The wicked Hun has the blood of innocent Arabs and Indians who the Tsar definitely cares about and isn't just cynically using as a justification for expansionism on his hands! We'll get the Papacy next time!
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I wouldn't say it would just be the right. A huge number of Polish civilians would benefit greatly from a buffer state... Or at least pushing the frontier into Germany.
1887-1890 – The Centre Shall Hold
The 1880s were a watershed decade in Tatar politics. Ever since the advent of constitutional government in Poland in 1840, Tatars and Mongols had invested their political energies into political currents that were committedly loyal to the Polish state, whether they were religious conservatives or secularising Belugunutists. Between 1863 and 1866, 1872 and 1875 and 1881 and 1883 national governments had depended upon the support of Hindu-Muslim deputies in the Duma to maintain their power. Although they had one some concessions for their community, they repeatedly been strung along and betrayed by the Jewish parties who had often used them as little more than pawns in their parliamentary games. Muslims and Hindus could not claim to enjoy the claim to enjoy the same rights as Jews in the Polish empire in anything more than name, and most vexingly of all the Brusilov Line remained stubbornly in place – marooning half of Poland’s Altaic peoples from political representation. Although the majority of the Tatar-Mongol political community remained committed to the vision of a reform Polish empire, with the Belugunutists increasingly dominant within the Duma party, some intellectuals were turning towards more radical horizons.
These were the Pan-Turanists. Like the Belugunutists, they believed in a single Turco-Mongolic ethnic community united by shared history, language and culture – although they had a more expansive idea of a Turanian ethnic family featuring the Ugric peoples and even the Alans. Where they differed was in the belief that their race had no future in Poland and needed to gain their independence in order to fulfil their destiny. The Turanists found a standard-bearer for their cause at the end of 1886 in the form of Oban Batur. Batur had a long and distinguished career in the imperial army, fighting wars on behalf of the Tsar since the 1850s and rising to the rank of major general. Having fought at the siege of Warsaw, he resigned from the military at the conclusion of the Beijing War – having been disgusted at the perceived maltreatment of Tatar soldiers and officers by their Jewish superiors. After returning to civilian life, Batur was approached by a group of Turanist intellectuals in his home city of Tver and invited to lead a slate of separatist candidates against the local Belugunutist establishment in the city at the next election – giving birth to the Tverian Congress.
The 1887 election, the first contested under the new mass franchise, had a great air of uncertainty to it as Poland’s political parties struggled to find electorates to sustain them in the coming era. Petr Orlov had high hopes that he would be rewarded by the people as the grand liberator, but expectations would quickly turn to horror as the first returns came in. The Constitutionalist lost a quarter of their vote share and a catastrophic 109 seats. The National Alliance, finding a ready-made core vote among the smallholders of the countryside and the pious across the empire, fared much better – largely maintaining its 1881 vote share but gaining nearly a hundred new seats to surge far ahead of the liberals as the Duma’s dominant faction. Notably, 1887 was the year when the socialists made a real electoral impact. Trudoviks won a shade under a tenth of the vote, securing strong support among both Jews and minorities in a manner the other national parties had struggled to in the past. Although this was only enough to win 11 seats, a parliamentary foothold but a fragile one, they had cemented themselves as players of national significance. Elsewhere, the minority parties had mixed fortunes, as both the Christian and Hindu-Muslim Blocks dropped vote share but the former gained seats while the latter lost them. Two of the Hindu-Muslim Block’s losses were inflicted by Oban Batur and the Turanists in the city of Tver – providing the Duma with its first openly separatist deputies.
Left to Right: Stepan Kostenko, Petr Orlov, Vasiliy Vlasov and Yildilz Kazimzade
The election results left the Duma extremely delicately poised. The National Alliance had won 235 seats, agonisingly short of a majority. A strong caucus on the left of the Constitutional Party led by Stepan Kostenko called for the Prime Minister Petr Orlov to resist the pressure to resign and instead seek to cobble together an alliance with the Hindu-Muslim and Christian Blocks and even the Trudoviks. Such a ministry, dubbed a “coalition of chaos” by the right-wing press, would likely be pushed towards a radical agenda involving social reform and the abolition of the Brusilov line. Petr Orlov was left in a difficult position. He was instinctively reluctant to agree to such an alliance, fearing it would split the party, permanently sully liberalism with a radical image and force him to go against his own personal, moderate, beliefs.
