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Heya! So, I recently bought the game over the past week, expansion included. As I am a long time fan of global simulation games such as Europa Universalis and Hearts of Iron, I decided that the rating of 66 on Metacritic, with its complaints of "steep learning curve" and "awesome game under the difficulty" warranted my immediate purchase. I must say, this game is amazingly well done, and slight flaws aside, you should be quite proud. This game is amazing.

After taking some time to learn the game mechanics in and out as best I could, I played through a few series of games as Iran, North Korea, Germany and South Africa. After conquering a large of part of the Middle East with Iran, I felt somewhat capable of taking a challenge and, on suggestion from my boyfriend, I decided to try Somalia. I realize their economy is, to put it lightly, at a dramatic disadvantage to the others in the game.

I started off initially by investing immediately in agriculture, as it is the primary export of Somalia, and with a few pieces of Uranium and Timber, about the only resource they have to produce. I immediately went around the world, primarily with Africa, and made Free Trade and other agreements with several countries, picking an alliance with several of the poorer, yet neighbouring countries in an attempt to stave off an Ethiopian and Djibouti invasion. My goal was to keep peace long enough for me to sell agriculture at four to five times the market value to the Sudan, my main ally, in order to build up enough cash to invest in further things. As it stands, I managed to build the GDP from a starting $600 p/c to about $5500p/c, and raised my revenues from the initiall $300M to about $130,000M. I did this by buying low level tech and gradually trading it to others and using the pay offs from my agriculture to buy higher level trades, which I then traded to Western and Eastern industrialized nations for higher tech. My current tech level is 75, and the only country with tech still to trade me is Japan, with nearly a trillion dollars in its coffers and a raging debt of $6 trillion.

My question is this, with my current amount of money, my intent is to build up my infrastructure using this massive amount of money I have so that I can become self sufficient in nearly every resource. Is it wise for me to begin to diversify my economy into synthetic coal, oil and composite ore, so that I can slowly build up my economy to keep it self sufficient? I have several engineers I've been using to rapid build things, but as Somalia has no ore, oil or coal, I've been hurting on trying to build Industrial, Consumer and Military Goods. I sold most of my poorer infantry and military to North Korea and Venezuela, and used my initial land fabricators to build new tech like Abrams, K2 Tanks, Marder Mechanized Infantry and other mostly modern equipment. As I'm starving for oil, I focused on some Special Forces, due to most African nations having such poor tech that I would be able to save on oil and still smash them around. At what point should I pick a fight with Ethiopia? Or for that matter, the rest of Africa? I've had a hard time determining how exactly to keep the UN on my side whilst still picking fights with other nations. I lucked out with my game on Iran, because Israel, Turkey, Greece and Iraq all declared war on me in turn, which left me with constant people to fight and not of my own accord.

Do you have any tips/ideas/suggestions on how I should further grow Somalia? My main problem thus far is that my unemployment rate is now at 1.2%, and I'm not sure about some of the finer details of the game and how things interact, but, I fear my economy will stagnate if I don't get more people. Is it wise to begin expanding into Ethiopia once I have a few more mechanized forces? Or should I hold off until I have a far better economy? Nearly 87% of my economy goes into social spending. My economy is kept aloft by selling the excess goods I have to Sudan at three to four times the price, and selling tech to Mexico, which is starved and fighting the US.



Sorry for the small picture size. I'm playing on a 1600x1050 monitor.

My apologies for the excessively long post.

Thanks again

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"One must have chaos in their soul to give birth to a dancing star." - Friederich Nietzsche
"War is simply the continuation of politics by other means." - Col. Carl von Clausewitz

Wrong forum, a dev will probably move it for you.

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This post approved by Tkobo:Official Rabble Rouser of the United Yahoos
Chuckle TM

Ah, I wasn't entirely sure. My apologies. It just dawned on me that I posted in the 2010 forum, when I meant to post in the 2020 forum. Yikes.

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"One must have chaos in their soul to give birth to a dancing star." - Friederich Nietzsche
"War is simply the continuation of politics by other means." - Col. Carl von Clausewitz

If you want to increase your treasury vastly,remain peaceful, and build up the nation....
Make the following regions your allies:
*India
*Saudi Arabia
*Mexico
*Canada
*Norway
*Any other regions in the top 10 list for their treasury

Buy oil from Saudi at a discount, and sell it to other rich allied nations at a profit.
Buy Consumer goods from who ever is among the top 5 producer and exporters,at a discount.Then sell them to wealthy allies at a profit.

