So, a while (a long while) ago, I did a China AAR for Victoria: An Empire Under the Sun. I always meant to continue it, but never got around to doing so, and now I'm on a new computer, I no longer have the save. Instead, I'm going to do an AAR as Prussia in Victoria 2. I'll be using the 1.4 beta patch, which among other things reduces France from an unstoppable behemoth to merely a mostly unstoppable juggernaut.Why Prussia?

1. Console Command To Reduce Infamy Victoria 2
2. Victoria 2 Infamy Decay

Well, I've just spent about two weeks playing low literacy, backwards nations that are a pain in the arse to industrialise. They also involve lots of sitting around waiting for stuff to happen, and are therefore, IMO, poor candidates for AARs. Prussia, in contrast, has a high literacy (therefore, good tech), is easy to industrialise and has lots to do.The objectives of this game are as follows:1) Form Germany. For preference, this should be Grossdeutschland (ie, a Germany that includes Austria), but normal Germany will suffice because I'm terrible when it comes to Grossdeutschland without the five to ten wars needed to dismember Austria.2) Modernise the political system: Germany should have all the political reforms by the end of the game.3) A place in the sun: I must end the game with a more extensive colonial empire than Germany did OTL.4) Territorial Integrity: I must end the game with all German cores in my possession. In particular, this means Alsace-Lorraine.So, without further ado.Bismark Has Noting On Me: A Prussia AARBehold, our glorious nation. We're split into three parts; Prussia itself, the Rhineland in the west, and Prussian Wurttemburg in the south. We have a literacy of 60.8%, and 8.10 RP, which is a decent amount at the start of the game.

In terms of politics, your current government is the Konservative Partei, who are protectionist (this means that we can't build fractories ourselves while they're in power, but we can build railways, and we can upgrade or shut down existing factories). We've got 3.56 million working age men in our nation, and two national foci, which I'll be using to promote clergymen in our most populous states, because while 60% literacy is good, it can still be better.Our military consists of 50 brigades, and we can mobilise 23 more should we feel the need.

In terms of a navy, we have a whole three ships, and all three of them are transports.So, first things first, the budget.This is the budget screen. On the left, you can see our tax income; taxing all classes at 50%, we get an income of £307.7. Our expenses are a mere £163.5, so it would seem that we have a healthy surplus. Both of these numbers are pretty much entirely fictional, though; it'll take a month for the world economy to stabilise after we start the clock, and we'll probably end up in the red.

If this is the case, I'll bump tariffs a bit until we get some factories to increase our income.The first thing I do here is to increase education, administration and military support to 80%. Well, at that level of spending, we still get the maximum bonus to promotion into bureaucrats, clergy, officers and soldiers, but we also (hopefully) prevent those pops accumulating so much money that they promote into capitalists and aristocrats.

We want some of those, true, but as Prussia, we have a reasonable aristocrat population to start with, and we'll naturally accumulate the right number of capitalists.On to technology!The tech screen. We start off with a decent number of techs, notably including Army Professionalism, which increases the organisation of our armies, and also our tactics, which reduces the number of casualties we take.

Basically, our army is not only large, but it's qualitatively superior to that of pretty much everybody else. We have a Military-Industrial Complex, which gives bonuses to army and industry research, and penalties to culture and naval research. If I were another nation, I'd probably restore the academia, because the penalty to culture research is nasty, and the culture tree has all the research and education boosting techs. However, because I have a high literacy already, I can basically ignore one of the three main culture tech branches, so the penalty doesn't really affect me. By the time I start researching the navy branch, I'll have a giant pile of RP and I'll be late researching them anyway, so it's not an issue.I select Experimental Railroad as my first tech; railways increase the throughput of my factories and the quantity of goods produced in my RGOs, which in simple terms means, more money.

More money is good.This is the politics screen. The first thing I do here is change my government to the Nationale Partei. They're State Capitalist, which means that I can build factories myself; I already have a few, but this way, I can ensure that I start with a solid base of profitable factories, rather than a million canneries, fertiliser factories and ammunition plants.In terms of decisions, two leap out at us; the North German Federation and the Three Hurrahs. We'll be enacting both of those, eventually. Both of them require you to have the cores of that nation in your nation or in your sphere of influence; for the NGF, we start the game meeting most of the conditions, but Denmark holds two provinces we need, and Holstein (who also has two of the NGF cores) is their puppet.

