The Grand Combination

TGC is a complete game overhaul that started as an attempt to merge all the various disparate HFM and HPM based submods into a single modding experience, this objective has been reached long ago. Nowadays, the team aims to improve historical accuracy and detail by adding plausible alt-history paths, immersive flavor to all nations, and designing new mechanics to make Victoria 2 feel new and refreshed again.

Features

TGC has the currently largest, most accurate, and well-made Victoria II map from Vanilla and all other mods, including an expanded 25% larger map with hundreds, if not thousands, of additional provinces, an improved map projection, enhanced coastlines and borders, flavor, new pops, buildings completely revamped and fixed economy and much much more. As of our motto, "No detail in history is too small to not be represented

A better map requires better people living on it; TGC's superior culture map is meticulously designed to highlight the sociocultural intricacies of each location.. The assimilation mechanics have also been revamped so that the player can interact more effectively with this superior cultural map.

TGC, like many other major overhauls, is no stranger to additional historical content and flavor. From fresh events and decisions to new formables and plausible alternative historical pathways, the player can pursue and satisfy their geographical and roleplay desires.
One thing we strongly try to avoid is "railroady" content, focusing our modding efforts on a mechanical and detailed approach rather than novel-style gameplay is our focus as a team, this lets us provide with options not just to the player but also to the AI, making the game more intriguing, flexible, and unexpectable.

When playing TGC, there are always cool "look what the AI did this time" moments during your campaigns.

Banks and Universities provide the player with new playstyles and methods to spend money. Universities are costly, but they provide prestige and a steady source of research points, giving the player the opportunity to pull ahead on research and become a technological powerhouse. Development banks will assist local landowners in developing their farms and considerably increasing farming capacity, allowing the player to develop their economy by investing in RGOs rather than just industrialization, creating a never-seen before playstyle.

Our two new PoPs: Pioneers and Tribesmen allow for a never-seen experience when it comes to expanding and colonizing new lands. Pioneers, who are usually seen in lands ripe for colonization are a special pop that can work as both a farmer and a soldier, a worker always ready to get his trusty rifle and protect his land. Tribesmen are similarily unique PoPs, in the sense that they are harder to integrate into western society, and have no plans in working with settlers. Why would a native pick up a hoe and start farming as soon as someone steps into their lands? These two new PoPs open room to vast possibilities in terms of flavor, immersion, and gameplay, something which you may never see in any other mod.

TGC's Economy won't stagnate, quite the contrary, it will get stronger as the game goes on. There's no Liquidity Crisis or stagnation on TGC. You can keep playing after 1900 and expect the Roaring Tweenties to really be "Roaring", as the economy will keep growing more and more.

The player's voice is always heard in TGC, the team makes constant polling about important decisions to help guide the mod's development.

The Grand Combination is the home for this mod where you will find the most recent updates, discussions and answers. Please visit if you would like to suggest improvements, report bugs, tell us something interesting, be part of the polls or discuss history in a civil manner.

And we are always looking for new developers interested in helping the development of the mod! Hit the discord up and go to #modder-recruiting.

Submods

Given how TGC completely overhauls the map and the game's mechanics, most (if not all) map mods and addons won't work here. Of course, to compensate for that, TGC has 3 map skins for players to pick from besides the default one: Pastel ThickBorders, a high contrast, improved version of the default map. HFM Style Map, a map with a color scheme similar to HFM's default map. And the classic Belle Cartographie, a map skin aiming to mimic old victorian style maps.

In the default mod, the culture colors of Europe have been changed to reflect the distinct language groups of the region and how closely related they are to each other. This rolls back that change to the HFM style of culture colors (for cultures inherited from HFM).

Our Direct Immigration submod adds two new buildings working as province selection buttons. These buttons, along with decisions enabled through Options decisions, can be used to move pops around where you want them.

With it, it's possible to influence migration with ease to adjust the country's population in whatever way the player sees fit, making it feasible to deeply shape the country's demography.

