Ecuador - pros and cons / Strategy discussion

[Nuclear Elvis]

Why Ecuador? Well, why Vicky 2 at that?
I'm fond of Vicky 2, cannot bring myself to dig into the new Vicky 3. Call me a purist or traditionalist among gamers here, but Vicky scratches a certain itch once in a while, no matter how "modern" my gaming experiences venture into.

So Ecuador is a challenging play-through, and with all the Real World issues ongoing right now, it was also a good refresher on the geography and geopolitics of the South American region, in deciding to dive in with Ecuador. It has just enough land/provinces to succeed, yet small enough that it's an extreme challenge to play through in Vicky 2 with "success." (Certainly not painting the map with Ecuador in V2).

I'm primarily starting this thread to learn from others - how have you done well as Ecuador in your own play-throughs?
What Government tends to be best to transition to for the play-through?
What country do you tend to ally with, or always avoid allying with?
What country(s) do you take land from?
Navy or no Navy in long term of a V2 game?
What external provinces hold the most importance to capture first due to game-changing results from their resources and/or population?

Just an entry point post here, looking forward to any discussion from any die-hard Vicky 2 players that are still active at this board.

 

[Nuclear Elvis]

One interesting angle I recently played as Ecuador - became friendly with the USA just before Civil War (started right at 1862 for them), and was able to Ally with USA (not called into Civil War to help, not even sure if USA AI can do that). They won fairly quickly and by 1866 were already stable and #4 among Great Powers. So I made a claim against Columbia, saved the game (in case this technique didn't work) - and went to war to take Columbia's coastal provincial area just North of Ecuador (had not seized any land from anyone to this point). Only USA joined me in the war (Venezuela, Bolivia, and Cent America all bailed out and didn't join). Interestingly, with USA joining, the AI did not have Mexico (Columbia's ally) join the war. It was a tough slog at first, losing several initial battles to a larger Columbian army, but USA did come through with a 4 Brigade and 10 Brigade set of armies that rolled over Columbia from top-down (so I was barely hanging on in my southern provinces before USA turned tide of war).

An oddity? France as Great Power joined the war on Columbia's side, after USA had already sieged down about half of Columbia's provinces. I was not certain why they would do that. There had just been news of tensions between USA and Great Britain (my game has USA owning western Canada on into Alaska which created animosity with Britain). Curious if anyone on this board knows why France would have joined into that war (USA over-extending so AI trying to temper them?).

Regardless, USA trounced onward and sieged down Columbia so fast, the war was over before any French troops arrived in the warzone. Columbia gave us, I took the 4x provinces north of Ecuador, although the War continued for yet another month with just France opposing. I don't know what happened in the background but USA and France declared peace (one-line message only so I wasn't sure if a White Peace or what the conditions were, but USA still had their entire land holdings that I could see).

So this is at least one "safe" route to take, to simply build up economy and open up for migration into Ecuador and then patiently await a USA alliance for first land siezure before 1870. That may be too slow a pace for some players here, but at least it is "a way" to expand. Looking forward to hearing any other players' experiences with Ecuador, especially if you seized land early in the game's timeline.

Oh, for full disclosure on this play-through's Government, I went from Liberal to Conservative/Protectionist for a while (had to indirectly force the closure of poor performing factories without raw goods input from Ecuador), and then went back to Liberal (and boosting population's opinion of Liberal), just to try and keep immigration flowing more quickly in. Ecuador starts underpopulated, considering the jungle provinces at only around 10K pop total at game start, plus Galapagos Island that depopulates unless immigration comes in to fish there. The cycle of game life with Cholera etc. drains pops that you must refill plus get Medicine going soon as you can to improve life in provinces.