Victoria II: The Great Power Great War Great Spam “Great” Walkthrough

Welcome to the best “Least Schizophrenic Campaign” screenshot generator to ever grace the gaming industry.

This guide is made for the purpose of walking you through what I like to call the “Great Power Great War Great Spam Campaign” (The GPGWGS Campaign, if you really feel like it), a sort of “template game” that can be replicated by almost all the starting GPs in the game, and even some potential outliers. These are campaigns that focus more on a relaxing feel (well, as relaxing as a game like this allows) due to their standardized and somewhat predictable nature.

I want to emphasize that I’m not an expert of any sort myself, a lot of this guide comes from ad hoc experience by repeatedly playing this game while gaining familiarity with it, and that’s my main focus here: to give other people some help in familiarizing with this game, I feel partially confident in saying that these template campaigns can help you gain at least some insight into the workings of Vicky 2.

This also means that you shouldn’t take the guide as some rigid playstyle you have to feel railroaded into emulating, you can certainly try and experiment further as you feel more comfortable during subsequent playthroughs. Again, this template serves the purpose of gaining familiarity or going for a “Great War and chill” campaign, nothing more.

These campaigns can also be seen as a springboard to jump into mods whenever you feel comfortable as this is a template born from the vanilla game. Yes, I like the vanilla game, and yes, I also like to suffer. Whatever mental ailment afflicts me is something I leave for you to speculate on, I don’t have the answer to that one.

I also admit that this guide will be basically useless to the true veterans that know every nook and cranny of this game’s code, particularily those who know the exploits and do the challenge runs (to whom I owe all of my respect btw), whichs means that this guide sits in the awkward position of being not exactly for true novices/beginners while also being unfit for the best of the best out there, this leaves those who feel a bit stuck or need a little push in understanding the game better. In that respect, I hope this guide works for you.

Most importantly, thank you in advance for reading this guide.

Before we begin, it’s important to establish which countries are applicable to this guide. This section, while explaining some technical details, is mostly for you to see which country you’d like to pick. Since this is a template campaign, a lot of the gameplay is going to feel similar regardless of candidate chosen, personally I feel like this is a scale from “no challenge” to “marginal challenge”.

The best country for this template game is Russia, and it’s not even close. With it’s MASSIVE amounts of pops, resources, and starting coastline, the Great Bear can be set to wake the ♥♥♥♥ up, win the scramble for Africa nearly unopposed, and then curbstomp the AI in the subsequent Great War Spam with its damn near endless brigades, while the industrial score overshadows even that of Germany.

“But it starts full of illiterate peasants!” I hear you say, and it’s true. Technically, Russia does have a technological handicap when compared to France and the UK, but that’s really its only drawback, one easily fixed by funding education and promoting clergymen with its unlimited money, while never once having to go below 100% funding for the entire campaign.

“But the lack of factories makes me look like some unwashed caveman!” I hear you protest, all green with envy at those technocratic, monopolistic, union-busting, child-maiming, mass-enslaving english factories, but don’t worry. You just hoard all that education, wait until around 1880, then spam factories with reckless abandon and watch the industrial score turn into a snowball. “German engineering”? Is that some kind of new russian factory we’re building?

Finally, as I previously mentioned, Russia has the most coastline, meaning the most available naval bases, which in turn means the most potential for the biggest ironclad fleet the world has ever seen, giving you access to somewhere around the park of 5K colonial points by the time you get “colonial negotiations”. The AI literally CANNOT compete for a single african territory after that, you might as well start thinking of Africa as The Continent of Russia. Or Russia 2. Or Russiafrica. Or Afrussia. Whichever sounds better to you.

The starting juggernaut of the game, it’s also a pretty obvious choice: its starting industrial base, great starting reforms, MASSIVE pops thanks to India, already ahead in naval tech, and a position so EXTREMELY easy to defend in the event of a war all serve to make this the comfy campaign. Now, you might have thought of me making a mistake when I said that Russia has the most coastline when, clearly, it’s the UK that has it, so what gives?

Sure, technically the UK has the most potential naval bases to build, but most of them will be in colonies, all of which are already eating away at its colonial points. Due to the game’s rules, these overseas bases cannot build the much needed Ironclads for the scramble for Africa, which means the production is at a bottleneck clearly surpassed by Russia and even the Ottomans (we’ll get to them later).

Despite that, the UK is still in an extremely advantageous position with its bits and pieces of the African coastline alongside the entirety of South Africa, at that point your only true contender is France. If you choose to not add any colonies to your starting ones and only focus on Africa to make the most of your colonial points, you can also paint the continent almost completely red and then pull the epic prank of turning everyone british, like so:

I gather these in the same tier due to their similarities. They have similar amount of coastlines (viable for building ironclads, that is), similar sizes within Europe, and practically play the same, with only some exceptions and quirks belonging to each country.

France is evidently the best of the three, it starts in a position similar to the UK in terms of reforms, industrial base, and technology, the exception being the arrangement of starting positions in Africa. It does have less potential for colonial points, but you can still easily rival the UK’s claims and take most of the continent during the scramble if you play your setup correctly. I’ve seen the AI fumble the UK so badly that it didn’t have the tech for “colonial negotiations” in time and was left HORRENDOUSLY behind in its colonial game, so you might even get lucky in that regard.

Germany is the middle option due to its starting position, or rather, the fact that you actually have to form it with Prussia to begin with. It’s not a difficult process, but you do have a more limited coastline (that is, if you choose to not do the wacky “sphere Austria during the brother’s war” exploit), expect to mostly focus on eastern Africa during the scramble and then fight your way through there. It still is a very powerful nation with a lot of potential for the Great War Spam in the late game phase.

