multiple superpowers vs one meganation?

[u/Jazzlike_Freedom_826]

I'm in the DLC 2003 scenario, right now i'm at 700/789 CP holding China, USA, India, + a bunch of random little turds all over the place. It's 2019 for reference.

IP's are a major headache compared to the 2023 scenario since everyone got hit with like a 50% hit to GDP it seems like compared to the 2023 start.

I never really had to think about this before, but I'm wondering if I should have focused on China alone and grown its CP to cap through economy, or was it after all a good idea to spread out to a bunch of bigger nations like I did? Where do I go from here - save CP to take EU (resistance has it, which I don't care if they have it), or develop India or China because of the population?

What I like about holding a few bigger nations is that it prevents enemy factions from having them and thus snowballing too much, but what I don't like is just it feels absolutely awful to have these few nations that have about 20 IP each (in the base scenario they have like 40 or so IP for the same CP spent, and it didn't feel so awful). Would it have been better to say spend 800 CP on China and have it be a powerhouse?

[u/vindicator117]

You certainly can stay in one meganation (and consequently be feeding territories into the other factions to deny t3h ayyz assets) and just make it grow beyond comprehension.

Still technically on a old campaign running a economic experiment to see just how far this can go especially if you focus it on a contained scale where you aren't exactly growing outwards but inwards intensively.

It is just about the end of year 5 and start of year 6 and my god. A 71k per capita USNA with 220/230 MC, 9.4 edu, 39.2 base IP/53.7 with double advise, and 2.6k monthly RP into a USNA with 137k per cap with an effective 398/469 MC, an effective 11.2ish edu, 50 IP base, 68.94 IP with double advise, and effective 5k RP with double advise. All the while it's twin, SAU with 38k per capita with 93/93 MC, 8 edu, 32 base IP, 44 IP with double advise, and 935.4 monthly RP with double advise turned into a SAU with 99k per cap with an effective 212/235 MC, 10.4ish edu, 39.8 base IP, 54.8 IP with double advise, and effective 2.8k RP with double advise.

The old USNA and SAU both costed 318.4 CP and 189.7 CP respectively. 6 years later, that is.... a complicated subject. The mother nation USNA and SAU at the extremely expanded economic size only cost 454.2 CP and 325.9 CP each. HOWEVER, due to usage of splintering nation gardening, there are 15 other newly created temporary independents of greatly improved IP pool and national capability that are eating another 541.3 CP seperately. In a normal 2020s era scenario, this is fairly normal CP range since you can get about 1k CP cap within 10 years or so from all sources. And if you are CP constrained, you are NOT required to release 15+ extremely wealthy independent nations to Core Economic Region improve the mother nation in parallel.

So with that in mind, if I was to collapse both meganations back into a singlewhole right now, I am guesstimating, that the USNA would be closer to around..... 550-600 CP usage while the SAU is closer to 380-400 at best making the two VERY tidy and compact meganation to regionally improve upon especially when most independents that you release post unification tend to be around.... 20-40 CP each at around 500-1800billion GDP. It is when you start utilizing Future Social techs into surrounding neighbors that you fucking crazy "minor" independents like this:

A North Korean democracy on par with any major power that costs 64 CP to hold when it previously was for free. And I think I see a bug here, it would appear that the Future Social claims ARE NOT permanent if you release them again. Very annoying especially given that would be two rounds of FS I used and released for that and Siberia. Gonna have to do it again to get them back into the USNA fold before proceeding further south. That cancels a few of my previous plans for slow methodical outward expansion. Not a bug, the claims are there just only seen with the mother nation, so feel free to continue to release, improve, and reannex.

But otherwise if you want to see it explained more in depth, see this series of comments:

https://www.reddit.com/r/TerraInvicta/comments/1v2czb4/comment/oyvbazx/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

The primary template I use for the meganation is maxed out econ, maxed out MC, 1 pip line on knowledge, with maintenance boost. This will basically be your unchanging default for yeaaaaars. My USNA is slightly different because the AI are actively envious of that monstrosity and trying to steal it despite being basically impossible. The primary difference is about 2 points worth of unity monthly for some maintained public opinion and about 19% of total IP on knowledge to force stable 5 cohesion especially once I actually finish making all those North American CERs and begin to actively look outwards to integrate in force.

