United Neverlands

So, I think this might be a first for me: I've actually officially finished a Paradox Grand Strategy Game! I've been playing these games for well over a decade, and feel like I've "won" quite a few of them; but typically you get to a point where you're the Undisputed Lord Of Everything, and it gets too tedious to just run out the clock until you reach the artificial end date.

 

Victoria 3 has a few advantages in this regard. It is objectively a "shorter" game, "only" covering the 100 years from 1836 to 1936 as opposed to the centuries of Europa Universalis or Stellaris. My total Steam time on the game is currently 150 hours; that includes my training Sweden runs, an early aborted Belgium run and some time left idling on the pause screen. I'm pretty sure this game ended up north of 100 hours, but that's still much less time than a completionist Europa Universalis campaign would take.

 

Besides the shortness, I think some of the mechanics of Victoria 3 keep things feeling more engaging in the end-game. Stellaris kind of does this with the Crisis, but once you beat the Crisis there's even less motivation than before to keep going. Victoria 3 doesn't necessarily pull you into a Great War (although that's certainly a possibility), but the dynamism of the game meant that, at least for me, I had to keep on my toes and not get too complacent. Smaller powers are still at the mercy of larger powers. If you are a large power, you're extremely unlikely to have actually conquered a large chunk of the map: rather, you may have grown your direct territory somewhat, but most of your influence is in the form of "soft power" through political alliances, power blocs, economic imperialism, control of markets, and so on. You do not directly control all of these things. So, for example, in my game I might see, say, France trying to conquer Madagascar, which is an independent nation but a part of my Trade League. I could decide to just let that slide, or threaten to escalate that conflict into a major war to keep the nation and its natural resources available for my own capitalist enterprises.

 

Internal dissension is also a compelling factor. For me, early in the game these felt more fraught, as when monarchists threatened a civil war or when the labor unions organized against our adoption of a laissez-faire economy. Later in the game I was mostly facing indigenous uprisings by native Africans in my colonies. These are far less of a threat to the nation as a whole, because they are tiny; but it does still require a response. In the short term this means marshaling troops, in the longer term checking the causes of the uprisings to try and prevent future ones. In my case, while these populations were doing extremely well by indigenous standards, they were also significantly poorer than the average standard of living in my country, which fed immense discontent. So the solution is to make them richer - not just employing people in rubber plantations and oil fields, but also making automotive factories, art academies and glassworks.

 

This particular mechanic was really interesting to me. For much of the game I used Colonial Exploitation in my African colonies, and for many decades the situation seemed fairly stable. I reached a point where I was having a hard time increasing my extraction industries' productivity: these states had a ready supply of laborers, but too few mechanics and engineers. As colonial wages were low, people in the metropole were reluctant to migrate there for jobs. So I started constructing local Universities to increase the Qualifications of the locals so they could take those jobs. That seemed to gradually help a bit. I eventually realized that as these (completed) colonies were all Unincorporated States, they didn't actually get any of the advantages from my Institutions, particularly Public Education. So I started the process of incorporating them. This increased education access, which increases their literacy... and literacy, in turn, increases their expected standard of living. So, basically, they were learning more about the world, and realizing how much better they could have it. Anyways, I just love this kind of dynamism in the game. More education and literacy is good - it increases innovation and qualifications, helping your technology spread and productivity - but it also potentially increases social unrest, which can destabilize a region or entire country. It's complex, just like history! I love it!

 

For a long time I thought I was way ahead in tech and worried that I would run out of things to research, maintaining expensive universities for little purpose, so I stopped building additional universities once I maxed out a stack of 50 in my capital and had an additional one per state for qualifications. I ended up getting nearly all the techs but not quite, with I think 5 undiscovered at the end, 1 which I was researching and 2 which were spreading to me. From some light online research, it sounds like the meta-strategy is to accept the "ahead of time" penalty and omit researching tech from earlier tiers while you focus on later tiers. This helps you avoid getting into the situation I encountered, where I would go for long stretches without any Tech Spread because I already knew everything everyone else did.

 

This does raise a recurring issue I've encountered with playing Paradox grand strategy games: the core mechanics for these games change significantly over time, so any time I Google for strategy advice or mechanics explanations, even if I find something that was accurate at the time it was written, it's very likely to have changed by now. This ended up being particularly impactful for this game because they had just released a brand-new update, "The Great Wave", that includes a DLC (which I haven't bought) but also a major reworking of naval combat and minor updates for many other things. Even when reading contemporary information on Reddit about, say, the ideal composition of ships in a fleet, that information would be based on bugs in the current game, which were patched during the course of my playthrough, tossing that initial analysis out the window.

 

But one silver lining is that in 2026 it does seem like it's easier to find info in text-based venues like Reddit, the Steam Community and the Paradox Plaza forums. A few years ago when researching EU or Stellaris it seemed like most information was buried in YouTube videos, which I am never going to watch. 

 

Going into my actual campaign:

 

I think my last post ended in the early 1900s. The last few decades generally felt a bit slower than the start of the game, as I was larger and had my finger in more pies, but as noted above it did generally feel "faster" than EU or Stellaris. After forming the United Netherlands I mostly focused on expanding my African colonies, picking up a few minor powers in Europe to join my Trade League but for the most part ignoring continental politics.

 

I had a couple of dust-ups with the United States. They declared on me to seize the Panama Canal, and there were multiple wars where they would declare on Mexico; Mexico would then call in Great Britain and myself and absolutely mop the floor with them. During our last war, a Proletarian Revolt broke out in the US so they were fighting (a second) civil war while also fighting the entirety of Central America, South America and Europe. The Proletarians were able to win the civil war, whereupon they immediately capitulated in the world war so they could focus on their new worker-oriented nation. So it ended up being almost exactly like Russia turning into the Soviet Union during World War 1, just with America this time. I thought that was pretty neat! We stayed friendly after that. 

Near the end of the game I started taking subjects in Africa from diplomatic plays. Typically I would oppose a European power that was trying to subjugate an Unrecognized power in my Trade Union, and as a condition for joining the Play I would demand their colony or transferring an African subject. I also did this with the United States and Liberia. The colony transfers (like taking the rest of Angola from the Portuguese) went smoothly and let me get some complete states. Subject transfers proved trickier: subjects seem to be pretty terrible at managing internal revolutionary movements, secessions and uprisings, so every few years you're dragged into putting down a rebellion. The AI might be able to handle it on its own, but not always, and it's always fastest to send your own army to the front. 

In, say, Europa Universalis it's almost always better to let subjects manage their own affairs, as they accept local cultures and will face fewer uprisings. That may be true at the start of Victoria 3 as well, but by the end-game I had secured hard-won legislative victories to enact Multiculturalism and Total Separation, which respectively significantly lower the cultural acceptance maluses from different ethnic backgrounds and religions. If you combine that with my significantly richer economy, welfare, and being a human being who knows how to play the game, I now think that I should have tried to integrate those late-game subjects ASAP instead of playing whack-a-mole for them. 

 

 

I've mentioned in previous posts that I had shifted from always promoting left-wing parties to instead alternating between the Socialist and Conservative parties in power. This helped with getting the specific laws passed that I wanted, like Laissez-Faire from the Conservative union; I also made a multi-party alliance with the Intelligentsia specifically to pass Total Separation. But by the end of the game I had settled back into just pumping the Socialist party as much as I could and keeping them in power. Single-interest-group parties have a big advantage by not having ideological differences. Even if, say, the Conservatives got 50% of the vote and the Socialists got 40%, the Socialists would inevitably have much higher Legitimacy, so I'd rather the Socialists get 45% than the Conservatives get 55% since I end up with a higher Legitimacy at single-IG 45%. Even if a multi-interest-group party manages to align on ideology, there's a very high chance that a new leader will take over an interest group during their term, which causes your Legitimacy to instantly drop.

