Foreign Policy
1) Which other Great Power(s) should the Ottomans seek an alliance with? Remember that Russia and Austria-Hungary are the people we're worried by.
C) Prussia
D) The USA
2) Where should we seek a war?
A) The Arabian Peninsula (smaller, easier, have accepted culture pops)
3) Where should we seek influence? (Remember, more influence on our continent and with our neighbors; if we want to pursue that luxury furniture factory, securing a source of tropical lumber would be helpful)
C) Persia
D) The New World - Brazil
Domestic Policy
4) Which party should lead us until 1840? I'd make the change in 1837 or so. Conservatives
5) Open Answer Question: What sort of industry should we focus on?
Clothing as stated elsewhere, furniture
6) Should we seek reforms or repress our citizens?
A) Reform!
Military policy
7) We have a 25 ship fleet, and no real enemies that are going to fight us with a navy. Should we downsize the navy? No - use it to support Brazil and the USA and/or protect our trade with them.
Technology policy
8) What technology should we pursue next? Culture (education, really) technology
Open Ended
If we can ally with Brazil and the USA and support them, we may be able to take a few holdings in the new world as they become dominant. Importing and creating value-added goods from the new world seems like a winning idea.
He's a shy overambitious dog-catcher on the wrong side of the law. She's an orphaned psychic mercenary with the power to bend men's minds. They fight crime!
Here's what we're making at the moment. Apologies about the formatting, APD does a lot of things nicely, but when they added goods, they made this particular screen look hideous. You can also see it in the factory image in the main update if you look closely. Also it's bigger and a png so it should be more readable, @Aldo ?
We make at least some of most basic goods. We lack gold, which is nice for turning a profit. We also don't make lead, so glass factories might not be ideal. We make a ton of wool and grain, so fabric factories and bakeries might turn a fair profit. Also no silk, so luxury clothes will be a bit costly, but they're that way for everyone who is not the British, who have easy access to Chinese silk.
Meanwhile, I decided to make separate tutorial posts between updates. Update one: POPs and the economy!
So the basic unit of the economy is not resources, but POPs. There are 12 kinds of POPs. Each individual POP represents every worker of that type of a single culture in a single province. For example, all the farmers in Instanbul that are Turkish are one POP, while all the craftsmen that are Turkish are another POP, while Arab farmers would be distinct from the Turkish farmers there.
There are two places a POP can work. A Research Gathering Operation (RGO), which is your basic farm, mine, ranch, fishery, or what have you. Alternately, they can work in factories, which turn the basic goods from RGOs into more valuable stuff, or initial factory production into even better stuff. For example, timber -> lumber -> furniture -> luxury furniture. Or more relevant to our interests: cotton OR wool -> fabric -> regular clothes -> luxury clothes. There are also some POPs who don't work in a specific place, but have other uses.
The types of POPs are, from left to right:
Aristocrats (upper class): Aristocrats own the RGOs. The more of them there are, the more efficient your RGO is. They tend to be very conservative and oppose reforms. If they have more money they'll be able to hire more farmers or laborers to work in the RGO.
Artisans (middle class): Artisans are like crappy factories that work in their own homes. They'll convert basic goods into better goods, which is how we're producing, for example, a small amount of liquor (we're also bad Muslims).
Bureaucrats (middle class): Bureaucrats manage your empire. They're paid out of the administration budget. They make social reforms effective, collect taxes, fight crime, and are generally cool dudes to have around. You want 1% of your population to be these dudes initially, plus more if you make social reforms. In APD, but not in normal Vicky2, they provide 2 * their percentage of the population in research points, up to a max of 2 points.
Capitalists (upper class): Capitalists build factories and railroads, as long as there's a profit in it for them. Profits from factories go to them, which they then pay taxes on. Whatever's left they'll invest in new factories, presuming there are not a ton of empty spots in existing factories (they need potential workers, basically). Additionally, for each percent of the population they are, they provide a research point. In vanilla, this is capped at 2 RP, in APD, it's instead capped at 4 RP. They tend towards liberal parties, as those are best for business.
Clergymen (middle class): Clergymen are responsible for educating the people. They're paid out of the education budget. They increase the rate at which other POPs gain literacy. They provide research points equal to their percentage of the population, capped at 2 RP in both vanilla and APD.
Clerks (middle class): Clerks are greyed out in this shot because we have none, as of yet. Clerks work in factories and make them more efficient, to a maximum of 20% of the factory's employees. Additionally, they are the only ones who can work in some of the new factories in APD, such as banks or stock exchanges. And they also provide RPs equal to half of their percentage of the population, to a cap of 2 RPs in vanilla and 4 in APD.
Craftsmen (lower class): Craftsmen are your basic factory workers. They need to have 20% literacy. That's pretty much all there is to know about craftsmen. You need lots of them.
Farmers (lower class): Farmers work in RGOs that are growing things or hunting things or catching things. Grain, cotton, fish, cattle, horses, wool, etc.
Labourers (lower class): Labourers are farmers, but work in mines, forests, and what not.
Officers (middle class): Officers create leadership for our military. More of them = more generals = better generals. They're paid out of the military budget.
Slaves (lower class): Free labor! Crappy labor, but it's free! We can ban slavery for a bit of prestige, which will instantly convert all slaves into farmers or labourers. There will probably be an anti-slavery movement at some point. Possibly international pressure too. We should end this when we can. If you're the US, it's somewhat more complicated, and almost inevitably leads to the Civil War.
Soldiers (lower class): Need these guys to form armies. They die when you get in fights, so that's no good. Every 3000 soldiers can support one regiment, adjusted based on the war policy of your ruling party. Jingoism gives the most, then pro-military, anti-military, and pacifists.
Lastly, we need to talk about a couple other elements of POPs. First, each POP has a literacy rate. More literacy = more science and more likely to be promoted to a higher class or factory job. Unfortunately/fortunately depending on your goals, literacy leads to consciousness. Consciousness is how much your POPs understand how government policy affects them. More conscious POPs are more likely to demand reforms and are more likely to vote for the issues they care about. If you ignore the demands of high consciousness POPs, they become militant. Militant POPs are more likely to join rebellions, which are bad news, obviously.
Generally: low consciousness, low militancy POPs = sheep who will support the government. High consciousness, low militancy POPs are POPs who are getting the reforms they want. Low consciousness, high militancy POPs are probably foreigners that don't like your rule. And high consciousness, high militancy POPs are probably going to rebel, and if successful will install a democracy or a dictorship of one of the extremist ideologies (Reactionary at the moment, later we'll add Anarcho-liberals [RON PAUL], Communists, or Fascists).
Feel free to ask questions, I know that's a lot of stuff. Next time: foreign policy!
Self-righteousness is incompatible with coalition building.
Now im tempted to get vicky 2, but I barely understand eu3's economy. Somehow I managed to make England the sick man of Europe as well as the villiage idiot.
Foreign Policy
1) Which other Great Power(s) should the Ottomans seek an alliance with? Remember that Russia and Austria-Hungary are the people we're worried by.
C) Prussia - Shares borders with the threats to us
2) Where should we seek a war?
A) The Arabian Peninsula (smaller, easier, have accepted culture pops) - Nice easy start to round up more workers.
3) Where should we seek influence? (Remember, more influence on our continent and with our neighbors; if we want to pursue that luxury furniture factory, securing a source of tropical lumber would be helpful)
A) Serbia - Too much competition in the others, and the Arabs can be brought to heel under the boot.
Domestic Policy
4) Which party should lead us until 1840? I'd make the change in 1837 or so.
A) Reactionaries - Because building a luxury furniture factory is dumb, Capitalists cannot be trusted to get the backbone of our economy sorted.
5) Open Answer Question: What sort of industry should we focus on?
Aim for high value production later on, but for now I'd like to see our basic military needs met domestically.
6) Should we seek reforms or repress our citizens?
b) Repress! - At all costs stop those pesky liberals from screwing up our exploitation of the workers economy.
Military policy
7) We have a 25 ship fleet, and no real enemies that are going to fight us with a navy. Should we downsize the navy?
A) Yes - We have no need right now and when we do those wooden ships will be useless.
Technology policy
8) What technology should we pursue next? Culture (education, really) technology - Imperative, the sooner we take this the quicker our other technological advancement and the further we get.
If we learn the second technology before 1840 I'll choose the option with the second most votes.
9) Any other suggestions!
Repress the populace until they rise up in glorious Communist revolt, comrade
Despite loving EU3, and CK and CK2, I never really got into Vicky(either of them) because the focus isn't really as much on what I find interesting in these games as the other series(either political intrigue and murder, overall development of a nation, rags to riches kinda thing and establishing my own empires. None really work that great in vicky).
There is no plan, it's just a temporary thing. It's obnoxious, but whatever.
It will be interesting to see what effect that has on the overall economy, especially immigration. You might have to do a quick run back thru every so often to make sure the world isn't always in a recession.
My vote, tech wise, is for education and research techs until you can't keep the education slider maxed then RGO output techs. Once you start industrializing heavy don't overlook the commerce factory efficiency line. Those 1 and 2 percent increases are deceptively important to keeping factories above water.
1) Who should we pursue an alliance with:
UK - II
USA - I
Prussia - IIIIIII
France - I
2) Expansion?
Arabia - IIIIIIIII
Persia -
3) Sphere?
Serbia - IIIII
Siam - II
Brazil - I
Persia - I
4) Party
Conservatives - IIII
Liberals - II
Reactionaries - III
5) Factories?
Basic Industry - I
Food stuffs - I
Heavy industry - I (zagdrob's vote)
clothing - II
Military - I
6) Politics
Repress - III
Reform - IIIIII
7) Naval Disarmament
Yes - III
No - IIIIII
8) Research
Military - I
Industry - IIII
Culture - IIII
Results!
The Ottoman Empire will pursue improved relations with the Prussian Empire. In the future, it may also be wise to ally with one of the world's pre-eminent naval powers, such as the US, UK, or the Netherlands. Prussia will probably eventually build a fleet, but it is usually not their first priority.
By unanimous consent, we will attack the Arab minors on the Arabian peninsula. Direct control of Mecca seems like a worthy goal, which means the small nation of Hedjaz is our probably first target.
Serbia must become part of our Sphere of Influence to maintain a shorter border with the dreaded Austrians, and to provide support against the Russian bear.
The Conservatives will lead the Empire into this age of industrialization, after a brief period in which the Sultan will supervise economic development. In particular, he will focus on turning our wool into fabric and the fabric and dyes into a clothing industry, though he'll probably also direct construction of at least a steel factory as well, in order to provide more of the raw materials needed for weaponry and eventually more advanced ships.
Reforms will be pursued. For now, this will mostly consist of improving literacy dramatically and taking pro-consciousness options during events. If a reform becomes available, the Sultan will pursue it, with a particular eye towards outlawing slavery. Though I would suspect that we will not be able to achieve any reforms in this play session. This will instead be one of our probable votes for next time.