Likewise, Saxony starts in Austria's SoI and Hannover is a satellite of Britain, although strangely, we can add them to our SoI anyway. The Three Hurrahs requires us to have, in addition to what we need for the NGF, Bavaria, Baden and Wurttemburg in our SoI, and Alsace Lorraine. That means war with France at some point, but it's possible to do the rest peacefully. We can also add Austria to form Grossdeutschland as well, if we can beat them down from Great Power status and then win a war with France quickly enough to get the Three Hurrahs before they climb back up.These are my factories. There are a decent number for an nation that isn't Britain at the start of the game.

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I don't have many craftsmen yet, but promoting them isn't usually an issue for Prussia, so that problem will fix itself. If it doesn't, or takes to long, I can switch a national focus to the task. They're all profitable except for the paper factory. I'm going to keep that around, though, because by about 1850, paper factories are the most valuable in the game up until you start building automobile and electronics factories.

I build a winery in Pommern, and steel mills in Westfalen and the Rhineland.When I unpause the game, my income instantly plummets, so I bump tariffs up to 30% nominal, which equate to 19% with my admin efficiency. I'll reduce these as my admin improves, because tariffs make it harder for your pops to buy stuff, and that's bad. I don't want to saddle myself with debt if I don't have to, however.I also immediately start influencing Saxony into my SoI. It'll take a while for me to win the influence war with Austria here, but win it I shall. I want to be the NGF before I start beating up on them.Speaking of forming the NGF, remember I said that Denmark had land we need? Well.I have military access through my German minor sphere, and Holstein's army of six brigades wisely declines to fight the 60,000 odd men I send after them. It takes a month or so to occupy the whole of Holstein.

The only troops on the other side I can see are Holstein's 6000 men in the southern Danish province of Flensburg. I send one stack after them, and even with fortifications, they can't stand against me. After just two days of battle, the army of Holstein is completely destroyed. Since the Danish army is still MIA, I can't just split up all my troops; they have about 18,000 men, so they're quite capable of squashing isolated occupation stacks.I compromise by splitting up one of my stacks, moving the other two back to occupied Holstein where they take no attrition.It seems that the ideals of the French Revolution aren't quite as dead as everybody hoped. This event pretty much means I can look forwards to high militancy and consciousness, and a pile of rebellions, although the first two are useful for forcing some political reforms through the upper house.The Danish army finally shows up. They maul one of my occupation stacks, but my cav stack shows up before they win and drives them off. I pursue them to eventual destruction in Arhus, then split up my cavalry to occupy the rest of the country.In December of 1836, I get the choice to send a botanical expedition to somewhere with a silly name.

I chose to send the expedition for five prestige. They will later be eaten by cannibals, which costs me 10 prestige, a net loss of five. A month later, my research into experimental railroad finishes. My capitalists immediately start spamming railroad construction tasks (which is good; this costs me nothing), and I start researching medicine. This is one of the strongest techs in the game; it increases your pop growth and the provincial support limit, which means you can field larger armies.On the 24th of April, Denmark finally concedes defeat. I gain control of Danish Schleiswig-Holstein, and remove Holstein from Denmark's sphere of influence.

That last bit was mistake. I should have added Holstein to my SoI through the peace treaty, because not I can't influence them until 1843, which means I can't form the NGF before then.Belgium offers me an alliance in November of 1837, which I accept. They aren't exactly a military powerhouse, but they're usually attacked by the Netherlands. That's good for me, because I'll almost certainly be called to arms and then assume leadership in the war. The Netherlands have some excellent colonies, and I intend to take them for myself by beating up on the Dutch in Europe.Medicine completes in December of 1838.

I start researching Muzzle Loaded Rifles. That tech gives my infantry higher attack and reduces the combat width of by brigades, meaning I can put more into the fight at once. It also increases my supply consumption, however, meaning that my armies are going to be more expensive.