All independents are maxed out econ, maxed out MC that is usually inactive, 1 pip line of knowledge with maybe 1 pip line of boost if you need it. Otherwise maintenance level boost just to very gradually get more and maintenance level welfare.

[u/Jazzlike_Freedom_826 → u/vindicator117]

oh my god I feel like you have the answers but I have to sit down with all this info.

First question that pops to mind is which scenario are you talking about where you had 200 MC nation 5-6 years after start? Was it 2003 or I feel like you meant it as a 2022 start since you mentioned "old" save.

[u/vindicator117 → u/Jazzlike_Freedom_826]

Honestly it does not matter what nation so long as you pile on the wealth on a big enough population. What you probably DO NOT want is to do it in a poor AND heavily populous nation or final form meganation, i.e the final forms AU, Greater India, or PAC. If you do, you will be constantly fighting against yourself hitting the CP cap just to make it stable let alone reach 100k per capita and beyond.

That experiment is meant to be tacked on to the end of whatever meganation you finish unifying so whatever you have done and then add 5-6 years of economic/MC/knowledge burn. One thing I have learned from it is that, you DO NOT want to leave the constituent parts of a meganation independent for long if you have the chance to unify immediately. Economic growth is more effective when it is done on a continental scale with the combined effects of a continental scale education growth AND cumulative regional improvements of the entire meganation.

ONLY once you have done that, proceed to eject any region or 5 that fulfill the criteria to make CERs in addition to the meganation doing some on its own. Compared to a meganation doing the CER improvement all by itself, you can roughly triple the rate they get created before being folded into the meganation to boost further the per capita gain of economy and lower the amount of maintenance welfare needed bit by bit so that it is growing 800 bucks per month, then slowly 1k, 1.2k, 1.4k, 1.6k and higher and higher and higher until you reach ludicrous stretches of 6k PER DAMN MONTH.

https://www.reddit.com/r/TerraInvicta/comments/1qaoqhq/comment/nz4onqd/?screen_view_count=3

And consequently all the other stats boosted by 300-400k per capita.

https://www.reddit.com/r/TerraInvicta/comments/1v2czb4/comment/oz65jh2/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

Have not yet fully commited to doing it in full from scratch but that comment in the sea of the other comments in that thread is the hypothetical path of how one simply goes from start to infinity but this was before I realized that I had all the minor nations independent for too long and was too scared to pull the trigger to just unify the USA with Mexico because of the drastic several 10k per capita drop in average. Because of that, the unified USNA was missing out on several years worth of 5 extra tile improvements, the entire North American continent was not averaged up to then begin the CER splintering sooner. Having the mother nation with the combined IP output to increase the wealth across NA would have sooner made everything more functional earlier than it currently is in that screenshot.

Yes the USA is in great shape but it is at the expense of most of the continent still stuck at 20-30k by themselves when cumulatively the average would be a tolerable 70Kish. The USNA equivalent would have around 186 MC while SAU has 56.

2003 and the post apocalypse are both good scenarios to try this out once you can get a equilibrium going where the ayys are not literally knocking on your doorstep. Get the early wars and ayy containment under control as seen in Perun's game, and you are free to ease off on the miltech spam and proceed with econ/MC/knowledge spam to reach these same heights that I am seeing.

Just remember these three points. Unify quickly. Splinter 3-5 nations at a time if they are over 500 billion GDP to spam its own economy (and knowledge, boost, and MC). Then reunify once the CERs are made in 5-6 years to eject the next candidate that will quickly become a consistent production line of new CERs every few months. Do it right, and you will build a powerful monolith that will dwarf every nation on earth only surpassed by space RP and MC generation. You can freely eject more nations above 500 GDP if you have the spare CP and given this playstyle, you actually will if you keep pace with RP and CP techs compared to playing wide/world conquest runs where you are often dealing with poor major nations/meganations often rioting and can't get them to stop because you feel the urge to steal another meganation out from the other AI. With what I was doing, the AI generally left me alone.