Early in the game, it's important to build your industrial capacity. Producing more Industrial Production Units - IPUs - in cities will reduce the time required to produce units, build new buildings and make money.

1. Use the C key to open the City Management panel. You can sort this list by clicking on any of the icons above the columns.
2. Left-click the bubbles in the Production Order column to open the drop-down menu for setting production orders. Choose Mechanized Factory. These factories, when completed, will add 10 IPUs per factory per turn. Notice the more IPUs the city is producing, the shorter the build time for the current project.
3. Orders use up the resources required as you set them. The United States starts with 2,000 coal and 1,000 metals. A Mechanized Factory costs 500 coal and 250 metals. Set a total of 4 Mechanized Factories, your coal and metal reserves shoold be at 0. If you set additional projects that require coal or metal, they will not start until you can afford them. Don't waste too many city production queues with orders they can't afford, as they can all be set to Goods which produce money and require no resources.
4. Now, end your turn by hitting Shift + Spacebar or hit the green button in the control panel located in the bottom-right of the screen.

You will notice all 4 Cottage Factories you set have started production. The bar under their name represents the project's current progress. Additionally, your stockpiles of metals and coal have recovered slightly. If you hover the mouse over the stockpile numbers in the top bar, you will see that your nation is currently producing 260 metals and 570 coal per turn.

As you begin turn 3, take a look around the map. Many of your regions will have mines or oil wells displayed that are producing resources for your nation. These are built in regions with available resource deposits. Untapped Deposits are displayed as pools of oil or lumps of coal or metal. Move your map view to the region named Mesilla Valley (If you can't find it, hit R and scroll down. Regions will be listed alphabetically).

1. Looking at the map, right-click on the region. This will bring up the drop-down menu for interacting with the map.
2. Select Set Production, this will bring up a list of available region improvements you can set for your region to build. As this region has untapped oil reserves, you can select Oil Well. Once selected, a worker will appear on the map to show the region is building your new well.
3. Now, right-click on the region to the left, Sangre de Cristo. This region is displaying a coal resource, set the region to build a Coal Mine.
4. To the right of Mesilla Valley, right-click on Llano Estacado. This region is displaying a metals resource, set the region to build a Metals Mine.
5. End your turn.

When these three projects have completed, they will increase your production of these three resources by 10 per turn. Establishing resource production is vital to keeping your nation growing as resources are required to build production buildings, research centers and military units you will need to defend your borders and capture enemy territory.

To see a list of all your controlled regions, hit R. The Region Management Panel displays regions, their terrain type, what they are currently working on and their resource values. The amount of each resource a region produces is displayed as well as the Available Slots, which represent the number of different mines, farms or oil wells you can construct in this region. Left-clicking bubbles in the Current Project column will allow you to set new projects.

In addition to resource production, regions can be improved in two other ways. You can construct Transportation Improvements (Paved Roads, Highways) to increase the speed units move through that region or Military Improvements (Fortifications, Airbases) to increase your ability to defend or wage war from a given region.

Regions also produce a more valuable resource, Manpower. All city and region projects require people to be built, maintained or operated. Manpower Units - MPUs - are consumed when a new project is completed and increase based on region popolations. If you keep your regions well-fed, they will steadily increase the number of available MPUs for your nation's projects.

The majority of regions have available farmland. Farms built in these regions do not show up on the map, but otherwise act like your other resource producers. The productivity of farms from region to region differs, so choose wisely where you locate your farms.

1. Open the region list, sort it by Land Type. The top of the list shoold display all desert regions you control. This is not where you want to build a farm as production decreases by 75% in desert regions.
2. Scroll down to regions will the Plains icon. These regions will not decrease the output of your farms. Click the project bubbles to set three of these regions to Plantation.
3. End your turn.

Like city projects, if you set more region orders than you can afford with stockpiled resources and available MPUs, the project will stall until you have the available resources. If you produce the required resources for a stalled project between turns, the project will begin during end-of-turn processing.

Diplomatic interactions are how you speak with the computer controlled nations all over the world. You can pose trades, alliance agreements, military access requests or declare war. All of these actions can impact your relations with your allies, the allies and enemies of the nation you are interacting with, etc. Be careful when picking fights or making demands, you never know which nation may get offended when you take a certain action.

