Problem is that we're in the middle of Europe and since NATO appears to be active everyone will defend each other (so far). Going into Africa will allow us to tap more resources in lightly-defended and poorly-managed nations.

There's a whole string of nations down there to be messed with and conquered. The Netherlands has done it before, let's reclaim the Empire!

That's exactly what I was trying to say before. We can't attack the high-value targets, because they'll gang up on us. Though I agree with flarecobra in saying that we need to stabilise our country and prepare economically for war. But we've already raised infrastructure spending, and we haven't had a disaster in a while, so we should be ok.

Is there any way to use covert ops to increase the scale of the middle-east conflict, to embroil more countries in the battle? We benefit from instability.

Bring Iran and Saudi Arabia into the Israel-Syria War?

Exactly! Iran, Saudi Arabia, throw Egypt into the mix and you have a great big pie of instability, with the USA embroiled in it. With any luck, Turkey will get pulled in and then the Nato's involved, making it an official continental clusterfuck. We either cut ourselves a slice of the resource-rich areas, or exploit the world's inattention to invade a country or seven. I'm just not sure if that's possible, but if it is we should attempt it.

Ok, I've read the thread now and the impression I get is that we're all trying to pull this in different directions. I think we'd benefit from coming together and figuring out what exactly what it is we're trying to do here. Military world conquest? Covert ops kingmaking?

I, for one, think the world has gone far too long with no real leadership and who better than us to take the reins!

Edit: However, I think we need to build up quite a bit more before we can make any overt moves. In the meantime, we should turn our society into a thing of wonder admired the world over!

To wit, what exactly is the effect of legalizing abortion and same sex marriage and polygamy(if they aren't already)?

Well, what we want is world domination, eventually. To do that, we need to build up our power base. Economic power. And military power.

Economic power: We're strong. But not quite strong enough. The Netherlands don't have enough resources to significantly influence other countries through trade. Nobody's going to keel over and die if we stop exporting whatever it is they buy from us. For now we'll just keep strengthening our economy, so we can support the military sector.

Military power:
This included armed forces as well as covert ops. We've been progressing here, building up covert forces as well as infantry and advancing whatever research we've been involved in. We're fairly good already, and have potential to advance a lot further, so we can actually afford to challenge some high-value targets. High-value targets are targets whose defeat and conquering would bring us significant strategic and economic advantages. Pretty much anything with a lot of people and resources. We can't exert much military force, however, since our immediate neighbors are all allied and an assault against one of them would result in them wiping us out. In other words, we cannot apply our military force fully due to a network of alliances.

Options:

Strike against Sweden and/or Finland:
Benefits:
Would bring both countries under our control, giving us increased access to resources
Both countries close to home, easy to defend
Demerits:
They're both fairly closely allied with a lot of European countries, attacking them might annoy some of our neighbors. We don't want to aggravate anyone who's bigger than us.
We'd need some time to strengthen our forces before we could take on both countries

Probable method: Strengthen Navy and Infantry forces, begin assault by attacking the weaker of the two, landing troops and then taking our the stronger one, once forces have been built up. Use covert forces to weaken the stronger's infrastructure and the weaker's defenses beforehand, as well as sullying both country's international image, so we don't elicit too much outrage when we attack.

Strike against an African nation:

Benefits:
Africa's resource-rich as well as unstable, making an invasion fairly easy, as we wouldn't have to worry about upsetting any allies or facing strong military opposition
Demerits:
We would annoy a few of the larger countries and possibly alienate our own population by just attacking.
Our target would be faaar away. We'd need a lot of air and sea power to stage the attack and even more to uphold supply lines until our new colony is self-sufficient. Due to the unstable nature of the area, we probably wouldn't find too many allies willing to help us. We could probably establish a presence, but keeping that presence there would be very financially draining.

Method:
Establish a large Navy, coast up to one country or another, drop all our dudes on their coast. Take over the country. Rinse and repeat with the next one along the coast. Use covert forces to further destabilize the target beforehand.

Attack against the middle east:

Benefits: The situation's already unstable, so attacking now would probably benefit us in the long term without us meeting too signficant resistance.

