Interesting Situation

[nord06]

Hello, I am a new member and a new player so I hope this is the correct place to post this. I had some experience with RTW and bought RTW2. Started a USA 1900 game for tutorial purposes. All went well and I reached 1930s however, things started to get weird. My budget ballooned immensely, which is correct behavior for US. Problem was because I reached parity with GB they assumed me as a threat. GB signed treaties to stop me with Italy and Japan, while I lost 10 prestige just to calm them down. Purposefully stopped building anything new and turned to refitting older ships. Tension never stopped climbing and war started with all three powers, tipping point was two new CA construction to replace very old ones. Sadly I lost that save but parity was 15 BB, 10 BC and 20 CA's with varying numbers of smaller ships and I was making 15k profit each turn. I guess GB couldn't reach that kind of budget and tried to destroy me altogether but after such a violent attitude I get confused and wanted to ask you guys if this is normal, or there are some things that I forgot to consider/didn't know. 

[zardoz]

I assume that you did not choose the so called "historical budget"?

USA is not really a challenge and I have never fnished a game with the USA but what I see on the almanach with regard to budget, even with "historical budgets" the USA "out-cashs" everybody by far.

[nord06]

I expected the budget increase, the thing that caught me off-guard was the violent reaction from GB when I reached parity with them. I checked US 1920 start and there they are much more stronger then GB and there are no problem between them. Colonial expansion is out of the discussion because as I said I took every opportunity to lower tension, ended up losing 10 prestige which helped postponing the war for 3 years. My problem is there are no clear way to communicate your intentions towards other powers sadly. In the end, 2 CA replacements started a world war.

[director]

Great Britain depended on her navy for her prosperity and, to a great degree, for food. The dreadnought race with Germany showed they were willing to spend just about anything to keep naval superiority; after WW1 the London Naval Treaties showed they could be pragmatic enough to accept parity with a (mostly) friendly nation.

The game is engineered around rising tensions, crisis resolutions and - eventually - war. This cycle will repeat with someone (it may be a neighbor three times in a row or the Japanese striking out of nowhere, but SOMEONE will hate you). Each round of crises and tensions can be resolved by you pushing it up or down and by the AI deciding to push it up or down. If one side wants war and the other doesn't then you get a slow rise, but if both want war then it tensions can skyrocket. I'd take a war before losing prestige over it, but that's just my ego talking LOL.

garrisonchisholm - (EDIT: In my current game I went to the knife-edge of war with Germany, watched tensions recede to mid-yellow and then leap upward again to war. Then the politicians cheated me out of any peace settlement. Not once, mind you - but TWICE. So the third time, I was relentless. We battled off West Africa and in the south Pacific. I built legions of submarines and went to full unrestricted warfare. Did the neutrals complain? Hah! LET them complain as I turn the state of Minnesota into steel, fill in the oceans and WALK to Berlin!
And then, finally, after three long years of grinding warfare, broken only by the magnificent victories of the Luanda convoys...
glorious...
glorious...
anti-climax.
I got 4 points of land, your choice of sand or jungle.
Meh.)

Since the AI is smart but not really intelligent, it will rope in allies to give it enough combat power to give you a good fight. As you become more experienced you will be able to handle two or even three enemy nations, though frankly I tend to avoid fighting the Royal Navy by itself, much less allied. If you have no choice but to fight, be conservative not reckless and you should come through OK.

[garrisonchisholm]

*after the edit*

...snif. I can't like it twice!

[generalvikus]

By all accounts I think it's proper that the player, representing the military brass, should want more out of a typical peace deal than he will typically get, as was usually the case in history. I think it's a problem, however, that there seems to be little or no relationship between the outcome of the war and the shape of the peace treaty.

I tend to re-load the save in some cases, such as if a climactic coalition war which I've been building up to for years peters out into a total anti - climax for no apparent reason. I find that justified, since as I said though it's natural for soldiers to feel cheated - even 'stabbed in the back' by politicians, I cannot think of an occasion in history when, in the midst of a general war, cooler heads prevailed and a compromise peace sprung up in the absence of any military decision.

As for the topic of maintaining peaceful relations with a desired targets (if indeed you are cowardly enough to concern yourself with such things!) I find that putting high intelligence priority on one's desired rivals will quite reliably lead to tensions rising with those nations more quickly than with nations you're not spying on as much or at all; and, as tensions with all powers are re-set after every war, you can thereby generally avoid war with whoever you wish. 

[rodentnavy]

Thing is though that since the AI has the attention span of a nat it is unlikely to sit on the North American East Coast and blockade the US into submission. So the USA has a fighting chance even against a British led coalition as the enemy mostly has to come to it.

[nord06]

Hey! Who do you call a coward?! Nah joking aside, I guess best course of action was stopping the self-handicap by throwing out the parity, arm heavily and destroy GB, before they can sign a treaty with Japan. Italy was meh but I wasn't able to fight against an equal GB and a pretty dangerous Japan at the same time (safely at least) with my sailing units. Well woe to me who forgot that naval strategy is a built strategy. Also generalvikus thats really a good advice, a quick war with Germany is a lesser evil than three naval superpowers fighting each other, also resetting the tensions of course.