Game as Hedjaz:
A bit earlier in this topic I posted up my first full game as Hedjaz. This is my second. In my first game, I included Bedouin as a secondary culture, but left it out this time. Honestly, I don't even know if anything changed, although that might have been deflated by taking Bedouin pops later and doing better generally. I did still do the annex trick of declaring war on the UK and then letting me go, although now I know I can make it to a Great Power I might try it without next time I do Hedjaz.
What went well:
In general, I improved more in pretty much every area, I started building more factories quicker so I got 19th place overall, I invaded better earlier to take my primary culture pops instead of useless Bedouin ones, and this sped up a lot of things including industry and research. Last game I had about 650k in my primary culture, this game I had 2.5m just from invading more intelligently, I actually had 2 national focus points! I managed to get tanks and aircraft in nearly as early as possible, as opposed to the last 5 years in my last game; which helped with my inevitable wars led mostly by myself going over the infamy limit accidentally.
What didn't go well:
I got stuck with a Liberal Government eventually, with LZ, when I didn't even need to. I should have switched back to Conservative as I was HM Government, just to kickstart my industry more, and hence I still got left behind although I did do better this time. I still have overflowing diplomatic points that I don't use, I don't use them because I'm too hooked up thinking about everything else and as Hedjaz, you don't really need to keep that many people happy early game and by late game you can just force your hand instead. Probably because Hedjaz just sucks in general, its really hard to get troops early on, simply due to lack of population to pick them from. I could have probably done more, faster if I simply had more troops.
Going over my infamy limit, mainly down to events and then accidentally starting a war before I realised doomed my late game to near constant war with the other great powers, its debatable whether this was actually a bad thing, because I took land from nearly all of them in the wars that happened since. Moving too quickly in some areas with liberal reforms also cut me off from getting everything, as socialists started to come about and split the liberals. In future, I need to select my liberal reforms better and then deal with the social reforms once I'm happy I got everything I want.
Here is how I did:
http://img17.imageshack.us/img17/2133/v2maphdj193512311.png
http://img692.imageshack.us/img692/7747/v2maphdj193512312.png
This time I decided to bring some info screens as well:
http://img703.imageshack.us/img703/875/2011090500002.jpg
http://img31.imageshack.us/img31/3757/2011090500003.jpg
Other general interesting things that happened:
Europe at one point looked quite clean, UK, France, Belgium, Netherlands, Germany, little what was left of Denmark and Portugal, Spain, Italy, Austria-Hungary and that was about it. Italy fell apart into three pieces (and later recovered somewhat), and then so did Belgium, and at the end a strong Austria-Hungary started losing ground to Russia and Germany.
In Asia, China civilised and dominated in the east, pretty much all the countries next to it was in its sphere by the end of the game. Netherlands managed to secure all their islands. Hyderabad, which as far as I know remained a UK puppet the whole game, civilised. Ottoman Empire, despite managing to win land off them most of the time, were a pain in the ass and always seemed to field more troops than I did, even as it slowly got torn apart. France usually steals them from Russia at some point, and this happened here.
Africa got dominated by France, and even won several wars vs Britain. It feels like this happens every time but this one was quite bad. UK did take Oman + Abu Dubai, but I got Oman back. In addition, I managed to salvage some of US and Colombian held Egypt, although both of them along with Spain and the Ottoman Empire still held parts by the end of the game. Somehow Egypt survived from being annexed, in part from entering US sphere. Americas was relatively usual, odd wars between South American nations and land switching hands, the Empire of Mexico did well at first and was an early Great Power, but got thrashed by the US later on.
I think that's about all I can say that is half interesting.
Edit: Oh I totally forgot. I only hit Great Power status from building ships. When I noticed just how high military score went up from building just one, I spammed them. I think this is pretty gamey even for me, but I wouldn't have hit Great Power without it. Then again, I was still being outnumbered when facing other great powers.
