AMW Big Discussion Thread

[Marimaia]

Just a thing to try if you're interested. I created an AMW server on Discord. If you use Discord, or want to give it a go, you can click the following link to get there. https://discord.gg/ZSdBPrT

Discord can be particularly useful because it saves all conversation, so if you get any good ideas or advice on there you can just log in and scroll up to check what it was.

[Chrinthanium]

Just a thing to try if you're interested. I created an AMW server on Discord. If you use Discord, or want to give it a go, you can click the following link to get there. https://discord.gg/ZSdBPrT

Discord can be particularly useful because it saves all conversation, so if you get any good ideas or advice on there you can just log in and scroll up to check what it was.

Yes, plus it's configuration is set up in such a way that we can have multiple rooms and the AMW SpeakEasy, a voice chat with no typing required. I like it better than IRC. Of course, not everyone will probably want to try it or like it, but at least it is a thing we can try out if nothing else.

On to AMWing...

Since Marimaia is no longer just a nation "some distance" away from Britain, but bordering our Middle Eastern dominions, I think the relationship between the two will be stronger than before. Most likely we do sell the Ocean to Marimaia. We probably also sell Marimaia older air craft for their air force as well. Obviously, fascist Britain isn't going to sell it's top-dollar projects too often.

So the group is aware, Walmington and I spoke and he's going to be "fully Walmingtonian" in his place names and the UK place names have been "repurposed" to Britain. So, there will always be an England while the flower of Scotland blooms and the Welsh will always live in the ancient land of their fathers. The Northern Irish will still be known as Ulster because, well, I like it better than Northern Ireland. Of course, Wales as it is in RL is not how it will be in AMW since the actual Welsh culture is in Soviet India. It'll probably be a collection of other native Britons who were "collected' into that area.

As far as the Norman Invasion of England, E-P, if it follows the flow of the RL version of events, I'm pretty happy to change names and/or dates or what have you as needed for you. In fact, if you want to keep a roughly similar history between England and "France" then I'm all game for that.

[Chrinthanium]

New AMW map! https://i.imgur.com/DX3I8y5.png

[Chemaki]

Wait, what? How long was I out?...

Mari, I'm pretty sure the Philippines isn't there!

Eurgh, Jesus, I guess this is finally the excuse I've been waiting for to actually update my factbook and not go mucking around in research labs... grumble grumble...

[Marimaia]

Wait, what? How long was I out?...

Mari, I'm pretty sure the Philippines isn't there!

Eurgh, Jesus, I guess this is finally the excuse I've been waiting for to actually update my factbook and not go mucking around in research labs... grumble grumble...

Hehe

Well my discussions with other AMW'ers on Discord are producing the idea that 'Middle East' Marimaia is more pragmatic and realpolitik-minded than the South East Asian version. For example, we buy frigates from Valendia, aircraft from Amerique, and tanks from the British. Romnika and Marimaia could therefore be rivals, 'frenemies', pursuing détente, or amiable neighbours, depending on what you want. We could even have some kind of mutual defense agreement in place just in case that neighbour to your north gets a little twitchy

[Chrinthanium]

Wait, what? How long was I out?...

Mari, I'm pretty sure the Philippines isn't there!

Eurgh, Jesus, I guess this is finally the excuse I've been waiting for to actually update my factbook and not go mucking around in research labs... grumble grumble...

Oh, Chemaki... welcome to the fast-pace of AMW claim jumping!

[The Crooked Beat]

Hi there everyone,

While as usual there are innumerable other things that I should be doing in AMW (and in real life, in all honesty! ), I was thinking that it might be at least a somewhat worthwhile endeavor to try and parse-out some of the lines of conflict and rivalry between AMW’s various constituent nations, both historically and in the present day. Here are some of my thoughts so far:

Anglo-American rivalry, in a world with (as yet) no strong Germany and where the potential strength represented in real life by the USSR is split into three mutually-antagonistic segments, might, to my mind, end up making for perhaps AMW’s deepest geo-political rift. Although Amerique and Britain might not be all that radically different from one another with respect to internal structure, I tend to picture Amerique as a self-consciously progressive, anti-imperialistic power which could well tend to oppose enduring British colonialism, both in its political-social and economic manifestations, on ideological as well as strategic grounds. Clearly Britain stands to be the only state capable of mounting a serious challenge to Amerique at sea, possibly leaving aside Soviet India and perhaps also Valendia.

One important engine for Anglo-American discord could, I think, turn out to be Ireland, particularly in the pre-nuclear era where Britain, in times of particular strife in the northern Counties, must have been sorely tempted to solve the Republican problem through force of arms, betting no doubt that Amerique would be unable to respond sufficiently quickly. Nowadays, if we assume that religious and ideological passions continue to generate any significant heat, the two governments could still find themselves continually at odds, depending particularly on the amount of force used by Britain in repressing Republican and Catholic insurgencies. That’s to say, if these things could really be said to exist in AMW. I could well be misrepresenting the relevant history in an egregious fashion.

Another source of tension could be the presence of a close historical relationship between Britain and The United Gulf States. TUGS would stand, historically, to be one of Britain’s most crucially important trading partners, particularly during the industrial revolution (or whatever its AMW equivalent could be said do be) with its cotton exports fueling British textile mills. The Gulf States’ importance would yet again be magnified by the absence, as yet, of alternate cotton sources in China and of India’s far more fractious and fragmented state. Britain might later on start to look at The Gulf States as an increasingly valuable buttress against an Amerique whose industrial and therefore military capacities were doubtless increasing at an alarming rate from 1900, while Amerique, for its part, would presumably look upon the unabashedly racist Gulfers with a mixture of disdain and disgust, and could well also resent British attempts at strategic encirclement by that route. Whereas Amerique would almost certainly wish to topple the Gulfer regime and replace it with something more democratic and inclusive, Britain, unwilling to lose what might have been and still be a loyal (if highly dependant) ally and important trading partner, would equally do its utmost to oppose American interference there.

I don’t have much of a sense of how relations between those two powers currently stand, though at least in a historical sense there would appear to be a lot of room for problems. To start with, we have the long-running French hunger for Savoy which might or might not apply also to Valendia, together with similar questions of territory won and lost in the Alps and on the Riviera through the ages. Present-day governments could continue to cling to these irredentisms easily enough, depending on their ideological bent, while they might well have prompted mutual violence of bloody and extended character during less-enlightened ages.

A similar degree of territorial competition might be applied to the sizable Italian empire in Africa, an arena from which Valendia, particularly during the era when such things were somewhat more fashionable, might have felt unfairly excluded. Considering the continued strong appeal of imperialism even into the modern day, in AMW, these considerations might still apply, depending on how strongly the Valendian government intends to hold onto them.

As for this particular relationship, while there’s the obvious real-life historical antagonism to fall back on, it seems possible that matters might tend more toward cooperation than competition, particularly if Valendia and Britain both have certain issues with Amerique in the colonial and related ideological spheres. There’s probably plenty of scope, however, for Anglo-Valendian tension in the Northwest Sahara.

