badger_ken: Because France's military score is also stratospheric! In all seriousness, I'm guessing if there is too great a military score disparity, the AI nations will just leave you alone. Also losing -2000£/day is very serious. In just three years that will drain a 2 million £ treasure!
Ivir Baggins, Judas Maccabeus: The Hedjaz is correct!
Projekt 919: Making Ole' Miss win is going to take a lot of rigging...
Thanks for the heads up on Southern cuisine. I am curious if you can elaborate with example the differences between the different dialects you mentioned.
Strategic Fail: Thanks! When the pics go back up, read pages 1 and 2...wasn't easy!
Freebot: Aim to
Vive la France!!! and not merely oppress
Tomsz: Thanks!
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A closer look into
France:
A questionable game mechanic world conquerors have to deal with is that every time you add a war goal, some of your jingoism turns into pro-military. You will sometimes here that isn't a big deal because your jingoism goes up during war. Wrong. I had, what, about 30% jingoism after the China War and I've been more or less in a constant state of war and now my jingoism is at 10%...but my pro-military is 42%. If you're adding war goals, you can't maintain jingoism, but your population will be very pro-military
The "war will raise jingoism" perspective reminds me of my online dating experiences. My online dates also have certain perspectives of "average" or "athletic and toned" that doesn't quite match up with reality :rofl:
Our industries:
There are actually some decent profits here for stuff like steel, liquor, steamers, and fabric. Military goods are another matter. Since this stuff is available on the world market, in a typical game I'm not sure I'd build these...
All right enough of the domestic blah blah nonsense!
7 September 1871: Vive La France!!! Ethiopia is annexed
It's time to fight
Projekt 919's Good ol' Boys again...if for no other reason than it's fun
Vive la Francing!!! them! Actually it made a lot of sense since:
- I already had a lot of troops there from Invasion USA
- The USA is big and will take lots of wars to annex it.
- I want to get started on Mexico and I can't do that until I expand from Oregon and Florida and border it.
Unlike Spain, the US has fully funded its troops and the good ol' boys in Jackson and Wilmington are actually putting up a rather stout defense.
But this does not save the mysterious flag people:
21 December 1871: Vive La France!!! The Hedjaz is annexed
Where are all these Good ol' Boys coming from?? Geez, they breed like rabbits! The Wilmington boys have been routed and
French troops have been dispatched to chase them down (never allow an AI army to reorganize if you can manage it) but now Knoxville and Ashville have become huge fights and now some Yankees are marching down from Kentucky!
What?!?! #%&?@!!
Well, at least things on the economic front are going well...
Reinforcements are shipped across the Atlantic to make amphibious landings against undefended Mid Atlantic states and to apply overwhelming force against the Good ol' Boys and Yankees who inflicted the first defeat upon French armies since the Nanning fiasco 20 years earlier. Where an entire Russian Spetsnaz division failed to break up a rag-tag band of American "Wolverines," the
French succeed in avenging its losses and send them running to the mountains of Ashville where they will be wiped out!
Our peace deal with Uncle Sam. Although we underestimated the resistance the Yankees and Good ol' Boys would put up, that merely softened the peace terms; glorious
France would never actually lose a war to such uncivilized barbarians
Next time you won't get off so easy...
We are content with these generous peace terms as I don't really have enough forces to overwhelm the Mexicans - because they're all in Southern France and the Middle East preparing for an invasion of Austria and finishing off the Ottomans! But before we get to this, there are some preliminaries to attend to first:
You're in the way Sardinia-Piedmont
20 April 1873: Vive La France!!! Sardinia-Piedmont is annexed
After our glorious The Hedjaz campaign
5 May 1873: Vive La France!!! Iraq is annexed
Picking off the remnants of the Central United States
17 June 1873: Vive La France!!! Costa Rica is annexed
The Mighty Lucca is slayed
9 October 1873: Vive La France!!! Lucca is annexed
While we're there
24 November 1873: Vive La France!!! Parma is annexed
The rest of Northern Italy is allied with Austria so we slap Vienna with a DOW.
Thanks for honoring the alliance Modena
12 December 1873: Vive La France!!! Modena is annexed
You too Tuscany
3 March 1874: Vive La France!!! Tuscany is annexed
France Vs. Austria, Switzerland, the Papal States, and the mighty Montenegro (Modena & Tuscany have already been
annexed).
After peace with Switzerland and the Papal States. Both are now annexable so in five years...
Austria is helpless against the flood of
French armies, but the little number under diplomacy is now becoming a problem.
The game doesn't give very many diplomats and I've got other fish to fry. A base of 0.2 a month is, how shall I say, small, meager, diminutive, minuscule, trifling, tiny, little, scant, meager, insignificant, picayune even. Rather than squeeze Austria for more states, I accept their offer that includes Lombardy because, despite having a gazillion soldiers, my diplomatic corps is somehow lacking
Anyway, I'd rather clean up the Middle East and continue dismantling the Ottomans than grant my ski teams a few Austrian mountains to practice on.
Adios Abu Dhabi
3 April 1876: Vive La France!!! Abu Dhabi is annexed.
With My DOW on the Ottomans, once again Alcibiades and Pericles have delusions of always having Paris and join the war. This ain't Casablanca fellows:
14 April 1876: Vive La France!!! Greece is annexed.
And while were at it
22 September 1876: Vive La France!!! Yeman is annexed
Even though we're at war with the Ottomans, the Spanish aren't safe:
Since I'm going to have horde diplomats and wait until I've got 9 before I launch any future campaigns, I'm going to wage a few, short wars just to tidy up the world map beforehand. If I've got to wait a decade before acquiring enough diplomats to embark on a future Spanish campaign, I'm going to take their Pacific possessions, the Philippines and the dinky island in the Marianas, away first. The Spanish might not be in a position to strategically threaten
France, but I've always been a stickler for the aesthetic beauty of maps
o
And Brunei is the wrong shade of blue
12 June 1877: Vive La France!!! Brunei is annexed
After turning the Pacific islands from a gross yellow into nice shade of light blue, I decide
France needs to boot the Russians out of Asia Minor before they vulch the remnants of the Ottoman carcass.
Of course, while
French armies are marching through the huge swathes of Russian territory, the we get this little notification
It just wouldn't be an genuine installment of this AAR with one mention of these guys...
Russia is so big, most of it's provinces are empty or rebel controlled. This makes an invasion of Russia seem less epic than it should, which is an unfortunate consequence of the nature of Victoria 2's gameplay that has far less armies than Victoria 1. Nevertheless, in one or two areas, the Russians do consolidate their mobilized troops and pick a fight:
Sweden has a total of six battalions guarding Scandinavia and decided to honor it's alliance and join the war. OK... Perhaps they were inspired by the Greek example?
The Russians are hopelessly outclassed technologically and pose little threat to
French armies. Russian attrition is a killer though. The best formula for invading Russia is to have a whole crapload of 2 battalion "armies" besiege their provinces and hold a real army in reserve in a province behind these mini-armies you control/occupy so attrition doesn't kill it (i.e. almost the reverse of a tradition invasion). When the Russian stack does show up, then march the real army to meet it. The Ruskies don't have the tech to make quick work out of your mini armies and your rescue force will arrive in time.
Peace
9 August 1878.
We took all of Russia's Asia Minor provinces, a Siberian province, and Norway from Sweden. Had I more diplomats and less war exhaustion, I would've squeezed a few more war goals in, but our revolt risk is a bit high and I didn't see the profit in extending an unnecessary war for 4 more months just to take Irkutsk or some other lovely Siberian Club Med getaway.
Next up: We will deal with this guy: