Guide to Troubleshooting Victoria II

Despite its maturity Victoria II can be surprisingly hard to run nowadays. This guide, while not exhaustive, aims to help you solve your issues.

Note that running Victoria II with mods can also bring its own share of issues. This guide will occasionally mention mods when it makes sense to, but e.g. how to install and run mods is outside the scope of this document.

Note on Steam betas

This is not expected to solve anything but this is a convenient opportunity to dispel misunderstandings. Steam users do not need to be using the 3.04 beta. Version 3.04 has been the default since 2016. Steam users can safely opt out of all beta programs.

Understanding your Victoria II install

A typical installation leads to the following file structures:

• Game files proper, necessary for Victoria II to run.

  For Steam users on Windows (depending on specifics and Steam library folder configuration) this typically looks like:

  C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Victoria 2
  

• User files, for things like user settings & save files. This also contains mod-specific user settings & save files, e.g. HPM saves would be stored under HPM/save games.

  For Window users this is usually %userprofile%\Documents\Paradox Interactive\Victoria II (this should be a valid path regardless of localization, provided that user files are present).

Note that the game can work without user files and a fresh install starts without them. You might not have a Paradox Interactive folder at all. The guide covers this situation below.

Using this guide

This guide divides known Victoria II issues into sections. Starting from the first, they each list symptoms together with possible fixes. You should check whether some of these symptoms match your situation. You shouldn’t expect absolutely all symptoms to apply, one or a couple should be enough.

If symptoms don’t match, skip ahead to the next section. If they do, see if the fixes help.

Table of Contents
The game won’t start
The game starts, but I have no user files
The game displays incorrectly
The game displays, but is not borderless
The game behaves unexpectedly when starting or loading a game
The game crashes when initialising the map
The game crashes when processing flags
The game displays text incorrectly

The game won’t start

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Steam users, pay close attention to this section! Important information has been highlighted.

Symptoms:

• this is a new install on a fresh system
• the unmodded game works fine, but the launcher can’t find mods or mods don’t work
• there is some error being displayed, such as a runtime error for C++
  
• an error appears, but only when starting the victoria2.exe or v2game.exe executable directly in the game files and not through Steam
• the error “The application was unable to start correctly” (code 0xc000007b) is being displayed
• there is no error being displayed
• the game or launcher doesn’t even appear
• the game process barely lasts if at all, there’s just no game
• the user files are missing, and the file structure is not being created by the game

This is typical of the Steam version, as it appears the installation process seems to (sometimes?) neglect installation of required redistributables. Steam users are highly encouraged to try the following fix when encountering a problem, even when some or all of the rest of the game appears to work.

Fix:

• Install required redistributables (below are links to official Microsoft downloads):

  • DirectX End-User Runtime

  • Visual C++ 2010 Redistributable Package (x86) which these days is distributed as part of a security update. Make sure to select the appropriate x86 installer as Victoria II is a 32-bit executable:

    

  Either of the installers may report that your system is up-to-date, which can look like the following:

  

  This is a sign that things are in order for that particular redistributable, and no further action is required on your part. Move on to the next installer, if not done already.

  However if one of the installers otherwise reports an error during the installation process, this can be a sign of conflict or corruption. How to repair your system in such case is outside the scope of this guide.

  After having installed all required prerequisites, Steam may still attempt to install outdated redistributables. If that process never seems to succeed to the extent that Steam will not start the launcher, you may do so yourself directly through the victoria2.exe executable that can be found in your local installed files. (You can also start the game directly through the v2game.exe executable, though if you want to use mods you will have to rely on launch parameters—which will not be explained in this guide.)

  If you are still seeing the error “The application was unable to start correctly” (code 0xc000007b) when attempting to launch the game, this most likely means that the 32-bit game executable is wrongly accessing 64-bit rather than 32-bit DLLs. You should at least have tried to install the required redistributables—and make sure that you did get the x86 version of the Visual C++ 2010 Redistributable Package. If you have at any point manually handled your system DLLs, how to undo some of your own steps is outside the scope of this guide.

Other remarks:

• Victoria II also requires the .NET Framework 2.0, which these days is included in the .NET Framework 3.5. If you are a Windows 10 user, you should have been prompted to enable it the first time you launched a .NET 3.5 or earlier application. You should not have to do anything else.

  If this does not cover your situation, you should try the official documentation.

  (Partially confirmed) Since however the .NET Framework is only used by the launcher and not the game itself, you can work around the issue if you cannot manage to install this prerequisite. You can start the game directly by launching the v2game.exe executable itself. You can find it in you installation folder right besides the victoria2.exe launcher executable.

