New Poster, Requesting Tips on Somalia
Posted: Jul 20 2009
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
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