Amphibious Assault and some misc questions

[Thrake]

Hi,

Let's begining by saying this is my first playthrough...

1. First thing, I'm trying to send land units on sea; this, I get it, but then, no matter what I order them, they just go back on land - my land, not high seas or ennemy's. I have tried setting land initiative and navy initiative to 0, but that still won't do the trick. How do I get around that?

2. I'm also a bit unsure about wether or not I could attack colonies; I'm at war with France, I conquered some colonies that declared war on me (I'm North Vietnam), but I can't declare war against other colonies. Is it about settings of rules of engagement perhaps?

3. Why would I want not to annex a country? I guess there's some drawback associated, but I failed to find out. Same for colony - why not a colony rather than just release?

4. How does civilian relations actually influence diplomacy? I mean, the wiki says what makes it go lower, but why would I want it to be high? What's about causus belli? A wild guess is, the higher, the less international opinion would care if I declare war against them.

5. If I build a factory that produces goods (food, water, uranium,...), does its production output is influenced by the map with red tiles? Or does it only represent how much at best of that given kind of factory I could build on this very tile (ie. flashy red, I can build say 6 factories for uranium).

6. It seems that a major part of my nation is actually migrating. Which is annoying, because I wanted to develop my economy while I can't as I'm already around 3% unemployment. So, I wait... But the rate hardly goes up! What should I do to keep people home? Increase social opinion perhaps (ie invest in more social spendings perhaps?) Does actually opening borders (free flow of labour force) with regions with higher GDP/c actually increase the amount of immigrants? I thought it would help increase my low GDP/c, but perhaps it's double edged as in real world, that would just push people toward the rich country to my understanding.

Ok, that's quite of a messy topic, I've tried to clear out as many questions by myself, but some still remain after a few hours... Thanks for giving a hand.

[Meisseli]

I can't answer to all of your questions, but I'll try answer as many as I can

3. If you annex a country, you take it to yourself and you take all land mass and population the country possess. There's some drawbacks such as increased civ demand for commodities (because you just doubled your population by annexing your neughbour) and people are loyal to the country you just annexed. Loyalty affects facilities' output (facilities produce something around 1/3 of max output on non-loyal land) and partisans may appear on non-loyal land. If you make the country your colony, the country becomes an AI-controlled nation but it's loyal to you, and IIRC it gives you any surplus commodities they produce

4. I think the civ relations goes like this: if you propose i.e mutual alliance to country B, B refuses because it's civ's don't like you. If B accepts your offer it would drop it's Domestic Approval Rating

5. You can always build up to six plants in one complex. I think that more red means bigger deposit on resources, but don't know if it affects on producing capabilities

6. Social spending is key to prevent people to move out. Wiki helps a lot http://www.supremewiki.com/node/81

[Thrake]

I can't answer to all of your questions, but I'll try answer as many as I can

3. If you annex a country, you take it to yourself and you take all land mass and population the country possess. There's some drawbacks such as increased civ demand for commodities (because you just doubled your population by annexing your neughbour) and people are loyal to the country you just annexed. Loyalty affects facilities' output (facilities produce something around 1/3 of max output on non-loyal land) and partisans may appear on non-loyal land. If you make the country your colony, the country becomes an AI-controlled nation but it's loyal to you, and IIRC it gives you any surplus commodities they produce

4. I think the civ relations goes like this: if you propose i.e mutual alliance to country B, B refuses because it's civ's don't like you. If B accepts your offer it would drop it's Domestic Approval Rating

5. You can always build up to six plants in one complex. I think that more red means bigger deposit on resources, but don't know if it affects on producing capabilities

6. Social spending is key to prevent people to move out. Wiki helps a lot http://www.supremewiki.com/node/81

Alright, thanks. I tried again for #1 and 2 and found out by myself in the end. Not quite sure how, but I did it

Now your wiki link about social spendings is weird. I had read the manual, and it said that most of it had little impact overall.

though this generally has little overall effect, taking it away from regions that have a history of receiving it can badly hurt your domestic approval.

Says something similar for some others. So, I just thought it was more of a republican thing to play with. Wiki suggests that it is something important though. And, obviously, both are official sources...

