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I will remind everyone that back on our last standard turn, we already had serious financial and action-economic issues even without having to mobilize the military. We could maybe succeed at the canal strike but I'm not convinced we could afford to do so.
While this is certainly true, it's worth noting that we also had a cost estimate for Mobilizing troops to put them into the field - which was a single DoD AP that would be locked for the duration of the military action. With the additional time for replenishing our stockpiles that's been mentioned, there's no reason to assume it would take more than at most 1 AP above and beyond that level to produce additional supplies to support a strike on the Welland Canal - and we'd only be doing that for at most 1 turn while we tried for another negotiated settlement because of the way we wouldn't be able to hold the Canal against a determined push from the Loyalists.
So, in terms of opportunity cost, a strike on the Welland Canal could be as low as delaying finishing the training reform we started for another 6 months. It's not ideal when we're also wanting to put AP into military expansion and improvement with stuff like Forging the Sword, but it doesn't really break the bank compared to the rest of the stuff on our plate we're working on.
As the original author of the 90-DC approach (reminder: not the plan itself, but rather the idea that a plan should be aiming for DC 90 for math reasons), I am conflicted. The plan was to bargain down to whatever we roll, but then also a good chance of actually getting those 130 DC worth of stuff would be pretty good as well... I'm kinda leaning towards continuing to bargain and hoping we get a pretty good reduction still, but it may not last.
Just read this whole thing in a day, absolutely fantastic read. Couldn't think of a way I'd rather spend a day off sick!
Saying that, I would tend towards not being too too greedy in this, we've got some great terms here and the perfect opportunity to get them. Gut 'em financially with this then let the civil war burn 'em out.
[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.
[X] Sit on it for now. When the quest resumes properly (still not yet), we will resume treaty negotiations.
I think, while we could probably still succeed in a confrontation, we're better off making use not only of the additional actions, but also of having whatever treaty is imposed on Victoria starting sooner.
Alright, let's look at the two plans that are indirectly in contest here, shall we?
[ ] Total Industry mk4 DC 90
-[ ] War Reparations Clause, Acquisitive: +5
-[ ] Artifact Reclamation Clause +5
-[ ] War Guilt Clause +5 DC
-[ ] Militia Clause -5
-[ ] Prisoners of War Clause, Delayed -10
-[ ] War Brides Clause, Exchange +15
-[ ] Free Migration Clause +30
-[ ] Johnson Doctrine Clause +10
-[ ] Foreign Aid Clause +15
-[ ] Annulment Clause +25
-[ ] Hostile Neutrality Clause -15
-[ ] Seaway Clause, General: +50
-[ ] Free Trade Clause +20
-[ ] Lakes Access Clause: -20
versus
[ ] Total Industry MK7 DC 30
-[ ] War Reparations Clause, Acquisitive: +5
-[ ] Artifact Reclamation Clause +5
-[ ] Militia Clause -5
-[ ] Prisoners of War Clause, Delayed -10
-[ ] War Brides Clause, Exchange +15
-[ ] Free Migration Clause +30
-[ ] Johnson Doctrine Clause +10
-[ ] Hostile Neutrality Clause -15
-[ ] Seaway Clause, General: +50
-[ ] Lakes Access Clause: -20
Total Industry MK7 contains no elements that Total Industry mk4 lacks, so I will address the four items that mk4 has that MK7 lacks.
Victoria shall acknowledge that they are solely responsible for the war starting, and apologize for both that and any war crimes committed by their forces during the course of the campaign. Victoria will publicly assume fault for the war and any wrongdoing committed during it, and issue formal apologies. +5 DC.
A comparatively minor clause, but one that is very important when it comes to shaping the narrative among foreign powers, a skill that Victoria has honed very well over the course of its existence. This will ease our efforts to secure foreign materiel assistance.
Victoria's aid workers are, sometimes, genuinely well-meaning aid workers helping to lessen the impact of the Collapse. However, they always travel with an Inquisitor, who acts as a forward observer for the Army. Even the benign aid workers are happy to share their findings with people back home. By forcing Victoria to admit the true nature of these aid workers and requiring that local power structures are permitted to expel aid workers without consequences, you could score a massive diplomatic success while greatly weakening Victoria's grip on the continent. Forcibly ensure that aid workers are voluntary. +15 DC.