First, something harmless:

1. Right-click one of the regions or cities in Canada (North of the United States).
2. Left-click Select Canada from the drop-down menu.
3. On the small Nation Selection Panel in the bottom-left, left-click Diplomatic to bring up a list of diplomatic options. Choose Propose Aid/Trade Agreement from that list.
4. On the right of the expanded nation panel will be a list of trade agreement options, try buying some Canadian coal. The AI will evaluate the trade proposal and accept or reject your proposal.

Proposing trades isn't going to change your diplomatic relations with other nations. Let's make an enemy. Hit N to bring up the World Nation List and locate Mexico. This list shows your relations with that nation, your military access to that nation and a list of that nation's allies. If you have an alliance treaty, anyone you go to war with will be at war with your allies and you will be at war with theirs. It's good to know a nation's list of friends before you attack them.

1. Click the bubble with Mexico's name and flag, this will select the nation and close the panel. Hit Spacebar to expand the nation information.
2. Regions in Mexico have valuable resource deposits you can use to expand your nation. To take control of these regions, you have to go to war. Click the words Declare War on the right and confirm by clicking the button. You are now at war with Mexico.
3. End your turn.

Now that you are at war with Mexico, you are free to attack their regions with your units. If their regions are undefended, you units will capture that region and you will control it. If their regions contain units, your army will fight their army until one side retreats or is destroyed.

When at war, it's best to have a good idea of your controlled territory. Hit F2, this will switch the mapview to Political View. Your regions will now display as a different color than those of other nations. There are a number of other mapviews that are helpful in different situations, displaying information about a region's terrain type, ideology or population demographics.

Now, to charge into battle. Hit M to bring up your Military Panel. This panel displays information about all the units you control in all branches of the military. Click on the Armies tab to bring up a list of all your ground unit groups. From here, left-click the 3rd Army. This will select and zoom the map to that unit group. To close the panel, hit M again or click the X in the top-right corner of the panel.

Now that you have your unit selected, take a moment to look at its Group Selection Panel in the bottom-left of the screen. These values represent combat effectiveness versus other unit groups. The three combat values are Land Attack, Land Defense and Air Attack. Left-click on Mexico's unit group to the South in Nuevo Leon. They have fewer units, so the unit groups values are much lower than yours.

1. Select the 3rd Army again.
2. With the 3rd army selected, right-click Nuevo Leon. This will give the unit group the order to march into Mexico and try to take the region for the United States.
3. End your turn.

With an artillery unit in tow, the trek South may take a while. Since your unit is stronger and artillery are defensive units, it would be better to leave the artillery behind.

1. Left-click the Split icon in the Group Selection Panel.
2. From the list of units in this group, left-click on the Horse Artillery. Notice the unit group currently has a speed of 175. This speed is determined by the slowest unit in the group.
3. Left-click the split icon again to leave the Horse Artillery behind as a new unit group. Clicking multiple units in this panel will create a new unit group made up of those units.

The group speed should now be 200. This isn't fast enough to get to Nuevo Leon next turn, but at least there is a defender in case Mexico has other forces to attack you. But it's a long border, you might need some more defenders for protection. Look at the summary panel, the strip of buttons along the top-right of the screen. There should be one glowing.

1. The Infantry II you ordered on turn 2 is complete, click the notification to zoom the map to that region.
2. Left-click that group to select it and right-click a region along the border to send that unit South as a reinforcement. Depending on what city produced it, it might be a long walk. Faster units like Light Tanks and Motorized Infantry will be available later in the game that can move much faster than basic Infantry.
3. End your turn

To minimize your losses, it's best if you can soften up targets before any ground units get there. Back in Central Texas, there should be an air field containing the 4th Army Air Force.

1. Left-click to select the 4th Army Air Force.
2. Right-click Nuevo Leon to get the command menu. Select Bomb Hostile Units in Nuevo Leon.
3. End your turn.

Now, your air group will attack the ground units as you arrive to begin fighting and - hopefully - capture the region for the US.

That's it for this walkthrough, good luck and have fun!