[Meisseli]

You can test this by yourself and see the results. Hover your mouse on those icons in red boxes

It will give you precise data of DAR and migration and births/deaths. Now throw some money to social services and wait for several days to effects to kick in. Now check those icons again and you should see that immigration should rise, emigration reduce and DAR improve. But if you are anything else than democracy you shouldn't concern much about DAR

[Thrake]

You can test this by yourself and see the results. Hover your mouse on those icons in red boxes

It will give you precise data of DAR and migration and births/deaths. Now throw some money to social services and wait for several days to effects to kick in. Now check those icons again and you should see that immigration should rise, emigration reduce and DAR improve. But if you are anything else than democracy you shouldn't concern much about DAR

As of now, I have 7 800 immigration, 318 000 emmigration and roughly there are 300 000 more citizens (death-birth). Meaning, I'm loosing around 10 000 pop a year. This, with the ongoing lack of workforce (was at 2.8%, I think I increased it a bit by turning of or destroying some facilities) is, to my understanding, what makes my economy crawl (trade going down, increase in debts while my treasure has almst always been healthy... That, I don't understand much. I invested a bit, but always much less than I had). I feel like I'm in a financial impasse as of now. That was predictible for a first try, but obviously, I'm doing something really wrong.

Not sure what's wrong with annexing too; domestic price seems better than the price my minister sets for the international market, so a lower production output but a higher domestic selling rate should actually mean I'm selling for a better price my goods. And colony AI feel so lame; seems like they hardly build anything.

[Meisseli]

Noticable effects won't kick in the next day after you have increased social spending, it takes some time. I don't know how much money did you put to those services but to have good effects you might want spend recommend values, or near that sum. Also different services does different things. I've noticed that law enforcement and social assitance are great ways to reduce emigration.

The economy side is a bit complicated at first. I found that locking minister out of taxes, social spending and bonds I managed to make a better job making surplus, maintaining positive people balance and all this without bonds. You might want to try Cuba or similar neutral country to get hang of the economy side.

Also you can't be self sufficient in every commodity. Remember to focus on electricity, Industrial-, Consumer- and Military goods. Perhaps oil. Everything else is just nice bonus

And colony AI feel so lame; seems like they hardly build anything.

That's because they don't.

[Balthagor]

And colony AI feel so lame; seems like they hardly build anything.

That's because they don't.

That's not true, if they have sufficient money and resources they will, however they also try and funnel excess to the parent region so they don't usually have the money/resources needed. If you feed them back money and IG, they will at times build.

[Thrake]

Now I really don't understand. I ran a test with Egypt (starts with 10% unemployment). I built nothing, and inactivated any fabrication around to avoid the army minister to do anything unwanted. I only changed social spendings, and let the game run. A couple of months later (around february 1950), unemployment went from 10% to less than 4%. It keeps going down, up to the point where I found myself again below 3% (I quited when it reached 2.6%...). Why? I also have growing inflation; around 16% after 1 year of the game running. Seems quite excessive.

[Meisseli]

I think it's because you increase the spending on social services = more available jobs = reducing unemployment. Because unemployment decreases it means it's harder to find people to do job. To find people to do job salaries increase = inflation goes up. And fighting against inflation, I really don't know how to do that but in here forums must be some threads on that topic

[Thrake]

Thanks again. That makes sense, given that Egypt starts with almost 0% in most social spendings. I will run another try and will try to maintain social spending when unemployment will get lower.

[Thrake]

Ok, I've got a good feeling about economy now I guess; at least enough not to bankrupt on my own I did try again with Egypt, stabilized unemployment around 3%, then invaded Ethiopia after they attaked Eritrea, relocated all production but timber (I had none available) to Egypt, and used the extra manpower to increase some more my economy. So far so good. Except that, I have 0% UN approval rating, and when trying to do some diplomacy with neighbours, they reject it because I have a "marginal diplomatic reputation". How could I fix that? How could I get some more causus belli? Looks like denunciating some actions helps, but I guess I could only get a decent amount of causus belli around end game this way.

[Meisseli]

Little tip, try the search function. It might answer your questions earlier and more accurate than my humble answers :D

To answer your questions, I found these topics. Hope these will help
http://www.bgforums.com/forums/viewtopi ... n+approval
http://www.bgforums.com/forums/viewtopi ... asus+belli

As for trading start from small trades i.e buy/sell oil, sell Industry goods and such because every trade positively builds up the relations. If other countries don't want to trade with you, you can try bribe them with money or commodities. In bribing many smaller trades are better than one big i.e 10x 1M$ bribe in separate offers is better than 1x 10M$ offer, and poorer countries are easier to bribe than rich ones

And for treaties, you can "game" these for better result i.e you want Free trade treaty but you can't have it in its own, so you'll have to stack some other smaller treaties to the point your partner accepts it. In the upper example you'll stack land/air/sea transit, line of sight tranist and/or criminal extradition along the free trade, and if it doesn't work out, try lump sum of $. But for treaties you need pretty good relations with your trade partner