Nation Prioities

[Jesus_Guy]

How much should i be investing in certain priorities? like economy and welfare. They affect each other, but is there a happy medium? or will i eventually plateau the economy for the sake of equality? Is it worth building a nation into a utopia?

What about the use of "spoils" in rich counties? can you out welfare the ruling class throwing a coup? is it worth the cap taking a resource rich third world and just 100% spoils for cash, any downsides?

i have watched the few videos, and the one dude's was pretty good, he went over all the interactions, but he didn't show any of the early game nation development...... Only that once you own a mega nation you can specialize each country into powerhouses.

[gimmethegepgun]

It depends on the country.
Small nations simply don't have the resources to make themselves good. They're much more useful making things that enrich factions, like MC, Boost, and Funding, because they have fewer CPs and thus are lighter on CP cap for their number of IPs.
Spoils is somewhat different, because the payout is per CP, as well as based on the size of the economy, so large countries get more money per CP cap from Spoils than smaller ones, but large nations probably need to worry about fixing the damage that Spoils causes to the country with Welfare, whereas the Inequality that small nations accrue is easily dealt with once they get annexed into a larger country.

[corisai]

For really big countries players usually go for at least 48750 GDP per capita (hard cap for extra RP from Economy).

[BlueOrange]

There are no simple answers. One thing that can help is to target your own country with an "Increase unrest" action and a "Coup d'etat" action. You don't actually carry these out of course - what you do is have a look at the defensive modifiers on the right-hand side and work out what the risk is that your opponent will succeed.

[wei270]

ok developing country long turn is very hard and it may conflict with your shot turn goals, early game you need lots and lots of research mostly how ever, if you want to truly build nation for the long run you want to increase population.

but getting more research means less population.

spoils is actually usefull because it can help you reduce your goverment screw and when you are trying to grow population you want to reduce goverment and education. + the extra money is nice, while the + defense for coup is almost pointless

wealth fare i heard some mathematicians claim it is too inconsequential to put investment in early game as it only reduce your investment point and you get more out of your existing investment point in to economy
you put investment in to welfare only when your need to rise stabilily but doesn't want to invest in unity because unity drops your goverment then you can think about investing in welfare.

[gimmethegepgun]

Originally posted by wei270:

you put investment in to welfare only when your need to rise stabilily but doesn't want to invest in unity because unity drops your goverment then you can think about investing in welfare.

Unity and Welfare are very different things. Unity is a short-term bandaid for cohesion and public opinion, whereas Welfare is a long-term fix for inequality and thus cohesion and stability.

[stun]

Welfare doesn't impact economy. You run enough welfare to prevent inequality from going up, more if you have inequality and want to drive it down. You always run economy. There is no shame in being poor, there's shame in not being ashamed of being poor; down that path lies hell.
Unity generates a lot of cohesion and acts like a constant publicity campaign, so in a similar way you can run a small amount of unity and your knowledge score will override it on the government, not that it especially matters either way.
GDP/capita gives you pop growth, you don't want this to go negative (from events etc.) so it helps beyond the basic increase in GDP. The event tied to national GDP going down are catastrophic as well, there's always a benefit in running econ if you want to hold on to a nation in it's own name longterm.
The china that gave me 2027 final victory objective unlock (brutal, servants, 1x speed) was on a lazy
3 economy
3 knowledge
3 welfare (it'd be 2 but my inequality got spiked)
1 military
1 unity (it was 2 when there was more of a threat to my cohesion. There's nothing wrong with having too much cohesion, it'll go down by itself once you fix the economy if you want it to)
1 funding
1 mission control
1 boost
for all points. This could definitely be optimized a lot more.
I just ran pure spoils in minor countries for cash. This is very reliable because there's always some fresh hell in africa or SA or wherever to fill in the gaps for, and other nations taking them from you doesn't matter at all. For servants specifically you can just run klepto default in the random points the ayys give you
>can you out welfare the ruling class throwing a coup?
Based on the wiki and backed up by my own experience, if government+cohesion-unrest*2 > 10, there will never be a coup ever even with 0% spoils (and it's pretty easy to maintain cohesion at 10 with unity investment). Ultramassive economies like china or the US are basically immune to outside interference, too.

