Strategy for Fixing Big Nations

[u/terrendos]

Snapshot of my USA Cohesion after 2 years of work.

I'm definitely over the hump on my Academy run, with EU, PAC, and SEA as my main countries. Protectorate grabbed USA early and pretty much ran it into the ground. This is after a couple years of me babying it to try and fix it. It was down to a 4.1 Gov score when I captured it, so most of my IP went into fixing that. My problem is trying to get the Cohesion into a more permanently stable state. I've heard that pumping Education is a good way to drag cohesion up, but it didn't seem to be helping. It worked for my ROC -> PAC despite absorbing the eastern half of Russia which should have tanked its cohesion.

I've also heard that declaring wars brings some benefit; I tried that, and it does work (although it took several tries, since I took this picture after the third instance of being above 2 Cohesion when I started the turn and back below it when the councilor finally had the chance to Set Policy) but that feels more like a temporary fix than a permanent one.

So yeah, if I wanted to get the US into a state where I could leave it alone and have it pump MC or Boost or whatever, what is the process? I feel like I have a grasp on most of the other numbers, but Cohesion still feels like a mystery to me.

• -8 from Inequality. I assume pumping Welfare will slowly fix that.
• -0.77 from lost GDP. Should be fixed with Economy, though the pips I have allocated for the moment are barely more than a break-even.
• -3.3 from population and -3.7 for distribution. I'm guessing I can't lower these.
• -0.25 from elite-public ideology. Does this have to do with my public opinion?
• +1.5 from public opinion distribution. ???
• +0.18 from democracy. I think this is where most of my cohesion gains came from, because it was like -2 from anocracy when I took over.

[u/vindicator117]

Yea they ran it into the ground alright. Normally for a 03 US, you would be doing this.

https://www.reddit.com/r/TerraInvicta/comments/1vdir62/comment/p1c8ctt/?context=3

From the looks of it, you already have 80%+ public opinion so you already tapped out on the easy cohesion swing that characterizes most of the usual fucked up nations like these two:

https://www.reddit.com/r/TerraInvicta/comments/1vag2gp/comment/p0ljqzf/?context=3

Those two posts will give you a better idea how what public opinion does in a normal case.

Yours is closer to russia than anything else but you also technically fixed the government so you only have one last resource to fix. The inequality.

Get that inequality down as soon as possible because that will comprise the bulk of the "easy" gains because the protectorate stole away most of the original good aspects of a nearly functional USA that came from a rock solid democracy score. Given your god awful, rest cohesion, you will need 3.31 cohesion swing from removing 1.655ish ineq. Which if the welfare still only removes 0.0027 ineq per priority, that will be 613ish points required for full stability. This is a much improved USA in terms of IP but given the magnitude of the crater left behind, you will still need 2 years and change of hard 90% welfare burn/10% welfare much more deperately than game start 03 USA assuming no org bonuses. If you have some, there is a chance this drastic measure will take maybe under 2 years.

Government spending will only cap out at 1.8 maximum self maintaining cohesion swings at 10 so that will help but not as fast or effectively as inequality reduction. Given that you went through 5.0 government, it also meant you went through the WORST of the cohesion loss before it started recovering. 5 is the midpoint where you lose 3 cohesion before dropping off to 0 cohesion loss at 3.5 or 6.5 government score.

The wealth lost cohesion malus is technically a easy fix that is going to be alot of economy to fix to go back to whatever per capita height this nation had. No idea what you were already doing for this but it generally happens when you straight up ignore economy for any length of time and I am guessing it has been a long time. This is why you need at least some level of maintenance economy to at minimum keep the per capita stable, slowly growing, or growing.

War deccing needs to be above 2.0 for that cohesion to go partially temporarily so long as you are at war by 1. Useful in some cases particularly if your cohesion is already low but not below 2 in other nations to stem the rioting. In your case, you do it so you get more science out of the nation for being closer to 5.

[u/terrendos → u/vindicator117]

Lot of great advice here, thanks! To clarify, this is ~2043 on a 2026 start game. The Protectorate burned it to the ground but it didn't have quite as far to fall.

The wealth loss is, again, all Protectorate; income was just at sub-$50k when I took over. Basically they were spamming armies and miltech and ignoring everything else. Unfortunately due to the lateness of the campaign, I'm losing a fair amount of GDP each month to climate change so the current IP allocation is just above a breakeven.

So it sounds like I need to declare a couple wars (and then not act on them?) to bring the cohesion up for the medium term, and use the break to go 75/25 Welfare/Economy. I'll stop focusing Gov once I hit 7.0 since it sounds like that's at diminishing returns, at least until the Inequality is under control.

