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Avocado Aguila

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Jul 22, 2001
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Krakow - one of the only 11 nations that cherish democracy in 1836 shall take over the world soon.

Sounds interesting? Stay tuned and enroll to class of 1836!
 
You're insane.

I can appreciate that. Keep going.
 
Thx for joining and discouraging 

So let’s start from the very beginning

A. Settings and house rules
- normal, I don’t really see any need for more fun ;)
- no cheating, editing of saves or non-random events
- constant load/saving so as to receive a slightly more favorable badboy outcome when needed, but please – I neither have time nor intention to replay a particular sequence 1000 times just to get 0 badboy for annexation claim.

B. Definition of world conquest
It may seem absurd to discuss this issue, in particular for EU series vets, but as there are only 100 years to succeed and a starting position is extremely bad – I suggest to agree that the world conquest in Viki 2 can be assumed when a particular country, without allies or sphered subjects is dominating at least 50% of worldwide stats for:
- population
- troops
- ships
preferably all of the above, but of course a standard world conquest – that is 100% of provinces annexed would be more than welcomed ;)

The stats for 1836 are around:
- population: 250m (counted as man, not total population) + some 6m waiting to be colonized
- troops: 800, yet this is quickly boosted up by far eastern countries
- ships: 500

Expected stats for 1936 are around:
- population: 650m
- troops: 4 500
- ships: 3 500

Thus for a country like Krakow – it means a multiplication of population by a factor of over 3 000 just to reach 50%. As there are no troops nor even a sea port to start with there is nothing to compare in these areas…

C. Abbreviation used
As you know from your own experience there is only 1 major threshold you cannot pass, unless you are really ready to do it – the badboy limit. Thus I need to consider badboy limit a major bottleneck for the world conquest and proper management of it figure is of utmost importance.

In this analytical approach I shall be working mainly on the return rate, where on one hand would be population (potential profit) and on the other max badboy (potential cost). A few examples show it all:
- annexation of a 1 state country with 100k pop, which costs 22 max bb, gives a return rate of 4.5/bb
- annexation of a 2 state uncivilized with 200k pop, which also costs 22 max bb, gives 9/bb
- taking over of 1 state from civilized country with 100k pop, which costs 11 max bb, gives 9/bb
- taking over of 1 state from uncivilized with 100k pop, which costs 5 max bb, gives 20/bb
I think it’s a pretty intuitive ratio and serves pretty well for any type of comparisons in early and mid stages of the game. Of course sometimes there are also other issues to be considered, but I shall bring them to the table in due time.

D. Population
As you can see I keep on talking about population. In Viki 2 there is a direct connection between population, troops and the potential strength of the country. Of course there are other aspects of life, like technology, politics, diplomacy or industry, and I shall also mention the ways of handling them during the game, but to be honest, provided you are not uncivilized, they are more or less equal to all the major countries, so you cannot base a WC on any of these. Immigration, the most interesting factor of the game for the smallish countries without jingoist spirit, is bringing in a late game a lavish max of some 10k men – way to low to consider it more than an interesting feature for a WC looking warmonger.

Please note – Viki 1 could have been won by technology rush after turning 99% of your pops into clergy. Technology and province trading could grant you half of the world without a single gunshot. I spent many hours playing countries like Uruguay or Hyderabad to trade all the colonies away from UK, Spain or whoever wanted to sell it. It’s not working in Viki 2, it’s not even close to it.

So to sum up – population allows troops, troops allow winning of wars. Won wars provide more population and thus more troops. There is no other way to WC in Viki 2.

When taking about population let’s see the top10 states worldwide in 1836:
Zhengding, Chinese Empire, capital state – 7.9m
British Delhi, UK – 5.3m + 1.2m if they annex a minor
Ganzhou, Guangxi – 6.5m
Suzu, Chinese Empire – 6.4m
Huizhou, Chinese Empire – 6m
Nanyang, Chinese Empire – 5.5m
Daming, Chinese Empire – 5.1m
Guizhou, Yunnan – 5.1m
Suzhou, Chinese Empire – 4.7m
Zhangzhou, Guangxi – 4.2m

As you can see these 10 states only give 20% of the world population in 1836 and it roughly stays that way, even after all the immigrations, diseases and higher level of medical care in Europe and Americas.

E. Master Plan
I do believe that any goal needs to be backed by a realistic plan and so shall I also prepare for this challenge. Furthermore in order to be sure that at the end you reach your target I normally prefer a planning methodology ‘from the end to the beginning’, with named milestones defined in time. Such a methodology allows following of the general progress against the master plan and allows calculation of buffers or delays, shall any of these appear.

