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1[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/a2f2451c0382c60214d69119ac937a88-Victoria__An_Empire_Under_the_Sun_22.jpg]]
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3''Victoria: An Empire Under the Sun'', affectionately known as "[[FanNickname Vicky]]" among its fans, is a GrandStrategy game created and published in 2003 by Creator/ParadoxInteractive.
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5Chronologically, it follows its sister series ''VideoGame/EuropaUniversalis'' and precedes its other sibling, the ''VideoGame/HeartsOfIron'' series. ''Vicky'' starts in 1836 and ending in 1920 (or 1936, if you bought the ExpansionPack). The game is noted for being arguably the most complicated of the Paradox Interactive games, dealing not only with war but also with an impressive economic and political system. It is noted as one of the better aversions of the CommandAndConquerEconomy.
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7The game was noticeably buggy at release, but some patches, the ExpansionPack (which radically changed the way the economy works) and some great work by modders have made the game far more stable.
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9The game covers the [[UsefulNotes/VictorianBritain Victorian]] and [[TheEdwardianEra Edwardian]] eras, beginning a year before Victoria took the throne and ending shortly before the death of George V. As it displays the entire globe, it also covers such periods as UsefulNotes/TheAmericanCivilWar, UsefulNotes/WorldWarI, UsefulNotes/ImperialGermany, the UsefulNotes/MeijiRestoration, and UsefulNotes/TheRoaringTwenties. Since an important part of the game is European Imperialism, DarkestAfrica comes into play at times.
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11The game is (in)famous for being almost incomprehensible to newbies, due to the vast array of interlocking factors, especially in politics and economy and how those two affect each other. The effect of these is often to create a rather fascinating effect where as an autocracy you are desperately trying to keep popular support from overwhelming you while a democracy has to take it relatively easy to avoid reactionary or dictatorial insurrections.
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13A sequel to the original game, titled ''Victoria 2'', was released on August 13th, 2010, turning this Paradox title into a new series. Two major expansion packs have been released:
14* On February 2nd, 2012, an ExpansionPack called ''A House Divided'' was released. Ostensibly focused on UsefulNotes/TheAmericanCivilWar, it added a 1861 start date and made the Confederacy less doomed. Additionally, many new mechanics were added, such as new ways to influence other nations and generate Casus Belli, a system of political movements and repression, new map modes and interface improvements, and [[FelonyMisdemeanor most importantly]], this expansion recolored Prussia from a sickly yellow to the proper Prussian blue.
15* On April 16th, 2013 a second ExpansionPack was released, titled ''Heart of Darkness''. It overhauled the colonization system, expanded naval combat, balanced the land combat, made twinges to the industry system, and added a more in-depth diplomacy system for Great Powers. Specifically, "crises" can now develop in high-tension areas (such as Greece demanding land from the Ottoman Empire), prompting all Great Powers to pick a side to support, or stand aside. These situations can escalate until one side backs down, or a Great War is triggered between both sides.
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17Development 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 mechanics [=DLC=], ''Colossus of the South'', adds flavour when playing as certain South American countries, including UsefulNotes/{{Brazil}}. ''Colossus'' was released in November 2023, alongside patch 1.57. The third mechanics [=DLC=], ''Sphere of Influence'', will simulate the "The Great Game" between Great Britain and Russia; besides the two great powers, local powers (such as Persia and the Afghan warlords of the era) will have their own unique ways of emerging victorious in this game.
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20!!The games provide examples of:
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22* AdamSmithHatesYourGuts:
23** Well, not really, but he's kind of a {{tsundere}}. In wartime prices of weaponry can increase quite spectacularly. Of course, this increase also [[WarForFunAndProfit makes it more profitable to build said weapons factories]]...
24** In the first game, as you progress with technology, affected things get more and more expensive. Adopting better artillery? Maintaining it makes it 140% more expensive ''per invention''. Better banking control? Keeping the bureaucracy needed for that will increase your crime-fighting spendings. And so on and forth. There is even certain cut-off point where you might be better off not researching any further (usually at tier 4 of related branch of technology) unless you control a global empire with huge industrial base, since you will spiral into debt just from maintenance alone.
25* AIGeneratedEconomy: The purpose of Capitalists, who invest their money into factories and railroads, taking a cut of the profit in return. In first two games, this is the only way to have factories built under Laissez-Faire and Interventionism economic policies.
26* TheAlliance: Spheres of influence in ''Victoria II'' can become this, to some extent. Especially true for UsefulNotes/{{Prussia}} and any Great Power looking to form Italy.
27* AlternateHistory: The inevitable outcome of every game. It's pretty much alternate history the moment you unpause the game.
28** ''Victoria 2'''s main menu art is a picture of Confederate soldiers fighting ''British redcoats''. The expansion ''A House Divided'' changes this to show American ironclads bombarding London. As of ''Heart of Darkness'' it's an Imperial Russian boat in an African jungle.
29** The box art shows UsefulNotes/OttoVonBismarck leading Prussian troops against the ''Americans''.
30** ''3'' continues this tradition in the art displayed while loading games. One art piece depicts a US suffragette march[[note]]The US Capitol can be seen in the background.[[/note]] with black women marching alongside white women. Historically, the US suffragette movement was notorious for being racist.
31* AnachronismStew: Provinces and states are divided according to the post World War 1 map, which doesn't always correlate with actual historical divisions. This is most obvious in the Middle East, which is divided along the lines of the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sykes-Picot_Agreement Sykes–Picot Agreement]] rather than the original Ottoman division.
32** The different flags of a country uses imagery from certain movements within those countries, even if said movement wasn't even conceived at the time. For example, the flag of a communist Colombia and fascist Afghanistan use the flags of FARC and the Taliban, respectively, even though neither group would exist until roughly thirty to sixty years after the game's end.
33* AntiFrustrationFeatures:
34** ''2'' '''greatly''' expanded on the AIGeneratedEconomy elements, along with the automated demotion and promotion system for pops. While it has its quirks, at least it takes out the enormous burden of manually managing a globe-spanning colonial empire or the population of China.
35** Before ''Victoria 3'', Paradox games that integrated the Steam {{achievement}} system required you to play in [[FinalDeathMode Ironman Mode]], despite common {{game breaking bug}}s, and to play unmodded so you couldn't fix those bugs. This led to a lot of vocally frustrated fans on Paradox forums. That ''Victoria 3'' removed this restriction was practically a selling point.
36* AntiHoarding: Both the first and second games had two steps to prevent players from simply indefinitely hoarding the world supply of specific good: a cap on how many goods can be stored via trade (1000 in the original, 2000 in the sequel) and, more importantly, a literal anti-hoarding set of events, which would trigger whenever a sufficiently large supply of a given good was in storage (and increasing probability with even bigger numbers). Once the event would fire, it would remove a large chunk of the storage, citing rot, faulty design or poor storage. Since people were still able to abuse the system, the third game reworked trade system and storage entirely, making it by design impossible to hoard anything - it all just goes directly to the market, outside player's control.
37** The third game also introduced a hard cap to money itself in the form of gold reserves: Once your treasury reaches a certain cap (which depends on the overall size of your nation's economy) you can't save any more money.
38* AntiStructure: Engineers, and to a lesser extent Tanks, in the second game. They have a stat called Siege which reduces the effectiveness of enemy forts, both the penalty to occupation speed that they incur on hostile armies as well as the defensive bonuses they provide to friendly armies during combat. This becomes more and more important the later into the game you get, as trying to occupy or fight in a province with a high-level fort without any siege support is an absolute slog.
39* ApatheticCitizens: Averted. It takes quite a bit for citizens to actually take arms against the government, but it's usually about lots of little things (unemployment, political repression, nationalism) rather than one big thing that upsets them.
40** ''A House Divided'' adds an additional step where [=POPs=] will join political movements. If you ignore them or repress them too much, they will take up arms against the government eventually.
41* AppealToForce:
42** In the first game, there is absolutely ''nothing'' preventing Prussia from declaring war on any of the [[UsefulNotes/AllTheLittleGermanies German states]] and unify Germany by force in less than a year. Since they are all allied, Germanic countries will all bravely unite against Prussia. And since Prussia is [[ForegoneConclusion military power No. 1 fighting against a coalition of city-states and tiny princedoms]]... AI will of course never do that, but all player has to do is call conscripts to arm, deploy them in crucial points and declare war. More importantly, since all those lands have Prussian cores, there is ''no diplomatic penalty'' for such conquest.
43** In the third game, the entire diplomacy system and its "plays" are all about ImpliedDeathThreat and stacking a sufficient number of troops at the frontline(s). There is a good chance that the country on the receiving end will fold, unless the demands are unrealistic or would lead to its demise. It's not very reliable, but the easiest way to secure compliance is to just have thrice or more troops than the other side. And if they won't fold - the enormous army will easily swarm over the defending side.
44* AppealToTradition: Modus operandi of reactionaries.
45* ArtificialBrilliance: People automatically try to find the highest quality of political and civil freedoms, even though it's not actually a stat. Playing a particularly liberal power with an oppressive Britain? Expect lots of Indian immigrants.
46* ArtificialStupidity:
47** In the first game, the only country that starts with ability to produce more machine parts was the United Kingdom. Everyone else was gaining miniscule amount of them from early industrial techs and the one unlocking ability to build machine parts factory was granting the exact amount of parts needed to build said factory, so your top priority was to build it regardless of anything else, or further industrialisation was virtually impossible, as ''the entire planet'' was trying to buy parts from the UK, which under AI was always under-producing, thus making top prestige countries to be the only one allowed to even try buying from Brits due to heavy competition. AI never, ever bothered with those issues and instead was eager to build a cement mill or a liquor distillery from the parts gained from industrial techs. And those were ''optimistic'' choices, because it might just as well build an artillery factory, without producing imput goods (explosives and steel, both requiring their own factories). Part of the reason why artisans were introduced to the second game was how stubbornly AI refused to "properly" use the machine parts it was given to kick-start industrialisation. On the flip-side, should player pick the UK ''or'' be the only other producer of machine parts, it allowed to both explode with own industry ''and'' slow competition to the crawl, as there weren't any parts on the market to buy for them.
48** Something of a problem in ''Victoria II''. The capitalist [=AI=] [[ArtisticLicenseEconomics loves to build luxury clothes factories in countries where nobody can afford them]], while other countries will happily continue to research philosophy while you're slaughtering their armies with machine guns and poison gas. To add to this, the AI frequently marches its soldiers in massive columns through harsh deserts and freezing mountains, leading to some truly horrific attrition levels which can leave armies decimated before they even ''see'' battle. Watching armies lose significant numbers of soldiers before even crossing the border is not that uncommon.
49** In early versions of the game, Prussia would sometimes demand the wrong provinces from Denmark (necessary to unite Germany). This could sometimes delay unification by a decade, and also lead to Jutland being absorbed into Germany. Paradox eventually stepped in to write specific code just to ensure that Germany would take the correct provinces, and use excess warscore to claim Danish colonies around the world.
50** In the first game, Chinese AI was ''purposefully'' written to do stupid things, thus follow the historical path. The most prominent example was a script forcing AI to make 90% of all troops in China as irregulars, despite having access to money, resources and manpower to train absurdly large armies of standard infantry. But this was the only way to make sure China will fold down when facing even the smallest Western invasion. Second game toned down the meddling with AI decision-making and instead used gameplay mechanics against the country.
51** Capitalists react to price spikes by building factories making related goods. Since spikes are temporary and obviously short-lived, once the factory is finished or expanded, the demand is long gone and sudden increase of production not only floods the market and drops the price further, but ultimately bankrupts the entire business... [[HereWeGoAgain which causes a new spike]].
52** Another issue with capitalists is their obsessive desire to continously build new or expand existing factories. A very common result by mid-game is bunch of [=OPMs=] having a ''level 40'' Winery and[=/=]or Distillery, which could employ about twice as many people as the total population of said country... while also generating world-wide demand for glass, thus creating price spike. If the countries in question are low on prestige, this only translates into increasing glass prices (which could be useful if you happen to be a producer), but if any of them will manage to be within top 10-20 countries by prestige, they will instead buy all that glass they create demand for. Never mind they will be incapable of processing it due to insufficient number of workers and the demand only existing on paper - it will still be bought, while also collapsing global economy due to glass shortage. ''Then'' the massive factory in question will bankrupt itself (costs of importing high-priced glass plus insufficient wine[=/=]liquor production), meaning the glass supply is lost for everyone. AI is utterly unable to manage such situations (which in players hand are trivial to fix), as it has issues with subsidies, controlling tarriffs, which businesses to run or how to cover for them and so on an forth. Multiply this by a factor of about 30 and you have the answer why the economy regularly collapses.
