Prestige from satellites

[gornard]

In hearts of iron 2 there was an obvious benefit to having puppets in that you got alot of resources off of them, you could take control of their military and often made good allies.

Satellites in victoria seem a bit less useful, you can use them as strategic buffer states, and they may be useful to reduce badboy or prevent land with non nationals from bringing your economy down (just an assumption). But i read somewhere that you get prestige relative to the success of your satellites. Does anyone know how this is calculated or if it's even a significant amount?

For alot of countries that are made satellites, their economy usually crashes after wards meaning huge amounts of negative prestige so i wouldn't have thought it earns that much prestige for you (unless you satellited a major power maybe). Released satellites often will not industrialize (except in ireland i've found) and usually have tiny militarys.

So in what situations do people release satellites, or what countries are good to release?

 

[henryjai]

right, satellites often don't industrialise, you have to either build the factories for them before releasing/promote cappis before releasing/give them a bunch of cash after releasing them.

I don't think satellites give much prestige(if there are any) to the master nation. Satellites are good for

1. buffer purpose

2. remove redundant population

3. increase production (let's say, you release guanxi clique, and you have like 30 luxurious furniture factory, you might benifit.)

4. an ally for defensive wars

5. remove your BB

6. as a tech trading partner (here comes an exploit, you can trade for tech using the cores of a satellite even if you have 2000 Badboy points)


always, if your satellite is an unciv, they are mostly useless for point 4 and 6. They'll have the money (usually) when you covered them with rails fully.

In the case of Chinese warlords, I found guangxi Clique would industrialise if I have promoted a few cappis for them, which is not bad (they also raised an army of good size), Yunnan seemed not to industralise at all. I haven't tried Xibei Sanma/Manchukuo. The Philipines never industrialise when I released them. In this case you get a dominion instead of a satellite, a dominion would help you on offensive wars too.

 

[unmerged(164401)]

i usually satellite great powers in which i think grabbing land from them only gets me into huge trouble.

in one of my Japan games, i satellited Austria which was ranked the 4th. soon after, Russia declared war on me, and with the Austrians pushing from the east and me from the west, things got much easier than having to fight this war on my own. for some reason, Austria always had a huge army scattering in all it's lands.

the only question i have, is that i always run very low on prestige at the end of the game. i though releasing satellites would have had something to do with it but it simply doesn't. UK alwyas gets huge amount of prestige. any one know if i am doing something wrong?

 

[Dyranum]

IIRC, declaring war can cost you a lot of prestige.
Maybe that's why.

 

[henryjai]

claiming colonies get prestige, declaring war lose prestige, cultural inventions get prestige...

so, if you do not go for massive colony, try to rush cultural techs - those techs are worth rushing.

There is an exploit to increase your prestige, that is to invade a random weak civilized nation, occupy their entire country, humilate, you get no prestige loss. Next time attack again, humiliate... repeat, you'll be getting 100 Prestige per war. The cost is some badboy increase.

 

[unmerged(157031)]

I satellite counties if I can't get anything worth while out of taking their land. Take my current game as Mexico for example.

To try and boost my overall score, I decided that a healthy boost in prestige was in order. I also needed more POP's, as a conservative party had been elected and there was now no immigration coming in to my country. The USCA had two northern provinces dominated with Mexican culture POP's. I invaded, took these provinces and satellited them, while also demanding war reparations. I got a total of 25 prestige, and a good boost in income every month or so.

I then realized that declaring war on Columbia would only cost me 40 prestige. If I hadn't satellited the USCA, I would not have access to Columbia. I can now invade them when ever I feel fit, satellite them, and then move on to other countries in SA. If I took all of the USCA land I would have access to Columbia, but these provinces would be riddled with rebels and useless POP's (non-culture POP's give very little in terms of production).

In short, it is generally better to satellite a country than to take swathes of their cored land.

 

[henryjai]

I satellite counties if I can't get anything worth while out of taking their land. Take my current game as Mexico for example.

To try and boost my overall score, I decided that a healthy boost in prestige was in order. I also needed more POP's, as a conservative party had been elected and there was now no immigration coming in to my country. The USCA had two northern provinces dominated with Mexican culture POP's. I invaded, took these provinces and satellited them, while also demanding war reparations. I got a total of 25 prestige, and a good boost in income every month or so.

