Capto Iugulum Background Thread

[Grandkhan]

So, what you're saying Elves, is that the Russian plan of distracting their enemies with foreign wars worked like a charm.

It is nice to know how close I came to getting devoured without even knowing it. Mind you, I'm not sure how well it would have worked - unless you literally marched into Copenhagen and I had ceased to exist I would have just flat out called the Russians in and GW2 would have begun (Russians willing - TLJ, in the interests of full disclosure, would you have entered on Denmark's side had that happened?).

And Iggy said he was happy with the Icelandic status quo.

Why did everybody care so much about Iceland anyway? I think it might have been more trouble than it was worth, and honestly I was insanely defensive about it for reasons of national pride than it was strategic. I mean, yes, it was possible for the Russians to base forces out of it but they never would have been able to get past the British and had no reason to anyway.

Incidentally, if it rebelled I would have sent my entire army to Iceland and just gone genocidally nuts on it. 100% srs.

Still, I would have liked to read about the Scandinavian transformation to leftist oligarchy. Ah well, c'est la vie as they said in the Confederation.

Oh yeah I had plans that if the Russians didn't give me what I wanted post war and tried to get me to vacate Skane I was just going to go "Bugger it.", bite the bullet, and offer Brazil basing rights in Copenhagen to protect my gains. I figure Lucky would have taken it, because a port in Europe proper is pretty valuable, but I guess its all speculation now.

 

[Bair_the_Normal]

all i can say right meow is lol.

edit: not directed at anyone in particular of course

 

[Lord of Elves]

So, what you're saying Elves, is that the Russian plan of distracting their enemies with foreign wars worked like a charm.

This is sort of like saying the Russians planned to keep their enemies distracted by convincing them to breathe. There is no way that spending all the EP I spent on funding the UPRA in the "Reclamation War" on Russian proletarist groups would have been nearly as lucrative and profitable short term or long term as funding the creation of a large, powerful proletarist state in the Americas. The idea that I should have been doing anything else is ridiculous

It is nice to know how close I came to getting devoured without even knowing it. Mind you, I'm not sure how well it would have worked - unless you literally marched into Copenhagen and I had ceased to exist I would have just flat out called the Russians in and GW2 would have begun (Russians willing - TLJ, in the interests of full disclosure, would you have entered on Denmark's side had that happened?).

The plan was to launch an invasion force from the northern Norwegian coast, seize ports in Iceland and Greenland and then publish our demands and reasoning, immediately transferring control over both to Vinland (as was agreed between myself and Iggy but quickly called off after the crisis in the Americas became clear).

Oh yeah I had plans that if the Russians didn't give me what I wanted post war and tried to get me to vacate Skane I was just going to go "Bugger it.", bite the bullet, and offer Brazil basing rights in Copenhagen to protect my gains. I figure Lucky would have taken it, because a port in Europe proper is pretty valuable, but I guess its all speculation now.

Thinking about territorial concessions makes me hear a loud ringing and slowly all I can see is white, and then there is nothing but blood. So much blood.

 

[Lord_Iggy]

It was my hope that this would convince Vinland and other states to begin bankrolling Scandinavian "democratization".

Good thing I never really thought that you were serious about that.

And Iggy said he was happy with the Icelandic status quo.

I was and remained to the conclusion of the NES Grandkhan, don't worry about that. However, if Denmark had gotten jumped by the Scandinavians and was unable to defend them, then I would have moved to prevent them from falling into traditional proletarist hands. That was the gist of my understanding with Lord of Elves.

Why did everybody care so much about Iceland anyway? I think it might have been more trouble than it was worth, and honestly I was insanely defensive about it for reasons of national pride than it was strategic. I mean, yes, it was possible for the Russians to base forces out of it but they never would have been able to get past the British and had no reason to anyway.

Hahah, I think this is mostly paranoia. I didn't have much of anything to do with Iceland, beyond what I explicitly discussed with you.

Incidentally, if it rebelled I would have sent my entire army to Iceland and just gone genocidally nuts on it. 100% srs.

That would probably be enough to convince me to intervene. Vinland's not cool with ethnic cleansing. Unless it's against the red man.

