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That...was actually supposed to happen a couple of updates ago. I forgot to do it, because burnout.
I actually have a couple of hours today, and I was reading through old stuff, and remembered that this was a thing that really needed to happen. And it, uh.
Ahhh, I understand. Since the Deikums shit the bed so hard on Side A, when should we expect the Zabi family to invade from Side B? Will we need to build ourselves a spaceship to evacuate ourselves to Side F, where we will discover the Federation's last and greatest project, the Gundam?
Ahhh, I understand. Since the Deikums shit the bed so hard on Side A, when should we expect the Zabi family to invade from Side B? Will we need to build ourselves a spaceship to evacuate ourselves to Side F, where we will discover the Federation's last and greatest project, the Gundam?
Victorian Civil War, Round One [Crusaders vs. Loyalists]: 3 vs. 1.
The Foreign Intelligence Office has received an urgent report from Buffalo. The 1st, "Abraham," CMC Division has departed the city. After drafting approximately 20,000 men from the city -- an outflow which has absolutely gutted the city's male population pool, taken in tandem with other losses sustained this year -- the 1st departed the city and punched through the still-organizing loyalist lines, inflicting heavy casualties for comparatively few of their own. Despite heavy losses to desertion among the conscripts, the CMC managed to escape Buffalo largely intact and with a large body of new, reluctant, recruits. In a bit of thoroughly mixed news, several of their new conscripts are our informants. This has simultaneously weakened our network in Buffalo while giving us more insight into the CMC's operations than we could have dreamed of. We're already started to get some bits of news back, although it's fragmented and unclear.
We have learned one thing, though. One of our informants managed to send a letter back home that, since escaping Buffalo, the 1st and their conscripts have linked up with the 3rd, "David," Division, somewhere inland. He says they've been issued weapons and are being put through training. He claims that he's been assigned to the reconstituted 2nd, "Moses," Division, and that his trainers say he has a long and proud legacy, up to which he had best live if he wants to survive this.
We don't know the details, but one thing is clear: Loyalist forces have been completely outmaneuvered by the Crusaders. The 1st and 3rd CMC Divisions have linked up and acquired recruits and materiel, and are hard at work putting the two together. Any hope Blackwell might have had for a swift victory is gone.
Which casts these peace negotiations in a starkly different light.
The Civil War has opened with a disaster for the Loyalists. The Victorians are desperately trying to conceal this; they've made no public statements on the progress of their war and are negotiating as hard as ever. Revealing now that you know about the crisis they're in will strengthen your bargaining position immensely; now more than ever, Victoria absolutely cannot afford to have their focus split. You have a chance to push for your original offer, under threat of war should the Victorians refuse you. The situation has changed.
Pick one of the following.
[ ] Reveal to the Victorians' negotiating team that you know what's up, and this is their last chance to accept your offer before your diplomats go home and your troops ship out. Reroll treaty negotiations at -40 DC; the Vicks are hiding it well, but with two shocking military disasters chasing each others' heels, they have to be desperate. The cost is that this is a precipitous demand to make; if you make it and lose, Victoria's walking.
[ ] Sit on it for now. When the quest resumes properly (still not yet), we will resume treaty negotiations.
NO APPROVAL VOTING, FOR A CHANGE. MANUAL MORATORIUM.
To refresh your memories, here is the original voted plan:
[X] Total Industry mk4 DC 90
-[X] War Reparations Clause, Acquisitive: +5
-[X] Artifact Reclamation Clause +5
-[X] War Guilt Clause +5 DC
-[X] Militia Clause -5
-[X] Prisoners of War Clause, Delayed -10
-[X] War Brides Clause, Exchange +15
-[X] Free Migration Clause +30
-[X] Johnson Doctrine Clause +10
-[X] Foreign Aid Clause +15
-[X] Annulment Clause +25
-[X] Hostile Neutrality Clause -15
-[X] Seaway Clause, General: +50
-[X] Free Trade Clause +20
-[X] Lakes Access Clause: -20
An explanation of all the involved clauses may be found here.
Heya, folks! We're not back yet. I have a good line on another job, but I've had absolutely garbage luck with other applications (I was all but in, and then upper management decided to reconfigure the position to one that required years upon years of experience!). That said, I remembered that this was something that needed to happen; back when we were going through treaty negotiations, I was burned out enough to forget. So we're doing it now!