I then realized that declaring war on Columbia would only cost me 40 prestige. If I hadn't satellited the USCA, I would not have access to Columbia. I can now invade them when ever I feel fit, satellite them, and then move on to other countries in SA. If I took all of the USCA land I would have access to Columbia, but these provinces would be riddled with rebels and useless POP's (non-culture POP's give very little in terms of production).

In short, it is generally better to satellite a country than to take swathes of their cored land.

I am not quite sure about the way of calculating how much prestige you gain from wars, but I am sure that demanding provinces MIGHT subtract the amount of prestige you'll gain without demanding provinces. (I think there are exceptions, when you totally occupy huge countries like UK/USA) I think in some cases you might gain up to 200 Prestige when you won a great war. Wars are a great way to get prestige if you don't demanded too much provinces.

Your lack of prestige is very likely due to that you ignored cultural researches, those "romanticism" "idealism" things give you very good amount of prestige even if you are not the first to have the inventions fired. Nations with higher prestige tends to have inventions fired sooner, that is why the more prestigious nations tends to be even more prestigious.

1st discoverer: 150 Prestige

I think 2nd discoverer gets 75 prestige, 3rd get 50, 4th get something like 18/25 and ... whatever. Well, gaining 150 prestige is a great difference from gaining 1 prestige.

Since you cannot trade for cultural techs, you need to rush them! You can easily trade the technologies you wanted from the other nations. There is a "bug" for selecting trading partners, I'll list it below.

When you trade with a country with national-value "liberty", for each industrial/commerce tech you trade for you only spend 0.9 of the RP regardless of your national value.

When you trade with a country with national-value "order", for each army/navy tech you trade for you only spend 0.9 of the RP you needed regardless of your national value. This little bit of RP might not make a difference for countries starting with good RP generation, but for more backwards countries it could be making a difference.


There is a gamey way of getting large chunks of land in a war without much badboy. Depending on how many non-core provinces you want from a nation, for 5 of such territories, you grab a core province. For example, to cede all of Portugal's colonies, you need about 3 core provinces. You have to also satellite the nation in the process. You then trade the core provinces you grab for those provinces you wanted. You can almost get everything from that nation in the peacedeal offering just 1 of their core provinces.

 

[pizza de oveja]

In my current glorious French campaing I just realised it would be a great Idea to satelite Belgium and thus have mil access to west prussia next time they DOW me. Currently I can only attack from a single province and the ai has a pretty hight infraestructure, level IV forts and the bulk of the prussian army in there(I try to avoid glorious IWW attack plans and elan and all that glorious crap tactics).

Next time Prussians DOW me, If I have starting positions for my glorious champagne-sardaukar crack troops across belgium, it will be indeed in Berlin by christmas...buwahahahahahaha

Other than that you also have the proven tactic of henryjai of lowering badboy score by releasing them, or having an ally in case of war (Baly as an ally in my current game is not that much against the gargantuan british empire but I appreciate their moral support).

You could also create satelites in provinces of a mayor power just to make them suffer (What a greater humillation there can be that creating again regional powers that were amalgamated into a nation) I used that against the prussians in total war Empire...oh that was a good day of gammin'.

I fear in vic I they wont work as buffer states as great as in HOi, unless you do not call them to the war in which case the enemy wont be able to attack them and thus you will negate them access thru the buffer state's territory. That way however you wont be getting their support.

 

[gornard]

I fear in vic I they wont work as buffer states as great as in HOi, unless you do not call them to the war in which case the enemy wont be able to attack them and thus you will negate them access thru the buffer state's territory. That way however you wont be getting their support.

Thats exactly why they make good buffer states, because you can opt out of calling them in. For example if you are playing the ottomans, you can simply sell constanta to wallachia. Then when the crimean war starts, you can opt out of calling in your puppets and the russians only access to you home lands is now through the very defensible mountains of caucasia.

Similarly for prussia or russia, releasing poland either narrows the front with russia to a very small area or in the case of russia removes it completly (i think). This means that war happens on your own terms and for russia especially you only lose less then a million non national pops.

 

[pizza de oveja]

Yep gornard that seems to be a really good strategy if you are playing the ottos. One of the things I love from victoria and from all paradox games, is the fact that when you change country the game really adquires a whole new meaning, and not all strategies one has developed to get advante of the ai will work, forcing you to rethink a lot.

