Industrializing China

[unmerged(37365)]

In honor of the Olympics, I was kicking around the idea of industrializing China starting at the outset of the Grand Campaign. So I loaded China in the 1830s and was pleasantly surprised at the massive size of the size of the "Army of the Green Banner." Once I converted a handful of clergymen to soldiers, I was able to fully replenish all the units it was one of the biggest armies I've ever seen in any game.

So I invaded Tibet, which fell quickly. Then I annexed it.

Industrialization is proving to be more of a challenge. The technology investment I made in the economic sector will eventually allow me to get my hands on some machine parts -- I hope -- but it's taking an interminable period of time to accomplish.

Any suggestions about military matters, industrial strategy, population maintenance or economic goals?

 

[Orm]

What game are you playing? Revolutions, VIP, vanilla Vicky...?

One tip: don't count on your enormous army to do anything at all against a civilized enemy. Most of them are irregulars that will not stand up against a regular division. Think of them as a flock of sheep. They easily occupy a lot of space but will run at the first sight of trouble.

 

[unmerged(76730)]

Just like Beowulf said. Please post game version it will narrow the options, because different game version need different approaches. Also dont waste time on IRR army. Completly useless.

Anyway one tip mate: Dont invade China neighbours early. There will be time for that later when you civilize and outproduce everybody in the world. You will have some major problems with scripted wars & rebellions. There is no need to add more troubles (in particular if you play Ricky+VIP) to already troubled uncivilized nation. Just be patient and CIVILIZE first. Military expansion can wait.

 

[unmerged(37365)]

Plain Old Vanilla

Don't have Revolutions, and I'm not sure what VIP is. As for the game ...

Things were moving along fine until the Opium War broke. As you suggested, my irregulars were no match for a real army. I did not save the game, so I'll be able to rethink the strategy in advance of the British declaration of war.

How should I stem loses against the British and move forward with my industrialization initiative?

 

[unmerged(76730)]

Hmm I cant offer extensive help with classic vanilla Vicky. I not played it in ages, so I dont want to make fool of myself. There is plenty of peps with more experience regarding basic Vicky.

But from what I remember you dont need to do anything during Opium Wars (1st&2nd). Events firing depending on what provinces AI UK holds. And as you expeirenced first hand IRR army is no match for REG INF. You can defeat one or two REG units when attacking at 20+:1 odds or something like that - in other words: dont bother, it makes no difference at all. Sometimes AI UK offers white peace during OW. Decline it or you will ruin event chain - at least it was thing which I experienced. After AI UK conquer some decent part of China you will get scripted peace event. That is the one to accept.

Somewhere in between OW and after 2nd war with UK you will get Modernization events with free techs. Need to be patient. When you civilize whole world will tremble. China industrialization is crazy, you just need to wait until you civilize, and after that it is piece of cake.

VIP is a mod. It exist both for Vicky & Ricky. It adds whole load of new events, wars and so on. In one sentence: much more fun [and troubles] than vanilla versions of V/R.

If you have questions, doubts and everybody on the forum is sleeping go to Vicky Wikipedia.

 

[Hybrid State]

My last game with Vicky was China. I think the first priority is to civilize. If you don't, your options are limited. To civilize, you need 100 prestige, 50 ind, 10 mil. You can build only Irregular units, so spam them! There are useless later in the game, but are good at least for fighting rebels and occupying provinces. During OW, UK actually did not dare attack me, because of my huge stack of Irregulars next to their border. China has huge manpower, so use it! Even regular infantry loses, if you can ram them with wave after wave of men.
To get 100 prestige easily, you need to colonize the pacific (why pacific, because Japan will do it otherwise) and claim the colonies. There are also some good colonies in indonesia.
To get 50 ind is the hardest. You need Freedom of trade to build factories and Publishing industry to get some machine parts to build those factories (you won't get them from the world market). You should also try to get experimental railroad, because that is the fastest way to increase your ind. You can trade some of your useless claims for these techs with USA. I have noticed that USA is even better than Russia in trading. The problem is you still need the RPs for the techs. That's why your education slider should be maxed at all times! Those illiterate peasants need education.
With max tariffs, you should get alot of cash, which you will need later to do social reforms and convert into a democracy.
One annoying thing about China is the POP handling. Once you start converting those labourers and farmers to clerks and craftsmen, your fingers will go numb with all the clicking.
Hope this helps. I would say good luck, but this game is not about luck...

