Vanity project.
The Robert Moses Niagara Falls Dam already produces 2600 MW of hydroelectric power.I'm assuming Toronto held on to the Adam Beck Hydroelectric power station on the other side of the river. Not sure why a retroculture society needs all that power.
Well, for starters, from what I remember, they use electric vehicles... powered by lead-acid batteries... for many civilian applications Short-ranged as hell, and power-hungry.
Secondly, "Retroculture" isn't (by Lind) intended to mean "we don't actually have electricity." Winding back the clock to before rural electrification is a bridge farther than they want to go.
Thirdly, Victoria's autarky fetish and refusal to tolerate industrialization outside their borders means they have to run a bunch of energy-intensive factories and production facilities (like steel mills) that in real life long since migrated out of New England.
Fourthly, I suspect that they sell electricity to New York, and that this is a major source of their power
over New York beyond the simple brute force threat to invade, along with being a significant source of foreign exchange.
Loot I guess, assuming we get that far.
We already have lots of reason to capture the Niagara Falls power generating facilities. The tidal power is just icing on the cake.
Between those, the Niagara Falls Dam, the Blenheim-Gilboa plant, Victoria is awash in cheap energy.
Just noone to sell it to, to the frustration of the corporations who own them. Because the FCNY would have prioritized achieving independence from the New York Power Authority in the wake of the Victorian takeover.
They'd have made it a priority but I'm not sure they'd be allowed to succeed. We need more information about that situation, which in turn will involve us coordinating with New York to make sure that our wars don't black out their city.
What I want to know is what happened to NYC's water. It all originates from Upper New York. Does FCNY just pay Victoria through the nose not to poison it or something?
Very possibly.
It's likely there is some element of that. NYC is very rich, Victoria is very poor, so I suspect that there are considerable payouts there. On the other hand, with the state lines dissolving and many of the other urban centers in the USA gone, there may be more available water southwards. With their recent defeat I suspect Victoria may try to extract greater tribute, a good reason for us to try to get in contact with NYC early.
I like the cut of your jib.
On long term plans, I know we've been discussing expansion plans, but there is at least one other area I'd like to call attention to
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[ ] Old Relics: The United States built a lot of heavy industrial presses back in the Cold War. None are in your territory, but their locations aren't exactly secret. Send out expeditions with the goal of studying these machines and gathering notes; perhaps, sometime in the future, you may be able to build your own. DC: 55. Successes Needed: 3. AP Limit: 1. Effect: Gain a group of experts capable of building heavy industrial presses for you; also confirm the status of the old presses.
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I think this is an option that is very easy to overlook. At DC55 and 3Ap with a limit, it isn't the sort of thing we can throw AP at and end in a turn. On average we won't finish this without 6 turns worth of effort, and even then it only let's us build and find them, not have them. Given the lack of short term benefits, it's going to be very easy to overlook, especially with whatever crises turn up each turn, but I would really like to focus on this. It's a huge industry upgrade once we get it, and since it's only one AP a turn, we can't throw Ap at it to solve it quickly if we discover we really need it later. I think it's reasonable to wait post-libraries, as that has a good chance of lowering the dc, but after that, I'd like any plan we do to keep a point invested here.
Oh, it's
definitely something we need to do. It's another one of those industrial actions.
The main thing to point out is that as you note,
Libraries has a good chance of lowering the DC... but so do other industrial actions. For example,
Infrastructure Projects will help us set up the facilities to even transport bulk industrial equipment. Actions gated behind the
Subsidize Industry action we took last turn may help us set up facilities capable of receiving or duplicating the kind of heavy industrial facilities we'd be looking for under
Old Relics.
I'm definitely going to support taking at least one firmly
industrial action that expands or increases our industrial base, preferably more than one, every turn starting from Turn 4. I think that barring major disasters we'll have the AP budget to support such investment too.
Old Relics isn't first on my list of priorities, but it's on there.
...
The thing to remember is that we explicitly chose a "high bonus high malus" start, where we voluntarily accepted a lot of penalties that have given us a very high pressure start. If we'd taken a more...
sedate... plan, we'd have had a lot fewer crises to resolve in the short term. On the other hand, we'd have had to spend AP just to get some of the things that "IRL" we now have. So, complexity is complex.
The threat is nuclear missiles and satellites.
One is unarmed. The other is something you can't harden yourself against.
You don't understand what I'm getting at and frankly I don't have the energy to keep explaining it when it's a totally moot point.
I'm aware.
Being far from Victoria doesn't help if our route passes through or adjacent to a Victoria ally we have to fight to keep the river clear.
Thing is, we don't have sufficient knowledge about conditions to make a judgement at this time.
The Missouri is an obvious boon for the southern route, but the majority minority cities of the Eastern seaboard are reliable foci of anti-Victorian sentiment to anchor logistics points on. With New Orleans gone the only other Mississipi port I'm seeing is Baton Rouge. And I dont know if it can break a blockade of "pirates" running out of the Texas coastline.
As others have pointed out, pro-Victorian pirates along the Texas coastline would probably be getting their balls kicked in by
everyone, including Miami which almost certainly has a much better developed navy than we do.
If we really try, and if we have the support of local communities that want to see these notional enemy Texans defeated, I'm pretty sure we'll be able to handle it.
As we are now it would be a problem, but as we are now the idea of our forcing a land route through central Pennsylvania and Ohio would be totally out of the question too. By the time we're capable of pushing east over the Appalachians towards the Mid-Atlantic Seaboard, we will assuredly be capable of fighting a river and coastal campaign down around the mouth of the Mississippi. If we need to, which I doubt.
Desalination plants.
All the international support they allegedly have is probably invested in infrastructure projects. Just like most of New Yorks power comes from dams currently under Vic control, which is intolerable from a security perspective.
A boatload of nuclear reactors on Long Island is definitely a possibility. On the other hand, this is an area where the Victorians likely struggle hard to limit New York's independence, and where they are in a good position to supply cheap water and energy to New York under normal conditions.