53** Artisans are going to ''always'' try to compete with your industry, trying to produce the current most-priced commodity. This clashes with any sort of industrialisation you are trying to pull, especially when trying to use capitalists for it. Say you just discovered telephones. Your capitalists might consider it profitable to build a factory... but artisans are already hand-making those, meaning the lion share of demand is already met. So rather than starting new business, capitalists will invest in pre-existing one ''or'' set up yet another luxury clothes factory. Meanwhile your artisans will either persist to exist (hurting national economy, as they are far less efficient than factories from about [=1850s=] onward) ''or'' go bankrupt anyway, but not enough to demote, so you will have angry conservatives that are unemployable, but create all sort of problems. And if they are somehow well-off in the end, they won't promote to clerks either, so you are screwed anyway.
54*** All of that goes without saying that artisans are trying to produce most expensive goods they can make, regardless of how much input resources are going to cost them and if there is any demand for the finished product. This can easily create a situation where they bankrupt themselves, while your country still has to import some crucial goods to start up industry, rather than "commission" your own artisan population or make them useful in any way.
55** Separatist rebels must occupy all of their proposed nation's core provinces for thirty days in order to successfully secede. You'd think the rebel AI would then focus exclusive on occupying these provinces, but instead, separatist rebels will often march off and try to occupy provinces they don't have cores for. The result is that separatist rebellions are very rarely successful, even when the mother country has no little or no troops to fight them with.
56* ArtisticLicenseEconomics:
57** In the first two games, embargos or any sort of trade restrictions don't exist. For extra irony points, trade embargo is a key component of both ''VideoGame/EuropaUniversalis'' and ''VideoGame/HeartsOfIron'', but isn't part of Victoria, ''the'' economy game from Paradox.
58** In the first two games, there is a single, unified, global price of all goods. There are no national differences and supply-demand ratio only matters on global scale. All goods are also accessible globally at instant, there are no supply issues other than insufficient production, there is no inefficiency on any stage and transport technology, while important for production output, doesn't matter at all for delivering goods or affecting supply-demand balance. Combined with listed below prestige mechanics, this can cause quite a lot of trouble, especially if you are playing as populous backwater that absolutely depends on imports.
59** As far as the game is concerned, setting up workshifts and limiting the time a single person can work per day decreases the productivity. Somehow, people working until they drop unconscious or doing 14 hours shift are more productive than the modern set of three 8 hours shifts or any other shift system. The modifier would make sense if it was increasing how expensive it is to run factories (since you need more workers to man the shifts and that means more wages to pay), but it explicitly affects output of the factories.
60** The capitalist [=AI=] in ''Victoria II'' at launch only looked at the maximum possible profit for a good when deciding what factories to build - even if nobody in the world could afford it, with the effect that capitalists would sink thousands of dollars into building luxury clothes factories and then immediately go bankrupt. This has been patched, thankfully.
61*** The infamous problem with capitalists was made ''even worse'' by changes in production system introduced by ''Heart of Darkness''... that the capitalist POP never take into account or consideration. The entire new system relies heavily on production bonuses gained by setting up factories in the same state as their input resources and making chains of production with other factories within the state. AI is quite literally unable to do it and acts on random. So you can expect things like setting up wineries in coal and iron state and construct steelworks in a middle of desert with miniscule wool production. And in all of the total overhaul mods it goes another notch further, since they all have tiers of factories and their historical efficiency... and AI always sets up the most basic ones. Hope you like those bronze cannon foundries build in 1930s in a state that would be a perfect spot for luxury clothes (and the irony it brings). The worst part is that even if you set up basic industry under either state capitalism or outright central planning policies, the AI will gleefully continue building random factories the second its allowed to if there are any spots left in given state.
62** Even then, there are often problems with economies under the Laissez Faire policy (where the player has almost no influence over their industry) as there is a tendency for AI to sometimes never build advanced factories (Automobiles, Electric Gear, etc) because they are not profitable in the short run.
63*** Conversely, in ''Victoria 3,'' Laissez-Faire policy only prevents you from ''subsidizing'' industries - even if you're "playing as the government," you still decide what's built and where, largely to avoid the above frustrations.
64** In the first two games, global market and trade operate in tandem with abstract concept of national prestige. In theory, the system encourages each country to gain and maintain as much prestige as possible to stay within top 10-15 nations and access the market without much issues. In practice, it means the global economy is decided by a handful of states with advanced cultural technology, thus gaining large amount of free prestige points. It also means that the actual size of economy or purchasing power parity of a country ''or'' relationships between nations don't matter at all, but who has the most modern painters and composers does dictate who can buy small arms or telephones. (The third game changes this so that it's largely based on the number and quality of your cargo ports.)
65** A close examination of the economy mechanics reveals that underneath of the fairly normal-looking (if obtuse) hood, many of its workings--especially anywhere it interfaces with politics--are utterly bizarre and seemingly counterintuitive. Case in point: one player figured out that the reason the number of goods on the world market is greater than world production totals is because [[https://www.reddit.com/r/paradoxplaza/comments/91mup9/how_victoria_2_sphere_markets_actually_work/?st=jk1rujfu&sh=a2ecc10d spheres of influence act as matter replicators.]]
66* ArtisticLicenseEngineering: In the first two games, any tier of infrastructure below the most basic railroad is considered equal. This means there is no such thing as "roadless wilderness", as provinces without railroads, regardless if in the middle of plains of Belgium or newly claimed colony in jungle-covered Congo, will have the exact same basic infrastructure. ''Victoria 3'' changes this so that the population of a province generates additional infrastructure, with several Society technologies increasing the bonus per [=POP=], which on paper solves the artistic license... but can easily lead to situation where mountainous Sichuan in southern China will have infrastructure as high as as far more technologically advanced, small, flatland province somewhere in Europe with few levels of railway.
67* ArtisticLicenseGeography: At the game start in 1836, all of the map is fully discovered and accessible to all countries in the same way. Aside obvious issues like some Central African petty chiefdom having access to accurate global maps, this trope covers everyone. For example, it wasn't until 1848 Sakhalin was confirmed to be an island rather than a peninsula, large sections of both Americas were still terra incognita until 1860s (and in Amazon until early 20th century) and obviously DarkestAfrica didn't came to life from knowing what's in the interior.
68** And all of this doesn't prevent your country from participating in exploration for the source of Nile... even if you can clearly see it on the map from the start.
69** This was partially addressed by implementing impassable terrain at various parts of the world, including deserts (e.g. large parts of the Sahara and the Rub' al Khali, and mountain ranges (e.g. the Himalayas).
70* ArtisticLicenseHistory:
71** While this may seem to be the case to the extreme for the Population figures which can all seem far too small, [=POPs=] actually only represent Healthy Adult men, a demographic that only makes up 25% of the population or less. However, even with this in mind, populations can still frequently end up being smaller than they should due to the way the game handles population growth.
72** Due to the way the game is structured, migration happens roughly in two directions: either internally, towards places offering employment for low strata ''or'' to the US. Moving pops between European countries was flat-out impossible in the first game without an elaborate loop of exploits, while the second required a very complex and unlikely global political setup (including ''monarchical'' USA) to get, say, French pops to hop the border to the player-controlled Italy, this time around a No. 1 in human rights, health care, employment opportunities and what not - they would still first consider the presidental dictatorship with industrialised slavery and total gag rule (thus worse than their place of origin) in the US or the backwater of Chilean interior, becoming dirt farmers. It wasn't until the third game that the migratory system was changed entirely, but it has extreme kinks in the opposite direction, with things like Shoshone people somehow migrating ''en masse'' from the Great Basin to, say, colonial Congo or the booming industrial heartland of China, the Shaaxi province.
73** In any other game than the first one, you are going to be lucky to reach universal literacy for your population by 1936. And only if it has already started at least at around 40%. This is chiefly caused by the fact ''II'' keeps track of the literacy of each and every pop separately, and ''III'', on top of that, prevents any sort of meaningful education reform until about the 1860s, and for AI-controlled countries - ever, as the AI is clueless about the reform system. Any sort of rapid basic literacy programme (like the ones done by Soviets) or effective, mandatory education that truly increases literacy are absent from the series. Even if one alters the save file to include the maximum education reform from the game start, they won't see >90% literacy until about ''three generations later'', since by the game logic, only children can be taught how to read and write. For context, Prussia reached 85% literacy rate ''by 1850'' in real life, and it wasn't some sort of European leader in this field, either.
74** Truces being completely inviolable short of an ally calling you to war or being dragged into the conflict via the crisis system however, is most certainly this.
75** Everything that's within borders of any given country is considered to be "tappable" for taxation, resource extraction and general manpower, regardless if they were even fully ''mapped'' back in the day, not to mention having functional administration or any sort of transport infrastructure.
76** All countries have a set "state religion" that minorities will assimilate into if certain conditions are met. This includes countries like the United States (which will rapidly convert its [=POPs=] to Protestantism), which has explicitly no state religion, and in which minorities have generally kept their own religions.
77*** In addition, in the second game, religion is portrayed as of minimal political importance, despite "religious policy" being one of the listed party policies. The only impact religious policy has is on a handful of events and decisions.
78** A country-specific one: When playing as the US, the manner in which slavery and especially the politics around it are portrayed is historically dubious.
79*** It is possible to admit new states into the Union as free states only. Historically, this was explicitly avoided by only allowing new states to be admitted in pairs (one free state and one slave state), and the debate over the balance between free and slave states was a major contributing factor to UsefulNotes/TheAmericanCivilWar.
80*** ''Victoria 3'' tries to simulate the antebellum sympathies for and against slavery by having landowners be the main pro-slavery bloc, with the states where they are dominant being the ones most likely to join the Confederacy. One problem: in real life, not only were landowners not at all united on the issue of slavery, but divides ''within'' the landowning class were central to debates over the issue. In the Northern free states, small farmers were staunchly anti-slavery and led the "free soil" movement opposed to it, seeing it as empowering wealthy plantation owners who would undercut free labor and farmers with dirt-cheap slave labor. In-game, the manner in which landowners are presented as uniformly pro-slavery can lead to some truly bizarre versions of the Civil War that fly in the face of history, such as Massachusetts (a bastion of the abolitionist movement) joining the Confederacy while South Carolina (a state where slaves outnumbered free citizens before the war) remains loyal to the Union. The [[https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/developer-diary/victoria-3-dev-diary-64-post-release-plans.1553970/ roadmap]] Paradox released shortly after the game's launch indicates that, where historical immersion is concerned, fixing the Civil War and having it play out more realistically is one of their top priorities.
81** The entire ideology of "Anarcho-Liberalism" is rather historically dubious, as it is a capitalist anarchist ideology, but anarcho-capitalism dates to the second half of the twentieth century, outside the game's period, and yet it's the first ideology that isn't present at 1836 to become active. If it's meant to represent or be inspired by early anarchists like Proudhon, then this also doesn't really follow as these early anarchists were ''anti''-capitalists (see for example, Proudhon's famous claim that "property is theft").
82** 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 the ''Zollverein'', an economic union of ''all'' Germanic states that was of the utmost importance for unification processes, is completely glossed over. In ''3'', Prussia starts with most of the German minors in its customs union and can add Hanover and others after the Hanoverian Succession.
83** ''3'' adds more detail to characters, but this sometimes fails to account for individual national laws and customs regarding politicians. For instance, in the United States there's a minimum age of 35 for presidents, something the game doesn't account for, and it's not uncommon for the same president to keep ruling for decades, especially if he's an IG leader. While having more than two terms was not actually prohibited until after the game's time period, this was completely unheard of due to departing from George Washington's example, and caused cries of dictatorship the only time it did happen, in the 20th century.
84** The Luddite ideology in ''3'' falls into the common pop culture trap of portraying luddites as anti-technology and in favor of banning heavy industry entirely, as opposed to the reality of the movement being about protesting the rapid loss of jobs and centralization of workplace power that automation presented.
85* ArtisticLicenseReligion: In the first two games, the needs of pops are uniform for their type, ignoring their religion. This means Muslims needing liquor and wine, Buddhists freely eating meat, and so on and so forth. This changed in ''Victoria 3'', which gives certain religions "taboos" which drastically reduce their [=POPs'=] consumption of such goods.
