Sick Man of Europe - an Ottoman Empire AAR

[PrawnStar]

try tinypic - I'm using it for my AARs and I'm getting a pretty high view count without any problems.

[naggy]

try tinypic - I'm using it for my AARs and I'm getting a pretty high view count without any problems.

Irony: Photobucket owns tinypic.

[t0m]

well photobucket seems to be owning you

[PrawnStar]

Irony: Photobucket owns tinypic.

True, but they haven't f**ked it up yet - although they have tried and failed.

I remember when Photobucket used to let you have 25gB of downloads free

t0m - Nice

[Alexspeed]

To quote the internet: "This Thread is worthless without Pics"

Well it may not be completly worthless, but it was deffiantly better with pictures
I can reccomend Imageshack, i use it myself, it has no limit that i know of and till now it hasent failed me.

Thank you for the chapter 5, hope you get your pictures working soon again

[Enewald]

Why not just create a new account for photobucket?

[Demon1]

Imageshack is a safe bet. It has no bandwith limit as far as i know.

[Cook66]

Imageshack is a safe bet. It has no bandwith limit as far as i know.

Not true. It's a good alternative but there definatly is a bandwidth limit.

[Melrick]

Imageshack has a bandwidth limit if the image is hotlinked, and then apparently only during their peak times of 6am to 3pm PST. The limit is 2000 mb an hour for each image.

[draik]

For image hosting, try www.imgur.com - it's used for reddit, so it's used to heavy traffic.

[badger_ken]

Imageshack is a safe bet. It has no bandwith limit as far as i know.

thumbs up to imageshack.

[Palm]

thumbs up to imageshack.

Only bad thing is that it's so slow and it often shows miniatures.

[naggy]

Only bad thing is that it's so slow and it often shows miniatures.

Easy to avoid miniatures. Slowness is an issue - it's why I didn't reuse imageshack for this AAR. I just didn't realize Photobucket's bandwidth max was so low now.

I'll try tinypic (Prawnstar can't be wrong!), and should have an update up tonight, barring something strange. Preview: The war with Russia is over!

[garudamon11]

Why would anyone use photobucket ? imageshack is way better and doesnt delete your images

[Arcvalons]

What about Imgur ?

[naggy]

Imgur: Images are deleted if not accessed for 3 months. Thus, if no one looked at the AAR for 3 months, all pics would be gone.
tinypic: Images are deleted if not accessed for 12 months, unless you have an account. However, you can't create new accounts (it refers you to photobucket). Same problem as above, and given that Photobucket keeps nerfing their service, I don't want to trust it.
Photobucket: 10GB bandwidth limit sucks for AARs.

So, back to Imageshack.

[naggy]

January 28, 1843: 2 more Russian brigades are run down in Tulcea and surrender at the cost of 858 Turks. Russia is now down to 92 regiments - none in the west, about 20 visible in the East, and the rest coming down from the Prussian border.

January 30: A glaring AI error: the AI ignores the strength of armies in adjacent provinces if they aren't moving towards the target province. A shade under 10K men with low org will attack 6K men in Ardahan, who are on a hill and dug in, with about 31K more nearby. (This is compensated by the fact that in 1.2, the AI can see you moving troops into a province, despite Fog of War saying they should not.)



February 1: The Rationalism invention fires (+5% plurality), giving me an instant 0.16 RP/day boost.

February 7: I move some men around, and instead, the Russians decide to hit Kars directly. Doesn't matter - I've swapped in a +3 defense general, and I'll pile in more troops as soon as the battle starts. One other oddity about Victorian combat: retreating before you run out of org is nigh on impossible.



February 14: Of course, the Russians decide to send more men into the meat grinder. The Turks, on the other hand, roll crap.

March 13: Russia decides to get their army ground into hamburger on two fronts simultaneously.



March 28: +3 defense general + defending a forest, and I only get about 1.4:1 kill ratio. The dice hate me, at the moment. One tidbit: you lose your dig in bonus if you send a second army into the combat. I switch to my +4 attack general and follow the army to Galati to wipe it out - 15K more Russians are moving to try and keep their army from dying.