I've got plenty of cash, though, so that's not an issue.In the event, it's not Belgium that Holland attacks, but Hannover. It's all the same to me, however, so I answer the call.The Netherlands immediately more a 30,000 man stack into Lingen, Hannover's province bordering them. I crush three isolated brigades at Eindhoven, Cleves and Munster, before sending 6000 dragoons to start occupying Eindhoven.

Meanwhile, I throw 54,000 men at Lingen. The results are predictable.I pursue them, and eventually destroy the Dutch army at Amsterdam. Then I split my army up to occupy the whole of the Netherlands.On the 10h of October 1839, I get one of my favourite event chains; Minority Building Restrictions. This is, on its own, not particularly fantastic; it gives +5% assimilation rate at the cost of increased militancy, and I don't have very many non North German pops right now. However, it also leads to the Discriminatory School System even, which can fire more than once and gives you extra RP at the cost of more militancy. Since I want militancy in order to push through reforms, this set of events is excellent. On the 11th of July, I get my first Discriminatory School System event, granting me and extra 198.51 RP, enough to finish researching Muzzle-loeaded Rifles.

I switch techs to Ideological Thought, which I have a penalty to researching. The inventions this tech gives, however, grant a lot of pluralism, which increases the number of RP we get considerably, and also gives me a third national focus. The Netherlands admits defeat on the 8th of August 1840, granting me Dutch Java.This is my first colony, and it's an extremely profitable one; my income jumps by £80 a day instantly. It can also provide for its own defence, as it has enough soldier pops to recruit 18,000 men, which is respectable for a colonial army outside of India.

I immediately start building a naval base in Batavia; I will need this later when I have the tech needed to colonise states with low life ratings.The King is dead! Long live the King!You thought I was joking about the cannibals, didn't you?The first rebellion I get as a result of the Age of Liberalism. It's not particularly large, and I crush it with ease.Then I get this.

The Prussian people are rioting in the streets and radical agitators and demagogues yell treason from the street corners. It frightens the government so much that they agree to allow the people to vote, provided they can meet the property requirements. In practical terms, this doesn't mean much yet; Landed Voting allows capitalists and aristocrats to vote, and aristocrats dominate, which means that it's going to be conservative or reactionary governments. Given I oppress political parties other than the one in power, it means that if I have the Konservative Partei or the Nationale Partei in power, they'll stay in power. I've switched back to the Konservatives by this point, so I can decrease taxes – thus encouraging pop promotion – and to increase the output of my factories.In August of 1842, Ideological Thought completes. I switch to Idealism, another culture tech, which gives me a flat 50% bonus to research points, and access to inventions that boost my prestige by an amount varying depending on who has them. At the moment, they'll give 20 each, for a total of 60, as nobody else has them, but I suspect that at least one other power will get them before me.By December of 1842, discontent boils over into another rebellion, and rebel stacks appear in pretty much every province of Prussia.

Fortunately, they're disorganised and easy prey for my elite armies.The counter-revolutionary action taken by the Prussian army is so effective, it causes revolutionary sentiment to die out across the nation.In 1843, I get a Temperence League event. This is a pretty good event in and of itself, although it has some annoying subsequent events in its chain. I choose to support the League, because it gives some pretty decent bonuses., at the cost of militancy which I want anyway.Finally, in 1844, I get Holstein into my SoI. There are parades and celebrations across the nation as delegates from the whole of Northern Germany meet and decide that it makes sense for the various disparate states of the region to unite under Prussian leadership, given that they're all basically controlled by Prussia anyway.The NGF is significantly larger than Prussia, with 2 million more working age males and capable of supporting 40 more brigades. I've inherited a bunch of extra factories as well, and gained a load of prestige. I'm now in a position to start looking at steamrolling Austria, hopefully knocking them out of GP status and turning around to grab Alsace-Lorraine from France. Worryingly, however, Austria is allied with the UK, and France with Russia, while my sole allies are Belgium and Wurttemburg.

