German Empire, not quite an AAR...

[HerrDan]

The year of 1884 has ended and the German Empire continued to expand its influence all over the world. We're struggling to keep the balance of power in Europe in our favor by creating closer links with all the contenders and trying to make them trust in our role of arbiter of Europe. Now we are the envy of the world with companies like Bayer, Krupp, Siemens and NDL leading the new industrial developments around the globe, but it seems like the more our power grows the more sour our relations with Great Britain becomes, specially now that Germany entered in the naval race with the british and the french.

Here's a summary of some of the important events of 1884:

Another demonstration of british treacherous behavior...
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Portugal trying to keep its interests in Africa safe...
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The German Empire expanding its share in Africa and tightening its grip in its possessions.
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Tension in Europe continues to rise as the year comes to an end...

[HerrDan]

Talking about tensions rising, it seems like the Russian Empire has crossed the line in its expansion in the east and tension between them and the British is really high at the moment (I couldn't be more happy to see the british even more isolated in Europe), I could use this oportunity to aproach the Russians with an alliance offer, although I'm not happy with their expansion either as recently there was some heated talks over our mutual border near Warsaw, so we decided to wait and see what happens.

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While in Africa we couldn't be more happy to announce that now Ostafrika is ours!

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We still have somethings to do there (as you can probably see...), but now no other power will be able to intervene...

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[loki100]

lots of colonial actions

would be very useful if the British and Russians went to war over Afghanistan, keep your two biggest rivals busy for some time

[HerrDan]

Yes I would surely love to see this crisis between them escalating into war, but we still have to wait and see how it unfolds...

On the Pacific our influence continues to grow! This is great indeed, but I fear this may possibly trigger a crisis between Germany and Spain as they have a lot of influence there as well...
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Now on the home front I have to please the ones who provide us with the best soldiers in the world, unfortunately it can't help but harm even more our relations with Russia...
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Now the Ottomans need our help, the Mahdist War is exhausting their resources and they need our help now that the british have abandoned them, also it's a great oportunity to increase our influence in the Middle East as we have interests in Kuwait...again it will probably degrade our relations with the Russian Empire.
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[HerrDan]

This is the dawn of a new age and The German Empire is leading the world into this age! The days of british dominance in the scientific advances are already something of the past!
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[HerrDan]

Belgium has finally formalised the borders of their "Congo Free State" in an agreement with the french and the portuguese.
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[HerrDan]

Finally we defeated the rebels in Dar es Salaam:

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It seems like the italians got the British to consent with their expansion in Eritrea...
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But of course!
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[HerrDan]

We started the construction of the Kiel Kanal, this work is very important for us, it'll make it easier to defend our coast in case tension with the british escalates into war...
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New crisis involving the british (as always!), this time with France...

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British arrogance never fail to amazes me...

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Well I'd like to have your opinion guys about what happened here...
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Sir Lloyd Mathews joined our forces along with the natives forces after we annexed Zanzibar, I think it's very strange, but amusing somehow, has he deserted the british to join The German Reich?

[Kensai]

Great pace! And you are keeping your inflation under control (in respect to me that I let it float!). Are you investing in any particular type of R&D?

[HerrDan]

Hi Kensai, it's very good to know that you're enjoying my AAR, that's very motivating.
By R&D you mean Research and Development?

[HerrDan]

We already have the chance to assert a protectorate over Kuwait, but I don't want to over expand and act too much ahistorically, in this game I intend to not deviate too much from history, I just want to make some diferent decisions here and there, like my plans for intervening more directly in the spanish-american war (what in fact almost happened in real history), have a stronger navy than Germany had in real history and of course win the first world war, again, all of these examples were quite conceivable in real history.

Kensai can you explain what happened with Sir Lloyd Mathews? I was confused by that, although I'm not unhappy about it (it's always good to have one extra general) I centainly didn't understand.