We will maintain our fleet. With it we can launch a silly invasion, of say, Italy. (no, not really)
And finally, the desire for railroads and improved education has tied. As such, the Sultan is allowed to break the tie. Our research path will be to finish our current investigations into Freedom of Trade, and then improve our education further with Positivism, and then work on Experimental Railroad.
Also, I plan on building forts along the Russian and Austrian borders and if I can afford it raise armies to man the border in Armenia.
The Russians frighten me and I don't want to let them hit us without being ready.
Self-righteousness is incompatible with coalition building.
Man, no love for supplying our own military? I always hated watching unit/ship build ques sitting at maximum days left because no one would sell me guns.
Maybe its more of a steamer/liquor thing for the better units I can't remember.
Man, no love for supplying our own military? I always hated watching unit/ship build ques sitting at maximum days left because no one would sell me guns.
Maybe its more of a steamer/liquor thing for the better units I can't remember.
This is less of a problem when you're a great power, and in APD, in my experience. You get access to the market in total score order, as best I can tell. And there are way too many fucking guns available, my arms factories always went bankrupt in my nearly permanent laissez faire USA game that I won by like 6000 points over France.
EDIT: Also, starting to write the update nowish. We'll do teach me about technology, Steve ebum!* as well.
*First person who knows what LP I'm referencing is a) a nerd and b) gets their vote counted double in this update's slate. Which I still have to come up with.
enlightenedbum on
Self-righteousness is incompatible with coalition building.
With the Tripolitan military defeated, all that remains is to occupy their country before we can annex them directly into the empire. The army is split into three parts, with the two hussar regiments venturing deep into the desert to seize those outposts, while the infantry march into Sabha. The war should be over about 100 days after they arrive.
Prussia is not yet willing to ally with our glorious empire, we will have to waste time and diplomats to improve relations.
So very, very simple version of diplomacy (I'll get to a more full version of it tomorrow). You can get up to 9 diplomatic points at any given time, you make a fair number back each month. More if you're a Great Power (again, more details on what that means tomorrow, for now, just accept that the 8 best nations are Great Powers). Most actions take one diplomatic point. Some, however, take two. Improving relations is one of these. Our diplomatic points will be mostly used towards improving relations with Prussia until they accept our alliance. Then we'll work on improving relations with other great powers, but won't sign any alliances yet. Generally the AI is hesitant to attack if your relations are positive, unless they get an event that tells them to or you have some of their core territories (like the USA will ALWAYS invade Mexico after firing the Manifest Destiny decision, which gives them cores on the Mexican Cession and Texas).
As instructed, we focus on clothes production. We build a clothes factory and a second fabric factory to help supply it.
Additionally, forts are constructed on the Russian border. This will slow them down a bit while we can move troops to counter their invasion. This should also hopefully spur some demand for our new cement factory.
If you play this game, these kinds of events pop up all the time. I won't be posting them all, but if they're particularly illustrative of a point or noteworthy in some way, I'll put them up. This one either has us piss off the US or makes our non-Turks angry. I actually kind of want high consciousness and high anger for political reforms (Sunday's tutorial subject, I think), so that's fine. And not angering a great power, even if it's one whose AI tends to not get involved in the Middle East, is a good thing.
After a fairly short time, Tripoli's provinces fall. Generally speaking unless you're demanding an annexation, the AI will surrender if the war score > the cost of the demands (here, 85). There's slightly more to it, factoring in war exhaustion and total military strength (they won't surrender early in a war if you blitz an undefended border, for example). If you're going for an annexation, you have to occupy it all. There are some scripted peaces, for example if after the USA fires Manifest Destiny they occupy Mexico City then they can force Mexico to sign the Treaty of Guadaloupe-Hidalgo which cedes the American southwest to the US in exchange for a bunch of money.
Evidence that we won. I move the army back towards the Egyptian border to make the French not nervous or something. Or to keep an eye on Egypt. Could be that.
Sorry that I forgot to re-size this. With the war over, our national stockpile costs go down, which means we can afford to fully fund education. This is desperately needed, because our literacy rate is so dreadfully low we cannot get many POPs to promote to craftsmen. No craftsmen = no injury = not a Great Power for very long. Need more literacy.
At the end of each year, the upper house of your parliament (or in our case, influential nobles?) is shuffled around. This affects your ability to reform. With an upper house this conservative, we are going to need a lot of militancy or a very, very strong movement to change anything in 1837 (spoiler: we don't). I'll get into this more on Sunday, but reactionaries will never vote for political reforms, liberals always will, and conservatives will if enough of the populace demands it (10% of conservatives per point of militancy or I think if 10% of the populace joins a movement).
Hedjaz, which has Mecca, is an Egyptian satellite and already in our sphere of influence. I GUESS we won't invade them then. If we fall out of Great Power status due to our crap literacy and thus crap industry, they'll fall out of our sphere, and Egypt will probably rebel at some point here. It might be a good idea to annex them when they do.
Ha'il is very friendly with us (150/200), so I decide not to insult them enough so I can justify a war (requires under 50 relations). Instead, I work on Nejd. Which I failed to notice has parts of two states, so we cannot annex them immediately. Sigh. To start a war, you need a casus belli. These cost infamy, which is just like infamy in any Paradox game. Get enough of it from taking territory and everyone dogpiles your warmongering ass. Here we are trying to create a justification. The closer we get to creating it, the less infamy we take. If we're caught immediately, it would cost 7.5 points of infamy, the limit is 25. Peacetime burns .1 every month, as does being a Great Power.
We're caught pretty quickly and pick up 6.3 infamy. That slows down the creation of the casus belli, increases war exhaustion, and is generally obnoxious.
On the plus side, after improving our relations with Prussia to +30, they accept our offer of an alliance. Now if we ever end up in a terrible, no good, rotten war with Russia, we'll at least have a major distraction as Prussians flood into Russian occupied Poland and the Baltic States.
It takes two years, but we finish Freedom of Trade. This improves our RGO performance by 10% and our makes our educators 10% more effective. To further improve the education, I switch both our national foci to making clergymen, in our two largest provinces. It's slooooooowly getting better.
America intervened in the War of Texan Independence, which forced the Mexicans to accept a white peace. Not long after, Texas is annexed by the United States. Also pictured, Colorado, Oklahoma, Washington State, Oregon, and southern Idaho are uncolonized. The US will get the NW, Mexico is about to finish colonizing Colorado and no one wants Oklahoma yet (the US usually gets it).
Annoyed at my failure to read maps accurately, I add a humiliate war goal to the war against Nejd. By occupying Riyadh, we have enough war score to demand both it and the small one province region they also had. Humiliating them gives us prestige and takes their prestige (such as it was away). The truce will end in five years, at which time we can annex them outright.
This is great for us if we want reforms. Bursa becomes more liberal, or more to the point, the POPs in Bursa become more liberal. And their desire for political reforms increase. Excellent.
Checking in on the movements. Hm, we have a ton of nationalistic movements who want independent countries of their own. Only the recently conquered Tripolitanians are taking up arms, along with some of the reformers, but there are lots of potential rebels there, mostly in the Balkans.
Victoria is crowned. This is an event the UK gets everytime, which I believe gives them additional prestige, but I don't play the UK, so I'm not really sure. Anyway, the namesake of the game is ruling now, huzzah!
Some people meet and discuss politics, we send in the Janisarries. And then release them. The other option is pretty much the opposite. Lowers consciousness, increases militancy. We want sustainable reforms, so we need higher consciousness.
Zaydi is useless, but an easy target. It also gets us a border with the UK, which could be dangerous, but I've improved relations to a positive state with them, and they have about a thousand scripted wars to fight anyway. It also gets us next to Yemen, which has opium, which is a fairly valuable luxury good we can always take more of. And eventually, some oil.
On the last day of 1839, we learn Malthusan thought, which should dramatically improve our education rates. It also means more Turks will head to the colonies, and Turks in the colonies will make them states faster, which means we can build factories there. All to the good. I don't start experimental railroad, because it's just about the end of this update, so I thought I would bank the research points so y'all can decide what to learn.
Because it's 1840, we can trade a small amount of prestige for a fair amount of science. We have plenty of prestige, and will get more from repeatedly smacking around Arab minors, so we'll go ahead and do it.
The war with Zaydi wasn't even worth showing. Walk in, kill 3000 dudes, siege their stuff, annex their land. Done!
In early April of 1840, we manage to add Serbia to our Sphere of Influence. So we'll need a new target.
Decisions
Foreign policy:
1. Where should we seek influence next?
A) Siam or Vietnam Brazil
C) Persia
D) Arab States, instead of conquering them (if this is not chosen, I will continue to annex them)
2. The Alliance with Prussia is certainly useful. But having additional allies would be useful, who to target? (Right now the great powers are impossible)
A) France The UK
C) A Secondary power, like the Netherlands
D) A growing power, like Argentina or Chile
E) An uncivilized power, China
Domestic policy:
3. We need more research points, there are two options to get them
A) Short term option, focus on bureaucrats Long term option, focus on clergy
C) Screw science, let's make stuff with craftsmen national focus
Governmental policy:
4. Who should rule in the Ottoman Empire for the next 5 years?
A) Conservatives (incumbent) Reactionaries
C) Liberals
Technology policy:
5. We have about 1000 RP banked now. We make just over 6 per day. It costs ~4000 RP to learn a tier one tech, quite a lot more to learn a tier 2. Over the full 5 years, we'll get about 1800 * 6.2 +1000 = 12160 RP. We can learn probably three tier one technologies, or one tier one technology and a tier two technology, or 1.5 tier two technologies. What should we learn?
And for a more informed decision, it's time for...
Teach Me, Steve ebum!
So, technology!
As mentioned in the POPs discussion, four kinds of POPs can give you research points. Bureaucrats, capitalists, clerks, and clergymen. In addition, you get .5 research points for being a Great Power (.25 for being a secondary power), and potentially some other bonuses from events, decisions, or what not. Add up these values and you get a base research score. Then you multiply that by a modifier for your literacy. And from certain technologies. And by your plurality (amount of freedom of thought, roughly). And then potentially by a few other things.
If you're learning nothing, you'll bank research points each day. You can then invest those points in whatever you choose at a rate of 100/day. Changing technologies loses all of your points though! Banking RPs is useful for when a new technology becomes available, as many just did in 1840. Generally, new technologies become available if you have the prerequisite every 10 years, though combat airplanes are 1914 I believe and highways (limited-access roads) is 1919, for example. Events can also give you lots of research points, these will also be invested 100 points per day.
Technology cost is determined by:
1) Tier
2) How long it has been since it was first available (tech costs decay)
3) Your academic focus. Ours is "traditional academic" which means we get a 2% bonus to everything. So we're not particularly great or particularly bad at anything. This can be changed later to...
