You would think that each mod would tell you exactly where to put the files in your Victoria II folder.
It turns out that a lot of them don’t.
Most mods are made in the following way:
Step 1: Find the “mod” folder in your Victoria II directory after the mod has been downloaded.
If you don’t have Victoria II on Steam, you can find it under C:/Program Files(x86)/Paradox Interactive/Victoria 2\
If you use Steam, you should find it under C:/Program Files(x86)/Steam/steamapps/common/Victoria 2
Step Two: Open the compressed mod file once you’ve found the mod folder. This is what you should see:
Step 3: Move the folder and the “.mod” file straight into the “mod” folder.
Step 4: If everything went well, your Victoria II launcher should have a checkbox that is easy to use. Click on it to turn on the mod, then start the game.
You should start to notice strange changes right away.
(Note: It’s not a good idea to turn on more than one total conversion mod at once.)
Victoria 2 Mods Troubleshooting
I had a lot of trouble getting the mods in this article to work while I was writing this article.
Because of this, I think of myself as PCGameN’s top troubleshooter for Victoria II mods (out of the candidate pool of one ED).
Here are some things I’ve learned along the way.
Check your versions – the simple stuff (1/2)
Make sure you’re playing the latest version of the game. “Verify Integrity of Game Files” should be run on Victoria II if you bought it through Steam.
If you’re running it outside of Steam, you’re in trouble, and it might be worth your time to reinstall it.
More about my adventures with Victoria II in the next section.
Delete Your Caches
If your mod crashes when you start it up, you should first go to My Documents and delete the cache for that mod.
Even though this advice didn’t work for me, it came up often enough that it’s worth saying again.
Most of the above mods will change the map in some way, so let’s assume you’ll be deleting both caches, better safe than sorry.
First, you will have to:
Go to the My Documents folder and find the folder called “Victoria II” in it.
This should look something like this: Documents/Paradox Interactive/Victoria II
Find and open the folder with the mod’s initials. For example, if you’re having trouble with the Historical Project Mod, the folder will be labeled “HPM.”
Open the map folder, and then open the cache folder inside it. Delete the contents of the cache folder.
Do the same thing with the “gfx” folder, deleting everything in the “flags” subfolder this time.
Then, when you’re done with all of that, go to your main Victoria II folder by following the installation instructions up top.
Then:
- Go to “map” and then “cache”
- Delete its contents.
This might just might work for you. This is said to fix a sneaky bug that can happen even if no mods are running.
Check your versions – the frankly bizarre stuff(2/2)
You might not know all there is to know about “versions.” If you’re lucky enough to have Steam, you might not have this problem.
Whoever thought that buying elsewhere would save them time or money, well.
For instance, I bought my copy of Victoria II from GamersGate. The version you download from their site is not the most up-to-date version, and the updater in the launcher won’t take you to the right place either.
No, I had to change the version of Victoria II from 3.01 to 3.03.
I read strict instructions from one mod to update to 3.04 from there. The mod worked perfectly. Everyone else didn’t. After a lot of frustration and waiting, I just gave up and reinstalled it.
That took me back to version 3.01 of GamersGate. Some mods worked with it, but some didn’t. I got to 3.03 with the last official update that came with a proper installer.
I tried once more. This time, every mod I tried worked, even the one that told me to upgrade to version 3.04.
Still, the advice I see repeatedly is to update to 3.04. As ever, in the pre-Steam world where everyone’s game is somehow that tiny bit different, modding remains something of a dark art.
