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Honestly, until we know the situation treaty wise, this is a bit up in the air. We almost certainly have more than 5 ap, Detroit was an economic powerhouse. OTOH, we are probably going to need to invest at least one AP into Toledo to prevent collapse there.
Detroit is a substantial city and addition to our strength, but I doubt it's more than 10% of the entire Commonwealth in terms of economic strength. I consider it overly optimistic to budget for more AP than we had last turn, under the circumstances.
EDIT:
Especially if we're likely to need to spend an AP to bail Toledo out of some problem.
[X] Something isn't right here. Push across the river and into Buffalo before reestablishing defensive lines. Maybe that will bait out the response for which you've been looking -- and you won't exactly complain about the opportunity to deny Victoria the rail infrastructure within the city.
Unpleasant Echoes
Seizing the Niagara [Commonwealth vs. Loyalists]: 16 vs. 0. Success.
Calling your seizure of the Niagara River an assault would be perhaps the most generous phrasing anybody has used over the past year.
Under ten thousand militiamen, huddled miserably around the eastern end of the four bridges crossing the Niagara from your side. They have mismatched weapons, a handful of artillery pieces which you've already counter-batteried into scrap, and a few mortar tubes that their commanders could spare and the militia hardly know how to use. They are terrified, most of their commanders are dead, and they have received no training whatsoever. On the plus side, they have sandbag emplacements, in which they huddle.
On the other bank, over sixty thousand combat troops, plus tens of thousands more of support personnel. Twenty light or medium artillery pieces. Scores of mortars. Hundreds of up-armored technicals. Offshore, three warships of the Commonwealth Navy bring extra guns to the equation, the others having left. Ten F-16s fly overhead with bombs, while over thirty R-3 vultures cruise by at lower altitudes.
And, departing from the northern end of the Welland Canal under cover of darkness in smaller cargo ships loaded to the gunwales with landing boats, a brigade of soldiers from the Liberators division.
* * *
-Porter, New York, United States of America-
-Northern Confederation of Victoria-
-Monday, November 25, 2075, 6:02-
-Private James Roycewicz-
"One minute to the beach," whispers Sergeant Reyes.
"How are your arms doing, Roycewicz?" says Yates, the flash of white from her taunting grin visible in the moonlight.
James grunts quietly, continuing to work the oars. "Hey, Yates? Do me a favor, and shut your god damned mouth."
"Can it," hisses Xavier. "I don't wanna get shot because you morons need to jabber!"
They settle down, and James takes the opportunity to glance around, trying to pick out the other boats headed for the beach. It's both relieving and nerve-wracking that he can't see any of them. Hundreds of people, heading for a beach in pitch blackness, no cover to be found, and somewhere around ten thousand Victorians on the beach.
James is glad that the other boats are nearly invisible, but a part of him longs for the simple comfort of being able to glance back and forth and see friendlies.
Reyes peers out into the darkness and curses quietly. "Nope, I was wrong. We're at the beach now. Roycewicz, stop paddling."
James flinches, jerking the paddles out of the water, and winces at the splash that makes. Then he hears a hollow thud as the boat hits the shore.
Splashing sounds off to his left, and he nearly has a heart attack before he glances over and finally, finally sees another one of the boats, dark figures hopping out onto the sand.
"Move!" whispers Reyes.
The squad does as she says, getting out of the boat and hauling it up out of the water. James points his gun down the beach, eyes straining to make out anything that could be hostile.
"All right, get up the beach!" snaps Reyes. They all rise to their feet and just sprint, their appetite for hanging around on a dark, empty stretch of sand just about nonexistent. James follows along, and nearly slams full-tilt into a rock as it suddenly looms into his vision. As sand swiftly gives way to stones, the squad -- and their fellows, all around -- slow, carefully picking their way through. Eventually, they hit a sea wall and pause, coming together. Reyes and the sergeant from the next squad down the line hold a whispered conference for a moment-
-before, in the distance, a burst of automatic fire rings out.
Everybody freezes in the frozen moment after the shots, and then there's a five-second stretch where it sounds like a whole platoon is unloading at once. Then, silence again.
And then, there's the sound of a klaxon going off.