Myself, I had a few secret things going, but the most interesting to me was the quiet saga of Per Palander, head of the Vinlandskridningpolis. The VRP arose around the time of the American Refugee Crisis, starting off as an organization meant to establish law and order in the Västermark. To complete this job, it was given several infantry and cavalry brigades. The organization succeeded in its objectives, and became an established and celebrated force in Vinland. The VRP and their elite Rensköldar cultivated a reputation for honesty, duty and incorruptibility, which would help to pave the way for the organization's continuing growth. As the 1910s, 1920s and 1930s passed, every successive American scare (and we've had plenty) presented an opportunity for the Polis to justify the acquisition of more and more resources, seeing it develop into more than just a policing organization, but also a dispensary of rural justice, and ultimately a national intelligence organization. A reasonable percentage of my military, as shown in the stats, are units controlled directly through the VRP.

I have toyed with several 'conspiracy' ideas about this. A few nearly came to fruition. Towards the end of the Saari Statsministry, Per Palander was leading the VRP, an organization more powerful than it had ever been before. The recent slaughter of several officers had further bolstered public support for the Polis, which Palander leveraged to indirectly influence Vinlandic politics. At one point, he came very close to conducting a false flag operation to enrage the Vinlandic public into supporting an intervention against 'Neo-Scottite American Aggression'. However, the Chicago Accords granted Vinland extra-national powers in the United States, and the rapid collapse of the UPRA rendered such an intervention much less attractive. Saari came out from the affair looking much worse for wear, and was soundly trounced by Johann Franzen's Konservativ Industripartiet, while Palander now exerted his influence into the northern midwest of the United States.

Ultimately, Palander was in the process of constructing a Vinlandsk Djupastaten, a deeply-entrenched and well-financed organization which would hold the potential to exert a massive influence on the nation. I toyed with several ideas to make use of this potential plotline, but Vinland never passed through a sufficiently traumatic trial to make such developments plausible. With that said, if Vinland were ever to collapse, I strongly suspect that it would have been the VRP that rebuilt the state.

 

[Jehoshua]

It's interesting reading the detail of TLJ's plan, although I think his assessment on what would of happened in an Italian revolution is quite speculative, particularly seeing as I probably would've taken the opportunity to simultaneously assist the monarchy at the price of reclaiming some of the Popes former territories . At any rate, his plan was quite shortsighted compared to the 100 year plan I had which would've lasted until the 2000's in the game. The plan of course being oriented towards rolling back liberalism and re-vivifying a Christian order the west. In this I think I was doing pretty well, seeing as when I started the Church's reputation was rather poorly.

I won't go into detail, but as it was it went through two phases, phase one being restoring the reputation and influence of the Church and promoting religious zeal in latin America and phase 2 actively opposing contradictory ideologies and secularism in the public sphere, engaging with states to institute pro-Catholic policies, and promoting a counter-ideology to liberalism and proletarism (moralism emerged spontaneously form phase I from the promotion of religious zeal, and was pretty "latin American", I was gradually pushing "traditionalism" in Europe as another "wing" of Catholic political thought, to compliment the more "left wing" [and Brazil dominated] moralism in phase 2). This second phase was not in the end completed, since the development of a counter-ideology was not finished. Indeed a pseudo-corporatist "worker theory" and the push for workplace reform was only just in the works (in providing an alternative to proletarism for the working class, simultaneously insinuating the Church's influence amongst them by producing an actual benefit where proletarism in many places had not produced major improvements). These efforts if completed, I think would've been successful in much of Europe in restoring a Catholic order, since it would have established an indigenous and united ideological front, while simultaneously engaging on a social level.

Post Script: Oh and no matter the outcome of the War, it would have worked to my advantage. If Russia won the political playing field of Europe would have been re-jigged to be more favourably inclined to the papal initiatives and associated ideological propositions to counter liberalism and proletarism (due to common interests in opposing those ideologies, and promoting a theocentric political order). If Russia lost than the liberal and prole states would still be severely weakened along with those ideologies from the war, and the Church would have had its stature advanced due to its humanitarian efforts. This would have been fertile ground for a Catholicisation of Europe via establishing unity under the Church as necessary against the "other", to which the soft-liberalism and totalitarian proletarism was so vulnerable towards.

 

[Lord of Elves]

Let's get old school with secret schemes, or, some meditations on the Europe that never was...