Victoria's dominance is maintained through hard power and soft power, among them a web of treaties and security arrangements limiting the military power of various regions and governments across the Country. This is going to be one of the hardest conditions you could ask for, because it means that once Victoria starts trying to reestablish itself, it will be doing so completely from scratch. That said...completely from scratch. Victoria will annul any and all treaties regarding security arrangements or military composition with any and all polities on the continent of North America. +25 DC.
These two clauses together form a devastating blow to Victoria's ability to keep North America under their boot-heel, and will combine splendidly with the General Seaway Clause to provide outstanding benefits to our continental diplomacy. Americans all over will know that when we won against Victoria, the Commonwealth acted for the benefit of all Americans.
Victoria prides itself on a starkly interventionist trade policy, with tariffs freely deployed as a tool of commerce with everybody but their Russian masters and those Russia presently favors. Forcing a free trade agreement would take a hammer to that, causing intense havoc all on its own, even before you factor in the potential for the Commonwealth to establish some measure of influence in the Victorian economy. Establish free trade between the Commonwealth and Victoria. +20 DC.
And this is what turns the Seaway Clause and Lakes Access Clause into an unholy terror for Victoria -- it will utterly devastate their economic controls and see the Commonwealth acting as an entry-point for global trade to fully penetrate Victorian markets. Combined with Free Migration Clause, and this treaty will play absolute havoc on Victoria's ability to maintain any semblance of internal cohesion in the long-run.
The choice here is between getting just enough breathing room to maybe start rearming for the next war, or to ensure that Victoria will be forced to restart everything from scratch, even ensuring order within their own society. It is the choice between a hard war in five years, or putting a bullet in Lind's fever dream and watching the piece of shit bleed out.
The choice here is between getting just enough breathing room to maybe start rearming for the next war, or to ensure that Victoria will be forced to restart everything from scratch, even ensuring order within their own society. It is the choice between a hard war in five years, or putting a bullet in Lind's fever dream and watching the piece of shit bleed out.
I agree on general terms, with the caveat that any war plan should basically assume that the Free City of New York is a major participant. Remember, the only reason that the FCNY isn't armed up is that Victoria keeps threatening to immediately invade if they take even small steps towards that. They can't do that right now, and the FCNY is going to engage on a crash rearmament program.
I agree on general terms, with the caveat that any war plan should basically assume that the Free City of New York is a major participant. Remember, the only reason that the FCNY isn't armed up is that Victoria keeps threatening to immediately invade if they take even small steps towards that. They can't do that right now, and the FCNY is going to engage on a crash rearmament program.
FCNY still has to worry about their populace's fear of Victoria, which will be greatly ameliorated if we either push them with a punishing peace or force a punishing peace after seizing Welland. A weaker peace will see more hesitation on the part of FCNY's populace.
While this is certainly true, it's worth noting that we also had a cost estimate for Mobilizing troops to put them into the field - which was a single DoD AP that would be locked for the duration of the military action. With the additional time for replenishing our stockpiles that's been mentioned, there's no reason to assume it would take more than at most 1 AP above and beyond that level to produce additional supplies to support a strike on the Welland Canal - and we'd only be doing that for at most 1 turn while we tried for another negotiated settlement because of the way we wouldn't be able to hold the Canal against a determined push from the Loyalists.
So, in terms of opportunity cost, a strike on the Welland Canal could be as low as delaying finishing the training reform we started for another 6 months. It's not ideal when we're also wanting to put AP into military expansion and improvement with stuff like Forging the Sword, but it doesn't really break the bank compared to the rest of the stuff on our plate we're working on.
I'd suggest that the opportunity cost is higher than that, because if we take a turn dragging Blackwell back to the negotiating table, that's a turn we don't spend getting two extra DofD AP from war reparations. Granted, we only get the AP for as long as the Vicks honor the treaty, which involves enough factors that I'm not gonna pretend I know which course of action is going to stretch it out longer. But if action economy issues are a concern, particularly with beefing up our military, we have an easy and certain way of alleviating that right in front of us.
The choice here is between getting just enough breathing room to maybe start rearming for the next war, or to ensure that Victoria will be forced to restart everything from scratch, even ensuring order within their own society. It is the choice between a hard war in five years, or putting a bullet in Lind's fever dream and watching the piece of shit bleed out.
