Victoria Falls: A Post-Collapse American Nation Quest [Down With Victoria!]

QTesseract said:

The Victorians have already killed 20,000 people from buffalo before we arrived, not counting however many died when the crusaders took the city, or all of those impressed to fight us. Like. The death of those civilians is a horrible tragedy, but even if somehow none of them starved from the terrible food situation in Victoria, we still quite plausibly have saved more Victorians than we got killed, if we discount the enemy combatants, so even if for some reason we assign blame for that ontu us rather than the vics I'm not sure we come up red.

Now, that being said, I'm kinda nervous on declaring the Buffalo free state to draw in Victorian attack. I voted for it, but I'm still kinda leery, because I'm not sure what the treaty post war is gonna look like and we have word of GM that we're done with treaty haggling. If we could guarentee the right to evacuate them, which I think we will get via the free movement clause, I'm for it, but while I think it's likely we'll get that I'm not positive and if we don't the plan gets a lot of civilians killed. I still prefer it to negotiating with the victoria now, but if it doesn't come with movement clause post war I think it's worse than the attack or industry.

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My position is currently "anything but the Victorian 'negotiation'" as well, so basically the same as yours, and honestly, I'd be shocked and appalled (and to a large extent give up hope on the current government as an American successor state without drastic reforms) if we budge on grabbing the evacuees if we have any say in the matter, treaty contents be damned.

Like, morally speaking and all else aside? There's no way in hell we can leave anyone here that isn't willing to actively fight us to stay put/loudly say they're being kidnapped.

Saving people from Victorian oppression is arguably the whole point of the nation. Failing at that, well...

Ugolino said:

Given a victorian approach to domestic affairs, it's honestly up in the air if they'd have killed more people from Buffalo- neglect, wartime rationing, general disregard for the wellfare of their own and using their own people as human resources- in that hypothetical than they did in this one. They're already using their own people up, purely in their internal civil war.

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No it isn't. In order for more people in the vicinity of Buffalo to have died in the case we didn't invade Victorian neglect/rationing/fighting/purges/etc. would have had to have been noticeably harsher had we not invaded, to the tune of having killed (3000 human shields + 20,000 militia or so) more people in the three weeks between our scouting the shoreline and having occupied Buffalo.

You might be able to make the argument that the amount of people who have died as a result of our invasion is small potatoes compared to the amount of people who are going to die as a result of the Victorian Civil War, but our invasion has not prevented 23 thousand people from starving to death or being purged in the territory we've occupied.

me.me.here said:

No it isn't. In order for more people in the vicinity of Buffalo to have died in the case we didn't invade Victorian neglect/rationing/fighting/purges/etc. would have had to have been noticeably harsher had we not invaded, to the tune of having killed (3000 human shields + 20,000 militia or so) more people in the three weeks between our scouting the shoreline and having occupied Buffalo.

You might be able to make the argument that the amount of people who have died as a result of our invasion is small potatoes compared to the amount of people who are going to die as a result of the Victorian Civil War, but our invasion has not prevented 23 thousand people from starving to death or being purged in the territory we've occupied.

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Militia are soldiers so that's a gray area and your argument assumes zero casualties outside of these three weeks in the potentially years it could have taken for us to otherwise meander towards Victoria, even assuming zero casualties during liberation and occupation at that point.

So, yes, it's a very dubious argument to claim Victoria couldn't meet or exceed these casualties on their own (even with the militia lumped in which is questionable as an argument) given their style of mismanagement and ongoing civil war. We've already seen how much they've depopulated Buffalo because of said civil war. My argument is that Victoria would have years to murder through mismanagement and god knows what else, as opposed to the inevitable and pretty much unavoidable (well, by us) casualties of an invasion hitting Buffalo now rather than years down the line.

