Looked it up, looks a lot like Europa Universalis, which is so different from Civ that you can't even compare them.
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All Paradox games look the same cause they use the same engine. It's a grand strategic simulator, which is essentially what Civilization boils down to.
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Is the gameplay in Victoria anything like Europa Universalis 2? I know a lot of people praise EU2 and while I had fun with it, it didn't compare to the addicting fun of the Civ series. And the depth they're adding to Civ 4 makes it sound even better than before.
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I haven;'t plaued EU2 before. VIctoria is primarily not about combat but economy, diplomacy and colonialism. Combat is straight forward based upon capturing regions, several regions make up a province and many provinces make a nation.
The economic system in VIctoria is far more realistic and complex then the hokey stuff in Civilization. It takes into account ethnicity, productivity, income, etc, etc. War is often counterproductive as a long war is guaranteed to ruin your economy and send you into enormous debts you will spend the next 3 decades paying off. This discourages "rushes" or expanion for the mere sake of expansion and forces the player to economize the situation through diplomacy more often.