Victoria II is a grand strategy game developed by the Swedish game company Paradox Development Studio and published by Paradox Interactive. It was announced on August 19, 2009, and released on August 13, 2010. It is a sequel to Victoria: An Empire Under the Sun.
Virtual Programming published the Mac OS X version of the game on September 17, 2010, which is available on the App Store. The game was localized for Russia by 1C Company and Snowball Studios.
Like its predecessor, Victoria II has the player control one of approximately 200 states of the world between 1836 and 1936. The player is in charge of a number of tools for managing the economy, science, domestic politics, diplomacy, army and navy. The main difference from other global strategies of Paradox Interactive is a significant emphasis on the details of internal processes occurring in the state, and the developed system of diplomacy available to the great powers. The game has many historical aspects to it, such as the ability to colonize places that, at the time, were not under the control of any European power, such as Sub-Saharan Africa, North and Western Canada, and parts of Asia. Additionally, the game possesses a multiplayer mode, in which up to 32 players can play simultaneously.
In 2021 Paradox announced a sequel, Victoria 3, which was released October 25, 2022.
Development
A sequel for Victoria: An Empire Under the Sun was announced on August 19, 2009 as part of GamesCon 2009. Johan Andersson, the lead programmer for Paradox Interactive at the time, talked about the changes in gameplay compared to the previous game and showed the first screenshots of the game, which showed a map of Europe and various interface elements.
Shortly after the announcement of the game, the head of Paradox Interactive Studios, Fredrik Wester, publicly stated that, due to the low sales of the first game, he did not believe in the success of Victoria 2, he voted for another project to be put in development, and that he was ready to shave his head should the game see a profit. On the contrary, Johan Andersson, the initiator of the project, was confident that the game would be successful, referring to the requests and votes by fans and the opinion of the development team. In the end, Andersson and Wester made a bet that, if Victoria 2 was successful, Wester would shave is head, and if it was not, he would have sole control over which game would release next. It was revealed in a German interview with Fredrik that 70,000 copies would need to be sold for Victoria II to be profitable. On June 17, 2010, when it became known that there would be many pre-orders giving the game good sales, Wester asked Jessica Chobot at IGN to shave his head and upload the pictures to Twitter.
The game was developed by a development team consisting of producer, designer and programmer Johan Andersson, project leader and programmer Thomas Johansson, designer and tester Christopher King, programmers Dan Lind, Fredrik Zetterman, Olof Björk, Henrik Vohraeus, Bjorn Johannessen, Sara Wendel-Ertqvist, artists Yunus Jakobsson, Fredrik Persson and composer Andreas Waldetoft. The development team covered the progress of development in their diaries, which were published to Paradox's official forum by Christopher King. Between November 2009 and June 2010, 29 numbered diaries and two bonus diaries were published.
A working beta version of Victoria II was demonstrated in June 2010 at the E3 show held in Los Angeles. The game was presented by the producer, Johan Andersson, who demonstrated the main gameplay and talked about innovations the game would bring. On August 10, 2010, a playable demo was released, allowing you to play as the United States.
Gameplay
Victoria II spans the globe from 1836 to 1936 with over 200 playable nations. Like its predecessor, Victoria II focuses on internal management, covering the industrialization and social/political changes in a country with 8 different government types. The game gives a lot of importance to the economy of a country by having a complex market system with over 50 types of goods and factories. While warfare is a component of the game it is not the primary focus as in other Paradox Interactive games such as the Hearts of Iron series.