Trek Wars: The Final Frontier Strikes Back

diskoerekto · Apr 29, 2018

-----Trek Wars: The Final Frontier Strikes Back-----

by diskoerekto

Country: Transvaal (will become South Africa later, more information below)
Start date: 1836 (the Grand Campaign)
Patch lineup: Victoria II HoD up to 3.04 patch (latest) with a self made mini mod. The mod includes Boer republics to Americas and Oceania as a preferred migration spot for POPs and adds a decision to form South African Republic.

Introduction:

This is my first AAR as far as I remember, and will mostly be an alternate history gameplay AAR with some narrative in between and of course some screenshots and some other images for fun. I will be an in game character ordering the president, ministers, generals etc around. They will probably believe I am a sort of a time traveler / semi benevolent demigod. I played Victoria 1 with Transvaal and it was a fun run. Let's see if some of that experience translates into Victoria 2.

All comments are welcome, well I can only hope people show interest, sign up and comment. I really want to make here an inclusive place and try to take every voice into account. I aim to make a couple updates per week but of course it will depend on how much motivation and time I have. Also, my girlfriend doesn't really like it if I spend a lot of time playing computer games, but that is another topic

My in-game goal is to keep as much of Africa from the western powers as I can. This means aggressively expanding (well, as aggressive as my puny military and economy allows me) early game for securing a good starting position when the Scramble for Africa begins.

So we will be trying to stop these guys

In the meanwhile I need to tech up at the correct places to be one of the first ones to start colonizing. Also, the nation needs to be industrialized ASAP to be able to produce stuff necessary for colonization (steamer ships, maxim guns, quinine tablets and others). Lastly, for sustainable industry, we need a lot of immigrants.

"Whatever happens we have got
The Maxim Gun, and they have not"

Luckily, even though we are much weaker than the Great Powers, at least we are colonizing our own garden. I expect this proximity to help us during the colonization process. Also, there will be some discovery of diamond mines so that should help the economy. To stockpile on some important stuff while the diamond mines are not operating yet, I plan to bankrupt once early game. I hope that doesn't come back to bite me.

Lastly, if I can figure out how it is done, I will try to make this first post a threadmark thingy where you can see all the chapters and jump to them etc. Also, I'd like to thank Bullfilter for encouraging me to start this. He has some nice AARs going and I recommend you to take a look at them. Even more lastly, I have to say that English is my secondary language so I am sorry in advance in case I write something stupid.

De Vierkleur

Table of Contents:

stnylan · Apr 29, 2018

I do like the title.

lad · Apr 29, 2018

I like the writing .Keep it up man .

diskoerekto · Apr 29, 2018

-----Chapter 1, Section 1: Here we go-----

Prologue:

The Beauty of a Pretoria Sunrise by someone's blog

It was sunny and dry summer mediterranean weather on new years day on the wrong side of the equator. The farmers who left their new British overlords for their own reasons made a long walk north and probably after committing some atrocities settled in those fertile and virgin lands. All they wanted was to be left alone with their own language and rules and they seemed to get it at this moment in history. Suddenly a strange figure appeared out of thin air. He had somewhat slanted eyes, or maybe an eyelid fold; pronounced cheek bones, long curly black hair and a small pot belly. He oriented himself and went on his way unlike Arnold as T800 because he had his clothes on. He found teleporting/timetravelling without clothes somewhat passé. He had to find the president of this ad-hoc country called Transvaal because they were on a tight schedule, the game called Victoria II did not start any earlier, and even if it did, there was no ad-hoc country like Transvaal before this date. One had nothing but to admire this young fella (late 30s is the new 20s in the 2010s, right?) who discovered this intricate technology to beam himself into computer games. He learnt some rudimentary Dutch by living in the country but that was not enough and was in the wrong millennium anyway. All problems can be solved somehow and this is his desperate story to try to stop imperialism.