Spain, while having more available coastline, is the lesser of the three. It doesn’t have the technological edge nor much in the way of starting reforms, you also have the looming threat of carlist rebels, and a bit less pops to draw soldiers from. On top of that, you also have some colonial points taken away by your starting colonies. You do, however, have a starting foothold in Africa, and some powerful strategic positions from wich you can easily paint most of the continent in glorious Plvs Vltra yellow so you can teach everyone how to make some paella.

A shadow of its former Europa Universalis self, the “sick man of Europe” can still be quite the powerhouse when managed correctly, but you have to put in the effort. Although a starting Great Power, the empire is running on borrowed time due to its drawbacks: (sort of) limited pops, it’s a crisis magnet, has very low literacy, and it’s the worst of the GPs in terms of technology, so you also have a lot of catching up to do. To top it off, you don’t get the same access to events that hand out prestige like the UK, France, or Russia do, and being behind on industrialization means you are just a few years away from dropping out of the top 8 due to score differences with the other european nations.

However, the country does have two main advantages: a massive coastline, and a good position to also participate in the scramble for Africa. The main difference here is that you have to manage your wargoals with Egypt in order to broaden your presence in the continent, which will yield prestige, and then take advantage of those high population areas to further increase your military score. Your biggest struggle, though, will be the budget, as the ottomans don’t have the most productive RGOs due to terrain type and low pop constraints on core territory, which means you’ll need to save a lot to keep your naval bases up to date in order to maximize ironclad production when the time comes.

It goes without saying, but these drawbacks make the country quite fragile, you absolutely do NOT want to pick an unnecessary fight with any of the other GPs until the Great War Spam at the late game.

These aren’t among the starting top 8, but they can easily participate in this particular template game in their own ways. The “problem” with them is that they do need some extra work for them to reach their full potential: Scandinavia has to be formed, while Japan and China begin as uncivilized. It’s not that any of this is difficult to play with, you just have to navigate through their quirks.

Scandinavia is the easiest one here, and the best candidate for its unification is Sweden, which is easily achievable by spamming prestige tech, then immediately going all-in on sphereing Denmark. Once formed, the world is your oister as Scandinavia also has a massive coastline to maximize colonial points and also a starting colony in Africa to play through the scramble. Its only meaningful drawback is the sparse population, but this is remedied by the colonies you gain; it also helps that your high literacy (I believe it’s the highest starting literacy rate of the entire game) allows you to better prioritize other techs and optimize research along military and navy for optimal colonial play and IKEA factory spamming.

Japan comes after, being among the best starting uncivilized nations due to its high literacy, it really is just a matter of waiting to get sphered and then rush through the reforms. This is quite finicky, though, as the AI takes its sweet time to sphere you (I’m almost conviced this is a bias hardcoded against the player), and the reforms really upset the reactionaries so they might try a couple of annoyingly populous uprisings, which can derail your military a little bit. Due to the time it takes to westernize, you don’t really get to participate much in the scramble for Africa, but you do get to epically troll Russia with the Sakhalin wargoal.

China should be on top of the entire list, right? In the hands of the player, clicking “westernize” with the Qing Empire might as well cause the credits to begin rolling. It is the embodiment of MASSIVE: territory, RGO output, population, coastline, industrial potential, a military that can be best described as “printing soldiers”, really every aspect of the country is just poised to take the number 1 spot on the list. Unfortunately, it starts uncivilized, and with very low literacy at that. It takes a while to westernize even if you conquer Dai Nam and Korea, so you’ll have to enjoy just looking at the map while the research points pile up.

If you get lucky, you can westernize much more quickly through the “winds of westernization” event, this will drive the consciousness up, which will cause the Taiping rebellion, giving you a hefty amount of research points to civilize with. Even with this, you really don’t get much in the way of a colonial game, but you can spam Great Wars like nobody’s business, especially if Russia took the “ruler of the east” decision, giving you free wargoals.

Much like Germany and Scandinavia, Italy doesn’t start as a GP because it also needs to be formed. The standard way of forming Italy is kind of annoying because you have to fight Austria, basically ruling out all of the italian minors with the exception of Sardinia-Piedmont and Two Sicilies, which is why everyone prefers the Garibaldi’s Redshirts method and let the rebels take any of the minors (in the “revolution” sense, not the “epstein island” sense). This, in turn, rules out Two Sicilies because, even if you reach GP as Sicily, the unification event seems to be hardcoded to only fire on the northern italian minors (sicilianbros…when will the hate end…), which can leave you in the awkward position of having Italy constantly breathing down your neck for the rest of its cores. If you want to do Italy (in the gameplay sense, not the Tifa Lockhart sense), just take Sardinia-Piedmont.

It’s difficult to predict when the rebels will spawn, so it’s likely you’ll play the colonial game with limited points and, like Germany, mostly focus on the eastern parts of Africa until your potential unlocks at the unification of Italy, and then you gear up for the Great War Spam. Again, it’s not that there’s much difficulty here, it’s mostly about the quirks of this GP, so the most that can be said of Italy is that it’s kind of unreliable for this guide, but still applicable.

Obvious side-splitting, knee-slapping, masterfully creative joke aside, I leave the USA outside the other tiers mostly due to the way the game is coded. Yes, it is one of the GPs, can easily become the military and industrial hegemon, has double population layer due to its natural growth and the insane amount of immigration, and also has a massive coastline, so what’s the issue?

