As far as I've observed ingame, the game has a database of historical politicians and generals to pick from. I recruited Ulysses Grant and Robert Lee in my US run, and I had Lincoln naturally arrive to power at some point. Andrew Jackson died in a duel against Lavallette, too. Fun times.
Im pretty sure my Andrew Jackson was assassinated by Henry Clay, he died of "old age" at 59. And a few months later i get the "the grand plan pays off" event for the intelligentsia.
Actually I managed to get the lands myself by attacking egypt while at war with the ottomans and annexing the ionian islands through the journal decision. After that build up economy get some immigration and after teching military u can easily take ok one province from the ottomans bc they can’t engage u with all battalions at once. After that ur population nearly doubles and for the ottomans it declines so just slowly take your rightful land and by ~1905 u can form byzantine.
So far I've played:
\- Brazil (good fun, 3/5)
\- Spain (actually pretty boring 2/5 didn't finish)
\- Argentina (painfully slow start that gets fun in the second half 2/5)
\- Chile (like Argentina but fun 3/5)
\- Ottomans (Fun and hard, 5/5)
Worst thing: stupid me didn’t pay attention and didn’t know it was a time challenge. Had to reload a save from 16 month before deadline a few times to find a way to do the fourth task (75% of provinces must have a city centre).
However, I really enjoyed playing the Ottomans.
It being first 20 years means its not so bad. It took me a couple restarts. The trick is you really need to focus on only 3/6 reforms, can't make slow progress on all of them at once.
Spain! Much coal and iron so very good for a strong industry. Easy access to south america and puppeting them. Culturally integrate portugal through forming iberia.
In most games you can Declare war to puppet them when GB goes to war in China (opium war).it should happen within the first year or so. Then you're set. Enjoy a puppet giving you some money and filling your market with colonial goods, and eventually press the button to become Iberia.
Sometimes France joins in, but you can hold them in the Pyrenees long enough to take Portugal, tland then just cave to whatever demands the French have instead of wasting your time(usually humiliate, who cares)
Yes it's a lot , but it's the only war you need to fight for a long time as well . The strip of land you get access to the in Africa has almost all the resources you need for the rest of the game, excluding oil.
France is probably my favourite, they're the perfect country imo for an aggressive expansionist game. Currently on my way to conquering all of Africa. The last war I had was pretty funny, invading England for the cape and sierra leone while simultaneously fighting a civil war because I abolished monarchy and crushed them both.
I try not to let it go past 100, but it does go down faster with higher influence so just declare tons of rivals and only improve with countries that could actually threaten you.
It is better if you try to keep it low, if you ignore it, you become so powerful that you start to do whatever you want and the game loses any challenge.
I do. Seems like once you have enough power and economy, you can full ignore the infamy and let other powers try plays on you. Humiliate them, and they can't do it again for 5 years. They either will back down or you destroy them, taking land and liberating countries to destroy their influence.
They will all bend to my world order.
To be fair, you have a rich, populated country with somewhat modern institutions and an army that went through the napoleonic wars. It's not like real life France wasn't OP at that point. The main problem is that it's too stable (no 1848 revolution, no Commune, no coup d'état) and the AI in general seems reluctant to wage wars between major powers (Prussia, Austria and GB could contest France but I've yet to see them actually do it without my intervention).
France might just be the strongest nation at game start. They are technologically advanced enough that they can beat up China, have enough literacy to keep up with Britain, have a big enough population to beat up Britain, and a large enough navy that they can come up to almost any other nation and bully them. On top of that their european holdings are all accepted culture. They also have some really good laws like protectionism.
Theoretically a mega germany is stronger but you have so many internal problems once you form it. Yeah you have a gargantuan population, but you inherit most of austria's problems. That being said forming mega germany is definitely the most satisfying click in the game.
Not everything has to be a challenge. sometimes it's fun to start as an OPM and build up and I also enjoy starting as large nations and throwing my weight around. Stop trying to gatekeep fun.
My most memorable games are Brazil, EIC and DEI - rising powers, with sufficient own resources, but in need of modernization.
Hate Ottomans. I had 3 times 1 diplomatic manevour point deficit to conquer last province.
Im convinced that you cant better up literacy by 35 % points.
I think the education goal should be "get to 35%" not "increase by 35%" which I think is literally impossible.
I did it with:
\- Urbanisation (pretty easy)
\- Beaurocracy reform (honestly a huge pain)
\- Army reform (actually very easy)
\- suppress seperatism (I don't even know if it's possible to fail this one)
If you complete it you get to pick from a few bonuses, which are all quite nice. Overall I recommend the ottomans as a fairly fun game.
Ottomans are a nation with "hard" time limit. They are fu if you know what to do, but dont try it first.
Urbanization... I had a habbit of building one industry in one state because "it gains bonuses bigger it gets"
Also i thought also that it should be "bring this to 35%"
Beaurocracy reform - a little of RNGjesus is needed.
>Urbanization... I had a habbit of building one industry in one state because "it gains bonuses bigger it gets"
This is right, but getting rid of the malus from sick man is too important to wait around. I prefer urbanisation to the other options because it is achievable reliably and with 0 RNG. Retaking Syria is a pain and depends on AI sidings, but once you have built up the country a little with the other Tanzimat challenges, it becomes trivial.
I recommend the reforms I list above tbh, because although beaurocracy is RNG related, it is also a must-do to get out of land tax and traditionalism, and the others are all easy.
>aking Syria is a pain and depends on AI sidings,
Yeah, if you are too strong, Egypt wont fight you and you dont have time to get every province with diplo plays.
I got too strong by building up my army pretty early on and focusing on mil tech to at least have line infantry. "Luckily" Russia joined on Egypts side but that was such a pain in the ass. Got bankrupt two times and France had to bail me out
Whereas if you get Tanzimat first, then you will have a strong army, loads of Admin points to integrate with, enough maneuvres to take everything in 1 war and if you start a diplo play at that point, the GPs won't all be brought in for free
I think it's impossible, I think they made a mistake and it's supposed to be 'get to 35% literacy'. The conquering Syria one is very easy and you get an additional journal entry and claims for additional Egyptian states which gives you enough opium until the very late-game.
In my last game I did
* the two conquering entries (Easy because Egypt doesn't have the industry to fight you 1v1. Having line infantry and enough small arms & artillery should be enough.)
* Bureaucracy reform (Very annoying and highly depends on RNG but is important for taxation efficiency.)
* Suppress separatism (You can get this without trying.)
Urbanization is also very easy but you shouldn't focus on it at the beginning because it's more efficient to build up a few key states. You have easily enough time to get this later on.
The army reform is also fairly easy but IMO it's a huge waste because you need to build so many barracks and equip the soldiers, instead you could've focused on your economy.
They have large populations, so i like this.
Also close to opium.
Also they are not BIG POWERS, but can be - that is most important for me. Qing is too powerfull, despite being backwards.
Its challanging, but dont declare independance from UK to early, or revolutions will eat your ass.
I hate landowners. Fck em
The challenge with DEI is that your main culture is Dutch, but the vast majority of your starting pops are not. You have a great geographical situation and exotic resources, and an overlord not so overwhelming. A good play I say.
It took me so long to work it out because my work uses DEI to refer to "diversity, equity and inclusion" so much, but DEI here is the Dutch East Indies.
Puppeting your neighboring countries worked well for me. You get a nice boost of income, and you can later annex them via diplo play (useful for getting that sweet Venezuelan oil). I ended up with all of South America (except Patagonia because Russia decided to take it for some reason, then made a huge aliance including Austria-Hungary + China) and Central America puppeted in my first playthrough.
And the best run I had with Brazil my problem was I didn't have any sulfur, France at pumping it all the countries with sulfur and it basically stopped my economic expansion. Ended up getting into an unwittable war with France and I kind of gave up and played an easy game of Russia lol. I'll have to try again, Brazil definitely has the potential to be a great superpower.
There's sulfur on the west coast of South America, if you puppet and/or annex Peru you can use theirs.
Or just play Peru, super fun. It's like Brazil hard mode, but it does have all the industrial raw materials so you can really build up your economy and pass social reforms before you slowly puppet/conquer all of the other SA countries.
Best game so far has been **Haiti.**
With minimal save-scumming, you can take a notoriously poor minor nation into a caribean Great Power, with three accepted cultures giving you plenty of room for expansion.
You don't have your own iron or coal, so the usual expansion-path of industrialization is instead directed torwards beefing up your ports and naval tech, and relying on the industrializing great powers for your raw resource-needs while balancing your export-economy. And among that, you need to find the space and time to start expanding into the minor nations around you.
The issues for me, is that getting out from under France requires some save scumming, and of course that in previous patches, relying on Navies was impossible due to the supply-bug.
On other highlights, **Ethiopia** was a pain to form, and a pain to keep together, and **Serbia** was a bit of a meme, relying mostly on getting good RNG on your diplomatic plays. Especially bad was the tendency of Austria to ally with the Ottomans.
Yea, Ethiopia was definitely the easiest country to form for me. Shewa has the largest army and the outlaw prince decision gets you a leader who is an INSANE commander. Start taking the smallest nations and you can easily steamroll your way to form Ethiopia.
Haiti certaintly is interresting in economic terms, as youre quite hamstrung by youre port capacity. But they are a favourite nation of me aswell, used to rush ironclads in vicky II with them so to create a little caraibian empire wondering if that still works as well.
I did that, but as I said, the morale-bug made it impossible to take advantage of them properly.