Demerits:
Same as Africa. Far away, difficult to reinforce, difficult to benefit economically.

March 17, 2004

After reading over your posts, I completely forgot what time period we were dealing with...

HEY! U.S.! LOOK OVER THERE! WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION WHAARGARBL!!!

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v6...enary/sp30.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v6...enary/sp31.jpg

I was hoping more countries would join in to defend Iraq, I even threw out the idea to a couple of them, but I guess Saddam just doesn't have many friends. To garner some further hatred, I convinced the U.S. to annex Iraq. If you guys don't like this, I can always revert to a save I made before it happened. Now, the U.S. world relations look something like this:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v6...enary/sp32.jpg

The Syria-Israel War ended with a Syrian surrender after losing most of their forces, but they maintained all of their land, Israel got its land back.

We have lots and lots of options, unfortunately, none of those countries would volunteer to start a war with the Americans. It would have to be the Americans going after them. And in an effort to stay somewhat realistic, the only wars I might be interested in starting would be between Iran/North Korea and the U.S.

What say you?

neither would appear to benefit us much I say we continue to collect taxes and build infastructure and industry so that we might be in a better position to enact our wishes at a later date. A slight bump to higher interest rates looks unavoidable I would suggest droping healthcare spending by a percentage point or two as well.

What we need is a boost to our own image, so that we might take another country without it looking like we're the bad guys. To this end, I propose using SD-1 to attack ourselves. A simple terrorist bombing will certainly draw sympathies from the rest of the UN. The catch of course; we blame it on Denmark. This gives us a valid enough reason to mobilize against them without it looking like we're the bad guys.

Simoutaneously, SD-2 and SD-3 will attack Libya and its neighbours, stirring up unrest in northern africa and breaking any alliances they might have. We can then profit from the ensuing conflict by offering arms deals to the losing side, giving them a sudden edge and keeping the war going on for longer, weakening all parties.

That then just leaves Isreal and Syria, who are ripe for further conflicts right now and still weak from the last war. Using SD-4 we shall stir up more trouble there once again, and further escalate the situation by bring Iran into the conflict. SD-5 will then attack America, blaming it on North Korea.

If we play this right, we should start a full scale world war, and in the confusion our "Peacekeeping" forces can take Denmark, Libya and Syria. Not bad for a days work.

In that case, let's have some real fun recreating the Old Kingdom.
Annex Suriname, the Antilles (although the Dutch Antilles should still be part of the Netherlands in the game) and Indonesia.
South Africa speaks for itself.

... actually, I think that's it, as far as the old colonies goes.
I guess Tasmania? I mean, it was discovered by the Dutch. So was Australia, if I recall correctly, though we never colonized it.

Then wage war on Spain, France, and England at the same time, while living on uneasy foot with Germany.

Problem would be that if the US would get horrifically pissy if we moved into the Americas (Suriname, the Antilles). South Africa and Indonesia are pretty powerful nations in their own rights, same with Australia.

It sucks being on the lower tier...

That's why we need to go for West Africa.
http://www.joli-ecotours.com/images/westafrica_xl.gif
Niger, Burkina Faso, Mali, and the coastal area from Senegal to Benin should be ripe pickings.

As Trade Commission Head, I would love to have those African resources to play with. Also, see if we can’t get in good with Egypt. Having the most stable and most powerful African nation on our side will be very helpful. Plus if we open trade with them then we can maybe get in on their textiles industry and help boslter our own.

What is the situation like in Darfur right now? We can easily spin that to our advantage by sending some of our highly trained troops and start defending the people from slaughter. We could play up the peacekeeping role and instead of declaring war or having a police action, we are there to keep the peace.

/edit: I say we should work on bolstering ties with Venezuala and Canada to get at the oil deposits so we don't have to be at the mercy of the Middle East when it comes to fossil fuel, while we work on alternate energy sources.

Fearless Leader? Are you there? :P

I notice the relations window you made up for the Iraq Attack deal...think you can show us how it looks for us?

.

