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Gunnarr

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Mar 5, 2012
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I hardly ever play great powers, but recently playing USA or Russia I just do not understand it.

How do you increase your influence? (I mean the points which supposebly increase over time)

For instance, I am allied and 200 relations with columbia. But my influence is just sitting at 2.06 and not really moving at all. How do I get it to move?

I tried investing all their land to railroads but it has hardly done anything.
 
You have to manually designate target for influencing.
In the diplomacy window in the list of countries there's a button to designate influencing-priority. It looks like a sideways traffic light (the same as the merchant priority thingy in EU3, but without the colors).
Set those for countries you're interested in sphering and your influence will be spent accordingly.

Investing in other countries and having high relations gives a positive multiplier on the spent influence, but if they're not designated as targets then well, two times zero is still zero.
 
wow! never knew that was there, good thing I asked about it! thank you both!
 
You have to manually designate target for influencing.
In the diplomacy window in the list of countries there's a button to designate influencing-priority. It looks like a sideways traffic light (the same as the merchant priority thingy in EU3, but without the colors).
Set those for countries you're interested in sphering and your influence will be spent accordingly.

Investing in other countries and having high relations gives a positive multiplier on the spent influence, but if they're not designated as targets then well, two times zero is still zero.

Investing in other countries does not give you an increase in influence. It gives other countries a penalty, and lessens the penalty you get from other investors. Aside from a small increase in your IND score, foreign investment will not make your influence grow faster if there are no other investors.
 
Hah, I remember making pretty much this same exact thread when I first started to play V2.

That whole system should be a little more intuitive.
 
It is much more efficient to influence 1 country at a time. The reason is: in the influence game, you need to be the first to reap any benefit. Influence is spent on increasing your opinion in the country as well as a few other options to decrease others' influence. You can only affect influence of countries that have the same or lower opinion. A few magical numbers to remember:

25 - allows you to discredit another nation (and for you to get discredited). This slows down influence gain (for 9 months I think), but does not remove already gained influence. If you are discredited, it might be good idea to start influencing another nation full time and then get back to this nation once the effect is gone.

50 - allows you to gain an influence level or to drop someone else's level. If there is someone higher level than you, you want to take is as soon as you hit 50: you cannot use other options against them anyway and if they ban your advisors, you lose all that influence.

65 - allows you to ban advisors. Is removes all influence of the target nation and also makes it impossible for them to invest for a while. I find it the best way to take out a competitor: wait till they are at 49 influence and then ban their advisors: they are now at zero and you have a head-start of several months on them. This pretty much guarantees your victory in the influence race.