My first game wasn't as bad as expected. I wouldn't say that I turned Hawaii into a "world power," but I wasn't colonized by those American bastards, and towards the end my economy was expanding nicely.
Actually, it was kind funny the way Victoria II charts a nation's prestige. At one point, I was the 15th most prestigious nation in the world, making me a "secondary power" and eligible to colonize other nations (if the British hadn't beaten me there first, which, of course, they did). This was entirely down to my cultural and technological achievements, which were the 4th greatest in the world.
I guess that's the upside of having no military whatsoever to distract you from peaceful pursuits. The downside is that the 3% of your country that is radically communist can overthrow your democratically elected socialist government and achieve . . . precisely squat because your nation was already the most progressive in the world with a robust planned economy and 0% unemployment. But hey, you managed to repeal women's suffrage, so great going guys.
Luckily, a democratic uprising occurred less than a decade later, and the communists were no better equipped than the socialists to deal with it. There was a white-knuckle moment for me when I thought these liberal rebels might repeal the minimum wage or whatnot, but it turned out mostly fine. I mean, the socialists were the largest single political bloc in the islands and they never regained the legislature because the liberals and the monarchists formed a coalition, but aside from the fact that my international reputation never recovered, it was fine.
It's still pretty amusing to think that in this timeline sovereign Hawaii was the 22nd most influential nation on earth, and in the top 10 most culturally prestigious nations. And I have a feeling that if I'd had another 20 years, I could have become a secondary power once again. The capitalists were bringing in a net 300 gold (for reference, most of the game I was content with 0.5 net gold) and my factories were modernizing rapidly. It was getting to the point where I was going to have a modern navy just by running out of other things to spend my money on (those fucking liberals and their stubborn refusal to allow public subsidies of industry).
It was a pretty fun strategy game, though I have my concerns. "Westernization" as a prerequisite for "primitive nations" to become "civilized" is still gross, even when it proved little barrier to Hawaii becoming a cultural powerhouse on par with France. And the game's metrics of success are patently ridiculous. Even when I was 15th nation in the world, I would have more or less rolled over instantly in the face of any colonial power. I couldn't even thwart a half-assed extremist uprising.
Still, I should probably play the game "correctly" at some point. Before writing this post, I did a check-in with the USA, because I didn't remember seeing anything about the civil war, so I was curious about what it would be like in 1936. Hilariously, they were more than a half-dozen technologies behind me, though much to my dismay, they could have annexed me at any time, without even the pretense of resistance. It literally just took a single button click. I guess the fact that most of the west coast (including all of California) still belonged to Mexico must have turned their attention away from the Pacific.
The most curious fact, though, was that slavery was abolished. Maybe the civil war happened and I just didn't notice because I was too busy slap-fighting with the liberals over my plan for public railroads. However, my theory is that it was abolished with a simple political reform, which strikes m as . . . overly generous to my countrymen. I guess the only way for me to know for sure is to play the USA for myself.
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