86* AsskickingLeadsToLeadership: In ''III'', there's one way for an unrecognized power (anyone that's not a European power or a former or present European colony) to become recognized as an equal with European civilization: Kick a Great Power's ass in a war. Any power that can do this will almost certainly become a Great Power themselves once recognized. While the former Great Power probably won't lose their status, they won't be able to push around the country who defeated them.
87* TheAssimilator: Democratic states (especially the [[EagleLand United States]]) and countries in both Americas get a bonus when assimilating immigrant [=POPs=] to their primary culture.
88** The USA in the first game got a special, country-specific stat. It was not only one of major factors attracting people, but also allowing US to assimilate virtually any kind and amount of immigrants, pronto. It was almost impossible to see non-American [=POPs=] in the States. This was modified in the second game, which instead eases assimilation in all American nations and allows other immigration-dependent states to achieve similar assimilation rates to the USA (though the latter still gets a couple of unique bonuses even in this game).
89** Taken to ridiculous extremes in the first game. Countries with multi-ethnic populations like Austria and the Ottomans, would, by the turn of the century, usually have completely marginalized all their minority populations and replaced them with their primary culture. This was mostly a result of these countries having few accepted cultures, motivating their minority populations to assimilate ASAP.
90** ''A House Divided'' modified the system for the second game to keep conversion under control. [=POPs=] get an absurdly high penalty to conversion if they are in their core provinces, e.g., the Irish can't be converted into British while in Ireland, but will gladly turn Yankee when emigrating to the USA. Colonial [=POPs=] were hit with this modification ''and'' a colonial penalty to conversion, meaning Africa is no longer ethnically European by the end game.
91** One of the most important factor to assimilation in both games is the citizenship policy of the ruling party. In the first game, the only reason why the USA was able to convert immigrants was the mentioned above national modifier - normally, with Slavery being in force, it would prevent any kind of conversion.
92** Religious assimilation is far, ''far'' too fast in Victoria II. For instance, the United States will usually be 99% percent Protestant by the end of the game. This is an especially egregious example, as the US even has flavor events concerning the country's growing Catholic minority in the 19th century- a minority which doesn't actually exist in the game.
93** In III, who you assimilate and how fast depends on your laws and bureaucracy. Cultural assimilation requires a pop's culture to already be accepted, while religious conversion only happens to members of discriminated religions. With Multiculturalism[[note]]all cultures accepted[[/note]], State Atheism[[note]][[ShapedLikeItself atheism as the state religion]], all other religions discriminated against and a bonus to conversion[[/note]] and Public Schools[[note]]bonus to cultural conversion[[/note]], thus, a power can rapidly absorb more and more peoples of all nations and creeds into a single unified culture and creed.
94* AttackAttackAttack: The primary strategy in the early part of the game. However, mid-game tech developments such as [[MoreDakka the machine gun]] [[TruthInTelevision start favouring the defense]]. And then near the end, tools such as [[DeadlyGas Chemical Weapons]] and [[TankGoodness Heavy Tanks]] turn the calculus back toward the offense.
95* {{Autosave}}: The game autosaves periodically, at intervals that can be set by the player (e.g. every 3 months in game time, 6 months, etc.). The player can also save manually at any point in the game.
96* BackFromTheBrink: What the player will have to deal with if they choose to play as either Texas or Tripoli in the first two games. 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.
97* BackFromTheDead: The Byzantine Empire can be reformed by Greece if they can be turned into a Great Power and have taken all the provinces in Thrace and the Asia Minor coast. Quite fittingly, this take quite some patience and skill, but can be achieved by a determined enough player.
98* BadGuysDoTheDirtyWork: A rather "gamey" tactic by players who wish to change their government type is to encourage a specific type of rebels and then let them take over your country and enforce their demands - the player takes a prestige hit, but it's not the end of the world. In fact, the game itself uses this technique with Garibaldi and his Redshirt army, whom the game treats as ordinary rebels that, if successful in taking over any other Italian state, unite Italy under Sardinia-Piedmont.
99** ''III'' has a similar mechanic for Italian unifcation: if the percentage of radicals in any Italian nation is too high, they first adopt a republican government. If the situation doesn't improve, they are then annexed by another Italian nation.
100* BalkaniseMe: One of several war goals is forcing another country to release states from under their control. Inverted with fragmented countries like Germany and Italy, which have to annex several other countries in order to properly form.
101** Unification and Balkanization are typically rare given that the AI never puts drastic effort into its wars. Expect countries to only go to war for one wargoal and quit despite possibly being able to tack on more if they stayed with the war.
102** The ''Heart of Darkness'' expansion makes this more likely, as any area with sufficiently high nationalism will eventually create a crisis, which will allow a new nation to form without any war.
103** United Provinces of Central America will implode in early 1840s thanks to a historical event. There is a very, very small chance at least part of the union remains, but usually it leads to historical and complete dissolution of it, ending up with Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua and Costa Rica emerging as separate nations.
104** Certain mods allow to turn American Civil War into this: each state has a choice to stay in the Union, side with Confederacy or [[TakeAThirdOption go on their own]], based on their location and what policies are preferred by local population.
105** China, provided it does particularly badly, may shatter and descend into [[UsefulNotes/NoMoreEmperors 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''
106* BoisterousWeakling:
107** 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, essentially being the series' LethalJokeCharacter - there are myriads of ways to reform the stagnant country or to simply prevent its free fall descent into a rump state, with various levels of difficulty to pull it off.
108** {{Downplayed|trope}} with the Ottoman Empire, which starts out as a Great Power and gradually declines as its highly illiterate and conservative society refuses to modernize with the rest of Europe and eventually becomes a pushover. Averted when the AI decides to research specific techs early on (they are picked at random), or with a skilled enough player who can work with the Ottoman Empire's weaknesses while developing their strengths.
109*** The trope is greatly amplified in ''III''. The Ottomans receive a special journal entry named "The sick man of Europe", and must complete 4 reforms within 20 years as recognized by the journal. If time runs out, an event named "The dead man of Europe" will occur, and turns the Ottomans into an ''unrecognized'' power[[note]]Presumably, the 20 year time limit is to simulate how the Ottomans became totally dependent on Britain and France after they did the heavy lifting in defeating Russia during the Crimean War.[[/note]].
110** In the first two games, any nation that manages to become a Great Power primarily through prestige. On paper, they will have the same respect and benefits as all the other Great Powers. But in practice, they will get absolutely destroyed if they ever end up in a major armed conflict. This is not uncommonly seen with Sweden/Scandinavia, who gets a lot of free prestige from unique events and can quickly get ahead in tech thanks to their high literacy, but their low population makes it difficult for them to compete in industry and warfare.
111* BribingYourWayToVictory: Played with for ''Voice of the People''. While the trope is played straight for France [[note]]as they are able to activate ''France's Natural Borders'', giving them claims on Belgian (Flanders and Wallonia), Prussian (North Rhine and Rhineland) and Piedmontese (Savoy) states. If the journal is completed, Wallonian becomes a French primary culture, allowing France to form the humongous Central Europe.[[/note]], the trope is naturally inverted for France's neighbours who are threatened by the French claims on their lands.
112* BrickJoke: In the sequel, there's an event called Comet Sighted. At least with the expansion pack, there are two options, which both increase research points, one called "Thank God we live in such enlightened times." A reference to [=EU3=], which has an event with an option added each expansion, which all give you negative stability points, also called Comet Sighted. If you decide to explore the Valley of the Kings, though, there eventually pops up an event which says your people think it is cursed. One of the responses is "What next, comet sighted?"
113* CharacterPortrait:
114** In ''Victoria II'', each general and admiral has a portrait next to their name when they appear attached to an army or in lists in the military tab. There are no unique portraits however; each general is randomly assigned a portrait from a limited set, meaning there will be lots of duplicates going around. Even scripted historical leaders that start in the employ of certain countries will be assigned a random portrait that changes with every new campaign.
115** ''Victoria III'' massively expanded the use of character portraits, taking advantage of the system for fully 3D models borrowed from VideoGame/CrusaderKingsIII to give every ruler, politician, general, admiral and political agitator their own unique appearance. Historical figures have predefined models based on their real life appearance while randomly generated characters get randomly generated portraits.
116* ChronicBackstabbingDisorder: Want to take over a country, but don't want the Great Power they are allied and/or in sphere of getting involved? Simple, become friendly with that nation and make them break the sphere or alliance. Then go to war.
117* ChummyCommies:
118** Socialists in ''I'' and especially ''II''. Their parties allow some of the most useful and profitable combinations of policies and reforms, along with sliders that aren't as extreme as those of Communists proper and still can utilise capitalists for economic build-up. In ''II'', you ''want'' to get Socialists into your Upper House (since you can't appoint them as an autocrat) to pass all sorts of reforms affecting better health system or education - other parties will only do so when the alternative is a revolution, and Communists won't show up for next half a century. Notably, any democratic country with universal suffrage and big industrial base (and thus loads of employed and thus content craftsmen and workers) will consistently elect Socialists from 1870s onward... but if you neglect your working classes, their high militancy will make them radicalised and pick Communists instead, or even directly gearing for a revolution if they can't.
119** The multiple mixed up law options of ''Victoria 3'' allow players to have a Council Republic government while simultaneously allowing Universal Suffrage, Protected Speech, Guaranteed Liberties, Multiculturalism, and Women's Suffrage. In particular, two of the three socialist ideologies support this. Communists are the default socialist ideology; they want to deliver the goods to the people through a Council Republic, land reform, and workers' rights (though they're also [[HollywoodAtheist rather repressive when it comes to religion]]). Meanwhile, Anarchists are aggressively antiauthoritarian; they want freedom of speech, cooperative ownership of the means of production, and are one of the very rare ideologies that support Multiculturalism.
120* CivilWar: The player can easily trigger one if they don't know what they are doing. While they are bad most of the time, the United States and the Ottoman Empire in ''3'' actually benefit from triggering one early. [[note]]For the US, fighting and winning the Civil War to ban slavery is the only way to trigger Reconstruction, which comes with the potential of adding African-American as a primary culture. For the Ottomans, before patch 1.3, winning a civil war as the rebels removes all negative modifiers and the ''Sick Man of Europe'' journal entry. Patch 1.3 changed it so that the journal entries remain, but the negative modifiers are still removed. The civil war also removes all truces (so that the Ottomans can declare war on Egypt more quickly) and reset relations with the great powers (including the removal of the rivalry with Russia); this means that the great powers are less likely to help Egypt when the Ottomans come knocking.[[/note]]
121* ColourCodedArmies: All civilized nations use basically the same soldier model with a different colored coat. Some countries' models are a bit more unique -- for example, South American soldiers wear sashes and Prussians wear [[CoolHelmet pickelhaubes]].
122** Subverted by the time the 20th Century rolls around, as everyone starts wearing duller browns and greys. However, the design of the various uniforms also become more unique.
123* ColourCodedForYourConvenience: Each country has an associated colour (Britain: red, France: blue, Russia: green, Germany: grey), some of which carry over into other Paradox titles. At the start of the game these color borders are easily distinguishable, but as colonization goes on countries with similar colors can end up bordering each other.
124* CommandAndConquerEconomy: Oh so averted. You don't even technically earn money from producing stuff: Instead your population does, and you can either tax them (which means they can't buy as much stuff...) or raise tariffs (which makes imported goods more expensive). All [=POPs=] have their own "needs" of stuff they want (everything from grain and coal to opium and radios) based on their class and type. If you can't satisfy them they'll move somewhere else or starve. Oh, and did we mention that under two of the games' four economic policies you don't actually build factories yourself? Instead your capitalists do (using their own money, that disappears if you tax them too highly). The problem with capitalists, of course, is that they build factories that are the most profitable to them, not the factories that you would prefer built. (For instance, the ones that produce guns).
125** {{Downplayed|trope}} under Planned Economy. You're in charge of deciding where to build the factories, and you can put them where they'll benefit the nation the most. One of the perks of being a [[DirtyCommunists Dirty Communist]]. You can't though tell people what to consume, which still adds in some difficulty.
126* TheComputerIsACheatingBastard: Averted. If you play above 'normal' difficulty, then the AI does get some bonuses to production, but otherwise it follows the exact same rules as the player. If the computer appears to be cheating, it is making use of some sort of mechanic that is not readily apparent. (Such as: The second game opens at the beginning of the Texan Revolution; if you play as Texas, you will soon discover that the Mexican army has better morale than you. But not because of this trope, rather because it has an Engineers brigade attached, which gives +10 to morale.)
127* CoolBoat: Starting with [[WoodenShipsAndIronMen wooden frigates and ships of the line]], and moving on through ironclads until reaching powerful battleships and dreadnoughts.
128* CrazyEnoughToWork: ''3'' offers one such way to complete Italian unification. After the ''Risorgimento'' journal entry is active, create radicals in owned Italian homelands. This can be done via conquering other Italian nations, or simply changing governmenent composition. The first event after enough radicals have been created is to change the government to a republican one. The second time? Another Italian nation will annex the player's country, but the player can continue playing as the other nation.
129* CreatorProvincialism: Sweden receives a handful of unique decisions and events, granting it, among others, a free cruiser, a new political party, extra research and production bonus to machine parts. Should Scandinavia be formed by Sweden, all the bonus content will be passed down to the new country. Creator/ParadoxInteractive is a Swedish company.
130* CrushingThePopulace: Each game in the series had its own version of it:
131** In the original, simply stationing a military unit in a province decreased local militancy. This was especially useful in freshly conquered territories, as they had an extra militancy due to recent shift of borders, nationalist sentiments, wrong culture etc. It also made fighting any rebels much easier, since the military was already there.
132** ''II'' had Suppression rating, which was about deploying more and more ruthless StateSec, along with actively suppressing any form of political or national dissent. In the same time, variety of inventions related with human rights were gradually decreasing Suppression efficiency (since larger and larger sections of the population were getting tangled into the mass politics), making it a constant gamble when playing as an oppressive autocracy - to keep order and revolts at bay or to get better tech.
133** ''III'' has the Violent Suppression edict, pacifying provinces by killing off the radicals. And the Militarized Police Force law is an institutional version of this, preventing pops under discrimination from getting uppity...and again, answering riots with deadly force.
134* DarkestAfrica: Treated as a malaria-infested uncivilized hellhole populated entirely by subhuman savages that only machine guns can tame - in other words, exactly like the European powers of the time saw it. In second game it's actually impossible to colonize 95% of Africa before your army got machine guns.
135** The ''Heart of Darkness'' expansion for the second one makes it so that you can colonize it without machine guns, but you still either need an equivalent technology or to be late to the party.
136** In ''3'', most of the continent is effectively off limits[[note]]-90% to colonization[[/note]] not to those without machine guns, but to those without ''quinine'' - the deadliest threat of the era being malaria. In some parts, even that's not enough; Malaria Prevention tech is needed before going into the darkest parts of Africa.
137* DeliberateValuesDissonance: The game encourages the players to stomp over peoples' rights, colonize huge patches of land and violently suppress political movements in the name of progress, science, tradition or downright profit. All of these match the actions of the real life nations of the time.
138* DepartmentOfRedundancyDepartment: In the second game, states that are not completely controlled by one country have their names show as <owning culture> <state>. This leads to gems like "British British Columbia", "Hawaiian Hawaiian Islands", "New English Northern New England" and "Luang Prabangni Luang Prabang".
139* DirtyCommunists:
140** [[Administrivia/TropesAreFlexible Socialists]] show up in 1848 (when Karl Marx published ''The Communist Manifesto'') and remain an important factor for the second half of the game. Communists (basically radicalised and angry Socialists) don't show up until much later.
141** In ''3'', the Vanguardist ideology shows up when Socialism is researched. Vanguardists support modernized authoritarian systems ([[IntellectuallySupportedTyranny Technocracy]] and [[PeoplesRepublicOfTyranny Single-Party State]]) and state-owned command economies. Not a good combination if you like personal freedom, though they don't actually take a position on issues like free speech or [[HollywoodAtheist State Atheism]], so they ''can'' be relatively easy-going dictators.
142* DividedStatesOfAmerica: Although some of them, like California and Texas, were nations in their own right before being absorbed into the USA, there is also a number of ahistorical nations. Among the nations that can be formed from United States Territory are: the California Republic, the Cherokee Nation, Columbia (with parts of Canada), Deseret, the Manhattan Commune, New England, and the Republic of Texas.
143** The [[GameMod Pop Demand Mod]] has a mechanic allowing for every ''single'' state to leave the Union if [[ScrewThisImOuttaHere things get bad enough]].
144*** It also adds a reversed American Civil War -- if the USA favours slavery enough that the southern states never secedes, the ''northern'' states will instead secede as the Free States of America.
145* EagleLand: The United States starts as a Great Power, ranked #7. They are the only Great Power to start as a democracy with extensive political freedoms, and as such get a huge boost to immigration. They also start with slavery still legal, [[UsefulNotes/TheAmericanCivilWar which is important later on]].
146* EarlyGameHell: Due to the changes in how the market works, playing as a land-locked nation in ''3'' imposes very strict limitations as to with whom your country can trade, especially when outside of a sphere or custom unions. Depending on your exact location, you can end up with no real trade partners and no access to most basic resources, effectively locking your economic growth, unless conquering a path to a border with a new country and[=/=]or port, which in turn might become nigh-impossible, too, due to your army being woefully under-equipped.
147* EarlyInstallmentWeirdness: The first game, while having the same setting and similar design goals, is wildly different than the sequel both in aesthetics and gameplay. Perhaps most notably, pops had to be promoted manually, and military building was much closer to Hearts of Iron than Europa Universalis. There was also a highly abuseable mechanic whereby the player could buy and sell provinces, but on the flip-side, it was possible to peacefully settle border and colonial disputes.
148* EasyLogistics: To some degree. Your units requires a ton of different kinds of resources to produce (basic infantry requires small arms, canned food and manpower) but upkeep "only" costs you money.
149** No longer the case in ''Victoria II'', where upkeep requires small arms, ammunition, explosives, and other military supplies.
150*** Though they can still get this no matter where they are stationed, and are just peachy as long as you aren't putting them in a high-attrition province.
151* EasterEgg: In the second game, if you manage to [[SelfImposedChallenge play as Jan Mayen (an island with an extremely low population that is almost always controlled by Sweden) and become a Great Power or Secondary Power]], you can take a decision which allows you to be a country of polar bears.
152* EliteMooks:
153** Brigades in the original game. If you can afford their maintenance, there is really nothing stopping you from equipping every single infantry regiment with artillery or any other brigade, significantly increasing their combat capacity. The price however gets exorbitant with just a handful of military technologies.
154** Guards in ''Victoria II'' are a form of this -- they have overall stronger stats than standard infantry (and in many mods they are made superior in every way), but are expensive and can only be recruited from your primary and accepted cultures. French AI just ''loves'' to build them, never looking on the costs.
155* TheEmpire: [[UsefulNotes/TheBritishEmpire Accept no substitutes]].
156** What every player strives to be.
157** Certain countries under certain forms of government are also listed as Empires, be it unified Germany, imperial China, tsarist Russia or Mexico during French intervention.
158* EnemyMine: In countries that have elections, you can see some really strange alliances of interest depending on the state of the country. For example, under serfdom you can see the Industrialists and Rural Folk (normally close to mortal enemies) teaming up in an Agrarian Party.[[note]]Industrialists have no default objection to slavery per se, but feudal serfdom gets in the way of doing business.[[/note]] Reformers in traditionally-conservative interest groups can pull their party into the Liberals despite not being entirely on board with radicalism. And fascism's appeal often cuts across interest group lines entirely - (almost) anyone who's worried about foreigners is welcome, even if that means an alliance between Industrialists and Trade Unions.
159* EventFlag: Abused in the original, almost as much as in ''VideoGame/HeartsOfIron''. Breaking the first game's reliance on these was one of the major design goals of the sequel. They are nearly absent in the third one, but that achieved the opposite extreme - a lot of easy-to-set-up things don't happen in-game on their own, because there are no flags to guide those outcomes.
160* EvilIsEasy:
161** In the first two games, picking highly conservative (or outright reactionary) options, keeping your subjects utterly apathetic and ignorant, trumping cultural and religious minorities, brutally taking control of new colonies and subjugating weaker, less advanced nations in blatant imperialistic expansion are all much easier, more profitable and less complicated paths to economic and political success. Hell, you really ''need'' those colonies, if not for raw materials, then at least for the prestige they generate upon establishment to even be able to trade in the first place. And by late game purposefully building your military-industrial complex into absurd size and letting fascist to power are pretty much "easy mode" when compared with anything else.
162** [[InvertedTrope Inverted]] with Victoria 3 on release. Because of how the economy and the Turmoil system work, a country that doesn't liberalize and enact economic reforms will suffer from a lowered Standard of Living and a lot of political agitation, only receiving relatively weak Authority bonuses in exchange.
163* EvilIsPetty: While ''3'' lacks the [[StupidEvil Anarcho-Liberals]], it makes that up with Petit Bourgeois. They come primarily from shopkeepers and clerks. All of the events related to them portray them as short-sighted, self-centered, dog-kicking maniacs who are constantly looking down at the lower strata, because [[CompensatingForSomething that's the only way they can be special]]. Unlike Anarcho-Liberals, you can't just sway people away from their interest group, since city centres by default generate shopkeepers by the millions.
164* EvilPaysBetter: If there is a non-westernized nation that has resources you want and you have the colonial power and infamy to spare, it's generally better to conquer the target rather than sphere them. While sphering a non-westernized nation does give you first dibs on their resources, conquering them accomplishes the same thing AND applies your far superior technology to the region, particularly bonuses to RGO output, infrastructure and population growth, making the territory far more profitable. As an added bonus, a conquered territory can't be stolen out of your sphere via diplomatic means and the population can also be recruited into your army.
165* FailureGambit: It can sometimes be advantageous to let a movement radicalize into a rebel uprising, and then purposefully let the uprising succeed, if the reforms they demand are desirable to the player but they just can't get the support from the upper house to pass it normally.
166* FakeDifficulty: All sorts of "reactionary" countries, such as the Ottomans or the Qing, start in a very bad situation in 1836... and can be whipped into shape in less than 20 years, transforming into monstrous juggernauts of economic and military power. In fact, their backward political system is their main asset - they can freely pass all the laws they need and appoint the government they need. Mods usually add some extra kickback for reforming "too fast", but that only slows down their pace, not how easy they are to pass.
167* TheFederation:
168** Any reasonably liberal Great Power arguably counts. The [=US=], [=UK=], France, Italy, a united Scandinavia, and even UsefulNotes/ImperialGermany (if formed through a liberal revolution) are all particularly likely candidates.
169** Pretty much every single mod to the game has a variation of the Danubian Federation, also known as the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_of_Greater_Austria United States of Greater Austria]], an ultimately unrealised project for the federalisation of Austria-Hungary.
170** The ''Colossus of the South'' DLC for ''3'' allows any country with North or South Andean primary culture and at least 10 incorporated states in South America[[note]]This requirement is for Chile as every other candidate can form either Gran Colombia, Peru-Bolivia or Rio de la Plata to qualify as a candidate[[/note]] to form the Federation of the Andes, which is a unification of all South American nations with Andean primary culture. As noted in the journal entry, such a federation was UsefulNotes/SimonBolivar's dream.
171* FictionalFlag: The game centers around managing countries in Victorian Era setting, as such, each country uses their real historical flag. However, if the country changes regimes (such as monarchic, communist or fascist), their flag will change as well to either real flags or completely fictional ones.
172* FlawExploitation: Once the game was patched, Rebels became laughably easy to pacify when revolting; you only need to pass a Reform with a high amount of support behind it and the Rebel armies will disband within days.
173* FogOfWar: The standard version: The player can only see what goes on in his or his Allies' territories, and only into foreign provinces bordering his own.
174* GambitRoulette: The Diplomatic Play system in Victoria 3 can easily turn into one of these. Declaring an interest in a region can result in: the region submitting to your demands, declaring war on you, declaring war and calling in other powers as allies, calling in other powers as enemies, or even uniting other powers against YOU to force you to back down before a shot has been fired.
175* GameMod: As per Creator/ParadoxInteractive tradition, many exist.
176** Historical Project Mod and its offshoot Historical Flavor Mod are the most popular mods for the sequel, both of them largely designed to facilitate a more historical game than vanilla, primarily by making far heavier use of scripted events and unique decisions than the base game.
177* GamePlaysItself:
178** Also known as "Haiti mode"[[note]]The original lacked spectator option, so players just played as Haiti for the same purpose, as its performance was meaningless on the grand scale of things[[/note]]. Ever since ''Revolutions'' expansion to the original ''Victoria'', the games in the series operate in such a way, player might do absolutely nothing at all, other than unpausing and disabling pause during event pop-ups - the game will still play itself till the end date. Not perfectly, but still. With each following game, the automated element is greatly expanded.
179** All aspects of warfare in ''3'' got fully automated, deliberately so. Rather than controlling divisions and navies, players just manage building garrisons and naval bases. The combat, and what's going on on often continent-long frontlines, are managed by AI. The only thing that can be directly affected by the player is the general tactics of troops and ships, along with their general type, depending on technologies, along with getting random commanders to lead specific groups of soldiers and ships. But beyond that the war effectively fights itself, with the player only being able to sit back and watch their generals occupy territory and engage in battles of their own accord. The degree of detailed control a player can assume also varies heavily depending on the number and sizes of fronts that happen to form: Sometimes you get a bunch of small fronts consisting of only a few provinces each, in which case the player has a lot of control in deciding precisely where to advance or defend. Other times you get one single frontline stretching halfway across a continent, but the game still only allows one offensive to be carried out at a time, severely limiting the decision-making capabilities of the player.
180* TheGeneralissimo: The ideology of ''Caudillismo'' idealizes this. Unique to Latin American landowners and militaries, this form of conservatism rejects overt feudalism and monarchism in favor of presidential dictators backed by a strong professional army.
181* GeoEffects: The type of terrain present in provinces can have a large impact on the course of a war fought around those provinces. Many terrain types, such as mountains, hills and forests, provide bonuses to the defender in a battle, with some also affecting the available combat width, mitigating the advantage of a numerically superior foe. On the strategic level the terrain type also affects the local supply limit, potentially resulting in higher attrition for large armies, and the movement cost of the province, resulting in longer travel times.
182* GlobalCurrency: The Pound Sterling is used for international trade.
183* GloriousMotherRussia: Entirely possible. Russia starts as a Great Power, but its technology and political freedoms are lacking, while its starting tech-group favours culture over such silly things like industry, commerce or military. Under the AI, it will either be on the tail of Great Powers or the most powerful Secondary Power and the UsefulNotes/RedOctober is inevitable.
184* GoingNative: In ''3'', if the East India Company or Dutch East Indies becomes independent, they will be faced with the decision to do this or to maintain colonial rule at the price of massive native radicalisation. If they do go native, any territory not in the Bengal/Java region will be given to their subjects, and said subjects would also become independent. But, if they have no subjects, the newly native nation will inherit ''all'' territory.
185* GoodCapitalismEvilCapitalism: Capitalists as pops are far more liberal than Aristocrats, which allows to pass a handful of useful laws early on or get specific parties elected to power. However, there is a clear cutting point for capitalists as pops, after which they will oppose any further changes (like establishing labour unions, increasing healthcare spending, introducing safety regulations and so on). The game as a whole is about building a booming, industrial economy, which on the one hand offers employment and access to goods to the masses, including luxuries (and in ''III'' very literal improvement of life ratings), but on the other, turns the majority of your population into poorly-paid factory workers (and in ''II'', ''demoted'' middle-class Artisans into lower-class Craftsmen) that are exploited to no end without an entire string of law regulations, which the capitalists owning the businesses will oppose by all means. Also, depending from game to game, the more liberal the economy gets, the more it turns into "wild capitalism", amping up all the problems the total deregulation brings, with RobberBaron galore or becoming a MeetTheNewBoss scenario, where serfdom is replaced with just as exploitative industrial oppression and zero gain in political rights.
186* GoodPaysBetter: The way the assimilation system works. The harsher the citizenship laws, the worse the conversion rate toward the accepted culture. Under Residency (where most countries and their parties start), conversion pretty much doesn't happen at all. Meanwhile, full citizenship and voting laws to everyone grant a large bonus to conversion rates (and in case of the USA, basically makes them unlimited).
187* GreatOffscreenWar: The Napoleonic wars are referenced occasionally in some events as a ground-shattering event that brought forth the ideas of Liberalism to the Ancient Régimes of Europe.
188* HardCodedHostility: Rebels. 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).
189* HarderThanHard: Keeping United States of Central America united is by design bound to fail. To reform it into an actual state, rather than a sketchy federation with an endless spawn of nationalist rebels, you must let the constituent regions go their own way, turning yourself into Guatemala in the process. Then, you need to gain Great Power status, sphere the splinter nations, and forge the UCA back again, this time with the cores and proper political structure to make it work. You know, as Guatemala. The country mostly known for being '''the''' BananaRepublic.
190* HegemonicEmpire:
191** Great Powers can increase influence by building factories and railways in minor states. Some nations can even be formed through influence mechanics, and can be quite large if done right.
192** The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth can be reformed this way in particular, if Krakow or Poland in some form have Lithuania, Belarus, Russia and Ukraine in their sphere of influence.
193** Germany can be formed this way as well, but either way needs Prussia or Austria to be knocked from the Great Powers list, and neither is particularly easy. Doing it with Austria, though, allows the player to form Greater Germany, which is huge and includes many other nations as part of it.
194* HighClassGlass: Various graphics for elite members of society, like army officers and capitalists, feature monocles. A FunnyBackgroundEvent in the newspapers describes prices for the eyewear reaching a plateau.
195* HoldTheLine: In both the second and third game, any defensive war over territory may turn into this due to the system of ticking warscore. If an attacker lays claim to a piece of your land as one of their war goals, they must make sure to occupy said land within a reasonable time frame or else they will gradually lose warscore (in ''II'') or war support (in ''III''). If this goes on for long enough they will eventually be forced to surrender, no matter how strong their military and economy is relative to yours. As such, in these types of wars the best strategy is often to just hang back and defend your territory from enemy attacks rather than going on the offensive yourself, especially if you're weaker than your opponent.
196* HomeFieldAdvantage:
197** ZigZagged in the original game. Whoever controlled the province (there is a difference between ownership and control in the game), was getting whatever positive modifiers it was providing - extra defence from forts, a general bonus from being rail-supplied and so on. But nothing prevented others from taking control of a given map tile and using it for their own advantage. However, the main advantage was a steady supply of OccupiersOutOfOurCountry rebels that eventually could posses bigger danger to the occupying force than the military of the country they were occupying. Also, occupying provinces with cores on was ''slightly'' faster, to suggest the locals were resisting your military presence less.
198** There are a few minor examples of this in the first two games: 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. Meanwhile, whoever controls the province in the first game, receives a tiny bonus from local railroad, if one is build there (but has no ability to build or expand them as a mere occupier).
199** In the third game the skill trait "Surveyor", when applied to a general, grants him +10% Home Offense and Home Defense, i.e bonuses to both attacking and defending while fighting on your home turf.
200* HopelessWar: Texas and Tripoli are set up to be like this; Texas starts off with armies named after the three battles it lost! Both are weak nations facing down secondary powers with far more divisions. However, this can be averted by a skilled player (or rather, a player who knows how to hold out until the US comes in, in the case of Texas, and who can exploit the attrition mechanic, in the case of Tripoli). The Victoria II wiki has advice on how to survive as both powers.
201* AnImmigrantsTale:
202** Not the focus of the game, but implied via the international migration mechanics, which motivate emigrants to head for the United States to escape destitution in Europe and Asia. Other democracies in the Americas and Oceania, especially Australia and Canada, can compete for immigrants if they become powerful enough.
203** In ''Victoria 3,'' this is reworked so that ''any'' country can become an attractive "immigration target," as long as it has decent civil liberties and a healthier economy than a given [=POP's=] current home.
204* InexplicablyIdenticalIndividuals: As a result of the limited number of available portraits for generals and admirals in ''I'' and ''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.
205* InformedEquipment: In first two games, armies are represented on the map as individual soldiers or vehicles (in ''II'') 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.
206* InsistentTerminology: In ''A House Divided'', foreign countries refer to UsefulNotes/TheAmericanCivilWar as such. The USA calls it "The War of the Rebellion", and for the CSA, it's "The War of Northern Aggression".
207* InstantMilitia: Mobilization in the original and ''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 (or your current mobilization pool) 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.
208* JobStealingRobot: This game covers the zenith of the Industrial Revolution, where machinery allows buildings to produce more goods using fewer workers. In ''3'', buildings usually (but not always) have two kinds of mechanization. Mechanization that increases productivity usually doesn't reduce the number of workers, though it does change the jobs available; some laborers become machinists and then engineers. Then there's options that don't increase production but allow the same production with fewer unskilled laborers.
209* JokeCharacter:
210** The ''Heart of Darkness'' expansion introduces the nation of [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan_Mayen Jan Mayen]], a tiny island in the North Sea, that even today has a total population of about 18 people. That is, until you [[LethalJokeCharacter start getting]] [[SillinessSwitch Polar Bear]] [[LethalJokeCharacter POPs]]...
211** In ''3'', [[UsefulNotes/SanFrancisco Joshua Norton]] is a potential Royalist agitator in the United States. He is purely there as a meme.
212* LandOfOneCity: Minor countries such as Moldavia or Texas start with only one State, usually made up of several provinces. However, some ''really'' small countries like Krakow and many German Minors have only one ''province'' within a single state. Also, it is impossible for a country with only one State to become a Great Power, no matter how powerful they actually are.
213* LastStand:
214** In ''2'' and ''3'', any rebel army will be wiped out should they lose a battle.
215** Any country that's just a single state will absolutely refuse to fold down to outside pressure and will instead fight, even if they stand absolutely zero chance to win the resulting war (itself a mop-up that will likely be resolved within a single battle and quick occupation). In ''3'', this goes a step further, as any diplomatic play that leads to annexation - regardless of the size of the defending country - will also lead to a bitter resistance to the last man.
216* LesserOfTwoEvils:
217** Throughout the series, [[PragmaticVillainy Capitalists]] are a better alternative to [[AppealToTradition Aristocrats]], both economically and politically. ''Both'' are leeching on the rest of the population for no other purpose than getting rich, but at least Capitalists build up your nation's economy and allow ''some'' limited reforms to make it a less awful place for the rest of the population.
218** In the original game, there was an entire slew of political events, setting up their flags for the rest of the game. The majority of them are about picking the less bad option, since both have their drawbacks - the question is what hurts your nation less in the long run.
219** In ''III'', Tenant Farmers is a pretty bad economic law, and it still bolsters the political power of Landowners... but unlike Serfdom, it doesn't block any of the important laws and reforms, and the Landowners themselves hate it the least, making it possible to pass it with relative ease.
220* MagikarpPower:
221** In the original game, the Clausewitzian path of army reforms starts as ''much'' weaker, but as the game goes on and new techs are unlocked, eventually the constantly increased Organisation allows armies to ''stay'' in combat [[WarIsHell until either side runs out of men]], rather than recover faster from it after a battle.
222** A civilized, industrialized China is truly a thing to be afraid of. Heck, even ''just'' civilized China can curb-stomp pretty much everyone, since their absurdly big population of artisans can make up for lacking industry for decades.
223** As pointed out below, [[UsefulNotes/AllTheLittleGermanies Any German State]], from mighty Prussia to middle-power Bavaria to little Saxe-Coburg-Gotha can form Germany through multiple paths. This includes Luxembourg. Besides being a micro-nation, Luxembourg is the only German state that also has French [=POPs=] as an acceptable culture. If you manage to form Germany as Luxembourg, you can potentially have a Germany that can take over France with none of the usual rebellions from the population that would usually provoke.
224** Chile starts as an underdeveloped backwater wedged between the Andes Mountains and the Pacific. However, they're a democracy and get a huge boost to immigration, meaning they can become a Great Power much easier than Argentina (Presidential Dictatorship) or Brazil (Constitutional Monarchy with slavery). Having a precious metal province also doesn't hurt, since it both provides sizable profit and attracts immigrants.
225** Japan starts out as an uncivilized nation just like the rest of East Asia, but gets a huge bonus to its westernization ability. This, along with its relatively large and hugely educated population, means that it can become civilized relatively quickly and immediately become at least a secondary power with an ideal position to dominate China and Southeast Asia.
226*** As of ''Heart of Darkness'', Japan can westernize even faster thanks to army reforms now allowing uncivilized countries to gain instant research through conquest. Japan has at least 3 countries within sailing distance that have absolutely tiny armies guarding them, the hardest part being getting enough clipper convoys to transport the troops. Or if Japan is especially bold a successful conquest of Korea with at least one army reform passed will likely grant enough research to cap out the storage at 25,000 points and enough prestige to potentially propel Japan all the way to rank 8 immediately after westernizing. Its possible for Japan to become a great power before 1850!
227** Panjab starts out as one of the few, yet largest, Indian minor states not a puppet of Britain, and thus stands the best possible chance of eventually working itself up to GP status and kicking Britain out of India. The AI will ''never'' accomplish this, but a skilled player can actually unite India around 1870 and with luck - by 1865. [[http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/showthread.php?568991-Subcontinental-Subtleties-An-experimental-comic-AAR One of the most award-winning After Action Reports]] for Victoria 2 is from Panjab's perspective.