Way back towards the end of the 1840's, after the Northern League was disbanded following the secession of Hanover from Brandenburg, it looked pretty likely to me that Paris-Burgundy's only path to success was the creation of a French state. Nationalism was on the rise as a political force in Europe, considering the various Italian wars, and Scandinavia was for the first time stable enough at home that it could seriously consider fostering dissension abroad. My goal was to counter-balance the potential creation of a German nation, as well as the dubious loyalties of the Netherlands, with a strong French state that would present a third way to aligning Scandinavia with Britain or Spain. This same France would, in order to secure its sovereignty, destroy the Netherlands and assist Savoy-Milan in establishing an Italian nation, and both states would collude with Scandinavia in order to wrest control of the continent from Spain and expand the Scandinavian east and central European sphere across the whole of Europe. The then-inevitable Franco-Dutch War would allow me to take Indonesia from the Netherlands in a "police action" in order to ensure the safety of the Indies from native revolts and opportunist invasions.

This would have secured an incredibly lucrative colonial empire for Scandinavia, which had fallen out of Asian possessions thanks to the failure of the Korean treaty-port at Jeju (this was before the war against the Ascendancy), as well as long term allies on the continent capable of competing with British and Spanish economic advantages. The new tripartite pact of Scandinavia, France and Italy would then pool their resources together in order to prevent the creation of a Russian state -- which was originally considered a dire threat to security but was later embraced yaddayaddayadda -- and crush the old European order.

I forget exactly why my master plan circa two years ago failed. Spryllino probably signed some dumb non-aggression compact with ZeletDude and decided to become the Frankenstein's Monster zombie HRE, or Savoy-Milan bit the dust, it's been too long

 

[Grandkhan]

I have always felt that the greatest irony of Capto Iugulum was that the Scandinavians put serious effort into bankrolling the Russian Empire and fighting German unification, only to ally with Germany to fight the Russians at the very end.

The fact that you bankrolled Italy as well is even funnier.

 

[TheLastJacobite]

Your brilliant master plan was to try and eliminate enemy intelligence a full 4 years before your offensives began, with the belief that in the shock and awe of such no one would ever again defect, rebuild, infiltrate, or otherwise be suspicious of your intentions, nor take it as a cue to begin defensive preparations?

Most cunning.

Yes, and it worked. Hell, Britain had proof during the Fireworks War that I had not only planned the Massacre there, but was actively operating against him and still did nothing. Britain continued to think the war would be "later" and didn't do any sort of military buildup. The only nation that did anything was Germany and even his buildup was small compared to mine. I mean no one seemed to notice that my army doubled in size in under 10 years. It should have been obvious to pretty much everyone that this war was coming and yet. The year before I said "Hey, me and my buddies are gonna get our militaries together and hang out; don't think anything of it, just pretend we're not here" and everyone collectively went "OK", Britain sends a few destroyers to monitor our fleets, and that's about it. If Germany and Scandinavia had said "We're gonna be having war games right on the border, pay us no mind" you had best believe I'm gonna be on high alert with troops standing by to repel invaders.

(Russians willing - TLJ, in the interests of full disclosure, would you have entered on Denmark's side had that happened?).

Absolutely. I wasn't fully prepared (nor were my allies) but my enemies were even less prepared. It would be very hard for Germany and Britain to come to the aid of Scandinavia after such a blatant aggressive act and call it defensive. So, I'd be able to focus my full wrath on defeating the Proles. After they were defeated, if Vinland were unwilling to relinquish the territory they had been "protecting" back to Denmark, well, I had over 100 brigades in the US that would be more than happy to travel north...

Oh yeah I had plans that if the Russians didn't give me what I wanted post war and tried to get me to vacate Skane I was just going to go "Bugger it.", bite the bullet, and offer Brazil basing rights in Copenhagen to protect my gains. I figure Lucky would have taken it, because a port in Europe proper is pretty valuable, but I guess its all speculation now.

That wasn't gonna happen. I'd been supporting Kongo for decades, there was no way in hell anyone (not even me) was getting any of their territory after we took it back. By that point in the war, the Emperor would be back in charge and be consolidating power, with a large Russian army to help, Germany would be overrun and Denmark would literally be surrounded by Russians more than willing to "persuade" them to return the rightful Scandinavian territory. If Brazil came in, I 'd have the entire Baltic secure and be able to have a fleet ready to thwart a Brazilian intervention.

