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

[Eternal_Freedom]

Holy shit...you raided Washington? That's awesome.

Though honestly I am slightly disappointed the Qing didn't throw all those one million men into an all-or-nothing battle. Would have been glorious.

[LaCroix]

Limping Tiger, fleeing Dragon...

[Borgholio]

As always Thanas, I enjoy you putting the historical quotes in to make this seem almost like a documentary rather than just a game. It really adds to the immersion.

[InsaneTD]

Bloody hell. That's a hell of an update. Glad to see those Yankees and the Brit navy get theirs. Scary that both the Chinese and Japanese joined the war. Still, German win.


Making me rather tempted to pick the game up.

[Thanas]

Si vis pacem.....



Another enemy of Germany has been struck by a natural disaster. No, we did not hire Blofeld.


In response to the threats to liberty in the form of fascists and communists, we decided to send envoys abroad in order to promote democracy.


More trade is always good for Germany.


Finally we can tame the free market.


Let's research more railroads.


The Berlin Olympiad was so memorable they decided to give it to us again. Awesome. Though why does it still cost the same? Did we just demolish all facilities? Eh?


Keynes, AKA the only economist people on the internet seem to know about without having read his work in detail.


FASCISTS? BOO. HISS.

Oh ffs....


Fascism became very popular in the US as well.


With Northern Italy in our grasp, we finally became known as a fashion powerhouse.


Our reconstructed defences in the west. Never know if those Frenchies are going to try something...


Great.


More proof of German superiority.



Let's hope they don't descend into Apartheid again....


With our rail research complete...

...we decided to research Panzers.


Of course we will join this search for the South Pole.


Too often, Capitalists omit the last part of the quote.


Yes. Awesome.
As to the effect of our generous assimilation policies:

Transsylvania now has one third German cititzens.


Our Polar Explorers are still models of failure.


But at least we had new railroads to built...

...and added Persia to our sphere of influence.


But Russia. You are not even communist.


There is no such thing as a Pole. There is only Germany.


Oh yeah.

Panzers need proper artillery support.


Meh...not that we will ever get it, but lets make a bid anyway.


The Titanic has sunk, inflicting on us all the disaster of shitty movies until the earth has gone cold.


I can think of some applications for such engineering....let's try it on the fascists.


Well, what do you know. Maybe nobody else had the money? But still, we got it. Better make it great.


Gas masks are now standard issue.


Of course the fair must be magnificent. Maybe we can even exhibit some of our gas masks there?


Hah, the dreadnought hoax. Back when Bunga Bunga was not associated with aging Italian prime ministers.




Better artillery and the first panzers. Nice.


More Army research was ordered for we knew it was only a matter of time until the enemy came knocking again.


Chile took more Argentinian territory. They might make a useful ally/hiding spot if everything goes wrong...

(continued below)

[Thanas]

(continued from above)


*Alexis Tsipras likes this*


Another? Berlin must have made quite the impression. Of course we will accept.


Death to enemy trenches.


Good. Be quiet and become Germans, frenchies. We already guarantee your cultural rights so just work with us here, ok?


Our Forces in the east have recovered from the attrition and have now been strengthened.


As we are an Empire...we now have Imperial Stormtroopers. Hooray.
Truly the bravest of the brave.



Of course our economy will be going strong. We are Germany after all.


....
I give up. They managed to get there first despite us being able to set out from Africa....ugh.


Well, at least our Army is going strong.

Let's make it even stronger with proper modern NCO training.


Wait what? How the fuck did you manage to embezzle 300 million Reichsmark?



Russia is making moves again.


Good thing we are already preparing for war with them.


Let's make Turbines a thing, people.


Something ends, something begins.


An efficient tax system is the best.



*Laughter is heard around the General staff building*

The Great colonial rebellion was over.


Always good to have an advantage.


Britain is going to Britain.


Come and see Berlin, jewel of Germany.


As our Reichskanzler made his speech, he introduced generous subsidies. Now people out of work can look for new ones without having any stress about their income.
This also finished all possible reforms.


Other nations were not as impressed by this however. Meh, let them think what they want.


