United States early army size - too much railroading?

[acidsun]

Hi,

After playing a few games I noticed the US manages to put up a really huge army really fast really early in the game. I decided to play as Mexico to see how it would eventually go.

I prepared myself for war early on, and managed to score alliances or treaties that would protect me with 2 other GPs: UK and Russia.

When the time came, the combined forces of Mexico, UK and Russia weren't enough to handle the US, which, with the 7th largest population and 7th GDP, had an army nearly as large as Great Qing's.

I understand this must be in order to force/railroad the Manifest Destiny, but it seems a bit excessive. I also couldn't find any modifiers to justify that - can someone elucidate how this works for me?

Also, any tips on how to play as Mexico in this situation?

 

[Treybor]

Hi,

After playing a few games I noticed the US manages to put up a really huge army really fast really early in the game. I decided to play as Mexico to see how it would eventually go.

I prepared myself for war early on, and managed to score alliances or treaties that would protect me with 2 other GPs: UK and Russia.

When the time came, the combined forces of Mexico, UK and Russia weren't enough to handle the US, which, with the 7th largest population and 7th GDP, had an army nearly as large as Great Qing's.

I understand this must be in order to force/railroad the Manifest Destiny, but it seems a bit excessive. I also couldn't find any modifiers to justify that - can someone elucidate how this works for me?

Also, any tips on how to play as Mexico in this situation?

The United States only has a whopping 8 regiments at game start with national militia as its military platform

All those troops are just conscripts and substantially weaker then professional army

Also the US AI will bankrupt itself with conscripts in most games

 

[Bisonmask]

National militia needs to give conscripts reduced attack or something because it's ridiculous that even the AI US fields 200k men to go take Mexico ten years after game start

 

[Eluchil404]

National militia needs to give conscripts reduced attack or something because it's ridiculous that even the AI US fields 200k men to go take Mexico ten years after game start

The IRL US fielded about 75K to conquer half of Mexico less than 10 years after 1836 so it's more in the ballpark of unrealistic rather than completely, insanely impossible. The difficulty is in distinguishing between existential struggles like the American Civil War and "foreign adventures" for which the political costs of mobilizing the entire theoretical power of the nation is much greater. There are some factors in the game to model this but not many. Players want this kind of thing to be transparent so they don't get dragged into a major war by accident, but as conflicts like WWI demonstrate what is and is not an epochal struggle that causes the deaths of empires isn't always obvious at the outset.

 

[H20]

Bankruptcy penalty is not high enough, and the US can just default on loans repeatedly. I was told in my post about it that yes it is intended that the US can do this.
So once again I had to fix their game for them and make the bankruptcy penalty much, much worse.

 

[IsaacCAT]

Default and bankruptcy are pretty damaging.

The key is to save your own forces and only attack when the other armies are depleted and the -50% offense/defense modifiers are applied in full. Default penalties are applied progressively.

Let the US AI waste their money and men against other AIs or attacking a well defended front before you switch to attack.

Spoiler: Default penalties

 

[Kabian]

National militia needs to give conscripts reduced attack or something because it's ridiculous that even the AI US fields 200k men to go take Mexico ten years after game start

Conscripts, in the worst case scenario, only are missing a 25% stat penalty (against a fully elite profesional army), and only for the first battles as fighting levels them up to parity pretty fast.

 

[KopiG]

The key is speed. You need to have good Kill Rate and a 1:1 Inf/Arti composition so you can just kill more than they can recruit. You will be seeing barely filled enemy divisions. AT that point, you won. To achieve this, you need to have friendly relations with the US for a few decades to build up your army / eco. I dont think its possible otherwise. I did it a few times.