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[Majestic7]

Depends on who you are playing. Maintaining standing army is very expensive in MM, you are supposed to disband large armies when you don't need them. (Since that is how it was historically.) Normal stability in MM is 0, yes, not +3 like in vanilla. Positive stability means a prosperous time and +3 is a legendary golden age. There are lots of events tied to the stability score.

Oh and don't be afraid to mint money if you need it.

[Virex]

How many divisions should I keep around, roughly speaking? I'm playing as Yemen, having 2 divisions on Socrota and 2 on the main land, as well as a total of 4 ships. I could disband my transports probably, but I'm afraid that disbanding any of my land units will mean I won't be able to respond to revolutions.


Edit: Started a new game, again as Yemen. Got rid of my army and navy and sold Socotra to Adal (for 0 gold.... It was a liability and I don't know if I could've afforded keeping it around). I'm not entirely sure what to do now though. going for a merchant-based economy seems too dangerous, with all the stability hits and negative events that I'd get for reforming my policies and trying to get the nomads to settle has the same problem. On the other hand, Yemen is just too poor to rely on taxes alone. I'm only getting 20 gold a year right now...

[Stworca]

Are the +3 stability events in MM similiar to CK Deus Vault ones? I.E. mostly BAD? ("pay gold or lose a point of stability".. yes.. amazing)

The AI in CK is probably the worst one yet from Paradox. DOW are ridiculous. Armies march through the entire map to finally lose on some deserted land due to attrition. No king is able to hold his dominion for longer than fifty years. It's also too easy to "start", unless you're bordered with super-powerful Muslims.
Once you turn your one province village into a kingdom, the boring part of the game starts.

I question the person who talked about "game mechanics" to please tell me what does he mean? There are nearly none. The wiki for the game can be closed on five pages.

I DID like the heritage systems however and how technology was spreading.

It's the complete opposite of Victoria series. Plain and simple.

[Majestic7]

How many divisions should I keep around, roughly speaking? I'm playing as Yemen, having 2 divisions on Socrota and 2 on the main land, as well as a total of 4 ships. I could disband my transports probably, but I'm afraid that disbanding any of my land units will mean I won't be able to respond to revolutions.

Well, I've never played Yemen (though I once had a long game as Oman), but rebel size depends on the tax income of the province, IIRC. So if you have only poor provinces, they will spawn very few rebels, even if the trade value of the province is high. Since tax value portrays population etc. I imagine you could do with two infantry and one cavalry in one army. Maybe even just two infantry, since cavalry upkeep is higher. One cavalry might do too with a shock general, since Muslims get excellent cavalry. You can ship the army around with those transports, disband the ones you don't need. The rebels will take lots of attrition besieging your provinces anyway, since they are mostly desert. Do you plan to colonize eastern Africa or try to unite Arabia or what?

Stworca, did you play CK or CK: DV? It is much better with the expansion. Expansion adds more character mechanics and events, those are the best part of the game. Yes, the technology spread is fun, I wish other Paradox games worked like that too. Armies running all around Europe was definitely stupid, DV fixes that somewhat.

edit - Some +3 stability events require you to do something to upkeep the high stability, yes, since it is exceptional situation. It isn't always just money. However, there are lots of positive events that stem from high stability, like great persons appearing or bonus to tech research etc. Negative stability has some good aspects too; it increases colonists spawning. So for colonial nations it can be good to have the realm in constant state of internal strife under certain conditions, heh.

edit2- Heh, answering to your edit with my edit... You could try colonizing eastern Africa, barging into the Indian/Indonesian markets for spice trade (there are events favoring Muslims for that untill the Portuguese barge in), try to unite Arabia with fire and sword or something else and completely different. Reforming is painful in the short term, but pays off the long term. 

[Virex]

In vanilla I would usualy take most of eastern Africa early (Mutapa has some good gold mines) and then expand northwards, maybe with some vassals or annexations in India. In MM that doesn't seem to be an option because last time I tried to attack Ethopia the attrition was murdering my army so fast I was at 0 reserves for a decade after...


Also, wouldn't having only 1 cavalry unit mean you'd get a huge tax hit for relying too much on cavalry?


