How Many is a Brazilian? : To speak the utter and absolute truth, I had in fact intended to fight a war with Brazil this session, for the sake of the three provinces that would have turned Yngling Guyana into a fully-useful ten-province colonial nation. What I had not intended to do was to be attacked by Brazil, allied with Atlassia and also with the Latin Empire. With thirty Brazilian regiments, thirty Atlassian regiments, and thirty Space Marine Chapters Latin regiments on the South American mainland, there was evidently no way for me to win the land war, even with English support. My war goal, therefore, became to get out of the war without losing my Caribbean islands, which were also demanded; for this purpose I could at least use my fleet – which, however, was numerically superior to Ranger’s or Dragoon’s, but not both. I was, therefore, very happy but somewhat surprised by the battle of Cape Orange, in which my 55 heavy ships engaged 114 (!) enemy ones supported by 30 galleys, and emerged victorious. This was partly due to my highly superior admiral, who by my calculations should get 11 heavies into the line of battle against my opponents’ 9 – which by Lanchester’s Laws works out to a 50% advantage – and partly from Ranger neglecting to upgrade his fleet, so that his ancient carracks were facing my galleons. Even so, it seems possible that Dragoon might have won the battle if he had kept his nerve; but seeing Ranger’s ships sink like so many stones, he concluded that I had some policy or other advantage which was making my ships impossibly superior, and retreated, losing – in his own words – “only 4 ships, the rest escaped” from fighting a force half the size of his own. With the resulting sea control, I was able to seize James’s Caribbean islands (which I had intended to colonise myself, so I was quite satisfied to get them after all) and repulse two attempts to get troops into Cuba by stealth. The net result was that I lost Yngling Guyana, but gained exactly the two provinces I needed to turn my Caribbean colonies into a ten-province CN. I may actually have come out of the war stronger, in spite of technically losing, since I went from having two colonial nations short of the ten-province limit, to having one that was just over it.

: To speak the utter and absolute truth, I had in fact intended to fight a war with Brazil this session, for the sake of the three provinces that would have turned Yngling Guyana into a fully-useful ten-province colonial nation. What I had not intended to do was to be attacked by Brazil, allied with Atlassia and also with the Latin Empire. With thirty Brazilian regiments, thirty Atlassian regiments, and thirty Latin regiments on the South American mainland, there was evidently no way for me to win the land war, even with English support. My war goal, therefore, became to get out of the war without losing my Caribbean islands, which were also demanded; for this purpose I could at least use my fleet – which, however, was numerically superior to Ranger’s or Dragoon’s, but not both. I was, therefore, very happy but somewhat surprised by the battle of Cape Orange, in which my 55 heavy ships engaged 114 (!) enemy ones supported by 30 galleys, and emerged victorious. This was partly due to my highly superior admiral, who by my calculations should get 11 heavies into the line of battle against my opponents’ 9 – which by Lanchester’s Laws works out to a 50% advantage – and partly from Ranger neglecting to upgrade his fleet, so that his ancient carracks were facing my galleons. Even so, it seems possible that Dragoon might have won the battle if he had kept his nerve; but seeing Ranger’s ships sink like so many stones, he concluded that I had some policy or other advantage which was making my ships impossibly superior, and retreated, losing – in his own words – “only 4 ships, the rest escaped” from fighting a force half the size of his own. With the resulting sea control, I was able to seize James’s Caribbean islands (which I had intended to colonise myself, so I was quite satisfied to get them after all) and repulse two attempts to get troops into Cuba by stealth. The net result was that I lost Yngling Guyana, but gained exactly the two provinces I needed to turn my Caribbean colonies into a ten-province CN. I may actually have come out of the war stronger, in spite of technically losing, since I went from having two colonial nations short of the ten-province limit, to having one that was just over it. Brokehemia : Already deep in debt from dealing with a disaster and the resulting rebellions, Yami decided to lean into it; he maximised his loans, spent the money on productive assets, and declared bankruptcy – trusting in his status as the Designated Buffer Zone of Europe to protect him from attack; to be fair, it’s not as though his armies could have fought off any of his neighbours even without the crippling morale penalty. This immoral defrauding of the investors who had in good faith bought Bohemian government bonds worked, of course, perfectly; for questions of right arise only between equals in power, and the strong do what they can, while the weak suffer what they must. Bohemia, it is true, is counted the least of the Powers of Europe; but its investors are – more accurately, they were – only wealthy men, merchants and nobles and perhaps even some capitalists, and they can no more fight Prague than they can fight Rome. Nevertheless, for this evil act there must be, sooner or later – and I choose my words with care – an accounting and a reckoning. How can men do business, if sovereigns can merely break their sworn word, and go unpunished?

