At about the mid-game, two simultaneous and independent revolutions broke out inside Imperial Russia and the Ottoman Empire. The Ottoman Revolution represented a moment of solidarity between the disgruntled parties of the Empire while the Russian Revolution was a foreign-backed affair of international intrigue. It appears Lenin had received the emotional endorsement of the socialist/communists who had arisen in France and the Anti-Russian Hawks of Germany. Capitalizing on this, the Russian Poles declared independence from both the Tsarists and the Revolutionaries and secured international recognition from Great Britain, the Austro-Hungarians, and others.

While I was planning on elongating the conflict to multiple turns to allow for the chance for foreign and internal factions to respond and scheme, both the Russians and Ottomans immediately hunkered down for an internal diplomatic end to the revolts. The Arab-led Coalition of disgruntled minorities settled down in return for greater autonomy, democratic reforms, minority protections, and the access to regional government positions. In Russia, the Russian factions settled on a new constitutional monarchy setup under the Grand Duke (ousting the Tsar) with Lenin as Prime Minister. This new government had non-specific economic policies and appeared by-and-large to not be very different from the previous government. The revolts were a mere flash from a time perspective but many of the Ottoman and Russian players highlighted those moments as their favorite from the game. The revolts also importantly kicked off the cascading series of invasions that solidified the end of the German Empire.

Germany up until this point had been cycling through Prime Ministers as the Kaiser (and team moderator) reshuffled the cabinet whenever the previous PM failed to live up to the absurd demands of the Kaiser or utter something about progressive income taxes. This periodic reshuffling along with the break-neck speed of the game led to a lack of consistency in foreign policy and a number of incidents where activist Prime Ministers got away with acting unilaterally instead through team consensus. This will be monitored and tightened for future games, but admittedly led to exciting results!

Despite the Kaiser, Germany’s future looked promising. France seemed content with winning the Chocolate War and Russia was in disarray. Germany further succeeded in convincing the other major powers to allow them to annex Luxembourg. They also secured a mutual defense pact with the Ottoman Empire and incorporated Bulgaria into the German Empire as a junior partner (later discovered to be a unilateral move by the PM at the time).