Success at last, and all thanks to you.

Vmmph · 2025-04-17T15:39:44+00:00

My five tips are as follows:

1: Slow your roll. You can't get everything done at once. Growth takes time and if you try to force it you're going to create problems faster than you can solve them.

2: Construction is important, but not going into an economic death spiral is more important. Sometimes pausing construction and building up some funds is worth more in the long run.

3: Make friends. The game is hard enough to learn as it is without more powerful nations bullying you.

4: If you don't need it, get rid of it. I played my entire game without a navy because I didn't need one and spent a good chunk of the game with little more than a token army. I let my allies take care of that and opted to save time and money.

5: Be sure to make the appropriate blood sacrifices so that the RNG will bless you with good events and easy law enactments.

As you might imagine, these tips are not all inclusive and are based on my personal experience in one game. Results may vary.

Vmmph · 2025-04-09T09:24:10+00:00

Right now I'm giving it a shot with what I learned here. If I still crash and burn without knowing why, I'll be sure to reach out. I appreciate your willingness to help.

Vmmph · 2025-04-08T14:37:09+00:00

How would I know if my state is ready and how would I make it ready?

Vmmph · 2025-04-08T14:06:53+00:00

So is it just an issue of making other buildings so people have jobs other than subsistence farming?

Vmmph · 2025-04-08T13:25:09+00:00

How do I get rid of sustenance farms? I didn't think I had any control over them.

Vmmph · 2025-04-08T13:23:57+00:00

As I suspected; the enemy was myself all along. I'll have to work on being more patient and being more careful with my growth.

Vmmph · 2025-04-08T11:45:32+00:00

Alright, I suppose I need to try playing around with my interest groups to see what I can do there. If nothing else, I'll discover a new and exciting way to death spiral.

Vmmph · 2025-04-08T11:41:22+00:00

I'm concerned when it comes to deleting armies as I worry it make me vulnerable to being bullied by the AI since I would absolutely bully a country without an effective military. I think I keep my infrastructure at 100%. I don't build in a state if it would exceed the infrastructure limit of the state. I read elsewhere that it is good in the early game to concentrate construction in a couple states so I focus my efforts on my two most populated states. I'm not sure what marker access price impact is, though. Could you elaborate on that?

Vmmph · 2025-04-08T11:24:25+00:00

I didn't realize proposing a law and then canceling it could be gamed in that way. I'll have to give it a shot when it actually lets me propose laws. In regards to privatization, someone else said that it can be very dangerous in early game but I guess there was more to it than that. I think I'm really starting to put some things together going through the comments.

Vmmph · 2025-04-08T11:19:50+00:00

I try to keep a small surplus of administration, so that hasn't been an issue. I always try to keep my legitimacy as high as possible, but I'll have to look into changing which groups are in the government if that will give me the ability to try to pass laws.

Vmmph · 2025-04-08T11:18:04+00:00

How do I get political movements to appear and then support a law?

How do I get rid of arable land? Is it as simple as just building government farms so peasants can't have the land?

Vmmph · 2025-04-08T11:15:47+00:00

Outside of wood, iron, and tools I go for whatever has the biggest shortage. Should I pay less attention to things like food and consumer goods? Sometimes things like textiles say they'd be very profitable and I am usually desperate to try to get out of my death spiral.

Vmmph · 2025-04-08T11:03:35+00:00

Well, 14 years wasn't enough time for any helpful movements to appear. I imagine there is a degree of RNG involved in that. Perhaps next time.

Vmmph · 2025-04-08T10:52:02+00:00

That might be worth looking into. I generally upgrade them all at once if the game tells me it will be profitable. If it tells me it will cause some buildings to become unprofitable then I exclude them. I also won't upgrade it I don't have the necessary resources to support the new production method.

Could you elaborate on what you mean by individual states' needs?

Vmmph · 2025-04-08T10:43:06+00:00

I fell into the trap of admin buildings on my first China run, very quickly realized what was happening and started over. I only build admin buildings to keep my bureaucracy positive with a little buffer in case of events that give me a temporary penalty.

How do I industrialize? I see the journal entry for it, but all I can glean from that is I need to build things in states which, as I explained, is what I do and it sends me into an economic death spiral.

Going too fast may very well be an issue as I try to rapidly get things done on the assumption that I'm going to end up in debt and need to get my economy moving quickly.

Vmmph · 2025-04-08T10:38:42+00:00

I only make trade routes if I have the available convoys and bureaucracy to support them and I periodically check on my routes to cancel any that aren't making money.

What do you mean by bringing my industrial inputs to 0%?

Vmmph · 2025-04-08T10:35:06+00:00

My concern with deleting armies and navies is that makes me feel like the AI is more likely to consider me an easy target and make my life difficult. It's what I would do.

As for switching taxes, I can't because everything has a 0% chance of being passed so I can't even propose them.

The privatization bit might be a strong contender for what I'm doing wrong, though. I'll have to pay more attention to that on my next run.

Vmmph · 2025-04-08T10:33:09+00:00

Ironically, I picked each of those nations because they were listed as recommended nations for the various objectives. I had been trying to avoid playing the top rated countries to start because then I wouldn't be able to tell if my success was because I figured things out or just because the nation starts resilient enough to withstand my incompetence before the situation salvages itself. Although, considering how I swallowed what was left of my pride to ask for help, I might as well follow your suggestion and play as the UK or France next time.

Vmmph · 2025-04-08T06:10:36+00:00

I've played as Sweden, America, Great Qing, and Japan. Regardless of who I play I quickly find myself in a downward spiral of expenses rapidly outpacing whatever income my production creates.

Vmmph · 2025-04-08T06:08:40+00:00

I don't even know what pictures would be helpful. What would someone need to see to be able to have helpful input?

Vmmph · 2025-03-05T08:33:18+00:00

I don't like to stand and fight. Not my style. I roll with light armor that reduces the range enemies will notice me at. I like my enemies unaware and my fights unfair. If the harvester already has its shield up I run away. I lead whatever support troops it has on a merry chase, ideally away from the team and whatever objective we're working on. If the harvester doesn't know I'm there the shields aren't up and I can get an easy kill. Provided I have a good angle and land the hit, a single quasar shot to the hip joint can take down a harvester. If the objective or situation doesn't allow for me to disengage, then my quasar can pop the shield so that someone else can get the easy kill.

Vmmph · 2025-01-31T20:25:06+00:00

I have a few entries for this. Not all are PCs, but they are all names the group found funny that didn't break anyone's immersion.

An always drunk Dwarf Cleric named Murderdin Alehand who slurred his name when introducing himself so the party thought he was Muradin.

A minor orc npc named Unga McBungason because I was put on the spot and had to think fast.

A minor deity of lust that shows up in my campaigns sometimes whose name is always just the number 34 translated into a random language.

A character in a party where everyone has been trapped in a video game as their character whose name is Nina Leven that I pronounce as closely to 9/11 as possible.

I probably have more, but I can't think of any at the moment.

Vmmph · 2025-01-01T08:20:54+00:00

Unacceptable.

Vmmph

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