Have fun with this one, and enjoy reconciling the confusing sensation of being happy that the mega-assholes are doing well. Bye!
EDIT: You can sit on this and use it later. However, the reason you can gain a whopping -40 DC reduction by using it now is because this is pretty much instantly on the heels of this disaster -- not only have they been sucker-punched twice now, you informing them that you know tells them that their best efforts at covering it all up came to exactly nothing. It's very shocking.
You can use this again in later rounds of negotiations, but you don't actually know if it'll hold its effect over time. Things genuinely are quite heavily stacked against the Crusaders, and if the balance shifts against them even slightly, things start looking way better for the Loyalists and the DC reduction gets smaller -- and by an unknowable and variable amount, at that. Now, there is the slim chance that the Crusaders will keep the victory train rolling, and if they do the DC stays the same or gets higher.
Basically, if you play hardball now, it's playing on the triple shocks they've experienced, and threatening to deal them a fourth if they don't cave -- your SecDef's opinions on that are available here. Options one and two are, now, infeasible, since you no longer have any idea where the Crusaders are. In light of the new information, though, he claims to find the Welland Canal strike more feasible now given the Loyalists' incredibly weak command and control structures as well as their need to focus somewhere inland, although he claims that it's still impossible to sustain if the Loyalists bring their full focus against you. He's pretty sure that pulling it off would all-but-guarantee a peace favorable to you, and the month of negotiations you've undertaken thus far has given you supply stockpiles a bit of time to recover. In short, he thinks you have the best shot at it now.
If you hold it to yourself, you're keeping it back as a trump card for later negotiations, but one that will depreciate to an unknown degree, and torch negotiations entirely if it fails.
Looking at this one map, I would point out something that somewhat undermines your demographic conclusions.
The Commonwealth's current population of "uh about fifteen million" before the accession of Detroit and Toledo is significantly less than the population that occupied the same areas in 2018 (most of the population of Illinois and much/most of Indiana and Wisconsin). And yet we have a food security problem. Food security problems, in the absence of someone providing large scale outside food aid, mean that your population hits a Malthusian upper limit; the population cannot grow past that point for any great length of time before a famine prunes it back down, through some combination of starvation and emigration.
California, which is crushingly dependent on climate and steady water supplies from inland, has probably also had famine years. You talk about how much of Nevada and Arizona is unlivable without modern infrastructure, well, so is California in a real sense. Even temporary interruptions to the water supply infrastructure would result in ruinous crop failures- people probably wouldn't literally die of thirst, but only because the proportion of available water used for drinking as opposed to agriculture is so small.
Furthermore, you are right to point out that influxes of refugees from elsewhere in America would tend to swell the Californian/Pacific Republican/NCR-an population, I think you significantly underestimate the death toll caused by a combination of famines and the inability to provide regular medical care. Especially since going into the great crisis of the Collapse, the US had a graying population with relatively few young adults to support a large elderly population reliant upon regular medical care.
If we assume that California had been focusing it's resources on dealing with a refugee crisis from the rest of North America around when the first rumblings of the Pacific War kicked off, it explains why the state had enough trouble managing it's resources that it had to make peace with the Vics and their mercenaries.
It's now been 30 years since the Pacific War by 2077.
California is one of the few spots on the continent that is both self-ruling and secure from marauding bands for that time; they have a periodic terrorist/rebel problem, but nothing actually serious compared to......anywhere else on the continent.
Which makes it a destination for refugees from neighboring states and the western half of North America.
The trek across the inland of the American interior is forbiddingly difficult for refugees without motor vehicles and associated support infrastructure. Consider the struggles faced by Oregon Trail migrants in the mid-19th century. Note that relatively speaking, the Oregon Trail settlers were a lot better equipped than typical refugees. And that their physical security was being ensured by having a national military commit outright genocide against any local inhabitants (the Indians) who even looked like they might threaten the migrants.
While motor vehicles offset some of the logistical challenges by greatly reducing the travel times, by 2040-50 it was probably becoming impractical for people to just drive across North America west of the Mississippi without some large scale organization backing them and ensuring there'd be fuel depots to make sure they didn't get stranded without gasoline somewhere in the middle of western Colorado or something.
Migrants continuing to flow into California would probably be the last populations from areas immediately around it, or coming in by water... and after the Pacific War, Russia controlled the water approaches.
Recent California DoF estimates suggest that California hitting ~43 million by 2030, and ~50 million by 2050.