Said spits something in a language James doesn't speak, and Reyes sighs. "Well, somebody's made. Get going!" She raises her voice above a whisper, shouting out. "C'mon, we've gotta move! They're gonna be scrambling, let's go!"
Off to their right, Roycewicz hears the Lieutenant's voice, crying, "C'mon folks, over the wall! Get to the road! Move it!"
James stands, sets up his gun on the edge of the wall, and peers off at the lights in the windows of a house further ahead. "Covering!"
Reyes claps him on the shoulder. "All right, up and over! Go, go, go!"
From all around, the sound of hundreds of people's tension snapping loose all at once arises, and the 1st Brigade of the Liberators division charges forward into the side of the Loyalists' lines.
* * *
The Liberators' assault, haphazard as it is, catches the Loyalists entirely off guard. With the northern third of the Niagara completely unnavigable, they have comparatively few troops in that area, and the process of trying to shift more to contain the landing has exactly the hoped-for effect. Some militia shift away, hoping to be on the side of the line not presently under attack. Some follow orders and move north to launch a counter-attack on the expanding ring of territory held by Commonwealth forces. Some of them just panic and break entirely.
Whatever their reactions, it means that when your artillery opens up, it lands on light infantry in dense masses, out of cover on the roads.
And when the Big Red One sends their trucks tearing across the bridges, there is precious little left to stop them. The Inquisitors try to rally their troops to resist, punch back, and make you bleed as much as they physically can make you.
Good Faith Effort: 40.
They fail. The militia has Commonwealth troops rolling up their flank, seemingly walking straight out of the sea. Eerie whistles herald titanic blasts that rip through half a dozen men at once. The Devils themselves roar up on trucks covered in sheet metal -- hardly the heralds of the Old Country they are renowned as, but terrifying visions of the Country as it is. And planes. Not many, but bombs dropping out of the sky from barely-visible glints of metal on high is more terrifying than it should be.
En masse, the militia routs. And against the Big Red One, fully mechanized and more mildly inconvenienced by obstruction than substantively slowed, they swiftly find their escape cut off. Over the next three days, as you push into the city of Buffalo, you secure the surrender of 4,000 Victorian militiamen, and either kill the rest or put them to flight. And it would have been more...
Rachel looks around her, at the civilians lining the streets.
Her unit was one of many sent into Buffalo in the wake of the Big Red One's madcap rush into the city across the Peace Bridge. Ostensibly, they're here to close the noose on fleeing militia forces, although nobody really expects much of a fight from it. No, far more of a concern is the people.
Rachel just can't conceive of being invaded by a foreign army and showing up equipped for a parade.
The citizens of Buffalo line the streets. Some hold flowers, some hold baskets full of ticker tape. You see one old man holding a ratty old American flag with an air of profound uncertainty. They look scared. One young girl dumps a basket of ticker tape out a window before her mother appears and yanks her back inside. An old woman holds out a rose to one of the officers, further up ahead in the column. Her hands shake. The rose looks like it's dancing in her grip.
Nobody speaks.
The crowd is exclusively women, children, and the elderly. One can see where the Crusaders and Loyalists took a knife and carved out every man of sound body for muster. Rachel doubts there's a wisp of facial hair in the city that doesn't have grey in it.
For ten minutes, Rachel marches alongside her fellows, following the trucks up ahead. They round a corner in response to orders she never hears.
The crowd up hear is livelier, although not by much. Old men with grim faces lead the crowd in casting their showers of ticker tape and flowers across the column of soldiers, although they still hardly make a sound. Rachel finds herself looking up at the flowers flying through the air, in silence split only by the rustle of flying bits of debris, and the rhythmic rumbling of an army on the move. She follows one rose as it flies.
Then she blinks, as a large, black blur takes the rose out of the air.
She shoulders her rifle without thinking, and her squad spreads out slightly as they do the same, instinct calling for suspicion at the sudden movement. Rachel tracks the blur until it lands next to one of the trucks. Her eyes narrow. Is that...a backpa-
BOOM
Rachel's world dissolves into a blur, ringing, and the distant sounds of screams, explosions, and gunfire. Somebody steps on her; she thrashes out, and they stop. Unable to focus her eyes, she manages to force herself to her hands and knees. She shakes her head; that seems to go well with the crippling dizziness, so she does it some more. She doesn't know how long she sits there, quaking with shock and disorientation, but eventually, things clear.