QTesseract said:

The Victorians have already killed 20,000 people from buffalo before we arrived,

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Citation?
I don't remember this being a thing. Conscripts yes, but killed? When?
Did I miss something?

me.me.here said:

No it isn't. In order for more people in the vicinity of Buffalo to have died in the case we didn't invade Victorian neglect/rationing/fighting/purges/etc. would have had to have been noticeably harsher had we not invaded, to the tune of having killed (3000 human shields + 20,000 militia or so) more people in the three weeks between our scouting the shoreline and having occupied Buffalo.

You might be able to make the argument that the amount of people who have died as a result of our invasion is small potatoes compared to the amount of people who are going to die as a result of the Victorian Civil War, but our invasion has not prevented 23 thousand people from starving to death or being purged in the territory we've occupied.

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It's kinda disingenuous to equate armed soldiers with civilian combatants, especially the Victorian retirees who don't even have the normal Victorian excuse of having grown up in a propagandizing authoritarian regime, but even if we accept that, well, it's entirely plausible that there will be fewer deaths regardless. Blackwell can afford to let the people of Buffalo starve if it's inconvenient to feed them, which given the state of the victorian economy and food stores, plus the fact that crusaders are there to make supply situations shitty, is almost certainly the case. We can't, because that would be a huge PR victory for blakcwell, so even if we were amoral monsters (we aren't) we still would be ensuring the people of Buffalo get fed.


E:

uju32 said:

Citation?
I don't remember this being a thing. Conscripts yes, but killed? When?
Did I miss something?

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They're not dead yet, but, uh. Even if peacetime, I wouldn't like the chances of CMC recruits survival. Given that they're essentially expendable shields for the Crusaders atm and Blackwell still has them outnumbered, the relative strengths of the forces, and the overall victorian doctrine, I would be very surprised if more than a small minority of them survived the civil war. You're right that 20,000 is an overestimate but I don't think it's much of one.

You know what?

[X] This isn't worth it. Call for peace with the Loyalists and accept that they will be able to use this travesty as a victory for leverage in negotiations. Victoria will present a peace plan. It will be significantly better for them than what you offered. You get to choose to accept or reject it. Negotiations will keep you locked up long enough that snow will be on the ground and practical campaigning will be done with.

[X] This isn't worth it. Call for peace with the Loyalists and accept that they will be able to use this travesty as a victory for leverage in negotiations. Victoria will present a peace plan. It will be significantly better for them than what you offered. You get to choose to accept or reject it. Negotiations will keep you locked up long enough that snow will be on the ground and practical campaigning will be done with.

I am tired of continuing to escalate in hopes of breaking Blackwell's will with the tools at our disposal; I do not think this represents a fully viable strategy. If some really good argument has been presented in the last several pages that I missed, I'll catch up on it. Maybe I'll change my vote. But until I have an hour or two to burn reconsidering, this is what I think.

PainRack said:

IIRC,climate change and pollution is estimated to cause flooding that would ironically make water supplies non potable.

Can't find the latter but

Climate Impacts Along the Mississippi River Corridor

A lot of the food surplus we want is going to be problematic to acquire due to flooding destroying the old transport infrastructure

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Climate change isn't as big an issue as we might expect. Say what you will about Alexander IV, he's been doing climate change remediation and greenhouse emissions cutbacks across the world ferociously, as though the furious vengeful whip of St. Greta slashed at his back in his every nightmare or something. Not saying it's irrelevant, but it's not as bad as you might think.

Also, remember how being this impoverished a mess a country affects standards of water potability. People will drink water that'll predictably give them cancer by 60 if they already expect to die of something else by then anyway.

Rivenscryr said:

I'm not sure there are any magical girls left in Victoria itself. I would have said our enemies were instead its Twelve Dark Generals, but well, with most of them being gone now, and an enemy civil war, this seems like Season 2.

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A Slightly Alternate Sara Goldblum*:

"I think Sailor Nothing gets the spirit of things about right."

