Yesterday the latest offering from Paradox Interactive was released, the expansion for Victoria II known as A House Divided. As you may surmise from the name, the expansion’s centerpiece is the American Civil War (As a Brit all I can say is we had our Civil War before it was cool). So let’s get this out of the way immediately; the Civil War scenario entails a new starting date, which seems to be reasonably well put together, and just about nothing else. If you win as the CSA, there’s nothing much that makes them a unique nation. There are no events to, for example, remove the USA’s cores on your territory. So every few years they will take another swing at reabsorbing you.
It is strange that the expansion’s centerpiece would be its weakest element, but there it is. The scenario is anemic and underdeveloped, and doesn’t really add a great deal that you wouldn’t have in the normal starting point of 1836.
On the other hand, “Loads of Small but Great Improvements” wouldn’t make for a very snappy expansion title, now would it? But that’s what it contains. I played an entire game yesterday as Persia and it was the most fun I’ve had with Vicky 2 by a fair way. The new elements work extremely well. The new method for modernizing countries that don’t start out that way seems very arduous at first, but soon reveals itself to be a very well-judged mechanic that is a lot more involving than the previous system. Similarly the new way you generate Casus Belli before you’re allowed to declare war (most of the time) was something I was very wary of, but in practice it’s a really clever mechanic that not only helps you feel involved, but becomes something rather tense as you hope you manufacture a war goal without being detected. It also helps keep the AI on a sensible path. Their need to make CBs means they seem to be acting rather more sensibly than they did beforehand, which is good!
The economic changes are similarly positive, or at least they seem to be, because Vicky 2 is rather hard to wrap your head around in that regard. Money is definitely scarcer, and you need to make decisions about what you are funding and how much. No more can some podunk middle-rank power field a first-class army, navy, and civil service all at once!
The one other negative thing is China, or more properly China and the new Substates system. See, in vanilla Vicky 2 China was something you really wanted to get into your Sphere of Influence. They were huge in every way, and getting first dibs on their market was immense, it would single-handedly keep you on top in industrial terms. To counter this we’ve got the new Substates system, where China is divided into six or seven different entities who are locked together as unbreakable satellites. Ahistoric nonsense. And it’s not like the 19th century was a time of unconstrained positivity for China! Where is the Taiping Rebellion for example? It’s a lazy and strange way to work around the problem. That said, using the substates system for, perhaps, the Confederacy, might be a very interesting way of doing things!
So overall I would say that if you only care about the American Civil War, this expansion probably won’t prove to be very interesting. However, every other aspect of the expansion is pretty much golden, and I highly recommend you get a hold of it if you’re a Vicky 2 player! Oh, and it runs far more smoothly and never really seemed to slow down for me.