Giving peace a chance - a Swiss AAR

[badger_ken]

Just in case anyone fancies taking the rap on, I am abandoning pacifist Chile, as my game has revolted against my constant meddling by corrupting all my savegames
On the other hand, this isn't to much of a loss as I really wasn't doing that well, my concentration on cultural prestige meant I had not made any real inroads to anything else.

Also, ken, could you post advice for all the nations you've played on the wiki? Well, maybe not Mexico. It just seems rather threadbare at the moment. Denmark, for instance, only has 1.1 advice

re Mexico - ouch

re other countries - I've thought about it, and I'd like to make the wiki better (it is indeed quite threadbare), but I'm never sure what exactly to put for strategy/advice, it depends so much on your playing style, what happens elsewhere, what mods you are using, etc. I've thought more about putting up articles analyzing the game mechanics (how elections work, how reform desire works, how MIL score is computed, etc.).

[Tanzhang (譚張)]

Just in case anyone fancies taking the rap on, I am abandoning pacifist Chile, as my game has revolted against my constant meddling by corrupting all my savegames
On the other hand, this isn't to much of a loss as I really wasn't doing that well, my concentration on cultural prestige meant I had not made any real inroads to anything else.

Also, ken, could you post advice for all the nations you've played on the wiki? Well, maybe not Mexico. It just seems rather threadbare at the moment. Denmark, for instance, only has 1.1 advice

We've already had one peaceful AAR, why on earth would he do another one?

[WelshDude]

We've already had one peaceful AAR, why on earth would he do another one?

I was actually talking about other people, so we could compare. It would be good to know which country has the best starting position for this strategy. Although, considering ken's aptitude for turning 73rd rank nations in to Great Powers, the results might be slightly biased...

re Mexico - ouch

re other countries - I've thought about it, and I'd like to make the wiki better (it is indeed quite threadbare), but I'm never sure what exactly to put for strategy/advice, it depends so much on your playing style, what happens elsewhere, what mods you are using, etc. I've thought more about putting up articles analyzing the game mechanics (how elections work, how reform desire works, how MIL score is computed, etc.).

RE Mexico - True nontheless. i was with you there ooing and aaring at all your errors, only a month later.


Fair point, although isn't that what the wiki's about? Sharing different strategies, I mean.
As for the others, you could just copy your magnum opus on the subject of elections (although I think I might as well point out that parties are not decided by the issues pops with their ideology have - it is scripted to historical accuracy).

Final thing, how far have you played on this game, or have I been distracting you too much on the advisor thing.

[badger_ken]

I was actually talking about other people, so we could compare. It would be good to know which country has the best starting position for this strategy. Although, considering ken's aptitude for turning 73rd rank nations in to Great Powers, the results might be slightly biased...

Thanks, but I am but an acolyte at the feet of people like Selzro - check out what Selzro did with Albania and is presently doing with Tunis, or what Rensslaer is doing with Siam.

Final thing, how far have you played on this game, or have I been distracting you too much on the advisor thing.

I'm up to 1919, there's this stupid Christmas thing that has taken up a lot of time .

[WelshDude]

Thanks, but I am but an acolyte at the feet of people like Selzro - check out what Selzro did with Albania and is presently doing with Tunis, or what Rensslaer is doing with Siam.



I'm up to 1919, there's this stupid Christmas thing that has taken up a lot of time .

I haven't read selzro's Albania AAR and, although I find his acheivments much more than anything I could hope to do, I doubt he's going to thrash Spain or France the way you thrashed Russia...

What! you got stuck on December 25! How annoying!

[Malerun]

Yeah, I'm not really sure what influences IND Score, I was hoping this game would let me explore that more - if profitability is a factor, i may well do, especially since as you see I've got RP coming out of my ears

KonradRichtmark: "IND[ustri score], we have determined, is directly proportional to the total value of stuff your factories crank out in a day" in this thread over at the VRRP mod.

[WelshDude]

KonradRichtmark: "IND[ustri score], we have determined, is directly proportional to the total value of stuff your factories crank out in a day" in this thread over at the VRRP mod.

What he's saying is industrial score is output divided by factories. However, I doubt this as a: it would allow tiny Makran to have a bigger ind score than a Russia that has eight factories in each state. b: you would get no added score from more or bigger factories.

[Malerun]

What he's saying is industrial score is output divided by factories. However, I doubt this as a: it would allow tiny Makran to have a bigger ind score than a Russia that has eight factories in each state. b: you would get no added score from more or bigger factories.

