This week, we’re going to be looking in particular at how Victoria II treats what is arguably its central game system: economics and the industrial revolution.Īs before, the reason I chose Paradox’s series of titles is not to subject them to withering critique, but because I think they are a particularly rich area to discuss precisely because they are somewhat more historically aware than many similar games.

Readers will find a number of references here to our previous discussion of one of Paradox’s other games, Europa Universalis IV, but I think this discussion will be mostly readable without having to rush back and read (or reread) the previous posts that said much of what we discuss here will, I suspect, be more interesting if one has read the previous entries. This is the first post in a three-part series that will be examining the historical assumption of Paradox Interactive’s grand strategy computer game set in the 19th and early 20th century, Victoria II.