Conquering any western african nation is tempting, but the quite large distances involved would make it difficult to reinforce and even more difficult to get the resources we produce there back to where we need them.

It's not much farther away than anything in the Middle East or the Caribbean. And, depending on how the game is set up, if we treat the locals better than their own governments were, they'll defend themselves for us.

Sorry, been working and such. I'll be starting up the game momentarily, but I'm thinking of reverting to the save I have after the Syria and Iraq wars, but before I triggered the annexation. I'd rather have it as relatively realistic as possible for now. And in the real world, the U.S. is only occupying Iraq.

Also, I'm all for increasing relations with Venezuala and Canada, but I'd like to know your opinions on going for Finland first, as opposed to west Africa. Not that I would be opposed to going directly for Africa if you were to command me to. Also, Hawk's idea about attacking ourselves didn't sound half bad, now that we're talking invading Africa.

Still March 17, 2004

-At the request and, might I add, genius of Mac I secured an economic partnership and common market with Canada. Venezuala was a bit more resistant, but we still worked out a partnership and, luckily, a cultural exchange which we can later use to construct a common market for their oil. It is too soon to see any real effects of any of this yet.

-The wars are winding down. Syria was finally pounded into submission and signed a cease fire today. The U.S. has destroyed all of Iraq's conventional forces, and are now simply sitting their fleets in the Gulf and bombarding the region with rockets. This should also end soon.

And, at Flare's request, our current relations with the world. Just to put things in perspective, anything around a 20% is considered "very good" and could be used for military trespassing or other deals. At 40% you get more into the area where we can start forming alliances. I've given billions of dollars in grants to nations before just to ramp up that rating. I've even sold nuclear technology.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v6...enary/SP35.jpg

What is the stance on having a nuclear arsenal? I am sure we can design weapons on the QT, but are we pro or anti nuke?

Well, I'd really like to know who Finland's allies are, but if we can screw with them economically to piss them off while still appearing to be not total dicks, we could attack ourselves, pin it on them and invade.

As for Africa, Lybia sounds nice.

Finland has no allies as far as I can see, is in pretty good standing with the world, and has a mostly random group of nations as their top "friends". Russia and some of NATO. To screw them economically, I don't think an embargo would be wise. But, maybe some light sabotage...

[Edit] And researching nuclear tech would cost $25 billion, take three years to complete, and make us a little unpopular.

Can we get a little breakdown of the possable threats to us in West Africa?

And some of those little countries are looking quite ripe....like a tasty orange...

And Syria's looking quite nice...perhaps we could "Help out" some of the other countries in military actions to get our troops some actual combat experance?

How unpopular are we talking here? And there is no way it could be done in secrecy?

We could take what's left of Syria if we enlisted about 5000 more grunts and built our air force up just a little more. The mideast might not like us much, though.

As for the African breakdown:

Mauritania, Senegal, Guinea-Bissau, Guinea, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Mali, Burkina Faso...essentially every nation on the west coast and a little inland we could mow through without stopping, as long as no one else joins in to stop us. Though, as we start more wars, our popularity will fall sharply. I'd stay away from Morocco though.

Mauritania, Guinea, and Burkina Faso are all the most...not hated...least liked on the continent. None of them have allies. Unfortunately, they aren't linked to each other. We would have to make some collateral damage if we decided to move in.

@Mac: We would recover from the hatred eventually, but say goodbye to any further economic deals. And from that point on, every move we make will be looked upon with added suspicion, like we're plotting something. It might even incite some people into building missile shields.

[Edit] Aaaaand Mauritania, the Congo, and Gabon all have the highest concentrations of resources in that area.

Hmmm...If we make a move on Africa, Mauritania sounds like a good starting point...

I'll also throw in my vote for Mauritania. Forces are currently standing by for deployment orders. Just rushing in, we have a small chance of drawing more people into the war than we want, or losing trade agreements, or getting embargos placed on our ass...but if you're all in, then I'm in. No guts, no glory.

By the way, where's our Chief of Staff...

>_>

What's our military standing at?