228** In ''III'', the British East India Company and Dutch East Indies are this. If they remain as colonies, they will have to endure continued radicalisation of their native population, while their masters siphon a considerable sum to fund their own growth. Plan your independence badly, and you end up with English/ Dutch rule which will quickly radicalize the natives, or only the Bengal/ Java region remaining under your control with any other territory split among your Indian/ Indonesian subjects (who also go independent). Plan it correctly, and you end up with an "East" India/ Indies which comprises most, if not all of the Indian sub-continent/ Indonesian archipelago, ready to form India/ Indonesia once Pan-Nationalism is researched and likely a Great/ Major Power right after independence.[[note]]Once the EIC/ DEI goes independent, an event will fire and give the player two options: maintain English/ Dutch rule, or return power to the natives. The second option will check for subjects and divide EIC/ DEI territory in regions beyond the Bengal/ Java region among said subjects. However, if all subjects had already been annexed beforehand, there will be no division of territory.[[/note]]
229** Bavaria, No. 3 country when it comes to contest for unifying Germany. It is the biggest country in the region after Prussia, has decent technology, literacy and population, along with some starting industry. On top of that, unlike Austria and Prussia, it can create ''Southern'' German Federation, and do so without firing a single shot. It unifies [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin all the southern Germanic countries]], greatly expanding Bavaria's initial power-base and, far more importantly, ''preventing'' Prussia from regular German unification, locking it at best as Northern German Federation. In fact, if done quickly enough, Bavaria can prevent Prussia from even forming the NGF, because all it takes is keeping ''any'' of the northern Germanic states out of the Prussian sphere - and some of them already have bad relations with Prussia, making it all that easier. You might not end up as a big grey blob, but you don't even need to. In ''III'', while Bavaria faces greater difficulty in forming the Southern German Federation[[note]]as it has to defeat ''both'' Austria and Prussia to become the sole leader for German unification[[/note]], it can screw over Prussia more easily; by annexing Hesse-Kassel (and Hesse to ensure that its own market is whole) and leaving the Prussian customs union, it can split the Prussian market and do a lot of damage to Prussia's economy.
230** The United States, although a Great Power is arguably a Magikarp compared to the other Great Powers, it's nowhere near as powerful as the likes of Britain or France at the start. But it does have a relatively large core territory that can double in size by the mid game and is loaded with arable land and natural resources. Its population, though relatively small for its territory, is also very literate for 1836 which gives them a head start on research and aids industrialization. And the small population density will almost certainly be solved by massive amounts of immigration. Then there is the fact that, of course, [[NormalFishInATinyPond it's a full-on Great Power surrounded by nothing more than colonies and pushovers]]. Besides the single stumbling block of the Civil War, it stands to just roll over all of the Americas while everyone else is just squabbling with each other.
231* MoraleMechanic: ''Two'' of them for your military: actual morale and organisation. Despite their names, organisation is your typical morale meter, while morale governs how fast it recovers. This was especially important in the first game, where you had to decide early on if you wanted to focus on morale or organisation of your armies. If you decide to favour morale, battles are short and brief, and if both sides favour morale, it will lead to another skirmish a few days later in a different place, turning into a ACW type of warfare. If you favour organisation, expect a [=WW1-style=] meatgrinder, where battles can go for ''years'' and just turn your soldier pops (or the poor conscripts) into mince, with the "winner" decided by the one willing to throw more warm bodies into the grinder. Notably, ''both'' approaches are terrible and you are better off not fighting wars at all.
232** Having said all that, the navy is better off with high morale than high organisation. Due to the different resolution system for naval combat, the more frequent, and yet shorter naval battles are, the better. Eventually, the side with high morale will have an easier time just grinding down the side with high organisation, as it will be unable to replenish it or fix its damaged ships.
233* MustHaveCaffeine[=/=]MustHaveNicotine: Both coffee and tobacco are luxury commodities your pops crave for. In fact, some of them consider it to be their ''everyday'' needs.
234* MyRulesAreNotYourRules: The AI is notorious for not having to adhere to a variety of production, trade and population control mechanics throughout the series. Highlights include, but aren't limited to: building ships and military divisions without the required resources, buying crucial resources off the market despite an abysmal prestige rating (or getting access to sea trade despite being landlocked in ''III''), performing diplomatic deals without diplomacy[=/=]interest points and so on and forth. To make it all that more annoying, in ''II'' and ''III'' the AI isn't simply allowed to ignore those rules on a regular basis, but only to catch up with the human player whenever getting stomped on.
235* NiceJobBreakingItHero:
236** Suppose you've worked up the diplomatic relations to add China to your sphere of influence. They're an uncivilized country at the start of the game, so having them in your sphere means your population has 100% access to their market of natural resources, as if your country made them (your population is coded to buy domestic goods before importing, having a country in your sphere of influence means that country no longer counts as an importer). However, China has such a large population, that they will outproduce anything your country can make. Even manufactured goods made in your factories can't compete with Chinese artisans who craft them by hand. Your population will therefore spend their income buying resources from China instead of your own market; demand for your nation's domestically produced goods goes way down; the owners aren't making money anymore; they can't pay their workers anymore and unemployment goes way up; unemployed workers make no money to spend, exacerbating all of the other problems; '''your whole economy collapses'''. Nice job bankrupting yourself.
237*** ''A House Divided'' had a partial solution: China was divided into several 'substates' (like satellites/dominions, but with somewhat less independence) under Qing China. Conquering a substate still requires going to war with all of China, but ''sphereing'' one does not, allowing for roughly-historical zones of influence in China (and making it significantly harder to sphere all of China).
238** A very similar problem persists in the third game, where, depending on who's your subject nation and what are ''their'' subjects, you can entirely collapse the economies of all involved parties. Countries that share their markets produce for and consume from a shared pool. If one suddenly adds a new participant that has a sizable economy, or at least resource production, one can collapse the prices at home. On the flip-side, adding countries like Russia or China can easily drive the prices sky-high (they rarely have their own industrial base for finished goods), meaning your own population will be unable to afford things, while whatever you produce will rarely be enough to saturate the market. Worst of all, AI absolutely loves to share markets with other countries, so it's very common to see all the members of any given tariff union ruining each other and ending up with riots of both unemployed and unable to afford anything pops. All while the game encourages making your shared market as big as possible.
239* NintendoHard: China [[InvokedTrope deliberately]] receives many crippling penalties to it (such as having 90% of its population be non-accepted, terribly inadequate military, and constant rebellion events) such that players complained China was unplayable/unfair. Paradox simply responded that China was made to be unplayable ''on purpose'' because [[ShownTheirWork China really was a political quagmire at the time]] and also because if they didn't, China would constantly turn into an a-historical superpower.
240** Romanian unification is actually one of the most difficult things to achieve in the game, as the player has to play either Wallachia or Moldavia, both of which are puppet states to the enormous Ottoman Empire. It doesn't help that both countries are poor and backwards, with no industrial base, low literacy and research points, and a military that is both low tech and small in numbers. And even if the player manages to unify both Wallachia and Moldavia, escape the Ottomans' hold, ''and'' get Romanian cores, they still have to steal other core lands from the Austrian and Russian empires, both of which are vicious wolves compared to the Ottoman Empire's yapping dog.
241** Tripoli in the second game is likely the hardest start of all, because not only are they a small, landlocked uncivilized country whose lands consist mostly of desert, but they start the game at war with the Ottoman Empire, a great power with orders of magnitude larger armies, stronger economy and more advanced technology. The war also just so happens to be for the full annexation of your country, meaning that a loss is an instant game over. It takes incredible skill, meticulous gameplay and probably a fat dose of luck to even survive the first two years of the game.
242* NoBloodForPhlebotinum: What colonial wars actually are, especially when fighting over territories already taken as colonies by other civilized nations. At least when fighting against non-civilized, there is the prestige bonus from winning and establishing a protectorate, but against other civilized nations it's all about resources you don't have and are too hard to come by to simply buy from world's market. Your goal is to gain access to some crucial resources for your industry, which given the time period can be anything from crude oil or natural rubber to such "trivial" things like cattle or timber. In fact, in Victoria 2's late game, timber shortages are so severe, you ''will'' end up waging wars for it.
243* NoProductSafetyStandards: The default state of your industry in all parts of the series. Depending on specifics, it can trigger various nasty events or even ''directly increase mortality'' of employed pops, and it takes various political reforms to alleviate the situation - ''if'' one is willing to face the resulting increase in running costs, that is.
244* NonEntityGeneral: Even though in-game messages are addressed to the leader of the country (eg "King" or "President") you most certainly can continue playing even if your country falls to a revolution.
245* NoSwastikas: The flag used to represent Fascist Germany displays an iron cross rather than a swastika.
246* NormalFishInATinyPond:
247** Throughout the series, the USA is hardly a great power at the game start, with a laughable military force, and while it is the most developed country in ''both Americas'', with the largest and highest educated population, its actual capacity is hardly impressive by global standards. However, the only countries that can really contest against the US are on the other side of the Atlantic, and the majority of them have no means to even ''get'' to the Americas. All of this offers players behind the American wheel the opportunity to shape the continent as they please, as nobody is really capable of opposing them.
248** Having an engineer as a ruler of your country in ''III'' offers a unique bonus of +5 construction, equal to the default value of any country without any buildings in the construction sector. It is ''nothing'' even for a middling regional power, but for a single-state country, or any kind of city-state? That's twice their capacity for construction, free of any charge. When you can't even think about getting construction resources, doubling your pool for building things is massive.
249* NoticeThis: To differentiate them from the hundreds of ordinary events that pop up routinely, truly momentous events (the American Civil War, the discovery of Tutankhamun's tomb, the writing of ''Literature/HeartOfDarkness'', etc.) have a special, major banner with fancy bordering and your flag flying suggesting the public notices used in the period.
250* NotSoHarmlessVillain: Excluding Prussia and Austria, most German countries are rather weak and will usually end up just being annexed by whatever powerful neighbor happens to border them. However, occasionally some lucky German nation will expand enough and can form either the Southern German Federation, or the Northern German federation, both of which are usually ranked as great powers in the game and can (when they're not controlled by them) match Prussia and Austria in status and power.
251* NotTheIntendedUse:
252** Revolutions are intended as big and scary things to avoid, especially in the first game. They are, however, [[BadGuysDoTheDirtyWork the easiest and fastest way to flip your government]] (especially in the second game) to the form you desire the most. All it takes is angering the people behind the right political views and then letting them occupy your capital. For some countries, this even allows to get out of their terrible opening situation, which would normally encourage you to ''quell'' any sort of dissent. In ''3'', causing a revolution as the Ottomans (and switching over to the rebels) is a ''good'' thing.[[note]]For the Ottomans, winning a civil war as the rebels remove the negative modifiers the Ottomans start the game with (which are pretty nasty), remove all truces (so that the Ottomans can declare war on Egypt more quickly) and reset relations with the great powers (including the removal of the rivalry with Russia); this means that the great powers are less likely to help Egypt when the Ottomans come knocking.[[/note]]
253** Another aspect of revolts is that, at least in the first game, they count as a military presence in a given province. Meaning the military unit spawned as rebels will actively decrease the militancy of ''all'' pops in the province, making it beneficial to let them stick around for at least a short while.
254** The exile mechanic in ''Victoria II''. The intended use of this mechanic is to remove the usual military access requirements from armies that are stranded in foreign territory after a war, so that they can move unhindered back to their homeland. But savvy players have realized that once an army is exiled there's nothing stopping you from exploiting their unrestricted movement to travel anywhere in the world, including territory that would otherwise be difficult or inconvenient to reach. They don't even necessarily have to end their journey in their own country's territory, since enemy territory during war also counts for removing the exiled status. Use of this exploit can allow for much more efficient army movement and greatly reduced reliance on transport ships.
255* ObstructiveBureaucrat: There's an optimum number of civil servants you need to run your country. Any more than that and all they do is draw a paycheck.
256** Conversely, if you don't have enough bureaucrats, your civil service will quickly descend into [[BeleagueredBureaucrat chaos]] and your country will suffer as a result. Passing social reforms requires a larger bureaucracy to keep the government running properly.
257* OffTheChart: A bug in the third game causes particularly dramatic gains and losses to exceed the boundaries of the game's line charts. This was noticed, but deemed amusing and [[AscendedGlitch left in]].
