The Grand "How Do I Get Immigration" Megathread (was : 1001th Immigration Thread)

  • We have updated our Community Code of Conduct. Please read through the new rules for the forum that are an integral part of Paradox Interactive’s User Agreement.
I'd be interested in the answer to that question, too, Sgian. I've come to understand that to really gain the ability to challenge countries like the UK, France, and Russia, you need lots and lots of people. And I've never been able to do more than quadruple Brazil's population in any of the games I've played. I've played Brazil 4 times now, three times under unmodded Ricky and once under VIP:R + Hotfixes, and the best I've been able to do is get my population up to around 24 mil by 1935. (Brazil starts with 6 mil.)

I have never, in any of those four games, ever reached a point where I had full RGOs in any Province.. The states WITHOUT factories in them have RGOs that are 1/5 or maybe 2/5. The states WITH factories in them have RGOs that are either at 0/5 or 1/5 due to unpromotable slaves.

But I get the impression that it's very possible to fill all those RGOs up with POPs -- if you're someone who, unlike me, actually knows how to play the game well.
 
Ok, I must admit I do not know how immigration works - I'm playing Revolutions.

I started the game with cheating just to get the hang of immigration. So I chose Serbia, and gave myself a lot of money and prestige by cheating. I've built a factory to convert labourers and farmers to clerks and craftsmen so that they turned liberal. After that I enacted some reforms, transformed from monarchy to democracy and liberal party came to power.

I lowered taxes for poor and middle class to 10-15%, and set all social reforms almost to max (I was losing a lot of money but that was solved via cheat).

So basically, it's 1870's I have all social reforms almost to max, I'm a democracy with liberal party in power, there are lots of open jobs (for all classes farmers/labourers/craftsmen/clerks), I have low taxes, my plurality is around 60% and still I get very little immigration... I get 5-6 POP's to appear and then they disappear in a very short amount of time (several days)...

Why is that? I'm guessing US has higher plurality than me (but not by a big margin I think), but I definitely have highest social reforms and lowest taxes. Doesn't that count for something? Is plurality the only important factor? Are social reforms unimportant for immigration, ie they are only useful for lowering militancy?

If somebody could be nice to explain it to me because I'm trying to figure it out and I can't...
 
60 plurality in the 1870s is pretty low, considering the USA starts at 50 in 1836 (and Switzerland and France have at least 25 at start as well)

getting immigrants as a European nation is just much more difficult than the Americas, the Americas as a continent have a bonus, and the USA has an additional hardcoded bonus on top of that (although it's been reduced compared to what it used to be in pre-1.4 versions of Victoria). But this reflects the history of the era - Europe was for the most part an exporter of people, not an immigrant migrant. European nations can attract other Europeans, but will never attract non-European pops like Chinese to migrate to Europe (again reflecting the history of the era, non-European labor migration did not exist pre-1945 with the slight exception of Algerian Muslims to France, but at the time Algeria was directly part of France, not a colony).

in the end, if you play a European nation, don't count of immigration to build your manpower - it will be conquering territories and then depending on full citizenship parties to fully harness the new peoples to your society.
 
One European nation that could get significant migration is OE, because it starts with non-European states or potential states (in Asia and Africa). Libya can become a very large migration magnet (particularly for internal migration) because it has a lot of provinces once you conquer Tripoli. Of course its plurality and literacy are abysmal :(
 
So if I got this right, plurality is the only important factor. Maybe not only, but most important. If I don't have a high plurality I shouldn't bother with anything else, right?

Whar are good ways of raising plurality in the beggining, except discovering ideological thought with liberal party in power, and how big my plurality should be to actually start to atract immigrants?
 
gamer42_au said:
One European nation that could get significant migration is OE, because it starts with non-European states or potential states (in Asia and Africa). Libya can become a very large migration magnet (particularly for internal migration) because it has a lot of provinces once you conquer Tripoli. Of course its plurality and literacy are abysmal :(

Yes, when I play OE I tend to build lots of factories in Libya.
Huge population because it contains so many provinces.
Think they split up Libya into 3-4 smaller states now though.. Pity..
 