Instead of an invasion, why not destabilize the ruling power and we step in saying we are there to stabilize the country.

Might be best. But it'll take a lot of covert operations. And once again, Africa's far away. Our supply lines will be murder. We'll lose a lot of money in the short term.

Let's at least get Finland and build up our Navy before undertaking such an endeavor. Let's destabilize our target covertly, build up diplomatic relations with its neighbors in the meantime and prepare for a naval invasion of Finland.

Also, what high political rank can I have?

I vote to ally/get buddied with Finland's friends, bomb yourself and blame it on them, m plant evidence of corruption with their officials, whatever else you can ruin their reputation with, and invade. Get it out of the way, and I think we can handle the backlash.

Then move in to Mauritania, and we can talk further there.

At least with West Africa we wouldn't have to pass through anyone's territorial waters to get there (maybe Britain's), but with Finland - that can only be reached by sailing close to Norway, Sweden, and Denmark (the Kattegat). So we'd have a bottleneck in our connection there.

And it would most likely be costlier to invade Finland than the West Africa nations. They have more resources and manpower that can be applied against other areas of interest - other than being in Europe, what does Finland provide us?

The Netherlands would get it's lakes back. 'Cause we all know Finland steals everybody's lakes.

How's Special Advisor to the President sound? Really you can be anything you want, because everyone's giving opinions on everything lately regardless of their positions. In the beginning I aimed at making this more RP-like, but the way we're doing it is fine.

Loading up the game now. From what you guys have said, I plan on moving our covert ops into West Africa to begin the destabilization process. After that, I'll begin heavy diplomacy with Finland's friends to grant us a possible attack option. What would you guys say would be the best route to take, making everyone hate Mauritania? Or just being a general menace in the region, making everyone hate each other?

When everything's panned out a bit, we can see which way we would be better off going. When I was Burundi, I began by taking Rwanda, then during World War III which broke out of nowhere I moved into and conquered an empty India.

[Update]

March 21, 2004

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v6...enary/sp36.jpg

You'll see that we are most fortunate to have Mauritania suffering from a drought right now. And I looked up Finland's closest friends, and strangely, their closest friend is Sweden, who is also not an ally. All of NATO is very close to them, which may work in or against our favor. Since they are all NATO, they love us right now, which gives us a lot of room to do what we want, but they won't love us so much after this.

Their next closes friend is Russia, which I just finished signing a cultural exchange with. Sweden refused, but I feel it is more due to the financial upkeep of the treaty itself than its underlying principles. They won't harm us.

Yessssss...Destablization...anarchy! Then we come in and "Restore order and peace."
Oblivian is at hand!

Then we decide we wanna stay. :P

Since when did you become Megatron?

I concur. Charge up the loading ramp!

Flare was always Megatron, she just doesn't post much.

March 7, 2007

Okay, lots and lots of stuff...

-Our covert ops were successful in Senegal and Guinea-Bissau, but not Guinea itself. Our agents there are feared captured, killed, or worse. Terrorism was also attempted all along the western contingent from Liberia to Sierra Lione. All failed, but our agents were able to get away without leaving a trace. All units were then given a thorough talking to and sentenced to one year of hard training.

-An idea popped into my head while sending agents to Finland to conduct some surveillance. Why not terrorize them and blame Mauritania? We could kill two birds with one stone, destabilize Finland and create more furor towards M. All three attempts were successful and Finland is now on a razor's edge of war. All that would be needed is a little coersion...perhaps by us if the time is right.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v6...enary/sp38.jpg

-Because of all of these attacks, the western edge of Africa has just become a little more of a flashpoint. No activity as of yet, but I'm thinking that if we wait, it will come.

-Both Iraq and Syria announced plans to construct missile defense systems in the name of national security. Either they are very paranoid, or they know something we don't...

-We lost the '04 elections. -_- And no amount of reloads proved otherwise. I couldn't understand. We have nearly 80% approval and 90% stability. But, the public being as it is, I was forced to change our political system from two-party government to one-party to stay in power. The transition was surprisingly smooth and even proved beneficial to our economy.

