Ireland has been done quite a bit, Canada would mainly be boring besides wars the UK dragged you into. Australia has so much potential and is quite a unique choice.
I say Advance Australia Fair!
I say Advance Australia Fair!
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Wow, that's a lot of votes. Let's tabulate them!
Our running tally is up to the following, assuming no miscounts:
Australia: 14
Canada: 1
Ireland: 4
That is quite the lead, but there's still a day to vote, so there's the possibility one of the other nations may pull ahead if there's enough interest.
Congratulations on being the first to vote for Canada!
Two votes for Ireland.
The fourth vote for Australia.
Three votes for Ireland. May I please at least colonize the Congo?
Five votes for Australia.
Six votes for Australia.
Seven votes for Australia, which is rather beginning to pull ahead quite dramatically.
Eight votes for the Habsburgs... I mean Australia.
Nine votes for Australia, which is beginning to look like a sequence of random letters to me.
An even ten votes for Australia!
Eleven votes for Australia. The immigration bonus, which can and will multiply Australia's population dramatically, is best described as "relatively useful".
Twelve votes for Australia.
Four votes for Ireland. Ironically, it was once believed that there was an "Emerald Island" somewhere in the South Pacific.
Thirteen votes for Australia. Since PDM simulates the Irish Famine, we'll still be getting quite a bit of Irish action even as other countries through elevated migration, even if the geopolitics end up a bit different.
Fourteen votes for Australia. Needless to say, their potential to become brutally strong seems to be attracting people.
Our running tally is up to the following, assuming no miscounts:
Australia: 14
Canada: 1
Ireland: 4
That is quite the lead, but there's still a day to vote, so there's the possibility one of the other nations may pull ahead if there's enough interest.
On the one hand I like Canada's position more, but on the other hand I like comedy... think I'll go for... hhhmmmmmm... difficult choice... I pick:
Australia
Australia
I wouldnt say ireland was a colony. But whatever. Just like to think my conuntry is better than the colonies.
Tabulation of votes returns to save the day.
It seems many voters are attracted to the promise of comedy. Fifteen votes for Australia.
I can only count one of those for the sake of fair electoral representation, so that's five votes for Ireland.
Six votes for Ireland. A "futile" vote is still a valuable vote, at least if proportional reputation is a thing.
Seven votes for Ireland. My main source for using the term 'colony' in relation to Ireland is The Enlightened Economy by Joel Mokyr. Whether it's accurate or not, there was definitely some unpleasant exploitation and (often religious) repression going on at the time.
Two votes for Canada.
An ornate eighth vote for Ireland.
A similarly ornate sixteenth vote for Australia!
I'm going to consider this the final count.
Australia: 16!
Canada: 2
Ireland: 8
Ireland seems to have gained some significant popularity in the final hours of this poll, but Australia's has been greater still. I'm going to declare Australia the winner of the election, and make the necessary revisions to my initial post. A proper prologue will follow on Monday, and this AAR will update every Monday after that (at the minimum), barring interference with my schedule.
Anyways, I'm pleased to see such a large response to the vote. I hope that you enjoy the approach I take to writing this AAR, and that those of you who voted against Australia will still be interested in following my progress.
We also got a vote after the official closing of the poll.
This would bring Canada up to 3 votes. No voice shall go unheard.
It seems many voters are attracted to the promise of comedy. Fifteen votes for Australia.
I can only count one of those for the sake of fair electoral representation, so that's five votes for Ireland.
Six votes for Ireland. A "futile" vote is still a valuable vote, at least if proportional reputation is a thing.
Seven votes for Ireland. My main source for using the term 'colony' in relation to Ireland is The Enlightened Economy by Joel Mokyr. Whether it's accurate or not, there was definitely some unpleasant exploitation and (often religious) repression going on at the time.
Two votes for Canada.
An ornate eighth vote for Ireland.
A similarly ornate sixteenth vote for Australia!
I'm going to consider this the final count.
Australia: 16!
