Chapter 13: The Grudge Match (Again); Part 10 (Mega)
When we last left off, we had just won a victory in the east against the Union army at Valdosta. This is significant because, as far as I can tell, this is the last Northern army in the East, the rest of their fighting power is concentrated to the west, around New Mexico and Oklahoma. With this army out of the way (and it's trapping itself to make that goal more achievable), there shouldn't be any roadblocks to me simply freeing all of the eastern states of the CSA. I'll also be running down the American army that I defeated in Dallas last update. I have a significant numbers and organization advantage, so that battle should go smoothly.
Unfortunately, there are still a couple of relatively strong American armies moving around further to the west. Mostly, this is inconveniencing because I've added New Mexico as a War Goal, but cannot siege it down without engaging American forces. I decide to take the opportunity to allow my various beleaguered forces to rest while I continue to liberate allied lands in the East. This way, I can defend in the west and limit enemy offensives on that front while maintaining a steady war score gain by freeing lands in the East.
This is especially true with the death of the last Eastern Yankee army under Gen. Charles Potter at Tallahassee. I don't need to worry about killing off counter-sieging American armies at this point, so with my own couple armies freeing the South, we should preserve a constant advantage in the war.
The situation out West. Clearly, there are a few dangers to me in the Western theater, principally the relatively untouched Union armies at Santa Fe and Pueblo. Fortunately for myself, these are some of the last few Northern armies of any significant size on the map. There is the potential for another, should the Yankee army that I'm pursuing from Okmulgee escape and reinforce itself completely, but I have no intention of allowing that to happen, and in the meantime I can easily maintain equal numbers to my opposition while taking armies in both the Mississippi and Georgia areas on a campaign of liberation. In other words, this is my war to win.
Shortly thereafter, just as it looks like I'm about to fall behind the US in score once more, and remain the 5th placed Power on the planet, this handy-dandy Decision pops up. 21 Prestige? Just 50k pounds? We'll take it. I have enough stored up in the bank that, despite the harsh effects of War exhaustion (which, by the way, is MUCH more brutal in Vic II than any other game), I should still have the capital to survive the war without going bankrupt.
Once again, we maintain the score advantage, and as I stated at the start of this AAR (though that
was months ago), that is my principal goal. Every second that we are "better" than the US according to the in-game ranking system is a second that I consider a little slice of victory. Eventually, we might strive to be not just above teh US in rank, but #1 on the planet, but we haven't quite reached that stage of the game... yet. I'd also like to give a shout-out to Denmark, for maintaining Great Power status, somehow. They seem to be on their way to forming Scandinavia.
Free Infamy + Winning War + Half-Price for adding War Goals = Adding War Goal for New Mexico (I probably meant to say Arizona earlier, my bad). I want to weaken as much of the US as possible. Now, since I played this session, it has occurred to me, and to some of the readers, that I should probably just start taking states adjacent to my CSA sphereling, and that is a very good point. If I took, say, Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois in this War, I could be reasonably certain of Crippling the US in both industry, and in the ability to fight future wars. Naturally, I didn't think of this, preferring instead to take things actually adjacent to my nation, without considering more expansive possibilities. The other option feels gamey to me anyway, as realistically, there is no way that Mexico would ever annex such states when it didn't border them and they were landlocked. Administering them would be a nightmare, and that's just for starters.
Meanwhile, I engage the enemy in New Mexico, reasoning that now that I've made it a War Goal, I need to start making progress on occupying it. I also feel as if I have the necessary reinforcements nearby to counteract any Union response. Notice the 39,000 stack sitting in Albuquerque, however. That army is fairly powerful, unless I'm mistaken it has a decent troop composition, and it's larger than any single force I'm fielding as of this point. But it's not heading towards the battle. It's actually moving in the opposite direction. Also worth mentioning is my activity in Oklahoma. Though it's not shown, as I wanted to skip the things of perhaps somewhat lesser importance with this marathon update, I've actually wiped out the Northern army in Oklahoma that I'd been chasing North from Houston, eliminating another potential 33,000 Americans from the war and freeing up almost 40,000 of my own men simultaneously.
