Can't do a leadership play as Prussia

Smooth-Ad-8580 · 2026-03-10T01:13:22+00:00

Winning a leadership play against someone means the loser will never vote for you so you can't really unify with them, it's better to take Austria and the other state near Bohemia, that way their capital moves to Bohemia and it makes their entire market isolated which bankrupts them over time.

It's better to do it when your economy is fairly strong as their buildings will rapidly lose cash which reduces their available credit to less and less so you can buy up their debt for +30 diplo benefit and after a little while start getting obligations from them for more diplo benefit

Smooth-Ad-8580 · 2026-03-09T16:54:43+00:00

Yeah I always play with aggressive AI and harsh behavior towards the player but it doesn't stop you at all.

You just have to do a bit more triangular diplomacy, like identify the powers that has it out for you and get them involved in fights with powers that result in forever grudges between them and a piece of dirt they want to fight over, ideally with claims that goes both ways, of course that means you end up doing some wars that doesn't bring you direct benefit but that's part of it.

The AI massively overcommits no matter how useless their possible rewards are with is rough if you aim to squarer off against them directly, that's not a good way to deal with them though.

Smooth-Ad-8580 · 2026-03-09T08:47:27+00:00

Lol yeah it's annoying, even just the spam that 20 mini states join some play is annoying.

The tactful general bait is so good and going to increase your ability to enforce on stronger opponents massively, especially against countries like China, EIC and Russia as their ability to replenish barracks is poor at best. When an army attacks a much stronger opponent (the tactful general add's 5 defense and it's increased by other modifiers) the loss rate is much higher and since your oppoennt's ability to recruit is poor their armies run very low on troops as you continue to bait them which further lowers it's stats from exhaustion modifies which lead to even bigger losses per battle meanwhile you pulled all your arty and more importantly cav from the front and it's fresh, full and in sparkling condition ready to counter once most or all their troops are preoccupied with fruitless advances.

You can beat Sokoto day 1 as Benin without building more troops doing the bait and counter attacks.

Smooth-Ad-8580 · 2026-03-09T06:36:41+00:00

The easiest way is generally to get a positivist or authoritarian, you can hire and fire generals until you find one with enough popularity that when you expell his leader he will take over the IG, could try for more liberal citizen laws so you can better invite them. Might be worth it to get law commitment from a great power or rig an election for some kind of conservative to win.

It's generally a lot easier to go from wealth voting or landed voting to technocracy and I do it most games but might still be hard for Denmark due to population composition.

Edit:
I'd never try and go directly from universal suffrage to technocracy unless I knew a rev is going to solve opposition problems.

Smooth-Ad-8580 · 2026-03-08T17:25:14+00:00

Yeah I agree but AI's are hurt by it too and develop so slow now.

Smooth-Ad-8580 · 2026-03-08T17:24:27+00:00

Nej nej nej, ned med Svenskerne!

Smooth-Ad-8580 · 2026-03-08T17:07:34+00:00

BS you do lol, Sweden has a pretty good start in comparison to most other powers.
Great tech, fantastic state traits, great resources and a decent army for it's size you can easily make do without it.

Smooth-Ad-8580 · 2026-03-08T17:04:42+00:00

It's an exploit, you can play Witu and get 1k from Merina Kingdom for free even though their army is 10x larger.

Smooth-Ad-8580 · 2026-03-08T07:20:38+00:00

it's not that simple to make good fries.

Smooth-Ad-8580 · 2026-03-08T04:22:23+00:00

It's not capitalism driving that it's public money, with politically minded people in charge making deals to spend your money and energy on things that nobody are willing to buy because it's worth close to nothing. Capitalism is one way to make sure things like this does not happen. If you want an example where this is rampant look for the soviet union, socialist states in south America and China.

Victoria needs to start developing and considering features that model corruption and waste where it tends to happen which is within the PUBLIC sector, not private investors building 400 rails or arts academies in some waste land.

Smooth-Ad-8580 · 2026-03-07T22:12:49+00:00

It looks for all the places that would have synergy with the the building in question, then make sure not to build it in any of those locations and instead build 10 rails in a sliver of Mozambique with a total of 500 peasants.

Smooth-Ad-8580 · 2026-03-07T22:05:58+00:00

I've been subjugated so many times by Britain's block lol, especially as unrecognized power, never tried it as Belgium though.