Russia is right to fear us. Also, good to know the news have caught up to the IOC, which has only existed for....20 years?



We continued researching naval tech.


A new, efficient Reichskanzler for an efficient nation.


Germany became a destination of immigrants (mainly from China) due to our advanced reforms and liberal society. This resulted in many benefits for us.


Germany now had 200 million citizens with the new immigrants being counted. Glory to Germany.


Sadly, Nicaragua refused.


Russia now claimed the whole pacific as a Russian ocean.


How great.


Colombia became influenced by us, thus ensuring our coffee supplies.



With our Naval research complete we turned back to industrial research.


Our destroyer fleet, still commanded by the legendary Großadmiral von Kleefeld was now back at full strength.

And now with us able to build Dreadnoughts, we quickly signed contracts with the Germaniawerft at Kiel to start building them.

Let us take a look at the world in August 1914:

Germany dominates Europe.

Russia is pushing into Afghanistan and Persia...

...while also expanding into Indonesia.

China is big.

France won the race for Northern Africa.

Spain won Central Africa, Britain South Africa.

Chile was beating up on Argentina again...

Brazil and the USA were at war with France and others...

..still amused by that US slice of Canada...


The great powers.

...and the current wars.

With the US and France being busy, it was time to start cleaning House.

The first target: The Russian Alliance.

From German Imperial War Strategy 1900-1949, by Generalfeldmarschall Erich von Manstein:
"Since the beginning of this century the German strategy had been to destroy Russia, frustrate Britain and contain France. Now, with Germany at the height of its power, the situation was judged to be appropriate. It was decided to act pre-emptively instead of waiting for Russia to rebuild its power".


7 years after the end of the Great War of 1902-1907, Operation "Weltmacht" had begun.

[End of this update]

[Borgholio]

How's your infamy doing? Winning the Great War reduced it by 1,000 points...so are you basically working with a clean slate now?

[Thanas]

Yeah pretty much. It went to 25, then got reduced to ~14 or so due to the 7 years wait. But I mostly ignore it now.

[Dominus Atheos]

So what are you going to do now? Like I said before, I always found that the best way to destroy a Great Power is to force it to release other countries. Russia basically falls out of Great Power status if you force it to release Poland-Lithuania; Britain can release India, Ireland, and Scotland; the USA can release the CSA; and (not that it matters to you now) Austria can release Hungary.

I also like making the North German Empire/Germany release Prussia, that's always hilarious.

[Dominus Atheos]

Here's a game I played on Vanilla:





And I forgot to mention my favorite thing about releasing other nations, when you do they automatically enter your sphere and become your allies.

[Thanas]

Yeah that doesn't work with the PDM-divide by Zero mod I am running. No forcing the USA to release the confederacy after they win the civil war for example.

[Thanas]

Weltmacht Part I - Russia

From: Victories in the east, by Generalfeldmarschaff Erich von Manstein, Köln 1962:


"On August 27th, 1914, the German war machine sprung to life.

18 Korps, totalling 648.000 men, were ordered to cross the Russian border and seize strategic points. The plan was to overrun the Russian population centers before they could completely mobilize. Clausewitz once wrote that one should hit the enemy at the Schwerpunkt. But Russia was simply to huge. Instead, it would be an advance across the entire line, with corps being reinforced by their neighbouring corps if they would run into any trouble.



In the west and South, Germany continued to keep her troops at full strength. This time, there would not be a two-front war for which Germany would be unprepared. Instead, forces in the West even outnumbered the forces in the East and stockpiles of ammunition and supplies had been concentrated there.

As expected, Great Britain declared war on Germany. This brought Flanders and the Netherlands into the war. France however was still fighting against the USA and thus no huge concern.


In the east, the German advance continued unabated.


In response, on September 10th, the German Army started Fall Schwarz, the invasion plan of Flanders and the Low Countries. Belgian resistance was overcome rather quickly. On the same day, German troops, of which the author is proud to say he was a member of, reached the outskirts of Brussels.


On September 20th, most of Belgium was under siege and forces had started penetrating into the Netherlands.

At Charleroi, the entire Belgian army surrendered, causing less than a thousand casualties.

