A Sentence That Makes No Sense Without Context · 6:11pm Nov 4th, 2015
"Ohio has become too powerful, and I'm not sure me and Louisiana have the strength to take it down."
I found a mod for Victoria 2 that divides up all of America, Mexico, and Canada into smaller states in the 1861 start date. Immediately on getting it I went into that mod's game files and deleted every single Old World nation, making everything in Europe, Asia, Africa, and Australia blank and ripe for colonization. Then I started playing as Massachusetts.
I managed to unify all of New England early on, and thereby get a name change from Massachusetts to New England. After that my goal was to focus on colonization of the Old World. At this point I have a monopoly on opium - New England is the only nation in the world with access to it, out of my Arabian colonies in what would be Yemen and Oman. But my real goal was to get to China and India for the tea and dyes. I've colonized Sierra Leon, South Africa, Madagascar, the Sychelles, and Ceylon, and I'm about to start colonizing Madras and finally get access to dyes. My Ceylon naval base once it's built up more will allow me to reach as far as Indochina, and once I build up there I should be able to start reching out towards Hong Kong and other southern Chinese states. Oh, I also have a major stake in the coffee trade thanks to my African colonies in Sierra Leon and surrounding regions.
Now, meanwhile, Brazil has been colonizing Europe. I have some minor European holdings, including southern Spain (plus the Balearic Isles) and all of the British Isles (or rather just England, as I released Ireland, Cornwall, Wales, and Scotland as semi-sovereign dominions under my aegis), but mostly Europe is Brazilian from central Spain to Westfallen and most of the Italian peninsula. New York has managed to grab what would be Portugal and is beginning to colonize around Denmark and northern Germany. Louisiana actually controls most of North Africa from Algeria to Egypt, including having built the Suez Canal. Oaxaca (a Mexican nation, its homeland is in and around what would be Mexico City) controls most of the Sahara, while Argentina controls middle Africa around the Congo.
Ohio, though. Ohio has put only minor effort into colonization - north Morocco, then some stuff in and around what should be Istanbul and Anatolia (Turkey). For the most part, though, they've instead been conquering...well, what you see on the map. I largely ignored them, busy as I was trying to get my merchant empire going (bit miffed that the Socialists have been consistently winning elections since the 1880s, but eh, my economy is good so they can't be all that bad), but now they've sort of reached a point where I'm pretty sure they have twice the army I do - and most of my army is spread across my colonial holdings rather than in New England proper, whereas most of Ohio's holdings are in America itself. And Ohio has just been very aggressive and expansionist in general, and right now seems to be trying to pick a fight with Louisiana for some overseas colonies. Mostly what I'm trying to do is subsidize and strengthen New York as a buffer between me and Ohio, but...well, we'll see how that goes.
So, yeah. Dark times ahead for New England.
Oh, I should probably mention that at least part of the reason why Ohio got so big is because Back In the Day, Ontario is the most powerful Canadian state and was competing with me for control of the Canadian nations of Quebec and Acadia (modern New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island), both of which I needed to either conquer or bring into my sphere of influence in order to turn Massachusetts into New England.
Ontario also wanted to control the various nations of the Great Lakes regions and was competing with Ohio for control of them. In order to get Ontario off of my back, I aided Ohio in a war against it for Ohio's control over the Superior region of Michigan, and during the war used the opportunity to take Acadia from Ontario's sphere of influence. Ontario lost the war, lost Great Power status, and has been stuck there ever since.
But the cost was giving Ohio momentum. Later still, Georgia had transformed itself into the United States of America (My guess is that a pro-American rebellion started and wasn't put down), and was threatening to destablize the entire southeastern region and start forming a new USA. I didn't want that, so I helped Ohio conquer former Georgia. That...that was a mistake, too. Should have instead supposed the USA against Ohio.