-Speaking of the economy: Our's is absolutely booming due to our recent expansion of markets into China, Venezuela, and Canada. We have just celebrated the breach of the 101% resource mark and our unemployment rate has dropped from 18% to 13.3%. Per capita is around $30,000 and inflation is falling after our interest rate hit 20%. We still have a deficit, but it's manageable.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v6...enary/sp37.jpg

-Put half our army (all of our ground forces) through rigorous training which improved them to 39th ranked in the world.

-Republicans won '04 elections in the U.S. The cremation of Iraq continues longer than anyone expected with the city of Basra being under heavy fire for almost four years now.

My plan now is to maybe continue a few more attacks in Finland, then move into an actual NATO country nearby to get them on our side when we finally move in.

Sound plan. Shall we prepare the insulting e-mail to Finland, and have it sent from a W. Africa E-mail service? :P [/joke]

13.3% unemployment? What the hell are we doing over there? It should be around 6% at most! Get that infrastructure going. Communications. Healthcare. Transport. Should help our economy quite a bit, increase efficiency, lower costs.

I guess in the military sector everything is rolling... I have some proposals for long-term strategy:

We currently have 2 primary strategic targets: Northern Europe and Western Africa. There is one thing those two have in common: Energy. Both are, unless I'm mistaken, major suppliers of oil and gas to much of the western world. Hell, IRL Nigeria gets 80% of its GDP from this, and I think a lot of other nations along Western Africa aren't far behind. Not to mention that besides producing a lot of their own oil, I think Sweden, Finland and Norway have a lot of pipelines ferrying oil from Russia to Western nations.

So my proposal is more or less: Set up an energy monopoly. If we get the Northern European countries (Codename: Santa) and Western Africa (Code name: Falco), maybe reach into the middle east when our Navy and covert is better we can gain major control over what oil goes where without needing huge and expensive armies or even antagonizing the NATO too much. A lot of our work can be done through covert means or by diplomacy and in the end we come out with outposts all over the world and an excellent bargaining position when trading. We'll see whether the NATO gets pissy about Norway if they're dependent on us for energy.

So, what do you say?

And special presidential advisor sounds awesome. Do I get sunglasses and appear omniously at meeting? Do I get to make veiled threats?

Have we managed to set up a trade agreement with Egypt yet? They are one of the largest agriculture producers in Africa and they are also the most stable and powerful nation in that crap-pile of a continent.

All said it'd be a lot cheaper to ship food from them then to move it from China or the Americas. Also it gets supplies out of an area that we're going to be turning into a war-zone soon.

I encourage this. But only because then I can be suspicious of you and have guys tailing you and maybe order your assassination.

Mister Burke?
http://wikicheats.gametrailers.com/i...aton_burke.jpg

Why attack a NATO country btw? We are talking about a group that could kick our asses and turn the Netherlands into the Never Existed Lands?

I support more covert attacks on Maurtiana and Finland. Maybe attack ourselves and blame Finland on it.

I suggest not a direct attack yet. But I also suggest we get in the good with Egypt as others have said.

Plus what is the status of turning our universities into compulsory Military Schools?

When I said attack NATO, I meant terrorism framing Mauritania so NATO would then have a reason to hate them too.

Update probably coming at midnight.

I support an Invasion of Africa assuming this will eventually (in the next 2-4 years) will end up being economically beneficial.

If we stay in occupation of the area only, we can steal their resources, but let them keep their population and debt. Annexation may come later, depending on if we can support the land by that time. Or we can just oppress them.

After the terrorism in Africa, I plan on doing it to a couple NATO nations, then finally attacking ourselves to finish it off as we swoop in to "defend our freedom" and play hero. The attack on us has to be significant though, I'll probably end up assigning all of our cells to the task and setting the difficulty of the attack to high.

Cool. What's our funding for covert ops? Whatever it is, if we're going for the energy monopoly, it should be higher. And universities--> military schools= Big no-no. We have a pretty good advantage in quality of education, let's not squander that.

Do we have enough troops to "defend our freedom"? And, for that matter, enough ships?
What's the status of our military, in terms of strength?

