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Maybe you'll get lucky and the Manhattan Commune will emerge, letting you nab it without having to go to war with the USA.

(Just don't plan your game's strategy around that possibility :p)

Except the commune is landlocked, so he'd have to invade the US anyway.

In all my games of Vicky 2, I've only see the Manhattan Commune break free with player intervention. Needless to say, I'm not getting my hopes up in either case. ;)

EDIT:

Or just get military access...

I've never gotten military access from the AI.
 
I've never gotten military access from the AI.

I have, once or twice. Mostly when I'm large enough that I could honestly just declare war (pre-AHD) to gain access if they refused... ;)
 
I have, once or twice. Mostly when I'm large enough that I could honestly just declare war (pre-AHD) to gain access if they refused... ;)

See, I think they've changed the algorithm in AHD, since it always reads "Impossible", even if we're allies. I did pull it off once, now that I think about it, with Korea in my last AAR, but they were in my sphere.
 

Great! :) The more the merrier!

AI only gives me MA if they're in my sphere, we're at war with the same country, or we have REALLY good relations/are allies.

That jives with my experience, although I've virtually only seen category 1.

The first update (the prologue) will be up tomorrow.
 
looking forward to the 1st update but i think that you should add re captureing places like ceylon and south africa to your county as a goal. its easier to get them early because there are no indian death sticks at the begining of the game in south africa and the british havent got cores, but if i was you i wouldent declare war on belgium unless you are sure that france isant gonna declare war on you. good luck
 
Looking forward to this.:)
 
The Dutch are hard to start with. If you go to war with Belgium immediately the British will join, and almost immediately the French start to justify a war for Guyana. I wish you the best of luck, and I will be following closely.
 
I love the concept of a Political-based AHD AAR (if I had the time I'd write one up myself) and I'm pretty much obligated to at least try and follow every Dutch Vicky II AAR, so here I am!

PS. Unless things have changed radically from vanilla 1.1 (Hah! as if...) destroy the Belgian Army ASAP. Don't worry too much about occupying territory until their main force is destroyed, then divide and occupy! Oh and either wait for Belgium to become a GP before invading or hope to God the US decides to "liberate" Quebec very early on...
 
One thing that has changed since 1.1 is that Belgium no longer has a tendency to become a GP (in 1.1 it was practically a given). Another is that the UK and USA settle their territorial differences through a decision, so wars between them are quite rare, except for much later in the game. I don't believe I've seen a Netherlands or Belgium AAR for AHD, so this should be quite interesting.
 
he shouldent have to much trouble with britain at the start of the game, and the british only drop of around 30,000 troops a year when they havent got a border with a country, i managed to beat britain as sardinia-piedmont and 2 sicilies because they never use the full force of their navy to blockade you and they dont use the full potencial of their armies.
 
Subscribed. I want to see if you take back the Cape from the dastardly Brits!

Certainly an implicit goal, if not one I explicitly stated! Plus, it would give me a chance to get righteous revenge on the Zulu. :mad:

looking forward to the 1st update but i think that you should add re captureing places like ceylon and south africa to your county as a goal. its easier to get them early because there are no indian death sticks at the begining of the game in south africa and the british havent got cores, but if i was you i wouldent declare war on belgium unless you are sure that france isant gonna declare war on you. good luck

Did the Dutch ever hold Ceylon? I don't actually know. If I do go after the British (which is not guaranteed!), it'll be after I fatten up a bit with some easy conquest.

Looking forward to this.:)

So am I!

The Dutch are hard to start with. If you go to war with Belgium immediately the British will join, and almost immediately the French start to justify a war for Guyana. I wish you the best of luck, and I will be following closely.

My current plan (and remember, I haven't even played yet), is to leave Belgium be for a short while. If I isolate Belgium, I have few doubts I'll win -- maybe a fortuitous revolution? The game owes me after the cruelty of the RNG in the Japan AAR, I'd say.

I love the concept of a Political-based AHD AAR (if I had the time I'd write one up myself) and I'm pretty much obligated to at least try and follow every Dutch Vicky II AAR, so here I am!

PS. Unless things have changed radically from vanilla 1.1 (Hah! as if...) destroy the Belgian Army ASAP. Don't worry too much about occupying territory until their main force is destroyed, then divide and occupy! Oh and either wait for Belgium to become a GP before invading or hope to God the US decides to "liberate" Quebec very early on...

Your Dutch AAR was superb, one of my favorites! Before BrandenburgIII's Russian AAR, one of my ideas was to obstruct all reforms in the Russian Empire. Of course, he beat me to it (and did an excellent job)! In AHD, they've definitely made politics more interesting, as well as (slightly) more predictable.

One thing that has changed since 1.1 is that Belgium no longer has a tendency to become a GP (in 1.1 it was practically a given). Another is that the UK and USA settle their territorial differences through a decision, so wars between them are quite rare, except for much later in the game. I don't believe I've seen a Netherlands or Belgium AAR for AHD, so this should be quite interesting.

