Newbie questions

[tx34]

A couple (few) extra questions:

Is there any advantage to keeping units in reserve besides fast deployment to trouble spots?

Are mobilization reserves best kept as only a backup plan or when playing a small poor nation?

What does the star beside goods in the trade screen mean?

What is the (rough) threshold that you should stay below for badboy if you are a weaker nation? Probably around 25, or if you are a more powerful nation?

Is it even worth building a sizable navy except for transportation purposes until later in the game since many ships become so obsolete?

How can you tell which enemy provinces are considered colonies?

When enacting social reforms is the running cost it gives you for maximum funding or for your current slider settings?

When enacting social reforms is it better to enact a bunch of low reforms or only one or two good reforms?

What is a good number of capitalist pops per state in terms of construction potential? Does size matter for this (not counting production efficiency) ?

Why wont countries ally with you when you are at 150+ relations?

 

[Shiggs]

I'm a newb as well in vicky... all good questions. I can answer one of them for you, the star (or more appropriately, asterisk) next to the trade goods means that you produce that good. You probably want to set it to sell so you can make profits from the tax. I like to keep a decent reserve of most goods though, depending on the world market and my needs.

 

[Legosim]

A couple (few) extra questions:

Is there any advantage to keeping units in reserve besides fast deployment to trouble spots?

Are mobilization reserves best kept as only a backup plan or when playing a small poor nation?

What does the star beside goods in the trade screen mean?

What is the (rough) threshold that you should stay below for badboy if you are a weaker nation? Probably around 25, or if you are a more powerful nation?

Is it even worth building a sizable navy except for transportation purposes until later in the game since many ships become so obsolete?

How can you tell which enemy provinces are considered colonies?

When enacting social reforms is the running cost it gives you for maximum funding or for your current slider settings?

When enacting social reforms is it better to enact a bunch of low reforms or only one or two good reforms?

What is a good number of capitalist pops per state in terms of construction potential? Does size matter for this (not counting production efficiency) ?

Why wont countries ally with you when you are at 150+ relations?

Depends on your style. I usually don't keep troops in border provinces unless they are strategically important. When you don't have troops on the border, the other countries tend not to, at least in my experience.

Always keep your reserve pool as big as you can afford. From Haiti all the way up to the UK.

The star means you are producing that item domestically, via RGO or factory.

Twenty-five is about right. Unless you have a large (large!) military score, the great powers, especially Great Britain, will have issues with you, no matter what country you play.

When playing anything but the UK, or the US, I tend to just focus on transport really. The naval system in the game is rather meh imo. You really don't have to worry about it because it's rather easy to avoid warships if you put some effort into controlling our fleets well. Really again, up to personal taste and geopolitical necessity.

If I remember correctly you really can't.

I have no idea for either of the reforms questions.

I usually just go for one cappy POP in each state, over saturation of capitalists can become an issue later on.

Relations and allying is really hit or miss. Badboy and hard-coded sutff could be an issue. Even at +200 relations, and 0 badboy, getting alliances can be troublesome.

 

[unmerged(164401)]

A couple (few) extra questions:Is there any advantage to keeping units in reserve besides fast deployment to trouble spots?

mobilizing your reserves will intimidate other great powers, so i would suggest you mobilize only when you think you need to.

if you mean the professional units you recruit yourself, you want to have enough troops at your borders as deploying your soldiers will increase the cost of army maintenance. so you just want to have enough to keep your borders safe, so that in case any nation declares war on you, your deployed army could hold off the enemy until the army in reserves have time to organize when deployed.

Are mobilization reserves best kept as only a backup plan or when playing a small poor nation?

yes, see above.

What does the star beside goods in the trade screen mean?

the goods you are producing.

What is the (rough) threshold that you should stay below for badboy if you are a weaker nation? Probably around 25, or if you are a more powerful nation?

someone else should help you as i really don't pay close attention to my BB when i really should.

Is it even worth building a sizable navy except for transportation purposes until later in the game since many ships become so obsolete?

it is worth it actually. it depends with who you playing with though. if you are a country that starts with enough navy techs (Great Britain), then you would expect the ironclad and the monitors soon.

How can you tell which enemy provinces are considered colonies?

that is i dont know but if you are planning to wage a colonial war, then i would suggest you dont. colonial wars are pretty worthless in this game and you will have to conquer all the colonies in order to have the AI accept your demands.

When enacting social reforms is the running cost it gives you for maximum funding or for your current slider settings?

i believe the maximum funding. not funding your POPs with their social reforms will increase their militancy. so be careful with that slider.

Edit: also working hours reforms will decrease your factory efficiency. again, reforming early in the game is pretty lethal.