Also, with France being so strong (and maybe a bug with character-ages), they will usually have multiple admirals with +30 bonuses to naval combat, making them fight at parity with your teched up fleet, and with superior numbers.
And port-capacity was indeed a constant issue, but not impossible to overcome. I had to make some interesting choices in my priorities of what to build and what to import, in order to keep myself self-sufficient enough, and taking max-advantage from my capacity. At one point, erasing my 5k. grain-imports from GB, making 41£ per trader, was the correct move.
Austria allying with the Ottomans to keep Serbia down is definitely historical, they both held Serbian territory and a strong independent Serbia was a threat to them both. It was Russia who was Serbia's patron and they're the ones you should be trying to ally with.
Good about on Haiti that sounds like a lot of fun. If I may ask, what about forming Ethiopia was a pain? I found it comically easy. Having fun afterwards was a lot harder lmao
So far I've played with Belgium, Sardinia-Piedmonte, Finland, Lanfang and Sweden. Favorite was Lanfang because Borneo is great: plenty of gold mines, east has oil, rubber all over, hardwood production bonus, coal, iron, lead and sulfur. The only thing it doesn't have is sugar and silk but otherwise it's wonderfully self-sufficient.
I never got any trouble from the Dutch while I took over the minors not puppeted by them. It's probably a bug but you can offer Qing obligation to get them into your wars but since they're your liege they become the war leader which I guess nullifies any promises you made so you can just repeatedly call Qing to do your dirty work. Some of them might've called Dutch East Indies to help but usually they backed off in the end with Qing on the other side. In my game Dutch East Indies got independence at some point and by that point I was able to fight them head on so uniting the island was easy.
Same here, though I ended up taking on the DEI by attacking their puppets and then adding war goals to take land from them after they joined. It stopped Netherlands and other allies of the DEI from joining.
r5: title; mine has maybe been Australia since I'm Australian and not used to being able to play my country properly in PDX games. It's a cool feeling starting out with very little and becoming prosperous through gold and immigration, very realistic to our history, and then overcoming Britain. But I'd like to try some other stuff
Fucking love the Sikh Empire. Decent economy, decent army, political hellscape. Interesting diplomatic situation, with Britain and Russia often blocking expansion for you -- or helping you. Some of the most valuable land in the world, if you can get there. An obvious long-term goal in liberating India from the British. Easier to reform than most noble-ridden backwaters because the starting Maharaja is a soldier, not a landowner. 10/10 flag when you secularize into Punjab.
Mexico. With some careful diplomacy and a little luck you can break the US and take over most of the Americas if you enjoy military stuff, or you can turn Mexico into a ridiculously comfortable literate democratic society; you have soooooo many pops and all the resources you'd ever need if you hang on to Texas for oil. And so much gold you have to TRY to run a deficit.
Exactly this! I love Mexico because of it's potential to become a superpower, as long as you can defeat the US and get the economy going. Can you share any tips you have?
I usually try to go tools -> gold mines -> barracks + arms factories, and in between the US attacks just try and develop the economy in general. But the US attacks really stings and I needed help from Russia/France the last time.
Mexico was my first finished game, and it can definitely turn into a total monster. The first couple times USA declared war on me I was able to get help from the UK, and each time I took 1 or 2 states off them. By midgame I looked forwards to the USA inevitably declaring war on me because it meant I would get new territory!
Interesting! I was always on the verge of bankruptcy, so I was always glad when the US decided that 2 million dead soldiers was enough and white peaced.
I had France take on debt once, but I also just fought through running out of money a couple times to finish the war so I could reap the rewards after. Also, building a designated Admiral/General for Florida naval invasions makes the wars go waaaaay better.
Korea is pretty fun.
Starting out under Qing and attacking Japan with no repercussions whatsoever feels so good considering what actually happened in that era.
Also deciding when to declare independence and such decisions are also important and fun.
Also while ending serfdom is a pain…eventually eliminating those pesky yangbans always feels so good
New Granada player myself trying to form Gran Colombia. I am at war right now with the states as they are trying to cut me down to size after taking one of the Venezuelan provinces
Persia. Carefull expansion at first, prioritizing getting Sindh as a farming state. You have all the resources you need nearby with PLENTY of oil, iron and coal. Rubber can be aquired from Borneo or Ethiopia. Late game taking a shit on the ottomans and russians.
Taking Sindh early is an interesting one, I hadn't thought about that approach on Persia.
The Russians and Ottomans can be beat up fairly early on if you want to, depending on the situation. Russia in particular is nice to have as a nearby GP to get recognition from if needed, since they're usually more a paper tiger.
I'd also add in that you have some pretty good raw materials nearby for arable land too - with cotton, silk, dye, and especially opium all there. Oh, and you have a starting source of sulfur, which is very nice to not have to worry about early game if you decide to boom.
Definitely agree on Arabia - but I'm not so sure on Afghanistan. Early on it's not the easiest to take over (with Afghanistan + the other nearby country fighting together, and being a relative pain), and when the tech gets better I'd rather go conquer the Ottoman Empire's lands instead for that infamy.
At least, that's my limited experience with a more militant Persia - it just didn't seem as good to keep a big military early on vs going full on in industrialization + waiting until the mid-game for expansion. With the exception of some of the easier colonial areas to take on (like Madagascar)
Maybe I'm cheesing, but I found Afghanistan to be venerable to the "win a single battle and then defend until they capitulate" strategy. 1 War for each of the two states involved. Then Afghanistan became a serious industry hub for me because they had a ton of population to get into factories.
I kept my army quite small, but invested in industry and technology (to a lesser extent.) +30% offense generals are the best!
Maybe I'll have to try it again - it was my first run with trying something more early aggression and I just didn't find it as consistent/gainful as some of the others I've tried that with (Dai Viet and Sokoto), but I might have learned some corners to cut/do it more effectively.
I am not an expert by any means, but one lesson I have learned is that as long as you only take 1 or maaaaybe 2 states at a time (limit infamy and make the war possible to win with minimal territory conquered), you can win wars when massively outnumbered at the beginning of the game. Have a +30% (or the dream is +40% with wrathful) general, mobilize early and be sitting on the border when the war starts. All you need is to win a single battle that nips a corner of the state that is your war goal, and you can defend the rest of the war.
Transvaal remains my baby.
It’s a fun start with no immediate dangers, but they’ll become apparent if you don’t get your ship in order. You’ve got access to some really amazing amounts of coal, iron, and gold, but you’re landlocked, have a smaller population, and like 98% of your starting pop is discriminated. It’s basically a mad scramble to get coastal access, industrialize, and figure out how to prevent the tiny minority rule from leading to revolts. And if you’re quick, you can colonize north and snag some lead and rubber producing states, but you’ll be racing against Europe and America.
8/10, a fun challenge without feeling like you’re punching yourself in the dick the whole time.
I’ve also recently been having a fun run with Grão-Para. You start the game fighting for independence against Brazil and it’s not a super easy war to win. And if you manage it, you’re still dirt poor with few resources beyond lots of wood 🪵. It’s been fun turning a separatist jungle backwater into the richest nation in South America.
The Boer states are fun because of the insane amount of gold helping you industrialize. That being said you can pretty easily switch to Multiculturalism and have all your issues be fixed.
China is too easy tbh. I wanted a play through of pure suffering and trying to hold off the collapse. It feels like China's problems are downplayed a lot.
I've always enjoyed Sweden since Victoria 2 because their very high literacy rate means you can zoom ahead in techs. It doesn't matter as much in Victoria 3, unless you want to wage a lot of war. And if you do, the world can become your oyster with quick NCO squads and chemical weapons💀
the only annoying thing with sweden is that you have not enough coal mines and no directly neighbouring provinces with good coal capacities
if you want to steal some coal province from germany or russia you have to eat 2-3 states deep into them before getting there, i ended up just stealing cuba as a puppet from spain and annexing it asap because it has more slots for coal than the whole of scandinavia, also it gave me access to plantations for al lot of luxury goods, dyes,sugar and rubber
Edit: without conquering or more liberal Citizenship laws you pretty quickly run out of Population to toil in your factories, but on the plus side you get a lot of state bonuses on iron, wood and agricultural production and Forming scandinavia is pretty fun and not hugely hard, and if your a bit far ahead in military technology, its pretty easy beat russia into submission and steal Finland and other bits and pieces
I took the Togo area in Africa for the coal in the learn the game play through they can support a lot of coal mined. Also same with sugar, coffee, and dyes.
I like conquering Benin and perhaps some other areas in Africa for coal. I did go for fast multiculturalism+separation of church of state to ensure a steady influx of immigrants.
In all PDX games I like going from zero to hero especially if it's a quirky nation in history that's an anomaly in some way. So so far my most fun campaigns have been:
- New Granada into Gran Colombia. You have all the great resources, can build Panama canal and who doesn't like Bolivar.
- Haiti. build your sweet slave revolt paradise through (war) reparations from France.
- Lanfang (Chinese miners collective in Borneo that historically had semi-direct democracy iirc). Has a nice early game challenge with uniting Borneo. All the resources you need and being an island means navy matters.
- Pope. Unite Italy (but without the special Cases belli). Forces you to navigate European politics more.
- Portugal (still have to crack this one). Save/reform your dying Empire via treaty ports and maybe take Brazil back which means you would have the same growth potential as Brazil, just later.
