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Victoria Falls: A Post-Collapse American Nation Quest [Down With Victoria!]

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veekie said:
Eh, going by history, execution usually cements them as "the good one".
If they're dead they can't fuck up their reputation by the reality of them being an ass
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Which is why I'd rather he not die before the trial. The whitewashing works when they're already too dead to answer for their crimes, much less so when their place in the history book goes into detail about the things he was found guilty of with citations for the evidence.
 
[X] Agreed. Sell the artifacts from the treaty directly to FCNY, along with the attendant Legitimacy boost. Gain +2 free AP for this upcoming turn.
 
[] Politely decline. You'd rather hold onto the artifacts, either for the symbolic value or for later resale. Gain +5 Legitimacy.
EDIT: Changed my vote later.
 
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[X] Agreed. Sell the artifacts from the treaty directly to FCNY, along with the attendant Legitimacy boost. Gain +2 free AP for this upcoming turn.
[X] Split the difference. New York has the means to better care for some of the more fragile / maintenance-intensive items, but you'd like to hang onto the rest (Gain 1 AP, 2 Legitimacy)

The farmers have a point, we need to focus on our domestic issues. There will be plenty of other opportunities to get legitimacy later on; on the other hand, we need to put out these fires now. We're facing hunger crises, refugee crises, housing shortages, we need to integrate Detroit and Toledo further, and the effort needed to preserve these artifacts could very well cost us more AP. We have the Declaration of Independence and the FCNY recognizes us. We already have a major legitimacy boost waiting in the wings. We don't have an easy solution to shifting back to the butter side of the guns and butter balance.
 
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Strypgia said:
Must? There is no 'must'. These poor, terrified people. I doubt 1/4 of them will still be alive in a year. The Victorian Government or the Crusaders will kill them all. They can't let anyone 'contaminated' by exposure to 'heretics' and even brief encounter with freedom live, and stay within the borders of Victoria. They're dead people walking.
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Sadly entirely possible, but off the top of my head, two factors may hold back the full weight of Victoria's brutality:

1) Neither Crusaders nor Blackwell are likely able to afford wasting time, troops and resources on a purge especially of ostensibly loyal and able bodies, particularly ones that know how to manufacture important assets, that could contribute to their respective war efforts (although from the sound of it likely Blackwell's). Especially considering that they are all stretched to the brink just trying to survive the winter.

Granted, such inconsequential things such as practicalities and priorities haven't exactly stopped any of them but Blackwell (the coward :V ) from commiting Stupid Evil before. And if Buffalo is controlled by one faction I have no doubt that the other will seek to retaliate and if not conquer then cripple the city's industrial capacity with no holds barred, particularly the Crusaders who as of now aren't in control.

2) They already have realised how much their threats of butchery (in this circumstance at least) have already cost them, so following through on the if not loyal then sufficiently cowed remaining populace could serve as a breaking point in the legitimacy of Victoria among even its genuine supporters, particularly after their worst-ever year, the ongoing civil war, and with such a harsh winter to come, this all could boil over into if not the breakdown of the very Victorian state then the kind of mass disillusionment and demoralisation which will get people fleeing en-mass to become refugees elsewhere.

And a mass emigration could quickly snowball not only because of all the terrible conditions and that not everyone may have enough food to live through winter by this point but this is a golden opportunity to escape before the government can fully re-establish itself and close the borders (I doubt there are many - if any - borders guards left right now considering the late harvest, the ongoing civil war and their terrible causalities against us draining so much manpower). So they can't afford to alienate anyone else. The other side of the civil war may even recruit them!

Although even in the best case scenario I suspect Buffalo will look increasingly like a gulag-level forced labour camp with a winter to match.
 
[X] Agreed. Sell the artifacts from the treaty directly to FCNY, along with the attendant Legitimacy boost. Gain +2 free AP for this upcoming turn.
 
[X] Politely decline. You'd rather hold onto the artifacts, either for the symbolic value or for later resale. Gain +5 Legitimacy.
 
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So we have more territory now as well as a border with the Vics.

Also I pity those people we left behind in buffalo they may have voted to stay but the lot of them are in for a world of hurt.
 
PoptartProdigy said:
Bluff Called

One could write a poem about the Battle For Buffalo. The announcement of the plebiscite. The sudden, searing panic in Loyalist Command. The sudden attack. You could make a movie about the soldiers on the ground, fighting in unseasonably warm weather to repel tides upon tides of Loyalist militia.

But that's all unnecessary, because frankly, the military operations were never the operative part of this. The long and short of it is: the Commonwealth puts about that they're going to give Buffalo a vote on their political status. Blackwell realizes that he cannot afford that, and musters up to attack, come hell or high water. The militia comes.

And they die.