AMW’s Middle East-Central/Western Asia region seems to contain an immense range of possibilities for conflict, filled as it is at the moment with four highly-militarized if individually not overwhelmingly powerful states with a long history of violence across borders. We also have there a considerable amount of relatively recent historical change, specifically the emergence of Depkazia as an independent nation and the detachment of remaining Gallaga from the former Shieldian Grand Empire. Shieldian imperial legacies clearly exert a great deal of influence over how the nations in AMW’s Middle East view one another. Parsistan, I think, before the assertion of Shieldian dominance a sizable and powerful empire in its own right, would feel particularly cheated, and must undoubtedly harbor some fairly intense irredentist sentiments.

Romnika as a self-declared communist country probably stands to have somewhat cool relations with Marimaia, though I may be overestimating the level of ideological rigor there. Depkazi hostility, however, relating of course to division of the Gallagan spoils, is well-documented, and presumably exacerbated by the Caliph’s anticommunism. Parsistan, for its part, having lost a considerable amount of territory to Romnika in several wars, must undoubtedly look upon that state as an enemy, though I’d imagine that Parsistani strategists see more gains to be had at Depkazia’s expense. There might even be some scope for a tripartite alliance, Romnika and Parsistan bankrolled by Marimaia, aimed at going after Depkazia and taking away some of his recent territorial gains.

In religious and ideological terms there is no terribly easy way to divide-up the region, as Parsistan and Depkazia, the two Muslim powers, are sharply at odds, and it seems probable that Romnika and Marimaia scarcely look upon one another as brothers in faith either. Romnika’s communism could perhaps serve to isolate it, to some extent, within its immediate neighborhood, though internationally there seems to be plenty of support to be had.

Another re-hashing of Drapoel history and in particular Dra-pol’s various catastrophic interactions with the European world might be too daunting of a process to embark on at this particular moment (though I for one find it a fascinating subject, and one treated in excellent fashion by Dra-pol), and given the amount of effort expended on historical matters in the past, only for that history to be rendered irrelevant by shifting (blame for which I significantly deserve), clearly a new definitive account of the region’s AMW past will have to await its proper moment.

That said, South and Southeast Asia amount to the political and geographical arena where what seems to be AMW’s key ideological divide, imperialism versus communism, is played out most explicitly. I’m not sure about the extent to which Dra-pol and Soviet India can really be expected to coordinate their actions, in light of their doctrinal differences, but the collective danger which they represent, both in a physical, military sense and as exporters of destabilizing ideas, must set them up as enemy number one for Britain especially, and perhaps also for Valendia, while of course the Gulf States’ reflexive anticommunism goes almost without saying.

Now that Sumatra is set to break away prematurely from its albeit weak form of Gandvian control, under a regime determined to preserve the essential content if not necessarily the form of the island’s prior colonial arrangements, the latent ideological tension might now have an opportunity to flare up a bit.

A long and bitter history of mutual antagonism between the Shield and Gandvik is by now, I think it is safe to say, fairly well-established, and while the international context to that history has changed a great deal, the basic elements still seem to hold well enough. Hostility between the Shield and Gandvik, I think, probably rests on a variety of interrelated factors stemming fundamentally from the centuries-long quest for political dominance in that arena, which perhaps has now reached something of a stalemate as the two states’ relative power balances out. On the surface, at least, Gandvian-Shieldian tension would reflect religious, Lutheran-Catholic, and ethnic-linguistic antipathy, with a strong dose of irredentism and mutual feelings of both sides’ having been cheated out of their territorial just desserts.

Gandvik having obviously taken blatant advantage of Shieldian internal difficulties to launch an albeit poorly-prepared invasion of Weshield, its clear objective to shatter the former Grand Empire into more manageable units, with recent political changes in Gandvik the shoe might be said, now, to be on the other foot, to some extent anyway. There’s also the increasingly uncertain status of Gandvik’s Muslim population to consider, together with that of a large if hitherto relatively silent population of Protestant reformists and nonconformists who may feel a certain alliegance to the Shieldian Movers.

As for present-day territorial tensions, I’m not completely sure what they might be but I’m thinking they must exist in some form. Perhaps Gandvian far-right nationalists insist that all of Ruthenia to the Polesian marshes is properly theirs, that Thortraia should not belong to the Gull Flag Republic, and other such things, while their Shieldian counterparts maintain claims on territory along the Jaizar (Volga? Am I getting that right?) and the southern Urals region occupied and annexed by Gandvik within living memory. Depkazia, meanwhile, might see an opportunity to detach Turkic-majority areas in Gandvik, the southern Urals and the Jaizar region in particular, at a time when Turkic nationalism and Islamic self-assertion are on the rise in a climate of greater if also somewhat chaotic freedom.

Walmington-on-Sea, undoubtedly, is to be numbered among those nations tending to see Gandvik as a threat. While Amberland and whatever Zealand ends up being called have obviously held out for centuries against what would at face value seem very long odds, perhaps Walmingtonian influence if not necessarily direct rule around the Baltic region and in Scandinavia was not so very long ago a great deal more extensive, various colonial misadventures in India having been avenged closer to home? I still need to develop Gandvik’s national character a great deal more fully, and my inclination is to emphasize to a larger degree than before the country’s heterogeneity. Clearly, unless I’m totally misrepresenting things here (by no means an impossibility) remains heavily invested in the Shield, even under its new leadership, and could maybe be said to provide the brains for sheer Shieldian numbers.

Britain too, I think, could have a history of fractious relations with Gandvik to look back on, which could have a lot to do with the extent to which it chooses to support Walmington in Walmington’s own support of the Shield. Britain might in the past have looked warily upon Gandvik as a potential naval and colonial rival, and the Gandvian threat to control of Britain’s near seas, particularly given the presence of oil in the North Sea, might still seem a very present one. There’s also the ideological split to consider, with Gandvik having chosen to cast its lot with the leftist nations. Dynastically, there might be yet another angle to play, as Gandvik’s former Prince was only the latest in a line of monarchs whose claim on nobility was dubious at best, so a pretender or two, wielding a far from spurious genealogical claim on the throne, could well reside in London. And lastly there’s also the possibility of a former British political presence in Scandinavia, perhaps playing on the early-British Nordic angle.

So, that’s all I have for the time being. Painted in very crude strokes, but maybe something in there to spark a bit of discussion.

[Marimaia]

Hi there everyone,

While as usual there are innumerable other things that I should be doing in AMW (and in real life, in all honesty! ), I was thinking that it might be at least a somewhat worthwhile endeavor to try and parse-out some of the lines of conflict and rivalry between AMW’s various constituent nations, both historically and in the present day. Here are some of my thoughts so far:

Anglo-American rivalry, in a world with (as yet) no strong Germany and where the potential strength represented in real life by the USSR is split into three mutually-antagonistic segments, might, to my mind, end up making for perhaps AMW’s deepest geo-political rift. Although Amerique and Britain might not be all that radically different from one another with respect to internal structure, I tend to picture Amerique as a self-consciously progressive, anti-imperialistic power which could well tend to oppose enduring British colonialism, both in its political-social and economic manifestations, on ideological as well as strategic grounds. Clearly Britain stands to be the only state capable of mounting a serious challenge to Amerique at sea, possibly leaving aside Soviet India and perhaps also Valendia.

One important engine for Anglo-American discord could, I think, turn out to be Ireland, particularly in the pre-nuclear era where Britain, in times of particular strife in the northern Counties, must have been sorely tempted to solve the Republican problem through force of arms, betting no doubt that Amerique would be unable to respond sufficiently quickly. Nowadays, if we assume that religious and ideological passions continue to generate any significant heat, the two governments could still find themselves continually at odds, depending particularly on the amount of force used by Britain in repressing Republican and Catholic insurgencies. That’s to say, if these things could really be said to exist in AMW. I could well be misrepresenting the relevant history in an egregious fashion.

