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Looks like it's time to start recruiting some colonial troops, and shipping them to Europe to start kicking to Ottomans around on land now along with the sea.
You're right, that was one of the scariest wars I've had... From now on I won't be leaving Corfu without a dedicated patrol steam transport (at the very least). As for colonial troops, I expanded my 1-brigade colonial army to 3 brigades (the two new ones were cavalry) to invade Somalia. I didn't have the infamy to burn (or the inclination) to try and take it from Sweden, but it did make me realize that with 6 brigades there are new courses of action, closer to home, that could be taken...
Canto The Ninth
(With apologies to T.S. Eliot)
Let us walk then, you and I,
Where the Ionian is stretched out across the sky,
Like a big bubbling mass of briny water.
See an empire rising from the waves,
Like light from out of Plato’s caves;
Seven islands, and all those which on them depend
(Though Plato would have liked them ten).
Let us picture men and women of some reason
Walking through Ionian colonnades
With talk of all that’s new, futuristic, nihilistic,
Existential quantum fuzz and all that jazz.
While from out of crouching dockyards
Sounds and smells of curious metals melt
Into gargantuan new machines.
I remember the commotion, don’t you too,
When the athletes all returned and there were two
Who were crowned with laurels and the president gave them a medal,
And some military rank or other and there was that big parade.
You remember, don’t you? What were they called?
Young Cyril clapped his hands in the crowd and I can still hear him say ‘pedal!’
That was a silly age.
The machines rolled out of their scaffolds brown,
One by one, like idle little islands painted grey.
The Seven Isles in stolid steel remade.
They did impress, I’ll give them that.
Though people mumbled more about their taxes,
Raised to pay the price of floating steel,
The once and future ships, at the still point of the turning wheel.
It was argued then (you may recall the zest)
How Ionians had a duty to look west;
And how Sicily, by virtue of geography,
Could be called an island of the Ionian Sea.
Such a pity how it all turned out for Sweden.
Such an empire, and quite used to being imperial.
Then, one day, it’s all just immaterial
Because Colombian factories were the new toast of the day.
In any case, with no support,
Naples found itself at war
With all the Ionian bright new toys.
And there were certain battles fought,
As tends to happen in such wars,
When the nation’s boys kill other nations’ boys.
Surely you remember that. It was rather too expensive.
Took a year for serious thinkers to seriously think it through.
They did restore some balance, in the end,
Just cut off most expenses of the army and the navy,
Rather bitter pill in war-time, but when swallowed things did mend.
Then the Ottoman automata like such nebulous mamata
Out of the blue sky of repetition with words of war did sway
The British to put down their sphere and go play another game.
It was pointless really, as that admiral said freely,
Just a few more ports for his ships to blockade.
When it was over, Cyril was older, playing his own triumphal games.
And in the west of the Ionian, the triangle to Greeks so jovial
Became of the Seven Isles the eighth.
And then there was a new parade.
(With apologies to T.S. Eliot)
Let us walk then, you and I,
Where the Ionian is stretched out across the sky,
Like a big bubbling mass of briny water.
See an empire rising from the waves,
Like light from out of Plato’s caves;
Seven islands, and all those which on them depend
(Though Plato would have liked them ten).
Let us picture men and women of some reason
Walking through Ionian colonnades
With talk of all that’s new, futuristic, nihilistic,
Existential quantum fuzz and all that jazz.
While from out of crouching dockyards
Sounds and smells of curious metals melt
Into gargantuan new machines.
I remember the commotion, don’t you too,
When the athletes all returned and there were two
Who were crowned with laurels and the president gave them a medal,
And some military rank or other and there was that big parade.
You remember, don’t you? What were they called?
Young Cyril clapped his hands in the crowd and I can still hear him say ‘pedal!’
That was a silly age.
The machines rolled out of their scaffolds brown,
One by one, like idle little islands painted grey.
The Seven Isles in stolid steel remade.
They did impress, I’ll give them that.
Though people mumbled more about their taxes,
Raised to pay the price of floating steel,
The once and future ships, at the still point of the turning wheel.
It was argued then (you may recall the zest)
How Ionians had a duty to look west;
And how Sicily, by virtue of geography,
Could be called an island of the Ionian Sea.
Such a pity how it all turned out for Sweden.
Such an empire, and quite used to being imperial.
Then, one day, it’s all just immaterial
Because Colombian factories were the new toast of the day.
In any case, with no support,
Naples found itself at war
With all the Ionian bright new toys.
And there were certain battles fought,
As tends to happen in such wars,
When the nation’s boys kill other nations’ boys.
Surely you remember that. It was rather too expensive.
Took a year for serious thinkers to seriously think it through.
They did restore some balance, in the end,
Just cut off most expenses of the army and the navy,
Rather bitter pill in war-time, but when swallowed things did mend.
Then the Ottoman automata like such nebulous mamata
Out of the blue sky of repetition with words of war did sway
The British to put down their sphere and go play another game.
It was pointless really, as that admiral said freely,
Just a few more ports for his ships to blockade.
When it was over, Cyril was older, playing his own triumphal games.
And in the west of the Ionian, the triangle to Greeks so jovial
Became of the Seven Isles the eighth.
And then there was a new parade.
Next war will have to be against Spain or Great Britain for their islands 
How did taking Sicily affect your literacy?
