Is Ultra-Left impossible?

[Honest]

I've tried many times to go ultra-left and have the Four take over while continuing the GPCR. I've even tried following the old guide which says it will allow for that to happen. Every time I make an attempt at this I'm overthrown. Is it really possible?

If anyone has made it to the end of the game (on normal or higher difficulty) as ultra-left here, please tell me how you did so.

[Kelldrim]

At the start of the game, I always remove all envelopes, take out 5 in loan money, reduce welfare to 6, agriculture to 11 (or 10), diplomatic to 1 (or 0) and dump money into propaganda, and MSS.

In the early events, do nothing for the funeral of Zhou Enlai, support Xiaopeng (or let them stand against each other and do nothing.) and AVOID doing anything regarding Zhou Enlai. When it comes to the Tianmen Square event, you should then be able to avoid doing anything that'd tank your public support too much.

The MSS is mostly there to arrest coup plotters (as this will probably happen.) You can support party unity in the second half of April as Ye Jinyang (a reformer with scientist as a trait, I forget his name exactly.) becomes an option for premier. Put him as premier.

This SHOULD set you on a path that can help you with the ultra left run. As it worked for me, but the largest issue is that you might not be able to do everything you set out to do early game. And you WILL be embargoed by the US for most of the game. (probably October 76').

[Typical_Name]

Originally posted by Kelldrim:

At the start of the game, I always remove all envelopes, take out 5 in loan money, reduce welfare to 6, agriculture to 11 (or 10), diplomatic to 1 (or 0) and dump money into propaganda, and MSS.

In the early events, do nothing for the funeral of Zhou Enlai, support Xiaopeng (or let them stand against each other and do nothing.) and AVOID doing anything regarding Zhou Enlai. When it comes to the Tianmen Square event, you should then be able to avoid doing anything that'd tank your public support too much.

The MSS is mostly there to arrest coup plotters (as this will probably happen.) You can support party unity in the second half of April as Ye Jinyang (a reformer with scientist as a trait, I forget his name exactly.) becomes an option for premier. Put him as premier.

This SHOULD set you on a path that can help you with the ultra left run. As it worked for me, but the largest issue is that you might not be able to do everything you set out to do early game. And you WILL be embargoed by the US for most of the game. (probably October 76').

What difficulty level did you do this on?

How quickly did you dump the money into propaganda and MSS? (I know that dumping lots of money into something all at once increases corruption but don't know how big of an increase to corruption this is or how much time you need to wait between budget increases)

Is confused, I thought doing an ultraleft run involved siding with the Gang of Four, which results in most of the non-leftradicals being purged?

[Kelldrim]

Oh, I did the things mentioned above on Normal, and once on the highest difficulty, but that was before it got made to actually be hardest.

At the very start, I put the propaganda to max it allows, basically, and MSS to around 16.

Generally speaking, the money needs to be put in VERY slowly, like no more than 1 extra per 2/3 months. BUT, you will need some money for events early game, such as the earthquake event.

By the time Mao dies, you're looking at 18/19 propaganda (perhaps 20 if possible.) And 17 or so in MSS.

You might need to just prioritise the focus on MSS/propaganda for a bit, just do NOT forget state mechanism to ensure corruption doesn't rise too excessively. (Try to keep it level with propaganda, but it'll only truly be an issue in 77' or so.)

As far as I know, you will HAVE to side with the Gang of Four and immediately transfer power to Wang Hongren. I can do a run in a bit, to try it out, but I think this should be okay as a starter, you may need to tweak it some.

[Typical_Name]

Originally posted by Kelldrim:

Oh, I did the things mentioned above on Normal, and once on the highest difficulty, but that was before it got made to actually be hardest.

At the very start, I put the propaganda to max it allows, basically, and MSS to around 16.

Generally speaking, the money needs to be put in VERY slowly, like no more than 1 extra per 2/3 months. BUT, you will need some money for events early game, such as the earthquake event.

By the time Mao dies, you're looking at 18/19 propaganda (perhaps 20 if possible.) And 17 or so in MSS.

You might need to just prioritise the focus on MSS/propaganda for a bit, just do NOT forget state mechanism to ensure corruption doesn't rise too excessively. (Try to keep it level with propaganda, but it'll only truly be an issue in 77' or so.)

As far as I know, you will HAVE to side with the Gang of Four and immediately transfer power to Wang Hongren. I can do a run in a bit, to try it out, but I think this should be okay as a starter, you may need to tweak it some.

When you say "highest difficulty", you mean Hard, correct? I have tried both Hard and Cultural Revolution difficulty recently and it appears to still be the case that Cultural Revolution is significantly easier than Hard (at least in terms of money, not sure what else might be going on).

[Kelldrim]

I did mean Hard, yes, I've not played the game much on hard, cause the economic struggles wind me up a little, haha! So, cultural revolution generally makes it harder to keep social unrest down, as far as I know.

[[BD] Crocve]

Well, I only played on Hard and Cultural Revolution to get the achievements related to them - besides that, I never played with those difficulties. Going left-radical is hard in the initial years, because of the low popularity that the Cultural Revolution has among the people. The easiest way in the 1st years is to not interevene in Thailand, because it consumes a lot of army, agents and money resources to intervene there. Also, you gonna need to invest on agents, the army and propaganda in order to combat party conspiracies and deal with the lowering of the popultarity among the people. But the hardest thing is the eventual fall of relations with the US, which can lead to an early economic sanctions and be very destructive to your economy - it is best to avoid this economic sanctions at least until mid-1979, when you can get your economic alliance. The best way being to try to promote and protect Zhao Zyiang in the Politics tab as much as possible, so you can put him both as Premier and MFA in the case relations gets worst with the US. The problem is that eventually, you won´t be able to protect him see he will be a target of post-party conspiracies investigations, so it is tricky to have him surviving. There is a Steam Guide made by Steam user "Brutus Too" detailing how to get the left-radicals in power, with my only disagreement with it being that you should not intervene in Thailand at all.

[Typical_Name]

Originally posted by Crocve:

Well, I only played on Hard and Cultural Revolution to get the achievements related to them - besides that, I never played with those difficulties. Going left-radical is hard in the initial years, because of the low popularity that the Cultural Revolution has among the people. The easiest way in the 1st years is to not interevene in Thailand, because it consumes a lot of army, agents and money resources to intervene there. Also, you gonna need to invest on agents, the army and propaganda in order to combat party conspiracies and deal with the lowering of the popultarity among the people. But the hardest thing is the eventual fall of relations with the US, which can lead to an early economic sanctions and be very destructive to your economy - it is best to avoid this economic sanctions at least until mid-1979, when you can get your economic alliance. The best way being to try to promote and protect Zhao Zyiang in the Politics tab as much as possible, so you can put him both as Premier and MFA in the case relations gets worst with the US. The problem is that eventually, you won´t be able to protect him see he will be a target of post-party conspiracies investigations, so it is tricky to have him surviving. There is a Steam Guide made by Steam user "Brutus Too" detailing how to get the left-radicals in power, with my only disagreement with it being that you should not intervene in Thailand at all.

Isn't getting into the war in Thailand important in order to accumulate intervention points to eventually dump into backing the Maoists in Afghanistan, though? (assuming one wants to do that, and I believe you need to be leftradical to do so)