I wonder thou all this talk about selling land...I understand that with revolutions the "exploit" of selling lands was removed from the game and you cant no longer buy it or sell it. so you can do it???
how much will it cost normally?

 

[gornard]

AFAIK you can sell land as normal in revolutions, but the ai will not sell a core province with a majority of it's national pops. You can for example buy dublin off of the UK but you can't buy manchester.

 

[henryjai]

AFAIK you can sell land as normal in revolutions, but the ai will not sell a core province with a majority of it's national pops. You can for example buy dublin off of the UK but you can't buy manchester.

You sure it is IMPOSSIBLE? It might just cost you horrible money.

 

[henryjai]

Thats exactly why they make good buffer states, because you can opt out of calling them in. For example if you are playing the ottomans, you can simply sell constanta to wallachia. Then when the crimean war starts, you can opt out of calling in your puppets and the russians only access to you home lands is now through the very defensible mountains of caucasia.

Similarly for prussia or russia, releasing poland either narrows the front with russia to a very small area or in the case of russia removes it completly (i think). This means that war happens on your own terms and for russia especially you only lose less then a million non national pops.

That won't work, Prussia/Germany tends to DOW Poland when it formed.

 

[gornard]

That won't work, Prussia/Germany tends to DOW Poland when it formed.

Well it was just a guess. I played a liberated poland for a while once but the population in congress poland is very low, theres not much opportunity for taking back posen and galicia where most the poles are.

 

[pizza de oveja]

You sure it is IMPOSSIBLE? It might just cost you horrible money.

Well you tried diplomacy and bribery...time to try then your glorious 300.000 arty army... they lived by the sword after all so... well...thou I wonder if that kind of peace thru superior firepower does not end up costing you more money in the end than buying it...

Im thinking about a formula or something in excell that allows me to take into account the expenses that my ultra huge army and my glorious decision of invading the Dutch and thus seting all powers against me have caused so far...

Mmmmm no that I think of it, better not to quantify that That is the kind of data a ruthless warlord like myself doesnt find particulary interesting

 

[henryjai]

Well you tried diplomacy and bribery...time to try then your glorious 300.000 arty army... they lived by the sword after all so... well...thou I wonder if that kind of peace thru superior firepower does not end up costing you more money in the end than buying it...

Im thinking about a formula or something in excell that allows me to take into account the expenses that my ultra huge army and my glorious decision of invading the Dutch and thus seting all powers against me have caused so far...

Mmmmm no that I think of it, better not to quantify that That is the kind of data a ruthless warlord like myself doesnt find particulary interesting

with that money you could field not only 300,000 arty army, you could field 300 division arty army... (In terms of men, that is 3,600,000 arty army) You would win even if the entire world go against you.

 

[pizza de oveja]

with that money you could field not only 300,000 arty army, you could field 300 division arty army... (In terms of men, that is 3,600,000 arty army) You would win even if the entire world go against you.

Ouch! how do I hate it when people put in in perspective:rofl:

Yep I guess you are entirelly right...
However now that I have 45 BB, if that means if you are correct that it takes like 85 years to get rid of that, I guess it will be total war from now on...

I wanted peace, but they wanted war...now they will have war, dishonor and shardaukars-croissant troops in their capital "gathering their supplies"...well...they lived by the sword and....

 

[gornard]

As far as i know, when you have BB that high, you'll be holding onto it unless you release alot of puppets. Nobody wants 80 years without a war, so you'll have to deal without allies.

 

[pizza de oveja]

Hi there gornard
Well I wont miss them allies that much I never had any allies before(the victoria game in which I have better relationships to date (180+ with Italy, GB, Turkey, US and nobody wanted an alliance)) I stupidly invaded the dutch making the whole world hate me for it, so...

I wonder if alliances are triggered via events mostly or if some countries can ally with others while other cannot.

I suspect the ai has more luck with that given the fact that alliances are the only way to stop a human player from conquering the whole world playing luxemburg. I dont know what else to do if countries wont accept with +200 to relations...

Prussia is almost ready to accept white peace, so one option is to renounce to my overseas empire (while I still dont have a powerful fleet and britain hating me it is pointless really and that war is really crippling me financialy, while GB doesnt appear to be eager to accept anything other that outright anexation of all my colonies), disband half my army, build a henryjai 100% proof 30 div arty army and defend the glorious french soil from each war Im sure I will be sucked into from now on.