 

[unmerged(60475)]

What's the easiest way to civilize for China in Vip:Ricky?

 

[OHgamer]

What's the easiest way to civilize for China in Vip:Ricky?

In VIP:R you need to discover a basket of technologies including several culture techs which you can not trade for, so the most important thing is to focus on education to get your RP generation up. Now in VIP:R we have included events that raise your RP generation (which in basic Victoria is only 1/10 the level of civilized nations) as you raise your literacy, so that you can continue to research at faster rates.

You also need a military score of 6 (which IIRC China is already very close to having or may already have) and positive prestige.

Players in general seem to be able to get civilized status for China by the late 1890s, though it really depends on how difficult it becomes for you to defeat the Taiping, which will eat up a good amount of resources for you in the 1850s.

 

[unmerged(5023)]

Glad to see I'm not the only one that got the idea to play China, with the
olympics Having not played Ricky in some time, I decided to play China
in that instead of EU...its been a *blast*.... I followed OHGamer's advice
on focusing on education as the way up..maxed it from the start and only
a few times had to slightly throttle down to avoid going broke...(using Ricky,
not the VIP mod, though). Managed to NOT get beaten by the Brits in
the OW, and thus avoided the big prestige hit, which also REALLY helped in
reaching Civilized status!!

One question that came up during the OW, that I havent' looked that far
into yet...is Vicky like HOI, where you can only seaborne-assault certain
provences? Because the silly Brits only attempted landings in a very select
few spots -- Hongkong, and the two provs next door, and just inland from
Shanghai...so I PILED troops into those, killed Brits by the shiploads there,
and they never got in....a simple landing midway along the coast from
HongKong to Shanghai, and I'd have been screwed...and they easily could
have taken Taiwan at least, or tried landing up by Dalian/PortArthur?

Anyways, things snowballed after stopping the Brits in the OW...with railroads
and some nice events (gotta love Opera!) I reached civilized status earlier
than I'd have expected possible, and then the economy REALLY snowballed.
Once you can do things like actually get items you need from the world
market, and expand your RGO's (why can't uncivilized nations expand a grain
farm, though? seems kinda silly!), combined with the massive # of POPs...
my IND score went thru the roof.

This was my 2nd attempt this past week doing China -- first time, I didn't
push EDU hard till mid-game, and lost the OW to the Brits -- China was a
total basket case by the end of the game, even worse than real-world
was then But winning the OW and cranking EDU from day 1...its been
a MUCH different story.

 

[Orm]

One question that came up during the OW, that I havent' looked that far
into yet...is Vicky like HOI, where you can only seaborne-assault certain
provences?

Not that I know. It's just the AI gets a bit silly now and then.

 

[Huskarl2006]

In vanilla Ricky it's possible to civilize around late 1840's... then the rampage begins! :wacko:

 

[RELee]

One question that came up during the OW, that I havent' looked that far
into yet...is Vicky like HOI, where you can only seaborne-assault certain
provences? Because the silly Brits only attempted landings in a very select
few spots -- Hongkong, and the two provs next door, and just inland from
Shanghai...so I PILED troops into those, killed Brits by the shiploads there,
and they never got in....a simple landing midway along the coast from
HongKong to Shanghai, and I'd have been screwed...and they easily could
have taken Taiwan at least, or tried landing up by Dalian/PortArthur?

No. You don't have "beach" provinces in Vicky. However, you do have an AI that is often very, very stubborn in how it wants things done. Think, middle-management mentality.

 

[OHgamer]

No. You don't have "beach" provinces in Vicky. However, you do have an AI that is often very, very stubborn in how it wants things done. Think, middle-management mentality.

