[Vic2 LP] How Bismarck got his herring - game thread

[Thanas]

Given the very low state of German naval research, that would take too long. No this needs to be another short but decisive land war against Austria or France, or maybe both at once if we have the strength for it.

Leave it to the Dalek to come up with a convincing strategy.

[Eternal_Freedom]

It is only logical. You have the military strength to take on Austria easily enough, since she won't be contributing much to France's war with Britain. France will be otherwise engaged with Perfidious Albion, as I believe you call them, so you can either engage them with limited forces for limited objectives or have your western troops stand on the defensive while assaulting Austria.

Being a Dalek is all about war and conquest, so this is fun

[Thanas]

A trip to the Adriatic


As expected, the French and British war dominated the headlines. Oh and dinosaurs.


Spain rebuilt the most important part of their former colonial empire by making Peru their puppet in a victorious war. The Spanish are back.


To better get at the British colonial empire, France started construction on the Suez canal.


A unified language for a unified people?


Dinosaus and coca wine. Best mixed together.


"Why do they hate us, daddy?"
"Because we are better than they are, son."
- Imperialists everywhere


The USA is debating whether it should stop lynchings or whether these are actually beneficial. GG, USA.
Oh, and inferior British architecture fell down. What else to expect?


Comments about British architecture however were quickly stopped when the heir was engaged to British nobility. This gave us political cover to move against Austria, especially as they were already fighting against Britain.


We invented the Human cockroach.


Hooray.

Let's focus on social science next.


Yes, more dinosaurs. Distract us from the real issues, please.


Hehehhe.
This pitted us against the Ottomans, France and Austria.

The Austrian army was quickly eliminated in a series of pitched battles.


As was the eastern French Army.

Finally, some good news.


Our military - of which only a third was sent to France - continued to batter the French, inflicting casualties on a 3:1 ratio.

In desperation, France pooled all her troops into one massive army and attacked at Besancon.

Although this was a defeat, it was a glorious one, with the French losing 115k out of their 207k forces. Our troops meanwhile lost only 73k despite being outnumerd 3:2.

Another pyrrhic victory happened at Arras, where the remaining French Army lost 58k (to our 26k) even though they had a 2:1 advantage. This rendered the French Army unable to actually retake any territory from us.

The French fear us. As they should. For our reinforced troops quickly went on a counteroffensive.


With our forces having overrun all of Austria, the three allies capitulated.


Europe after the war. The Anglo-French war still rages on, but we already look like the massive profiteers we are.



Good, more useful disciplines. Hermeneutics btw is the reason modern, critical history exists.


People love Bismarck.


Switzerland? Why would we ever attack them?


Ah, Social Science. Understood by idiots everywhere to mean "coddling bad people".

Meanwhile....


Lets focus on our army, we will need it.


The Berlin Amsterdam Conference happened.


The scramble for Africa begins.


We prefer our forces to remain at home, now already fully reconstituted.


"We're better than Britain. Now be quiet and go back to work."


Spain regained its rightful status as a Great Power.


Right. Trenches.


More railroads. Germany is run by rails.



Meanwhile, the war between France and Britain - now in its second year - heated up.



At home, our assimilation of the Czech people continued apace.


Although not a big fan of colonies, we recognized they were important to keep people from leaving for the USA. Get free land in Africa instead.

Let's organize our new colonies.


Welcome into the Empire, Deutsch Ostafrika. May you be a jewel in our crown and not a drag.

(to be continued)

[Thanas]

(continued from above)


The Kiel Canal was completed, allowing our ships unrestricted and easy passage from the North Sea into the Baltic.

Yay us.


Isn't it a beautiful triumph of German engineering?


"Whatever happens, we have got the Maschinengewehr and they have not".
Fun fact: During the first world war the most produced model of machine guns was the Model 08/15. It became so standardized that even today, 08/15 is a slang term in Germany for a thing being standard.


We quickly set out to colonise more parts of Africa.


Oh yes. (Must not become Britain. Must not become like Britain. Must not become like Britain).

