The Victoria Total War Discussion Thread

[Evillemon325]

In light of the sheer inevitability that CA will see reason and choose to make the most-popular-in-the-polls, most-interesting-and-varied-gameplay, and realize that people who legitimately want Medieval 3 right now, after 2 (or 3, counting NTW) sequels in a row to all be sad, strange people.

In light of the fact that VTW can, should, and will be the next total war we should probably have a thread up and running for years in advance.

Timeframe? Thinking multiple start dates of 1837, 1848, 1861, and 1871 that culminates in the great war which can end no later than 1921.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

[Aymer de Valence]

I will run outside naked and jump for joy in the street if Victoria Total War is announced as the next TW game! It really is the most logical route to go down, and your pictures summarise it perfectly.


The age of the greatest empires the world has ever seen, who would NOT want to see a VTW!?

[Evillemon325]

The age of the greatest empires the world has ever seen, who would NOT want to see a VTW!?

Sad, sad strange little people who are probably dead on the inside.

[Aide-de-camp]

The question is not would you like to see it, but how. If i am going to fight Crimean War by a force of a bigger battalion of 1500 men, spread in a tiny box, with absolutely no trenches, ditches, and similar sort of improvised cover, with improvised artillery that behaves in such an odd way and is almost completely useless and hard to control, with infantry that will be obsessed with straightforward charges and that will have multiple dozens of comebacks after being routed (which is fight, run back barely 100 meters in panic, then all of sudden, they come back from most unexpected direction) and creating complete and uncontrollable chaos in the battlefield - no thanks. If TW was a MP based game, with a rudimentary campaign, i would not have anything against a such a release, but since biggest portion of euphoria about TW comes from campaign map and factions and since price for such a pleasure is more then high these days - i demand AAA product.

[I WUB PUGS]

Would prefer that the game ends in 1910 or so. I do not think it at all possible that WW1 could be accurately represented in an TW game.

By all means CA, prove me wrong but you couldn't even get the 18th century right so I have no faith.

[Captain Jin]

To me it doesn't seem like a WWI type scenario should be so hard for them. I imagine trench warfare could be during the deployment phase you have trenches all over where you deploy your troops then with the use of artillery in certain spots of the large line you try to soften up the enemy and then cross no-man's land. At least for trench heavy areas. They just have to make it so that the game recognizes if you deploy into trenches and does so appropriately. I mean if Men of War can get it right then why can't Total War?

[Count von Orlok]

I will run outside naked and jump for joy in the street if Victoria Total War is announced as the next TW game! It really is the most logical route to go down, and your pictures summarise it perfectly.


The age of the greatest empires the world has ever seen, who would NOT want to see a VTW!?

I'll do exactly the same. My favorite age for TW game. Franco-Prussian ,Austro-Prussian, Crimean , colonial wars etc in TW game.
Start date: 1860 (after the unification of Italy) and just before austro-prussian war. Units with muskets and later rifles (advancing tech), ironclads all over the map and huge land battles (with ships bombardment ) etc

[Aide-de-camp]

I sometimes do not understand the way some players think. My favorite age is Napoleonic era. I absolutely love Borodino, Wagram, Friedland, Jena, Waterloo, Vitoria and other battles, and i have read books on the era, etc.

But i was not the least delighted when they announced NTW, knowing how poor Empire was at replicating the similar era, and i was even less delighted when i actually played the game and felt completely disappointed

So, are you really gonna be completely out of yourself for just seeing Victorian era in TW game, even if you are not going to actually play the era in game, cause it will look nothing alike.

[BigDogDavis]

FOTS had some of my favourite combat of any Total War game yet, so taking that and putting it on a global scale would be absolutely amazing.

[Aymer de Valence]

Yeah, the theme of Fall of the Samurai definitely makes it look like they are planning a VTW.

Like Count von Orlok has said, there were so many conflicts going on across the world at this time, plus the rise in technology. Think of the world in 1815, and the world again perhaps even 50 years later. So much had changed.

