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paracat

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Aug 8, 2010
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I was playing a game as USCA and I was locked in a liberal government from the start. I didn't think it was too big of an issue but it was impossible to start industrialization. The capitalists I promoted up had no money to start factories and so none got built. Then I tried to conquer neighboring Colombian and Mexican territories with factories in but they all were closed by the end of the war or closed soon after as the subsidies stopped (and before the capitalists from there could fund new factories). In the end I just gave up at around 1900 as I couldn't see a way to start the ball rolling.

Am I missing something or is it literally impossible to industrialize from Laissez Faire?
 
That pretty much describes several of my UPCA attempts. They don't have the population, wealth, or economic base to effectively survive in a Laissez Faire world. You'll have to do whatever you can to manipulate the population to elect in a government more suited to industrialisation. Tax them to exhaustion, ignore their demands, use focuses, everything, and once they crack (either vote for a different party or full on revolt), you can start building a base, repair the damage, then conquer the world. Once UPCA starts rolling, they can be pretty strong. I find waiting on the AI (capitalists, foreign investment, or whatever else) is a very risky venture for an unindustrialised country.

edit: Worth noting, once you have a functioning industrial base and a good base of wealthy capitalists, Laissez Faire works quite well. It's just hard to get the kick start while that policy is in effect.
 
You don't need a factory that early into your game anyway. Focus on reforms and fix your tech rate with NF. When your tech is great and you are in the American SOI, you'll have plenty of time to setup some actually profitable industries.
 
That pretty much describes several of my UPCA attempts. They don't have the population, wealth, or economic base to effectively survive in a Laissez Faire world. You'll have to do whatever you can to manipulate the population to elect in a government more suited to industrialisation. Tax them to exhaustion, ignore their demands, use focuses, everything, and once they crack (either vote for a different party or full on revolt), you can start building a base, repair the damage, then conquer the world. Once UPCA starts rolling, they can be pretty strong. I find waiting on the AI (capitalists, foreign investment, or whatever else) is a very risky venture for an unindustrialised country.

edit: Worth noting, once you have a functioning industrial base and a good base of wealthy capitalists, Laissez Faire works quite well. It's just hard to get the kick start while that policy is in effect.

So pretty much have to force industrialization on them then? Cool.

You don't need a factory that early into your game anyway. Focus on reforms and fix your tech rate with NF. When your tech is great and you are in the American SOI, you'll have plenty of time to setup some actually profitable industries.

I wouldn't call 1900 early. You basically described what I did except waiting just solidified the liberal party's position.
 
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USCA is a hard country to play as I've found, one of the countried I've played that I never went back to after several failures.
If you follow the wait it out till good tech approach, as I have. By the time you get that really good tech level, the USA has taken whatever they wanted from Mexico and most likely sphered it; and someone (probably the USA once again) will have sphered Columbia and built the Panama Canal. So you cannot expand on land in either direction unless you feel like fighting the USA and its allies.
South America becomes the obvious choice, but the problem is that at this point in the game, Brazil and probably Argentina and Chille are just as advanced as you, so can only hit Ecuador, Peru, Venezuela (although the UK seems to sphere this one often before this point), and Uruguay. Paraguay and Bolivia are usually landlocked and not suitable for initial conquest from the sea.
The key seems to be industrializing somehow very early on, early enough to give you an army large enough to challenge either Mexico or Columbia as its much cheaper to have to worry about only an army, and not a navy as well, although this does depend on how well you're doing.
In almost every game I play the USCA seems to break up by 20-30 years into the game, having achieved nothing and having possibly lost a great deal.
 
I didn't find expansion hard at all. I allied with Venezuela and Ecuador and immediately dowed Colombia for Panama within the first few months. Then over a few years I annexed Colombia and later Haiti. When USA invaded Mexico for its cores I invaded as well and took Yucatan and since it was then weak I took another state a few years later. I did all this without industrialising but that meant I couldn't get GP status so I just got bored and quit.
 
I'm playing as Austria, 1848 and my industry seems to grow to little in comparison to other countries. What am I doing wrong?
How can I really kick start industrialisation? I tried to get a national focus on creating more capitalists..
Never really understood where the differences are between laissez faire, protectionism, state blabla ... :(
 
Trade Policy: Protectionism and Free Trade are to do with Tariffs. 90% of the time you want to have tariffs on zero so you can essentially ignore these two.

Economic Policy: These have 2 parts to them: taxes and industry.
Certain policies have different limits on how much you can tax your pops. e.g. Laissez Faire can only tax a maximum of 50% and State Capitalism have to tax at least 30%
For industrialization, they essentially move from least control to most control:
Laissez Faire you can do nothing and all industry is controlled by the capitalists. This is good once you have an industry already as then your capitalists will have money to invest in more factories. In return the factories produce more.
Interventionism you still cannot build factories but you can invest in projects your capitalists start and subsidize factories already built. Like Laissez Faire this is bad to start with but can work when you have some industry already present.
State Capitalism allows you to do everything (build, subsidize, invest etc) and also you can have capitalists help. In return the factories are more expensive and produce less. This policy is best at the start to get your industry started but it is best to switch to Interventionism or Laissez Faire afterwards.
Planned Economy allows you to do everything but your capitalists are banned from doing anything. This one can also be useful to start up your industry but should be switched out of asap.

I hope this helped you. Look at this for some more tips to do with industrializing: http://www.paradoxian.org/vicky2wiki/Industrializing_Guide

EDIT: Forgot to mention, you can start industrializing with interventionism by encouraging capitalists and then investing in their projects for them but they inevitably choose rubbish ones and so it can take a long time to get started this way.
 
I'm playing as Austria, 1848 and my industry seems to grow to little in comparison to other countries. What am I doing wrong?
How can I really kick start industrialisation? I tried to get a national focus on creating more capitalists..
Never really understood where the differences are between laissez faire, protectionism, state blabla ... :(

Austria is a monarchy, capis are useless, if not annoying (they build shitty factories). Go for production chains (glass => liquor/wine, steel + lumber => furniture + trop wood, which you can get by conquering/sphering indochina => lux. furniture). Clothes are a different beast, since you can't get dyes easily and the UK starts with a shitload of factories that produce them. Lux, clothes can still be a good idea, esp. if you have silk, while normal clothes might be worth it if you get your hands on some dyes.

Once you get there, build cars/telephones/planes and the stuff that you need to build these (mac. parts and stuff like that).

Mil. supply factories aren't that great, generally speaking. All you can do with them is cover your own needs, exports are simply out of the question. But eventually even the ones you build for just your own needs will become too big and lead to unemployment.

That's all I can think of. LF republics (especially the S. American ones and definitely not the US) have it worst, because your capis are poor, your tech is mostly really bad (you don't have a lot of good choices and you're missing all the techs that improve production), so you mostly need to ignore factories until you have good tech. Otherwise, you'll have unemployment and you'll never be able to reduce it.
 
You need to focus on getting your RGOs so efficient that they can't sell everything. This means that they will start firing people, which will mean that you have workers for your eventual factories. Grabbing some industrial efficiency boosters will help as well.

While you are doing this, literacy. Literacy, literacy, and more literacy. It is one of the keys to industrial growth. You will also want to look into getting resources from those native slaves disadvantaged nations (ahem) that will aid you in your quest for industrial supremacy. Establishing production chains with things you produce will also help.

Industrializing takes time. There is no magic formula, and a small illiterate country will not become an industrial power quickly while the seeds of industrialization are poorly tended to.