Basically Ohio is America's Prussia, it turns out. I think what Ohio is trying to do is form either the Great Lakes state (for which it merely needs Wisconsin and Minnesota), the Federal States of America (for which it needs New York and Delaware), or possibly the Confederate States of America (for which it needs Louisiana, Florida, and the Carolinas).
None of these would bode well for me.
'Looks at story page to remember who you are'
Ah. Daleks. Carry on.
I laughed harder at this than I can really explain. Could be due to all the EUIV I've been playing lately, I suppose.
Huh. And here I thought this would be about primary elections or the Electoral College. This was much more entertaining than I expected.
muh state lets go
VicII has a pony mod. You probably know that, just mentioning
EUIV also has one.
Soon, CKII will, as well. When I'm finished writing it, actually. I'm at the localization part now.
Kinda off being called New England when you colonised the British Isles, shouldn't you be Old England?
3520352
It would actually be pretty easy for me to go into the game files and change the names of some things, though I don't think the New England region would be called Old England.
Basically what I'm thinking the timeline of events was is...
- Through to April 11th, 1861: Exactly as normal history.
- April 12th, 4:30 AM: First shot of the American Civil War fired.
- April 12th, 4:31 AM: Will the Alien Space Bat shows up, sees the American Civil War kicking off, and decides that it'd be more fun if every state in the Union and the Confederacy was a sovereign nation, plus the various territories of the US organized into sovereign nations. Plus Mexico and Canada and the Caribbean because why not.
- April 12th, 4:32 AM: Vicky the Alien Space Bat shows up and decides that it would be further fun if the entire Old World was replaced with virgin land, as though humanity had simply never evolved or existed there, or at most was still in primitive hunter-gatherer tribes and maybe tiny settlements.
- April 12th, 4:35 AM: Vicky and Will get together and decide that, additionally, while everyone in the New World will be aware of the Old World just plum disappearing and remember all the history leading up to it and stuff, no one will consider the event to be supernatural. I.e., no one will run around screaming about the end of the world.
So New England still remembers that it's a former colony of England/Britain. I've actually in-game been referring to colonized old England as Albion, though this mostly amounts to the units I've built there being organized into the Army of Albion, Albion Fleet, and Albion Marine (the transport ships for the Army of Albion).
3520427
Damn you alien space bat!
Although Albion refers to the whole of Great Briton, if you've removed Wales and Scotland it technically doesn't count, Englaland or Angleland maybe?
3520214
I was about to say, Ohio is basically behaving like Prussia in that scenario.
I adore those games.
3520427
It seems like the obvious play to me is to set Quebec and Ontario against the might of Ohio. Perhaps if motivated by significant treasure or promise of glory, can the might of Canada crush this upstart empire for its ignorance!
....I also noticed that the Mormons seem to be doing pretty well for themselves.
3520547
Not really, no. Deseret has had those borders since the campaign started in 1861. On the other hand they've been a stable democracy that entire time, usually under their Union Party (a Conservative party, a la America's modern Republicans). They're currently ranked 36th.
They're doing better than Arizona, though. Early in the game Arizona attacked and absorbed New Mexico. But then New Mexican nationalist rebels rose up and reclaimed New Mexico, then conquered Arizona. Then Arizonan nationalists rose up, reclaimed Arizona, and then conquered New Mexico. Not to mention that they constantly have Anarchists, Socialists, Jacobins, and other revolutionaries that force government change between presidential dictatorships, democracies, and I think at one point they were a kingdom. Back and forth and back and forth, etc.
As near as I can tell there's no actual nation there and no real government, just whatever warlord can control the most land at the time. Basically "Arixo" is the US' Balkans.
I want to ask, is Victoria 2 similar to Europa Universalis 4? What differences are there between those two games? I have EU4 and it is mostly a conquest game.
3522718
I've never played EU4, though I know the EU series and the Victoria series are made by the same company (Paradox Interactive). Paradox also made Crusader Kings and Hearts of Iron; it's actually possible to export a saved game from the first Crusader Kings into Europa Universalis II, then from that into Victoria: An Empire Under the Sun (the first Vicky game), and then from there to Hearts of Iron II, letting you play a single game from 1066 to 1964.