If CA decide to make a MTW3, I will be annoyed for sure, but not really really angry. VTW is the logical game to make next, and I think CA knows it

[BigDogDavis]

If I recall CA said they didn't plan on making a TW with a 3 in the title for a long time. So yeah, VTW seems like the next logical step. If would be glorious, just the thought of the entire world/close to the entire world being on the map is amazing.

[Mr Kriegtooth]

Victoria does sound like the logical progression, and what I'd like to play if I could

Only problems I see is that the later eras started having trench warfare and such. Seems like that'd be kinda hard to do without changing the entire game. But then again, maybe battles would function as "seiges" where when you meet another army on the field, you have time to start building defences in the mean time, and armies can pre-build them on the map too

That'd probably work for all the way up through World War One I think. I mean, Call of Warhammer has tanks, and I think theres some other mod with tanks in it...

World War II is the end though. Cant think of anyway to make a World War II Total War work properly, unless it was like, Total War in the turnbased game, and then Company of Heroes in battle, and thats just...kinda lame sounding to me

What would Total War do after a Victorian era? All I can think of is Ancient and Medieval Asia, and then remakes. If they arent gonna have a Medieval 3 or Rome 3, then its pretty much over

[BigDogDavis]

Since Rome 2 is adding multiple settlement capture points I could see that being easily translated into a VTW.

[Evillemon325]

Would prefer that the game ends in 1910 or so. I do not think it at all possible that WW1 could be accurately represented in an TW game.

By all means CA, prove me wrong but you couldn't even get the 18th century right so I have no faith.

Except that in the historical timeline (and technology seems to go by faster in Total War anyways) we had already developed bolt action rifles and maxim machine guns by the 1880's. We already had the tools for making WW1 style combat happen thirty years before the war actually happened. Since it Total War the player is at liberty to start wars when so they please, we would be seeing plenty of wars in-game that use WW1 technology anyways- ending the game just before when WW1 started historically is irrelevant.

But to cut out the historical climax of the Victorian/Edwardian era seems so utterly strange. World War 1 was the cataclysm that so abruptly and startingly changed the world radically from what it had been for the past 100 years. The concert of europe, since the time of napoleon, had seen a century of a generally stable balance of power in Europe (until the rise of Germany). It was the great war that ended all that, that brought colonialism into its sharp decline, sealed the fates of half of Europe's dynasties, and brought the world it's first socialist state. It absolutely cannot be a question in the case of a VTW, the great war must be its end, the natural and absolute climax. There is no other way it could or should be brought into total war.

The victory conditions in a normal total war are often quite dull; there is no real room for diplomacy. Just paint your faction around the map onto the regions nearest you. In Victoria Total War, diplomacy must be key. The top 8 powers with the highest prestige scores would be the games great powers, the other civilized nations would be minor powers. Attacking other powers, especially great ones, would be seen as a threat to the balance of power and incur very large diplomatic penalties with the other powers. One must work diligently to manage this if one seeks power in Europe; Bismarck was a genius in the uniting of Germany; if he simply tried to conquer and annex every piece of land in Germany straightforwardly he would have failed miserably. Therefore, unless one has matters of great importance to attend to in Europe, such as the Prussians in their uniting of Germany, the real early game will be in darkest Africa, the far Orient, or elsewhere across the seas. The 'lesser races' of the world may be conquered without much fear of retribution from your rivals... at first.

The game would thus naturally pace itself. It would need not arbitrarily hold back the best units from you when realistically there is no reason you should not be able to recruit them, because the vast changes in technology provide an organic, non artificial progression. Similarly in matters of war and peace the game is so naturally set forth given the time period, with no Realm divide conjured from mid air to give the player a challenge. The first third of the game would be spent priming your Empire, with vast swathes of land yet unclaimed and yet 'uncivilized'. The player takes his choices and goes far and wide to cherry pick from the best places in the world to put down his flag, prestige rises amongst the great powers. Republicanism is mainly suppressed but the Jacobins and nationalists will fight to tear the old regimes apart from the inside, and rebellions will be an issue.