MUST NOT BECOME LIKE BRITAIN. Must negotiate settlement.


Yay, Trenches. Much better to shoot at French Frogs from cover.


I am sure there will be applications for it soon.


Hey, this electricity thingy looks interesting. Let's do that.


Damn, son.


Yep, sounds about right.


Scholarships. Necessary. Good. Why did we not have them sooner?


Exploitation? Why, I never.


The French finished the Suez canal.

However their landgrab incensed the locals.

In response, the French - though already fighting the British - declared war on the whole of Egypt.

We quickly sent money and weapons to the Egyptians. After all, the more French die there, the better for us.

While the British and French were distracted fighting each other, we gained more territory in Africa.


So how does colonization work? Well, each country gets a certain amount of points. Colonies above a certain treshold can be colonized according to the available tech.

First you send an expedition. If nobody contests your attempts, you automatically have the expedition turn into:

and

At which point you can claim the territory. If another Great or secondary power contests your attempts with one of their own, each has to invest more and more points in building towns, forts etc. Eventually, one will win out or there will be a political crisis and maybe even war.

With everybody busy elsewhere we made to grab more of Kenya and Djibouti.

Eventually you get events allowing you to better exploit the colonies for the generation of rare resources.

Back at home:


We mastered trench warfare.


And opened the glorious colonial exhibition.


...and finally enacted non-secret ballots, putting an end to Gerrymandering.


All power now belonged to the Reichskanzler, very little to the monarch.


New flags for us. (Why does the game do this? There is no reason not to keep the old one if there is not a revolution but gradual change. Ugh.)

End of this update.

Tl, DR:
- German Adriatic Coast: Yay
- Better democracy: Yay
- Colonies: Yay
- Trenches: YAY.

[Titan Uranus]

The flags allow you to tell, at a glance, what sort of government each state has, for most countries.

[Thanas]

Yeah but it kinda breaks immersion for me.

[Purple]

You could probably mod it out easily enough just by editing the game files, deleting the extra flags and replacing them with copies of the ones you like.

[Thanas]

Britain victorious


Yay, politial science. Finally something for our law students to sneer at.


A new national conference gave us a massive boost in research....


..and so we discovered electricity. Apparently lots of people now get electrocuted as well.


More industry makes Germany happy and fat.


It was time to change our national value to something more appropriate of an empire of this size and composition. Henceforth, we decided that our ideology would reflect our liberty and our militant defence and expansion of it.

Good for research.

Meanwhile, Austrian archeologists made a startling discovery.

Tutenchamun would be going to Vienna.


Meanwhile, we got da booty.

While this gave us a good port to control the Suez from, it dwarfed in relation to the new Russian conquest.

After a quick and brutal war they subjugated the Afghans.


But we didn't care that much, for we still had superior industry.


Which we hastened to expand with Assembly Line research.



Railroads and social politics, oh my.


In a new social reform, we prohibited our industry from dumping their waste into food-producing areas.


Meanwhile, in the now three-year old war between Britain and France, Austria dropped out after making a peace treaty.


In a new reform, we affirmed our commitment to assimilation and open immigration. Everybody who immigrates here can become a true German. They just need some wurst, beer and a rifle.

Speaking of rifles...

Spain conquered more and more of Africa.

Damn. Did they clone some conquistadors or what?


It's cute how the dutch try.

Meanwhile, after a long blockade (boy, does the British AI love its blockades) the UK forced France to submit.

Reaffirming their status as the greatest military power on Earth.



Vitamins and assembly lines, Baby.


Combustion engines are necessary. We need cars. And Panzers.


Secret ballots were now the voting law in the German Empire.

Though Britain had won the war, it kinda lost the peace. For this freed up French resources for ambitious projects like:

...and allowed French divisions to pour into Egypt.



Meanwhile, Spain continued its policy of colonisation, conversion and conquest.



We on the other hand created a minimum wage and the fair working hours limit of 14 per day.


BOOO. DAMN YOU.