If you want to just kick butt and grow to be a military super power,just gobble up Africa to start with.Theres actually alot of resources there that will make you an econmic power also after you take control of them.
Trade high tech regions for the best unit designs you can get and crush your neighbors

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This post approved by Tkobo:Official Rabble Rouser of the United Yahoos
Chuckle TM

Hey, thanks for the reply.

I guess I don't fully understand the diplomatic mechanics, because the game starts with Saudi Arabia, India, US, Canada and most of Europe either hating me or being ambivalent towards me. I managed to get Canada to come around, but I'm not sure if I've done something to further the ire of the Middle East, but I can't get anyone to ally with me, even after several treaties and lots of trading of goods and technology. I even offered the Saudis some $300,000m combined trades of tech, goods, and Western military units and they refused. For some reason, their civilian population hates me even though I've gone to war with no one.

I've managed to get some trades going with Canada, but most of the top countries are heavily engaged in wars and I have such a high CB on them that they hate me, especially the US. Do my alliances with several states, like Libya, Zimbabwe, Kenya and the Sudan have an effect on how the West and others align with me? I expected that they did, but I wasn't sure if that was a defining reason that other states, even with what seems like somewhat positive relations, refuse alliances even under high amounts of money and trade.

I tried to get Norway to agree to an alliance, but they wouldn't accept it out right. I though maybe if I offered them my own alliance, with out them having to be allied to me, they'd give in. However, now that I am allied to them, they accept a formal unilateral alliance, but because I've already allied with them, it tells me that I'm unable to fulfill my side of the bargain. It's odd. They still buy oil at a good pace though.

How can I provoke someone into war with me? I would like to take on Ethiopia, but I don't want to lose my UN rating and subsidies, which I dearly need. They have a low rate of attack on me but they're allied with Djbouti, who has a medium chance. I put a fortress on their border, right across from their units, to try to tempt them into a border clash, but nothing as of yet. They also won't let me cancel my embassy. I've tried dozens of times with all kinds of tech, cash and goods. The one time I tried to use a spy, it caused a war with me as the aggressor. I'm eager to use my K2 tanks, special forces, M-2 Puma's and Paladin artillery on Africa though.

_________________
"One must have chaos in their soul to give birth to a dancing star." - Friederich Nietzsche
"War is simply the continuation of politics by other means." - Col. Carl von Clausewitz

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This post approved by Tkobo:Official Rabble Rouser of the United Yahoos
Chuckle TM

So, Update!

I took your advice and tried canceling treaties with Djibouti, but they simply wouldn't give into the fight. I can't blame them really, as I have a fairly state of the art military. I desperately needed more population, as I was running on a GDP of around $30,000 and I had an inflation of 55% with just a little over nine million people. I also couldn't staff my military bases. So, I checked the ledger and the only people I had a decent CB on were Russia, the United States and China. As Alaska seemed utterly defenseless, since the US was at war with Mexico, Cuba and Canada at the time, I built a few troop transports, some Globemasters and sent as much of my land army as I possibly could, with some destroyers to guard them. I waited until I was already at Alaska before I canceled all contact and declared war. They put up little resistance, as their treasury for some reason was $1.9 trillion in the red, and they had some $9 trillion in debt. They didn't seem to be able to afford any repairs or even ammunition. I managed to take nearly all of Alaska before Ethiopia suddenly declared war on me, which I spared no time in utterly crushing, as their army and planes stood no chance against even my limited force still left in Somalia, which had B52 bombers, Abrams, Pumas and FRES troops, backed up with lots of Paladin artillery and SCUDs.

So, the US refused to give into a peace agreement. I didn't really want the war to drag on, as the Ehtiopian population brought my total to over 50 million, and crashed my GDP down to $9,000 with 5% unemployment, and a crushing net annual loss in my treasury. After I balanced my budget a bit, I decided to go on some courage and try to move onto continental US soil, with the left overs of my expeditionary force in Alaska. I guess in the meantime the US realized that the once dirt poor nation of Africa was suddenly a world power and no longer just a joke, because they quickly ended their war with Canada, suddenly got out of their immense treasury loss, and managed to turn a profit. Their war with Mexico stuttered to a halt just as I took a small part of Montana. They even stopped shelling Cuba. I had to build a number of air defenses around Helena and some land fabricators, several fortresses and fortifications and keep a fair number of patrol aircraft just to stop their constant carpet bombing of me.

