Jingoism, Infamy, World Conquest?

It sounds like you're already doing everything you can to game the system, so there's not much to suggest other than modding.

You'd probably prefer a Europa Universalis game if you want to do world conquest, though: Victoria 2 isn't really built around world taking everyone's stuff. You can get lots of land, sure, but you won't be taking most of it from civilized nations. Victoria 2 is more about the economy and a few big, destructive dust-ups that may or may not be worth it. It's the kind of game where you can go without a single war and still have fun because there's plenty more to do.

GC13 said:

You'd probably prefer a Europa Universalis game if you want to do world conquest, though: Victoria 2 isn't really built around world taking everyone's stuff.

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I would disagree with it. In EU WC is a tedious and boring map-painting process (unless you can come up with some creative method) while in Vic2 WC is a serious challenge. It would be a map painting exercise too if you could convince your population that this is a good idea. Fortunately you can not, at least not in any straightforward way. Generally jingoism increases fairly quickly from 1-2% to 4-5%, but then the growth slows down and in the later game (or if there's desire of various reforms) it may not even reach 7% naturally at all. However, you can groom jingoistic population in other nations. For example, take several less populous provinces from France and their population will be growing more and more jingoistic with the time, so when you acquire few more states later on, you'll increase your overall jingoism. China is a huge source of jingoistic population and with some planning you can create more in their sub-states too. And, of course, planning your additional wargoals, DoWs and peace terms is important to minimize jingoism loss. Which brings diplomat management as an additional concern.

has there even been an heart of darkness world conquest? it seems like it would be incredibly difficult with the short timespan

I've never seen an AAR or a picture of world conquest in Victoria II, whether the latest expansion or any earlier model. There was one with Russia back in Victoria 1 - Russia would probably be a good country to use in V2 as well, either them or UK. When you start to get really big, the economic model will likely start to crumble in interesting ways (that reminds me, I should get around to setting up a "mod" where all the world is run by one country in 1836 just to see what that does to the economic model), but that alone probably won't be enough to stop you. Lack of jingoism, mass rebellions, and the short timeframe (100 years! In EUIV terms that's only to 1544!) will be the big issues.

So if you can do it, post about it and I'll be very impressed

I am actually trying a UK WC as we speak, but I will not make it. Got all of Africa, and most of Indochina, most of japan, a bit of the Chinese Empire...

Jingoism is the real issue. Not rebels, and certainly not infamy.

EDIT: And I am in the late 1880's.

I wonder if you could farm Jingoism among your own POPs by picking the US, claiming Cuba and the Southwest as cores but never conquering them, and then letting the CSA secede as well? It'd be difficult (for me anyway) to do a WC from such a small base, but it might give you the Jingoism you need - the US would be at around 40% Revanchism, at least until lots of areas outside the original USA started coring.

Oliver Twopence said:

I am actually trying a UK WC as we speak, but I will not make it. Got all of Africa, and most of Indochina, most of japan, a bit of the Chinese Empire...

Jingoism is the real issue. Not rebels, and certainly not infamy.

EDIT: And I am in the late 1880's.

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I've tried UK WC a while ago. I've reached 1880s and I think there are two big problems. The first one is Russia - it has so many states so that you need to be taking about one every 1.5 years. Taking into account truce time, cb fabrication time and jingoism recovery, it is not easy to achieve. Successful strategy will need to be focused on Russia. I kind of did that and with 50 years to go Russia has 27 states remaining (Poland-Lithuania already taken, but Ukraine is still available). So taking over Russia is still realistic. Initially, I was thinking about engineering great war vs Russia, but after the beating it took in the first 50 years, it's far away from GP and even if it gets there (probably due to elimination of other nations, AI wasn't very enthusiastic about making alliances (or honouring them).

The second problem is cb fabrication time. Many nations require multiple wars, so even with taking every random CB coming your way, always fabricating some CB and starting as many wars with quick CBs (place under the sun, free people etc...) I might run out of time to do all necessary fabrication. Consequence of this is that I have to keep reactionary party in power (it's the only one with Jingoism) to get maximum CB generation speed. And since few people like it, it produces militancy and massive revolts, which are not much danger by themselves, but it takes 2-3 hours to suppress each revolt (this is the main reason I've put this game aside). Other than that it looks in a decent shape - I made a lot of inroads into the big nations and most of the remaining nations can be now conquered in 1-2 wars (but I am not in a hurry, because they generate valuable jingoism as long as they stay independent).

FerdinandVeblen said:

I wonder if you could farm Jingoism among your own POPs by picking the US, claiming Cuba and the Southwest as cores but never conquering them, and then letting the CSA secede as well? It'd be difficult (for me anyway) to do a WC from such a small base, but it might give you the Jingoism you need - the US would be at around 40% Revanchism, at least until lots of areas outside the original USA started coring.

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I don't think it will work. Revanchism seems to be proportional to missing cores/number of states ratio, so as you expand revanchism will quickly go down. Of course, playing another nation and farming jingoism in USA is a perfectly good tactics

alexti said:

Other than that it looks in a decent shape - I made a lot of inroads into the big nations and most of the remaining nations can be now conquered in 1-2 wars (but I am not in a hurry, because they generate valuable jingoism as long as they stay independent).

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Yeah, my big fault is probably that I haven't even touched Europe in fear of opening the floodgates to French and Russian doomstacks. Instead I have isolated the continent with an insane number of ships and focused on easy conquests in Asia and Africa.

