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I need to put some more time into this game now that it's had a couple patches. I've done a Sweden into Scandinavia run and a Prussia into Germany run. I may give Russia a try, or maybe the USA or France. I don't really have the desire to try an unrecognized country right now, it doesn't sound like the system to claw your way out of that status is really satisfactory yet. I'll probably try the USA though, even if it is probably still too easy to avoid the US Civil War.
It's not particularly hard to move up from unrecognized, but yeah I guess there's not anything really "special" about the process either. I like starting small, so I've done several of them, and it's definitely viable. The bonuses from becoming a major/great power are good, but nothing that's core to developing your economy either (you don't need to go in debt really to grow production -- the low interest rates are nice but easy enough to work around not having the bonus). A lot of the undeveloped nations start with access to rare resources too, which can be a huge boost and are fun to have around.
Fairly related -- if you're playing as any country that starts without a modern economic system (i.e. traditionalism), Corn Laws are amazing and will give you a really big boost fairly quickly out of the gates. It's a journal entry event that you start the game with that allows you to very easily transition into a better economic system if the Landowners are your dominant political group, when you normally have to slowly starve them out as they're always very powerful in traditionalist countries and hate all of the good laws. You just need to enact the "encourage exports" tariff on grain (the one that jacks up import taxes), have either isolationism or mercantilism as a trade policy (which is just about every traditionalist country), and wait for a bit. Pretty quickly you'll get an event that gives you the option to install a Market Liberal leader to the Landowners, who will support the more modern economic systems and tax laws that are a huge income boost. It can save 30-40 years of waiting in some countries, and drastically improves your economy. Typically I repeal the grain tax as soon as the leader pops up, as it also causes an event to strengthen the Landowners from time to time (which you still don't really want long term).
I did play a fair bit as the USA, and I just kind of feel like I'm doing something wrong. I've taken over the lower 48 in their entirety, which is good. I had a movement to abolish slavery pop up so I tried to force it through, the Southern Landowners immediately quit the government in protest and started the countdown towards civil war, which I went ahead and let happen and stomped them flat. I'm trying to do the Reconstruction journal entries, and I got the frontier one done (fairly simple, just needed to not have devastation) but the one to have 20% loyalist pops in every Dixie state is a real pain in the ass. I'm pretty sure there are 17 of them, and I've gotten exactly 1 of them (which I think is D.C. but I'm not certain, it might be South Carolina because that state is something like 95% African American) to hit the threshold. I've gotten a few nice reforms passed like public healthcare and dedicated police, but I'm just not getting the immigration I was hoping for. I think i only have like 25m pop in the mid-1850s, and I kind of crushed myself with debt during the war (and fell out of GP status temporarily, but I'm back now) and also I needed to build a ton of administration buildings to be able to get all the states re-cored, so I am definitely behind on my construction capacity. I think if I can get that rolling better I can make something nice out of the nation, the best way to get loyalists is to increase their standard of living after all. Though Georgia is being quite stubborn about not giving me events that could let me lower their radical levels, they're the only state in turmoil now which is good, but just not good enough.
I suppose it's not the end of the world if I end up losing Dixie as an accepted culture, because they would still share a trait with Yankee that keep them from being discriminated against. It just feels bad trying to meet the condition because I have to let Confederates back into the government and ignore paramilitary groups running around, discriminating against I dunno, the native tribes I suppose since African American is accepted due to being Anglophone.
I do like the new system for autonomous construction using the construction money though, that's real nice. I just hope my immigration will pick up sooner rather than later. I definitely need a larger population to build a world beating economy.
Yeah I haven't played the US since last version, when it was mega easy to just avoid the Civil War all together.
I did hear reports from the open beta, and I it appears to have stayed for the final version, that they nerfed mass migrations too hard. Entire states were being depopulated in the last version, but they swung the pendulum too hard and the only reliable migration now is "in market" migration.
If you want to work around it, getting countries in your market is very strong and they will flee in mass to you if they're accepted and you have a higher SoL.
If you check the patch notes, Paradox integrated a remarkable amount of changes into the final version that were lifted entirely from a popular "open beta tweaks" mod (and credited the authors). They didn't put in some of the later additions to partially un-nerf mass migration though, so I went in and grabbed them myself and am using them. Fair to say they have a pretty solid vanilla-like vision when Paradox made so much of their mod core, and the tweaks aren't drastic, so it seemed a good compromise for me.
I played another 20 years or so, and I am finally getting mass migration events decently regularly. I've also managed to get a bunch of the other nations in the Americas into my market, which has probably helped a fair bit as well since my nation has a pretty substantial advantage in migration attraction. I'm still behind the actual population of the USA for the time period, but I'm up to about 50 million population with the third largest economy in the world, though I'm pretty far behind UK and France in terms of prestige. I wasn't able to keep Dixie as a primary culture (I think the Reconstruction events need to be looked at perhaps) but that's not a huge deal as they have the same cultural heritage traits as Yankee anyway so they're accepted and don't give me any further accepted cultures. The nice thing is that I managed to get Afro-American as a primary culture, which means with my current law of cultural exclusion makes all pops of African heritage accepted. I've gotten a fair few migration events from European colonies in Africa.
Something that is annoying is that I have built the Panama Canal, but I can't get anybody to move down there to actually work in the canal itself. I had to build a port to make it stop being an isolated region, and I'm pretty sure the canal itself doesn't count as a port for that reason, but man just nobody wants to move there. I did not have that issue when I had the Panama and Suez canals as Germany in a much older version.
I almost feel bad for Brazil, I got them into my market and now they are unable to become a Great Power, though I think a big chunk of the reason they have the prestige to qualify is being in my market. Before they joined they were ranked 10th, but they jumped up fast after joining. I'm a bit peeved that I can't get any support for changing my army setup to Professional Army instead of National Militia. Though I suppose it doesn't make much difference if I never really go to war.
Heh so I'm obviously enjoying the new version, but it does look like Paradox let a fairly large bug creep into the final version.
Not sure what causes it exactly, but it does happen from time to time and I've seen it in my run -- there's a weird bug that causes buildings to sometimes only hire one worker.
The workaround is fairly simple -- you can subsidize the building to unbreak it, and switching PMs seems to work as well. The issue being, some economic systems don't allow for subsidies, and this is happening to a lot of people early game before there are different PMs to switch to.
I do have to chuckle a bit though, as this is what a lot of the people participating in the open beta were worried about. The open beta was a great idea, many bugs were caught by the community and fixed for the final version, buuuut at some point they mentioned they would probably put in some extra changes into the final release that weren't in the open beta. I saw numerous people mention to the developer in the thread the potential pitfalls of that, and yeah they added a late minute change without letting the community test it causing this issue. It would have been easily caught by the community, as it's pretty obvious and I noticed it on my first full run, but again for some reason their QA process doesn't seem to entail having people do a full run of the game before pushing it live.