Let's take a look at the scramble for Africa:


France dominates the North, Spain the West and Britain the South. Meanwhile, we are colonizing at a much slower pace.

Wonder what we should do next? Maybe get into Austria again?
(end of this update)

[Purple]

Launch a crusade against the Turks and invade the holy land.

[Eternal_Freedom]

Nah that would be a waste. This is the modern era of liberalism, religion is no longer (or should not be) a driving force for a proud nation like Germany!

Have the frogs build the Suez Canal yet? If so, engineer a war and seize it if possible, it coudl come in very handy indeed.

[Skywalker_T-65]

Fairly certain the French got Suez last chapter...wasn't that why they were at war with Egypt in the first place?

And man, that's an unusually successful Spain right there.

[phred]

Maybe we should move into Africa a little more, if for no other reason than to contain Spain's expansion.

[Elheru Aran]

Kinda strange to see the Spanish in my old stomping grounds...

[Thanas]

The dream of 1848


"Bismarck, tell Krupp we just invented industrialised armaments"
"...."
"Has your majesty forgotten to take his pills again?"


We decided to protect the Austrian brethren. How do you protect somebody? By invading them of course.


"Yeah, whatever happened that caused them to fall from Great Power status?"


We sent an expedition into Uganda to create a colony there.


More food for our people. Good.


More railways? Of course we will support this.


In Bohemia, more people were now considering Germans instead of Czechs as more and more Czechs gave up the language of their ancestors and spoke German exclusively.


The combination of more food, better medicine and more state sponsoring of social reforms led to a population boom.


...which was partially mitigated by the discovery of combustion engines, which tended to...combust.


We shifted our research to Machine guns, for we found the idea very useful.


German farmer joke:
"Hanno mag sein Gyros nicht"
"Ischa rein zu Deutz"

Cookie for whoever figures that one out.

News arrived from France:

The French have entered the circle of civilized countries.

The French have left the circle of civilized countries.


Poor animals. But more steaks for us.

More machinery. Good.


Hey, the Royal couple has been busy. Good.

We will name a town in our new colony after the child.

How to get fired from the modern German Army, featuring a machinegun

Our soldiers now traded the blue uniforms for the very stylish feldgrau and black uniforms.


Time to improve our commerce and administration.


We immediately rushed through a reform. The health of our workers is paramount. After all, who else would build the new Maschinengewehre?

As we were several years ahead, research progressed very quickly.


More commerce tech, leading to:



We invested a lot in our relationship with the Ottomans. With success.


From now on, the state would subsidize the starving artists to ensure our culture flourished.

Meanwhile, elsewhere:

Spain was expanding again.

This time in Asia, annexing Sulu.


We changed our laws again so that everybody could be naturalized.


Some say this art style is magnificent.


Commerce.

And more commerce.

Now with added marxism for that special flavour.


Poor Korea. When you make Nazi occupations look like a valid comparison...well, you done fucked up.


"Therefore, we must hasten to spare Austria such a fate."

(to be continued below

[Thanas]

(continued from above)


Thus, the war of Austrian Protection started.


We had already formed up on their borders and the border with France, who was their ally.


However, the French took one look at our new machine guns and said "nope".


Which led to predictable results.

However, soon the vultures started circling.

Italy declared war on Austria to get Lombardia back. Of course, being the brave people they are, they did so after we had smashed the Austrian armies.
And a massive army of militant communists rose in the west of Austria.


Austria quickly surrendered to us, realizing they needed our protection to survive against the Italians.

Thus we intervened on their behalf.





Our highly trained soldiers quickly started a counter-attack. The goal was to cut the supply lines into Venice and turn Istria into a giant cauldron.

The early battles had the expected results.

Things turned even worse for the Italians once machine guns became standard equipment.

Even heavily entrenched Italians in mountain terrain could not withstand this firepower.

RATTTATTTATTATT. RATTATTATTTATTT. "More ammo".


After the battle of Udine, Italy quickly accepted a white peace. With peace concluded, we started enhancing our relationship with our new vassal state of Austria.

But there were also other developments.