[sets her jaw, grits her teeth, twists her hand just so, murmuring softly]

"...Rude... Awakening!"

[smiles to herself with a little hell-lit flicker of perverse happiness]
________________________________

(The 'canon' Goldblum didn't have that genre as a guilty pleasure forty years ago, just before the Internet went dark. This is the one that did.)

uju32 said:

-Even military juntas have to care about the opinions of their constituents. They may not vote but they have opinions. And weapons. Take it from someone who still pays attention to internal politics in parts of Africa.

When a third of those constituents are from Buffalo, where a major massacre was just instigated by Blackwell's supporters.....

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OK, but if you picture the Crusaders as being an African warlord army, it's entirely possible that the conscripted Buffalo militia are basically the porters or something, and fewer of them than you'd think have weapons. They're relevant to what decisions the Crusader army makes, but they're not going to have a seat at the table in their own right; they're a group that either leadership cadre is going to be thinking about manipulating and controlling, not negotiating with.

Combining this with the ability to selectively spin the truth of what happened in Buffalo, and I think that my original point (Blackwell may be in negotiations with the Crusaders to unite against the common enemy in theory) still stands.

Luckily, there are no dams or locks on the middle or lower Mississippi. There are a bunch of bridges that have probably dropped and will need clearing away, but that's nothing like the problems we'd have if we had a major dam along its route.

The late nineteenth century saw the use of thousand ton-plus coal powered paddle wheelers on the Mississippi between St Louis and New Orleans. Four days for 1210 river miles.

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I'm not sure maintaining the shipping channel is going to be THAT easy, because there are a lot of places where partial dams and other structures were put up by the Corps of Engineers and I'm pretty sure that was done for a reason. I know we CAN get riverboat traffic up and going again if we can deal with dropped bridges and the like, but this is definitely going to be a case of "more effort will yield much better results."

So. How the Vote?

[X] This was not a decisive blow, merely a painful setback. It wasn't even a defeat! You achieved your operational objectives and pushed out the forces responsible for this. Operations will continue. Continue the war, now racing internal dissent as well as Loyalist pressure.
-[X] Blackwell wants to avoid your main strength and strike where you are weak? Two can play at that game. Advance a couple of divisions as tripwires against an assault from Rochester and disperse the rest into upstate New York. Tear up the industrial infrastructure Blackwell needs to fight these wars, and he will be forced to respond, allowing you to draw him out to battle on your own terms. The risk is that, when he responds, he managed to find a favorable engagement and bleed you enough that the victory you're seeking is denied.

[X] This was not a decisive blow, merely a painful setback. It wasn't even a defeat! You achieved your operational objectives and pushed out the forces responsible for this. Operations will continue. Continue the war, now racing internal dissent as well as Loyalist pressure.
-[X] If you can make it unacceptable for Blackwell to keep waiting you out, he'll be forced to attack you, guaranteeing you a crushing, heavily symbolic victory. Put about on public broadcast announcements that you're planning to recognize Buffalo and surrounds -- including the Niagara Isthmus -- as an independent and free city, and are organizing elections to that effect. Blackwell absolutely could not ignore that, and would be politically required to launch an attack immediately, which would get him slaughtered. The downside is that you'd need to get the population out, because anybody remaining behind would have a death sentence on their heads. Something to demand in the peace treaty after you crush Blackwell's assault, in exchange for returning the physical location to him. Also...well, this looks fairly callous, and being used as bait for a trap won't really make the people of Buffalo grateful, much less being relocated from their homes under threat of death afterwards. And if you don't get peace, somehow, you're in the nasty position of having to evacuate a city under siege using your logistics...or leaving it.

Can I just say that I find the "Buffalo Free State" plan disgusting? It is quite deliberately sacrificing innocent civilians to wring out a few more concessions at the bargaining table. We haven't liberated Buffalo, we've occupied it, and we are physically unable to keep it. The supply situation is just completely untenable. Declaring a "Buffalo Free State" is something the people of Buffalo almost certainly do not want, and it forces them to uproot themselves and dissolve their communities on pain of death.

