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One thing that was keeping me from starting my own game as S-P was not knowing how to unify the Italy (what events to wait for and how to deal with them). I see you've done it, but still not sure how. Did the event Unification of Italy just appear out of nowhere and voila - you're Italy? Seems a bit effortless, would that event fire if you've done completely nothing?
And I think it's great that 4 elements of the army of Parma now serve you as 0 ships ;). Also, please, make sure that 2000 unknown men and that famous bastard, No commanding general (0-0-0) (full name) pay for the loss of 50 Italian lives! Maybe just assume they were Austrian? Or any next 2k people who cross your path?
 
One thing that was keeping me from starting my own game as S-P was not knowing how to unify the Italy (what events to wait for and how to deal with them). I see you've done it, but still not sure how. Did the event Unification of Italy just appear out of nowhere and voila - you're Italy? Seems a bit effortless, would that event fire if you've done completely nothing?
And I think it's great that 4 elements of the army of Parma now serve you as 0 ships ;). Also, please, make sure that 2000 unknown men and that famous bastard, No commanding general (0-0-0) (full name) pay for the loss of 50 Italian lives! Maybe just assume they were Austrian? Or any next 2k people who cross your path?

there are two different chains.

One is historic - cosy up to France leading to the Treaty of Piombieres, Austria panics and attacks you. If you win (& with French backing you should) you get Tuscany, Parma + Pope by event (historically these were all in revolt after the start of the war with Austria). Garibaldi does his thing in Sicily, you step in and beat the Bourbon army.

Depending on how well the Austrian war went, I guess you could grab all your targets (including Alto Adige and Trieste) or settle for the Po valley provinces.

That all depends on the Austrian AI suiciding and as I've found it doesn't seem to want to do that, despite being insulted and facing a major ongoing revolt in Lombardia and Veneto.

So you have chain #2 which has just fired. All non-Austrian Italy unifies. This is why you have to play those 'unification' cards early on to ensure the conditions for this are met. As we'll see there are consequences which I am still struggling with 2 (game) years later. So yes it is a bit of a non-event, but if you were stuck as Piedmont then the game has no long term challenge. I think its well demonstrated that you can build and sustain an impressive little economy but you will never be strong enough to actually take control of your own destiny. I think that is the key difference to playing say Prussia where you should be able to take on Austria and France (in isolated wars) all by yourself.
 
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Congratulations on the "official" unveiling of Italy! I'm sure flags are at half mast around you're new nation for the lost explorers. Now you are a power to be reckoned with what are your plans?
 
That was quite anti-climatic I must say. Thanks ye gods that you will finally be able to do something more than just sit around sending missionaries around the world. Any chance you might go and prove Austria that those 14 years of constant insulting weren't just Italian blusters?
 
Congratulations on the "official" unveiling of Italy! I'm sure flags are at half mast around you're new nation for the lost explorers. Now you are a power to be reckoned with what are your plans?

well I have major civil unrest to deal with, but am now in a position to try and build up my prestige by joining the colonial game.

not sure I am yet in a position to have my very own personal war with Austria though.

That was quite anti-climatic I must say. Thanks ye gods that you will finally be able to do something more than just sit around sending missionaries around the world. Any chance you might go and prove Austria that those 14 years of constant insulting weren't just Italian blusters?

I think its where PoN is a better simulation and in some ways V2 is a better game. PoN to me, captures the mindset of the era brilliantly in that war was rare (in Europe) and the minor powers had to live by the rules imposed by the major powers. V2 allows you to forge a very different worldview. The consequence with PoN and the smaller states is it is very slow at the start, but with Austria I still think I have to wait for one of two things. A crisis that escalates (I still have my French alliance) or them to get into a war with Prussia and I can stab them in the back. Post unification and some new building I have an army based around 4 decent infantry corps so can handle their Italian army with ease - just not the rest of what they could potentially field.

Impressive. You beat the Italians' march to ignomy in Adowa by 30 years! :p

So, you're Italy - now what'chu gonna do? ;)

get my revenge, if I ever work out who did it. Well you can have a civil war for starters.

The next update shows the transition around unification, I'll then take it to the end of 1864 in the next post.

