What Is Going On

I have been gorging myself on Victoria 2. I actually stayed up till like midnight playing the damn thing- I couldn't help it. It's compelling.

It's all about managing your people, unlike most map-painting Grand Strategy games. You have to make sure that your ethnic factions are all working together in harmony, and you can capably quash rebellions, and build factories, and you know, honestly, just look at the game if you like the time period. It's set from the Industrial Revolution to the Great War and it's wonderful.

I was playing as the Russian Empire and it's a huge pain to get my illiterate masses of peasants educated and getting them to actually be capable of industrializing because hooooly crap, there are so many of them. It's insane. I can raise something like three times as many armies as anybody that isn't Britain or maybe France, but I don't have any industrialization so I can't be a truly great Great Power. It's frustrating!

But I guess what can you do.

This isn't my empire, but this is the sort of thing you can do in the game.

For example: Imperial Russia (me) has claimed Florida and part of Japan in my game. It's beautiful.