Business and Tycoon Schools - Focus on commerce and industry techs, with a loss on army and culture techs. The US starts with this.
Avantgarde Intelligentsia - MASSIVE bonus to culture (30%!), 5% penalty to everything else; I think Austria starts with this?
Sea Power and Commerce - Navy and commerce bonus, penalty to military and culture, I think. UK and Dutch start with this one.
Military-Industrial Complex - Bonus to army and industry, penalty to commerce and navy
Junkers, German name and German name - only available to Prussia, basically a supercharged MI Complex
So what do the technologies do, ebum?
Before we do that, let's talk about the two kinds of technologies. First there are big, broad topics. Like, for example, Malthusan Thought. Then within that, there are inventions. Inventions can trigger any month, at a certain percentage adjusted by factors like what other technologies you have, your literacy rate, your ruling party, that kind of thing. You don't actively research them, you just hope they happen. One invention under Malthusan Thought is... the man Thomas Robert Malthus, who gives you some prestige for "inventing" him. OK, let's look at some tech screens! (We have the green stuff)
The army screen! Each tech screen is divided into five subschools. And then there are six techs in each subschool, which become available as the game moves on, presuming you have the earlier techs in that subschool. For example, here, we can learn the second technology in Army Doctrine, but not in Military Science.
Army Doctrine increases our defensive abilities, basically. Better forts, and our infantry can dig-in more, giving them a bonus on each roll when defending if they've stayed in one province for a long time.
Light Armament improves our infantry generally. It's better and better rifles, essentially. Good on attack and defense. Also makes them more expensive to pay for.
Heavy Armament improves our artillery and makes them cost more.
Military Science improves our logistics and what not, making upkeep cost less.
Army Leadership makes our tactics better, leading to fewer casualties.
The navy screen!
Naval Doctrine lets us build larger naval bases, which build ships faster and are the only places ships can be repaired. Useful!
Ship Construction invents new kinds of ships for us, or improves existing ships. Clipper Design, for example, will let us build Man-O-Wars, even though we already have some.
Naval Engineering teaches us how to build the ships faster.
Naval Science lowers ship maintenance costs and increases how far away from naval bases we can sail.
Naval Leadership is Army Leadership, but with boats!
The commerce screen! (Veterans note that ADP generally alters this the most)
Financial Institutions lets us make and improve stock exchanges and banks and what not.
Monetary System improves our tax and administration efficiency
Economic Thought and Critique gives a small bonus to research points and factory efficiency
Market Functionality gives a bonus to education efficiency and factory efficiency
Organization gives larger bonuses to factory efficiency
Some of these also open up new kinds of factories.
The culture screen!
Aesthetics gives you prestige and makes you generate more prestige. That's about it.
Philosophy improves your research points. Flat out. Less in APD than in vanilla. It's relatively easy to get 70 RP in vanilla with the US and max out the tech tree. In APD, 50 is fairly ambitious and finishing the tech tree is though, even with the Americans.
Social Thought improves education efficiency, and generally some other things, usually colonial in nature.
Political Thought gives you an extra national focus for each one you learn, improves your "Rights of Man" decision (more prestige for more consciousness, generally), gives you more diplomatic points, and increases your influence points. Basically it makes your government work better.
Psychology makes your armies reinforce faster and a few other smaller bonuses. I tend to ignore it more than most.
The industry screen!
Power improves RGOs (mostly farmers).
Mechanization improves factories.
Metallurgy improves mining and steel production.
Infrastructures gives you better railroads. There are six levels of railroad, each railroad tech gives you one of them (with an invention in APD, grrrrrr)
Chemistry and Electricity are variously useful, mostly giving you increased population growth, larger supply limits in your provinces, and less attrition.
So now that you vaguely know what's going on, tech wise, you can answer question 5's freeform hilarity. Top vote getters will be research this round. Eventually we'll have enough points to blitz through the cheap ones quickly. Hopefully. And if we can open up some damn tombs in Egypt, possibly really fast!
Self-righteousness is incompatible with coalition building.
Kinda proud, I'm fooling around with Prussia, because I NEVER play in Europe. Took Alsace-Lorraine in 1845 without mobilizing and with a "bad leadership" penalty.
And then the game gave me a free acquire state AND place in the sun casus belli against the Netherlands. Unfortunately they're allied with the UK...
Self-righteousness is incompatible with coalition building.
Foreign policy:
1. Where should we seek influence next?
C) Persia -Eventual oil, and near enough that we won't have to worry about our navy too much yet.
2. The Alliance with Prussia is certainly useful. But having additional allies would be useful, who to target? (Right now the great powers are impossible)
E) An uncivilized power, China - Might as well ring Russia with our friends. Not that China's going to successfully invade Moscow via Mongolia, but maybe Russia will send some armies off in that direction.
Domestic policy:
3. We need more research points, there are two options to get them Long term option, focus on clergy - Define long term as regards Victoria. Are we talking five years, or twenty, or sixty, or what?
Governmental policy:
4. Who should rule in the Ottoman Empire for the next 5 years?
Whichever of the three will boost our economy the most. I bet they all say it's them.
Foreign policy:
1. Where should we seek influence next?
C) Persia
The Ottoman Empire seems like an "immediate physical borders" kind of empire - you can't really trust most of your immediate neighbours to not try something suspicious, so I would want to be sure that dominance would be asserted over the immediate area.
2. The Alliance with Prussia is certainly useful. But having additional allies would be useful, who to target? (Right now the great powers are impossible)
C) A Secondary power, like the Netherlands
The Netherlands have some colonies around the place without being so large they are completely unapproachable. I would say a secondary power such as the Ottomans teaming up with another secondary power such as the Netherlands would intimidate anyone.
Domestic policy:
3. We need more research points, there are two options to get them Long term option, focus on clergy
Always love that long term option. Unless you are in imminent danger (and I would say that you do not seem to be) that long term investment into exponential growth will pay off during the last 20 years of the play through where you do more damage than you would otherwise do in 60.
Governmental policy:
4. Who should rule in the Ottoman Empire for the next 5 years?
C) Liberals
I am split between libs and conservatives but social reform is what you've been playing for so why not go 100% on this and push for Liberals?
Tech:
How about Economic Thought & Critique or Chemistry & Electricity? It depends on whether the next tier of research is an order of magnitude higher in RP, but both should bump up your RP if the descriptions are correct.
So on reflection I've come to terms with the fact that I know nothing about how tech works in this game so I can't make a rational contribution beyond the following:
I'm always a tech/economy first kind of guy. Success follows money. Let's make sure we have lots of that. How we go about that is... Beyond my pay-grade.
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MackenzierGold Star Police NinjaLurking... less than usual.Registered Userregular
Foreign policy:
1. Where should we seek influence next?
I'd suggest one of the remaining North African states, just to try and contain French/Spanish expansion into that area. Failing that, I'll pick A.
2. The Alliance with Prussia is certainly useful. But having additional allies would be useful, who to target? (Right now the great powers are impossible)
E) An uncivilized power, China. I agree with GrimmyTOA, let's ring Russia in with friends. If you could convince Sweden as well, we'd have some significant distractions should it come down to war.
Domestic policy:
3. We need more research points, there are two options to get them Long term option, focus on clergy
Governmental policy:
4. Who should rule in the Ottoman Empire for the next 5 years?
A) Conservatives (incumbent). No need to rock the boat unless you want to start getting some reforms done!
North African States, for reference: Algeria, which France kicks the shit out of, every time. And the poor Moroccans, who will probably cause a war between us and Spain.
Self-righteousness is incompatible with coalition building.
Genocide is not possible, it's sort of vaguely possible in that you can turn them into Turks slowly, but not the way you're thinking. Unless there's an event in there if we have Armenia. I don't know the Ottoman events, but based on my other game, Egypt should rebel in the next session at some point. At which point the European great powers have to decide to support us or them (in my game the UK and Austria supported the Ottomans, France supported Egypt, I took the opportunity to kick France's ass).
Self-righteousness is incompatible with coalition building.
The first thing you need to know is that there are five categories of nations, from least to most important:
1) Uncivilized nations. These are countries that are not European-influenced (Africa, India, China, Japan), basically. They can slowly become civilized by investing research points in several reforms.
2) Partially civilized nations. The above with some reforms undertaken.
Both of those nations are cheaper to take stuff from, infamy wise, for Western nations like us. Basically half price, become a fourth price later in the game when the "Scramble for Africa" event starts (~1880). They're also ineligible to become Great Powers or Secondary Powers, even if they have the score to get there.
3) Civilized nations. They're western or westernized, have industry, decent militaries, and if you annex them or take their stuff without a valid casus belli you earn a lot of infamy. 11 for each state you would like to conquer, or 22 if you would like to annex them. They can become secondary or great powers.
4) Secondary Powers. These are the nations with the 9th to 16th best scores in the world. Secondary powers are just like civilized nations, except they can colonize unoccupied territory if they have the naval range and technology to do so.
5) Great Powers. The nations with the top 8 scores. A nation loses great power status if it falls below a secondary power for a period of I think three months. It might be six. A Great Power is like a secondary power, except they have spheres of influence, about which more in a second.
Score is calculated by adding your prestige (from events and technologies, and it slowly grows on its own), your industrial score (how much you make and how advanced the stuff you make is; radios are more valuable for cement), and your military score (roughly divisions + capital ships - Man O'War, Ironclads, Dreadnoughts; by the end of the game capitals ships dominate this category).
Spheres of Influence:
Once you are a great power, you can add nations to your sphere of influence by spending influence points on them. You can prioritize influence at a low rate, a medium rate, and a high rate. We did this to Serbia, and added them to our sphere in the last update. Influence points are dependent on: technology, sharing a border, being on the same continent, foreign investment (great powers can build factories and railroads in other nations), and the actions of other great powers. You can spend influence points on: increasing your relations (on a scale from hostile to opposed to neutral to cordial to friendly), decreasing another great power at the same or lower level of relations, kicking another great power out for a year, lowering the rate at which another great power gains influence, or adding them (or removing them) to your (from another great power's) sphere, which costs 100 points and can only be done at "friendly" relations.
Why sphere?
Well, first, countries in your sphere are automatically allied with you and you can intervene in any attack on them.
But for a better reasoning, we have to talk about how the economy works a little.
So let's talk about say, steel. To make steel, your factory needs iron and coal. First the factory checks if you have a domestic source of iron and/or coal. If you do, the factory buys it from that RGO and you're done. If not, the factory then checks if you have a source in your sphere of influence. If you're the Great Power in charge, you get to check your spherelings RGOs first, even before they do. It's a big advantage! If, instead, you are the sphereling, you get to buy your master's or your co-sphereling's goods before the rest of the planet, so if you're not in a great power, it can be good to be in a sphere! Finally, if there's not enough iron and/or coal in both your nation and your sphere of influence, only then does the factory try to import the iron/coal from the rest of the world.