258* OldSaveBonus:
259** You can import games from the ''VideoGame/EuropaUniversalis'' series. You can export them to ''VideoGame/HeartsOfIron 2''. Considering ''VideoGame/CrusaderKings'' has an export feature to ''Europa Universalis II'', you could in theory pilot the same faction from 1066 (or even 769) all the way through 1964 via the four games, a true feat of Paradox fanboyism.
260** At least one person has [[http://lparchive.org/Paradox-Hohenzollern/ actually done so]], leading to a world that's...''quite'' different from our own by 1836 - for one, the Spanish Reconquista failed, France never united from feudal fragmentation, and America was first discovered and colonized by Muslims; taking the place of real-world Mexico is the Islamic Republic of Mazula - and that's one of the ''smallest'' changes. [[http://www.shardsofdalaya.com/images/germany_lp/ending/world-1946.png Here's]] the state of the world in 1946 (at the end of an enormous war) as a result of the events of this playthrough.
261** ''Vicky II'' is similarly the third step in a chain from ''Crusader Kings II'' to ''Europa Universalis IV'' to ''Hearts of Iron III'' or ''IV'' (either works).
262* OneNationUnderCopyright: One of the most famous examples, the Honourable East India Company, is playable in ''Revolutions'' expansion of the original game and also in ''3'' (as is the Hudson Bay Company over in North America).
263* OverratedAndUnderleveled: EIC in ''3'' is poised to be the ultimate ruler of India; at the same time, it is a technological backwater with a political situation that's straight out of [[{{Qurac}} a sultanate somewhere in Central Asia]] - and not much can be done to improve either of those (like importing know-how from the British Isles or imposing harsh laws and then enforcing them at gunpoint, as it did in real life). The result is a PaperTiger that gets woefully underpowered within the first two-three decades of gameplay. It is really saying when ''Panjab'' is in a position to beat the crap out of the East India Company without any issues, while in previous two games defending against British presence was a popular challenge for people playing as Panjab. For better or worse, it can't truly fall, either, like it did after the Sepoy Rebellion, leaving a [[VestigialEmpire rump state covering most of India and a puppet directly under British control]] from the 1860s onward. However, in a player's hands, the EIC can gain independence rather easily and with earlier preparations, become "[[InNameOnly Bengal]]", which covers most (if not the whole) of the subcontinent.
264* PaperTiger:
265** China before becoming civilized nation. In the first game, it goes a step further: AI is deliberately scripted to do stupid or inefficient things, like making 90% of its armed forces out of irregulars and ignore support brigades, despite nothing else really stopping it from building actual infantry with some artillery.
266** Any larger "unrecognised" country from ''3'' usually starts with entire hordes of soldiers. Except those are irregulars, who don't even need firearms to train them and don't have any artillery support. They can be readily handled by a tiny expedition of any European power with just line infantry and a few token guns, not to mention more modern firepower and tactics.
267** Also from ''3'', the Netherlands is this as it is heavily reliant on its dominion the Dutch East Indies for its status as a Major Power. Remove the DEI, and the Netherlands easily fades away into irrelevance.
268** East India Company in ''3'' and any mod that featured it for the first two games is a complete pushover that still controls 2/3 of India directly and rest as subjects at the game start and can field endless hordes of poorly-equipped troops, while each year getting more and more behind the curve. Furthermore, a large chunk of Great Britain's power comes from the fact that they control EIC as their subject, which can cause a domino effect if EIC is taken down. ''3'' takes it a step further, because it has a scripted event that simulates UsefulNotes/IndianRebellion, and even if EIC survives (which isn't a guaranteed thing to begin with), the most likely outcome is the dissolution of the Company and [[BalkaniseMe releasing all the Indian states and entities]].
269* PragmaticVillainy: The Industrialist Interest Group from ''3'' tend toward this. They tend to favor limited social reform because it ultimately makes them more money. They'd rather have per-capita taxes than land tax even if it means they'd pay a little more, they'd rather implement Poor Laws to get the poor limited relief than just let them die faster, and serfdom and migration controls get in the way of people moving up to wage labor. Just don't try to ban child labor, implement public healthcare for the people, or tax their profits, because then they'll have a bone to pick with you.
270* PretextForWar: The casus belli system functions like this. ''A House Divided'' expands the system so you can manufacture them, your ability to do so depending on how free your press is.
271* PrisonersDilemma: The first, second and last reason why the global economy suffers a complete meltdown by the tail end of the 19th century in ''II''. To prevent the infamous liquidity crisis, all the bigger countries must keep a minimal surplus of their income, spending everything else and lowering taxes accordingly, to be just barely in the green. AI doesn't understand it and will ''always'' seek to maximise profit for utterly useless money reserves, in the process draining its own population for no real reason other than making even more money, decreasing POP consumption, generating militancy due to inability to fulfill even basic needs and the absurd taxes, cause excessive immigration and removing money from the market. Multiply this by 30+ countries and it's a matter of ''when'', not ''if'' the global economy will eventually collapse. Of course, on paper, a country having huge budget surplus is great and desirable thing. One of the [[ObviousRulePatch changes introduced]] in ''III'' was to rework how budget reserves even operate, rendering further taxing pointless, as there is no way to amass any more cash.
272* PublicDomainSoundtrack: The entirety of the original game's soundtrack was classical music from the era. Averted in the sequel, which has original music composed by Paradox's in-house composer, Andreas Waldetoft.
273* PuppetState: Satellites (civilized) and Dominions (uncivilized), using the same mechanic as in most PI games. As of ''Heart of Darkness'', the AI tends to release these more often and become more efficient rather than remaining monolithic and bureaucratically choked.
274** ''III'' introduces a puppet state for any Great Power who has the required number of German states (either directly held or as subjects): [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confederation_of_the_Rhine the Confederation of the Rhine]]. Once formed, no other power may form Germany. As such, any Great Power who intends to muddle the waters in continental Europe will seek to create this puppet, while Prussia and Austria has a vested interest in destroying it should it exist.
275* {{Pun}}:
276** The Dye Works Accident event in the second game, which has two options: "They shall not have dyed in vain!" and "We shall all dye sooner or later." ''III'' also had a similar event and puns.
277** There's also the "Mummy Found!" event (involving Egyptology), the response to which is "Orphans Rejoice!"
278* {{Realpolitik}}: In ''3'', after you have joined a side during a diplomatic play with your ally promising you a reward, if the opposing side doesn't have any war goals targeting you or your subjects, it is possible to capitulate immediately when war breaks out, thus screwing your ally ''and'' keeping your reward. This can also happen to the player, although the AI tends to at least send a token force and/or fight for some time.
279* RealTimeWithPause: As is the standard for grand strategy games developed by ''Creator/ParadoxInteractive'', all three games in the ''Victoria'' franchise use this kind of system.
280* RedScare: If you turn Communist, expect everyone to hate you. TruthInTelevision, of course.
281** With good reason: as of ''A House Divided'', Communist nations immediately get a permanent "Spread the Revolution" casus belli on all their neighbours. Well, their non-great power neighbors.
282* RefiningResources: Factories (and Artisan [=POPs=] in the sequel) turn raw materials into finished products. For example, cotton is spun into fabric, and then combined with dyes to make clothing, which is then bought by citizens or used by the military for uniforms.
283* RelationshipValues: Two different scales. One, Relations, measures a country's government's of another's, which translates to easier alliance and military access deals. The second, Opinion, is available only for Great Powers, and measures how much influence they have over a smaller nation's government.
284* 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 (any Great Power) to recognize them as a peer.
285* RiskStyleMap: The game has over 2000 provinces, where people live, resource-gathering operations are run, and armies are stationed. These are grouped into states, where national foci are set and factories are located.
286* RiverOfInsanity: There are event chains that simulate expeditions up the Nile, Amazon, and so on. More often than not, they disappear without a trace...
287* RoyalMess: When playing as a monarchy, in-game text boxes address the player as "King". Even if you're playing as a not-Kingdom like Austria or the Duchy of Baden, or if you're the [[UsefulNotes/QueenVictoria United Kingdom]].
288* RPGElements: Military leaders have "backgrounds" and "personalities" which have positive or negative effects on the units they lead. ''A House Divided'' introduced the idea of leader prestige: the positive effects of leader traits increase with prestige.
289* SaveScumming:
290** The innovation system from ''III'' encourages it to almost absurd proportions. Any tech that was researched anywhere on the planet that you still don't have yourself can be advanced passively by the simple spread of the technology. However, the specific tech is picked at random each time the last innovation is finished. When you're a complete backwater, it makes a huge difference if you're passively gaining extra points to mastering the construction of railroads or maybe getting not one, but two military technologies at once, rather than, say, how to make baking soda or perhaps build paddle steamers (especially when your country is landlocked). And each reload will make a re-roll on what technology will be picked for the next innovation spread.
291** To a lesser degree, doing the same in ''II'' upon the last day of the month meant a re-roll on chance to unlock an innovation (a sort of bonus unlocked by researching main tech), where it was often easier to keep reloading for half an hour until it "clicks", rather than wait for the game to ''finally'' unlock furniture factories for you or grant your military breech-loaders, which you technically researched 30 years earlier.
292* ScareChord: The sound that accompanies the message that someone has declared war on you.
293* SchizoTech: Depending on your research focus in Victoria II, it's possible to have such combinations as dreadnought battleships powered by water wheels.
294* ShoutOut: Tons, mostly in event texts, especially the "You have lost X amount of X resources" random events. After getting these dire news the "accept" option is usually a witty remark, for instance, for cotton it is [[Film/GoneWithTheWind "Frankly, I don't give a damn!"]] and for Precious Metals it's [[Film/TheLordOfTheRings "My precioussss!"]]
295** In Vicky 2, one of the in-game events that happen if New England achieves independence is the foundation of the [[Creator/HPLovecraft Miskatonic University]].
296** Also in the sequel, the existence of the Manhattan Commune as a possible nation is a reference to ''Literature/TheDifferenceEngine''.
297** [[invoked]] One of ''Victoria 2'''s election events is on immigration, with one possible choice being [[MemeticMutation "Immigrants? In 'my' <province>?"]] Doubly hilarious if it happens to the island of Victoria.
298** Getting a surplus of goods also leads to references, such as the event for cotton: [[Music/CreedenceClearwaterRevival "In Them Old Cotton Fields", with one choice being "Rock me in my cradle!"]]
299** You might just have a ship sunk by a [[Literature/TwentyThousandLeaguesUnderTheSea certain submarine]].
300** One of the news stories added in ''Heart of Darkness'' references the Spanish language short story "A Letter to God".
301** Another news stories makes reference to Mass Effect 3's ending controversy by using Sherlock Holmes. The article states that new ending for Sherlock Holmes will provide "additional clarity and closure".
302*** This pulls double-duty as a reference to the actual Sherlock Holmes franchise, as Conan Doyle's first attempt to end it ("The Final Problem") was... not well-received itself.
303** The flag for a fascist Siebenbürgen (a releasable minor state that starts out as part of Austria-Hungary) has a vampire bat as the central device. Siebenbürgen is better known in English as Transylvania, home of the fictional Count Literature/{{Dracula}}.
304** Yet another news story references Adam West's Batman with crime-fighting action by a masked vigilante calling himself 'The Catman', repelling sharks as he goes.
305** The name of the Manchurian Anarcho-Liberal party is [[Literature/TheManchurianCandidate A Very Unlikely Candidate]].
306** The Icelandic Anarcho-Liberal party is a shout out to the existing [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Best_Party Best Party]], a joke party, that after the wake of Iceland's financial crisis, managed to win a plurality on the (Iceland's capital) Reykjavík City Council as well as getting their candidate elected as Reykjavík's mayor.
307** In ''3'', if Karl Marx ends up being born in Estonia, his name will be changed to "[[VideoGame/DiscoElysium Kras Mazov]]".
308** An event after passing prohibition in ''3'' titled [[https://i.redd.it/o44zpyw4prsa1.jpg "The Best Damn Pet Shop in Town"]] concerns a "pet shop" attracting a suspicious amount of noise and furore late at night. The concept, title and flavour text are all lifted directly from ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons'' episode ''[[{{Recap/TheSimpsonsS8E18HomerVsTheEighteenth Amendment}} Homer vs The Eighteenth Amendment]]''.
309** 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!]]"
310* SoLastSeason:
311** All preceding military developments become pretty much irrelevant with the [[GatlingGood invention of the machine gun]]. Then the machine gun itself becomes outdated with [[TankGoodness introduction of tanks]].
