Part 17: Chapter XVII: Writer's Block (1931-1936)
Writer's block. Need...gimmick...for last update.Chapter XVII: Leonard Zelig's Munich Period: 1931-1936.
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Tempting, but no, back to the drawing board. Besides, I barely remember Zelig. My favorite of his films was always Love and Death, but the time for a Dostoyevsky-style update, serious or jokey, is long in the past.
Maybe I'm going about this the wrong way. What do I need to convey in this update?
Hm...the update needs to describe social changes. I had resisted raising the minimum wage, limiting the workplace, and especially implementing workplace safety for so long because those reforms are horrible and directly hurt industry, but by this point gave in and gave them to the people anyway. How could I possibly justify that?
Chapter XVII: The People's Triumph (1931-1936)
Nah, the Socialist Workers Party has been in and out of power for half a century and just now has suddenly decided to fix factories that have gears jammed with human flesh and bone? People will notice that I intentionally didn't move on workplace safety for half a century.
Also, Keynesianism was more the order of the day in this update than true socialist economics.
Besides, the economic news wasn't really rosy this update. SGF actually went into heavy debt, briefly, before dramatically hiking up taxes, hardly the picture of a healthy economy. Even if it were a cheerier picture, it's hardly the main story of the update.
Is the story of the update the rising tide of Fascism?
Fascism is a tempting topic to go with. It's compelling subject matter, and it confronts goons with how they outwardly pretend to despise it, but, deep in the secret recesses of their hearts, all have a burning desire to see half of any given map labeled GERMANY in gigantic letters.
Chapter XVII: The Eagle's Cry (1931-1936)
But, though more countries than ever have voted fascist parties in power, few if adopted fascist dictatorships. In fact, Bastar overthrew their fascist dictatorship and went the other direction. I mean, Italy and Romania aren't dictatorships, just cheerful con mons that elect fascist parties to power (though I doubt Italy could vote Mussolini out of power if it wanted to force the issue). Fascism isn't what I want to do. I mean, goons might be closet fascists, but confronting them with it makes them uncomfortable.
How about writing about naval affairs?
Chapter XVII: The Unsinkable Wagner (1931-36)
Oh, wait, my fleet literally never left the harbor. Like I told the thread, I built up a ton of dreadnoughts because they were skyrocketing my score and couldn't really afford to accidentally lose one in actual combat. All that focus I put on naval tech was useless because my thread wanted me to be a European land power and not a colonial one, preventing me from showing off like a third of V2 because I had to save my infamy for European wargoals.
That's it! They want to hear about the war. Wars, that is.
Chapter XVII: Cry Havoc And Let Slip The...No Pretension, Just Kill Everyone In France Again Like Henry V Did. (1931-1936)
This could be a winner, because I miscalculated that one battle at the very beginning! People will see my crushing defeat by the Italians of all people and go "maybe he's bitten off more than he can chew!"
Of course, this happened, like, a week later.
Yeah...I'm not sure that I can maintain suspense.
Why does Spain share the Latin American portraits again? I've never gotten that.
There was that week or so that the Germans were occupying Prague. I could write a thing about Gertrude Stein's house getting hit by a shell, tie it into the last update. Dammit, though, the only picture I have of NGF-occupied Prague is the one where I took Berlin, I can't keep suspense this way!
Maybe something about France's heroic, tragic, last attempt to lift the siege of Paris?
Argh, the screenshots don't lie. However, there is the matter that I was unable to set a wargoal in the Soviet campaign because of low Jingoism. That's it! There's my gimmick! The war-weary people of SGF putting their feet down and saying "No" to the thread's rampant jingoism and insistence that we spend all of our time in V2's boring meat-grinder warfare rather than interfacing with the economy or colonialism.
But I kind of enjoy that meat-grinder...
Though I mainly love vassal-swarming and letting minor allies like Madagascar do the heavy lifting.
Seriously, though, I'll never convince anyone I don't enjoy doing this.
It is me, I am the one reducing my beloved complex economic and political simulator to the level of a subpar and rather nonsensical prequel to Hearts of Iron.
Still regret not getting USSR to release its share of Poland, though.
The thing is, there's not much to the wars. At least, not to the wars I fought. Maybe I could talk about international affairs more?
The Middle East is dull, but there was some excitement in India, and of course there was the Japan situation, and Argentina and Bolivia had their periodic fight.
Hm...
Chapter XVII: The Thread Told Me To Crush All My Opponents And Ended Up Causing Hungary to GP And Lost Me My Most Critical Vassal. (1931-1936)
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No, that title is a bit too on the nose. I need something a bit more subtle.
It is disappointing that after all France did to unite under their republican Fifth Republic, they had to throw it away and descend back into anarchy, but I had my orders.
Really, though, the Japan story is amazing. Why they would decide to take on China and the United States simultaneously in a quixotic quest to liberate Mongolia is beyond me. They had to know what would happen.
It's a shame that war didn't end by the time the game's time ran out, but Chinese and American troops were both occupying parts of the Japanese home islands. It's one of the biggest miscalculations I've seen the AI do with the Crisis mechanic, and because Japan's score was mostly based on its naval power, once that navy sank, so did Japan's station in the world. How can I justify this happening? The sheer arrogance of the 1930s Imperial Japanese leadership in thinking that they could take on both China and the United States is totally unrealistic, no country would provoke a fight it so obviously could not win in real life. It does, however, offer good story potential about the sheer power of the Chinese/American juggernaut and how that alliance would dominate this world's future. Maybe I'll use that in the epilogue.
SGF isn't a pariah, I suppose, but only because everyone around it is either utterly demolished and unable to answer or an ally of it.
I'm glad Persia finally got to work on Baluchistan, but I wish they'd grabbed Kalat as well, it would've made labeling the map easier. Damned Ukraine asking me to release Holstein and making me use that tiny font on the map...
Why did I have the "Dai Viet Westernizes" thing on the Miracle on the Vistula screenshot? I have this great narrative at play on how Poland defeated an NGF army larger than it through some miracle of dice rolls and defeated NGF in this war, conquering Krakow and even acquiring land, but I was going to use it to discuss Vietnam? What was I thinking?
If nothing else, Poland has a taste for eliminating stupid enclaves like east Prussia. Of course, Poland is like 70% North German and its capital of
If nothing else, having Poland and Ukraine both eyeing it should make Ruthenia an even more loyal vassal to the SGF. I should put that in the update, especially contrasting it with disloyal archtraitor Hungary. Hungary's not going to last long on its own, anyway. I've been killing their rebels for years now. On its own, the Absolute Monarchy of Hungary has about two or three years of life in it. They're just lucky that they left their bondage to me with only months left before the game ended.
If nothing else, AI Bolivia has me interested in doing a game as them, someday. The whole time, all of South America wants a piece of them, and they managed to more or less win. Admirable, I suppose.
Of course, there's also India, the persistent loser of my thread. I remember when I force-released them I thought that they'd be a player, but they just lost two more states to Beroda and Hyderabad in a war they started. India is probably the biggest underperformer of the LP, and that's an LP where Portugal lost Macau to China.
Dammit, I just can't think of a theme.
Chapter XVII: Writer's Block. 1931-1936
I guess I've just run out of things to say.
Population of SGF
Politics of SGF
The World, 1936