Soon, our new railroad guns started pounding away at Dutch cities. In response, the Dutch flooded huge parts of their country to slow down our advance, concentrating their forces in those areas that were not under water.

The Dutch forces at Cleves were nevertheless pushed back after a protracted struggle.

And at Arnheim, the Dutch Army retreating from Cleves was met by two forces - one of theirs and a much larger one of ours. Dutch forces took horrendous casualties as our artillery pounded at them while they tried to retreat over the main bridge, which was captured intact after a vaillant attack by our Pioniere.


By October, Russia was doomed. The Russians retreated close to Smolensk and tried making a stand there.


Yet the Dutch and Flemish people did not have the luxury of exchanging terrain for time. On November 13, the last resistance in Flanders was broken...

...and the reich gained another crown juwel, which had been torn away from the crown nearly 300 years ago.


On November 27th, reinforced by the Finns, the Russian army tried a counter-attack near Smolensk.


Their efforts to save the encircled city of Minsk however failed, as less than two days after the Russian attack had started the city surrendered.


On December 4th, the Netherlands lost their last Army. Now all they could do was pray that the British would save them and that the winter storms would slow our advance.


On December 21st, the Russian counter-offensive near Smolensk was called off. It had failed to make an impression on our advancing army, with the Russians losing 2 soldiers to each of our own.



Research was concluded and focus was shifted to Naval technology.

In response to the desperate Russian pleas for help, Britain sent several aid convoys, filled with soldiers, to Archangelsk. One of those, consisting nearly of the entire Canadian Navy, was intercepted by our Hochseeflotte.

As the icy waters claimed the few survivors of the massed torpedo attack, our fleet returned to port.


Our Naval staff argued that we should adopt a more offensive attitude, whereas our economists took step that the war economy would not cool down.


As winter eased, our attack continued.

The British took this as a sign to attempt a massive blockade of the German coast, sending their Armada to blockade us. And what an Armada it was, the greatest fleet the world had ever seen to this day. The United Kingdom of Great Britain had poured all her resources into this Navy. Over 139 dreadnoughts, pre-dreadnoughts, battlecruisers and armored cruisers. Over 135 screening vessels. And two supply ship divisions. In response, we sent our torpedo boats and destroyers, preferring to keep our larger units in harbor. And as soon as winter had passed - where huge northern sea storms had rocked the British fleet - they came under attack of small, agile crafts. This harrying strategy had a devestating effect, as from December to March 1915....

...over 106 british war ships were sent to the bottom. The British lost over a hundred-thousand sailors whereas we scarcely lost 2000 men. The British losses were compounded by the fact that the rough seas and cold made rescuing survivors near impossible as average survival time was less than 10 minutes in the icy water. Though we were unable to break the blockade, the British could not sustain those losses. They called off the close blockade in March, preferring a blockade of our mediterranean shipping and intercepting North Sea shipping at the Scapa Flow-Norway line.


As the British sailors drowned, their counterparts attempted to break our hold on the Ukrainian corn chamber.


In response, our forces were ordered to cut off their supply route by seizing Rostov.

The British never had been good at playing the army game. Now, their forces, cut off and starving, were no match for elite German troops who had strongly superior gear and supplies. An attempt to break out of the Don cauldron was quickly beaten back, with massive British casualties.


On April 17th, 1915, our Army Group Centre reached the outskirts of Moskau.


The British could do little except pressure other Governments to seize our assets. But this had little effect on the war itself.


The battle of Krivoy Rog proved the superiority of our soldiers as we inflicted nearly a 1:4 casualty ratio.


At Melitopol, 57.000 British soldiers surrendered after a brief battle.


June saw the elimination of the remaining British troops in the Ukraine...


...with only 300 remaining of the 350k troops they had sent to aid Russia.


Our victory was in part dependent on the more advanced medicine we had at our disposal.


In June, the Danish and Swedish also entered the war on Britain's side.


This however was a mistake, for we quickly crushed the Danes and Swedish forces.

In September, the Russians no longer had the power to even contest our advance.

Moskau and St. Petersburg had fallen.

In the south, the Krimea was close to surrendering whereas the Donbas was already German.