: Already deep in debt from dealing with a disaster and the resulting rebellions, Yami decided to lean into it; he maximised his loans, spent the money on productive assets, and declared bankruptcy – trusting in his status as the Designated Buffer Zone of Europe to protect him from attack; to be fair, it’s not as though his armies could have fought off any of his neighbours even without the crippling morale penalty. This immoral defrauding of the investors who had in good faith bought Bohemian government bonds worked, of course, perfectly; for questions of right arise only between equals in power, and the strong do what they can, while the weak suffer what they must. Bohemia, it is true, is counted the least of the Powers of Europe; but its investors are – more accurately, they were – only wealthy men, merchants and nobles and perhaps even some capitalists, and they can no more fight Prague than they can fight Rome. Nevertheless, for this evil act there must be, sooner or later – and I choose my words with care – an accounting and a reckoning. How can men do business, if sovereigns can merely break their sworn word, and go unpunished? Bohemoth : Yami also finally managed to integrate Poland into Bohemia, making him vastly stronger; Bohemia matters to the balance of power in Europe, now. It is still, I’d say, least among the powers; but it is no longer negligible.

: Yami also finally managed to integrate Poland into Bohemia, making him vastly stronger; Bohemia matters to the balance of power in Europe, now. It is still, I’d say, least among the powers; but it is no longer negligible. Yue’re Fired : There was a war in China, when Blayne moved against his former tributary in Yue, which is somewhat similar to me moving against Bohemia – that is to say, the war was nasty, brutal, and short. Blayne claims that he originally intended only to take a few border provinces, and was goaded into the

actually-applied crippling peace by the Discord chatter, in which

several people did assert that he could either make the peace

crippling, or face a coalition when the truce was over. The

traditional cry of “Death to China” may also have been raised by

some veteran players. At any rate Gutrage did not care to continue

playing what was left of Yue.

: There was a war in China, when Blayne moved against his former tributary in Yue, which is somewhat similar to me moving against Bohemia – that is to say, the war was nasty, brutal, and short. Blayne claims that he originally intended only to take a few border provinces, and was goaded into the actually-applied crippling peace by the Discord chatter, in which several people did assert that he could either make the peace crippling, or face a coalition when the truce was over. The traditional cry of “Death to China” may also have been raised by some veteran players. At any rate Gutrage did not care to continue playing what was left of Yue. Hermit Kingdom : The word ‘hermit’ comes from the Greek ‘eremites’, “of the desert”; hence it means to be alone, to inhabit uninhabited lands. We have unfortunately lost Vaniver to the pressures of Real Life ™, and thus Korea is now in truth eremitic, uninhabited.

: The word ‘hermit’ comes from the Greek ‘eremites’, “of the desert”; hence it means to be alone, to inhabit uninhabited lands. We have unfortunately lost Vaniver to the pressures of Real Life ™, and thus Korea is now in truth eremitic, uninhabited. Chili Con Khanage : I want to be clear that this is entirely Dragoon’s fault; obviously, left to my own devices, I would never dream of attacking someone with whom I have a land border and who has a bigger army than me. But Dragoon – whose chosen gamer name, you will observe, is cognate with ‘Dragon’, as in, “and the Dragon fought, and his angels” – Dragoon, I say, tempted me with an alliance, and there was the victory card, just inside Khan’s border, right on the Rhine… So I mustered the black-clad army of the Ynglings on the North German plain, and marched, as I have done before, upon Eindhoven. But, although the mercantile Ynglings of this timeline are hardly a match for the grim warrior nation that the pressure of constant defeat created in the first Great Game, it is also true that the Occitanians are no Burgundians. Khan, clearly overawed by the immense fleet of dragon-headed ships blockading his English Channel coast, surrendered as soon as he realised what he was up against, and Westphalia and the North Rhineland came into my possession without a shot fired.

: I want to be clear that this is entirely Dragoon’s fault; obviously, left to my own devices, I would never dream of attacking someone with whom I have a land border and who has a bigger army than me. But Dragoon – whose chosen gamer name, you will observe, is cognate with ‘Dragon’, as in, “and the Dragon fought, and his angels” – Dragoon, I say, tempted me with an alliance, and there was the victory card, just inside Khan’s border, right on the Rhine… So I mustered the black-clad army of the Ynglings on the North German plain, and marched, as I have done before, upon Eindhoven. But, although the mercantile Ynglings of this timeline are hardly a match for the grim warrior nation that the pressure of constant defeat created in the first Great Game, it is also true that the Occitanians are no Burgundians. Khan, clearly overawed by the immense fleet of dragon-headed ships blockading his English Channel coast, surrendered as soon as he realised what he was up against, and Westphalia and the North Rhineland came into my possession without a shot fired. How Many is a Mexican?: The Mexican trade node opened, and the wolves descended like Assyrians on Jerusalem; I was fortunate enough to end up with most of the gold provinces. However, in my preoccupation with chasing the spear-chucking savages out of their fortresses, I utterly forgot that South Africa had opened as well, and neglected to get a colony that would give me a stepping stone towards India.

Cape Orange in non-Wiki form.

Europe and the Americas, 1641. Note the Yngling blue in Mexico, and the disappearance of Yngling Guyana.

Asia, 1641, showing the crippling loss of Vaniver.