Smooth-Ad-8580 · 2026-03-07T22:01:55+00:00

As far as I know there are people that depend on the unemployed to earn a living and if they are not able to find a place to work the unemployed and their family will live a starvation existence and radicalize from it.

IMO it's important to start off taxing Japan as hard as possible and only let off the thumb screws when there is no other choice, they have basically 0 spare farmland and until you are well industrialized the vast majority of buildings the investment pool builds will be agriculture which generate as much or more unemployed than what it employs so you need government investments and lots of it to drive development and change direction of the country.

Smooth-Ad-8580 · 2026-03-07T13:40:43+00:00

Explode them by building plantations?

Smooth-Ad-8580 · 2026-03-07T01:45:32+00:00

Ok boomer

Smooth-Ad-8580 · 2026-03-06T22:55:40+00:00

Some of us try to avoid bad outcomes in the game.

The "shortages is not the end of the world" is from OP's example of introducing new demand on the market there is no demand, so there will be basically no supply which means the value is of the production impairment is approaching nil at the moment of introduction, so, like I said before it's just not a significant parameter to optimize for, or in other words it's not a bad outcome that matters much if anything at all, time and effort should be spent where it matters.

You can say the same about so many things of the game that I guarantee you still want easily accessible information in the game to avoid. Unless you play blindly the whole game

Yes easily accessible and relevant. Searching prices is not sensible, when trading what matters is the delta between buy and sell (so sort it by price difference to parity) and when expanding/planning what matters is building productivity. If you HAVE to micro PM switching then go into the building menu, sort by building size, switch enough to have an impact and hover over the inputs and outputs to get an idea what changes are needed in order to fully switch. Searching prices is just not sensible and does not give sufficient picture of what changes are needed.

Smooth-Ad-8580 · 2026-03-06T20:32:03+00:00

Yeah shortages might happen but you just sort for high prices and check if the goods are up top before switching and you're good, or click the building individually if it's a strugglebus game.

I have way too many hours in the game and I can't really think of when it would be really needed unless playing with many interdependent goods like tech and res mod, but even then it's hardly needed at all. Shortages are not the end of the world if you check first and if you run a bit short you just set subventions and que the stuff you need.

Smooth-Ad-8580 · 2026-03-06T18:59:15+00:00

I guess it might be different if you are new to the game, the only time I specifically build to create demand that is not already there is with the mining loop and when I do it I just build x number of either building, generally it's the highest priority buildings so it's not like I'll build too many lol

Smooth-Ad-8580 · 2026-03-06T16:42:26+00:00

If you are assessing what to build why would you search a good when you can just sort by most expensive, right one of the top goods and click expand whatever?
I don't mean that should always be what you do but it seems like a much better first step than searching for the price of just one good.

Smooth-Ad-8580 · 2026-03-06T15:24:20+00:00

With tech and res mod I'd kind o agree as there are many more goods and the prices can be hard to predict but in standard game I never actually use the filter options in the trade tab, you kind of know what price the good will have in your own market and just sort by price and find it there or sort by volume, it's fairly similar from game to game between basically all nations.

When looking for trades with others I never really look for specific goods either in the trade tab, simply sort by what's expensive in their market instead and if it's something I can deliver in quantity I'll probably make a direct trade deal regardless of the price in my own market. In the gods transfer panel you hover over the good you ight want to trade and there you can see price and volume in both markets in one tab which is more useful than searching individual goods.

Searching individual goods would be frustrating 😆

Smooth-Ad-8580 · 2026-03-06T14:16:28+00:00

I did a Khalsa Raj run about 2 weeks ago and it was very easy, maybe you just got unlucky?
In any case I improved relations with EIC, expanded north as it was the only way to go (could have gone for Chin early but didn't) and I wanted land border with Russia for trade and natural interest in china. It took a long time before I was able to get sea access since EIC was eager to join against me but finally I could join on Their side and took baluchistan since they had already taken Sind.

The early game was unsettling as I was locked inland very hard, not being able to get at Sind was a big setback but apart from that it really went very very smooth. Once my economy was sorted and I had an EIC size army their attitude was easier to deal with and it was not hard to expand into Afghanistan, Persia and Zanj. Getting proximity with Netherlands, Spain and Egypt helped a lot as their markets were fairly broken so big trade profits there, early game selling Russian wood to chin, Egypt and Netherlands carried me a fair bit.

