Questions from a Noob

1) Hugely worth it. Colonization is way better, occupation is way better—just get it.

2) Money's only worth so much. For the most part it's best to let your POPs keep as much as you reasonably can, so they buy more from your economy and help you industrialize by consumption.

3) I can't really talk about migration, except that colonial migration isn't something I'd count on.

4) Practically? No. They have way more troops than you, and will have about the same tech as you. France is an unholy terror on the continent, so I'd ally with them if I could. Germany and Russia should still be competent though, so look at how the powers are laid out.

5) Having a more pro-military party will make you justify more quickly. Getting the Nationalism and Imperialism technology also makes you justify wars a little bit more quickly. Other than that, it's just the luck of the draw. I think on average it takes about forty days to be discovered, so expect to eat most of the infamy cost of any war goal you justify.

6) Hold it for a long time. That's the only way.

7) There are plenty of wars, but it might be that you're going to war too much. If you're just kicking the uncivs in Asia around then I'd say you're playing the Netherlands correctly, but not every power has the luxury of a ready-made power base there, meaning that the only avenue for expansion they have is a very dicey European war.

8) I wouldn't know about mods.

Ivashanko said:

2) Does money ever really matter? I seem to have an incredible amount of money, and my stockpile has never threatened to go down into the negatives. Does that change in the latter game? Or is my nation just unusually blessed?

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I know switching from AHD to heart of darkness you get less money so it becomes a little harder.

I will answer as best I can here (not every point as I don't know some of them at all):

Ivashanko said:

...1) Is HoD worth it? Does it change anything related to the below questions?

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Definitely. Never played without it and wouldn't bother now from everything I have heard. I play with the PDM (or PoD) mod as well and it is excellent.

2) Does money ever really matter? I seem to have an incredible amount of money, and my stockpile has never threatened to go down into the negatives. Does that change in the latter game? Or is my nation just unusually blessed?

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I quite like PoD because money is pretty much something you don't need to worry about, I don't particularly find it fun having to worry about money with all the other things you deal with. I find money is only really of a certain use though, so many other things are important which do not depend on money at all (I agree with GC13).

4) Any advice on beating France in an offensive war? They seem to be able to steamroll both the Brits and the Prussians in head to head combat, so I don't see how I could possibly win, but I'd like to try.

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I always find this quite easy but admittedly I have only really played Italy so far. I end up in a war against France because I refuse to hand over Savoy and they always try to take it by force. I always ally with Prussia/Germany early on and beat up France together with them. They tend to peace out earlier than me but France is weak by that point and I then occupy the whole country and try to destroy their industry, etc. I gradually free Occitania to gain another ally/sphereling. I would love to release Occitania 100% but that requires 100% war score, it is inefficient but releasing it gradually works.

5) Is there any way to make the war justification less likely for others to find out about? It seems like every time I try and establish a protectorate others find out about it extremely quickly, which frustrates me and gives me nearly 10 infamy a pop. Also can I conquer in Europe without gaining ridiculous amounts of infamy?

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This annoys me incredibly as well! I have modded my own game to make infamy reduce at double the speed, I find it a really annoying restriction on your game and not fun at all!

6) Is there a way to easily gain cores?

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Not as far as I know I like EU3 better than V2 in this regard.

7) Why are their so few wars? It seems like I have been involved in more wars than the rest of the world combined. Is this a AHD thing or is it just my game?

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Not really sure about this but possibly because of infamy and the AI calculating in such a way to avoid going over the limit? As you have seen just one war declaration discovered early can screw you completely for the next 20 years!

8) What are the best mods? Does PoP slow the game down? How much? Do you like what it changes? What exactly does it change?

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PoD is slower, but it is really good. Worth doing despite the occasional frustrating slowness. I tend to have it running on one laptop while I do other things on my other laptop. I will then play it when something is happening and keep an eye on it occasionally.

10) Aside from factory score (and the military products they produce) do factories really matter all that much?

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Useful for military goods or other things which can be really hard to come by. Not quite the same but related is stockpile. I have found it very useful to set certain goods such as artillery, small arms, etc to buy over 500 and keep them. Otherwise there can be times you are trying to raise an army and the good you want isn't available (Another reason I don't mind money being quite easy to come by )

11) What exactly do tariffs do? They just seem to be a way to print cash right now. What are the negatives of having high tariffs? What are the advantages of having no (or even negative) tariffs?

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What exactly do they do? Screw your factories and artisans to hell is what they do. I try to have them at 0 or less as much as possible. I never use them unless I am in a long drawn out war. Use higher tax rates instead! Tariffs basically make the goods your factories and artisans need to produce their goods a lot more expensive and are a long term way to ruin your economy.

12) How easy would it be to mod my game so that fascism appears earlier and that socialism and communism become more prevalent earlier?

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Don't know how but I think it is easy enough - you would just change the first appear date in the xml files (or something similar to that).

13) Can I spread an ideology to other nations via war?

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Yes, but only with a mod - PoD does this.

15) Thank you very much for your time!

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My pleasure

My insomnia is a great thing for other people :rofl:

Oh, I didn't see that there were more questions added to the quiz:

9) No.

