1920-1929 : Massive Armament
The Portuguese troops fought bravely. But it soon became obvious that Portugal's army was inadequate to defeat the Chinese soundly enough to be able to get anything from them. Therefore, this time too, we chose the easy way out - we called the UK to arms.
While we were still stuck fighting in Nanning, the British came in from India and overwhelmed the Chinese. The result was not in doubt, but we were unlikely to get anything from this war as we were not allowed to negotiate directly with the Chinese. Which it was fair, as it was obvious that Portugal wouldn't have managed to beat the Chinese without the UK's help. We didn't add any wargoal.
This war showed how inadequate Portugal's armed forces were, compared to other GPs.
In November 1921, the war was already over. It ended with Status Quo - but the Chinese had to pay war reparations. That would give us the opportunity to boost our economy and build up an army and a navy for real - it was unacceptable that we couldn't accomplish anything without help from the UK or France.
Meanwhile, Central Europe was a mess. Kaiserslautern belonged to the British after they got it from Bayern while helping Prussia, a while ago. The NGF was still Communist. Several minors had seceded from it, and Hesse-Kassel and Hesse-Darmstadt were also Communists - while the other German minors were Democracies. The NGF was a failed state and there were constantly revolts.
Norway had grabbed another province from Sweden. In the East, Danzig had also declared indpendence from the NGF.
The USA had become quite a powerful country, but it reveled in its isolationism. The only contact we actually had with them was the fight over the sphere of influence.
I had been trying to sphere Italy, but in 1926 France declared war on them. We were friendly with Italy, and we could intervene.
For some reason, we were not allied with France any longer - but we were allied with the UK, Austria and the Russian Empire. We could have intervened and called them to arms - it might have been "interesting". But it would have been risky - they might have not answered the call to arms and we would have been stuck fighting against France - after all Austria was allied with Italy as well and didn't help them.
It would have been different if Italy had been a sphereling of course - then we would have had to intervene.
Our infamy had been at 0 for a while. We had run out of targets - there were very few uncivilized countries in the world. One of them was Cambodia - but it was in our sphere. What do you do if you want to invade a sphereling ?
In AHD Vanilla, you can't do that without editing the save file. But you can let another country remove it from your sphere - and then you can immediately use your influence to decrease the target's opinion of the GP who did that, so that it goes back from friendly to cordial.
I did that with Cambodia - I let the USA unsphere Cambodia, and I immediately used my influence to decrease the opinion of the USA, so that they were back at cordial. Cambodia was up for grabs. Of course I needed to unally it, decrease relations and create a casus belli first.
I did exactly that and by September 1927, Cambodia was part of Portugal's empire.
Sweden went back for a while to being a superpower and I accepted their alliance - without thinking it through. Of course Norway attacked them again and I answered Sweden's call to arms - which made me lose Norway as a sphereling. I chose not to help Sweden in this war as I couldn't care less. Sweden had a huge score just by building ships - somebody should have told them that this is not going to help if your enemy has a land border with you.
In 1927, we were rank #4. We nearly got there in 1881 - before the Great War when the NGF was partitioned. Prestige and Military score were good - but we were lacking in industrial score.
We were now in the era when industralization MUST be profitable. Now we look at our Industrial Power breakdown, it is obvious that compared to the other GPs we had not enough mainland regions. Now it dawns on us - we should have expanded into Spain instead of sphering them. Spain gave us just a meager 16 industrial score - not nearly enough to make a difference.
I explain the problem here :
Sphering a country can kill its factories.
In hindsight, maybe I shouldn't have sphered Spain, but grabbed provinces from them - making sure they stay a failed state in the process, so that their alliances get cancelled all the time. That way I would have gotten a better industrial score for sure. But while I was playing the game, I wasn't aware that sphering a country makes industrialization very hard for it.
My solution while I was playing was to set the national focuses to craftsmen, hoping to get a better industrial score.
By 1929, we were about to sphere Italy (so that we can destroy their economy as well?), who regrettably has lost Piedmont to France. Italy still hasn't an army, though.
Brazil now is in the Netherlands's sphere. There was no way we could get them back into our sphere diplomatically. Both Brazil and the Netherlands had to be punished, as this is unacceptable - Brazil is supposed to be in Portugal's sphere. In 1929, we created a casus belli to make of Brazil a puppet state. As they were in the Netherlands sphere, the Dutch were expected to intervene.
A war with the Dutch was not going to be easy. They had more ships and better naval technologies, while we had more brigades and a better army technology. But our time was running out - or at least we thought at the time.
But we were building a lot of ships - and rally points had been set.
State of the world in August 1929.
World map.