Tips for Placing 1st?

[unmerged(28056)]

I've been playing Vicky off and on for some time now, and while I always finish in the top 8, I've never finished 1st. That honor always goes to the United Kingdom.

For example, in my current France game, I will be very lucky if I finish 3rd (will probably finish 4th, with just 9 years left in the game). The UK just always has a higher military, industrial, and prestige score than me (Sometimes I might edge them out in Prestige, but never the other two) Oddly enough, in that game I also fell heinously behind in tech, but that's beside the point.

So, basically, what are some good rules of thumb for beating the UK in the Cumulative Score?

 

[Orm]

Spam battleships.

 

[unmerged(28056)]

I thought that, but then I thought that researching that high up into the naval tech tree would detract from other very important techs like commerce, industrial, army, etc.

 

[noddysseus]

Convert more pops to clerks.

And to compliment this policy, build/expand more factories!

 

[unmerged(28056)]

Toward around 1895 I figured out that I had very few clerks, but I had about as many factories as I could possibly have (converting most/all of the POPs into Craftsmen/Clerks) and I still only had about 1400 Industrial Score to UK's 2400 something (or some insanely high number). I was 6th in Industry, 4th overall.

But of course, that was France, not exactly a beacon for immigration.

I never did get enough Frenchmen in my colonies to get statehood and thus begin industrialization there. Any way to get your National POPs to go forth and colonize?

 

[Jingles]

Make sure that you routinely split all your POPs that are above 40k, especially ones employed in factories. Sometimes it may not affect your industry score so much, but the added productivity alone will enable you to increase your other scores.

 

[Marxistbard]

Spam Factories if you don't have a lassez faire party. Depending on the verison of Vic all that matters is having factories, not if they actually produce anything.

Make sure you have Tech Research at full funding and evantully you'll have spare Tech Points. As long as you have decent relations with someone that has already researched Naval Tech you can jump your way up the naval tree rather quickly.

 

[Dark Scipio]

I only played one game as a major nation. I really had no trouble becoming number 1 and leaving the UK behind me. I even fired a WWI as Germany and still held Place No.1.
So perhaps you just try Prussia/Germany.

 

[truth is life]

If you play as China, it's not too much trouble to civilize by the 1860s/70s (in vanilla). Once you do, it's no trouble at all reaching #1.

 

[Lord Finnish]

Pause, put state cap. party on lead, make hordes of factories, put your main party back in lead and unpause.

If you already got state cap., spam factories.

There, you got 15,000 industry