With a positive immigration flow from the rest of the continent, and significantly higher population growth rates, you are looking at anywhere from 60-100+ million people in the territory of the NCR; an uptick of population growth would significantly change numbers.
Note that I'm pretty sure plausible current estimates of California population already include immigration flow inwards- just from different parts of the world. And that they do not include any realistic possibilities of famines or major medical crises of the sort that kill off millions for lack of the means to keep them alive.
For comparison, at 40 million people, California has a density of 251 people/square miles and a surface area of 163,696 sq mi.
Germany, at 83 million people, has a density of 583 people/square mile and a surface area of 137,988 sq mi.
New Jersey has 1210/square mile and 8729 sq mi as of around 2017.
Notably, much of California is quite inhospitable, far more so than the corresponding least-hospitable parts of Germany and New Jersey. A comparable average population density spread out over the whole state (including the deserts and mountains) would mean extremely high population densities in the areas that are actually habitable.
This further creates issues because California is going to be susceptible to natural disasters even if climate change is "kept under control" and is broadly speaking halted at 2020-2030-ish levels.
So assume that they have secured the Hoover Dam in the late 2030s after the US fell and noone was going to maintain it.
If they performed land or resource grabs post-fall, whether out of necessity, greed, or due to the terms of their peace treaty with the Russians, it would account for things like the motivations for the rebel groups the GM has mentioned.
I suspect they will have maintained rail lines as far inland as Utah and Arizona, both of which are significant mining territories, with Arizona being a major copper producer, and Utah being a source of uranium, copper, gold, silver, molybdenum, zinc, lead,beryllium, coal, petroleum, and natural gas (according to Wiki).
Basically, I'm thinking of a GDP per capita that's still significantly lower than pre-Collapse California (not as bad when you account for purchasing power parity), but a much bigger population, which gives a significantly chunky total GDP.
An economy that size, with an industrial base capable of producing and maintaining 4th and 5th gen aircraft and the relevant munitions as well as their own tanks, while being an active arms exporter, and possibly retaining their domestic nuclear power generation at Diablo Canyon, is pretty much perched on the edge of a breakout should the Empire take it's eye off the ball.
All of this analysis is shaped more or less correctly, but I think you may be implicitly overestimating how much the Californians could have accomplished, or would be allowed to accomplish. Note that Poptart has explicitly made statements about how much territory the Californians actually control, which should not be neglected.
MISCELLANEOUS BRAINBUGS
-California was independent for 13 years prior to the Russian Intervention.
It might be safe to assume that they got significant amounts of military aid from Europe and possibly China before the Pacific War.
Alternate hypothesis: California faced few if any direct military threats prior to the Pacific War and so needed no significant military aid, since it had a sizeable 'rump' portion of the existing US military-industrial complex. Other parts of the world, which had their own problems, did not bother to provide significant aid to California. And this was to prove an exploitable weakness that allowed Russia to crush them under mercenaries and blockade tactics, despite the nominally substantial and potent military force at the NCR's disposal.
-Japan is supposed to be the second largest operator of F35 aircraft after the United States if all the aircraft deliveries happen.
It's booked to procure 147 aircraft, and is assembling some in-country. That's in addition to their own domestic F3 stealth fighter.
Something to keep in mind.
Yes. This may help to explain why California has been allowed to maintain production lines for modern military equipment- Russia is using them as a parts supplier to some of the places in the world that already use American equipment, because it's easier than getting them all to switch to Russian kit.
-The US Army is in the process of beginning to slowly adopt 6.8mm caliber small arms and cased-telescoped or caseless ammunition, as well as the new light machinegun under the NGSW(Next Generation Small Weapon) program. Which is supposed to be smaller, lighter, longer ranged, and to have better body armor penetration qualities.
Since the Collapse begins to seriously damage the US economy some time in the 2020s and is well underway by the early 2030s, any military development project not being phased in right the fuck now in real life will probably be aborted or greatly curtailed. Things that aren't going to be implemented on a large scale until 2025 probably won't make it into mass service before the Collapse overtakes the US military-industrial complex, and things that aren't slated to be implemented before 2030 will likely be aborted entirely.
I suspect that the NGSW program turned into poorly funded prototypes that never saw mass production.
Furthermore, the rifles associated with Old World Equipment units are explicitly M4s and M16s, not exotic next-generation firearms.
-India is likely the ultimate winner of the last thirty years.