War!
Wars require a casus belli (or an event). You can make one up with the justify war option, as I showed in the update. There are quite a few possible reasons for war. There are the straight forward taking of a state or annexation, which we have already seen. There's humiliation which gets you prestige and removes prestige from the target. "Place in the sun" is just like taking a state, but it's a colonial state instead. "Cut down to size" forces them to pay reparations and limits their ability to re-arm post war. "Free people"... frees another nation. For example, some other nation could try to free our Greek majority states and give them back to Greece. This generates less infamy then taking the state for yourself, obviously. You can also force a country to change its sphere of influence or install a puppet government.
I think that's most of the important things foreign policy wise that I haven't covered already. Again, feel free to ask questions!
Self-righteousness is incompatible with coalition building.
We'll be influencing Persia, focusing on clergy, and trying to ally with China. We'll go liberal if their war policy is OK. We're going to need troops soon.
Self-righteousness is incompatible with coalition building.
First we check to see what the liberal party's war policy is. The answer is: bad. Pacifism would cripple our military, which is something we can absolutely not afford to have happen. So we'll be sticking with conservatives until such a time as the Crimean War has happened. Hopefully we'll get a new liberal party or something, because: YIKES.
I suspect my big info dump post on technologies may have intimidated people, there weren't really votes for it. I decide that people endorsed education via the clergy national focus, so let's learn Positivism and improve their efficiency. This is probably the choice I make with no democracy, FWIW. It'll take a long time, but this is a long term play.
This was a mistake, but I was hoping to prime the pump and get the capitalists some more income. So I finish their investments into the luxury furniture factory. Still don't have enough craftsmen to really make any factories effective, which means our status as a Great Power is in jeopardy. Hopefully I can keep our prestige up until our literacy hits the magic numbers required to really get some factories going.
More events! Here one of the eventual liberalization options is selected. Hopefully we can get some reform desire later.
An example of an invention as opposed to a full technology. This allows bakeries which convert grain into canned food. Because canned food is vital to military and we make a ton of grain, it'll probably help us to have some bakeries.
Russia's expanding into Central Asia, as they do. When they run into India and the British, they'll inevitably decide to beat up either us or the Chinese. Diplomatic efforts are made to improve the relationship with the Qing, but no alliance is forthcoming.
We continue to try to take over the Arabian peninsula. This time going after Yemen, and sucking hard at not getting caught fabricating a war goal. Damn.
Fortunately, this event shows up to speed the acquisition of the casus beli. These happen frequently, along with the opposite event, as long as you're trying to create a war goal. Not going to show them in the future.
Here's our first political movement! It's small, but these people want public meetings to be allowed. Once that happens, political reform desire increases much more quickly. Once the movement hits a certain size (I believe 10% of the population, or about 500k in our case), it will push 10% of conservatives in the upper house to vote for reform. Liberals always vote for reform. This is not nearly big enough to actually do anything. Maybe next time.
Every so often you can do this in APD, which gives you a large amount of prestige in exchange for a large amount of money. We don't have the economy to do this yet, as much as the prestige would help towards maintaining our Great Power status. Damn damn damn.
War is declared on Yemen. The Sultan fails to notice they own an island off the Arabian coast, so no boats are ordered in the Red Sea. This would have unfortunate consequences, sort of.
Because not long after, this happens. Naturally we refuse to negotiate. So begins a massive, nasty war with our Egyptian vassals. It lasts two and a half years, and kills about a hundred thousand Turks. More Egyptians.
The budget is shifted dramatically. Education and Administration funding is cut, while more resources are devoted to buying goods for the military (stockpile). Military spending itself is not increased at all.
Fortunately, we do not have that alliance with the Qing, as the British declare war in one of their frequent smacking around of Chinese for fun and profit and opening opium markets.
The first battle is a rousing success, with Murat Bey's forces killing a third of a slightly larger army, suffering relatively few casualties themselves. The victory awards us some much needed prestige as well...
Which is unfortunately lost, as future battles are losses. The Turkish troops give much worse than they get, but strategically failures force retreats. At this point, we're mostly buying time for our troops to get to the front (sorry, I did a bad job on the larger strategic view until later, basically just assume our troops our rushing from the Russian and Austrian borders as fast as they can while the border garrisons fight a holding action.
The fleet is sent to blockade Alexandria, but is forced to retreat by an Egyptian fleet. They do manage to sink two transports, though.
Murat Bey continues to inflict massive punishment on the Egyptians before retreating. Both sides have mobilized their entire nations at this point (you can convert a certain percentage of farmers and labourers into crappy soldiers). It was necessary. But hurt our economy badly, with some unfortunate results.
Finally, some good news. Our Prussian allies have entered the war. Unfortunately, without military access from the Austrians, any land armies will have to be shipped all the way around Europe by boat. The Prussian navy is about the size of ours, so this won't be particularly efficient.
The second naval battle goes much better, and a blockade of the Egyptian coast is set up. This will give us some war score and increase war weariness in Egypt, making them more likely to accept terms.
We finally learn Positivism. I select the last of the tier one army technologies as we need the additional organization and the maintenance savings would be a gift from Allah.
And the war's basically over at this point. I just need to survive long enough for the Egyptians to not force a surrender. They took a few provinces in Turkey and one in Iraq, but this should be simple. Once the Austrians arrive we can demobilize and get our economy vaguely decentish again.
Here come the Austrian hordes. If you look closely you can see our budget is not doing well. At all.
We do not need separatist rebels right now, game. Gah! This happened because the "liberal revolution" event is going off all over Europe, with people trying to get representative governments. France, I think, is the only country that had its monarchy fall, only for Napoleon III to launch a coup and crown himself Emperor like his uncle. Austria had a thing happen, which should be in the next update, but they suppressed it and then... you'll see.
The overall state of the war, about a year in. You can see the Egyptians have occupied a few territories in Turkey, but the war is basically ending right now in the Adana state (south central Turkey). And the floods of Austrians and Prussians coming over through the Dardenelles hasn't stopped. Meanwhile in North Africa, we're taking land back and the Austrians have landed on Egyptian Crete. At this point I'm furiously adding war goals, because all of that stuff in Israel/Palestine/Jordan/Syria is core Ottoman territory, as well as Crete. This is unnecessary, as you'll see.
Lots of occupying going on. Also the Egyptians built a bunch of new ships, but the blockade won't let them out of port. When their provinces are captured, they get forced out and die horrible deaths.
Military staff system finishes, making our armies less likely to retreat and, somewhat more importantly, saving us money on their upkeep. I start Experimental Railroad, which should help just about everything once we get them built.
On December 10, Egypt surrenders. I probably should have strategically avoided taking Cairo, which I think is the trigger for this. I was trying to get the Suez AND all of our cores in the peace deal. If we have the Suez, we get to build the canal as long as we remain a Great Power. Now whoever spheres Egypt will get to, and there will be a LOT of competition for that. Note this kills our relationship with Russia. With that war exhaustion modifier, we should probably not be fighting a ton of wars for the next three years, though there are other reasons for that, too. Which I forgot to take a shot of, naturally.
Here's the new Ottoman Empire. You can see Yemen was added down in southern Arabia. And obviously the coast of the Eastern Mediterranean.
Other things that happened: Persia was sphered. Greece tried to jump in the war against Egypt for Crete, but we ended the war before they could make peace. We now have an alliance with Austria as well as Prussia from the Crisis. No other Great Powers intervened, especially none on Egypt's side (France does sometimes), which was a blessing. The US took New Mexico from the Mexicans in the first true US-Mexican War. They'll probably take a couple states at a time before finally winning the whole Mexican Cession.
The major problem (and thing I forgot to take a shot of) is that between the mobilization and increasing our normal forces, our budget was screwed. I needed to keep the stockpile up to win battles. So we're about 140k in debt. Interest is ~170 pounds a day. With our current budget settings, if we do nothing else, we can pay this off in about a year and a half. Not terrible, but limits other things like the Lavish Exhibition, building railroads personally, investing in factories, and random events.
Decisions
1) Who should govern us?
A) Liberals Conservatives
C) Reactionaries
(there will be more options in the future)
2) Who to try to sphere next? I put the emphasis on Greece for now.
(open question, suggest a region if you don't have a specific nation)
3) What should we learn?
1) Army
2) Navy
3) Commerce
4) Culture
5) Industry
4) How should we handle the debt crisis (sort of)?
A) Do nothing but pay back our creditors until we're out of debt. Lower taxes on the capitalists to spur development and try to grow our way out, paying down some of the debt.
C) Use our current surplus to increase military spending and stockpile spending, so we're ready for any future war.
D) Focus on maintaining great power status by saving for a Lavish Exhibition.
E) Pay the debt until railroads are available and then personally build them in every province.
5) Other suggestions.
Tomorrow: a tutorial on the military! Which I planned to do tonight, but playing that took two hours and the update took an hour to write. So I'm exhausted.
enlightenedbum on
Self-righteousness is incompatible with coalition building.
1: Conservatives still, because they seem to be doing a decent job
2: Greece seems like a good option, given it's rightfully our territory anyway
3: Commerce, we clearly need all the financial skills we can get
4: Lavish Exhibition, because economic advisers are only there to be ignored in the name of national glory
5: If China is going to be Britain's punching bag seems like it would be a good idea to avoid any kind of alliance with them. With Prussia and Austria on our side we should be able to hold back the Russian menace.
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KadokenGiving Ends to my Friends and it Feels StupendousRegistered Userregular
Get cozy with the Netherlands and Sweeden. I doubt the Austria alliance will last long. Maybe pick an Italian nation to support. Help them form Italy and then you have a potential Great Power as an ally. Unless you have plans for conquering them.
Does Gibraltar block movement like in HoI? Maybe build a Indian ocean fleet and carve off some parts of Africa, India, Indonesia, or Indochina. Oh, Ottoman Australia! Make it happen
I'll post a bunch of maps in 1850 so we can get an idea of where everything is.
Meanwhile, apparently if Egypt is in your sphere there's a chance for an "Egypt insults you, gain an annexation casus beli against them" event. Which is pretty neat, if a pain in the ass because they have like 50 provinces.
Self-righteousness is incompatible with coalition building.
1) Conservatives|only sensible option
2) Greece|they're in the middle of 'our' territory anyway. I do know that the Greek/Turkish relationship has always been terrible, so I'm going to assume that we'll get some interesting events out of this
3) Industry|we need to produce stuff so we can make a quick profit, I'd put commerce as a close second.
4) Focus on maintaining great power status by saving for a Lavish Exhibition. Railroads are a good second, they also help with maintaining an easy to transport military. Having to send them back and forth between the northern border and the Arabian peninsula (or the Maghreb once shit starts hitting vans there) will take ridiculously long.