No, what he is saying is that your sum the value of everything you produce in a day to determine IND. Russia with 8 factories/provinces would produce MUCH more and probably more valuable stuff and receive a much higher IND score than Makran.

[WelshDude]

No, what he is saying is that your sum the value of everything you produce in a day to determine IND. Russia with 8 factories/provinces would produce MUCH more and probably more valuable stuff and receive a much higher IND score than Makran.

You could read it either way, it's rather ambigous. I agree with what you think he was saying, otherwise industrial subsidies would be bad for your IND score

[WelshDude]

My dear badger, it appears your christmas is almost as complicated as mine! Either that or you are playing a lot. In which case, by all means carry on!

[Selzro]

You're too modest, badger_ken!

Industrial score appears (from my observations) to be a function of the value of what you produce, no matter whether it gets sold or not (so interventionism helps with the score), but I could be wrong. Different factories have different effects on that score, for the same number of workers, depending on what they're producing.

[badger_ken]

Welcome back to another chapter in the Swiss Experiment. The experiment concludes in this chapter, with a surprising (and muddled) set of results. In this post I'll mainly focus on what happened, and some 'small learnings', and then throw things open to group discussion - this experiment has indeed changed how I will approach Vic2.

Enough muttering and mumbling, on with our show....

The Swiss Wave

When we left Switzerland, it was 1911, and Switzerland is somehow in 5th place, and has just finished getting Austria to enter its SOI (and ally with it).

Things start on a sour note, as almost immediately Austria regains GP status (leaving my SOI), and then breaks its Alliance with me. I guess the Austrians really didn't appreciate being 'protected' by me . Ahh well, it matters little as it turns out, as they don't attack me, which is what I really cared about.

And then, a phenomenon I am calling "The Wave" hits. Swiss growth goes from Exponential to hyper-Exponential. This happened suddenly, as well - just as some "bit" flips in the program that causes your craftsmen supply to take off from 0, just as some "bit" flips that causes your capis to decide they'll start building factories, some "bit" somewhere flipped that caused my craftsmen supply to skyrocket hugely. A main cause of this (though perhaps not the only one) is that pop growth skyrocketed - from around 1-2K/month (this in a country of under 2M) to 10-20K/month. Now, was this cause, or effect of the wave, I don't know. (Almost none of this was immigration, by the way - though I did get waves of it, it was roughly balanced by emigration - this was almost all due to natural pop growth).

But at any rate, as I catch and ride the Wave, my score starts climbing. I move past the NGF into 4th place, and by January 1913 am very close to 3rd, behind France!



The 'Wave' is in full roar, and I find throughout almost all of this session that I have to have all of my factories expanding constantly - literally the day that a factory finishes expanding, I order it to expand again - and that's still not enough!

At this point, I'm wondering if I have somehow stumbled across the mystic secret of Vic2 success, tapped into the 'mother lode' of progress, when things change....

World Events

First, let me sketch what happens in the world this session, to set the stage.

I make a mistake, and take my eye off the German unification ball for just a minute, just long enough for Germany to take Wurttemberg out of my SOI (there are 3 german minors left - Baden, Bavaria, and Wurttemberg). We are both now ''Friendly', and yet I find to my amazement that the NGF is advancing influence at over double the rate I am, even though I have it at priority 3. Before you know it, in 1914 Germany forms. Interestingly, their score doesn't really change much.

Then there are a bunch of major-power wars, still no Great War though (I've never seen one in 4 games, though others have):

Germany attacks France, and wins, taking a French core province (Franche-Comte).

The USA finally wakes up and gets mighty angry with Mexico, ripping off large chunks.

The UK attacks China twice, winning twice, ripping off more chunks of China - by the end of this game, they'll own roughly half of China.

The UK attacks the USA twice, and France once, and white-peaces every time! Odd, given their Godzilla status, I don't know what happened here, oh well.

I mention all this to set the stage for the next set of events....

Swiss wave good, French wave better

Starting about 1920, while it is losing a war and a core province to Germany, France gets its own much larger wave - it goes from just barely ahead of me in 1920 to almost triple my score by 1936.

Swiss wave good, German wave better

Starting about 1930, well after it won its war with France, Germany gets its own wave - it's much smaller than the French wave, but it goes from well behind me in 1920 (and even 1930) to, sorry to spoil the ending here , but to just surpassing me in 1936.

Swiss wave good, USA wave better

Starting about 1925, while it's thrashing Mexico, the US catches its own wave - it's smaller than the French wave, but bigger than mine, and it goes from way behind me in 1920 (I had outscored it 3:2), to way ahead (outscoring me 3:2) in 1936.