When enacting social reforms is it better to enact a bunch of low reforms or only one or two good reforms?

depends..better in what? if it's prestige wise, the i would go for the latter. if you mean the cheapest, i would go for the former. i wouldn't worry much about social reforms early in the game. be careful, as it might hurt your economy and slow your industrialization process.

What is a good number of capitalist pops per state in terms of construction potential? Does size matter for this (not counting production efficiency) ?

i usually leave a capie in each state, but it wont matter much if i missed one. you would want to have 20,000 or more. [confirmation needed]

Why wont countries ally with you when you are at 150+ relations?

200+ will work better. it's not guaranteed though.

Edit: i knew someone would beat me to it.

 

[tx34]

if you mean the professional units you recruit yourself, you want to have enough troops at your borders as deploying your soldiers will increase the cost of army maintenance. so you just want to have enough to keep your borders safe, so that in case any nation declares war on you, your deployed army could hold off the enemy until the army in reserves have time to organize when deployed.

depends..better in what? if it's prestige wise, the i would go for the latter. if you mean the cheapest, i would go for the former. i wouldn't worry much about social reforms early in the game. be careful, as it might hurt your economy and slow your industrialization process.

Thanks for the replies.

I was referring to the professional units of your standing army, specifically whether deploying them will increase your upkeep maintenance or if they still cost you in reserve. When I checked this in game deploying them didn't seem to make a difference in upkeep, it seems I will have to check this again.

In terms of keeping as large of a mobilization pool as you can afford would that not be that optimal since say having 40 extra divisions being able to mobilize could save you, but if you could have afforded 80 the mobilization of the 80 would possibly crash your economy harder than necessary when you only needed 40. (I realize this is more personal preference just trying to get others opinions).

I meant best in terms of cost to militancy decrease and immigration potential. I didn't actually even consider the prestige gains. I guess Ill just have to do an in game test for the costs once I have some time to play.

I'm also confused about when pop splitting is profitable. Since having a high population pop is more efficient. The only way this would work is if say with a 40K pop you get 0.75 efficiency but if you split it you get 30K at 0.75 and 10K at 0.5 which gives you 1.25 overall? It doesn't make sense to me that they would be additive like and it probably doesn't work like that but otherwise wouldn't splitting them decrease efficiency?

 

[Eärendil]

I'm also confused about when pop splitting is profitable. Since having a high population pop is more efficient. The only way this would work is if say with a 40K pop you get 0.75 efficiency but if you split it you get 30K at 0.75 and 10K at 0.5 which gives you 1.25 overall? It doesn't make sense to me that they would be additive like and it probably doesn't work like that but otherwise wouldn't splitting them decrease efficiency?

It does work like that, so it's pretty much always worth it to split POPs. The reason it was done this way was to make sure the countries with small population like Sweden were playable.

 

[tx34]

It does work like that, so it's pretty much always worth it to split POPs. The reason it was done this way was to make sure the countries with small population like Sweden were playable.

Ok thanks I better get splitting my pops then!

Also how come the AI does not suffer pop loss from war? Is it because the AI just couldn't handle war properly otherwise or to prevent abuse from the player? I wish it did because it sort of takes away one of the aspects of warfare, but I'm sure there was some reason this was done.

 

[unmerged(164401)]

Thanks for the replies.

I was referring to the professional units of your standing army, specifically whether deploying them will increase your upkeep maintenance or if they still cost you in reserve. When I checked this in game deploying them didn't seem to make a difference in upkeep, it seems I will have to check this again.

i believe it should.

In terms of keeping as large of a mobilization pool as you can afford would that not be that optimal since say having 40 extra divisions being able to mobilize could save you, but if you could have afforded 80 the mobilization of the 80 would possibly crash your economy harder than necessary when you only needed 40. (I realize this is more personal preference just trying to get others opinions).

of course they would require an extra amount of money, but that will only crash your economy if you are planning to wage war against a formidable country, in which the war is expected to last for years. i wouldn't worry about, specially if your economy is in good shape. just make sure your budget is doing well, and you have a good amount of cash in case your great war takes a little more time. remember that WWI time wars do take some time and effort, as the defending positions is always in a better position than you.

 

[tx34]

There would be no point in mobilizing if you weren't fighting a formidable country Plus it could be annoying to re promote any demoted pops.

 

[gornard]

If you have any sort of military power badboy wars seem to be rare. As france i'm number 3 (but partially because of an obsolete fleet) in military power, bad relations with everyone and i have 75 badboy, aggressiveness on max. Nobody has DOW'd on me yet (i'm in 1860's) except by event. Playing VIP. I've no chance of an alliance but nobody seems to want to fight me either.

 

[tx34]

After some testing the cost given for social reforms is the minimum cost to inspire confidence.

Also keeping divisions in the reserve pool does not decrease their maintenance cost. So there is no real point in not deploying them unless you are trying to seem weaker than you are.

I am playing Revolutions 2.01