In truth the next update should be entitled "what the hell was I doing", and when I finally get back into the game I'm going to struggle to remember what I was doing
 
September 1864 - Italy unites

With this post, what I intend to do is just to show the difference pre/post unification. Some of the comparison points are to the July information as I didn’t take the full set beforehand but it will give some idea of what the implications are.

Industry

Manufactures



The main thing here is the absorption of the stocks (money, capital and goods) of all the holdings by the smaller states. The leap in production is limited (most of what I have inherited is closed). I’m not buying/selling much more internationally (the commerce lines) but domestic usage (last line) is up quite a lot due to increased domestic demand.

Non-Manufactures



Much the same here. You can see the leap in stocks and the small increase in production (most sites outside Piedmont are agricultural) and the leap in domestic demand.

Replacements and things



The main thing to note here is the huge leap in potential conscript companies from 110 to 481 (and of officers but that has not really been a problem so far). I am going to need some of those as the armies I’ve just inherited need upgrading.

Note also the increase in supply and ammunition stocks (again I have inherited this from the smaller states) and the small leap in rail capacity from 31 to 33. Now I think this makes the point that such capacity is indeed related to the number of built railway units as I now have inherited those in Tuscany (built by Tuscany) and Rome (built by me).

No longer so many happy people



Well the ungrateful wretches. I’ve worked hard for this. The top rows are the old S-P for early July, the bottom are most of the provinces I’ve inherited on unification (it no longer fits on one screen). As you can see satisfaction is down (3rd column) with only Rome pleased to see me (this is before Juventus start cheating Roma out of the Scudetto on a regular basis), but militancy in many places is now well over 20.

And Sicily looks very strange – all those 0s.

I’ll have a view in more detail on those odd population contentment symbols in a moment.

First you can see the leap in population demand for goods that was clear from the industrial screens.



So this has increased substantially for food and common goods. The growth in demand for luxuries is a bit less, but as we’ll see will also be a lot harder for me to meet.

I’ve shown the demand situation by picking one good from each group. As you can see



I’m able to meet all the categories but luxuries.



But first I am going to have to find some way to control the dissent problem. As you can see I have demonstrations in Abruzzo and Campania and riots in the Po (ungrateful wretches in Parma). The latter doesn’t just cost production, it closes production down and threatens my stocks.

Progress



Not too much there. A one-off bonus for unification and more per turn due to holding extra cities … and the Sicily problem.

New things to build



I can now build a couple of one off buildings that will give me a small per-turn prestige boost and a few more officers. I’ll put the army one in Rome and the navy in La Spezia. Note I can only build one of each (the one on the little building symbol).

And the Garibaldi problem

 
No doubt Garibaldi feels his ideals for a democratic and unified Italy has been betrayed by the cunning Piemontese statesmen, who ended up with the whole of the country without even realising it :)

Good luck with restoring order. The quelling of "brigandage" in the South seems to have cost more lives than the Risorgimento wars themselves. If I remember correctly I read this in one of the books of Hobsbawm's trilogy - he also famously quotes that, when the teachers of Italian (i.e. Toscanese) arrived in Sicily from the North, the locals thought they were English.
 
No doubt Garibaldi feels his ideals for a democratic and unified Italy has been betrayed by the cunning Piemontese statesmen, who ended up with the whole of the country without even realising it :)

Good luck with restoring order. The quelling of "brigandage" in the South seems to have cost more lives than the Risorgimento wars themselves. If I remember correctly I read this in one of the books of Hobsbawm's trilogy - he also famously quotes that, when the teachers of Italian (i.e. Toscanese) arrived in Sicily from the North, the locals thought they were English.

yes, what follows is a monumental pain but historically perfectly correct. One Italian source I have (Giulano Procacci) estimated the military deaths in the period 1860-66 as 40-45,000 (no one seems to know how many peasants died but it must have been far higher). The main problem was Cavour was so desparate to derail Garibaldi (& to be fair to Cavour he feared that if Italy went the revolutionary republican route that would trigger British and French intervention) that he maintained the entire Bourbon state structure in the Two Sicilies apart from the King. This in turn set off a monumental revolt. As with Weimar, the resulting problem of state legitimacy was to haunt Italy all the way from unification to Mussolini.

the language problem lasted well into the 1940s. Carlo Levi was a communist (& a doctor) who was exiled to the region between Bari and Reggio Calabria in the 1930s and wrote a post war classic Cristo si e fermato a Eboli (Christ stopped at Eboli) that did a lot to raise awareness of the neglect of the South. One thing he notes was the local dialect had nothing to do with either modern Italian or even Latin but was closely related to classical Greek (and that he used the Greek from his medical training to communicate).
 