Also, eastern Africa is largely controlled by Mutapa and I think Swahili or Mozambique. Since they're both quite large and oversea from Yemen, I doubt I'd be able to take them on so easily.


Edit 3: Would getting rid of my least productive provinces to get the specialist trader bonus be worth it?

[Majestic7]

Well, taking over Mecca would grant you nice bonuses, though you might be targeted by the Mameluks then. Playing a small poor Arab realm is not exact an easy start, you know. I think spice trade would be the easiest way to make money. I don't remember/know what kind of sliders and values Yemen has, but I think Oman has pretty good mercantile setup at the start for getting rich from trade. That in turn will give the funds for colonial expansion or military ambitions. One way to beat those African tribals is to hoard money from trade, then hire a big bunch of mercs and use them as fodder in a colonial grabbing war. Just enough to get access to empty provinces to colonize.

Yes, the tax hit is nasty, but if you get most of your money from trade anyway, it might be worth it. I don't know, depends. Perhaps one infantry and one cavalry is the most cost-effective setup. Look out for ambitious neighbours, though. Remember that coastal provinces help in trading, so even worthless coastal provinces can be useful. Other than that... I don't know, experiment? Usually giving up cores is not a good thing, but if you can rake more money that way... Then you'll have casus belli ready for some land-grabbing.

[Virex]

I don't think attacking Hedjaz is an option, considering they're allied with the Mamelukes if I recall correctly. Colonization would require me to focus on getting Quest for the New World, since there's nothing revealed that isn't already occupied (unless you consider the current owners "natives" and colonization "liberal use of force"). Spice trade is an option. Would it be an idea to switch out one of my nations ideas for a more trade-centered idea? Last time I tried that, I got hit hard by destabilizing and money-sucking events (to the point where I had 300 gold in loans for a country that makes 20 gold a year).


I know a small poor Arab country isn't supposed to be easy, but I just didn't take into account that early expansion would be impossible (Yemen apparently doesn't have the manpower to beat a few savages with sticks...), because if you can conquer some parts of east Africa early, you can get quite a comfortable game going...

[Majestic7]

Hehe, there are lots of good reasons why the Arab realms didn't historically conquer large swathes of eastern Africa. It was easier to just trade with the locals, since projecting force over there with little manpower was very difficult. Yes, taking over Mecca requires you to be a vulture or take it as a long-term plan after getting money from somewhere. You could try preying on your small neighbours, but they have crappy provinces too. Changing ideas takes you to the crap chute, yes... so be sure it is worth it if you do it. Taking over the trade center on an island on the eastern African coast might be a good expansion step. (Zanzibar? Can't remember.) Owning a trade center gives nice benefits, at least after you core it. Remember that in MM, you can take over provinces without a peace treaty if your opponent is stubborn. It requires occupying the province for years and years (don't know what the mean time to happen is) and you get an event granting the ownership to you.

[Rakonas]

Not really. In the end, a gamer is left with a few more keywords to blurt out like "Council of Trent!" but is far from understanding the actual history. That comes from studying primary sources, the writings and other evidence left by people from that era. A game is just a game, and surrenders to fun gameplay 95% of the time.

You need to get someone interested in history first, before he is willing to even consider anything like that. All good teachers are those, who make the taught subject fun. That is what EUII did. Besides, you can hardly call studying primary sources something most people do, heh. Not even basic university-level history courses do that.

This, the majority of people don't really have access to things that make them interested in history. It's video games that have always given me an interest in history. Simply the ability to see things from the point of view of any one historical group, whether it be the Capet dynasty, the trading nation of Oman, industrializing America, and so forth is essential a great teacher of history. Playing Eu2, and even Eu3 to an extent, taught me about underlying trends and key events, like the protestant reformation, European contact, imperialism, and most importantly why all these things were done with how the leaders felt about the events unfolding.
On an unarguable note, Paradox games are the best teachers of geography there are.

[Ampersand]

I have to agree. It is because of EU3 and Magna Mundi that I now know and understand who Jan Hus and John Wycliffe were. They didn't have to teach me exactly, they merely gave me the keywords, to inform me that there was something that I didn't know, and this was enough to make me want to know.