Based on what has been already said earlier I feel that the following could be quite an interesting master plan for the world conquest:
Till 1935-12-31 – clearing of all what is left after previous wars
Till 1925-12-31 – major war with UK
Till 1915-12-31 – formation of Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth
Till 1905-12-31 – initial war with UK, possibly leading to disarmament of the enemy
Till 1895-12-31 – annexations of all the remaining Chinese states
Till 1885-12-31 – annexations of at least half of Chinese states
Till 1875-12-31 – downsizing of Chinese Empire to annexable 4 states
Till 1865-12-31 – readiness for war with China
Till 1855-12-31 – top8
Till 1845-12-31 – top16

Ps. of course you can say it’s nothing particular – any country could set up the master plan as above, maybe apart from PLC formation, but let’s see if it’s manageable!

Nest update: Getting to top16 – stay on board!
 
Pretty interesting update, with a very diferent mindset from other aar.
About your goals, while I believe you can get to top 8 with Krakow(mostly from pretige techs), its usually hard to maintain it, and , I find it really hard to see you winning a war with China, even 10 years after it.Best of luck, I'll stay onboard till'the end
 
Even if you get slaughtered, this'll be memorable simply due to you having the guts to even attempt it.
 
Ehhh – well let’s see if it stays that way ;)

Milestone no. 1: top16. Deadline set: till 1845-12-31

A. Nature of the goal
Before starting any further discussions on ‘how’ I suggest considering the question ‘why’. And this is a focal point in my analysis – I don’t really like goals that do not really bring anything to the progress – a milestone needs to correspond with it’s name – to be a defining moment in the development of the project.

So why getting to top16, why is it such an important moment in Viki 2? There are two basic aspects of this level:
- being in top16 allows colonizing empty states – that’s a very big change to Viki 1, when basically everyone would do it, provided he had enough resources. In Viki 2 – there are no visible costs, so the profits are almost for free. Such being the case I consider the colonization strategy a key point for the early game of every small country and partly also a nice free backup in mid game. I said ‘no visible costs’ – that’s because there are quite real costs associated with it and the most important is engagement of national focus – thus you trade additional population for eg. additional clergy or soldiers you could get from stimulations. You could also damage relations with another countries, the average clergy level normally drops, costs of education raise etc. But for simplicity reasons I will consider colonization as free profit;
- being in top16 allows leaving the sphere of interest of another country, thus it let’s you declare wars on the countries from that sphere of interest. I will not comment on this as it seems irrelevant to my master plan.

I really like both these aspects of Viki 2 and it really makes the whole game way more realistic than Viki 1.

When talking about colonization it’s hard not to mention the top10 states available, and to make it even simpler I shall divide them into 3 groups depending on their availability in time (I’m on purpose excluding the ones close to Russia on which they have cores – they are scarcely populated and I don’t really need to give Russia a CB on me too early):
- immediate colonization (only 6 available):
o Negele – 0.17m, available only with access through Ethiopian Negele or Ethiopian Werder or Werder
o Werder – 0.16m, available only with access through Ethiopian Werder or Negele
o Kuka – 0.16m, available only with access through Sokotian Zaria or Sokotian Tukari
o Mozambique – 0.16m, available only with access through Portuguese Mozambique or Portuguese Sena or Sena
o Sena – 0.13m, available only with access through Portuguese Sena or Mozambique or Lourenzo Marques
o Lourenzo Marques – 0.07m available only with access through Portuguese Lourenzo Marques or Portuguese Sena or Sena
- post 1850s colonization (only 3 available):
o Zambezi – 0.11m, available only with access through Sena, Lourenzo Marques, Portuguese Lourenzo Marques, Transwal or Zambia
o Zambia – 0.07m, available only with access through Sena or Zambezi
o Bali – 0.01m, available only with access through regional marine base
- post 1870s colonization (only top10 shown):
o Warri – 0.55m (coastal, central Africa)
o Kigali – 0.49m (inland, eastern Africa)
o Lagos – 0.40m (coastal, central Africa)
o Wagadugu – 0.38m (inland, western Africa)
o Uganda – 0.34m (inland, eastern Africa)
o South Cameroon – 0.34m (coastal, central Africa)
o Wau – 0.25m (inland, eastern Africa)
o Guinea – 0.24m (coastal, western Africa)
o Bougouni – 0.24m (inland, western Africa)
o North New Guinea – 0.22m (coastal, Oceania)

As you can see – in the early game if you intend to colonize – you need to get to eastern Africa somehow, while in mid game – the opportunities are waiting everywhere, but you shall get the most by focusing on western, central and eastern Africa.