Equally, the National Alliance were a problematic potential partner. Agudah Yisrael’s Yildilz Kazimzade, Prime Minister between 1875 and 1881, remained by far the most prominent of the Alliance’s deputies and was a hero to many on the Right for his achievements in government in the 1870s and forthright defence of conservative Jewish values. He was likely the Alliance’s preferred choice for Prime Minister. Yet Orlov made it clear to the conservatives that he would be unwilling to support a Rightist government but would have a different attitude towards a moderate premier. The Alliance therefore presented Vasiliy Vlasov, a centre-right National Conservative, to the Tsar. A new National Alliance minority government was then approved in the Duma, with the consent of the Constitutionalists. Vlasov’s government was predominantly made up of moderates, but did contain a few key hardliners – not least Kazimzade himself, who remained an influential force on the right both as a minister and through his parliamentary strength as the leading figure in the Agudah Yisrael.
Orlov’s decision to facilitate a right-wing government and turn his nose at the opportunity to push for genuinely radical change left much of the Constitutionalist left angry and despondent. A small gang of deputies were convinced that the aftermath of the election had proven that the centrist party establishment was committed to frustrating those who hoped for serious lasting change. A gang of eight deputies led by Stepan Kostenko therefore decided to abandon the Constitutional Party and found their own organisation – the Democratic Party. The Democrats in many ways had more in common with the Trudoviks than their former liberal allies – standing for social reform, universal suffrage, minority rights and an end to the Brusilov Line, albeit within the context of a stable social order. Within the Duma, they would attempt to forge links across the Left and minority parties to build consensus around a future reformist programme.
For the new government, the first major issue to confront was, as ever, education. It had been barely a decade and a half since the last significant expansion of schooling in Poland, under the government of David Israel in the early 1870s, and literacy rates had grown markedly since then. Yet coverage remained far short of the government’s ambitions and lagged behind the empire's European contemporaries. It therefore set aside funds for a huge expansion of the system of schools to guarantee a full six or seven years of elementary education to all subjects of the empire, with some areas receiving the benefit of high schools. As before, the schools were to be funded by the state but administered by religious institutions according the denominations of the local population. However, in agreement with the liberals, a national curriculum was produced that would be formulated independently of any religious body, while the schools themselves would be forced to submit to regular state inspections to ensure standards. It was hoped that, after decades of political conflict over the issue, these reforms might produce an education system that both the religious and secularists could accept.
The 1880s were a time of arctic exploration. Earlier in the decade, Poland had made efforts to properly map and exert a degree of state power over even the more isolated and remote lands of northern Siberia. At the end of the decade they brought the same process to bear in North America. Setting out from Grigoria, Polish explorers traversed the desolate lands of the extreme north of the continent, reaching the frozen waters of the Hudson Bay and Baffin Island in Nunavut. They claimed these territories for the Polish crown and established a small number of tiny outposts to solidify their authority. The Polish excursions in the north sparked tensions with Denmark, whose relations with Kiev had otherwise been very strong in recent years but who saw Nunavut as a part of their traditional area of influence in Canada. These disputes found their resolution through Kiev’s agreement to send a nominal payment to the Danes to compensate for their surrender of their claims to the northern territories and the two powers’ guarantee of one another’s American borders.
The Beijing War of 1884-86 was only the opening act of the breakdown of the relative European peace that had held through most of the 19th century. Over the course of the past half century, the Holy Roman Empire had fought a number of wars against its western neighbours that had seen it gain a number of new territories. But none came close to the decisiveness and scale of the French War of 1886-1891. The Empire’s truce with the Poles in 1886, and the agreement of each power not to interfere in the other’s affairs, had given the Germans a free hand pursue its territorial ambitions in the west. Fighting a coalition of the Abbadids, Italians and Skots, the Germans swept all enemies asunder to seize control of the majority of France. The Skots were the worst impacted, with their once sprawling continental domains reduced to an exclave around the city of Paris. The European balance of power had been upended. All her great states would have to re-access their position in this new order.
- 2
Well now in the international sphere the HRE have really thrown the cat among the pigeons. The Poles better be aware.