She can't see her squad; wherever they've gone, they're not immediately visible. She can see some bodies, which she blessedly doesn't recognize. She sees the burning ruin of a truck. She sees tracers whipping past. She sees those grim-faced old men, surrounded by fleeing civilians, having produced assault rifles from somewhere, spraying down the convoy while shouting, "Victoria!" Nothing makes sense. A second ago she was in a parade.
But she has been trained on what to do when somebody shoots at her. Before she can consider doing otherwise, she lifts her rifle, aims at one of the men, and holds down the trigger until it stops kicking.
* * *
Ron Burns's radio squawks, and he answers. "Burns. Go," he says.
"General, sir," pants a voice over the line, the reports of gunfire in the distance. "There's...there's been an incident."
* * *
Thousands of old men. Thousands. Everything from grey old fathers to men who would have been alive for the Collapse. Some have scars. Some are missing hands.
All of them bear one of a set of twelve tattoos that every soldier in the Commonwealth Army has taken to using as tally marks on divisional insignias.
Burns swallows his outrage and sickening sense of deja vu. "There weren't any men of serving age left," he says, voice raspy. "So he went and found ones that would blend in." He looks across a row of bodies. "They must have known this was a suicide mission."
Schultz sighs. "If there's one thing the Victorian Army could always bring out of its soldiers, sir..."
Burns takes a deep breath. "Yes." He takes a long, slow blink to recenter himself. "What are the civilian casualties looking like?"
Schultz shifts uncomfortably. "...the bastards attacked after getting the citizens out to throw a parade. I got the Division turned around as fast as possible-"
"General Schultz."
"-we had to break off pursuit of the militia to do it, but we came around in order to take charge of things, but the delay-"
"Ed."
Schultz cuts himself off, grimacing. He inhales. "Current estimate is over two thousand."
Burns closes his eyes. "Two thousand in a day. In an hour."
"Sir..."
Burns turns away. "Find them. Blackwell wants to play games? We'll play. Find them."
Major General Schultz nods. "Yessir!"
Burns stalks away, fists clenched at his sides.
* * *
The Big Red One was due for a rest. Burns had intended to give them time off.
Burns isn't here, now. Hellfire's giving the orders, at this point.
The Devil Brigade leads their less experienced comrades into the City of Buffalo and rips the Loyalists' dare-to-die troops out by their roots. The Army retirees fight every step of the way. Time has dulled their fervor and their experience doesn't quite substitute for infirmity, but they are still old monsters with an edge of viciousness that no amount of age could ever break. Ancient grandfathers spend their last, sucking breaths wiring IEDs to blow. Men who look like they'd be better at home sending their children to universities pop out to empty rifle magazines of ammunition before they can be shot to death. They blend into the riddled population of Buffalo and dare the Devils to come and pry them out.
The Devils oblige.
Veterans of a decades-long retreat around the middle of America, the Devils know asymmetric warfare. They know what an ambush point looks like. They know how to hear the sounds of something being out of place. They know how to fight around civilians. They lead their compatriots into Buffalo and slam into these desperate martyrs.
Civilians die, shattered by bomb blasts or riddled with bullets, caught in the fighting between Devils and Loyalists, even as Commonwealth forces strive to evacuate those they can. Buffalo nearly burns as the last memory of the Victorian Army tries to drag it with them into death.
But the Devils prevail. The people of Buffalo have gone from terrified to furious, and while the deaths on the day you entered the city do you no favors, the citizenry recognize who incited this, and the attackers find no allies within the city limits, even as well-suited as they are to blending in. Within two weeks, the city is secure, any man with a divisional tattoo is dead -- or a handful captured -- and the Big Red One can finally rest. It is not a cheerful victory.
But it is a victory.
Buffalo has fallen to your troops and the eastern bank of the Niagara is secure. Some three thousand militia escaped the fall of the city and fled. The Victorians' surprise has been revealed: mustered-out Army men, called back into service and left behind to blend in with Buffalo's gutted civilian population and make you bleed and choke on the city. They have been rooted out, with relatively low cost to your troops.