TGC's official music submod! With hours of carefully curated classic and folk music, to enhance your Victoria II gameplay. Each music was carefully chosen, and assigned special playing conditions, from war, peace, country, culture, even war exhaustion and level of westernization!

• Songs carefully hand picked with proper research and analysis.
• Fully overhauled western music.
• Different songs for different cultures.
• Different songs for different game situations.
• Completely new non-western playlist for asian countries.

Due to download size constraints, The Grand Orchestra is stored in another repository, which you can access by clicking here.

With the Endonymic Localization submod, by Guy from the Land of Phillip II, countries' names will be changed to their native names instead of english. For added immersion during gameplay.

The features listed here are just a fraction of what TGC has to offer, it's a full overhaul after all. New map, new provinces, tons of flavor, interesting but non railroady event chains, improved reform system, useful submods, fixed economy, no liquidity crisis, new mechanics like improved pop growth, ideological spread, improved assimilation mechanics and much much more.

Installation and Technical stuff

1. To get the latest version, click the green button that says "Code" and click "Download ZIP". warning: read below

2. Go to the mod folder in your Victoria 2 install directory.

• If you got the Steam version on Windows this will look something like C:/Program Files (x86)/Steam/steamapps/common/Victoria 2/mod
• If you got a non-Steam version on Windows it might be something like C:/Program Files (x86)/Paradox Interactive/Victoria 2/mod

3. Delete the old versions of the mods, if you have any.

4. From the ZIP move everything into the mod folder.

By the end of the process, your /mod folder should look like the picture above, and you be able to select the mod in the Launcher.

• BEWARE: There is a chance that due to the sheer number of files, Github Browser zipping process can corrupt your download, therefore the mod might not work for you. If that happens, follow instructions below on how to download the mod (its very latest version) via Github Desktop app or download the zip from latest pre-packed release (usually somewhat outdated).
• Fresh off the press version: You can use the GitHub Desktop application. This is slightly more complicated but preferable since downloading the zip through the browser can lead to corrupted files being downloaded which can cause the game to crash. For instructions on this go to the #install-instructions channel on the Discord.
• Slightly stale: Stable pre-packed zip releases: https://github.com/rderekp/The-Grand-Combo/releases

For Increased Performace on 64-bit PCs):

1. Download laa_2_0_4.zip from the site: https://www.techpowerup.com/forums/threads/large-address-aware.112556/
2. Open the .exe
3. Select your V2game.exe
4. Check "Large Address Aware Flag"
5. Save
6. Enjoy! the game now should run twice as fast now for any mod

If you have a low end pc or laptop and is running low on ram, this patch will make your game run on less than 2gbs of ram.

1. After installing TGC, go to your "Victoria 2/mod" folder
2. Enter the "TGCLowRam" folder
3. Copy the "CompressedFlagCache.zip" file

4. Go to your flag cache folder at "Documents\Paradox Interactive\Victoria II\TGC\gfx\flags"

If you have not ran TGC yet, you will need to create this folder.

5. Delete all the contents inside the /flags folder
6. Paste the "CompressedFlagCache.zip" file you copied inside said folder
7. Unpack the contents of the .zip into the /flags folder

Now your /flags folder should look like this, and TGC game will use considerably less ram:

TGC was made possible by the below developers and mods:

• u/Hammonia-HFM mapmod
• arkhometha-HPM
• Sighpie-HFM
• u/louisky58-More Stuff for HFM
• God of Cheese and Kristjan2-GOC PUIR
• vic1984-Victoria Universalis
• u/YLEK111 or kstar234 - Hearts of Ideologies
• Kspeher - GEF
• MaTi - GreenUI
• Guy from the Land of Phillip II - Localized Country Endonyms Submod
• many others

TGC Developers:

• rderekp
• Hammonia
• Kspeher
• Gelre
• champfish
• ColdSlav
• emprahtheodosius
• Frazza

Honorable mentions and ex-Developers:

• JmanThunder - Founder
• MBnomics
• vjwua
• martoeuropa
• DrFaustie
• Tenno Momonga
• bop
• Fraggy
• LouisTheFly
• anzu-3278