TheFlemishDuck said:
Neat. I'm kinda surprized though that you managed to defeat Punjab and Afhanistan with irregulars alone.You had irregulars withought army doctrine's wich should be very low morale ,and impossible to regain morale in the field (because of attrition) ,so either you had to have leaders with attrition or morale modifiers or you took Punjab really really fast ,same with Afhanistan.
While Punjab and Afhansitan had flintlock rifles and possibly jominion or clauswitzian.
Of course I had to take Punjab quickly...as mentioned the key was numbers, 15-20 divisions. Then I kept buying regular clothes and when a division fell to 3000 men or less, I reinforced by setting to full the defense budget, converting POPs to soldiers, and reinforcing. I used my strong armies with good morale to win the battles, and the reinforced ones with low organization to take provinces. You don't need any organization or morale to take provinces: only to win battles. Punjab and Afghanistan are also small countries, I think about 8 provinces for Punjab and 7 for Afghanistan. So the battles were over within a short period of time. If they had been any bigger, attrition would have been a bigger problem, but given the rapidity of the invasion it was not as much as I though. After Afghanistan and Punjab, the other minors were easy, as they only had 3-4 provinces each and only very small armies.
Try it yourself-- you can reliably beat Afghanistan and Punjab as long as you have at least 15-20 reinforced irregular divisions. 15 if you are very confident in your military tactics (i.e.: attack from 2 sides for flanking bonuses when possible etc), or 20 if you want a little extra security. Any less and you will lose though.
I did get Jominian attitude with post-napoleon thought, some months after the trade from Russia. I was in a hurry to trade for this as IIRC the possibility for Jominian attitude "expires" (i.e. the invention doesn't occur) at the end of 1845, and I got this in '44 or so. However, this was before the invasion of BEIC, but only after the invasion of Punjab, Afghanistan, etc.
TheFlemishDuck said:
60 cavalery ,thats a lot of cavalery pumped from the lands you have for an India campaign.Say you had 10£ profit from 38 to 45 (the date you DOW) ,then thats still only 3500£ a year or 25.000£ in 7 years ,while 60 plain cavalery devissions would cost you about 60 x 1000£ (=60.000£) to order alone ,not to speak of the raw costs for smallarms ,canned goods and clothes for manpower.Hmm when you traded away those claims did you get money in addition to tech? Though those claims must have cost a handsome price to.My rough estimate is that to be able to fund all youre expenses atm (irr. troops ,regular troops ,reform costs ,manpower cost ,claim building ,pop reforming ,goods cost etc.) you would have needed in excess of 140.000£ in 7 years ,or 20.000£ a year ,wich is roughly 60£ a day ,i have no idea where you got that kind of money.... (unless you went in serious debt)
Actually my initial profit as Tibet was 10-15 a day with only 3 million POPs. Once I took Punjab this rose to about 30-40 a day. The claim buildings cost 5000 each, or 20,000 for four.
From 1837-1844, (after the conquest of Punjab & Afghanistan) my balance sheet looked like this:
Tax income: 9/day (@32%)
Tariff income: 38-40/day (full tariffs)
Army maintenance: 2/day (full maintenance to whack rebels)
That's a positive balance of about +10,000 to +13,000 per year. Over an 8 year period, about +100,000 L. Plus four or five thousand in the trade with Russia, IIRC.
Total income: approx. +113,000
Minus expenses:
4 Claim buildings -20,000
Political reforms - 7,500
60 divisions - 60,000 (formation cost)
Supply cost: small arms are approx. 65 each, canned food @ 20, wine @25
= 110 for one of each, or 1100 per division. Since Laissez-faire gets a 50% discount on imports, this is 550 per division x 60= 33,000
Clipper ships: 65 each, 50% Laissez-faire discount = 32 each, 4 needed per transport x 24 transports = 3072 L
Clipper formation cost: 4 clipper ships + 500 L each, x 24 transports = 12,000 L
plus a few thousand more for the conversion of soldier pops and the purchase of regular clothes -- let's say 10,000
Total of all expenses:
142,500
As you can see this leaves a deficit of approximately 40,000 L, incurred approx. 4 months before the invasion of British India when the cavalry divisions are organized. Up until then, my balance was always positive.
As I recall, I was about 58,000 to 60,000 L in the hole (a loan) at the time of the strike on British India. This includes the 40,000 above, a small amount of interest, and also more because my micromanagement was not completely efficient. Sometimes I had paid more than was necessary for the purchase of some goods by getting them in too large quantities without managing the trade sliders as meticulously as I could.
For a country with 30 million people, a 60,000 debt is not bad -- especially for a short time. And it was being paid back even before provinces were won from British India. Taking British India, or at least key portions, shot the population up another 80 or 90 million...from there on the economy was a gold mine, +100 L a day.
Had I not had a Laissez-faire party, I would have been another 36,000 in debt for goods. Again this debt is incurred within the couple of years before invading India. Of course this is still easily repayable, especially after India falls. In the worse possible case, if you did not wish to go into debt, the delay would cost 2-3 additional years.
The main reason I had to wait from '38 to '44 before attacking British India related to 2 things:
1. You have to have a +5000 balance to build a colony building -- no loans allowed. The colonies of course were critical to the trade for tech that enabled cavalry. The colony buildings take about 3 years to build after they are started.
2. The accumulation of 600 small arms and other supplies off the world market took several years to complete.
You can verify these figures yourself by repeating this strategy. I've tried the initial phase several times and things always come out about the same, so I am confident in the reproducibility of my results.
TheFlemishDuck said:
What is youre BB though ,and what are the changes (with you having selled claims to Russia) that Russia gets a land border with you?
Currently about 600. At the time of the last update however before the invasion of British India, BB was 28 or 29. Russia took the claims, but does not have enough to make colonies -- so no formal land border. Within four years I was DOW'd by both the UK and Russia (colonial wars) as you will see later.