 

Other than the occasional Diplomatic Play and even more occasional shooting war, my gameplay in the last few decades was entirely focused on construction and economic expansion: I had all the laws I wanted, was diplomatically secure and only used diplomacy to try and finagle independent nations into my Trade League. My rough (government) building priority level looks like:

1. Expand Construction Sectors if the Private Investment Pool has untapped capacity.
2. Addressing Market Access issues - building at-capacity Railroads and Ports, or making cheaper goods that are inputs to those.
3. Expanding Government Administration to collect available taxes.
4. Expanding at-capacity industries that produce Government or Military goods that are currently expensive; or making cheaper the input goods to these that keep those buildings from hiring.
5. "Starter Package" for new colonies: Trade Center, University, Railroad, Power Plant, Art Academy, one food-producing Arable Resource. 
6. Addressing starvation or low standard of living by building food or job-producing buildings. 
7. Only if running a consistent surplus: More construction sectors or military or universities.
8. Strategic investing in specific foreign nations that I am trying to coerce into my Trade League.
9. Expanding the highest-Productivity at-capacity buildings, up to size 50.
10. Expanding lower-Productivity at-capacity buildings or starting new industries if all domestic ones are at 50+ size already. 

When building in foreign nations, I focus on raw goods (crops and resources) and local services (railroads, ports, trading centers and electricity). My thinking has been that once that nation is in my market, I want my own pops to be making the high-value finished manufactured goods, and I want their pops to be supplying cheap natural resources. I want to buy their cheap stuff and sell them my expensive stuff. I haven't crunched the numbers or researched that strategy, though. In particular, it is common for industry buildings to be significantly more profitable than resource buildings, so if my primary goal is to get enough influence to drag them into my trade league, it might make more sense to, say, build three factories instead of ten farms.

 

While dipping into the community, I've seen Victoria 3 repeatedly described as a "Line Go Up Simulator." I chuckle at that - it's very true! For me it's very satisfying to see wealth, population, literacy and more steadily ticking up in response to your gardening of the nation. I've also heard people say that the game is called Victoria because she is the final boss. Again, that's pretty apt. The game is named that for the Victorian Era, but also she is the monarch of Great Britain for most of the time, and Great Britain starts as the overwhelming #1 greatest power. Unlike Europa Universalis, where Ming starts off as #1 but is doomed to fall off, or Stellaris, where the Fallen Empires start off very powerful but are doomed to stagnation, in Victoria 3 Great Britain is almost certain to advance in power, expanding its influence even more around the globe. All that to say, while conquering the world in this game seems like a very tall and not-very-fun order, outperforming Great Britain is a fantastic goal.

 

And, I did it! In the last decade of the game I eventually surpassed Great Britain as the #1 Great Power in the world. We actually switched places back and forth a few times. I think this is because, when I was at war I would mobilize my armies, which would add to my Army Power Projection enough to push me above them, then drop back when when we demobilized. But I kept chugging along, eventually surpassing one BILLION pounds in GDP and permanently securing my position on top. 

 

So, yep! This game was a lot of fun. I don't have immediate plans to replay, but also the idea of replaying this feels far less daunting than Europa Universalis (or even Hearts of Iron). As with EU it could be fun to just set a specific achievement challenge, like turning the UK Anarchist or forming Yugoslavia. But I can also see myself doing another "completionist" campaign with a less easy start than Belgium - starting in Southeast Asia or South America or something could be pretty entertaining. We'll see if and when I revisit!

Belgian Again

Okay, I'm back on my Paradox saddle again! I've been doing almost nothing for the last month other than working and playing Victoria 3; when I remember, I try to also sleep and eat. Now that I've gotten at least someway up the learning curve I'm having a blast. I keep thinking "I should write a blog post about what I've done and learned!", and then just play more Victoria for a while. Now that I'm finally starting to write this post, it will likely take me at least a week to finish. It is what it is!

 

Let's see... my last post was the end of my Sweden "training run". I planned to do Belgium next, based largely on the Paradox wiki indicating that it's one of the easiest countries and one of the best to learn with (along with Sweden). I got some ways into the game, felt like I was doing well for a while, but reached a point where my economy seemed to be permanently spiraling downward. After a patch update, I realized that Paradox had made a huge change to the game: previously, Political Concessions would add more influence to the faction which granted them, but now they also cost around 100-150 Authority per concession... including ones signed on previous savegames! There was no way I would ever be able to recover from this. But I was already planning on restarting to apply the various things I had learned, so I appreciated the nudge to get a blank slate.

I'm playing as Belgium again, and as I write this I'm now up to... hm, I think I'm in the 1860s or so. (Update: Nearly 1890!) I have fairly warm relations with all the major western European powers, although Prussia / North Germany / German Empire are making me a bit nervous. I've signed and maintained a Defensive Pact with Sweden, that hasn't come into play but I think it helped discourage a potential Netherlands conflict early on. I'm probably friendliest with France, which is the one major nearby power to have ejected its monarchy. 

 

 

In my very first Sweden game I'd joined the British Empire Power Bloc, then mildly regretted it as it seemed to only offer downsides. In my first Belgium game Britain made overtures and got mad when I rejected them. This time I avoided too many entanglements with Britain while still remaining friendly with them. I considered joining the French Free Commerce Committee, which at least seemed to offer some benefit, but decided it would be interesting to try and create my own Power Bloc. I ended up making my own Trade League, and it's been a lot of fun to grow it. I started off getting a lot of unrecognized African nations into it, which doesn't really help at all with Mandate but is economically beneficial and got me used to the recruitment mechanics. I made a big play for Brazil, which was a big help, and since then I've gotten almost all of South America and most of Africa to join, including regional and major unrecognized powers. Now that I have Mandate and Principles ticking up I'm really seeing the benefit. Power Blocs remind me a lot of Federations from Stellaris, which are one of my favorite mechanics from that game, although Victoria Power Blocs at least are a lot less militarily oriented.

 

 

I've also been making a big colonization play in this game.  Getting an Interest in Equatorial Africa was super hard, I tried to do it in my first Belgium game but never was able to do it. Kongo is the only centralized state you can interact with, and it's basically impossible to reach the required 1000 Influence with them to start colonizing. In this game I made every single treaty with them that I could that would increase interest, and eventually sent my navy down there to project power to push me over the threshold. Once I did have a high enough interest to create a colony, that made enough interest to keep it going. I did maintain the Kongo treaties to get all the way up to 2500 Influence for the Establish Missions decree.

 

As a side note: I mentioned in my previous post how I really like how colonization is visually depicted in this game, as "decentralized nations" that you are essentially invading rather than the "blank spots on the map" of Europa Universalis. The mechanics are a bit different as well. In EU, there is a "native uprising" progress bar that generally slowly ticks up over time as your colony progresses. You can manage this in various ways, like having a strategy of Native Appeasement (or whatever it's called) to slow down the progress rate; or station troops in the territory to suppress them; or just let it fire and reset. In EU4 a native uprising will wipe out some number of your settlers, but in some cases that might be preferable to permanently stationing a military force on the other side of the planet. I think that in EU3 an uprising would actually spawn a military unit in the territory that you would need to defeat, although it's been a while and I may be mis-remembering. Anyways, in Victoria there is a "Tension" meter that rises with nearby decentralized nations. It ticks up each time you expand a new province, and very slowly decays over time. If you are aggressively expanding (with a very high Colonial Affairs office and possibly an Establish Missions decree and/or focusing all your expansion on one or two colonies), then Tensions will very quickly rise to the maximum. But... at least in my game, this never had any consequence. According to the game, it should create a Diplomatic Play in the area as the decentralized power tries to shake you off; if you defeat them, you get a big boost to your expansion for some number of years; and like all other Diplomatic Plays, any other powers in the area can intervene, so what started as an indigenous uprising could expand into a global conflagration. But again, this never happened to me, despite me being at 100 Tension with many nations throughout Africa. I'm not sure if this is because my military was strong enough to dissuade them (it isn't that strong), or because I'm playing on an easier difficulty setting, or if it's some bug in this patch.