The "Gang of Eight" reminds of the UK's own gang of four back in 1981. I think that has the possibilty of being a much more significant shift. To begin with - it will split the vote, and likely make the conservative task at election easier. But ... with new ideas sometimes comes new vigour. They may yet stand where once their forebears stood, and do to them what Labour did the Liberals in the UK.
One can dream, right?
The "Gang of Eight" reminds of the UK's own gang of four back in 1981. I think that has the possibilty of being a much more significant shift. To begin with - it will split the vote, and likely make the conservative task at election easier. But ... with new ideas sometimes comes new vigour. They may yet stand where once their forebears stood, and do to them what Labour did the Liberals in the UK.
One can dream, right?
Indeed, the most obvious location to push the border westward would be Silesia - an area with Polish history (it was a part of the early Medieval Kingdom), and a mixed German-Krakowian population. It could also be possible to envision Bohemia - also home to a mixed German-Slav population - could potentially be separated.
The issue of so many of our key cities being in the West has also perhaps lessened a bit during the 19th century - with a triangle around Kiev, Minsk and Moscow being the heart of our industrial revolution while industrialisation has been slower and patchier in the Western provinces (most on that in the next update).
Perhaps a mixture of both. We didn't see an instant majority for the Trudoviks here, but it is clear that the change in the franchise has shifted things up - principally hurting the liberals and helping the socialists. It appears that the upper working class may be distributed fairly similarly to the middle class in terms of the balance between left and right. But left wing workingmen are more likely to be socialist than their wealthier compatriots.
And we can see the beginning of an Anti-Brusilov alignment. The Trudoviks, Democrats and Hindu-Muslims (and Turanists) are all anti-Brusilov, the Right are strongly pro-Brusilov, the Constitutionalists and Christians equivocal on the issue. Almost splitting Poland into three uneven thirds!
The Right did get the cut of the green in terms of how the electoral cycle turned out. A long period of stability in the 1870s for a radical government to push its agenda, and then peace again at the end of the 1880s for a more centre-right administration. They also benefitted form the fact they were the ones in office for two of our biggest expansions in education, and so had the chance to guide the way they turned out.
It is always nice when the game helps you out to make the story feel more grand!
I've tried to make our political evolution towards a democratic system feel more natural than how it often appears in game with V2 (you wait until the liberals get enough support, then pass 20 political reforms, then the socialists appear and its time for 20 social reforms). So glad you've enjoyed
. That Polish German border is a real danger for both parties. Although the southern flank around the Carpathians is easy to defend - the area between Kiev and Berlin is basically all flat land, with few natural barriers. If one side gets the jump on the other they could find themselves deep in enemy territory before anyone can react.
2 huge wars, and still not yet one empire dismantling. every time one starts, I get my popcorn to see which countries will get released but alas
Alliances with the countries on the other side of HRE and Papal states can be beneficial on the long run
I'm anxious to see how the next election will get shaped with all the new voters. Maybe a bit more open to populism? Reactionaries making a comeback? Socialists surprising everybody? Or more or less the same ratios? One thing I know is, Tatars will not be fooled for a 3rd time (I hope
Well, Great Wars get unlocked at some point in the 1890s - at that allows for really big changes in the peace deals
.The HRE has gone away and become something of a monster. (In game these gains came over a longer period of decades with their last big war ending in 1891 - but I've smooshed into a single incident for our TL). Suddenly, Poland doesn't look like the big monster coming to take over Europe anymore ...
We saw some important change in the election, and the socialists are already pushing on as major players. With separatists factions breathing down their necks, the unionist Tatars will know they have to be more forceful the next time they get a sniff of power, or else they could pay for it dearly.
The HRE was much stronger than me at the start of that war (with so much of my army fighting in Asia). I only managed to get a WP by grouping all my armies and picking off their troops one by one. But it was looking tricky for a time that is for sure!
With the HRE emerging as an absolute continent-spanning monster - the Big One is surely only a matter of time
.Such cynicism! The Tsar cares for the freedom of all the world's peoples - he is the Grand Liberator!
A cracking update, a great victory (although the unfortunate cities of old Poland got occupied again) and an ally propped up.
That's without mentioning the march towards real popular representation.
Is the purple area above Mongolia an enclave of the Shanxi Clique? That's some border gore that could be removed before Darkest Hour comes.