Another source of tension could be the presence of a close historical relationship between Britain and The United Gulf States. TUGS would stand, historically, to be one of Britain’s most crucially important trading partners, particularly during the industrial revolution (or whatever its AMW equivalent could be said do be) with its cotton exports fueling British textile mills. The Gulf States’ importance would yet again be magnified by the absence, as yet, of alternate cotton sources in China and of India’s far more fractious and fragmented state. Britain might later on start to look at The Gulf States as an increasingly valuable buttress against an Amerique whose industrial and therefore military capacities were doubtless increasing at an alarming rate from 1900, while Amerique, for its part, would presumably look upon the unabashedly racist Gulfers with a mixture of disdain and disgust, and could well also resent British attempts at strategic encirclement by that route. Whereas Amerique would almost certainly wish to topple the Gulfer regime and replace it with something more democratic and inclusive, Britain, unwilling to lose what might have been and still be a loyal (if highly dependant) ally and important trading partner, would equally do its utmost to oppose American interference there.

I don’t have much of a sense of how relations between those two powers currently stand, though at least in a historical sense there would appear to be a lot of room for problems. To start with, we have the long-running French hunger for Savoy which might or might not apply also to Valendia, together with similar questions of territory won and lost in the Alps and on the Riviera through the ages. Present-day governments could continue to cling to these irredentisms easily enough, depending on their ideological bent, while they might well have prompted mutual violence of bloody and extended character during less-enlightened ages.

A similar degree of territorial competition might be applied to the sizable Italian empire in Africa, an arena from which Valendia, particularly during the era when such things were somewhat more fashionable, might have felt unfairly excluded. Considering the continued strong appeal of imperialism even into the modern day, in AMW, these considerations might still apply, depending on how strongly the Valendian government intends to hold onto them.

As for this particular relationship, while there’s the obvious real-life historical antagonism to fall back on, it seems possible that matters might tend more toward cooperation than competition, particularly if Valendia and Britain both have certain issues with Amerique in the colonial and related ideological spheres. There’s probably plenty of scope, however, for Anglo-Valendian tension in the Northwest Sahara.

AMW’s Middle East-Central/Western Asia region seems to contain an immense range of possibilities for conflict, filled as it is at the moment with four highly-militarized if individually not overwhelmingly powerful states with a long history of violence across borders. We also have there a considerable amount of relatively recent historical change, specifically the emergence of Depkazia as an independent nation and the detachment of remaining Gallaga from the former Shieldian Grand Empire. Shieldian imperial legacies clearly exert a great deal of influence over how the nations in AMW’s Middle East view one another. Parsistan, I think, before the assertion of Shieldian dominance a sizable and powerful empire in its own right, would feel particularly cheated, and must undoubtedly harbor some fairly intense irredentist sentiments.

Romnika as a self-declared communist country probably stands to have somewhat cool relations with Marimaia, though I may be overestimating the level of ideological rigor there. Depkazi hostility, however, relating of course to division of the Gallagan spoils, is well-documented, and presumably exacerbated by the Caliph’s anticommunism. Parsistan, for its part, having lost a considerable amount of territory to Romnika in several wars, must undoubtedly look upon that state as an enemy, though I’d imagine that Parsistani strategists see more gains to be had at Depkazia’s expense. There might even be some scope for a tripartite alliance, Romnika and Parsistan bankrolled by Marimaia, aimed at going after Depkazia and taking away some of his recent territorial gains.

In religious and ideological terms there is no terribly easy way to divide-up the region, as Parsistan and Depkazia, the two Muslim powers, are sharply at odds, and it seems probable that Romnika and Marimaia scarcely look upon one another as brothers in faith either. Romnika’s communism could perhaps serve to isolate it, to some extent, within its immediate neighborhood, though internationally there seems to be plenty of support to be had.

Another re-hashing of Drapoel history and in particular Dra-pol’s various catastrophic interactions with the European world might be too daunting of a process to embark on at this particular moment (though I for one find it a fascinating subject, and one treated in excellent fashion by Dra-pol), and given the amount of effort expended on historical matters in the past, only for that history to be rendered irrelevant by shifting (blame for which I significantly deserve), clearly a new definitive account of the region’s AMW past will have to await its proper moment.

That said, South and Southeast Asia amount to the political and geographical arena where what seems to be AMW’s key ideological divide, imperialism versus communism, is played out most explicitly. I’m not sure about the extent to which Dra-pol and Soviet India can really be expected to coordinate their actions, in light of their doctrinal differences, but the collective danger which they represent, both in a physical, military sense and as exporters of destabilizing ideas, must set them up as enemy number one for Britain especially, and perhaps also for Valendia, while of course the Gulf States’ reflexive anticommunism goes almost without saying.

Now that Sumatra is set to break away prematurely from its albeit weak form of Gandvian control, under a regime determined to preserve the essential content if not necessarily the form of the island’s prior colonial arrangements, the latent ideological tension might now have an opportunity to flare up a bit.

A long and bitter history of mutual antagonism between the Shield and Gandvik is by now, I think it is safe to say, fairly well-established, and while the international context to that history has changed a great deal, the basic elements still seem to hold well enough. Hostility between the Shield and Gandvik, I think, probably rests on a variety of interrelated factors stemming fundamentally from the centuries-long quest for political dominance in that arena, which perhaps has now reached something of a stalemate as the two states’ relative power balances out. On the surface, at least, Gandvian-Shieldian tension would reflect religious, Lutheran-Catholic, and ethnic-linguistic antipathy, with a strong dose of irredentism and mutual feelings of both sides’ having been cheated out of their territorial just desserts.

Gandvik having obviously taken blatant advantage of Shieldian internal difficulties to launch an albeit poorly-prepared invasion of Weshield, its clear objective to shatter the former Grand Empire into more manageable units, with recent political changes in Gandvik the shoe might be said, now, to be on the other foot, to some extent anyway. There’s also the increasingly uncertain status of Gandvik’s Muslim population to consider, together with that of a large if hitherto relatively silent population of Protestant reformists and nonconformists who may feel a certain alliegance to the Shieldian Movers.

As for present-day territorial tensions, I’m not completely sure what they might be but I’m thinking they must exist in some form. Perhaps Gandvian far-right nationalists insist that all of Ruthenia to the Polesian marshes is properly theirs, that Thortraia should not belong to the Gull Flag Republic, and other such things, while their Shieldian counterparts maintain claims on territory along the Jaizar (Volga? Am I getting that right?) and the southern Urals region occupied and annexed by Gandvik within living memory. Depkazia, meanwhile, might see an opportunity to detach Turkic-majority areas in Gandvik, the southern Urals and the Jaizar region in particular, at a time when Turkic nationalism and Islamic self-assertion are on the rise in a climate of greater if also somewhat chaotic freedom.

Walmington-on-Sea, undoubtedly, is to be numbered among those nations tending to see Gandvik as a threat. While Amberland and whatever Zealand ends up being called have obviously held out for centuries against what would at face value seem very long odds, perhaps Walmingtonian influence if not necessarily direct rule around the Baltic region and in Scandinavia was not so very long ago a great deal more extensive, various colonial misadventures in India having been avenged closer to home? I still need to develop Gandvik’s national character a great deal more fully, and my inclination is to emphasize to a larger degree than before the country’s heterogeneity. Clearly, unless I’m totally misrepresenting things here (by no means an impossibility) remains heavily invested in the Shield, even under its new leadership, and could maybe be said to provide the brains for sheer Shieldian numbers.

