Stuck in the middle, CentrAARl AARmericAAR

United States of Central America

Part 2, Securing power

A much quieter decade due to truces and badboy to wear off. I started by building a navy to provide some security, I have hardly any naval techs but they should be able to defeat small fleets. Then I decided to take the troops stationed in Asia and gain a bit of Prestige by humilating lots of people.

I successfully did this to Atjeh and Bali and then running out of small states to attack in the far east I invaded Kutch. At this point the main action of the decade kicked off. The dutch declared war (again) this time for Central American Singapore.



This was disasterous timing as I had no army in the far east at all and my navy was based in Guatemala. I loaded up the troops and embarked across the Pacific Ocean with my flotilla, half way there I became a great power, which was nice.



I would soon lose this though to Belgium, I think I only got it because of wars in Europe knocking about each others prestige. After what seemed like ages my warships arrived unchallenged in Malaysia, I had defeated Kutch by now too and they arrived at exactly the same time. The game was up for the invading dutch troops.



The surviving 2000 enemy hid in Malacca while I invaded Java and blockaded many ports forcing them to beg for peace. With a larger army in the area I decided to humilate Siam and Hawaii as well which after a short time (and another big war in Europe) gave us great power status once more.

I'm lacking casus belli to do much right now so I'm just building up in case something happens. It also seems very hard to get 2% clergy due to massive immigration. Nonetheless I'm richer and better equiped now for whatever the dutch my throw at me, next time I will try to nick some of their land for sure.

United States of Central America

Part 3, Expansion

A bit more building up the army and navy to start with along with a lovely new railway network across Central America topped off by the construction of the Panama Canal, I can now defend my Caribbean shores and launch attacks with ease.



Meanwhile shortly after in Europe the North German Federation was formed.



Around this time I started to annoy some uncivilised nations and I was equiped to deal with it, first cutting down to size Oman (this was repeated 5 years later after they insulted me again) followed by Korea and Morocco much later. The only one of note being the Korean war, they were allied with the manpower rich Japan who came to their aid invading Borneo twice and mainland Malaysia once. All being repelled by small forces in the area running after them.



Many Japanese ships were also sunk in this period and my Asia based navy ferried troops to defeat invasions. Half way through the occupation of Korea the UK declared war on China (also part of the far eastern unciv alliance), bringing an end to Japanese invasions of Borneo due to royal navy ships in the regions. Nonetheless the Japanese launched a final invasion in occupied North Korea which proved a decisive victory for Central America and as the Japanese survivors escaped into China peace was declared on my terms.



All of this was really just a prelude to the main action of the decade as I waited for my bad boy to drop below 17. Which it did during the war with Korea and so as soon as my troops arrived back in Malaysia they marched across the border to the north and encounted pathetically little resistance. Bask in the magnificience of Central American Siam!



I am now a real power in the far east and at home, my navies have grown in size if not tech but I'm working on that now army tech is maxxed out for now.



Next up, revenge on the Dutch, Vietnam looking worried, something closer to home?

Good thing you became a GP before US SoI you and steal the canal from you. How come I didn't think of invading an Asian country?

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I think I was a bit lucky with becoming GP but I didn't want to hang around too long doing the research for the canal myself, its almost impossible to operate on both sides of the country without it. Since I chose to go after Asian countries all my navy is Pacific Ocean based so I had nothing to defend the Atlantic side.

I went after Asian states because theres more of them and its further from the big scary European navies. Lots of cheap uncivs to take and if I do go for the dutch it will take them ages to react to an invasion.

United States of Central America

Part 4, Revenge

Time to tech up, with the army done for now I rushed through naval upgrades and built 4 new fleets of 10 steam transports each and then started building two new navies of ironclads and monitors, this actually took most the decade and was going on during the first war, a real big one.

As soon as my badboy was below 17 we struck and went for a real big fish declaring war on Japan, still uncivilised but with a big army and big allies in China and Korea. This would also teach them a lesson for their repeated invasions of Borneo, they tried again during this war and failed of course. The first action of the war was actually the sinking of 2 Korean transports but shortly we landed on the island of Kyushu resulting in two massive battles.



Seeing more stacks on the horizon we called for 60K more troops to be sent from central america to give me 120K in Japan. I was forced to keep 30K troops in Siam due to Chinese troops moving through Vietnam, around 50K Chinese were defeated easily here during the course of the war.



With the extra troops in Japan we were able to spread out and conquer, it took a while but soon Japan was taken and peace was declared.

By now it was past 1870 and time to colonise, I would colonise some more but I only have 1 national focus point and need more clergy still! I started by taking central borneo.



Immediately after we declared war to annoy the dutch, our aim was to cripple them in any way possible, hopefully without spending much bad boy. So I chose to liberate Java, it has a very high population and should be quite a big loss for the already weakened dutch.



Gladly I only had to fight the dutch (and Luxembourg), they were in fact allied with Mexico, USA and Spain, making this declaration of war a bit risky on my part should they all have came at me.

The first invasion was made in Batavia and then the main army defeated in Yogyakarta ending dutch resistance. Remarkably I only ever saw 1 dutch ship during the entire war.



