Now, we start the clock! In order to make sure we get going on upgrading our cavalry divisions, I’m actually going set the upgrades to 12.0 and dump all of our new IC (from reduced supply demand) into production. (I’m also upgrading the 3rd light Cavalry division to light armour. It was in the 2nd Army which is now in the 1st Army Group).On January 22, we got lucky. We got the Economic Boost Event.Since we’ve stopped, and we have enough money, I’m going to change laws to Consumer Product Orientation. This is going to significantly drop the amount of CG we need, letting us funnel more into production and upgrades. How much more? Let's just see!Our situation before changing laws (and approving the “Economic Boost” event) was that we needed 31.68 for CG, and were putting 12.0 and 12.24 into Upgrades and Production respectively. (Note – “upgrades” only upgrades standing units with better equipment. By Upgrading our cavalry, we actually disband the cavalry and build new light armoured units in their place.) Also, the first batch of artillery would be finished on April 22.After we change laws, we only need 20.16 consumer goods, giving us over 11.0 to use for our production. Our artillery only takes 5 days longer to finish (although the first 3 weeks were produced using the more efficient “Mixed Industry”), making a nice tradeoff. I’m going to allocate the rest of the newly available IC to production which almost lets us fully fund our production. Also notice that we have 1.3 allocated to reinforcement. Because of attrition of our troops even in peacetime, you’ll need to reinforce from time to time.With our “economic boost,” we need .12 more for consumer goods, but we gain 6 IC units, which we’ll use to top off our production, and increase our Upgrade budget.If you notice our resources, we could use some crude oil. It’s not a big problem right now, as our fuel stockpile are doing well, but since we’re making lots of money, we’ll be able to buy from a country like the US who has a lot in the future.Now, it’s January 31, and we’ve got our 10 domestic spies. As you can see we’re raising our national unity until we get to 60%. Now I’m going to go back to the Tech screen and lower the leadership allocation to a trickle.When we look at the tech screen, you can see that our first round of Industry techs will be finished in May (Production, Efficiency and Agriculture). Education won’t be done until October. If you notice the numbers in circles before the year of the tech, Agriculture is a level 1 tech, and Industrial production and efficiency are level 2. This means they’re easier to research. Education is level 5, which is why it takes twice as long to research it. Our 4 infantry equipment techs will finish from early April to late May, and our doctrines (not shown) (Infantry Warfare 2 and Assault Concentration 2) will finish in late October. The Artillery tech at the bottom (also not shown) is yellow which means it’s getting partially funded. It will get more funding as other techs in the queue finish and move to the bottom.You might notice in the production screen our supply numbers keep increasing. This is because we are reinforcing troops lost through attrition. Again, it’s not a problem, but this is the reason I like to manually handle the sliders. The AI isn’t good at getting these micro-fluctuations.Now we wait. Nothing much will happen for a while, at least until our first round of artillery is finished.On February 12, we got a "Rigged Elections” event. TThere's nothing we can do about these events. Unfortunately the result was that we lost 1 unityFeb. 16: Siam wants energy. I’m going to say no, even though we don’t have use our own convoys to ship it to them (the buyer supplies them in a transaction). I really don’t have any need to be friendly with Siam, and we don’t need the money, and when we ramp up production later, we need all the energy have to power our factories. Each 1 unit of IC (a factory if you will) requires 2 units of Energy (or Coal), 1 unit of Metal and ½ unit of Rare materials to function. Keep this ratio in mind as you play countries with higher IC or are building IC.The reason we’re not building IC as France is that we really can’t spare any to build it, as building new factories ties up the production cue for a long time until you build up your construction practical. At the beginning of the game, it can take a major country like France about a year to build one more IC unit. Some smaller countries need to research the Construction Engineering tech just to be able to build IC, and when they can it will take over a year and half.