I think that PON models discontent in a very realistic way, with disturbances affecting province productivity and rebels being almost invincible. It's extremely annoying sometimes, but it's close to what 19th century states faced in "lawless" areas like Southern Italy, Macedonia or Yemen.

And as a side remark, I have a great lot of Italian friends, and I have always been amazed that every time they met, the conversation would always, inevitably turn to regionalism: How do you call this in your dialect, what region do you have feud with, what football team do you support where you come from etc. It's seems that the strong local identities, supported by equally strong local economic and patronage networks, survived 150 years of unification - something which also there, though less pronounced, in say Germany or France.
 
So Garibaldi has gone native and is pulling a Kurtz on you? Did he also exterminate all the Sicilians, or are they simply not showing up in your province overview because you don't have control over the province?
 
Interesting to see the affects of unification that is certainly a massive increase in domestic demand! Have you kept your tarriff rate the same or have you lowered it to better meet that demand? I think I had better start planning now how I get hold of enough luxury goods. I had been putting off investing in a silk farm in France because of the cost but perhaps it is time to bite the bullet.

I notice one of your other objectives Tirana is rebel held have you though of dispatching an expedition to claim it? Thinking about it I am not 100% sure what the status of the province would be if you wrest it from the rebels does it return to its original owner or do you aquire ownership?

With respect to Austria I am guessing you will have to wait for them to fall out with Prussia (should that even happen in this universe)

Sorry one last question did you notice a leap in the number of conscripts you receive per turn?

Looking forward to seeing what happens next.
 
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I think that PON models discontent in a very realistic way, with disturbances affecting province productivity and rebels being almost invincible. It's extremely annoying sometimes, but it's close to what 19th century states faced in "lawless" areas like Southern Italy, Macedonia or Yemen.

And as a side remark, I have a great lot of Italian friends, and I have always been amazed that every time they met, the conversation would always, inevitably turn to regionalism: How do you call this in your dialect, what region do you have feud with, what football team do you support where you come from etc. It's seems that the strong local identities, supported by equally strong local economic and patronage networks, survived 150 years of unification - something which also there, though less pronounced, in say Germany or France.

Yes I quite agree, dealing with deep seated revolt in PoN is painfully slow as is hunting down a small irregular force. As you say it effectively models all the problems of controlling border lands.

SerieA has always had a historic geographic rivalry. Everyone hates Juventus but some of the other rivalries used to be political (Roma/Parma/Genova/Bologna were once seen as left wing ... but that is no longer really relevant) but for example Roma and Perugia had a real tension alledgedly down to the Etruscan-Roman rivalry. There were and are plenty of others.

So Garibaldi has gone native and is pulling a Kurtz on you? Did he also exterminate all the Sicilians, or are they simply not showing up in your province overview because you don't have control over the province?

Not showing as its under rebel control, but yep, he has indeed gone rogue and is very unwilling to be quietely terminated (at which stage the Doors playing 'The End' has to be listened to).

Interesting to see the affects of unification that is certainly a massive increase in domestic demand! Have you kept your tarriff rate the same or have you lowered it to better meet that demand? I think I had better start planning now how I get hold of enough luxury goods. I had been putting off investing in a silk farm in France because of the cost but perhaps it is time to bite the bullet.

I notice one of your other objectives Tirana is rebel held have you though of dispatching an expedition to claim it? Thinking about it I am not 100% sure what the status of the province would be if you wrest it from the rebels does it return to its original owner or do you aquire ownership?

With respect to Austria I am guessing you will have to wait for them to fall out with Prussia (should that even happen in this universe)

Sorry one last question did you notice a leap in the number of conscripts you receive per turn?

Looking forward to seeing what happens next.

I've dropped all my taxes. With that huge 12000 pile of state cash I may as well maximise satisfaction and indeed maximise demand (plus usage of my transport ships). Everything but the luxuries are quite welcome as it allows me to open up a few industrial plants.

I think if I took Tirana it would flip back to the Ottomans. So I'll wait till I am ready for that and focus on the colonial developments.

