PART SEVENTY: A War with China, to Mixed Results (January 1st, 1905 – November 15, 1906)
The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Games > Let’s Play! > Mings and Things: Let’s Play War in the East
Rincewind
Feb 19, 2001
No reason to make an effort to empathize if doing so comes at the price of oblivion.
WAR IN THE EAST: GENERAL’S EDITION
“Europe was still, in many ways, recovering from decades of war— the Wars of the Victorian League, the proxy struggles of the Great Game, the Containment War, German attacks on France and Poland, French attacks on Lai Ang, civil wars, and revolutions. Nobody wanted to fight another war. Or, at least, not until the arsenals of the future were assembled.”
—The Collected Diaries of Meryem Terzioğlu
Introduction
I really appreciated how much everyone enjoyed and got involved with my last LP, Blood in the Bosphorus: A Sultanate of Rum Paradox Mega-Campaign, even though it didn’t last that long, since I managed to get annexed by the Byzantines in AD 1075. (In my defense, CK2 gave Alexios I Komnenos really good stats, and Project Balance gave him lots of bullshit event troops to retake the Anatolian coast with. Also, I’m horrible at CK2. Also, horrible at video games.)
Maybe it was for the best, since in the Shura votes towards the ends goons were edging dangerously close to inventing fascism in the 11th century. Like, yeah, it’s called the sultanate of Rum, but a few of you were taking the whole “Rome” thing a bit too literally. Like, did you expect me to write a whole bunch of posts roleplaying as some kind of, I don’t know, Turkish Empress Valeria II? That’d be in pretty poor taste.
What is it with Rome, anyway? You don’t see people trying to argue that the Ming and Yuan empires were a single continuous polity, even though they both ruled China.
Aside from that whole creepiness, though, LPing was a lot of fun so I thought I’d just jump right into another one, like some kind of majestic phoenix that is bad at video games. I thought of a few other CK2 starts– maybe Odo de Conteville, to see if I could steer my dynasty towards not destroying the entire kingdom of England and fatally weakening the HRE on the eve of the invasion of Chang Yuchun? Or just go, if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em and play as the Byzantines.
But then I looked into other games that deal with Byzantine history (things got a bit Roman for a while there in medieval Byzantium, you know?) and I discovered Matrix Games’ War in the East.
War in the East
Now, I’m sure a lot of you have heard of War in the West, Matrix Games’ brilliant, incredibly detailed, grognardy game about the Great War. If you haven’t, you really should check out Grey Hunter’s day-by-day LP of it. WitE jumps a few years before the Great War, but it’s the same formula— in-depth strategy and granular detail, practically down to the buttons on the Red Guards’ coats and the rivets on the hulls of the Ostia Home Fleet.
WitE makes a few changes to the old WitW formula, though— for starters, it brings in a lot more political mechanics and adds a lot of prewar turns, to model the ambivalence around the war seen in, say, the Ekklesia or among a Chinese bourgeoise divided over the benefits of new territories and the drawbacks of a war between great powers disrupting the flow of trade between China and the Occident. More importantly, instead of just having one player or computer for each side (as in WitW where all the forces of each bloc are under that bloc’s players control as soon as they’re built or appear from off the map), each major belligerent is controlled separately, with its own war priorities, internal politics, personality, etc. So it means that as the Byzantines, I’ll have to bail out my dumb allies instead of just controlling their forces.
Knowing me, the AI will probably do a better job controlling our allied forces than I did.
Anyway! Another blathering on! Time to try to arrange things so we don’t get blown up!
WitE models a lot of what’s going on ‘off-the-map’. Things mostly just follow their historical trajectory, though, unless you intervene specifically.
You can conduct diplomacy with the other Great Powers, and supposedly they can help you out in war if they like you enough by sending forces into relevant theaters. Anacaona likes us, but not that much (they are bourgeois swine, and still in a personal union with the Ayiti Federation, even if they aren’t a dominion anymore).
