Ok so I've only ever played this for like one day, and I cannot seem to play for more than two hours without absolutely tanking my economy.
I'm playing as Cuba, and obviously my goal is to liberate the Cuban people from the tyranny of the landowners and Catholic church and eventually establish communism.
I've watched a couple of "complete beginner" videos on the topic, but there's almost twenty "complete beginner" videos in this series and they're all like 40 minutes long lol. This game is insanely complicated.
I've played a lot of Tropico so I am not unfamiliar with "nation building" games, but this is of course way more complex. It only dawned on me recently that the reason that the plantations that I started with weren't making me any money because they're owned by the fucking ruling class and not the state.
So, any pointers? Early on in the game what should I be focusing on? What should I build, research, etc? I've established that I need to first start a construction industry (Cuba starts with none) and build some plantations in order to get some money flowing in, but after that I'm just kind of lost. Plus the Spanish empire seems to immediately gift me Puerto Rico for reasons unknown and it's a completely impoverished backwards starving hell hole, so then I have to deal with that hot mess too.
Thanks in advance Hexbears.
Before you unpause:
Raise taxes to highest (more money for you + radicals) and set consumption taxes on services + as many luxuries as possible
Set grain to export focus (we want the corn laws event to fire)
Build 1 construction building for every 3-5k you are over net. If you have iron construction turn that on.
After unpausing: focus on goods which feed the construction industry. Try not to build any agriculture buildings. Only privatize if you are independent and no one has investment rights, otherwise foreign capital will buy everything.
After the corn laws fire the leader of the aristocrats will be a liberal, change your eco law to laizie faire
Research: you need railroads, otherwise you will run out of infrastructure (negative infrastructure means less goods sold and pops unable to buy goods)
After that you have choices, but I focus the society branch for better laws and New political ideologies
1860 is is when I'd go into mil tech for skirmish inf. Unless you want to go imperializing then your army should exclusively be infantry (best defence)
Politics/laws: radicals support opposition interest groups, early game while you're stuck with landowners they will be very helpful in getting the good laws. Do not worry about civil wars, Spain should be able to handle it** (if anti-player bias is set to high then the GPS will intervene against you). Try to go all the way, incremental steps will take extra time and annoy more IGs. Below is recommended goals early game
Slavery: banned
Education: public/religious (same education bonus)
Healthcare: universal/religious (same sol bonus for poor)
Home affairs: secret police (reduces the chances of civil war)
Taxes: proportional
Economy: laizie faire (construction is your #1 cost, LZ has a 20-50% bonus to paying for construction effectively making free money)
Voting rights: universal
This was very helpful thanks. So far so good, I've made it to 1842 and I'm still making money so far. I didn't realise that if I wasn't producing lumber / fabric / iron etc than I was just lighting money on fire.