I humbly accept all of your accolades for my heroic service. Moreover, the very presentation of Paradox’s games as historical simulations as much as games both encourages players to think about them as exercises in history and also lends their theory of history tremendous persuasive power.įinally, I should note that, when I began this series with EU4, I noted that we would do VickyII next as, “I want to bully Paradox into green-lighting Victoria III.” Paradox almost immediately announced Victoria III so I want to note right away that I gracious accept Paradox’s surrender on this point and will happily take credit for ending the long drought of Victoria content.

Paradox games, by and large, arrive at their subject matter with a theory of the history behind them and that theory is then expressed in interesting ways through the game mechanics. This week, we’re going to be looking in particular at how Victoria II treats what is arguably its central game system: economics and the industrial revolution.Īs before, the reason I chose Paradox’s series of titles is not to subject them to withering critique, but because I think they are a particularly rich area to discuss precisely because they are somewhat more historically aware than many similar games. Readers will find a number of references here to our previous discussion of one of Paradox’s other games, Europa Universalis IV, but I think this discussion will be mostly readable without having to rush back and read (or reread) the previous posts that said much of what we discuss here will, I suspect, be more interesting if one has read the previous entries.

This is the first post in a three-part series that will be examining the historical assumption of Paradox Interactive’s grand strategy computer game set in the 19th and early 20th century, Victoria II.

Victoria 2 jacobin rebels