Shattering upon six divisions of proper troops with artillery and air support, the militia die. Barely directed by an officer corps more used to directing house searches and political arrests than military actions, they die. By the thousands, they die. For a week of all the assaults the Inquisitors can force them into, they die.

And they break.
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Huh. Well, I can't say I'm surprised that Blackwell went all-in on a futile attack...

@PoptartProdigy , about how many militia do we think the Victorians just lost in those attacks?

Plebiscite [Remain or Leave]: 4+25=29.

And the worst part of it is, they needn't have bothered.

The vote occurs in the midst of the fighting, when the sounds of battle were audible constantly, and isn't tallied until after the fighting is done, and so there are many reasons why the people of Buffalo vote, pretty solidly, to remain a part of Victoria. Part of that is the terror that the Loyalists will win, and what they will do after they win. Part of it is the threats. Part of it is simply inertia.

The regular demonstrations, however, with citizens waving signs begging the Loyalists for mercy, that they didn't set this up, that they won't vote for this, are fairly indicative of which of those reasons is foremost among them.

But there are two weeks in between when the ballots are submitted and when they are counted. Two weeks of Victoria going from howling about how they will cleanse Buffalo in blood to grumbling to the nation at large that the traitors of Buffalo, those bastard city-dwellers, sold Victoria to the Marxists. Two weeks of people within Buffalo whispering back and forth, "I voted to stay, didn't you? We all did, right? Why are they still talking about this? Why are they saying we wouldn't ask to stay? Why do they want to kill us?"
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I gotta admire the 30% or so of Buffalonians (?) who had the gonadical fortitude to vote "Leave" on Buffalexit.

The Commonwealth will be a stronger nation for incorporating them into our people.

Two weeks during which the media presence within Buffalo is under strict controls, with news reports on a mandatory delay until the results are released. A good part of that is the fact that the city is home to significant military operations, and you very much cannot have media reports accidentally disclosing things about troop movements. But incidentally, it means that the Loyalists have no means to take the mood in Buffalo, hear about exit polls, and realize that death threats may not be the optimal response to this situation.

And then the Loyalists realize that they've been threatening a population that voted to remain with them with a 71% majority with death for disloyalty, 24/7, for the better part of a month.
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Gideon Damned Blackwell:

"D'oh." :(

Victoria vanishes under a white sheet as its militiamen are released in barely enough time to get home. Half of the harvest rotted in the fields. Hundreds of thousands of able-bodied young men have perished. There is severe rationing of what little is left. They are a nation so badly hurt it's staggering, and still they need to fight a civil war to its conclusion. At this point, they need peace. They need peace almost as badly as they need food.

And by now, there is no amount of bluff that can conceal that. Premier Swift returns to the Free City of New York with the look of a man facing a firing squad. To open negotiations, you propose, again, the treaty that caused them to walk away last time.

He signs it immediately, and then immediately departs back to Victoria. A week later, the word spreads that he has committed suicide. You don't know what that's code for. You don't want to question it.
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Blackwell going full freakout on this was more than I expected, and definitely left Blackwell in a much worse bargaining position than I'd feared he might be in.

This treaty is nothing less than a Victorian surrender in full; among others terms, Victoria assumes full fault for the war, opens the St. Lawrence Seaway to general travel, and grants their population leave to seek refugee status in foreign nations. Furthermore, the treaty contains a demand that Victorian Prisoners of War be repatriated in exchange for war brides seized by Victoria troops while abroad.
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Given how hungry the Vicks are, we may see a looooot of Vick civilians trying to flee to the Free City of New York. Because say what you will about New York, and Victorian stereotypes probably say a LOT about it... well, even the Victorians never denied that they're rich.

Hope the Big Apple is ready for this.

[] 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
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Well shit, it worked.

[gasps]

...Let us never gamble this aggressively again; it won't work a second time against Victorians who are in a better position to hit back. It won't work after Blackwell consolidates his hold on power, assuming the Crusaders don't manage to knock him off. And remember, Blackwell DOES control the secret police, so the longer he remains in power the less conceivable any challenge to his authority will tend to become.

It probably won't work even on a hypothetical "Crusader State" Victoria, because Russia is likely to start backing them again rather than lose all influence on the eastern half of North America.

[ ] Agreed. Sell the artifacts from the treaty directly to FCNY, along with the attendant Legitimacy boost. Gain +2 free AP for this upcoming turn.
[ ] Politely decline. You'd rather hold onto the artifacts, either for the symbolic value or for later resale. Gain +5 Legitimacy.
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Hmm. Gonna have to think about this one.
 
fasquardon said:
If we have the population, the military power and the economic power (especially food and drinking water power), we won't be the junior partner.

So forgoing 5 legitimacy now for more AP that can be used to feed and integrate the massive surge of refugees we are expecting from Victoria and refurbish our intel services seems to me far superior.