Longview

My plan was to install as many monarchies as I could and eventually have them marry into the Russian royal family. The ultimate goal being to eventually have the League of the Three Emperors become a single nation (WAAAAAAAAAAAYYY down the line)

 

[spryllino]

Let's get old school with secret schemes, or, some meditations on the Europe that never was...

Way back towards the end of the 1840's, after the Northern League was disbanded following the secession of Hanover from Brandenburg, it looked pretty likely to me that Paris-Burgundy's only path to success was the creation of a French state. Nationalism was on the rise as a political force in Europe, considering the various Italian wars, and Scandinavia was for the first time stable enough at home that it could seriously consider fostering dissension abroad. My goal was to counter-balance the potential creation of a German nation, as well as the dubious loyalties of the Netherlands, with a strong French state that would present a third way to aligning Scandinavia with Britain or Spain. This same France would, in order to secure its sovereignty, destroy the Netherlands and assist Savoy-Milan in establishing an Italian nation, and both states would collude with Scandinavia in order to wrest control of the continent from Spain and expand the Scandinavian east and central European sphere across the whole of Europe. The then-inevitable Franco-Dutch War would allow me to take Indonesia from the Netherlands in a "police action" in order to ensure the safety of the Indies from native revolts and opportunist invasions.

This would have secured an incredibly lucrative colonial empire for Scandinavia, which had fallen out of Asian possessions thanks to the failure of the Korean treaty-port at Jeju (this was before the war against the Ascendancy), as well as long term allies on the continent capable of competing with British and Spanish economic advantages. The new tripartite pact of Scandinavia, France and Italy would then pool their resources together in order to prevent the creation of a Russian state -- which was originally considered a dire threat to security but was later embraced yaddayaddayadda -- and crush the old European order.

I forget exactly why my master plan circa two years ago failed. Spryllino probably signed some dumb non-aggression compact with ZeletDude and decided to become the Frankenstein's Monster zombie HRE, or Savoy-Milan bit the dust, it's been too long

That was a very dodgy masterplan on many levels. And yeah, I decided to act IC as a principled king who hated nationalism and wanted to maintain the integrity of his kingdom, and didn't care about forming France.

 

[Gem Hound]

With my country it was rather simple. You look at it and instantly know what is going on.

 

[Terrance888]

AKA nothing of much import.

 

[Gem Hound]

Precisely.

 

[Quisani]

TLJ was pretty obvious when he came up and offered help to me as Florida.

I was doing "well" too, playing ICly with various factions and moving towards achieving regional power status. Well, apparently my orders were worded in such a way that things went pearshaped in a way disadvantageous to me. But I was fine with that. I fought hard to try to stabilize the PADA and to revive the Pacific Concord (which I envisioned as overall neutral considering Brazil and Russia).

The reason I quit was merely a personal disagreement with EQ's modding methods. I do not wish, nor do I think any of us would wish me, to elaborate.

The collapse of the Pacifc Concord is a perfect representation of this.

In the long run, Japan would've dropped out. Japan has little love for Prole nations or Prole sympathizers, with the exception of perhaps Hawaii. The period of leftward moving governments left a bad taste in Japan's mouth. That and tensions had eased between Brazil and Japan.

 

[Terrance888]

On one hand, Japan dropping out was perfect for the reconstituted Pacific Concord. On another, Jacksonia wasn't solidly leftist until after that little trick I played on Nuka. The revigorated PC was meant to be a neutral, economic forum, and it was developing well in that direction.

EDIT: It was your own decision to not call upon the PC's defensive pact that grealty strengthened the neutrality I was aiming for.

 

[J.K. Stockholme]

Jehoshua your plan was fairly transparent I think to most people. I was well aware at least, and perhaps you could also tell that I was actively preparing a counter-offensive for liberalism in Europe. I too (with Switzerland) was creating a charity organization to help refugees and those in need in the war, an explicitly secular one, to bolster secular credentials against Catholicism. I was also cultivating Septembrism to be a social democratic pro-worker ideology, and I was writing up a speech-story for this year in which I was to declare the "d'Auvergne Doctrine" - I was preparing social liberalism to replace proletarism as a beacon of light on the left.