How did taking Sicily affect your literacy?
Next war will have to be against Spain or Great Britain for their islands
How did taking Sicily affect your literacy?
Very positively. It went from 49% to 63.5%. Looks like Two Sicilies invested heavily in education there, more so than in their two Italian states, by the looks of it.
Spain has a lot of islands (including all the Portuguese ones by now) but most of them are too far away to be easily defensible by the Ionian Fleet. There's the Balearic Islands in the Med, but to get them I'd have to gain the whole state of Catalonia, which would be too difficult to manage. Sardinia would be nice, but S-P is in France's sphere and since my British sphere-masters abandoned me when the Ottomans got uppity, I doubt they'd stick around to face France...
I may follow some previous advice from here and try to bolster Greece, if the Ottomans start a fifth war. Or do something completely different - I'll see as I play along. The interesting thing is that with the new boost to my score, with Sicily's factories pushing my industrial score up from 2 to 102, I may become a GP again, if certain things go my way.
Btw, I thought I'd go for a more modern poetic style what with the 20th century dawning and all my recent cultural breakthroughs. I hope people will enjoy it as much as the previous style.
I didn't think you would have the army to pull that off, Two Sicilies can raise some pretty big stacks in my experience.
For no good reason, the Two Sicilies can just pull huge amounts of Mobilized armies out of nowhere- Fighting them with the Pope in 1840 was a nice expidenture when they kicked off the war by summoning a doom-stack of 50 right in their capital... They also tend to have a huge NAVY for no good reason. Frankly, I'd keep good watch on the island, especially if they try to form Italy...
(...
And the women come and go,
talking of Michelangelo)
Loving this AAR. I dont know if the islands on the Ionian are the only ones you want, but considering all thats left is malta and greek islands, you might need to expand your horizon. Britannia is an island, you know ;-).
And the women come and go,
talking of Michelangelo)
Loving this AAR. I dont know if the islands on the Ionian are the only ones you want, but considering all thats left is malta and greek islands, you might need to expand your horizon. Britannia is an island, you know ;-).
Nice move.
I took Sicily as Greece in a previous game and it did wonders. You should be a lot better off now, only risk is when/if Italy forms you'll probably be fighting to retain the islands.
I took Sicily as Greece in a previous game and it did wonders. You should be a lot better off now, only risk is when/if Italy forms you'll probably be fighting to retain the islands.
Two Sicilies had a standing army comparable in strength to my own, which is why I started the war with a landing near Naples, to build up some warscore through land victories. But when I won the first engagements, they mobilized an ungodly amount of troops, like you said, forcing me to move my army to Sicily, where the mobilized troops outnumbered me but not by much, and were still unorganized enough to take on. Once Sicily was secured, I could use my navy to block all passage of Sicilian troops south to it (and there were about 100,000 of them, 72,000 of which were waiting for any opportunity to cross the straits), which will be my standard tactic in any possible future war. Should that fail, I'll have to rely on defending Messina with all the land forces I've got, taking advantage of the -2 crossing malus and my dug in bonus, the combination of which worked so well in Corfu against the Ottomans.
And yes, Sicily does wonders. I've played a bit ahead and it's let me recruit 7 brigades so far (which is more than my entire army at the time of the previous war), plus it has increased my industrial score by about 5000% and raised my literacy to a more respectable level (though still not as high as it would have been if my initial state was still my only state).
Do I dare disturb the universe? More importantly, do I dare disturb Great Britain?
It would be interesting if I could somehow get Venice, maybe as a satellite; a nice reversal of historical roles, I think. But I doubt it would be possible. I'll just keep playing and see what ideas and opportunities will come up.
Nice little island empire you've got there. Would you consider snagging any Greek provinces (i.e. from Greece or the OE) or would having a land border to defend be too big of a drawback for you?
Although the Greek Aegean Islands and/or Greek Peloponnese would look nice to have, I'm not sure if I want to dismantle Greece or buff up it by liberating its regions from the Ottomans, to gain an ally against the Ottomans (or someone else for them to invade, for a change). Taking continental regions from the Ottomans directly would be more risky, although I'm just getting at the point where I may be able to raise armies big enough to challenge them on land. I might go with my original thought and try to create an Albanian buffer state, although my naval superiority is good enough at this point that I'm not worried about a new (third) Ottoman landing in Corfu.
Sardinia would be a more enticing prospect, but there's no way of getting it without French involvement against me... It would make things more symmetrical around Corfu, though - Crete and Cyprus to the east, Sicily and Sardinia to the west.
In a minute there is time,
To take sardinia and corsica
(My 11th grade English teacher would be so proud)
To take sardinia and corsica
(My 11th grade English teacher would be so proud)
Which a French minute will reverse.
I had a chance to go for the Portuguese islands in the Atlantic at one point, but I decided that my forces would be best kept closer at home and then Spain beat me to it. That was before Macao, and before Portugal entered the Swedish sphere - it's still going through an oscillation of different flavoured revolutions, with Spain snatching a colony in Africa every five years (since it's run out of states in Europe).
I'll try not to veer too far away from the old style. The Ionian Islands won't be discovering surrealist poetry before 1936.
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Wouldn't it be nice if you could somehow absorb Greece?... All greeks should be under one banner, you know...