Wow that is a nasty bug that could potentially cripple a country. Hopefully they can fix it soon, but it's been marked as confirmed and high priority since Wednesday so maybe they are having issues tracking it down. Now I'm going to have to go through all my states and check to see if any of my buildings have been impacted.
Honestly this patch has been quite fun so far. Once they fix this issue and hopefully tune the nation to nation migration a bit better (because it really seems too low right now) I think the game will be in a spot where they can start looking at improvements to base systems instead of fixing and tuning what is already there.
I will say that the American Civil War was fairly easy, which I think was due to a combination of reasons. First, I had Great Britain as an ally and they joined the war on my side. Clearly that had a huge impact as they sent like 120 troops over. Second, I had focused my economic development primarily on New York, Pennsylvania and Ohio so I could afford to properly equip my army. I don't think the Confederates were able to afford Skirmish Infantry or possibly even Mobile Artillery because I definitely had a massive troop quality advantage even when British troops were not in the equation. Third, I'm pretty sure that the military interest group has happy, though not powerful. Overall this added up to my troops having nearly double the combat power of the Confederate troops, in addition to my troops simply outnumbering them plus the extra 120 or so that Great Britain sent over. The only downside was that I had to keep my armies mobilized after the war ended, because Great Britain had started up a small conflict in Africa that I decided not to sit out because I wanted to make sure I didn't lose my ally. Turns out mobilized a fuckoff huge amount of conscripted soldiers is quite expensive and I had some pretty serious debt afterwards, though I was not in danger of defaulting at any point. The credit bar got up to like 40% full.
Hopefully the Southern Landowners interest group will lose the pro-slavery stance at some point, it's been over 30 years since the war and they still have that trait.
Yeah 1.2 is still a huge improvement over the last version. It's just one of those "Paradox you came so close to pulling it off" things. Previous patches are buggy, okay let's do an open beta for our big post-Holiday update. Initial versions have big bugs, everyone understands because it's an open beta, and the community happily and enthusiastically reports the bugs. Bugs are fixed, wooh, but no it's okay we can fit in these last few changes without putting them in open beta they definitely won't break anything major aaaand.....yeah.
It's not directly related, but it does get compounded with the new private investment system. Private investors don't seem to care at all for the economy of scale bonuses you get for centralizing/specializing resource productions by state, and this bug only seems to affect new buildings and not expanded buildings.
I do hope they tweak that a bit in the next version -- it makes sense to have some inefficiency in private investment -- but the current system can have, for example, American capitalists deciding they want to have a single very inefficient automobile factory in every single state of the union, as opposed to you know, Detroit. The game models that, but the private investors don't care about it right now.
Wow that is a nasty bug that could potentially cripple a country. Hopefully they can fix it soon, but it's been marked as confirmed and high priority since Wednesday so maybe they are having issues tracking it down. Now I'm going to have to go through all my states and check to see if any of my buildings have been impacted.
Honestly this patch has been quite fun so far. Once they fix this issue and hopefully tune the nation to nation migration a bit better (because it really seems too low right now) I think the game will be in a spot where they can start looking at improvements to base systems instead of fixing and tuning what is already there.
I will say that the American Civil War was fairly easy, which I think was due to a combination of reasons. First, I had Great Britain as an ally and they joined the war on my side. Clearly that had a huge impact as they sent like 120 troops over. Second, I had focused my economic development primarily on New York, Pennsylvania and Ohio so I could afford to properly equip my army. I don't think the Confederates were able to afford Skirmish Infantry or possibly even Mobile Artillery because I definitely had a massive troop quality advantage even when British troops were not in the equation. Third, I'm pretty sure that the military interest group has happy, though not powerful. Overall this added up to my troops having nearly double the combat power of the Confederate troops, in addition to my troops simply outnumbering them plus the extra 120 or so that Great Britain sent over. The only downside was that I had to keep my armies mobilized after the war ended, because Great Britain had started up a small conflict in Africa that I decided not to sit out because I wanted to make sure I didn't lose my ally. Turns out mobilized a fuckoff huge amount of conscripted soldiers is quite expensive and I had some pretty serious debt afterwards, though I was not in danger of defaulting at any point. The credit bar got up to like 40% full.
Hopefully the Southern Landowners interest group will lose the pro-slavery stance at some point, it's been over 30 years since the war and they still have that trait.
It's been 160 years in the real world...
The idea that your vote is a moral statement about you or who you vote for is some backwards ass libertarian nonsense. Your vote is about society. Vote to protect the vulnerable.
My USA game is nearly up to 1900 now, and things are definitely rolling now. I decided that I could beeline malaria prevention and get a jump on southern Africa colonization if I wanted, so I did that (partially because it's an easy source of accepted pops, thanks Reconstruction!). I may have annoyed France and Great Britain while doing so, but thankfully they don't like each other terribly much (and in fact just recently fought a war against each other) so hopefully they won't be likely to tag team me. I have also managed, after the most recent elections, to finally switch to Professional Army instead of National Militia, so I'm building up my army and navy just in case somebody thinks it might be a good idea to mess with me.
In 1890 a ridiculous war kicked off after Great Britain decided to conquer a part of Manchuria. GB tried to sway me to their side by offering me a Chinese province of somewhere around 15 million people, but I really wasn't too interested in taking on that many non-accepted pops in a part of the world I would have issues reaching in any reasonable amount of time so I said no. The war ended up being GB, France and Russia on one side with Qing, North German Federation, Austria and Italy on the other. With the #1, #2 and #4 nations all fighting on the same side it wasn't even really a contest, and the European nations ended up peacing out early and leaving Qing to its fate. They have not been having a good time, what with losing the coastal regions of South China to The Heavenly Kingdom and two states to GB, plus some treaty ports. I was really surprised that war didn't end up causing more devastation, but it was over quickly enough that nobody other than China really suffered too badly.
If Germany ends up forming, it's going to be a very late one. I know Prussia and Austria had a war over German leadership, but they were incredibly evenly matched and I'm not sure how it ended. I don't know how to check either, which is a little annoying. Either way both those countries are towards the bottom of the GP ranks. Meanwhile, Russia and the Ottomans are doing really well, Russia was third but is now fourth as I've really gotten the economy rolling the USA. I doubt I'll have any chance to purchase Alaska, and Hawaii is in my market but I have no idea how to make them a state, or if I'd really want to since it would be a bunch of unaccepted pops most likely. Most of the Americas are in my market and we're mostly peaceful and prospering. My population is up to about 100 million, which is definitely higher than it historically was in 1900 (I think I'm in 1898, close enough) but at least some of that is my colonies in Africa. Not a huge chunk, since I didn't get areas like Niger that are heavily populated, but more stuff in the Congo and southwards area (Angola, Namibia, Botswana and some of modern Congo).
The only thing that is a bit worrisome is I went from the Intelligentsia being the most powerful interest group (until Teddy Roosevelt died) to the Armed Forces being the most powerful interest group. Right now people seem pretty satisfied with the laws I have, but I'd like to get women's suffrage and women in the workplace if possible, as well as compulsory school. I really don't have all that many radicals, and many of the ones I do have are concentrated in Arizona. Little chance of being able to enact Multiculturalism, so the tribal cultures are just kind of out of luck. I definitely have a ton more loyal pops than radical pops, which is nice because I remember the last time I played (as Germany) I had a lot more unrest than I felt was warranted.
