Chapter VII - That was... anti-climactic... Or was it?!
In the last update, I was wondering when will the Civil War finally break out. Well, it didn't take too long... A day after the electoral victory of the Republicans (the now-only Liberal party), I got the 'South Carolina Secession Convention' event, telling me that South Carolina won't stand for a Republican Government, and that they will secede from the Union. Bad news, I guess. Question is, bad news to whom?
And it will only get worse...
Georgia and Alabama were quick to follow. I think it's time to mobilize the reserves. It's early June, and it will take until late August for them to be ready. Shortly after came Arkansas, Virginia, North Carolina, Tennesse, Mississippi, Luisiana... When the war broke out, almost every Southern State was on the wrong side of the front, except for maybe Florida and Texas.
Secession is spreading like a disease...
Now, the situation. The CSA supposedly has 24 Divisions, while we currently only have 16. That will soon change though, as my reserves are mobilizing quickly. Almost half of my factories are now in Confederate territory, which is bad. Still, we have reserves of the necessary materials and money as well, so not that bad. When I had the opportunity, I called Brazil to help me in my war. That should help a bit. (To be honest, I'm a bit worried that they might score some separate peace with the Confederates, gaining some territories in the South, which then won't come back to me when the war is over. That wouldn't be nice. I guess I would have to force them to give those territories back through war
) On a sidenote: the Whigs are ruling the Confederate States. Now I know why I didn't really like them to begin with. As a result of the Gold Rush, California has some nice huge POPs, so I quickly converted about 150000 Yankee Farmers and Labourers to Soldiers, so now I have 75 Manpower (perviously I had -150 because of the mobilization). Now I only need to wait for the reserves to mobilize.
In an event ('Confederate Agents Attack!'), I got the opportunity to attack Canada and the UK. I turned it down, as a two-front war would be a pretty bad idea at the moment. A day later, Kentucky seceded and took the four Infantry divisions I got from a mobilizing event at the start of the war. They only returned into the pool though, so there's nothing to worry about.
The situation isn't too bright at the moment...
...but it's getting better!
When the reserves were ready, I still only could deploy 2/3 of them, because the rest came from now-CSA territory... No matter, when I liberate those provinces, I will be able to recruit them, and I already outnumber the Confederates to almost 2:1! The troops are deployed on the Northern border of the secessionists, and I ordered a front-wide push. Most of the CSA forces are understrength, so I expect some quick progress.
The battle is fierce, but we are definitely winning.
The war was mostly in my favour, except in Panama, where a small Confederate force could resist my troops for a long time due to bad terrain, so I ordered a withdrawal there. Meanwhile, in an event, I decided to press the Cherokee to support us in the war, but they betrayed us and became a Satelite of the CSA! Are they stupid? They really want to support the slaveholders? Come on!... They are not involved in the war by the way. No matter. As things look right now, this war won't last for four years.
Things look good again!
The amphibious invasion of Alexandria. The goal is to liberate the province and thus allowing the reserves there to be finally deployed.
The American Civil War, started in July, 1860, is already decided in December, the same year.
In February, 1861, the Confederate States sent a Peace Offer, which I promptly refused. There should be some event soon that stops this bloodshed outside of the normal game mechanics. I don't want the CSA to remain along with the USA! And it did. On February 15, 1861, an event fired telling me that the die-hard secessionists have taken the fight to the hills and are now waging a Guerilla war. Hopefully some restoration event-chain will help me get the Dixies back into citizens soon... Oh, yeah, and some of the CSA forces are now rebels. Not that they pose any threat or anything, I'm just saying. It's time to demobilize the temporary Soldiers in California. And the tons of Soldiers the AI CSA created...
I had to cheat again to take back the territories the stupid Apache sold to Mexico. Why didn't the event-chain realize that those should be sold to me now?!
Some time after the Civil War, Utah decided that the name Deseret would be more fitting, and seceded from the Union. Shouldn't that be negated by the end of the war??
In September, 1861, I finally recieved the blueprints for Monitors! That's some progress, I would say! I will start to build some right away! Also, I've got myself involved in a new war with France and soon after with Spain and even with the whole British Empire, to defend my Satelite, Mexico! That might even be interesting, because the country is currently in a very bad shape after the Civil War because of the Dixie rebels all over the place and the gazillions of Soldier POPs the CSA left for me as a birthday present...