--- Current Situation---

This is what a fresh start looks like:

This is also what getting Victoria 2 to run on Linux looks like. Wasn't rocket science but wasn't easy either. Playing windowed for easier screenshots

So here we are landlocked behind the Zulu Empire and Portuguese Mozambique. On our south is the Vrijstaat Oranje (Free State Orange, Dutch really is a lot like English), another Boer Republic like us although we have our differences. For example as far as I know they are ok with slavery and we are not (yay for us). We will have to conquer them ASAP. South of them is the new overlords of the Cape Colony: the mighty British. I am not sure if there will come a day we will have the strength to claim all of it. North of Portuguese Africa, there is Zanzibar, the trade colony of Oman where Freddie Mercury will be born 110 years later. Our northwest is rolling plains and unexplored jungles of Central Africa until Portuguese Angola.

In this second map is the Sokoto Empire between the outskirts of West Africa and the Sahara on further northwest. There is also the breakaway Egyptian state from the Ottomans in way northeast and the ancient empire of Ethiopia just south of it. Lastly, off the coast of Mozambique there is Madagascar which I'd really like to conquer (has tropical timber which is expensive resource, and also coal which is a strategic resource for industry) but it will be really difficult since France has a lot of time to put the island state under its sphere of influence before I conquer a port province and build some transports.

A huge continent

---

Here is the first 2 expansion targets. First will be the 3 province Oranje on the left with a brigade (same as us) and 3 province Zulu on the right. Zulu seems to have a huge army but it is irregulars and as an uncivilized nation they have worse supply so I expect to let them attrit themselves into oblivion while I besiege their provinces and maybe finish them off when they're weak.

We have to be as quick as our meager status allows us since the British can also take some nations under their sphere of influence. It will be like a race to pick up the goodies.

The map really looks better when zoomed out but this is with more details

---

We have no generals, no leadership points to create one, no brigades to mobilize and no manpower to build more brigades. I nevertheless turn off auto-create leaders to stop the game from wasting leadership points. I am not sure what else you can spend them on but I'd like to keep control of what's going on.We have more than enough officer POPs so I expect to have more than enough generals in the future. In fact it would be better if some of those officers were soldiers so we could've built another brigade or so.

Crickets......

---

This is how declaring wars work in Victoria II. Depending on the circumstance you choose a CB and justify it. If you are lucky (I am sure there are some variables that affect this) you can create the CB without getting caught which means you basically have a badboy (called infamy here) free war. If you get caught on the first day it is 22 badboy points. It is expected to take 308 days so it will be some tense waiting. Wiki says infamy over 25 is not nice and the decay is not a lot (0.1 decay in a month, which is like 120 infamy for the entire game span) but luckily against colonial possessions and uncivilized nations this is smaller.

Cabin Crew – Arm sliding doors and cross check

---

Normally it is probably the best to leave the trading to AI, but our small and unindustrialized country lacks a lot of things and they might not be available on the world market when we need it so I went ahead and put in buy orders for creating some infantry divisions, some transport ships, and a factory. This probably means bankruptcy in the following years but that's a risk I will take now. I hope it is not a stupid move.

So many things to buy

---

I thought slavery was banned in Transvaal but it seems it is not. Well that's something to do when we have the chance to push some reforms. The screen says we cannot enact social or political reforms but in a test game to see if everything was working ok under Linux, I was somehow able to enact reforms. I am not sure how exactly it works. Now it seems impossible but I expect something to change in the near future.

Quite a backwards society

---

Here you can see the decision I modded in the game. I based it off the event from HPM mod but changed a little bit. I also wanted to add the condition to own Cape Town to be necessary as well but I was not sure if I could ever get that province so that's just an OR instead of an AND. If this decision is taken it gives some cores and prestige and does some other stuff. We will discuss about it when that time comes.

Decisions, decisions

---

Muzzle-loaded rifles seems to be a no-brainer here. It is on the way to the very important for colonization Machine Guns, and also it gives instant free stat upgrade to our single infantry brigade.