Yes, my per-turn intake is higher, I have a screenshot for somewhere in 1865 so I'll show it then.

As to Austria, well at the moment I don't want trouble as I have enough problems with Garibaldi, but yes I think now its a case of waiting till they fall out with Prussia
 
October-December 1864: Hunting Garibaldi

Well as may have been clear from the last post a united Italy is not a happy place. Now this is both a monumental pain and very accurate.

In reality there was nothing inevitable about the events of 1859. The period between the signing of Piombieres and Austrian declaration of war saw both Cavour and Louis Napoleon panic that the Austrians wouldn’t bite (and the British were trying to negotiate a settlement that would have seen an Italian federation form instead). When Napoleon pulled the plug on military support it was because a revolutionary Republican movement seemed to be out of control (especially in Tuscany and the former Papal States) and he was afraid this would spread.

Equally Cavour invaded the Two Sicilies to stop Garibaldi who he had previously sponsored again to stop the creation of a republican state.

In general European history books, the unification of Italy is treated as a pair with that of Germany, seen as a set of pretty much inevitable sequential stages and then their attention wanders off. Italian history books refer to the ‘miracle of 1859’ and those from a left wing perspective put a lot of stress on both the suppression of political republicanism by the new regime and the massive peasant revolt in the south.

Which is a round about way to say that what I’ve got on my hands may seem implausible but its not ahistorical.

My first goal is to send a large army to Reggio Calabria in order to retake Sicily. I’m expecting a tough battle as they will be entrenched and there is a malus for crossing the straights.

Some of the army goes by rail



And other parts will be moved by sea. I don’t really want infantry marching down there and arriving too exhausted to be of any real use.



While I’m doing this, I decide to cash in all those nice new conscript companies and raise a fresh infantry corps



Equally I collect together all the various brigades and bits I have inherited from the other states.



I also have a new fleet that I send north to join the rest at La Spezia



Anyway by the end of November, a decent army is gathered, and my commanders are prepared to move. Death to the traitor? Well I do decide on a degree of caution in my combat stance just in case.



Well that was grim, but at least I did win.

Now Garibaldi has run away back to the mainland. So this time I set up more of a trap in an attempt to stop any more escapes and prepare to attack him again.



This gets worse, at least I lost no elements but the death toll is growing. At the same time as all these momentous events, a minor hissy fit breaks out between Russian and Prussia. Seems that Prussia won.



So in the snows of late December I decide its time to end this campaign. Lots of units to block off retreat routes so the end is nigh.



In an attempt to reduce the unrest I try to pass as many social decrees as I possibly can. I also go hunting for more gold than my previous random allocations. Quite prepared, for a while to pay extra. Unfortunately I’m too late to build my very own gold mines.



Not that by the end of December have I got very far in reducing militancy



Economic development.

Despite all the war and chaos, I have an economy to build. This is helped by the huge stockpiles I have inherited, so first goal is to complete the rail net and then start building new industry. I can also briefly reduce taxes and invest heavily in research as I may as well burn down that state cash mountain. I won’t show the economic changes as they are predictable and I don’t want to make this report too long. But my new builds include:



And the united Italy sees a patriotic surge of fish.



Well that is good except I have most of the fishing industry closed down.



Replacements

The new formations are all being upgraded. This is just a single report but I have a lot, with an impact on my replacement stock.



Prestige is growing (slowly) as is the numbers of dead.



Despite all the war, I decide its time to invest in really developing my colonial status. I know have a number of options that will significantly increase my influence





And start to make Djibuti the centre of my actions. I want to take control and build up a fort and naval base before moving on to bigger goals.

 
When you start talking that it will all be over by Christmas, I automatically start to worry... :) Especially considering that Gary is getting close to Vesuvius - I still think he's going to blow it all up. :p

Well that was grim, but at least I did win.
Are you sure about that? The screenshot states 'Sicilian victory' - I assume Gary is Sicily in this context?
 
Ouch Garibaldi is the terminator! Thankfully you look like you have got that situation under control. The extra resources troops prestige etc looks like a nice side effect of unification although I am not looking forward to inheriting that screaming mob.
 
Oh just a thought might be worth getting some colonial troops on the ground in Djibhuti to protect your structures there. If rebels pop up or a native unit passes through the province there is a fair chance they might decide to burn everything down.