[Jim-NC]

We started the construction of the Kiel Kanal, this work is very important for us, it'll make it easier to defend our coast in case tension with the british escalates into war...
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New crisis involving the british (as always!), this time with France...

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British arrogance never fail to amazes me...

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Well I'd like to have your opinion guys about what happened here...
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Sir Lloyd Mathews joined our forces along with the natives forces after we annexed Zanzibar, I think it's very strange, but amusing somehow, has he deserted the british to join The German Reich?

A bug I think. My guess is that he was in a stack with one of the units that converted to your nation as a result of the annexation (the picture covers the colonial brigade portrait to his right, but I think that may have been a British colonial brigade). Did you notice if there was a British garrison before the annexation? It's possible that Britain had created some units before you took control.

[loki100]

that crisis worked out well for you ... anything that costs GB prestige is good news

[HerrDan]

A bug I think. My guess is that he was in a stack with one of the units that converted to your nation as a result of the annexation (the picture covers the colonial brigade portrait to his right, but I think that may have been a British colonial brigade). Did you notice if there was a British garrison before the annexation? It's possible that Britain had created some units before you took control.

Yes that's my guess as well, Sir Lloyd Mathews served in Zanzibar and eventually became prime minister there and thus served under Zanzibar army in some conflicts in east africa, but that's supposed to happen later, my doubt is if the bug that brought him to my army was out of british troops or Zanzibar's army, anyway that feel a little awkward but it's not a big issue anyway (not bad to have an extra good general).

Yes Loki, that crisis was great for us, I laughed when I heard about it.

[HerrDan]

We couldn't be more happy about sir Lloyd Mathews decision to join our forces, he proved a very capable commander when we sent him to quell the rebellion in Ostafrika. Here's the report we got from the first battle:

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[HerrDan]

After much deliberation we finally decided to declare Kuwait our protectorate, with our relations with the Ottomans improving we must to use this oportunity to establish a foothold in the Persian Gulf before the british do.
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[HerrDan]

Another crisis between France and Britain, but this time it ended up being bad for the french (and as bad for ourselves).
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Tension is high between Germany and Great Britain over the control of Solomon Islands, many within Germany think that it's a great moment for war, as we are at the moment in a great position in Europe, our alliance with Austria and Italy almost gives us a guarantee that no other power would intervene against us, besides that, we could count on two powerful allies in case things go wrong. Still I'm hesitant to take such a harsh decision, I think we still need some time to build a stronger navy and to stabilish ourselves better in our colonies.
We need patience.

[loki100]

does seem as if the French and British really do not like each other ...

if you are going for war with Britain, I'd suggest enough transports to move 3 big armies at any one time and then start thinking of how you intend to invade key regions such as S Africa and India and try to ensure you have overwhelming strength in one theatre.

[HerrDan]

Fortunately they don't like each other, until now.
I'm still hesitant to make such a move, I was thinking about something like a small colonial conflict, as I didn't think it was feasible to invade their mainland.
We still have to draw a plan for such a war.

[HerrDan]

Loki do you know if I'll ever get more naval bases to build? I was distracted and I realised now I can't build more naval bases.

[HerrDan]

A small incident on the frontier between France and Germany almost led to a war between our countries, although some argued that a war with France at the moment could be beneficial for Germany, we decided it wasn't the moment for such a conflict, as we still have matters to settle with Great Britain and such a move could maybe approximate them. So for now we decided to avoid war.
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[HerrDan]

We signed a treaty with The Russian Empire, just in case the crisis between us and the french goes out of control...
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...and it seems like we don't need to worry about the possibility of France and Great Britain uniting forces against us.
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[loki100]

Loki do you know if I'll ever get more naval bases to build? I was distracted and I realised now I can't build more naval bases.

I would guess that what you have is the total, in an 1850 game I'd expect more to be made available about this stage but that should be coded into the 1880 start (Kensai may have a better idea here). Do you mean colonial bases or those you can build at home? In either case, I'd suggest you are better off increasing the size of your existing ones (more supplies/range) than building lots more.