Free trade will always prevail. I don't care if your holy book forbids you from eating shell fish.


New technologies:

Silver standard.

Telephones.

...and more commerce tech.

So we went from silver standard to Gold standard in a matter of months. Interesting.


It was decided that we needed a better Navy to counter the Italians and protect our colonies. Thus, we now focused on Naval research.

Research progressed rapidly.

Military steamers. Yes, please.

What does every good steamer need? Why, better fire control of course.



Cool.


France was expanding again into West Africa.



AWESOME.

We decided to go with Greater Germany as well. After all, it is the dream of every German nationalist.

"Von der Maas bis an die Memel,
von der Etsch bis an den Belt"
- Hoffmann von Fallersleben

However, it was more than questionable if the Great Powers would tolerate this union between the Habsburg and Hohenzollern crowns. Several of them had already registered their protests and there were reports about mobilizations being ordered and alliances against Germany being formed. But for now, Greater Germany was a Reality.

(end of this update)

[Elheru Aran]

Because 'protecting' Austria involves Chinese junks from the Opium Wars, of course

[phred]

Hey, we can build that beach house now. Do we get any other colonies out of this? I didn't see anything obvious, but it's possible I missed something.

[Eternal_Freedom]

The Spanish seized Sulu? Who will pilot our starships now?

Anyways, this is an excellent development. And now that you have machine guns in general deployment (and industry strong enough to keep them all supplied) if the French/Italians/Russians/whoever do decide to try invading you in response, it'll be incredibly bloody for them.

Also, the French deciding their alliance with Austria to be a lost cause? Hahahaha! Oh France.

[Thanas]

The World vs Germany, Part I of IV: Declarations


Great, now our non-existent warships can finally find targets.


Naval plans are next on the agenda. We need a good planning bureau.


With the integration of Austria, we now had 100 million citizens. Woohoo.


And on July 21, after we had rejected an ultimatum to break up the union of the thrones, the Russian Empire declared war on us.

It was soon followed by declarations of war from its allies/satellites Finland, Sweden, Serbia and Montenegro.

Soon, Russian troops poured into Silesia and East Prussia, with our forces using every available rail transport to meet them.

We however kept our western troops at full strength. No sense in leaving the frontier to our most important industrial areas wide open. Instead, they were told to dig in and take a defensive posture. Massive minefields and barbed wire were constructed in Elsaß-Lothringen.

After a few days, we were ready to launch the counteroffensive.

Silesia was the main focus.

I would like to have looked at the Russian faces when six corps started to slam into their forces.


The union with Austria put us far above the infamy limit, so everybody in the world now hated our guts.


Meanwhile, in Serbia, our forces had quickly neutralized the Serbian armies and were now pushing into Serbia itself.


Victory notices soon came in from the eastern front and we started a counteroffensive in Poland.

Nevertheless, despite victories like the ones above, the Russian push into eastern Prussia continued.


France finished its war in Africa....

..and immediately declared war on us.

Thankfully they had no allies.

However, with the French threat, we decided to mobilize every reservist we had. Soon, another 1.5 million soldiers would join our forces. We decided to send all mobilized forces to the Western Front, as the French were the more immediate threat.


We had more success in Poland, though the fortress landscape held us up a lot.

In Eastern Prussia, we managed to stop another Russian advance, but still could not break the Russian siege of East Prussia.


The Irish presented another petition for independence to the Queen. They were laughed at. Poor Irish.


Another massive success in Eastern Prussia broke a large Russian corps.


With the war going somewhat ok, we decided to finalize some war aims.


..and enacted another reform to support art and culture. Good things to keep the populace quiet in wartime.



We finished researching Naval Plans.

And started researching Naval Professionalism.


In East Prussia, however, the situation was deteriorating. The Finnish and Swedish Armies had arrived and provided a boost to the Russian siege forces.


On Oktober 17th, the French started their winter offensive against our well-entrenched forces in Elsaß-Lothringen.


And nine days later, the UK declared war on us.



