u/a_saddler

Took me 60 in-game years, but it's finally done. The 'natural borders' of the United States of Europe.

A couple of days ago I asked here why I couldn't form the Confederation of the Rhine while having 8-9 states puppeted in Germany as France, and turned out that I'd knocked Prussia and Austria out of the GP ranks and it auto-completed before I could even form it. Tried to do it the old-fashioned way, but turned out that the hit to your Sovereign Empire cohesion was too much to deal with.

So I restarted and did it properly, and without ever going above 25-30 infamy. I learned a lot from this run, and certain tricks I can do along the way. I think that if I tried again, I can get it down to the 1870s instead. Some of the things I learned:

- Fastest way to get Natural Borders of France is to exile your Rural Folk leader a couple of months into the game. There's like a 40% chance the next leader becomes a Bonapartist (you can cheese this). Then you turn into a republic by starting something silly like Autocracy (If you didn't know, France turns into a Parliamentary Republic with Universal Suffrage if the Radical Movement starts a revolution and it gets to 25%). In the next election, the rural folk will almost certainly win 50% of the vote. I usually tend to do this after I get legal guardianship first.

- I've tried to be friends with Russia in a previous run, but they're useless. They will take Prussia's side even if you have an Alliance with them. It's much better to be friends with the UK. They're a good trading partner, and you can fix all the bordergore in Africa (if you decide to colonize) by trading states with them.

- Get your involvement in Central Europe to Pervasive. That 25% leverage generation bonus is immense to get your initial large German states as fast as possible into your power block. The quickest way to form the Confederation is to Subjugate Bavaria and Hannover. They're the easiest to get into your powerblock, although I do want to stress that you should get Switzerland puppeted (not just a protectorate) so they're absorbed and the confederation instantly becomes a puppet instead of a protectorate. I also try to get Baden subjugated to to give the Bavarian lands access to your market. Use your navy to project power in the Baltics to up your involvement as well as treaties.

- Keep Austria powerful so they stay a GP but at an arms distance. They're the easiest to break apart in a 'final war' because of all their releasables. Prussia is much harder to puppet and will cost you a ton of infamy if you do it via war because you can't break it up too much.

- Revolutions are your friend. The way I got Prussia into my powerblock and subjugated is by devastating them in my war with them for the Rhineland, where I also released Westphalia and Pomerania, and then waited until a radical revolt started after they tanked financially. The subsequent Prussian Republic will be friends with you, which you can easily bring into your powerblock because they'll be a minor and subjugate without having to pay 50+ infamy. I did this with Austria later too, though they turned communist instead lol.

- The best trick that I learned too late: In order to absorb all countries into Central Europe, you need to reduce their autonomies to puppets from protectorates. And this can take a long time depending on the countries, especially if you need to puppet a lot of them, which rises the liberty desire of others. What you can do instead is to just protectorate whomever you need at the end via a final war, then start 'grant state' chains where you give one protectorate territory from another puppet, which will rise the liberty desire of the puppet a lot, but will lower it on the protectorate. You do this until you can puppet the protectorate, then you start over again with the next until you've puppeted everyone. This will obviously lead to every puppet being at 100 liberty desire in the end, but that doesn't matter because you'll be forming Central Europe and they will disappear.

Things I want to learn:

- If it's possible to get one of your protectorates or puppets to form Italy somehow. I'm not sure if there's a trick for this, since a country needs to be a major power to form Italy, and they can't be that if they're your puppet.

- Also, if there's a reliable way to keep the Netherlands a minor power without having to go to war with them and straight up take territory from them or get them to release the Dutch East Indies.

I'd appreciate any tips and tricks you might have about how to optimize forming Centra Europe as France if you've tried this. This was a low infamy attempt, and I'm wondering what a high infamy one would look like.

I'm playing France, and I've puppeted Bavaria, Baden, Wurttemberg and Westpahia too, but it's still not triggering. Are there other requirements besides having 4 states puppeted?

So, if you're like me, having set the game aside for quite a while only to come back with the Great Wave DLC having reworked Japan quite a bit, you're probably very confused about how all the new flavor works. I've played a few runs myself and I think I've finally figured out how to do the honorable restoration early optimally, and I think it actually makes Japan stronger than in previous patches.

It relies on two pieces of RNG at the start.

1. The first is fairly easy, when you start a game, there's a chance that on day 0, the Chonin, which are the Japanese Petite Bourgeoise, aren't marginalized, therefore you can put them in government right from the start. I think about a third of the new games start out with them available. If you move a day forward though, they immediately fall back to marginalized. So I'd restart if they're marginalized from the start. But if you don't want to restart, just switch the Government Admin PM to Secular, build 2-3 more Admin buildings, and they should appear again.
2. Now, the 2nd piece of RNG, which I find incredibly annoying, is that you need Qing to ban the opium. That way, the UK will almost certainly declare on them (and win easily), which will trigger an event on your side where you can end Sakoku (Isolationism) early. But right now, most of the time they don't because the Qing AI doesn't ban opium. It picks the 'we have to do something' option but then just leaves the journal untouched. I don't know how to fix this behavior without switching to Qing and banning it yourself, but I hope that anyone can tell me how to make a simple mod so that Qing chooses that option so I don't have to rely on a simple piece of RNG that doesn't work how it's supposed to.

Otherwise, you have to rely on GB to open you up, or an event to fire where smugglers try to trade in Japan and you can use that opportunity to end Sakoku. But these are even less predictable. The Opium War is much more reliable, if only it worked properly. I really hope the new AI patch addresses that. You can of course try to repeal the law yourself too, but it's a pain to try to do that.

