I picked up V2 yesterday after having read up on how to play the game over the past week and managed to get through a whole game as Haiti, ending up in 16th place or so, but some things that happened through the game confused me and I'm hoping for some feedback.
1) For the entire game, I was not in anyone's sphere, and influence points from GP's didn't seem to ever go above 50 towards me. This of course made my economy interesting as I didn't have decent access to a lot of stuff. Why did this happen? I assumed that by the time I reached secondary power status, that the GP's would start trying to sphere me, but they just didn't seem interested. Did my friendly status with most of the GP's cause them to cancel eachother out or something?
2) I tried to keep my state administration at 100% in all of my states by focusing on bureaucrats, but it seemed to be a losing battle in my captured Venezuela/Brazilian states. I'd get them to 95%-100%, switch NF somewhere else and a few years later it would be back down to 20-30%. Was this just promoting/demoting at play? Or was the culture difference/rebellion movements a part of it?
3) How does cultural assimilation happen? Despite controlling all of Venezuela, and a decent chunk of Brazil for a long period of the game, their culture never appeared to become accepted, and they were constantly rebelling.
4) Is there a way to diminish/completely get rid of movements once they have get to rebel status? Or am I stuck with them as an issue for the entire game?
Cheers