Currently playing as the United States in Victoria 2 with the POP of Darkness mod. Yeah, USA is the easiest country, but whatev.
Anyhow, it's 1885 and I'm the most technologically advanced country in the world and my industrial output is almost as high as Britain's. So far I'm keeping my liberal Republican party in control, but the Socialists/Communists are gaining power and every once-in-awhile I have to quash them down. Right now I've set a few focuses in my provinces to encourage liberalism over socialism to try to keep the red menace down. If they take over then I have to manage a lot of my factories on my own and possibly decrease my military budget, which I don't want to do. My military is pretty large and I'd like to get some mechanized infantry going, but automobiles haven't been invented yet.
Recently I decided to build the Panama Canal. The problem was I had to have Colombia in my sphere of influence and they used to own the area, and it seemed like the European powers were going to add Colombia to their sphere first and possibly build the canal before me. So I manufactured a casus belli and declared war on Colombia and forced them to release Panama as a free state, then I added the new Panama to my sphere and got the canal.
I'm also trying to colonize some Pacific islands, but my technology is too poor to get a few of them at the moment.
I'm also trying to increase relations with Germany so that I can be on their side whenever the Great War comes around. I'm tired of Britain being on top; I want to make sure they burn. They also took over Alaska from the Russians, bunch of tards.
Just for completeness I'll mention the earlier part of the game: I was able to annex Texas and get into a war with Mexico very quickly in the 1840s. I had some trouble with the Mexicans but in the end was able to eradicate their armies and take half of their territory just like historically. Then the Civil War came along almost immediately afterwards since I made a lot of decisions that made the slavery debate worse. I was able to beat the South in about three years, had to occupy the whole damn thing to win but the war was never really in doubt. Ever since then it's been mostly about industrializing and expanding my influence over Central and South America. When you add a country to your sphere of influence you link your goods pool, so my factories sell finished products to their citizens and I get access to their raw resources. There's a lot of timber and rubber in South America, valuable products for the late-game industry. Fortunately as the USA I'm sitting on a lot of oil, which is another valuable late-game product. I was actually playing a recent game as Italy and got frustrated in the late game because it was so difficult to get the industrial resources I needed to keep up with the other Great Powers and France had already gobbled up Africa.
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