I vaguely remembered that the Byzantines of the early 19th century were known as a leading innovator in the field of radio, and I remembered how useful radio could be in WitW– but no dice. Don’t have the tech yet.
The AI keeps on countering my diplomatic efforts. 
Really, though, in this period Bogomil Milenov made a lot of savvy political moves– like encouraging Chinese communists to protest against the bourgeois conservatives in power at the time– so I often found myself just following history’s blueprints.
My knowledge of the era’s pretty patchy. Like, I could go on-and-on about the differences between the socialist realism of Müller’s North German Federation and the more avant-garde movements like constructivism that the older communist regime in Byzantion favored. 
I thought of keeping my troops stationed in Marathas right from the start (the game starts just after the Marathi-Byzantine victory over Pangalist Hindustan), but it was hard to keep them supplied out there in peacetime, and anyway with elections (another thing Müllerists had no use for 
) looming, I didn’t have the political points to spare to keep my forces abroad.
I’m feeling a bit railroaded by these election events, to be frank.
Like if I were playing Victoria 2 I’d probably write reams of in-character stuff about how grateful the Byzantine peoples are for Milenov’s healthcare reform but now I’m just like, holy shit, all that silver could have bought a lot of artillery shells.
And since all of my attention was focused on making sure things went like they did in OTL instead of worse, somehow, the Ming just happily followed their historical trajectory, and all my efforts to foment labor strife slid off Wu Daoming like water off a duck’s back.
Okay, so the war started like it did in actual history, basically. In my defense, apparently if you fuck things up Da Qin joins on the Ming Empire’s side.
(Also, hilariously, apparently if you’re playing as Marathas and Byzantium is an AI, they can just fucking refuse to join the war and let the Ming burn down your entire country while they’re busy, I don’t know, trying to figure out how to manufacture radios or huffing cement fumes.)
(And then you miss out on the whole clowncar of allies Byzantium brings– remember, 1905 was like the height of the Byzantine Commune’s “Pax Europaea” alliance.
Oh, hey, I forgot about the Ming offensive through the Caucasus. Haha, probably a good thing I pulled my troops out of Marathas… 
It’s not exactly the Containment War, though, since the Mings’ main objectives are in India, and the AI knows it. So I need to break out of the caucasus and pronto before that big Marathas offensive you see here collapses.
I figure, if we can just get all our forces into the Indian theater, our chances are looking pretty good.
Oh, that’s lucky! The Ming couldn’t decide whether to try to occupy Azerbaijan, or press on straight into Anatolia, so they just kind of half-assedly split the difference.
The information you get about casualities on other sides in WitE is notoriously sketchy and inaccurate, but I think we won the Battle of Agdam. Just a hunch!
In the African theater, Da Qin and Tripoli are doing their damnedest to keep Somalia off my back. If their soldiers can’t hold on, I’m hoping the huge, empty deserts of Da Qin will slow them down. If I get attacked by Somalia in the rear, I’m pretty sure I’m fucked.
Still steadily pressing the Ming back in the western front, but I’m worried I’m not making the best time.
Things aren’t going well in Marathas– the offensive has lost most of its momentum, and for some reason some militant socialists revolted in the rear, disrupting the Marathi supply lines. What the fuck? I thought we were comrades! You’re out of the International!!
The price of ammunition is steadily increasing, and my factories can’t fully meet our need for it. Fortunately, we still have plenty of cash so our soliders won’t be trying to shoot rocks out of their fancy rifles for a while yet.
The Ming just aren’t willing to commit the sorts of troops they’d need to outnumber the Azeri-Byzantine armies. But I guess the AI knows it just needs to slow me down. (I’m probably anthropomorhpizing the AI a bit here, I’ll admit)
What? Oh, come the fuck on, we were winning! We were driving them back! Nooooooooo 
lmao now i get radios
At least Milesov and his pro-military Labour party stayed in power. If the war goes badly, the Irenicists or Athens Commune can come in and force you to the negotiating table.