Alternatively, it's a choice between getting a bunch of valuable things now, and possibly getting more valuable things either now or later, depending on how things shake out.
I'd suggest that the opportunity cost is higher than that, because if we take a turn dragging Blackwell back to the negotiating table, that's a turn we don't spend getting two extra DofD AP from war reparations. Granted, we only get the AP for as long as the Vicks honor the treaty, which involves enough factors that I'm not gonna pretend I know which course of action is going to stretch it out longer. But if action economy issues are a concern, particularly with beefing up our military, we have an easy and certain way of alleviating that right in front of us.
True. That being said, 3 or 4 AP for an extra 40-60 DC equivalent of terms could very easily be worth it - especially with stuff like the Annulment Clause that could save us half a dozen or more AP working with nascent Revivalist polities and doesn't disappear if the treaty gets broken.
Delayed gratification does tend to win out over the "bird in hand" approach in the long run, after all.
I am amused at how alexander is going to react to this treaty if we pull it off. He told his puppet to sort their shit or no more aid, and then a few weeks later he finds out they burned their diplomatic clout and soft power to ash to do so, when that was just about the last truly useful thing they had. Victora without its treaties, without its trade stronghold, is a far less useful asset to the tzar because it's down to brute military force to accomplish its aims, something he knows he's going to have to hold their hands for.
True. That being said, 3 or 4 AP for an extra 40-60 DC equivalent of terms could very easily be worth it - especially with stuff like the Annulment Clause that could save us half a dozen or more AP working with nascent Revivalist polities and doesn't disappear if the treaty gets broken.
Delayed gratification does tend to win out over the "bird in hand" approach in the long run, after all.
The bird's less about whether gratification is delayed than if it happens at all, which is my primary concern. I brought up the opportunity cost to argue that even in the best case of needing to make the canal strike we're suffering some AP screwage, but what I'm really worried about is the worst case where the military action fails and we get jack. It's not gonna be a fun time if this ends with the birds in the bush flying off beyond our reach.
The bird's less about whether gratification is delayed than if it happens at all, which is my primary concern. I brought up the opportunity cost to argue that even in the best case of needing to make the canal strike we're suffering some AP screwage, but what I'm really worried about is the worst case where the military action fails and we get jack. It's not gonna be a fun time if this ends with the birds in the bush flying off beyond our reach.
Then your calculations there should also include the likelihood of the Victorians being able to more quickly win their civil war if they get a weak enough peace deal. The higher your estimation of their military capabilities in fending us off, the higher your estimation must also weigh that risk too.
[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.
"Look. We know that our negotiations went quite Acremoneously. Even our Krak negotiators have only made you quite Cross, but then it is a heavy matter. In fact, I'd even go so far as to say that it's a Teu-ton matter. Haha. Sorry bad joke. But - if you permit us to add a bit of Levanty - Making a peace treaty is all about patience bit like making a good meal, specifically Bouillon. It's all about patience, see. The trick, of course, is to know when to put the Saladin. " *wink wink*
My core point, though, is that California farming is peculiarily and unusually dependent on a constant supply of irrigation water from out of state, and on specific climate conditions that can be disrupted by, as you note, bad weather fucking up the harvest, or a disease outbreak that the state's overstrained Collapse agricultural service cannot handle, or many other things. If the state was, in the 2030s and 2040s, coping with a major refugee influx even the water projects that normally make the state livable for such large populations were becoming less reliable... famine would be far from impossible.
I am pretty sure that @PoptartProdigy did not mean "order of magnitude" in that literal sense. Technically "order of magnitude of two million" refugees means 'between 200,000 and 20,000,000.' But I am confident that Poptart did not mean to suggest "as far as you know there might be only two hundred thousand refugees," nor did they mean to say "the refugees might number twenty million for all you know," because the latter could be estimated by the simple expedient of wandering around a few towns and asking "has the population literally doubled in the past five years, yes or no" without need for a full-scale census.
The big problem is that water supply and distribution failures might not be planned; they might very well be abrupt and catastrophic. Having plenty of water in a reservoir hundreds of miles away matters very little if the aqueduct breaks down (or is sabotaged by Russians or Victorian sympathizers, which I wouldn't put past them). And crops need water continuously, with minimal interruptions; if the irrigation system breaks down for a few weeks you may have a famine on your hands no matter how good your water distribution plan seemed at the start of the year.