With a billion plus people, and an improving per capita GDP, foreign military adventures limited to mostly Pakistan, and that apparently short-lived but disastrous espionage attempt to pull a Russia in China's internal politics, it's probably the single largest economy in the world at the moment, and has managed to avoid drawing all the aggro that Russia has.
And it's natural advantages would have made it a natural haven for a bunch of companies looking to sell technology or die, and no longer bound by the export control regimes of the US or the UK.
1) Climate change (even 2020s levels of climate change are bad for India, it's a very tropical climate and it doesn't take much to render it borderline uninhabitable)
2) Lack of export markets (historically developing economies rely heavily on the ability to cheaply produce and export industrial goods to the service-oriented economies of the developed world. With those richer economies of the top tier in a state of collapse or at least shrinkage, self-industrialization becomes harder).
-We might well need to operate propeller attack aircraft in Army Aviation.
Helicopters yes, but also STOL prop aircraft that are rough field capable, and armed with rockets and Hellfire missiles and similar munitions, which can operate from forward airfields very near the front to provide CAS.
Think something like the F6F Grumman Hellcat(up to 4,000 pounds munitions payload, 600 feet minimum takeoff roll, 630km max speed), or the A-1 Douglas Skyraider(up to 8000 pounds munitions payload, 520km max speed).
Given that the Commonwealth Air Force already operates piston-engine close air support, there is no reason to spin this off to Army Aviation, or even to have Army Aviation as a branch until the Commonwealth military is far more developed than it is today.
_________________
*(in my Warbirds canon regarding the Battle of Leamington, this includes a mix of WWII warbirds, militarized T-6 Texan II trainer aircraft, and a number of AT-6 Wolverines that actually have modern-as-of-2020 avionics). Let me check my notes...
4 F-16s, various models
4 F-4 Phantoms, various models
7 T-38 Talons (armed)
1 F-8 Crusader
1 F-104S Starfighter
1 F-111 Aardvark (greatly altered, with F100 engines, swing wings locked in the subsonic landing position)
2 F-105D Thunderchiefs
4 A-4 Skyhawks
1 F-100 Super Sabre
-We should brace for chemical attacks in the next war.
Saddam did it when the US and the rest of the West were backing him in the 80s; IIRC, Spain sold him munitions containers that could be used for gas delivery, as did Egypt, and the Soviet Union outright provided an improved version of mustard gas.
It is well within the realm of the possible and we should indeed prepare for the prospect.
-The US used remote-controlled aircraft in Korea as suicide drones.
Loaded up obsolete Hellcat prop fighters with 2000 pound bombs, remote controlled off the decks of US carriers and flown into bridges and railway tunnels and the like as basically early 50s cruise missiles. Limited success at the time.
Our big obstacle here is aircraft manufacturing capability. Small low-performance drones are more likely; I discuss your suggestions along these lines below.
-The US stores roughly 4500 metric tonnes of gold, over half the US total, at Fort Knox in Kentucky.
A little over 260 billion dollars worth of gold, at 2000 dollars an ounce.
That also happens to be one of the secure locations for storing things like the US Constitution, Declaration of Independence, Gettysburg Address, et cetera.
We have the Declaration, which somehow ended up in Chicago.Where did the gold go?
You can't fly 4500 tons of gold out, or drive it out in dump trucks without being fucking obvious. And the equipment needed to handle it is serious.
So it has to be when the military forces there moved out to operate somewhere. And it hasn't shown up on the open market.
Probable alternate hypothesis: The Russians got ahold of it. The sequence of events is likely to involve the federal units at Fort Knox gradually losing manpower to desertion and troop withdrawals to cover other needs. This was followed by the New American Confederation* taking custody. When that fell apart, it was straightforward enough for a large Victorian/Russian expedition to get their hands on Fort Knox by moving on the site with a division-sized column of proto-Vick militia types and just taking whatever they wanted.
_________________
*(the remnant state in the South that Victoria broke up by intervening in a civil war on the side of the racist 'Old South' fuckers and nuking Atlanta)
-The Vic Navy sucks. But their Air Force will undoubtedly outnumber ours in significant numbers.
How to equalize things a little? I'm going to suggest that we put some thought into buying a nice fishing boat registered in Pennsylvania or the Carolinas, and staff it with special forces and hang out well out to sea. Then have them swim onshore to hit LaGuardia when the next war starts and attempt to burn a bunch of their military aircraft on the ground.