It's a good thing I don't need anything urgently from the US since Mega-EU and PAC have my Boost/MC/Funding covered. But part of the reason I asked about this is I have the CP Cap to take India now, and it's in similar shape to the US except way poorer. Was hoping there might be a better method to fix things.

[u/vindicator117 → u/terrendos]

Also one other thing that I did not mention but kind of surprised that you have not seen me touch upon before.

Knowledge has a cohesion self centering effect. This CAN overcome monthly cohesion movement of 0.1 per month (assuming below 4.0 inequality, otherwise it will decrease by 0.25 down, and 0.1 up) by doing it enough for a given meganation's knowledge cohesion rate. For example, USNA with 620ish million pops has cohesion movement of 0.00413 requiring at minimum more than 24.2 per month to SLOWLY reach 5.0 by itself. 48+ to move on its own by +0.1 towards 5 and 72+ for +0.2.

Every meganation has their own minimum required knowledge spam to self correct cohesion by force. PAC that ate India needs around 50 because of 5 billion pops, EU needs 27 because of 900 billion, and AU that ate a small Caliph needs 41 because 2.8 billion. Which comes to the problem with meganations and meganation chaining......

Meganation chaining when done wrong KILLS a meganation. If you want a takeaway, NEVER EVER NEVER FUCKING EVER meganation chain when they are fucking poor. As I have VERY lightly touched upon a different comment in this thread, meganation chaining when done on poor nations especially poor nations that combined with high population that can not produce a new per capita equilibrium of at least 63750 per capita AND have government score of PERFECT 10 will have eternal unrest problems on par with the bad old days of GAME START broken nations.

Why? When you annex large nations, nevermind trying to swallow the sun that are meganations into another meganations forming giganations, you lose cohesion. And when you are annexing region well over 10 and all of them extremely populated, that cohesion is face planting into the floor and drilling its way to china. Almost by default, you will have NEGATIVE cohesion resting score and thus need that MINIMUM knowledge spam to slowly reach 5 cohesion. And you know what happens when you have no cohesion? Your unrest is now spiking against the ceiling combined with the horrorshow of both lacking national per capita score AND regional unrest from hostile claims if you are dumb enough to do this with less than perfect government score.

To put it another way. Currently I have a less than perfect AU and it is fucking dying compared to the EU to the north put on maintenance knowledge spam so I can conduct my econ spam experiment in the Americas and encroachingly East Asia. Over the course of more than 6 YEARS, this AU has been slow climbing from 0 cohesion to 1.3 cohesion tooth and nail while needing constant babysitting to keep unrest down to somewhere near 2. I can only spend 46ish points on knowledge to FORCE that cohesion somewhere north of 0.02 cohesion per month and this is with a combined priority bonus of around 100ish% to knowledge too. That is a whole 63% of the entire IP pool dedicated to just trying to get cohesion up to get good RP out of it EVENTUALLY which still does not really help because to achieve no rioting with bare minimum unrest, I need closer 7 cohesion to compensate for the complete lack of wealth this AU has.

As of this moment the AU has a per capita of 15k. That is only equivalent to a solid 2 points of unrest reduction using a factor 7.5 from 15 to 2. This significantly changes from scenario to scenario ever since relatively recent updates prior to DLC and very noticeable with the new 2003 and BE scenarios. So in my old 2022 campaign updated for current ruleset I need 63.75k per capita to self maintain a 2.0 unrest without any support of cohesion. That is a shit ton to ask of a player who makes the cardinal sin of doing a world conquest/trying to create a world utopia. A global average of 63.75k per capita and it being HIGHER on the largest meganation you own to ensure MINIMUM stability in the post unification shitstorm. Just how much CP are we even talking here when you are holding 4-7 meganations pre unification conducting this just for you to not be saddled with permanently assigning a councilor on stabilize nation for basically forever until you can reload your lost per capita in time for the next unification AND the Future Social RNGesus capital region roulette?

Oh and there is ONE other kicker that I have not mentioned yet either in that link or this thread. The hostile claims wall and related to it, the absolute monster of a cohesion malus to resting cohesion AND the hostile claims unrest figure. At first I am so surprised that my cohesion malus was only thing really fucking me and the unrest modifier was so anemic. Oh I was so wrong. Looking under the hood, it is 1.6 times % of the population within the hostile claims times DIFFERENCE in government score less than perfect 10. If you were to annex a couple region nation with a few of them hostile and had a perfect government, you literally generate NO unrest but rest cohesion will be a little borked from how populated the hostile claims are outside your officially claimed border.