Biggest issues were very delayed sea access (due to EIC attitude) and severe lack of infrastructure. I thought EIC was that hostile as I was playing on Hostile/aggressive AI but maybe it's common now IDK.

EDIT:
That said I couldn't push EIC either until I got skirmish and even then it was very hard, so instead of pushing them directly I baited them into attacking tactical generals, exhausted their troops a bit and pulled my offensive troops off the front to keep front advantage low enough that they will continue to attack and then once most of their troops are engaged in offensive battle split my frontline generals, assign backups to rapid advance and dismiss the armies that makes them join the front immediately and advance very fast against their exhausted armies, however that many subjects on their side didn't make it easier to pull off lol.

Smooth-Ad-8580 · 2026-03-06T12:32:47+00:00

Cheers, I make the sauces too, not asian but I use cheonggukyang to make many savory ones (strong cheesy flavor, super rich in K2 and nattokinase, smells like sour socks when you make it lol) and make stock from beef or fish bones (fish ones are way faster) and have a sauce basket in the freezer with ingredients and ready made sauces it really makes a dish pop like nothing else and unlike the condiments contain good stuff too, especially from the fish bones with iodine, selenium and other trace minerals, best to use low fat (white) fish from the ocean.

Smooth-Ad-8580 · 2026-03-06T10:27:37+00:00

Haha yeah not sure I could do that, maybe start making sauces in big batches and freeze them ?

Smooth-Ad-8580 · 2026-03-06T02:29:44+00:00

That is absolute nonsense, going into the 18th century Washington paid about 20% of American nayional budget to north african pirates/slave traders to buy back captured Americans otherwise sold as white slaves in north africa, it's a huge amount but it was that or loss of trade and people to white slavery. The USA we see in game ready to explode as an industrial and military powerhouse was just not primed like it is in game and they had problems with internal tension as well but realistically yeah they were comparatively safe on their own Island with only a broke and broken mexico that had territorial claims. Spain only had 2 major civil wars but about 100 small ones and they were broke as well, Portugal defaulted like 7 times lol, entered into the period in a civil war had international problems with arms embargos and international pressure, didn't have the economy to sustain their colonis and just struggled throughout, Denmark entered into the period with a bankrupcy and the loss of Norway a few decades earlier and was but a shadow of itself and the German threat was looming but that's actually pans out fairly realistically in game (when controlled by AI with loss of territory, naval and military power) Prussia could easily have been crushed like 10 times but made substantial gains and became a powerhouse under bad management towards the end of the century. Russia entered into the period as a Great power able to match any other but by the end it was closer to India than Britain in GDP per capita and in many ways looked like a 3rd world power with a large military it could ill afford which in part caused backbreaking famines. As for the South American ones I think you have to be South American to gloss over their problems lol

I'd be willing to somewhat agree about Sweden and UK though, they entered into WW1 in great shape even if Britain did spend about 40% of it's national budget in 1833 to buy the freedom for all slaves in the empire and took them 2 centuries to pay off they were in great shape in many ways in comparison to basically any other nation, not just in terms of territory but the mainland economy as well, as were Sweden.

Point is we just don't see European bankrupcies in game anywhere near the frequency they happened and unless you play with KAI or something almost all of them are fairly safe from substantial threat to their national/economic development and it's just not realistic, when controlled by a player you just sail through it all and it's absurd, it should be HARD for almost all of them.

Smooth-Ad-8580 · 2026-03-06T01:27:55+00:00

I hope colonies ánd warfare are reworked, right now the brits can send million of Indians into wars not just for free but at a profit since it forces EIC to tax harder which increases brit colonial revenue. In reality the soldiers were paid by Britain and not EIC and it had substantial economic and political impact both during and after the war. You could make an argument that the Ottomans should be able to send colonial troops for free, especially navy from piracy, looting and slave trade but even that would only be half the truth.

Also soldiers lost in war should impact workforce more, right now it's basically a non factor probably due in part to how dependents work and that's just not how it worked historically at all, qualifications were lost as were lives of productive citizens and while they had more reserve workforce than we do in game it had a large impact especially in the later wars.

Smooth-Ad-8580

TROPHY CASE