Mid-Game, you, and your rivals, will come to put down their flag on a piece of land and find someone else's already their. The choice lands have been conquered, countries are not an infinite resource. The Empire building of the great powers begins to become a race, and pax europa begins to strain. A few flares, here and there, on that continent as in reality, but not inferno... as later. Technology further paces along, new nations arise, some of those nations that were once 'uncivilized' now throw off the colonial powers, such as Japan, and absolute European hegemony is called into question. A man named Marx publishes a book and radical parties begin to organize, underground, weak enough for now. But given a crisis, in say thirty years, the rotted frames of backwards Empires like Russia might have their structural integrity brought into question.

The late game. Europe is a powder keg, at this point. Nationalism and jingoism runs higher than ever before in the history of man kind; and our tools for killing yet more advanced than ever before. Similar to the shogun 2 meter for 'fame', VTW would measure 'tensions' as an aggregate score of all the great powers prestige scores. As it increases, random diplomatic effects begin to pop up; relationship hits, casus beli begin to be awarded, wars begin to appear more frequently in the more unstable areas of Europe, such as the Balkans. Sparks for the powder. The unclaimed lands and spheres of influence across the world have run out; what's left has your neighbors flag on it. Once the 'tensions' meter has reached its maximum by the late game, any war that is started with a great power on either side is named 'The Great War'. The interests of Europe of the nationalism of its peoples prohibits what might have been a simple punitory expedition from Austria against Serbia. Russia comes, then so does Germany, and France, then Britain. Pride and the lands of their rivals intice the Ottomans, Italians, and Americans, eventually.

The victory conditions for Victoria Total War should be entirely tied to prestige, diplomacy, and the great war, which defined the concert of Europe period. Thus, the Victor is the great power with the highest prestige score, on the Winning alliance. In the War itself, all military actions generate a far greater amount of prestige than at any other point in the game; the powers must be active. You must have the highest prestige in the winning alliance, not just win. While you could join in on a war against the decrepit Ottomans with whatever the other six great powers may be as a great war, your chances of winning the game might actually be lower since you must not only win but outperform your alliance members. The balance of power doctrine, so key a part of European policy during the period, would thus be accurately and naturally modeled.

[Evillemon325]

I'll do exactly the same. My favorite age for TW game. Franco-Prussian ,Austro-Prussian, Crimean , colonial wars etc in TW game.
Start date: 1860 (after the unification of Italy) and just before austro-prussian war. Units with muskets and later rifles (advancing tech), ironclads all over the map and huge land battles (with ships bombardment ) etc

Victoria Total War absolutely needs multiple start dates. People want to play the variety of interesting nations that appeared rather briefly in a full scale grand campaign, in the situations they were in, instead of having to spend 20 hours in a grand campaign trying to recreate a similar situation to play from. Or, they want to play late game technology such as machine guns and Aeroplanes without having to go through the early pseudonapoleonic combat phase of the game.

I would think that 1837, the start of the reign of Queen Victoria and an early point in the brief existence of the most important and greatest nation of the period, Texas, 1848, where all of Europe is on fire from revolution, and even where it is not it is close to happening, 1861, where Italy has finally been united and the civil war has just broken out in America, and 1871, where a unified Germany and Japan are now on the world stage and the final diplomatic period has begun would make admirable start dates in the base game.

[BigDogDavis]

I'm wondering whether or not Australia and New Zealand, and the Pacific Islands as a whole should be in the game.

[Evillemon325]

I'm wondering whether or not Australia and New Zealand, and the Pacific Islands as a whole should be in the game.

The answer is yes. Everything that's not antartica.

[BigDogDavis]

What if I wanted to genocide the penguins?

[Aymer de Valence]

I'm wondering whether or not Australia and New Zealand, and the Pacific Islands as a whole should be in the game.

They should be, the British had several conflicts with the Maori's, and British convicts were shipped to Australia

[BigDogDavis]

It'd be a nice touch, but I'd be worried that once you take out the Aborigines there'd be nothing to do.