This took longer than expected once I went down the Rabbit hole of trying to get a pop growth modifier that gave Russia near its historical population by 1900. I felt this was important because before, an AI Russia would typically have 70-90 million people, which was far less than the IRL Russian census done in 1900 showed (136,000,000). This made Russia far more of a pushover than they were IRL. The Germans feared the potential of an industrialized Russia, because it had far more people than Germany, and I wanted this to translate into Vicky 2. While I was doing this, I also noticed a similar problem for the USA where it would underperform its historical population growth, and this resulted in it being far less powerful compared to its IRL self. Both now get a bonus throughout the game to pop growth, but Russia will also get an education efficiency malus with it to prevent it from industrializing with everyone else in the ~1880's
*Moved some of the industry bonuses from the last update onto inventions instead of the main techs, so the increases in production of iron and coal are a bit more gradual.
*Reverted to default HPM gold production because the AI seems to do better with it.
*Added in scaling debuffs similar to GFM's to decrease tax and tariff efficiency that will help prevent the ai from sucking up all the money from its pops, the tax refund event is still present, but now triggers at 15,000,000 instead of 6, to matchup with the highest level of money hoarder debuff.
*Also added a 1-time event that an AI country will get on game start, which gives all pops in the world a semi-random amount of money up to $200 to jumpstart the world economy.
*Reduced the MTTH for great game events to encourage Russia to expand historically
*Overhauled Russia to make them more unique, historically accurate, and more competent when played by the AI. I did this by adding a new hidden modifier for Russia which lasts until 1900, and will increase its population growth by 0.007%, this was done so Russia can actually reach near its historical population of 136,000,000 in 1900 when played by the AI. To prevent Russia from becoming the #1 industrial power in the 1890's from this change, this hidden modifier also gives -50% education efficiency, so an AI Russia will usually have close to its historical literacy rate of ~16% in 1900. After 1900 Russia will keep the pop growth, but will lose the crippling education debuff
*Gave the USA a similar hidden modifier for extra pop growth like Russia, for the same reason, to allow it to be a late game juggernaut if left alone
*Serfdom has had its education efficiency malus increased to help contain Russia and help represent the backwardness serfdom caused for countries which kept it later than the rest.
*Austria has been buffed with its Core territories having literacy comparable to the rest of Germany, and its non-core territories have had a slight increase as well. This was done because they also start with Serfdom but shouldn't have their literacy gains as crippled as Russia's.
*Austria-Hungary has had their color changed to match Austria's because I like the clean white color much better than the Brown/Red color it was before.
*Changed the All-Mexico decision for the US to not require jingoism, instead, now a player can do it just by occupying 80% of Mexico. The AI will only take the decision if a party with jingoism is in power (southern democrats)
*Added a fix to crisis white peacing this is turned on in the options decisions
*Added in the "liberate and puppet" cb's from B&I
*Changed the debuff countries get while at war stopping immigration to them, now it will only trigger once a core province is occupied
*Added in a stronger "vassal nation" triggered modifier for AI vassals like in crimeamod, that makes it very hard for them to gain prestige, and so much are less likely to break free by becoming a great power. Player vassals still use the HPM default one
*Added precious goods to Istanbul and Gibraltar to make them more strategic/important
*Probably a few other things I forgot to note/mention, but these are the major ones
Russia had the only functional strategic bomber wing in the world during the start of ww1, so much for the backwardness meme
This is true, however the Russian industry was very limited compared to other European powers (though it was Industrializing fast before WW1) of the time, to the point the Russian military needed to import small arms to equip their army from the United States. The AI in my mod usually is pretty good about keeping its military as modern as possible, which imo is a pretty good representation of the state of Russia in 1914, a military which is pretty modern for its time, but has trouble supplying itself, because it is lagging behind in industry technologies.
Do you have a Discord or a category in the Victoria 2 Modding Server?
Discord.com