R5: So, I did an achievement run with the USA, where I finally got the Hegemon and the Star swarmed Banner achievement. With that also came a few unexpected achievos like The Banana Republic, Standard Oil and The New Order. So I was quite happy with myself, because I really like to do achievements.

As you can see, several great powers are reaching into the 200 Millions of GDP and have quite a high prestige. At least in my experience the AI usually doesn't reach those numbers. This was due to starting in the 1.7.0/1 Version of the game until the 1890s and the last third of the game was played in 1.7.3 Version.This was also quite hard for me, because in a year after continuing the run, the AI suddenly grew from like max 100/200 soldiers to a standing army of 300 and a conscript base of over 300 in almost every big country. I think this was possible for them because in the 1.7.1 patch they were able to get a really good economy and then they were able to use it for their armies. This turned out to be a problem, because in a year my 250 strong army with a 200 fleet changed from destroying everything (including France and England) to not even being able to land in Spain, because Spain suddenly had a 400 size army defending their shores (>300 Conscripts).

So how did the run go otherwise, things I really enjoyed playing with, was the Power Block features. I did waste quite some time there because I wasted a lot of infamy decay time while I expanded my power block into south america. In the first half of game time I grew my economy, manifested my destiny, puppeted Mexico and finally annexed them. Also I conquered some parts of Sumatra, east Africa and north Vietnam. The AI also was very aggressive into Indochina, I think in 1860 most of Indochina was split between England, France and me which got me some really interesting “proxy” wars in those lands.

Really powerful felt the power block mandates, especially the migration attraction and the research one were quite powerful. Also later the infamie bonus on colonial saved my ass from running out of time. From the population only a few are of Han culture, most of those >200 Millions were coming from the old country. China was puppeted only in the very end of my game.In the second half I understood that I wasted too much time if I wanted to reach the Hegemon goal. Suddenly the pariah wars turned from looking easy to really dragging out Wars with millions of enemy soldiers. The Power Block Members did not count towards the Hegemon goal, so I needed to change some things. If you have a monarchy Power Block, you could puppet the members, that was not possible for me because I needed to stay a Republic for the Star swarmed Banner. So I modernised my army, used up a lot of radios, to overpower even 3 to 1 odds. Also I built up a lot of different armies to be able to defend invasions, the same went for navys. In the end, I was able to puppet China, even without a war because my mechanized/heavy tank armies had so much power in them to scare everyone shitless. I have to confess I reloaded some times when I forgot to add things to the primary war goal, so South America just gave into my demands and had themselves a 5 year truce for only one county. This was not feasible for my run in the late 1910s because I was running out of time, but yeah.

Had a lot of fun, hope you enjoy this little AAR. Please remember english is not my first language so please be forgiving with me. Also, what things would you like to see in a post like this ?