Victoria II definitely has conquest and war aspects, but it's more a game about managing your empire. If you're a Great Power (GP) (one of the 8 most powerful nations), you also "influence" a non-GP nation, eventually bringing the nation into your Sphere of Influence. A nation in a GP's Sphere is still independent, but part of its Internal Market is joined to both the GP that sphered it and all other members of that GP's sphere, making a larger and more versatile Internal Market. Goods produced in one country may be purchased by the other without tariffs and before being sold to other nations not part of the Sphere (although this can actually be a bad thing if your nation relies on tariffs for a good portion of its economy). Also nations in a Sphere are more likely to ally and otherwise interact favorably with the GP they're sphered with; and in any event a Sphere'd nation will never go to war with the GP it's been sphered by. Finally some Unification events can occur if a nation is sphered. For example, in the "normal" game, a Great Power German state (usually Germany or Austria, but theoretically any of them can do it as long as they've achieved Great Power status) that manages to Sphere all the smaller German states can form Germany.
You can go to war with a country to force it into your Sphere, but equally you can just go to the Diplomacy tab and tell your nation to expend Influence into it, which will eventually allow you to sphere the nation. In this way you can basically build a large confederation of trading partners that will help you out in the event of war.
Oh, newbie mistake: never Sphere China. Learned that one the hard way.
See, suppose you've worked up the diplomatic relations to add China to your sphere of influence. They're an uncivilized country at the start of the game, so having them in your sphere means your population has 100% access to their market of natural resources, as if your country made them (your population is coded to buy domestic goods before importing, having a country in your sphere of influence means that country no longer counts as an importer). However, China has such a large population, that they will outproduce anything your country can make. Even manufactured goods made in your factories can't compete with Chinese artisans who craft them by hand. Your population will therefore spend their income buying resources from China instead of your own market; demand for your nation's domestically produced goods goes way down; the owners aren't making money anymore; they can't pay their workers anymore and unemployment goes way up; unemployed workers make no money to spend, exacerbating all of the other problems; your whole economy collapses. Nice job bankrupting yourself.
3522787 Is there also a time limit on each playthrough? And is there a mod to extend time limit?
3522816
Well, the game goes from 1836 to 1936. You can change the game speed; I normally have it set to the middle speed, so that 1 second = 1 day, meaning it takes about 10 hours for a full game (assuming no pausing).
Here's how to change the end date. Probably a similar method to changing the start date.
3524226 So how is your game against Ohio going?
3525491
Actually I managed to overcome them. I built a bunch of clipper transports and basically exported all my armies in Europe and Africa to New England, leaving them vulnerable to the Brazilians and Oaxaca, but I was on fairly good terms with both so that's okay.
Then I generated a casus bellus against Ohio, restoring more native New Yorker land to New York (in the mod states tend to have cores in nearby states, so New York has cores in Pennsylvania, and Pennsylvania has cores in New York), then attacked at a time and place of my choosing and when I was ready, rather than when Ohio chose. It was New England, Louisiane, and New York against Ohio and...Oaxaca, who decided to intervene in the War on Ohio's side. Damnit. I had hoped to get Virginia, Florida, and the Carolinas in on the war, but they'd actually just finished a war with Ohio (the one that got Ohio former Georgia) and so were locked into a truce with them.
The world's first Great War went from 1901 to 1904. My navy is overwhelmingly the largest (The New England Home Fleet alone was bigger than the Ohioan and Oaxaca fleets combined) so I was easily able to blockade Ohio's coastline, and since I built and controlled the Panama Canal I also was able to do likewise to both of Oaxaca's shores on either side of Mexico. Fortunately Oaxaca didn't have that many troops in Africa so I was able to build up some new forces for there and basically battle across the Sahara, though mostly that was holding actions and I was slowly but steadily losing there since the Oaxacans just had better land in Africa than me.
Louisiane had Texas as an ally, so Louisiane and Texas fought a two-front war against Ohio from the east and north and Oaxaca & friends (Oaxaca is allied with most of former Mexico) from the south. Me, I poured everything into the Pennsylvania Front. I had a total of 117 regiments (each regiment is 3,000 people, so an army of 351,000, mostly Infantry but with some Artillery, Dragoons, and Engineers) to devote there, even with Mobilizing; New York had another 54 regiments or so (162,000 troops). I think Ohio fielded half again our combined number (so about 256 regiments, or 768,000 troops) on the Pennsylvanian front. I mostly focused on waiting for the New Yorkers to start a battle and then went in to back them up. The Ohioans fortunately tended to divide their army into much smaller units, so I basically used my army to play whack-a-mole.
In the end, all of Pennsylvania was taken and the New England-New Yorker combine achieved a breakthrough into Ohio itself, taking it swiftly. At the same time the Ontarians actually declared a separate war on Ohio and Minnesota (an Ohioan ally) for the purposes of conquering Minnesota. Ohioan troops leaving the Louisiane front were crushed between New Yorker/New English and Ontarian troops. In the end, Ontario got the Minnesota it wanted, I expanded New York, and I even gave West Virginia back to Virgina and re-created the Georgia Republic...although one of the latter's first acts was to declare war on South Carolina, a war it's now losing since South Carolina is allied with North Carolina, Florida, and Virginia.
The war was devastating while it went on, though. My economy tanked, though fortunately my cash reserves were large enough for me to absorb the hit; and I lost about half of my army total. Still, I have the largest and wealthiest empire in the world (especially seeing as I got those Indian and Chinese colonies going now), so I was able to eventually make good on my losses, and I used the excuse to re-organize my army and navies.
The map looks like this now:
oi65.tinypic.com/10wmueh.jpg
Virginia has become a Great Power, while Ontario has reversed its fortunes and is now a Secondary Power.
...oh, and "Arixo" remains a war-torn Hellhole, as you can see. Currently New Mexico has the upper hand. Also most of Kansas is now calling itself the "Plains Association" for some reason. We'll see how long that lasts.
3525577 So how did the game end?
3531676
I've actually lost interest in it - with Ohio down and me expanding across Asia with no contest there's not really much of a challenge to it anymore. Instead I loaded up the NNM and am now playing through as New England, but with nothing else having changed. Much more challenging and fun, it turns out.
I modded the files so I could start as New England plus New York according to an 1807 Northern Secession timeline I once found (where the Hartford Convention produced more than just some folk talking to one another) and not start out in America's sphere. I also made sure to mod America's own files so that it didn't have to disband its starting army or navy due to the loss of New England and New York, i.e., it's just as powerful as it normally should be.
So far I've been in the following wars (including a few that happened in the "backstory")
1810-1812: The War of Independence
AKA the War of Northern Rebellion
I'll just link the timeline that inspired this one; funnily enough it was, itself, a setup to a Vicky II game: Part I, Part II, Part III.
1836-1838: War of Preservation
AKA the War of Restoration
Within twelve days (so twelve real-world seconds) of starting the game I found myself at war with the United States. They wanted New York. I disagreed on the matter. Although they had a larger army then me at first, it was out-of-position, ready to begin intervention in the Texas War of Independence, but instead focused North. I can only assume that whoever was President of America in 1836 wanted a quick war to reclaim New York followed by a quicker war with Mexico to firmly establish America as a great power. Instead what happened was America losing good portions of its armies to the New England winter as it occupied Buffalo, Rochester, and Binghamton, followed by my army - supplemented with conscripted troops - attacking and smashing the invasion, reclaiming the three cities and then counter-attacking into Pennsylvania and New Jersey during the war's last four months. Peace was signed after a triple victory in Williamsport, Newark, and Trenton.
1837: British Acquisition of Caribou
Of course in the middle of my war with America, Britain declared war for Caribou, the northernmost province of Maine. I absolutely could not take on the British and America at the same time and so after two weeks I decided to just let them have it. Unusually mercenary move on the part of the British, but it kept them happy and I lost nothing of real value in Caribou. Actually they briefly took control of all of Maine, Vermont, and New Hampshire, but then almost immediately returned both of the latter and most of the former (save Caribou) to me, saying that all they wanted to do was take what was rightfully there's. They can have it.
1844-1846: First Haitian-Commonwealth War
AKA Commonwealth Intervention in Haiti
I originally wanted a war with Denmark for their Caribbean island of Saint Thomas, but then they allied with Britain and, well, I was having none of that. So instead I went to war with Haiti in order to puppet them. Something-something restoration of order, something-something expansion of democracy. I think their democracy had fallen into a presidential dictorship, anyway. In any event I puppeted the island after two years, most of it spent in occupation duties rather than battles as the Haitians didn't have much of an army.
1847: Mexican-Central American War
The United States of Central America usually breaks apart early in the game, but in this timeline it didn't break apart fully. It lost El Salvador and Nicaragua but was able to regain control of Guatemala, Costa Rica, and Honduras. Also, with America distracted up north with me, they never got involved in the Texas War of Independence, and so Texas stayed Tejas. But the downside is that Mexico couldn't do much when the Yucatán Republic and Chiapas formed down south. Later both joined the USCA. Me, I was allied with Mexico, and so, when Mexico went to war for the restoration of Chiapas to their control, I joined in. It was a brief conflict that saw me occupying part of the Yucatán before it was done.
1849-1851: Second Haitian-Commonwealth War
AKA Second Restoration of Democracy to Haiti
Rebels overthrew the government in Haiti and decided they didn't want to be a puppet anymore. New England disagreed. Not much else to say about that, except that it left my forces out of position when...
1851-1853: Mexican-American War
This war is unfortunately coded to occur sooner or later in the game. With my forces occupied in occupying Haiti, I couldn't help Mexico and broke my alliance with them, which hurt me on the international stage. Mexico was overrun by tens of thousands of American forces that reached all the way down to Mexico City before the war finally ended and the borders between Mexico and America were settled on to be identical to the modern borders. Tejas became Texas after all.
1854-1856: Second War of Preservation
America must have been riding a high after winning the Mexican-American War. Fortunately I'd had time to secure Haiti and return my forces to new England, beginning a rapid buildup of my armed forces for the war that I knew was coming. When it did I basically repeated what happened last time - drew the Americans in, then attacked them after attrition began to winnow their numbers. After that, and deciding that I need more strategic depth, more people, and more ports, I decided to try my hand at annexing Pennsylvania and New Jersey. It was relatively easy, but while I was at war the Haitians were attacked by America's allies in the USCA. Problem: the United States Navy is twice as large as the New England navy. Basically I sailed out my clipper transports and my 17-ship (7 man-o'-wars, 10 frigates) proper Navy, both heading for Bermuda. The United States Navy, consisting of 55 ships (20 man-o'-wars, 22 frigates, 13 clipper transports), launched from Atlanta. My battle Navy sailed south to hold them while my clipper transports slipped by and then sailed south to relieve the Haitians. They made it and I was able to trounce the USCA easily, but the cost was my entire 17 ship fleet, as they were all destroyed before they could retreat.
Haiti so far has not been worth the damn effort.
Bright side: I got Pennsylvania and New Jersey, occupied Washington DC for a time, and the course of the War saw me propelled to 7th place - displacing Austria-Hungary and becoming a Great Power. My maximum navy size just doubled from 30 to 60 ships, my maximum number of regiments increases from 15 to 26, and I now have more than twice as many factories as the USA, which is gonna have to start dealing with the Confederate States soon.
And that's it so far. I'm right now trying to expand my Sphere of Influence. So far I have Haiti, Nicaragua, and El Salvador in it; my next target for Spheres is Colombia so that I can, when the time is right, build the Panama Canal.