Sid Meier's Inevitable China AAR

I think this is the smallest I can get images without it becomming blurry.

Alright so starting the game I look immediately at the politics situation:



Looks like I already have 1 requirement met, but the prestige and tech rquirements are going to be hard, especially considering my slower research speed of a whole 1.117!!!

Politically speaking I got 3 parties to choose from and they all suck, all are state capitalist so it doesn't matter since I can't build factories or get capitalists which one I get so I'll encourage liberals for the heck of it but not going to risk revolt or lose prestige, I needz my prestige.

Actually wait a second, I got a good reason for liberals!! ROLE PLAYINGT!

That's right folks, if the Conservatives are against reform but me, the EMPEROR want's reform, then it only makes sense to encourage liberals so I can implement reforms, in game they may not be too relevant to the industrialization process (though it should) but meta speaking... It does make some sense, rp wise.

Liberals want reform, reform leads to modernization, makes sense in context!



Diplomacy screen, surprisingly more I can do here then I thought, if I ally with Tibet, Japan, Burma(?), Vietnam, and Thailand I should be able to get a CB to intervene in protecting them from Britian, France and other pedobear European white round eyed devils!



I got a surprisingly large supply pool to make a really huge army, a 1,239,000 man army to be precise, this is far too much and is probably taking a huge chunk out of my budget, I'll modernize what I got if I can build regulars* and then put the military budget slider later one to 10% or so, China by being very Pacifistic in ideology (Confucianism) this makes a bit of sense, It'll take a while before the Liberals gain enough traction to demand a large investment in the military forces, for now I needz ze moneyz.

*Thankfully yes, I can build regular infantry.



Technology: As we can see I gotz only 1.17 techpoints per day, at this rate means it's 9 years roughly per tech, I got ALOT of work to do to speed this up.

I'll start with The Rights of Man so I can get my second NF point, which are the games way of letting you to manipulate/encourage your pops to a certain course of action.



Production screen, crap all I can do here until I get capitalists, I'll raise tarrifs to max just so I can keep them in business.

But yeah... HOLY WOAH MAN! LOOK AT THOSE NUMBERS!? It's like my wildest wet dream in terms of production if I was even a civilized and fully industrialized China! I'm skeptical that I would even want factories if my artisans are doing this much!!!

I'm going to stockpile small arms, supplies, and any other good that's needed for when the inevitable blockade comes knocking.



Trade:

I'll go back to the trade window now that I realized something, I'll be manually stocking up on a few things, since I produce massive amounts of these it won't bankrupt me like it would in Victoria Revolutions.



Budget:

Not sure how mlong my massive surplus will apparantly last buuuuut... *fiddle fiddle* I'll lower military spending to 10%, max out Education and max out my tarrifs while at the same time adjusting the rich, poor, and middle taxes lower so they can still afford whatever goods are on the world market.

Why the heck China had to take a loan in Singleplayer demo as the USA I have no idea...

Update: 1839:



As we can see my maximum military size has decreased by about 60 brigades, my efforts at squeezing the military of their bugdet is working.

I actually as it turns out had to quit/reload a couple of times as I experimented with ways to keep my aristocrats happy, none worked, so screw that I'm just concentrating on keeping my budget balanced.

As it turns out, not only is China a massive creditor nation as the loans given amount can testify to, 9000$ to south italy...

I started off with max tarrifs, raised poor taxes to 70-80% as it still made a profit there, albeit weirdly, eventually I reduced it to 65 or so %, where it still made a profit, the old victoria tradition of "tickling the dragon" remain in full effect.

*Tickling the dragon is a nuclear physics term for the trial and error process of manually with a screw driver measuring the neutrino emission of two halves of a nuclear uranium/plutonium core, this is extremely dangerous as should they fall it'll release a gamma burst and kill you and anyone unprotected with horrible radiation poisoning, which happened in real life, this is relevant here because this is essentially the same, slowly changing pop taxes and tarrifs to get the most oppimal result.

At some point I don't know why but a combination of high tarrifs and pop world market purchases eventually gave me huge amounts of profit, including my gold mine in Caozhou, so I lowered tarrifs to see if I could slow down "The Great Artisan Die off" extinction event, as they're amking up, I assume, a huge amount of my income/production.

The national bank is also fairly huge, maybe that has somehting to do with it?

With clergy being encouyraged in Beijing and education at 81% (the maximum where clergy still get a bonus) my RP production is going up a fair amount, still brutally low but it's getting there.

The pops are actually slowly increasing their income and I have no idea why!

Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaagh!





My alliance with Burma has decidly in a single stroke became a bad idea, they dowed Britain hoping to acquire British Burma, in the mean time I'mma gonna raisah some more modern regiments and send some of my spare forces south and raise the budget a little, i got 200k money stockpiled I should be good.

Consequently my ass was so brutally kicked I almost immediately threw in the towel and let UK annex burma.

1847



Aristocrats have finally stopped dying off as bad as before, now its only 4000 per day instead of 15,000, but at the same time the number dropped by about 2 million.



Education finally at max, military at an all time low, taxes are sorta moderate, admin is at half as I noticed that Bureaucrats were promoting fine on their own and I need rps more then I need money.

Thanks to my super awesome gold mine my balanace is sorta balanced, dips into negatives every so often but comes back up.



Larger screen so you can see numbers more clearly, production of goods has massively climbed back up, hopefully this means aritsdans are actually making money now, though unfortunately none are making any canned goods anymore.

Holy crap researching freedom of trade is AWESOME!

War against against England, this time they attacked first, but this time I'm ready for them.

Chasing the British army out of Dali now, beginning occupation of Burma.





Aksu is more troubesome, attrition is murder on me and troops are harding to bring to the border.

Finally fought them to a white peace, they must of not liked the massive casualties, attrition, and in generally being forced back to India.

On the other hand I couldnt add any war goals, portugal and beglium attacked me and frankly fighting in India with massive attrition was tiring.

Finally fought Portugal and Gelgium to a white peace but only after a bitter fight over Taiwan finally kicking them out, just got a CB on Vietnam, gonna rtry expanding in their direction to score some prestige.

Greetings everyone, I am back from my 2 shift weekend and here's some updates:

Publishing industry is almost done being researched



After which only Post Napoleonic thought remains.

Also you can see on the right that I am building a massive force of Man'O'Wars, basically my lesson with fighting UK and Portugal is that I'm pretty screwed to defend myself without a navy, so loe and behold by constructing this death navy I intend to be able to combat and defeat any British force.

In the meantime I am critically short on prestige for westernization, this will take effort, to which I will farm Tibet and my other neighbours for prestige, disclaimer: technique may not work in multiplayer.

Invading Korea for more prestige.