I mostly have Equitorial Africa to myself, except British Senegal has carved out some land and is currently killing itself in the Severe Malaria states. The other European powers (British, France, Denmark, Netherlands, Portugal) have all been competing on the Ivory Coast. I was originally planning to exclusively focus on inner Africa, but from peeking at the wiki I realize I need to secure some Oil supplies for the late game, and Sarahan Africa seems like my best chance for that. I made good process for a while, but got boxed out by France and my nemesis the Netherlands. So that was a good incentive for my first intentional war!

I started a Diplomatic Play to take the colony. My professional army was about 3x the size of theirs; they had conscripts to fill out the numbers, but I was pretty sure my army quality was better. The Netherlands did have a much larger navy than me, but I was pretty sure that navy was mostly busy in the Dutch East Indies and wouldn't be of too much concern to me. I felt good about fighting in the African colonies and in the Low Countries, and didn't have other interests overseas to defend.

There was a bit of a curveball when Spain decided to back the Netherlands - in the UI preview of the play it looked like nobody was open to being swayed, I'm curious if the Netherlands were able to call in a favor or if something else in the calculus changed to convince Spain to join. I did slightly expand my Diplomatic Maneuvers to demand Gelre as well - this is a "split state" that is mostly controlled by the Netherlands but with a decent slice in Belgium.

I do really like the overall shape of war in Victoria. Everything starts as a Diplomatic Play, and it's fairly common for them to be resolved before war - if a huge power declares on a tiny one, the tiny one will often give in rather than endure the expense and uncertainty of war. At some point you have to decide to start mobilizing your forces. As in the real-world 1800s, war is VERY expensive, so hopefully your economy is already on a solid footing before it starts. The actual progress of the war is fairly abstract: you have large Armies and Navies, each controlled by a General or Admiral, assign them to a Front and give them Orders (generally to Defend the front or Advance the front). The battles all happen automatically - you can click into them to see how they are progressing, but you aren't manually initiating them like in Europa Universalis or Stellaris. It feels a lot closer to Hearts of Iron, but with not as insane a level of operational detail.

In my case, I'd split my army into two parts, and moved a very small force into Africa so I could take the colony. This took ages! Apparently another effect from this recent patch is a total change in how the navy works, previously each ship could carry one army unit, but now my fleet of 12 ships could only carry 2 units at a time. So prior to the war I spent months ferrying back and forth. In retrospect I would have been totally fine with only 1 unit down there since the Netherlands didn't have any military in their colonies.

The larger armies remained in the Low Countries. As I'd hoped, my professional military basically wiped the floor with the conscript-heavy Netherlands forces. I was lucky that Spain mostly stayed at home and stared at us - they had a few battalions on the ground but not nearly enough to turn the tide. I did feel somewhat pleased by my going-in-blind strategic choices. I completely abandoned the Flanders front and focused my entire army on Luxemburg. They were crushed swiftly, wiping out the Luxemburgian (sp?) forces as well as their contingent of Dutch soldiers. That made my southern border completely secured and let me completely focus on the northern front. They hadn't had time to take many provinces, and once I arrived en masse we easily won nearly every battle, eventually pushing them back to the sea.

After exterminating the Dutch troops I was hoping to cash out for a nice payday - getting that African colony, but maybe also freeing Luxemburg, humiliating the Netherlands, and so on. I came to realize, though, that there's a key difference in warfare in Victoria 3 versus other Paradox games I've played. In order for a war to end, all parties must agree to it. In this case, the Netherlands had given up, but Spain hadn't suffered many losses and still had huge reserves, so they were more than willing to keep going. This is pretty different from, say, Europa Universalis or Stellaris where the War Leader can just make unilateral decisions. But I can kind of see the benefit of the Victoria approach - it's annoying when, say, the AI agrees to give away your territory in a peace deal, or if they white-peace out when you're steamrolling towards a total victory. And, on the other-other hand, Victoria 3 does allow for concessions on both sides, unlike other games where there is only one "winner" who can receive spoils. (Victoria is much more accurate to how wars in history have concluded!)

Unlike the other Paradox games, you also can't create separate peaces with multiple enemies: it's all-or-nothing. Fortunately, there is still a rough equivalent of a ticking war score, so once I had conquered both the colony and, uh, the entire Netherlands, each week both parties grew more and more willing to deal with me. I wasn't quite able to get everything I wanted, but I did manage to end the war taking the entire state of Gelre in addition to the colony. Gelre had been the runt of my three states, and I was pleased to see that the Netherlands had actually developed their larger share of it quite thoroughly.

 

 

Just from looking at the map, this seemed like a stupid war - the Dutch colony was so small - but it was 100% worth fighting over. I was able to start colonies on the other side, into Timbuktu and then into the Sahara. With my focused colonizing I was able to outflank the growing French colonies, and as I write this I have the entirety of inland northern Africa at my disposal. Which means that I'll be able to tap that precious, precious oil!

Other than that, I've avoided wars for the most part - I get tempted to jump in when Britain or France bullies one of my tiny African partners into their power bloc, but it just isn't worth the conflict at this time. Maybe one day I'll get them back. I do have a feeling that by the late-game I'll end up in a big war against someone. The German Empire seems the most likely, as they have claims on Wallonia; I also might want to eventually take a crack at Britain, as they are the 800-pound gorilla squatting on the #1 Great Power in the ranking charts.

 

 

Politically, Belgium starts off as a Monarchy, but a fairly progressive one with periodic elections. I've been loving the political aspect to this game, proposing laws and fighting to get them passed, cutting deals with interest groups and shaping the economy to produce the kind of electorate that will be conducive to my vision. I've focused on the law changes that seem to have good in-game benefits, particularly public education and graduated taxation. I used to also push for neutral-ish laws that didn't seem to have much of an in-game impact but that are personally appealing to me, like workers' protections and social programs. I now think that it might be better (from a realpolitik perspective) to hold off on those as they might be options to persuade recalcitrant interest groups to support other laws that they would ordinarily oppose, in a "If you give me X I'll pass Y" kind of way.

 

 

One of the most white-knuckle parts of my game so far was the transition to a Parliamentary Republic. I'd previously made some changes to the voting structure and stuff that went relatively smoothly, so I was not prepared for the intense reaction: a strong Monarchist movement swiftly appeared and began agitating against the law. This hurt its chances of advancement, created unhappy radicals in the population, and, judging from the tool-tip, was on its way to creating a full-fledged civil war. And alarmingly, the Monarchist movement was largely supported by the Armed Forces, so not only would there be a civil war, but an extremely challenging one.

I pulled out all the stops for this one: I slashed taxes to increase my government's Legitimacy, cut deals with every group I could to support the legislation, spent Authority to suppress the Monarchist movement (this didn't pause it but at least slowed its growth a bit), and used every Advance to boost my chance for success instead of society-wide benefits. At last, in the final Voting stage, the RNG handed me a Debate with a killer of a choice. The initial vote had failed, but an angry mob had stormed the palace and taken King Leopold prisoner. I could arrest the mob and insist on doing things the right way, giving a big boost to legitimacy and prestige but postponing the final vote by another three months. Or give in to the crowd and commit regicide.