Britain too, I think, could have a history of fractious relations with Gandvik to look back on, which could have a lot to do with the extent to which it chooses to support Walmington in Walmington’s own support of the Shield. Britain might in the past have looked warily upon Gandvik as a potential naval and colonial rival, and the Gandvian threat to control of Britain’s near seas, particularly given the presence of oil in the North Sea, might still seem a very present one. There’s also the ideological split to consider, with Gandvik having chosen to cast its lot with the leftist nations. Dynastically, there might be yet another angle to play, as Gandvik’s former Prince was only the latest in a line of monarchs whose claim on nobility was dubious at best, so a pretender or two, wielding a far from spurious genealogical claim on the throne, could well reside in London. And lastly there’s also the possibility of a former British political presence in Scandinavia, perhaps playing on the early-British Nordic angle.

So, that’s all I have for the time being. Painted in very crude strokes, but maybe something in there to spark a bit of discussion.

Lots of potential for people to explore

As far as the Middle East-Central/Western Asia section is concerned, Chemaki and I have briefly discussed the possibility of a Romnikan-Marimaian détente due to the ever-looming presence of Depkazia so the tripartite alliance idea may well be on the table in some form or another. Marimaia and Parsistan could align quite well and I could definitely see a great deal of cooperation between the two. Marimaia would see Parsistan as an agreeable counterweight to Romnika (just in case Romnika ever gets aggressive) and revolutionary leftist movements which could threaten the cosy Margrave way of life, while Parsistan may view Marimaia as a useful source of financial, political, and moral support. As the comments always seem to go on Discord, Marimaia's certainly got the money available

Parsistan (and others) may also appreciate the fact that under Marimaian rule, Mecca and the Old City core of Medina are off-limits to non-Muslims (the only exception being the reigning monarch, but there are very stringent conditions on that exception). The Hajj is unimpeded and the Marimaian state always endeavours to ensure that only Muslim personnel are deployed to escort/protect pilgrims; it's a bit of a logistical nightmare sometimes, but they're used to it by now. The more I think about it, the more I need to cast a Minister of Religious Affairs/Council of Faith Leaders for the Marimaian factbook.

[Chrinthanium]

Hi there everyone,

While as usual there are innumerable other things that I should be doing in AMW (and in real life, in all honesty! ), I was thinking that it might be at least a somewhat worthwhile endeavor to try and parse-out some of the lines of conflict and rivalry between AMW’s various constituent nations, both historically and in the present day. Here are some of my thoughts so far:

Anglo-American rivalry, in a world with (as yet) no strong Germany and where the potential strength represented in real life by the USSR is split into three mutually-antagonistic segments, might, to my mind, end up making for perhaps AMW’s deepest geo-political rift. Although Amerique and Britain might not be all that radically different from one another with respect to internal structure, I tend to picture Amerique as a self-consciously progressive, anti-imperialistic power which could well tend to oppose enduring British colonialism, both in its political-social and economic manifestations, on ideological as well as strategic grounds. Clearly Britain stands to be the only state capable of mounting a serious challenge to Amerique at sea, possibly leaving aside Soviet India and perhaps also Valendia.

One important engine for Anglo-American discord could, I think, turn out to be Ireland, particularly in the pre-nuclear era where Britain, in times of particular strife in the northern Counties, must have been sorely tempted to solve the Republican problem through force of arms, betting no doubt that Amerique would be unable to respond sufficiently quickly. Nowadays, if we assume that religious and ideological passions continue to generate any significant heat, the two governments could still find themselves continually at odds, depending particularly on the amount of force used by Britain in repressing Republican and Catholic insurgencies. That’s to say, if these things could really be said to exist in AMW. I could well be misrepresenting the relevant history in an egregious fashion.

Another source of tension could be the presence of a close historical relationship between Britain and The United Gulf States. TUGS would stand, historically, to be one of Britain’s most crucially important trading partners, particularly during the industrial revolution (or whatever its AMW equivalent could be said do be) with its cotton exports fueling British textile mills. The Gulf States’ importance would yet again be magnified by the absence, as yet, of alternate cotton sources in China and of India’s far more fractious and fragmented state. Britain might later on start to look at The Gulf States as an increasingly valuable buttress against an Amerique whose industrial and therefore military capacities were doubtless increasing at an alarming rate from 1900, while Amerique, for its part, would presumably look upon the unabashedly racist Gulfers with a mixture of disdain and disgust, and could well also resent British attempts at strategic encirclement by that route. Whereas Amerique would almost certainly wish to topple the Gulfer regime and replace it with something more democratic and inclusive, Britain, unwilling to lose what might have been and still be a loyal (if highly dependant) ally and important trading partner, would equally do its utmost to oppose American interference there.

I don’t have much of a sense of how relations between those two powers currently stand, though at least in a historical sense there would appear to be a lot of room for problems. To start with, we have the long-running French hunger for Savoy which might or might not apply also to Valendia, together with similar questions of territory won and lost in the Alps and on the Riviera through the ages. Present-day governments could continue to cling to these irredentisms easily enough, depending on their ideological bent, while they might well have prompted mutual violence of bloody and extended character during less-enlightened ages.

A similar degree of territorial competition might be applied to the sizable Italian empire in Africa, an arena from which Valendia, particularly during the era when such things were somewhat more fashionable, might have felt unfairly excluded. Considering the continued strong appeal of imperialism even into the modern day, in AMW, these considerations might still apply, depending on how strongly the Valendian government intends to hold onto them.

As for this particular relationship, while there’s the obvious real-life historical antagonism to fall back on, it seems possible that matters might tend more toward cooperation than competition, particularly if Valendia and Britain both have certain issues with Amerique in the colonial and related ideological spheres. There’s probably plenty of scope, however, for Anglo-Valendian tension in the Northwest Sahara.

AMW’s Middle East-Central/Western Asia region seems to contain an immense range of possibilities for conflict, filled as it is at the moment with four highly-militarized if individually not overwhelmingly powerful states with a long history of violence across borders. We also have there a considerable amount of relatively recent historical change, specifically the emergence of Depkazia as an independent nation and the detachment of remaining Gallaga from the former Shieldian Grand Empire. Shieldian imperial legacies clearly exert a great deal of influence over how the nations in AMW’s Middle East view one another. Parsistan, I think, before the assertion of Shieldian dominance a sizable and powerful empire in its own right, would feel particularly cheated, and must undoubtedly harbor some fairly intense irredentist sentiments.

Romnika as a self-declared communist country probably stands to have somewhat cool relations with Marimaia, though I may be overestimating the level of ideological rigor there. Depkazi hostility, however, relating of course to division of the Gallagan spoils, is well-documented, and presumably exacerbated by the Caliph’s anticommunism. Parsistan, for its part, having lost a considerable amount of territory to Romnika in several wars, must undoubtedly look upon that state as an enemy, though I’d imagine that Parsistani strategists see more gains to be had at Depkazia’s expense. There might even be some scope for a tripartite alliance, Romnika and Parsistan bankrolled by Marimaia, aimed at going after Depkazia and taking away some of his recent territorial gains.