This is where 6,000 of that 39,000 stack went (you'll remember that originally it was only an army of 33k). To El-Paso. Isolated from support. Practically behind enemy lines. Despite my own army in Lubbock desperately needing to stay out of combat and reinforce, I decide not to pass up the opportunity to knock out another 2 Union Brigades practically for free. With the Yankee General marching the other way, I feel fairly safe doing this.
At the end of my orders, this is what the front looks like. Across the entire front with America that I'm engaging I can see around 57,000 Union soldiers. The vast majority of these men, 49,000 of them, are currently in New Mexico, however, the majority of those men, an army of 33,000 Infantry, Cavalry, and Artillery, is moving out of the state, leaving the remaining 16,000 to lose a battle to my own forces. Besides the concentration of Yankee troops in New Mexico, they also have 3,000 moving through Colorado and 5,000-6,000 being Pursued in Texas. In contrast, I posses, across the entirety of the front, about 152,000 soldiers, though my forces are considerably more spread out than their American counterparts. In Texas and New Mexico I have 34,000 soldiers, split about evenly, half of whom are currently engaged in Las Cruces, and half of whom are in pursuit of the enemy in Texas. This is practically all of the predicted combat on the entire front. A little ways off in Oklahoma, and with orders to intervene in the conflicts further West if necessary, I have 65,000 soldiers organized into three armies liberating Oklahoma. This represents the largest concentration of Mexican troops on the planet. Further to the East, I have two separate "liberation" armies in Tallahassee and whatever the province in Northern Louisiana is called. Outside of my front against the USA I have about 6,000 soldiers recently recruited in Mexico.
Outside of my front against the US, they have
at least another 36,00 men chasing California around. What's more, they're actually diverting the majority of their fighting force in the East, 33,000 men, to support their front with California.
I've been asked why I haven't taken control of the Californian army, and this is why. I'm not confident enough in my micromanagement to so completely distract roughly 70,000 Yankee soldiers that they become absolutely useless in the war. Honestly, California, for this reason alone, is completely worth releasing, even if I could have kept the land myself. Until I feel confident enough that I can easily take on the US every time in a war against them, I'm keeping California as a Satellite. And hopefully, you can see why.
Meanwhile, the war progresses smoothly, with the sole exception of the small enemy division in Texas running around all over the place. Otherwise, I have successfully liberated Oklahoma City (that army is moving to Santa Fe as of this screenshot), and as we can see, I've also simultaneously won another siege and a battle, which will only help to speed my progress in this war.
If you were wondering where my non-Californian allies were during this process, then wonder no longer. Clearly, they have much more interesting things to deal with
on their vaca the grueling combat in Liberia.
Considering that the War seems to finally be swinging decisively towards an ending in my favor anyway, I don't get too bitter about the AI's hilarious antics.
More progress in the war. I'm keeping these two armies together because a.) they siege much much faster that way, and b.) they compliment each other quite nicely. What I mean by this is simple: one army has lost almost all of its infantry contingent during months of constant fighting, while the other army has nothing but infantry, being constructed of mobilized brigades. One army needs infantry, the other needs the supporting troops to go with infantry, so together they get much more accomplished.
The sieges progress steadily in New Mexico and elsewhere, and while I let the Union force defeated at Las Cruces escape, there is only limited damage that they can even inflict at this point. In the undocumented time that I've skipped (well, I have the screenshots, they just aren't posted here) the most important thing that's happened is the eventual catching of that small army in El Paso that has fled to several other provinces in the proceeding time. I've gathered up a few more newly minted brigades in my quest, but I've finally cornered the bastards, and hope to defeat them once and for all. Yes, it is highly annoying micromanaging the pursuit of one, insignificant AI army. Also note the relatively high population growth of my country.
A brief check of the Immigration map mode confirms it: I'm receiving more immigrants now than I was at the start of the war. Considering my War exhaustion and struggling industry (raised taxes and tariffs during war time hurt industry), this is somewhat of a surprise. I'm assuming that some sort of large scale European Conflict is responsible.