Alternatively, buy a bunch of cheap drones and launch them from the fishing vessel to do the same thing.
Problems: Firstly, LaGuardia is property of the Free City of New York so, uh... whut.
Secondly, many Victorian air bases will not be in convenient range of the coast, and Victorian land forces are going to be sizeable along with competent internal security death squads. Commando infiltration of their territory will be difficult.
Thirdly, the drone thing is not a bad idea at all, but bear in mind that this tactic can cut both ways (Victoria's history of false-flag terror attacks from civilian shipping is significant). We need cheap and good air defense solutions for just such an emergency, or we'll get pasted the way that Saudi refinery did last year.
Raytheon Coyote.
Costs 20,000 dollars, weighs 13 pounds, has a 4 pound payload, a cruising speed of ~100km, oprationl endurance of 2 hours, and can be controlled from 130km away.
The NOAA uses them for hurricane tracking.
The US military uses them for surveillance, killing other drones, and as a flying munition.
Get satellite maps of the Vic air bases.
Put a 2.2 pound HMX warhead on a bunch of these, fly them into a military airbase and just dive them into enemy aircraft or fuel tankers.
Doesn't take that much to deadline an airplane after all; you don't have to completely wreck it to mission-kill it.
1) This is broadly speaking a good idea, but one that may or may not work especially well- worth trying and preparing for in any case though.
2) We'd be better positioned to implement such an idea if we hadn't lost the Fly, My Pretties! option due to inaction, but can presumably scrape back together whatever capabilities Audrey Jameson had managed to amass to make her drone fleet a technical possibility... eventually.
3a) Bear in mind that in the 60+ years between 2015 and 207X when we have our next round of war with Victoria, we will not be the first people to try this. The Russians, who have been dealing with counterinsurgency needs all over the world for most of the century, will be intimately familiar with the problem of someone sending a cheap-ass swarm of crude flying drones to swarm high value targets in hopes of causing highly localized sabotage damage. This general pattern of attack has already happened in real life, after all (that Saudi refinery I mentioned).
3b) Because of (3a), a viable military counter to this tactic probably exists (e.g. tactical laser air defense systems that can cheaply burn the enemy's drones out of the sky without expending multimillion dollar missiles to kill drones that cost less than a luxury car). Whether or not the Victorians actually obtain or deploy such a system is hard to predict; we'll want to get good intelligence on the nature of any arms they import from Russia in the coming years.
[ ] Reveal to the Victorians' negotiating team that you know what's up, and this is their last chance to accept your offer before your diplomats go home and your troops ship out. Reroll treaty negotiations at -40 DC; the Vicks are hiding it well, but with two shocking military disasters chasing each others' heels, they have to be desperate. The cost is that this is a precipitous demand to make; if you make it and lose, Victoria's walking.
The enemy of my enemy is my enemy's enemy, nothing more.
But oh, man. Fifty-fifty chance they'll accept a calamitous peace treaty (if I understand it right)? And even if they walk, they're in a bad enough position that it might be good to continue the war and mobilize again, to keep pressing them.
I believe that the offer is time-sensitive - we don't get to roll on a more conservative plan with the -40 bonus. Given that our previous conservative plans were still ~DC40 IIRC, the decrease of DC is vastly outweighed by the difference in the offer quality.
[X] Reveal to the Victorians' negotiating team that you know what's up, and this is their last chance to accept your offer before your diplomats go home and your troops ship out. Reroll treaty negotiations at -40 DC; the Vicks are hiding it well, but with two shocking military disasters chasing each others' heels, they have to be desperate. The cost is that this is a precipitous demand to make; if you make it and lose, Victoria's walking.
[X] Reveal to the Victorians' negotiating team that you know what's up, and this is their last chance to accept your offer before your diplomats go home and your troops ship out. Reroll treaty negotiations at -40 DC; the Vicks are hiding it well, but with two shocking military disasters chasing each others' heels, they have to be desperate. The cost is that this is a precipitous demand to make; if you make it and lose, Victoria's walking.
I believe that the offer is time-sensitive - we don't get to roll on a more conservative plan with the -40 bonus. Given that our previous conservative plans were still ~DC40 IIRC, the decrease of DC is vastly outweighed by the difference in the offer quality.
No. We sit on the information and offer a more cutdown offer (say 65 DC) and *then* if the Vics don't agree we reveal the fact that we know and get the -40 DC.