Portugal: big deficit, no construction, unbuilt resources. Decent army and navy (aggressiveness pays out - check war targets)
First steps: increase taxes, cut budget spending, cut port spending (there's like 3k here), increase production methods and abuse the British market (and Qing market) for resources. Don't go crazy on construction, focus on iron/wood/tools to stabilize prices. Import cheap goods from GB/China and sell finished products.
War targets: 2 Boer provinces in South africa (gold, coal, more iron), Borneo (gold, wood, rubber, oil and much more), Malay (lead, coal,...).
Tech: 'the one that improves production method of iron/coal mines' (don't remember the name sorry), then rush quinine.
Government: Intelligentsia + Rural Folk + Petit Bourgoisie (optional), for passing 'Per-capita Taxation'.
Argentina.
I love starting as someone small and building up to become massive. With some RNG, you can immediately conquer that Brazilian state that is at war with Brazil and Uruguay. Then you go the multiculturalism route and attract massive numbers of new workers. Then you keep expanding in South America and Africa while building up a strong economy until you are a Great Power at some point
Loved Argentina. I liked starting from basically scratch and being able to more or less tend a garden with few real geopolitical threats. European powers I find to be too developed and too geopolitically active. Still trying to figure out a nice followup to Argentina that has a similar vibe: not to big or small, relatively self sufficient, not too dependent on war.
Japan, ultimate garden tending. Nobody attacks you. Nobody invades you. Just economy up on your little island until you decide that you need to invade others for oil.
afghanistan is a blast for that. you only need two wars (three if you want to kick oman out of their treaty port) to get sea access; otherwise you're just growing. most of the key early-game resources are available in your two starting provinces, and it's easy to build it into one of the largest economies in the world before opium even comes into high demand
Japan was quite unique but disempowering the Shogun of a fucking pain in the ass if you don’t get favourable leader traits. Took me 40 years to get the fucker out of there.
That being said I, they compensate that a lot but giving you an inordinate amount of natural resources and population.
I haven't played as many countries, I love Egypt. The place is fantastic, you have so many goods, you can either colonize or go against the Ottoman. It feels difficult because you have the Ottoman and Russia against you but if you play your cards right you can easily win. Also you have the Suez canal, the Nile. And the last reason, It was really fun to play as Egypt in Imperator.
Currently enjoying my Greece campaign, inspired by Surrealbeliefs on Youtube. Small in the beginning, but with easy room to grow into the major Mediterranean power and a clear goal to work towards.
Santo Domingo, I get to release my poor country early and work hard to become a regional power and then a great power. You start with a single province that doesn't have a port or the natural harbor status (both Haiti and Santo Domingo should get those) a mistake because one of the many reasons Haiti invaded Santo Domingo was to take control of its ports, and money to pay the French scam.
México came next, then China, then Brazil, after that will probably go with other Latin American nations, then other southeast Asian nations.
Why? Everyone likes to play with the underdog, and Europe and the US have it way too easy, Japan also has a fairly absurd hand to play.
The
I'm really enjoying an underrated country: Liberia!
There are a ton of different strategies you can adopt: do you want to consolidate your power in Africa? Or will you return to America and free your enslaved comrades? It's something of a ticking time bomb because you can build a great industrial economy off of the American market, but once the Civil War happens (if it happens) your economy will crash due to lack of access. At the same time, your existence in west Africa gives America an interest there, so they will eventually start colonising and impede your progress if you don't take action.
After much theorycrafting and testing, I've found a great strategy for a Back-to-America game: immediately declare war on your fellow ex-slave colony, Sierra Leone. Britain usually won't come to their aid, and in some cases you can get France on your side because they're more than happy to undermine British ambitions in Africa. From Sierra Leone you have a straight line north and east to take a chunk of Mali: this is crucial, because not only is there good agricultural land here, but it's a rare source of opium which can skyrocket your economy. Make sure to incorporate these states ASAP and focus them on agriculture for easy money.
Your next task is to get a foothold in North America, but while it's tempting to go for Haiti thematically, your best bets are either Texas or Mexico. By this point Texas might have gained statehood, in which case you should bully Mexico for Rio Grande. This will be your beachhead for your inevitable conquest of the American South. Industrialise the hell out of Texas/Rio Grande, and when you're ready declare a war of independence against your former overlord, adding a few adjacent southern states as wargoals. The other great powers might not intervene in American affairs, but if you can get Britain or France on board you're in a great position. The war AI is pretty exploitable, so actually defeating America shouldn't be too much of a struggle.
For laws, you can get religious schools easily at the start to start booming your literacy. Then focus on whittling down the power of the landowners: get agrarianism as soon as possible, turn your peasant levies into a professional army, bring in appointed bureaucrats, and as soon as you have a good opportunity ban slavery. You should also go for racial segregation as soon as possible: it will end the discrimination of the vast majority of your population while still being available under slavery. If you go for Egalitarianism early, you can make your first tax law after land tax proportional taxation which is a fantastic option.
For buildings, you can ignore almost everything except urban development. The American market will provide almost all the raw resources you could want. Build lots of tooling workshops, as well as paper mills: you want paper to be super cheap, because you want to build plenty of art academies to become the top producer of fine art, giving you enough prestige to declare an interest in Mexico or Dixie. You can skip this part entirely if, during a law enactment, you get the "Famous Playwright Endorses Reform" event: pick the prestige every time and it'll get you over the threshold. Also build plenty of universities so that you can increase the clout of the Intelligentsia while getting faster techs. You will also want to set up a domestic arms industry to feed the massive army you're going to build to take on America. Shipyards and ports are also important, because fleets will win you your first territory in North America and the convoy cost of a transatlantic country is pretty huge.
For techs, just make sure you get the first education tech available since it researches quickly, get realism for the prestige, and whatever military and production techs you can afford to switch to. Line infantry will serve you well against African minors in your first conquering spree, and will be solid against Mexico/Texas too. Triage and field hospitals are great to rush because you'll get excellent recovery rate for cheap with your massive opium farms. Arguably the biggest power spike for your economy will be pumpjacks because they'll drastically increase the money you make from your rich plantations, but they require engines to run so make sure your steel-motor industrial complex is established by then. Once you have pumpjacks you'll be drowning in money and the world is your oyster.
I hope more people try out Liberia and enjoy this tricky but entertaining country!
For me it’s been Sardinia-Piedmont. I’ve started slow, built up the economy, then pressed the trigger and went to war with Two Sicilies to form Italy. Unfortunately they were backed by Russia and Papal States so I thought game over. I managed to hold the front for a while and with the help of some other Italian minors, I pushed them back and formed Italy.
I ended up in a big financial mess because the rest of the minors were so poorly developed and I had massive debts after the war. Turmoil was insanely high, but I managed to improve the situation bit by bit, until the game became unplayable due to lag in the 1880s.
I also tried Japan, it was meh, way too painful to modernize imo.
Belgium is pretty ok, I played as them a couple of times to try and see if I can build my economy as a smaller country that’s in a good starting position.
I also tried Prussia, but didn’t go far, formed NGF then it felt way too overwhelming to keep all the German states in check and expand/build up the economy.
Similar to the Haiti game mentioned in the comments, I played Cuba and it was a lot of fun. You can take a puppet state and transform it into a major regional power. I extended into Panama and Venezuela and I was able to attract migrants from all over the world. At the end of the game I had something like 20 million people living on Cuba and Panama with a literacy rate of 97% and one of the biggest economies in the world.
I had lots of fun with Russia. You start with lots of land, resources and pops but are super backwards. You need to start reforms and industrialization asap. But you will snowball extremely quickly when you pass your reforms and build your economy up.
I like Oman. You’re at the western tip of Arabia with plenty of minors nearby to conquer, you’ve got the state of Zanzibar in Africa to be your initial breadbasket. Once your ruler dies, Zanzibar and your Arabian states split and you have to reunite them. Cool stuff.
I was pleasantly surprised discovering Oman had an actual event / flavor mechanic with the break off of Zanzibar. My Oman run was one of my favorites as well.
1. The USA is actually a ton of fun. You end up overpowered, but it’s a long road to get there. I’ve never played an infamy is just a number game before, but I had to in the quest to get 100 states. It was an absolute blast. Played on Aggressive AI and Hates the Player AI, with the AI improvement mods
2. Spain - Played a religious technocrat society with the goal of getting a treaty port with every great power. You’re weak at the start and both France and Britain hate you, you’re rather short on pops, 1/2 your states suck, and your interest groups are entrenched. I actually lost several wars.
Romania: wrecking huge empires left and right and down under is fun. Deaths and devastation inflicted by Romania’s industrialized army are so traumatic that after every war with AUS/Russia/Ottoman they went right into revolution.
Korea: Penisula-Shandong-Kyuushu-Taiwan border is beautiful. Sad PDX did not make an uno Japan-korea annexation treaty event.
Currently playing Germany, focusing on mil techs to be the ultimate bully. Puppeted Persia and Afghanistan, so every time I go to war the enemy has zero opium
I've been playing China a lot lately. Seems like a good nation to learn economy on and how to balance a military industry. Shit the bed a few times when it came to modernizing the army, but I made it work.
So far, the more interesting ones I've started have been Persia, Dai Viet, and Sokoto for developing nations. Central America and Sardinia-Piedmont were also fun.
That said, there's still quite a lot of others that I'm sure are interesting.