I can confirm this: I've never seen Belgium become a GP. Ditto the British-American wars (most of the time). Glad to have you along!

he shouldent have to much trouble with britain at the start of the game, and the british only drop of around 30,000 troops a year when they havent got a border with a country, i managed to beat britain as sardinia-piedmont and 2 sicilies because they never use the full force of their navy to blockade you and they dont use the full potencial of their armies.

I've never had the guts to fight the British in any Vicky 2 game apart from one as Prussia -> Germany; this could be very helpful if/when I do throw down with them. AHD is supposed to reduce the Indian doomstacks considerably by drastically reducing manpower from colonies. I've never fought in India much, so I could be wrong.

Good call.

Thank the voters! :)

Working on screenshots now; prologue will be up later today.
 
the dutch took control of ceylon from the portugese and they where forced to give it to britain during the napoleonic wars. and regarding how strong britain is they still build hundreds of death stacks but they are usless at deploying troops to other places. i fought britain and france at the begining of a ahd game the french sent 60,000 troops across through belgium which i killed and that was it, i took french guyana from them and i took cape colony from britain and annexed belgium, but try and avoid fighting france. good luck cant wait for it.
 
the dutch took control of ceylon from the portugese and they where forced to give it to britain during the napoleonic wars. and regarding how strong britain is they still build hundreds of death stacks but they are usless at deploying troops to other places. i fought britain and france at the begining of a ahd game the french sent 60,000 troops across through belgium which i killed and that was it, i took french guyana from them and i took cape colony from britain and annexed belgium, but try and avoid fighting france. good luck cant wait for it.

Interesting stuff!

Update is incoming.
 
Prologue: Whither those men of Orange?

The first screen we're going to look at is the production screen. I find this very helpful in planning future campaigns, as it highlights what we have and what we don't.

dutchproduction.jpg


The most notable basic good we lack is Iron -- if only we had a neighbor with free cores that had Iron? Oh, right. We do. :D In the short term, while I have no doubt I'll get plenty of Iron, Steel will be harder to come by. Not crippling, but it'll probably make me more cautious when building factories. The most obvious chain here is Cement->Glass->Winery, so those will be my first three factories when I get the cash.

As a broad overview, here are the Dutch possessions.

v2mapnet1836111.jpg


I've got a significant head start in SE Asia, and I intend to use that advantage, as you'll see a bit later on. My presence in the New World is pitiful, with only a couple of Caribbean Islands and Dutch Guyana to my name, with equally light presence in Africa. I'll probably try to colonize Africa when and if I can, but unless the opportunity presents itself, I'll leave the New World be. Maybe.

Here's my budget.

budgetb.jpg


A positive cash flow is good! I'll definitely bump the education slider to the max (haven't done it yet, because I want to actually let things run for a week before I make economic decisions), but I think the other sliders can stay where they are (maybe move up Admin; haven't decided yet).

Politics and parties:

rulingpartiesandreforms.jpg


I had no idea the Dutch still had slavery in 1836. I've learned something today, always a lovely fringe benefit with PDS games. I'm going to put the Nationalists into power once I've got the cash to build factories, but I'm not going State Capitalism yet in case my capitalists get frisky. At this stage in the game, any factory is better than no factory.

Dutch technology:

firsttech.jpg


I've got every first tier tech except Early Railroad. As a smaller country, I'll need to try to pick up a tech advantage, so you'll see I'm starting with Positivism to boost my literacy rate. I could hold off on these with Japan because my neighbors were lower tech than me -- not so for the Netherlands!

POPs:

populationv.jpg


I should really call myself Java featuring the Netherlands at this stage, given those cultural differences! You'll note my NF is to boost Clergy, right in line with my plans to get literacy skyrocketing as soon as possible.

Dutch Southeast Asia:

dutchseasia.jpg


This will be the theater I intend to make my initial gains in. With a bit of luck, some conquests here will get me into GP status, and they shouldn't be terribly taxing. I'm still a conservative kind of guy, though, so I'll boost my odds.

Army increase:

buildinguparmy.jpg


I want to finish these wars as quickly as possible, because I'm hoping my new possessions will help fuel my economy enough to industrialize. Three more brigades of infantry (for a total of 5 in theater) should be ample, although I may need to build another transport or two.

My first target?

justifywaragainstjohore.jpg


See? I'm learning from my mistakes! :) My planned order of conquest, infamy depending, is Johore, Brunei, and Atjeh. Johore will provide me with gold, Brunei nicer borders (and, of course, oil), Atjeh... well, Atjeh is just the border neatness and the easy target. With luck, I'll have all three beaten in five years, ten at the outside (in case I get bad luck with infamy). Since I can declare war on Belgium any time I want, this shouldn't hamper my flexibility in Europe. Especially with two new allies: the Prussians and the British! (Weirdly, my diplomats teleported here. I sent the requests, then loaded up the game to check something, and found both requests accepted.)

My first gameplay update should cover these conquests. I'm going to play today/tonight and have that update for you tomorrow (let's get started with a bang, shall we?) If I can't beat those three countries with 5 brigades, I don't deserve to play AHD anyway.

If you think I'm being a fool, of course, that's what comments are for (as long as you're polite). The Danes offered me an alliance, FYI, but I told them to go jump in a lake; like I want war with Prussia!