China will grow larger/Death mode guide

[Anton Alexander]

Have not played for a few year and came back finding exciting new dlcs and difficulty levels. The achievement symbol for China will grow larger(name of the achievement, 0.2% currently) is cool, and turns out fun to play.

The achievement consists of 3 requirement: Cultural revolution difficulty (on the radio in settings), Death mode, and 5 years everyone die. The last is not troubling at all, as after 5 years, if one is still poor and cannot use money to take care of most things, then one is wrong. The CR difficulty is much easier than hard difficulty, as it removes the threshold for corruption from 10 to 0 without needing full automation of economy at the start. This means an extra of +1 budget every turn. very handy. The death mode is the challenging part. It limits stats <=50 and liberalization rate >=50. Thankfully foreign relations are not effected, so friendships (like CMEA) are allowed. Also, it works differently from normal stats cap as it is not a real cap. Instead, at the end of every turn, if stat values are <=50 (expect lib), then it will minus that but after that add on your natural growth rate. For example, so you party cohesion is +1.7 per turn, and your current party is 80, then next turn you stay at 51.7, forever, unless it drops below due to some event.

OK. Main challenge. Two death checks: 1. Conspiracy. Conspiracy can be dealt with no cost when party cohesion >50. Easy, not a real problem. 2. Popular discontent. It can be dealt with 4 ways (the middle option was always locked for me) 1. consumes people's support, 2. democratize (turns into multiparty democracy and start election right after, even if you are already multiparty democracy) 3. military, 4, agents. 1 will fail at 50 popular support, so not a reliable way. For 3, military requires a lot of investment, so much that cannot be easily attained early game, so out of the way. This leaves 2 or 4. For 2, it gets very nasty. For elections, you need at least 40-50 support PLUS 10 agents to win the election. Otherwise, even at 50 support, waiting an honest election or drive civil servants to vote will give you a game over. A good thing is, if the event popped up recently, it will not pop up again until a while after (like Dentente).

There are 2 ways to deal with popular discontent, elections (10 agents AND 40+ support) or agents (15? agents i think). I strongly recommend the authoritarian route, as once democratized, elections have the tendency to pop up at the most inconvenient times and is a huge drain on agents. Save up agents to save your game.

I strongly suspect that it is far more difficult to play right wing reformist/liberal route in death mode, as I have no idea how they deal with liberalization rate besides propaganda. Max propaganda tends to be far from enough to me. I have to rely on left-wing politicians to reduce liberalization rate in exchange for a decrease of party cohesion. Party cohesion can be bought with envelopes within spending cap. Harsh ones double the effort.

As for left wings, I am able to get cultural revolution modifier to stay, but had to democratize for it. I do not think it is worth it, as elections bites every now and then. Although honestly, I have not tried hard enough to see if it is feasible to get CR modifier without democratizing.

Some tips: different from your usual game 1. do not overspend resources (agents, envelopes, propaganda) when stat hits the cap, unless you are preping for an event. 2. keep liberalization down at 50 with harsh and left wingers and keep party happy with envelopes. 3. at the first few years, military is harsh, so maybe not the Thailand war, which is nice. Definitely not the Cambodian war (cannot get it on hard mode/normal stats).

As a side tip, I always appoint Ji Dengkui to premier, CMC, and a province/direction. To avoid the 0.1 budget and 0.5 agents for support at the beginning to get him to be premier, you can have others at top be premier and he magically moves up to the top 2 rows without cost. His is left, and thrifty (+0.1 budget per position per turn, premier i think doubles, so +0.4 in total). The best political guy in the game. Usually I keep Deng as he is thrifty and have good uses. It does rely on RNG.

Overall, it shall be pretty easy once Mao's death is stabilized. If I find any new interesting stuff I will share.

[Anton Alexander]

Some new comments - restoring relationship with ussr is impossible early on, as it requires 90 party support. This could be theoritically attained by have a party coup at 50 and arresting conspirators. Alternatively, support Trots and build you own union.

Late game death checks can be relied on Army troops. Army is cheap later on, and is not capped at all. A trick to cheaply raising reputation later is to has popular discontent(say send for reeducation) and then sending troops. Also for your own union, members goes astray, you cannot directly send troops as it requires something unattainable, say high party unity.


Once you make money, things so easy, but trade reduces agents, so one has to be rather careful for events and death checks and unruly partners

[Anton Alexander]

Ok, I tried 3 times, and did it. With investment in agents, military, envelopes and propaganda, and a fine tuning of politicians, I am able to get cultural revolution without democratizing, which is a agents sink hole. Agents are precious, and just cannot be wasted on elections.

The politicians fine tuning is too complicated. Basically, keep party unity above 40.4 to avoid conspiracy (besides events triggered), after all drama is over, focus on lowering liberalization.

For conspiracies arising from events(transferring power and continuing the CR), use solely military strength to crush. There are a minimum of 3 unavoidable of such events/drops. My military can only take care of 2, so for the other one, invest 10 budget to swiss bank to deal with conspiracy. There are a few popular discontent. The good thing is that once one happened, there is a timer for another one. Only use agents to break up popular discontent.

After getting CR modifier, I have to comment, I make much more money without investing in the economy at all and sacrificing agents for trade deals. One somehow gets +3. Perhaps keeping the living standards low also makes money by lowering the demand for oil.

Conclusion: CR under Cultural Revolution difficulty and Death mode is possible by walking on a thin wire, using a combination of military suppression, agents infiltration, and party secret swiss bank. It is a very fun challenge. It is quite ironic, that the CR is only able to continue thanks to the swiss bank.