Definitely feels better than before. A bit more polish and some more features and I'll be really happy with the game.
Sounds like you're having a nice run! Worth noting that no interest group supports multiculturalism "naturally" anymore -- the intelligentsia had that removed from their base interests in the most recent patch, as it was probably a bit too easy to get. You now have to get a leader with the radical trait to pull it off -- the events to get them happen pretty often mid to late game though it seems like, so definitely not impossible.
I decided to get a little weird with it on my end. I saw a discussion on African nations being sort of stuck with the way colonization works -- there's no real way for them to expand internally in Africa with the way colonization and malaria works right now, as you need a lot of tech to fight off severe malaria and by that time the UK and France have probably carved it all up and blocked you off.
It probably fits historically, but that's no fun. I'm supposed to be the spirit of the nation, and the spirit demands that Africans unite to fight off the Western imperialists. So I made a simple mod to give Sokoto the colonialism law to start, and the malaria prevention tech as well. Still terrible laws and low tech aside, but I want to get my expansion on too.
It's been super fun! There's a ton of stuff to do with the smaller nations nearby to conquer in addition to colonies to manage and all of the events that pop up from that. I'm still pretty early but have a relatively huge workforce to play with and some nice resource deposits as well.
I always figured African states colonizing other African states should have lower malaria penalties. Not no penalties, but lower penalties than the European countries get.
I always figured African states colonizing other African states should have lower malaria penalties. Not no penalties, but lower penalties than the European countries get.
Yeah something like that would be the best solution. I think that works if your native pop views the territory as a "homeland", but those areas are fairly small overall.
There's probably a way to mod that in, but I went with the very lazy method that took adding three lines of text. It's definitely a bit overpowered, and particularly if pushed to the max (I'm restricting myself to only colonizing African provinces that I share a border with and not using my immune to malaria powers to conquer Asia).
The nice thing about Paradox games is that overpowered is relative. Like, Great Britain is super overpowered! But obviously it makes sense given the type of game it is.
Wooh! Paradox has (okay probably temporarily) re-re-learned from their mistakes, and are actually releasing the hotfix as an open beta. It appears to be out now on the open beta branch, addressing the "no hiring" bug and a couple of others.
So one nice thing about having Afro-American as a primary culture, is that I can incorporate states in Africa in 5 years. Also without massive immigration happening, I'm having to actually move buildings to more automated production methods which is nice. When I played last as Germany, my population was increasing so fast that I couldn't build places to work fast enough and just had so many peasants and unemployed it was starting to be a problem. Things are going pretty swimmingly for the US of A, I have now surpassed France for #2 GP (partially as a result of my superior economy, partially a result of building up my military). The only nations that have a higher standard of living have less than 2 million population and no power on the world stage. My literacy rate is pretty solid at just over 70%, so I'm one of the leaders in technology and from observing other people's wars my army is significantly stronger on a unit per unit basis, even if it isn't as large (yet) as the major European powers.
I will say that the AI construction queue is nice, but also kind of stupid at times. It seems to like to expand buildings in places that do not have the population to support them. It also builds things in some weird places, like I have a huge arts academy in Iowa of all places. Also the Dakotas have a crapton of people.
I think I can wrap this up before the patch hits, and then try somebody else (probably Russia).
Yeaaah despite my initial enthusiasm I'm now over the private construction queue for the time being.
Too many really bad decisions that result in ultimately more micromanagement than just building everything yourself.
Spamming factories when you're early game and infrastructure bottlenecked is a pain. Spamming factories in every state without any concern for the economy of scale bonus isn't great. They don't really seem to care about infrastructure much either -- I know I've seen them build a port before, but building railroads seems to only happen when the price of transportation is high, not to increase infrastructure. In small nations in particular, they can cause massive goods shortages that you have to slowly micromanage your way out of. They don't seem to care about turmoil in a state, and will spam expensive buildings in high turmoil low infrastructure states. The new turmoil system is quite a bit more punishing than the old, aaand it will just drag your whole economy down quickly. They don't care about employment/available workforce, which can be a huge bottleneck for lots of nations and cause you grief as well.
It's a cool system, I'm sure they'll improve the behavior over time, but the end of my Gran Colombia game was mostly just de-constructing stuff that the AI kept trying to build that actively made my economy worse. It gets turned off for now.
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SolyspPreviously Kane Red RobeRegistered Userregular
Yeah, reminds me of Vicky 2 to be honest, capitalists are dumb. I was watching a streamer playing as the Sikh and nearly the first thing the investors decided Punjab needed was a fine arts academy. Nearly torpedoed the whole economy.
I have so many fine arts academies, and I have no idea why. Iowa is just filled to the brim with artists, I guess. It kind of seems like my guys are paying attention to economy of scale bonuses, because they aren't spamming a ton of little scattered buildings, they seem to be focus building like Iowa gets the fine arts academies, North Dakota gets the motor industries, stuff like that. They definitely don't seem to care about infrastructure or available workforce though, which is a huge hassle. I do wonder if the ownership type impacts things, because my railroads are government run while just about everything else is public shares or whatever it is called.
If they can improve the building AI, I think the auto-investment pool spending will be a wonderful feature. Just, like, stop expanding buildings in areas that have no available workforce!
Yeah it's weird. I felt like they were concentrating in one of my playthroughs, but then my next playthrough was just "glass factories in every province". It's definitely a common complaint if you look at the various discussion forums too.
I do think it's a cool system, just needs refining. Like every new Paradox feature.
Characters will not start rolling for some traits until you research the tech, so if you wqnt multiculturalism or feminist laws you need to research them as early as possible then wait for a good roll.
Military is going to be a strong interest group if you have a large military and a lot og generals since they are almost always military. You can keep adding and removing generals for significant anger of the military if you want specific interest group generals.
I think cooperatives is broken right now as it ruined my investment pool to 1% of what it used to be. I think the issue is it adds farmers and shopkeepers as owners for ariable land and urban development respectivly. Then both have 25% contribution plus another 15% from postal banking. But the dividends in cooperatives is distributed to all worker pops not just the "owners". No other pop types contribute to the investment pool, So since shopkeepers and farmers are so few it cuts the investment pool by 50% to 90%.
It is still a really good law to increase standard of living as you can push lower and middle class to 25+ standard of living.
The AI has been a lot better at not tanking their own economy from what I have seen.
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!
The hotfix is now live on the main branch. We were bumped up a few more version numbers -- one was to fix a bug where the last few soldiers in a battle would hang on foreverrr that was present in the live version -- and of course one of them was to hotfix a bug introduced by the hotfix.
At last, the Revolution is complete and we have achieved a truly Anarchist 'state'. No Gods, no Masters.
Still got a bunch of colonies, though.