In religious and ideological terms there is no terribly easy way to divide-up the region, as Parsistan and Depkazia, the two Muslim powers, are sharply at odds, and it seems probable that Romnika and Marimaia scarcely look upon one another as brothers in faith either. Romnika’s communism could perhaps serve to isolate it, to some extent, within its immediate neighborhood, though internationally there seems to be plenty of support to be had.

Another re-hashing of Drapoel history and in particular Dra-pol’s various catastrophic interactions with the European world might be too daunting of a process to embark on at this particular moment (though I for one find it a fascinating subject, and one treated in excellent fashion by Dra-pol), and given the amount of effort expended on historical matters in the past, only for that history to be rendered irrelevant by shifting (blame for which I significantly deserve), clearly a new definitive account of the region’s AMW past will have to await its proper moment.

That said, South and Southeast Asia amount to the political and geographical arena where what seems to be AMW’s key ideological divide, imperialism versus communism, is played out most explicitly. I’m not sure about the extent to which Dra-pol and Soviet India can really be expected to coordinate their actions, in light of their doctrinal differences, but the collective danger which they represent, both in a physical, military sense and as exporters of destabilizing ideas, must set them up as enemy number one for Britain especially, and perhaps also for Valendia, while of course the Gulf States’ reflexive anticommunism goes almost without saying.

Now that Sumatra is set to break away prematurely from its albeit weak form of Gandvian control, under a regime determined to preserve the essential content if not necessarily the form of the island’s prior colonial arrangements, the latent ideological tension might now have an opportunity to flare up a bit.

A long and bitter history of mutual antagonism between the Shield and Gandvik is by now, I think it is safe to say, fairly well-established, and while the international context to that history has changed a great deal, the basic elements still seem to hold well enough. Hostility between the Shield and Gandvik, I think, probably rests on a variety of interrelated factors stemming fundamentally from the centuries-long quest for political dominance in that arena, which perhaps has now reached something of a stalemate as the two states’ relative power balances out. On the surface, at least, Gandvian-Shieldian tension would reflect religious, Lutheran-Catholic, and ethnic-linguistic antipathy, with a strong dose of irredentism and mutual feelings of both sides’ having been cheated out of their territorial just desserts.

Gandvik having obviously taken blatant advantage of Shieldian internal difficulties to launch an albeit poorly-prepared invasion of Weshield, its clear objective to shatter the former Grand Empire into more manageable units, with recent political changes in Gandvik the shoe might be said, now, to be on the other foot, to some extent anyway. There’s also the increasingly uncertain status of Gandvik’s Muslim population to consider, together with that of a large if hitherto relatively silent population of Protestant reformists and nonconformists who may feel a certain alliegance to the Shieldian Movers.

As for present-day territorial tensions, I’m not completely sure what they might be but I’m thinking they must exist in some form. Perhaps Gandvian far-right nationalists insist that all of Ruthenia to the Polesian marshes is properly theirs, that Thortraia should not belong to the Gull Flag Republic, and other such things, while their Shieldian counterparts maintain claims on territory along the Jaizar (Volga? Am I getting that right?) and the southern Urals region occupied and annexed by Gandvik within living memory. Depkazia, meanwhile, might see an opportunity to detach Turkic-majority areas in Gandvik, the southern Urals and the Jaizar region in particular, at a time when Turkic nationalism and Islamic self-assertion are on the rise in a climate of greater if also somewhat chaotic freedom.

Walmington-on-Sea, undoubtedly, is to be numbered among those nations tending to see Gandvik as a threat. While Amberland and whatever Zealand ends up being called have obviously held out for centuries against what would at face value seem very long odds, perhaps Walmingtonian influence if not necessarily direct rule around the Baltic region and in Scandinavia was not so very long ago a great deal more extensive, various colonial misadventures in India having been avenged closer to home? I still need to develop Gandvik’s national character a great deal more fully, and my inclination is to emphasize to a larger degree than before the country’s heterogeneity. Clearly, unless I’m totally misrepresenting things here (by no means an impossibility) remains heavily invested in the Shield, even under its new leadership, and could maybe be said to provide the brains for sheer Shieldian numbers.

Britain too, I think, could have a history of fractious relations with Gandvik to look back on, which could have a lot to do with the extent to which it chooses to support Walmington in Walmington’s own support of the Shield. Britain might in the past have looked warily upon Gandvik as a potential naval and colonial rival, and the Gandvian threat to control of Britain’s near seas, particularly given the presence of oil in the North Sea, might still seem a very present one. There’s also the ideological split to consider, with Gandvik having chosen to cast its lot with the leftist nations. Dynastically, there might be yet another angle to play, as Gandvik’s former Prince was only the latest in a line of monarchs whose claim on nobility was dubious at best, so a pretender or two, wielding a far from spurious genealogical claim on the throne, could well reside in London. And lastly there’s also the possibility of a former British political presence in Scandinavia, perhaps playing on the early-British Nordic angle.

So, that’s all I have for the time being. Painted in very crude strokes, but maybe something in there to spark a bit of discussion.

Britain will have some influence in AMW history. Chrinthania doesn't even get a mention

As far as British history goes, that's going to be a long work in progress until I can figure out what everyone else needs Britain to do in their history. I can speak to the Valendian-British history a bit, though. Outside of a Norman invasion, there's probably very little direct history between the two. So, no big England vs France thing going on in AMW, apparently. ça va très mal!

If you wish to have a more antagonistic relationship between Britain and Gandvik, I don't see why we can't. Simply put, Britain is designed to be antagonistic; if not intentionally, then accidentally. Britain will do what Britain wants because what Britain wants is all that matters to Britain. While we can be antagonistic, Britain isn't interested in controlling the internal politics of nations not already within her empire. Do as you want within your own borders, but when what do you attempts to thwart what is in Britain's self interest, then we have the issue. As far as British self interest and The Shield, we'd more-than-likely side with Walmington in their endeavors with The Shield. They are our little brother, after all!

As far as Drapol and Britain, I see Singapore as taken from Drapol early on and we managed to make it back there without being eradicated by the Drapoel after our intervention(s) in SE Asia. Outside of that, I've no clear idea on where Drapol history puts that time frame or what, exactly, we did there. Britain does keep a back-and-forth on whether Drapol or Soviet India are enemy number 1. After Drapol and Soviet India, America ranks third. Ireland is indeed a point of contention. So as long as the Americans want to bolster it and keep a presence there, we have no choice but to continue our presence in the Caribbean as well as keeping our close relationship with TUGS. Even if America abandons Ireland to its inevitable fate, we're keeping TUGS as a close friend because it balances out America a bit as well as just really pisses them off.

I think you should pay more attention to the Anglo-Chrinthani relationship. Internal Chrinthani politics is set up based on this. The Chrinthani Tories are pro-Britain while Chrinthani Labour are pro-Leftist Alliance. Chrinthania is decidedly non-neutral coming down on the side of the Leftists, but it isn't afraid to maintain friendly relations and trade pacts with nations outside of that alliance. Remember, it is a nation of only around 50 million covering 9 million sq km of land and many parts of it are islands some distance from the mainland. We're work with whomever keeps us from becoming a territory of the other.

Right... time to watch Neighbours... more later.