Technology, or lack thereof

---

I am taxing the poor and the middle as low as possible because they don't have much anyway and there are some POP types that are really important to me at this stage of game (laborers for diamond mines, soldiers for new brigades, clergy for research points, diplomats for some important business...) and the rich as much as I can because they have some to give and there aren't any capitalists yet (they will be useful from mid game on, I guess?). The tariffs are also low because the artisans will probably need to import everything to build stuff. All the spending is at 100% because we will bankrupt anyway and they are all necessary at this point in time. I hope the diamond mines appear quickly.

We're like broke

---

Now is the time to hit unpause. Let's see what this game has in it for us. A quick next chapter is coming today as well. The time and reality travelling Tatar boy in the Netherlands needs to eat.

stnylan · Apr 29, 2018

So we're off!

Clearly no "brotherly" love lost with the Oranje.

Bullfilter · Apr 29, 2018

All came up overnight my time - I’ve hopped on board as soon as I could! Will now have a good read of the first two sections. Good to see you in the ‘front end’ of AARLand as an authAAR!

diskoerekto · Apr 29, 2018

-----Chapter 1, Section 2: Here we go, this time for reals-----

This will be a short one, I actually planned to make this a part of the previous section but it ran too long so I separated from here. The rest of the game I haven't played yet so we will see what happens together.

The first event of the game is a very happy one. Although, if I were that dried up old traveler I would have kept it to myself. This will be useful for our economy, but still we are so behind in every technology including mining technologies that we cannot make enough money with this. In time, this will hopefully be very good for our economy.

Diamond ruuuussshhhh

---

Then, on the same day, two inverse events happened within hours of each other. So, having the good one of those is beneficial in two ways. Firstly, you get your CB sooner, and secondly, since I guess there is a MTTH for the getting caught while fabricating CB event, it indirectly causes less badboy hit.

What comes around, goes around

---

Only a few months later (June 30th), the expected thing happens. It is not really nice but that was bound to happen anyway. I see the glass half full and say we dodged half of that badboy.

I am an infamous naughty boy, punish me oh mighty Berlin conference

---

A few more months pass (November 6th) and oh boy, are we ready for action or what? I get that we are sibling nations and whatever, but I know that Great Britain will gobble you in an instant if I let you roam around longer. Sorry, Oranje, you were a good neighbor for the better part for a year, oh and I just see that you disbanded your only brigade. That was a really bad idea. This is the age where social darwinism was at its peak. It seems you are not really fit to survive, my dear sibling Oranje.

Here begins our first war

diskoerekto · Apr 29, 2018

stnylan said:
I do like the title.

stnylan said:
So we're off!

Clearly no "brotherly" love lost with the Oranje.

lad said:
I like the writing .Keep it up man .

Bullfilter said:
All came up overnight my time - I’ve hopped on board as soon as I could! Will now have a good read of the first two sections. Good to see you in the ‘front end’ of AARLand as an authAAR!

Welcome all, I am thrilled to see readers already

I hope to keep this until the very end. Let's see.

By the way, I am somewhat inexperienced with Vicky2. So, if anybody notices something and thinks I know what I'm doing, I most probably do not. So in that case please send some comments

stnylan · Apr 30, 2018

Tut tut, what an infamously bad boy you are being

Shinkuro Yukinari · Apr 30, 2018

Well, this will be interesting. Although I would have gone for HFM and Zoutpansberg, a more interesting challenge

diskoerekto · Apr 30, 2018

Shinkuro Yukinari said:
Well, this will be interesting. Although I would have gone for HFM and Zoutpansberg, a more interesting challenge

Actually I tried to go with HPM in the beginning, but there was only Great Britain and a bunch of local countries. Well, if I could have done it, I also probably would have gone for HFM and Zoutpansberg but alas, I already began this. Well I can always try HFM/HPM in my next game

volksmarschall · Apr 30, 2018

Should enjoy this. Good luck. Can't wait to see what you do in Africa with one of maybe two or three countries that can really re-shape and alter the Scramble for Africa! Into the final frontier you go and beyond!