Any of the other "keep the war going" options are better, morally speaking.

@Ugolino, the people changing votes because you've annoyed them are not the ones I'm angry with.

As the QM, I'm asking that you leave off the posting until this vote is over with.

uju32 said:

Because if we have any, we are resigning our soldiers to fighting a major battle with a logistics malus, as the same logistics that are supposed to ship in weapons are moving civilians out.

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Oh, I would have said if there was going to be a supply malus, you don't need to worry about that. Evacuating civilians under wartime conditions is going to be troublesome because any evacs come after you've shipped in enough military supplies.

[X] This was not a decisive blow, merely a painful setback. It wasn't even a defeat! You achieved your operational objectives and pushed out the forces responsible for this. Operations will continue. Continue the war, now racing internal dissent as well as Loyalist pressure.
-[X] If you can make it unacceptable for Blackwell to keep waiting you out, he'll be forced to attack you, guaranteeing you a crushing, heavily symbolic victory. Put about on public broadcast announcements that you're planning to recognize Buffalo and surrounds -- including the Niagara Isthmus -- as an independent and free city, and are organizing elections to that effect. Blackwell absolutely could not ignore that, and would be politically required to launch an attack immediately, which would get him slaughtered. The downside is that you'd need to get the population out, because anybody remaining behind would have a death sentence on their heads. Something to demand in the peace treaty after you crush Blackwell's assault, in exchange for returning the physical location to him. Also...well, this looks fairly callous, and being used as bait for a trap won't really make the people of Buffalo grateful, much less being relocated from their homes under threat of death afterwards. And if you don't get peace, somehow, you're in the nasty position of having to evacuate a city under siege using your logistics...or leaving it.

[X] This was not a decisive blow, merely a painful setback. It wasn't even a defeat! You achieved your operational objectives and pushed out the forces responsible for this. Operations will continue. Continue the war, now racing internal dissent as well as Loyalist pressure.

-[X] Blackwell has overplayed his hand; by calling a muster at Rochester, he's given you a concrete target. If you move out to the city with your motorized forces, you should be able cut the forces there off from supply and communications, and force a decisive battle with your superior forces. The risk is that they get enough warning to simply, leaving you very overextended and vulnerable to attacks on your own supply lines.

-[X] Blackwell is waiting to do enough damage to you that he can land a decisive blow. If you halt where you are and simply wait through the winter, you deny him that opportunity, and this momentary perception of victory starts to fade. Throughout, you'll send annoyance raids using your F-16s; this won't apply much pressure, but it'll at least make the point that you have in no way been beaten by this sanctioned terrorist attack. If he attacks in order to keep his symbolic victory, great, he'll suffer a massive defeat! If he doesn't attack, also fine. You'll withdraw with spring, your point made; that is your walk-away point. The risk is that this one plays really fast and loose with the risk of a regime change which, given the Farmers' stated stance that they'll peace out on first offer, will drastically undercut the message you're trying to convey.

-[X] If you can make it unacceptable for Blackwell to keep waiting you out, he'll be forced to attack you, guaranteeing you a crushing, heavily symbolic victory. Put about on public broadcast announcements that you're planning to recognize Buffalo and surrounds -- including the Niagara Isthmus -- as an independent and free city, and are organizing elections to that effect. Blackwell absolutely could not ignore that, and would be politically required to launch an attack immediately, which would get him slaughtered. The downside is that you'd need to get the population out, because anybody remaining behind would have a death sentence on their heads. Something to demand in the peace treaty after you crush Blackwell's assault, in exchange for returning the physical location to him. Also...well, this looks fairly callous, and being used as bait for a trap won't really make the people of Buffalo grateful, much less being relocated from their homes under threat of death afterwards. And if you don't get peace, somehow, you're in the nasty position of having to evacuate a city under siege using your logistics...or leaving it.