Venezuela wants to Cut down on the looming specter that is the awesome might of Liberia's elite armed forces, and I want my allies to actually help with the United States for once, so I agree to knocking Liberia out of the war, though I do expect to lose some war score in the process. At this point, we can also see that Prussia and Austria are at war. Considering that the majority of my immigrants are coming from Prussia and Austria, I can only assume that this is the cause of my good fortune. Oddly enough, the Prussians are winning, but 3,000 of their people flock to my country each month compared to just 390 from Austria. You'd assume that people would want to leave the losing country more, but apparently not.
This is significant. The United States wants out of the war. The only reason for this is because they've finally reached a War Exhaustion threshold where, despite probably still believing that they could turn the war around (the AI is silly like that), they just don't believe that it's worth it anymore. A few more months of this, and they might even peace out to all of my demands.
Twenty-thousand Americans want to more or less trap themselves in Oklahoma City, and I feel inclined to let them. Meanwhile, I've made progress in my sieges out East; South Carolina is being freed, but I've accrued some Panamanian patriots as well. Fortunately, nobody lives in Panama (my apologies if any of my readers live in Panama, at this point, it's one of my least-populated states), so the rebels that spawned aren't really all that intimidating.
I add Arizona as a war goal, confirming that I was wrong two times in a row and that this is only the second War Goal that I've added. With the US about to capitulate to my earlier demands, I decide to raise the stakes, as I'm almost certain of my victory.
I've won a few sieges, and finally, after chasing them across half of Northern Mexico, I've eliminated those pesky American soldiers. The result of my efforts seems to be a brand new army I can order around. It's been assembled out of one half-dead army and 5 or so newly constructed soldiers, cobbled together really, but it's serviceable enough to go help in the final push for victory.
Everywhere we look, progress is being made, with nary a stumbling block in sight. I'm still completely unopposed in the South.
[rant]Here we can see the War Exhaustion that I've accrued during the long stretch of this war. 39% War Exhaustion isn't too bad, it just means that I lose about 40% of the efficiency on all of my factories and RGOs. And it reduces Organization regain. Along with increasing militancy and damaging the rest of my nation in various other nasty ways. This is why War Exhaustion is so deadly in Victoria II, it builds up whenever you have a long war, assuming that you have any infamy (the only exception is Great Wars, and that's specifically via events that PDM introduces), or that any of your land is occupied, and there is no way to get rid of it until after the war is over. It will continually harm your nation until after you make peace, and even the, if your higher militancy generates Rebels and they start sieging half your nation then
they can also build up war exhaustion. I have had serious trouble in any number of playthroughs with Mexico on Victoria II with recuperating after staggering War Exhaustion fighting America in time for the next war. I've won wars, repeatedly, against the UNion, but because of how the Manifest Destiny event works in vanilla Vic II, they just keep declaring war. It's annoying, and if there was one feature of Victoria II that I could change, it would probably be the War Exhaustion system. [/rant]
I continue my steady advance in the East. Predictably, I've also finished a siege in Kansas before the Union could finish their assault on Oklahoma, and with no way to outrun my armies, the enemy is more or less doomed.
With such huge advantages out West as well, I can easily siege down 3 or 4 provinces to every one that the US attempts to take back. At this point, I feel confident in my ability to hold my own, even if the Yankees were to reintroduce the 70,000 fresh soldiers they have marching around California. And... that's all for this update. yes, I know, the war isn't over, but this is the end of the session. Annoying how long that is, isn't it? The micromanagement during the war was really starting to get tedious just before everything broke in my favor, so in a way I'm certainly glad to be getting through the war, finally. Usually combat and warfare is the most interesting part of the game for me, so it should say something that I wasn't really looking forward to more fighting with my American opponents. Still, despite ending the update here, I think that the war is, at this point, a foregone conclusion. I have an army at least twice that of the Union (unless they've rebuilt, but even then, I hold a massive advantage), and what's ore, most of the actual Northern forces are skipping about California, trying to catch the magical Bears that are rumored to live in that region, which basically neutralizes them for the time being. By the time they ever make it back, it will likely be too late. What's more, all those battles have finally started to take their toll on the United States, I'm sure, as they're finally starting to take enough War Exhaustion to want peace, despite only having about 4 of their actual provinces occupied. And so, I am comfortable ending the update here, on the cusp of victory, to be pursued next time in...
The Southern Eagle: A Mexico AAR!