312** For naval combat, that would be introduction of destroyers. They are stronger, faster and more durable than anything up until that point and by such huge margain, any ship prior to those becomes instantly obsolete.
313** ''3'' (finally) adds it to production. Each and every new way of producing something is strictly superior to the previous one, even if it might require additional input. It also extends to specific case of the synthetic dye factory - a mid-level one will produce more dye than all the plantations ''in the game'' were growing so far.
314* StartingUnits: Both in the original and ''II'', there are several countries that start with units they don't yet possess the necessary technologies to recruit. Examples include nations that start with Engineer or Guard units, even though both are locked behind techs that no country has researched at the start (and in fact it's impossible to even ''begin'' researching the necessary technology for Guards until ''14 years'' after the game's 1836 start date). There are also a few uncivilized nations that start in possession of regular Infantry units despite lacking the reform that enables them, or even Artillery units despite the fact that uncivilized nations can never recruit them ''period''.
315* StupidEvil:
316** Out of the ideologies that seek to impose some form of dictatorship, the Anarcho-Liberals tend to be the least practical, especially if you're playing as a less-industrialized country short on capitalists, since the economic policies will seriously hinder industrialization. If you wish to attract immigrants, their attempts to reverse your political reforms and establish a dictator will also hinder immigrant attraction.
317** In ''3'', the Landowners Interest Group are (by default) obstinately power-hungry, short-sighted {{Upper Class Twit}}s who will do their best to obstruct any and all reforms, even those needed to keep the country functional. Next to them are Petit Bourgeois, who, while they are barely qualified to be called middle class in the first place, they also refuse to support any relief or public support laws.
318* SurprisinglyRealisticOutcome: [[https://www.reddit.com/r/badeconomics/comments/em3l26/victoria_2s_flawed_economic_model_and_the_good/ This post]] from [=r/BadEconomics=] analyzes the economic model that ''Victoria II'' uses, specifically how it is designed to ensnare players in the sort of bad economic decision-making that, in real life, led to TheGreatDepression. In short, playing it like one normally would a strategy game of this sort -- namely, seeking to always run a surplus of gold and resources -- will lead to a liquidity trap where the government, through high taxation and low spending, is taking money out of the economy and letting it do nothing in a vault. Sure enough, the endgame in the 1920s and '30s is often characterized by economic crises. Ironically, the first game ''did not'' have this kind of problem, as with technological progress, the upkeep of various things was increasing, so the money was spend automatically, rather than being amassed, while the player was forced to keep finding new sources of income, or being forced to cut down significantly on military or colonial ventures.
319* 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.
320* TankGoodness: These start appearing towards the tail end of the game. The first game and the release version of ''2'' called them "[[Creator/HarryTurtledove barrels]]", ''2'' as of "Heart of Darkness" and ''3'' just call them tanks.
321* TechTree:
322** In the first game, research was split into several lists and categories, which were still interconnected without the actual tree, despite still functionally working like one.
323** ''3'' changes this to a more literal tree, where one tech directly leads to another, but the three trees are completely separated from each other.
324** ''2'' averted the trope completely, having just a tech list, with each list being separate from the others. Although the inventions that come along with certain technologies may require additional technologies from different lists to be unlocked, such as some of the inventions that enable further colonization, and thus take on a more tree-like progression in practice.
325* ThemeNaming: In 3, all of the alternate names for the United States follow the pattern of "United [something starting with an S] of America" and thus can all be abbreviated "USA".[[note]]The country's "base" name "America" doesn't follow the pattern, though this will only normally be seen in-game in very rare circumstances where the USA is completely conquered and then re-formed.[[/note]]
326** United States of America (Presidential or Parliamentary Republic)
327** United Sovereign Archduchy (Monarchy)
328** United Synods of America (Theocracy)
329** United Syndicates of America (Council Republic)
330** United Senators of America (when the USA's only controlled state is the District of Columbia)
331** United State of America (when the USA controls only one state not counting the District of Columbia)
332* TurnedAgainstTheirMasters: Any subject country can attempt to gain their freedom, either when they believe they are capable of defeating their overlord or when the situation is so dire that they will perish if they do not fight back, making it [[TheLastDance their last dance]] if they fail.
333* TutorialFailure: The first two games infamously lacked ''any'' tutorial whatsoever, despite being some of the more complex games from Paradox, requiring players to either rely on TrialAndErrorGameplay or read the fan-maintained wikias (which had to be first filled with the results of said trial-and-error). Meanwhile ''III'' is a more traditional example of the trope, as its tutorial does a very poor job at explaining the gameplay mechanics beyond the bare basics and a tour through the UI.
334* UnitedEurope: A difficult but achievable goal for advanced players. To at least become the absolute dominant European power is very possible, in particular as someone like Germany.
335* UnitsNotToScale: Every game of the series is full of these. Considering that the primary view is a world map where entire countries or even continents are meant to visible all at once, anything smaller than a medium-sized lake wouldn't be possible to render at all if everything was kept to scale. As such, you end up with individual factories as large as whole cities, ships as wide as islands, and soldiers as tall as mountains.
336* UnwantedAssistance: Victoria 2 sees Belgium start the game in the United Kingdom's sphere of influence. This would be a great military advantage if there wasn't a [[ShownTheirWork world iron shortage coming on]], and the [=UK=] didn't have first pick of its sphere-members' iron.
337** Of course, if the UK WASN'T helping Belgium, it would be called "Southern Netherlands."
338* UselessUsefulSpell: As in other Paradox games, most naval technology is questionably useful, since ships cannot occupy provinces and Great Britain tends to dominate the sea for the majority of the game. [[NotCompletelyUseless It's worth taking the leftmost two techs in the tree, however;]] a large navy, even with poor combat stats, is still critical for colonization, and large flagships (especially Battleships and Dreadnoughts) can artificially bolster a nation's military score.
339* VestigialEmpire:
340** Supposed to happen to the Ottoman Empire, which is lagging behind in tech, has a huge number of releasable Balkan states, and suffers from having a huge non-accepted population of Arabs and Slavs. The game often averts this, however; sometimes the AI will play the country competently and avert its fall from Great Power status, and most of the time the empire's enemies could seemingly care less about releasing the Balkan states or annexing Middle Eastern territory (except perhaps for Greece's cores.) In ''III'', the trope becomes more prominent as if the Ottomans fail to push through enough reforms by 1856, they become an unrecognized power à la Qing China.
341** Austria is intended to gradually fall into a similar state. Unless it forms Greater Germany, Austria will usually lose most of its sphere members to the formations of Germany and Italy, prompting the Austro-Hungarian Compromise as a last-ditch attempt to preserve the country's integrity.
342** Italy is a curious case in hands of the AI. Upon formation (and it will happen time and again, unless human player actively try to counter it), Italy will be in the lower half of the Great Powers, gaining extra prestige for the effort and having the combined economy of the whole peninsula... but it will then instantly start to decay, for the AI will have no idea what to do now, nor being scripted to develop the country. It's perfectly possible for Italy to get booted out of Great Powers entirely within a mere decade and the only reason it stays a Secondary Power (so between 9th and 16th most powerful nations) is that all the unification movements in Europe decreasing the number of eligible countries.
343** In ''III'', the British East Indian Company can be downgraded to a British puppet, forcing them to give up their own puppets and significant autonomy.
344* VeteranUnit: In ''I'' and ''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.
345* VideoGameCaringPotential: It's entirely possible to build a democratic utopia where the rights of workers and minorities are protected. However, it's also [[EvilIsEasy much much MUCH easier]] to be an oppressive bastard, and the game generally [[DeliberateValuesDissonance rewards you for acting that way]]. See below.
346** For example, enforcing labour regulations such as limited work hours and safety standards make factories more expensive and will hurt your economy.
347* VideoGameCrueltyPotential: It's entirely possible to end the game with the world under the domination of a fascist dictatorship with institutionalized slavery.
348** Plus, it is almost impossible to play a great power without committing atrocities, colonial or otherwise. Drive Native Americans off their lands and set up mining operations? Yup! Forbid Africans from teaching in schools in their native tongue? Sure! Execute minorities for trying to oppose your foreign rule? Why not?
349** Do you have lots of weapons factories? Do you have gunpowder, ammunition, small arms, artillery, and the panoply of modern war churning out of your Arsenal of Whatever-ocracy? Is there world peace such that no one wants to spend money on your goods of death? Start a war, preferably between two Great Powers far away from where you are! Watch as your people grow rich and prosperous, and your tax coffers fill, as other states buy your weapons at outrageous prices to slaughter each other!
350* VideoGameDelegationPenalty: On paper inverted, but in practice often played straight, when it comes to economic policies in the ''Revolutions'' expansion and 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 or basic resources 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. And the fact that majority of civilised countries in ''II'' start with either Laissez-Faire or Interventionism parties as their only choice for the government causes all kinds and sorts of trouble to get that foundation started.
351* VideoGameHistoricalRevisionism: Due to the high level of detail present in the game, there are often mistakes made, sometimes for AcceptableBreaksFromReality reasons, sometimes because they can't be arsed to fix it (somewhere though, a modder will) most divisive tends to be the allocation of minority cultures and POP's.
352* ViolationOfCommonSense: In ''3'', one of the fastest way to abolish slavery as the USA is to... make slavery worse, by introducing debt slavery. This makes landowners, the group emulating plantation owners from the South, happy, which allows to sway them on other subjects, erode their power base in the government and then just force slavery away. All they will be able to do by then is try to block the legislation, rather than outright secession.
353* WarForFunAndProfit: One war cause lets the victor demand concessions from the loser. Plus, countries can actually create a military-industrial complex, which boosts army/navy/industrial research, but hampers both cultural and financial research.
354* WeAreStrugglingTogether: It's fully possible to have rebels rise up when their party is in power (Jacobins when the liberals are in charge, etc.), or when you have a system of government they want already (Jacobins when you have a democracy, Commies when you have a communist dictatorship, etc.). One particularly bad example is when you have a revolution only for the same rebels to rise again. Players agree this trope is likely the best explanation for why this happens.
355* WeHaveReserves: Played literally with the 'mobilization' option that lets you conscript a large amount of ordinary workers into your army, ostensibly as canon fodder since they aren't nearly as effective as regular soldiers.
356** The AI typically like to group soldiers into gigantic armies, which often times causes horrible attrition on long marches through territory that can't support so many soldiers at once. Combat also usually devolves into throwing huge amounts of armies into one battle trying to overwhelm the enemy. In fact, it's the only way uncivs even stand a ''chance'' against the Great Powers.
357** China in particular suffers this most of the game, as trying to fight the Great Powers results in your armies dying by the thousands just to kill hundreds of their guys.
358* WrongTurnAtAlbuquerque: The "botanical expedition to the colonies" events in the sequel have a fairly high chance of resulting in the party either disappearing or turning up again much later and worse for wear, as in real life. However, they don't check to see which province the expedition was sent to first, and generate a random destination. This leads to such situations as a character going to Canada and ending up in ''Morocco''.
359* YouRequireMoreVespeneGas: No less than 47 different resources. Basic types like iron, coal, wheat, and wool are all present, as well as more esoteric goods such as tea, opium, tanks, and luxury furniture. Raw materials such as coal or wheat are mined/harvested by worker [=POPs=] in provinces, and are either consumed ore refined into other goods. Some advanced goods, like Radios, Aeroplanes, and Tanks require a [[http://www.paradoxian.org/vickywiki/index.php/Production_Flow_Chart production chain]] that is pretty complex. Luckily you can buy all resources from the world market, assuming there is SOMEONE somewhere who is producing the stuff... though price fluctuations can make an import-heavy economy very vulnerable to shortages.
360** Different powers have different levels of priority for resources, and some resources repeatedly prove problematic. For starters, liquor is required for a variety of units and you can find yourself in dire shortage of it. Cue ''the British Empire'' not being able to build artillery regiments because they can't get any liquor.
361** Also an economic powerhouse for any economic policy capable of choosing its factory type rather than leaving it up for the AI to decide since anyone making these low priority but high demand goods will earn absurd amounts of money for them due to their demand.
362** Some major mods add even more resources, namely the Modern Era Mod.
363* XanatosSpeedChess: The Diplomatic Play system from ''Victoria 3'' can involve unexpected third party on either side. This allows to completely shift priorities of the brewing conflict, fulfilling completely different goals than originally intended (like gaining a new protectorate or getting an important treaty port, or even going as far as abolishing slavery in the US as an accessory to some minor skirmish they had with natives).

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