loki100 wrote:... and in truth I have no realistic expansion goals in Europe (Split, Salonika and Adana are not really worth taking). Now I realise a later, rather infamous Austrian said that too.
Oh my god, you're going for Danzig now?!?

Jim-NC wrote:I have to ask, what is going on with the weird Italian hats/head gear? In your picture on the last page, your engineers had some sort of gas hood? or something?, so apparently, if it's not feathers, it's rubber?
I blame Gari.
Stuyvesant wrote:Oh my god, you're going for Danzig now?!?![]()
Stuyvesant wrote:Now, on to the actual update. The overall losses do seem disproportionate to the territorial adjustments effected. A few million people dead (screw it, I'm sticking with the 'If it's a casualty, it's in a coffin' mentality for this game), Austria comprehensively wrecked... And the price for you, in terms of experienced troops, was quite high, too.
But you won! Europe is your oyster! A closed oyster, but still. And one that's balanced precariously on varying competing alliances, but still...
At least you have Africa! Coffee, trains, fortified palace-villas... I picture Gari enjoying a nice Hemingway-style retirement, exterminating the local wildlife, drinking himself silly and messing around with a fair proportion of the local female population. Does that image have anything to do with the historic Garibaldi? No, but it's certainly the image that I have built up of the man over the last few months.![]()
r_rolo1 wrote:So, the Austrians(-Hungarians) still had a little of fight in them ... and your top generals decided to retire right at the time the war was over ( now that was a smooth move , Gari). Anyway, this war is over and hopefully this is the last time you need to walk to Wien with bayonets in this game.
But ,as a certain "Greek" commander said in the Roman days, this war and the Prussian-English one left quite a battlefield for you and GB: a isolated #1 with #2 and #3 ( you and Germany ) with no direct feud between them , but with revanchist side claims on and by their defensive pact allies and a Russian joker that no one really knows what side it is ( if it is on any side besides his own) and with ambitions that can make things derail fast. Now seeing this from the Italian side, it is pretty clear what to do gamewise: you need to keep Germany and GB relation in bad blood as much as possible, to avoid a Germany-GB coalition ( story wise you might want to do the exact opposite, though
), be friendly with the Russians and keep the French happy with you.
But the GB position at this point is the really interesting one ( if a inteligent being was controlling it and not the PON AI ): GB has no feud with you and, besides the souring effects of the rapid rise in prestige of Italy, there is no reason to think that Italy has a reason to attack GB at all. OTOH Italy must be contained somehow ... but also the newly united Germany. Austria is as much a sick man of Europe as the Ottomans , and it is most likely the target of possible future Russian pan-slavism ambitions, another confusion point to add, besides the so far unchecked Russian Asian expansion. There are a couple of options for GB, but all are bad in one way or another:
- The more sensible one: try to get France out of the Italian aliance while being also friendly enough with Russia ( the OTL path that led to WW I, but with Italy in the place of Germany and France in the place of Italy). It would at the same time weaken Italy and stop Germany ambitions in both East and west right on their tracks. it has the serious side effect of basically allowing free reign to Russian games in the Balkans and pushes both Italy and Germany to the wall right to each other side, maybe leading to a "enemy of my enemy is my friend" situation.
- Assume that Italy is the guy to take down and align with Germany. This one would need some hard pride swallowing from both sides of the recent war, but atleast joins two powers with a common enemy alliance. BTW this has the side effect of throwing Russia to the other side, with all that can come from there ...
- Get some kind of deal with the Russians and use them as a bat to hit Europe as needed if the Italians and/or the Germans get too out of their place. Ok in theory, but what to give to the Russians in exchange? Free hand in Asia? Free hand in the Balkans ? Maybe a chunk of Prussia ? And besides, can GB really trust those pesky orthodox Czars ?
- Keep playing the splendid isolation game , without major commitments with no one ( the whole " no permanent friends , just permanent interests" thing ). With the steady decline of the prestige difference between GB and the competition and with two reunified and victorious countries wanting to show up their might and/ or clear old feuds out, can really GB allow itself to risk being sidelined like a ageing formerly important person?
