Chapter 15: I Have Not Yet Begun to Fight!
Now the Infamy is no longer a factor for me, I can pretty much take whatever I want. The problem is, I have a truce with the U.S. for the next 5 years and my truce with the U.K. still has another 2 years on it. So if I want to expand I really only have two options, those being the CSA and Mexico. The CSA might be a bit difficult to take in only a year, plus I have good relations and they may end up in a war with the U.S. in a couple years so I leave them alone. Mexico on the other hand, is still hovering near the top of the secondary power rankings but isn't a global power and is still backwards technology wise, although they are making progress. Their regions aren't worth too much to me but if I were to take enough of them it would provide me with a highway to my spheres in central America which would allow me to defend them easier which is what I really need.
For some odd reason Mexico's states are very expensive, at the start it requires a 104 war score to take most of their states. If I were to occupy all of the regions in the state I could knock it down to 52 but still, that's pretty much one region at a time, meaning it will probably take me 2 more wars to get a good passageway through Mexico. I find the quickest way down through Mexico is along the west coast so I declare war on Mexico in hopes of taking Sonora. I later add Durango as a war goal since it's a bit cheaper then the other regions so I could take it along with Sonora in one war.
Mexico quickly mobilizes their reserves to boost their brigade total to about 150, however my forces are more advanced military wise and now have tanks. It doesn't take long for me to engage the Mexicans in several large battles and then proceed to surround them to easily wipe out their armies.
It took a couple of months for me to completely wipe out their brigades but by about February of 1908, I had left Mexico defenseless. I continued to occupy regions but a couple of months later my truce with the U.K. expired and they immediately declared war. As you can see from the map below I've pretty much got a handle on things in Mexico, plus I had already left a few brigades up north to be ready for an attack. I send some of my troops up from Mexico to Canada while I leave the rest down in Mexico to finish the job and attack the U.K. in Belize so that they wouldn't cause any trouble for my spherlings.
Due to my longer border, fighting off the U.K. was a bit more difficult this time. I'm able to use the Rockies to my advantage though as they tend to make up the entire border between Alberta and British Columbia. My main strategy up north is to set up a wall of defenders along my side of the border and try and bait the Canadians to attacking my mountain regions. The plan works perfectly as my armies just obliterate the British in the mountains and I am able to move my troops around behind them so that they are wiped out once they lose.
Down South my forces have finally managed to reach Mexico City and get the war score up to 85. This was barely enough to get the Mexicans to hand over Durango and Sonora, but they really didn't have much of a choice. With Mexico dealt with I could now focus my forces on Canada.
Now that almost all of my forces were dedicated to Canada I was able to trap the British at Fort Vermilion, where they had sent almost all of their brigades on the continent.
After that the British armies in North America are scattered and weak and I just continue to march east and occupying everything I could. I had set my war goal to acquire Alberta but I thought be able to get Saskatchewan to. It would take some time to get my warscore high enough, but I still have a couple of years before I go to war with the U.S. again so I have time. During this war I even have enough time to send an expedition to the South pole, even after having missed out on the North Pole.
By the time I reach Manitoba the British army is starting to cause problems again. It's not that they're putting up a fight, but that they've managed to break through my regions and have started to occupy a couple of regions with just single brigades. I have to start playing whack a mole with them as the U.K. isn't ready to give up their two Canadian regions yet. I manage to make it all the way to Ontario a couple months later, and after sending an army out ahead to take Toronto, the U.K. was finally ready to let go.
Now my borders kind of look like this, I like how it's no longer called British Canada.
I will have to come back later for the Northwest territories, the hard thing about fighting the U.K. is that I won't be able to occupy their home islands so I can't get my war score up to 100% like I could with the U.S. or Mexico. I have been dreadnaught spamming and investing in naval tech lately though, so I may be able to pose a threat later in the game, although the end date is only about 25 years away. While I can always extend the end date, I still want to play the game like it's ending in 1936, just to see what I can get done.
The next two years are pretty quiet. As much as I want to go to war there really isn't a good target. I now have truces with the U.K., Mexico, and the U.S. along with good relations with the CSA. I could invade the CSA but I figure they will go to war with the U.S. a little bit before my truce with the U.S. expired which would weaken the U.S. for me. I considered breaking my truce with Mexico, however I didn't want to take the militancy hit and my war exhaustion was still at 7% from my last war with the U.S. so I didn't want to bother.
During this time I built up both my navies and my armies, which were probably tired after fighting three wars back to back to back. The U.S. still hasn't rebuilt most of the brigades they lost in the last war so I'm thinking I'll take a good shot at them in the next war, but you'll just have to wait for the next chapter to hear about that.