[Hashkin]

can I claim Germany, Rest of Denmark, Benelux, austria, madagascar, and Mozambique

[Chrinthanium]

can I claim Germany, Rest of Denmark, Benelux, austria, madagascar, and Mozambique

Hey, thanks for your interest in AMW. Please check out our apps thread (viewtopic.php?f=4&t=209089) to make a claim. Please read the OP so you get to know what we are looking for and how we work. Looking forward to seeing your idea.

[Chrinthanium]

I was going to do the new map this past weekend, but my life isn't always easy like Sunday morning. So, I am predicting the new map to be up this coming weekend (if not sooner).

[Europe - Prussia]

I've already mentioned this on discord, but to keep things official and in order, and Chrin doesn't forgets, I'd like to scrape Western Sahara, and instead claim Guinea-Bissau; with Portugal, holding Western Sahara is redundant, so I prefer a plot of land more to the south.
So, with the permission of all of you, I'd like to exchange Western Sahara (587,666) for Guinea-Bissau (1,815,698), leaving Valendia's population at 131,875,039.

[Chrinthanium]

I've already mentioned this on discord, but to keep things official and in order, and Chrin doesn't forgets, I'd like to scrape Western Sahara, and instead claim Guinea-Bissau; with Portugal, holding Western Sahara is redundant, so I prefer a plot of land more to the south.
So, with the permission of all of you, I'd like to exchange Western Sahara (587,666) for Guinea-Bissau (1,815,698), leaving Valendia's population at 131,875,039.

I haven't forgotten

I just haven't done it yet. I'll do it tonight.

[Chrinthanium]

New map including Walmington's addition: https://i.imgur.com/33WCDzx.png

[Chrinthanium]

Thanksgiving is upon us in the US. I will be off Weds through Sun, but it isn't quite a holiday for me. Wednesday I am going in for dental surgery to have two wisdom teeth and an impacted molar removed. Should be fun with me in Discord high on pain killers. Any AMW updates that are pending will be updated during that time. Amerique and Chemaki both wanted New map colors so that update will come. I think everything else is already mapped.

[Chrinthanium]

Before decisions that seem arbitrary and unilateral are made final, I am here to speak to the AMW community about one of our players. I hate doing this in a public forum, but there's precious few other ways to get people all in one spot.

Almost 30 days ago I wrote to Great Italy. The contents of the TG are as follows:

Hey there!

I was poking around AMW and checking on a few things and I couldn't help but notice you haven't posted since 10 October 2015. I know you said you were busy in life along with other things a while back. I hope you're going okay, mate. Sometimes we do get busy and some things just fall by the wayside. I know how that feels. And I get it if you just haven't had any time for whatever reason to keep up with the Italian Confederation. I just think if that's the case, it might be best to scale it back a bit or perhaps shift to an area that won't be as entwined with other history. If you need to talk about anything or have any questions, feel free to ask me or the group. We might be able to work together to find something that works for you and your time constraints.

I hope this message finds you in good health and good spirits.

To date, no reply has arrived. He hasn't even logged into the nation for the last 32 days (meaning he left it on vacation mode). I had discussion in the Discord with a few other AMWers and the general consensus seems to be that we should remove the claim. Before I finalize this, I wanted to post this for everyone to see and to give anyone a chance to voice an opinion on the matter. While AMW has no requirement for activity for its members, we do kind of tend to check in everyone few months to let people know we're still interest/coming up with ideas. Even if no IC posts come, a simple discussion thread post has sufficed for these purposes. I know some people want history with Italy overall, and normally with a claimant in Italy, we'd be able to sort that out, but his long stretch of inactivity has mostly rendered this a moot point. Has he replied to other TGs? Yes, when he eventually logs in. But I don't know how long we, as a group, should hold a place if, at the end of the day, we see no movement in over 2 years. So, rather than make a mostly singular decision, I'd rather bring this up here and see.

[Marimaia]

So......

With it looking likely that my democratic, socially liberal Caliphate idea has received no objections and will therefore go ahead, there exists the prospect of what to do with the Suez Canal. Discussions on Discord have led to the idea that the Suez Canal will not be owned by the Caliphate but rather exist under 'international authority', something which I am perfectly happy with. So my proposal is for there to be an administrative organisation called the 'Suez Canal Treaty Organisation', 'Suez Canal Company', or something similar. The organisation will be much like the RL Suez Canal Authority, in that it 'owns' the Canal and attached buildings/equipment/etc., collects the tolls, and is responsible for the operation/maintenance/traffic safety of the Canal (the tolls being used to pay for these things).

As it will be an international organisation, the idea is that AMW nations will have representatives sitting on the Board of Governors/Directors/whatever. This Board will exist to oversee administration and maintain the Canal's neutrality. If there is some crisis/situation with the Canal which requires additional funding outside of the tolls, then the cost would be divided evenly between all represented nations (because if you want a say over how the Canal is operated, it's only fair that you contribute if it becomes necessary but you'd pay the same as every other nation on the Board). Basically it would act as a not-for-profit organisation because all income from tolls or anything else under the body's control would be ploughed back into maintenance, etc. I'm thinking that a majority vote would carry rather than a unanimous vote, just in case we get representatives on the Board who try being contrary to show the follies of capitalism, globalism, or somesuch.

We'd also need an AMW equivalent of the RL 1888 Convention of Constantinople, which grants the right of free access and use of the canal at equal conditions to all ships, commercial ships and ships of war, in times of peace or of war, even to ships of belligerent parties. That way if any one nation tries to block access to the Canal for someone else, the rest of the world has the right to Bonstock the crap out of them.

If this particular proposal is adopted then we're going to need AMW nations to sit on the Board. I'd like to put the Caliphate on the Board because the Canal cuts through their territory and is obviously important for their economy, so if you think the proposal works and want to be on the Board then say so.

If anyone's got any alternative ideas then feel free to offer them

[Iansisle]

Super late responding to TCB's excellent post. The Jaizar is indeed the Shieldian name for the Volga. The River Mans is their name for the Dnister, and the Daldan is the Dnieper. Certainly, any animosity from Gandvik is matched by the Shieldian state, which sees itself as an embattled state on the verge of invasion. Because its military position is tenuous (especially without Cass to back them up!), the GFR concentrates mostly on espionage and propaganda, trying to destabilize the Gandvian government enough that foreign adventures become impossible (and, of course, risking that a foreign adventure might become their government's only choice!). Meanwhile, the Republic is working desperately on modernizing the military, creating a nuclear deterrent, and purging reactionaries, perhaps to the consternation of other, more mature democracies that might otherwise support the revolution.

While the civil and military bureaucracies hum along, the Republic's upper political levels are at an impasse, as a constitutional crisis has been triggered by Charles Bradsworth attempting to sack Lawrence Madders from his position in the War Directorate; it turns out that, while the Director-President can appoint his cabinet, it can be argued that he does not have the power to remove them. While the courts fight out the question, Madders and his allies remain in power over their respective departments while Bradsworth's supporters experience one by-election defeat after another and movements for a vote of no confidence get closer and closer to success. The election of 18 May 2018 could well overturn the entire system.

