"Okay, is everyone here?" Leon asked.
"'Ere," Eddy said in a bored tone.
"We are present," Luna stated in an imperious voice.
"Standing at attention!" Shining Armor said enthusiastically.
"...I'm here," Fluttershy mumbled, almost inaudibly.
"Alright," Leon said. Luna, as the host for the game, you have the privilege of starting it."
"It's the one we were on last week, correct?"
"Yes," Eddy confirmed. "It was me playin' Denmark - and getting threatened with war because one of our number can't take criticism properly."
Leon laughed.
"Hmm. Shining was playing as Japan, Luna was playing as China and ripping East Asia apart, and Leo miraculously won a war against Mexico and showed off his leet skills by threatening me.
Leon chuckled again.
"Um, aren't you...?"
"Hmm? Oh, yes, and Flutters was taking an extended vacation in Hawaii."
"Okay, that's everyone. Starting the game... now."
The screen changed to a dynamic loading screen, with flashing paintings presumably from the Victorian Era becoming momentarily visible before the map finally loaded.
Now, Leon thought, Where was I? Ah, yes, the casus belli on Mexico. He checked up on that, and it was still a few weeks away, in-game time, but that would come pretty quick.
"Is everyone ready? I'm going to start time now," Luna announced.
"Ready!"
The dates in the game began moving, and now things could get truly underway. It wasn't long before Leon got his casus belli, and promptly declared war on Mexico.
"Oh, another war, Leon?" Luna asked, sounding interested. "You're being very aggressive for such a small country."
"It's because I'm small that I need to be aggressive," Leon said. "And playing as a major power is boring anyway, because you just steam roll everyone."
"True."
"I'll join if you ask," Shining offered.
"I will, but I don't think you westernized yet, so I doubt you'll be able to reach me."
"Actually I can. I got the reform that allows me to build transports."
"Oh really? What about your army?"
"I have infantry, and plenty of it. It'll be a while before I can get to you, though," the Guard stallion warned, "Clippers are slow."
"You sure you don't need them...?"
"I have enough to annex Dai Viet."
"Alright then, but Mexico is civilized, and their units will be better than yours."
"It'll be a chance to play smarter, in that case."
As the Japanese forces set sail, Leon sent his army - now reinforced to seven brigades, or about twenty-one thousand men, including five infantry brigades, along with one cavalry and one artillery - into Mexico. Sam Houston was still alive, so he was still in charge of the army. A Mexican army tried a counterattack, but Houston's defensive bonus was too much, and the Mexicans fell back in utter disarray.
Suddenly a message rolled up on the screen, accompanied by a sigh of disgust by Luna;
"Russia has declared WAR on The Chinese Empire."
"Oh dear," the Princess moaned. "And I still haven't fully westernized yet."
"You did get the reform allowing infantry, right?" Eddy asked.
"Yes, but I can't build anything else. Ugh, this is going to be a slugging match."
"Why are you complaining?" Leon asked, "There's no limit to your manpower, which is what you have to rely on right now. You could easily throw three hundred brigades, plus hundreds more if you decided to mobilize."
"The manpower isn't the problem; the fact is that they have cavalry and artillery, not to mention an actual navy. I am going to lose an awful amount of money because they'll blockade everything."
"Ah, cutting into your ability to build factories and other industry when you do westernize," Eddy realized.
"Already their armies are starting to occupy Mongolia, and there is a stack of 21 that I am not eager to engage."
"You can call me into the war," Shining offered.
"I'll take it, but can you spare the troops?"
"I have loads," the stallion boasted.
"Well..."
Another message quickly claimed, "Japan has declared WAR on Russia."
"Well this could go badly," Leon muttered.
His own war was going okay, but the U.S. had joined the war on his side. This was a big problem, because when they did, they became the war leader, allowing them to either make or accept peace offers... which Texas would have to abide by. So far, the Mexican armies had been beaten three times trying to attack his army, and the only thing they succeeded in doing was to increase the Texan war score. They had lost one of their provinces to Texan occupation, and another was on the way. New Mexico was going to fall, with Arizona, Nevada-Utah, and California being invaded by the U.S.
Leon began to check up on all the wars. So far, besides the war between him, the U.S., and Mexico, not to mention the massive Asian war that was unfolding, the main conflicts were Britain beating up small Indian substates, the Netherlands going to war against Brunei, France conquering Algeria, and Argentina and Chile going at it hammer and tongs. So far, there hadn't been a major world war yet.
"Japan has declared WAR on Dai Viet."
