Hello everyone, and welcome to a semi-clueless exploration of playing Mexico in Victoria 2! Hope you enjoy it - I've certainly enjoyed the other AARs in this forum, and hope this can repay things a little.
I played Eu3 a good bit (see my Hungary and Venice AARs), but this is my first foray into Victoria 2, which is one complex puppy, so hopefully we can all learn together.
This is playing totally vanilla 1.1 - I wanted to wait for the MOD/patch dust to settle a little before picking anything.
Why Mexico? Well, two reasons: first, I find it helps when starting a game like this to play a power that can ignore certain parts of the game - as Mexico, the naval and colonization parts are not a factor. Second, after playing the demo a few times and regularly slapping Mexico around like, well, a pinata, I felt the urge to return the favor.
Which brings me to my goals in this game. As I see it, there are basically two ways to play Mexico:
1) "Poor Mexico, so far from God and so close to the United States!" - first attributed to Porfirio Diaz, who was Mexican president from 1876 to 1911. In this rather masochistic adventure, we would try to haul Mexico up bit by bit, as essentially a poorer version of the US, which we hope will let us alone.
2) "Peasant Power". We don't need no stinking factories! Mexico's policy will always be focused diplomatically on damaging the cursed Yankee, and economically on the peasants and soldiers.
I'm going to try "Peasant power" (a.k.a. "poder campesino" - I haven't decided yet how much of my Spanish I'll inflict on you , mainly because I think it'll be more fun/informative.
This means that:
Economically, I'm going to try and have a nation composed of poor and middle class (clergy and soldiers are just fine), and no rich. Let 'em go. What my peasants can't make, I'll buy on the world market, hopefully the goods the peasants crank out will be enough.
Diplomatically, I'll try to keep the USCA happy (they don't do me much good as a friend, but are a second front as an enemy), and focus all my attention on the US. I'll try to make friends with the UK, as it's the only country that can really militarily pose a threat to the US, and also hopefully it can sell me the goods I don't make - I may even try to get into their sphere.
Militarily, I'm going to try and overwhelm the cursed Yankees with quantity.
My hope is that American slavery will be their undoing - I'm going to try to hold my ground until the civil war (yeah, this is a bit gamey, I try to avoid this kind of thing, but it seems reasonable in this case), and then try to smash 'em.
On with our show!
I played Eu3 a good bit (see my Hungary and Venice AARs), but this is my first foray into Victoria 2, which is one complex puppy, so hopefully we can all learn together.
This is playing totally vanilla 1.1 - I wanted to wait for the MOD/patch dust to settle a little before picking anything.
Why Mexico? Well, two reasons: first, I find it helps when starting a game like this to play a power that can ignore certain parts of the game - as Mexico, the naval and colonization parts are not a factor. Second, after playing the demo a few times and regularly slapping Mexico around like, well, a pinata, I felt the urge to return the favor.
Which brings me to my goals in this game. As I see it, there are basically two ways to play Mexico:
1) "Poor Mexico, so far from God and so close to the United States!" - first attributed to Porfirio Diaz, who was Mexican president from 1876 to 1911. In this rather masochistic adventure, we would try to haul Mexico up bit by bit, as essentially a poorer version of the US, which we hope will let us alone.
2) "Peasant Power". We don't need no stinking factories! Mexico's policy will always be focused diplomatically on damaging the cursed Yankee, and economically on the peasants and soldiers.
I'm going to try "Peasant power" (a.k.a. "poder campesino" - I haven't decided yet how much of my Spanish I'll inflict on you , mainly because I think it'll be more fun/informative.
This means that:
Economically, I'm going to try and have a nation composed of poor and middle class (clergy and soldiers are just fine), and no rich. Let 'em go. What my peasants can't make, I'll buy on the world market, hopefully the goods the peasants crank out will be enough.
Diplomatically, I'll try to keep the USCA happy (they don't do me much good as a friend, but are a second front as an enemy), and focus all my attention on the US. I'll try to make friends with the UK, as it's the only country that can really militarily pose a threat to the US, and also hopefully it can sell me the goods I don't make - I may even try to get into their sphere.
Militarily, I'm going to try and overwhelm the cursed Yankees with quantity.
My hope is that American slavery will be their undoing - I'm going to try to hold my ground until the civil war (yeah, this is a bit gamey, I try to avoid this kind of thing, but it seems reasonable in this case), and then try to smash 'em.
On with our show!
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