10) Factories are hugely important. Having a lot of good factories brings gainful employment to your POPs, which means they make more money, which means they not only pay more taxes but they buy more of their life and everyday needs and so become happier.

11) Tariffs are an import fee. They make life hard for anyone who has to import to meet their needs (like certain factories or artisans) but spare anyone who can buy what they need from you or anyone who you have in your sphere of influence.

12) Probably pretty easy.

13) Only if you're a communist.

14) You upgrade naval bases, upgrade naval logistics tech, and get naval bases closer to where you want to colonize.

GC13 said:

...13) Only if you're a communist...

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I thought Fascism could do this as well? Admittedly I am more used to PoD though.

1anrs said:

I thought Fascism could do this as well? Admittedly I am more used to PoD though.

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Nope, it's a communist-only CB with no fascist equivalent. It's not in the CB files, and a fascist nation gets no special CBs.

16) no- you can build a naval base in any province you control, regardless of whether it is colony, protectorate or state. But only 1 naval base per province in total. So colonisation range is drawn from the closest port (if you open up an uncolionised region and then hover the mouse over the 'colonise?' box, it will tell you what you need in order to colonise that particular region (might just be HoD though).

Every (coastal) region in a province has a small port which can be used for building civilian and early small naval ships, but this is not a naval base, which you have to build.

Industry also helps a lot with money, which is not your problem right now, but supporting a huge late game army and fleet, along with 3% clergy and social reforms is really tough when you're only an agricultural economy.
Industry means your pops make a lot more money, which means they can buy stuff and drown their sorrows in consumerism instead of revolutions.

Fighting France as Netherlands requires either a strong ally, Germany or UK should do it, or a lot of soldier pops from your colonies, and, of course, some nice tech advantage. France usually lags a bit in military tech so it should be easy to overtech them. They also have a huge mobilization pool, which can be countered by artillery heavy armies in defensive battles. A well balanced 60k army can withstand the assault of 150K mobilized infantry.
So between an alliance with either UK and Germany and colonial troops not only from Java but Indochina, China, Korea etc. you should be able to do it.

On wars and infamy : the AI is reluctant to wage overseas wars if they don't already have a border, and european wars are much riskier. Still it depends of the games, I've seen situation where Europe keeps exploding in desvastating wars from the 1840s. Some other times it's all peaceful.
I like the scarcity of infamy, it means that in Victoria you have to plan your conquests and be careful of your expansion, it means war is not as important as in other paradox games and that's a nice change.
From 1890 great wars do allow for big territorial gain in Europe, your Netherlands could go from Brest to Lubeck.

Just a couple of very quick answers (have to dash to work)

Ivashanko said:

...17) Any chance I defeat England's navy? Or should I just put my armies into positions where they can win before we begin general engagements?...

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I suspect you, as a relatively small country, would never be able to match the UK's navy. Better to concentrate on armies where it would be more realistic.

18) Is there any way I can help prop up France and Russia? I need them both strong so that in twenty years they can have their revenge (not on me though!)

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I would caution against this very strongly. As the Netherlands, you are better to show consistency with which country you are friends with and which you are enemies with. If you have already annoyed France (and especially if you have any of their cores), they may well backstab you when you go to war against Germany. Best to either be friends with France to beat up Prussia or the other way round, not friends with one and then turn on them and join the other.

21) If I release Israel will the Jews migrate in large numbers to it?

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I doubt it, but why not try, I'd be interested to see as well.

Expect a big change if you buy HoD, you wouldn't be able to build such a fleet and to sphere the Soviet Union... (Fleet requires port capacity to sustain and influence is adjusted relatively to population so that influencing USSR is very hard unless you have a higher population)

I think HoD makes UK a bit weaker, but it's been so long since I've played with AHD that I can't tell you.
It's supposed to be hard to break UK because they're protected by sea, so you need sea dominance to make them comply, or patience, the AI won't fold easily in a great war but after a while they may agree. Reaching 50% would help. Invading the isles would help even more. Going after Ireland is a good strat because you can block the strait between Scotland and Ireland.

23) It's worth war score, and that's just about it. Maybe it also increases war exhaustion? I've never tested it.

24) You can either use an exploit by stockpiling a lot of a good and them dumping it onto the economy, or occupy their territory in a war until the factories all close.

25) No. Someone has to suffer the great war capitulation: it's to make sure they're devastating fights to the bitter end.

26) I think you're looking at Victoria 2 all wrong if you think of the UK as something you need to fight. Even referring to it as a "boss" seems to show that you think Victoria 2 is about warfare. The point is to make your nation the best you can, not to conquer everything.

Britain's a bunch of pussycats (if you've played Deus Ex and get the reference). Any war I see them in, France is wrecking them. Anyway, dismantling the king isn't an easy task. Still, it's not terribly hard to win against them. Just get a bigger navy than them (not all that hard) and make sure they can't move their troops.

27) This is actually historically accurate. Your infantry aren't all that much better than their irregulars: it's the ability to use artillery that makes you so scary. That (and the Maxim gun) was what wrecked "uncivs" so bad in real life too. That said, HoD gives uncivs Cavalry so they have recon for their armies (which in HoD also massively increases occupation speed), so it's a very handy buff.