How do you win "Gateway to Europe"?

[ostlandr]

Can it be done, or is it just a massive waste of political power?

[TasteDasRainbow]

First off, it is selected finally by the netherlands as a national focus, when one of the 3 choices (UK/Neutral/Germany) is available, based on who has how much PP invested. As the UK, they will more than often select you when the PP is balanced in your favor.

That being said, as Germany, don't expect netherlands to ever select the one that leans toward germany during historical. At best they will go neutral, but I have never seen them lean germany on historical, as expected.

As a result, I tend to only match what the UK put in, in order to prevent the netherlands from leaning toward the UK, without wasting excess PP and using it later on when the UK does.

[Grenzer]

It's a trap.

At the start of the game, every country has a strategy it picks. If your game is set to historical, then it'll be the same focuses it takes every time, if it's on non-historical, then it may pick other focus branches.

Unless the Netherlands chooses at the start of the game the political strategy that favors you(democratic, if Britain; fascist, if Germany), then the Netherlands will NEVER take the focus that that their strategy rules out, no matter how many years you keep influence over your rival.

So yeah, in short, it's a total waste. I brought this up immediately after the release of MTG on the forum, and have brought it up a few times over the years, but the devs ignore it. Don't count on it ever being changed.

There is only one hyper niche use for it. If you know the Netherlands is going to cave to your faction ahead of time, it can be worth spending some political power on increasing your influence, as this will entice the Germans/British AI into trying to match your influence, but the Netherlands AI will spend it's own PP to bolster the side that it decided to cave to at game start. You can use this to game the system and get more PP out of it, as all the PP goes to the country Netherlands caves to.

[marshaladmiralq]

I have seen it work

[76561199418627359]

This thread was quite old before the recent post, so we're locking it to prevent confusion.