Need help playing the game

[murlocmancer]

Ok well I have tried to play this game, but got lost really fast. I was playing as Ethiopia, and seeing how poor it was, I thought it would be fun to get it up higher. So here is my list of questions.

1. How does the infrastructure and other things like that work? What is the quality rating, and how does that effect my country. What i have observed so far is that it improves GPD/c, but then plateus later on.

2. How do you get reasons to go to war. I invested in the independance of african colonies in the Horn of Africa, so i could later war and annex them, but I can't ever get a reason too.

3. Now if I did go to war with no justification, and my UN rating goes to 0, how can I reverse this without making peace?

4. I always seem to get a shortage of Petroleum, and how can I fix this. I also get this with energy alot.

5. Sometimes, even though i have a surplus of cash, I still lose money in my treasurey, even if I am not building anything. Why is this happening?

6. Also, does making more roads help my infrastructure, and then ultimately my economy? Is this a good investment, and if so where should i build them?

7. When i begin to construct troops, the progress seems to go nowhere at all. They seem always to be stuck on the same day. Why is this happening?

8. Is Ethiopia a poor chance to begin with? What is the best country to start with?

Thanks for any help. This game seems fun, but right now I don't understand all the aspects of it.

 

[degen83]

I am by no means an expert, but I can answer some of these questions.

2: Investing in independence movements is a costly project and it takes easily years in game. Don't expect results in under 2-3 years, at least.

4: If you have a shortage of a resource you have 2 options to fix that. Long term is to produce more of that resource to meet and exceed domestic demand, do this by clicking the overlay for the resource you want to find in the bottom right. That lets you find where the best spots to put your resource buildings. To get oil build more oil/gas fields, or oil derricks if your oil is on the water. To get more energy/electricity, build more power plants, either coal, petrol, hydro, or nuclear power are available, though coal and petrol should be available from the start.

Note that for every one of these industrial buildings it costs Industrial goods. You need to watch how many buildings you are building at once and make sure you aren't "spending" more industrial goods than you are bringing in. To get more industrial/military/consumer goods build the corresponding factory. for a poor country it may make sense to start with the -small factory, then move to mid, then finally the factory since the base factories produce the most, but also cost the most to build and take the longest time.

The short term answer to getting more resources/goods is to buy them from the world market or directly from another country. This will not solve the problem of you having a deficit, but it will get you a big enough stockpile to be able to get by until you can produce enough domestically to at least match domestic demand

7: I think you need military goods to produce troops. You can check and see if you have a shortage of military goods, if you do that is your reason. Build military goods factories, or buy military goods from the world market/ other countries to rectify this situation.

8: Ethiopia may be a good choice to learn the game with, I'm not sure I've never played Ethiopia. I don't know much about it in game, where the resources are, if its heavy in resources, that sort of thing. I've played the game with Soviet Union, Israel, China, and will be doing an Iran game soon. I'm not too scared of running a large country, but that is all personal preference. For a sandbox game you can set your goals to match your play style and give the country you choose a chance.

I don't know the answers to the rest of your questions unfortunately. I have played a few games and am confident enough with the economic system of finding what my deficits are and slowly building up an economy. One thing to keep in mind, when building up an economy go slow. If you go too fast you'll waste too much resources and burn out quickly. If you continually build up just a few projects at a time, when those are complete build a few more projects, and keep doing that for a few years you can really turn resource rich countries into powerhouses.

Industrial goods are key to economy, most buildings you have require industrial goods to operate. Your military requires military goods to be effective and petroleum (oil) to move and fight. Your civilians want consumer goods to be happy.

Of course these factories require resources to maintain themselves. For example industry goods factories require petroleum and electricity to operate, so the more industrial factories you build your demand for petroleum and electricity grows and you have to also expand your production of those resources, which means you require more industrial goods to build and maintain those new facilities. Its a cycle that requires some balance to it, and my advice is don't take it too fast or you will run out of your stockpile of goods you need in order to grow so you can meet domestic demand.

The economy is fairly simplified in that you have lists of how much goods your country demands. You have to provide that demand from your resource stockpile. You can buy more resources from others to keep your stockpile up, but you should also use some of those resources to increase your own domestic production so you don't have a deficit and don't have to keep buying more of this good to keep affloat.

Hope this helps some.

 

[murlocmancer]

Thanks for the answers. So far i got one country to get independance which is eritrea, but that gave me my sea ports so I am happy so far.