Chapter 3: "a day which will live in fame forever"
Chapter 3: "a day which will live in fame forever"
We left Persia in
August 1857, with Persia deciding whether to jump into a Russian war against the Ottomans. I wind up going with my initial thoughts, and stay out of the fight - the 'bang for the buck' just wasn't there.
To my surprise, this turns out to be a wise move, as it turns out the Ottomans were allied with Austria, which joins the war against Russia. This proves too much for the Russians, and in
January 1859 the war ends with the Ottomans taking Georgia from Russia!
Wow! Good thing I stayed out.
The only other thing of note during this time is that in late 1857 Kalat (Pakistan - my next target) enters the British SOI! Drat! I am very lucky as they somehow drift out of the SOI, but I take this as a warning sign that I need to move there as quickly as possible. Sadly, my infamy won't yet allow it. My winged lion roars futilely against its cage of infamy.....
I'M YOUR PUPPET
I get consoled slightly in
1860, as I enter the Russian Sphere of Interest! I'm sure there must be a downside to this, but I don't see what it is - the upsides are that (a) Russia can't DOW me, and (b) it will protect me, and (c) my net income seems to immediately go up about 25%. The winged lion purrs....
ENTERING THE HOME STRETCH
In
January 1860 I get the "Private Banks" technology. this leaves me only 1 technology to go for Westernization - I start paying more attention to what I need to do to get this done ASAP. To Westernize, you need to meet 3 criteria:
1) a bunch of technologies. All but one ("publishing industry") done, the game estimates I'll get that last one in early 1864.
2) A prestige of 40. I have 35 presently. I oculd get 5 easily by 'Humiliate-ing' someone, but I would much rather 'conquer' Kalat - it's a big hole in my eastern flank, should be an easy conquest, and I want to beat the UK to it. However, I won't have the infamy to DOW them until January 1864. I decide it's worth waiting a few months for this.
3) A military score of 50. I have 23 presently. This is a big problem - I am already at my military max. I decide this is the time to throw financial caution to the winds - I start a crash naval program of men-of-war (nearly useless, but they do move the war score up), coupled with moving the military slider to 100% and building troops as rapidly as I can.
In
December 1863, a little earlier than predicted, I get the last needed technology -
however, as noted in the screen grab,
1) my prestige is still at 35 - my infamy is still just barely too high to annex Kalat.
2) My military score, rapidly mounting due to massive army construction is at 48 -
so close!
3) 25 years of promoting clergy seems to be ever-so-slowly paying off, as my POPs are up 11.1% literacy (from a starting 5.5%), and RPs are up to 2.75 (from a starting 1.16).
I then get a piece of very bad news on the last day of the year, though, as one of my generals dies:
A general is worth a whopping
4 points on military score (and it's not like I'd been spamming them, this moves me from 3 leaders to 2!), this hurts a LOT.
However, I forge ahead, on
January 1st, 1864 my infamy is down to 4.94, just barely low enough that I can DOW Kalat. I do so, and in a laughable campaign (they have no allies, and their military consists of a
total of 3K infantry! I annex Kalat in
June 1864
I now have the prestige, but am still 5 points away on the military score, despite my frantic massive building spree - I have the 11th largest army in the world, a navy of 14 ships (12 men of war), and it's still not enough!
by
December 7th, 1864, a day which will live in fame forever,
I finally, finally, have enough military score, and I step across the altar:
Let's walk through the effects, shall we?
1) I move from 68th in the world to 15th, overnight!
2) My RP have moved from 2.75 to 6.20!
3) I good chunk of the above is because as a "secondary power" (if I remember correctly, this means I am rank 9-16), I get a 2 RP bump.
4) My small steadily accrued bank balance of 30K was vaporized in my military spending spree - I am now about 10K in debt. However, all of the debt consists of a loan from the Bank of Persia, I'm basically borrowing it from the savings my own POPs have been accruing over the decades. Generally I find in this game, unlike EU3, you want to run close to a zero surplus - instead of letting your
government stash run up, you let your POPs have it, which makes them happy, and they can lend it back to you when/if you need it - like now.
5) Westernization has wisely left untouched the winged lion icon! Soar and roar!
NEXT STEPS
Now that I'm Westernized, I can build factories. Or at least Persians can.
However, the AI is notoriously bad at building factories (by December 9th, they have chosen to start a "luxury clothes" factory (boo!) in a relatively lightly populated province - booh!). I feel that at this early and fragile stage, I can't afford that luxury. However, sadly, my Conservative ruling party, which has something like 60% support, believes in 'Interventionism'. I decide that the times demand stronger measures, even if the people don't. As an absolute monarch, I can change ruling parties when I wish (it's good to be king), and I appoint the 'reactionary' party, as they are the only party which has 'State Capitalism').
By the way, the fact that I'm appointing a party with only about 10% popular support seems to matter not....
I order the construction of two factories - a 'cement' factory in the central heavily populated province of 'Tabriz' (which also produces coal - I don't think producing coal in a province whose factory consumes coal helps, but it certainly won't hurt), and a 'fabric' factory (which consumes cotton) in my cotton-producing capital of Teheran.
I then sit back and wait a bit, and get two surprises:
First, in
October 1865, Russia DOWs the Ottomans - go go go! Once again, I am going to sit on the sidelines, as I have no CB, and my infamy is still something like 23.
To my surprise, Russia has somehow managed to ally itself with China, who ask me for military access, which I grant - for some reason, I find this humorous - the idea of chinese soldiers marching across the middle east to attack Turkey.
Second, in
March 1866, I finish Experimental Railorad - yes! so what if it's 30 years after the leading-edge, it's still great to have.
For my next technology, I decide to take a gamble, and invest in a tier-2 (my first of the game) technology, and a cultural one to boot - Ideological Thought. The net effect of Idelogical thought is to significantly increase your pluraility, and hence your research - if you're going to do it, the earlier the better - I decide to take the plunge.
The last thing to report is that that same month I get a mixed surprise - I turn to my nations 'projects', and see.....
The good news is, the country has embarked on a railroad-building spree.
The slightly-less good news is, I had forgotten that with 'State Capitalism', even though
I can order the construction of new factories, this doesn't prevent capitalists from building them as well. As I had
no capitalists a mere 18 months ago, I thought it would take a long time for them to get started, but as you can see, they're on quite the building frenzy - I may switch ruling partes back to the (more popular) Conservatives in a bit....
THE ROAD TO WESTERNIZATION - LESSONS LEARNED
To recap, I westernized in December 1864 - could this have been done earlier? Let's look at each of the 3 "legs" of Westernization....
1)
Technology. that was ready in December 1863, and I think that was about as fast as anyone could do it - with one exception (the must-have "Freedom of Trade"), every technology I researched was on this path, I used my national focus on clergy throughout, and I took every research-aiding western influence I could get.
2)
Prestige. That was ready in June 1864, and could have been done years earlier, either by being more careful with alliances (I lost 10 prestige by not honozing one), or by doing more 'Humiliating' and less 'Conquering'.
3)
Military. This was the gating factor, not ready until December 1864, and that was only acheived by spending a
lot of money on troops and ships. In hindsight, this would have been a lot easier with a less feeble officer corps - I only had 2-3 throughout, just didn't have the leadership points for more, and each officer is worth 4 points. What I would recommend to others is that 5 years or so before your Westernization target, you raise Military spending to 100%, but
not to recruit more troops, but rather to recruit more leaders. Just having, say, 6 leaders instead of 2 would have made my military score high enough years earlier.
Let my pain be your gain
I think this is a good place to end for now - the next post will be more of a 'where are we now' post, as we are approaching with 1/3 mark.