I stayed up until 4 playing Japan in Vicky, until I felt like I had screwed up too much

I, ever the builder, focused on economy and didn't keep my military growing which tanked my prestige.

I didn't do the evil thing and colonize further, which eventually meant the US got half of some islands near me when I refused to become their subject

and I didn't appreciate how I needed to do something to strip power from the Shogunate so I can do the Meiji Restoration

one of the things I dig about Paradox games is that each country really does feel like its own puzzle

I was too afraid to demand the US recognize me because while I had double the troops (without guns yet, though) I was afraid the UK or another big country would join in on their side

The US was the only reasonable target to make that demand because they were by far the weakest of the powers I had the option to do that for

the other big issue on the liberalization front is the Shogunate who has a straight majority of the political clout

I don't quite get how to weaken political blocs, I had the same issue in Haiti when land taxation entrenched a church-military-landowner coalition

I did abolish serfdom after immense struggle, but my big thought is just like the demand to be recognized, I should be braver about forming a less legitimate government

Moving up to Japan was a huge jump in scale that I wasn't ready for either. Haiti was so small that my construction projects would pretty much immediately knock out good deficits, but in Japan they were like a drop in the bucket

This was especially due to the first pressing issue you're presented with in Japan, terrible taxation capacity across the board.

I was like "well, slow and steady, let's build more Government Administration"...

but each one of those only added 10 points of capacity, I had deficits in the hundreds.

So the correct solution is better production methods, but that means I need way more paper and the best way to boost paper is to mine sulfur

but even then, same issue with just being in a much bigger country

one sulfur mine lets me improve one paper mill lets me improve one government admin and I need to improve all of them

while I'm disappointed, it actually makes me appreciate the game mechanics more because I was totally like "Japan already has a lot of these resources Haiti could never get, this should be easy"

because the other thing about Japan is that it starts out with the county still closed under Sengoku. So no trade routes.

Which goes back to I need to get the Shogun out of power so the county can be opened. I thought it would actually benefit me to stay closed and build up first, but not now