1) Conservatives
2) If Sphere is a road toward annexation, then Greece. Otherwise, a strong Italian nation to help form Italy.
3) Culture. The money problem will solve itself, so emphasize tech speed.
4) Pay off the debt. That way if there's another emergency war you can take out another loan.
5) Look for a weak minor power to humiliate-troll for some prestige gain as soon as War Exhaustion is at a manageable level. Anything available in Arabia or NW Africa?
Triptycho: A card-and-dice tabletop indie RPG currently in development and playtesting
1) Who should govern us?
A) Liberals Conservatives
C) Reactionaries
(there will be more options in the future)
2) Who to try to sphere next? I put the emphasis on Greece for now.
(open question, suggest a region if you don't have a specific nation)
3) What should we learn?
1) Army
2) Navy
3) Commerce
4) Culture
5) Industry
4) How should we handle the debt crisis (sort of)?
A) Do nothing but pay back our creditors until we're out of debt. Lower taxes on the capitalists to spur development and try to grow our way out, paying down some of the debt.
C) Use our current surplus to increase military spending and stockpile spending, so we're ready for any future war.
D) Focus on maintaining great power status by saving for a Lavish Exhibition.
E) Pay the debt until railroads are available and then personally build them in every province.
5) Other suggestions.
Tomorrow: a tutorial on the military! Which I planned to do tonight, but playing that took two hours and the update took an hour to write. So I'm exhausted.
1. Reactionaries! State Capitalism > Capitalist AI
2. Tunis
3. Army, Crimean War is not so far away
4. Slash everything except education until the debt is paid. Alliances should ward off any immediate dangers.
1: Conservatives still, because they seem to be doing a decent job
2: Greece seems like a good option, given it's rightfully our territory anyway
3: Commerce, we clearly need all the financial skills we can get
4: Lavish Exhibition, because economic advisers are only there to be ignored in the name of national glory
5: If China is going to be Britain's punching bag seems like it would be a good idea to avoid any kind of alliance with them. With Prussia and Austria on our side we should be able to hold back the Russian menace.
Agreed on all counts. We need to pay the loan back, but we will not suffer being known as the sick man of Europe. Also, avoid spending infamy on things other than conquering the Arabs. We want that oil!
Posts
I don't care too much about having the game explained to me beyond what we need to know to understand what we're voting for.
Or the player having to deal with half the decisions being made by people who don't have a clues. You know, nothing like real life.
I can switch to bigger and PNGs if you want, though that'll take a bit longer to load.
1) Which other Great Power(s) should the Ottomans seek an alliance with? Remember that Russia and Austria-Hungary are the people we're worried by.
C) Prussia
D) The USA
2) Where should we seek a war?
A) The Arabian Peninsula (smaller, easier, have accepted culture pops)
3) Where should we seek influence? (Remember, more influence on our continent and with our neighbors; if we want to pursue that luxury furniture factory, securing a source of tropical lumber would be helpful)
C) Persia
D) The New World - Brazil
Domestic Policy
4) Which party should lead us until 1840? I'd make the change in 1837 or so.
5) Open Answer Question: What sort of industry should we focus on?
Clothing as stated elsewhere, furniture
6) Should we seek reforms or repress our citizens?
A) Reform!
Military policy
7) We have a 25 ship fleet, and no real enemies that are going to fight us with a navy. Should we downsize the navy?
Technology policy
8) What technology should we pursue next?
Open Ended
If we can ally with Brazil and the USA and support them, we may be able to take a few holdings in the new world as they become dominant. Importing and creating value-added goods from the new world seems like a winning idea.
Here's what we're making at the moment. Apologies about the formatting, APD does a lot of things nicely, but when they added goods, they made this particular screen look hideous. You can also see it in the factory image in the main update if you look closely. Also it's bigger and a png so it should be more readable, @Aldo ?
We make at least some of most basic goods. We lack gold, which is nice for turning a profit. We also don't make lead, so glass factories might not be ideal. We make a ton of wool and grain, so fabric factories and bakeries might turn a fair profit. Also no silk, so luxury clothes will be a bit costly, but they're that way for everyone who is not the British, who have easy access to Chinese silk.
Meanwhile, I decided to make separate tutorial posts between updates. Update one: POPs and the economy!
So the basic unit of the economy is not resources, but POPs. There are 12 kinds of POPs. Each individual POP represents every worker of that type of a single culture in a single province. For example, all the farmers in Instanbul that are Turkish are one POP, while all the craftsmen that are Turkish are another POP, while Arab farmers would be distinct from the Turkish farmers there.
There are two places a POP can work. A Research Gathering Operation (RGO), which is your basic farm, mine, ranch, fishery, or what have you. Alternately, they can work in factories, which turn the basic goods from RGOs into more valuable stuff, or initial factory production into even better stuff. For example, timber -> lumber -> furniture -> luxury furniture. Or more relevant to our interests: cotton OR wool -> fabric -> regular clothes -> luxury clothes. There are also some POPs who don't work in a specific place, but have other uses.
The types of POPs are, from left to right:
Aristocrats (upper class): Aristocrats own the RGOs. The more of them there are, the more efficient your RGO is. They tend to be very conservative and oppose reforms. If they have more money they'll be able to hire more farmers or laborers to work in the RGO.
Artisans (middle class): Artisans are like crappy factories that work in their own homes. They'll convert basic goods into better goods, which is how we're producing, for example, a small amount of liquor (we're also bad Muslims).
Bureaucrats (middle class): Bureaucrats manage your empire. They're paid out of the administration budget. They make social reforms effective, collect taxes, fight crime, and are generally cool dudes to have around. You want 1% of your population to be these dudes initially, plus more if you make social reforms. In APD, but not in normal Vicky2, they provide 2 * their percentage of the population in research points, up to a max of 2 points.
Capitalists (upper class): Capitalists build factories and railroads, as long as there's a profit in it for them. Profits from factories go to them, which they then pay taxes on. Whatever's left they'll invest in new factories, presuming there are not a ton of empty spots in existing factories (they need potential workers, basically). Additionally, for each percent of the population they are, they provide a research point. In vanilla, this is capped at 2 RP, in APD, it's instead capped at 4 RP. They tend towards liberal parties, as those are best for business.
Clergymen (middle class): Clergymen are responsible for educating the people. They're paid out of the education budget. They increase the rate at which other POPs gain literacy. They provide research points equal to their percentage of the population, capped at 2 RP in both vanilla and APD.
Clerks (middle class): Clerks are greyed out in this shot because we have none, as of yet. Clerks work in factories and make them more efficient, to a maximum of 20% of the factory's employees. Additionally, they are the only ones who can work in some of the new factories in APD, such as banks or stock exchanges. And they also provide RPs equal to half of their percentage of the population, to a cap of 2 RPs in vanilla and 4 in APD.
Craftsmen (lower class): Craftsmen are your basic factory workers. They need to have 20% literacy. That's pretty much all there is to know about craftsmen. You need lots of them.
Farmers (lower class): Farmers work in RGOs that are growing things or hunting things or catching things. Grain, cotton, fish, cattle, horses, wool, etc.
Labourers (lower class): Labourers are farmers, but work in mines, forests, and what not.
Officers (middle class): Officers create leadership for our military. More of them = more generals = better generals. They're paid out of the military budget.
Slaves (lower class): Free labor! Crappy labor, but it's free! We can ban slavery for a bit of prestige, which will instantly convert all slaves into farmers or labourers. There will probably be an anti-slavery movement at some point. Possibly international pressure too. We should end this when we can. If you're the US, it's somewhat more complicated, and almost inevitably leads to the Civil War.
Soldiers (lower class): Need these guys to form armies. They die when you get in fights, so that's no good. Every 3000 soldiers can support one regiment, adjusted based on the war policy of your ruling party. Jingoism gives the most, then pro-military, anti-military, and pacifists.
Lastly, we need to talk about a couple other elements of POPs. First, each POP has a literacy rate. More literacy = more science and more likely to be promoted to a higher class or factory job. Unfortunately/fortunately depending on your goals, literacy leads to consciousness. Consciousness is how much your POPs understand how government policy affects them. More conscious POPs are more likely to demand reforms and are more likely to vote for the issues they care about. If you ignore the demands of high consciousness POPs, they become militant. Militant POPs are more likely to join rebellions, which are bad news, obviously.
Generally: low consciousness, low militancy POPs = sheep who will support the government. High consciousness, low militancy POPs are POPs who are getting the reforms they want. Low consciousness, high militancy POPs are probably foreigners that don't like your rule. And high consciousness, high militancy POPs are probably going to rebel, and if successful will install a democracy or a dictorship of one of the extremist ideologies (Reactionary at the moment, later we'll add Anarcho-liberals [RON PAUL], Communists, or Fascists).
Feel free to ask questions, I know that's a lot of stuff. Next time: foreign policy!
Also, nice to learn a bit about populations.
1) Which other Great Power(s) should the Ottomans seek an alliance with? Remember that Russia and Austria-Hungary are the people we're worried by.
C) Prussia - Shares borders with the threats to us
2) Where should we seek a war?
A) The Arabian Peninsula (smaller, easier, have accepted culture pops) - Nice easy start to round up more workers.
3) Where should we seek influence? (Remember, more influence on our continent and with our neighbors; if we want to pursue that luxury furniture factory, securing a source of tropical lumber would be helpful)
A) Serbia - Too much competition in the others, and the Arabs can be brought to heel under the boot.
Domestic Policy
4) Which party should lead us until 1840? I'd make the change in 1837 or so.
A) Reactionaries - Because building a luxury furniture factory is dumb, Capitalists cannot be trusted to get the backbone of our economy sorted.
5) Open Answer Question: What sort of industry should we focus on?
Aim for high value production later on, but for now I'd like to see our basic military needs met domestically.
6) Should we seek reforms or repress our citizens?
b) Repress! - At all costs stop those pesky liberals from screwing up our exploitation of the workers economy.
Military policy
7) We have a 25 ship fleet, and no real enemies that are going to fight us with a navy. Should we downsize the navy?
A) Yes - We have no need right now and when we do those wooden ships will be useless.
Technology policy
8) What technology should we pursue next?
If we learn the second technology before 1840 I'll choose the option with the second most votes.
9) Any other suggestions!
Repress the populace until they rise up in glorious Communist revolt, comrade
It will be interesting to see what effect that has on the overall economy, especially immigration. You might have to do a quick run back thru every so often to make sure the world isn't always in a recession.
My vote, tech wise, is for education and research techs until you can't keep the education slider maxed then RGO output techs. Once you start industrializing heavy don't overlook the commerce factory efficiency line. Those 1 and 2 percent increases are deceptively important to keeping factories above water.
