Brazilian Errors

urm, morpehus, i have the save files elsewhere, but I am not adept at posting screenies (have not bothered to get myself some webspace)

the whole US in Nejd thin came about because I sold them the tip of Adu Dhabi, since I was not doing well at making money. Unfortunately, if the US ever gets land on another continent, it is very aggressive, has lots of industrial resource to back it up, and is pretty safe back on it's own continent.

1912

Rebel scum abound thank s to war exhaustion and possible tax problems. I returned to mending relations with my neighbours. Also, more colonisation that had started before the last war completed, with trade posts in Tanaland , Nairobi & Jubaland.

Clearly we have become some sort of international punch bag, because in September 1903, Russia declared war. They brought Krakow and Greece along for the fun, which mattered little. A bit more annoying was Venezuela and Columbia failing to honour our alliance. I ended up with a border with Russia thanks to Yebuti. They managed to colonise it, and being Russia, then proceeded to eat Ethiopia in small bites. After a while I had a largish border between my northeast African possessions and Russian colonies.

By December, four additional infantry divisions were available, but Russian incursions into my western African territories were pretty formidable. I countered by stomping into Greece. Russia rejected my peace offers, and sank my fleet that attempted a Black Sea invasion. It also meant that the troops I had landed in Greece were now cut off, since the Russian navy was vast compared to mine.

Russia annexed Lubeck in mid 1904. In late 1904 Cyprus and Crete both bowed out with separate peace deals. Any forces I did manage to march over to lower Egypt were pretty promptly stomped by the Russians. I did manage to liberate a few of my own provinces in early 1905. I fielded four new dragoon divisions by the end of 1905 and four infantry divisions late 1906, although this was really a war of attrition now. Various peace treaties expired in early 1907, which made me very worried I would be in a two front war.

Naval skirmishes in the gulf all went pretty badly too. I now started loosing territory in the holy land to Russia too, and then the North African coast in 1909. The only part of Africa where I held on was the northern coast. I was helped by expoditionary forces from Spain, who joined the war in 1910. Sardinia unfortunately joined on the other side in 1911, although since all my problems were with Russia, this had little practical effect.

I started to get resigned to the fact that I really couldn’t do anything about the Russians in east Africa, since any new divisions I raised in Brazil couldn’t get through, thanks to their superior navy. War exhaustion on both sides was creeping up past 50%, and I was about 28% down in terms of war score.
The main problem was that I never really had a decent army, and wasn’t sufficiently disciplined about putting together a decent sized relief force. I thought Russia might tire of the war, or accept a low-ish peace deal, although for a few years this did not happen.

A note on the economy at this point, in that I had real problems with coal. Factories such as steel, glass, steamers, and consequently also winery and liquor all ground to a halt because I couldn’t import any coal. I was still #4 in prestige, but it didn’t really help. Funding troops overseas and trying to increase the army with new divisions was all putting me pretty heavily into debt.

yeah, ouch indeed..
it was a bit like being in a cake shop, taking all the cake home, and then finding out you actually had to take it all back again.

As you can see, there is a little more 'ouch' to come



1920

An end, of sorts.

I actually gave up at the 1912 point, since I wanted to win the war, and just couldn’t see how. Months later, in the interest of completeness, I went back to it.

It turned out that whilst I’d been waiting for a better peace I had built up about 200 manpower, so I set to an ordered 10 extra infantry divisions, and took a gamble on shipping them over from Brazil. This kind of worked, and I put together 3 armies of 4 divisions that systematically kicked the Ottomans out of North Africa.

I also fixed my income & expenditure at this time, putting a few more onto military, cutting out education, and raising poor tax to 75% - I had been too timid with those sliders before. Considering my lack of coal, I expanded lumber mills and furniture factories, to try to make just a little cash that way (by supplying my luxury furniture factory).

The campaign against the Ottomans worked, and I freed everything west of Egypt. That meant, however that I was up to a +5% peace with them, but stuck on –28% against Russia. Nobody wanted to take my offers of peace. In the end I bit the bullet, and offered Russia all the holy land and all of North East Africa. Naturally they took it. The prestige hit was not too huge (-20) and those lands weren’t doing too much for my economy. I really should have just lost them about three years earlier, since I was never in a position to really challenge the Russians.

The economy, ah yes. Debt about £98,000.00. Even with military funding on minimum, and lots of tax (75%, 49%, 40%) I was clearing about £100 per day profit. I had a garage sale of claims to my two buddies, Spain and the USA, tending to take £5000 to £9000 a go. I think they were short on cash, or something, since I think they could have sold for more, but I needed the money & didn’t have 10 years to get somebody else rich to be my friend. Amazingly I got the debt clear by about 1916.

Still couldn’t import any coal. Lumber businesses doing so well, I had to start importing timber. Level of railways around the country generally pretty pitiful.

I also remembered to demobilize around 1914 or so, a lot later than I should have. Oddly, that really helped by military rating. To go along with that, I started building a few more infantry divisions to make up for the relatively feeble size of my army in comparison to, say, my prestige.