-----Chapter 1, Section 4: It's me, again-----
I think me teleporting and time travelling myself through layers of realities into this Paradox grand strategy game called Victoria 2 was just too much for poor Andries. He may be the president / tribe leader of a small unconventional band of people that can be called a nation, but he was sure as hell not ready for somebody that was yet to be born until around 150 years later. Well I hope he pulls his stuff together, and so do I. I had some problems with my girlfriend, then with my job, then had my parents come visit me from a different continent, then had some more problems with my girlfriend. My therapist says she sure is crazy but I need her nonetheless. Sometimes I wish I was only as crazy and troubled as Andries, then I think the cholera and dysenteria of 1800s would kill me in an explosively horrid torrent of crap and I change my mind. Now let's try to steer this small civilized African nation to relative power and try to slow the powers from colonizing. This uncharted territory is the final frontier and we will strike back with fury.
Now, after this pep talk, why don't we check where we left it the last time:
On second thought, was it really wise attacking a country with 9 times the army?
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God I wrote the part above yesterday. Suddenly my gf dropped by unannounced, we made peace, then had a fight, then made peace, then went to sleep, then had breakfast in the morning, then had a fight, then made peace, then went out for coffee, then she went home and I came home to eat something and now here I am sipping my tea writing this before a friend of mine who had a fight with his wife come at my place to discuss about life and stuff. I really sometimes hope my life was only as crazy as Andries. Take a look at the newspapers from Transvaal while I have some tea with my friend over his marital problems.
The bigs are getting bigger, the developed are getting more techs, the Germans are composing songs
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My friend has just left and it's been over 5-6 hours since I wrote the previous paragraph. I will not go into other details but he had sex once in the last four years. Pretty descriptive of his situation. We understandably switched to Rakı instead of the tea. Andries has it so easy. So, what happened in the time period when those newspapers were published? Well we won a siege but in the meanwhile the Zulu army won 4 sieges including our capital and was besieging the 5th province. They lost half their army to attrition though.
I have a missing screenshot of the siege where we lost our capital. I think I was too distraught to take a screenshot.
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So it took the better part of a year to complete the siege. Let's see what else happened in our lovely little nation when I was keeping our army besieging Ladysmith and the Zulu army going crazy in our provinces and Andries was sending telegrams and messenger pigeons and human messengers and everything in his power to convince me to break the siege and bring the army back to defend the motherland. I couldn't convince him this was the only way we get out of this war alive. He came himself swearing and kicking but in the end I hold the absolute power. I can even delete the save file and his universe will vanish from existence. So he returned to keep an eye on what we have left as a nation and run my orders about the affairs of the state. For example, our brilliant scientists discovered the practice of medicine. Should be pretty useful, now we can work on steam engines.
I am an idiot to have forgotten to keep current on the tech line that affects research speed. It gives huge bonuses (bonii?) and I forgotten about it for years. Andries told me but I didn't listen.
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Now is also a nice time to have a look at the budget. Victoria 2 is the Paradox grand strategy game most geared towards economic concepts. Here you can see the direct effect of gold to our coffers is only 1,2 pounds per day whereas the tax from the poor classes are a lot. This is because the laborers in the gold and diamond mines make good money (they are profitable businesses) thus pay more taxes. Also, since they make a lot of money and buy a lot of stuff, and that stuff mostly is imported, we make some tariff money. Normally I'd keep tariff as low as my economy allows (which can even go to negative meaning you are subsidizing imports, all sliders have min and max limits depending on the stances of the ruling party of the country) because rising this slows down the economy if you are not producing ALL of the resources that your industries (including artisans) might be using. When tariffs are higher inputs for your industries are more expensive thus the industries are less profitable which keeps the workers unhappy and the production low which in turn causes poorer workers to buy the outputs of other industries thus making them less profitable etc. But for now I will keep it 30%, and you will see I will even increase that temporarily in the future. There are strategic materiel to be stockpiled and things that needs to be done ASAP so that is why.
Oh the great cycle of economics
In the second screenshot you can see the stockpile. Most items (except for machine parts which we still only managed to buy 73.87 units and timber which I only recently added to manually stockpile) are stockpiled as much as we ordered. That is the reason for the thousands of pounds of debt we amassed (machine parts is around 50 pounds per unit!) and we'll even borrow more to fill our stockpiles. That might see us go bankrupt but I think that would be worth the risk. One small thing that got my attention is the small steel icon in the top trade section. It shows we are selling wool, precious metals and steel while we are buying furniture, clothes and booze. Now, one can ask how we can export steel without any industry at all?
The prices a risin
In the last screenshot the answer to that stands. Artisans, which are the traditional way of production can decide to produce any item. They choose by their own free will, they can buy their input materiel from the world market as well, and will produce whatever they like and sell it. You can see here (small icons next to the artisan icons) they are producing steel, explosives, canned food etc which are all industrial goods that normally require a factory. Early game, without a good raw material production base and some techs making factories more efficient, artisans are actually a more efficient way to produce stuff than factories. You cannot control them though. How nice would it be if one could control EVERYTHING.
Come on artisans, build artillery and machine parts and luxury clothes and all
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My real life stuff really tired me, I'm already halfway through this episode but I'm finished. I will continue with the rest of the Zulu war and more soon. Now is the time for sleep. Andries and others can have their peace of mind too. See you soon.