As long as nothing breaks too badly or too suddenly, California would be able to support this large population by being careful about water resources. But a few bad decisions or accidents could easily disturb things, and there have been many opportunities since the Collapse for things to go wrong. I do not declare with certainty that California must have faced crop failures or famines in the years since the 2020s in this setting, but it very easily could have.
[For example, that 'environmental use' water may seem to be accessible, but it isn't necessarily. For example, if fresh water stops being poured into a low-lying river system, salt water from the sea can infiltrate upstream and salt the fields in the river valley; this is (I have been told) a reason why some of the river deltas of California require 'environmental use' water.]
Again with California, the big problem is going to be the period of abrupt adjustment to a much harsher set of economic realities. You may be aware of the recent major wildfires in California these past few years; I doubt those will be improving any time soon and I am quite sure that Collapse-era California had major wildfire trouble. This would tend to disrupt agriculture, hamper growth of the economy to sustain the population, and potentially even dehouse or kill large numbers of people if the fires swept across large shantytowns occupied by refugees well out from the major cities.
There would be similar problems with earthquakes; the reason an earthquake can kill a hundred thousand in Haiti while another quake of equal magnitude in Southern California kills more like one thousand is that California is a rich area that can afford to carefully construct quake-proof buildings. Post-Collapse construction in the NCR is probably built more to the 'Haiti' standard, and earthquakes are probably a lot more damaging to lives and property now than they were then.
None of this inherently prevents population growth or economic recovery, but it adds complicating factors, piles burden upon burden. We do not know the full extent of the NCR's troubles, and should not underestimate those troubles until we learn more.
I am not saying there has been no mining, or no expansion. It's mostly a question of scale. I can imagine California being relatively tenuously spread out in tendrils along the interstates and rail lines, with large stretches of relatively lawless country that are only safely traversed by vehicle convoys or armed trains, allowing them to access a handful of valuable mining sites but leaving the rest of the country to wither. Or I can imagine them administering the territory and integrating it. Anything in between is conceivable.
Not implausible but very far from certain. There are other projects that would be more likely candidates for military spending attempted to stimulate the economy. Also, modern Republicans tend to favor things that more directly pay out to corporations.
Fair.
What I'm getting at is that the effects would be disruptive, not crippling. India is still no doubt far stronger in this setting than it is in real 2020 life, both in absolute and in relative terms- but it would be somewhat hampered by dealing with climate difficulties, even if famine is averted and the effects aren't turning millions into refugees.
There are ample reasons to rely on piston-engine COIN aircraft for many roles the Commonwealth Air Force needs. I totally agree with you on that general point. My point, in turn, was that this is already done.
The problem with literal World War Two fighter aircraft is that they're so cheap for reasons that are inadvisable on a modern battlefield. They have almost no avionics or electronics of any kind, for instance. Which means they can't use many kinds of precision weapons and are completely blind and helpless in air combat of any sort, or in the face of even limited modern air defenses. The lack of precision weapons, in turn, means that to destroy any given target you have to send out a lot more air sorties, which means that to have the same level of impact on the battlefield from your air support you need many many more planes, and a bigger logistical footprint.
Those planes were designed to be manufactured and crewed in the thousands, with the full intent that hundreds would be lost in battle every year and that there'd be hundreds more where they came from. And that was against a technological peer competitor, without the means to hack swarms of them out of the sky for minimal expenditure of effort on their part. Anything we do to limit that ability to hack swarms of our crude aircraft out of the sky (say, putting radar warning receivers on them, or equipping them with some kind of ECM to make them harder to track and target, or giving them radars of their own) will immediately make them vastly more expensive and tend to defeat the purpose of 'cheap and numerous.'
A better model for the kind of plane we need is something like the Super Tucano, not the Grumman Hellcat.
And as far as I'm concerned, we probably already have some of those, and will no doubt acquire more when and as we can.
What, sending several thousand militia into the middle of Kentucky to loot Fort Knox?