Improvements in synthetic materials showed the world that the British blockade was not effective.


The Netherlands, faced with another hunger winter, surrendered. The Reich now included the great ports of Rotterdam and Antwerp (which had been gained earlier from Flanders). Those ports were quickly turned into U-boat bases.


On the 5th of October 1915, the city of Archangelsk fell, a feat that was celebrated in our newspapers. Russia no longer had any port which could reliably handle trade and supply routes with Great Britain.


And thus, a day later, Russia signed the peace of St. Petersburg, turning the great cities of Minsk and Kiev over to Germany. Part 1 of the operation to break Russia was complete and our engineers were already hard at work to build new railways to better integrate those territories into the Reich.

The time was now to look westwards.

(end of this update)

[Eternal_Freedom]

God damn...that reads like a real-world German fantasy of WW1.

[LaCroix]

I did compare that map with a real one - Germany is now almost 8x as big.
At this point, you can pretty much ignore all infamy and just do what you want.

Any bets how this will continue?

My guess is that Germany will gobble up continental Denmark as a snack on the way to take a huge bite out of Sweden and Norway.

Spain and Netherlands? He'll probably either take their colonies or make them release them.
But Albion? Knowing him, he'll probably grab a big part of the Island, which will force them to move their Capital to Africa or India.

[Purple]

Conquer France. It is your destiny.

[Bedlam]

Clearly Germany is now an unstoppable juggernaut.

When was the last point you think you could have lost? Or do you think this outcome was more or less destined from outset?

[Purple]

Clearly Germany is now an unstoppable juggernaut.

When was the last point you think you could have lost? Or do you think this outcome was more or less destined from outset?

If my experience from other paradox games is any indication the way these things work is that basically you have a period of struggling until you overcome the difficulties imposed artificially by your starting conditions. But once that's over you basically can't lose. For him that was probably the moment where he conquered Austria completely.

[InsaneTD]

Gods damn but did you spank Russia. They'll be feeling that for a long time to come.

[Thanas]

Spain and Netherlands? He'll probably either take their colonies or make them release them.
But Albion? Knowing him, he'll probably grab a big part of the Island, which will force them to move their Capital to Africa or India.

My plans for Britain are a bit more....complex.

Clearly Germany is now an unstoppable juggernaut.

When was the last point you think you could have lost? Or do you think this outcome was more or less destined from outset?

When the Qing horde arrived to be honest. But that was before I realized how underdeveloped they were. Before that, the war against Russia and France after German Unification as that was a nail-biter to the finish.

[Thanas]

Weltmacht II - France


Just as we focused our attention on the Navy, French troops started appearing near unguarded sections of the border, specifically Flanders. Hmmm...suspicious.


Nevertheless, we better continue focusing on the Navy if we ever want to wrest control of the seas from Britain.


I wonder if there is a mistake in the script, for this doesn't seem to follow a four-year term. Or maybe I just suck at keeping time...


"Quick, bolt these on"


The world's Great Powers. All hail mighty Canada.


Greece has now fallen under Germany's influence. Free trips to Athens for everyone.


French agents meanwhile toppled our friends in Persia. We ignored this.

More and better medicine, distributed through our free healthcare.

Ooh. Niiiiiiceeee.


We laughed at their threats. They declared war. We laughed even more.

And then....

"The definition of insanity is trying the same thing over and over again expecting a different result. Exhibit A: The French declaration of war" - German General staff memo, April 4th, 1916.


A German-American summit failed to do much. The differences between what the US perceived as their rights and what we perceived as ours were just too large. Still, at least we talked....
Manwhile, in France:


From: "Joyriding on the banks of the Seine is forbidden. My experiences as a cavalry commander during the Great War of 1914-1919", by Hyacinth Graf Strachwitz von Groß-Zauche und Camminetz, Warschau 1958:"The usual preparations for war had by this time long been made. Trenches had been dug, reserves called up to take the place of frontline units and the trucks and tanks, which had been fuelled up, started. Within the first hours of the French declaration of war, our cavalry had already crossed the frontier. And a total of 504.000 men followed in their wake."