I winced. Every bone in my body wanted to follow the legal system and ensure an orderly, bloodless transition. But... that Monarchist Movement was up in the 90s, and in just a few weeks that dreaded civil war would trigger. How could I hold one life against that of the tens of thousands who would be killed in a devastating internecine struggle? Even the life of a king? I gave the nod, a sickening "thwick/chunk!" sound effect played, the monarchy was ended and the United States of Belgium were born.

 

 

I came to recognize that this is a common shape to the major social and political upheavals depicted in Victoria 3. While we were debating the monarchy, tensions were incredibly high and society stood on the edge of a knife. But once it was decided, the tide swiftly turned. The monarchist movement gradually abated and eventually disappeared altogether as the final remnants of monarchism were stamped out. Traditional supporters of the monarchy like the Landowners moved on, and everyone adapted to the new republican order. I've seen similar things play out since, such as an incipient Communist uprising triggered by my (eventually defeated) attempt at implementing Laissez-Faire Economics, and a near revolt among indigenous communities when I enacted Women's Suffrage. Getting things done is really hard, but once they're done, the Overton window moves, the status quo updates, and you start to forget that things were ever any different.

 

 

Here are some random notes on things I've learned over the course of this game:

As the tutorial helpfully informs you, you don't need to worry too much about deficits. There's no intrinsic benefit to having money in your treasury, other than the ability to run future deficits (such as a protracted war). And deficit spending can grow your economy and put you on a much better footing. Overall, I usually try to keep my weekly expenses and income roughly equal.

 

 

I have noticed that the reported surplus/deficit will often swing strongly positive, like -6k one week, then +1k the second week, then -6k the third week. I think this happens when you're completing construction on a building, probably because you aren't paying for the full amount of Construction Goods that week. But when I would see that green number, I would go "Great!" and expand my construction sector or buy income-losing buildings like Universities, but then my deficit would immediately swing back into the red. Now, I'll usually wait for multiple consecutive weeks of budgetary surpluses before I switch to expensive investments. In the meantime I'll usually queue up some quick and profitable buildings like Logging Camps.

 

Construction units are (at least currently) split 50-50 between the public and the private sector, but I've belatedly learned that if one sector isn't building, the other sector will be able to take more units (but not all of them). I'm not sure what the exact formula is. When I had 40 total construction points and the Private sector wasn't building anything, I would get 24 units for public building. That's another thing that would throw off my budget, since your government expenses will jump up and down with the number of sectors you have. Now I track it more closely, but also I'm now constantly building both public and private buildings so I don't see that variation as often as I did earlier in the game.

In my Sweden game the private sector was building a ton from the beginning, but in my Belgium game it was really sporadic. They would take ages getting funds to start a single project, would finish it and then need to wait a while before their second project could kick off. I'm not 100% sure, but I think this might be because I had my tax rate set to Very High at the start of this game, which probably limited the profits that owners could add to the investment pool. Once the investors do start building, they quickly snowball, as the more buildings they own the more money they get to add to the pool to build more buildings. There's always a full queue now and I don't think they'll ever exhaust their investment pool.

As a side note, judging from the release date of this game it was probably being designed during the European Austerity regime, and I think in a lot of ways you can view this game as a specific rebuke to that perspective. You can see visually how the expanding bar of your nation's GDP is more important than the sliver of debt inside that bar - the sliver that will shrink in proportion over time. Getting out of a funk requires more investment, not less. 

 

 

That's just one of the many, many parts of this game that gets into broader economic and policy discussions, which were very relevant during the 19th century and continue to this day. Higher taxes do impede growth and slow down the expansion of the private sector. But higher taxes can also harm the wellbeing of pops, particularly in a regressive tax system. This will make working-class pops more radical, which can cause obstinance and harm productivity. So there are cases where raising taxes could theoretically limit long-term revenues, and lowering taxes could raise them, as the private sector grows faster and generates a larger tax base, in addition to employing more pops who then pay income taxes, and use their salaries to buy goods that fund consumption taxes and spur additional employment and investment for the goods they want. 

In this "learning" Belgium game, most of my decisions are driven by warnings: "silver" expensive goods, "gold" expensive goods, and shortages. Based on the description, shortages are the most serious of the three, as the price will rapidly rise in addition to imposing a penalty on the output. So if I saw a shortage for, say, Motors, I would order the construction of more Motor Industries and move it to the head of the build queue. After a few weeks the shortage would go away, even before the building finished. I would go "Huh, that's weird", and let the building complete. Then a year or so later the cycle would happen again.

I eventually clicked into the actual building, and saw that my Level-3 Motor Industries could support a workforce of 3000 laborers, and had a grand total of 7 people actually employed. Yikes!

After watching it more closely, I think that this happens when you have a very limited or intermittent need for a good. If nothing needs the good and there isn't demand on the world market or trade capacity for it, then nobody will buy the good, so the factory doesn't want to make any of the good and will gradually lay everyone off. Once an order does come in for, say, One Engine or One Explosive, then at first that good might have a price of something like 3 pennies. That isn't enough for the owners to justify making them; their potential laborers are probably making higher salaries over at the full-capacity Iron Mine. The shortage is created here.

The price of Engines or Explosives will gradually tick up.  The factory owners will look to hire, but not find laborers willing to take the job. Over weeks the owners will gradually offer higher wages, until eventually they are high enough to persuade peasants to leave their subsistence farms or existing workers to switch careers. Then the employees will build One Explosive, then there will be no more demand, everyone will be laid off and the cycle starts over again.

Now that I know how this works, whenever I see a Shortage warning I'll first make a sanity check to see if I already have at least one building that Makes The Thing, and if so, what its employment looks like. It's almost always nearly completely vacant. If it was a capacity shortage, it would have shown up as an Expensive Good long before becoming a Shortage Good.

In practice, I'll usually just wait a few weeks and the shortage will resolve itself. It does mean some unnecessary expense that has a slight cascading effect through the economy, but The Invisible Hand Of The Free Market will eventually take care of it.

I did recently experience a larger-scale version of this that gave me pause. Some time previously I discovered Rubber, and began creating some Rubber Plantations (in Africa, and the Belgians do). But I didn't have any real need for Rubber, so the plantations stood mostly idle. Some time later, I discovered Vulcanization, which unlocked Machined Steel Tools in my Tooling Workshop. This finally gave me an application for Rubber, and would give a significant boost to these buildings' productivity. But all of my Tooling Workshops were so huge that changing even one to demand Rubber would create a Rubber Shortage. I knew (or hoped) that it would eventually be filled; but I would need a lot of Rubber and didn't know how long it would take.

I rolled ahead with this approach, switching my smallest (but still large) Tooling Workshop over, eating the Shortage for maybe a month or so. The larger workshops were a smoother transition: the jump from, say, 100 Rubber to 300 Rubber is much gentler than the jump from 0 Rubber to 100 Rubber. Rubber got expensive, but not to a shortage level.

But anyways, I realized after the fact that this is probably the perfect use case for Subsidies. This is an option where the government will make up the difference between what the private sector is willing to pay and the wage that will ensure full employment in that building. I could have started Subsidizing my rubber plantations, or at least a single one of them, to bring up the supply, and then turned on the demand for rubber, then turned off the subsidy once the market had become self-regulating. Which, now that I write it out, is at least in theory what subsidies are often for in the real world as well! When you think of things like renewable energy or EVs, it can be really hard for market forces to get a new industry off the ground even when it is superior; once it is established, it can easily pay its own way.