Cheers!

Bullfilter · May 1, 2018

An interesting start and well written. Your English as a second language is a lot better than many who have it as a first!

I don’t know the game at all, so some of the gameplay nuances will be lost on me, but that’s OK. If it looks interesting you might inspire me to buy and play it (surely one of the key reasons Paradox runs and supports these forums

) and I don’t need to know the game well to follow the story.

So good luck time traveller - we’ll see whether you can alter the course of history! Who needs foreign colonialist imperialism when you can generate a perfectly good home-grown colonial imperialism.

SibCDC · May 2, 2018

A time traveller in 19th century South Africa, will follow.

diskoerekto · May 2, 2018

volksmarschall said:
Should enjoy this. Good luck. Can't wait to see what you do in Africa with one of maybe two or three countries that can really re-shape and alter the Scramble for Africa! Into the final frontier you go and beyond!

Cheers!

Bullfilter said:
An interesting start and well written. Your English as a second language is a lot better than many who have it as a first!

I don’t know the game at all, so some of the gameplay nuances will be lost on me, but that’s OK. If it looks interesting you might inspire me to buy and play it (surely one of the key reasons Paradox runs and supports these forums ) and I don’t need to know the game well to follow the story.

So good luck time traveller - we’ll see whether you can alter the course of history! Who needs foreign colonialist imperialism when you can generate a perfectly good home-grown colonial imperialism.

SibCDC said:
A time traveller in 19th century South Africa, will follow.

Thank you all for the good wishes

I am somewhat explaining stuff about the game as I go since except for a brief game with Chile some years back when I bought the game, this is also my first Victoria II game.

I was about to put the next episode, but I lost my screenshot directory so I will have to play again

Huzzah for homegrown colonialism

diskoerekto · May 7, 2018

I played again, and this time I have screenshots too. So new episode will be here.

diskoerekto · May 8, 2018

-----Chapter 1, Section 3: Musings of a trekker-----

So this guy called diskoerekto showed up out of nowhere. He was running around like a madman and I was sure he was one but decided I could still hear what he has to say anyway. Also, whenever I decided to not talk to him and send him away, or get him locked up somewhere, or get him executed (believe me people, I tried everything) I found myself the next day I was living the same day over and over. That January 1st of 1836, I think I lived it 20 times over at least. When I finally gave up and granted this crazy dude a hearing, days started to pass normally. When I told him this one day over brandies after dinner, he laughed and babbled something about something called a movie and a day of groundhogs or whatever. He really is like a madman, but also is like a wise man. I think I will become a madman if I keep on listening to him but it seems like there is no other way to get out of this time loop. Maybe I should have stayed under the British. We came and settled here to be left alone, but ever since that day strange things happened.

So after this strange guy who speaks a funny English with some invented words as if it ramblings of a mad hatter and a funnier broken half Dutch somehow convinced me to make some decisions regarding how we run our little farmer state, and got me to declare war on our only good neighbors, Oranje! Unthinkable! And they disbanded their only brigade, probably they thought they were safe with us as the enemies but we pounced on our only brothers like a backstabbing jackal. I do not know how I got myself in this but believe me, he has this animal magnetism or something that captivates one. I just cannot resist or else it is the hedgehog day or whatever that is called all over again. He mumbles about Great Britain taking them before we do, about France entering the picture, about Portugal, about everybody and their uncles wanting their place under the sun, about something called the industrial revolution, having to colonize before the others and blocking their ways; dear God what are you testing me with?

Sadly, our brothers in Oranje tried to muster a force to defend themselves from us, and they tried to muster it right were we were besieging so they were taken prisoners the day they got their rifles distributed to them.

TO AARRRMSSSS... oh sorry officer I didn't know this was not allowed? Are you taking us? #resistoranje

---

The siege seems like it'll take quite some time. It's already been 10 months and the end isn't anywhere in sight. This diskoerekto dude goes on with his crazy ramblings saying we're already too late. We need to take this country, we need to take that country, we need to invent this, we need to stockpile that, it will never be in time... I swear to god I will go crazy just like him. Maybe I can disrupt myself with the newspaper.

Damn the British and their dye producing colonies. No hussars for us.

---

The siege is finally over. It's taken more than a year. Disko is whining non stop. It is strange his clothing and facial hair etc never changes. It's as if this past year was but a few minutes for him, but he keeps on whining. He says if it was possible to do so he would bring something called a Kalashnikov here. Or someone? Might this madman also be Russian? Is he a spy? Well, at least there is some gossip about the British royal family. The madman says the universe I live in exists only because of this Queen Victoria. I say I am for republics and do not care much for nobles. He laughs.

Quite some time for 3000 guys to knock the doors of some farmers and say "hey guys your capital's just changed"

She'll also get married soon

---

The siege in Bloemfontain seems it will take even longer. At least we've got our newspapers.

Machine parts will be a problem going forward with industrialization

---

The madman said we have enough of something called leadership points and I should create... err... promote 2 of my officers into generals. He says we have enough points for 2 and not 3. I am not sure what he is talking about but there are only 2 officers that I could've promoted anyway. Well, both seem to be good generals and amiable people, but that crazy idiot says Danie is our guy and Rudolf is a complete waste of leadership points and an excuse of a soldier. I just got to go with whatever drivel he is spouting out. Danie is now leading our only brigade and Rudolf is counting how many boot laces we are purchasing each year.

I am in love with my de Heer van Rensburg

---

Some more boring months pass. In Mosega there is a trouble that needs my attention and a few days later a nation wide social issue. The traveler tells me to solve both of the problems with common sense and with a just approach. I mean in the second issue, I did not have the choice to stop that dreary system but even just acknowledging it as so was enough to increase productivity at the farms and also at the mines which we don't have any. He says we will have some mines soon, and some very good mines. I think he is talking about the coal mines of Oranje but I am not sure why he is so excited. Maybe he is not that mad after all but just confused.

Consciousness is good for us I guess?

I sure as hell wouldn't want to be in that prison

---

The neverending siege of a farming village continues. Our knowledgeable persons tinkering with better rifles just came to us saying now we have better rifles and an invention about this new technology can also happen any time soon. The deranged guy is acting like always babbling about minimum liferating of provinces and its importance in colonization and orders the persons to go try to find new things about medicines. In the end it is a good thing to have medicines, I guess.

The knowledgeable persons heralding the news of an upcoming invention tied to the new rifle technology were proved true in only a little more than a month. Now our troops would fire better.

So many things to discover and so little people who knows how to read and write, another day at the savanna

Go knowledgeable per... scientists!!!

---

While waiting for the the siege of Bloemfontein to end, there is the new issue of the newspaper. Diskoerekto says newspapers are supposed to be out every day. He really is one confused guy.

This is the date of my girlfriend's birthday, I should've given her the province of Lucca

---

The siege of Bloemfontein is finally over. It took even longer than the first siege. The madman orders me to order our troops to the next province. That would be the last province of our Oranjean brothers. After giving the orders, we wait for months and have the chance to read many newspapers.

I wonder what those soldiers REALLY did all those months

Welcome to 20th century when everybody is inventing stuff and everything is getting more expensive

---

During the 3rd long siege of this neverending war, there is some good news from the province of Klerksdorp. That crazy guy called diskoerekto says it was damn high time that event fired and there should be one more. I do not understand a thing from that. We now have a diamond mine which should help our economy. Our poor economy hobbled by that deranged idiot who ordered us to stockpile a shitload of expensive stuff.

Money money money, must be funny, in the rich man's world

---

There is another decision to be made. My reasoning would be to take the books to knowledgeable persons and the faster assimilating of locals but the mad hatter did some calculations on a piece of paper and told the research points is not anywhere near we will be losing and consciousness is probably something good for us and made me choose to not enforce the curriculum. I am pretty sure this is the wrong thing to do but I cannot help but do whatever this dude tells me to do.

No dark sarcasm in the classroom, teachers leave them kids alone!

---

It's been some years, but finally the final siege is over. I was reluctant at first but uniting all our Boer brothers under one banner feels kinda gezellig. In the meanwhile, for some reason we are able to pass some reforms. We are not supposed to be doing that but I guess rising militancy of our peoples caused this? I do something that I am doing the first time, and ask the crazy idiot about this. He is as clueless as I am. We choose to ban slavery. That is what should be anyway. Also, we extend this ban to our newly conquered provinces as well.

Then the mad hatter starts hitting his head saying he forgot to manifacture a CB (whatever that is) and we will lose some months because of this. He also says last time he played this war he did that in time. I am not sure what he means but I sure as hell felt some déja vu in the last years to be honest. I think spending too much time with an eccentric madman has this effect, I am going slightly mad.

Growing stronger

And forbidden it shall be

A neater map, a still landlocked nation

---

While we are waiting for our agents to convince the concert of nations that it is only prudent that Zulu lands would be better looked after under our supervision, it is time to make another decision and just after that it turns out our agents weren't really very subtle about how they work. The crazed guy starts swearing in a language I never heard and throws stuff around. He says things like last time he played he had much less bad boys. Might his craziness be something sexual?

The beer hall opening sounds like good news to me, but diskoerekto says he has to choose between higher militancy and crappier mines but after all decides mines are more important than anything else at this point, and militancy might be helpful in the future for pushing new reforms so we shut down the nice beer house like some bigots. Dammit I was really in the mood for a beer.

No beer for you, poor masses who should work the mines

They got caught only 20% of the way, well better than nothing

---

A look at what we are doing with our trade seems like we are somewhat going near our stockpile goals set by diskoerekto. The diamond mine of Klerksdorp is really helping a lot with the economy, without that we probably would've gone bankrupt already. Although it seems like if we go like this in the future bankruptcy might be inevitable. Our crazy overlord says there is a price to be paid for colonization and that is industrialization. Also there is a price to be paid for industrialization and that is, if you are not colonized already, bankruptcy. It really sounds crazy but if you listen to how he describes it, it makes sense. I cannot believe I find some sense in what he has to describe.

Industrialization is expensive

---

While waiting for our clumsy agents to clumsily convince other nations about how we should have Zulu, I receive yet another newspaper.

Even the Montenegrin are inventing stuff

---

Finally our agents convinced everybody about the Zulu question. I am not sure what this new war will bring to us. As far as our scouts see from the border, they have a massive army nearly 10 times ours although they lack disciplined western style military. Still, the numbers are very stacked against us. The crazy bastard diskoerekto says this way or that way we need to beat them as soon as possible, we need coastal provinces, we need to form a big republic, we need to build harbors for better colonization, they have manpower to recruit and stuff. His big plan includes something called attrition. I am really worried about our people. God save us from his antics.

Warmongering Transvaal Republic

---

I do not know if anybody will read my diaries but if you do, please tell everybody me, Andries Pretorius is not responsible for all the craziness that has been going on. We just wanted some peaceful farms away from the British. Now I find us in the middle of something much bigger. Difficult days are upon us. Godspeed and good luck.

Looking quite somber

Bullfilter · May 8, 2018

I'm reading them, Andries. Are you sure this strange diskoerekto character isn't simply another personality within your own mind? If so, "may God have mercy", as they say in the papers!

But, whoever this stranger is, Transvaal is expanding. But have they done enough to be able to beat those fierce Zulu hordes?

OtakuStrategy · May 8, 2018

Subbed

SibCDC · May 8, 2018

And so Oranje Vrijstaat is no more, next stop, those nice beaches to the east!

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