I also didn't notice when Colombia managed to suffer a revolution, breaking away from being my puppet... They will pay for that! Soon...
Alright. So we have a Great War on our hands, against France, the UK, British India and Spain. It wouldn't really be a problem to fight any of them separately, but together they are kinda scary... Alright-alright-alright. Calm down! We won't let those pesky Europeans interfere in our interests! We are still mobilized, that's good. We have some steamer warships, that's also good. They are only Commerce Raiders, that's bad. We are building some Monitors right now, that's good. It's still one and a half year until they are finished, that's bad... I think I don't really have the power to fight an offensive war right now, so I will try to weather it out for the time being. Protect my shores and my interests (ie. Mexico), but that's it. In theory, I have more Divisions than any of the other participants (due to the mobilized reserves) and I will be fighting on my own turf, but that's far from enough, as the UK has ten times as many ships as I do, and even France has about 4-5 times as many. Mexico only has 6 divisions and 3 ships, so they won't be able to protect themselves. To be honest, I hope there will be a nice little event to end this war quickly...
The first invasion came from the North, in Concord. I intended to defend much of the East Coast with my entire Navy organised into a huge fleet of 34 ships (some of them were transports though), and it payed off, when the 30-something fleet of the enemy came to me. It was a long and bloody battle. Still, we have won. An important lesson of this battle was that the new steamer ships are not even on the same level of competence as the clipper ships were! Out of the 34 starting ships, 25 survived, and 20 of these were Commerce Raiders, and non of them were under 90% strength, while I lost most of my clipper fleet! So, I decided to chase down the French Fleet and destroy them once and for all! Of course that is only a fragment of their Navy, but still, I won't pass the opportunity to destroy 25 or so ships (most of them Man-O-Wars) while I can!
The battle of Chesapeake Bay.
Some Spanish soldiers also made it on to the shores of Concord, but they were quickly defeated, and garrisons were organised to hold off any new invaders. That was quickly dealt with, but then a ton more British and French came knocking on the door of the White House, so I had to move a few troops there and like that wasn't enough, India started to methodically conquer California. That's not good, I have no troops to spare to defend the West Coast!
When the situation finally stabilized in the North-East, the French lunched another invasion in Texas. The were pretty successfull with that, too! At least at first. Meanwhile, Mexico did exactly zero to help, even though the whole affair was started because of them! Alright, they sent me one division of Infantry. Thanks for nothing...
By September 1862, my Navy melted down to three Commerce Raiders, but we sunk about 50 French ships, so that's a fair trade for me. Again, if they weren't ganging up on me, I would be quite able to defeat any of them!
After some heavy fighting and re-organising, we managed to clear Texas of enemy forces, so I could finally turn my attention towards the Wild West, where - as you can see - the situation is far from being optimal...
British Indian troops are occupying most of California and Nevada, and they are marching towards Oregon.
Meanwhile, a large chunk of the British Indian forces decided that they are more needed on the Eastern Coast (where I already defeated most of the enemy by the way) and started to move back on the Oregon Trail. They suffered a lot of attrition by the time they arrived, so they were quickly and harshly dealt with in December 1862. Also important to note that at that time I got the plans for Ironclads. That is reeeally good news! I will no longer build any clippers! At all! (Partially because I can't, but mostly because I don't even want to.) Actually, I can no longer build Commerce Raiders or Monitors either... My current navy is 2 Commerce Raiders, and 5 Monitors will soon be finished, then another 5 in October '63, but after that, there will be only Ironclads (and whatever I get afterwards). Which is good, because that will make my Navy superior to any of my neighbours and even to the Great Powers for now.
The Second Battle of Chesapeake Bay. Note the number of combatants! This battle has been going on for a few months now, and I started only with 2 more Commerce Raiders... Impressive.
In the end, we lost the Second Battle of Chesapeake Bay, losing two Commerce Raiders and two Monitors, but we managed to sink about 50 or so ships in the process. I really miss the combat-results window you get in Hearts of Iron! That would have made an epic screenshot!
(Alright, most of the sunk ships were probably transports, but still! I'm impressed!) Something else I'm missing is a notification when an army starts to occupy one of my provinces. It is pretty annoying when someone invades your nation and you doesn't even know!...
The Battle of Hartford. Those transports didn't came empty, you know.