Oh, I don't agree for one moment. If they didn't have that kind of capacity by the late 2030s and early 2040s, they wouldn't ever have been able to do what they did in terms of wandering the country wrecking industry and whole defiant city-states with division-sized roaming forces of murderhobos.
Something like that would certainly work- the key realization is that the enemy can do this too, and deploy the Russian equivalent of such a system. We should be prepared for them to be prepared for the most obvious gambits we might try; Gideon Damned Blackwell is not stupid and understands that this war is going to be different from the ones before. He will be much more prepared to listen to Russian advisors and obtain a diverse array of Russian equipment.
You're right, but since "drones come flying in at low altitude over the base" is practically something from a target practice exercise, they may still be relevant and effective. Again, I'm not saying we shouldn't try this tactic, just don't be disappointed if it doesn't work as well as we'd hoped.
-Major rivers of California:
It really is nowhere as dire as you think.
The only major river that's significantly outside their borders, and whose waters they share is the Colorado, which they share with six smaller states(Wyoming, Nevada,Utah,Arizona,Colorado,New Mexico) and Mexico.
And given that they probably ended up in charge of Hoover and Lake Mead, after Russia destabilized everyone else......
-This is going to be an opinion thing because it could be argued either way.
I just don't find it credible that they had a famine, or even food shortage. Other than the essential environmental allocation, the majority of California's water consumption is going to livestock feed for export and landscaping. Things that would be rationalized out of existence the moment they could no longer afford things like subsidizing the costs of export farmers.
It's hard to comprehend how much slack there is in the US economy. For example, California was in a drought from 2011 to 2019. Alfalfa farmers were still paying for water at a rate of 5.7 cents per cubic meter. Los Angeles pays for it at 81 cents per cubic meter. Las Vegas still has decorative open-air water fountains in a desert climate.
Famine is precisely the sort of thing that Victorian sympathizers would be sure to trumpet as proof of the degeneracy and incompetence of "Azanian cultural Marxists and women supremacists". Rumford wouldn't have passed up the opportunity to sneer in his opus. And no mention of California receiving food aid from Europe or Australia, or importing grain from South America, where both Argentina and Brazil are significant exporters, in the 13 years between the US dissolving and the Pacific War.
-With GM clarification, you're right.
It suggests that we control less territory than I thought we did. In particular, much less of Illnois than the fact that one of our founders was its putative Governor would imply. And on review, it bears remembering that while we saw an influx of refugees, a non-trivial number of people moved AWAY from CFC territory for fear of getting caught in the Victorian reprisal invasion. People only now showing up after the war is over.
-If some sort of catastrophe you posit had happened, it's the sort of thing that would have been mentioned.
And the talent base that's building and exporting hightech munitions would not have survived famine.
Dead or gone to Australia/New Zealand/Argentina/Chile.
California's continuing viability argues against the chance of anything like that happening here.
You dont export F16s and fly F35s if you're having trouble feeding large parts of your society. You don't contemplate going up against Russia and Japan if that's an issue.
-My apologies.
I did not mean to imply they physically control large chunks of territory. Outside of their immediate neighbors, like Nevada and Arizona, where they need stuff like the Colorado? It would be both provocative and expensive to justify.
But keeping hold of trade and logistic arterials, while supporting friendly organizations along their length?
Very much so. Amtrack rail to Utah and Arizona, for example, where Russian corporations benefit from having local communities and warlords operate mines, and buying cheap raw materials and subsidised Cali transport to the coast?
Victoria is not the only place capable of sending out aid workers as an implement of foreign policy.
Ten to one there are California reps all along the length of the Colorado.
-Thing is, the fall of the United States was not abrupt.
Almost twenty years of progressive federal dysfunction culminating in the 2033 collapse, and then another 13 years before the Pacific War.
And California's actual political class has been pretty cognizant of food and water security issues and the climate security implications.
There are desalination plants going into portions of California today, and more planned; climate change issues are being accounted for in state planning, unlike say Florida. Or the Carolinas.
-Disagree about the aircraft.
I actually did look at the Super Tucano, and in passing, the AT-6 Wolverine.
Military costs are often deliberately opaque, but with the Tucano it's 10-20 million dollars per unit for 3600 pounds of payload and ~1,000 dollar/hour or 2000 dollar/hour operating costs.
