Alright, having combed over the design doc and clarified some things, I feel like I have a decent handle of what we'll be wanting to do going forward. Time for planning that nobody asked for!
A quick reminder of our likely starting stats. They may change, so don't get too hung up on them, but it gives a rough idea of what we're working with here:
Econ
Industrial Cap 2/3
Development 10/15
Pollution 0
Culture
Consciousness 3 (4)
Standard of Living 3
Happiness 5 (4)/10
Research
Academies 3/3
Education 3
Innovation 2
Diplomacy
Trust 8
Espionage 8
Martial
Militancy 5
Armies 6
Navies 3
The most important things to remember is that Industrial Capacity is the new econ. We need it for basically everything, which should come as no surprise considering the quest is now called Paths of Industrialization. You want more Education and Academies? Your statement is really, "I want more Industrial Capacity so we can build more Academies." Consciousness, Armies, Navies, Happiness, Political Will, Education and Innovation all eventually come down to how much Industrial Capacity you have at your disposal. The only exception are some Soft Power option like Espionage and Trust.
So, Industrial Capacity is important. Duh. What goes hand in hand with this is the importance of eating not!Siberia. This is because we need to have available Active Development to continue raising IC, which makes it sort of the new Econ Expansion. As of this moment, we have two option for this:
Develop Transport Infrastructure - 1 PW, -3 Temp IC, +1 Max Development, (4 more uses to remove Undeveloped Hinterlands status)
Claim Kyberi Territory - 1 PW, -1 Temp IC, +2 Max Development, increases required Transport Infrastructure to remove Undeveloped Hinterlands status
The important thing to note is that Transport Infrastructure gives
half the Max Development for
three times the Temp IC. This is particularly bad for us because we're maxed out at 3 IC right now, and only regenerate 2-3 Temp IC per turn. Once we break the backs of the Guilds and transition to a better economic system this will be less of a concern, but early on we absolutely need to be claiming portions of land if we want to jump start our Industry.
So that's our early game. Claim Territory, Develop Industry and funnel it into other projects while trying to break the Guilds. Use spare Political Will for Soft Power actions like Trust and Espionage. But what should we be building for late game? In my opinion, we need to start with Innovation. Why? Because it makes almost everything better. Here's a sample of actions that become much more efficient after reaching certain thresholds of Innovation:
Increase Navies: 1PW: Temp Increases Navies by 1, -1 Temp IC
2PW: Increases Navies by 1, -1 IC
2PW + Innovation >15: Increases Navies by 1, -3 Temp IC
Improve Standard of Living - 1PW: Temp Increases SoL by 1, -1 Temp IC
2PW: Increases SoL by 1, -1 IC
2PW + Innovation >10: Increases SoL by 1, -3 Temp IC
What you'll notice is that, once we reach enough Innovation, we no longer need to spend
Permanent IC to increase things. This is a really big deal because if we cannot transition to spending Temp IC, we will cease Industrializing once we can no longer expand to new lands. Aside from the fact that it means no more Martial, not being able to Improve Standard of Living means we can no longer Improve Education:
Improve Education - 2 PW: -1 SoL, +1 Education, +1 Innovation
No Education means no more Academies or increasing our Consciousness, which means no increasing our PW regen and thus no increasing our actions per turn. Because of this, I think we should rush 8 Perm Innovation with Support Innovation:
Support Innovation - 1 PW: -1 Temp IC, +2 Temp Innovation
2 PW: -1 SoL, +2 Innovation
For a measly 6 PW, we can get most of the way towards making SoL no longer cost Perm IC. After this point, we can switch to Improve Education. It is less efficient for Innovation, but by this time what we really want is Education for Academies and Consciousness. After enough Education spamming we'll hit 15 Innovation, which will make raising Armies and Navies much easier.
Obviously we'll need to be raising Martial
before this point, and we'll be doing Soft Power actions throughout, but this is our late game goal. At this point, we can start churning out advanced Naval vessels like it's nobodies business.
Now for something to change and invalidate all of this