(continued below)

[Thanas]

(continued from above)

The World vs Germany, Part II of IV: The Trenches


The French offensive into Alsace soon wasted itself against the barbed wires and machine guns that had been put into place, as our forts rained deadly artillery fire on the French lines. After losing more than 3 men for one of ours, they retreated.


Our state had now finished building military steamer shipyards.


In Oppeln, we started our counteroffensive to push the Russians out of East Prussia. The Russian lines held strong, despite our 4:1 advantage and gave as good as they got. Soon, we had to abandon that counteroffensive.


The troubles for France were growing however. Italy declared war to recover Savoy.


And our western forces started an offensive against the French army which had wasted its strength against Alsace.

The most ignoble defeat was suffered - again - at Verdun, where we lost 900 soldiers and they 23.000.


The first manned flight took place in Germany. Take that, wright brothers.

While we struggled in vain against the Russian forces in Brandenburg...

...we did more than well against the Russian forces in Poland.

The British meanwhile enacted a blockade against all our ports.

In response, we developed more naval technology.

We decided to research a raider doctrine.

Stick to land things, Bony.

More dire news came from overseas:

Oh noes. The USA.

After Danzig fell to the Russians, we had to evacuate our fleet. The British sent a squadron to hold them in place and their main battlefleet to destroy it.

Thankfully, we managed to escape into Stettin without taking any losses.

Better news came from the southern front.

Serbia was finally close to getting conquered.


In Bromberg, the Swedish Army suffered a nasty defeat.


The news, everybody.

Azazels Atoll sounds about right. Penal colony established.


On March 8th, the last bastion of the serb forces capitulated and we forced Serbia to accept our peace terms.


Montenegro was next.

Complete and utter annexation was demanded and achieved.

This freed up five badly needed corps for use on the other fronts.


Meanwhile, we embarked on the largest naval armamanet program in German history. Naval officers swarmed the ports of the German Empire, seizing merchant ships and started the process of converting them into commerce raiders. A total of 96 ships were slated to be converted.


We enacted stricter pollution standards to keep our populace happy.


As the French and British started a massive campaign into our African colonies, we had no options but to disband the colonial forces and start guerilla warfare.


France accepted the peace offer from Italy to eliminate one front as we pushed further into France...

...and handed Savoy back to the Italians.


Hey, Mahan.



Finally, our counteroffensive into Prussia had success.


In France, our mobilized reserves had collapsed the French forces.

And we had taken almost all of the Netherlands, who were allied with Britain. We had also reseached the Raider Group doctrine.

Which lead us to researching the Iron Steamer doctrine next.


On August 20th, 1888, we had finally liberated all of Prussia and pushed now into Lithuania.


On August 28th, Paris fell to our advancing troops.


France had to accept a peace treaty and signed both the buffer zone of Franche-Comte as well as...

the Naval bases of Guadeloupe....

...and Bourbon to us. These would make great Naval bases.

(to be continued below)

[Thanas]

(continued from above)

The World vs Germany, Part III of IV - Decisions


I guess the French must be getting tired of signing surrender documents in Versailles.


Great. Too bad they can't leave Port due to the British blockade...


China has westernized. OK.


We immediately directed the Zeiss works in Jena to make a lot of those devices.


The British blockade was impenetrable. However, we had occupied all of the continental allies of Britain.


Damn. The Spanish as well?


Why would we invade Norway? And why is it news that men are contemplating flight when two newspapers ago the first manned flight actually took place? You are confusing, news generator.

[img]hthttp://i.imgur.com/LblHm8q.png[/img]
Meanwhile, Russia, exhausted and unable to continue the war effort any longer, accepted our peace terms.

We now had a nice buffer zone between Russia and the heart of Germany.


After the victory over Russia, we didn't have a need to keep up General mobilization and thus demobilized. The reserves could return home, our professional troops would be enough to hold the lines.


Even more endowment for the arts. A good choice, I think, for what is a nation without art?


Nothing of consequence, I think.


Well, France certainly is busy.



Our advance of naval technologies progressed.

Yet we needed more to have a prayer against Britain.