Gathering reliable data is difficult given the population's understandable reticence, but present estimates say that some 4,000 civilians died during the fall of Buffalo.
The Victorians have revealed their strategy. You must expect more ploys like this, if you advance deeper into Victorian territory. There simply won't be enough veterans to stock every town -- but then, every town hasn't been denuded of men of fighting age, the way Buffalo has been. Victoria's goal is to make you bleed for every step of land. Reconnaissance flights now show militia units starting to muster in Rochester. It seems that Blackwell intends to bleed you before landing a stronger strike.
In addition to being frustrating and demoralizing for many of your troops, the capture of Buffalo, and particularly news reports of the massive civilian casualties during the terror strikes on the first day, have prompted outrage back home. The Commonwealth Farmer-Laborer Party, in particular, is leading condemnations of Sara Johnson's government for embroiling the Commonwealth in a situation that would naturally lead to such civilian casualties when the chance for a negotiated settlement on favorable terms existed. While not overwhelming yet, the left-wing opposition is starting to call for peace.
How do you respond to this? You are voting what to do with the last few weeks before winter sets in and your operational tempo grinds to a halt. You are voting on a strategic objective, and not your treatment of Buffalo, which has already been determined by your play style.
[ ] This isn't worth it. Call for peace with the Loyalists and accept that they will be able to use this 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.
[ ] 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 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 it off and force a decisive battle with your superior forces.
-[ ] Blackwell is waiting to do enough damage to you that he can land a decisive blow. If you halt where you are and act like this hurt you more than it actually did, you may be able to bait him into attacking you right were you always wanted him to, giving you the chance to decisively shatter him that you've been waiting for.
-[ ] 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.
[ ] Especially now, write-in.
MANUAL MORATORIUM; APPROVAL VOTING.
Gah, this one fought me, but I hope you folks like it! Blackwell is starting to adopt better tactics; they're not working yet, but there for want of properly-trained troops go you.
As @Simon_Jester has been prophesying, this is one of my quests. Consider this an uncharacteristically gentle warning shot that your enemies are beginning to adapt to the realities of the situation.
Costly victory, but still a victory. Nonetheless, we'll have to pick out a feasible strategic objective and stick to it (hard for quests, but still) if we want to make strategic gains.
Could also just take the peace. It wouldnt be great, but it would let us eat some metaphorical sandwiches, and postpones -- not avoids, to be fair -- dealing with massive Victorian insurgencies.
I'm caught between wanting to sue for peace and trying to tear up industrial infrastructure first. We really want Blackwell to come to the table first, but we absolutely cannot let this war keep going much longer. We simply do not have the resources for it.
First and third subvotes for option 2 appeal to me. I think I could be persuaded on either, but I lean towards 3. Fewer casualties from it and still puts on the hurt.
this is frankly just getting boring with Victoria committing more and more atrocities...and frankly I'm just tired of seeing it. Sooner or later its going to fall and burn away, we will be dealing with its embers for a few generations, and of course without their damn plot armor they wouldn't survive much longer anyway as a society and culture. Just hope we can finally break them with this, because they cant feasibly keep doing this...then again they could probably go full insurgency and fall into terrorist-mode of making every man in Victoria go full-on fanatic bullshit...
edited: anyway my vote is to either go for the full on infrastructure damage or hitting their concentration of forces...then again they could be planning to do SOMTHING sooner or later, and we haven't heard from the real nasty sort of the Victoria crusaders yet. So i really dont want to know what they are getting up too these days...
Jeez I feel like we have been forced into bad position now. It's a race against time to force blackwell back to the table we can't let victoria have a treaty that favors them I say we attempt to bit Blackwell into attacking us.
This is suicidal for him either way, the time he takes to concentrate a response is time the Crusaders are playing whack-a-mole in the interior and any decisive battle is going to end in us ripping them to shreds unless he achieves local force superiority- and against Burns with a mechanized force that's a joke.