OFC that in the game GB with only do as scripted, but we can always wonder![]()
Jim-NC wrote:I have to ask, what is going on with the weird Italian hats/head gear? In your picture on the last page, your engineers had some sort of gas hood? or something?, so apparently, if it's not feathers, it's rubber?
I blame Gari.
Stuyvesant wrote:Blaming Gari is always a wise course of action - as long as he can't take an army to come after you.Upon closer inspection it appears to me that the engineers are carrying flame throwers. Which is a scary thought (it's not as if these Italian soldiers need to be any more destructive). And won't mix well with all the feathers worn by the other units...
how in the blazes did the Austrians manage to get their morale to 178?!? They have no army, they've been on the receiving end of two whoopings, they barely have a state to speak of (and half of it is now run as a private members club by the Hungarians)... How did that happen?
Gen. Monkey-Bear wrote:Perhaps in this alternate universe, the song "The Blue Danube" was just written and is lifting people's spirits after the Austro-Italian Wars? I mean, it's a great song, it certainly brings my morale up to 178![]()
r_rolo1 wrote:@ Stuyvesant
Actually the Brits never did the "Cape to Cairo" railroad ( the propaganda was about it and not only about land possession ... as a counterpart of the Berlin -Baghdad line, made by the Germans ). Neither the French, the Belgians or the Germans showed up as very cooperative with the British in this endeavour before WW I ( you needed to pass either French, Belgian or German territory to do the railroad ) and after WW I , when the German cooperation was no longer necessary :/ , the UK had lost the will ( and probably the means ) to do so... But who knows , Rome to Nairobi might be a interesting alternative![]()
Stuyvesant wrote:Flamethrowers were invented in the early 20th century by those geniuses of finding more interesting ways to kill more people, the Germans.I'm not sure what I find a more terrifying scenario: the Italians inventing stuff twenty years in advance, or part of the Italian army deciding to dress up as bondage freaks (I mean, to each their own, of course, but visualizing a batallion of people in fetish gear is... <Shudder>).
Interesting to see the steel shortage evolving out of the game - though with your plans to railroad-ize all of Eastern Africa, I can't say I'm surprised. It's a nice gesture to throw a 500-mile spur to Gari's villa, just so that the old man can get his canned prostitutes and fresh sturgeon delivered in a timely manner (wait, wrong facial-hair-bedecked-psycho, wrong universe).
If you're going to go through the trouble to build a railroad from your colonial empire to Cairo, then the logical conclusion is that you must turn south and incorporate the Cape into your budding empire as well. Let's face it, 'Cairo to Kenya' doesn't have the same ring to it as 'Cairo to the Cape'. The cause of appropriate alliteration demands it! To the Cape!
<Ahem>
Your analysis of the Italian-British race is sobering. You definitely ain't going to catch them, unless you can A) beat them in a war and B) make sure that you bleed them profusely of prestige while doing so. A fine challenge for the endgame.
Last thought: how in the blazes did the Austrians manage to get their morale to 178?!? They have no army, they've been on the receiving end of two whoopings, they barely have a state to speak of (and half of it is now run as a private members club by the Hungarians)... How did that happen?