Neither of those are really names that instil fear in the hearts of men. Click to expand.Yep, most recent 1.4 beta, vanilla. The two main reasons are because it makes France more reasonable, rather than having three hundred brigades by 1850 and an industrial score of 3000 due to spamming luxury furniture factories, and because it gives you first dibs on goods before your pops. That helps fix ridiculous problems like not being able to build artillery due to a global shortage of liquor, despite the fact that you're the leading liquor producer in the entire world, because you're fourth in prestige and the UK and France use it all up.It also means it's worth having an armaments industry for the first time ever in Vicky 2; it used to be pointless, because everybody built weapons factories, resulting is massive overproduction and a price crash into negative figures. That happened in Vicky 1 as well, but since you bought stuff from your factories before the world market did, it was worth subsidising an armaments industry so that you'd have a guaranteed supply of kit. In Vicky 2, previously, you bought stuff only from the world market, and since people with high prestige get first dibs, if there's a global shortage of something, you got nothing even if you were the leading producer of that good. Liquor is infamous for this, because it's needed by guards and artillery, but also by basically every pop, with the result that demand skyrockets.As for clergy; the optimum number of clergy for purposes of RP generation is 2% per state.

For purposes of education, it's 4%, above which there is no further bonus. In this case, I have high literacy already (forming the NGF actually boosted it by 7%, netting me roughly 4 RP/day), but clergy are a cheap way to boost it further. Because boosting literacy as fast as possible isn't such a huge issue (like it is with, say, the Ottomans), I'm boosting the clergy percentage in each state to 2% then leaving it.

With my education slider at 80% that percentage will naturally grow over time anyway. Since I'm going to be forming Grossdeutschland if al goes well, it is worth it to have a decent clergy population, since if I keep the non-German bits of Austria, it'll pull my literacy rate down somewhat. Yep, most recent 1.4 beta, vanilla. The two main reasons are because it makes France more reasonable, rather than having three hundred brigades by 1850 and an industrial score of 3000 due to spamming luxury furniture factories, and because it gives you first dibs on goods before your pops. That helps fix ridiculous problems like not being able to build artillery due to a global shortage of liquor, despite the fact that you're the leading liquor producer in the entire world, because you're fourth in prestige and the UK and France use it all up. As for clergy; the optimum number of clergy for purposes of RP generation is 2% per state.

For purposes of education, it's 4%, above which there is no further bonus. In this case, I have high literacy already (forming the NGF actually boosted it by 7%, netting me roughly 4 RP/day), but clergy are a cheap way to boost it further. Because boosting literacy as fast as possible isn't such a huge issue (like it is with, say, the Ottomans), I'm boosting the clergy percentage in each state to 2% then leaving it. With my education slider at 80% that percentage will naturally grow over time anyway.

Since I'm going to be forming Grossdeutschland if al goes well, it is worth it to have a decent clergy population, since if I keep the non-German bits of Austria, it'll pull my literacy rate down somewhat. Click to expand.Right now, Java has 1.1 million people. I would dearly love to convert it into a state, because that many people would support a huge industrial base, so when I get the chance - probably when I've researched State & Government - I'm going to stick an NF on it promoting Bureacrats. Because it's got so many people, though, it'll take ages to promote enough pops to convert it to a state. It's already got full RGOs, so it's going to end up with something like 1.5 million unemployed people by 1880.Other highlights of my planned colonial policy include nabbing Zululand before somebody else does, since it's an excellent spot for a naval base and will fix my problem of being miles away from anywhere and probably lagging a bit in naval tech, which means low colonisation range.

Possibly Madagascar as well, just to stop the French from getting it. I'll grab the Dutch colony in West Africa as well if I get into another war with them and have the BB to spare.

They're allied with Austria and I can beat them with one stack, but I need all the BB I can get with Austria in order to pile on crippling wargoals to knock them out of GP status. They've industrialised fast - faster than me, in fact - so that's going to be pretty bloody hard. To complicate things further, Bavaria is a GP now as well, but fortunately Switzerland is only six points behind them, so I can probably fix that when they go to war with me after I attack Austria. Bismark Has Nothing On MePart 2: Reverse HistorySo, we've formed the NGF.