Almost missed this comment!
Yes, every decade or so we seem to give the vote to a wider section of society. Before you know it the women and Yakuts will be asking for it!
And that purple enclave is indeed a Shanxi exclave, and I do indeed plan on letting it quietly disappear when we go over to DH
.- 2
Once again the mainstream liberal tendency seems to be afflicted with a strong case of Zoolander Disorder: incapable of turning left. Always pretty grim to see how fast the reformists will give up any pretence to social justice and just side with their class allies, so thank goodness the left don’t seem to be taking it lying down!
Germany is truly horrific, and something needs to be done about that sharpish. Often seems to happen in megacampaigns that you get to the 19th century and a whole host of stable nation-state blobs already exist, so the world just becomes like a game of Risk. Would love to see a bit more diversity back on the map of Europe before DH.
Oh, and would it be possible to get a list of prime ministers? Would love to see them all in one place.
Germany is truly horrific, and something needs to be done about that sharpish. Often seems to happen in megacampaigns that you get to the 19th century and a whole host of stable nation-state blobs already exist, so the world just becomes like a game of Risk. Would love to see a bit more diversity back on the map of Europe before DH.
Oh, and would it be possible to get a list of prime ministers? Would love to see them all in one place.
Seems like the conservatives will be able to make hay out of divisions on the center and left, and I imagine that the Tatar nationalists would prove a handy foil for right-wing leaders. But in the long run I expect the new ideologies to be formidable indeed.
As for the Holy Roman Empire, is anybody in Poland considering the Morgenthau Plan? Given the basis of the Polish regime you wouldn't even need to change the name.
As for the Holy Roman Empire, is anybody in Poland considering the Morgenthau Plan? Given the basis of the Polish regime you wouldn't even need to change the name.
Could a strong alliance with a revanchist Skotland followed by a joint war help with taming the new beastier HRE?
the story is taking shape, and it's a joy to read
HRE must be destroyed
dilde, fikirde, işte birlik (unity in language, idea, action) quote by İsmail Gaspıralı
nice to also hear from the colonization aspect of the game. it's said the game for colonization is EU4, but I find Vic2 more exciting in that sense. any oil/gold provinces in far north america yet?
HRE must be destroyedmaybe there'll be an election front?
it's about to be 1890, now I'm expecting to pounce on HRE together with Denmark, Skots, Italy and Abbadids. HRE is huge, but has no natural barriers on neither of the sides.
I sincerely hope we won't have to wait for Tatar Martin Luther King for the Empire's minorities to gain some measure of equality.
Also, that's an insane Germany; Poland needs to build a coalition to turn back the evil of the Hun yesterday.
Also, that's an insane Germany; Poland needs to build a coalition to turn back the evil of the Hun yesterday.
Well, with the socialists and Turanists both making waves, I imagine Poland's political scene will remain volatile for some time yet. The Constitutionalists seem doggedly determined to chart a course down the center, and consequently have ended up taking flak from both ends; I imagine they'll probably wither away if they can't find some strong position to take a stand on or yet another meteoric figure to rally around, with their position gradually eroding as the Left and the Right grow increasingly polarized.
Curious that the Trudnoviks have fewer seats than the Christian Block despite winning a larger fraction of the popular vote. I imagine the latter are benefiting from a target demographic concentrated largely in a few key districts?
Meanwhile, it seems like the world's first Great War is looming just over the horizon...
Curious that the Trudnoviks have fewer seats than the Christian Block despite winning a larger fraction of the popular vote. I imagine the latter are benefiting from a target demographic concentrated largely in a few key districts?
Meanwhile, it seems like the world's first Great War is looming just over the horizon...
- 1
The Great War approaches... and I say that Poland is screwed. I mean, it'll be the HRE and the Papal States against them. And alliances with other countries is unlikely because destroying the HRE-Papal States axis would just create a Poland-domination. And Poland is Jewish, not Christian, so...
Also,I think that the Tatar Revolt draws ever closer. If you're unlucky, it'll occur during the war against the above alliance. In that case, Revanchist Fascist Poland would be likely...
Also,I think that the Tatar Revolt draws ever closer. If you're unlucky, it'll occur during the war against the above alliance. In that case, Revanchist Fascist Poland would be likely...
