Some questions from a newb (first playthrough as Belgium)

[hisdudeness94]

Hey guys, I just started playing again and I'm only in 1841. I chose Belgium because apparently it's pretty forgiving and an instructive playthrough. I'm currently ranked #6 in the world and a GP so that seems accurate. Some questions:

1) Can I even take credit for my economy? I'm the third most industrialized nation in the world, but it seems only because of the capitalists. I just keep taxes for the rich low and destroy some factories when they're in the red too much. Every now and then I'll manually fulfil my pop's and producer's needs via the Trade menu. Is this a usual strategy? What would happen if I were to appoint the Reactionary Party and took care of things myself? Smart move or would I wreck the impressive feat of leading Belgium to #3rd in industry?

2) Why is the Trade menu so random? Sometimes the stockpile will increase and the numbers in front of "available for my country" will rise when I buy manually, and sometimes nothing happens. What gives?

3.) If I want to prevent unemployment, is it enough to make sure my pop gets its needs so as to keep growing? It seems like the more stagnant my pop size is the more unemployed I have (my capitalists are relentlessly expanding)

4.) What can I do to increase prestige? I already added Luxembourg to my sphere, but they're so irrelevant that our common market is meaningless. Colonization isn't until late game right? How do I kick that off anyway, simply by expanding my navy and sailing to Africa or is it a Tech decision?

Lots of questions, I know! I just feel like playing is a better way to learn than endless AARs or LPs on Youtube. 2 and 4 are my most important issues.

Thank you very much for reading and answering!

 

[austrianemporer]

1. The Trade Menu does nothing for you pops. It doesn't really matter if you take care of industry or the capitalists if you're overseeing the factories correctly.

2. The Trade Menu is somewhat bugged and you shouldn't do anything about it UNLESS you're building a massive amount of factories or forts.

3. Pops will grow if they have, I think, 50% or more of life needs met. Otherwise, they start starving and dying. Increase literacy and industrialize more. Build more profitable factories.

4. Culture techs give a lot of prestige, look at the inventions. Rush the shared prestige ones. Build a navy and eat some uncivs. Colonization is late game, you need Colonial Points from naval bases and ships along with the necessary inventions.

 

[BeauNiddle]

Colonisation is activated by tech. All provinces have a life rating (thermometer style icon bottom left of the province picture), Tech allows you to live in lower life ratings. The main one is an invention off Breech loading rifles - the invention has a 0% chance until level 4 techs are started (mainly machine guns but there is one in navy and industry IIRC). If any of your neighbours have the invention then you get a massive bonus (+25%) as well so generally everybody gets colonization about the same time.

To colonise you need a neighbouring province or a port within range and you need colony points. Colony points come from naval bases you've built and non-transport ships you build. They go down depending on how many colonies you already have.


The easiest way to colonise Africa is to take the middle state of Sokoto (or the whole lot if you can with Imperialism). There is a state to it's north than can be colonised before life rating 5 and those two states give you adjacency on a nice chunk of middle Africa.

It's 80 points to start an adjacent colony, 100 points for a non-adjacent colony (within range of a port) and if other countries contest your colony it's 20 points per step and the cost increases each time it's challenged.

Look at the tooltip for life rating & the inventions and it will explain what you need. Build l level 3 ports everywhere you can in your home country (and probably at least level 2 anywhere else you can). Max out your ship force limit with ironclads & commerce raiders (I can't remember which has the most colony points but they are both quite good).


Or just play a test game as Britain as they have the easiest time colonising.

 

[Kovax]

Normally, you want to keep taxes at some middle level for each group, plus or minus a bit depending on whether they're getting their basic needs met, or if they're getting too wealthy and promoting into a class you don't need more of. Undertaxing the rich doesn't gain you anything once they've got enough money to fund factories and railroads on their own, so keep their taxes a lot higher than for the middle and lower classes.

The trade values will be all over the place, depending on which countries are building what on any given day. The long-term trends are all that really matters, except when you've got some wealthy capitalists who see a profit to be made in today's high Canned Food price (because France and Prussia are at war and building armies in quantity) and decide to build a factory, despite the poor average performance of such factories.

Unemployment, particularly in the poor class, is usually because the market for their product is saturated, and they can't sell what they produce. Either you need to have a market for those goods in your Sphere of Influence, or a huge population of your own to use it. Getting a couple of large and densely populated uncivilized countries into your Sphere of Influence (Lux is probably one of the worst possible candidates) can help you market goods to a country that doesn't have much of what you produce, and gives your own population groups (pops) first access to whatever they produce. If you produce wheat and cattle, sphering a country with little or no wheat or cattle, and lots of tea, coffee, or tobacco could be mutually beneficial, allowing each to sell more of what they produce and get what they lack. Note that sometimes you WANT particular occupations to promote or demote to other groups.

Quickest Prestige gain is to research a few Culture techs that give Prestige, although there are several techs in other fields which also provide Prestige as secondary Inventions (which can happen randomly at any time after the tech has been researched), rather than as the immediate benefits. Note that some amounts of Prestige are "shared", which means that the first to discover it gets full value, and each country that follows only gets a progressively smaller amount, so it pays to either rush it or ignore it completely. Other techs give "permanent" Prestige, which means that the value never changes no matter how many other countries have researched it already.

Colonization usually happens in the mid-game, around the 1880s, give or take a bit. Before that, you can grab a few colonies the hard way, by declaring war on an uncivilized country and demanding a region as a colony (which costs around 10-12 "Infamy"). Taking their capital (and entire remaining country) costs something like 20-22 Infamy, although it can sometimes be worth it to take the capital and 1 or 2 other regions in one big bite for those 22 points. Taking a region from a civilized nation is 22 points. Don't go over 25 Infamy unless you're ready to fight half of the world by yourself, otherwise the rest of the world tends to view you as a major threat, and start to ally against you. Burning off Infamy takes about a year per point, so taking an uncivilized region about once a decade is sustainable in the long run. Once the techs become available (in 1880?) to lower the minimum life rating, you can start colonizing undeveloped and uncolonized regions, and the race is on. It helps the colonization effort to have pre-existing colonies and ports nearby, such as on the African east coast, which you can do easily if you've already established a few colonies by force in settled but uncivilized territory.

That's just the tip of the iceberg; there's a LOT more to this game.