Now we're the third most powerful nation on the planet, after Britain and France, we have a new flag, we've got a bunch more factories and we can now pretty much double the number of brigades we have right now, in addition to having roughly doubled our mobilisation pool. Ultimately, this means we can field just a hair over 160 brigades in a total war, and thanks to our military tech, they're good brigades as well.That's the easy part over with, however.This is Austria's diplo screen. The two important things to note is that they have 69 Brigades – about the same number as we do right now before we build more. This means that we can probably take them in a war, since they'll have lower tech than us. However, the second thing to note is their industrial score. 72 isn't high compared to what you can get in the late game, but in the 1840s, it's respectable. By the time we've built and positioned our new armies, it'll be even higher.This is a lethal blow to my original plan, which involved as the next step hammering Austria into the ground to kick them out of GP status, adding them to my sphere along with their current satellites in southern Germany, then quickly turning around and smashing France to grab Alsace-Lorraine before Austria recovered.

Even if I manage to knock Austria out of the top eight nations now, they'll recover very quickly thanks to their industry. I could dismember them, but that's expensive in terms of badboy, and results in me getting less land after the Three Hurrahs.So, what do I do?

No!I'm going to attack France first instead.This might sound insane, since the problem is Austria, but there is method in my madness, I assure you. The reason Austria is a problem is their industrial score. Their military score will plummet if I wipe out their army and occupy their provinces, so that's not an issue, but as soon as I peace out with them, their workers will all go back into their factories. What I need to do, therefore, is occupy all of Austria and wait for their industrial score to crash (because the craftsmen in occupied territory don't work in their factories), wait for Austria to become a secondary power, then add them to my sphere as a wargoal, peace out and immediately enact the Three Hurrahs.That means that I need to have the other conditions met already at that point.

I therefore need Bavaria, Wurttemburg and Baden in my sphere (which I can do during the war with Austria), and Alsace-Lorraine. Effectively, I have to form Germany in reverse, starting with France and finishing with Austria.This is France's diplo screen. They're stronger than Austria, and stronger than us in terms of brigades.

Their maximum mobilisation pool works out to over 170 brigades. However, our military score is higher than theirs, and they have a significant navy to help inflate their numbers, so we should win a war. However, they're allied with Russia. There's not much we can do about that, beyond mobilising before we declare war and hoping that the size of our army intimidates Russia into staying put.

We've got good relations with them as well, which should help.I therefore start building more troops and moving my forces towards the western border. It'll be a little while before I'm ready, however, which gives me an excellent chance to work towards my third objective. At the start of the game, there are three places in Africa available to interested European powers; Zululand, Madagascar and Oman, which has holdings in Somalia. These are important because you can conquer their land even when you don't have the tech required to colonise low life rating states. Having naval bases in these areas is crucial, especially for distant Germany, because the provinces you can colonise are determined by how far away your nearest naval base is.I choose to take Zululand; it's only a single state, it's on the African mainland, and it borders Oranje and Transvaal, who are juicy potential conquests in the future.

Portuguese Africa would look attractive in German colours as well, in my opinion. I set to work building some clipper transports in order to ferry an army there.In April of 1844, Idealism completes.

I being researching Strategic Mobility, which increases the recon value of my armies, as well as increasing my dig in cap bonus and the level of forts I can build. I want to have all of the available army techs before I take on France.My clipper transports are finished in Septermber 1844, and I load 15,000 men onto them to begin the voyage to South Africa.

Almost immediately afterwards, I get a border incident event with Denmark. This gives me an acquire state casus belli on them, and since they're currently almost entirely occupied by rebels and have no army, I declare war with Jutland as the target of my acquisitive armies.My clippers arrive at Zulu in February of 1845. There are more Zulus than I expected, but my ships probably won't survive a voyage back to Europe at this point, so I've got to attack anyway. I have significantly better tech, so I declare war and land my soldiers in Durban.Strategic Mobility finishes in February as well. I begin researching Iron Muzzle-loaded Artillery.

This tech increases the attack of artillery, and it's important for me; I try to maintain a 1:1 ratio of artillery to infantry in my armies, or a little bit less for artillery. Unlike every other unit in the game, artillery can attack from behind infantry, which means that armies with a lot of artillery have a lot more firepower over any given frontage than armies that don't. The downside is, artillery are expensive, but as Prussia, that's not an issue.Having occupied Durban, I attack the Zulus in Ulundi. I defeat them easily, inflicting massively disproportionate losses despite having to attack across a river.