- 1
We're largely past the point where religion is all that relevant to geopolitics, at least in Europe. The Germans are at the moment a much more pressing threat to the Skots and Abbadids than Poland. They can think of the balance of power when the Hun isn't across the channel. For now Poland is their only hope of a savior.
1890-1892 – A Slow Divorce
The Beijing War, and then the Empire’s great victories in the French War, provoked an arms race between the Poles and Germans as both rapidly expanded the sizes of their armed forces, competed to introduce the newest technologies and construct the most devastating weapons of war. Between 1887 and 1892 alone the Polish standing army increased in terms of manpower by more than 50% - rising from around 300,000 to almost 500,000, with millions in reserve. The Poles were also committed to launching themselves as a major naval power, building dozens of cruisers and battleships as they sought to compete with the greatest maritime empires. At war for the better part of a decade, the Germans military ballooned in size – with the Empire choosing not only to maintain the size of its armed forced at the conclusion of the French War, but continue to invest greater men and material into them.
The Poles had not sat idly by while their German neighbours had made war upon half of Europe. While the Holy Roman Empire was in the closing days of its French War in 1891, the Poles took advantage of one the routine border skirmishes between the Serbs and Pannonians to launch a short, victorious and relatively bloodless invasion of Serbia. With the Empire otherwise engages, and the Papacy reluctant to go to war with Poland again so recently after its latest humbling, the Serbs were left completely isolated. Polish forces easily swatted the Serb army aside and threatened to occupy Belgrade before the Serbs agreed to a peace deal in which they surrendered Vojvodina – leaving their capital city with little buffer before the Pannonian border.
While the 19th century had been one of remarkable internal peace for Poland – a nation with a millennia long history of civil strife – it is important to note that low level banditry and occasional rebellions on the wild fringes of the empire had never been entirely stamped out. However, the 1880s had seen an escalation of violence in the ever-troublesome region of the South Caucuses and Polish Persia. Here, a dizzying array of ethnic, religious, tribal and personal animosities had made feuding frequent – but during this period popular energies were increasingly directed against the state, as the Polish government had attempted to tighten its control over its southern territories in an effort to better project its power into the Middle East and Persia. The question of how to deal with this unrest caused a notable divide among the National Alliance and their nominal liberal allies. The government favoured a harsh line and placed the region under effective marshal law – garrisoning it with tens of thousands of troops and ruthless squashing any glimmer of dissent. While some on the Constitutionalist benches saw this as a regretful but necessary measure, the majority believed it to be needlessly heavy handed, fearing it would only further estrange the region’s peoples from Kiev.
Through the 1880s the expansion of Polish industry accelerated significantly. The proportion of the imperial population working in factories rose from 3.6% to 6% between the 1881 and 1891 censuses, with the raw numerical tally doubling to around two million. This stampede into the cities was the result of three key factories – the continued poverty of the landless peasants who had not been able to secure smallholdings of their own, a steep rise in wages following the abolition of the anti-labour laws at the beginning of the decade and the continued prosperity of the Polish industrial economy, now increasingly exporting to foreign markets as well as catering to domestic demand.
The distribution of industry around the empire had changed relatively little since 1870. Its beating heart was still the triangle around Minsk, Kiev and Moscow, with the Belarussian city remaining the most heavily industrialised in the empire with nearly a quarter of the population of the Minsk region employed in factory work. However, the gap these core cities and the rest of the empire had narrowed somewhat – with the likes of Smolensk, Lvov, Danzig and Pomerania rising to become important manufacturing centres in their own right. Elsewhere, a large stretch of settlements in south-eastern Ukraine emanating out of the coalfields of the Donbass were increasingly important industrial centres. It is notable that within the European portion of the empire the west and north – traditionally among Poland’s richest lands – were significantly more agricultural than the east, although the first signs of industrialisation were beginning to reach into these territories too. Even in faraway Siberia lumber processing was leading the way in pushing the region away from a solely extractive economy as wider Polish society continued to change.
Almost every industry had showed impressive growth. Textiles and alcohol production both doubles over the course of the 1880s, although the home goods had a less successful decade, enduring a sharp decline in the middle of decade before recovering strongly around 1890. The heavy industrial economy was also very heavy. Output of arms, ships and machine tools rose by around 50% over the course of the decade. Yet, while textiles had consistently been the best performing sector of the Polish economy for nigh on half a century – steel forged ahead in the 1880s, with output trebling by 1891 allowing Poland to overtake the Holy Roman Empire as the world’s largest producer.