It mostly has to do with logistics. You can fight Great Wars with the USA, but you have to ferry your stacks accross the oceans. With the supply limits in mind, this means having multiple transport stacks alongside your fleet so you can be ready to sort of cycle them to help fight the inevitable dog-pile doomstack that the AI favors so much during those wars. It’s mostly up to you if you want to take chunks of Europe as the USA while dealing with the logistics of the issue.

Technically you can also participate in the scramble for Africa, but due to the game’s code, your pops will never move to the colonies in order to turn them into states. This is because pops will always favor moving to America or Oceania (something you can even see in the game’s immigration factors), so your pops are sort of hardcoded to remain in the homeland while the colonial ones just stay there, unchanging, never once tempted by Honest Abe’s “COME GET YOUR FREE RANCH” offer for the rest of the game. You can try and take colonies if you want but this would be mostly to get RGOs. Or maybe roleplay the Bush administration before its time, it’s up to you.

Since this guide focuses so much on colonial play and Great Wars, this is the one GP that is somewhat incompatible with. It’s not that you can’t apply it to the USA, it’s moreso the fact that this country feels designed to run counter to the european style of play the rest of the game offers.

After choosing your candidate, you need to keep in mind the structure of the game. I divide the campaign in two broad halves: The Scramble, and The Great War Spam. Obviously the game isn’t divided into those at the fifty year mark, with Great Wars being at the late game stage; this is mostly a way to visualize your objectives.

This half is all about the complete* domination of Africa, so you should thoroughly ignore european affairs (unless you’re going for one of the european formabble nations) and buckle down for early aggression. Most of the starting GPs already have more than enough troops to make this viable, and since you’re mostly dealing with uncivs in the area, you’re going to be fine.
*: variations may apply

I manage infamy accross these main targets for this stage: Egypt (mostly for Sinai), Morocco, Ethiopia, and Oman. All of these are great because they give you a LOT of places to expand simultaneously into Africa when the scramble begins. They also give you near total control if you’re playing either France or the UK due to their starting colonies in the area (it’s unmatched if you play Russia, though).

If you really want to, you can minmax infamy by reloading a save constantly when justifying wargoals to get your desired infamy values. I know that this isn’t a popular choice due to a percieved “spirit” of the gameplay the community has, but honestly so much of the RNG feels heavily biased against the player, so I don’t really blame anyone that tries this, it’s up to you.

My first move is always to grab Sinai from Egypt, this is because it’ll greatly facilitate logistics for further conquest, and also keeps the AI from its endless and annoying attempts to sphere that nation. The AI does this because it REALLY wants to build both of the canals (you can see this when you attempt to sphere Colombia as well) but the moment you possess Sinai, the AI will lose all interest in the area. If you’re playing the Ottomans, you can add Sinai whenever liberating your cores, just keep track of the other GPs relationship with Egypt to avoid annoying interventions.

During this early phase I fight with the classic 30 stack armies: 4 infantry brigades, 4 artillery brigades and 2 hussar brigades, the mighty all-rounder that completely melts all irregular unciv stacks. Be mindful of splitting them whenever needed as the early armies are VERY vulnerable to attrition, especially when walking through mountains and deserts.

Next stop is Morocco. If Spain has taken a piece of it, go straight for a conquest wargoal, what this does is give us further access to western Africa. I know that these aren’t popular areas because they have poor RGOs in sparsely populated provinces on top of being deserts, but these are taken mostly to contain the AI when colonization begins in full force. If Spain has left Morocco alone, you can try and get a concession before going for conquest, but keep in mind that Spain (or even other GPs) might take other pieces of the country during your truce.

In the meantime, and for most of this phase, we are going to print as much money as we can by taxing heavily and raising the tariffs, we’re going to invest all of those vickybux straight into naval bases while also keeping them up to date the moment their techs become available. These naval bases get exponentially more expensive with every level, so we’re going to need a lot of money, and then some more when building the ironclads. I know Joe Citizen and Jim Artisan are not very fond of this, but the game makes a lot of fuss about “rising nationalist sentiments”, so what could be more patriotic than giving most of your money to the guvmint for the glory of the nation? For King and Taxman!

Of course, you shouldn’t take the above to mean that you’re meant to tax high an raise the tariffs for the entire campaign. Feel free to play your economic preference but only until after you’re done with the scramble for Africa and the construction of your ironclad fleet.

In regards to technology, I ALWAYS open with Medicine, then follow up with Idealism by banking one year’s worth of research points and researching it the moment 1840 begins. This might not be “optimal” to some people, but I do this because (at least, in my personal ranking) pops are THE most important number in the game, it’s the number from which the rest of the numbers are affected, so having those early pop growth modifiers is helpful. It’s also nice to get all those attrition modifiers so that you don’t lose like a third or half an army after moving around anything that isn’t plains or farmlands.

By the way, we’re absolutely making use of the research points stockpiling feature for the entire campaign, so it’s best to always pay attention to the calendar and be ready to take the most important techs as soon as they become available. I already covered the opening research, so here are the priority techs from eacth tree for this phase:

ARMY TECH: Our main focus here is the Light Armament line with special care to take Machine Guns as soon as 1870 begins. Since we’re mostly dealing with uncivs in this phase, you can put less priority on army research, but by no means should you completely neglect it, I’m just highlighting the focus here.