Gen. Monkey-Bear wrote:Perhaps in this alternate universe, the song "The Blue Danube" was just written and is lifting people's spirits after the Austro-Italian Wars? I mean, it's a great song, it certainly brings my morale up to 178![]()
Stuyvesant wrote:It is a nifty tune and your theory is certainly more plausible than anything I could come up with.![]()
r_rolo1 wrote:Well, your analysis about the prestige combined evolution of you and the GB only empathizes the fact that you need one or two wars with them to peg them down and those wars must bleed them dry in terms of prestige and stop them from recovering. I'm not sure about this, but I assume that, based on the posted map, India is the thing to get to do those kind of damages. This means that you need the Suez ( and most likely Egypt and Sudan ) under control in a couple of years or so and not sucking your troops out in a hunt for the Mahdi, so you don't actually have much time if you want to go two wars with the GB ( the more safe option ), given that the GB most likely is a division or two above Austria in terms of difficulty of handling ( most likely not in the land sense, but the naval aspect will surely need extensive preparations ). So, to Egypt , young man
@ Stuyvesant
Actually the Brits never did the "Cape to Cairo" railroad ( the propaganda was about it and not only about land possession ... as a counterpart of the Berlin -Baghdad line, made by the Germans ). Neither the French, the Belgians or the Germans showed up as very cooperative with the British in this endeavour before WW I ( you needed to pass either French, Belgian or German territory to do the railroad ) and after WW I , when the German cooperation was no longer necessary :/ , the UK had lost the will ( and probably the means ) to do so... But who knows , Rome to Nairobi might be a interesting alternative![]()
Stuyvesant wrote:Yeah, I know the British never actually managed to put the railroad in place (wasn't it one giant pipe dream from Cecil Rhodes, anyway?), but that's no excuse for loki! I demand an Italian Cape to Cairo railroad, so that Gari can shoot exotic animals all over the continent from the comfort of a Pullman wagon - the man's getting on in age, we can't expect him to do his slaughtering on foot anymore.![]()
Y'know, this AAR has made me hold my breath and double-click the dusty 'PON' shortcut on my laptop again last night. I brushed through two tutorials, started a new game as S-P... I even ended the turn! Mind you, I mostly ended the turn because I was utterly clueless about what to do in the turn itself, so I didn't actually do anything in the first turn... But still, more PON activity than I've had since... well... <long bout of really hard thinking>
Probably since I played two turns as Russia after I had just purchased the game a couple of years ago.
I might try to advance another turn or two tonight, possibly even tinkering with the trade screens and ordering a structure or two! I even obtained some library books to tide me over during the turn resolution.
r_rolo1 wrote:You don't need to feel bad about Gran Paradiso history, given that most of the first European national parks have exactly the same origin :/
Apparently the GB prestige evolution is even worse ( for you ) than I thought ( I was under the impression you were making a slight advance against them in peaceful years, but that most likely was a erroneous perception ). You will really need two wars with GB to take them down and that might not be enough by itself ... you might need to complement it with trashing someone else in between just to juice out some prestige, preferentially someone weak that you have a CB on ( say, like the good ol'Turks )
The economical situation looks good enough, except the steel ( and coal ) situation, but with so much demand in the form of battleships and rails, it is not exactly a surprise to see that. You will most likely need more steel factories and coal pits for your projects, though .
To end, it is good to see that finally the situation on Yemen is somewhat stabilized and that it is not as rebel infested as the Ottoman Arabia still is. A fine display of the Italian superior civilizing ways ( that or the rebels heard that Gari was in the other side of the Red Sea and fled to safety)
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Jim-NC wrote:The prestige gain that shows on the F10 (I think) screen is I belive from the regions held only. I don't believe it includes either colonial actions/gains, nor does it include the amount from manufacturing. Thus, it severely understates what is happening later in the game (where a good manufacturing sector can bring around 100 PP a turn).
Stuyvesant wrote:Y'know, this AAR has made me hold my breath and double-click the dusty 'PON' shortcut on my laptop again last night. I brushed through two tutorials, started a new game as S-P... I even ended the turn! Mind you, I mostly ended the turn because I was utterly clueless about what to do in the turn itself, so I didn't actually do anything in the first turn... But still, more PON activity than I've had since... well... <long bout of really hard thinking>
Probably since I played two turns as Russia after I had just purchased the game a couple of years ago.
I might try to advance another turn or two tonight, possibly even tinkering with the trade screens and ordering a structure or two! I even obtained some library books to tide me over during the turn resolution.