Unfortunately, my worries about numbers prove to be true; they retreat into Ladysmith, and while my pursuing army is victorious, I take enough casualties that I need to rest and refit, allowing the Zulus to do the same. I retreat to Ulundi and occupy it, but by the time I'm ready to attack again, the Zulus have retaken Durban. They move into Ladysmith, then attack my army in Ulundi, but I defeat them and pursue them back into Ladysmith. This time, I finally destroy them, and split up my stack to occupy both the remaining Zulu provinces.

Iron Muzzle-loaded Artillery finishes in November of 1845, and I being working on Military Plans; this allows the construction of Dragoons, and increases the organisation of my armies.With most of Jylland occupied without seeing even a single Danish soldier, Denmark admits defeat and cedes the state to me. It's not really a very good state, but infamy-free land is infamy-free land.Military Plans finishes in July 1846, and I begin researching High and Low Pressure Steam Engines. This tech has a number of effects, but what it boils down to is more productive factories and RGOs, while at the same time reducing the number of people said RGOs can employ. This early in the game, the effect of that isn't huge, but by 1860 or so, my RGOs will have filled up, and all the unemployed farmers tat can't get a job growing wheat will instead move to the city and become craftsmen in factories instead. Or clerks, since I have high literacy. Progressing along the Power tech branch is, therefore, extremely important for growing my industrial score.I finally occupy all of Zululand in March of 1846, and they become my second colony. I immediately begin building a naval base in Ulundi; I'll use this to colonise South Africa after I get Machine Guns.High and Low Pressure Steam Engines completes in September of 1847, and I start work on Interchangeable Parts.

Well, the French do pretty much exactly what I want to start with. They hurl 90,000 men at Saarbrucken and the 27,000 men I have dug in there. Fortunately for my frontline units, they're behind forts, have the tech advantage, have a +3 defence general and, possibly most importantly, they've got 54,000 friends a couple of weeks travel away. My positional advantage and general stop my leading army from suffering too much damage before reinforcements arrive. Once they do, the result is predictable.The French retreat out of sight, and I attempt to exploit this by sending some cavalry to start occupying Strasbourg. Unfortunately, the French army fell back on its reinforcements, and has turned around.

I find out too late to do anything about it, and 6,000 of my dragoons are caught and destroyed.Ouch.The French follow up their success by ramming their heads against the brick wall of Saarbrucken again, against even more overwhelming opposition. Predictably, they get their heads kicked in.I pursue them back into Strasbourg with most of my army, and score an even more convincing victory, inflicting more than two to one losses.

My army is larger than theirs, and is considerably more powerful than even the numbers suggest; my large proportion or artillery gives me probably about twice as much firepower as them, and it shows in battles like this one.While I was distracted, however, another French stack slipped around behind me through Luxembourg and started occupying Trier. I call my army back from pursuing the first French stack before they take too much attrition, and descend upon the stack at Trier with great fury, killing a third of them and forcing them to retreat into Luxembourg. Frustratingly, I can't chase them down because I don't have access through Luxembourg, and they won't give it to me.I'm surprised, therefore, when the French offer me a white peace.

Normally, the AI only does that when you've severely hurt them in terms of numbers if you haven't occupied any territory, but checking the diplo screen, France still has 180 brigades, and the only thing I can see is a swarm of undamaged 45,000 man stacks. I decline the offer.The French then attack my army on Java, and are convincingly defeated. They will try this several times throughout the war, and each time, they get ruined; that battle was the most costly one for me, and in one case, I lose absolutely nobody while inflicting over 10,000 casualties. What follows is a slew of lopsided battles at Saarbrucken, Trier, Aachen and Strasbourg, with North German armies regularly inflicting twice the casualties on the French that they themselves receive. I manage to surround one French megastack in Trier, and seventeen French brigades are wiped from the face of the Earth.It doesn't always go my way, however; just when it seems I've got France on the ropes and start to seriously advance into their territory, another 70,000 Frenchmen appear.