Canada: 2
Ireland: 8
Ireland seems to have gained some significant popularity in the final hours of this poll, but Australia's has been greater still. I'm going to declare Australia the winner of the election, and make the necessary revisions to my initial post. A proper prologue will follow on Monday, and this AAR will update every Monday after that (at the minimum), barring interference with my schedule.
Anyways, I'm pleased to see such a large response to the vote. I hope that you enjoy the approach I take to writing this AAR, and that those of you who voted against Australia will still be interested in following my progress.
We also got a vote after the official closing of the poll.
This would bring Canada up to 3 votes. No voice shall go unheard.
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Ahaha, thanks! I didn't notice the poll closed, I wasn't particularly paying attention, sorry!
Prologue to the 1st Edition
First rule of Australia: Do NOT mess with the Aborigines. I once found myself in a gutter, covered in my own blood for it.
Don't think I didn't go down without a fight - I spent my youth engaged in sport - wrestling, rugby, even the occasional game of American baseball. In my 20s, I was rather scrappy, and they say I was absolutely terrifying after I'd downed a few beers. My opponent must've been nearly 7 feet tall and nearly 300 pounds. If there's one flaw I'll admit to having, it's that I like to pick dangerous fights, but I've learned not to tangle with the natives over the years.
More seriously, the indigenous people of Australia managed to eke out a living in some of the most unpleasant and barren parts of the country long before the British found the east coast and decided it would make an excellent dumping ground for convicts. Even after that, Australia was still a continent full of tough, brutally powerful people. Anyone who immigrated (trust me, there were millions who wanted to) had to measure up to that.
Merely immigrating in our formative days (the late 1820s onwards, by my appraisal) was a feat in itself. Before the Suez canal opened, it was a brutal voyage. The Western route kept one marginally closer to civilization, perhaps with a few sunny days in Panama or Monterey. Most of the early immigrants, however, took the eastern route, though, heading first to Gibraltar, then to Sierra Leone, Cape Town, Mauritus, and perhaps an Indian or Malaysian port before they finally arrived in the Australian colonies. Any attempt to travel here became a veritable tour of the British Empire, and many stops along the way became prosperous cities in their own right.
Okay, I admit it. Merely getting here was already a feat.
Dread pirates! These were apparently a problem in the mid-1860s.
Most of those ships didn't really make it. There were many casualties on-board, even without operator error beaching a boat, or slamming it into some off-shore rocks, or mutinies causing everyone to give up and attempt a new life in Mozambique or something. The point is that merely getting to Australia was hard, and it drove shipbuilders to do increasingly bold things to increase the survival rate... and other kinds of engineers. Consider the Suez canal - alone, it could cut weeks off a voyage from London to Sydney.
Tropical diseases abound in the Indian ocean, including the dreaded 'Maldives fever'...
The British garrison was then devoured by a pack of wild log cabins.
As a result, Australians are still tougher than steel, even the stuff the Bush conglomerate makes. The very land we walk upon has been made our servant. It grows our crops, provides our minerals, and it even occasionally bowls for us when we want to play cricket. One of my friends tells me he beat the Great Barrier Reef in an epic struggle for sportsman's dominance, but I doubt it. It's got a mean topspinner. Of course, it wasn't always like this - there used to be a time when by necessity we were forced to live in 'harmony' with the land.
Curse you, coral! ...want to play football next week?
I sense that after the decolonization crises of the late 1950s that there may be some doubts as to our dominance, but Australia's industry, trade, and military remain powerful. Despite what the last few paragraphs may lead you to believe, I wrote this book not to convince you of Australia's awesomeness (which should be apparent), but to explain its roots. Without us, who knows what direction history would have taken?
Australian history after responsible government is by necessity a story of ascendance and supremacy, but this was not always a given. After the double shock of the American Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars, there were many in favor of tighter controls on the colonies, even if the average governor was suddenly more willing to listen to the desires of the colonists. This wasn't possible in Australia, though, since we were simply too far away. This is also why Australian culture was so quick to diverge from the mainline British.
More than anything, "The Australia Project" is the story of that divergence.
Liam Jacobsen, January 1974
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Nice work so far! I gotta say, your writing style is very interesting, so I'll surely be following. Plus, you don't see a lot of Australian AARs around here, huh.
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