NAVY TECH: The Naval Doctrine and Ship Construction lines are the top priority in navy research, it’s important to keep those up to date as they give access to the Level 3 naval base and the ironclad from which colonial points will be generated. A recommendation, but not exactly necessary, is to also mix in the Naval Engineering line to optimize ship construction and get your ironclads built faster; this is easily achieved by the UK thanks to the buffs from the Sea Power & Merchant Marine school, but not so much by France and Russia due to the massive 25% penalty to navy research from the Avantgarde Intelligentsia school, so it’s best to just research Naval Doctrine and Ship Construction with the latter two.

CULTURE TECH: The entire Philosophy line as they become available (except Analytic Philosophy, which we replace by researching Machine Guns), from the Political Thought line we aim for Nationalism & Imperalism. Not only does this keep our research points high, increase our national focus, and gets us the Mission to Civilize invention needed for colonization, it’ll also give us access to the Establish Protectorate CB which we’ll use for the next part of this phase.

COMMERCE TECH: No particular tech is mandatory from this research tree, but in between waiting for the priority techs from other trees, I like to interperse some from the Financial Institutions, Monetary System, and Market Functionality lines here because they increase tax efficiency and RGO output. These will help upgrade naval bases and ironclad construction.

INDUSTRIAL TECH: This was pretty much covered by opening with Medicine, which has the Anaphylaxis For Malaria invention needed for colonization, but I recommend keeping the Chemistry and Electricity line updated because this helps with the supply limit and also unlocks the Cracking invention necessary for Gas Attack later. My recommendations here are also updating the Power, Mechanization, and Infrastructure lines whenever possible as these help with RGO output, which also means more money for naval bases and ironclads.

For national focii in this phase I always encourage clergymen accross all the states until reaching the 4% mark for maximum research potential. I mean, you are a Great Power, aren’t you? Can’t teach the glories of western civilization if you yourself can’t read about them, right? Seriously, though, this is more of a personal choice, you can also encourage soldiers to keep your military score high (and intimidate the AI in the process) as needed, especially when playing the Ottomans.

I tend to wait for industrialization until around 1880 mostly because this unlocks the electric gear, at which point I go all in on monopolizing the electricity sector for maximum profits while also expanding and spamming as many factories as I can to truly snowball my production. Of course, this mostly applies to Russia, Spain, and the Ottoman Empire as they are the GPs lagging behind industrialization and the literacy needed for craftsmen and clerks, while France, the UK, and Prussia are already in possession of factories, so you can tinker with those if you feel like it.

With the opening aggression now ended, our downtime and infamy cooldown should be focused on building naval bases and keeping them up to date as the techs become available, whenever waiting for those you should also go down the Political Thought line in Culture research to prepare the Nationalism and Imperialism tech. Remember to intersperse Commerce and Industrial techs in between to bolster your savings for all things navy related.

Something to keep in mind when building naval bases is to keep an eye out for your timber use, your capitalists are complete morons incapable of considering proper RGO use and might like spamming and expanding their lumber factories a little too much, which means they might end up eating all of the available timber which will completely freeze your ability to expand pretty much any construction. If you notice that your naval bases have no timber available for expansion, close down the biggest lumber factory. Make sure to do it in time so you don’t lag behind on your ironclad building potential.

Stockpile your research points by 1849 so you can rush Nationalism and Imperialism the moment it becomes available. If you’re playing the Ottomans this might be trickier due to their literacy issues, ensure your have your navy up to date before going down that path, don’t worry if you get that tech a little later, the AI rarely takes an Ethiopian or an Oman protectorate (at least, in my experience).

After getting the Establish Protectorate CB, your next targets are Ethiopia and Oman to further expand your presence in the continent. In Ethiopia’s case, it’s likely that the nation takes a piece or two out of Egypt because you thoroughly smashed the egyptian army in taking Sinai (and the Ottomans do their part for their cores), so there is a slight possibility that they have 5 states instead of 4, thereby negating the Establish Protectorate condition, so keep an eye on them and prepare accordingly for a double war (one for a concession, the other for the protectorate) if necessary.

On the other hand, Oman begins with 5 states, and more often than not Portugal will take a bit of their coast so that you can easily just go for the protectorate by the 1850s. If this isn’t the case, be cautious that going for the double war might tempt the AI to take the Oman protectorate during the truce. It’s not a common occurence, but do watch out for the schizophrenic AI and keep that in mind.

This is where the logistics of Sinai come into play: you’re going to build a transport stack of 10 clippers in the Sharm al-Shaykh province since it’s the one that faces that side of the sea and will allow you to ferry your troops to attack Ethiopia and Oman without having to go all the way around the continent and risk your transports and armies in the process. This is done because we’ve already prioritized our research around the scramble rather than building the canals, so you might have to rely on this method of getting your troops down to those nations.

A trick here is to land your troops in the Suez province, take the transport fleet out of Sharm al-Shaykh and into the sea so that, from Suez, you order your troops to board the transport fleet. This avoids the attrition from going all the way to the desert province so that your stack arrives at full fighting strength. Here’s a graphical example (pardon the 10 trillion years in MS paint):

I can’t truly confirm if this is the case, but it seems advantageous to not build the Suez canal until after you’ve taken all the available colonies because I believe that opening the canal allows other nations (mostly Austria) to colonize the horn of Africa which can be annoying as you are already using colonial points to keep the attention of the other GPs in the area. I don’t know for certain if the Suez canal allows for the colonial range to be projected through it, so (at least, from what I’ve noticed) it’s best to delay building the canal.

