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Parsidius

First Lieutenant
83 Badges
Feb 17, 2007
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I know that it is probably an exercise in masochism for me to play as the country of Paraguay for my first game of AHD, but I really want to play this nation more than I do any other country; even getting enough help to do better than just straight out abysmal would be much appreciated.

So, right of the bat, I usually get attacked by Brazil with any potential allies immediately flaking out; I've tried to get the US or Spain to sphere me, but they never seem interested. I only lose one little province that they have a core on, so I don't think that is so bad. However, what is bad is that my economy stays in a rut; I have a feeling that it is because I'm pretty low in terms of country rankings, but I just cannot seem to get it any better. What I usually do is set stockpile and military to 0, raise taxes on poor and rich to max, and set the middle class taxes as low as possible. Even so, over time I lose clergy and bureaucrats, although it doesn't seem as though it is because any of them are demoting. I usually put an NF first on clergy to boost up my literacy and research points, and then later I will place an NF for bureaucrats.

I usually research technology like freedom of trade, business regulations, etc. that boost my RGO production, which usually is good enough to give me a fairly large budget surplus. But then when I try to put the money into factories (cement, glass, etc., the ones that seem to usually be recommended), they usually seem to run losses even though most of the time they seem to be able to meet their demand for inputs (I make sure to put in an NF for craftsmen when I have my factories up and running, so they can fill up.) And, on top of it all, my population seems to slowly decline over time, possibly having something to do with the fact that my militancy always seems to be on the rise (partly because I prefer events that increase militancy over events that increase consciousness, since I am lead to believe that consciousness has worse effects than militancy under a reactionary government that I start with and cannot change.) In any case, I never really seem to be able to get into industrialization.

So... does anyone have any suggestions as to what I might do to avoid being completely destroyed in my next attempt?
 
Have you tried increasing your relations with Brazil?

Paraguay will have a hard time until you can attract massive immigration. Your main goal therefore should be to enact political reforms which make your tiny country look favourable.
 
I've managed to spam increase relations with Brazil right up to just under 100, but they will still declare war on me anyway.

I am thinking that I might actually have to turn more liberal; as an experiment, I tried to boost consciousness as much as possible until I had a Jacobin revolt on my hand, and once they had taken power I did see that my population increased significantly from immigration. Taking medicine fairly early also seemed to help population wise. The problem seems to be that I need to maintain state capitalism in order to industrialize, which unfortunately prevents me from liberalizing politically; although, to be honest, since I'm having such trouble with getting factories to remain in the black that might not be such a problem. However, since I do think I should industrialize eventually, I'm wondering what it is that I must do to rectify my economic issues.
 
The reason you're attacked by Brazil is that they have a core on Iguatimi and you can never have a large enough navy to scare them off. They shouldn't have that core as it was taken by Brazil as spoils of war during the War of the Triple Alliance. It was never claimed before that by Brazil. To fix that, go to the history folder and search for Iguatiemi, open it with Notepad and remove the BRZ core. That should give you some more breathing room.
 
In my Argentina game my early industrializing attempts also didn't work and until the around the 1870s most of my income came from farmers and labourers. Until then I had to heavily subside my factories and was on the verge of bankruptcy. This only changed after I exclusively researched commerce techs for nearly 10 years to increase input and output efficiency.

It should be sufficient to build one very basic factory (fabric or lumber for example) which uses some goods you produce domestically so you become a valid immigration target for craftsmen and clerks.
 
That war was from 1932-1935, not 1832-1835

It was a disputed zone, nominally under Paraguayan control. Bolivia challenged them, Paraguay won. It works. Ideally one would make it terra nullius, but there's no guarantee that either country under AI control will ever become a secondary power and get the colonization techs.
 
It was a disputed zone, nominally under Paraguayan control. Bolivia challenged them, Paraguay won. It works. Ideally one would make it terra nullius, but there's no guarantee that either country under AI control will ever become a secondary power and get the colonization techs.

This is Correct
 
yes, sorry, somehow I confused the territories, there is a part of argentina which paraguay used to own in 1836, for some reason I confused it with alto paraguay. Also, as previously mentioned, alto paraguay wasn't bolivian either.
 
I've managed to spam increase relations with Brazil right up to just under 100, but they will still declare war on me anyway.
That's worth nothing. Increase it to over 100, preferably 200. Maybe Paraguay is in a special situation because Brazil already has cores on that territory, but in most games increasing your relationship to over 100 prevents all kind of countries from attacking you for no apparent reason. That's why you should try that first.

And of course you should take a more liberal position, but since Paraguay is a small country, it's quite easy to change your policies in a peaceful way.
 
That's worth nothing. Increase it to over 100, preferably 200. Maybe Paraguay is in a special situation because Brazil already has cores on that territory, but in most games increasing your relationship to over 100 prevents all kind of countries from attacking you for no apparent reason. That's why you should try that first.

And of course you should take a more liberal position, but since Paraguay is a small country, it's quite easy to change your policies in a peaceful way.

Oh, what I meant was that I managed to get it to just under 100 before they attacked me (intending to raise it more), not that I stopped increasing relations when I hit that threshold and let it stay there.

I did actually manage to get Paraguay up and running in my last game, actually getting it to GP status first by getting relations with Brazil over 100 (they were too occupied attacking all of their neighbors), getting medicine after freedom of trade then focusing on pumping up RGO output before using state capitalism to build a cement factory in Bajo Paraguay and a lumber yard in Alto (which I gained from Bolivia, effectively fighting the Chaco war 100 years before it happened.) After that, I somehow managed to get the option to liberalize (it happened after I chose appointed for upper house, maybe the aristocrats had become more liberal?) and went to push for voting rights for more people, which meant I had the liberal party in power. Fortunately, the capitalists (I used an NF to gain them) managed to run my factories right this time, and afterwards it was more or less a cakewalk (I think it also helped that I put craftsmen NFs wherever I could.)

I'm not sure I would be able to replicate the liberalization if I tried it again; what are some of the ways that I can liberalize peacefully without the need for Jacobin rebels or the like?
 
It works something like that. When you are a one or two state country with only a small population (and thus few rich people) there are some easy things you can do to get a majority of liberals in your upper house.