I've no idea how they can still assemble armies like this after the drubbing I've given them already (I would've run out of soldier pops by now, and my reserves would be absolutely thrashed), but they catch me unprepared in Strasbourg. Despite everything I can do to concentrate against them, I lose the battle and am forced to retreat back into North German territory.In the midst of this drama, Interchangeable Parts finishes. I start researching Cheap Iron, which boosts the production of basically all mines, and activates the invention Bessemer Steel, amongst others.By November 1848, the French appear to have consolidated all the smashed fragments of armies that litter north eastern France into a single huge megastack of 200,000 men. Considering how low their military score is for the number of brigades (they still have 160, while I'm down to 130 but have almost twice their military score), I figure that this has to be absolutely everything they have left.

Basically repeating the first day of the war, they launch themselves right at Saarbrucken, which is defended by 180,000 German soldiers.The result is devastating. They kill nearly 50,000 Germans, but over two thirds of their army is destroyed. The French stack shatters into a horde of smaller armies all trying to escape me, and I finally see why their military score is so low for their brigade number; most of those microstacks have less than a thousand men in them. Certainly, they're not in any condition to fight.

I detach my cavalry to run them down, and start occupying territory.The French manage to rally some of their scattered armies into decent sized stacks, but they remain low on morale, and I accept the attritional damage needed to maintain a couple of decent sized stacks of my own. It takes a while, but eventually, all the French armies of any relevance are run down and destroyed, the last battle taking place near the town of Montpelier in the south of France. France's allies, Sardinia and the Papal States, ask for a white peace, and we grant it to them; we're not really interested in them right now anyway.I also get a bit greedy and add French West Africa to my wargoals at this point.

This was probably a mistake in hindsight; it cost nine BB, and considering the difficulty I'm having beating Austria in the diplomatic war over the south German minors, I'm probably going to have to add them to my sphere via violence, which will cost s total of 12 BB. Since I'm at 19 out of 25 max BB after adding French West Africa, I'll have to wait for my infamy to drop before starting the war. On the other hand, waiting will give me the chance to replace all my infantry with guards once they become available. Click to expand.I'll tell you if you contract with me and become a magical girl!Actually, I'll include a state of the world bit in the next instalment. There's not a huge amount of difference yet, the main points being that Spain has taken Crete (possibly we'll see a Spanish dominated Egypt?), the Ottomans have failed to do anything to Egypt, Sardinia has taken West Switzerland, Brazil has beaten up Bolivia some and Mexico hasn't yet had its arse kicked by the US, leading to an astoundingly ugly border in North America because Oklahoma is Mexican, but Texas joined America. Click to expand.Yep. It's possible to get them to join you after it as well, I believe, if you can get them into your sphere.

The same is true of Austria, actually, but only if they no longer own Hungary. The only way to get an intact Austrian or Austro-Hungarian Empire to join Germany is to have them in your SoI for the Three Hurrahs. I think, in fact, that you can get Switzerland to join also, although I'm not sure. You can definitely get them to join Germany as a result of Pan-Nat rebellions causing a crown from the gutter event.Also, I'm not confusing it with HoI; look on the tool tips for the Light Armament tree. They reduce combat frontage. Click to expand.I did consider doing the Austrians for this, but I played them recently.

That was a successful campaign and finished with me in the number one slot by several thousand points, but it's too soon for me to do it again. Next time, perhaps.Also, a general point, this isn't a Let's Play, but if people want to offer me advice and cunning strategies, you're more than welcome. I don't think I'm a master at this game, so I'm always open to suggestions, although I'll reserve the right to veto things that are insane, won't work, or will get me dogpiled by every other GP in the world because of high BB. It's possible to get them to join you after it as well, I believe, if you can get them into your sphere. The same is true of Austria, actually, but only if they no longer own Hungary.

The only way to get an intact Austrian or Austro-Hungarian Empire to join Germany is to have them in your SoI for the Three Hurrahs. I think, in fact, that you can get Switzerland to join also, although I'm not sure. You can definitely get them to join Germany as a result of Pan-Nat rebellions causing a crown from the gutter event.Also, I'm not confusing it with HoI; look on the tool tips for the Light Armament tree.

