April 1836

[Anthropoid]

Having restarted numerous times with this game, I'm still just not quite getting the hang of it. I've tried out France and U.S. France obviously is in the doldrums compared to the U.S. but even with U.S. I'm having a hard time striking a balance between military development and economic development.

As U.S. it seems that Texas almost in variably gets reduced to one province if not annexed by Mexico. Then Mexico itself seems far more powerful than I would have guessed. This is one Easy and Weakling!?

More than once I've had Mexico attack me in like 1843 (after Texas was reduced to one province) and fit me to a more or less standstill with an army that must have numbered close to 50,000. And they always seem to keep their Divisions up at 10K.

So any ideas what I'm doing wrong here?

 

[LlywelynII]

So any ideas what I'm doing wrong here?

Militarize?

 

[RELee]

So any ideas what I'm doing wrong here?

Yep. You have to commit!

Either let the Texicans fight Mexico alone, or sacrifice your economy in the short term by promoting pops to soldiers and officers (be careful with officers because you can't convert them back to anything else) and go to war. This means you will have to seriously tax your poor pops and run up tariffs to max, perhaps even sacrificing education, crime fighting and social reforms in order to fund the army. Once you defeat the Mexicans, then you can return to building your economy in the hopes of being prepared for the Civil War, should it occur.

 

[LlywelynII]

Civil War, should it occur.

See also: Damnyankees, Reasons to enlist only

 

[TheFlemishDuck]

You can have a fairly large standing army cheaply. Just keep youre devissions at their lowest strenght, but highest upkeep (devissions of 1900 but fully paid, not reinforced) and youre millitary funding at max to have enough manpower to reinforce them when war arrives.

In the early game, you don't even need to give youre devissions max strenght, because of the low firepower 2 devissions of each 5000 strenght will have far better combat capabilety than 1 devission of 10000 strenght.
ive even used at times in the early game 3 devissions of 3500 men each rather than 1 of 10.000 to gain a significant advantage over my enemy at virtually the same cost. In the later game they will take more strenght losses, but it's probably that by then you will have the money to upkeep them at maximum.

 

[Anthropoid]

Why!? What you guys are suggesting is downright Imperalistic!

Glances at self's signature on this site . . . oh yeah. I guess that pretty much the name of the game right up until here recently eh? . . . or . . . well . . . maybe even recently too, albeit with really good PR that makes it seem like a "kinder gentler" sort of Imperalism.

It is interesting reading your responses, cause it made me realize I probably had a bit of a bias about U.S. history in the 1840s. I know a good deal about the ACW period, and I do know that it was incredibly costly in blood and treasure. I had it in my head that the Mexican-American war was a cakewalk for the U.S. but I guess that is not correct after all.

Ah vell. Vee schall buildt uph awr legiuns andt vee schall crwruwsh zem!

 

[unmerged(16676)]

The way to beat mexico is to take Mexico city, not fight for the border provinces.

If you put a little money into your mobilization, you should have between 12-20 divisions to mobilize, more then enough.

Group at least ten of them under Scott (he's always the first US leader) and March for mexico city.

IGNORE taking each province along the way, and fighting unless you have to, you should have at least 5-7 other divisions to keep the mexicans busy at the border.

Once you have Mexico city, the peace offerings start, accept any of them, the treaty of HD will give you everything anyway.

 

[unmerged(37660)]

As Fez has stated, use mobil pool and take the capital. However I would satilite and humiliate them for the peace. You get all your cores with zero badboy and leave them in a poor prestige postion in case you want to go to war against them again. Or pass on the humiliate and get war reps instead.
Your decision will be should you do this war in 1836 or wait until Mexico declares on Texas the second time around.

A nice move to make when playing the USA GC is to pause the game on the first day. Offer tech to Texas for the claim they have and the cash they have. If you don't claim the Oklahoma colony asap, then Mexico just may capture the claim. Also there is a event coming up very soon that will give you 3 full 100,000 pops in Oklahoma but ONLY if you have the colony.

Hammer

 

[Anthropoid]

Okay cranked it down to Easiest, restarted, and I seem to be getting the drift now. This game is really about managing a 19th century nation eh?

Here are a couple questions though:

1) At game start in 1836 Tejas seems to be in a state of war with Mexico? Maybe I'm missing that, and they are not actually at war. In any event, once they are at war, they ask me for a defensive alliance, and when I agree, I am not then automatically at war with Mexico?

So then I DoW Mexico for the -59 Prestige hit or whatever it is? Seems like if I have a Defensive Alliance I should get to DoW without that hit, but maybe since the alliance formed after the state of war the engine doesn't count it that way?

2) Potentially related to this, I occupy several Mexican provinces (Matamoros, Santilla, Revilla, Tampico, San Luis Potosi) and won a string of battles (bout 6 in total), but my War score was still 0%. Also because of the order in which the wars were declared?

I'm not using any mods, and have it patched as mentioned in the OP, but I did run the POP Splitter at one point.

I think I'll restart again and see what happens if I propose an alliance with Tejasicans immediately . . .