Europa Conflict Theory.

In my first Ricky 1.01 with hotfixes game I played the U.S. California had like a 140 million population by the 1920's. When I released it, it ended up being ranked like 7th. I pretty much had the historical U.S. borders but had a population in the 1920 bigger than modern day U.S. Hawaii had like 18 million ,it had 8 or 9 million when I acquired it.

In later games I could not figure it out I tried cheating to see what the theoretical max pop size I could get the U.S. I had 100 plurality, maxed literacy, maxed social reforms, liberal party, and no taxes the whole game. I could not get to the population I had in this first game. Finally it dawned on me. Most of my pops were Germans in the first game. California population was almost a third German. Germany for years had low economic output due to wars and actually lost population over a few years. Unification did not happen till as late as I ever had seen it.

I need to test it but my theory but an unstable Europe is what you want. Pops have no jobs, and loss money thus they immigrate. So you want immigrants, try to get the major land wars going on all the time in Europa. Let me know what you think.
 
When I played as Germany, from about 1890 onwards, the state of OstPrussia(sp) got enormous amounts of immigration...the RGOs and factories were ALWAYS full, I couldn't expand them fast enough to fill them. In the end the state had a combined total population of something like 30 million. Germany as a whole had about 210 million. Strange times.
edit: IIRC I had liberal party in power and healthcare reforms, taxes were 49.92% and plurality was 100. It was vanilla Victoria. I still have the save game if anyone's interested.
 
Collock said:
In my first Ricky 1.01 with hotfixes game I played the U.S. California had like a 140 million population by the 1920's. When I released it, it ended up being ranked like 7th. I pretty much had the historical U.S. borders but had a population in the 1920 bigger than modern day U.S. Hawaii had like 18 million ,it had 8 or 9 million when I acquired it.

In later games I could not figure it out I tried cheating to see what the theoretical max pop size I could get the U.S. I had 100 plurality, maxed literacy, maxed social reforms, liberal party, and no taxes the whole game. I could not get to the population I had in this first game. Finally it dawned on me. Most of my pops were Germans in the first game. California population was almost a third German. Germany for years had low economic output due to wars and actually lost population over a few years. Unification did not happen till as late as I ever had seen it.

I need to test it but my theory but an unstable Europe is what you want. Pops have no jobs, and loss money thus they immigrate. So you want immigrants, try to get the major land wars going on all the time in Europa. Let me know what you think.

You hit the nail on the head here. One of the main factors which drive POPs away from a nation is militancy. What causes militancy? War exhaustion, for one. The wars are also a drain on the economy, meaning POPs in that country are not going to get the goods they need, thus raising militancy.

You can still get lotsa immigrants as the US, though, no matter what.
 
I'm playing as the US and I'm getting a lot of immigration from Europe to California and Alaska. That's fine with me.

In Alaska, they're retaining their nationalities. The starting populations of some provinces was 6,000 and now they're 600,000. No problems there.

greekchangweru3.jpg


This may look normal to you, a thousand American farmers. The issue is that a day ago these were a thousand Greek farmers. They're more useful as Yankees, as I can promote them and the like, but I like the flavour of having them as Greeks, French and Poles.

So can anyone tell me why they're suddenly becoming Yankees?
 
Assimilation.
When you're an American nation, small immigrant pops will very quickly dissolve into you nation.
 
We are America. Resistance is futile.
 
Emp_Palpatine said:
Assimilation.
When you're an American nation, small immigrant pops will very quickly dissolve into you nation.

can you define "small"? Because some of these populations managed to get to over six thousand before they assimilated.

On a more interesting note, there are half a million Poles in Murray, and over five million Frenchmen in Alaska.

Do these populations not assimilate because those regions aren't states?
 
Admiral_Nelson said:
I'm playing as the US and I'm getting a lot of immigration from Europe to California and Alaska. That's fine with me.