1) Who should we pursue an alliance with:
UK - II
USA - I
Prussia - IIIIIII
France - I
2) Expansion?
Arabia - IIIIIIIII
Persia -
3) Sphere?
Serbia - IIIII
Siam - II
Brazil - I
Persia - I
4) Party
Conservatives - IIII
Liberals - II
Reactionaries - III
5) Factories?
Basic Industry - I
Food stuffs - I
Heavy industry - I (zagdrob's vote)
clothing - II
Military - I
6) Politics
Repress - III
Reform - IIIIII
7) Naval Disarmament
Yes - III
No - IIIIII
8) Research
Military - I
Industry - IIII
Culture - IIII
Results!
The Ottoman Empire will pursue improved relations with the Prussian Empire. In the future, it may also be wise to ally with one of the world's pre-eminent naval powers, such as the US, UK, or the Netherlands. Prussia will probably eventually build a fleet, but it is usually not their first priority.
By unanimous consent, we will attack the Arab minors on the Arabian peninsula. Direct control of Mecca seems like a worthy goal, which means the small nation of Hedjaz is our probably first target.
Serbia must become part of our Sphere of Influence to maintain a shorter border with the dreaded Austrians, and to provide support against the Russian bear.
The Conservatives will lead the Empire into this age of industrialization, after a brief period in which the Sultan will supervise economic development. In particular, he will focus on turning our wool into fabric and the fabric and dyes into a clothing industry, though he'll probably also direct construction of at least a steel factory as well, in order to provide more of the raw materials needed for weaponry and eventually more advanced ships.
Reforms will be pursued. For now, this will mostly consist of improving literacy dramatically and taking pro-consciousness options during events. If a reform becomes available, the Sultan will pursue it, with a particular eye towards outlawing slavery. Though I would suspect that we will not be able to achieve any reforms in this play session. This will instead be one of our probable votes for next time.
We will maintain our fleet. With it we can launch a silly invasion, of say, Italy. (no, not really)
And finally, the desire for railroads and improved education has tied. As such, the Sultan is allowed to break the tie. Our research path will be to finish our current investigations into Freedom of Trade, and then improve our education further with Positivism, and then work on Experimental Railroad.
Also, I plan on building forts along the Russian and Austrian borders and if I can afford it raise armies to man the border in Armenia.
The Russians frighten me and I don't want to let them hit us without being ready.
Maybe its more of a steamer/liquor thing for the better units I can't remember.
This is less of a problem when you're a great power, and in APD, in my experience. You get access to the market in total score order, as best I can tell. And there are way too many fucking guns available, my arms factories always went bankrupt in my nearly permanent laissez faire USA game that I won by like 6000 points over France.
EDIT: Also, starting to write the update nowish. We'll do teach me about technology, Steve ebum!* as well.
*First person who knows what LP I'm referencing is a) a nerd and b) gets their vote counted double in this update's slate. Which I still have to come up with.
With the Tripolitan military defeated, all that remains is to occupy their country before we can annex them directly into the empire. The army is split into three parts, with the two hussar regiments venturing deep into the desert to seize those outposts, while the infantry march into Sabha. The war should be over about 100 days after they arrive.
Prussia is not yet willing to ally with our glorious empire, we will have to waste time and diplomats to improve relations.
So very, very simple version of diplomacy (I'll get to a more full version of it tomorrow). You can get up to 9 diplomatic points at any given time, you make a fair number back each month. More if you're a Great Power (again, more details on what that means tomorrow, for now, just accept that the 8 best nations are Great Powers). Most actions take one diplomatic point. Some, however, take two. Improving relations is one of these. Our diplomatic points will be mostly used towards improving relations with Prussia until they accept our alliance. Then we'll work on improving relations with other great powers, but won't sign any alliances yet. Generally the AI is hesitant to attack if your relations are positive, unless they get an event that tells them to or you have some of their core territories (like the USA will ALWAYS invade Mexico after firing the Manifest Destiny decision, which gives them cores on the Mexican Cession and Texas).
As instructed, we focus on clothes production. We build a clothes factory and a second fabric factory to help supply it.
Additionally, forts are constructed on the Russian border. This will slow them down a bit while we can move troops to counter their invasion. This should also hopefully spur some demand for our new cement factory.
If you play this game, these kinds of events pop up all the time. I won't be posting them all, but if they're particularly illustrative of a point or noteworthy in some way, I'll put them up. This one either has us piss off the US or makes our non-Turks angry. I actually kind of want high consciousness and high anger for political reforms (Sunday's tutorial subject, I think), so that's fine. And not angering a great power, even if it's one whose AI tends to not get involved in the Middle East, is a good thing.
After a fairly short time, Tripoli's provinces fall. Generally speaking unless you're demanding an annexation, the AI will surrender if the war score > the cost of the demands (here, 85). There's slightly more to it, factoring in war exhaustion and total military strength (they won't surrender early in a war if you blitz an undefended border, for example). If you're going for an annexation, you have to occupy it all. There are some scripted peaces, for example if after the USA fires Manifest Destiny they occupy Mexico City then they can force Mexico to sign the Treaty of Guadaloupe-Hidalgo which cedes the American southwest to the US in exchange for a bunch of money.
Evidence that we won. I move the army back towards the Egyptian border to make the French not nervous or something. Or to keep an eye on Egypt. Could be that.
Sorry that I forgot to re-size this. With the war over, our national stockpile costs go down, which means we can afford to fully fund education. This is desperately needed, because our literacy rate is so dreadfully low we cannot get many POPs to promote to craftsmen. No craftsmen = no injury = not a Great Power for very long. Need more literacy.
At the end of each year, the upper house of your parliament (or in our case, influential nobles?) is shuffled around. This affects your ability to reform. With an upper house this conservative, we are going to need a lot of militancy or a very, very strong movement to change anything in 1837 (spoiler: we don't). I'll get into this more on Sunday, but reactionaries will never vote for political reforms, liberals always will, and conservatives will if enough of the populace demands it (10% of conservatives per point of militancy or I think if 10% of the populace joins a movement).
Hedjaz, which has Mecca, is an Egyptian satellite and already in our sphere of influence. I GUESS we won't invade them then. If we fall out of Great Power status due to our crap literacy and thus crap industry, they'll fall out of our sphere, and Egypt will probably rebel at some point here. It might be a good idea to annex them when they do.
Ha'il is very friendly with us (150/200), so I decide not to insult them enough so I can justify a war (requires under 50 relations). Instead, I work on Nejd. Which I failed to notice has parts of two states, so we cannot annex them immediately. Sigh. To start a war, you need a casus belli. These cost infamy, which is just like infamy in any Paradox game. Get enough of it from taking territory and everyone dogpiles your warmongering ass. Here we are trying to create a justification. The closer we get to creating it, the less infamy we take. If we're caught immediately, it would cost 7.5 points of infamy, the limit is 25. Peacetime burns .1 every month, as does being a Great Power.
We're caught pretty quickly and pick up 6.3 infamy. That slows down the creation of the casus belli, increases war exhaustion, and is generally obnoxious.
On the plus side, after improving our relations with Prussia to +30, they accept our offer of an alliance. Now if we ever end up in a terrible, no good, rotten war with Russia, we'll at least have a major distraction as Prussians flood into Russian occupied Poland and the Baltic States.
It takes two years, but we finish Freedom of Trade. This improves our RGO performance by 10% and our makes our educators 10% more effective. To further improve the education, I switch both our national foci to making clergymen, in our two largest provinces. It's slooooooowly getting better.
America intervened in the War of Texan Independence, which forced the Mexicans to accept a white peace. Not long after, Texas is annexed by the United States. Also pictured, Colorado, Oklahoma, Washington State, Oregon, and southern Idaho are uncolonized. The US will get the NW, Mexico is about to finish colonizing Colorado and no one wants Oklahoma yet (the US usually gets it).
Annoyed at my failure to read maps accurately, I add a humiliate war goal to the war against Nejd. By occupying Riyadh, we have enough war score to demand both it and the small one province region they also had. Humiliating them gives us prestige and takes their prestige (such as it was away). The truce will end in five years, at which time we can annex them outright.
This is great for us if we want reforms. Bursa becomes more liberal, or more to the point, the POPs in Bursa become more liberal. And their desire for political reforms increase. Excellent.
Checking in on the movements. Hm, we have a ton of nationalistic movements who want independent countries of their own. Only the recently conquered Tripolitanians are taking up arms, along with some of the reformers, but there are lots of potential rebels there, mostly in the Balkans.
Victoria is crowned. This is an event the UK gets everytime, which I believe gives them additional prestige, but I don't play the UK, so I'm not really sure. Anyway, the namesake of the game is ruling now, huzzah!
Some people meet and discuss politics, we send in the Janisarries. And then release them. The other option is pretty much the opposite. Lowers consciousness, increases militancy. We want sustainable reforms, so we need higher consciousness.
Zaydi is useless, but an easy target. It also gets us a border with the UK, which could be dangerous, but I've improved relations to a positive state with them, and they have about a thousand scripted wars to fight anyway. It also gets us next to Yemen, which has opium, which is a fairly valuable luxury good we can always take more of. And eventually, some oil.
On the last day of 1839, we learn Malthusan thought, which should dramatically improve our education rates. It also means more Turks will head to the colonies, and Turks in the colonies will make them states faster, which means we can build factories there. All to the good. I don't start experimental railroad, because it's just about the end of this update, so I thought I would bank the research points so y'all can decide what to learn.
Because it's 1840, we can trade a small amount of prestige for a fair amount of science. We have plenty of prestige, and will get more from repeatedly smacking around Arab minors, so we'll go ahead and do it.
The war with Zaydi wasn't even worth showing. Walk in, kill 3000 dudes, siege their stuff, annex their land. Done!
In early April of 1840, we manage to add Serbia to our Sphere of Influence. So we'll need a new target.
Decisions
Foreign policy:
1. Where should we seek influence next?
A) Siam or Vietnam
C) Persia
D) Arab States, instead of conquering them (if this is not chosen, I will continue to annex them)
2. The Alliance with Prussia is certainly useful. But having additional allies would be useful, who to target? (Right now the great powers are impossible)
A) France
C) A Secondary power, like the Netherlands
D) A growing power, like Argentina or Chile
E) An uncivilized power, China
Domestic policy:
3. We need more research points, there are two options to get them
A) Short term option, focus on bureaucrats
C) Screw science, let's make stuff with craftsmen national focus
Governmental policy:
4. Who should rule in the Ottoman Empire for the next 5 years?
A) Conservatives (incumbent)
C) Liberals
Technology policy:
5. We have about 1000 RP banked now. We make just over 6 per day. It costs ~4000 RP to learn a tier one tech, quite a lot more to learn a tier 2. Over the full 5 years, we'll get about 1800 * 6.2 +1000 = 12160 RP. We can learn probably three tier one technologies, or one tier one technology and a tier two technology, or 1.5 tier two technologies. What should we learn?