The Sichelschnitt tactic proved to be a resounding success. Within 2 days, our forces bypassed Tours and reached Macon. In the same vein, our northern forces were cutting off the enemy from Chambrai and Laon. Soon, over 110k French soldiers were trapped in a massive Kesselschlacht.



In the south, our forces from Italy overrun the weak defences of Savoy and entered Toulon, defeating another 50k French soldiers in the Process. The Blitzkrieg, as it was termed, completely caught the French by surprise.


The French received some positive news from the USA when it - and mighty Haiti - joined the war."


Support for foreign abolitionism? Sure.


From: "Joyriding on the banks of the Seine is forbidden. My experiences as a cavalry commander during the Great War of 1914-1919", by Hyacinth Graf Strachwitz von Groß-Zauche und Camminetz, Warschau 1958:
"On April 24th, less than three weeks after it had started, the French-German war was nearly over. The Kesselschlacht had been over in less than a week, with the totally shocked French soldiers surrendering en masse. Our advance had been very uneventful, with few battles. Most of the time it was more of a challenge to find somebody who would surrender a town instead of preparing to take it by storm. There was almost a measure of resignation and inevitability in the air, as if the French people had known they would have to endure another occupation."


Hmm...their work is not illegal per se, so they shall be allowed to continue...for now. Better assign some more secret police to them though...

"Every British merchant captain shall be supplied brown pants free of charge at any German port" - German Naval Staff order 216003.


From: "Joyriding on the banks of the Seine is forbidden. My experiences as a cavalry commander during the Great War of 1914-1919", by Hyacinth Graf Strachwitz von Groß-Zauche und Camminetz, Warschau 1958:
"By September, the war was essentially over. Paris had fallen to German troops again and we had gained control of Marseilles and Toulouse. Our advance was slowed more by lack of supplies and because we had been forbidden to forage in French territory. The German high command - after the success of the Sichelschnitt and Kesselschlacht preferred to take a slow, methodological approach.


On October 1st, France offered the most humiliating peace treaty of her history, ceding her heartland over to Germany.

France lost the great coal mines of Savoy, last under German rule during the HRE. It also lost Champagne and Picardie, including the great historical cities of Amiens and Reims. Reims, the place where French kings were crowned and anointed since the day of the founder of the French monarchy, Clovis, was now under German Rule. And Champagne was now "made in Germany".

Paris now was a border town, being less than 15km away from Germany. The war had caused minimal loss of life on the German side but resulted in a massive gain in prestige, culture and industry - at the cost of the French, of course. All in all, it had been a most profitable excursion."

The question was how to deal with the pesky USA, measly Qing and mighty Haiti (yes, they declared war too) next?

Well, the Navy had some ideas....


(end of this update)

[Eternal_Freedom]

Well fuck.

Incidentally, how come you managed to overrun pretty much all of France but only get to annex three regions in the peace treaty? Was there not an option for "keep everything we've taken"?

EDIT: As for dealing with the USA, well if you had managed to keep more of France then having those Atlantic bases for your Navy would have been useful, no blockade from Perfidious Albion to stop you.

[LaCroix]

Can Germany into France?

It Can-can...

[Thanas]

Incidentally, how come you managed to overrun pretty much all of France but only get to annex three regions in the peace treaty? Was there not an option for "keep everything we've taken"?

Because the game only allows you to take up to 100 warscore points, with each core region being around 20-100 points worth - and the smaller the country, the higher the points required. So those three regions had so many points that I could not take any more. Of course, I could have gamed the system and demanded the more worthless southern French regions but honestly, it would not have made sense from an RP perspective to take isolated provinces in southern France.

[Eternal_Freedom]

That strikes me as an extremely annoying game mechanic - you literally have the French at your mercy, not being able to demand the whole country be annexed is frustrating.

[LaCroix]

Some of these contraints are strange - like you can only annex if a country has less than 4 regions, even if you are dominating the whole world, and they are some tribal nation in the Sahara that barely had entered iron age.

I'd also rather had the game allow you to annex all, but instead have to deal with constant huge rebellions, binding your manpower for years to come, and slowly making that region less worth as you try to subdue the people.