The Liberty Bell and the USS Constitution would be better cared for in New York and I'd much rather claim the mantle of the old US (if we have to) by being the polity that takes care of the American people.

fasquardon
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I'm pretty sure we don't actually have the population or economic power advantage compared to FCNY - maybe if some of our neighbors join us or once we've had a dozen years to work on our infrastructure and economy. NYC + Long Island have something like 16 million people between them, and that's not counting their getting a massive influx of refugees or natural population growth over the last 50 years.

If they've built basically everything up to population densities along the lines of Manhattan, then FCNY would have a population somewhere in the vicinity of the 120 million mark. That's very high, but even cutting it in half still leaves FCNY with around twice the population of the Commonwealth as it is now - and FCNY hasn't suffered degradation of their scientific/educational base, which means it's likely to be significantly more productive on a per capita basis.
 
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[X] Agreed. Sell the artifacts from the treaty directly to FCNY, along with the attendant Legitimacy boost. Gain +2 free AP for this upcoming turn.
 
[X] Politely decline. You'd rather hold onto the artifacts, either for the symbolic value or for later resale. Gain +5 Legitimacy.

Maximum Legitimacy! We can hardly piss the Russians off any harder, but I'll damn well try!
 
Deathbybunnies said:
[X] Politely decline. You'd rather hold onto the artifacts, either for the symbolic value or for later resale. Gain +5 Legitimacy.

Maximum Legitimacy! We can hardly piss the Russians off any harder, but I'll damn well try!
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I don't know having an agent dump on the Tzars throne and him sitting on it would probably piss them off more so.
 
[X] Politely decline. You'd rather hold onto the artifacts, either for the symbolic value or for later resale. Gain +5 Legitimacy
 
So, since we have seaway access now, I kind of want to start making a shopping list of what we can get from the outside world. We don't want to become dependent on outside imports because Victoria cutting off the seaway would cripple us then, but there should be quite a lot of stuff that we can get that Victoria can't take away from us simply by blocking the sealanes:

Shopping list:
- Pay for someone to find and copy as much open-source information as possible onto a bunch of hard drives and mail them to us.
- Skilled human resources: People with technical and academic knowledge who can help fix our tech situation, ex-military veterans and mercs who can be used as a training cadre and patch up holes in our doctrine
- Also, economic advisers. We don't want to fuck this up.
- High end consumer electronics that we can't make domestically. Also software licenses for shit like CAD and whatever, or whatever variants exist in the mid-late 21st century.
- Military manuals and school curricula. We could always send students overseas to learn, but keep in mind we have a time limit and university degrees take a few years at the minimum.
- Meteorology equipment. I don't know what the state of our meteorology is, but getting better forecasting should help improve agriculture productivity.
- Some satellite dishes, so we can hook up to the global internet. Limited access is better than no access.
- Heavy industrial presses. It's also important eventually that we be able to maintain and repair them ourselves, without needing to import parts from abroad.
- Equipment for making precision measuring equipment. This will help greatly with any kind of manufacturing that requires high end tolerances. Also see below.
- Equipment for industrial scale chemical processes. We literally ran short on explosives in the last war. Nevermind the utility in making fertilizer (which is not far removed from explosives), or antibiotics.
- Maybe some 3D printers along with the software to use them, since they're quite useful for prototyping and whatnot, even if they're not so great for simpler manufacturing.
- Medical equipment. Thermometers, needles, diagnostic equipment etc. Anything that can help with improving the general quality of life for the majority of the population in this aspect.

Problem is we're going to need a lot of money, and holy shit there's going to be so much stuff to deal with:
- Selling off the artefacts is a good starting point for getting an influx of for all the damn cash we're going to need.
- We absolutely need a dedicated Ministry/Department of Trade. Like, holy shit.
- Also a Ministry/Department of Industry, to make sure we have solid legal controls in place.
- Entice companies to build factories here. Do our damned best to convince them to set up higher end manufacturing, in particular. Unfortunately the second part will be trickier than simply convincing them to make a cheap textile factory or whatever, but upteching is crucial.
- Maintaining government stability will help in attracting foreign investment. Companies are obviously going to be spooked about investing if a regime change causes everything to get tossed up.
- Also a clearly defined and structured legal environment. First, to avoid exploitation. Second, to avoid companies from backing away because the legal limits are muddy and they don't want us to suddenly appropriate their factories or some shit.
- We've been cut off from the rest of the world for years. Our measuring standards are going to be out of alignment simply for this reason, so like, we really need some experts to fly in and help us confirm that yes, our definition of one metre equals their definition of one metre (or rather, recalibrate it because our measurements will definitely have drifted), and so forth. Also while we're at this, we can adopt the metric system wholesale. Down with Imperial measurements.

