I don't think it likely that their civil war will end this turn, so the option should still be there next turn. I'd rather make our intel agency more efficient ASAP.
Greater efficiency of analysis doesn't offset
not having agents. We're assembling an agency from scratch here; inevitably the bureaucratic infrastructure will take time to put into place. If we're not actively cultivating contacts on the ground, it does us little good.
Also, we could wind up looking very silly if one of Nicholas' first actions is to end the civil war in a couple of months' effort and drone-strikes (he could do so easily enough), because he wants Victoria
functional. There is absolutely no guarantee that Nicholas will let the war drag out as Alexander did.
No, I'm not actually salty. I unironically believe this is how Social Democracies have to work, and I've resigned myself to the government we control. And I gave advice that is no shit what would be Chicago's best bet for prosperity.
If we try to half ass Social Democracy our national bourgeoisie will start looking to the far right to restore their profits, or international capital will end up owning our asses in an unwilling transition to a Comprador regime.
If you build your Republic on a heirarchy of haves and have nots, *someone has to be the have not* and it's best for your Republic to externalize the have nots (the other favored option is racializing the internal have nots, which is bad)
This is a long term structural issue that has an easy short term answer that costs us less than nothing, and in fact also benefits Chicago in the short term. It's only on the generational scale that the bill comes due (witness Boomers vs Millenials)
I think this reflects a type of analysis in which all problems that exist in the present day are declared to be unavoidable, regardless of the underlying conditions.
International capital is fragmented by the multipolar world
Victoria Falls exists in, with no single prevailing "world order" aside from the Russian one that is pretty clearly about to go under the knives. The Commonwealth of Free Cities has overwhelming popular support for measures likely to promote economic equality, minimal support for promoting inequality as a "greed is good" engine of growth, and a population with probably less collective hostility to socialist or 'socialist' measures than you can readily imagine.
Fukuyama was wrong to proclaim that the dominance of a neoliberal world order in 1991 formed the "end of history," but it would be even wronger to proclaim that the historical sequence will reach such an end
more than once, even when restarted with dramatically different starting conditions.
This is you, 12 hours later and not even on a different page, claiming that Victoria closing the Welland Canal this winter was not only plausible but likely. You don't get to talk out of both sides of your mouth and claim that Victoria will be both incapable of taking offensive operations while also saying they'll start a war by closing the Seaway - they are mutually exclusive conditions.
Dude.
Victoria will not close the Welland Canal this winter.
Giant blocks of ice will close the Welland Canal this winter.
Without heavy icebreaking equipment, the Great Lakes are impassable to shipping traffic during the winter seasons. Even then, ice damaging the hulls of ships and disrupting operations remains a problem, and most shipping closes down. This has nothing to do with the Vicks and everything to do with basic facts about weather and climate in the region.
The Vicks' willingness to comply with the peace treaty does not help us, unless the Vicks are in possession of a weather control machine.
We are not at risk of starving if we fail to complete it this turn. We might be at risk if we fail next turn, but it'll say if that ends up being the case, and I'd be willing to invest more to ensure success if so.
Again, being forced to rely on food imports already
is bad consequences. It's not "thousands of people die right away" bad, but it's bad for our developing economy because we're spending money importing food that gets eaten that we could otherwise have made ourselves, instead of industrial equipment and tools to grow our future economy that we could
not make ourselves.
In many strategy games, the "correct" strategy for handling food production is to do the minimum necessary to prevent famine from hurting your population, while viewing all resources devoted to agriculture beyond that point as a begrudged waste. This is
not a realistic mindset, because continually doing only the minimum required for self-sufficiency in food production and relying on imports to make up the difference is a bad strategy for a developing nation.
But the Census Office is inextricably bound up with the Refugee crisis, and right now that is one of the key issues facing us. 2 AP might not give us a majority chance of 1 turning it, but it does give us a hell of a good chance of getting at least 1 success, and I'm of the opinion we need all the help we can get ensuring the Refugee crisis doesn't get worse.
Uh... you are conflating the census and the refugee issues.
The refugee crisis is not being caused by the lack of a census. It's being caused by the lack of
citizenship rights. The five-year delay on naturalization for immigrating refugees makes the refugees angry. Having a census won't calm them back down. We still need the census, but there is very little reason to expect a partial success on the census to do much of anything to calm down the refugees. Especially if the bill doesn't pass.
Furthermore,
as long as the refugees are not rioting, then no the refugees are
not our biggest problem. Overwhelming national poverty, food insecurity (that is, "we have enough food sometimes, but not always, and we don't control when we will or won't have enough"), and lack of resources and equipment of all kinds are our biggest problem. A strong agricultural sector does a lot to help with these issues.
Point of order:
Welland Canal was closed between December 26 2020 and March 19 2021.
Its typically closed for around three months but has been closed for up to five months according to some of the resources I can find. Other portions of the Lakes Seaway are also closed for varying amounts of time; the locks on the Montreal-Lake Ontario Section of the St Lawrence River, for example.
Point of order:
That's not a point of order. That's a point of information. Points of information are when you tell someone a fact that's "outside the room" of the ongoing discussion. Points of order are when you object to the way the discussion is being carried out (i.e. rule violations).
WE MUST DESTROY THE LANDLORDS
Right, customary salutations aside time to catch up after going to sleep at a reasonable hour. Let's start with the consideration of the hour: the question of the two diplomatic commitments.
These are the texts of the Minnesota mediation. In addition here is the state of play on the map. While territorial control is not the be all end all of state power, this strongly seems to suggest to me that the State of Minnesota at Minneapolis possesses more state power, insofar as it is able to keep more territory under their control.