The situation - Britain keeps us contained despite the growing number of warships in our ports, we keep the British allies occupied.
Thus a stalemate developed.


We decided to enact acceptable safety regulations. We need to stop losing people to accidents.


Revolutions everywhere.

Several months later...


More naval technology.


Our forces in our new western territories have almost regained their strength.


Ironclads and better oil. Too bad that we don't have time to build ironclads.


We need to have a better education policy. More efforts need to be made.


Of course our naval officers need academic education.


The british decided to strike at our "soft underbelly". However, we quickly moved sufficient forces to crush their invasion force. As we started the process of doing that, the British suddenly offered peace.

Which we accepted.




More naval tech and more naval research.


....
Never change, Britain.

The US now tried to copy Britain and blockade our ports. However, our new commerce raiders had now finished rebuilding and retraining.
And on:


Our forces sailed out of Stettin to meet the threat.

The combined Spanish-American squadron retreated after losing two of their ships. Germany had won her first naval victory.

(to be continued below)

[Thanas]

The World against Germany Part IV (of IV): Foreign shores


Apparently Russia won a war against the Ottoman Empire.

We enacted a maximum work day of 12 hours. Pretty progressive, I say.


Our raiders are now even more deadly. Torpedo production soon soared.


Our new torpedo-equipped forces struck against the American squadron blockading Venice.

The battle was a resounding success. One steamer and six armed merchantmen were sent to the bottom.


Torosaurus. And some other stuff we do not care about.



Another naval technology was researched. The quote of course is about the most famous ship-to-ship duel in the 19th century, between the Monitor and the Virginia.

However, as we saw that the USA was not that much of a threat in ship quality, we decided to now focus on commerce tech again.


Another US blockade squadron was caught and lost one ship in the retreat.


A museum on every street corner? That sounds like a nation I would like to live in.

CATASTROPHE

Bismarck died at his desk. A sad day for Germany. We shall win this war in his memory.


More naval tech.


We continued the progress of reform by heavily regulating "most" pollutants. That the game calls that "good standards" is depressing and scary.


Good. Much more useful. I mean, what modern nation would use such a stupid system?

On march 15, 1893, we send out the first naval expedition of the German Empire, in a large fleet comprised of 54 vessels.

The aim was to set sail for the new naval bases in Guadalupe - which had fallen to invading US forces - and to harass US shipping in the Caribbean.



More advances in commerce tech.


Steamer Navy transports. Good.


The progress of the various wars.


In November, France surrendered (again).

With the victory, Britain and Spain became the largest colonial powers in Africa.

And then, Italy entered the war on behalf of the USA.

They didn't think that through.



The Italian troops suffered horrendous casualties and were no match for the battle-tested and better-equipped German veterans.


A naval battle in the caribbean ended in our favour as mass torpedo attacks decimated the Italo-American fleet.


At Savona, the last operational remnant of the Italian army was encircled and destroyed.


On June 8th, Italy offered to surrender. Their offer was accepted.




Research. Cool.


We abolished the four-year draft in favour of the two-year draft.


And just as we were about to crush the US garrison of Guadeloupe, the US sued for peace.

And on July 8th 1894, Spain followed. The guns were silent for the first time in five years.


We promptly cancelled all Naval construction and returned the ships to commercial service.


Then, we adopted the new national value of Prosperity.

We shall be an industrious and prosperous nation.

Hooray for Germany.

(end of this update)

[darthkommandant]

Impressive indeed. Bismarck would be proud.

[Borgholio]

Holy crap. With the combined nations of the world against her, Germany emerged victorious and greatly expanded as well. I don't think at this point you have to worry about being challenged by anybody ever again.

[Eternal_Freedom]

So does that constitute the First World War in this game? Germany unites with Austria, so Russia, France, Britain, Spain, the US and eventually Italy declare war, while talking about "German aggressiveness?" That's an...interesting way to phrase it.

Also, I love the bit from Part 1 where Serbia declares war and it says "now they will pay the price for their lack of vision." I cracked up on seeing that