Also, could you check which countries are major oil-producers?

Asked that.

Though I am curious about our navy and air forces.

Funding for everything is basically set as far as we can afford to go right now. Any further spending will just force us deeper into the money pit. Besides, I just splurged a bit on them. We now have three elite (lvl 3) cells, two level 2s, and one level 1. If you really want me to go all out I can, I mean it's not like we're going to go bankrupt. I just hate to see that red number get much higher.

10306 soldiers, 96th ranked
2391 armored units, 39th ranked
123 air force units, 52nd ranked
43 naval units, 24th ranked

We would wipe the floor with Mauritania. It wouldn't even be an issue. The issue would be if more than just the west coast joined in the war. But, we really have no choice as expanding the military any more right now would increase our debt even more. I say we take Mauritania. Build up our army there, then move on to the next target.

Nigeria, Angola, and Algeria are the largest producers in the region we're attacking. The ones next door to Mauritania have a modest amount. The largest producers in the world, though, are a bunch of as-of-yet unbeatable countries.

I'm sending the ops out now.

[Edit] Also, I'm a complete idiot. Our unemployment rate is 3.4%. That figure I posted earlier was our "below the poverty line stat".

What's the picture for Nigeria?


QUESTION: How does this game treat resources? Are there listings for everything or just generic "oil, minerals, etc."?

The most important question is: do we have missiles?

Let's do a little more destablizing there, and send in some to attack and occupy that place.

Then we build it back up in our own image.


And this just struck me. What kind of Government are we going to become? :P

Last I saw....no. We do not.

Never Forget
 

April 18, 2009
Address to the Nation

[BEGIN TRANSCRIPT]

Good evening.

People of the Netherlands, I come to you tonight not as your President, not as your leader, but as one of you. A citizen. It is on this day our nation joined the ranks of the United States, Great Britain, Spain and others as one of those who have suffered the effects of terrorism on their home soil. I can assure you that around the world, others are now sharing the heartbreak and sorrow you so personally felt this morning as the news broke.

On a day that began so positive, with the formation of new economic ties with Egypt, we were met with the worst catastrophe in our nation's history. The last time we sustained such loss of life was during World War II. It would be a sin, an act of degradation towards the lives of those who died, and towards our very principles and duties as human beings, to allow their deaths to be in vain. The time for mourning is now, but the time for action is swiftly approaching.

Analysis of evidence collected from the attack, surveillance videos, eyewitness reports, and forensics reveal the perpetrators almost certainly originated from the African nation of Mauritania. As you know, several months ago a string of violence erupted up and down the west coast of Africa which these same groups have already been linked to. It is also a matter of public record that our policy is to deal harshly and quickly with any country or entity that would harbor such murderers within their borders. And at this time, sanctions have failed to produce any substantive change in relations between us.

Shortly after the attack I ordered our entire army reserve, navy, and air force to ready status. At this moment they are converging in Rotterdam to prepare for deployment to and armed engagement with the nation of Mauritania. Their objective: find and destroy any who would plot harm against us or our allies. We will hunt them, we will find them, and we will put them to justice.

At this time I wish you all to lend your prayers to our armed forces and the families of those who lost their lives today.

God bless you all. Good night.

[BREAK TRANSCRIPT]

Dunno which is more fitting...

http://i31.tinypic.com/i27biw.jpg

Or

http://i31.tinypic.com/6z7otk.jpg

I don't think we'll even have to bring tanks, most of Mauritania's population are nomads and the largest city has about 800,000 people in it. So unless they have some big shit hidden in the sands, the 3rd Dutch Schoolboys Brigade should be able to handle this invasion.

http://www.digalist.com/up/0722/013549.jpg
Go get them lads! Make the homeland proud!

But what if someone tries to move in while we're moving in? Have to let them know we mean business.

Oh, and about Finland...

Remember this.

Unless their leaders name is Carl Gustaf Emil Mannerheim, we're fine.

Seriously, it's common sense that combat prowess rises exponentially with length of name. He probably killed all those guys himself, with a name like that.