Swiss wave good, Chinese wave good

Starting about 1930, while it's losing two wars and two core provinces to the UK, China catches its own wave - it's actually smaller than the Swiss wave, but enough to move China into 7th place by the end of the game.

Oh, by the way, I had China in my SOI most of this session - it's quite the money-maker!

So even though Switzerland kept its throttle to the max its whole time (as we'll see, I wound up with large pools of unemployed craftsmen - even "all expansion, all the time" wasn't enough), other nations, with bigger boats riding bigger waves eventually outstrip me - here's the final tally:



I finish in 6th place, narrowly losing to Germany. Congrats to Timmie0307 and Selzro, who both predicted a 5th place finish - double-congrats to Timmie, who predicted it way back at the halfway point. Sal-ute!

Before post-game analysis , let's do the end-of-game stats:

The World



(1) The USA wound up pounding Mexico
(2) 'lucky Brazil' did nothing the last half of the game, wound up in 13th place
(3) Germany forms, takes Alsace-Lorraine, and Franche-Comte
(4) best I've seen Russia do - they annexed Persia, then colonized a bunch of Africa
(5) UK took almost half of China



(1) This was my first game with the 'Age of Colonialism' mod, which is supposed to weaken Britain in reasonable ways, and yet they wound up with 4X the score of #2

(2) Note how IND score, for everyone in the top 10 but China, dominates everything else - it's the economy, stupid. (especially when you consider that the Army part of MIL is heavily influenced by economy and RP).

Here are the scores that the final 8 had in 1911, and then 1936 - note how much of the final score comes in this last quarter, and mainly, I think from the 'Wave' (too bad I can't stick in HTML tables here, sorry ). Numbers don't always quite add up, due to rounding:

Power ... Score(Prestige/IND/Mil) in 1911 ... Score(Prestige/IND/Mil in 1936) ... % in last 25:

UK ... 43487(2859/39794/1835) ... [B]76725(2024/72693/2008) ... 43%
France .... 2863(348/1137/1378) ... 18516(1654/13266/1604) ... 85%
USA ... 1556(507/302/747) ... 10121(1115/7950/1056) ... 85%
Russia ... 4929(201/4119/609) ... 7842(772/6145/925) ... 37%
Germany ... 2342(535/1495/402) ... 7189(2379/4296/914) ... 67%
Switzerland ... 2325(130/1130/1065) ... 6780(438/4993/1349) ... 66%
China ... 609(527/0/82) ... 2569(1559/840/169) ... 76%
Austria ... 798[/B(247/280/271) ... 2352(609/1428/315) ... 66%

Switzerland overall

Taking a stroll through the top strip:



(1) I wound up 5th in industry - not too shabby, but not quite enough. I'm actually more surprised by the 9th place in MIL, this shows how powerfully MIL score is affected by your economy (better economy means better RP, means more people, means more soldier POPs).

(2) I wound up running a large deficit at the end, more on this later

(3) I stayed a research super-power, the last 10 years I researched stuff that didn't help me just to see how far I could get.

(4) I had a reactionary ruling party almost the entire game

(5) Only two states mean you can only use 2 NF

(6) soldier POPs and reserves grew nicely

The Economy





(1) I stopped the ceaseless expansion when there was less than a year left, but notice how full-to-the-brim the factories are. Here's my unemployment situation at the end of the game:



That's right, over 100K idle hands in East Switzerland alone.

Learning - two states isn't enough

What's the difference between 5 level 2 factories, and 10 level 1 factories? They both employ the same number of workers, and produce the same output, after all - the difference is, you can build the latter twice as fast as the former - more parallelism. This hurt me mightily. I don't think you'd need that many more states, though - even just 4 states probably would have been enough.

(2) Note how many of the factories are now losing money.

Learning - the World Market shrinks

Why did the factories become such money losers? It's hard to say for sure (the game could easily give me this info, but doesn't ) but I think much of this was due to idle time due to factories not being able to get their needed inputs. I could see this by watching the little symbols twinkle on the production screen, but you can't stay on there permanently as you don't see the outliner when there

My hypothesis going into this game was that the World Market would suffice for Switzerland's inputs, as with a nice high prestige it would always be near the front of the line. This indeed was the case for about 3/4 of the game, when two things happen:

(1) As mentioned above, as more and more countries hyper-industrialize, industrial demand begins to far outstrip supply. In particular, as France and the UK hyper-industrialize, they probably begin to consume everything on the WM before it can trickle down to Switzerland.