[X] This was not a decisive blow, merely a painful setback. It wasn't even a defeat! You achieved your operational objectives and pushed out the forces responsible for this. Operations will continue. Continue the war, now racing internal dissent as well as Loyalist pressure.
-[X] If you can make it unacceptable for Blackwell to keep waiting you out, he'll be forced to attack you, guaranteeing you a crushing, heavily symbolic victory. Put about on public broadcast announcements that you're planning to recognize Buffalo and surrounds -- including the Niagara Isthmus -- as an independent and free city, and are organizing elections to that effect. Blackwell absolutely could not ignore that, and would be politically required to launch an attack immediately, which would get him slaughtered. The downside is that you'd need to get the population out, because anybody remaining behind would have a death sentence on their heads. Something to demand in the peace treaty after you crush Blackwell's assault, in exchange for returning the physical location to him. Also...well, this looks fairly callous, and being used as bait for a trap won't really make the people of Buffalo grateful, much less being relocated from their homes under threat of death afterwards. And if you don't get peace, somehow, you're in the nasty position of having to evacuate a city under siege using your logistics...or leaving it.

Aranfan said:

Can I just say that I find the "Buffalo Free State" plan disgusting? It is quite deliberately sacrificing innocent civilians to wring out a few more concessions at the bargaining table. We haven't liberated Buffalo, we've occupied it, and we are physically unable to keep it. The supply situation is just completely untenable. Declaring a "Buffalo Free State" is something the people of Buffalo almost certainly do not want, and it forces them to uproot themselves and dissolve their communities on pain of death.

Any of the other "keep the war going" options are better, morally speaking.

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Like it or lump it, the moment they started helping us they were dead. If we don't evacuate them, they are just as likely to be piled in a mass grave if we take that option or if we take another. The reason that the other options are more palatable is that they don't put the residents of Buffalo front and center. They don't make the truth obvious. We can leave them behind and let the Inquisitors murder them slowly with a more clear conscience because we didn't officially hang them out to dry. But the ship has sailed. Whether we make it obvious or no, these people are dead or worse as soon as Victoria returns.

Aranfan said:

Can I just say that I find the "Buffalo Free State" plan disgusting? It is quite deliberately sacrificing innocent civilians to wring out a few more concessions at the bargaining table. We haven't liberated Buffalo, we've occupied it, and we are physically unable to keep it. The supply situation is just completely untenable. Declaring a "Buffalo Free State" is something the people of Buffalo almost certainly do not want, and it forces them to uproot themselves and dissolve their communities on pain of death.

Any of the other "keep the war going" options are better, morally speaking.

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Perhaps. At the same time, even if we don't use that option, there will be severe reprisals that will, and I quote @PoptartProdigy:

most likely continue until the Inquisitors are confident that anybody whom have aid to Commonwealth forces has paid for it.

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This indicates to me that we're not sacrificing anyone, because if Victoria gets to them, whether or not we use Plan Buffalo, they're already dead.

PoptartProdigy said:

Oh, I would have said if there was going to be a supply malus, you don't need to worry about that. Evacuating civilians under wartime conditions is going to be troublesome because any evacs come after you've shipped in enough military supplies.

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I mean, the good news then is that you can move supplies in and carry refugees out on the same ship or vehicle... but that is a LOT of people to move in a hurry and it's going to impose extra burdens, especially since they have to be fed and taken care of on the way back.

[X] This was not a decisive blow, merely a painful setback. It wasn't even a defeat! You achieved your operational objectives and pushed out the forces responsible for this. Operations will continue. Continue the war, now racing internal dissent as well as Loyalist pressure.
-[X] Blackwell wants to avoid your main strength and strike where you are weak? Two can play at that game. Advance a couple of divisions as tripwires against an assault from Rochester and disperse the rest into upstate New York. Tear up the industrial infrastructure Blackwell needs to fight these wars, and he will be forced to respond, allowing you to draw him out to battle on your own terms. The risk is that, when he responds, he managed to find a favorable engagement and bleed you enough that the victory you're seeking is denied.