And for a more informed decision, it's time for...
Teach Me, Steve ebum!
So, technology!
As mentioned in the POPs discussion, four kinds of POPs can give you research points. Bureaucrats, capitalists, clerks, and clergymen. In addition, you get .5 research points for being a Great Power (.25 for being a secondary power), and potentially some other bonuses from events, decisions, or what not. Add up these values and you get a base research score. Then you multiply that by a modifier for your literacy. And from certain technologies. And by your plurality (amount of freedom of thought, roughly). And then potentially by a few other things.
If you're learning nothing, you'll bank research points each day. You can then invest those points in whatever you choose at a rate of 100/day. Changing technologies loses all of your points though! Banking RPs is useful for when a new technology becomes available, as many just did in 1840. Generally, new technologies become available if you have the prerequisite every 10 years, though combat airplanes are 1914 I believe and highways (limited-access roads) is 1919, for example. Events can also give you lots of research points, these will also be invested 100 points per day.
Technology cost is determined by:
1) Tier
2) How long it has been since it was first available (tech costs decay)
3) Your academic focus. Ours is "traditional academic" which means we get a 2% bonus to everything. So we're not particularly great or particularly bad at anything. This can be changed later to...
Business and Tycoon Schools - Focus on commerce and industry techs, with a loss on army and culture techs. The US starts with this.
Avantgarde Intelligentsia - MASSIVE bonus to culture (30%!), 5% penalty to everything else; I think Austria starts with this?
Sea Power and Commerce - Navy and commerce bonus, penalty to military and culture, I think. UK and Dutch start with this one.
Military-Industrial Complex - Bonus to army and industry, penalty to commerce and navy
Junkers, German name and German name - only available to Prussia, basically a supercharged MI Complex
So what do the technologies do, ebum?
Before we do that, let's talk about the two kinds of technologies. First there are big, broad topics. Like, for example, Malthusan Thought. Then within that, there are inventions. Inventions can trigger any month, at a certain percentage adjusted by factors like what other technologies you have, your literacy rate, your ruling party, that kind of thing. You don't actively research them, you just hope they happen. One invention under Malthusan Thought is... the man Thomas Robert Malthus, who gives you some prestige for "inventing" him. OK, let's look at some tech screens! (We have the green stuff)
The army screen! Each tech screen is divided into five subschools. And then there are six techs in each subschool, which become available as the game moves on, presuming you have the earlier techs in that subschool. For example, here, we can learn the second technology in Army Doctrine, but not in Military Science.
Army Doctrine increases our defensive abilities, basically. Better forts, and our infantry can dig-in more, giving them a bonus on each roll when defending if they've stayed in one province for a long time.
Light Armament improves our infantry generally. It's better and better rifles, essentially. Good on attack and defense. Also makes them more expensive to pay for.
Heavy Armament improves our artillery and makes them cost more.
Military Science improves our logistics and what not, making upkeep cost less.
Army Leadership makes our tactics better, leading to fewer casualties.
The navy screen!
Naval Doctrine lets us build larger naval bases, which build ships faster and are the only places ships can be repaired. Useful!
Ship Construction invents new kinds of ships for us, or improves existing ships. Clipper Design, for example, will let us build Man-O-Wars, even though we already have some.
Naval Engineering teaches us how to build the ships faster.
Naval Science lowers ship maintenance costs and increases how far away from naval bases we can sail.
Naval Leadership is Army Leadership, but with boats!
The commerce screen! (Veterans note that ADP generally alters this the most)
Financial Institutions lets us make and improve stock exchanges and banks and what not.
Monetary System improves our tax and administration efficiency
Economic Thought and Critique gives a small bonus to research points and factory efficiency
Market Functionality gives a bonus to education efficiency and factory efficiency
Organization gives larger bonuses to factory efficiency
Some of these also open up new kinds of factories.
The culture screen!
Aesthetics gives you prestige and makes you generate more prestige. That's about it.
Philosophy improves your research points. Flat out. Less in APD than in vanilla. It's relatively easy to get 70 RP in vanilla with the US and max out the tech tree. In APD, 50 is fairly ambitious and finishing the tech tree is though, even with the Americans.
Social Thought improves education efficiency, and generally some other things, usually colonial in nature.
Political Thought gives you an extra national focus for each one you learn, improves your "Rights of Man" decision (more prestige for more consciousness, generally), gives you more diplomatic points, and increases your influence points. Basically it makes your government work better.
Psychology makes your armies reinforce faster and a few other smaller bonuses. I tend to ignore it more than most.
The industry screen!
Power improves RGOs (mostly farmers).
Mechanization improves factories.
Metallurgy improves mining and steel production.
Infrastructures gives you better railroads. There are six levels of railroad, each railroad tech gives you one of them (with an invention in APD, grrrrrr)
Chemistry and Electricity are variously useful, mostly giving you increased population growth, larger supply limits in your provinces, and less attrition.
So now that you vaguely know what's going on, tech wise, you can answer question 5's freeform hilarity. Top vote getters will be research this round. Eventually we'll have enough points to blitz through the cheap ones quickly. Hopefully. And if we can open up some damn tombs in Egypt, possibly really fast!
And then the game gave me a free acquire state AND place in the sun casus belli against the Netherlands. Unfortunately they're allied with the UK...
1. Where should we seek influence next?
C) Persia -Eventual oil, and near enough that we won't have to worry about our navy too much yet.
2. The Alliance with Prussia is certainly useful. But having additional allies would be useful, who to target? (Right now the great powers are impossible)
E) An uncivilized power, China - Might as well ring Russia with our friends. Not that China's going to successfully invade Moscow via Mongolia, but maybe Russia will send some armies off in that direction.
Domestic policy:
3. We need more research points, there are two options to get them
Governmental policy:
4. Who should rule in the Ottoman Empire for the next 5 years?
Whichever of the three will boost our economy the most. I bet they all say it's them.
Thinking on tech.
1. Where should we seek influence next?
C) Persia
The Ottoman Empire seems like an "immediate physical borders" kind of empire - you can't really trust most of your immediate neighbours to not try something suspicious, so I would want to be sure that dominance would be asserted over the immediate area.
2. The Alliance with Prussia is certainly useful. But having additional allies would be useful, who to target? (Right now the great powers are impossible)
C) A Secondary power, like the Netherlands
The Netherlands have some colonies around the place without being so large they are completely unapproachable. I would say a secondary power such as the Ottomans teaming up with another secondary power such as the Netherlands would intimidate anyone.
Domestic policy:
3. We need more research points, there are two options to get them
Always love that long term option. Unless you are in imminent danger (and I would say that you do not seem to be) that long term investment into exponential growth will pay off during the last 20 years of the play through where you do more damage than you would otherwise do in 60.
Governmental policy:
4. Who should rule in the Ottoman Empire for the next 5 years?
C) Liberals
I am split between libs and conservatives but social reform is what you've been playing for so why not go 100% on this and push for Liberals?
Tech:
How about Economic Thought & Critique or Chemistry & Electricity? It depends on whether the next tier of research is an order of magnitude higher in RP, but both should bump up your RP if the descriptions are correct.
I'm always a tech/economy first kind of guy. Success follows money. Let's make sure we have lots of that. How we go about that is... Beyond my pay-grade.
1. Where should we seek influence next?
I'd suggest one of the remaining North African states, just to try and contain French/Spanish expansion into that area. Failing that, I'll pick A.
2. The Alliance with Prussia is certainly useful. But having additional allies would be useful, who to target? (Right now the great powers are impossible)
E) An uncivilized power, China. I agree with GrimmyTOA, let's ring Russia in with friends. If you could convince Sweden as well, we'd have some significant distractions should it come down to war.
Domestic policy:
3. We need more research points, there are two options to get them
Governmental policy:
4. Who should rule in the Ottoman Empire for the next 5 years?
A) Conservatives (incumbent). No need to rock the boat unless you want to start getting some reforms done!
FFRK: 9rRG
So let's talk about foreign policy!
The first thing you need to know is that there are five categories of nations, from least to most important:
1) Uncivilized nations. These are countries that are not European-influenced (Africa, India, China, Japan), basically. They can slowly become civilized by investing research points in several reforms.
2) Partially civilized nations. The above with some reforms undertaken.
Both of those nations are cheaper to take stuff from, infamy wise, for Western nations like us. Basically half price, become a fourth price later in the game when the "Scramble for Africa" event starts (~1880). They're also ineligible to become Great Powers or Secondary Powers, even if they have the score to get there.
3) Civilized nations. They're western or westernized, have industry, decent militaries, and if you annex them or take their stuff without a valid casus belli you earn a lot of infamy. 11 for each state you would like to conquer, or 22 if you would like to annex them. They can become secondary or great powers.
4) Secondary Powers. These are the nations with the 9th to 16th best scores in the world. Secondary powers are just like civilized nations, except they can colonize unoccupied territory if they have the naval range and technology to do so.
5) Great Powers. The nations with the top 8 scores. A nation loses great power status if it falls below a secondary power for a period of I think three months. It might be six. A Great Power is like a secondary power, except they have spheres of influence, about which more in a second.
Score is calculated by adding your prestige (from events and technologies, and it slowly grows on its own), your industrial score (how much you make and how advanced the stuff you make is; radios are more valuable for cement), and your military score (roughly divisions + capital ships - Man O'War, Ironclads, Dreadnoughts; by the end of the game capitals ships dominate this category).
Spheres of Influence:
Once you are a great power, you can add nations to your sphere of influence by spending influence points on them. You can prioritize influence at a low rate, a medium rate, and a high rate. We did this to Serbia, and added them to our sphere in the last update. Influence points are dependent on: technology, sharing a border, being on the same continent, foreign investment (great powers can build factories and railroads in other nations), and the actions of other great powers. You can spend influence points on: increasing your relations (on a scale from hostile to opposed to neutral to cordial to friendly), decreasing another great power at the same or lower level of relations, kicking another great power out for a year, lowering the rate at which another great power gains influence, or adding them (or removing them) to your (from another great power's) sphere, which costs 100 points and can only be done at "friendly" relations.
Why sphere?
Well, first, countries in your sphere are automatically allied with you and you can intervene in any attack on them.
But for a better reasoning, we have to talk about how the economy works a little.
So let's talk about say, steel. To make steel, your factory needs iron and coal. First the factory checks if you have a domestic source of iron and/or coal. If you do, the factory buys it from that RGO and you're done. If not, the factory then checks if you have a source in your sphere of influence. If you're the Great Power in charge, you get to check your spherelings RGOs first, even before they do. It's a big advantage! If, instead, you are the sphereling, you get to buy your master's or your co-sphereling's goods before the rest of the planet, so if you're not in a great power, it can be good to be in a sphere! Finally, if there's not enough iron and/or coal in both your nation and your sphere of influence, only then does the factory try to import the iron/coal from the rest of the world.