(2) As the game continues, more and more countries enter SOIs - I think I tend to over-focus on conquests, as they show up on the map, but there's this "hidden layer" of conquests, namely SOIs - by the end of the game, roughly 3/4 of the countries were in SOIs. Sure, those countries still put their goods on the WM, but only with the 'leavings' their overlords don't want.

This also implies a strategy of aggressively trying to monopolize the market on certain crucial mid- to late- game goods (oil, rubber, iron) could be very powerful.

The Population



(1) Faskinatin' - I wind up with 13% Frenchies. Yet despite this steady exodus to Switzerland from France, France far outstripped me in production. Perhaps it was so much bigger that this was 'in the noise' for them? The 'Breifaren' are Chinese immigrants.

(2) wound up with almost 40% craftsmen, and 8% clerks, by far the largest I've ever had.

(3) 2.8% Jewish? I wonder where that immigration came from.

(4) While the population stayed solidly Socialist in plurality, they never got a second Socialist party with a wiser party platform, and the Socialists never came close to taking power - see in the pie chart below that they only had 14% electoral support.

Oh, and just to show that the pop growth wasn't due to immigration, here's the last month:



Note how emigration can be to non new-world countries, they might get a bonus (and only they can make it a NF), but I've had lots of immigration to Switzerland in this game, and here we see emigration to Austria.

Politics and Diplomacy





All the ones with 100 influence are in my SOI, as is the OE. I lost both Austria and China from my SOI late when they became GPs . In hindsight I probably should have been more aggressive here on smaller countries that could provide more goods, and less on Austria/OE.

Technology

Army:


Commerce:



got 'em all

Culture:



The untaken ones here raise educational efficiency (which was already at 100%), and colonial migration (didn't have any), I could have left this entire column untouched....

Industry:


Learning: tech tree size
One of my goals in this AAR was to see just how far you could get in the research tree - I think Switzerland here did about as much researching as is possible, and it got roughly 4/5 of the way through (I never did anything in Navy).

RGO Production




Factory Production



As discussed before, I think many of the factories were starved for inputs at the end.

Class Discussion

I'd now like to throw things open for general discussion

Join in, won't you? Some of the topics under discussion:

(-) How is that France could lose to Germany, including losing home provinces, yet far defeat it in score, after being fairly close in 1920?

(-) Same question, with France and Spain. Spain was a big colonizer, was at peace the whole time, had 1/2 the score of France in 1920 - and wound up with 1/7th the final score. What happened to France that didn't happen to Spain?

(-) Why did the 'wave' hit some countries big (France, USA), some medium (Austria, Germany), and some not at all (Russia, Spain)? Is it all about tech level? Is it about social reforms? If so, then why did it hit Switzerland 20 years after the last social reform passed?

(-) If so much of the ending score is racked up in the last 25 years, and so much of that is from IND, then should we all be spending more effort on SOI-ing and colonizing and less on conquering?

Until then, awaiting your inputs, I remain your experimenting colleague:

[winsingtonIII]

Nice work! This AAR really does do a good job of taking a look at some of the game mechanics and trying to figure out how the game really works, I would definitely recommend it to new players.

As for the discussion questions, my theory is that the single major "resource" that counts in this game is population. Obviously, it can't do everything, but high population does account for a lot of a high score, because it makes for high industrial and military scores. My theory on France is that they have a larger population than Spain and Germany, and as such, that probably accounts for a lot of their military and industrial score. I've generally found that France in particular has huge population growth, why this happens, I'm not entirely sure, but since population is so important, it often drives them forward to huge scores. The UK of course gets the same benefit from India/China.

But then you may ask, what about Russia and the U.S. ? They have large populations but they don't always keep up with France. Here my theory focuses on population density. France achieves very high population density per state, which allows for very high level factories, and thus very high industrial score. Russia and the U.S. are much more spread out, so factories are less likely to reach as high levels.

Additionally, I'm not sure how much of a difference it makes, but France has a population that is hugely dominated by its primary culture POPs. Germany is split between North and South German, the U.S. has Dixie, Texan, Afro-American, etc. as well as Yankee, and Russia has Byelorussian, Ukrainian, Finnish, etc. as well as Russian. It does seem that having a nation dominated by primary culture POPs help, although I'm not sure how much. Some have called for an "Occidental" culture for Southern France, so that France will have French primary but Occidental accepted and thus much of the south of the nation will not be primary culture.