 

[RELee]

Okay cranked it down to Easiest, restarted, and I seem to be getting the drift now. This game is really about managing a 19th century nation eh?

Here are a couple questions though:

1) At game start in 1836 Tejas seems to be in a state of war with Mexico? Maybe I'm missing that, and they are not actually at war. In any event, once they are at war, they ask me for a defensive alliance, and when I agree, I am not then automatically at war with Mexico?

So then I DoW Mexico for the -59 Prestige hit or whatever it is? Seems like if I have a Defensive Alliance I should get to DoW without that hit, but maybe since the alliance formed after the state of war the engine doesn't count it that way?

2) Potentially related to this, I occupy several Mexican provinces (Matamoros, Santilla, Revilla, Tampico, San Luis Potosi) and won a string of battles (bout 6 in total), but my War score was still 0%. Also because of the order in which the wars were declared?

I'm not using any mods, and have it patched as mentioned in the OP, but I did run the POP Splitter at one point.

I think I'll restart again and see what happens if I propose an alliance with Tejasicans immediately . . .

#1. I've never been drug into a war when I get a defensive alliance with a country already at war. I sometimes get drug into a war if I accept a full alliance offer with a country already at war. I've never figured out why it only works sometimes, but then I've never sat down and run test scenarios to try and figure it out. Maybe somebody else has an answer to it. You can squawk about it if you like, but it won't change anything. It not something that is moddable to my knowledge, limited as it is.

#2. I don't think the order that wars are declared has any impact on war score. Can't find any evidence of that. However, points are awarded for winning battles and occupying provinces. So, you say you have won about 6 battles. Did Mexico win any battles at all, or have you won all to date? I suspect that border provinces (I don't have a map in front of me so don't get me if some of the provinces you mention are not border) do not add as significant a war score as those deeper in the country, or they may score war score exactly like they are listed in the peace negotiations page. Just not sure. It would make sense that the provinces give war score commiserate with the score used in peace treaties. However, since the actual war score is the difference between yours and theirs, there might be something offsetting your gains, and then when you add rounding, it might be that your war score is still displayed as zero.

I'm guessing.

One thing I do know, occupying the capital province gives an immediate twenty percent increase to your war score, so always aim for that province as a goal in any war.

Perhaps someone has the formula used for determining war score. I can't find it though.

 

[Anthropoid]

Thanks RELee.

Well I finally seem to have got to the point of moving around upright, even if I do still have the "training wheels" (Very Easy Weakling opponent) on

Have played up to about 1870 as U.S. and as far as I know the history of the era, I am pretty well advanced in Techs, gained all the Mexico land except Tucson (3 million bucks for that!?) and have more-or-less figured out the engine. The impressive thing about this game is, that it is obvious there is much more than just a basic figuring it out, i.e., as in many Paradox games there is an incredible depth, subtlety, historical complexity, and long-termedness that is belied by the apparently clunky and simplistic interface/user actions when you first start.

Fantastic game!

 

[RELee]

Let me caution you, while I'm thinking about it, in expecting the combat model to follow history. It won't. You will not get an Alamo. You will not get too many battles where Lee can hold off opponents twice or three times his size due to his remarkable leadership and a fast-marching Jackson. Instead, you get wars where Texas flounders against the Mexican horde and the USA flattens the rebellious states in less than two years. As a human player, you will eventually learn the ways of mastering Victoria battlefield tactics, if you are willing to micromanage every battle in every province and don't have a problem with wars that were historically two to four years in length lasting ten years as you slowly grind down your superior opponent.

They're not all like that, I'm just making a point.

As a human player, the computer will do things to you that you can't do to them. Get used to it. Some call it AI cheating. I call it giving the computer a chance. So, you are going to have to be flexible enough to learn how to utilize terrain and manage reserves to fight the computer in ways that it can't cope.

Now that VickyWiki is back up, you might want to take a quick jump and read this.

Let us know if you have any specific questions.

 

[Anthropoid]

Thanks RE. A good page.

I did go with the Arostook war in one of my restarts and that taught me a good deal about warfare. I managed to take most of Canada, but the Brits kept popping up like one of those gopher games at the carnival. Then all I had in warscore was about a 37 and I couldn't even get them to agree to a White Peace! Ah ha! Don't mess with the Big Girls! (Victoria that is).

It is a pretty decent combat engine for a game that is primarily focused on society development.

So in my learning game as US, I'm up to March 1885 and lagging a bit behind the Great European Powers

I've probably muddled things a bit with the POP maintenance and factories and such, just in order to learn what you can and cannot click etc.

The Democrats have ruled the U.S. from the beginning, and the ACW never happened. Abolition also never happened and I cannot seem to get rid of the slave-lover (or, eh, would that be slaving-loving?) Democratic Party.

My MIL and CON are quite reasonable. I've enacted a couple reforms for my workers and the only folks who are testy are the Clergy because of the Free Press, etc.

Here's the National Comparison sorted by Factories. I'm in the top echelon, but I've deleted quite a few capitalist built factories since I did not have POPs and I figured empty factories might be costly.

Was that a mistake?