Still a fun game, though. I will probably settle with getting all of America or something.

In retrospect, I think Russia is a better option since, unlikely other nations, it doesn't have to deal with the task of conquering Russia Of course, it has to deal with UK instead, but unlike very monolithic Russia, UK can be disassembled in many pieces. I think that as long as you don't destroy their fleet they won't be releasing puppets, so you can take large areas (Canada, Australia, India etc...) for 2 small WG each. Russia would start somewhat slower, but it can expand into a weaker nations at first.

don't forget- you want North German Conf to form, as well as Italy. Better to conquor 1 state than 3 tiny countries.

China is a contender for WC, because you can +80% War justify early to avoid mega infamy, untill you conquor lots (and gain uber research points in the process), then just explode, civilize, militarize and go joyriding against the UK. So Long as you declare war to liberate Hong Kong, and never actually accept it in a peace deal, you can keep breaking truces and eat the empire alive. But breaking truces and not securing your obj. has it's own problems.

Secret Master said:

Another issue is that Great Wars open up the possibility to add war goals without worrying about jingoism. But you can't get into Great Wars without at least one GP on your side, and that's not going to happen once you break the infamy barrier.

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Jingoism is still a concern in the Great War, just much smaller one. Unfortunately, the biggest problem isn't to get another GP on your side - it's how to get two (or more) GPs on the opposing side There are numbers of methods of getting another GP on your side and they all (AFAIK) revolve around the same idea. You puppetize suitable 2-3 state secondary nation, allied with them, beat up few current GPs. If you can arrange a war with two GP on the opposing side, when your puppet will promote into GP, the war will become "great". But as I've learned AI has no intention to honour its alliances when it discovers it has to fight a big bad nation with WC ambitions so you end up with a single GP as your opponent :-(.

Secret Master said:

Then there's the war score problem. Some states simply cost tons of war score, and you can't demand more than 100% war score in a single war without cheating.

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I think that WS is capped at 100%. I have seen plenty of states that requires 100% WS to take and never a state that would require over 100%. This still contributes to the need for multiple wars, so taking states (especially coastal) from the developed nations should be a priority, before they had a chance to build lots of ports and forts and factories.

alexti said:

I think that WS is capped at 100%. I have seen plenty of states that requires 100% WS to take and never a state that would require over 100%. This still contributes to the need for multiple wars, so taking states (especially coastal) from the developed nations should be a priority, before they had a chance to build lots of ports and forts and factories.

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If you only have 1 wargoal item, like Admit Hedegemony or Acquite Yucatan at 130 warscore, and you have EVERY state occupied and 100% warscore, the AI will accept that 1 item. If you have 2 that total over 100, even by 1 point, then you are correct.

AdeptusM said:

If you only have 1 wargoal item, like Admit Hedegemony or Acquite Yucatan at 130 warscore, and you have EVERY state occupied and 100% warscore, the AI will accept that 1 item. If you have 2 that total over 100, even by 1 point, then you are correct.

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It's actually possible to get several wargoals with of total slightly exceeding 100%. AI won't accept such offer, but it will eventually make one and you can accept it.

Secret Master said:

Yes, but that doesn't help with world conquest, though.

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It does help with WC because it allows to postpone conquest and liberate country wars without fear of their WS raising too high. And this in turns allows to focus on more urgent wars.

Secret Master said:

In fact, depending on when certain countries civilize and who starts the world conquest spree, war score might be a bigger impediment than jingoism in the long run. I can always farm extra jingoism by extending pointless wars, but I simply can't annex everything I want thanks to war score costs.

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I think that in the case of WC it' safe to assume that nobody will civilize and that it will be a player nation that will start world conquest spree I don't think warscore by itself is the biggest problem (after 50 years I've reduced virtually everybody to 1- or 2- war conquerable state). But warscore contributes to the problem of Russia - you can only take so many states per war (typically around 5-7). Jingoism is another contributing factor because it prevents you taking those states very quickly and natural jingoism growth is insufficient (after early game it can't get back to 7% in any reasonable time). Additional constraint comes from the length of CB cycle. Since war declaration drops jingoism you have to go without war declarations while naturally farming jingoism. Big CB (such as acquire state) takes ~10 months (with jingoistic party) and it lats for a year, so roughly there is 22 months window to recover jingoism. It's not long enough, so finding external sources of jingoism is a must.

alexti said:

It does help with WC because it allows to postpone conquest and liberate country wars without fear of their WS raising too high. And this in turns allows to focus on more urgent wars.


I think that in the case of WC it' safe to assume that nobody will civilize and that it will be a player nation that will start world conquest spree I don't think warscore by itself is the biggest problem (after 50 years I've reduced virtually everybody to 1- or 2- war conquerable state). But warscore contributes to the problem of Russia - you can only take so many states per war (typically around 5-7). Jingoism is another contributing factor because it prevents you taking those states very quickly and natural jingoism growth is insufficient (after early game it can't get back to 7% in any reasonable time). Additional constraint comes from the length of CB cycle. Since war declaration drops jingoism you have to go without war declarations while naturally farming jingoism. Big CB (such as acquire state) takes ~10 months (with jingoistic party) and it lats for a year, so roughly there is 22 months window to recover jingoism. It's not long enough, so finding external sources of jingoism is a must.

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just out of interest how big is your infamy?