In the AI files (esp for VIP) there is a list of provinces that the AI will use to base its decision to launch seaborn landings on. These are given various emphasis. Unfortunatley if you treat all provinces equally, the AI just sits doing very little because it ends up having 2 or 3 provinces being the same score in "good place to land" and it can't decide. One of those issues where there is no good solution, as the AI (developed almost 6 years ago, mind) does not have the sophistication to know not to keep landing in a place once it is secured by humans. This is something that later Paradox games has improved, but once again Victoria is showing its age with.

 

[TheFlemishDuck]

I used to civilize China in vanilla really fast in the early versions. All you had to do was annex annam and korea both in 1 go, netting you the 100 prestige, and getting publishing industry or mechanical production and early railroad + some other techs from and european nation, for wich i used to sell land in Annam or Korea. I went constitutional monarch to get an instant +100 relations with european powers, so that the trade's could be made favourable with not to much diplo's. With the machine parts i got from tech's i usualy build 1 large expanded cloth factory's in one state prefferably railed and occupied by pops as sizeable as possible + some added capitalists for effeciancy. (not hard in China) so that the machine parts were used as effeciantly possible. I think i was able to civilize china in a matter of a few years like that.

 

[LlywelynII]

(gotta love Opera!)

Obviously you have never heard Peking Opera...

 

[kalenderee]

Yeah, VIP:R Opium War pretty much depends on packing Hong Kong so full of soldier you can't throw a rock without killing a platoon.

Civilizing is tough, though. The technology basket is far enough ahead that you have to save any massive tech purchases (I like to deal with Russia) for the very end.

 

[TheFlemishDuck]

Civilizing is tough, though. The technology basket is far enough ahead that you have to save any massive tech purchases (I like to deal with Russia) for the very end.

I'm not sure, but iirc the rp speed of an unciv in VIP:R depends on what techs it got already researched, so i guess it's advantagious to get as many tech's as fast as possible, even if you go into negative rp for a while, because youll be cleaning up that negative rp faster with a better RP gain than you woiuld have been able to research those tech's with the RP speed you had.

Only, you still have to find something to trade with for the tech's.

 

[OHgamer]

I'm not sure, but iirc the rp speed of an unciv in VIP:R depends on what techs it got already researched, so i guess it's advantagious to get as many tech's as fast as possible, even if you go into negative rp for a while, because youll be cleaning up that negative rp faster with a better RP gain than you woiuld have been able to research those tech's with the RP speed you had.

Only, you still have to find something to trade with for the tech's.

no in VIP:R RP speed is connected with literacy rate - the higher your literacy, the faster your rate of RP generation

 

[TheFlemishDuck]

no in VIP:R RP speed is connected with literacy rate - the higher your literacy, the faster your rate of RP generation

I see. Yet i thought my RP gain was going up after researching certain tech's. (and not functionalism or such traditional rp increasing tech's)
Wich makes functionalims somewhat more interresting for an unciv but im not sure if the time required to research it would be smaller than the time gain you would get by the increased RP speed.

In any case ill go 100% clerks with my national popullation asap as unciv, even the smaller pops.

It still surprizes me btw that the game still doesn't penalize you much for turning youre national pops 100% into unemployed clerks, even if they don't work in RGO's or factory's they still bring in plenty of middle tax, enough to ofset the labour lost from rgo's usually.

 

[unmerged(5023)]

Now, with China...my game is around 1890 now -- and the wave of
"plurality +5" events hit recently...which with my non-democracy govt,
seems to be a very bad thing? Will some -5 events even those out,
or am I just going to have to get used to 10% revolt-risk all over China
for the next 30 years? Or will China get a democracy-govt option sometime
down the road? Right now, I've got a State Property govt in.

Which leads to this question -- just to see what they'd do, I took one POP
in Beijing and turned them into capi's early on, and have watched them
over time...they havent' done a thing for the whole game, that I can tell.
I thought under State Property, they could still build rails or factories, if
their $ reserves got high enough...for a brief period, their reserves did get
high, but most of the time they have been stuck in the $90's. Are capi's
pretty much pointless in State Property?

Oh, and I never saw an answer on this one: when enemy forces move into
a provence of mine and start sieging, is there a popup for that? I can find
no message-setting for that event, just for when the provence finally
falls.