Onze Plaats in de Zon: The Rise of Frederik de Grote (van Holland)

Tommy4ever said:

I do hope the Netherlands shall experience some sort of socialist movement by the end of the century. Ths SDP can barely even be consdered a social-democratic group.

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Well in our timeline the first Dutch socialist party (the SDB, a communist party in Vicky II) was formed in 1881 or thereabouts, so it's still early days yet. I would consider them Social Democratic, they have a strong social reforms policy that they have'nt been able to push through with due to their minority in the upper house (getting that Wage Slavery event was a very lucky break).

Your industrial score seems rather low. Have you not been using your NFs for craftsmen? That seems to be the only sure fire way to get good industrial growth prior to the urban population explosion when your RGOs fill up.

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I paid little attention to Industry while the Conservatives were in power, which is why Dutch industry was in such a deplorable state and why I was so desperate to get the SDP in power in the first place. Those Industry screenshots were taken the day I appointed the SDP as the ruling party, hence the small growth. Only Vlaanderen and Java had NFs for craftsmen before 1872, the rest used for either colonisation or for bureaucrats in Java

Timmie: I certainly have thought about merging the Royalists into either the SDP or CZP, however I don't think I'd do so. Despite having such a poor run at elections as of late, they still have a majority in the Upper House* and remember that this is a party which utterly dominated Dutch Politics in one form or another since King Willem's day, I'm sure most in the party consider the last 11 years to be just a minor setback.

* The Dutch Upper House is appointed by the monarch, which is why the ideologies are disproportional to the number of votes cast. There is no lower house in Vicky II, seats and popular vote are all simulated by me based on POP Ideology to make things more even (SDP got around 80% of the votes this election, while the Liberales got barely any despite having the support of around 12% of the electorate and 35% of the population)

Gigau: 10BB is a large price to pay for just one island, wouldn't you agree? I think an American Conquest of the Dutch Hawaiian Islands will be far more likely.

Enewald: I believe I've mentioned this before but just in case I haven't, all of Indochina is either British (Burma), Dutch (Malaya) or in the British (Luang Prabang) or Dutch SoI (Dai Nam, Cambodia, Siam). Back when I started this game I was more concerned with sphering than conquest which is why the Dutch SoI is so unnecessarily large.

If Siam or Dai Nam ever breaks out of the Dutch Sphere, I will definitely consider annexation if I have a BB score low enough to afford it.

gigau said:

10 BB is indeed a bit expensive for that tiny piece of land

It's just that it seemed to have some "strategic" importance to your trade.

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That's just a little story flavour, game-wise it's no more important than any other island in Oceania. I happened to remember that in our timeline Kamehameha V tried to resist the American alcohol trade and said trade played a factor in the American annexation, and since I've already established the Dutch alcohol trade with Colombia I figured the Dutch would have had a stake in Hawaii in this timeline.

That being said, I wouldn't rule out the possibility of war with the US in future it just won't be started by the Dutch...

GhostWriter: Thank you, I'm glad you liked that last chapter so much.

It may be some time before I get a chance to write up the next chapter everyone, I'm very busy at the moment and wartime updates aren't as easy to write as peacetime ones. With any luck, I might be able to have it done sometime later this week but that's an optimistic estimate at best.

Thanks for all the interest everyone, I really appreciate it. I apologise for taking so long to update, you can blame the incredibly addictive property that is Football Manager for that, which has been eating up most of my free time for the past week or so. I'm about 15-20% done with the next chapter but I'll try my best to get it finished by the end of the week.

I'd also like to thank everyone who voted for Onze Plaats in de Zon at the last quarter's ACAs. Obviously I couldn't have won without you!

Henry v. Keiper: Welcome! Ironically the two things that are stopping the CZP from winning an election (tough and restrictive voting laws and a FPTP voting system) cannot be changed due to the CZP Lords in the upper house blocking these reforms from passing! Hopefully they'll come to their senses before it's too late, the next election update should prove to be one of the most interesting yet...

Rensslaer: Thank you very much! I hope that the quality of updates can somehow make up for the quantity of updates.

Eber & Seek: Thank you both for your patience, this AAR is by no means finished. I just hope the next chapter is worth the wait.

Razgriz: Welcome, I'm glad you're enjoying this AAR.

Middelkerke: Don't worry, I'm happy that people care enough about my AAR that they're impatient for an update! Like I said though, I just hope that each chapter's quality can make up for the low quantity. It can be hard to write a historybook chapter for a war because you're too busy concentrating on playing the game rather than wondering what events would make good story points.

Anyways, thanks for commenting everyone. I think it's time I try to finish the next update...