(side note: May 18th will be Iansisle's 15th birthday. )

Anglo-American rivalry, in a world with (as yet) no strong Germany and where the potential strength represented in real life by the USSR is split into three mutually-antagonistic segments, might, to my mind, end up making for perhaps AMW’s deepest geo-political rift. Although Amerique and Britain might not be all that radically different from one another with respect to internal structure, I tend to picture Amerique as a self-consciously progressive, anti-imperialistic power which could well tend to oppose enduring British colonialism, both in its political-social and economic manifestations, on ideological as well as strategic grounds. Clearly Britain stands to be the only state capable of mounting a serious challenge to Amerique at sea, possibly leaving aside Soviet India and perhaps also Valendia.

One important engine for Anglo-American discord could, I think, turn out to be Ireland, particularly in the pre-nuclear era where Britain, in times of particular strife in the northern Counties, must have been sorely tempted to solve the Republican problem through force of arms, betting no doubt that Amerique would be unable to respond sufficiently quickly. Nowadays, if we assume that religious and ideological passions continue to generate any significant heat, the two governments could still find themselves continually at odds, depending particularly on the amount of force used by Britain in repressing Republican and Catholic insurgencies. That’s to say, if these things could really be said to exist in AMW. I could well be misrepresenting the relevant history in an egregious fashion.

Another source of tension could be the presence of a close historical relationship between Britain and The United Gulf States. TUGS would stand, historically, to be one of Britain’s most crucially important trading partners, particularly during the industrial revolution (or whatever its AMW equivalent could be said do be) with its cotton exports fueling British textile mills. The Gulf States’ importance would yet again be magnified by the absence, as yet, of alternate cotton sources in China and of India’s far more fractious and fragmented state. Britain might later on start to look at The Gulf States as an increasingly valuable buttress against an Amerique whose industrial and therefore military capacities were doubtless increasing at an alarming rate from 1900, while Amerique, for its part, would presumably look upon the unabashedly racist Gulfers with a mixture of disdain and disgust, and could well also resent British attempts at strategic encirclement by that route. Whereas Amerique would almost certainly wish to topple the Gulfer regime and replace it with something more democratic and inclusive, Britain, unwilling to lose what might have been and still be a loyal (if highly dependant) ally and important trading partner, would equally do its utmost to oppose American interference there.

MEANWHILE, on the other side of the world, California's democratic institutions are proving more resilient. After the mid-teens scandals of the Ewaa presidency, things are starting to return to normalcy. Ewaa retired in 2016 and was replaced by a Socialist candidate renowned for having no scandals (or accomplishments) to be renowned for. The presidency has faded back into being a nice reward for faithful backbenchers or senile cabinet members, a position for cutting ribbons and kissing babies. The Greens are reaching the end of their six-year mandate and new elections have been called for the middle of 2018, which are tipped to be a Socialist victory, albeit a close one.

New neighbors, however, call for new alignments, as many Californians find themselves as ignorant of conditions in the Eight Nations or Arcadia as a Shieldian serf is ignorant of the latest dank memes. Old families of Presidieros, whose ancestors settled the barren deserts of the transnevada and formed lancero brigades to defend the Republic against The Gulf States wonder if perhaps their forefathers would have been just as comfortable and safe staying home.

Foreign policy priorities continue to include the isolation, by diplomatic and economic means, of the Gulf States; financial and technological support of liberal movements around the world; the expansion of internet connectivity; and the stabilization of conflict zones through mediation. California still prefers to follow the lead of other democratic states where possible, and shoulders the burden of global leadership only when unavoidable. All in all, California projects a picture of an incredibly rich, happy, well-educated, and well-meaning but naive and soft state.

[Chrinthanium]

Just some random discussion. Nothing of any real great importance, but still worth putting it in here for review and, for me, future recall.

As far as British history, without having to war with France for most of the history (kind of a defining characteristic of British history) I’ve been hard pressed to replace some of the history. What I am working from is an idea that, at least internally, I’ll be keeping British history the same as RL until after Queen Elizabeth I as far as I can (maybe we’ll just have more wars with the Scots). Somewhere in there, be it the Stuarts themselves or a made-up royal house, is where I’ll start to divulge. This will keep kind of the nuts and bolts of some of British history together.. Like the Reformation... while not having to worry about trying to justify recent modern history. Since, prior to around 1600, it was far easier to remain focused on internal things while letting the external things work themselves out... as far as I am concerned.

I’m also thinking that I may tweak my idea a bit and turn Britain a bit more... fanatical Fascist. Got to give it a reason to be a big “bad” as some people think it is. Of course, the British don’t think they’re all that bad. They’ve just figured out things better than the like of the Americans or Californians have. Some people were just unfortunate to have been born to a lesser race of people. That’s just the British way in AMW.

As far as Chrinthania, well, it sits off of Southeast Asia waiting for neighbors to arrive. And they come and go and still there’s Chrinthania. Considering Chrinthania’s recent good fortune (the shifting of the Soviet Celts back to SE Europe, Drapol downsizing and refocusing more on agrarian communism), it has no natural enemies down there. This being said, I’m going to keep a military in Chrinthania that is probably bigger than what Australia and New Zealand field together on the off chance someone arrives wanting to plop down a more sinister claim next to the Chrinnies. No need to give anyone the idea that Chrinthania is simply betting on an enemy not wanting to die in the deserts or get killed by the plethora of things that can kill people in Australia. We’ll hope that helps deter people, but we’re smart enough to know guns do that as well. If EP and Amerique are willing (as usual) to sell military items to Chrinthania, we’ll replace what comes from Britain with those items. I do think the Chrinnies are the least threatening people on the planet.

Also, a slight housekeeping note... the little thread I had going isn’t dead, but I think it may well be pushed into a new thread in order to tighten up the plot a bit more and focus on a few things that I’ve lost track of. I hope to add a few more characters and plan to create more interesting storylines.

[United Kongo]

Just a couple of thoughts I wanted to discuss.

So a question for the military minded in AMW, I am currently working on Sennar's fact book and in terms of the Kingdom's of military I am little stuck on possible organisation and size, as military matters isn't my strong point. Basically, I wanted to conceptualize the Sennari armed forces as being less of a proper army and more of a Gendarmerie type organisation that is more concerned with suppressing dissent and defending key resources that actually fighting other militaries. In addition, the Kingdom would also be looking to keep the military from becoming a potential political threat to the royal family and ensuring only certain ethnic groups/tribes are recruited. I was looking around at a few other African militaries for inspiration and initially thought about modelling the army off of South Sudan or Eritrea, but changed my mind as they seemed a little larger than what I was looking for and come from a history of militarisation that isn't really present in Sennar. Thus I was thinking of modelling the Sennari army off Mauritania or Cote D'Ivoir which have much smaller forces seemingly more dedicated to internal suppression of marginalized groups.

With this in mind, would it make more sense for the Sennari army to be divided into say, 4 divisions tasked with defending specific military zones, or for it to be divided into numerours independent brigades that can be moved around into different regional commands depending on need. I'm leaning towards the latter I think as it would also reflect the concerns of the Sennari state from preventing the army from becoming too powerful a force by preventing Generals from establishing themselves in any area too long. Plus it would also allow the Kingdom to move soldiers from their homelands and into areas with differing ethnic/tribal populations, again to prevent the creation of ethnic based power networks. In terms of its actual composition, I'd imagine it would mostly be either infantry or mechanised infantry (or maybe mechanised infantry where half the vehicles don't work) with probably very little need for armour or artillery.