It's a long endurance STOL COIN aircraft whose virtues are it's ability to operate from short unprepared runways, and low operating costs. Not an attack plane designed to attack into enemy AA the way warbirds were. Won't work as CAS slinging Hellfires or Brimstones or Hydra 70/CRV7 rocket pods at Vic mechanized divisions while their jet brethren attempt to intercept enemy aircraft or punch out enemy logistics and C&C nodes.
For comparison, an F6F Hellcat's 4000 pounds of payload and inflation adjusted cost of ~560,000 dollars, prior to an avionics upgrade.
Or the Textron Scorpion jet, which is supposed to cost less than 20 million per unit, and ~3,000 dollar/hour operating costs(AT-6 Wolverine is 2200 dollars), and haul ~6,000 pounds of munitions and stores.
Re-engining a late WW2/Korea warbird with a turboprop and helicopter/light aircraft avionics is the quick and dirty option, because options abound.
Better would be going with a cleansheet design, and keeping the production cost well under 2 million dollars, preferably under a million.
We'll still take significant combat losses, but dems the breaks.
At this point in our development we don't really have all that much of a choice except to risk pilots.
Can't afford everything yet.
I'll talk more about aircraft tactics, survivability, hardware choices and employment some other time. - Not in the 2040s. Before they had consolidated internal control properly.
By WoG, the Victorian Army didn't transition from the citizen soldier model to the professional until after the death of Kraft, Rumsford and all their true believers in 2049 by the hand of Russian Intelligence.
That trained Quality 2 professional light infantry can live off the land and flourish is one thing. Militia?
Across the almost one thousand kilometers from the New York border to Fort Knox? Across territory that had not been pacified by decades of terror, and would have been pretty unfriendly to the Vics after their purges and the disruption caused?
And then assault a US military base, with heavy US military equipment(Fort Knox headquartered three divisions and a cavalry brigade, so plenty of hardware for the locals? That's the kind of situation where even National Guard would murder
Basically, I think the gold was moved after the New American Confederacy fell in 2038 after the nuking of Atlanta, and it became clear that there wouldn't be a US successor state on the East Coast for ex-US military units to pledge allegiance to.
Which would have meant it would have gone towards New York or Cali.
Neither state got it, and Russia has not operated overtly in North America, as they would need to do to move several thousand tons of gold.
Which is why I think it got cached somewhere.
[tangent]
New York probably got the ~1700 tons/100 billion dollars worth of gold bullion stored at the West Point Mint, though, after Victoria invaded New York State; the military personnel staffing the US Military Academy and base there would have just transferred it by boat down the Hudson, and gotten themselves a place in FCNY that way.
It suggests that we control less territory than I thought we did. In particular, much less of Illnois than the fact that one of our founders was its putative Governor would imply. And on review, it bears remembering that while we saw an influx of refugees, a non-trivial number of people moved AWAY from CFC territory for fear of getting caught in the Victorian reprisal invasion. People only now showing up after the war is over.
No, you do control all of Illinois as displayed on the map in the Status Screen. It's just that there has been a truly massive exodus away from your territory over the past several decades. Urban centers tend not to do very well when there's an ongoing agricultural collapse. Even less so when it's in recovery from an outright Nazi occupation. People dispersed, quite heavily. Many south, many across the Great Plains, many to FCNY. Now that things are going your way again, you're seeing population figures rebound again, which is a significant part of the, "refugees," issue; many are returning citizens.
Whom, thanks to the Refugee Act, don't get to be citizens at all. Thanks, Sperling!
Given he's presumably a fan of both 'those leftists Social Democrats with their reform capitalist ideas are gonna turn the country into gulags' and 'I'm only right wing because the radical left kept calling me a Nazi' it's only fair.
The Victorian government, Blackwell included, know exactly what we want. If we could invade Victoria in force, there would be no negotiation here. By showing up to the table we are essentially admitting that we don't have the power to immediately crush them. Blackwell calling things right wouldn't be miraculous, it would be a reasonable interpretation of our actions.
That said, you are right that Victoria doesn't know if that's the correct interpretation. For all they know, we could actually be strong enough to run them down and we just don't realize it. Blackwell knows that if he guesses wrong, he ends up in front of our firing squad or a Victorian one. On the other hand, Blackwell and the negotiators know that if they come home with a treaty that's too unfavorable, they might wind up in front of a Victorian firing squad anyway. Blackwell absolutely does not want to fight us and the CMC, but he can't look weak to his subordinates, either.