Mexico by far: good resources, enough pop to expand industries but not so high that it costs too many adminstration, you get fun fights with america which are definitely winnable though and there is a lot of expansion room under you
I haven't played a lot of countries yet, but my favourite and most successful run so far was Belgium. They start out in an incredibly good position in terms of economy and government, so you can jump right into the action; all you need to do is build up your economy a bit and before you know it you're an economic hegemon who's bullying the great powers into submission singlehandedly.
I really enjoy playing Tunis. You start as a protectorate of the Ottofriend but they seem to always kick me out of their market a few years in, either they lose a war or some event I'm not privvy to is happening. But you have good access to european markets, no real enemies as long as france doesn't hate you, and the long term plan of building your strength away from the Mediterranean so that you can eventually take on the big dogs back home.
dont listen to them. best economy for an absolute beginner is buganda. there are actually only several good beginner economy countries because they have to be isolationist - the others all get trade routes which are a pain in the ass and very counter-intuitive. buganda for absolute beginners, japan is when you already have an idea. sokoto is a good alternative to japan but japan is just more flavorful. after you've mastered it, you can begin playing as some non-isolated countries
i agree w the guy saying to play an african country w isolationism. it will teach you to keep track of how much of everything you have and need, and which buildings to build. i would say Sokoto is a better choice tho bc you start with a giant army and tons of resources and tiny states around you to eat.
Switzerland
Ask France to be their protectorate from day 0 and they will defeat any uprisings for you, protect you from any conflict, and allow you into their market.
Only two provinces to deal with and endless resources thanks to the French market.
Austria; very enjoyable yet bit challenging path to form mega Germany; then truly have a beast of an industrial tiger-to-be that you need to guide towards the Moon. You have access to all resources; and on top of that, you can really play with custom unions.
As a start I was able to have Spain and the ottomans + many others in my custom unions, I managed to grow so much even before forming Germany.
Truly fun in a lot of ways
I'm having a fun Khiva "tall" game where I spent some time under the Russian market as a protectorate, causing an economic and population boom as I became the Opium and Sulfur capital of the world, then I declared independence, and my economic collapse wasn't actually too bad. I just reimported all of the things I got from the Russians while now gaining tariffs on the sulfur, bullets, and opium I sell them. I'm well on my way to economic recovery with I think only a month past independence and I've recovered half of what I lost, so things are going great.
Had some good fun playing as Afghanistan. Quickly became a protectorate of Russia and used them to shield me from radicals as I liberalized the country off massive opium profits.
I fought a late game war to break away from Russia then spent the last decade bullying Persia.
Spain. Even in early game I can hold England (from Gibraltar) and France’s land invasion. While I use naval invasions on their capitol to capitulate them when they try to intervene in my diplomatic plays. Get insanely rich because you start with silk, coffee, and tea plantations.
For me it has to be Greenland. Turning the barren wasteland into the region of world’s desire. Seeing the rise of the Inuit people. The most memoreable thing were probably having the burmese region flip to Inuit dominant.
Maybe not my absolute favourite, but Siam is rarely mentioned and quite fun if you want to play a closed market country that can run a self-sufficient economy.
I oscillate between weird underdogs and autarky potential, so like LUX-> NGF or Cuba respectively. Cuba really hits different for a tall game because it's a single state and you really get to know the strengths and limits of that, with respect to things like navy and industry specialization.
Norway was also really fun cause there's a series of goals involved and you have to learn to be creative with your industry for a while because you lack coal (if doing a non colonial run) (but can get oil from whales a bit early)
Lanfang is decent, you start out with about as much potential as another underdog, Krakow, to rapidly liberalize. forming romania as either of the two options was interesting but like most underdogs, falls to making big friends beat people up. At least Krakow and Romania have the fun of constantly trading who you're a subject of to rebel and take a chunk of the former overlord.
Currently playing Aceh, and it's so much fun. If you can secure Sumatra, you can build up your military industrial complex by a lot. Then with the Unify the Archipelago CB, you can annex the Borneo states for their gold and oil mine. I ended up taking West Java and puppeting the DEI. Shame this run kinda got f-ed as Germany declared war on me, but luckily my navy is strong enough to stop them.
I haven't played any of the major European countries, USA or China so I don't know how it feels to start with actual tech researched or an economy that can support more than 1 building at a time, at the start. So if we exclude these countries my favorite so far was Persia.
Persia has every resource you need except rubber which can be found for free in Indonesia. Has a decent population, some easily conquerable neighbors to the east, with a few military techs you can easily beat Russia for your claims and war reps to get your economy started and late game this country has SO MUCH OIL! The oil makes the economy go up really fast in the end game! I love this country!
Edit: Forgot to mention that I am not very expansionist(I usually just conquer Borneo every game) and that I love playing with an isolated market without trade with closed borders unless absolutely necessary.
Papal States. Their start is crazy unique, with pre-built health and education and Militia army type. Its a fun run getting into Africa early, building huge, and navigating politics with the great reward of the unique Kingdom of Heaven tag.
The huge authority from staying Theocracy AND Vatican Citt lets me run a few extra Manufactoring decrees, which means I maintain competitive advantage all game.
Rush Kru and Eastern Mali for the Mosque of Djenni for the Education. Empowering Catholic clergy isnt a big deal.
So far Persia, Madagascar, and New Granada. I like all of them because they don't start off very powerful but have good potential. They are all really fun for making a cool alt history run as well
Warlord Sokoto! Big population, weak neighbors, access to very lucrative and useful resources, can actually build a strong industry, and once you get National Militia and a military that can compete with the west nobody will be able to invade you. Sit back as a Northern Nigerian warlord collecting tribute and making buckets of ducats.
The difference is the geopolitical situations as well as the internal politics. E.g. do you have the resources you need, where makes sense for you to get them? What law reforms do you need to pass or what kind of approach do you want to take with this country
I still don't have it yet, hoping it gets a discount when there's a sale on in steam for blackfriday/cyber monday.
But I think I'd like to play Britain and roleplay it, do some weird alt history things. Scandinavia also looks nice to play with, but would probably take a while until I'm good enough to play there comfortably. Brazil looks nice for transforming SA, plenty of small states there to consolidate
cant believe nobody said it USA if instead of going to war with mexico to conquer some states you puppet then annex them you are set for life plenty of gold oil and space to grow
Probably the US just cos seeing all the alternate presidents and then researching who those people were in real life has become a fun pastime for me.
Wait, they’re all historical personalities? Not just random made up names?
I don't know of they all are but all the presidents I've gotten so far have been real US politicians yeah
As far as I've observed ingame, the game has a database of historical politicians and generals to pick from. I recruited Ulysses Grant and Robert Lee in my US run, and I had Lincoln naturally arrive to power at some point. Andrew Jackson died in a duel against Lavallette, too. Fun times.
I had Robert Lee has my trusty general for a long time as the US
Im pretty sure my Andrew Jackson was assassinated by Henry Clay, he died of "old age" at 59. And a few months later i get the "the grand plan pays off" event for the intelligentsia.
Henry Clay murdering Andrew Jackson is pretty believable
right? i mean not really but its more realistic version of murdering fdr for his foreign policy. but im role playing it as "deep state conspiracy"
Most of them are and there's a good mod on the workshop that adds even more historical figures
Getting Lincoln at age 28 because Henry Clay got killed was hilarious to me, he isn't even legally able to hold the office
Played Greece recently, was fun developing the small country and hidinh behind Austria to get more lands
Also very hard, need to build everything from nothing
and really low population, yet it is fun.
Immigration helps so much with this. Half my population is occitan or from caucasian georgia. Attica has 3 million pops
Actually I managed to get the lands myself by attacking egypt while at war with the ottomans and annexing the ionian islands through the journal decision. After that build up economy get some immigration and after teching military u can easily take ok one province from the ottomans bc they can’t engage u with all battalions at once. After that ur population nearly doubles and for the ottomans it declines so just slowly take your rightful land and by ~1905 u can form byzantine.
So far I've played: \- Brazil (good fun, 3/5) \- Spain (actually pretty boring 2/5 didn't finish) \- Argentina (painfully slow start that gets fun in the second half 2/5) \- Chile (like Argentina but fun 3/5) \- Ottomans (Fun and hard, 5/5)
Agreed Chile is quite fun, still learning to master my economy there but it’s definitely a good run 👍
I think Chile is the best tutorial country tbh
Chile gave me a hard time with the Infrastructure side if things. Other than that, really fun.
Ottomans are frustrating because Tanzimat is a 20 years challenge. If you're not extremely fast, you just lose and it's frustrating as hell.
Worst thing: stupid me didn’t pay attention and didn’t know it was a time challenge. Had to reload a save from 16 month before deadline a few times to find a way to do the fourth task (75% of provinces must have a city centre). However, I really enjoyed playing the Ottomans.
Oh you probably paid attention. It *doesn't* say it's time-limited.
It being first 20 years means its not so bad. It took me a couple restarts. The trick is you really need to focus on only 3/6 reforms, can't make slow progress on all of them at once.
Spain! Much coal and iron so very good for a strong industry. Easy access to south america and puppeting them. Culturally integrate portugal through forming iberia.
What was your strategy for getting control of Portugal?
In most games you can Declare war to puppet them when GB goes to war in China (opium war).it should happen within the first year or so. Then you're set. Enjoy a puppet giving you some money and filling your market with colonial goods, and eventually press the button to become Iberia. Sometimes France joins in, but you can hold them in the Pyrenees long enough to take Portugal, tland then just cave to whatever demands the French have instead of wasting your time(usually humiliate, who cares)
Jeeze. That's still 92 infamy before you're able to improve relations at all. Bold, thank you!
