather join forces than fight each other. On the flip side, one rebel faction will never be hostile to another rebel faction, even if they have completely incompatible goals (for example, Communist and Anarcho-Liberal rebels will happily help each other overthrow the government, despite having wildly different ideological aims).

** There are a few minor examples of this in the second game: Owned provinces have significantly higher supply limit for the owner's armies compared to hostile or neutral provinces. Provinces that are cores of the army's nation but not owned by them offer a slightly smaller but still significant bonus as well. Then there are forts, that offer defensive bonuses to the fort owner's armies if a battle takes place in a fortified province, provided the fort owner is also in control of the province. If a hostile army occupies the province then the fort owner loses these bonuses, but the occupying army won't benefit from them either; you have to both own ''and'' control a fort to gain any bonuses from it.

* InexplicablyIdenticalIndividuals: As a result of the limited number of available portraits for generals and admirals in ''Victoria II'', identical ones are bound to start showing up once you've recruited enough of them. Some of them might even get assigned the exact same names, since the naming pool is also limited.
* InformedEquipment: In Victoria II, armies are represented on the map as individual soldiers or vehicles depending on the most significant component of that army (i.e a cavalry-heavy army will be represented by a soldier on horseback, a tank-heavy army will be represented by a tank, etc). As a result, neither variation in the types of regiments present in an army, nor the quantity of said regiments, are reflected in the on-map sprite. In practice most armies will simply be represented as a single infantryman, since those tend to make up the bulk of all regiments.

* InstantMilitia: Mobilization in ''Victoria II'' works like this. Your regular armies are always made up of professional soldier pops, while your economy is driven by the work done by Farmers, Laborers and Craftsmen. When you declare mobilization you temporarily convert a portion of your working class citizens into infantry regiments that can be used alongside your regular armies. This can be very useful for quickly inflating your military during big wars, but comes with an immediate hit to your nation's productivity and may also have long-term negative effects if too many workers perish while mobilized. Mobilized units also reinforce more slowly than regulars and will always serve as infantry, meaning you'll still need to rely on professional soldiers for specialized regiments such as artillery or cavalry.

* VeteranUnit: In Victoria II, individual regiments can gain experience from fighting in battles (and also from certain technologies). The higher the experience, the less damage the regiment takes in combat.

* VideoGameDelegationPenalty: On paper inverted, but in practice often played straight, when it comes to economic policies in the second game. These go all the way from Planned Economy, where the player has complete control over their country's industry, to Laissez-Faire, where capitalists run everything and the player is relegated to funding the capitalists' projects, at most. In theory, Laissez-Faire has every advantage as the government does not have to spend anything on industrial buildup if they don't want to and factories are actually cheaper for capitalists to build compared to the player. In practice though, the capitalist AI is typically not very good at long-term thinking and their interests aren't necessarily aligned with that of the government (for example, the player will usually be far more keen on military industries than the capitalists). As such, letting the capitalists handle your industries for you can easily spell trouble, especially early on before you have a solid industrial foundation.

* CharacterPortrait: Generals and admirals have unique portraits.