B. Krakow – assets and issues
Let’s now look at Krakow as a country – what are their assets we could use for our mean purpose and what are the issues to be tackled.

Assets:
- 0.11m population, which can support 1 army;
- 54% literacy – relatively high level compared to the majors and inferior only to Prussia, Holland, France and Sweden to name a couple of potentially top8 countries, but better or much better than UK, US, Russia or Austria – this value give a reasonable starting position for the technology run, or to put it in another words – we are still in game. The general technology development strategy I intend to implement would be the following: research boosting techs, plurality boosting techs, prestige boosting techs, if nothing is left – infantry and artillery, education and diplomatic influence, additionally somewhere in the middle I want to get medicine as the additional 2% in pops for free cannot be omitted. Please note – I don’t really intend to research all the time, I don’t even have to – collecting research points before major ground breaking dates like 1850-01-01, 1860-01-01 and in particular 1870-01-01 in order to turbo rush the techs seems so obvious that I won't even point to it;
- relatively balanced budget – as I won’t mention it in future I would just roughly describe the general rules for the budget I’m planning to implement:
o 50% PIT;
o max CIT;
o 100% for the army and state upkeep;
o As much as possible for education;
o 0% for bureaucracy;
o 0% for military;
- neighbors with high diplomatic relations and no CB on Krakow core – this has a huge value – you can sleep well as noone will be chasing after you at 4:45 shooting from some just passing by school ship on the first of September;
- sphered by Austria – I prefer sphering to being sphered, but it better then nth. Please note that Russia and Prussia are also in friendly relations and it’s quite normal that Krakow pretty soon starts floating between all these countries. Austria is a nice country to work with in early game – they are pretty strong both on land and sea. Additionally they are willing to join wars on basically all the countries in Europe, unless in a particular game they get allied with them by the time you declare war;
- later in game CB on all 3 neighbors – this is a nice asset, I really love the thought of annexing so many states free of charge ;)

Issues:
- 0 sea ports;
- No military access to any coast in Europe;
- Low clergy level (1.03%) – this would be the first and only national focus, unless colonization is in progress, always in the highest populated state;
- High tendency to drift to liberal government – this is a killing issue for warmongers, as the claim gaining times and average real bb costs are rising.

C. First things first
After analysis of all these factors I decide to pursue the following on the day 1:
1. Ally with Austria – as a sphered country I have a high probability of getting it, later on also ask for military access to tackle the ‘no coast in Europe’ issue;
2. Colonial claim on Portugal – as analyzed in point A – it’s the only country that gives an access to 3 out of 6 states available for immediate colonization.



The whole idea is to have Austria fight Portugal for me and grant me 1 province in Africa without even firing 1 shot nor having any navy – cute, isn’t it?

I admit – it’s not really a very probable scenario, and a few things need to happen to make it real, but it does happen. Typical flow of action is the following:
- Austria, not Prussia, go for Danish War;
- Austria gets no military access through Prussia, so they need to try sending their massive armies through Russia and Sweden (really hilarious sight) and concurrently send navy to Danish coast;
- Prussia does not stand for Danmark against Austria;
- sooner or later Austria gets what they wanted and underway back to Venice their navy accidentally blocks Lisboa – as you know naval blockade of the capital gives huge boost in war score;
- Portugal sues for peace and offers Austria what I wanted;
- Austria gladly accepts as they didn’t even realize they were at war with them, I guess ;)

So how probable is this? I would say – it happens once in say ten games, but as I don’t really see any more reasonable and probable start point – I need to go for it. The other good aspects of this approach are the following:
- I can start claiming immediately, so the loss from not having any bb that could be reduced by 0.1 per month will be limited to the minimum possible;
- I don’t need to recruit an army, so it costs less;
- I don’t need to (nor can) recruit any navy, so it costs less.

Now – why a colonial province in Africa and not Makau or Goa – the answer is in point A – colonies in Africa give access to free population through colonization, Makau or Goa cannot.

So out of the 3 colonies, which one to choose? Let’s have a look:
- Portuguese Mozambique – 0.12m – will cost 14 points of war score;
- Portuguese Sena – 0.10m – will cost 10 points of war score;
- Portuguese Lourenzo Marques – 0.17m – will cost 10 points of war score.
To start with you need to disqualify Mozambique – 14 points is too much for Portugal to accept only after ‘blockade’ of Lisboa, so they will not offer it in peace deal. They will instead keep on fighting and Austria will eventually ask for Makronesia (Cape Verde and European islands) and get it, while you end up with a return rate of 0/bb. Out of the other 2 – Lourenzo Marques give 17/bb and Sena only 10/bb, so typically LM would be better, but I personally prefer Sena, as it gives a direct access to high prestige colonization of Sena and Mozambique, while with LM you loose time for colonizing 1 province LM before you can proceed any further, so it will take longer to get high valued prestige points for colonization, which shall bring you from stage top16 to top8.

