The year is 2036, and I'm diving into the latest Victoria 3 patch, "The Communist Paradise." As I boot up the game, I'm greeted by Johan’s hologram offering me a 50% discount on the "Army Warfare" DLC.

I decide to play as the United Kingdom, the fledging-mighty empire. As I start, I notice a Diplomatic Play notification pops up, but since there’s no sound to distinct whether a diplomatic play is about you, I don’t notice it. By the time I notice it, half of Africa has joined a coalition against me, and my closest ally has already abandoned me for a better trade deal on pickled herring.

I frantically try to manage my economy, but it's too late. My capitalists, in their infinite wisdom, have upgraded the same railway to level 400, bankrupting the entire nation.

Desperate, I attempt to declare war on China to secure some resources. But the game informs me that I can't because I'm still resolving a Diplomatic Play over a single acre of land in the Falklands. Wanting to quickly solve this, I try to call my allies, and I quite literally give them Scotland, but a second they suddenly decide they'd rather not help.

In a last-ditch effort, I try to industrialize further, only to find that my advanced nation now primarily requires oil and iron - resources that have somehow become rarer than unicorn tears. As I watch my civilization collapse due to a shortage of 19th-century resources in a 20th-century economy, I realize the true victoria was the friends we made along the way.
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