Hence the State of Minnesota at Bemidiji has both secured allies and called for the Commonwealth of Free Cities to be the mediator, much to the surprise of the State of Minnesota at Minneapolis, who apparently did not spend their time securing diplomatic allies.
This is revealing in and of itself - to me, this suggests three key features:
1. The State of Minnesota at Minneapolis has the de facto claim to control of the state
1a. and has been leveraging this control in ways that the rest of the state does not appreciate.
2. The State of Minnesota at Bemidiji objects to this claim...
2a. and has recruited like minded allies....
3. .. and they have requested the Commonwealth of Free Cities to "mediate" this dispute
3a. ...catching the State of Minnesota at Minneapolis off-guard, who did not expect this was coming.
This has three important consequences:
1. This mediation doesn't happen unless we say it does
2. This balance of power will likely increasingly favor the State of Minnesota at Minneapolis as time goes on.
3. If either party objects, depending on what the result of the mediation might be, that will be an additional commitment.
Furthermore, recall the geography - the State of Superior at Duluth seems to be taking the approach of being neutral-slash-playing both sides, and not coincidentally, they are one of our key strategic interests.
On balance, then, I'm coming around to the idea that the Minnesota mediation can plausibly wait for a better time.
The problem is that, as others have pointed out, the balance of power shifting in favor of "Minnesota at Minneapolis" could well be a bad thing that works against our interests.
...
On a semi-related note, I want to repeat my prediction, based on the close interaction between Minnesota-at-Bemidji and the Manitoulin Islanders, and also based on a bit of cursory research about the demographics of the area around Bemidji, that I suspect Minnesota-at-Bemidji is to a large extent secretly three Chippewa reservations wearing a trenchcoat.
The more I chew on the thought, the more appealing more gunboats x2 looks to me. I think I'm coming around to this sort of plan in Plan Surge.
While I can see the argument for double
Gunboats in an attmept to more rapidly secure waterways and ensure no uptick in piracy, I don't want to do this at the cost of
Farming Equipment and I'm nervous about the situation in Minnesota.
I might actually revise my current best thought plan to something like:
[] Plan Groundbreaking
-[] More Gunboats (Department)
-[] More Gunboats (Free)
-[] Michigan Mediation (Department)
-[] Census Office (Dedicated)
-[] Census Office (Free)
-[] Refugee Crisis (Free)
-[] Refugee Crisis (Free)
-[] Economic Legislation (Free)
-[] Farming Equipment (Department)
-[] Farming Equipment (Department)
-[] Green Energy (Department)
-[] Midwest Economic Summit (Free)
-[] Into Victoria (Department)
-[] Libraries (Department)
We strip everything else bare and focus on internal development - which means Gunboats, Census Office, Refugee Crisis, Farming Equipment, and developmental options.
*also I have a thought about Green Energy and I'll need to come back to it.
I don't think this is a good move. Mono-focusing on development is problematic because unlike most real world developing nations, we face:
1) Ongoing security crises from enemies- and at least one superpower specifically hates us and wants us to fail. And
2) Many opportunities for rapid
voluntary territorial growth (expanding our resource area and helping us secure key trade routes) if we play our diplomatic cards right.
Neglecting diplomacy entirely or doing only the bare minimum is unwise- it's the equivalent of a "turtle" strategy.
Not saying that other things aren't important, but if we don't develop connections with the American diaspora and find foreign allies someone else in the former USA will.
This too. Of course, we
literally cannot do everything on our list in a single turn, but this is in particular a reason we need to expand the State Department- so we can at least do
more of the things on our list and form the connections you describe.
[] Plan Cement The Foundation With Extra Guns
-[] Military Training Reform
-[] Expand the Department
-[] Michigan Mediation
-[] Intervention In Minnesota
-[] Census Office x2
-[] Refugee Crisis
-[] Green Energy x2
-[] Farming Equipment, Part 2
-[] Arms Factories
-[] Into Victoria
-[] Organize the Libraries
This is highly similar to Plan: A Good Problem to Have and Plan Cement the Foundation, but with Arms Factories and 2x on Green Energy to get that done faster.
Arms Factories is a bad choice because churning out masses of obsolete weaponry that we will likely be replacing or improving on in the near future is not a good use of our Development dice. Right now we want to focus on expanding the civilian economy as fast as possible while war against any of the other 'big fish' in our pond is unlikely. We can build more arms factories as part of the next war mobilization, but
right now is not war mobilization time.
Also,
Green Energy is a good action to take
either one
or three AP on, but not two... because with two, it auto-completes and the opportunity to get the third ("expand your power grid") success goes 'poof.' Better to partly finish now and complete the action next turn. Remember that
Green Energy doesn't actually expand our supply of electricity (without that third success). It just replaces coal-fired power plants with wind turbines.
I would like to continue my advocacy for:
[] Plan Chill Out Kids, You're Safe Now
-[]
More Gunboats (Defense fixed die)
-[]
Expand the Department (State fixed die)
-[]
Michigan Mediation (free die)
-[]
Intervention in Minnesota (free die)
-[]
Census Office (Domestic Affairs fixed die)
-[]
Refugee Crisis (free die)
-[]
Refugee Crisis x2 (free die)
-[]
Economic Legislation (free die)
-[]
Farming Equipment, Part 2 (Development fixed die)
-[]
Farming Equipment, Part 2 x2 (Development fixed die)
-[]
Green Energy (Development fixed die)
-[]
Midwest Economic Summit (free die)
-[]
Into Victoria (Security fixed die)
-[]
Organize the Libraries (Technological Recovery fixed die)
This plan is reasonably sure to handle the refugee crisis or at least deflect blame for it away from the Johnson administration's government, and provides us with good chances of a strong agricultural base upon which to build the rest of our economy, rather than being stuck relying on food imports.
docs.google.com
