Aru Harru Blitannia! (Vicky 2 AAR)

[Oberon]

So, last April I started a new Victoria II game as the United Kingdom, last night I finally finished it after playing it on and off. Vanilla Heart of Darkness game with a few twists and turns which I will document below.

First, stand for the national anthem:





We begin in 1836, but aside from colonial consolidation, little happens until Holland attacks Belgium late in the 1830s. Belgium calls upon her British ally, who easily kicks the Dutch back over the border. Holland, not so easily swayed, decides to import Spanish and Russian help and try again in 1845.
It didn't end well for them, and afterwards they gave up and accepted Belgium as an entity.



After this, the world continued much as in this timeline, except for the failure of the North German Federation to create Germany when Britain intervened in the German Brothers war and consistently beat the NGF, thus preventing the Germans from forcing Austria to admit hegemony.
Britain expected that eventually Germany would form and the battle for control over the continent would soon come, so was constantly expanding her armed forces, whilst colonising Africa and releasing Dominions to reduce 'Badboy' (infamy), this expansion resulted in an interesting event in 1887 when Britannia gained a Cassus Belli on a nation she'd just conquered (Transvaal IIRC):



Britain alone could not hold back the tide forever though, and eventually in 1895, after a Great War in which the North German Federation and Italy attacked and defeated France, Austria and Russia (Russia being overrun ridiculously easily since it refused to mobilise for some strange reason), the NGF finally forced Austria to admit hegemony and created the German Empire, Austria promptly collapsed and became Austria-Hungary. The stage was set.



It may be noted in the above picture the lack of British naval forces, please note however that this picture was taken during the crash course upgrade program of the late 1890s when naval bases were being built wherever Britain could build them, and the Ironclads and Monitors being scrapped in favour of the more resource intensive pre-Dreadnought Battleships.


HMS Ramilles, a 'Royal Sovereign' class pre-dreadnought, 1892

By 1901 tensions on the continent were beginning to grow, it was clear that the first Great War which had created Germany would not be the last, Britain was determined to steer clear of as many Great Wars as she could, particularly after witnessing how utterly useless Austria, France and Russia had been in the first one. Italy, on the other hand, decided to invent an offensive attitude...how Italian...


The Italian offensive doctrine in full swing...



Inevitably war broke out in Europe again, this time the focal point being the contested territory of Alsace-Lorraine, France and her allies had a clear military advantage in this war...and yet, proving Britains suspicions of French and Russian incompetence, the war ended in the defeat of France and her allies as Russia was once again completely overrun by German forces, driving the war score in favour of the German Alliance.

Strange things began to happen after the Second Great War, firstly Dutch troops were spotted sharing drinks and stories with Indian troops in North-west India. They were pointed in the direction of Holland and eventually went home.



Then in 1909, the world woke up one morning to find that Belgium had gone communist...



Then Austria-Hungary called all her allies into war to aid against a fearsome adversary in the form of Trieste...



Which was overrun before most of the aforementioned allies could even get there to help...

In the 1910s, another Great war broke out between the rivals of the 2nd Great War, the 3rd Great War ended in another German victory, and France had been utterly crippled, barely able to raise two troops to fight the rebels which were overrunning her. Her ally Austria-Hungary was in a similar state, and it was only the size of Russia which seemed to keep it from imploding under its own incompetence.
With France relatively isolated and most of her forces in a war against Belgium, Britain looked at the small French speck in her Indian Raj and decided to act. It was a rather ridiculously lop-sided affair, and so began the Fourth Great war...



Once the initial French defending force had been overrun, the biggest opposition coming from Communist and Anarchist rebels which were springing up quite literally like wildfires. France was soon occupied by British forces, who moved on through their ally Switzerland into Austria-Hungary.



British forces joined her allies in Austria-Hungary and pushed onwards, passing Canadian, Siamese and Japanese soldiers on the way.


British tanks pushing across the lowlands of Austria-Hungary carrying trench-filling devices.


British troops, fresh from Raj duties, pass Japanese forces outside Fiume (now known as Rijeka)

Japan took the opportunity of its alliance with the most dominant military power in the world, to take a stab at some Pacific Dutch holdings. The British were only too happy to keep the Japanese on side, and so in a brief side show of the Fourth Great War, British forces entered and again overran Holland, which, defeated, collapsed in on itself in a Communist revolution, and as the Fourth Great War came to an end, France also went Communist briefly, and then it went Anarcho-Liberal, and then Communist again, alternating between the two in a state of near constant revolution for the next decade. Austria-Hungary was forced by Britain to release its Polish states, which amounted to a small stretch of provinces near the German border.



Communist Holland gets a really cool flag....



During the 1920s, whilst Britain began to lag behind in industry and prestige, there was no question that it had the most dominant military force in the world, with the dock expansion program enabling the Royal Navy to sortee dozens of Dreadnought warships which were the Queens of the sea wherever they sailed.


Orion class Dreadnoughts of the High Seas Fleet in 1921