A little late to the party today considering I missed the ConCon vote(but what I wanted go in anyway so yay). I wonder if we had the Traditional Concon Blind Drunk festival?
1841 EY
The armies of the People were called up, nearly in full for what they could truly call up. Ranks were filled with citizens recalled for service and fresh conscripts drawn from refugee populations fleeing east. Those who were not deemed fit to serve in this war were instead pressed into service in farms and factories to replace the citizens being called away to the front, with some nobles calling that this sort of economic service in times of crisis should count at least in part towards the years of military service owed to the state.
So we're establishing precedent that state labor also counts against military service. Those who can fight will fight. Those who cannot will work the farms and factories.
Likely to show up in laws later on. Stay tuned!
Unfortunately, there was also violence and discontent at these newcomers taking jobs locals saw as their own, but fortunately the Divine also chose to smile upon the world as the weather seemed to have taken a more pleasant turn within the past few years, with disaster minimized and the crops coming in sweet and bountiful. While pretty much everyone declared that this was God smiling on them, it at least meant that hunger was soothed across the world. Even if it soothed enemies, it also soothed allies as well.
-1 Temp Happiness from Refugee Integration Troubles
+2 Temp SoL from bumper crops and good weather
Cosmopolitan Acceptance Trigger => Great weather!
God approves of refugees!
The Hung were now officially in the midst of a disintegration of central authority, but the provinces that were still loyal to the Emperor were fully on side now at least. Although from the sounds of things from the first trainers to arrive the People's ways of war and production were going to cause issue as they gave what many officials saw as undue amounts of power to the lower classes.
And so we see how the limited acknowledgement went out. They shed their periphery to rebellions, but the core are fully on board(and likely moving their capital nearer to the Gylmaryn controlled port?).
They got more shocks to ride yet, but we've experienced the very same pains before and our advisors would be bringing historical records from merely 30 years ago, and more recently the Khemetri and Mapanca reforms.
Trust us, we're professional economy rebuilders!
Also, the extra funding to the arts and the promotion of Gylruvian-Ymaryn culture could not have come at a better time as it definitely helped integrate all the new migrants much more effectively, both by displaying what their new culture was and by allowing them to share their own knowledge more fully. Academic and scientific contributions from fleeing Tortuns were particularly useful.
We looted a bunch of tech!
Not sure WHAT techs yet, but we got them!
But of course, the big thing that had everyone's attentions were the wars, with millions of soldiers gathered into a dozen army groups, each one practical a nation in its own right. Finally freed from logistic constraints and given the full backing of the nation's industries, the army marched like it had never done before, an unstoppable juggernaut that crushed all in its path.
Bricks fill thousands of pants as military planners across Europe realize what the Dual Crown really meant when they said "Don't make me come over there."
Nokly could only watch the endless parades of troops and cannon and read the reports and imagine some bronze colossus of an ancient era, it's legs spanning the mouth of a harbour in its enormity. Only, while the People never truly stopped their foes proved to be a colossus in their own right. The Ochruhr were well lead and with their territory protected by mountain fortresses it was impossible to simply march into their capital, and when the People had attempted to make an alliance with the Etal they had discovered that the Ochruhr had drawn a line and retreated slightly from the penninsula while making peace with the southern states, allowing them to focus entirely to the north.
Clever bastards.
And as for the SKF, they were both well lead and had the motivation of fanatics. Thus it was that while the People were a bronze colossus, they were fighting other colossi, and the report of their fists against each other's metal skins must be as an entire battery of cannon going off at once. If the People had been fighting just the SFK they probably would have overrun them anyway, but as it was they had only managed to push a bit into their eastern territories.
So to sum it up, the Ochruhr pulled the old Highland Kingdom strategy of "quick, pull back into our mountain fortresses!" and the SKF let our distraction drag things out a bit.
Fortunately while the Hespranxer had lost an enormous number of skilled NCOs and troops to revolution and defection, their officer corp remained intact and turned out to be at least peers to the People. While the Hes were staggering and reeling from the Khemetri claiming the last of their Northern Greater Khem holdings and the Vortuga showing up to contest the territory that had been ceded in years past, the kingdom as a whole managed to maintain its primary territorial integrity, and gave essentially nothing to the SKF.
Khemetri: "Thanks for the update, also MY CLAY IS BACK!"
Vortuga: *Sharpens knives*
Hespranxer: "This Baguette is still ROCK HARD!"
The same could not be said of Behryvar, unfortunately.
Behryvar was gone.
While the Ochruhr and SKF had slowed almost to the point of stalling the press of the People, they had caught the Behryvar in a press between them and torn the country apart in a lightning fast tug of war between them. The nation's industries were seized mostly intact from the sheer speed at which the two belligerents attacked, providing farms, mines, and factories to the two groups that the People did not need them to have.
BehryvarBall: *Squashed between sumo wrestlers*
Elsewhere in the world the Sketch were being so incredibly Sketch-y and thus annoying. They had taken massive amounts of old industrial equipment seized in factory foreclosures, sold it to the Nohon in exchange for large amounts of silver and an enclave in one of the ports the Nohon had taken control of from the Hung, and then used this wealth and collateral to buy new and better machinery from the Kielmyr. The Nohon had undoubtedly been massively accelerated in their attempts to modernize their economy with this move, while the Sketch discovered a way to turn their own economic crash into a benefit for themselves. How utterly obnoxious of them. They hadn't even made any moves around the war with the SKF yet either, but from ripples going around the diplomatic circles they would probably seize Halvyni colonies in the Monsoon and Hung Seas, even though those colonies had declared independence from their former masters.
Sketch does as is Traditional.
Its more or less what we did with the Black Sheep, neither of us want the other to truly be dominant, even as, at the same time, neither of us want to actually fight the other, because we can't hurt each other enough to make it stop.
Still, whatever they do with Nohon is going to be orders of magnitude less scary than what we can do to the Hung.
At least in terms of international trade the CCP had sent over a diplomatic gift basket of tobacco and cotton with the promise of preferred prices for the People for the next few years due to prior assistance and good trade agreements, which was nice of them. They didn't have enough funds quite yet to want to buy certain services, but they were certainly making motions in that direction for the future once they had their house in order after the stresses of unification and war against the UPM.
*Advisor fetish intensifies*
We made a friend!
The Conference was of course the most scrupulously protected site on the planet. The People had learned their lesson from the past two times.
Are we holding this in a star fort?
1842 EY
This design however used the needle to pierce a paper cartridge loaded with powder and a percussion cap, which was both cheap and allowed for rapid reloading, even if the needle needed replacing every dozen or so shots.
The ball also had a unique design, in that it was more elongated and had a bit of a cup at the back. The burning powder shoved the bullet hard enough that the rear expanded and thus very snugly engaged with the rifling. Precision sharpshooters had better results in tests, but the design was overall a close second best compared to most specialist weapons, and in terms of sustained fire it had the potential to be the fastest thing ever. The fiddly needle design would likely cause problems for the average trooper, but the People probably had at least a hundred thousand troops who were rated of high enough quality to be able to use these weapons under fire. That was a lot of lead being hurled down range in short order.
This is absolutely terrifying to be downwind of, considering people were used to firing
one shot per
minute, rather than a dozen per minute.
When our elites hit them they're going to be shredded.
Still... while this design could probably become part of the People's arsenal eventually, getting it into mass production right away would eat up a lot of efforts going elsewhere and it would still take time to really filter out. It also wasn't really appropriate for all units, since the cavalry would probably get something a little easier to reload while mounted and the revolving cylinder designs could provide instantaneously faster shots when in pistol form, which would also be useful for the cavalry and certain assault specialists.
Oh and we just got six shooters for our cavalry, breaching specialists and probably our police force, who didn't have time to reload anyway for various reasons.
The Qeshyks are going to look like demons with a brace of revolvers.
Speaking of cavalry, while the Ochruhr were being pushed back as quickly as possible, the Qeshyks had managed to get in behind the front of the SKF and were merrily blowing things up, while the foot and cannon regiments were taking advantage of the logistical chaos to isolate and annihilate SKF regiments.
Doctrine: Initiative
One of the things with revolutionary armies is they probably have a pretty sparse cavalry corps, and thus our cavalry were largely unopposed on the Tortun lands to play merry hell with supply lines.
Going to need protected convoys, which again, revolutionary armies aren't usually going to figure out so quickly.
The generals were practically having to run to keep up with the colonels, although the overall objectives definitely needed to be clarified with this new success lest the armies lose all focus and go running off in every direction.
"Well, its not like the Haddyth actually said where to stop right?"
Also, while some of the communities that the SKF had been running were just regular communities, there were reports coming back of some communities seeming to have just gone off. Locals seemed to have completely lost themselves in a frenzy of attempts to top each other's piety and the results had been ugly, especially if they turned against anyone they deemed insufficiently committed to the cause. What might be happening in Behryvar and the Hespranxer territories that had been less willing to join was obviously something that was still unclear, but if it was even half as bad as the stories some spies and refugees were passing back... hoo. Not good to let this war go on much longer.
Sounds like if we do this right, the occupied territories are going to love us for the rescue?
Zealotry gets ugly.
Now lets see the scoreboard:
Supreme Power
1. Kingdom of Sketch (129 Prestige; Armies: Small But Professional Plus Many Local Mercenaries, Economy: Most Industrialized But Smouldering, Navy: World Class, Culture: Rich, Forests: Blasted Heaths)
Great Powers
2. Ymaryn-Gylruv Dual Monarch (126 Prestige; Army: Greatest in the World, Economy: Precision Industrial, Navy: World Class, Culture: Impressive Martial, Forests: Endless and/or Well Managed) - Players
The Sketch are probably not very happy about this. We get Prestige for military victories(and we're getting one) and for completing [Rare] techs(we're completing Breechloaders).
Unless they do SOMETHING huge we're taking the crown this turn.
3. Nohon Empire (90 Prestige; Armies: Numerous but Variable, Economy: Reforming, Navy: Elite, Culture: Weird, Forests: Many Petals)
The Nohon are catching up fast, though apparently the world has discovered the literature work 'Dream of the Fisherman's Wife"
Wonder how that compares to Ymaryn porn.
Probably less wood.
4. Syffryn Karivonite Federation (75 Prestige; Armies: Enormous, Economy: Struggling Mixed Industrial, Navy: Competent, Culture: Religious, Forests: Dark)
8. Ochruhr (59 Prestige; Armies: Elite + Numerous, Economy: Reorganizing Industrial, Navy: Sort of Present, Culture: Glorious, Forests: Alpine Meadows)
And our two combatants. Looks like they inherited a lot of the old stuff and Ochruhr used the time when they were in a hole to industrialize with no protest(because they were willing to do ANYTHING to stop sucking)
6. Hung Empire (67 Prestige; Armies: Primitive Mobs, Economy: On Fire, Navy: Nonexistant, Culture: Sophisticated, Forests: Bamboo)
9. Black Sheep Empire (56 Prestige)
10. Kingdom of Khemetri (47 Prestige)
Pihtawak Houhendashee [Confederacy of Cahok Peoples] (26 Prestige)
Our friends aren't doing so hot though. Climbing, but not fast, while the Hung have hopefully arrested their nosedive.
Archeology is going to give the Khemetri and Hung a booster shot.
Oh no, they actually caused permanent damage to their education system. They did a whole bunch of temp slashing of their education budget to free up SoL and lower Consciousness, only they did it so much they picked up a -2 Edu, -2 Inno, +1 Consciousness status for the next 20 years. The effect drove their temp Edu score below 0, forcing a reorg that cost them more permanent Edu and the shuttering of a university. They badly damaged their long term research capacity and building it back up will take time, but along with a number of other concessions and outright shooting a large number of their own citizens they managed to use the government to prop up industry on public expense.
Huh, they basically fired all their intellectuals to save money, to the point that their entire educational system shut down and mostly converted to become vocational training schools?
...and presumably we then proceeded to hire up basically all those who left the country as a result.
This is pretty devastating mid term, but long term this is sort of the root of the public education system, since industrialization also needed ways to train lots of engineers and operators who're at least capable of reading instruction labels.
It is also coming out that they have been selling a chunk of their fleet to lesser powers that came out okay, like the UPM, New Hex, Mapanca, and Redwoods. While still the best fleet around, they have shoved off significant amounts of maintenance costs in exchange for cash injections.
Mmm, I notice this incidentally limits what the CCP can manage as well, since the coast has gotten some semblence of a real fleet.
Yeah, see, what you see as unified response is the fact that the internal factions frequently look the same from the outside. Like, the HEKC basically runs itself with no input from the crown but can still draw upon the Army and Navy if it needs to in exchange for pumping in large amounts of SoL. The business elite sort of do their own thing using government resources half the time, it is just that maximizing IC and SoL are considered a goal in of themselves, so the government doesn't care that their resources are being used like that.
Meanwhile from all the Negaverses: "How the hell does Nokly keep doing this?!"
Nokly: "I don't know either man. My life's ambition was just to shitpost."
Also, yeah, they basically have no strategic allies right now, because they keep pissing people off when their businesses go out and do evil shit. They have long term relationships with the Vortuga, but the Vortuga have been repeatedly kicked around by the world. They are friendly-ish with the Nohon but both will happily stab the other in the back if they think it was worth it, they just agree that it isn't right now.
Is it just me or is it actually in the Sketch's interests to have a bunch of revolutions reset their diplomacy chart? Or do the common people dislike the Sketch enough that this won't do much?