Of course, the billions of transport ships that we failed to defeat in the Second Battle of Chesapeake Bay didn't came empty: they brought about 12 divisons worth of Britons, Frencmen and Spainards. As you can see in the screenshot above, we are ready for them.
In August, 1863, France arrived to the conclusion that even the combined might of two Great Powers with the help of two other major players is not enough to bring the great nation of the United States of f*ckin' America to its kneels, and they offered a white peace. Which I accepted. Their navy is pretty beaten up (compared to the starting numbers at least), and while I'm sure I do have the ability to build mine up again, I'm not that sure about them. That leaves Spain and the British Empire to be dealt with.
But not for long. Even though I would have been happy to keep on fighting the Spanish at least (if not the British), unfortunately, they were clever enough to offer their peace to Mexico, which was the target of the war to begin with, so when they accepted to return to Status Quo, I was brought with them as well... No matter, I wanted this to be a deffensive war in the first place. Still, when things started to look good for me, I wanted to gain something in the end. Back to everyday life then. Yeah, I guess it was anti-climactic after all...
Which brings us back to the stupid Apache again, selling land to Mexico. Which I then need to cheat back to me. I can't let Mexico have Las Vegas!!! (Actually, I didn't need to cheat this time: when I offered two nice little techs and 10000 bucks, they willingly gave back the land to me, its rightfull owner. Maybe they were grateful that I just saved their collective asses in a long, Great War.)
Oh, yeah, I almost forgot. Deseret, home of the deserters. They went bankrupt during the war, so it is now the perfect time to go and annex them. That will only cost me 1 point of prestige, but will also give some 'badboy' points. I know little about that mechanic though. And as I already mentioned (I think) it is not shown on the interface. You can find out how many you have by a console command, but I don't really want to. I will live with the consequences, because that's how hard I rock!
I expect this to be a short war.
The war with Deseret was pretty short, as expected, lasting about one month. They had 1000 soldiers defending their capital, and that was of course no match for my 70000 strong Army. Then it was only a matter of time to occupy their provinces. They even offered a peace after the defeat of their army which would have given me the two non-capital provinces they had, but that would have been stupid of me to accept. They all belong to me!!!
And now, for something completely different: industrialization!
The Infrastructural situation in 1863. The Eastern Coast is almost fully up-to-date in terms of the railroad system.
This is an industrializing AAR after all!
We currently have Iron Railroads in most of the Eastern parts of the USA, and the rest is already working on it. The only few exceptions are the territories recently gained from natives and Deseret.
Now, on to factories. We currently have 82 factories, but as a consequence of the war with the South, many of our current POPs are soldiers, so I will need to do some serious demobilizing in order to fill them with workors. Funnily enough, South Carolina has more than 40000 Dixie Capitalists, and as a consequence, 16 factories... Of course I won't be able to fill those. By the way, how come I still have slaves when the ruling party has Residence as their Minority Policy? What should I do to free them?? I think there will be an event that abolishes slavery nation-wide. The funniest part is that there are slaves even in New York!
I still want some Soldier POPs though, because I will still wage quite a few wars I guess. Question is, where should I keep them? Obviously where I have the fewest factories. That would be Georgia, Florida, Mississippi, Tennessee and Kentucky. I will have a lot of Dixie Soldiers
While checking out the States, I noticed that Utah has 13 factories!!! WTF?!?!?!?!?! There are only FOUR POPs there! And non of them can work in factories either! Stupid mormons... And I can't even promote three of them because they are non-state-culture... The rest of the States are more or less realistic.
By the way, that's what I really like about this game: even when you are not at war, there's always something to do! Heck, I once tried a game as Switzerland with the intention of not getting myself into war ever. (It didn't turn out as I would have hoped though, as there are some events that force Switzerland into war, and I got my ass handed to me in nice silk wrapping, but it was still fun!
)
For some reason, I thought that Guarantees of Independence are permanent. But that is not the case, and because of that, I missed out on a nice little war in South America against Paraguay. Quite a shame. Now I will start and re-guarantee everyone on sight. That will be mostly the topic of next weeks update: dealing with Central and South America. Plus some proper industrialization.
In March, 1865, it came as no surprise, that the Republicans were re-elected for another term. At the time, the United States of America is the second on the ranking of nations, with only the United Kingdom in its way for eternal glory, and having forced France back to the third place. Farewell for now, and I'll see you next time!