Above all else, the boom in steel was a result of a craze for railway construction sweeping the empire. Poland had possessed railways since the middle of the century, yet its rail network had not extended much further than the major cities and areas with important industrial goods like the coalfields of the Donbass. In the 1880s speculative investment ranging of mania had powered an incredible surge in rail construction, making use of the latest technological advances. Thousands of locomotives were put into service on new lines that connected virtually every major settlement of note in European Poland and drove into the east. Indeed, this period witnessed the construction of the longest railway line in the world – the Trans-Siberian Railway, that connected Kiev with the Pacific port of Okhotsk, one of the grandest engineering projects of the age. It is notable that these feats were not solely accomplished with private money. The railway boom had been set off under the liberal governments of 1881-1887 on private initiate, but as some investments turned bad, companies began to fail and projects risked being abandoned the state stepped in during the conservative period in power – much to the chagrin of their Constitutionalist partners. Government subsidies kept the largescale expansion of rail infrastructure going into the 1890s and saw the Polish state acquire part or full ownership in a substantial portion of her railways – most notably the Trans-Siberian itself, which had been acquired by the government after its initial owners had fallen into insolvency.
The rising cost of education, the imperial administration, construction projects and above all the military had seen public expenditure soar to unheard of hights. While the bouyant economy offset this to some extent, there remained a yawning fiscal deficit that needed to be addressed. The issue of how to address this issue vexed the Vlasov government throughout its term – with few options appealing to the administration. From the political Left, the idea of a proportional income tax – levying higher rates on those on higher incomes – was put forward and quickly found supporters in the Trudoviks and Democrats. What brought the issue to the centre of the national political debate was the decision of Petr Orlov and the Constitutionalist leadership to come out in favour of the income tax ahead of the 1892 election – placing them in the same camp as the Leftists and putting clear red water between the two governmental allies of the previous half decade.
The widening divide between the Constitutionalists and the National Alliance was not solely a matter of economic policy. With Agudah Yisrael ensconced in government, the old spectre of clerical power riled many liberal diehards – many of whom were reflexively opposed to Rabbinical influence over the secular world. More pointedly, there were concerns that Prime Minister Vlasov and his moderates were struggling to keep the lid on the radicals the National Alliance. The former premier Yildilz Kazimzade had been a key minister in his government and continued to dominate the Agudah Yisrael while holding significant influence among the Right of the National Conservatives. Indeed, the Vlasov ministry had never garnered the same sort of devoted enthusiasm that Kazimzade’s had. This placed the premier under pressure to shift to the right, and at the very least offer rhetorical support to centrality of Judaism to the Polish state. Naturally, this rankled with the liberals and contributed to the lobbying of a cohort of younger Constitutionalists who pushed their leadership to distance itself from the conservatives, for both ideological reasons and for fear of being outflanked by the Democrats and even Trudoviks.
As the 1892 election approached, it was clear that both the National Alliance and the Constitutionalists were itching for an opportunity to abandon their marriage of convenience and set out in a new direction.
- 3
Well now in the international sphere the HRE have really thrown the cat among the pigeons. The Poles better be aware.
The "Gang of Eight" reminds of the UK's own gang of four back in 1981. I think that has the possibilty of being a much more significant shift. To begin with - it will split the vote, and likely make the conservative task at election easier. But ... with new ideas sometimes comes new vigour. They may yet stand where once their forebears stood, and do to them what Labour did the Liberals in the UK.
One can dream, right?
The HRE really have become a monster, now the world's undisputed premier power.
I may have stolen their name from the SDP splitter
. The Democrat split has contributed towards a Constitutionalist drift towards the left late during this term, as they fret over seeing their voters defect to the new party. We shall have to see if this manoeuvre successfully prevents too many left leaning liberals going over to the new party, or if the liberal vote is so badly split it hands power to the Right. And then there are the rising Trudovikds to worry about! 1892 will be a big election.
Once again the mainstream liberal tendency seems to be afflicted with a strong case of Zoolander Disorder: incapable of turning left. Always pretty grim to see how fast the reformists will give up any pretence to social justice and just side with their class allies, so thank goodness the left don’t seem to be taking it lying down!
Germany is truly horrific, and something needs to be done about that sharpish. Often seems to happen in megacampaigns that you get to the 19th century and a whole host of stable nation-state blobs already exist, so the world just becomes like a game of Risk. Would love to see a bit more diversity back on the map of Europe before DH.
Oh, and would it be possible to get a list of prime ministers? Would love to see them all in one place.
Haha. Well, five years supporting a conservative government has left the liberals sick of coalitions with the right (something about that story sounds familiar
), and they are now looking at other options. Of course, Orlov would ultimately want a liberal majority, and certainly a wouldn't be eager to share a government with socialists,, but we shall see what happens after the next election. I remember at the CK2 to EU4 conversion I had to drastically edit down the size of the HRE as they were already continent spanning. Thankfully that stopped them go too crazy in EU4, but yes - they've become a bit ridiculous at this stage
. Maybe a bigger problem for the balance of power is that Skotland, the Abbadids and Denmark had either very modest or no real industrial revolutions - meaning that they really got left behind by the HRE, Poland and the Papacy (the 4th industrial power at this point in the game, having been overtaken by New Andalucia not long ago). Fear of the Tatar is always going to be a big force in Polish politics. Under the current moderate leadership they are restrained from running too hard on the issue - but if the Hard Right gets back in power they are less likely to hold back any punches.
I may just have to use that name if we ever do get the chance to totally disestablish a Great Power!
We certainly won't have to look far to find other anti-German powers now - but no spoiling the road to the Great War!
(Although that may be a spoiler in itself )the story is taking shape, and it's a joy to read
dilde, fikirde, işte birlik (unity in language, idea, action) quote by İsmail Gaspıralı
nice to also hear from the colonization aspect of the game. it's said the game for colonization is EU4, but I find Vic2 more exciting in that sense. any oil/gold provinces in far north america yet?
maybe there'll be an election front?
it's about to be 1890, now I'm expecting to pounce on HRE together with Denmark, Skots, Italy and Abbadids. HRE is huge, but has no natural barriers on neither of the sides.
I'm glad you are still enjoying the Tatar side of the story! Your enthusiasm for that aspect has pushed me to put greater focus on it since the EU4 days
.And yes! The time for final showdown is going to have to come at some point ...
The Dems will be running independently in the coming election, but there are no guaruntees we won't see any pacts in the future.
A lot will depend on the next election. If the Left can get it in some form it will likely push strongly for minority right, but if the right can maintain their grip or even win a a majority they will have to wait. We also have to remember that the minorities aren't monolithic - the Christians would see their influence shrink if Brusilov were abolished and may be less enthusiastic for a third of the Duma to go to the Hindus and Muslims in perpituity.
Its frightening just how big they are. Their population is now similar or even ahead of mine (including colonies), but much of their land is richer, population more educated and tech more advanced. We can field similar sized armies, but their troops are superior.
And the liberals have become tired of that centrist alliance - but will this be enough to protect them from pressures on left and right?
Yes, the Truds are fishing across a wider area - in the Jewish heartland and in minority seats, while the Christian Block is just focussed on those areas they populate. So they can win more seats with less votes, while having a lower ceiling.
Certainly. Of course, in an age where the Pope is the 2nd most powerful Christian state religion isn't out the wibdow. But power politics are a bigger motivation in diplomacy than religion now. But no spoilers for the diplomacy ahead!
As for a Tatar revolt, they now have a centralised separatist leadership. Any rebellion would likely be far more devastating than the localised risings we've had in the past.
Excellent, a good old fashioned arms race is exactly what we like to see in a Vicky AAR!
International tensions are getting really scary. Feels like the Great War could happen at any moment.
Also, I want to say how much I enjoy the really granular details of coalition management and opinions shifting. This AAR is making me want to actually try Vic2 someday.
Also, I want to say how much I enjoy the really granular details of coalition management and opinions shifting. This AAR is making me want to actually try Vic2 someday.
I am really looking forward to the 1892 election. It should be an absolute delight.
And perhaps - in my fond dreams - it will produce another result that will make the Brusilov line fall.
And perhaps - in my fond dreams - it will produce another result that will make the Brusilov line fall.