[aldriq]

Great research AAR! The end results are very interesting... 6th position for a landlocked 2-state nation is pretty good, and goes to show that the literacy-technology-industry stepladder is king in V2.

(-) How is that France could lose to Germany, including losing home provinces, yet far defeat it in score, after being fairly close in 1920?

I guess France has a great deal of its army in Africa, while Germany doesn't have that burden, so a military victory in Europe is far easier.

(-) Same question, with France and Spain. Spain was a big colonizer, was at peace the whole time, had 1/2 the score of France in 1920 - and wound up with 1/7th the final score. What happened to France that didn't happen to Spain?

(-) Why did the 'wave' hit some countries big (France, USA), some medium (Austria, Germany), and some not at all (Russia, Spain)? Is it all about tech level? Is it about social reforms? If so, then why did it hit Switzerland 20 years after the last social reform passed?

For these two I'd say literacy is the key. France and the USA usually end up at 100% literacy, while Spain and especially Russia never do. This sets them back technologically and industrially as a consequence.

(-) If so much of the ending score is racked up in the last 25 years, and so much of that is from IND, then should we all be spending more effort on SOI-ing and colonizing and less on conquering?

Absolutely, and to be fair in the time period there was little conquest and lots of colonising and diplomatic hand-wringing. The game leaves plenty of scope for success whatever you choose to do.

[Selzro]

Very nicely played and very informative!

To the previous comments on industry, I should add that the UK reached a monstrous industrial score in your game. I'm betting that British oversupply knocked down prices in goods such as airplanes, to the extent that your socially-minded factories (8-hour workday, best safety conditions in the world, etc.) couldn't keep making a profit. Also, those same social measures that make your population happier by reducing its goods demands (workdays and safety conditions, IIRC) would also reduce your internal market, by extension, though I imagine not to a significant extent. Now, as to your concluding discussion points:

(-) How is that France could lose to Germany, including losing home provinces, yet far defeat it in score, after being fairly close in 1920?

France lost some land to Germany but continued expanding in Africa, where all its colonies would be states. Industrial and population expansion there would offset the loss in the mainland, even as colonial troops wouldn't be ferried there in large enough amounts to stem the German advance.

(-) Same question, with France and Spain. Spain was a big colonizer, was at peace the whole time, had 1/2 the score of France in 1920 - and wound up with 1/7th the final score. What happened to France that didn't happen to Spain?

Like aldriq, I think the most important difference is literacy. The Iberians start with about 10% and it usually doesn't get much better fast (in my Tunisian game, conquered Spanish POPs in the 1890s would have lower literacy than my native Tunisians - in the 20%s compared to my 30%s). Russia has the same problem. That affects techs which tend to limit RGOs and increase military and industrial scores. Also, Spain may have not passed the same social reforms as France.

(-) Why did the 'wave' hit some countries big (France, USA), some medium (Austria, Germany), and some not at all (Russia, Spain)? Is it all about tech level? Is it about social reforms? If so, then why did it hit Switzerland 20 years after the last social reform passed?

Health care reforms have a major impact on population increase, and when people run out of RGOs they have to seek employment in factories. That's probably why Switzerland's boom came earlier than that of the colonial powers. Tunis, which passed all health reforms early in my game under conditions of constant blockade, is experiencing that boom in the 1890s, with a population increase of around 10-15,000 per month.

(-) If so much of the ending score is racked up in the last 25 years, and so much of that is from IND, then should we all be spending more effort on SOI-ing and colonizing and less on conquering?

Good point. However, selective conquests can greatly aid colonization and influence, by securing the right borders, and in some cases they can greatly aid industrial score. As an example I bring my Australian game, where the conquest of California effectively made Australia an industrial nation, its home states being too sparsely populated to support much industry before that.

This experiment has intrigued me. I think after I'm done with Tunis I'll try something similar, though not as extreme - a USCA game with no badboy; wars can only be fought if there is a casus belli, and I expect there should be very few of them. The USCA starts out with low literacy but it's a democracy so it should get lots of literate immigrants; and it has 4 states, which should keep industry more spread out and easier to expand in the later stages of the game.

[Kaltorak]

(-) How is that France could lose to Germany, including losing home provinces, yet far defeat it in score, after being fairly close in 1920?

I'm not sure how far Germany advanced when it took the lands from France, but the occupied territories leading to a large chunk of the population heading over to craftsmen jobs because they are available would be one factor.

The other as Selzro said would be the colonial lands. I've seen france turn a colony into a state in about 3 months later on in the game. This gives it more factories and more population to exploit in them.