No. We sit on the information and offer a more cutdown offer (say 65 DC) and *then* if the Vics don't agree we reveal the fact that we know and get the -40 DC.
The DC reduction is from us standing up and threatening to walk out right now, I would be surprised if we could apply it after giving them a few days to sort their shit out and indicating that acutally, we're open to negotiations.
No. We sit on the information and offer a more cutdown offer (say 65 DC) and *then* if the Vics don't agree we reveal the fact that we know and get the -40 DC.
[ ] Reveal to the Victorians' negotiating team that you know what's up, and this is their last chance to accept your offer before your diplomats go home and your troops ship out. Reroll treaty negotiations at -40 DC; the Vicks are hiding it well, but with two shocking military disasters chasing each others' heels, they have to be desperate. The cost is that this is a precipitous demand to make; if you make it and lose, Victoria's walking.
[ ] Sit on it for now. When the quest resumes properly (still not yet), we will resume treaty negotiations.
The Civil War has opened with a disaster for the Loyalists. The Victorians are desperately trying to conceal this; they've made no public statements on the progress of their war and are negotiating as hard as ever. Revealing now that you know about the crisis they're in will strengthen your bargaining position immensely; now more than ever, Victoria absolutely cannot afford to have their focus split. You have a chance to push for your original offer, under threat of war should the Victorians refuse you. The situation has changed.
Pick one of the following.
[ ] Reveal to the Victorians' negotiating team that you know what's up, and this is their last chance to accept your offer before your diplomats go home and your troops ship out. Reroll treaty negotiations at -40 DC; the Vicks are hiding it well, but with two shocking military disasters chasing each others' heels, they have to be desperate. The cost is that this is a precipitous demand to make; if you make it and lose, Victoria's walking.
[ ] Sit on it for now. When the quest resumes properly (still not yet), we will resume treaty negotiations.
NO APPROVAL VOTING, FOR A CHANGE. MANUAL MORATORIUM.
To refresh your memories, here is the original voted plan:
[X] Total Industry mk4 DC 90
-[X] War Reparations Clause, Acquisitive: +5
-[X] Artifact Reclamation Clause +5
-[X] War Guilt Clause +5 DC
-[X] Militia Clause -5
-[X] Prisoners of War Clause, Delayed -10
-[X] War Brides Clause, Exchange +15
-[X] Free Migration Clause +30
-[X] Johnson Doctrine Clause +10
-[X] Foreign Aid Clause +15
-[X] Annulment Clause +25
-[X] Hostile Neutrality Clause -15
-[X] Seaway Clause, General: +50
-[X] Free Trade Clause +20
-[X] Lakes Access Clause: -20
An explanation of all the involved clauses may be found here.
OK, as I recall, the general plan was that we'd bank on this very high-DC treaty option, and then predictably allow ourselves to be negotiated down to something in line with whatever we actually roll on the d100 die roll.
This would deterministically work and avoid putting us in a situation where (for fear of not getting a treaty) we ask for very little and then roll an 80 or something and curse ourselves for not getting as much as we could have.
Compared to this, a 50/50 gamble of remaining at war OR getting a very generous peace settlement doesn't strike me as so good. I'd be more inclined to try this if our plan were already a DC 65-ish plan, a bit less restrictive on the Victorians in exchange for having a very high likelihood that we'd get it.
But at a 50/50 chance of remaining at war, under circumstances where we are poorly equipped to do anything other than own-goal ourselves by harassing the Crusaders from behind or betray our principles by supplying them with weapons...
I don't think we should take this tactic.
[] Sit on it for now. When the quest resumes properly (still not yet), we will resume treaty negotiations.
Have fun with this one, and enjoy reconciling the confusing sensation of being happy that the mega-assholes are doing well. Bye!
"Abraham Lincoln nailed it 220 years ago. The evildoers have summoned up demons, and those demons are now totally not surprisingly turning upon them and rending them."
I believe that the offer is time-sensitive - we don't get to roll on a more conservative plan with the -40 bonus. Given that our previous conservative plans were still ~DC40 IIRC, the decrease of DC is vastly outweighed by the difference in the offer quality.
It seems kind of unrealistic that we can't gain diplomatic leverage by revealing what we know about the Victorian war situation after they refuse our first offer. @PoptartProdigy is usually pretty realistic, so I would think it'll at least move the needle- say, by providing a reduced reduction of the DC of our eventual plan.