After capturing parts of southern Sumatra and Borneo the dutch accepted peace and Java became an independent nation.



By 1874 I have a large army and navy, it could soon be time to ignore badboy and tempt a containment war, although I am worried about having land borders with British India, the troops could really swarm over into Siam.

United States of Central America

Part 5, A proper war

Up until now I had just been beating up uncivs and Dutch colonies for the most part so it was time I started off with a proper war. If you're going to go for a big war you might as well pick on the British so preparations were in order. Using mostly Japanese troops (as a citizen of Central America at the moment you are most likely Japanese) I constructed the Siam wall. More a wall of meat at the moment, the forts are building.



The plan was that should conflict with Britain break out these armies could as least hold them until help arrived. The plan as outlined involved 2 further Japanese armies invading Manila and liberating the Philippines. During this the Siam wall and naval blockade of the straits of Malacca should keep us safe. The end result being the South China sea is my own private pond and safe pond. The real danger here is that Spain was allied with Britain and USA who in turn had Mexico in their SOI, it would also put me over the badboy limit.



Luckily for me no one bothered to honour their alliances and hung Spain out to dry but I still had to stay alert for containment wars. When my troops arrived off the coast of Manila there was more good news, the Spanish empire was in turmoil chasing rebels everywhere.



After securing Manila there was still the matter of the rather large Spanish force to the south which was dealt with in two swift blows ending any real resistance to the liberation.



This wasn't enough for them to accept my demands though so I occupied Spanish Micronesia, Cuba and Puerto Rico while preparing an invasion of Spain itself. This starting by harassing the Spanish fleet who after being beaten in battle were caught up again by my more advanced Ironclad fleet and sent to the bottom of the ocean. Shortly after they gave in, unfortunately my old fleet of Man'o'wars that was also sent to Spain despite being victorious in battle failed to make it back across the Atlantic and was all lost at sea.



Still no one had tried to contain me, so I just started some wars for the fun of it destroying Laos and Vietnam, the latter having its entire army massacred at Hue, annoying since Cambodia is a satellite I can't annex it at the same time. At least I couldn't find the war goal for it so they exist still.



I twiddled my thumbs for a while with bad boy at 50 surely someone would come. Didn't happen so after making the Siam wall even meatier I decided to start the war myself. I declared war on China, (in Britain's SOI at the time) in order steal Guandong province just next to Vietnam. This annoyed the British a lot and I got my war.



I added British Singapore to my list of wargoals, I hate seeing those blobs on my land! This was a mostly defensive war still and so much of the heavy fighting was in northern Vietnam. There were also many invasions of Borneo to repel.



The battle of Toungoo (just across the border in British owned Burma) grew into a particularly large encounter with over 200K British troops, while a further 150K attacked a province just south. Both of these were defensive battles with forts involved and my small but better equipped forces could hold them. I also suspect many of their troops were from the various Indian satellite states who sporadically turned up but were easily annihilated. The battle of Long San on the Chinese border was also especially bloody with at least 5 stacks of 30K Chinese troops marching into it and getting slaughtered while the much fewer British troops held the line. I don't have any pictures of these battle results though as although I won many smaller battles 30K vs 30K type affairs I decided I would only take pictures of the really big ones. The war ended before they did though so I never got to see the figures. After some time though I got what I wanted.



The British still outnumber me in the region but I have better techs. As soon as the truce wears off there may well be some more action. Since the war I've added another 90K troops to the region bringing the number 330K in south East Asian mainland + 30K in Borneo and 99K in Japan. Its going to messy next time.

Nice colonial expansion you got there, are you plannning to go to Africa? Good luck on the containment wars

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I don't particularly want to open up a new region to defend. With Africa being so far away I would have to make a new navy and army for it, also I still don't have many national focus points to colonise, only just got my 2nd. Even more so now with the war against Britain there’s plenty to focus on. As for containment I don't think any one will try now.

United States of Central America

Part 6, War for China

Since the last war with Britain it has become clear what path I should take, to wrestle control of China from the British. It was still a few years before the truce would wear off though so I was working on a backup plan to befriend Brazil and annoy the rest of South America. I intervened in this minor skirmish, hopefully some casus belli will come out of it.



Meanwhile at the same time my truce with Cambodia wore off so they were annexed leaving a beautiful Central American south east Asia. There was a bit too much red on the map for me though so a plan was devised called operation slice. We would hold the Burmese/Thai border as before and aim to annex that little annoying strip of Burmese land. Then the main force should take Yunnan province slicing the British holdings in the east, I would also hand back the only coastal provinces of this slice so it can be eaten up later or if I can get the warscore high enough.



The first battle to be completed in this war actually took place on the other side of the world as the British attacked from Belize, I was prepared for this of course and then were beaten and Belize occupied.



They also tried their luck invading the Kuril Islands north of Japan, with so many armies to keep track off I often don’t notice things like this going on but once spotted they got attacked, they also tried to invade Chiba just next to Tokyo but failed again. To finish off the minor actions of the war, Portugal joined Britain in the war but had no troops in the region and gave up after several transport ships were suck in the Straits of Johore, which was blockaded by 20 Central America cruisers for the duration of the war as were other key entrances to my private pond.



