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Blood and Iron -- A Fast Road to Greater Germany

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I got inspired by this AAR and had a go at it myself.
My goal was to unify Greater Germany within 3-5 years (tracing your footsteps). However, my attempt ended up pretty poorly to say the least. I finally managed it in 1846 and in crappy shape too. I had unified Greater Germany once before in 1847 with much less fuss and chaos.

Anyway, I started off like you against Austria and asserted hegemony & humiliated them. I was done with them early 1938 or something, so not very fast. I immediately turned to attack France for Alsace-Lorraine and beat them by the end of 1839. I was meanwhile sphering Luxembourg, Holstein and Denmark and keeping a check on my other spherelings. However, as I was maneuvering to deliver the decisive blow to Austria, I noticed they had dropped to secondary power status! Apparently the humiliation was a little overkill as they had zero prestige and tiny industry. So I found myself unable to attack them immediately with the truce and had to wait for them a little over a year to recover back to GP status.

Finally at the end of 1839 Hannover dropped from UK's sphere so I aggressively started sphering it and sometime in 1840 I could go back into Austria again as they had recovered. Business as usual, Austrian armies were crushed faster this time, but occupying land & mopping up the remaining forces took again considerable time. Just as I was getting finished (Austria had lost it's armies and the land was mostly in my control), my truce with France ran out and they attacked with all my troops still stuck in Austria. They also brought Russia, OE, the Swiss and some minor powers to the war. Having spent another two or more years just bashing the invaders back, turns out Bavaria had become a GP and fell out of my sphere. So when I finally got peace with France and her allies. I was stuck waiting for Bavaria to drop from GP status -> 1846.

Obviously my attempt wasn't exactly a grand success. Seems like the very first war with Austria is the most decisive point in the whole campaign for quick unification and some luck! Maybe it's also a good idea to leave the German minors out of the wars so they don't accumulate prestige?
 
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Urrbaan said:
I got inspired by this AAR and had a go at it myself.
My goal was to unify Greater Germany within 3-5 years (tracing your footsteps). However, my attempt ended up pretty poorly to say the least. I finally managed it in 1846 and in crappy shape too. I had unified Greater Germany once before in 1847 with much less fuss and chaos.

Anyway, I started off like you against Austria and asserted hegemony & humiliated them. I was done with them early 1938 or something, so not very fast. I immediately turned to attack France for Alsace-Lorraine and beat them by the end of 1839. I was meanwhile sphering Luxembourg, Holstein and Denmark and keeping a check on my other spherelings. However, as I was maneuvering to deliver the decisive blow to Austria, I noticed they had dropped to secondary power status! Apparently the humiliation was a little overkill as they had zero prestige and tiny industry. So I found myself unable to attack them immediately with the truce and had to wait for them a little over a year to recover back to GP status.

Finally at the end of 1839 Hannover dropped from UK's sphere so I aggressively started sphering it and sometime in 1840 I could go back into Austria again as they had recovered. Business as usual, Austrian armies were crushed faster this time, but occupying land & mopping up the remaining forces took again considerable time. Just as I was getting finished (Austria had lost it's armies and the land was mostly in my control), my truce with France ran out and they attacked with all my troops still stuck in Austria. They also brought Russia, OE, the Swiss and some minor powers to the war. Having spent another two or more years just bashing the invaders back, turns out Bavaria had become a GP and fell out of my sphere. So when I finally got peace with France and her allies. I was stuck waiting for Bavaria to drop from GP status -> 1846.

Obviously my attempt wasn't exactly a grand success. Seems like the very first war with Austria is the most decisive point in the whole campaign for quick unification and some luck! Maybe it's also a good idea to leave the German minors out of the wars so they don't accumulate prestige?
Click to expand...

Yes, and now you have the exact reverse problem -- you need to wait until you have a CB or a truce has passed (since you don't have the automatically available CB of Assert Hegemony when it's a secondary power), so you can start war, and then you need to beat them down. You might want to declare war on a weak Austria (headed down to secondary power status would be great) even before France is finished. With their small army, they probably cannot occupy much of Prussia before you get enough troops to turn the tide.

The problems with the Russians and Bavarians can probably be finessed with a Prussian alliance with Russia and by not calling Bavaria to war. As I mentioned, this will reduce their MIL score a great deal, hopefully keeping them from the top 8.
 
So to implement the first part of the "get overseas bases", I set my sights on Johor Bahru and Egypt. I figure that I will save a bit of infamy if I attack them both together (as Germany does not needs its entire army for either, and we can reduce the amount of time we are at war).



The UK has declared war on Siam in order to obtain for Johor Bahru the exact Siamese provinces I need for Siamese rubber. Heh, heh.



The Johor Bahru CB costs me about 5 infamy. Not too bad. It will be worth it to have Asian bases. The Egyptian CB costs me 1.6 infamy. War is joined in April of 1840 on both Johor Bahru and Egypt. Fighting is uneventful -- basically a romp through their territory. Johor Bahru is annexed in September of 1840, while Egypt is taking a bit longer due to the extent. Unfortunately, the UK-Siam War to make Johor Bahru bigger was a stalemate. So my Johor plunder will be only what is normal. And then Germany gets a lucky break:



Having a base in West Africa is so important in colonizing Africa, I was planning on attacking someone if I did not get an event like this. The powers that have colonies there are: Portugal, Denmark (now Scandinavia), France, the UK, Spain, the Netherlands. You can also attack Sokoto or Liberia (should it be liberated from being a puppet of the US). Anyways, Scandinavia is allied with The Ottomans and France. So Germany will have to trade the familiar ground to Paris, as France will likely be the war leader. Germany has only a transports and a few frigates, so I plan on dropping off 90,000 German troops and then getting my transports back to a harbor. Everything turns out OK, though, as France declines the Scandinavian call to arms. Instead, the Turks are the war leader! They fold, but Germany did have to move a few armies to the Balkans and beat up some Turkish armies. Germany is unable to exercise the infamy-free CB to get Schleswig-Holstein (German Jingoism is too low to get even national territory), so it remains Scandinavian, for now.
 
Just discovered this magnificent AAR. I've got a spot in my heart for Prussia to Germany games and it looks like you're going to have a lot of fun in this one. Subbed!
 
This AAR is great, I'll have to try this while I'm waiting for the CKII patch to come out.

Also, I agree with @oberstbrooksy, acquiring the land from the Brest-Litovsk treaty would be a noble goal as it may have actually become part of Germany had the St. Michael offensive worked! Much better than Hitler's stupid Lebensraum anyway. Perhaps also you might try and unify all the Germanic people such as the Belgians, Dutch, and Scandinavians?
 
Epix10689 said:
This AAR is great, I'll have to try this while I'm waiting for the CKII patch to come out.

Also, I agree with @oberstbrooksy, acquiring the land from the Brest-Litovsk treaty would be a noble goal as it may have actually become part of Germany had the St. Michael offensive worked! Much better than Hitler's stupid Lebensraum anyway. Perhaps also you might try and unify all the Germanic people such as the Belgians, Dutch, and Scandinavians?
Click to expand...

With such a loose definition, you may as well include the Brits as well.
 
Tried out your strategy and it worked quite well, although I wasn't lucky enough to have Austria and France be allies so I had to wait until 1841 for my truce to expire. Then I had to fight a long and bloody war to liberate Austria from their Russian overlords who had sphered them, which was quite annoying, so I didn't form greater Germany until 1843, although that's pretty impressive compared to the way I usually play!

@calvinhobbeslik, sure why not? although if he's going that far he may as well try and form the Empire of Charlemagne while he's at it
 
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