Otherwise, the steps to restoring Japan are fairly straightforward with little RNG involved. And I'm just going to focus on the political side, the economics are up to you:

• Day 0, before unpausing, add the Chonin and Jisha (Religious IG) alongside the Landowners to your government and start Appointed Bureaucrats. Then immediately remove the Chonin so you get a fully legitimate government. Then negotiate with the Jisha, who will 9 times out of 10 have the 'improve lives' option available because Japan starts with terrible SoL due to the current crisis in the country. You will fulfill that requirement really easily. This way you will have some 10-15% chance to pass, and some push back from the Landowners which we will fix with the next step.
• Patronize the Landowner leader, then go to your national caste and find two more who you can patronize, preferably at least one non-Tokugawa member that will give you +1 approval. It'll cost you 300 authority total. Along with the Frugal Ordinance, they will have so much approval that they won't stand against you for the first law.
• Now go to your buildings PMs, and switch Rice PM's to fish fertilizers and single crop. This will immediately update without unpausing, and along with having kicked out the Chonin out of government will give you two options on the Tenpo Crisis, which are Combat Rice Hoarding and Frugal Ordinance. Pick both, especially Frugal Ordinance which will give you a -2 minimum SoL as an amendment to your Loose Status Order law in the Edo System Law. This is very helpful and you won't want to switch off Loose until the Tenpo Crisis almost runs out.
• Whatever you do with your authority and taxes, I would recommend you keep authority close to excess and your government over 90 legitimate so you get those law tics as quickly as possible. In my experience, despite starting with low chance, you get Appointed Bureaucrats passed in around a year easily. Appointed Bureaucrats is good because Japan, like Qing, has lots of pops in few states, which means the +25% tax bonus is very useful, and it counts under the Tenpo requirements. And because you're going to have to build Admin Buildings after it passes, it'll make the Chonin unmarginalized again. You'll need them.
• Once you're done with Appointed Bureaucrats, you go straight for Tenant Farmers. Put the Farmers in government, and negotiate with the Jisha again for SoL improvements, which should be easy once more because you shouldn't be past the starting SoL crisis. You should be able to pass it easily too by 1839. Don't try to go for Homesteading, it's too hard and not even worth it because you'll want the Landowners to still be powerful when you put a modernizers in charge of them.
• This is where usually, if Qing banned Opium, the war happens and Britain wins. Sometime they take the land route over Tibet and it takes quite a while. So if they haven't won just yet, put the Military in government (kick out the farmers) and start the Shinsegumi Law, which you can later merge into the Secret Police law, and wait for the Opium war to be over.
• Once the war is over, you get an event, Lion in the Dragn's Den, which will give you the option to choose to have a Journal entry where you can end Sakoku. Pick that, and before you end Sakoku, put the Chonin in government again so you have the Free Trade option available. Pick that and kick the Chonin once again out, but do keep a government with less than 50 legitimacy (unless you want to go for the Taikunate, but this is not a guide for that).
• The Honorable Restoration should fire in a few days, with all sorts of stuff happening all at once. But the main thing to focus on are the Journal Entries, where you can pick 'decide on a reform strategy', pick Bakufu.
• Now, in order to Petition for Imperial restoration, you need the Sono Joi movement to be agitated above 50%. It should happen naturally, but if it's not, just start a law they like and immediately cancel it, such as Oligarchy. It'll easily get them over 50%, but don't overdo it with any other law because you need them not to start a revolution, since you need 6 months of quiet and peace so that the Emperor can be properly restored. It's a delicate balance to strike, but not too hard. Here's where the Free Trade option comes handy though, because if the Sono Joi look like they're about to start a revolution, you just go for Mercantilism, which will make them and the landowners happy.
• After six months, you should have the Ninko Restoration, and soon after you should get an event that kicks out the Tokugawa leader from the Landowners. Here's where that young non-Tokugawa member becomes leader of the Landowners, which in my game is a moderate named Date Narikuni.
• After the restoration, you should have an option to dispatch a mission to the west. Click on it immediately, and send the Landowner leader in the mission. In the few tests that I did, if you have him spend the maximum on all places he visits, he will likely pick up too many options and when he returns, and you will have a select chance of him becoming either a Modernizer, a Protectionist or a Market Liberal. You really want Modernizer, and in order to get that reliably, don't spend too much time on Mexico or Europe, but spend the most time in the UK. This way you're almost guaranteed to get him to become a Modernizer. You want that because Modernizer means Interventionism, Protectionism, Public Schools, Lax Status Order, Per Capita Taxation etc. All from the leader of the landowners that should be quite powerful still. And on top of that, there's a chance he picks up Interventionism from the UK and you can immediately change from Traditionalism to it if you don't care about Production tech boost.

This way, by 1840 to 1845 you should have a restored Imperial Japan with a Modernizer in charge of your Landowners and a +2 monthly tick towards recognition too. And the Tenpo Crisis should be easily resolvable whichever way you choose. It's up to you what you do with your game going forward.

If you have insights in how to optimize this further, please do share them.

This is in the pack description:

• Narrative content for Poland and other nations vying for independence from Russia.

And it's also somewhat historically accurate too. I had a lot of fun playing as Hungary this way.

I was wondering why I wasn't getting any recommendations like I did in other clubs with the Transfer Room In feature with this particular club I joined, Cercle Brugge, and found this out. I loaded the same game while I was at other clubs, and it was working because the DoF was in charge (General Manager), as it's supposed to be.

I even fired and hired a new DoF, but it's still the Managing Director in charge. Happens even when I delegate transfers, where it goes to him instead of the DoF.