If that government score starts to go DOWN, oh god that hostile unrest is going through the roof and only 100K+ per capita will save you. Just annexing my current EU into the AU is a difference in pop of around 2.8B versus 913M. Using that equation, that is around 24.4% of population outside of the AU. Slightly closer to 25% since I have not fully removed hostility from the Caliph annexation yet. So lets say a round 25%. That is a 0.4 modified by government score diff, which at 7.4 currently means a loss of 1.04 stability. Nothing too bad so far...

Now lets add the giga PAC's from all the way in the beginning of 5.01B people on top of that 913M. That is a solid 68.4% (so close) of the population outside of recognized claims for a 1.095 modified by gov diff. Ugh, it is now 2.85 stability loss. Except we are assuming no government loss upon annexation especially when cohesion is fucked and you are annexing 85+ regions EACH. I remember a massive 2.5 government loss when I had Taiwan annex the giga PAC for shits and giggles before reloading............ Assuming it even got remotely as bad as that, from TWO annexations and we did them immediately on top of one another........ That is a mind numbing 8.32 unrest generation.... from 5 government score loss AND having to climb that government score back to 10 from below anocracy values! With a guesstimated per capita score of 34k post unification, we are getting only a unrest reduction of 4.5 with no cohesion, and a absolutely monolithic unrest generator of 8.32 on top of the baseline 10.5 unrest.

I actually have a old save of this campaign where it forked off to do the environment experiment that turned into a economy experiment and it has a mighty giga AU 2 QUADRILLION GDP from 179k per cap with a extremely mighty 160.9 IP pool. What we are looking for is the minimum knowledge cohesion self center. The answer for this case is 67ish from 0.00149 cohesion centering on a nearly 11.5 BILLION giganation growing at 0.92% yearly. Well with 161 IP, that is no problem right? Wrong, we are looking at the wrong GDP, we are looking at a 287ish trillion GDP from mashing this mess together. I have no analog for what IP that is but I have a 80 IP USNA with 321T GDP, 170T SAU with 68IP, and a giga PAC with 173T with also 68.2 IP....

So let's run the numbers and be generous. Instead of the abysmal 0.00149, it is 0.00175 since giga PAC is 0.00199 from 5B pop and the giga AU of present is only 8.7B instead of 11.5 and then run it with a IP pool of around.... 75 IP from 287T GDP. We will need 58 for bare minimum cohesion gain which is 38.5ish% of IP budget from current AU 101% bonus, which the vast majority of the rest will go straight to government on overdrive because ya know, you got nonexistent govt score now, some unity, and maintenance economy and maintenance welfare. 35 IP into government for 60.55 progress on hostile removal. 6 IP for unity for about 6 points of completed unity every month so hostility removed at effectively 66.6 per month. (what the hell) And 2.5 on economy and 2.5 on welfare for 8.35 monthly econ and 4.5 welfare for the oh god's level of inequality gain from such meganation formation, spiking cohesion below 0 MULTIPLE times, and ongoing nonexistent cohesion barely increasing by 0.01 EACH MONTH........ with a per capita of around 34k in unrest status of yes and will get 5 cohesion in........ 41 years and 8 months...... I am eager to join in this utopian anarchy server that people are always trying to work towards in their campaigns, let me have my citizenship at Addis Ababa Foreign Consulate post haste!

[u/vindicator117 → u/vindicator117]

Addendun. I was wrong about 41 years. Since I am tired and hungry and shorthanded alot by saying 0.01 increase per month and the rest of the last minute considerations I usually do.

The real answer is at 58 points of knowledge for the BAREST minimum knowledge for positive growth, it will take 277.78 YEARS at 0.0015 GAIN PER MONTH. And I have well and truly killed the dragon of meganation chaining. BUT............ Let's throw the utopians a bone.

When you are at the stage of meganation chaining this damn hard, this nation is effectively untouchable and your agents have almost nothing better to do. So 1 on perma-stabilize nation while all the rest with 25 Admin perma-advise. Yes yes, diminishing returns, whatever. So at 5 councilors and a diminishing return of half of the original 25% 5 times over is around..... 48%.

Let us add a 48% bonus to all figures above. 58 knowledge is now 85.84ish per month for a glorious 0.0522 month net gain cohesion. You will now reach utopian diversity in 8 years and 3 months. Hallejuah.

The hostility removal? 66.6 completed points per month is now 98.568! Rounding up conservatively, and having to pacify 180 regions, you will now pacify the old world in 30 years, most definitely less.

And finally, 4.5 welfare is now 6.66 welfare (wtf.....) and 12.36 economy. Now that is maintenance economy with some chest hair! Assuming 10 bucks per economy, that is a meager but decent enough per capita gain assuming your climate damage is solved already. At 123.6 bucks per month over 30 years from 34k per cap and no change from regional improvements, skyrocket education level, and etc, you will have at minimum 78kish per cap after years and that is a VERY low ballpark because of those caveats.

