How do I increase my GDP and naval budget in campaign mode?

[monicaida25]

I started with Japan and I have managed to invade all of China's coasts, but my technology is apparently very backward, and I suppose it's because I can't put enough money into research, how do I do that?

Another question, by taking away all of China's coast, they have disappeared and the territory appears as ungoverned territory, will that remain like that until the end of the game? or is it possible to invade it?

[chiyen]

1) Always keep TR as much as possible.
2) Expand Territory - fast.

For the remains of inland provinces, just ignore them. You have no control over that. Go to conquer South East Asia and Russia Far East ASAP. Block the Singapore strait when you are doing this.

[monicaida25]

and can I start a naval invasion of a territory that does not belong to a naval power? because I am at war with Spain, which is also an ally of Korea, and I suppose it would not hurt to have more territory.

[thunderspirit2014]

Originally posted by monicaida25:

and can I start a naval invasion of a territory that does not belong to a naval power? because I am at war with Spain, which is also an ally of Korea, and I suppose it would not hurt to have more territory.

Yes, you can invade Korea if they are allies with someone you are at war with. Have enough tonnage in the appropriate sea zone and they will be listed in the 'Naval Invasion' options on the politics screen.

You cannot invade any province that has no ports, naval power or not. However, if you take a province of China and drag the war out eventually your 'army' will start an invasion of landlocked Chinese territories. Watch the arrow and you will see % of invasion completed. You might want to let China keep Formosa or Hong Kong so the war continues while your 'army' invades the interior of China.

Japan is IMO not one of the easier countries to play. Chiyen is 100% correct, you have to expand fast or will get buried. About the worst thing is a 'friendly' China, Russian and Spanish Far East territories don't bring you much money and France or Britain will kick your butt early in the game.

[Sword_of_Light]

So, economy, especially for Japan, can be difficult at the beginning of the game.

In general, I favor random events that add to my GDP, even at the expense of naval budget.

I agree that transports should be a priority. I aim for 200%, because even the best defended empire will loose transports. I am fighting the French at the moment, and am loosing about 1% of my shipping per month, despite having a vastly larger fleet. However, since I started at 200%, my shipping is still at 181%.

In the beginning, I set my transport slider to somewhere just above 0%, so that I'm building transports, even if it slow. Tech is my second priority, and manpower third. I make sure that I am not loosing money each month. So that might mean in the beginning that my manpower is only set to 10%, my tech at 45%, and shipping at +.01%.

As my economy slowly improves, I slowly increase each slider. You need all three. Usually what I do is if I see that I've got a surplus of $5M - that is to say, I'm going to make $5M at the end of the turn - I'll invest that into one of the 3 sliders.

Economy improves with conquest, but the difficulty with Japan is that early on it's difficult to build navies large enough to grab large swaths of land. In fact, I recommend trying to maintain peace for the first 20 years so you can build a sizable navy.

As you conquer, however, you will see that economy becomes easier and easier to maintain. As Great Britain, I think I achieved 100% on all sliders around the 1920's. So it's possible - though GB and the US are easier by far than Japan.

[monicaida25]

I always have the transports at maximum, but I can't notice a big difference.

[Plothos]

Early on, it’s very possible to overbuild your navy. I don’t know if you have, but start there. At the bottom of your finance screen you will see a itemization of expenses. If building, maintenance, and fuel/ammo are huge chunks of your budget, then you are supporting a giant navy that is active and operational at the expense of your research and economy.

You can either a) scrap or mothball ships, suspend builds; b) put fleet into limited status to cut costs; c) conquer stuff so fast while not continuing to overbuild to the point your gdp catches up.

Generally speaking, you’re better off with a smaller, more advanced fleet while boosting your research and grabbing what you can and building transports (very slow even at max) to 200%. At a certain point you will reach an economic point where you can keep sliders maxed, constantly expand ports, and still build and refit at port capacity. This takes time, and the early game is a balancing act.

Most of my games don’t see a ton of conquest in the first 5 years while I carry a minimal fleet to jump start tech and econ.

That’s what I did in my current japan playthrough, and I have only Germany and (half of) the US left, some 25 provinces to take for conquest in 1933.

[dmansail]

Also, with Japan depends when you start a campaign, 1910 is a lot easier than 1900 despite the level of difficulty.

[hurepoix]

Make conquest
Accept any event rising naval budget and ignore counterpart.
Reject any event rising GDP and ignore counterpart (I know it is counter intiutive)

Unfair additional way fall in bankrupcy any time it is possible.

It worth for any country, so it worth also for japan.

[Kuma]

I'm not a fan of the new research / GDP implementation in the final version of the game. I only play 1890 campaigns and Japan is one of my favorite to play. It is all in the initial setup.

Suggestions:

1.) Keep starting / remaking your initial campaign as Japan until you get at least 9% GDP.