[ ] This was not a decisive blow, merely a painful setback. It wasn't even a defeat! You achieved your operational objectives and pushed out the forces responsible for this. Operations will continue. Continue the war, now racing internal dissent as well as Loyalist pressure.

-[ ] Blackwell wants to avoid your main strength and strike where you are weak? Two can play at that game. Advance a couple of divisions as tripwires against an assault from Rochester and disperse the rest into upstate New York. Tear up the industrial infrastructure Blackwell needs to fight these wars, and he will be forced to respond, allowing you to draw him out to battle on your own terms. The risk is that, when he responds, he managed to find a favorable engagement and bleed you enough that the victory you're seeking is denied.

This was always going to be ugly. Dividing our forces in enemy territory presents several risks and the Vics will have an answer to that, but this seems still preferable to digging in for the winter (which will be seen as cowardly and give them time to organise further) or a full attack on Rochester (which kinda smells like a trap...).

Also, an observation : Most of the (surviving) Victorian higher ups think the Commonwealth are effette commies who won through a mix of superior number, reliance of technology, treachery and luck, and so will prioritize regular guerrilla tactics, but Blackwell believe he's fighting a Machine, and so probably thinks that inflicting casualties (damage enought "parts", and the army of the Machine-State will have to withdraw for repairs) is more important than undermining our morale.

Ugolino said:

Militia are soldiers so that's a gray area and your argument assumes zero casualties outside of these three weeks in the potentially years it could have taken for us to otherwise meander towards Victoria, even assuming zero casualties during liberation and occupation at that point.

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No, my argument assumes that the amount of its people Victoria is going to kill off in the period between after we leave and when we come back for good is roughly equivalent to the amount of its people Victoria would have killed off in the same period had we not invaded. Our invasion has not made Victoria significantly less likely to deliberately kill its own citizens nor improved its long term food security, which is what's necessary to assume that more people would die in the "business as usual" case as opposed to the "Commonwealth invades and then leaves" case over the equivalent periods where the Commonwealth isn't involved.

If you're counting all the people that die over the next 5-10 years in one case you need to count all of the people that die over the next 5-10 years in the other case too.

QTesseract said:

It's kinda disingenuous to equate armed soldiers with civilian combatants, especially the Victorian retirees who don't even have the normal Victorian excuse of having grown up in a propagandizing authoritarian regime, but even if we accept that, well, it's entirely plausible that there will be fewer deaths regardless.

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It is a little disingenuous, but as noted above Ugo is comparing 3 weeks of people not starving as a result of our invasion to multiple years of people starving as a result of life under Victoria - in the face of such blatantly dishonest arguments I wasn't too concerned about being incredibly accurate.

Also, I'm pretty sure that most of the extra food the people of Buffalo have as a result of our invasion is coming from not having to support the tens of thousands of militia we killed rather than us shipping in extra food above the amount needed to feed our troops - most of them would have been living in the local area as civilians when not acting as a military force, and I doubt their non-militia time was productive enough to make them a net zero or better food burden.

News from the discord!

Quantum TesseractToday at 9:21 PM
@PoptartProdigy does our admin / military team think declaring a plebiscite would have similar affects to outright declaring a free state, or do we think that it would be significantly less effective than suggesting it's already underway?

PoptartProdigyToday at 9:22 PM
It has been two weeks of intense asymmetric combat. You know the locals presently hate the Victorians more than they hate you.