Impressed to see a 3rd Franco-British crisis, they really are not being very cordial to each other

[HerrDan]

As I'm not able to build more naval bases I'm upgrading some harbours to naval bases, and yeah they really hate each other, I've seen a 4th crisis 2 turns ago. I'm finding it amusing, as I'll have to deal with one of them sooner or later, so at least I can guess that they won't try to help each other.

I'm considering going to war with Britain, because (among other reasons) I think that my non-agressive stance isn't helping me in gaining prestige, I'm still around 43% of the enough amount to win the game.

[HerrDan]

Kuwait is almost completelly ours:

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And Marokko our new target for this year of 1888...

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With the control over Marokko assured it will be much easier to dominate the mediterranean sea (and btw Tangier is very close to Gibraltar...).
On the diplomatic arena we are in the best possible position, I think this year is the best possible date to declare war on the british, they are isolated and we have the support of our powerful alliance, they won't stand a chance!
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Our economy is also the most developed in the World...
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We definitely have NOTHING to fear! Tomorrow belongs to us!
(here's the song Tomorrow belongs to me)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pDBq_Y-BPLA

[HerrDan]

Well, my router broke, so I was without internet for these last days, now I got a new one, so if you're following my AAR, that's the reason why I didn't update it during these days (as if anyone cared...).
As people are giving me almost no feedback or comments, questions etc... I'm thinking about stop writing this AAR, as it's really not very motivating to write an AAR without these kind of feedback, it's very frustrating indeed.

I had a war with Spain, but I will only continue this AAR if I see people are interested in it. I guess I'm not really good at writing an AAR (or my english is too bad, or maybe both!)...

[havi]

No Dont quit writing it is intresting. I don't have this game but I'm thinking of buying it and this is really intresting what u have going on so please do continue..

[loki100]

can understand the frustration, but it would be good to see this carry on. Not least it is useful to understand the differences between the 1880 and the 1850 scenario. In a lot of games a 'late start' scenario is usually a bit second best but in PoN it seems as if the 1800 scenario is a completely different game

war with Spain is good, lots of nice colonies you can take off them

[HerrDan]

No Dont quit writing it is intresting. I don't have this game but I'm thinking of buying it and this is really intresting what u have going on so please do continue..

It's great to know that you're enjoying and thinking about purchasing the game, it shows my AAR is worth it somehow. This helped me decide to go on. Thank you!

[HerrDan]

can understand the frustration, but it would be good to see this carry on. Not least it is useful to understand the differences between the 1880 and the 1850 scenario. In a lot of games a 'late start' scenario is usually a bit second best but in PoN it seems as if the 1800 scenario is a completely different game

war with Spain is good, lots of nice colonies you can take off them

Yes, I decided to start this war with them, mainly because of their pacific colonies, and because we needed to test our armies before a confrontation with the british, that seems by now almost unavoildable. The war was short, it started with some confrontation in Marokko between colonial troops, where no decisive battle took place. We tried to invade spanish guinea from our Kamerun, but we couldn't get a foothold there and we ended up retreating. The war was mostly decided at the sea, where our Kriegsmarine shined, we imposed a heavy blockade to spanish ports and this was decisive to our victory, but after some time, we got to conclude that this wasn't enough to bring Spain to its knee, or that it would take maybe too long to bring them to their knees this way, so we took the most dificult decision that was to land troops in Spain, I knew the risks were high, but if we wanted to finish this war quickly enough to avoid intervention from another power we needed to take our troops to Madrid quickly.

We ended up landing two armies in Spain, one led by Georg von Sachsen (later replaced by Moltke himself) and another led by Ludwig von Hesse. The spanish army avoided major confrontation and we advanced smoothly from Oviedo and Bilbao to the doors of Madrid, at the point Spain sued for peace.

With the peace treaty we acquired Carolinas, Marianas and Guam from Spain, which strengthened our position on the Pacific Ocean.