Imp 1: Running out of money – 3

Self sustainability is your #1 goal. Labor shouldn’t be your main focus, after all what’s the use of unused labor? 

When I start playing I ask myself this: What resources do I have access too and what are areas I need to focus on? In every game there’s going to be a couple scarce and therefor ‘key’ resources you need to acquire. If you’re short on iron then you need to either plan on acquiring it by trade or military action. 

While you begin to accumulate resources exploit those resources as quickly as you can. Startup costs for bringing the resources into your capital can be pricey, but they pay off BIG time in the long run (and the quicker you bring in the resources the more money it’ll pay out). Once you’re bringing in resources start to get your industry chugging along to keep pace, after all resources that sit in your vault don’t make you money. Obviously try and keep pace with labor as well, but you shouldn’t have much problems with that. For most games you should have easy access to food creating resources which tends to be the biggest obstacle (besides money) to get your labor supply moving (As a side note: Never let your workers starve if you can avoid it. Buy food if you have no other options… and if you’re playing a scenario where you know you’ll run out eventually make sure to stock up in advance).

As I mentioned before self sustainability is the ultimate goal. On the military side I tend to only build enough units to conquer minor non-capital territories and focus solely on my industry until around 100 dark blue labor (depending on the scenario and situation). If you have 50-100 dark blue labor being utilized (and a healthy supply of EVERY resource… Scarcity of even a single resource can greatly hinder economic development so resource acquisition can’t be stressed enough) but once you have enough resource self-sufficiency then you can focus your attention on global domination. At 100 labor you can replenish military units WITHOUT slowing down economic development too much. In fact, most games I play I end up making so much money and have so many resources that I can build insane amounts of military units every single game. But that only comes with time, planning, and patience. 

Some scenarios are a lot trickier than others, but all of them are beatable. I’ve won as every single country on the map (including all the so called ‘impossible’ countries) in every single scenario. My priority is:

1. Resource acquisition (either by finding resources you have or finding and obtaining the resources elsewhere)

2. Resource exploitation (every set of trees you have in your territory that’s not being utilized is wasted monetary potential). A good rule of thumb is: Always be exploiting. More is better. Why settle for 10 iron when you can bring in 20 by building bigger mining plots?

3. Adequate industry and labor buildup to match resource exploitation (don’t let resources sit and accumulate spider webs in your warehouse!)

4. Self-sustainability. If you have to start the game by acquiring resources through trade, begin to transition your economy to near 100% self sufficiency. This will pay big dividends in the long run.

5. Dominate

– Zach