Though unlike the church, my long-term ideological plan was bundled closely with my long-term political plan, I mean, while it's highly speculative as to how things in Europe would have panned out, I had been informed (by EQ) on several occasions that some liberals were advocating for the Confederation to be a model of a united Europe - in which war was finally and truly gone, because Europe's militaries would have been integrated together. I intended to privilege them in the Confederation, so as to cultivate a strong Pan-European impulse there, which would be spread abroad through Septembrism like in Catalonia (which incidentally I didn't deliberately influence). Anyway, the pipe-dream was that the Second Confederation might slowly incorporate more and more states over time, and depending on an Allied victory in the Second Great War (which I was hoping to bring in American states, along with my own troops, to help achieve it as liberal-led saviours), get even Germany into the Confederation by liberating their people from Russian tyranny with liberal-led troops (that the Confederation had a huge number of Germans, and had a long history in Germany, made this also more plausible).

On the TLJ front, I also had quite a number of plans. If the Russians seemed like they were in the home stretch to victory and I would have no other choice, I had in mind making my crown prince and president Max d'Auvergne commit a coup, creating a new monarchy, which would ally with the Russians to secure its own stability. Obviously though defeating Russia would be preferable to this new liberal order. In Spain I actually really didn't consider them much of a threat, seeing as, with the seceded states, I would have vastly more EP, a much larger army, and a better doctrine and conscription rate - this, combined with my secret talks with the Portuguese whom agreed to attack Spain if they attacked any of the seceded states, and the fact that Brazil can't really afford a land war in which the enemy has the high ground, meant I anticipated a pretty swift victory over there. At the very least, the Spanish would run up a huge number of deaths for little land gain or reciprocated kills. In any case, though I never got confirmation from Azale that he wouldn't attack, I think I had a pretty strong power of deterrence, particularly after allying with Brazil, so odds of war were low.

When I was Occitania, by the way, the number one thing I positively wanted to see was Burgundian aggression against any of its neighbours. They were my only competition for leadership in France. I freaked out when reading the update because I figured that the death of Hollande would have meant his private war plans wouldn't be put into actions (I mean, the only person I was aware of that was crazy enough to start a war was him) - but luckily de Gaulle was just as crazy. Maybe I'll do a write-up for all the stuff Section 2 and the Intelligence Directorate did sometime soon.

 

[Luckymoose]

Yes, and it worked. Hell, Britain had proof during the Fireworks War that I had not only planned the Massacre there, but was actively operating against him and still did nothing. Britain continued to think the war would be "later" and didn't do any sort of military buildup. The only nation that did anything was Germany and even his buildup was small compared to mine. I mean no one seemed to notice that my army doubled in size in under 10 years. It should have been obvious to pretty much everyone that this war was coming and yet. The year before I said "Hey, me and my buddies are gonna get our militaries together and hang out; don't think anything of it, just pretend we're not here" and everyone collectively went "OK", Britain sends a few destroyers to monitor our fleets, and that's about it. If Germany and Scandinavia had said "We're gonna be having war games right on the border, pay us no mind" you had best believe I'm gonna be on high alert with troops standing by to repel invaders.

Don't brag about the stupidity of your major rivals here. I was well aware of your imminent plans and consistently warned people for over a year. It is not my fault every other great power in the world was dumb enough to buy into hippie peace bullcrap or turn their attentions against me.

You're bragging because the playerbase was ********. You weren't the only person taking advantage of them.

 

[JohannaK]

I'm not but I was Adjuuramark.

 

[Lord of Elves]

Don't brag about the stupidity of your major rivals here. I was well aware of your imminent plans and consistently warned people for over a year. It is not my fault every other great power in the world was dumb enough to buy into hippie peace bullcrap or turn their attentions against me.

You're bragging because the playerbase was ********. You weren't the only person taking advantage of them.

While I wouldn't necessarily go this far, the cleverness of Russian arms build-up is still overstated. I accepted sometime in the 1920's that I would never be able to match the economic and technological advantage Russia had and both Britain and Germany refused to share designs with Scandinavia so I gave up on having a modern military -- to the exception of the air force where prior to jets I still had some level of competence -- and focused on trying (with virtually no success but whatever) to strengthen the international Revolution.

 

[Luckymoose]

No, you were all ********. I called Britain-Germany-Scandinavia Skylar, Walt Jr., and Marie to show how dumb you all were.

 

[Lord of Elves]

No, you were all ********. I called Britain-Germany-Scandinavia Skylar, Walt Jr., and Marie to show how dumb you all were.

You are perfectly aware of my beliefs regarding the cogency of the "Germany, Britain and friends" alliance