War!
Wars require a casus belli (or an event). You can make one up with the justify war option, as I showed in the update. There are quite a few possible reasons for war. There are the straight forward taking of a state or annexation, which we have already seen. There's humiliation which gets you prestige and removes prestige from the target. "Place in the sun" is just like taking a state, but it's a colonial state instead. "Cut down to size" forces them to pay reparations and limits their ability to re-arm post war. "Free people"... frees another nation. For example, some other nation could try to free our Greek majority states and give them back to Greece. This generates less infamy then taking the state for yourself, obviously. You can also force a country to change its sphere of influence or install a puppet government.
I think that's most of the important things foreign policy wise that I haven't covered already. Again, feel free to ask questions!
First we check to see what the liberal party's war policy is. The answer is: bad. Pacifism would cripple our military, which is something we can absolutely not afford to have happen. So we'll be sticking with conservatives until such a time as the Crimean War has happened. Hopefully we'll get a new liberal party or something, because: YIKES.
I suspect my big info dump post on technologies may have intimidated people, there weren't really votes for it. I decide that people endorsed education via the clergy national focus, so let's learn Positivism and improve their efficiency. This is probably the choice I make with no democracy, FWIW. It'll take a long time, but this is a long term play.
This was a mistake, but I was hoping to prime the pump and get the capitalists some more income. So I finish their investments into the luxury furniture factory. Still don't have enough craftsmen to really make any factories effective, which means our status as a Great Power is in jeopardy. Hopefully I can keep our prestige up until our literacy hits the magic numbers required to really get some factories going.
More events! Here one of the eventual liberalization options is selected. Hopefully we can get some reform desire later.
An example of an invention as opposed to a full technology. This allows bakeries which convert grain into canned food. Because canned food is vital to military and we make a ton of grain, it'll probably help us to have some bakeries.
Russia's expanding into Central Asia, as they do. When they run into India and the British, they'll inevitably decide to beat up either us or the Chinese. Diplomatic efforts are made to improve the relationship with the Qing, but no alliance is forthcoming.
We continue to try to take over the Arabian peninsula. This time going after Yemen, and sucking hard at not getting caught fabricating a war goal. Damn.
Fortunately, this event shows up to speed the acquisition of the casus beli. These happen frequently, along with the opposite event, as long as you're trying to create a war goal. Not going to show them in the future.
Here's our first political movement! It's small, but these people want public meetings to be allowed. Once that happens, political reform desire increases much more quickly. Once the movement hits a certain size (I believe 10% of the population, or about 500k in our case), it will push 10% of conservatives in the upper house to vote for reform. Liberals always vote for reform. This is not nearly big enough to actually do anything. Maybe next time.
Every so often you can do this in APD, which gives you a large amount of prestige in exchange for a large amount of money. We don't have the economy to do this yet, as much as the prestige would help towards maintaining our Great Power status. Damn damn damn.
War is declared on Yemen. The Sultan fails to notice they own an island off the Arabian coast, so no boats are ordered in the Red Sea. This would have unfortunate consequences, sort of.
Because not long after, this happens. Naturally we refuse to negotiate. So begins a massive, nasty war with our Egyptian vassals. It lasts two and a half years, and kills about a hundred thousand Turks. More Egyptians.
The budget is shifted dramatically. Education and Administration funding is cut, while more resources are devoted to buying goods for the military (stockpile). Military spending itself is not increased at all.
Fortunately, we do not have that alliance with the Qing, as the British declare war in one of their frequent smacking around of Chinese for fun and profit and opening opium markets.
The first battle is a rousing success, with Murat Bey's forces killing a third of a slightly larger army, suffering relatively few casualties themselves. The victory awards us some much needed prestige as well...
Which is unfortunately lost, as future battles are losses. The Turkish troops give much worse than they get, but strategically failures force retreats. At this point, we're mostly buying time for our troops to get to the front (sorry, I did a bad job on the larger strategic view until later, basically just assume our troops our rushing from the Russian and Austrian borders as fast as they can while the border garrisons fight a holding action.
The fleet is sent to blockade Alexandria, but is forced to retreat by an Egyptian fleet. They do manage to sink two transports, though.
Murat Bey continues to inflict massive punishment on the Egyptians before retreating. Both sides have mobilized their entire nations at this point (you can convert a certain percentage of farmers and labourers into crappy soldiers). It was necessary. But hurt our economy badly, with some unfortunate results.
Finally, some good news. Our Prussian allies have entered the war. Unfortunately, without military access from the Austrians, any land armies will have to be shipped all the way around Europe by boat. The Prussian navy is about the size of ours, so this won't be particularly efficient.
The second naval battle goes much better, and a blockade of the Egyptian coast is set up. This will give us some war score and increase war weariness in Egypt, making them more likely to accept terms.
We finally learn Positivism. I select the last of the tier one army technologies as we need the additional organization and the maintenance savings would be a gift from Allah.
And the war's basically over at this point. I just need to survive long enough for the Egyptians to not force a surrender. They took a few provinces in Turkey and one in Iraq, but this should be simple. Once the Austrians arrive we can demobilize and get our economy vaguely decentish again.
Here come the Austrian hordes. If you look closely you can see our budget is not doing well. At all.
We do not need separatist rebels right now, game. Gah! This happened because the "liberal revolution" event is going off all over Europe, with people trying to get representative governments. France, I think, is the only country that had its monarchy fall, only for Napoleon III to launch a coup and crown himself Emperor like his uncle. Austria had a thing happen, which should be in the next update, but they suppressed it and then... you'll see.
The overall state of the war, about a year in. You can see the Egyptians have occupied a few territories in Turkey, but the war is basically ending right now in the Adana state (south central Turkey). And the floods of Austrians and Prussians coming over through the Dardenelles hasn't stopped. Meanwhile in North Africa, we're taking land back and the Austrians have landed on Egyptian Crete. At this point I'm furiously adding war goals, because all of that stuff in Israel/Palestine/Jordan/Syria is core Ottoman territory, as well as Crete. This is unnecessary, as you'll see.
Lots of occupying going on. Also the Egyptians built a bunch of new ships, but the blockade won't let them out of port. When their provinces are captured, they get forced out and die horrible deaths.
Military staff system finishes, making our armies less likely to retreat and, somewhat more importantly, saving us money on their upkeep. I start Experimental Railroad, which should help just about everything once we get them built.
On December 10, Egypt surrenders. I probably should have strategically avoided taking Cairo, which I think is the trigger for this. I was trying to get the Suez AND all of our cores in the peace deal. If we have the Suez, we get to build the canal as long as we remain a Great Power. Now whoever spheres Egypt will get to, and there will be a LOT of competition for that. Note this kills our relationship with Russia. With that war exhaustion modifier, we should probably not be fighting a ton of wars for the next three years, though there are other reasons for that, too. Which I forgot to take a shot of, naturally.
Here's the new Ottoman Empire. You can see Yemen was added down in southern Arabia. And obviously the coast of the Eastern Mediterranean.
Other things that happened: Persia was sphered. Greece tried to jump in the war against Egypt for Crete, but we ended the war before they could make peace. We now have an alliance with Austria as well as Prussia from the Crisis. No other Great Powers intervened, especially none on Egypt's side (France does sometimes), which was a blessing. The US took New Mexico from the Mexicans in the first true US-Mexican War. They'll probably take a couple states at a time before finally winning the whole Mexican Cession.
The major problem (and thing I forgot to take a shot of) is that between the mobilization and increasing our normal forces, our budget was screwed. I needed to keep the stockpile up to win battles. So we're about 140k in debt. Interest is ~170 pounds a day. With our current budget settings, if we do nothing else, we can pay this off in about a year and a half. Not terrible, but limits other things like the Lavish Exhibition, building railroads personally, investing in factories, and random events.
Decisions
1) Who should govern us?
A) Liberals
C) Reactionaries
(there will be more options in the future)
2) Who to try to sphere next? I put the emphasis on Greece for now.
(open question, suggest a region if you don't have a specific nation)
3) What should we learn?
1) Army
2) Navy
3) Commerce
4) Culture
5) Industry
4) How should we handle the debt crisis (sort of)?
A) Do nothing but pay back our creditors until we're out of debt.
C) Use our current surplus to increase military spending and stockpile spending, so we're ready for any future war.
D) Focus on maintaining great power status by saving for a Lavish Exhibition.
E) Pay the debt until railroads are available and then personally build them in every province.
5) Other suggestions.
Tomorrow: a tutorial on the military! Which I planned to do tonight, but playing that took two hours and the update took an hour to write. So I'm exhausted.
2: Greece seems like a good option, given it's rightfully our territory anyway
3: Commerce, we clearly need all the financial skills we can get
4: Lavish Exhibition, because economic advisers are only there to be ignored in the name of national glory
5: If China is going to be Britain's punching bag seems like it would be a good idea to avoid any kind of alliance with them. With Prussia and Austria on our side we should be able to hold back the Russian menace.
Does Gibraltar block movement like in HoI? Maybe build a Indian ocean fleet and carve off some parts of Africa, India, Indonesia, or Indochina. Oh, Ottoman Australia! Make it happen
Meanwhile, apparently if Egypt is in your sphere there's a chance for an "Egypt insults you, gain an annexation casus beli against them" event. Which is pretty neat, if a pain in the ass because they have like 50 provinces.
2) Greece|they're in the middle of 'our' territory anyway. I do know that the Greek/Turkish relationship has always been terrible, so I'm going to assume that we'll get some interesting events out of this
3) Industry|we need to produce stuff so we can make a quick profit, I'd put commerce as a close second.
4) Focus on maintaining great power status by saving for a Lavish Exhibition. Railroads are a good second, they also help with maintaining an easy to transport military. Having to send them back and forth between the northern border and the Arabian peninsula (or the Maghreb once shit starts hitting vans there) will take ridiculously long.
2) If Sphere is a road toward annexation, then Greece. Otherwise, a strong Italian nation to help form Italy.
3) Culture. The money problem will solve itself, so emphasize tech speed.
4) Pay off the debt. That way if there's another emergency war you can take out another loan.
5) Look for a weak minor power to humiliate-troll for some prestige gain as soon as War Exhaustion is at a manageable level. Anything available in Arabia or NW Africa?
1. Reactionaries! State Capitalism > Capitalist AI
2. Tunis
3. Army, Crimean War is not so far away
4. Slash everything except education until the debt is paid. Alliances should ward off any immediate dangers.
Agreed on all counts. We need to pay the loan back, but we will not suffer being known as the sick man of Europe. Also, avoid spending infamy on things other than conquering the Arabs. We want that oil!