Thread by @BretDevereaux

This week on the blog: More Victoria II! We're continuing our look at @PdxInteractive 's industrial revolution Grand Strategy game by asking how it handles war in the period and why - in a game about WWI - the best move is not to fight at all.

acoup.blog/2021/08/20/col…

This is the post in this series I've most wanted to write, because I think this is perhaps the best example of the promise of a simulation approach to historical gaming...and consequently, despite Vicky2's well established jank, the crowning triumph of Paradox design.

The genius here is that for all of the simplification and abstraction, the game systems do a good enough job of simulating both rising productivity and the rising destructiveness of war to create the same effect we view historically where after a point war doesn't 'pay.'

It also, I think, shows the brilliance of this particular implementation of the pop system, which does more to put a human face on the costs of war than I have seen done in perhaps any other major release commercial war game.