April 5: The battle in Kars finally ends with a resounding Turkish victory. I follow it up in hopes for a wipeout, but instead get inconclusive battles.



April 14: The army I beat in Braila is wiped out in Galati. I now have 25 war score on Russia, and they're still not even thinking white peace.

May 11: My Eastern Army swings back to Tulcea to smack down 11000 Russians that thought they could sneak by me. The army is chased to Izmail (3037 killed), and finally wiped out in Chisinau on June 3. Since my army is concentrated, I actually take less attrition by attacking (since you take no attrition when moving into a province to start a battle, or during battle) than I would by spending time to disperse or not follow up.



May 18: The Russians again decide to attack me in hills, with a crap attack general, against my good defensive general. They end up losing 6548 to my 1940.



June 19: Another Russian army dies, this time in one shot. 2 days later, a Russian attack into Kars fails with moderate losses.



July 7: Russia tries to sneak in the back door, so I move my best attack general to the East and charge against a general I know has crap defense. 5200 dead Russians later (to 2100 Turks), the Russians realize the back door is closed.



August 22: With the Russians down to 64 brigades to my 57 (very depleted) brigades, Russia finally admits defeat and cedes Armenia. They also have 11% War Exhaustion (to my 1%).



With peace finally declared, I can go pay off my 32K in war debts. It's hard for a major power to cripple themselves with loans in Victoria, since you run out of available money before then. At that point, you simply fail to buy everything you need for your stockpile (hence why my armies were had yellow boxes for moderate org most of the time).



September 18: After demobilization, I check Russia's army: 32 remaining brigades.

October 2: Social Justice invention fires (+5% plurality).

October 17: All loans are paid off. Took barely less than 2 months!

October 22: My wartime influence expenditure pays off: I add Two Sicilies to my SoI. Persia and Moldavia are the two nations that Russia wanted to pick off, but since they were allied and in the war, Russia can't influence them for 5 years.

Oh look: I'm finally over 1/3rd Turkish!



Thoughts on major war in V2:
1.) The war was very realistically fought. Well, for Russia. Not so realistically for the rest of the world, where throwing away most of your army in meatgrinders is frowned upon.

2.) The loan limit really limits how bad fighting a war is for a player led nation. Stubborn AI nations, on the other hand, would bankrupt themselves without the limit.

3.) Russia lost 51 brigades of mobilized troops (83 mobilized, 32 demobilized) and at least 36 built brigades (63 starting brigades, 5 under construction at war start (checked save), .32 remaining), for 261,000 troops dead before considering reinforcement. Yet, as of Jan 1, 1844, they have 1.90 average militancy, after losing Armenia and their war goal (They also had a slight net increase in population, but that's not surprising). That kind of butt-whooping should cause more militancy.

4.) Also, loading Russia in Jan 1, 1844, they can again mobilize 83 brigades. In fact, I tested this with a save from Jan 1843, and you can demobilize/mobilize during war. So, for example, you could:
mobilize
grab 100 brigades
slap them into a mega stack
attack and lose
instantly demobilize the battered army to take them out of harms way
remobilize
slap them into a slightly smaller mega stack...

Nope. No ability to abuse that...

[badger_ken]

very impressive, kudos! Though personally I find your general-shuffling kinda gamey.....

one question - speaking of your 'crap dice' - do you want high or low rolls? I've never seen this written down....

[naggy]

very impressive, kudos! Though personally I find your general-shuffling kinda gamey.....

Later in the game, with aeroplanes, it's less so.

one question - speaking of your 'crap dice' - do you want high or low rolls? I've never seen this written down....

You want high rolls for yourself, low rolls for the enemy. The dice rolls are modified by the modifiers shown (dig in bonus, terrain, general stat), and then affected by various modifiers (such as tactics) to determine casualties and how much org is lost each day.

[Enewald]

Ha, suddenly the Russians are stopped on their historical expansion route.
Well played!