Anyway, back to the actual AAR: I'm impressed with the colonial gains you've made since the start. And that's quite a nice opium operation you've got going there in Yemen.Now, after a whole update dedicated to peace and development, how about another war? Preferably one that's bloody and one-sided?
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Gen. Monkey-Bear wrote:Good to hear!
There's never too much to do the first turn, so no worries. If you keep at it, it'll make sense eventually. Or as we say in school, if you fake it long enough, eventually you'll understand (or you'll flunk the class!)![]()
loki100 wrote:Another Italian volcano blows up but I doubt this is some subtle warning by the Belgians for me to back off.
Director wrote:Be careful when twisting the tail of the British lion. Your empire is basically just one big long coastline, and (historically) they had the ships and the ability to deploy large armies. With the home islands and India they have an enormous manpower pool. If they were still at war with Prussia, I'd say go for it. As it is... be careful.
jokeon wrote:If you want to start a game I would suggest GB, it gets to do whatever it likes and is required to take an interest everywhere.
So I think it makes the best starting country.
vaalen wrote:Loki, I want to thank you for this fascinating AAR. I am an experienced player, yet I have learned a lot just from reading this. You have a gift for showing exactly what is going on, and the reasoning behind your decisions.
This AAR shows a great deal of work on your part, and I thank for all your efforts, which are very much appreciated!
Soulstrider wrote:Be careful with Mahdi, if it works like in the MP games, he will apparently start to declare war against random European powers
Stuyvesant wrote:It's the Austrian Emperor, I tell ya! Yes, you [s]blew up his Death Star[/s] destroyed his armies. Twice. But he's got a new secret weapon and he is plotting his revenge! It probably also involves turning Gari to the Dark Side, although it's hard to imagine how Gari could be any Darker than he already is (I mean, he's the man who torched Mecca and stormed Jerusalem - and that's just getting started on things)...
On a more serious note, I'd be a little bit concerned about the Mahdi, seeing as his army is right on your doorstep. Eventually Fashoda will fall, I assume, and then what will he do with his thousands of holy fanatics? You present somewhat of an attractive target.
Director wrote:That's not an Austrian plot, it is just Neapolitans being Neapolitan.
Be careful when twisting the tail of the British lion. Your empire is basically just one big long coastline, and (historically) they had the ships and the ability to deploy large armies. With the home islands and India they have an enormous manpower pool. If they were still at war with Prussia, I'd say go for it. As it is... be careful.
There is a great scene from 'The Court-Martial of George Armstrong Custer' where one of the surviving Indian scouts is testifying about the battle. As he leaves the stand he stops by Custer's seat and says, "Too many, Yellow-hair. Too many!" It has been a favorite saying of mine for many years and I intone it whenever something catastrophic happens. Like the Germans launching a 25-division death-ride at my lines, or (in my current Vic2 game) the Ottomans launching a six-great-power Great War in their fourth bid to get Mosul back. (Seriously: get a life, Turks, really. Please!).
Be careful. And if possible set up some nice traps where you can beat them piece-meal. Whipping Austria and coming in second with Italy is victory enough for me... it wasn't so very long ago we thought you'd never even get to form Italy.
r_rolo1 wrote:True enough, but again loki has been ramping up the shipbuilding so he will probably be ready to atleast achieve local superiority. You also have to add the fact that it will be Italy that owns the Suez, that allows interior lines play. The Indian manpower is a issue, though ... :/ Loki will definitely need some kind of killing ground like in the first Austrian war to grind out the Brit manpower...
On the update proper, Ethiopia surely was a good investment ( and given how relatively bloodless was to get, it was probably one of best cost/profit relation of your colonies ) and it probably is quite lucrative even without the rails. On the Mahdi ... well, don't go to Khartoum without a rail behind ... learn with Kitchener and not with Gordon![]()
loki100 wrote:Much to my surprise, the US backed down, not sure why it reports it as a US diplomatic victory when most of the prestige stash went to Prussia.
r_rolo1 wrote:Well, your CP leakage is putting yourself in crash course with a number of really unwanted guests.
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