Perestroika Difficulty

[TheEntente1]

Perestroika difficulty (which is needed for achievements) is ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ brutal. I was playing as Grigory Romanov (the Stalinist guy) and by 1988 I had a budget surplus, leaderism, totalitarianism, and all the rest to put the bolt on opposition, but it kept growing no matter what I did.

The Intellectuals were pissy for the entire game, no matter how much I pumped into the culture sphere. The worst was the opposition, it went down by -.1 if I was lucky and went up by 1-2 points every turn, which means I have to run them over with tanks with the army or commit another Great Purge with the KGB. This tanks my SSR loyalties, and my US relations, necessitating Detentes which loot my gold reserves. The cherry on top where the Gaulists not doing anything despite me funding them since day 1, which means an embarge from France as well.

How do I beat this? Literally all of the guides I am reading refer to things like "communications" and were written in 2017, so I am at a loss for what to do. Any help is welcome.

[Kelldrim]

How were you funding things like propaganda and the special services? If I'm playing on this difficulty I tend to just put at least 150 into Special Services and Propaganda from the get go.

But, I agree, Perestroika difficulty is a pain in the backside!

I rarely play on it, so I can't be of too much help, apologies.

[TheEntente1]

I brought my KGB budget to 150-160, but my state propaganda was kept at 120 because I was relying on envelopes to keep my Intellectuals and SSR leaders happy. How much will propaganda alone really help though?

[Yaponchik]

increasing envelopes will cause corruption to spiral out of control, which will tank your economy. Better to invest the money in Special Services and Propaganda.

I won as a Stalinist a few times (not all the time as Perestroika level is harder than the Hard level) playing Perestroika difficulty by keeping the Special Services well funded (start at 150, get it up to 200 as soon as I could), Propaganda (start at 180, get it to the low 200s as soon as I could). I cut envelopes SLOWLY especially the Intellectuals' envelope and would always make the cuts when Opposition strength was low. I also kept the State Mechanism well funded (ideal is 10% of your economy).

[TheEntente1]

I see, so I should also take a step back and go to normal mode, learn that (because I was playing on easy mode before) and ease myself into Perestroika. Also, Is it true that increasing your propaganda and secret police disproportionately angers the intellectuals?

[Deco Boladasso]

The thing is: Perestroika is about increasing liberties all the time. It would be very hard to govern as a Stalinist, because people will always try to get more freedom - so you get more crisis in your kremlin. In part, what you doing is pushing it to the other side of the political scope, so maybe you can keep things under control this way. I got the ballance of keeping some liberalization but always keeping the republics under the socialist point of view. But it didn't manage to beat the game in this difficulty, because it took tons of money to keep the republics under socialism. Besides, it was harder to make the US collapse - and my army soon wasn't enought to contain those liberal bastards.