New Player Questions

[batbat]

Hi all. I'm a Paradox Interactive veteran of sorts (played EUII and Crusader Kings to death) but a newcomer to Victoria and I have a question or two to ask, if you have time:

1) My first game was with Mexico. I managed to do pretty well improving my scientific research and infrastructure, building factories, and managing trade and production, but militarily I was a basket case. I managed to defeat Texas and take some of their provinces, but eventually found war with the USA unavoidable. First time around I managed to fight off both the USA and France to get a status quo peace, but 10 years later to the day the USA declared war again with about 100,000 troops. The most divisions I could bring to the field were 6. I was getting my ass kicked and gave up. How do you increase manpower, beyond defence spending? (Mine was exhorbitantly high.) And how do you increase the maximum number of divisions you can recruit? (I could only get a max of 5 Mexican and 1 Cree.)

2) My second game I started as Portugal. Immediately I'm losing money like a seive. I've set Tarriffs, but because the ruling party believes in free trade the most I can set gives me about $12 per day. Apart from reducing my spending on crime fighting, education etc., how are you supposed to balance the budget in a situation like that?

Forgive me if these seem like silly questions... the manual isn't the greatest.

 

[DaeMoohn]

1. I hope to be right. You can convert a part of your population to become soldiers if the party in power allows you to do that. Jingoist parties do not allow you to demobilize soldiers, pacifist parties don't allow you to create soldiers. Also, having various ideologies affect your maximum investment in defense. I don't know if various governments (i.e. monarchy with two party, constitutional monarchy, etc.) influence the investment rates.

 

[DaeMoohn]

2. I never played with Portugal, but all the times when I had initial deficit I lived for several months in decline while investing in the right technology - in Wallachia I invested a lot to upgrade the output of my coal mines. Also, if you already have factories, take note that the profit made by these is not the same for different type of factories. I don't know if I play the game right, but I tend to favor the factories with high profit having the maximum number of clerks and craftsmen (note that you cannot have more clerks than craftsmen in a factory). Raising the level of the factory or RGO doesn't increase the profit, it only allows you to add more farmers/labourers/craftsmen/clerks. Can you tell us what are your natural resources? Take a look at the industry tree and see if you can grab a quick invention (one year) that can improve your profit.

Don't take what I'm saying as facts, because I'm playing the game for about 2 or 3 weeks.

 

[DaeMoohn]

Also, are you playing Victoria or Victoria:Revolutions? VIP included?

 

[Orm]

2) My second game I started as Portugal. Immediately I'm losing money like a seive. I've set Tarriffs, but because the ruling party believes in free trade the most I can set gives me about $12 per day. Apart from reducing my spending on crime fighting, education etc., how are you supposed to balance the budget in a situation like that?

How much money are you spending on imports? Usually it's not a good idea at the beginning of a game to import stuff to keep factories running. Shut down factories that need imports.

 

[batbat]

Thanks, guys. To answer your questions, I'm just playing vanilla Victoria. I'm not importing anything, and am producing/exporting lots of fruit, coffee, some cotton and tobacco... Short of raising lots of taxes and having punishingly low levels of investment it's very hard to stay in the black. Is this normal?

 

[Orm]

Thanks, guys. To answer your questions, I'm just playing vanilla Victoria. I'm not importing anything, and am producing/exporting lots of fruit, coffee, some cotton and tobacco... Short of raising lots of taxes and having punishingly low levels of investment it's very hard to stay in the black. Is this normal?

It varies from country to country. With some countries you just have to accept not being able to afford crime fighting, education and/or military spending at the start of the game. Of those, education is the one you should cut down last. Unless you're in a war of course.
Since you rely heavily on RGO production for your income, you should try to aim for the tech called Mechanical Production as soon as possible, or try to trade for it. It gives a lot of inventions that boost various kinds of RGOs.