Topic shift: As I've mentioned before, the political aspect of this game might be my favorite part. I've mostly been doing everything to promote my preferred Interest Groups. Very roughly speaking, for me this looks like:

• Best: Intelligentsia > Trade Unions
• Neutral: Armed Forces
• Situational: Industrialists > Devout > Petty Bourgeois > Rural Folk
• Nope: Landowners

So usually, when election season rolls around, I'll do everything I can to boost the groups/parties high on the list and shiv the ones below. This yields inconsistent results: my beloved Intelligentsia usually have a tiny share of the vote, so if they're in a party by themselves, even giving them every available boost still leaves them with very little support. And there's a lot of randomness in the Momentum that starts each election. If the odds start off in my favor, I can turn a victory in a landslide; if not, I might turn a defeat into a deadlock.

 

 

But after experiencing several election cycles and passing a ton of laws, I now think that it might make sense to alternate between parties in power, rather than trying to keep the same party in power but with varying levels of mandate. The specific example I'm thinking of at the moment is that I mostly want policies pushed by the Trade Unions, but I also really want Laissez-faire, and it's really hard to implement that. I can't even start debate on it since none of my preferred factions support it. And on the other hand, when I try to implement the 5th law in a row supporting workers' rights, the opposition is utterly irate at me, making enactments an uphill battle.

 

 

If I pursued more of an alternating-parties strategy, I could let the bloc with the Industrialists into power, and use their term to implement Laissez-Faire. During their term the conservative groups' disapproval would gradually diminish as memories of past legislation cooled. Then once the left came back into power, I could mount a fresh push for the sixth law supporting workers' rights, with hopefully more tepid opposition. This would also keep all the parties busy during their terms. I'm at a point now where I've passed all the laws that I've unlocked that I want to and can pass; I don't want to implement Council Republic or No Migration or anything like that.

 

 

I briefly mentioned Power Blocs before, but going into a bit more detail: it's been a really fun part of the game. I like how it gives a sense of expansion without requiring conquest: I'm expanding my influence throughout the globe, but doing so based on my economic and political power instead of through military dominance. (Although merely having a large military does add to power projection, which adds more weight to your political power!) My general approach is:

1. Identify a target. I'm looking for someone who is still Unaligned, and is fully independent without an Overlord. Hovering over my Leverage in that nation's screen will show how much Leverage other Power Blocs have. Ideally nobody else has too much influence already.
2. If I don't have at least a Level 2 Interest in the Strategic Region, start working on that. A lot of this will come naturally through the following steps, but it might also be necessary to Improve Relations with some other countries or take other steps to bump it up.
3. Start Improving Relations with my target - as I learned early on, merely having the required Leverage isn't enough to make them join your Bloc, they need to like you as well. Improved relations will get you ready for that final step, and also make them more likely to agree to treaties with you.
4. Sign treaties. I'm looking for ones that they will agree to (Ideally 100% chance, I might try at 70%+ but also might wait for relations to increase). While details vary, usually I'll start off with an exchange of Trade Privileges. This works well as a pair, as they'll usually have a slight malus in giving privileges and a large bonus in receiving privileges.
5. I'll offer a Power Bloc Embassy - this automatically gets canceled after they join the Bloc, so it's even more temporary Diplomacy points than the others.
6. The biggest one I want is Investment Rights. This gives a good amount of Influence and Leverage by itself, and also lets my expansion-hungry private sector start constructing buildings in their land for even more Leverage. Depending on their situation, I might be able to get this right off the bat, but often I'll need to wait: I need to get to Level 2 Interest in the Region, and they need to like me better if they don't need the investment.
7. Around this time I'll check in again on the Leverage preview. The popup shows the current and projected leverage, and how quickly it is ticking up. For small countries I'll likely be on track already for the necessary 200 point advantage, so I'll shift my focus and wait for it to tick up. For larger countries, ones with more leverage resistance or other bloc competitors, I'll need to push it up more.
8. Guaranteeing Independence, and later maybe even offering a Defensive Pact will give a huge amount of Leverage, and countries will almost always agree to these. So far I haven't gotten pulled into any wars as a result of it.
9. Funding Lobbies is a good option. Sometimes I do this even on the tiny countries: it's super-cheap for them, and if it speeds up their admittance, it also means I'll be able to dial down my investments more quickly.
10. This is usually plenty for almost everyone. The powers I ran into in my game where it wasn't immediately sufficient were Egypt and Persia, huge and relatively wealthy and powerful unrecognized powers. In this case, I'll start to directly invest in buildings in their country through my government construction queue. It's expensive and takes a while, so if the projected gap is more than 10-20 points or so, I'll call it quits here and move on.
11. Eventually, you'll get the notification that you can invite them. If you've been improving relations from the start they will agree to join, otherwise you might need to offer them a Favor or wait longer for their opinion to tick up.
12. After they accept, turn off Fund Lobbies. Turn off Improve Relations if it's still going. Power Bloc Embassy will automatically cancel.
13. Whenever the treaties expire, Withdraw from them. There's no penalty to this, and you usually have plenty of Influence and Leverage through their Bloc membership to keep them in the Bloc and your Interest high enough in their Strategic Region. The one treaty I keep is Investment Rights - it's cheap, and will ensure their loyalty over time.

 

 

I've lost a handful of Bloc members - if a revolution overturns the government, the new nation will usually exit, though you can get them back through the above steps if you want. A couple of times they've just left for seemingly no reason. Occasionally they've been conquered, usually when African unrecognized coastal nations get defeated by European colonizers. I've been tempted to weigh in on the Diplomatic Plays here to defend the nations but haven't done it yet. I might get to a point where my military is strong enough to scare opponents into backing down, or I may reach a day where I want the excuse for a war against European frenemies, but for now it just isn't worth it: there are plenty of fish in the sea, for every nation I lose I'm gaining another 5-10. 

 

 

A few final thoughts before I wrap up this post:

The music is awesome! I've hit that point that I generally reach in Paradox games where it's running through my head all day long, even when I'm away from the computer. This music has a distinct sound, occupying a separate space from Stellaris's orchestral splendor, Europa Universalis's frenetic heavy-metal driving force, and Hearts of Iron's nostalgic mid-century tunes. I've recognized quite a few Victoria melodies as coming from hymns, while others are rousing marches. Overall the music tends to be very pretty and pleasant, which is great because I'm listening to it a lot!

I'm really enjoying the "tall" gameplay of this particular game, with my core homeland of Belgium just being 2.5 states in Europe while I'm still getting involved in sprawling global webs of economic dominance, colonization and power-bloc shenanigans. While I'm sure that a "wide" game would be more complex, I also am getting the sense that it wouldn't be as complex as a wide game in Stellaris or EU. In particular, you have a single national Construction Queue that defines what your nation as a whole is building, unlike Stellaris where each planet has its own queues and EU where each province has a queue. If two countries are equally rich and advanced, they'll be building the same amount of stuff, it's just that a smaller country will be building lots of things in a few states while a larger country will be building fewer things in more states. And because your nation shares the same market, to some extent it doesn't matter a ton either way - you'll be making glass, whether it's all in Gelre or scattered across multiple continents. The thought of playing Great Britain still sounds overwhelming, but I think I'd be up to try playing, say, America or Spain or something.

All right, that's it for now! I'm enjoying this game so darn much, and it feels like it's flying by. I think the game runs 1836-1936, so I'm already more than halfway through. I don't think I've ever actually finished a Paradox game (unless you count blowing up the galaxy when I Became The Crisis in Stellaris), but so far it's feeling like things shouldn't get too sloggy in the endgame, so this may become a first for me! 

IKEA

Another (hopefully) little post on Victoria 3. I've finished my first "training" run. With any new Paradox game, I assume the first game (or three, or five, or ten...) will be a learning experience: I'll make some dumb decisions, belatedly realize why they were dumb, see whether they're recoverable, and get an overall rough sense for how the basics of the systems work. I think I've reached that point in my Sweden run. From the start in 1836, I've played nearly twenty years, through the Year of Revolutions and many other significant events. In that time I think I've done a decent (not perfect) job at growing my economy, and I have radically reformed the laws of Sweden. It's all ended up in an amusing conflagration, though: after losing one war against Russia to defend a breakaway Finish republic, I'm now losing a much larger war against Russia and Prussia for Finnish independence (despite the best effort of my allies Great Britain and the Netherlands), and furthermore, a monarchical revolution has broken out in central Sweden, leading to me fighting on like six different fronts. I'm doomed, but it's fun!