In Alaska, they're retaining their nationalities. The starting populations of some provinces was 6,000 and now they're 600,000. No problems there.

greekchangweru3.jpg


This may look normal to you, a thousand American farmers. The issue is that a day ago these were a thousand Greek farmers. They're more useful as Yankees, as I can promote them and the like, but I like the flavour of having them as Greeks, French and Poles.

So can anyone tell me why they're suddenly becoming Yankees?

Assimilation is hardcoded so that they become national POPs. Since assimilated POPs are better for gameplay, this means the bias if you create immigration friendly and settlement friendly governments is assimiliation at rapid rates. It's not historical, but in this case gameplay > historical depiction.

(though for the USA, I'd argue it's rate of assimilation under optimal conditions is just too fast, that's something to be investigated now that the source code is open to licensing from Paradox to third-party developers).
 
Admiral_Nelson said:
Do these populations not assimilate because those regions aren't states?

correct - assimilation does NOT happen in colonies except at a very slow rate, so if you do want the POPs to assimilate you have to have them in full states.

And POPs over 10K in size are much more resistant to assimilation, so you may not get those huge French POP groups assimilated even afterward.
 
AK 47 said:
Has anyone been able to get immigrants as Oranje Vrystaat? If so... please explain ;).
1. Mobilize
2. Attack Transavaal
3. Conquer all provinces and humilate them
4. Make all social reforms and set ruling party liberals, make yourself democracy.
5. Research 'ideological thought'
6. Don't expand too fast. Annex Transavaal, Zulu, from 1860's start colonization: Rodesia etc.
From 1848 (Liberal Revolution hit) you'll get immigrants.
More or less this is the same way as for: Argentina, Haiti, Urugway, Brazil, Chile, Greece, Persia...
 
ninjaska said:
1. Mobilize
2. Attack Transavaal
3. Conquer all provinces and humilate them
4. Make all social reforms and set ruling party liberals, make yourself democracy.
5. Research 'ideological thought'
6. Don't expand too fast. Annex Transavaal, Zulu, from 1860's start colonization: Rodesia etc.
From 1848 (Liberal Revolution hit) you'll get immigrants.
More or less this is the same way as for: Argentina, Haiti, Urugway, Brazil, Chile, Greece, Persia...

I already got Transvaal (they do not exist from start in VIP:R 0.2 or have not yet been split off from me or something), I got as much social reforms as possible, I have the Liberal party in charge with 90% of the votes and I got ideological thought. Its 1855, plurality is 35, but zero immigrants have arrived :(.
 
AK 47 said:
I already got Transvaal (they do not exist from start in VIP:R 0.2 or have not yet been split off from me or something), I got as much social reforms as possible, I have the Liberal party in charge with 90% of the votes and I got ideological thought. Its 1855, plurality is 35, but zero immigrants have arrived :(.

Your plurality is what hurts you - the USA starts with 50 in 1836 and grows from there. combine that with generally lower rates of emigration from Europe in the first half of the game (which is historical, the major European exodus is post-1875) and the fact that the Americas get a bonus in immigration calculation done by the exe, and the USA gets a small bonus on top of that, and it becomes much more difficult for the Boers to attract immigrants, esp in VIP where the party setup tends to be based around issues that are less attractive to immigrants except for the most radical parties.

Keep in mind that the Boer Republics remained low population poor agricultural societies with little immigration until the discovery of minerals (Diamonds in Kimberley, Gold in the Witwatersrand) after 1870. And even then, the social impact of thousands of uitlanders (foreigners) coming into the Boer states heavily disrupted the society, while the Boer states found it difficult to balance their budgets until well into the 1880s. in the end, the Boer Republics wanted their own homeland where they could continue living as they had before the British conquest of the Cape, they were not looking to establish dominance and become a center of immigration, which indeed would threaten the Boer way of life that had led to the Great Trek in the first place.

Plus there was the constant meddling of the British in Boer affairs during this period.

In VIP in particular, playing the Boer statelets is a great challenge, the deck is very much stacked against you, and survival should be first and foremost on your mind, because in the end the British most likely will come after you at some point.