Do you have some tips on how to crush the US? I have about $300, 000 M in my treasury, with a profit in every resource except power, which is absolutely eating up my treasury. Having to several land fab and air fab bases just to keep enough ground forces in Montana is also keeping my annual losses kinda high, but I manage to make it up by trading resources at atrociously high prices in diplomatic trades to a few rich states allied with me. Canada recently allied with the US again, and I'm worried my once partner in crime may turn on me, even though we're still quite green in relations.

I'm poised to almost strike Camp Guernesy and I could also move on Denver or Sioux Falls, as I have nearly the entire state of Montana under my control. I've had to ring my entire mainland possession with air defences and garrisons, as the US seems unrelenting. I have it set to capitals as the condition needed to win, so my objective is to move on DC, but that place is absolutely covered with units. I don't have nearly the man power, at 350k soldiers, half of which are still in Somalia, to take the US military staff at 3.6 million. Would building ICBMS or long range bombers be the best idea? The US doesn't seem to stock a lot of AA guns, so far as I can tell, at least, in the area's I've looked. Would it be a better solution to try to take Seattle first, for the port to bring soldiers down from the mainland via Alaska? or would it be better to just split the US in half by taking their natural resources and trying to take DC directly?

I also managed to get a number of alliances using your tip of putting extra tech, cash, goods and units into the trade to get several cash laden countries to partner up with me, through which I've bilked them out of billions for really criminal level diplomatic trades. I managed to sell Mexico petroleum at almost ten times its value, and I'm routinely able to sell consumer goods to Nigeria for crazy prices as well. The UK, Saudi Arabia, South Africa and Australia all seem highly interested in attacking me, which provocations ranging from the high end of Medium to out right red. I know if I take the US, I'll have a global war on my hands, but if I can pull off a defeat of the US, I could probably have the financial and man power resources to put a severe beating on them.

When you take a country, do you also get its technology that it has researched? The US has lots of high level tech and units I'd love to have, but I don't want to lose access to it by destroying them.

Thanks

_________________
"One must have chaos in their soul to give birth to a dancing star." - Friederich Nietzsche
"War is simply the continuation of politics by other means." - Col. Carl von Clausewitz

No. You don't get tech for eliminating enemy regions.

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"All warfare is based on deception...
Hold out baits to entice the enemy. Feign disorder, and crush him."

Sun Tzu, The Art of War

I find that out of what the US of throws at you,tanks and airpower at their biggest threat.

Make their tanks come to your forces, which should be high close combat and in cities and other close combat hexes.Create highways of death,where the approach and retreat of the enemy is under constant attack.And then bleed them dry.

For their air,dont fight them head on unless youve got compariable aircraft.Those stealth fighters can be a real pain.Set up abushes.Heavily man an area with good anti-air close to their border.Then send a small group of aircraft right over them and into the enemy airspace to stir up their air force.Then as soon as you know they are coming, retreat your air units back behind that anti-air.Right after the enemy encounters your anti-air and crosses into your airspace,jump them with the bulk of your fighters.

Expect to have to kill over 3k U.S. units,before their military collapses.

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This post approved by Tkobo:Official Rabble Rouser of the United Yahoos
Chuckle TM

After reading all this, now I want to go buy the game!

actually i would ally my self with Egypt (for petrolum)
Ukraine(for ore)&China (for coal) & south africa & indonesia to supply them with techs for money also you should (after they become your ally)figure out the max output of each in their category.
Ex:china has a max production per day of about 2,000,000 coal a day so i offer 999x2,000,000 coal a day & add missile defense & $1m you can repeat with all you allies & take care that missile & mutual defense are very big things for the AI so he will not mind losing a trillion ( if he could afford to) just for them

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"If I weren't an Egyptian, I would have wished to be an Egyptian" Mostafa kamel


MAY THE SOULS OF THE THOUSANDS WHO GAVE UP THERE MOST PRECIOUS THING FOR US REST IN PEACE ,AMIN