Quantum TesseractToday at 9:23 PM
I meant in terms of provoking a reaction from blackwell
not in terms of sucess
my bad for not being clear

PoptartProdigyToday at 9:29 PM
"Announcing that would be threatening in the same way as announcing the free state, although not to the same extent. The Free State being announced is a direct and ongoing threat. A plebiscite raises the possibility that Buffalo might vote to sta-"

-and there is where I-as-Blackwell had a brief, but intense, flashback to the fact that Buffalo's population is like 65%-70% of what it was last year almost entirely because of the efforts of one flavor of Victorians or another, including the most recent -- by design -- highly visible terrorist attack orchestrated at every stage on army veterans shipping in about a month prior.

A plebiscite would actually be threatening to about the same degree. It wouldn't really be safe for anybody in Buffalo who declines to go live in the Commonwealth, but it probably wouldn't provoke a, "Raze it to the ground," response, although the resulting purge would be much stiffer than what the city is already in for.

That's a genuinely creative idea, @Quantum Tesseract, and I'm a little disappointed I didn't think of it. Very nicely thought, and feel free to copy my comments to the thread when you propose the write-in.

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I think this is genuinely a much better plan than just unilaterally announcing that they're independent, and is likely to play over mcuh better internationally.

[X] This was not a decisive blow, merely a painful setback. It wasn't even a defeat! You achieved your operational objectives and pushed out the forces responsible for this. Operations will continue. Continue the war, now racing internal dissent as well as Loyalist pressure.
-[X] If you can make it unacceptable for Blackwell to keep waiting you out, he'll be forced to attack you, guaranteeing you a crushing, heavily symbolic victory. Put about on public broadcast announcements of a Plebiscite of Independence for Buffalo. They hate Blackwell more than they hate you, and he knows it. Blackwell absolutely cannot ignore the threat this leaves, and has to to launch an attack immediately - which will end in a dismal failure.

[X] This was not a decisive blow, merely a painful setback. It wasn't even a defeat! You achieved your operational objectives and pushed out the forces responsible for this. Operations will continue. Continue the war, now racing internal dissent as well as Loyalist pressure.
-[X] If you can make it unacceptable for Blackwell to keep waiting you out, he'll be forced to attack you, guaranteeing you a crushing, heavily symbolic victory. Put about on public broadcast announcements of a Plebiscite of Independence for Buffalo. They hate Blackwell more than they hate you, and he knows it. Blackwell absolutely cannot ignore the threat this leaves, and has to to launch an attack immediately - which will end in a dismal failure.

I like this plan.

[X] This was not a decisive blow, merely a painful setback. It wasn't even a defeat! You achieved your operational objectives and pushed out the forces responsible for this. Operations will continue. Continue the war, now racing internal dissent as well as Loyalist pressure.
-[X] If you can make it unacceptable for Blackwell to keep waiting you out, he'll be forced to attack you, guaranteeing you a crushing, heavily symbolic victory. Put about on public broadcast announcements of a Plebiscite of Independence for Buffalo. They hate Blackwell more than they hate you, and he knows it. Blackwell absolutely cannot ignore the threat this leaves, and has to to launch an attack immediately - which will end in a dismal failure.

This sells well internationally, has the population be willing to do this, and also shows them that we are going to respect what they want to do. Along with providing an even bigger middle finger to the Vics as these are their own people voting to leave them, causing further rage/incentive to attack.

@PoptartProdigy Just to confirm, is there any possibility where Blackwell chooses to not attack during this and his government survives?

[X] This was not a decisive blow, merely a painful setback. It wasn't even a defeat! You achieved your operational objectives and pushed out the forces responsible for this. Operations will continue. Continue the war, now racing internal dissent as well as Loyalist pressure.
-[X] If you can make it unacceptable for Blackwell to keep waiting you out, he'll be forced to attack you, guaranteeing you a crushing, heavily symbolic victory. Put about on public broadcast announcements of a Plebiscite of Independence for Buffalo. They hate Blackwell more than they hate you, and he knows it. Blackwell absolutely cannot ignore the threat this leaves, and has to to launch an attack immediately - which will end in a dismal failure.