[corisai]

Originally posted by stun:

You always run economy.

Absolutely not worth it and even harmful in small countries with GDP per capita higher then 8k.

Originally posted by stun:

Unity generates a lot of cohesion

Except Cohesion from it is only temporary so a HUGE waste of IP if your Cohesion resting point is low.

Originally posted by stun:

GDP/capita gives you pop growth, you don't want this to go negative (from events etc.)

It will be negative from time to time for most developed countries and that don't affect your game at all.

Originally posted by stun:

The china that gave me 2027 final victory objective unlock (brutal, servants, 1x speed) was on a lazy
3 economy
3 knowledge
3 welfare (it'd be 2 but my inequality got spiked)
1 military
1 unity (it was 2 when there was more of a threat to my cohesion. There's nothing wrong with having too much cohesion, it'll go down by itself once you fix the economy if you want it to)
1 funding
1 mission control
1 boost
for all points.

Extremely inefficient. And winning by playing Servants is always an easy-mode because of few current issues with AI envy mechanic.

[wei270]

so how do we run nations if we want to said long term growth?

[corisai]

Originally posted by wei270:

so how do we run nations if we want to said long term growth?

Really long term growth?

For mega-nation its:
0) Fix it (stabilize Unrest and Cohesion resting points). If you don't plan to use it as beatstick - consider using few armies (1-3) and disband excees ones.
1) Invest into 95-100% Economy until at least 48750 GDP per capita (I usually target 50k for some reserves). Keep an eye and fix Unrest / Cohesion issues happening during Eco growth.
2) Shape it in whatever you want.
- Research nation? Invest into Knowledge.
- Military beatstick? Invest into Military.
- Your luxury Citadel invulnerable to enemies? Cap Government (ideally drop to 0, but if it's already high - push to 10.0) and pump Eco even more (for pop growth and defense against enemy councilors).
- And whatever you want from it.

Of course if you really need some Boost / MC / Cash - don't be shy to run it.

[gimmethegepgun]

Originally posted by corisai:

Of course if you really need some Boost / MC / Cash - don't be shy to run it.

Though consider using small nations for that instead, as they're much cheaper to hold for the IPs they generate.

[corisai]

Originally posted by gimmethegepgun:

Though consider using small nations for that instead, as they're much cheaper to hold for the IPs they generate.

Absolutely.

(I would add it mostly for new players coming here so forgive me): And for Boost nations - really consider to grab something on equator. It will create a lot more Boost per each investment. In same time avoid Boost in nations like Canada, Sweden and so on.

[Ravenous]

What you need to conquer space is a bit of boost to get to Mars and especially Mercury and Venus. You will build your main economy there. Earth is good for research. But you will need decent armies and some nukes later or.

Africa is full of poor singular nations with bad econ but should you create African Union or islamic Caliphate there and unite the poor countiries together, Africa becomes a powerhouse easily.

[corisai]

Originally posted by Ravenous:

But you will need decent armies and some nukes later or.

If you seriously building you space economy - you don't need them at all. But of course this strategy is not for first game.

Originally posted by Ravenous:

Earth is good for research.

Until you have Research Campuses and decent space economy :)

[gimmethegepgun]

Originally posted by corisai:

And for Boost nations - really consider to grab something on equator. It will create a lot more Boost per each investment. In same time avoid Boost in nations like Canada, Sweden and so on.

Even so, iirc, the difference in Boost generation between Norway, the farthest north, and an equatorial site like Kenya is only 2x. Most European nations are wealthy enough that even though they're far from the equator they'll still generate plenty simply by having a lot of IPs, and they don't have Unrest problems like most equatorial nations bogging them down.

France and Benelux get a special shoutout because they have colonial regions near the equator that get very good generation due to their location AND they have a strong economy to generate IPs with. France probably has better things to do, though, since it's the core of the EU.

[wei270]

wow ok 100% in to gdp that is interesting.