 

Backing up a bit: as I mentioned before, one thing I really love about Victoria is that it is primarily focused on the economic and social aspects of grand strategy games, which (along with technology) are the parts I enjoy most; in other games I'll often grumble when I "have" to fight a war. There's a lot going on in Victoria, but I think the core of the game is trying to make your GDP as large as possible. That directly increases your Prestige, and also allows you to, say, operate a larger military, fund lobbies to increase your involvement, fully fund your social safety net and university researchers, and so on.

 

 

As I figured out how the economy worked, I started to smile: it's exactly like The Wealth of Nations! You're basically encouraging the specialization of your nation's workforce, coaxing peasants to leave their homesteads and take jobs in large farms or buildings in the cities. They become laborers who start earning higher wages, which they use to buy goods and services, which raises demand for more products, which creates more job openings, and so on.

 

 

There's also an element of Thinking Fast and Slow. As your country industrializes, your population's wealth will increase and their standard of living will rise. However, this won't necessarily lead to happiness! If someone was a peasant and starts to work as a laborer, then their income has increased, and they will be a happy pop: loyal to the regime, working hard, increasing their birth rate. But if someone was a clergyman and had to become a laborer because the administration is now secular, they will earn the same wage, but they will be unhappy, and more likely to become Radical.

 

 

A big part of the mechanics of the game is based on building. You, acting through the government, decide what buildings to create and where - a new Iron Mine in Svealand, a Trade Center in Gotland, a Textile Mill in Scania. However, there is also a "private construction" queue. I think the way this works is, as pops in your country gain profits (aristocrats from farms, capitalists from factories, etc.), they create an "investment pool", and then use that money to construct buildings on their own. This runs autonomously of the government. In practice they seem to focus on making profitable buildings and not necessarily ones that follow your own strategy; but these are always good regardless, as they create more jobs, provide more goods (thus lowering market prices), require more inputs (thus creating demand for other goods and stimulating production), and hopefully generate more profit, allowing the private sector to create still more buildings.

An interesting wrinkle is requesting or offering "investment rights" with another country; for example, you could allow Great Britain to build in your own country, or you could get permission to build in the Kongo. This leads to a situation where a building is in Country A, giving it the benefit of job opportunities and producing goods for its market; but the profits go to Country B. Depending on your perspective this is either symbiotic or exploitative, and there are valid reasons to pursue or deny such investments. This aligns with one of the veins of Thomas Piketty's writings in Capital in the Twenty-first Century and Capital and Ideology, and is generally a big subject of discussion through to the present day, and I love seeing it represented in the game like this. 

 

 

I really dig the technology system in this game. Technology passively spreads to you, I think if you have one or more neighbors who have researched it, and more than half of my discoveries have come that way. You can also focus your research on a specific technology; if you already had some passive spread then you will be part of the way there already. Some techs seem to take around 3 years to research, others 10 or more; I focused on the shorter ones in this case, prioritizing ones that provide passive benefits over ones that unlock new equipment or building configurations. Anyways, I like the combination of focusing and driving your priorities while also never worrying about falling too far behind in, say, military tech.

 

 

I also like how colonizing is presented here. In Europa Universalis colonizable land looks empty - there are technically "natives", but visually it's just blank space. Here they are "decentralized" territories, each led by a "chieftain". The game is still depicting the historically accurate European domination over indigenous lands (by this time period primarily African territories), but it's also very clear that there were already people there with their own society, culture and leadership, not empty lands waiting for settlers to arrive.

That said, I never figured out how to colonize in my game. I enacted a law and started a Colonizing Institution which should let me colonize overseas provinces. The thing tripping me up seems to be that you need to have an "interest" in a region to begin a colony there. I was able to get some "interest" by signing various economic pacts with some African states like Kongo, Gaza and Natal. I think that I somehow need to bring "interest" to an even higher tier, but I was never able to figure out how to do that in this game. Which isn't terrible, I didn't necessarily want Sweden to become a colonizing force, but that's the one mechanic I'm aware of that I wasn't able to engage with in this game.

 

 

While construction is probably the most satisfying part of the game for me, politics is the most exciting. This seems to generate the lion's share of events, as things will occur during election season or while debating a new law that will require you to make a decision. The system here is strong: it's primarily oriented around "interest groups", such as Rural Folk or Armed Forces. Each interest group has its own ideology, describing the laws they would favor or dislike; each interest group also has "clout", describing the total amount of power they wield.

 

 

Early in the game, the "Landowners" interest group is very powerful and tends to run the government. Let's say that, long-term, you want to put the Trade Unions in charge. This is a non-starter: while they are plentiful, they are very poor and have almost no power. However, the Industrialists and the Petite Bourgeois are interested in, say, moving from Landed Voting to Wealth Voting. You can pursue a law change to the franchise, which will shake up the factions' clout. Now the Landowners are less powerful, the Trade Unions still don't have power, but the Industrialists and Petite Bourgeois do. This can crack open the door for some other reforms, like more equitable taxation or a public school system, that will materially improve the lives of the working class. This allows them to generate some wealth and improve their standard of living, letting them get a foothold in the Wealth Voting system. Then you might be able to move towards Census Suffrage and eventually Universal Suffrage. The whole system makes sense, is historically accurate, and is basically quoting The Communist Manifesto, hence I love it!

Okay, that's it for now on the Sweden game. I think that next I'm going to try Belgium, one of the other recommended "learner" countries. Wish me luck in the Low Countries! 

Before Enlightenment

I'm continuing to love my current Europa Universalis IV game, continuing as Prussia into the late 1600s. It's had a very different rhythm from my Portugal game, with much more warfare and a stronger European focus. As I head into the endgame they are growing more similar, as I'm now leading (conquered) subjects in the New World and fighting various wars in Africa and India to control trade. It remains to be seen if I'll see this game all the way through, but so far I'm having a blast.

As I expand, the "clockface" organization from my previous posts doesn't make as much sense, but I'll try doing something similar. Let's start off with Persia and India. For a while my influence extended to the shores of the Black Sea, as the edge of Europe and as far as the HRE can expand. My last post ended around the time of my first war against the Mughals, who are mutual foes with my allies the Mamluks. The Mughals at one time had the (geographical) largest empire in the world, stretching across a vast territory; but it seems like they were badly overextended, and there would be times I would check on their status and see that they're defending against five separate wars.

Part of my motivation was to soft-block the Mamluks from extending into Persia and India, and that's kind of worked. We thrashed the Mughals and I had a ton of war-score to spend, but they also had an enormous empire, and I ended up taking a very snaky chain of provinces rather than clean borders, prioritizing Centers of Trade and Great Projects, and secondarily coastal provinces and strategic chokepoints. After this kind of evisceration it's nearly impossible for an AI power to recover, and I'm sure that's contributed to their ongoing woes.

Dealing with the conquered lands was slightly more tricky than usual due to the sheer distances involved. If a revolt broke out, it could take a year to march troops over from Prague to deal with it. I think this is the first part in this campaign where I've started to maintain permanent standing armies in distant territories. I know they'll eventually be used in future wars, and in the meantime they can drill and put down revolts.