This looks bad, and if we don't get a coherent plan our loyal opposition at home might force a peace, but the only way Blackwell wins is if he scares us enough to back down here. We were never going to manage a sweeping advance into Victoria but there's only so much Fabian tactics can do for you when you have vital targets you can't obfuscate.
I'm caught between wanting to sue for peace and trying to tear up industrial infrastructure first. We really want Blackwell to come to the table first, but we absolutely cannot let this war keep going much longer. We simply do not have the resources for it.
Everything that just happened at Buffalo? Didn't stop us in the slightest- calling for peace is playing to Victoria's tendency to fetishsise the 'moral' level of warfare. We were never going to pull off a sweeping advance, and we always knew the countryside was going to be hostile. That doesn't help Blackwell at all if we gut his industry or crush his muster and simply wait for the Crusaders to rampage through his interior largely uncontested.
This is horrible and I feel squeamish about what's happening but this is the same bullshit Lind went on about like chaining captured aircraft pilots to train engines so the US wouldn't blow them sky high. This is the monstrous fascist having the audacity to claim it's better than us because of how inhuman it is all too eager to be. I feel zero inclination to lend that any credence and implore people to do the same.
Jeez I feel like we have been forced into bad position now. It's a race against time to force blackwell back to the table we can't let victoria have a treaty that favors them I say we attempt to bit Blackwell into attacking us.
Any result would have done so -- if we'd succeeded on the treaty roll, it would have just served as pretext for greater Russian intervention, or some other bullshit. Victoria isn't allowed to lose in any way that doesn't immediately set the stage for them gaining an advantage from it.
Any result would have done so -- if we'd succeeded on the treaty roll, it would have just served as pretext for greater Russian intervention, or some other bullshit. Victoria isn't allowed to lose in any way that doesn't immediately set the stage for them gaining an advantage from it.
I don't feel that's completely true do to the fact that the russians more or less said to blackwell to ithier sink or swim. And with the part about Victoria isn't allowed to lose without gaining something in return well we'll just have to change that here won't we?
Any result would have done so -- if we'd succeeded on the treaty roll, it would have just served as pretext for greater Russian intervention, or some other bullshit. Victoria isn't allowed to lose in any way that doesn't immediately set the stage for them gaining an advantage from it.
Any result would have done so -- if we'd succeeded on the treaty roll, it would have just served as pretext for greater Russian intervention, or some other bullshit. Victoria isn't allowed to lose in any way that doesn't immediately set the stage for them gaining an advantage from it.
Any result would have done so -- if we'd succeeded on the treaty roll, it would have just served as pretext for greater Russian intervention, or some other bullshit. Victoria isn't allowed to lose in any way that doesn't immediately set the stage for them gaining an advantage from it.
This is horrible and I feel squeamish about what's happening but this is the same bullshit Lind went on about like chaining captured aircraft pilots to train engines so the US wouldn't blow them sky high. This is the monstrous fascist having the audacity to claim it's better than us because of how inhuman it is all too eager to be. I feel zero inclination to lend that any credence and implore people to do the same.
Is there any chance we could just see the treaty they offer? I'm sort of worried we vote to see the treaty, then vote on if to take it, and if we reject, then go back to voting on military response if we reject it. Which is a bit of a potential bog-down.
We have not yet hurt Victoria enough to force them to the table, it seems, and for us to call for peace would defeat the purpose of our demonstration - especially since they'd probably demand Buffalo back in any peace agreement they propose, and you know what will happen to the populace once we leave in that case.
I'm inclined to either wreck their infrastructure or crush the muster at Rochester, since we have the forces for it and have pacified Buffalo.
@PoptartProdigy are there any substantial minority populations nearby? Arming rebels might be the sort of thing which draws an immediate response from Blackwell, since I don't think he's dumb enough to just come at us without some sort of provocation, and I'm concerned if we try to penetrate further, we'll overextend and let Blackwell turn this into a battle of maneuver on ground friendly to the Victorians.
Is there any chance we could just see the treaty they offer? I'm sort of worried we vote to see the treaty, then vote on if to take it, and if we reject, then go back to voting on military response if we reject it. Which is a bit of a potential bog-down.
We'd need to actually accept meeting with their representatives to see whatever treaty it is they have proposed, which implies that we're not willing to keep fighting.