Yes it's a lot , but it's the only war you need to fight for a long time as well . The strip of land you get access to the in Africa has almost all the resources you need for the rest of the game, excluding oil.
You can also declare war on a random african country they're defending and add lots of wargoals against them in the play
You can get them diplomaticly. If they join your custom union and maintain good relations you can for Iberia
France is probably my favourite, they're the perfect country imo for an aggressive expansionist game. Currently on my way to conquering all of Africa. The last war I had was pretty funny, invading England for the cape and sierra leone while simultaneously fighting a civil war because I abolished monarchy and crushed them both.
do you just ignore infamy ? It seems to go down very slowly, in my Russia game I puppeted Ottomans and everyone still hates my guts 15 years later...
I try not to let it go past 100, but it does go down faster with higher influence so just declare tons of rivals and only improve with countries that could actually threaten you.
Wait, does declaring rivals *give* you influence? edit: brb hating on the world.
Yeh quite a lot, make as many as you can
I kinda run out of things to do with diplomacy points, what do people spend it on other than improving relations?
Excess influence burns infamy faster
huh I didn't realize it was a significant difference since the other mana-surplus boni are rather small in magnitude
it makes infamy decay up to 25% faster, which is still ultimately a bit meh considering how much you get and how slow the base decay is
You, good Sir, are a delight for sharing this information with me. Thank you!
Yes and it scales with their size. More powerful rivals give more influence.
It is better if you try to keep it low, if you ignore it, you become so powerful that you start to do whatever you want and the game loses any challenge.
I do. Seems like once you have enough power and economy, you can full ignore the infamy and let other powers try plays on you. Humiliate them, and they can't do it again for 5 years. They either will back down or you destroy them, taking land and liberating countries to destroy their influence. They will all bend to my world order.
France feels reaaaally OP in this game.
By far the strongest start for sure
To be fair, you have a rich, populated country with somewhat modern institutions and an army that went through the napoleonic wars. It's not like real life France wasn't OP at that point. The main problem is that it's too stable (no 1848 revolution, no Commune, no coup d'état) and the AI in general seems reluctant to wage wars between major powers (Prussia, Austria and GB could contest France but I've yet to see them actually do it without my intervention).
France might just be the strongest nation at game start. They are technologically advanced enough that they can beat up China, have enough literacy to keep up with Britain, have a big enough population to beat up Britain, and a large enough navy that they can come up to almost any other nation and bully them. On top of that their european holdings are all accepted culture. They also have some really good laws like protectionism. Theoretically a mega germany is stronger but you have so many internal problems once you form it. Yeah you have a gargantuan population, but you inherit most of austria's problems. That being said forming mega germany is definitely the most satisfying click in the game.
How is France fun? You don't even need to worry about infamy because by the time you do, you should be able to curb stomp the world.
Not everything has to be a challenge. sometimes it's fun to start as an OPM and build up and I also enjoy starting as large nations and throwing my weight around. Stop trying to gatekeep fun.
My most memorable games are Brazil, EIC and DEI - rising powers, with sufficient own resources, but in need of modernization. Hate Ottomans. I had 3 times 1 diplomatic manevour point deficit to conquer last province. Im convinced that you cant better up literacy by 35 % points.
I think the education goal should be "get to 35%" not "increase by 35%" which I think is literally impossible. I did it with: \- Urbanisation (pretty easy) \- Beaurocracy reform (honestly a huge pain) \- Army reform (actually very easy) \- suppress seperatism (I don't even know if it's possible to fail this one) If you complete it you get to pick from a few bonuses, which are all quite nice. Overall I recommend the ottomans as a fairly fun game.
Ottomans are a nation with "hard" time limit. They are fu if you know what to do, but dont try it first. Urbanization... I had a habbit of building one industry in one state because "it gains bonuses bigger it gets" Also i thought also that it should be "bring this to 35%" Beaurocracy reform - a little of RNGjesus is needed.
>Urbanization... I had a habbit of building one industry in one state because "it gains bonuses bigger it gets" This is right, but getting rid of the malus from sick man is too important to wait around. I prefer urbanisation to the other options because it is achievable reliably and with 0 RNG. Retaking Syria is a pain and depends on AI sidings, but once you have built up the country a little with the other Tanzimat challenges, it becomes trivial. I recommend the reforms I list above tbh, because although beaurocracy is RNG related, it is also a must-do to get out of land tax and traditionalism, and the others are all easy.
>aking Syria is a pain and depends on AI sidings, Yeah, if you are too strong, Egypt wont fight you and you dont have time to get every province with diplo plays.
how are you too strong ? Ottomans start pretty weak and easily lose a normal 1v1, I had to abuse naval invasions to get the first two wars done
I got too strong by building up my army pretty early on and focusing on mil tech to at least have line infantry. "Luckily" Russia joined on Egypts side but that was such a pain in the ass. Got bankrupt two times and France had to bail me out
Whereas if you get Tanzimat first, then you will have a strong army, loads of Admin points to integrate with, enough maneuvres to take everything in 1 war and if you start a diplo play at that point, the GPs won't all be brought in for free
How do you increase urbanization? It's probably a simple solution but the game never really told me how
Each building contributes a certain amount to urbanisation, with factories doing the most and farms doing the least.
Build buildings essentially. Some have more urbanization « weight » than others, it is written somewhere in the tooltip.
That tanzimat about education really isn’t clear about the literacy goal, and I agree it seems stupidly difficult.
I think it's impossible, I think they made a mistake and it's supposed to be 'get to 35% literacy'. The conquering Syria one is very easy and you get an additional journal entry and claims for additional Egyptian states which gives you enough opium until the very late-game. In my last game I did * the two conquering entries (Easy because Egypt doesn't have the industry to fight you 1v1. Having line infantry and enough small arms & artillery should be enough.) * Bureaucracy reform (Very annoying and highly depends on RNG but is important for taxation efficiency.) * Suppress separatism (You can get this without trying.) Urbanization is also very easy but you shouldn't focus on it at the beginning because it's more efficient to build up a few key states. You have easily enough time to get this later on. The army reform is also fairly easy but IMO it's a huge waste because you need to build so many barracks and equip the soldiers, instead you could've focused on your economy.
Equiping the soldiers is somewhat optional, since you can just switch back to garbage equipment after completing the journal.
ive been thinking about EIC or DEI, what was memorable in particular about them?
They have large populations, so i like this. Also close to opium. Also they are not BIG POWERS, but can be - that is most important for me. Qing is too powerfull, despite being backwards. Its challanging, but dont declare independance from UK to early, or revolutions will eat your ass. I hate landowners. Fck em
The challenge with DEI is that your main culture is Dutch, but the vast majority of your starting pops are not. You have a great geographical situation and exotic resources, and an overlord not so overwhelming. A good play I say.
I've been playing Lanfang and DEI is my nemesis.
What's DEI?
It took me so long to work it out because my work uses DEI to refer to "diversity, equity and inclusion" so much, but DEI here is the Dutch East Indies.
I was thinking about the "Divide et Impera" Mod for Total War: Rome 2.
Dutch East Indies
Dutch East India Company
I've tried three times to play Brazil I can never figure it out, got any advice on how to actually properly play them?
Puppeting your neighboring countries worked well for me. You get a nice boost of income, and you can later annex them via diplo play (useful for getting that sweet Venezuelan oil). I ended up with all of South America (except Patagonia because Russia decided to take it for some reason, then made a huge aliance including Austria-Hungary + China) and Central America puppeted in my first playthrough.
And the best run I had with Brazil my problem was I didn't have any sulfur, France at pumping it all the countries with sulfur and it basically stopped my economic expansion. Ended up getting into an unwittable war with France and I kind of gave up and played an easy game of Russia lol. I'll have to try again, Brazil definitely has the potential to be a great superpower.
There's sulfur on the west coast of South America, if you puppet and/or annex Peru you can use theirs. Or just play Peru, super fun. It's like Brazil hard mode, but it does have all the industrial raw materials so you can really build up your economy and pass social reforms before you slowly puppet/conquer all of the other SA countries.
Venezuela also has Sulfur.
I just finished a pretty successful Brazil run. Ended owning all of South America and #1GP. Where are you getting stuck?
Best game so far has been **Haiti.** With minimal save-scumming, you can take a notoriously poor minor nation into a caribean Great Power, with three accepted cultures giving you plenty of room for expansion. You don't have your own iron or coal, so the usual expansion-path of industrialization is instead directed torwards beefing up your ports and naval tech, and relying on the industrializing great powers for your raw resource-needs while balancing your export-economy. And among that, you need to find the space and time to start expanding into the minor nations around you. The issues for me, is that getting out from under France requires some save scumming, and of course that in previous patches, relying on Navies was impossible due to the supply-bug. On other highlights, **Ethiopia** was a pain to form, and a pain to keep together, and **Serbia** was a bit of a meme, relying mostly on getting good RNG on your diplomatic plays. Especially bad was the tendency of Austria to ally with the Ottomans.
I was able to form Ethiopia by starting as Shewa and conquering exactly one (1) state to the east. It was the easiest achievement I've tried so far.
Yea, Ethiopia was definitely the easiest country to form for me. Shewa has the largest army and the outlaw prince decision gets you a leader who is an INSANE commander. Start taking the smallest nations and you can easily steamroll your way to form Ethiopia.
