Welcome to the forums! I'll try to answer your questions to the best of my ability.
way2co0l wrote:
Say I'm wanting to play as the US. I assume domestic approval doesn't matter much until election time comes around so I can let it gradually drop but what kind of tax rates should I be looking at? Should I use the universal tax ratings or should I adjust the various taxes at different rates to encourage specific growth? I assume health care and infrastructure should be raised as highly as possible but what about the other social spending settings?
You are right about the domestic approval. It can be ignored until election unless it drops too low. I usually have mine between 27 and 34. As for taxes, a good starting point is 50% and then prod and pull the various taxes as needed. Health care should be maxed if you want to raise your population and also greatly affects the approval rate. Infrastructure should be kept at 200%. The other social spendings also affects your country and you should try to keep them at 100% except social services. I usually reduce that to 0% and then adjust it upwards in case I am not happy with my GDP\c growth.
way2co0l wrote:
What kind of finances should I be aiming for? With my tinkering I've got nearly a month into the game and a decent 200,000 M anual profits has slowly eroded day by day to only a marginal amount of income right now. So how much should I aim to earn in profit on an anual basis?
There is no good answer for that. Larger countries should keep a larger cash reserve as a war fund then small nations. As long as you are in the black in peace time you're fine. Just remember as the USA you have the worlds largest economy and thus your actions on the world market greatly affects other nations. A mistake many new players do is build tons upon tons of consumer and industrial goods factories and thus saturate the market and reduce prices to a painful level for exporting nations. Try not to rely on only one item for export and become self sufficient in your base resources. One can effectively cool down the economy by importing base resources should it be required.
way2co0l wrote:
How much of my armed forces can I reasonably expect to deploy and how much should I leave in reserve until I need it? How much should I try to mobilize and in which categories?
You don't really need that many units to defeat your enemies if you use them efficiently. Using your air force correctly, you can take out almost any enemy with minimal losses. Also, remember that invasion over water requires a lot of transport ships and aircraft.
way2co0l wrote:
Should I try to begin a bunch of construction early or will that place too large a strain on my finances early? What should I focus on building up first?
Be patient. If you build a lot of facilities early and you adjust your economy towards that it can be hard to shift back later. Like I said earlier, it is important not to over saturate the world market with goods as it will affect you negatively in the long haul.
Generally though, at scenario start there is usually a dire need for military goods and electricity. Remember that military goods consume industrial goods during their production. Also, you need to decide whether you want to export electricity or not. If you want to export it then you should build coal power plants because they are very inexpensive and offers cheap energy. If you don't want to export electricity then you should build petrol power plants so that your markup on electricity becomes higher = more money in the treasury. The markup of any goods doesn't have a pain level on the price itself, only the percentage. This is useful to know if you don't want to be an export economy.
way2co0l wrote:
Just those and a bunch of other questions I'll ask later. I understand the sandbox mode for the game allows for flexibility and for everyone to be able to play their game to their tastes but without having any direction or knowing what I should expect I'm having a difficult time knowing if I'm doing it right in the first place or what I should be doing differently.
I'm basically just looking for some basic goals and some basic direction to compare my experiences to so that I can tell when I'm doing something wrong and can focus my attention on improving. I just don't know what I should be expecting or working on. lol.
I'd appreciate any feedback I can get to put me on the right direction as the US with the newest update on pretty much all default settings.
Most important of all is to remember to have fun! It's a great game once you get to know it. Keep pulling and prodding those sliders to learn the mechanics of the game. Good luck!