That’s as much warmongering we’ll do for this phase, as this final stretch in research should be focused in making sure we have the navy tech up to date and have already researched Light Armament in the army tree so that we can confidently stockpile research on 1869. By this point, you should have your level 3 naval bases with ironclads unlocked. This might also get finicky because the RNG in this game really hates the player so I’ve seen ironclads being unlocked within the month of researching Iron Steamers on some campaings while sometimes taking YEARS to unlock on others, so watch out for that.

By this point you should have quite a lot of money in savings so that, the moment ironclads become available, you SPAM them until reaching your naval supply limit. However, this won’t be enough as the trade AI likes to buy the necessary materials for a single ironclad at a time, and we want those available as soon as possible. Since the best way to optimize this is to build them all at once, it’s best to go to the trade screen, disable AI trading and set to buy stockpile for these values:

• 21 Steamer Convoys
• 7 Artillery
• 11 Canned Food

(it’s 1 above the value of goods needed for an ironclad, a personal choice of mine just to be sure)

This will make the trade AI buy those goods until the stockpile fills, but since you are building a lot of ironclads the values will just reset, so it’ll keep buying them until all your ironclad orders are filled; this will tank your funds because you’ll buy A LOT of goods here which is why we needed all the money, but it doesn’t end there. The upkeep of the fleet is also going to get pretty expensive, so set the naval funding to its lowest available value (or as low as you can to avoid damage due to lack of goods) so that your savings endure the expense. This is mostly harder on the Ottomans due to their monetary constraints, just keep an eye on the budget and adjust accordingly; regardless, all of this gets solved as you get more pops from the scramble through colonies since their RGOs and taxes offset any potential monetary issues.

As your ironclads keep getting built, you’ll be ready to research Machine Guns by the time 1870 begins, it’s important to stockpile research during 1869 to ensure you’re the one who unlocks Colonial Negotiations first, giving you day 1 access to the colonization mechanic. Sure, you can wait until the neighbor bonus gives you that benefit if you want to go for Analytic Philosophy and keep your research up to date, but really, who should be the first candidate to become Africa’s benevolent overlord? The schizophrenic, incompetent, spaghetti-coded AI or the indomitable, gentlemanly, and civilized human spirit within the player? Well, yes, we mostly do this to avoid bordergore, but you get the idea. I hope.

After hitting Colonial Negotiations, set out to colonize immediately. If you’re playing Russia, you can absolutely go ham and indiscriminately take every single territory available to you for the glory of the Tsar and the Patriarch, but outside that nation I recommend playing something of a containment game with the AI because it has a simple-minded approach to the scramble.

The AI likes to go colonizing bit by bit and doesn’t like “carpet-colonizing” as much as you, the player, can. This is mostly because the AI wishes to have some colonial points in reserve to fight off any attempt by any of the other colonizing powers to take their territory, or likewise contest any territory already being colonized by another nation. This is what makes the AI vulnerable, because part of its attention is being kept on fighting potential colonizing rivals rather than taking more available territory. This gives you the ability to sort of “contain” the AI in certain areas.

While you can carpet-colonize many areas simultaneously, you should also try to keep some points in the bank to force the AI on to certain areas so that it focuses on whatever colonial dispute you have, all the while you keep taking more territory on the side and the ironclads keep feeding you more colonial points. You might have to concede some area to the AI, but by that time you should have covered enough of Africa to sort of “corral” it into a position you feel comfortable in giving away.

If a crisis fires, you should have enough military score (thanks to naval stacking from all those ironclads) to have the AI interested in either backing you or simply allowing you to immediately enforce your colonial demand to end the crisis, so it’s almost always a win-win scenario for you.

A brief side note on crises: avoid them like the plague in this phase. I feel like the feature needed some work to be made compelling because the crises are almost always firing over wargoals that are never worth the effort and that your stupid dumb allies incompetently give free war score over, and all for bits and pieces of prestige. Keep your focus on Africa, it’s a much better objective.

If you play your setup correctly, you can end up with an Africa that looks something like this:

With the canvas of Africa now painted to your heart’s content, this phase of the campaign is now reaching its final stretch. After 1870 I like to prioritize researching Electricity not just because of further pop growth buffs and better supply limits, but also because it unlocks the Electric Gear to ensure an almost complete monopoly of the most profitable goods in the game. For better results, keep the Power line of Industrial Tech updated to then unlock automobiles and airplanes as well.

In the lead up to the next half of the campaign, again, I recommend you also update your military tech as much as possible, especially to ensure you can get Gas Attack as soon as you are able. Other than that, this section is pretty much over as we wait for the 1890 notification informing us that Great Wars are enabled. Still, there are some optional tips and tricks with sphering that I’d like to share here.

With the exception of the Ottomans and Spain (due to distance and border constraints) you can practically prevent Germany and/or Italy from unifying by sphering some of their minor forming nations. France has the easiest time with Italy since the nation already holds a good chunk of the northern italian minor nations within its sphere and can actually get Two Sicilies in for good measure.

Due to the diplomatic modifiers that come from being sphere leader, you are very likely to be given military access by your spherelings and, therefore, be able to prevent any rebels from taking hold and forming Italy.

The same principle applies to Germany: if you sphere Schleswig-Holstein away from Prussia, it cannot form the North German Federation as the condition for its unification is to own pretty much the entirety of northern Germany within its sphere, and a single territory missing is enough to never get formed. France has a bit of a difficult time doing this alongside keeping the italian spherelings, but pretty much everyone else can do this, especially Scandinavia due border sharing with Schleswig-Holstein.