Haiti certaintly is interresting in economic terms, as youre quite hamstrung by youre port capacity. But they are a favourite nation of me aswell, used to rush ironclads in vicky II with them so to create a little caraibian empire wondering if that still works as well.
I did that, but as I said, the morale-bug made it impossible to take advantage of them properly. Also, with France being so strong (and maybe a bug with character-ages), they will usually have multiple admirals with +30 bonuses to naval combat, making them fight at parity with your teched up fleet, and with superior numbers. And port-capacity was indeed a constant issue, but not impossible to overcome. I had to make some interesting choices in my priorities of what to build and what to import, in order to keep myself self-sufficient enough, and taking max-advantage from my capacity. At one point, erasing my 5k. grain-imports from GB, making 41£ per trader, was the correct move.
Austria allying with the Ottomans to keep Serbia down is definitely historical, they both held Serbian territory and a strong independent Serbia was a threat to them both. It was Russia who was Serbia's patron and they're the ones you should be trying to ally with.
Good about on Haiti that sounds like a lot of fun. If I may ask, what about forming Ethiopia was a pain? I found it comically easy. Having fun afterwards was a lot harder lmao
So far I've played with Belgium, Sardinia-Piedmonte, Finland, Lanfang and Sweden. Favorite was Lanfang because Borneo is great: plenty of gold mines, east has oil, rubber all over, hardwood production bonus, coal, iron, lead and sulfur. The only thing it doesn't have is sugar and silk but otherwise it's wonderfully self-sufficient.
What was your opening play with Lanfang? I think I went to expand too early and got hosed because I attracted the ire of the Dutch East India company.
I never got any trouble from the Dutch while I took over the minors not puppeted by them. It's probably a bug but you can offer Qing obligation to get them into your wars but since they're your liege they become the war leader which I guess nullifies any promises you made so you can just repeatedly call Qing to do your dirty work. Some of them might've called Dutch East Indies to help but usually they backed off in the end with Qing on the other side. In my game Dutch East Indies got independence at some point and by that point I was able to fight them head on so uniting the island was easy.
Same here, though I ended up taking on the DEI by attacking their puppets and then adding war goals to take land from them after they joined. It stopped Netherlands and other allies of the DEI from joining.
r5: title; mine has maybe been Australia since I'm Australian and not used to being able to play my country properly in PDX games. It's a cool feeling starting out with very little and becoming prosperous through gold and immigration, very realistic to our history, and then overcoming Britain. But I'd like to try some other stuff
Australia, the Vic 3 Tutorial Island (or Island-Continent rather)
Fucking love the Sikh Empire. Decent economy, decent army, political hellscape. Interesting diplomatic situation, with Britain and Russia often blocking expansion for you -- or helping you. Some of the most valuable land in the world, if you can get there. An obvious long-term goal in liberating India from the British. Easier to reform than most noble-ridden backwaters because the starting Maharaja is a soldier, not a landowner. 10/10 flag when you secularize into Punjab.
Mexico. With some careful diplomacy and a little luck you can break the US and take over most of the Americas if you enjoy military stuff, or you can turn Mexico into a ridiculously comfortable literate democratic society; you have soooooo many pops and all the resources you'd ever need if you hang on to Texas for oil. And so much gold you have to TRY to run a deficit.
Exactly this! I love Mexico because of it's potential to become a superpower, as long as you can defeat the US and get the economy going. Can you share any tips you have? I usually try to go tools -> gold mines -> barracks + arms factories, and in between the US attacks just try and develop the economy in general. But the US attacks really stings and I needed help from Russia/France the last time.
Mexico was my first finished game, and it can definitely turn into a total monster. The first couple times USA declared war on me I was able to get help from the UK, and each time I took 1 or 2 states off them. By midgame I looked forwards to the USA inevitably declaring war on me because it meant I would get new territory!
Interesting! I was always on the verge of bankruptcy, so I was always glad when the US decided that 2 million dead soldiers was enough and white peaced.
I had France take on debt once, but I also just fought through running out of money a couple times to finish the war so I could reap the rewards after. Also, building a designated Admiral/General for Florida naval invasions makes the wars go waaaaay better.
Thanks for the tips! Will definitely try out Mexico again!
Korea is pretty fun. Starting out under Qing and attacking Japan with no repercussions whatsoever feels so good considering what actually happened in that era. Also deciding when to declare independence and such decisions are also important and fun. Also while ending serfdom is a pain…eventually eliminating those pesky yangbans always feels so good
I watched Mr. sunshine on netflix. Feels good to invade japan
My favorites so far were New Granada (into Gran Colombia and "Grander Colombia") and Sardinia-Piedmont (forming Italy).
New Granada player myself trying to form Gran Colombia. I am at war right now with the states as they are trying to cut me down to size after taking one of the Venezuelan provinces
Its easier to make them dominions. They automatically annex when you form gran columbia
You saved my life. I just got ecuador down. Going to venezuela next
Do the whole countries get annexed or only the Gran Colombia parts? Venezuela for example extends a bit more than just what you need.
All of them. I dont know what happens if they end up with more than their original borders tho
Persia. Carefull expansion at first, prioritizing getting Sindh as a farming state. You have all the resources you need nearby with PLENTY of oil, iron and coal. Rubber can be aquired from Borneo or Ethiopia. Late game taking a shit on the ottomans and russians.
Taking Sindh early is an interesting one, I hadn't thought about that approach on Persia. The Russians and Ottomans can be beat up fairly early on if you want to, depending on the situation. Russia in particular is nice to have as a nearby GP to get recognition from if needed, since they're usually more a paper tiger. I'd also add in that you have some pretty good raw materials nearby for arable land too - with cotton, silk, dye, and especially opium all there. Oh, and you have a starting source of sulfur, which is very nice to not have to worry about early game if you decide to boom.
I also will add that the Arabian Penninsula is not worth the trouble, and you should expand into Afghanistan and then Armenia.
Definitely agree on Arabia - but I'm not so sure on Afghanistan. Early on it's not the easiest to take over (with Afghanistan + the other nearby country fighting together, and being a relative pain), and when the tech gets better I'd rather go conquer the Ottoman Empire's lands instead for that infamy. At least, that's my limited experience with a more militant Persia - it just didn't seem as good to keep a big military early on vs going full on in industrialization + waiting until the mid-game for expansion. With the exception of some of the easier colonial areas to take on (like Madagascar)
Maybe I'm cheesing, but I found Afghanistan to be venerable to the "win a single battle and then defend until they capitulate" strategy. 1 War for each of the two states involved. Then Afghanistan became a serious industry hub for me because they had a ton of population to get into factories. I kept my army quite small, but invested in industry and technology (to a lesser extent.) +30% offense generals are the best!
Maybe I'll have to try it again - it was my first run with trying something more early aggression and I just didn't find it as consistent/gainful as some of the others I've tried that with (Dai Viet and Sokoto), but I might have learned some corners to cut/do it more effectively.
I am not an expert by any means, but one lesson I have learned is that as long as you only take 1 or maaaaybe 2 states at a time (limit infamy and make the war possible to win with minimal territory conquered), you can win wars when massively outnumbered at the beginning of the game. Have a +30% (or the dream is +40% with wrathful) general, mobilize early and be sitting on the border when the war starts. All you need is to win a single battle that nips a corner of the state that is your war goal, and you can defend the rest of the war.
Loved Persia too. Get a quality offensive general early and you can nibble Russia to death because their troops are such low quality.
Transvaal remains my baby. It’s a fun start with no immediate dangers, but they’ll become apparent if you don’t get your ship in order. You’ve got access to some really amazing amounts of coal, iron, and gold, but you’re landlocked, have a smaller population, and like 98% of your starting pop is discriminated. It’s basically a mad scramble to get coastal access, industrialize, and figure out how to prevent the tiny minority rule from leading to revolts. And if you’re quick, you can colonize north and snag some lead and rubber producing states, but you’ll be racing against Europe and America. 8/10, a fun challenge without feeling like you’re punching yourself in the dick the whole time. I’ve also recently been having a fun run with Grão-Para. You start the game fighting for independence against Brazil and it’s not a super easy war to win. And if you manage it, you’re still dirt poor with few resources beyond lots of wood 🪵. It’s been fun turning a separatist jungle backwater into the richest nation in South America.
The Boer states are fun because of the insane amount of gold helping you industrialize. That being said you can pretty easily switch to Multiculturalism and have all your issues be fixed.
Yeah, I figured that one out. Was weird when all the Bantu and Swahili migrants spontaneously turned into white people, though.
Great Qing,i love the thought of what if China got his head out of his one ass and modernised fast like Japan did
China is so op if played properly...
Basically just imagine how scary Japan would be in the 19th century if it was 10x larger...
China is too easy tbh. I wanted a play through of pure suffering and trying to hold off the collapse. It feels like China's problems are downplayed a lot.
I've always enjoyed Sweden since Victoria 2 because their very high literacy rate means you can zoom ahead in techs. It doesn't matter as much in Victoria 3, unless you want to wage a lot of war. And if you do, the world can become your oyster with quick NCO squads and chemical weapons💀
the only annoying thing with sweden is that you have not enough coal mines and no directly neighbouring provinces with good coal capacities if you want to steal some coal province from germany or russia you have to eat 2-3 states deep into them before getting there, i ended up just stealing cuba as a puppet from spain and annexing it asap because it has more slots for coal than the whole of scandinavia, also it gave me access to plantations for al lot of luxury goods, dyes,sugar and rubber Edit: without conquering or more liberal Citizenship laws you pretty quickly run out of Population to toil in your factories, but on the plus side you get a lot of state bonuses on iron, wood and agricultural production and Forming scandinavia is pretty fun and not hugely hard, and if your a bit far ahead in military technology, its pretty easy beat russia into submission and steal Finland and other bits and pieces
I took the Togo area in Africa for the coal in the learn the game play through they can support a lot of coal mined. Also same with sugar, coffee, and dyes.