Anyway, in character:

Excellent... Mr. President. Our proud nation's first true combat operation, executed with cunning, deceit, and strength. Let us hope it pays off...
I guess the question on all our minds is... what next? Once we have taken those poor dupes, do we consolidate, or expand? When will the western coast be ours?
An expansion towards Senegal might be advisable... though possibly diplomatically unfeasible. We wouldn't want to annoy our neighbors...

So, the plan is to take Mauritania, and then to make NATO hate Norway more? And then to invade Norway? Or are we going to try and secure more of West Africa before that?

You mean Finland?

Well, our army's in west africa already, me might as well finish off our work there and then return home to take Finland, Sweden and Norway.

What does Maurtiana have anyway?

It's a staging area, primarily, I think. I'm not sure about the resources, but I'm guessing mining industries.

November 30, 2009

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v6...ary/SP38-1.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v6...enary/sp40.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v6...enary/sp41.jpg

At 1600 hours on April 30th, mere weeks after the attack on our nation, our forces made landfall at Nouakchott, Mauritania's capital city. By May 6th, we had complete control of the country. The battle could almost be considered a joke, were it not for the brave souls we lost in its midst. What's more, we were given full support of our operation by the entire world.

Our troops are currently in a state of occupation, working day and night to keep supply lines open and crush any residual opposition. We have placed operatives in key positions to give us ample access to their (anemic) resource supply.

OOC: Okay, so now that we have a foothold, I tried what Geminex suggested and invaded Senegal just to see what would happen. We took them easily, though the war took about two months to complete, what with Senegal's guerilla tactics. I chased them up and down the coast. When they were dislodged from their home country, they ran and hid in Mauritania. This game of chicken didn't last long, as our special forcesdeath squads managed to hunt the last of them down. We also lost four naval vessels in the initial invasion, but still maintain the 24th ranked navy.

The only thing, our diplomatic relations with the world dropped drastically after the attack on Senegal. We hold an unfavorable rating with 2/3 of the world, but lost no treaties or allies, which is very positive. It means that the attack brought them to the very edge of their friendship, but didn't break it.

It's up to you guys whether you want to stay in Mauritania and set up base camp until we can garner more of a sympathy vote, or just go ahead with the Senegal invasion save file. Here's what it would look like:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v6...enary/sp42.jpg

If we do it that way, there's a chance a neighboring nation might do some covert ops of their own on us. That would make it easier to continue our invasion into Africa, but it's up to you.

...I really should buy this game, shouldn't I?

...Too bad it apparently costs over $150 now.

On eBay I saw copies being sold anywhere from $4 to $24. Here's one of them.

Before you buy it, just be aware it is heavy on the micromanagement and can get very tedious. In a way, this LP might be making it sound like it's more fun than it actually is. Although, if you're into graphs and charts and numbers, you might get a kick out of it. I'd suggest reading some reviews.

Hmmmm...Perhaps we should hold tight there, secure our holdings, and let the world get over it.

Can't we spin this in saying that Senegal was aiding Maurtiana during the "terrorist attacks"

To do that we would've had to have spent more time doing attacks on ourselves or others and framing Senegal. There is no direct way in the game to make excuses or explanations to other countries. And if we do that for every country we invade, eventually the AI will catch on, if it hasn't already.

In other news, most troops have returned home and our intelligence services remain on high alert.

Oh, and how would everyone feel about building a few destroyers so we have access to offshore bombardments if needed? They might be a little pricey, but doing this coast war like we are I think it would be worth it.

Any chance of an update on our economic situation hows the budget looking (I need the relevant information before I say yes or no ^^)

You ask, I deliver.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v6...budget1130.jpg

Figured I'd take the liberty of pushing a $10 billion stimulus towards the environment, education, telecom, and infrastructure sectors. Our population has grown by 300,000 since we took office, so we'll either need to figure out some way to reduce the population or increase jobs (possibly through the closing of our borders or limiting the number of children per household). Our debt is also increasing by about $188 million/month and I'm trying desperately to hold inflation steady, but at this rate, the interest rate will just continue to rise. I'm very resistant to upping the tax rate above 50%.