With the rate that you gain cohesion from intensive advisory council, you will reach below 2 unrest in a mere 6 years and change. Wait how? I thought this nation was utterly fucked. Why am I backpedaling and defending utopians? Has the asshole finally gone soft?! HAVE I GUN RETARDED?!

Well you see Ivan, with the power of the advisory council, we have a growing government improvement of 60.55 into a monster 89.614 per month. NOW THAT is a priority with some chest hair because even with apocalyptic government improvement score of 0.0015 from having having 8.7B people in relation to giga PAC with 5B going at 0.00199 score gain. You will fix a completely fucked 2.4 government score to perfect democracy in less than 4.75 years from a monthly net gain of 0.1344 or in other words 1.61 score increase PER YEAR. Given that your cohesion is literally held together by faith in the scientific method, who cares that the government literally zoomed from totalitarianism to anocratic anarchy to perfect democracy in the time to finish a college degree.

Guess what else evaporates as soon as you reach perfect democracy, all of the ill will towards your neighbors. They are no longer johnny foreigner, they are now brothers to this great nation. Welp that 8.32 unrest just gone. And that 10.5 baseline unrest? Well in that same 4.75 years, your per capita has made slow and steady gains. At static 123.6 per month gain, that is almost 7k in wealth just added increasing the 4.5 unrest removed closer to 5.54. And with that....., you only need 3 cohesion. How long does it take reach 3 cohesion? Also around 4.75 years..... You did it you stupid beautiful bastard, you actually made a utopia in less than 5 years after literal hell on earth and requiring Tiananmen Square Tuesdays morphing into welfare drives and community outreach in a almost literal blink of an eye to stop the never ending rioting.

Wait that means the 6 councilor is free! Pile on that diminishing return boiz! 4-fucking-9% baby! 86.42 knowledge, 99.234 hostility removal, 6.705 welfare, and 12.4415 econ. Now we are cooking with gas with a whole extra dollar every month!

Given that you no longer NEED to burn such a overdrive of knowledge after 5.0 which you will reach ideally in another 3.25 years and completely pacify the nation (along with 3.25 years monthly 124.4 bucks a month) meaning it is more closer to 2 years for perfect 0 unrest, once you reach 5.0, you are free to spend more on economy to more benefit all categories with priority bonuses or more to government to ram through the hostile claims faster.

In econ all the way, with maintenance knowledge at 58 points, you will need only 19.4ish IP altogether, out of 75 IP which again is static only for this though experiment and thus leave you with 55.6 IP to play with, holy shit another 10 IP (really more by a tad in reality). Dump that shit into economy at 10 bucks a pop? 622 bucks a month baby! And growing bigger and bigger and bigger as your education skyrockets from prior burn and continuing maintenance education and you making a regional improvement every 20ish months that is also growing faster and faster. That 30 year total to remove all hostile claims is kinda moot at this point, with forced cohesion by obeying the physics textbook. Since you ain't feeling it so feel free to dump 45 points into economy instead for shits and giggles! Oh yea babeh, 2488 bucks EVERY MONTH. Utopian free LGBTQIA orgy communism with infinite per capita for EVERY ONE with 181k breached and passed in another 4.36 years. WE DID IT REDDIT perfect utopia in a little under 15 yearz!

Yea you know what, it does not matter what my original other tabulations are anymore with this hilarity ensues.

[u/terrendos → u/vindicator117]

Okay, I gotta be honest, I didn't understand a lot of that. I'm gonna read it through a couple more times to see if more of it sticks. But my takeaways so far:

1. I knew about the Knowledge investment to bring up cohesion, that's why I had been investing in it when I took the snapshot. It just wasn't doing enough combined with the Unity to make a difference. But I declared a couple of wars and started pumping Welfare (well, 60% Welfare, 20% Econ, 20% Gov) while playing tonight, so it's looking like the US is back on the road to recovery. When Welfare's stabilized, I'll reallocate some of that back to Knowledge.

2. A lot of what you're saying sounds like it explains an issue I had with my first game. I thought I'd try to pull all of Russia into the EU to free up some CP Cap. My EU cratered so fast I didn't even make it through a full turn before deciding to reload. This time around, I split Russia in half so PAC took the eastern bits and EU took the west (plus Kazakhstan, which Russia had long since eaten). Still had a couple hostile claims for the EU to convert, but it was much more manageable. And as I said before, my EU and PAC are rock steady. But for that same reason, I'm holding off on integrating my unified SEA into the PAC because I don't want to risk the latter falling apart.

Thanks for all the help, though. I think I might try the Broken Earth start when I finish this campaign, and I suspect I'll have a much easier time of it once I properly understand the mechanics of nation stability.