Secondly, a question on the status of Communism in AMW, as AMW currently seems to have a number of socialist states, however do these form a distinct political bloc or are they perhaps more loosely organised and divided over ideological differences and geopolitical considerations? I ask as I intend to have communist movements to have been a former major political force in Sennar and one that is still lurking around although somewhat dormant. Sennari proto socialist movements probably would have emerged in the large mechanised irrigation schemes along the Nile in the 1930s and 1940s where large numbers of workers would have been brought together from all over the country to work as sharecroppers, giving rise to the first worker unions. From these worker unions would have emerged the "Sudanese" movement, an Africanist like political movement opposing Marimaiain colonial rule and the unity of all Sennari regardless of ethnicity or tribe (hence the designation Sudanese from term Bilad as Sudan = Land of the Blacks used to describe Sennar). While not initially an explicitly socialist movement, by say the 1950s and 1960s (the post war era if their is still a Great War?) the Sudanese movement would have become more or less synonymous with socialism and a major opponent of the Marimaian government, starting to engage in guerrilla activity. I think around this period between the 1950s-1980s it appears as though a lot of AMW's communist states come into existence if i'm not mistaken, and so the Sudanese communist movement could likely have been apart of this trend.

However in the case of Sennar, due to a combination of internal and external factors, the revolutionary movement fails and dies off by the 1980s/1990s. In its current form, the Sudanese movement would consist of a political party in exile to some friendly communist state whose membership consists of old guard revolutionaries still dreaming of class struggle and recent arrivals who have left/fled Sennar. On the ground however, the movement would consist of scattered groups of guerrillas in remote areas that are less interested in class struggle and more driven by parochial interests. However the appearance of revolutionary ideology is kept in order to receive financial and military assistance from friendly states. In addition their would be numerous underground unions and student movements more loosely connected with the original Revolutionary groups. Thus revolutionary communism would still be a potent and potential source of political opposition towards the Sennari monarchy, along with tribal and ethnic identity movements and a growing group of political Islamists.

[Chrinthanium]

Well, with TCB green-lighting Cass to take Norway and Sweden (and I concur that Cass is a welcomed return to our community), I wanted to post this myself before Cassanos had a chance to post a claim/discuss the idea.

Much like TCB, the idea of a second claim has loomed ominously in my mind trying to work out its position and set it up in a way I could roll with. I have been loathe to drop the UK and the idea of a British Empire because I have agreements in place with Walmington. However, Cass has come back looking to rejoin and I have spoken to him about a potential idea. What that would mean is I drop the British Empire. I would give the UK to Cass and he'd tack on Norway and Sweden for his little Scandinavian idea. I have asked Cassanos to retain the English people and to not CTE I know Walmy and I had agreements and I hope that he and Cass will work to retain those as well. Cass was having trouble working out another place he'd like to live and, frankly, if I can help someone like Cassanos by dropping all/some of a second claim, then so be it.

This being said, I'm not giving up on fascism altogether (there's a sentence I never knew I'd say). What I am planning is to shift the idea into a Pan-Latin ideology and claim the remainder of Spain, Portugal, southern France, Monaco, Italy, San Marino, Malta, Switzerland, and Vatican City. I will be dropping all other territories formerly of the British Empire. I will likely work out external colonies, but I haven't a clue if/what at this moment. I'm going to try to go no more than around 200 million at maximum. I have to hammer out exact figures, but I want to put the idea in the discussion thread. Much thanks to Amerique for tipping me to some historical ideas for this claim.

Essentially, keeping with RL history (ish) the Celtic tribes (in whatever form BG wishes) sack Rome, and eventually kill Romulus Augustulus in 475 AD and the Western Empire ends and these territories go their ways. Then, somewhere either in the 18th or 19th century the idea of Pan-Latinism is born and these territories united into some remnant entity clinging to Roman traditions in some ways. I'm not going to have a Western Roman Empire (though, it may well operate as such in practice if not in name). It will be some sort of Pan-Latin union of states to be named as I work it out some more. Whether or not the Catholic Church is using the nation to its advantage or the other way around remains to be seen. Lots of ideas, little time to flesh them out during the week.

Anyway, that's where we are at currently. Here's to the discussion to follow!

[United Kongo]

Well, with TCB green-lighting Cass to take Norway and Sweden (and I concur that Cass is a welcomed return to our community), I wanted to post this myself before Cassanos had a chance to post a claim/discuss the idea.

Much like TCB, the idea of a second claim has loomed ominously in my mind trying to work out its position and set it up in a way I could roll with. I have been loathe to drop the UK and the idea of a British Empire because I have agreements in place with Walmington. However, Cass has come back looking to rejoin and I have spoken to him about a potential idea. What that would mean is I drop the British Empire. I would give the UK to Cass and he'd tack on Norway and Sweden for his little Scandinavian idea. I have asked Cassanos to retain the English people and to not CTE I know Walmy and I had agreements and I hope that he and Cass will work to retain those as well. Cass was having trouble working out another place he'd like to live and, frankly, if I can help someone like Cassanos by dropping all/some of a second claim, then so be it.

This being said, I'm not giving up on fascism altogether (there's a sentence I never knew I'd say). What I am planning is to shift the idea into a Pan-Latin ideology and claim the remainder of Spain, Portugal, southern France, Monaco, Italy, San Marino, Malta, Switzerland, and Vatican City. I will be dropping all other territories formerly of the British Empire. I will likely work out external colonies, but I haven't a clue if/what at this moment. I'm going to try to go no more than around 200 million at maximum. I have to hammer out exact figures, but I want to put the idea in the discussion thread. Much thanks to Amerique for tipping me to some historical ideas for this claim.

Essentially, keeping with RL history (ish) the Celtic tribes (in whatever form BG wishes) sack Rome, and eventually kill Romulus Augustulus in 475 AD and the Western Empire ends and these territories go their ways. Then, somewhere either in the 18th or 19th century the idea of Pan-Latinism is born and these territories united into some remnant entity clinging to Roman traditions in some ways. I'm not going to have a Western Roman Empire (though, it may well operate as such in practice if not in name). It will be some sort of Pan-Latin union of states to be named as I work it out some more. Whether or not the Catholic Church is using the nation to its advantage or the other way around remains to be seen. Lots of ideas, little time to flesh them out during the week.

Anyway, that's where we are at currently. Here's to the discussion to follow!

I like the idea of a Pan Latin state that is not necessarily Rome but still heavily influenced by it, especially if you are considering going Fascist still. I think the 18th and 19th century is a good place for such as union to be born, perhaps if I might suggest an idea, from a Napoleon/Napoleon like figure who could emerge and sweep away all the old (maybe decrepit) states that inhabit your claim and create the new Pan-Latin state and identity. This state could either survive and go on the modern state or perhaps is destroyed and broken up by a coalition, before Pan Latinism re surges in the 19th/20th century and unites once more.

Anyway looks cool regardless.

[Cassanos]

If there were a coalition, we could essentially have our Napoleon and Waterloo, with a fascist Roman Revolution. Neat .

[DaShunchao]

This is all very confusing, but I don't see any real issues.

If Cass took Denmark as well, his new claim would be a reboot of the North Sea Empire of King Canute, and cold be Aenglisc, rather than English. Something like that.

All your moving around, though...

well, someone needs Macau. Is Valendia keeping it? Otherwise, IC reasoning suggests the Ming selling it to the Caliphate.

EDIT

I would be willing to trade Shanghai to a European country for either Macau or Hong Kong, if either party is interested.