Feels wrong, to be both an officially multicultural anarchist society and also automatically hang on to the colonial possessions of your imperial forebear.
The end game is so much different than it was before.
Heh the most obvious is that I can actually get to 1880 and beyond without feeling the game slow down minute by minute until I want to quit. A very positive change!
This is especially good though, because the game has been shifted towards the last 50 years mattering much more now. Tech has been slowed down a lot. It may be slightly too slow now -- I've heard stuff about the AI getting tech way later than is historically appropriate -- but previously you could knock out most everything by about 1890 so it probably makes sense.
It looks like they've made an attempt to fight the massive unemployment you get late game with the automation technologies by heavily emphasizing the need to spam arts academies and universities. Possibly a bit too much, but it does sort of solve the gameplay problem of having nothing to build late game but needing to keep your construction industry churning. Hitting the innovation cap requires a ton of universities, and satisfying the art need is the same (they nerfed the output of art academies as well).
I decided to return to the ol' USA for my most recent playthrough. I had the achievement to expand out West from prior versions, but don't have the one to expand to 100 states and get 100 stars on your flag (probably the best flavor thing in Victoria 3 right now). That was purely because making it to end game in 1.1 was terrible and horribly slow, particularly playing as a big country that can achieve very large GDPs and really slow it down.
But they really have done a great job of improving end game performance with 1.2, so the time is now.
It's been going great so far. As soon as Mexico defeated Texas, I immediately puppeted them and took the entire huge swathe of territory that entails. It's a super easy war at that stage in the game, and a great economy boost. 5 years later I annexed them outright, because hey I need all of the stars on my flag I can get.
I spent the next 30ish years building stuff everywhere except the South, just in case things got hot and we had to civil war. Luckily though, peacefully avoiding the civil war entirely is still possible. It's harder than before and takes more time, but the old strategies still work fairly well. I boosted the Intelligentsia all game, and eventually was able to push the Southern Landowners out of government while maintaining enough government stability to avoid chaos. That opens up suppressing them, and a combination of that and getting rid of as many laws that help them out as possible weakened them to the point that I could abolish slavery while avoiding war and reconstruction. The Southern Planters did get up to 90% on the rebellion/rage meter while the law was being debated, but that's all you need. As long as it's below 100, no rebellion, the law passes, and it starts to tick down over time.
With that done I passed Cultural Exclusion (the tier below Multi-culturalism that makes pretty much everyone outside of Asia accepted in the US) and am off to the races. It's 1880 and I have a ridiculous amount of arable land and resources to mess with, with all of my population as an accepted culture.
I was also wrong about universities being more of a bottleneck than before -- it's literacy that's the trick now. I'm on level 5 public schools and it's just pretty slow going getting that particular line to go up. They lowered base literacy across the board, which lowers your research cap, while also increasing tech costs. The waves of conquest will probably make it impossible to get to 90%+, but the USA starts pretty teched out so I'm hoping I can finish the tree by end game.
So I know that during Reconstruction you can get Dixie and Afro-American added to your primary culture list. I was able to get Afro-American but not Dixie, but Dixie doesn't really matter anyway because they have the same heritage traits as Yankee. Can you get Afro-American as a primary culture without doing Reconstruction? Because that would be pretty fantastic. I've definitely been enjoying having everybody in my African colonies as accepted pops.
So I know that during Reconstruction you can get Dixie and Afro-American added to your primary culture list. I was able to get Afro-American but not Dixie, but Dixie doesn't really matter anyway because they have the same heritage traits as Yankee. Can you get Afro-American as a primary culture without doing Reconstruction? Because that would be pretty fantastic. I've definitely been enjoying having everybody in my African colonies as accepted pops.
You raise a good point that I had forgotten about -- I don't know that you can actually. There is a "peculiar reconstruction" event that fires after 10 years of no slavery sans civil war, but it doesn't look like it adds Afro-Americans as a primary accepted culture. As a result I was wrong and not all of my pop is accepted yet -- my pops from African colonies are currently discriminated against. You wind up with Afro-American as accepted with cultural exclusion (as they're anglophones), but not any African descendant pop that has a different language trait.
On the plus side, I was also wrong about it being 1880 -- I'm in 1867, 10 years out of slavery being abolished, which at least gives me more time to get a radical leader and switch to multi-culturalism. I had an event pop for one in the armed forces group, but they were fairly tiny and I didn't go for it. Sooooon though.
In one of my two America playthroughs I just did I was dumb and didn't puppet Mexico after Texas lost. It's also definitely a lot harder to dodge conflict in general unless you get lucky/get on suppressing the Southern Planters ASAP. Also have to watch out for the Industrialists as well though, because they're just as likely to swing in and cause a rebellion over women's rights or social security. The first playthrough went up in smoke because I got Women Voting passed and it outraged folks into a rebellion almost instantly, to the point where I was just kinda zoning building stuff and Whoops, everyone else is at war with New England and Florida.
The nice thing about rebellions in this is that you can pretty much always avoid them by just cancelling the law you're trying to enact. If their rebellion meter is below 100, they will not rebel (and you can see from the very start what the "max" is, so you have time to cancel it). If it hits 100, they immediately rebel. So if they're like "70 angry" about the law, eh not a big deal. You get more radicals which can be bad, but generally a temporary problem unless you have a ton.
It feels bad cancelling a "good" law like women's suffrage for that, but at most it's a temporary setback if you want to avoid war. Just cancel it, keep on suppressin' (boost other good influence groups too), and maybe pass laws that diminish the "problem" interest group's political influence that are less controversial.
So it was mentioned earlier that there are events to get radical leaders for interest groups, and I realized I'm not entirely sure how that plays out. Is it the event where a leader dies/retires and you have a choice between a new guy or an incompetent guy or something like that? Can you only get a certain number of those events, and should save the choice of the new guy for a powerful IG instead of just going for the new guy right away? Or is there a specific event that says it will give a radical leader? I think I've seen one like that in a previous run, but nothing like that in my USA game. Which I should get back to at some point this weekend.
So it was mentioned earlier that there are events to get radical leaders for interest groups, and I realized I'm not entirely sure how that plays out. Is it the event where a leader dies/retires and you have a choice between a new guy or an incompetent guy or something like that? Can you only get a certain number of those events, and should save the choice of the new guy for a powerful IG instead of just going for the new guy right away? Or is there a specific event that says it will give a radical leader? I think I've seen one like that in a previous run, but nothing like that in my USA game. Which I should get back to at some point this weekend.
I think you get the option to get one from the "Path to Liberalism" journal event every time, but I'm not 100% as I'm often bad at paying attention to which event is firing. I've heard someone mention it on one of the forums, and I've gotten them from more than just that event.
The ones I know for sure though, will overtly say that whatever option you're picking will give a leader with the "radical" trait when you mouse over the event options. I know there are some political leader events that are more vague (like the one where you choose an established dumb guy or a promising newcomer) and I would assume those have a chance to be radical, but I know for sure there are events that fire that will specifically say you're going to get a leader with the radical trait when you mouse over the options for context.
I had a game where I had like 4-5 events to get a radical leader happen in pretty quick succession mid-late game, so it's not a crazy rare thing from what I can tell. I would assume it pops more often later game though, but I know I've seen events pre 1900 that give you the choice too (including the option I had in my current USA game pre 1870 to make the military leader radical).
I'll try to keep more of an eye out when I play this weekend to what events specifically are giving them.
I've been thinking about it, and I'm not sure which nation I want to do after the USA. I traditionally play Russia a fair bit in this sort of game, and I haven't done that yet. But I also might just want a nice and easy run as France instead. Or maybe take a different route and try Japan or China for the Unrecognized -> Recognized attempt. I'd have to look into how to properly handle The Heavenly Kingdom stuff if I did China, or figure out a good strategy for Japan that doesn't involve getting roflstomped by Great Britain like happened to both Japan and China in my current USA game. Frankly, playing as Russia to figure out how to deal with abolishing serfdom might be quite useful in preparation for playing China or Japan.
I've been thinking about it, and I'm not sure which nation I want to do after the USA. I traditionally play Russia a fair bit in this sort of game, and I haven't done that yet. But I also might just want a nice and easy run as France instead. Or maybe take a different route and try Japan or China for the Unrecognized -> Recognized attempt. I'd have to look into how to properly handle The Heavenly Kingdom stuff if I did China, or figure out a good strategy for Japan that doesn't involve getting roflstomped by Great Britain like happened to both Japan and China in my current USA game. Frankly, playing as Russia to figure out how to deal with abolishing serfdom might be quite useful in preparation for playing China or Japan.
Russia and China both get huge boosts from the Corn Laws event I mentioned at the top of this page. It will make it fairly easy to overturn serfdom, and Russia in particular should be able to get super filthy because they aren't as much of a big target at the start as Qing are to Great Britain.
Really all of those options should be fun! Japan isn't quite as awesome as they were last version with the arable land changes, but they still have great access to rare resources.
Went ahead and started up a game as Great Qing, and wow the tax capacity deficit is immense. I got to 1868 and I've started making a dent in it, but it's still like 750k. It's been interesting for sure, I've got railroads everywhere now and I am 20% into the bar on the big journal entry where you just kind of explode into warring factions I guess, because I did have to take some loans (and came shockingly close to bankruptcy), but I'm back in the positive territory now. I'm trying to keep the turmoil in Guangdong as low as possible, because those pesky Portuguese keep trying to open a hospital down there. I keep saying no, but there are a few Protestants that are slowly converting religion. I'm not sure how to see the exact turmoil percentage in a state that isn't counting as having unrest, but the journal entry says The Heavenly Kingdom thing will happen if there are any Protestants and unrest is like 15% or more, and I have to be close to that. Overall I have quite a few radicals because my standard of living is so low with so many peasants (at least they aren't serfs though). I'm also not really sure what I have to do to break the power of the landowners, I can't really pass the laws that would lower their political power (I got a movement to enact one law that would have hurt them, but it failed badly and I had to abandon it). I'm slowly modernizing my army, I have mostly line infantry and some with artillery, and I'm starting to transition to skirmish infantry. I might be able to try for Recognition soon, I just have to figure out who I should try it against. My first thought is Russia, but I'm not settled on that yet. I also need to work on my navy eventually, but that can come later.
#1 economy, #1 population, not quite dead last in SoL or literacy but not far off. If I was recognized, I think I'd be like #3 on the GP power list. Anybody with any tips on ways to work my nation towards a more egalitarian society, let me know because right now all I can think of doing is researching some techs that might give me liberal leaders.
I've experimented a little bit this last patch, and I think getting the landowners + industrialists as government and then going for landed voting is a good early start. While it will tank your legitimacy a bit, having elections should help with getting a mix of different factions into power to slowly reform.
Otherwise just pumping SoL enough to be able to pass reforms that would otherwise make them rebel helps, but probably tough to do as Qing
I've experimented a little bit this last patch, and I think getting the landowners + industrialists as government and then going for landed voting is a good early start. While it will tank your legitimacy a bit, having elections should help with getting a mix of different factions into power to slowly reform.
Otherwise just pumping SoL enough to be able to pass reforms that would otherwise make them rebel helps, but probably tough to do as Qing
Yeah I generally don't worry about low government legitimacy early on, as long as it's not in the lowest category that makes stuff go really crazy. Getting at least 50 is nice, but going lower to cut out the Landowner rot is generally worth it. I agree that Industrialists are your friends early on -- they like better laws than the landowners, and boosting them will divert power away from the landowners too.
Aaand honestly a bit of appeasement works too. When you get the popups to pick whether to make the Landowners happy or like the Trade Unions, going with the Landowners early will give you enough of a boost to pass the laws they hate. Gotta play the long game sometimes.
So I think there are a ton of things I could have done better so far in this run, but it's been interesting for sure. I finally got my army to a competitive state, so I decided to take back Macau. I ended up having to fight Portugal, Great Britain and North German Federation, but I pulled it off. Unfortunately I couldn't become recognized because I couldn't take any land from the Germans. Emboldened by this, I started harming relations with Russia, and when I finally got them low enough to demand recognition, I found out they were allied to France and Two Sicilies. Regardless, I took the plunge, and ended up fighting the Sicilians a few times before they were forced to capitulate, and France once or twice before their soldiers mysteriously disappeared from the battlefield, though they were still in the war. After that it was just a matter of stomping the Russians for a bit and now I am the #3 Great Power. My standard of living is still crap, but I was at least able to get the armed forces into government and get Professional Army (probably the main reason I was able to win, since I had to get away from peasant levies to get Shrapnel Artillery active).
Soon I will have mutual funds, so I can finally get away from the landowners owning everything. I have tried a couple times to get a better taxation law passed, but so far no luck. I used up all my luck on the 10% chance at Professional Army going through. I think if I did this again I would approach things a bit differently, though with so many serfs/peasants to start with it's a real uphill climb to get the standard of living up. I also find it very interesting that expanding my taxation capacity (through building more administration) hasn't actually been increasing my income, because I guess the salaries and supplies to collect more taxes are worth more than the taxes I get afterwards.
It's been a fun run so far, and I'm going to keep going a bit longer, but I accomplished my primary goal of becoming a recognized power. I guess when I took Macau I might have screwed myself a bit, because it seems to lock me out of the Boxer Rebellion stuff which is required to get rid of the Fragile Unity journal entry. Well whatever, as long as it stops the Portuguese from trying to open schools and hospitals in Guangdong I'll be happy.
How has this been shaping up since release? From what I've seen, it looks like they have the economic part moving so that the AI is less likely to screw itself and the late game is playable. But do all the countries feel kinda the same still? Or is there a different feel to Russia/Japan/Prussia, etc?
How has this been shaping up since release? From what I've seen, it looks like they have the economic part moving so that the AI is less likely to screw itself and the late game is playable. But do all the countries feel kinda the same still? Or is there a different feel to Russia/Japan/Prussia, etc?
It's complicated, I guess. There aren't a ton of flavor events per country overall -- they're in there, and each of those countries have some unique ones like the Meiji Restoration for Japan -- but overall it's kind of standard Paradox game pre-DLC lately where the systems are there and the "per country flavor" is probably coming more as time goes on.
Personally, I think each of those three countries feel very different to play. But it's more due to their economic and political situations than flavor events. The game does a solid job of representing that, and you're going to get three very different playthroughs as a result. Japan starts off isolationist with a very firmly entrenched landowner class and military/shogun class. Their tech is bad, their politics are horrible, their economy is undeveloped, and they're "unrecognized" as a non-Western power which brings penalties, but they have a pretty great base of resources to industrialize with. Russia starts with a ton of population, obvious expansion targets, an effective massed low tech army, and pretty crappy politics but not quite as bad as Japan. Prussia will be the most different, as they're small but with tons of potential for growth (unifying Germany is an event), and better tech and politics.
They also did a lot to differentiate the economic systems in the last version, so playing as a command economy will feel quite different than playing as a laissez faire nation.
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It's not particularly hard to move up from unrecognized, but yeah I guess there's not anything really "special" about the process either. I like starting small, so I've done several of them, and it's definitely viable. The bonuses from becoming a major/great power are good, but nothing that's core to developing your economy either (you don't need to go in debt really to grow production -- the low interest rates are nice but easy enough to work around not having the bonus). A lot of the undeveloped nations start with access to rare resources too, which can be a huge boost and are fun to have around.
Fairly related -- if you're playing as any country that starts without a modern economic system (i.e. traditionalism), Corn Laws are amazing and will give you a really big boost fairly quickly out of the gates. It's a journal entry event that you start the game with that allows you to very easily transition into a better economic system if the Landowners are your dominant political group, when you normally have to slowly starve them out as they're always very powerful in traditionalist countries and hate all of the good laws. You just need to enact the "encourage exports" tariff on grain (the one that jacks up import taxes), have either isolationism or mercantilism as a trade policy (which is just about every traditionalist country), and wait for a bit. Pretty quickly you'll get an event that gives you the option to install a Market Liberal leader to the Landowners, who will support the more modern economic systems and tax laws that are a huge income boost. It can save 30-40 years of waiting in some countries, and drastically improves your economy. Typically I repeal the grain tax as soon as the leader pops up, as it also causes an event to strengthen the Landowners from time to time (which you still don't really want long term).
I suppose it's not the end of the world if I end up losing Dixie as an accepted culture, because they would still share a trait with Yankee that keep them from being discriminated against. It just feels bad trying to meet the condition because I have to let Confederates back into the government and ignore paramilitary groups running around, discriminating against I dunno, the native tribes I suppose since African American is accepted due to being Anglophone.
I do like the new system for autonomous construction using the construction money though, that's real nice. I just hope my immigration will pick up sooner rather than later. I definitely need a larger population to build a world beating economy.
I did hear reports from the open beta, and I it appears to have stayed for the final version, that they nerfed mass migrations too hard. Entire states were being depopulated in the last version, but they swung the pendulum too hard and the only reliable migration now is "in market" migration.
If you want to work around it, getting countries in your market is very strong and they will flee in mass to you if they're accepted and you have a higher SoL.
If you check the patch notes, Paradox integrated a remarkable amount of changes into the final version that were lifted entirely from a popular "open beta tweaks" mod (and credited the authors). They didn't put in some of the later additions to partially un-nerf mass migration though, so I went in and grabbed them myself and am using them. Fair to say they have a pretty solid vanilla-like vision when Paradox made so much of their mod core, and the tweaks aren't drastic, so it seemed a good compromise for me.
Something that is annoying is that I have built the Panama Canal, but I can't get anybody to move down there to actually work in the canal itself. I had to build a port to make it stop being an isolated region, and I'm pretty sure the canal itself doesn't count as a port for that reason, but man just nobody wants to move there. I did not have that issue when I had the Panama and Suez canals as Germany in a much older version.
I almost feel bad for Brazil, I got them into my market and now they are unable to become a Great Power, though I think a big chunk of the reason they have the prestige to qualify is being in my market. Before they joined they were ranked 10th, but they jumped up fast after joining. I'm a bit peeved that I can't get any support for changing my army setup to Professional Army instead of National Militia. Though I suppose it doesn't make much difference if I never really go to war.
Not sure what causes it exactly, but it does happen from time to time and I've seen it in my run -- there's a weird bug that causes buildings to sometimes only hire one worker.
The workaround is fairly simple -- you can subsidize the building to unbreak it, and switching PMs seems to work as well. The issue being, some economic systems don't allow for subsidies, and this is happening to a lot of people early game before there are different PMs to switch to.
I do have to chuckle a bit though, as this is what a lot of the people participating in the open beta were worried about. The open beta was a great idea, many bugs were caught by the community and fixed for the final version, buuuut at some point they mentioned they would probably put in some extra changes into the final release that weren't in the open beta. I saw numerous people mention to the developer in the thread the potential pitfalls of that, and yeah they added a late minute change without letting the community test it causing this issue. It would have been easily caught by the community, as it's pretty obvious and I noticed it on my first full run, but again for some reason their QA process doesn't seem to entail having people do a full run of the game before pushing it live.
Honestly this patch has been quite fun so far. Once they fix this issue and hopefully tune the nation to nation migration a bit better (because it really seems too low right now) I think the game will be in a spot where they can start looking at improvements to base systems instead of fixing and tuning what is already there.
I will say that the American Civil War was fairly easy, which I think was due to a combination of reasons. First, I had Great Britain as an ally and they joined the war on my side. Clearly that had a huge impact as they sent like 120 troops over. Second, I had focused my economic development primarily on New York, Pennsylvania and Ohio so I could afford to properly equip my army. I don't think the Confederates were able to afford Skirmish Infantry or possibly even Mobile Artillery because I definitely had a massive troop quality advantage even when British troops were not in the equation. Third, I'm pretty sure that the military interest group has happy, though not powerful. Overall this added up to my troops having nearly double the combat power of the Confederate troops, in addition to my troops simply outnumbering them plus the extra 120 or so that Great Britain sent over. The only downside was that I had to keep my armies mobilized after the war ended, because Great Britain had started up a small conflict in Africa that I decided not to sit out because I wanted to make sure I didn't lose my ally. Turns out mobilized a fuckoff huge amount of conscripted soldiers is quite expensive and I had some pretty serious debt afterwards, though I was not in danger of defaulting at any point. The credit bar got up to like 40% full.
Hopefully the Southern Landowners interest group will lose the pro-slavery stance at some point, it's been over 30 years since the war and they still have that trait.
It's not directly related, but it does get compounded with the new private investment system. Private investors don't seem to care at all for the economy of scale bonuses you get for centralizing/specializing resource productions by state, and this bug only seems to affect new buildings and not expanded buildings.
I do hope they tweak that a bit in the next version -- it makes sense to have some inefficiency in private investment -- but the current system can have, for example, American capitalists deciding they want to have a single very inefficient automobile factory in every single state of the union, as opposed to you know, Detroit. The game models that, but the private investors don't care about it right now.
It's been 160 years in the real world...
In 1890 a ridiculous war kicked off after Great Britain decided to conquer a part of Manchuria. GB tried to sway me to their side by offering me a Chinese province of somewhere around 15 million people, but I really wasn't too interested in taking on that many non-accepted pops in a part of the world I would have issues reaching in any reasonable amount of time so I said no. The war ended up being GB, France and Russia on one side with Qing, North German Federation, Austria and Italy on the other. With the #1, #2 and #4 nations all fighting on the same side it wasn't even really a contest, and the European nations ended up peacing out early and leaving Qing to its fate. They have not been having a good time, what with losing the coastal regions of South China to The Heavenly Kingdom and two states to GB, plus some treaty ports. I was really surprised that war didn't end up causing more devastation, but it was over quickly enough that nobody other than China really suffered too badly.
If Germany ends up forming, it's going to be a very late one. I know Prussia and Austria had a war over German leadership, but they were incredibly evenly matched and I'm not sure how it ended. I don't know how to check either, which is a little annoying. Either way both those countries are towards the bottom of the GP ranks. Meanwhile, Russia and the Ottomans are doing really well, Russia was third but is now fourth as I've really gotten the economy rolling the USA. I doubt I'll have any chance to purchase Alaska, and Hawaii is in my market but I have no idea how to make them a state, or if I'd really want to since it would be a bunch of unaccepted pops most likely. Most of the Americas are in my market and we're mostly peaceful and prospering. My population is up to about 100 million, which is definitely higher than it historically was in 1900 (I think I'm in 1898, close enough) but at least some of that is my colonies in Africa. Not a huge chunk, since I didn't get areas like Niger that are heavily populated, but more stuff in the Congo and southwards area (Angola, Namibia, Botswana and some of modern Congo).
The only thing that is a bit worrisome is I went from the Intelligentsia being the most powerful interest group (until Teddy Roosevelt died) to the Armed Forces being the most powerful interest group. Right now people seem pretty satisfied with the laws I have, but I'd like to get women's suffrage and women in the workplace if possible, as well as compulsory school. I really don't have all that many radicals, and many of the ones I do have are concentrated in Arizona. Little chance of being able to enact Multiculturalism, so the tribal cultures are just kind of out of luck. I definitely have a ton more loyal pops than radical pops, which is nice because I remember the last time I played (as Germany) I had a lot more unrest than I felt was warranted.
Definitely feels better than before. A bit more polish and some more features and I'll be really happy with the game.
I decided to get a little weird with it on my end. I saw a discussion on African nations being sort of stuck with the way colonization works -- there's no real way for them to expand internally in Africa with the way colonization and malaria works right now, as you need a lot of tech to fight off severe malaria and by that time the UK and France have probably carved it all up and blocked you off.
It probably fits historically, but that's no fun. I'm supposed to be the spirit of the nation, and the spirit demands that Africans unite to fight off the Western imperialists. So I made a simple mod to give Sokoto the colonialism law to start, and the malaria prevention tech as well. Still terrible laws and low tech aside, but I want to get my expansion on too.
It's been super fun! There's a ton of stuff to do with the smaller nations nearby to conquer in addition to colonies to manage and all of the events that pop up from that. I'm still pretty early but have a relatively huge workforce to play with and some nice resource deposits as well.
Yeah something like that would be the best solution. I think that works if your native pop views the territory as a "homeland", but those areas are fairly small overall.
There's probably a way to mod that in, but I went with the very lazy method that took adding three lines of text. It's definitely a bit overpowered, and particularly if pushed to the max (I'm restricting myself to only colonizing African provinces that I share a border with and not using my immune to malaria powers to conquer Asia).
The nice thing about Paradox games is that overpowered is relative. Like, Great Britain is super overpowered! But obviously it makes sense given the type of game it is.
I will say that the AI construction queue is nice, but also kind of stupid at times. It seems to like to expand buildings in places that do not have the population to support them. It also builds things in some weird places, like I have a huge arts academy in Iowa of all places. Also the Dakotas have a crapton of people.
I think I can wrap this up before the patch hits, and then try somebody else (probably Russia).
Too many really bad decisions that result in ultimately more micromanagement than just building everything yourself.
Spamming factories when you're early game and infrastructure bottlenecked is a pain. Spamming factories in every state without any concern for the economy of scale bonus isn't great. They don't really seem to care about infrastructure much either -- I know I've seen them build a port before, but building railroads seems to only happen when the price of transportation is high, not to increase infrastructure. In small nations in particular, they can cause massive goods shortages that you have to slowly micromanage your way out of. They don't seem to care about turmoil in a state, and will spam expensive buildings in high turmoil low infrastructure states. The new turmoil system is quite a bit more punishing than the old, aaand it will just drag your whole economy down quickly. They don't care about employment/available workforce, which can be a huge bottleneck for lots of nations and cause you grief as well.
It's a cool system, I'm sure they'll improve the behavior over time, but the end of my Gran Colombia game was mostly just de-constructing stuff that the AI kept trying to build that actively made my economy worse. It gets turned off for now.
If they can improve the building AI, I think the auto-investment pool spending will be a wonderful feature. Just, like, stop expanding buildings in areas that have no available workforce!
I do think it's a cool system, just needs refining. Like every new Paradox feature.
Military is going to be a strong interest group if you have a large military and a lot og generals since they are almost always military. You can keep adding and removing generals for significant anger of the military if you want specific interest group generals.
I think cooperatives is broken right now as it ruined my investment pool to 1% of what it used to be. I think the issue is it adds farmers and shopkeepers as owners for ariable land and urban development respectivly. Then both have 25% contribution plus another 15% from postal banking. But the dividends in cooperatives is distributed to all worker pops not just the "owners". No other pop types contribute to the investment pool, So since shopkeepers and farmers are so few it cuts the investment pool by 50% to 90%.
It is still a really good law to increase standard of living as you can push lower and middle class to 25+ standard of living.
The AI has been a lot better at not tanking their own economy from what I have seen.
Still got a bunch of colonies, though.
Feels wrong, to be both an officially multicultural anarchist society and also automatically hang on to the colonial possessions of your imperial forebear.
Heh the most obvious is that I can actually get to 1880 and beyond without feeling the game slow down minute by minute until I want to quit. A very positive change!
This is especially good though, because the game has been shifted towards the last 50 years mattering much more now. Tech has been slowed down a lot. It may be slightly too slow now -- I've heard stuff about the AI getting tech way later than is historically appropriate -- but previously you could knock out most everything by about 1890 so it probably makes sense.
It looks like they've made an attempt to fight the massive unemployment you get late game with the automation technologies by heavily emphasizing the need to spam arts academies and universities. Possibly a bit too much, but it does sort of solve the gameplay problem of having nothing to build late game but needing to keep your construction industry churning. Hitting the innovation cap requires a ton of universities, and satisfying the art need is the same (they nerfed the output of art academies as well).
But they really have done a great job of improving end game performance with 1.2, so the time is now.
It's been going great so far. As soon as Mexico defeated Texas, I immediately puppeted them and took the entire huge swathe of territory that entails. It's a super easy war at that stage in the game, and a great economy boost. 5 years later I annexed them outright, because hey I need all of the stars on my flag I can get.
I spent the next 30ish years building stuff everywhere except the South, just in case things got hot and we had to civil war. Luckily though, peacefully avoiding the civil war entirely is still possible. It's harder than before and takes more time, but the old strategies still work fairly well. I boosted the Intelligentsia all game, and eventually was able to push the Southern Landowners out of government while maintaining enough government stability to avoid chaos. That opens up suppressing them, and a combination of that and getting rid of as many laws that help them out as possible weakened them to the point that I could abolish slavery while avoiding war and reconstruction. The Southern Planters did get up to 90% on the rebellion/rage meter while the law was being debated, but that's all you need. As long as it's below 100, no rebellion, the law passes, and it starts to tick down over time.
With that done I passed Cultural Exclusion (the tier below Multi-culturalism that makes pretty much everyone outside of Asia accepted in the US) and am off to the races. It's 1880 and I have a ridiculous amount of arable land and resources to mess with, with all of my population as an accepted culture.
I was also wrong about universities being more of a bottleneck than before -- it's literacy that's the trick now. I'm on level 5 public schools and it's just pretty slow going getting that particular line to go up. They lowered base literacy across the board, which lowers your research cap, while also increasing tech costs. The waves of conquest will probably make it impossible to get to 90%+, but the USA starts pretty teched out so I'm hoping I can finish the tree by end game.
You raise a good point that I had forgotten about -- I don't know that you can actually. There is a "peculiar reconstruction" event that fires after 10 years of no slavery sans civil war, but it doesn't look like it adds Afro-Americans as a primary accepted culture. As a result I was wrong and not all of my pop is accepted yet -- my pops from African colonies are currently discriminated against. You wind up with Afro-American as accepted with cultural exclusion (as they're anglophones), but not any African descendant pop that has a different language trait.
On the plus side, I was also wrong about it being 1880 -- I'm in 1867, 10 years out of slavery being abolished, which at least gives me more time to get a radical leader and switch to multi-culturalism. I had an event pop for one in the armed forces group, but they were fairly tiny and I didn't go for it. Sooooon though.
It feels bad cancelling a "good" law like women's suffrage for that, but at most it's a temporary setback if you want to avoid war. Just cancel it, keep on suppressin' (boost other good influence groups too), and maybe pass laws that diminish the "problem" interest group's political influence that are less controversial.
I think you get the option to get one from the "Path to Liberalism" journal event every time, but I'm not 100% as I'm often bad at paying attention to which event is firing. I've heard someone mention it on one of the forums, and I've gotten them from more than just that event.
The ones I know for sure though, will overtly say that whatever option you're picking will give a leader with the "radical" trait when you mouse over the event options. I know there are some political leader events that are more vague (like the one where you choose an established dumb guy or a promising newcomer) and I would assume those have a chance to be radical, but I know for sure there are events that fire that will specifically say you're going to get a leader with the radical trait when you mouse over the options for context.
I had a game where I had like 4-5 events to get a radical leader happen in pretty quick succession mid-late game, so it's not a crazy rare thing from what I can tell. I would assume it pops more often later game though, but I know I've seen events pre 1900 that give you the choice too (including the option I had in my current USA game pre 1870 to make the military leader radical).
I'll try to keep more of an eye out when I play this weekend to what events specifically are giving them.
Russia and China both get huge boosts from the Corn Laws event I mentioned at the top of this page. It will make it fairly easy to overturn serfdom, and Russia in particular should be able to get super filthy because they aren't as much of a big target at the start as Qing are to Great Britain.
Really all of those options should be fun! Japan isn't quite as awesome as they were last version with the arable land changes, but they still have great access to rare resources.
#1 economy, #1 population, not quite dead last in SoL or literacy but not far off. If I was recognized, I think I'd be like #3 on the GP power list. Anybody with any tips on ways to work my nation towards a more egalitarian society, let me know because right now all I can think of doing is researching some techs that might give me liberal leaders.
Otherwise just pumping SoL enough to be able to pass reforms that would otherwise make them rebel helps, but probably tough to do as Qing
LoL EU West nickname: Irridan
Yeah I generally don't worry about low government legitimacy early on, as long as it's not in the lowest category that makes stuff go really crazy. Getting at least 50 is nice, but going lower to cut out the Landowner rot is generally worth it. I agree that Industrialists are your friends early on -- they like better laws than the landowners, and boosting them will divert power away from the landowners too.
Aaand honestly a bit of appeasement works too. When you get the popups to pick whether to make the Landowners happy or like the Trade Unions, going with the Landowners early will give you enough of a boost to pass the laws they hate. Gotta play the long game sometimes.
Soon I will have mutual funds, so I can finally get away from the landowners owning everything. I have tried a couple times to get a better taxation law passed, but so far no luck. I used up all my luck on the 10% chance at Professional Army going through. I think if I did this again I would approach things a bit differently, though with so many serfs/peasants to start with it's a real uphill climb to get the standard of living up. I also find it very interesting that expanding my taxation capacity (through building more administration) hasn't actually been increasing my income, because I guess the salaries and supplies to collect more taxes are worth more than the taxes I get afterwards.
It's been a fun run so far, and I'm going to keep going a bit longer, but I accomplished my primary goal of becoming a recognized power. I guess when I took Macau I might have screwed myself a bit, because it seems to lock me out of the Boxer Rebellion stuff which is required to get rid of the Fragile Unity journal entry. Well whatever, as long as it stops the Portuguese from trying to open schools and hospitals in Guangdong I'll be happy.
It's complicated, I guess. There aren't a ton of flavor events per country overall -- they're in there, and each of those countries have some unique ones like the Meiji Restoration for Japan -- but overall it's kind of standard Paradox game pre-DLC lately where the systems are there and the "per country flavor" is probably coming more as time goes on.
Personally, I think each of those three countries feel very different to play. But it's more due to their economic and political situations than flavor events. The game does a solid job of representing that, and you're going to get three very different playthroughs as a result. Japan starts off isolationist with a very firmly entrenched landowner class and military/shogun class. Their tech is bad, their politics are horrible, their economy is undeveloped, and they're "unrecognized" as a non-Western power which brings penalties, but they have a pretty great base of resources to industrialize with. Russia starts with a ton of population, obvious expansion targets, an effective massed low tech army, and pretty crappy politics but not quite as bad as Japan. Prussia will be the most different, as they're small but with tons of potential for growth (unifying Germany is an event), and better tech and politics.
They also did a lot to differentiate the economic systems in the last version, so playing as a command economy will feel quite different than playing as a laissez faire nation.