Since there’s still Marathas armies in the field, it’s not too late to relieve them. I refuse the Ming peace overtures.
Maputo shows up to help the Da Qin keep Somalia busy, which is nice of them.
I’m starting to see the limits of the Pax Europaea alliance beyond its stated intention of preventing a war between the European Great Powers. Even though in the WitE period, France was ruled by helpful Jacobins, they still understandably didn’t want to let hordes of Müllerist Germans march through their country. They did let the British through, one liberal democratic monarchy tipping its hat to another, so Queen Vicky 5, in her infinite wisdom, has decided to walk all the way down France and then across the entire Byzantine Commune to get to the war.
and here i thought we were still decades off from guerre éclair being invented. vroooooooom.
I’m still fucking pissed Azerbaijan left me hanging, but I’m starting to regain the ground I lost in the Caucasus, at least.
But, I mean, tick tock, tick tock.
Time is money. And dead Marathas armies.
Britain’s reinforced Da Qin against Somalia, though, so that’s one less front to worry about. If this were a Paradox game you’d see like three paragraphs by some communist PoV character about how all the British really wanted was a slice of Somalia’s gross colonial empire added to their own, but right now I’m just glad to see hexes with friends in them instead of enemies.
I finally get a few Red Guards through the Ming lines and into India. The Army of Trebizond is the first of many, hopefully.
(Around this time, while communists, socialists, liberal monarchs, and ok I guess Somalia was still an authoritarian dictatorship were all slaughtering one another in India, the Caucasus, northern Africa, and the Levant, a Bavarian author writing under the name Valeria put out a book you might have heard of. Although I guess within the timeframe of WitE, everyone important just wrote it off as a turgid and unreadable science fiction book about a utopian world where Rome never fell and everyone was living on the moon and wearing matching uniforms by the year 1906, for some reason.)
“Let me just click this button and get a game over,” said nobody ever.
Just one more Ming army left in the Caucasus, and I can send Athena’s Own Red Guards and all the rest after the Army of Trebizond and hopefully turn the tide in India.
It’d be nice if I could just sail through the Suez Canal and get to India like that, but even if we held Suez, in 1906 the canal hadn’t been reconstructed to allow modern dreadnoughts through yet. Maputo’s expeditionary force got wiped out, unfortunately, but the British and survivors from Da Qin’s defense forces are holding things down in Africa. I’ve sent a small force to help them out, but most of the Red Guards will be needed in India. If they ever get there.
omg plucky little maputo raised fresh troops to attack aceh’s colonies 
Hey, I wonder why Somalia hasn’t sent more troops in for a counterattack against the Da Qin-British armies in the north? Oh. Because they’re busy occupying all of British Africa.
oh noooooooooooo kenya
YESSSSSSSSS
With the last Ming armies retreating from the Caucasus, I can send more forces to the Indian theater. If I can just hold it together long enough to retool my factories to start manufacturing landships…
Fortunately, as a communist country, I can just start building landship factories immediately in the name of, I don’t know, reducing unemployment or whatever.
Because holy shit could I use some mobile armor. Like, we won this battle, but look how short we’re running on artillery. The Marathas army must be mostly mobilized conscripts at this point. Most of the cream of the Marathi crop was being casually slaughtered while I was trying to reoccupy all of the trenchworks and fortifications the Azerbaijanis just abandoned.
The Ming are still a lot stronger in the east, but if we can just reoccupy what they’ve occupied already, we’ll take a lot of the wind out of their sails.
Shit, they intercepted the Army of Trebizond as it was on its way north to link up with the Marathis. Shit shit shit.
HOLY SHIT I CAN’T BELIEVE I WON THAT BATTLE AAAA
We’re getting pretty well dug-in in Sukkur. The downside is that the AI realizes that too, so in their third attempt to retake it the Ming retire after just a few casualties. Still, a victory’s a victory.