(-) Same question, with France and Spain. Spain was a big colonizer, was at peace the whole time, had 1/2 the score of France in 1920 - and wound up with 1/7th the final score. What happened to France that didn't happen to Spain?

Again I feel Selzro is on the money here. With literacy and possibly social reforms been a large factor. Obviously with that literacy and the fact that Spain looks like it spent some time out of the GPs meant it had worse research. The last factor I look at here is the SoIs. France has Holland and Brazil against Spain's Portugal, this probably gave them far greater access to goods, both volume and variety.

(-) Why did the 'wave' hit some countries big (France, USA), some medium (Austria, Germany), and some not at all (Russia, Spain)? Is it all about tech level? Is it about social reforms? If so, then why did it hit Switzerland 20 years after the last social reform passed?

Tech level is definately a big factor, but so is literacy itself. Higher literacy generally meaning more mobility amongst POPs. Also linked to tech level is some population increases (some might not have researched Electricity for example). The surprise to me here is Germany not catching a BIG wave.

(-) If so much of the ending score is racked up in the last 25 years, and so much of that is from IND, then should we all be spending more effort on SOI-ing and colonizing and less on conquering?

I think soft power (SoIing) is underestimated in this game. Its almost as good as owning the country except you don't get to exploit the population. Obviously if you can take land from China and make it into states like the UK it works far better.

Colonisation certainly has its benefits, probably as seen in France through that game. To take serious advantage of colonies though you must have a large population density in your current states so you can get the immigration to make states of that land. The resources in themselves are probably not as valuable as you can SoI for most resources you need.

Anyway.. a very interesting game. A shame you couldn't maintain your position. I'm also curious what would have happened if you had constantly expanded your factories earlier in the game so you could get those unemployed craftmen that were absolutely eating up your budget in unemployment subsidies into work in the end game. Another good AAR from the badger.

[WelshDude]

(-) How is that France could lose to Germany, including losing home provinces, yet far defeat it in score, after being fairly close in 1920?

From the score screen I can tell that A: France's industry easily outstrips Germany's and B: France has masses of cultural prestige and, lategame, losing prestige from wars hardly affects your score, as it is so large.

(-) Same question, with France and Spain. Spain was a big colonizer, was at peace the whole time, had 1/2 the score of France in 1920 - and wound up with 1/7th the final score. What happened to France that didn't happen to Spain?

I must admit I was utterly perplexed by this at first but now agree with everyone else that literacy is the only reasanoble explanation.

(-) Why did the 'wave' hit some countries big (France, USA), some medium (Austria, Germany), and some not at all (Russia, Spain)? Is it all about tech level? Is it about social reforms? If so, then why did it hit Switzerland 20 years after the last social reform passed?

Same as above.

(-) If so much of the ending score is racked up in the last 25 years, and so much of that is from IND, then should we all be spending more effort on SOI-ing and colonizing and less on conquering?

It really depends whether you want to have fun or win. Or what your idea of fun is.

Finally, great AAR, might I inquire as to what will be your next choice?

[badger_ken]

Thanks for all the great inputs!

What we seem to be concluding is that to make a potent Wave, you need a witches brew of various parts Literacy, Research, Population, Population Density, Industrial base, health care reforms, and colonies. If so, all I can say is - that's one deeply designed game system! Kudos to Paradox, methinks - sure they got some things wrong, but they got a lot of things right.

Re next game - I think it's time to try actually winning a game of Vic2 . After seeing the UK thrash China in my last 3 games, I'm going to try and turn the tables. "Chinese India" - has a nice ring, don't you think?

[Selzro]

"Chinese Europe" has an even better ring!

[WelshDude]

Thanks for all the great inputs!

What we seem to be concluding is that to make a potent Wave, you need a witches brew of various parts Literacy, Research, Population, Population Density, Industrial base, health care reforms, and colonies. If so, all I can say is - that's one deeply designed game system! Kudos to Paradox, methinks - sure they got some things wrong, but they got a lot of things right.

Re next game - I think it's time to try actually winning a game of Vic2 . After seeing the UK thrash China in my last 3 games, I'm going to try and turn the tables. "Chinese India" - has a nice ring, don't you think?

I do indeed, but you'll need a lot of prestige - fast.

Re Selzro - That's totally ridicolous! We both know it would entirely mess up the the world spelling system!

EDIT: OTOH, my dear badger, have you still got that Scandanavian save game from 1930. I'd like to see how wise your caution really was...