In general I've been having an easier time with unrest in this game than in the Portugal game, thanks to taking Humanist ideas, so it's pretty rare for me to worry about revolts, but when they do happen (so far only once or twice since Absolutism) they can erupt all over and be a pain. I think I ran into trouble when I had high Overextension plus lots of Separatism (both from big conquering sprees) along with unusually low Legitimacy, which in turn decreased Tolerance. Now that my Legitimacy is high again I haven't run into problems, even when actively converting recently-conquered provinces.

Apologies for the tangent / stream-of-consciousness, but while I'm talking about Legitimacy: One thing that initially annoyed me after Revoking the Privilegia was the endless stream of Royal Marriage proposals I received from my new vassals. At the start of each new play session I would dismiss or decline literally dozens of them. After a while, though, I started to wonder: why not? Why shouldn't I be loved?

When you accept (or initiate, more on that later) a RM proposal, there's an immediate hit to your Legitimacy, either -2 or -5 depending on the partner's own Legitimacy and Prestige. But then there's an ongoing monthly benefit for as long as the ruler lives: a big but not usually important boost to New Heir Change, a mildly important boost to Improve Relations, and a tiny but very helpful boost to Legitimacy. So after some time the marriage will "pay for itself" in Legitimacy, either about 2 or 4 years, and after that you'll get surplus Legitimacy.

Legitimacy is kind of interesting, in that there's a hard cap at 100 and any surplus value is wasted. It usually isn't terribly hard to get it to 100 and keep it at 100, so I'd been loathe to marry down from it. But if you get a lot of Royal Marriages (which usually isn't an option, except for the Emperor of a Revoked HRE, who doesn't use Diplomatic Relationship slots for vassal relations), then you can get pretty significant ticking monthly Legitimacy, so when it does drop (due to an event or a bad Heir or something), it will bounce back pretty quickly. Keeping Legitimacy high helps a lot with Unrest, and also gives Max Absolutism and a few other things.

The higher Improve Relations is nice. It isn't communicated very clearly in-game, but Aggressive Expansion's decay is largely driven by your passive Improve Relations modifier, so keeping that high will cause AE to melt away before coalitions can form.

Finally, while you don't often need the New Heir Chance, it did embolden me to disinherit a thoroughly average heir. The very next day I got a new heir, a better heir! Let's hear it for my harem of concubines!

So being in this situation of tons of Royal Marriages (I currently have over 80) is nice, but getting there was rough. Legitimacy has a hard cap of 100 and also a hard floor of 0, so once you get down there, there's no penalty to entering into additional marriages. So I went through a long stretch of accepting literally every proposal from my vassals. In less than a year I was all married up and started ticking up in my Legitimacy. I had planned this around the time that my Empress-Regent was about to step down and the new Emperor Heir would take the throne; but as I learned to my chagrin, you can't Abdicate while you have low Legitimacy, which I would think would be the whole point! I think I ended up burning some Military Mana on Strengthen Government just so I could get back over 50 Legitimacy and switch over. Abdicating gives a -20 Legitimacy hit, so my heir took the throne at 80 instead of 100; but again, thanks to all the active Marriages, I was able to get back up 100 before too long.

 

 

Oh, and finally a note on timing: you can either send or receive marriage proposals. The marriage lasts for as long as the person who sends the proposal. So, from the player's perspective, and marriages you initiated will end when your monarch dies, and marriages you accepted will end when the other monarch dies. So, if you want to keep your marriages high, you definitely want to receive and not initiate. This lets you maintain Legitimacy at nearly 100 indefinitely: periodically other rulers will die, then you'll receive an invitation, your Legitimacy will drop to 98 or 95 but will be back up at 100 before long. Going in the other direction,  you'd need to re-marry all 80+ rulers when your ruler dies, which means wading back through the Low Legitimacy morass again.

Final (phew!) observation: at least in my game, I don't seem to ever receive royal marriage proposals from my vassals while we're at war. I do receive marriage proposals from other nations, both in the HRE and outside it, whether at war or not. So lately, after wrapping up a war, I'll usually go for at least a month or so of peace to catch up on any pending proposals before kicking off my next war.

I can't believe I wrote all that in the middle of writing about war against the Mughals!

After the Mughals, I hit Gujarat next. I was now moving into Sunni territory, which is tricky: the Mamluks are my very good friends, and they're also allied to many large Sunni nations, and they're often the Defender of the Sunni Faith, so I definitely don't want to break that alliance (at least, not yet!). But fortunately this is usually pretty easy to work around: I can just declare any other war I want, invite the Mamluks in as war allies with my stock of 100 Favors, and then declare on the original target. A red "X" will appear in the war interface showing that the Mamluks won't honor the call to arms since they're already fighting on my side in another war. Humorously, sometimes I can even call them into that war on my side - I haven't thoroughly tested this, I think it works if they received the Call to Arms from their Defender of the Faith role, but not if they are allied to the war target.

Gujarat was an easier war than the Mughals; they were also large and powerful, but not nearly as vast and sprawling, so we could do a few more focused wars without chasing them all over the globe. I think that it's a bad sign when my HRE minions have time to get all the war to a war in Asia and meaningfully contribute.

As with the Mughals, I prioritized trade provinces and Great Projects, but also strategic positioning of borders: in particular, I wanted to get good borders on my next target, Vijayanagar, so I could Fabricate Claims on them. Having taken Espionage and Aristocratic Idea Groups, I can take claims on multiple large areas of provinces in a very short amount of time. I've been leaning heavily on the Conquest Casus Belli for most of my recent wars: I think the new Imperialism CB may technically be better since the War Score Cost is low, but what's great about Conquest is that you pay 0 Diplomatic mana for any province you have a claim on. This is especially great against wealthy European powers like Spain, but is handy everywhere.

Once my rebellions were under control, I declared on Vijayanagar. They had managed to consolidate pretty much the entire Indian subcontinent, which was pretty impressive; in my previous Portugal game there was much more of a partition. I was pretty shocked at how much territory I could take from them in a single war: I ended up taking the entire Indian coast, as well as most inland provinces with Centers of Trade and some other "pathways" through the north under the Himalayas. I now could walk from Lisbon to Bengal.

In my last post I'd mentioned making use of the Charter Trade Company diplomatic option to buy provinces for expansion. That was really helpful for these Gujarat and Vijayanagar wars, as I could fabricate claims around those provinces to help me maximize my future wars. So far I haven't operated in East Asia; I do periodically Fabricate there as well so I have claims ready to go, but I'm not ready for military action there yet.

My next big target will be Bengal, but right now that's looking like a really tricky war. They're allied with Wu, who are the current Emperors of China and have been doing surprisingly well. They're also allied with Malacca, which is allied with the Mamluks; Malacca is the most powerful regional player in the East Indies, we've butted heads a few times there around my Trade Company provinces. Overall this game is lagging far behind Portugal in my East Indies approach, by this point I had totally dominated that area and monopolized production of Cloves, but currently I just have a couple of tenuous footholds and am blocked from easy expansions by powerful webs of alliances. Which isn't a huge deal just yet, just something I may eventually deal with.

Phew! Moving along the clock dial:

I've been getting more active in Africa. The most important action took place nearly a century ago when I took control of the Ivory Coast from France and Denmark, letting me drive most of the world's trade to the English Channel and away from Spain, Portugal and France. Since then I've made a few attempts at breaking into Mali (who are allied with Denmark) but have not yet succeeded. Mali has a huge army, is up to date on tech, have high-level forts, and most of their territory is Terra Incognita so movement in there would be incredibly slow. They also have strong local alliances, so making them a co-belligerant will pull in Air, Yao and others. I usually C-B them intending to take territory, but end up fighting defensively on the Ivory Coast, eventually defeating their armies but unable to take land from them. Maybe next time!

Spain colonized most of South Africa, and I was able to take that from them - more on that later. This is one of the more satisfying parts of the game, as whoever owns the Cape of Good Hope province automatically dominates that Trade Node and will get a free Merchant, which they can use elsewhere since trade from here only flows to the Ivory Coast.