Also, we need a design for our destroyer.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v6.../blueprint.jpg

The small blue dots are what levels of research we have completed so far in each area. If I max all of them out, that destroyer would cost about $1,600,000,000 each to build. If you change the design from a level 6 rating in one of the areas to level 5, that decreases the cost by $100 million. Changing from a 5 to a 4 decreases it by $50 million, and so on down the line, decreasing by about 50% per level, just to give you an idea of how it works.

Right now we don't need much, just something that can move and fire. We also need a name and a color.

No sensors, or any missile thing.
Armor to half.
Guns all max.
Speed max.
Counter measures to half.

The Pillar of Oster lives?

Course, that was designed to be every ship EVER...

Hmmm... How about the Van Speijk?

Ok assuming we are not going to go to war any more for a few years I would suggest pooling money into tourism on the budget so that we can grow our income from that prehaps we should pare down health care spending as well to help ease the budget burden that will also help us remove the extra population burden.

I think we need to go for minimalist healthcare spending and prehaps education spending we need to shrink our national debt as it stands we are losing budget money to the debt and the situation looks like it will only get worse so slashing spending looks to be the best option.

We are also losing 5B a year in trade any idea whats causing this and if it can be rectified?

So the doctrine will be to, instead of surrender, the captain is to blow up one's own ship?

No, fight until you run outta ammo. Then ram the enemy, then blow it up. :P

Six years later...
 

March 3, 2015

Way way too much happened in these six years for me to possibly hope to RP in this post, so here comes a condensed summary.

-July 10th, 2010 - The U.S. finally withdraws half its troops from Iraq.

-We landed an economic partnership with the U.S. and Romania, giving us needed vegetables and fruit.

-Ukraine and Russia signed an arms agreement which, years later, led to an alliance.

-(This one came before I saw Sifright's post, I will be making the changes to healthcare spending) In an effort to get rid of our excess population, I closed our borders to immigration and limited the number of children per family. I called this the "GTFO Act of 2012". Eventually, after I set the interest rate at 40% and the inflation rate went from 4.4% to a stable 3%, I opened the borders back up and lifted the limit. We are still in a nosedive, with a deficit of $90 billion and debt of over $600 billion.

-September 30th, 2011 - Slovakia declares war on Tonga.....then quickly signs a cease fire. Presumably because Slovakia discovered that they are, in fact, a landlocked country.

-I let the private sector take control of the fossil fuel, electricity, vegetables and fruit resources after they post higher than expected gains and no longer need our support to bring in income.

-The United Arab Emirates began researching missile defense...

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v6...enary/sp47.jpg

...and the world flipped a shit.

Maybe they had good reason to go through with their research, what with the entire world just waiting for a reason to puree them. I noticed before this happened that they weren't on very good terms with anyone except the Saudis, but I didn't realize increasing defense equated to killing someone's family. That list goes on for about fifty more countries, and keeps growing, and has been going on now for almost three years. Their government must be in tatters, I'm impressed at their resilience. Also in response to that, Brunei and Qatar began their own missile defense programs. Still, I'm waiting for the final straw. They could literally be going to war at any time. And it could be with anyone. In the diplomatic relations window, they are blood red with almost the entire planet. Except the Saudis. Damn Saudis.

But back to our situation. I think with this little distraction we have an opening for another attack. I did some research and found Gabon and the Congo to be the most resource rich (and vulnerable) nations left in Africa. We could go in and make another dual strike, hopefully without many noticing.

Well... that's just odd seeing as how every one hates the ARE why not try suggesting to nato they go to war with them? we join in an occupy as many territories as possible in the ensueing chaos?

...Wow.

What's our military standing right now, and locations?

I like the idea of taking out the Congo and Gabon and try and aquire resources. Maybe have Maurtiana a target to give us leeway, or we have the troops in Maurtiana go after Gabon and Congo, if allowable.

Also, this is an odd one, but what are the laws like pertaining to gay marriage and marijuana?