'Fun' nations

[unmerged(157031)]

I'm nearing the end of my latest Two Sicilies games, and I've reached that point. Any experienced Vicky player will know what I mean; the point in the game where your once humble agricultural nation of peasants and Aristocrats has grown (thanks to your divine intervention of course) in to one of the worlds great industrial giants. You coffers are stuffed, your army is formidable, your people are rich and happy, and of course Africa lies beneath your iron imperial boot. When you say "boo" the world says "eek". You look at your nation and think about your glorious achievements; surely now the game shall end, leaving you to revel in glory and finally leave the house for the first time in a week. But then you realize; it's only 1908. You have 27 years left in the game, more than a quarter of total play time, yet you have nothing left to do. The game suddenly feels empty. I'm talking about that point.

So I'm asking you guys for help. I want to play a country that remains interesting for the full 100 years; a country where I can feel a sense of pride for establishing as a great power; a country that is challenging, yet enjoyable.

I'm a pretty decent player, so I don't mind if it's tough; hell I'd like it to be tough! Mind you, the key word here is 'tough', not hard. I'll leave you to judge the difference...

So, in short; what is a country that is fun for the full 100 year course?

 

[RELee]

Brazil - Attempt to create the Greater SA Empire
Belgium - Rival the UK with another empire where the sun never sets
USCA - Might be "hard", just keep it together. You can make future plans if you succeed.
China or Japan - Become the "unciv" giant. Some people love uncivs. I ain't one of 'em.
Sardinia-Piedmont - Similar to Two Sicilies, but make it a challenge and remain conservative for as long as possible without losing control of your pops. It's been a while. Events may defeat your goal. Can't remember.
Sweden - Bring back the Viking Kings. Rule Northern Europe!

 

[Waffen9999]

Brazil - Attempt to create the Greater SA Empire
Belgium - Rival the UK with another empire where the sun never sets
USCA - Might be "hard", just keep it together. You can make future plans if you succeed.
China or Japan - Become the "unciv" giant. Some people love uncivs. I ain't one of 'em.
Sardinia-Piedmont - Similar to Two Sicilies, but make it a challenge and remain conservative for as long as possible without losing control of your pops. It's been a while. Events may defeat your goal. Can't remember.
Sweden - Bring back the Viking Kings. Rule Northern Europe!

How could you forget Spain?

Rebuild the Spanish Empire. You'll need a MASSIVE military as your badboy will go through the roof to the point that Britain, France, and the U.S. will all have borders with you in the end and WILL declare war on you if you're not strong enough. Very fun though as you'll have a massive amount of production potential.

Japan though is easily one of the funnest. You get a full citizenship party into power and take over parts of China and you'll never have a problem with production.

 

[unmerged(16676)]

I like to have the end game be about setting up for a conversion to HoI Armageddon.

Even if I don't play it out in the other game, just seeing how the conversion looks can be fun.

 

[RELee]

How could you forget Spain?

I'm old.

 

[unmerged(157031)]

Brazil - Attempt to create the Greater SA Empire

Everybody and their mum has played Brazil before (me included) thanks to that tutorial on the wiki...

Belgium - Rival the UK with another empire where the sun never sets

Could be interesting. I think Belgium was the country I chose in my very first game (as in I'd only read the wiki briefly and the manual), so it would be interesting to see how far I've come!

USCA - Might be "hard", just keep it together. You can make future plans if you succeed.

Another early choice, but if it's anything like Mexico it could become quite dull. Mind you, i seem to recall that it has a denser population than Mexico, making it better for industrializing.

China or Japan - Become the "unciv" giant. Some people love uncivs. I ain't one of 'em.

These two countries are dictated very heavily by events, which is never as fun as having room to do what you want; might be interesting though...

Sardinia-Piedmont - Similar to Two Sicilies, but make it a challenge and remain conservative for as long as possible without losing control of your pops. It's been a while. Events may defeat your goal. Can't remember.

This would ultimatley end in forming Italy again though, which I've just done. SP is like TS , but easier (As the war with Austria is considerably easier)

Sweden - Bring back the Viking Kings. Rule Northern Europe!

Again, this was another early choice, though I dropped it out of boredom. I might enjoy it more now that I have a firm grasp on the games' mechanics though.

Edit:

How could you forget Spain?

I've already completed a game as Spain; it's not as fun as you make out...

Keep 'em coming!