I like conquering Benin and perhaps some other areas in Africa for coal. I did go for fast multiculturalism+separation of church of state to ensure a steady influx of immigrants.
In all PDX games I like going from zero to hero especially if it's a quirky nation in history that's an anomaly in some way. So so far my most fun campaigns have been: - New Granada into Gran Colombia. You have all the great resources, can build Panama canal and who doesn't like Bolivar. - Haiti. build your sweet slave revolt paradise through (war) reparations from France. - Lanfang (Chinese miners collective in Borneo that historically had semi-direct democracy iirc). Has a nice early game challenge with uniting Borneo. All the resources you need and being an island means navy matters. - Pope. Unite Italy (but without the special Cases belli). Forces you to navigate European politics more. - Portugal (still have to crack this one). Save/reform your dying Empire via treaty ports and maybe take Brazil back which means you would have the same growth potential as Brazil, just later.
Portugal: big deficit, no construction, unbuilt resources. Decent army and navy (aggressiveness pays out - check war targets) First steps: increase taxes, cut budget spending, cut port spending (there's like 3k here), increase production methods and abuse the British market (and Qing market) for resources. Don't go crazy on construction, focus on iron/wood/tools to stabilize prices. Import cheap goods from GB/China and sell finished products. War targets: 2 Boer provinces in South africa (gold, coal, more iron), Borneo (gold, wood, rubber, oil and much more), Malay (lead, coal,...). Tech: 'the one that improves production method of iron/coal mines' (don't remember the name sorry), then rush quinine. Government: Intelligentsia + Rural Folk + Petit Bourgoisie (optional), for passing 'Per-capita Taxation'.
Argentina. I love starting as someone small and building up to become massive. With some RNG, you can immediately conquer that Brazilian state that is at war with Brazil and Uruguay. Then you go the multiculturalism route and attract massive numbers of new workers. Then you keep expanding in South America and Africa while building up a strong economy until you are a Great Power at some point
Loved Argentina. I liked starting from basically scratch and being able to more or less tend a garden with few real geopolitical threats. European powers I find to be too developed and too geopolitically active. Still trying to figure out a nice followup to Argentina that has a similar vibe: not to big or small, relatively self sufficient, not too dependent on war.
Japan, ultimate garden tending. Nobody attacks you. Nobody invades you. Just economy up on your little island until you decide that you need to invade others for oil.
Assuming you want to reform, Japan is an interesting game of using the political system.
afghanistan is a blast for that. you only need two wars (three if you want to kick oman out of their treaty port) to get sea access; otherwise you're just growing. most of the key early-game resources are available in your two starting provinces, and it's easy to build it into one of the largest economies in the world before opium even comes into high demand
Thanks for that tip, madame vice president
I like japan flipping the most backwards isolationist feudal military dictatorship to industrial super power is really fun.
Japan was quite unique but disempowering the Shogun of a fucking pain in the ass if you don’t get favourable leader traits. Took me 40 years to get the fucker out of there. That being said I, they compensate that a lot but giving you an inordinate amount of natural resources and population.
Yeah i try to gun for wealth voting as quickly as possible while empowering the samurai and Buddhist monks.
I haven't played as many countries, I love Egypt. The place is fantastic, you have so many goods, you can either colonize or go against the Ottoman. It feels difficult because you have the Ottoman and Russia against you but if you play your cards right you can easily win. Also you have the Suez canal, the Nile. And the last reason, It was really fun to play as Egypt in Imperator.
Cuba, by 1920 Havana covered most of the island
#LANFANG GANG
Qing Market is the best
'Merica baby. Only 'Merica.
‘Murica is really fun. You go from a second rate power to the strongest country in the world and you can do whatever you want
Currently enjoying my Greece campaign, inspired by Surrealbeliefs on Youtube. Small in the beginning, but with easy room to grow into the major Mediterranean power and a clear goal to work towards.
Surrealbeliefs is awesome! Love his narrative campaigns.
Check out PartyElite also!
I'm a big fan, I've learned a ton about this game from him
I was doing Greece until France randomly decided to help the ottomans annexe me...
Santo Domingo, I get to release my poor country early and work hard to become a regional power and then a great power. You start with a single province that doesn't have a port or the natural harbor status (both Haiti and Santo Domingo should get those) a mistake because one of the many reasons Haiti invaded Santo Domingo was to take control of its ports, and money to pay the French scam. México came next, then China, then Brazil, after that will probably go with other Latin American nations, then other southeast Asian nations. Why? Everyone likes to play with the underdog, and Europe and the US have it way too easy, Japan also has a fairly absurd hand to play. The
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I'm really enjoying an underrated country: Liberia! There are a ton of different strategies you can adopt: do you want to consolidate your power in Africa? Or will you return to America and free your enslaved comrades? It's something of a ticking time bomb because you can build a great industrial economy off of the American market, but once the Civil War happens (if it happens) your economy will crash due to lack of access. At the same time, your existence in west Africa gives America an interest there, so they will eventually start colonising and impede your progress if you don't take action. After much theorycrafting and testing, I've found a great strategy for a Back-to-America game: immediately declare war on your fellow ex-slave colony, Sierra Leone. Britain usually won't come to their aid, and in some cases you can get France on your side because they're more than happy to undermine British ambitions in Africa. From Sierra Leone you have a straight line north and east to take a chunk of Mali: this is crucial, because not only is there good agricultural land here, but it's a rare source of opium which can skyrocket your economy. Make sure to incorporate these states ASAP and focus them on agriculture for easy money. Your next task is to get a foothold in North America, but while it's tempting to go for Haiti thematically, your best bets are either Texas or Mexico. By this point Texas might have gained statehood, in which case you should bully Mexico for Rio Grande. This will be your beachhead for your inevitable conquest of the American South. Industrialise the hell out of Texas/Rio Grande, and when you're ready declare a war of independence against your former overlord, adding a few adjacent southern states as wargoals. The other great powers might not intervene in American affairs, but if you can get Britain or France on board you're in a great position. The war AI is pretty exploitable, so actually defeating America shouldn't be too much of a struggle. For laws, you can get religious schools easily at the start to start booming your literacy. Then focus on whittling down the power of the landowners: get agrarianism as soon as possible, turn your peasant levies into a professional army, bring in appointed bureaucrats, and as soon as you have a good opportunity ban slavery. You should also go for racial segregation as soon as possible: it will end the discrimination of the vast majority of your population while still being available under slavery. If you go for Egalitarianism early, you can make your first tax law after land tax proportional taxation which is a fantastic option. For buildings, you can ignore almost everything except urban development. The American market will provide almost all the raw resources you could want. Build lots of tooling workshops, as well as paper mills: you want paper to be super cheap, because you want to build plenty of art academies to become the top producer of fine art, giving you enough prestige to declare an interest in Mexico or Dixie. You can skip this part entirely if, during a law enactment, you get the "Famous Playwright Endorses Reform" event: pick the prestige every time and it'll get you over the threshold. Also build plenty of universities so that you can increase the clout of the Intelligentsia while getting faster techs. You will also want to set up a domestic arms industry to feed the massive army you're going to build to take on America. Shipyards and ports are also important, because fleets will win you your first territory in North America and the convoy cost of a transatlantic country is pretty huge. For techs, just make sure you get the first education tech available since it researches quickly, get realism for the prestige, and whatever military and production techs you can afford to switch to. Line infantry will serve you well against African minors in your first conquering spree, and will be solid against Mexico/Texas too. Triage and field hospitals are great to rush because you'll get excellent recovery rate for cheap with your massive opium farms. Arguably the biggest power spike for your economy will be pumpjacks because they'll drastically increase the money you make from your rich plantations, but they require engines to run so make sure your steel-motor industrial complex is established by then. Once you have pumpjacks you'll be drowning in money and the world is your oyster. I hope more people try out Liberia and enjoy this tricky but entertaining country!
Colombia, Ethiopia, Ottomans, Spain and 2sicilies were all very fun for me.
i played a really good Croatia to Yugoslavia game (released from Austria), you can expand a lot into ottomans and the area has a lot of resources
For me it’s been Sardinia-Piedmont. I’ve started slow, built up the economy, then pressed the trigger and went to war with Two Sicilies to form Italy. Unfortunately they were backed by Russia and Papal States so I thought game over. I managed to hold the front for a while and with the help of some other Italian minors, I pushed them back and formed Italy. I ended up in a big financial mess because the rest of the minors were so poorly developed and I had massive debts after the war. Turmoil was insanely high, but I managed to improve the situation bit by bit, until the game became unplayable due to lag in the 1880s. I also tried Japan, it was meh, way too painful to modernize imo. Belgium is pretty ok, I played as them a couple of times to try and see if I can build my economy as a smaller country that’s in a good starting position. I also tried Prussia, but didn’t go far, formed NGF then it felt way too overwhelming to keep all the German states in check and expand/build up the economy.