And a DC 90 treaty is going to be brutally one-sided. That may cause trouble with his political backers at home, and they're closer than to him than we are. Conceding this treaty to us is not necessarily a safe option for Blackwell. Admittedly, neither is refusing: either option is potentially deadly. It's why this is a coin flip– Victoria is stuck between a rock and a hard place. Except the hard place isn't actually that hard, as it turns out.
There's a huge difference between an invasion in force and assault to cripple them. Occupying/Conquering Victoria is an impossibility and everyone knows this. But launching an attack with the intent to cripple their infrastructure/break their ability to project force- that's how Victoria has been shitting on the rest of the Continental United States. We don't need to deal with asymmetric warfare against an indoctrinated populace or the logistical issues of a long term campaign in Victoria to take a hatchet to their ability to fight us for round two.
Everyone knows this isn't the last war, and that's why the Victorians are so squirrely about this peace deal- they know just as we do victory tomorrow depends on getting the most and giving the least in the peace of today. We can't hide that because it's self evident. But we can change the information they're using to calculate what's acceptable. That's why the information is more valuable now likelier than not-because the shock value skews their ability to actually determine the impact on the peace. Realistically- the Crusaders catching a break changes very little about what we can do, but it changes the context in which we can do it. The question of whether 'can this Chicago assault do enough damage to tell in the next war' becomes 'can this Chicago assault do enough damage before we can deal with the Crusaders, will it let the Crusaders run rampant, will dealing with the Crusaders mean Chicago runs rampant'? We force a ton more variables into the equation and make the best answer to reducing the variables to something they can manage agreeing to our deal.
The invasion takes on more menace because it's two uncontained threats, and I'm arguing peace is more palatable because the military aristocracy and the CM inquisitors are going to be able to look at our landing in Victoria, look at what we did in the Detroit campaign, look at the Crusaders rampaging around their interior, and decide they want no part of that. Yes- Blackwell can't afford to look weak, but submitting to the demands of a foreign power far away across the lakes is different than submitting to their demands when they have your maritime lifeline by the throat.
No, you do control all of Illinois as displayed on the map in the Status Screen. It's just that there has been a truly massive exodus away from your territory over the past several decades. Urban centers tend not to do very well when there's an ongoing agricultural collapse. Even less so when it's in recovery from an outright Nazi occupation. People dispersed, quite heavily. Many south, many across the Great Plains, many to FCNY. Now that things are going your way again, you're seeing population figures rebound again, which is a significant part of the, "refugees," issue; many are returning citizens.
Whom, thanks to the Refugee Act, don't get to be citizens at all. Thanks, Sperling!
Suggests that Wisconsin and Manitoba saw distinct increases in population, being both productive, possible to get to on the water, and an even further distance from Victoria. Probably Iowa as well, because it was also a significant food producer.
We're probably much better off than Ohio and Pennsylvania though. Especially since the next land war is going to be fought on the Ohio plains.
Must get around to grabbing the rest of Michigan and Indiana.
Plus at least St Louis.
You know when they say the best revenge is living well?
We want him to live a long healthy powerless life and witness the ruination of all his plans. It would be even better to have him realize that he was wrong, even if he doesn't admit it
But I'll settle for him witnessing our success while being powerless in politics ever again.
Then your calculations there should also include the likelihood of the Victorians being able to more quickly win their civil war if they get a weak enough peace deal. The higher your estimation of their military capabilities in fending us off, the higher your estimation must also weigh that risk too.
Well, I don't consider getting two extra Defense AP, hindering their ability to recover, gobbling up a good chunk of their population as refugees, and forcing them to open up the Midwest to international trade (while going through us if they want a taste) to be particularly weak, even discounting all the moral and PR victories from stuff like the War Brides clause that doesn't have such a direct military or economic effect. If we just take the deal now, then we get to spend however long that civil war takes beefing ourselves up, especially militarily, while they're busy killing their own soldiers and driving off their civilians. And then keep beefing ourselves up while they recover from punching themselves in the face, a process that we've dropped a debuff on. That seems pretty solid for something we can just get automatically.