 

[Tommy4ever]

Sweden can be a very fun game. You'll run out of plebs to opress in your factories pretty quick so your going to have to get some immigration. In game a highly liberal European state will usually get some normal immigration from the most conservative and troubled areas (mainly from Russia and Austria). However your main source of humans for work will have to come from conquest. When I played Sweden I took lands in Italy, Croatia, Greece and even Spain - I left unemployed pops and these people migrated over to Sweden where I could use them to further the glorius industrial expansion of the Swedish Empire. All Hail Sweden!

Twas fun

 

[Legosim]

Greece so far has been an incredibly enjoyable game. I'd assume keeping the Ottomans together as a major power would be equally as entertaining.

Transval or Oranje could be interesting, seeing as you'll have to deal with a very small accepted population. I'm sure the many wars to kick the Europeans out of Africa would be very, very fun.

Paraguay maybe? They where after all "the Prussia of South America".

 

[henryjai]

New Sweden, (pity that game is screwed up and my cappis don't build anything with their money, beat the UK navy though)

Krakow (Just destroyed 300+ Russian divisions, in case you're curious about population makeup, it is 86.8% Polish, no cheats/mod)

I also had a new Hannover, pity I don't have the pics.


Japan (33% national)

(yeah that Krakow has ridiculous export, I think I am producing like 20+ paper a day)

 

[unmerged(157031)]

That Krakow must be the most densley populated country in the world! Was that thanks to mods, immigration, or just massive POP growth?

I don't think I want to play Sweeden or Japan, but Krakow could be an option...

 

[pizza de oveja]

After all the exploits we players do it is easy to come to that point.
I strongly recomend to you what I so far never done, to give yourself in to the dark side of the force and load the game, playing as one of your enemies.

Now that would indeed be a chalenge!

I thinking on doing that after I stromtroop prusia with my glorious french army...thou it really takes a lot of will to do soo After all we all play games to win, and I've never met anybody that did continue playing a campaing until they saw the red baner flyin' hight over the reichtag.

So far Im comited to not reloading ever, and not using cheat codes...but I always take advantage of the crapy ai and encircle it after it advances into an obvious trap. Somehow even knowing that a monkey who had just drunk a crate of beers wouldnt fall into that, it still fells really rewarding to destroy those huge armies in the ensuing cauldron of death.

I dont think I would like victoria in multiplayer at all. It happened in starcraft. Just 2 multi-player games, I knew it certainly wasnt a "good multiplayer game"


That reminds me tomorrow is hollyday in my country...and you knew it already, that means a lot of Victoria..:rofl:
oh! how I will make those hordes to turn back to their lairs....elán my boys elán!!!! Next year in Berlin!

 

[unmerged(157031)]

I don't even know what country you're trying to suggest, but you get a gold star for effort *

I think I'll play as Belgium for now; my overall aim will be to reunite the Dutch people. This will mean taking on the French and the English at the same time, which will be a mighty challenge indeed. I shall no doubt need a globe spanning empire to achieve this, oodles of prestige, masses of immigration, and of course an army that would make Hindenburg himself cry.

Keep the suggestions coming though! I'd like to know what your favorite nations to play so far have bee. Mine as of yet is Two Sicilies, though even that became boring towards the end...

 

[Legosim]

That Krakow picture wants to make me play a game as them...even on Europe their immigration bonus is that ridiculously huge? Jeez...

 

[henryjai]

That Krakow must be the most densley populated country in the world! Was that thanks to mods, immigration, or just massive POP growth?

I don't think I want to play Sweeden or Japan, but Krakow could be an option...

Immigration alone(And the native populations of the Carribean Islands), I did escaped from Europe to build up my strength, then coming back after I feel bored splitting POPs. Basically, I was able to assimilate EVERY immigrant that moved to New Krakow. The capital of Krakow is relocated to San Diego, which by the game ended, has a population of around 70,000,000, 88% is Polish Culture, 6 % Russians, and 6% of North/South Germans. Industry in New Krakow is crazy, I don't really like to micro my factories or else I could simply let all my pops work in Steel/Automobile/Aeroplane/Tank factories for maximum profit instead of working in stupid glass factories. And thanks to bank sector hause I have like 21 Capitalist POPs and 5 Aristocrats POPs in San Diego. My huge workforce means inventions fire almost instantly...(I love that event in early game, but at late game it is not that good, I had already enough cappis for the cappi income bonus.)

The secrets of assimilation is to have low tax and low tariffs (you might not afford that early in game), a POP that is satisfied assimilate super-fast. Avoid to have any colonies as those are redundancy. I only have 4 pacific islands as my colonies, kind of worthless provinces I must say.