A diplomatic breakthrough for Müller! The Tsar has given the German permission to cross Russia! They should arrive in theater in, oh, another few years or so. I guess this answers why the fuck Russia is on the WitE map to begin with.
I think I might have left too many of my forces guarding the Caucasus, waiting for a second Chinese offensive that never came. Maybe the Germans can take over so I can send all those armies (and their artillery!) to India?
The Army of Trebizond, Athena’s Own Red Guards, and their Marathi pals are proving hard to dislodge as-is. But I’m bottomed out on artillery and heavy munitions, and I’m starting to take more casualties than they are.
Maybe more MilenovCare™ will convince the Byzantine peoples to have a bit more fighting spirit? Thanks, Milenov.
Hey look, a battle where all three Pax Europaea members participated! They did a pretty good job, too. Glad General Regina Maxwell is kicking as much ass in digital form as she did in OTL. Whoever picked her as their lucky general had the right idea.
Okay, so by the June 29 turn, I have a bit of momentum, but the Ming still hold 100% of their war objective points in Punjab. Not good.
Whoops, good thing I left those troops in the Caucasus, since somehow I don’t think 7,000 British Regulars are up to fighting off 60,000 Ming soldiers.
The Byzantine-Marathas lines in India are getting pushed to the north and west in a way I don’t like. There’s a big Ming push at Bahawalpur, so I send what’s left of Athena’s Own in. Hopefully, I can leave those Marathis on their own for a bit.
Okay, well, I guess it’s less the Byzantine-Marathas lines at Bahawalpur than the Byzantine-Marathas salient at Bahawalpur. Looks like I still have a corridor through Iran and then along the Marathi coast I can send reinforcements through. Maybe my tank factories will finish getting built, or something? I don’t know. I’m sure I can peel some forces off from the Caucasus…
…or… maybe not…
The Germans seem to be in charge of the join Pax Europaea force in Egypt, and have apparently decided that they absolutely need to control the (militarily useless, since this is the fucking year 1906) Suez instead of relieving me against the Ming, like, anywhere, anywhere at all, holy shit use your 300,000 strong army for something, I’m begging you, von Halkett.
I mean, I’m really impressed with how well they’re doing— better than any other theater in the war, really. Especially considering most of my artillery is either guarding the Caucasus or limbered and slowly making its way to Bahawalpur.
At least Maputo just single-handedly knocked Aceh out of the war. 
Let’s check on how my attempts to relieve the salient at Bahawalpur are going! That bad, huh?
holy toledo that’s a lot of ming
whoops i just went a few turns without issuing new orders to the caucasus theater, that’s probably pretty bad
I mean, everything the Ming are doing up there was just a feint, so it was pretty easy to get it under control, but it’s pretty embarrassing.
The Bahawalpur salient becomes the Bahawalpur pocket.
Can I just start a fresh offensive with troops from the Caucasus and work my way east from Iran? Oh. No.
We try to do something nice for a bunch of bourgeois liberals and look what happens. 
“The most important reality of international relations is that China can instantly destroy us whenever they want to.”
—Bogomil Milenov, Tribune of the Byzantine Commune
Well, darn, I guess I didn’t manage to do any better than the OTL Byzantines. I mean, it’s not like I expected to actually win against China, right? But maybe I was hoping to hold out a little longer. Or at least reinforce the Bahawalpur salient, maybe? Maybe I should have played a practice game before I started this LP.
Anyway! See you in a few weeks for my next LP, where I’ll play as Dawit II Gideon, the Jewish Duke of Axum in CK2’s 1066 start! I think it’ll last a bit longer than my last two.
WORLD MAP, 1906
(OOC: OOTP is still in the middle of simming the last few years of baseball, and I’d rather not delay the update for that. Baseball stats next time!)