The final result brings the return rate of 10/bb without colonies, or whooping 46/bb including the 3 colonies for immediate take over. War started on 1836-06-15 and finished on 1838-02-22.



D. Getting myself an army
So with the first war we solved the sea port issue – now we are a happy owner of 3 of them in Sena. Unluckily without any naval base, so forget about repairing any damages. The other bad news is that Sena does not allow recruiting any army. The third bad news is that our status moved up just a bit, but we are still not in top16. But the good news is that neither is Portugal, so for the time being they will not be allowed to seize _our_ colonies.

I decide to start another war – this time against Oman. There are many reasons for this:
- it has a 0.14m pop rich state in Mombassa offering a return rate of 28/bb – much higher than any of the Portuguese colonies in the first war;
- Oman is a coastal country, including they have a capital city on coast – this all means that you can really reap on blockade points in war score – all you need are 5 transport ships, which goes pretty cheap and fast, thx to our 3 sea ports in Sena;
- Portugal will be mad after losing top16 status and they are like 100% sure to declare for Lindi before you wink your eye.

So we start with our claims. As expected Portugal declares for Lindi and get their Mozambique occupied by 2 Omanese local regiments. I’m overjoyed. Whenever possible and ships are ready I declare on Oman for Mombassa and proceed with the ships. Oman is as nice as to manage to occupy all 3 Portuguese Mozambique provinces (additional blockade war score for me – hurrah!) and battle me at the coast of their capital with their only 2 ships – it all sums up to their giving me Mombassa ;)

Again – there was no army involved on my side and the result is splendid, in particular when you take under account that the 2 local regiments that were sent against Portuguese Mozambique were actually from Mombassa and now proudly form the 1st and the 2nd Krakowian Army. War started on 1839-06-30 and finished on 1840-05-03.



E. Next target
I’m still under the top16 limit and really badly need to get some extra points. I could count on techs or safari, but it takes too long. I need the prestige here and now.

I decide to declare on Kutch – a 1 province minor with only 3 local brigades on the coast of India. I need to ask for annexation, so the return rate is killing low – only 3.5/bb, but there are more important goals:
1. Mandvi is capable of supporting 1 army, and I’m not taking about any locals – they offer alive and kicking infantry or artillery, which I need badly.
2. No one really cares for them. OK OK they have some pointless ally of Makaran, but why would I care. The key point is that neither UK nor any other neighbor have cores on this province.
3. It gives us a border with UK, which is also an interesting bonus as UK shall be more willing to propose alliance later in the game. This would certainly help a lot, as I would not really have to worry about some weird Portuguese, Spanish or Dutch claims. Of course there is also a risk that UK gets their random claim event on us as neighbors.
4. And last but not least – this is the biggest country mighty forces of which can be beaten by my 2 locals from Mombassa with their 100% organization – read: nicely pointed sticks ;)

3 times hurrah for Krakowian India! War started on 1841-08-21 and finished on 1842-01-18.

F. Summary
Let’s see where we are after against the master plan:
- milestone 1, status: accomplished
- milestone 1, deadline: accomplished ahead of time (1842-01-18)
- buffer/delay: buffer of 2 years, 11 months, 13 days
- assets: population passed 0.4m + access gained to further 3 states for colonizing offering additional 0.36m, 2 normal and 2 local regiment on the payroll – woo hoo – be afraid China, we are coming ;)
- issues: bb value is way too high, clergy level is way too low

Next update: getting to top8! Stay focused!
 
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This methodicity really looks interesting. I'm interested, keep it up!

As for images, you can either upload them here and embed them (there's an option for attaching files under 'go advanced') or you can upload them somewhere like Photobucket and link to them with [img /img] tags.
 
OK thx! i don't really know how to upload on paradox sites and photobucket is blocked for me, but imgur works pretty fine!

ps. the last picture is taken 2 years after the war actually took place, as i don't have the save from right after the war with Kutch.

ps2. i removed the last picture at all as i noticed that it was from some earlier try outs...
 
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Milestone no. 2: top8. Deadline set: till 1855-12-31

A. Nature of the goal
Again the same question as last time. In Viki 2 being in top8 opens a number of interesting options:
- you can start your own sphere of influence, the sphered countries are much more eager to ally with you and even if they are allied with someone else – they cannot declare on you. Such being the case I consider management of sphering highly important and the sooner you start – the easier it will be to reach the next milestones;
- other countries are more open to propose an alliance themselves – this is also a nice bonus, as again – we don’t want any pointless wars that would not be bringing us to closer to master plan fulfillment.

B. Prestige above all
As we have a 0 industrial and 0+ military score all I can rely on are prestige points. In the early game you don’t really need hundreds of points to get to top8 – usually something around 60-80 shall do the job and keep you where you belong.

So let’s see where to take them from:
- colonies bring 5 points per province, so eg. Mozambique will give you 3x5 = 15 points, Sena 4x5 = 20 and LM 1x5 = 5;
- technology gives an early prestige boost – romantics (+5% and 3x5) and realism (+5% and 3x10) – getting it all is quite probable as we keep on being at the forefront of the technology rush;
- there are always chances for safaris in the colonies, which pay pretty well – over 3 points to start with and +0.01 bonus and later on over 6 not to discontinue.

As you can see the major part of the prestige needed lies in technology. That’s why it is so important in early years to focus on research and plurality boosting techs, clergy and education.

C. Step by step
Of course when we get to top16, colonization process is started. Please note – it’s good not to wait till the occupation is done in 100%, but get 1 of your locals down to Mozambique or Sena to be ready for colonization support immediately once it’s possible. Additional 2% progress is worth all you effort. This is a generally good remark – I will do my best to always have 1 regiment in the state I plan to colonize next waiting. With 2 locals from Mombassa it’s very efficient and with low maintenance costs.

So I start with Mozambique – maybe Sena could have been better (20 points instead of 15 only), but my 1 local regiment taken from Mendvi occupation will reach Mozambique faster, so the military presence boost will not be lost at all. Later on I go for Sena and LM.



You need 1 year of actually being in top8 to be considered the real thing, so eventually it’s only on 1845-03-07 that the world starts truly recognizing us.

D. Summary
Let’s see again where we are against the master plan:
- milestone 2, status: accomplished
- milestone 2, deadline: accomplished, ahead of time (1845-03-07)
- buffer/delay: buffer of 10 years, 8 months, 24 days
- assets: population passed 0.71m + Lourenzo Marques is bringing additional 0.07, 2 normal and 2 local regiments on the pay roll
- issues: bb value is slightly dropping, but still too high, clergy level is way too low, the bad news about the new provinces is that none of them is able to support any army at this stage :(

E. The sphere
As it went quite fast I will comment a bit more on the sphering issue. As I mentioned – having someone in sphere is actually not allowing them to declare on you, not even if they are an ally of the country you declared on, nor even if they are an ally and a puppet of the country you declared on, nor even if they are an ally and a substate of the country you declared on. It’s a very powerful mean of influence.

I think you understand what I’m aiming it – China.

China in 1845 looks solid as a rock – apart from their own worldwide dominating position in both population and troops, they have quite strong puppets/substates of Guangxi, Korea, Manzhou, Mongolia, Qinghai, Tibet, Xinjiang and Yunnan. All together they have under direct control some:
- 110m population;
- some 650 brigades;
- some 40 ships.
Additionally they are also allied with Burma, Japan and Dai Nam, which bring further 10m population, 100 brigades and 20 ships. So the whole alliance is:
- 120m population -> 150x more than Krakow
- some 750 brigades -> 190x more than Krakow
- some 60 ships -> 20x more than Krakow, but this is the easiest factor to be fixed over time

But consider you don’t have to fight the whole alliance, but only Chinese Empire. The stats would immediately be way better:
- 55m population -> only 70x more than Krakow
- some 260 brigades -> only 65x more than Krakow
- some 20 ships -> only 7x more than Krakow

So fighting Chinese Empire all alone gives you immediately some 3-4 times better starting position.

Such being the case I decide on the day of acquiring top8 status to start sphering all the countries from Chinese domain + Japan, their key ally. Out of the rest – Burma is already in UK sphere, so they will either quite soon be out of the alliance or opt out whenever possible and I have better plans for Dai Nam. The top ones – Guangxi and Yunnan get the absolute priority.



Next update: readiness for war with China! Save your souls!
 
I'm impressed. In my experience, Vicky 2 is one of the hardest games when it comes to tiny countries. Nicely done so far.

There are two really hard things to do, the rest is quite easy: Get a coastal province and going above the infamy limit. Other than that it's just the usual annexing of smaller countries.

Really well done so far, the idea with Portugal was a bit strange... but it worked I guess.