'Uh, you sure that's wise, Shiny?" Eddy inquired.
"Hey! Only Twilight and Cadence can call me that!" the Guard Captain protested. "And I'm confident that I have more than enough troops to spare in order to beat an uncivilized nation."
"Just saying mate; you have a lot on you plate just now."
"How are you doing, Ed?" Leon asked.
"Who, me? I'm pretty well," the British player said very confidently. "My reforms are coming along nicely, and my tech's growing at a steady rate; I might be able to colonize when Machine Guns becomes available. A Danish Africa would be... Oh, reactionary rebels just popped up in my capital."
"Do you think you can deal with them?"
"Oh yeah, there's just a few of 'em, nothing to worry abou..."
There was a sudden silence. Then...
"Oh, shit."
Over Fluttershy's shocked gasp and Luna's outraged shout, Leon asked, "What happened?"
"They just spawned everywhere! The army's getting destroyed, there's nothing I can do!"
Leon checked his own war. So far, New Mexico had fallen, and Arizona wasn't far behind. The Mexican army was reeling from it's defeats from Texan and U.S. hands; now was the time to take as much territory as possible, before they recovered and the U.S. made a peace deal with Mexico that he didn't want. After several minutes, the war was going well enough so that he could take his eyes off of it.
Most of the red-tinged provinces of Denmark had black lines across them; when he clicked on one of them, it said, "Occupied by Danish Reactionaries."
Aaaaaaaaaaannnnnnd... this is why I'm Conservative. While it was difficult to gain reforms as a Conservative government, it wasn't impossible, and he preferred the Conservative style of government over the Liberal. Reactionaries sought a return to "the good old days," and would stop at nothing to undo reforms and return to a less enlightened type of government, usually absolute monarchy but occasionally something else. Leon chose not to think about his thoughts on politics in real life and focused on the game.
"I'm trying to rebuild the army, but there's too many of them!"
Leon watched as the last few territories of Denmark were taken by black lines.
"No! No! NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"
A message spawned stating that Denmark had switched to an absolute monarchy.
Eddy made several noises; it sounded as if he'd shorted out. Leon could sense that a huge loss of temper was about to happen.
"Huuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu..."
"Edward, if you swear again, I'll kick you out of the game and I will not let you come back," Luna warned.
The funny noises cut off; Eddy must have turned off his headset.
"Wow, I've never seen him blow up like this," Leon said, deliberately forgetting the fact that he had never seen Ed in real life. "He must have worked pretty hard to get those reforms passed in so short a time."
"Still doesn't excuse the profanity," the Princess said unapologetically. "I meant it when I said I'd kick him."
"You just worry about your war; he'll be back, and he'll have calmed down." Under his breath, Leon added, "Maybe."
He was proven correct. After a minute or two, Eddy came back. He sounded out of breath, as though he'd shouted himself hoarse. Leon suspected he had, and hoped no one else had been in his house - or, preferably, in the neighborhood - when that had happened.
"They reset... every... single... reform... I made since the start of the game," Eddy said weakly. "Everything. Even slavery is legal now."
"Ouch."
"And I have no army now, it all got wiped out by the rebels. If Prussia - if anybody - declares war on me now, I'm dead."
"Try to ally with them."
"I can't; it says, "impossible."
"Well, then, you're... in trouble," Leon finished lamely, remembering Luna's warning. He began to check on the war he'd begun. So far, the Mexican army was avoiding battle, having taken horrendous losses when it had tried to engage. To make matters worse for the enemy, Shining's troops had finally arrived. He hadn't westernized yet, and didn't have the military techs that would have changed the soldier icon for his troops, so a samurai was currently standing on San Francisco.
"Ha, a Japanese invasion of the West Coast; they would have given anything to have done that in World War II," Leon said, finding the situation somewhat ironic.
"How far did they get?" Shining asked.
"In real life? As far as Hawaii when they raided it, but as far as territory captured, they didn't get farther than the Battles of the Coral Sea and Midway."
"Sounded interesting. Maybe we should talk more about history sometime."
"Yeah, but let's focus on the here and now."
"Good idea."
"How's the other war going?"
"Which one?"
"The one with Russia."
Shining sounded a little desperate as he answered, "not all that well. The Russians have artillery and cavalry all over the place, and their navy is blockading just about everything; I couldn't bring reinforcements to the mainland to save my life. The Princess is holding up a little better, but only because she has the numbers on land."
"Ugh, I have lost so many units already," Luna groaned. "Most of my irregulars have been wiped out, and even my best armies struggle against their stacks. Not to mention my people are ungrateful whelps who would put to death the knowledge that would save them."
"I take it your reforms aren't popular?"
"Are you kidding? They're resisting every little thing I do! I can't improve either the military or the economy without some hidebound traditionalists causing trouble. Fortunately I haven't had a big rebellion yet, only small stacks that I can crush easily even in this war, but there are a lot of these small rebellions, and it's going to hurt me badly if I can't put them all down."
"I'm assuming you're broke."
"Not quite, but almost, with the Russians blockading every little piece of shoreline, as Shining Armor said."
"I hope no one else is thinking of joining? On Russia's side, at least?"
"Well, as Japan is an enemy of both the Vietnamese and Russia, I'd say they'll probably form some sort of an alliance eventually. If you're talking about Britain, well, I've been checking up on their relations, and they don't seem to particularly like one another right now. Hopefully something like the Crimean War breaks out so that the Russians have to split their forces."
"Yeah, just about everything important for them is in Europe," Leon noted. "If they lose that, they're dead."
"That's why we're not getting much war score from taking their stuff over here," Shining said, a note of finally understanding something in his voice.
"Uh-huh. Take their capital and they'll holler, but until then they won't care what they lose over there."
"I don't think that's in the cards. Their units are all over here. It's all we can do just to keep them from advancing."
Leon began managing his own war. The war score was good enough that he could add a war goal. He choose to take Arizona in addition to New Mexico.
He began to advance into Mexico proper, knocking out the singular brigades currently in the region, and began taking provinces.
Wait. Didn't I just tell Luna and Shining that taking the capital matters? Nuts to this, I'm going for Mexico City. He switched course and headed for the big red dot on Mexico. He reached it without trouble, but he noticed that the Mexicans had built a fort in the territory, meaning that Mexico City was going to take a long time to fall. He hadn't gotten the research for engineers yet, and frankly didn't use them all too often.
A stack of forty-two thousand came up from southern Mexico, led by Santa Anna, heading straight for him.
"Guys, wish me luck; Santa's coming to town, and he's bringing an entire army with him."
"Huh?" Shining must have been searching on the map, because he was quiet for a few seconds. "Oh, Santa Anna. Yeah, good luck dealing with that. I'll bring my own troops in; it might be a long fight."
"Thanks. You certainly secured San Francisco, at any rate."
The Mexican army collided with his own. Immediately, Sam Houston's soldiers began inflicting heavy casualties. However, there were a lot of Mexican troops, and more scattered brigades were coming in, as if the A.I. had figured out that this was the battle that would decide the fate of the war. Gradually, the tide of battle slowly turned away from the Texans, who nevertheless kept fighting.
The battle lasted for well over a week with the numbers involved. Superior Mexican numbers began to tell, wearing down the Texan forces.
Suddenly, Shining's Japanese troops arrived. With their addition to the Texan forces, the Mexican forces no longer had a telling superiority, and all the while Houston's defense bonus kept hurting them. The battle meter slid more and more to the right, towards victory.
Finally, a post-battle screen came up. The battle was a great victory; over thirty thousand Mexican casualties for somewhat over five thousand allied losses.
"If we didn't put Santa Anna into disgrace with this battle, I don't know what would." Leon said, sighing with relief.
"Considering what he did in real life, he would have deserved it." Shining Armor might not have been as addicted to books and knowledge as his sister, but that didn't mean that he didn't like reading.
"I'm chasing him," Leon said, ordering his army to do just that.
"I don't think that's wise. Sam might be a good defender, but I don't think he's a good leader for attacking."
Leon thought about it, then reluctantly conceded the point. "I guess," he said, cancelling the move. "Can you move your troops to a different province? We're suffering attrition standing on the same tile."
"Oops!" Shining said in surprise. "Sorry." The Japanese troops moved into the region just west of Mexico City. "It's not easy trying to juggle three wars at once," the Guard stallion went on. "I'm never doing that again."
"How's Dai Viet coming along?"
"It's going okay, but it would be going much faster if I was able to bring in more soldiers."
"I wish I could return the favor, but I don't have a navy whatsoever."
"I don't blame you. You have a lot of land to worry about and only a small area of land actually touching the sea. But I appreciate the sentiment," Shining added helpfully.
Leon was about to reply, but before he could, a message came up on the screen; "Mexico has accepted the generous peace terms of The U.S.A."
Leon felt like reaching through the screen and hitting whoever was in charge of the U.S. until he saw what the terms actually said; "Mexico will cede New Mexico and Arizona to Texas. Mexico will cede Nevada-Utah and California to the U.S."
"Well, that didn't go so badly for you," Shining noted.
Leon nodded, even though the pony couldn't see him do so. All things considered, it could have been a lot worse. He'd wanted to get California for access to the sea, but this wasn't so bad either. Another war five years down the road could give him access to the Pacific, and he was willing to wait. His economy was in bad shape as it was; if he didn't fix it soon, he'd go bankrupt.
Just after he'd dismissed the message, the Breech-loading Rifles technology finished.
"Wow, the tech I needed for the war finishes just after it's done."
"What was it?" Luna asked.
"Breech-loading Rifles."
"Ah, yes, that would have helped immensely. I could use it right now," she added wistfully.
Eddy hadn't said anything at all for a while. Leon knew he was still pretty upset about the revolution he'd suffered and probably didn't trust himself to say anything completely clean.
"Hey Fluttershy, how are you doing?" he asked.
"Oh! Um... I guess I'm okay," the shy mare said quietly. "I'm getting economic reforms done, and my people seem to like me."
"Better than mine do," Luna muttered, not quite inaudibly.
Fluttershy stopped talking for a moment, then continued. "I do wish the U.S. and Britain would stop fighting over the whole sphere of influence thing; it kind of makes me nervous."
"As long as they don't drag you into a war of something like that, you're going to be fine," Leon reassured her. "Just be careful, continue you efforts to westernize, and keep an eye on your revolt risk; that should be your only problem."
"Okay. Thanks, Leon."
"Da netra," he answered in Breton; you're welcome.
"Hey Leo, speak something that the rest of us can understand, why don't ya? Instead of speaking French in random places."
Leon answered something foul in Breton.
"You're welcome."
Leon put a lid on his frustration. Remember, he's just got over that damn revolution. It was still hard to take when his heritage was insulted; he had a lot of pride being Breton - who were incidentally Celtic - descended.
"Hey Shining," he asked, "want to call me into the war?"
"I don't think you'll be able to do much, Leon. Even if you started building a navy now, you'd have to travel across half the world just to get to us, and by then the war would probably be over."
"You'd have moral support."
"Well, that would be nice, but I don't think even you could stop their invasion, and I'd hate to see you get invaded by them for our trouble."
"Not to mention that we've lost most of Mongolia to them," Luna added. "We're fighting just to slow them down."
Leon set his research to getting more tax efficiency, then moved his camera to their part of the world. Northern Mongolia was covered with green lines, and Russian armies seemed to be everywhere. They were much smaller in number to their Asian counterparts - or at least smaller than the Chinese - but there were a lot of them.
"I see the problem," he said. He could also see that the Chinese armies far outnumbered the Russians; Luna had at least two stacks of about a hundred thousand soldiers each, with several smaller stacks of fifty thousand roaming around. Shining Armor had two stacks of twenty-one thousand, both taking positions to defend Port Arthur; much of Manchuria had fallen as well.
"If you were able to concentrate your armies," Leon said slowly, thinking out loud, "You could smash the Russians one at a time."
"And what of the attrition?" Luna asked. "We have trouble even with the stacks we are using."
"And how bad will it be if you lose the war? What exactly are they hoping to accomplish?"
"Well," Shining began, we... aw, rats."
"What?"
"Korean nationalists just rose up in..." He stopped as he realized what he had just said. "No, don't any of you say it...!"
"Kekekekeke."
"Darn it, Leon!"
Everyone laughed, even Shining Armor.
"Hopefully, this stupid war will be over soon; I have to get to my nighttime duties very shortly," Luna said.
Leon checked his economy. After the war, he'd managed to straighten things out, and it was now in the positive. He was soon able to pay off the debts he owed, and gave orders to build a couple factories in Texas proper. They were going to be long-term projects, true, but the benefits he could reap from them could be well worth the wait. Cement factories were usually good to start with; other stuff could come later. And, now that capitalists were finally moving in in acceptable numbers, he was probably going to have factories and railroads going up on their own pretty soon.
"Sorry, everyone," Luna apologized a few minutes later. "It's time."
"Well, good game so far," Shining said encouragingly.
"Not for me, I had Reactionaries reverse everything I was workin' for," Eddy said in an annoyed tone.
"I suppose same time next week?" Leon asked.
Again, the answers were affirmative. After everyone exited the game, he got up and stretched. It was good to have friends, and a common interest to enjoy with them.