Expanding on this, you can further sabotage Prussia by just taking a state, this is best done with France if you manage to ally Russia. Go for the “the left bank” decision and declare war alongside Russia, utterly wreck Prussia together as Russia is also likely to demand a state from them. With that, Prussia is once again unable to form the NGF and successfully unite Germany.

These methods are not exactly 100% reliable, sometimes a german nation can get the “crown from the gutter” event, basically bypassing the entire formation process and spawning Germany, the same way Garibaldi’s Redshirts might take an italian sphereling from Austria and then form Italy, but this method is still pretty consistent in keeping both nations from forming for the longest stretches of time during a campaign. Wether you think this helps you by securing your place on the top 8 or you want them formed for further rivalries during the Great War Spam is up to you.

By 1890, Great Wars will unlock, and honestly this feature might just be the biggest reason to play vanilla vicky 2, it’s pretty much the main attraction. The “too many great power allies” diplomatic malus will disappear and every GP will quickly attempt to get more allies which will begin forming “factions”, and this is where the rest of the magic happens. At this point in the game, you might think that you just either wait for a crisis or justify whatever wargoal willy-nilly, and while you can do that, I think there’s a better way of achieving this.

The Great War Spam is all about looking into which GPs formed alliances, this is going to be the determining factor when selecting your target. Depending on who you decide to play, there are some considerations to make, not just regarding the AI’s alliances, but also the ones you have with other GPs.

As a consequence of your ironclad naval stacking, your military score is going to be pretty high (you should also capitalize on this by building as many army stacks as your soldier population allows), which will mean the AI REALLY wants to be your friend and you’ll likely recieve alliance offers left and right, this doesn’t mean you should take all of them as this can create problems that I’ll touch on later.

We absolutely need to have the highest military score not just to intimidate the AI, but also to ensure that we take leadership of our alliance whenever a Great War breaks out. NEVER ONCE UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCE participate as a secondary nation in ANY Great War as the AI is completely braindead and white-peaces out of any conflict whenever a random war score threshold tickled its fancy, which means that it will completely ignore almost all demands made by you, screwing you over and epically pranking your infamy investment. Even better, most of the time your allies are complete idiots who will gladly give away 50 war score from getting all of its forces killed, immediately capitulating even with your help. NEVER be a secondary participant, ALWAYS ensure you take FULL control of any Great War.

After ensuring your military might, the next part is triggering the war itself. I’ve seen some people in videos waiting around for a crisis to fire, but that’s not necessary. Sure, it saves you the infamy but you tend to run into the problem of the war goal that fires the crisis, which might get logistically difficult or even require a full-on death war so you can avoid the negative ticking war score. For almost any war, I’ll introduce you to the spammy power of: the Humilliate CB.

Outside “Release Puppet”, Humilliate is the cheapest CB in infamy value and among the faster ones to justify, it also revolves around battle so you don’t have the pressure of ticking warscore over a territorial claim, and you can minmax this further by selecting a political party with the Jingoism military policy for even faster justification. This is basically the hook that begins any Great War of your choosing without having to wait for a crisis to begin, so by now you’re hopefully starting to get why I call this the “Great War Spam” phase.

If you do this enough times, you might get a GP’s prestige so low that the Humilliate CB is no longer valid, at that point you can either switch target to whatever GP is in the alliance or you can switch to the backup CB, Dismantle Fortifications, it takes the same time to justify at just one point higher in infamy compared to Humilliate.

Take care to not blow your 25 infamy points in your first Great War, manage and space out your demands so that you can fit more Great Wars for further expansion as this is truly the “map painting” phase of the game. If you’re reaching 1936 by your last war, absolutely go insane with all sorts of demands just so you can go out with a bang, just watch out for the 100 point war score limit.

With all that said, I plan a Great War along three major considerations: my own alliance, target selection, and finally the war itself.

PLAYER ALLIANCE: As I previously stated, most of the other GPs are really after your approval due to your military score so you’re likely to get a lot of alliance offers. While your alliance will be determined largely by the nation you’re playing, it is MUCH more convenient if Japan or the USA are allied to you, and fortunately this seems to be quite a common occurrence.

We want those nations as allies because they are largely isolated and the vanilla AI is ABYSMAL at naval invasions, on top of that their AI can also keep its coastline well defended due to their mobilized stacks. Sure, they aren’t likely to help you directly, but what this does is give you damn near omnipotent control over the course of the war so that you don’t worry much about big brain AI plays such as schizoprenically marching stacks all over the place only to get all of them killed and handing the opposing side a fat 50% in war score due to battles, which of course your enemy will use to pile every demand under the sun.

If you happen to lose them as allies for whatever reason, you should choose allies who are closest to you so that you can better manage battles and help your allies whenever needed. Evidently, the biggest degree of flexibility is found among the european nations due to their proximity, but as China the US and Japan are also of great help.

TARGET SELECTION: Much like your alliance, you should look into the alliances formed by the AI so that you know what demands you plan on making, and this will also depend largely on the nation you’re playing.

To exemplify this, let’s say that you’re the UK and you’d like to take Java, which belongs to the dutch. Sure, you can justify for Place In The Sun, but why just one wargoal when you can demand a bunch more? In this hypothetical, we see that the Netherlands is under Germany’s sphere (which tends to happen), and then we notice that Germany is also allied to Russia.

What we do here is justify a Humilliate CB on Germany so that their entire alliance, including Netherlands, enters into the war. If you have, say, France as an ally, call them in and now we have a Great War. With that, you just cross your stacks into France to bolster their numbers and duke it out while also having the chance to either ask more from the dutch or just mess with Russia/Germany with some liberations or whatever else you feel like throwing in.

The point here is that you shouldn’t go straight to justify for your main goal, but rather to look into opportunities like the previous one to justify a Humilliate CB and start a Great War at will. Select your targets according to the alliances created by the AI and then work your way from there.

A final note on diplomacy here is to watch out for what I call the “stabilized campaign”, a condition in which the GPs will make alliances in a way that doesn’t allow for a Great War to happen. I’ve noticed that this occurs when you ally too many of the GPs at the same time, or when they attempt to keep good relations with you in order to try and be your ally.

In these cases you have to attempt some manipulation with your alliances, mostly breaking ones that you think will end up in an Alliance with other GPs in order to fulfill the conditions for a Great War, but I’ve also noticed that this isn’t 100% reliable, so you sometimes might end up in really boring end game content where nothing really happens outside of a crisis.

THE WAR ITSELF: After justifying a humilliation, DO NOT EVER DECLARE THE WAR BY CALLING ALL YOUR ALLIES AT THE SAME TIME. Sorry for opening this bit by shouting at you, but by this point you not only have your main GP allies, you’re likely to have some other smaller nations asking alliances from you either directly or through being a sphere leader, so never open with “call all allies” as it will allow the opposing side to get battle war score by defeating what are essentially jobber nations. Whenever declaring a war, do so by yourself, and then manually call in your other GP ally, do not ever call for unnecessary help.

With that out of the way, how do we go about actually fighting the war? Due to the mechanics of the game, it’s always a far better idea to fight defensively by baiting the AI with smaller stacks, especially whenever rough terrain (like hills, mountains, and river crossings) is available. This is because there are more defensive modifiers available compared to offensive ones; when on the offensive basically have your general’s stats to help, but when you’re defending you have:

• Entrenchment
• Terrain
• River Crossing (stacks with terrain)
• General’s stats

Most of those can be quite directly under your control, so it’s almost always a net positive to fight defensively; this doesn’t mean you can just rule out offensive strats, though. A personal favorite is to set up “kill zones” around plains/farmlands (thus denying the enemy as much defensive factors as possible) by leaving a province of such terrain type open, let the AI step into it and then entering into battle with large stacks surrounding the province. Do note that this might tempt the AI to send in a gigantic mobilization doomstack dog pile to help the battle, so always make sure to have available reinforcements to cycle in and out.

You’ll know you got into one of those dog-pile doomstacks when the battle results look something like this:

Regarding stacks, your technology should now allow you to field bigger armies, so I like to keep a front of 30 stacks as bait with other 60 stack heavy-hitters for support and as a main force. I like to compose those larger armies as such: 8 infantry brigades, 6 artillery brigades, 2 engineer brigades, 4 hussars; this composition not only is a bigger all-rounder, it also speeds up sieges because the AI really likes to spam its forts and you’ll need to occupy quickly to cover your territorial demands. Of course, you should replace the hussars with airplanes as they become available.

“But what about the tanks?” I hear you ask, all ready and eager to make Verdun look like a joke, but unfortunately this is a pipe dream. Sure, you can field tanks in the late game, but the AI is really disinterested in building the factories needed to support them, so more often than not you get a game with almost no tanks whatsoever, even your own capitalists are seemingly allergic to building them. Use them if available, but don’t count on making the Battle of Kursk happen before its time.

Make sure to win a couple of early battles to get positive war score so that you can immediately start making demands, that way you’re always putting on the pressure. Also ensure you have the means of fulfilling whatever demands you make so that you don’t get negative war score over time. If you start asking for colonies, mix in at least one demand for a state, this is because wargoals will cost much less under a Great War which also impacts their ticking war score value, states have a lot of it so that way you don’t have to wait for years to demand peace.

On that note, you should absolutely let your allied GP make whatever demands it feels like, their AI will shift to aggressively fulfill them and its likely that they’ll succeed with your help. We, however, do NOT do this out of the kindness of our heart, we do this to take sweet revenge on AI white-peacing habits and also take advantage of the situation: all AI demands also help the war score which comes at no expense to your infamy.

I make a lot of noise about the war score and here’s why: during a Great War the AI feels almost hardcoded to not concede a defeat until you reach 100%, so you should work to make that happen as quickly as possible, either with heavy demands or with the help of those by your allied GP. After doing so, prioritize your own wargoals as the AI is likely to demand things that go way beyond the 100 mark, then wiggle your middle finger at your allies after thoroughly ignoring their demands for maximum satisfaction. Apparently they happen to enjoy this, seeing as they still remain allied to you despite getting screwed over.

If you happen to be among the first to get Gas Attack, you should absolutely press your advantage as it is a massive buff to any attack you’re conducting, allowing you to melt enemy stacks with near impunity. Unfortunately, Gas Attack might be the biggest double-edged sword in the entire game because the RNG is most certainly working against you, so by the time the AI researches Military Directionism it is highly likely to get Gas Defense within weeks of fighting you (or sometimes because the AI fights each other).

Of course, the game hates you, so you’ll spend YEARS without seeing Gas Defense even if you get into further wars with the AI, or at least that’s been my experience accross my campaigns. The problem is that this makes fighting much tougher because if you don’t have Gas Defense, the AI is able to keep that hefty +3 attack on any battle while negating yours, which can hurt your stacks quite a lot. Even with the advantages that come with winning your Great Wars, this is still a pretty annoying thing to deal with. Maybe it’s my just punishment for constantly playing vanilla, you be the judge.

These are all the mechanical considerations whenever entering the Great War Spam, follow them through and you’ll likely get a game that reaches this level of madness:

I could end the guide right here, but I’ll add some individual tips and tricks for good measure.

• Sometimes certain alliances remain quite rigid even after losing a Great War, this can create a scenario in which you have a reliable target that you can bully constantly with great wars, leading to hilarious results. France and Russia have a tendency of becoming this kind of target.
• The previous can lead to someone dropping out of GP status, so keep that in mind as this can shift alliances and you’ll have to find a suitable target for future wars. This can be compounded further by rebellions and revolutions as they reset alliances, keep an eye on your potential targets after winning a war.
• If your enemy is the UK, preemptively securing the channel with a fleet is of vital importance as they won’t be able to reinforce anyone on the continent, effectively rendering them mostly useless, but watch for the colonies as they like keeping beefy stacks in them. Keep your naval tech up to date to further naval-stack with better ships to better cement this advantage and then name-call the nation with “perfidious Albion!”
• There’s a chance that AI Austria wins the brother’s war by taking a chunk off of Prussia, this can evolve into a situation in which the Admit Hegemony CB essentially becomes a free Great War depending on who they ally, see if you can take advantage of this if it happens.
• Try to stay within the infamy limit as much as possible, otherwise you’ll be denied alliances, and any crisis that fires will have the AI constantly stacking itself against you, which will completely invalidate Great Wars until you’re below 25 points. Go nuts only in your last war whenever you’re absolutely certain there won’t be enough time for another one.

• Any enemy that crosses through the channel is begging for you to trap them by plugging the area with a fleet. Bait them into a battle, allow as many stacks as they can to attack you(while you roll in reinforcements as well) and then trap them with a fleet. They won’t be able to retreat and your enemy will lose an insane amount of stacks in the process; this works wonders if France is among your enemies.
• Keep a fleet ready to block the Gibraltar Strait as well so that the AI focuses on trying to invade through the channel as much as possible rather than spreading through your colonial holdings.

• You can apply the previous cheese with the English Channel on the UK as well: get into a war with them, let them fully mobilize and then allow them to cross into Dunkirk. Reinforce the battle as necessary and, when you see no more stacks crossing, plug the channel with your fleet and watch as you erase somewhere between 50-75% of their brigades, making an invasion into Britain MUCH easier.
• If you don’t want to meddle with Prussia, let Germany form by giving Alsace-Lorraine to the AI, this gives you a free war goal to start a Great War with when the time comes, saving you the infamy.
• Spain can be a potential target if you let it get sphered by the UK or an asset if you sphere it yourself, it’s up to you.

• If France declares for Alsace-Lorraine before Great Wars are enabled, give it back as it becomes a free war goal to begin a Great War as well. The same goes for British Osthannover, and this compounds further if you notice France and the UK in an alliance, as it’s essentially two free Great Wars you can declare at will.
• Switzerland is absolutely unreliable as a sphereling as its likely to give military access to your enemies even if you’re the sphere leader, so keep the southern border defended just in case.

• Do not take the decision to abandon Finland as Sweden, I know it’s free prestige and allows for faster GP status, but youre giving away two free war goals with Russia by doing so, and these can be turned into Great Wars later.
• It’s better to stall the formation of Germany as much as possible by sphering Schleswig-Holstein because some of the Danish provinces you get are actually german cores as well, for which they can declare war when you may not be ready to fight them.

• If Russia goes for the “ruler of the east” decision, you’re given a free war goal which might get expanded to two if Russia wants your piece of Tomsk, which is extremely likely to happen. Let them take it, as these are two free war goals with Russia as well.
• Do not take both of your cores in the same Great War. Take one, add some demands, then leave the other so that your next Great War comes at no infamy expense.
• There is absolutely no reason for you to not run exclusively on 60 stack armies whenever playing China, it’s literally impossible to run out of soldiers with your military’s Infinite Soldier 3d-Printer, exploit this as much as possible.
• Watch out for the absolutely annoying boxer rebellions, leave stacks to patrol for them whenever they spawn. Unlike other rebels, they win by taking ANY province and holding on to it for 30 days, which is extremely possible for them because they spawn in INSANE numbers. If they win, they’ll reset your alliances and break your sphere, so guard yourself as much as possible.
• Do not take the japanese cores under russian possession, you’ll lose Japan as an ally if you do and you absolutely want to keep them around as they allow you free Great Wars while they automatically defend themselves. They don’t help you much, but come on, you have infinite soldiers, you cannot lose any war as China.

• Much like China, Russia likes to take your northern islands, which are free war goals for Great Wars in the future.
• Although the AI is really bad at naval invasions, keep an eye out for the main island’s southern provinces, they really like trying to land their forces there, keep some stacks in the area for defensive purposes.

Now that you have this knowledge you should be able to fully embrace the true form of the schizophrenia available to you in the vanilla game. Once again, I hope you found this guide useful, or at the very least entertaining in some respect.

Feel free to leave any feedback in the comments, I’ve been a pretty busy person lately but I’ll try my best to answer any questions you may have. That or you can also accuse me of being a lobotomite for getting any enjoyment out of playing vanilla, while speculating on the mental ailment that allowed for this guide to be made, I don’t mind.

Thank you very much for reading, and here’s another vanilla screencap for sticking around: