We don't plan on pushing over rhe Victorians. We plan on smashing their initial forces...
It is grossly overconfident for us to plan on doing this
without taking significant damage. Or without diversion of effort that will in turn leave us vulnerable to other problems- such as a typhus epidemic, or a crash in the shambolic local economy, or any of a dozen other problems a post-apocalyptic society may face.
Initial advantages that compound are nice. Initial
damage, though, also compounds. You may survive the experience, you will always be less than you could have been, if only you hadn't stuck your arm in that beartrap.
As for the Victorians themselves, consider that the inconveniences of a weak infrastructure goes both ways. For one, a particularly sizable force is a hungry force. They would require such a massive supply of fuel, food, ammunition, and other supplies that their effective operating range from Victoria itself is hamstrung. This isn't even considering the headache of organizing a campaign/expedition in the first place, wherein the Victorians would have to determine which divisions (possibly smaller units, considering the drop in population) would be assigned to the task force, would have to assemble these divisions, would have to consolidate the supplies necessary to move these divisions, then send them forth into the wild. Furthermore, the sub-par roads and the lack of rails or a dedicated naval transportation force ensures that the Victorians won't be able to move so fast as to blindside us. I understand this is controlled by the whims of the dice gods, but logically speaking, if a force is able to reach us within six months within the aforementioned conditions, I would (eat my cap) expect that the enemy force is small enough that we can utilize any nearby militias to hold this enemy force in place while the Old World Battalion mobilizes to either neutralize this force through sheer firepower or, more likely, move behind them to destroy (or, better yet, commandeer) their supply train or otherwise wreak havoc across their rear-echelon elements.
I think the most likely threat profiles are "The Victorians have existing units garrisoned in a location closer to us than we know about, having gained vassals or allies closer to our territory than we expected, and stage out of those bases" or "the Victorians spend a year securing a naval supply route along the Great Lakes, then hit us the following spring when the drift ice melts."
Either way we have a problem we can potentially counter, but their stronger industrial base and trained military could present us with a lot of problems. What we can HOPE is that they will recklessly send an underprepared expeditionary force without taking full precautions to be sure it's supplied, and that we can defeat in a single major pitched battle... but again, I don't expect the Victorians to be that stupid. They cannot, institutionally, have succeeded this far without being able to do
something right, and that 'something' is probably 'fight a war against a weaker but distant opponent.'
In conclusion, while the guarantee of a confrontation with Victoria can be disheartening, the enemy task force, by necessity, cannot be overwhelmingly superior to our own forces, to say nothing of the inherent advantage a defender wields over his or her opponent. Furthermore, military necessity is not mutually exclusive from improving the internal affairs of the state. If we choose Burns, we can conceivably thread the needle, satisfying both our military and civic needs in-game. Just because we gain or lose in customization doesn't mean we won't have the opportunity to rectify that issue soon after.
Bear in mind, I'm not opposed to the Local Hero start. I like Sara and the Illinois Woman German Suplexes Nazis headline. I would just prefer the flavor of Old Guard and Last Echo (less likely) over her. Furthermore, if Poptart executes battle-rolls similarly to Terminus Quest, (I understand there's insulation between strategic and tactical combat) I can only see us suffering unduly in the event of the dice rolling abysmally low, which isn't even considering the possible decision-making we avail ourselves of during the fighting itself to increase our odds.
I do respect your analysis, and won't panic if
Old Guard wins.
But I AM going to be very strongly pushing back against anyone who assumes that CHICAGO BATTALION STRONK means we can start rolling over our opposition casually, or that it's going to be easy from there. The Victorians didn't get this far by being pushovers, and historically nations of sepoys that sell out their homelands to their colonial masters tend to have, if no other virtues, at least the virtue of being
tough.
Okay, The Last Echo voters, I feel the need to point something out: You're all idiots for picking the one path that gives us 0 CP and the one of the worst disadvantages possible. I can't believe that you just can't bring yourself to care about how you're picking the one path whose advantages nobody really particularly wants, at the same time as having a disadvantage that absolutely no one wants, just so that you can resurrect some geezer that should've died a long time ago and to bring back a country that lost to foreign meddling, superplagues, economic collapse, and the Nazi luddites that comprise the Victorians. It's like you don't care at all about all these disadvantages, and how hard the quest is going to be, just so that you can reach for that old Legitimacy, which a sizable portion of our population doesn't even want to play with!
Rage on, beautiful bastards. I'm with you 120%. o7
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Dude I was already approval-voting her, so the reverse-psychology gambit wouldn't even work if it
worked.
Please don't frame Old Guard as the hotheaded, stupid option LHB.We both know very well SV would love nothing more than maximizing income forever and playing diplomancer
It's not that
Old Guard is the hotheaded stupid option.
It's that the hotheaded risk-taking strategy (LET THEM COME, THERE IS ONE MURICAN YET IN CHICAGOLAND WHO DRAWS BREATH!) has chosen to gravitate around
Old Guard.
A lot of people who are voting
Old Guard probably favor gradual buildup strategies that reduce the risk of Victoria simply squashing us. But because it explicitly invites Victorian intervention, that's also the option that guarantees us the early fight that the 'quick risky start' and the 'our power will flow from the barrel of a gun' voters favor.
Old Guard comes with both old world weapons and old world soldiers. The text on the rules page explicitly states that each charge of this tech guarantees a victory until the charges are used up.
A
tactical victory.
We have no way of guaranteeing that winning tactical victories with a single elite super-unit will be enough to ensure we don't suffer
strategic defeats. Like the city getting infected with a bioweapon. Or like saboteurs sneaking in under guise of a refugee column fleeing the Victorian expeditionary force and blowing up key industrial or political targets. Or like us getting pincered with one force acting to draw away the elite super-unit while another entirely different unit hits the city from another direction.