Between Mali and the Cape, I fought a war against Kongo. I already dominated the Ivory Coast but they did have a few Centers of Trade that I wanted for completeness sake, plus they have a nice Monument in Mambuka. This was a relatively straightforward war, with the mildly interesting wrinkle that Kongo was the one Catholic nation in Africa. I focused on taking their provinces, but in the future I may try and turn them Protestant.

The war I just won before starting this post was primarily against Zimbabwe, but pulled in Mombasa and Mahafaly as co-belligerents and Aljuraan as a non-co-belligerent. This war was all about trade. I already have a pretty good route to move trade from India through Astrakhan to Crimea to Kiev and on into my totally-dominated European funnel to the English Channel. Most siphoning happens in Aden, Aleppo and Basra, where the Mamluks dominate. This war for the east cost of Africa should give me very strong control of the Zanzibar trade node, which may help in drawing some other trade away from the Aden path to Alexandria. Once trade hits the Cape of Good Hope I have a straight shot through Ivory Coast to the Channel. Unlike in my Portugal game I'm not routing everything through this, it will mostly be local trade.

Moving on from Africa back to Europe: My main focus lately has been conquering the colonizers. Spain is the biggest priority as a long-term #2 power and the biggest colonial overlord, but Portugal is a lot smaller, and very shortly before my Zimbabwe war I managed to conquer Portugal. I think this only took two wars, thanks to my Administrative Efficiency and multiple nice war score cost reductions.

During my first war against Portugal, I was reminded that there's a huge malus to accept a treaty that would result in the war leader's complete annexation. This is especially painful against colonizers, since even if the mother country is fully occupied, you'd need to siege down like two whole continents to make them accept. The "trick" is to declare on one of their allies and make the colonizer a co-belligerent, since the ally won't have the malus for sacrificing their friend.

But I'd been too successful in isolating Portugal and they didn't have any allies left after Spain annexed Guanmar in a previous war. Fortunately, Portugal was the Defender of the Faith. Unfortunately, I'd also been too effective in stamping out Catholicism in Europe. The only independent Catholic states left were the Papal States, who I had a truce with, and Spain, who I also had a truce with and who Portugal hated and wouldn't defend. I ended up getting around this by declaring on the remnants of France, who had fallen into a Personal Union under Brittany, a landlocked OPM in the HRE. I couldn't declare on Brittany itself due to Perpetual Peace in the HRE, but somehow declaring on their junior subject worked.

 

 

Once I was finally able to get into the war, it ended pretty quickly, as Portugal was already exhausted from its previous Spanish war. I took their few remaining inland Maghreb provinces and the rest of Portugal proper, and a single token province from France, but the real prizes were the beefy colonies of Brazil, Rio de la Plata, Mexico and California, which now joined by former English colonies.

 

Now that Town Halls are available I don't really need to worry about Governing Capacity any more, but I've been giving provinces to my HRE vassals when it makes sense. My general priority is:

1. I'll keep provinces with a culture I already accept.
2. I'll keep provinces with Great Projects that I can use (either immediately or after accepting a culture).
3. I'll keep non-European provinces with a Center of Trade or an Estuary. I'll convert these to Protestantism and then give them to Trade Companies.
4. European provinces with a culture I don't accept will go to an adjacent vassal Prince.
5. Provinces that are outside Europe but adjacent to a Prince will get fed to them. I've now "snaked" states like Perm and Astrakhan far east to Siberia, and others like Provence and Catalonia across the Mediterranean to North Africa.
6. Provinces that are outside Europe and far from any HRE princes are kept by me as regular (non-Trade Company) territories. Once I build a Town Hall they're basically free to govern.

One little administrative trick: after winning a war, I'll often get a big chunk of territory, and I might want to keep one or two provinces inside it while giving the rest away. You can start to Core all the territories as long as you own everything that's in range and contiguous to your borders. But, once you give away border provinces, those interior ones won't be considered "adjacent" and you'll need to wait for your vassals to finish coring before you can start to core yours. So you should click the "Core" button for everything you want to keep before transferring provinces you want to get rid of.

I've also been fighting Spain, and those wars have been going well. Spain is stronger than Portugal, both in Europe and the New World, but the Vassal Swarm is incredibly strong, and the Mamluks have been happy to help me out too. In the first war I took all their islands other than a couple like Galapagos that I didn't have range for. Over successive wars I've taken their remaining Pacific holdings, the North African coast, and so on. This has been another great phase of expanding the HRE. In one war, I'll take a single province from Spain that has a core for, say, Leon, and another single province with a core for Catalonia, and so on. I'll core those provinces, convert them to Protestantism, add to the HRE, and then release them as a OPM vassal. They automatically join the HRE as a vassal prince. The UI will say that they release with the Catholic religion, because most of their cores are still in Catholic land; but in my experience they'll almost immediately convert to Protestantism, probably because their one owned province is Protestant. In the next war, I'll fight a Reconquest war, and will be able to take all of the remaining Leonese, Aragonese, Catalonian, etc. provinces. This leaves extra War Score, and my Spy Network will have given me a ton of claims to use to take more lands. Even the ones I take for myself I'll end up giving away as described above; this is a lot cheaper, since I have much more Admin Efficiency and stuff, so I'm better off taking the province and giving it than transferring the occupation and giving directly in the peace deal.

 

 

I think I have one more big war to fight against Spain before finally defeating them and taking their New World colonies, which will put me firmly in control of four continents. I think I'll be able to do that before worrying about their colonies revolting.

 

 

I fought a bit more against Denmark, they're very diminished now and I'll probably be able to add them to the HRE before long. I missed the opportunity to release Norway as a vassal since Norway has a core on a Great Project I already took for myself and want to keep, so instead Friesberg, Mecklenberg and other states have gotten to rule much of Scandinavia.

Muscovy is also a shell of its former self, and as noted above I've granted most of their lands to my far-east-European vassals. I kind of messed up after the last war and their capital ended up in Asia, so I just fought a war to take those Asian provinces and force Muscovy back into Europe. They'll eventually become part of the HRE.

I'm at the point now where money is meaningless. I'll hit 1 million Ducats in the bank before long. I still focus on trade when planning my strategy, which is largely from habit but also helps starve potential enemies and hopefully make future conquests easier. I'm also getting near 1 million maximum Manpower as well. For well over a century I've been throwing bodies into Great Projects to speed their completion. I haven't built anywhere near my Force Limit yet and haven't felt the need until now because the Vassal Swarm can crush anything near Europe and my main armies can handle the stuff outside. However, if I do start a war in China I'll probably need to raise some more serious armies for that... probably still nowhere near my Force Limit, but more than I've had to date.

Let's see, I think that's it! I'm coming up on Enlightenment, and will finally be able to start making use of all the Coal provinces I've been acquiring. I need to refresh my memory on the Revolution mechanic. In my Portugal game I hadn't gotten very involved in European expansion outside of Iberia, until the Revolution started in... I think France? I remember that being an exciting war but the details are fuzzy for me. Anyways, I don't think there are any European powers in my game who could become the Revolution Target. It would be interesting if it happened to the Mamluks or Wu or something. I think there might be some benefit to spawning the Revolution in my own borders so I can more easily crush it, but I'm not sure yet if I want to go down that path.

 

 

I'm also not sure exactly what I'm doing in this game. Earlier I had vaguely thought of forming Rome, which would probably still be doable, but very expensive to annex all the necessary vassals and would require many wars against my faithful allies the Mamluks. Trying for a World Conquest also sounds tempting, but I imagine that could get really tedious. As before, I'll keep playing this game until it isn't fun any more. Fortunately, so far it's still really fun!