Why You Haitian?: Victoria 2 HPM Haiti Campaign

Hello Again Steem Folk!

Today I'm going to be starting a campaign in yet another game by Paradox Interactive. The game is Victoria 2 and, thought it's aged a bit, I've found the ever developing Historical Project Mod to keep it fresh. I'll be using the latest version of that mod, which adds a ton of flavor and new mechanics to the game.

Victoria 2 takes place between 1836 and 1936, fifteen years after the end of Europa Universalis IV and shortly before Hearts of Iron IV's time frame. I'm working on getting HOI4 as soon as possible.

Before I get started, I'd just like to point out that I don't have much experience with Victoria 2, only 40 hours or so. There are several mechanics, especially with the addition of HPM, that I don't fully understand, so don't be upset if I crash and burn. That's how we learn!

So let's go.

Getting Things in Order:

As you all may have gathered from my ongoing EU4 and CK2 campaigns, I like a challenge and Haiti is no exception. Situated off the coast of the growing United States and surrounded by colonizers and water, Haiti is a small, poor nation. 

It's people are only %3 literate and that number is dropping.

We're a presidential dictatorship, which can be a good thing if you use your power in the right manner. We have a few reforms we could enact, but we don't really want drafts or slavery as that will cause people to not want to come live in Haiti. 

What we want is to try and get people to immigrate and increase our population.

Speaking of, %95.8 of our people are farmers. Intellectuals are almost nonexistent. We want to fix that.

To that end, we begin reseraching Malthusian thought on day one. Once done, this will strengthen our awful education system.

As you can see here, our biggest resource is our tobacco farms. They are the backbone of our economy along with coffee farms. We'll have to work on our nonexistent industry.

With no immediate threat, we disband our costly army and completely lower our military spending. We max out our education and administration spending in its stead.

In addition, we set our national focus to encouraging intellectuals. The more intellectuals in our country produces, the better our education system is, thus driving up the falling literacy rate.

It appears a secret society has been formed seeking the independence of the Dominican Republic. There isn't much we can do.

The peasants get more outrage from landowners calling for independence from Haiti.

With the growing militancy of our Dominican population, a movement has begun to form and prepares to rise up against us.

We've finished Malthusian thought and are one step closer to getting our people literate.

Next we seek to understand the philosophy of the Enlightenment, which will give as a much needed bump to research point generation.

A temperance league forms and we endorse them, causing our people to work harder and more efficient rather than waste time drinking.

While we've been attempting to gain the trust of the United States all this time, we are forced to send the secret police to stop correspondence between the revolutionary Dominicans and their US supporters, harming our relations.

As the population of intellectuals in Haiti continues to grow, we've finally managed to turn the shrinking literacy in our country around. Feels good.

We host a military parade, increasing our country's prestige. We want to get as much prestige as possible so that our country can have better access to the world trade market among other things.

Now that the US has brought us into their sphere of influence, we seek an alliance with them. They graciously accept.

Our greatest researchers uncover the philosophy of the Enlightenment, nearly doubling our research speed.

Next we seek to learn of Classicism and Early Romanticism. This will increase our prestige in the eyes of the world by a large margin.

Though we thought our nation safe, the Dominicans declare a war of independence. We hold firm to our belief in a unified Haitian nation. With no standing army, we mobilize our country, providing a small defensive regiment.

With the Dominican army twice our size, we seek the help of the US, who gladly joins our war.

The massive US army demolishes our enemies with ease and we send our laughable conscripts to siege down their land.

With the help of the US, the war is over and we retain control of the Dominicans. We demobilize our nation and prepare for the future as one.

Thanks for Reading!

I hope you enjoyed this first episode and will stay tuned for more.

Please feel free to leave a word of advice in the comments.

This is P5yc0path, signing off.