In the main theatre there was as expected fierce fighting on the Burmese Thai border and I attacked hard the coastal province of Waizao, this left the middle exposed and this weak point was quickly overrun.



I was outnumbered on the Burmese front and some of the battles looked bad from the overview but really it seemed I was still winning like this one here.



I continued to expose the breakthrough from Puer region grabbing several undefended provinces and reinforcing battles that needed it.



I was deploying a rotation strategy around several of the larger battles both in the east and the west allowing my soldiers to freshen up and run back to war like here in Chiang Mai and Nan.



Waizao was one of the few battles I seemed to be losing for a while and rotation was only possible using transport ships due to the battle in Canton. So I decided to encircle the province making things a little simpler and soon this was a winning battle too.



With all the battles going in my favour after a couple of rotations, the breakthrough made and province being captured all other the place China decided to offer a military alliance. Why not I thought as these were going to be given to Chinese control anyway and so we had an ally in our war.



After a long time some of the big battles started to end, the figures seem a bit distorted due to the rotation of soldiers involved on my side but the British figures should accurate. These key battles totally broke the British resistance and it was then simple to capture the remaining provinces.



I continued the war hoping to be able to free more Chinese land but it seems the warscore goes up very slowly, surely if I occupy all the provinces I should be able to take them without having to take all of British India to get the score high enough. Anyway I decided I wouldn’t be able to get the kind of score needed in this war alone so I settled for the key targets in the plan and peace was declared.



The next aim to get China into my sphere and then jointly kick the British out of China (and Burma) for good. I added it up to be around 12 million people that were taken from British control in this war, should hurt their army size soon. I don’t especially want to bother myself with ruling over more land in the region so expect more wars to free peoples.

I love my private pond, think i might have to go to war with the dutch though, see theres a couple of dutch islands in it!

As for rebellions, I did't mention them much but during the latest update I had almost constant total rebellions in central america. As soon as the first one was crushed the next one came, you can see on some of the screens theres combats in those provinces, they're rebellions. I think theres only been 1 brigade revolt in Japan itself, which is lucky, when I played as Japan as there were rebellions all the time.

United States of Central America

Part 7, Burma

Before I get started on the inevitable wars with Britain, you wished to see the Central American economy Tmac. I haven't been able to build factories all game so what I have been doing is taxing the rich strata less than the others to give them a chance. Every now and then I look at the factory screen and any loss making enterprise I remove subsidies (unless I think its important) so it closes and anything profitable I expand the factory.



Moulmein is actually in Burma captured from the British, none of my people have ever built a factory outside Central America itself. And the production screen, I don't really look at this much myself as I don't really understand the whole trade things much so its just left auto.



I hope that answers your questions about the economy, so to war! I couldn't be bothered to wait five years for this one so I took the hit, who cares about prestige I'll still beat them up.



As you might expect the main fighting was in Burma with all the troops from India although this wasn't the main strategic purpose of the war. Here though you see my sparkling new cruisers, much better than any ships they have, protecting some transports to switch fresh for battered troops in Sitwe province for use further inland.



This fighting in Burma sucked in most the British army despite their attempts to invade Borneo and Japan. I also captured a couple of provinces in the east of Guangxi province which was the main purpose of the war really. Also occupying southern Borneo let me steal Dutch Singapore, those pesky islands in my private pond.



So the results of the war, a free Burma and some little islands but the key thing is the eastern front against British China has been removed. This means I can now send everyone towards India and really overwhelm them. I really struggle to ever get a warscore much above 25-30 despite owning all that I want to take from them which is why the gains each time are pretty small.

I was a bit bored waiting for the next truce to run out and dealing with enormous rebellions every ten seconds in Central America so I invaded a couple of countries for fun. Goodbye Bali and Korea, Bali still exists though because I released it as a puppet just after, can't be bothered to administer it myself really.



I didn't wait for the truce to wear out again with Britain, which is naughty but its all for a good cause, this time to free the rest of Burma. With no eastern front to worry about I could really flood troops west, seems they can flood more though.



The good thing about this is that’s 631K troops I don't have to worry about elsewhere. Another 350K were accounted for in Chittagong and Putao where we won convincing victories.



Towards the end of the war the situation looked like this with most of Bangladesh captured as well, you can see they are down to 472K in Haka now, 159K dead, by the end of the war it was around 400K British fighting there, the battle never ended despite me prolonging the war needlessly to see if I could get it to end.



The Dutch surrendered first though after an invasion of Sumatra gave me enough warscore against them to annex the south of Borneo.



Then I gave up waiting for the battle of Haka to finish and Burma was fully free and independent of British control.



For next time, I have noticed that the British have military access to Tibet, this cannot be allowed to continue as it joins British China to British India.

Other issues, finally my people in Asia have started to assimilate to Central Americans. This is great in that I very quickly zoomed to 6 national focus points but bad in that the rebellions are starting to pop up in Japan and Thailand and not just in Central America.



I have quite some problem with rebels...