They reduce combat frontage. Click to expand.I did it with Lux for the NGF since that works by any nation that has a large North German population(which Lux has). Austria I heard about on the forums if you can reduce them to just their cores though that may be a mod.Yes, but you said that they reduce combat width and allow more troops onto battlefield is incorrect. Rather, they reduce the number of the troops that are fought in each battle which can weaken any opponent who relies on zerging and increases the value of fewer high quality troops with artillery. Since the extra troops aren't needed except maybe as reserves, you can get away with sending more troops into a separate armies elsewhere.Anyway, have you tried managing your industry? I believe the Prussian conservative party is Interventionist which I feel is one of the better ones(since you can subsides new industry).

You can indirectly control what new factory your capitalists build by canceling the new productions. With a National Focus, you can more easily influence what kind of factory they will build as well. I did it with Lux for the NGF since that works by any nation that has a large North German population(which Lux has). Austria I heard about on the forums if you can reduce them to just their cores though that may be a mod.Yes, but you said that they reduce combat width and allow more troops onto battlefield is incorrect. Rather, they reduce the number of the troops that are fought in each battle which can weaken any opponent who relies on zerging and increases the value of fewer high quality troops with artillery. Since the extra troops aren't needed except maybe as reserves, you can get away with sending more troops into a separate armies elsewhere.

Click to expand.So I did, you're right.As for Austria; if they're in your SoI when the Three Hurrahs fire, you get everything. If they aren't, you need to separate the German bit of Austria from the non-German bits (ie, you need to go for the historically Grossdeutschland idea), then get Austria in your SoI. They'll then petition to join the German Empire. The same is true, I believe, of Luxembourg.

In practice, as far as I can tell, the condition on Austria joining an already extant Germany is actually just 'Hungary must exist,' however. Click to expand.I generally use this approach in the mid-game, once I've got a base of factories I know will be profitable. In my experiance, the AI has a fetish for canned goods, armaments, cement and fabric, to the exclusion of all else. I very rarely see them building paper factories, for example, or furniture, luxury furniture and luxury clothes.

They don't seem to build things like steel and machine parts factories, the latter because at the point machine parts become available, there usually aren't a whole lot of spare craftsmen about to work in those factories.I suspect that they focus on what they do because those goods, especially armaments, have a very high price in the early game. The problem is, because of that, everybody builds loads of them, which crashes the price. Furniture factories, wineries and the like have a slightly lower price, so get passed over, as do paper factories, which start the game making losses due to low efficiency and low demand. All of those produce low quantites of goods than armaments factories though, in my experiance, and demand for them grows extremely quickly as people industrialise, whereas demand for military kit seems to grow slower.

Console Command To Reduce Infamy Victoria 2

Since my capitalists don't seem capable of doing it, I therefore always try and pick a state capitalist party for the first ten years or so, just so I can set up an extremely profitable base on which to expand.After that's done, I usually switch to an interventionist party (or desperately try to get one elected, as the case may be). Notice that I've got the Konservatives in power in most of the screenshots. Laissez-Faire works better now than it has done in the past, but it's still screwy with handling things like abrupt, temporary gluts in the market. A factory making over £4k a day can have a one day deficit as a result of an event giving somebody a stockpile of a good and them selling it, and your capitalists can and will shut it down under LF. Once they do, there's nothing you can do about it. Interventionism, on the other hand, means you can weather that sort of thing very well.

IMO, it's the best option out of all of them, with State Capitalism second, LF third and Planned Economy last.Essentially, my thought is that the AI is woeful at actually starting an economy, but once you've laid the foundation, it can grow it fine, so long as you provide a bit of a safety net. If you've ever tried to play a nation like the USCA, which only has LF parties for the first fifty years or so, you'll understand why I think that way. Say have you tried fiddling around with negative tariffs (AKA subsidies)? Its a decent money sink later on but even in the early game its benefits are that your POPs get more everyday/luxury goods (which then encourages social mobility and such) with the side effect of increasing revenue as well as demand.Of course unempoyment/pensions are better as they prevent POPs from going in the red.

Victoria 2 Infamy Decay

Still it is a potential benefit, only problem is that LF will prevent you from really using it as the 25% max tax is what kills it. (Which is why I love the Brazillian Conservative party, Interventionism+Free Trade is a very good combo).