1847
Uristia on the War Path
The world has gone mad.
Pretext: Things were moving along swimmingly, despite our tightening coal supply, and the Council of Governors 1845 was held under the typical conditions. Krorko and Ace were elected the most bad-ass of all nations.
Not a week later, this brief was landed on my desk without any forewarning.
This put us in an interesting position. We had no relations of consequence with the industrial giant Ace, and could benefit from our alliance with the Siss by piggybacking upon their war. Of course, we stood to lose everything should the war go sour. I signed our war declaration the following day. Our military was due for a test of mettle, after all, and I thought, this may be our opportunity to seize the coal we need.
So imagine my surprise when I read this in the paper!
This wasnīt
our petty war with Ace, this was a world war! Everybody had ganged up on the poor bastards. I felt like a shithead, but at the same time reassured that we probably wouldnīt get steamrolled by an Ace invasion. Letīs think of it as an anti-trust thing - Ace is frighteningly large and powerful. Krorko probably conceived the whole thing, to eliminate their most worthy opposition.
So, we went to war! I eyeballed the provinces of Aceīs homeland, and found them all to be well-fortified. A more tantalizing scheme was to seize their resource rich colonies. In particular, Cecilo looked the most supple and resource-rich, and would make a geographically simple acquisition since we already share a land border with the country and our ships were already dominant in the area.
In the spring of 1845, I moved the requisite pieces into place. Our ships established a beachhead on the Rica coast, the westernmost province of Cecilo, and we landed a sizeable force there in the summer of that year. Lord General Slowpoke was in charge of this amphibious landing, while General Ehndras was tasked with getting the second wave of troops prepared for their campaign back in Uristia City.
We trounced the colonial defenders, who were a small force armed with obsolete weapons. We seized the gem and coal mines of the province, and set an engineer soon after to building a port for the export of this precious booty to Uristia.
Our troops stormed to a glorious victory the following season by taking Same, to the east, a province rich in gems and iron. This battle was revealing - our troops, nearly entirely modernized by this point, crushed a defensive force of comparable size with low casualties, inflicting dreadful carnage amongst the defenders. Despite being the forces of a great power such as Ace, the majority of the army was still armed with obsolete weapons and could not hold their ground against our sophisticated, veteran troops.
Meanwhile, I ordered the
Boatmurdered to enforce a blockade on Cecilo City while a flotilla of our other ships maintained vigorous patrol along the western coastline. I imagine Ace would be hurting terribly from the loss of iron, coal, and especially two gem mines, but our occupation was uncontested. Surely Ace has enough fronts to fight on already...
While our troops recuperated and established control in these two provinces, a naval war was underway all over the world, sinking Ace ships everywhere they could be found. We had some small scuffles of our own, and our ships performed admirably.
In the Spring of 1846, flush with confidence from our victories in west Cecilo, I ordered a massive attack on the capitol of Cecilo, with an army 38,000 strong, representing almost our entire elite force and with a shared command between generals LordSlowpoke and Ehndras.
If only we had known the enemy army possessed 18 units of heavy artillery, perhaps we would have thought twice.
It was an inferno of destruction and carnage. Tens of thousands were slain, on both sides. We fought like lions, but we were turned back, with grievous casualties. We gave as good as we got, though, leaving dozens of enemy regiments obliterated. Perhaps half the defensive army, which significantly outnumbered our own, was completely destroyed. Most of the Ace troops were unmodernized and suffered tremendously at the ends of our breech-loading rifles and rifled artillery. Yet, the enemy barrage hammered us into a bloody defeat. The surviving troops:
Only the generals survived, interestingly. Never seen these units die.
Lord General Slowpoke himself was vaporized by an Ace shell late in the struggle, as he galloped through cannon smoke along a strategic ridgeline while bellowing orders, waving his saber, and clenching a huge tobacco pipe in his bearded jaws.
His honorable contribution to our cause will not be forgotten, especially for the Oleikale campaign of 1836-37. May Armok find good work for him in the mines of Heaven.
The Ace contingent even launched a counterattack shortly after the legendary battle, and our bloodied soldiers
still turned them back despite their ragged condition. Those men are heroes!
Since the 1846 campaign, our troops have been recuperating in Same province. Our port was completed in Rica, and now is exporting coal and $1000 worth of precious GEMS! to Uristia every season. Ace has not mustered an invasion force to retake their provinces, struggling as they are with the rest of the Major powers. Meanwhile, Iīve been raising regiments back home to replace the fallen.
New, expensive technology is available: Advanced iron working, which allows the production of ironclads! This means that soon (10 years?) our ships of the line will become obsolete hulks. Nevertheless, try to get excited about our new ship. Thereīs two more on the way, also.
Author
Topic: Letīs play Imperialism! Hail Uristia - We have colonies. (Read 29774 times)