(France starts the game with Construction Engineering researched)I'll explain a little bit about "practical" and "theoretical" tech knowledge. You can find a bar at the bottom of your Tech screen.Green icons are "theoretical" knowledge, and blue icons represent your "practical." Theoretical knowledge is increased by researching more techs in that particular area. Consequently, the higher your theoretical knowledge, the faster you can research more techs in that area. Practical knowledge is increased by building units or buildings. Let's keep an eye on our numbers as we progress through the first part of 1936. If you notice our Artillery Theoretical and Practical (the bottom of the "land" section) are both 7.5. Let's keep an eye on it as we build more artillery units. You may not remember this, but in the production screens (see "brigade attachment screen below), when you select a unit to build, at the bottom, underneath where it says how long it will take to build it shows one of these icons and gives a number. In the case of our artillery build, the number is 0.3. This means that each additional artillery brigade we build will add 0.3 to our artillery practical. However, there is a decay (you can check the Wiki for more accurate information about exactly how much decay there is), so if you don't build units or buildings of a particular type, the number will decrease over time. The higher the number, the less time it will take to build those units or buildings.In the middle, in the "Doctrines" section, there is one difference. The blue numbers represent Air, Sea, and Land combat experience. This will reduce the amount of time needed to research the corresponding doctrines. As you can see, we have no combat experience.... yet.It’s February 26. The Brits want to buy supplies. However, I’m also going to decline because increasing the amount of supplies we have to produce (both for our own troops and for export) will tie up more IC.March 4: I’m going to open negotiations with the USA to buy some oil. Oil is pretty expensive, so I’m not going to buy much. Once our relations, which are only 10 (of a maximum 200), are better, we’ll probably be able to get a better price. So we got 4 units for about $2.20,or 1 for $0.55. Not a great deal, but it’ll do for now. We still have a cushion of over $2 a day so that we can build our cash stockpiles and lower the hit our oil stockpiles are taking. As a point of comparison, I looked at how much money Persia would want for 1 unit of oil, which was $0.56, and we have worse relations with them than with the US.(Sorry, no screenshot for the US Trade)On March 29, you’ll see that our required amount for upgrades is down to 51.78. It’s going to go down slowly, and once we research the next techs for infantry, it’s going to jump up again, so it’s not coming down to manageable levels for a while. We’re going to continue or slow army build up starting with support brigades, and building to full infantry divisions probably around early 1938.I’ve also initiated another trade with the US for crude oil. This time just for 1 unit. It’s a whole cent cheaper than the last one was! When we start to need more, hopefully we’ll have more IC to sell supplies. As long as people like us and aren’t threatened by us, we’ll have plenty of trading partners. Also, crude oil isn’t as essential as fuel since it’s not used directly. Crude oil is converted into fuel, so our tanks and planes and ships will still run even if we run out of crude oil. We will eventually research techs to make the coal to oil conversion process more efficient.Making trades is easy. Just go to a country's tab in the Diplomacy screen, and click "Offer Trade Agreement." Move the sliders to where you want. It's a little confusing though. The "buy" or "sell" on the slider is the OPPOSITE of what it tells you below. It's hard to see because we're only buying one unit of oil, but the slider is slightly to the "buy" side of the middle. This is saying that WE want to buy one unit of oil. Below, it says "We offer the USA to SELL 1.00 Crude Oil". Basically, they're selling, we're buying. Yes, it's confusing. Be careful!They accepted the trade.By April 24, Our Upgrade needs were down to 45.83, but on that day, we finished researching our first infantry upgrade – small arms. Interestingly, there wasn’t a corresponding jump to upgrade our infantry. Hmmm… I’ll take it. The pop up tells you what the advance does for your units. Some advances will actually contribute negative effects, for example, Tank Engine advances will increase speed, but also increase fuel consumption. You can see that at the bottom, it says Infantry Theory +1. This means that we've added one to our infantry theoretical knowledge.On April 27, our first artillery brigades were finished, with one more coming the next day. I add them first to the Maginot Line infantry divisions, and work my way north and west as more become available. Then I’ll take care of my southern France divisions.The first division is in Belfort, so I’ll select an artillery brigade, and select my target division in Belfort.Voila! That division now has 4 brigades.This will be repeated with each of the artillery brigades, moving north until we've added them to all of our divisions in the north of France.