Part 10: Status Brazil in 1890
It has been 54 years since we started, so we're roughly halfway through a full game at this point. Let's see how Brazil compares to its position in 1860.The Basics
Upgrading the strength of our standing armies not only saved us from losing great power status, but moved us into 7th place. I'd still like to further solidify our position as a great power by improving our score in any way possible. The easiest way would be to start construction of powerful capital ships for a modern navy.
Our budget is acceptable, considering that we are operating with a lassiez faire party. I'd prefer to have another economic policy in place so that I could utilize high tariffs and build up a larger treasury, but this is working well enough. Our literacy is sky-high now, and doesn't need any further special attention. We're researching technologies very fast, and I'm tempted to go back through technology categories that I've been neglecting to bring up everything to a baseline of about the third row.
Our population has grown by 1.2 million pops in 30 years, but we're getting less and less immigrants due to our pretty conservative (by this date) political reforms, and our lack of social reform.
The People
Our pops are for the most part meeting their needs. Nobody is swimming in the cheap luxury goods from British India anymore, but the vast majority of our population is meeting their life needs, if not better. The amount of tax we are collecting from our rich pops now pales in comparison to the proportion we collected from them just 30 years ago. This is due to our capitalists profiting from successful industry.
Our richest pops are, by far, the capitalists in our states with profitable industry. A pop of 186 capitalists in Rio is making a total of 1740 pounds every day. The only non-rich pop type to make it on this first page is the tropical wood laborer pop from Bahia, which contains 25,188 laborers making a total of 70 pounds per day.
Our poorest pops are our remaining artisans. They cannot compete with industry any more. Slowly, they wither away into bureaucrats and clerks, or demote into craftsmen.
The Industry
Rio is a major center for consumer goods production for us. It is flourishing on its level 3 winery, distillery, and clothing factories. Wine and liquor are both actually used for military supply as well, so they're doubly useful. Bahia has focused on its very profitable luxury furniture industry, and that factory has grown to a large level 5.
We have trouble keeping related factories like glass and fabric in business under lassiez faire. It's probably due to the lack of any domestic coal, which is needed for glass and synthetic dye, but we are doing fine with making finished goods using imported components. Our capitalists have been attempting to get a military goods industry going as well, but our small arms factories are not looking very healthy. The new artillery foundry in Bahia seems to be doing well, however.
Technology
Army
Our army technology has been neglected for a long time, and I'm afraid that if we are forced into a fight that we won't be able to defend ourselves. We research technologies quickly now, so I'm considering bringing every tech in this tree up to a baseline of the third row at least.
Navy
I'm actually researching Steel Steamers right now. This should get us access to battleships, though we still need to build up our naval bases enough to handle their construction. I may bring the rest of this category up to a baseline of the third row as well.
Commerce
The commerce tree has been one of our areas of focus, so I can't really say that we need much work here.
Culture
The culture tab has received a great deal of my attention, too. The final techs in the aesthetics and philosophy trees open up in 1900, so I'll need to be sure to prepare for that and attempt to get them first, as usual. The psychology tree has been ignored up until now because its value is mostly a military one. We'll bring this up to at least the third row when we start playing catch-up.
Industry
Industry needs the least of our attention. The metallurgy column can probably be safely ignored since it only affects RGOs which we don't own. Mechanization is good, but it isn't a priority.
Politics
Conservatism is a shrinking ideology in our population, especially among voting pops. We're getting so close to the point where we might pass another political reform.
Our potential rebels and movements remain small. Our rebels are, however, growing agitated enough to try and take action. Note that some of them have a small ~3% chance to stage an uprising. Of course, the Jacobins are our largest rebel group and they already tried once. It didn't work out.
Ranking
We sit in 7th place in overall ranking, just above Spain. It looks like we could overtake Japan with a bit of luck or effort, too. Rising to 5th rank or higher will take a bit more time with Russia entrenched there at a full 350 total score higher than us.
Our nation's literacy ranks at 6th highest in the world. This is pretty great, considering where we started. Note that the 'Total Population' on this ledger page doesn't match up with what is displayed on our population screen. Our population pane and population screen both list our number of pops, while this ledger screen translates pops into an actual number of people.
Maps
Sphere of influence map mode is displayed here. Nearly all of South America is in our sphere. Chile would be in our sphere, but a revolution in their country set us back. I'd very much like to add Columbia and Venezuela into our sphere too, so that we'd have complete hegemony over South American nations. It'll take some effort to dig the UK out of this position, but our proximity will play to our advantage.
The USA seized the state of Chihuahua from Mexico during another conflict. Other than that, our North American neighbor has been relatively quiet.
Their Sphere of influence includes most of Central America, but not much else.
The United Kingdom's sphere of influence includes pretty much the entire Indian subcontinent as well as Thailand and Burma. This is, of course, in addition to their presence in Colombia and Venezuela, British Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and British Columbia. Yeesh.
Japan appears to be doing whatever it feels like, seizing states from both Korea and the Chinese Empire
The former sub-states of the Chinese Empire have been separated from the rule of the Empire proper and now stand on their own.
Japan's sphere is slowly expanding to include the nations of the Chinese region.
Large continental powers consolidate in Europe. Garibaldi's red shirt rebellion has resulted in the formation of an Italian nation, and the North German Federation's victory over Austria nearly a decade ago paved the way for Germany. Austria, in an attempt to consolidate it's remaining power has reformed as Austria-Hungary. This union actually adds Hungarian as an accepted culture for the country, but makes all of their other (many) cultures upset.