2.) Crew budget 0% Transport to max until you hit 200% then back to middle of slider 0%
100% Tech budget and keep it there no-matter what happens.

This typically results in a loss of 8 million every turn. You have just enough funds to make it to 1892 were you can change the slider for transport to 0% once you hit 200%. If you have to go bankrupt once to get there, so be it.

Like hurepoix said, always select naval budget over GDP. Also take anything that increases prestige such as the amazing deny alliance for +15. Helps if you need to go bankrupt a few times. Take money for slight unrest, it resets every 4 years anyway. You are basically using the pop-ups to generate money with the occasional bankruptcy if needed.

Do not invest in dock building at all. You will notice your monthly balance will go down month and month. It will not start to equalize to around 1915-1920. I start to build docks at year 1920. Torpedo boats / destroyers / cruisers are all you have until then. Against the AI, not much of a challenge anyway since early heavy warships are easily approached and sunk via torpedo. If you are forced into a war, either settle quickly by letting the enemy raid your port once and sue for peace or take a few destroyers and damage their ports for a quick war and payout.

After all this headache, you can emerge as Japan in the late 1920's with all three sliders maxed without being technologically impotent. The dock building is not as crucial as it was before since every month your shipbuilding capacity increases even if you are not building docks. For me, starting to build docks in 1920, got me max shipyard size 131,800 tons and max capacity 323,254 in 1930.

It was always my opinion that this game is a peace simulator. No matter how I have played, economic and technological growth has always been higher staying out of wars.

[hurepoix]

Originally posted by Kuma:

It was always my opinion that this game is a peace simulator. No matter how I have played, economic and technological growth has always been higher staying out of wars.

It is true that playing peacefully up to 1930 will place you in a good if not hegemonic situation at that date.

However as self evident truth, it also prevent you to win a rule, alone, the entire world before 1930.

[Wrayday]

Nothing really seems to matter until you secure territory with oil. I think the economy is hard coded to each nation to level the playing field. It's why you can drive a nation to a tiny island in the middle of the Pacific and somehow they can build a fleet.

I controlled the entire American hemisphere and still my economy was rated lower than Germany... which only had Germany and a small part of Russia.

There also (Tin foil hat) seems to be a time where game mechanics break... and your game stops offering your prompts to increase GPT of Naval Budget.

[thunderspirit2014]

Originally posted by Wrayday:

Nothing really seems to matter until you secure territory with oil.

Grab China, several provinces have oil and you also get a ton of money from their economy. The same provinces will always get oil discoveries so target going to war with whoever controls them.

[glythe]

Originally posted by monicaida25:

I started with Japan and I have managed to invade all of China's coasts, but my technology is apparently very backward, and I suppose it's because I can't put enough money into research, how do I do that?

Have you tried starting the game with no ships? Just "end turn" for 10 years.

Also by the way : going to war massively hurts the GDP unless you mod it out.

[quote=monicaida25
Another question, by taking away all of China's coast, they have disappeared and the territory appears as ungoverned territory, will that remain like that until the end of the game? or is it possible to invade it? [/quote]

In times past governments would "revive" with core territory only but it was not a 100% guarantee. I am not sure if this is enabled in the final build or not.

[chiyen]

Originally posted by glythe:

Originally posted by monicaida25:

I started with Japan and I have managed to invade all of China's coasts, but my technology is apparently very backward, and I suppose it's because I can't put enough money into research, how do I do that?

Have you tried starting the game with no ships? Just "end turn" for 10 years.

Just build tons of them in the beginning, and mothball all of them as the first thing to do in your 1st month in game. You don't have to pay for maintenance before you start a war, and you can mobilize them in 1 month (despite a lot of clicks required).

You can position some cheap TB into choke points far away and remotely refuel them. Since in early ages range and speed is a problem for your ships newly mobilized in home ports.

Don't have to worry about the exp lost either. Since in the first 5~10 years the training efficiency is close to non-existent; and the train level ceiling is so low that the only practical way is to do fighting instead of paying expensive training fees every month.

[thunderspirit2014]

Originally posted by chiyen:

Originally posted by glythe:

Have you tried starting the game with no ships? Just "end turn" for 10 years.

Just build tons of them in the beginning, and mothball all of them as the first thing to do in your 1st month in game. You don't have to pay for maintenance before you start a war, and you can mobilize them in 1 month (despite a lot of clicks required).

You can position some cheap TB into choke points far away and remotely refuel them. Since in early ages range and speed is a problem for your ships newly mobilized in home ports.

Don't have to worry about the exp lost either. Since in the first 5~10 years the training efficiency is close to non-existent; and the train level ceiling is so low that the only practical way is to do fighting instead of paying expensive training fees every month.

I'll have to try this approach. Different from my regular tactics.