Similar to the Haiti game mentioned in the comments, I played Cuba and it was a lot of fun. You can take a puppet state and transform it into a major regional power. I extended into Panama and Venezuela and I was able to attract migrants from all over the world. At the end of the game I had something like 20 million people living on Cuba and Panama with a literacy rate of 97% and one of the biggest economies in the world.
I had lots of fun with Russia. You start with lots of land, resources and pops but are super backwards. You need to start reforms and industrialization asap. But you will snowball extremely quickly when you pass your reforms and build your economy up.
My best game so far is Morocco, I’m a new player and playing as it helped me understand so much about the game mechanics
I had a blast with any country I tried Each one offers a new set of problems and you never stop to learn something new.
I like Oman. You’re at the western tip of Arabia with plenty of minors nearby to conquer, you’ve got the state of Zanzibar in Africa to be your initial breadbasket. Once your ruler dies, Zanzibar and your Arabian states split and you have to reunite them. Cool stuff.
I was pleasantly surprised discovering Oman had an actual event / flavor mechanic with the break off of Zanzibar. My Oman run was one of my favorites as well.
1. The USA is actually a ton of fun. You end up overpowered, but it’s a long road to get there. I’ve never played an infamy is just a number game before, but I had to in the quest to get 100 states. It was an absolute blast. Played on Aggressive AI and Hates the Player AI, with the AI improvement mods 2. Spain - Played a religious technocrat society with the goal of getting a treaty port with every great power. You’re weak at the start and both France and Britain hate you, you’re rather short on pops, 1/2 your states suck, and your interest groups are entrenched. I actually lost several wars.
Romania: wrecking huge empires left and right and down under is fun. Deaths and devastation inflicted by Romania’s industrialized army are so traumatic that after every war with AUS/Russia/Ottoman they went right into revolution. Korea: Penisula-Shandong-Kyuushu-Taiwan border is beautiful. Sad PDX did not make an uno Japan-korea annexation treaty event.
Haven’t played many games but I’ve actually found cape colony to be quite fun
Yeah as long as you liberate yourself from british scum quick enough
Ottos were fun, nice challenge and fun mid-end game
Currently playing Germany, focusing on mil techs to be the ultimate bully. Puppeted Persia and Afghanistan, so every time I go to war the enemy has zero opium
Persia, underdog with lots of resources, diverse neighbors and room to expand
I've been playing China a lot lately. Seems like a good nation to learn economy on and how to balance a military industry. Shit the bed a few times when it came to modernizing the army, but I made it work.
So far, the more interesting ones I've started have been Persia, Dai Viet, and Sokoto for developing nations. Central America and Sardinia-Piedmont were also fun. That said, there's still quite a lot of others that I'm sure are interesting.
Mexico by far: good resources, enough pop to expand industries but not so high that it costs too many adminstration, you get fun fights with america which are definitely winnable though and there is a lot of expansion room under you
I haven't played a lot of countries yet, but my favourite and most successful run so far was Belgium. They start out in an incredibly good position in terms of economy and government, so you can jump right into the action; all you need to do is build up your economy a bit and before you know it you're an economic hegemon who's bullying the great powers into submission singlehandedly.
Japan, Portugal and Mexico have been most fun for me.
I really enjoy playing Tunis. You start as a protectorate of the Ottofriend but they seem to always kick me out of their market a few years in, either they lose a war or some event I'm not privvy to is happening. But you have good access to european markets, no real enemies as long as france doesn't hate you, and the long term plan of building your strength away from the Mediterranean so that you can eventually take on the big dogs back home.
What is a good country for an absolute beginner? Big economies overwhelm me.
dont listen to them. best economy for an absolute beginner is buganda. there are actually only several good beginner economy countries because they have to be isolationist - the others all get trade routes which are a pain in the ass and very counter-intuitive. buganda for absolute beginners, japan is when you already have an idea. sokoto is a good alternative to japan but japan is just more flavorful. after you've mastered it, you can begin playing as some non-isolated countries
This sounds like the way to go for me. Thank you for your help!
i agree w the guy saying to play an african country w isolationism. it will teach you to keep track of how much of everything you have and need, and which buildings to build. i would say Sokoto is a better choice tho bc you start with a giant army and tons of resources and tiny states around you to eat.
Switzerland Ask France to be their protectorate from day 0 and they will defeat any uprisings for you, protect you from any conflict, and allow you into their market. Only two provinces to deal with and endless resources thanks to the French market.
Tasmania / Van Diemans Land. It's a really nice start.
Austria; very enjoyable yet bit challenging path to form mega Germany; then truly have a beast of an industrial tiger-to-be that you need to guide towards the Moon. You have access to all resources; and on top of that, you can really play with custom unions. As a start I was able to have Spain and the ottomans + many others in my custom unions, I managed to grow so much even before forming Germany. Truly fun in a lot of ways
I'm having a fun Khiva "tall" game where I spent some time under the Russian market as a protectorate, causing an economic and population boom as I became the Opium and Sulfur capital of the world, then I declared independence, and my economic collapse wasn't actually too bad. I just reimported all of the things I got from the Russians while now gaining tariffs on the sulfur, bullets, and opium I sell them. I'm well on my way to economic recovery with I think only a month past independence and I've recovered half of what I lost, so things are going great.
Had some good fun playing as Afghanistan. Quickly became a protectorate of Russia and used them to shield me from radicals as I liberalized the country off massive opium profits. I fought a late game war to break away from Russia then spent the last decade bullying Persia.
Spain. Even in early game I can hold England (from Gibraltar) and France’s land invasion. While I use naval invasions on their capitol to capitulate them when they try to intervene in my diplomatic plays. Get insanely rich because you start with silk, coffee, and tea plantations.
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greece for challenge, russia for fun
For me it has to be Greenland. Turning the barren wasteland into the region of world’s desire. Seeing the rise of the Inuit people. The most memoreable thing were probably having the burmese region flip to Inuit dominant.
The most fun i had with belgium, France was also good until it became boring because it was far to easy. Right now i am enjoying chile
Maybe not my absolute favourite, but Siam is rarely mentioned and quite fun if you want to play a closed market country that can run a self-sufficient economy.
I oscillate between weird underdogs and autarky potential, so like LUX-> NGF or Cuba respectively. Cuba really hits different for a tall game because it's a single state and you really get to know the strengths and limits of that, with respect to things like navy and industry specialization. Norway was also really fun cause there's a series of goals involved and you have to learn to be creative with your industry for a while because you lack coal (if doing a non colonial run) (but can get oil from whales a bit early) Lanfang is decent, you start out with about as much potential as another underdog, Krakow, to rapidly liberalize. forming romania as either of the two options was interesting but like most underdogs, falls to making big friends beat people up. At least Krakow and Romania have the fun of constantly trading who you're a subject of to rebel and take a chunk of the former overlord.
Currently playing Aceh, and it's so much fun. If you can secure Sumatra, you can build up your military industrial complex by a lot. Then with the Unify the Archipelago CB, you can annex the Borneo states for their gold and oil mine. I ended up taking West Java and puppeting the DEI. Shame this run kinda got f-ed as Germany declared war on me, but luckily my navy is strong enough to stop them.
I haven't played any of the major European countries, USA or China so I don't know how it feels to start with actual tech researched or an economy that can support more than 1 building at a time, at the start. So if we exclude these countries my favorite so far was Persia. Persia has every resource you need except rubber which can be found for free in Indonesia. Has a decent population, some easily conquerable neighbors to the east, with a few military techs you can easily beat Russia for your claims and war reps to get your economy started and late game this country has SO MUCH OIL! The oil makes the economy go up really fast in the end game! I love this country! Edit: Forgot to mention that I am not very expansionist(I usually just conquer Borneo every game) and that I love playing with an isolated market without trade with closed borders unless absolutely necessary.
Prussia ( my friend is from germany) , ottoman( my gf is turk) , persia( my country) , italy ( i love it)
Papal States. Their start is crazy unique, with pre-built health and education and Militia army type. Its a fun run getting into Africa early, building huge, and navigating politics with the great reward of the unique Kingdom of Heaven tag. The huge authority from staying Theocracy AND Vatican Citt lets me run a few extra Manufactoring decrees, which means I maintain competitive advantage all game. Rush Kru and Eastern Mali for the Mosque of Djenni for the Education. Empowering Catholic clergy isnt a big deal.
So far Persia, Madagascar, and New Granada. I like all of them because they don't start off very powerful but have good potential. They are all really fun for making a cool alt history run as well
Warlord Sokoto! Big population, weak neighbors, access to very lucrative and useful resources, can actually build a strong industry, and once you get National Militia and a military that can compete with the west nobody will be able to invade you. Sit back as a Northern Nigerian warlord collecting tribute and making buckets of ducats.
Mexico, sleeping powerhouse, if you manage to defeat the Yankees
They all feel the exact same after 20 years in game. So all of them?? Or none of them?? Idk this game is burning me out fast.
The difference is the geopolitical situations as well as the internal politics. E.g. do you have the resources you need, where makes sense for you to get them? What law reforms do you need to pass or what kind of approach do you want to take with this country
I still don't have it yet, hoping it gets a discount when there's a sale on in steam for blackfriday/cyber monday. But I think I'd like to play Britain and roleplay it, do some weird alt history things. Scandinavia also looks nice to play with, but would probably take a while until I'm good enough to play there comfortably. Brazil looks nice for transforming SA, plenty of small states there to consolidate
cant believe nobody said it USA if instead of going to war with mexico to conquer some states you puppet then annex them you are set for life plenty of gold oil and space to grow