  If you want to load mods without the launcher, you’ll need to be adding -mod=<mod file> launch options, e.g. to a shortcut to v2game.exe (for Windows users). Multiple options can be used to load multiple mods. Detailed information on the topic is outside the scope of guide.

The game starts, but I have no user files

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Symptoms:

• the launcher works
• the game starts
• there is no user file structure
• there is a user file structure, but the logs folder inside is always empty when starting the game without mods
  • a logs folder full of empty individual .txt log files is not abnormal in itself however

For Window users, this typically means there is either no %userprofile%\Documents\Paradox Interactive\Victoria II folder (if you have played other Paradox games before), or not even a Paradox Interactive one (if you haven’t).

Possible causes & some fixes:

• (Partially confirmed) The device or filesystem where the user files are expected to live may not have any available storage left. When this is the case, the game is sometimes known to crash rather than tell the user what is happening. You will have to free up some space.
• You may have unusual ownership/permissions set for either your game files or your user file parent folders. (This can be the case if you are only able to start e.g. Steam or your games in admin mode.) This should only happen if you went out of your way to set it up so, and power users should figure out on their own how to fix this.
• There are ways to use a custom location for your user files. Once again this is more of a power user situation that shouldn’t happen on its own, and that will not be covered here.

From this point on, subsequent sections will assume that the user file structure is set up and functional. In particular, the logs folder inside the user files is also where the game stores logging information. (Starting the game with a mod enabled may result in information being stored in <mod-path>/logs instead.) This can be useful for figuring out what goes wrong with the game.

The game displays incorrectly

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Symptom:

• the game runs (there is a game process) but it’s being displayed incorrectly:
  • nothing is being displayed
  • the screen is black
  • the resolution is wrong
  • there is a lot of flickering (the refresh rate is wrong)
  • there is no mouse cursor
  • it’s hard to click on the right spot of the user interface

While the game lets you set video options, this is not of much help if the display is so wrong the user isn’t able to click anything!

Fixes:

• In your user files there should be a settings.txt file. You can edit it directly when the game is not running to change how the game will display on the next start.

  Here is for instance what the graphics entry of the file can look like for running at 1080p 60 Hz in borderless mode:

  graphics=
  {
  size=
  {
          x=1920
          y=1080
  }
  
  refreshRate=60
  fullScreen=no
  borderless=yes
  shadows=no
  shadowSize=2048
  multi_sampling=8
  anisotropic_filtering=0
  gamma=50.000000
  }
  

  Besides of course using a resolution appropriate for your screen, here are some things that may be worth investigating:

  • Using full screen:

    fullScreen=yes
    borderless=no
    

  • Paying close attention to the refresh rate. Some screens can be running at 59.94 Hz (sometimes displayed as 59 Hz) or 61 Hz and you should verify what your system and/or other games are using. Victoria II is known to sometimes guess an incorrect refresh rate, making it unusable.

• You may not have a settings.txt file, worry that it is broken, or not be confident that you can correctly edit it by yourself. For these cases we provide a model file that you can review to use as a template or download wholesale.

  When doing the latter, place the file at the root of your user files as long as you understand this will affect all your settings. (As is tradition for Paradox games you might want to put your headphones down for the first start!) Typical window users would end up with the following file:

  %userprofile%\Documents\Paradox Interactive\Victoria II\settings.txt
  

Note that the above applies to the unmodded game. Some mods rely on a mod-specific user file location. If you are encountering this issue while starting the game with such a mod enabled, you can try the same steps at that location. For instance for a typical HPM installation on Windows you would be tweaking the following file instead:

%userprofile%\Documents\Paradox Interactive\Victoria II\HPM\settings.txt

To make your life easier you can take care of a single master settings.txt file as long as you copy it over to each of your mod user file location whenever you change it. (As an added bonus you can likewise copy your messagetypes_custom.txt files around to transfer your message settings between mods.)

The game displays, but is not borderless

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Symptom:

• the game runs & displays, but:
  • setting borderless=yes in the settings.txt file has no effect, and the entry is being removed from the file by the game
  • in the settings screen of the game, there is no option for setting borderless

Cause:

The option to run the game borderless was added very late in the game’s development. As a consequence, it is only available to users with the final Heart of Darkness expansion. (In this era of Paradox Development Studio games, on-going development only applied to the latest expansion meaning that patches & fixes were not backported to earlier expansions or the base version of the game.)

This is what part of the video settings screen should look like when you are running Heart of Darkness, with the window mode option highlighted:

Note the expansion title & background image.

Fixes:

There are tools to make a windowed application appear borderless. One such tool that is known to work for Victoria II is Borderless Gaming. (Make sure you are running the game in windowed mode: either set it through video settings, or edit your settings.txt to contain fullScreen=no. Remember that mods may rely on their own settings.txt!) How to use these tools is beyond the scope of this guide.

While using these tools, you may have difficulty scrolling the map with your mouse cursor as it escapes the borderless window. You can use the arrow keys to mitigate this, or investigate whether the tool supports a mouse locking feature. Borderless Gaming has one such feature under its options.

The game behaves unexpectedly when starting or loading a game

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Note that save games are part of the user files. Ensure these are working before reading this section.

Symptoms:

• the game is stuck or crashes when attempting to display the campaign screen before starting or loading a game, after choosing “Single Player” in the main menu
• the game can reach the campaign screen, but there are oddities:
  • some countries display incorrect or black flags
  • some countries are missing a government or culture
  • some borders look wrong
  • some countries are missing

Fixes:

• The game can behave unexpectedly when it fails to process some saves. This can happen for corrupted saves, or saves that were made with a different game or mod version. On a typical installation on Windows saves are located at the following:

  %userprofile%\Documents\Paradox Interactive\Victoria II\save games
  

  (If you are loading a mod you may be using mod-specific user files instead, in which case the save games are found in a <mod-path>/save games folder inside your user files.)

  You can stow away your old saves in a subfolder to hide them from the game. E.g.:

  %userprofile%\Documents\Paradox Interactive\Victoria II\save games\my old saves
  

  Other solutions may involve hiding those saves inside an archive file, moving them somewhere else altogether, or outright deleting them.

The game crashes when initialising the map

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Note that the logs and the map cache are part of the user files. Ensure these are working before reading this section.

Symptoms:

• the game is stuck or crashes on the initial loading screen when initialising the map logic or when the map is properly initialized
• the game is stuck or crashes on or soon after startup, and the last thing that the logs mention is related to the map

Fixes:

• (Unconfirmed) If the device or filesystem where the user files live has no available storage left, you will have to free up some space.

• Initialising the map logic for the first time is an expensive operation. If the game is not crashing, make sure you are giving the operation a chance by leaving it some time to complete.

• You can clear the map cache, either by deleting it or by emptying it of all files. The map cache is the map/cache folder in your user files. For Windows user, that is typically:

  %userprofile%\Documents\Paradox Interactive\Victoria II\map\cache
  

  If you are loading a mod you may be using mod-specific user files instead, in which case the map cache is a <mod-path>/map/cache folder inside your user files.

• Steam users may try verifying the integrity of game files, in case the map files were corrupted. (This does not compromise your settings or save files.) If Steam find files to correct, consider clearing the map cache before starting the game.

• Other users may try reinstalling the game & clearing the map cache.

The game crashes when processing flags

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Note that the logs and the flag cache are part of the user files. Ensure these are working before reading this section.

Symptoms:

• the game is stuck or crashes on the initial loading screen when processing or loading flags
• the game is stuck or crashes on or soon after startup, and the last thing that the logs mention is related to flags

Fixes:

• If the device or filesystem where the user files live has no available storage left, you will have to free up some space.

• Initialising the flag cache for the first time is an expensive operation. If the game is not crashing, make sure you are giving the operation a chance by leaving it some time to complete.

• You can clear the flag cache, either by deleting it or by emptying it of all files. The flag cache is the gfx/flags folder in your user files. For Windows user, that is typically:

  %userprofile%\Documents\Paradox Interactive\Victoria II\gfx\flags
  

  If you are loading a mod you may be using mod-specific user files instead, in which case the flag cache is a <mod-path>/gfx/flags folder inside your user files.

• Steam users may try verifying the integrity of game files, in case the flag files were corrupted. (This does not compromise your settings or save files.) If Steam find files to correct, consider clearing the flag cache before starting the game.

• Other users may try reinstalling the game & clearing the flag cache.

The game displays text incorrectly

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Symptoms while in the game:

• the text is slightly offset
• the text has incorrect spacing
• the text is all white/black boxes instead
• the text is incorrect (e.g. the ‘Exit’ button displays something nonsensical instead)

This can be caused by mangled localisation files.

Fixes:

• if this happens to the unmodded game, verify the integrity of game files (for the Steam version) or reinstall the game—make sure that game files (but not user files, normally: you should be able to keep your saves!) are properly being cleared after uninstallation
• if this happens to the game with a mod enabled, verify that you correctly downloaded the mod’s files and placed it at the right location (how to do this will not be covered in this guide)