[] Defense and Industry
-[] Address the Air (1)
-[] Detroit (2)
-[] Subsidize Industry (1)
-[] What do you know, asshole (2)
-[] Farming Equipment (3)
Logic is that this build seeks to be relatively isolationist for the time being outside of actions that directly relate to defense. If we plan to actually engage in nearby foreign policy, we'd have to sink quite a lot of AP into soothing fears, which is not worth it given the number of crises we currently have. Suspicious neighbors also aren't an immediate threat if we do not take an overtly aggressive stance. As such, informants on neighbors, while time-limited, is not important crisis-term for this strategy.
Food is a major priority here. Buying food, though, is ridiculously expensive for what it costs--2AP essentially, for a stop-gap solution. For 3 AP on farming equipment, we'd have better than even odds at getting the 2 needed successes for a more permanent solution and are very likely to get at least 1.
"Buy food" commits us to spending 1 AP per turn
until the food crisis is over.
"Don't buy food" means we have no backup plan. We have roughly a 2/3 chance of a giant bumper crop harvest saving us from mass starvation at the end of the year if we go with your plan, and roughly a 1/3 chance of NO giant bumper crop harvest, in which case we get mass famine.
You also spend no AP on building more shelter for the winter, which in the long run is probably about as big a problem as famine.
Address the air and Detroit would help neutralize the major advantage Victoria has over us--air. As noted before, they really need to base out of Detroit to truly leverage their air power over us. If we take that, we beat them on the sea, deny them full power over the air, freeing us for a free fight. If they get Detroit before we get it, we're going to be in for a far rougher fight...
Lastly, if we are to ever ameliorate this action scarcity problem, we need to improve our industry.
If it was just
air basing they could take a location other than Detroit. Say, Toledo, which is closer as the Viper flies anyway.
The really important reason to hold Detroit is that a few big-ass cannons carefully situated in Detroit can make it suicidally idiotic to try to get out of Lake Erie and into Lake Huron or Lake Michigan. Without which, they can't supply an invasion force to attack Chicago.
Show the Flag is nice, but as Detroit shows, Victoria can convince people to side against us, and Show the Flag explicitly intimidates our neighbors, who are already suspicious of us. Victoria's navy is also garbage--I don't expect major problems here with our Brown Water Navy.
Without patrols, our
having the Brown Water Navy is pointless; our ships can't accomplish anything tied up to the dock. Moreover, you misread the wording of
Show The Flag. The 1 AP result isn't "intimidate anyone." The 2 AP result ARGUABLY is, but we can't get a 2 AP result by spending 1 AP anyway, so it's a moot point.
Actually this plan, I think, does all I want. Maybe a bit less sure about showing the flag as opposed to improving training ASAP, but otherwise seems ok.
OTOH showing the flag probably combines well with poking Detroit? It's wrong lake, but still....
I think we can survive with just the Devil Brigade and poorly trained troops,
ESPECIALLY if we have Detroit, and especially if we have the fleet active AND Detroit.
Also, Lake Michigan and Lake Huron are effectively one body of water connected by the relatively skinny but still substantial Strait of Mackinac. And the Detroit River (on which Detroit is located) is the river that leads between Lake Huron and Lake Erie. The Victorian ports are on the other end of Lake Erie from Detroit. So our patrols will probably reach as far as Detroit.
From the discord:
"It would be half a year of your food supplies collapsing. Mostly emaciated, but you'd start losing some people out of at-risk populations. The ill, the elderly. Children. That sort of thing. "
"Buying food in addition to instantly completing farming equipment will keep anybody from starving, as opposed to simply stopping the starving very quickly."
So, we could theoretically afford to go all in onto farming equipment. As the losses would... pragmatically be only from populations that cannot be thrown into the industrial or war effort.
Thus, an update on my plan:
[ ] Plan The City Must Survive
-[] Show The Flag (1)
-[] Organize Elections (1)
-[] Subsidize Industry (1)
-[] Pick Up The Marbles (1)
-[] What Do You Know, Asshole? (2)
-[] Farming Equipment (3)
NO HOLODOMOR. THIS IS A BAD IDEA.
Arguably it is an even WORSE idea if you are planning to hold an election immediately after cutting food rations so far that Grandma starves to death. You may be assured the Victorian-sympathizing Unionists will make ALL of the hay out of that.
Yeah, but people will be dying no matter what you do. No defense against Victoria? Here come the bombs. No housing? People'll freeze. Fascists delay more of our actions? People die due to inaction. Fascists take power? Well, the outcome of that should be obvious. Like someone said, very many Frostpunk-vibes here.
From what I've heard, the thing about Frostpunk is that you only start needing to go the Hard Man Hard Decisions route
if you fuck things up. If you prioritize taking care of your people from the start, it's quite possible to be able to go on doing so without the HMHD approach to deciding you can write people off as 'not necessary for the industrial war effort' or whatever.
That said, I've never played the game, so I'm taking someone else's word for this.
I have a couple of plans I would like to propose. The first one is
[] Plan Stem the Bleeding
-[ ] Show The Flag (1)
-[ ] Detroit (2)
-[ ] Scale Up Food Purchases (1)
-[ ] Subsidize Industry (1)
-[ ] Pick up Marbles (1)
-[ ] What Do You Know, Asshole? (1)
-[ ] Farming Equipment (2)
This plan seeks to get control of the waterways and reach an understanding with Detroit, while at the same time trying to get our food situation under control by buying food now and helping with farming equipment. We don't want people starving, because when they starve, they get desperate, and we don't have the AP to arrange for...accidents to happen to the Victorian Sympathizers. Yet.
Tolerable, but we're REALLY going to have to hammer the
Subsidize Housing button next turn. I'd be a lot happier swapping
Show The Flag, Subsidize Industry, or even one of the
Detroit points for a point on
Housing Repair.
Maybe people should have thought of that before voting for Burns?
Because the entire URGENT MILITARY CRISIS that leads to HARD CALLS BY HARD MEN WHO ARE HARD is something I specifically called out as a possibility and here we are discussing the feasibility and practicality of deliberately starving our own children to death!
To be fair, it is a slim minority of the Burns voters who are advocating this. In fact, it's basically the same 1-3 people who have been doing this throughout the thread.
So rather than relitigate that, how about we focus on the fact that MOST of the plans being suggested DO include "buy food," often to the point of compromising other concerns quite sharply.