Things to avoid:
- Selling off land. We're going to need some legal controls here to avoid foreign investment.
- Simply allowing our market to be flooded with cheap consumer goods that Victoria can cut us off from when they break the treaty.
- Taking loans. We shouldn't shy away from it if we need to, but we need to be careful about this. Absolutely no loans from Russia or Japan either.
 
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[X] Agreed. Sell the artifacts from the treaty directly to FCNY, along with the attendant Legitimacy boost. Gain +2 free AP for this upcoming turn.
 
CthuluWasRight said:
Which leads me to my next point, their skills. Leaving aside for a moment the impression I seem to have created of being a heartless bastard, it's a pretty important factor in more senses than just "how do we get some use out of them." On their part, their entire block of skills will be based around agrarian subsistence farming or light or heavy industry using a model of manufacturing that is utterly obsolete and where even the cutting-edge tech is almost 100 years behind the curve...
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The good news is that our economy is in little or no better shape than theirs.

Many of OUR people are, or recently were, subsistence farmers until we started providing upgrades, and we could almost certainly use a lot more farmhands.

Our light and heavy industry have been destroyed by Vicks and Nazis and are being rebuilt from scratch, with most of our population having grown up in a post-Collapse America where their own education and technical skills are very fucking patchy.

I don't even want to think how many administrative personnel will be instant redundancies once they become aware that the TI-84 exists.
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Well, that's the same problem we already have anyway, because we can't make TI-84s either. Not yet. If we don't have administrative personnel about to be made obsolete, it's because we don't have much administration (see our lack of a census).

In which case, y'know, importing a bunch of ex-Vick bureaucrats might not be so bad; say what you will about the Vicks, they probably at least know how to count their own people and things.

Doctor Elsewhere said:
[] Agreed. Sell the artifacts from the treaty directly to FCNY, along with the attendant Legitimacy boost. Gain +2 free AP for this upcoming turn.

We need AP like water in a desert.
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We're already getting +2 AP/turn, specifically and exclusively for economic internal development, from the peace treaty. And that treaty is liable to last at least 3-4 turns in my opinion. Combine that with the 'peace dividend' of not being forced to take at least 1-2 actions per turn specifically aimed at actively fighting Vicks or arming ourselves for an impending war with the Vicks, and...

We've got the water.

picklepikkl said:
I believe the last thing Poptart said on the subject was that "a successor state at 25 Legitimacy is universally recognized as the United States reborn." Currently, FCNY is at I think +9, so acquiring the +5 from this would bring them to 14, whereas we're at -2 and +5 would take us to +3.

EDIT: This is wrong, see my post here: Victoria Falls: A Post-Collapse American Nation Quest [Down With Victoria!]
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I think that @PoptartProdigy said we got a Legitimacy boost from beating the Victorians, too (it would make sense, since it makes us more credible and powerful). But dunno.

Antix_Shadows said:
Legitimacy is something that seems to be pretty easy to gain. AP is not, and we should take what ap we can to boost our post war economy.
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Legitimacy will be a lot harder to come by in the future. We lucked into a big pile of it by randomly finding the Declaration of Independence, which is not a repeatable success. We're getting another pile of it by positioning ourselves as guardians of Old America's historical treasures as a whole- which, again, we can really only do once.

In future I think we're going to have to gain Legitimacy one or two points at a time, often by making decisions we may have reasons not to make. Like, decisions to pursue specific policy or political reforms some of the quest's voter base will oppose. Or by getting +1 point each time we laboriously diplo-annex the territory of several former U.S. states. Or things like that.

10ebbor10 said:
[] Agreed. Sell the artifacts from the treaty directly to FCNY, along with the attendant Legitimacy boost. Gain +2 free AP for this upcoming turn.

Legitimacy is not inherently good, while AP is.
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Legitimacy can be leveraged into lasting good, especially if it helps us rally the fragmented, shell-shocked "wait the Victorians just fucking evaporated like a bad dream" remnant polities of the Mississippi River valley and the Great Lakes.

+2 AP for the upcoming turn, well... it's nothing to sneeze at, but I don't think the knock-on effects will be of the same order.

Chronic said:
Whatever would have happened to Buffalo would not have been our fault. Seriously, don't let Victoria gaslight you into feeling guilty for their atrocities. We are not responsible for them being fucking monsters.
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OK but we should still be able to acknowledge that we're endangering people by exposing them to monsters.

If you leave a baby out where the baby-eating ogres can get to it, the ogres are VERY much morally blameworthy for being baby-eaters... But that doesn't mean you made the right choice.
 
[X] Agreed. Sell the artifacts from the treaty directly to FCNY, along with the attendant Legitimacy boost. Gain +2 free AP for this upcoming turn.

I understand the need for legitimacy, and fully support it's acquisition, but an extra 2 AP will be vital in the centralization and growth of our economy. Especially when so many are gonna be doing to our state now that we've shown ourselves to be a dominant regional power.
 
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