The thing that alarms me in that ledger page is that UK has a researh of "215" and mine is "zero." That doesn't sound good at all. Not to mention that they have ten times as many POP, and a navy that is about 12 times as big as mine, and a comparably massive army.

I guess having figured out how to make it go, and get my nation on solid footing, now I'm wondering what I should be planning to do to move toward victory?

 

[TheFlemishDuck]

I figure you eventually mostly lack in research. The AI is very fast in research, especially the majors. And you have a lot of people, and looking at youre industrial score you probably havn't got to many pops wich give bonus to research, or railroads and factory's for that matter.

 

[Anthropoid]

I've got a ton of railroads, but yeah, only 25 factories. There is no point in promoting POPs to clerks if there is not a factory for them to work in is there? I know they help with research, but are they worthwhile if they don't have a factory to work in?

 

[TheFlemishDuck]

I've got a ton of railroads, but yeah, only 25 factories. There is no point in promoting POPs to clerks if there is not a factory for them to work in is there? I know they help with research, but are they worthwhile if they don't have a factory to work in?

As long as you do it with big pops in province's with unimportant rgo's, it will probably be worthwhile. Always use the largest sized pops for clerks, they have the highest production and research value.
The pops will get money from export and because middle strata has a better tax effeciancy than poor strata youll probably gain more from them even unemployed, while they add well to research.
Another thing is that i have noticed that rich capitalist tend to build factory's far faster in state's where there is excess and unemployed labour, so if you want the AI to build more factory's in a state have some craftsmen and clerks unemployed.
though it's also better to have larger sized factory's than many smaller ones. A fully manned lvl 3 steel factory will produce more than 3 fully manned lvl 1 steel factory's.

 

[Anthropoid]

I'm increasingly seeing the real beauty of this game. Amazing what a toughie it is initially, but now that I'm up and running I'm loving it!

I know I've got a few questions I want to ask you guys, as well as some observations, but I'll save them up till after my next play session . . . which is Right Now!

 

[Anthropoid]

I'm amazed at this game. It is the only game I've been playing and I still have not fully figured it out!

I must have restarted about 10 times now as U.S. to figure out how things work. I just might play through my current game which is up to about 1853.

This time, I focused on getting the Cultural Techs first, and didn't bother allying with Texas. The Mex-Am War never happened. I have focused on industry and culture, and inadvertently caused myself to have a Presidential Dicatorship voted into power!

So, then (or maybe this was before the Dicatator?) I decided to go on a POP converting spree and try to get the Republican party voted in (must've been around mid 1840s). I converted all my biggest Conservative POPs to Craftsmen. I cannot remember now if this was before or after the Dictatorship . . . anyway, the Dictatorship only lasted a couple years. It seems the Liberal middle-class were very displeased and I had a ton of Provinces whose revolt risk just kept climbing. Rather than fight it, I just decided to leave by 19 reserve Div in reserve, and not fiddle with my 4 starting units (I had built none). Pretty soon the rebels started taking over my most Industrialized provinces. Within about a year, the whole of New England and the upper Mid-Atlantic had changed hands to the Rebel Scum.

Then *poof* Republicans in power!

Meanwhile, Mexico and UK just sit there watching . . . okay seems plausible (I love how you can only sort of predict what effects something will have in this game! which to me makes it one of the most realistic games I've ever played).

I think I then continued converting POPs to Liberal Craftsmen, but I was still not able to keep the Republicans in power through the next election.

No idea if the ACW will happen or not. I'm just amazed at how complex this game is.

 

[Noblejms]

Hey Anthropoid, is there any particular reason that you pick USA every time you restarted the game?

For me, USA has achieved so much from 1836 to 1930 in the real world, that I think the bar is set too high for me as a Vicky player to surpass that glory.

In my current game, which is also my first Vicky game, I'm having a real blast playing as Brazil. The only cheat I've used is "Event 23102 USA", which installs a socialist party in USA thus making is less attractive to immigrants. It took me 3 years of political turmoil to finally get a democracy government and full social reforms to Brazil. That happened back in 1868 when Brazil has a population of 9 million. Afterward I've got about half a million flowing into my country every year, it's just awesome.

I bought this game 5 years ago, in and between I probably tried to play it for about 4 times, and it never lasted more than 2 hours before I gave up. And two weeks ago I decided to give it another try (with the Revolution expansion pack) and everything just magically worked out.

Yes this game put all other strategy games to shame once you've figured out the brilliance of it.

Oh by the way, I'm not sure if you know, but there's an interface mod that greatly improves the feel of this game. I'd highly recommended it. Please let me know if you can't find it. Thanks.

 

[Noblejms]

Here's the National Comparison sorted by Factories. I'm in the top echelon, but I've deleted quite a few capitalist built factories since I did not have POPs and I figured empty factories might be costly.

Was that a mistake?

I think it's a mistake, though I hope someone can confirm this. You probably should've just closed them down rather than deleting them all together. As far as I know, empty factories and RGOs help you attract immigrants. Also from personal experience, empty factories does not negatively affect your budget so much as to worth any attention.