This tactic is actually employed in many games; Mass Effect is one of them, though it includes an in game encyclopedia.

The Extra Credits show on The Escapist actually have a pretty good episode on this sort of thing, called Tangential Learning. This effect does not only work, it is actually fairly well researched.

The next step would be integrating URL links directly into a videogame like EU3 such that any time a keyword or name pops up, you can jump directly to Wikipedia and read about it at your leisure.

[sonerohi]

Stronghold 2 had something like that. When you viewed tutorials and hints and such, words would be bolded here and there, and investigation would lead to an in game dictionary, with vignettes and reference lists. I love M2TW because of how fun it is to try and mimic your real nation. I've spent eons studying different cultures and city states and such from feudal Europe in order to play my games thematically. EU3 and MM aren't my personal favorite, but they are definitely appreciated and they obviously work with us at least  .

[mainiac]

Vicky 2 is IMHO about one major change away from being balanced.  The economy is inherently imbalanced, meaning   that money tends to pool in rich pops and countries while large parts of the world suffer from inadequate liquidity (i.e. the depression of 1836.)  It's a very unstable situation and there are plenty of ways stability could have been introduced: currency exchange stabilization, a working finance system, flexible consumer demand or even just factories not buying inputs for sea-dumping (which would allow for comparative advantage to keep them profitable).  It seems to me like the team never consulted with an economist because then they would have realized that they were creating a very unstable equilibrium.

[Majestic7]

1.3 is much better in Vic2 than 1.2, but the economical balance is still screwed. I think it is due to three major factors. First, supply and demand doesn't work - for example, capitalists keep building canned food factories for some reason and ignore luxury clothes. Second, the purchase priorities are all wrong, population goes first. So if you have available X units of commodity Y and need a fraction of it to create a new military unit, the chances are the unit never gets built because your civilian population gets first pick on the market. Third, global buying order goes according to prestige, nothing else counts. That means a country with low prestige have to wait a loooong looooong time to buy, say, machine parts for a new factory, even if they are swimming in cash (and realistically could offer to pay 500% the normal price for those parts in this situation). The second and third thing are especially what keeps poor countries poor.

[Mr.Person]

Vicky 2 is IMHO about one major change away from being balanced.  The economy is inherently imbalanced, meaning   that money tends to pool in rich pops and countries while large parts of the world suffer from inadequate liquidity (i.e. the depression of 1836.)  It's a very unstable situation and there are plenty of ways stability could have been introduced: currency exchange stabilization, a working finance system, flexible consumer demand or even just factories not buying inputs for sea-dumping (which would allow for comparative advantage to keep them profitable).  It seems to me like the team never consulted with an economist because then they would have realized that they were creating a very unstable equilibrium.

I'm not trying to defend Paradox here, but I'm pretty sure that was all by design. Majestic7's problems sound more like bugs. The issues you point out all seem intentional. I mean, think about it. It's simulating the world of the 19th and early 20th centuries. The economies of those days were absurdly unstable and fairly limited in nature. It sounds like the got it about right if you ask me.

Now, that being said, it might not make for a good game. If that's the case, then yes, Paradox probably should of done a better job. I'm just saying that if Paradox is very in-depthly simulating a shitty economic system, you can't turn around and berate them when the economies of the world are shit.

[Brons]

You're right but it's by design but the design just sucks. Also, it's not very historical. Another problem is that prices are skewy and don't work like they should. Prices fluctuate inside a certain bandwidth. This means that a product with 10 times more supply than demand might still be profitable because there is a minimum price, not driving out producers. Also, pops don't look at the price at all when buying stuff. They just look if they can afford it, not if it's reasonable. So instead of not buying meat because it's crazy expensive (while wheat is cheap) they just buy it at every price, as long as they have the money. It's like if pizza's are $5000 a piece but you want one so you buy it anyway.

PI tried to build a 'free' market for goods but failed because they put in some severely limiting mechanisms. I'm not sure Victoria 2 can be fixed. Although I thought that about Victoria 1 too and they did a decent job.