90 years after their exile from the Mainland Europe, Krakow is back with millions of men, artillery, tanks, coffee and cigarettes... a good story, huh.



@ Legosim: I moved my capital to America, those in europe are reconquests, you cannot survive to the point of getting 1 immigrant if you don't move your capital.

 

[gornard]

I tried playing as the ottomans and it definently is different. It's really tough to get your economy going and money is an extreme issue untill later. It's good that you can gain more national pops then you start with, pretty much only belgium can do it to the same degree. I adopted a new philosophy of creating puppets where ever my national pops were not present. That said it is very draining in the first 50 years and come the 1880's your capitalists are too poor to keep up momentum... probably better to switch to a command economy.

Another thing to try is releasing a nation. I tried to set up a game as poland. I loaded as russia, released all its puppets and then used entered the event code to bring a communist revolution. All puppets were released. I then edited the save file to give poland, the national cultures of polish, ukranian, byelorussian and lithuanian to somewhat ahistorically represent a will to reunite poland-lithuania (i also made it constitutional monarchy with land voting to represent the old governemnt). Congress poland has a population of less then a million, so most your pops are in germany and austria. So you can expand, puppet or ally the other successor states to the east (ukrain starts out stronger then you) and then punish prussia and austria for the partition and try to gain a sea port. Sounds like it could have been an interesting game. Although you may want to give yourself some new parties too.

 

[Justo]

Persia is one of my favourites in Revolutions. Events to modernize with British assistance and plenty of room for expansion. Mid game the Ottomans will need to be dealt with. Come late game war with Russia and/or British will be fun.

Persia also has Persian, Arabic and Baluchi culture accepted in Revolutions so plenty of pops available for exploitation.

 

[henryjai]

I tried playing as the ottomans and it definently is different. It's really tough to get your economy going and money is an extreme issue untill later. It's good that you can gain more national pops then you start with, pretty much only belgium can do it to the same degree. I adopted a new philosophy of creating puppets where ever my national pops were not present. That said it is very draining in the first 50 years and come the 1880's your capitalists are too poor to keep up momentum... probably better to switch to a command economy.

Non-national POPs are a redundancy especially when you are not very well industrialized. The dirt-poor provinces in Albania/Greece are sort of worthless. As a European Nation, a good way to gain a lot of national POP is to conquer a few provinces in America(must be states), in the case of Ottoman empire those provinces are better to be as empty as possible as you cannot assimilate the catholics/protestants POPs easily. The state should have as many provinces as possible so you can assimilate the immigrants without their size going over your assimilation limit. (I think if you have full citizenship, in America a non-state religion POP over 10k size cannot be assimilated)

For Japan it is completely different story though, the Chinese provinces are so densely populated that you could simply afford to promote 330k Cappis to have +50% output from the factories even when not populated by national POPs(Thus the penalty of non-national POP is almost cancelled)... In that game as Japan the industrial output is ridiculous. I released a few satellites for fun, or else I'd expect my industrial score to go over 50000 in 1936. Of course, if you play as China, I guess that is even more easy. (but low literacy sucks)

 

[unmerged(157031)]

I don't know why, but when I got to the country selection screen, I chose the Ottomans over Belgium. So far I'm enjoying the challenge; a relatively dilute population and a weak military, looking on at Russia as they point their rifles towards my mountainous fortress.

The first couple of years were rough; an income of 0.5 does not a nation make. Now though I'm making about £15 a day which is a huge comparative increase. The problems I face currently are as follows:

1: Population- Currently there are 25,000,000 people living under the Ottoman flag; many of these are in Europe however, and those in Turkey are spread out over a lot of states. The Arab lands to the south are even more sparsely populated, though every man counts I suppose. Immigration will be the key here, though this will be nigh-on impossible until I've got enough Liberal POP's (currently 1.7% of population) and voting reforms.

2: Tech- You start the game with the same tech levels as Egypt. Currently industrial and commercial techs are my focus, however I must research at least some military techs in anticipation of the Russian invasion.

3: Cappi's- There are only about 6000 total in my entire nation; I just made about 10,000 more, but this shall not be enough by a long shot. Still, every little helps.

This is certainly as entertaining as playing an easier power, albeit for different reasons. I'm hoping to at least end on Great Power status, maybe even make it to the top 5...

 

[Legosim]

For Krakow though, how do you get the cash to buy San Diego from Mexico before America takes it?

 

[gornard]

I don't know why, but when I got to the country selection screen, I chose the Ottomans over Belgium.

yes i win