Akordania wrote:Honestly forgive me if I've misinterpreted something here. Does that not sum up to 34 months, which is nearly three total years?
From my understanding, the stages aren't subsequent to each other. For example Stage Emil begins one month after Stage Dora and eleven months after the overall plan has been activated, rather than taking a full eleven months.
New Decius, I have to agree with Akordania here.
Olympus may be game-changing, but who's to say that the Royalists will even survive long enough to see it through? Unless I've misunderstood, only one Capilean, Hermann Winser, even knows of the plans existence. To the general public and even most government and military top brass, it just seems as if the Duchy's foremost ally has given up on the war effort. Shipments of grain and materiel are good but their continued delivery will do little to undermine the general perception that Capile is being abandoned by its most powerful ally and thus the war must be lost. (I haven't done a good job of showing this in my posts, to be fair, but it's the logical takeaway.)
That devastating blow to morale is one of the primary reasons I believe the Royalists might realistically collapse, but let me delve into a few more:
1) The Royalists have not won a single major victory. The best they have done has been to knock out the Saatlanders and the Dutch which, honestly, took far too long. The effects of this would be twofold. Firstly, the general public would again be demoralized: their military has been humiliated time and time again by a seemingly invincible foe; compound that with the seeming withdrawal of the only competent Royalist forces, and hopes are dashed. Secondly, the military itself would be demoralized and mutinous. I have been planning on a Royalist mutiny but haven't found a way to work it in thus far. Which brings me to reason number two.
2) The Royalist military itself is in a sorry shape. It had been in a constant state of atrophy since Klaus' ascension due to a combination of corruption and cutbacks. The Stoßwehr's treachery robbed it of many of the competent officers and soldiers remaining. It has never recovered since. It has essentially been bled white, and has suffered the most casualties of all the factions (this without even factoring in Operation Fenrir). As Akordania pointed out, many of the remaining personnel are fresh recruits whose motivations are dubious and training even more so. The remaining veterans are furious at their leaders and their constant setbacks. Many of them are war-weary and wish to end the war, while others want radical reform to reinvigorate the army and the entire government. In terms of the officer corps, Winser has tried to bring competent officers to the forefront but even he can only do so much. As you have seen, men like Hornburg are allowed to keep their positions and even advance simply because they are well-connected or there is no-one better to replace them.
Thus you have the combination of a corrupt, incompetent officer corps and a downright mutinous soldiery.
3) There is a good chance that the Reich may soon capture the Royalist capital. If this happens, the Reich would control about half the country and most of the population. The Royalist war effort may entirely collapse, even if important government officials escape. The morale of the general citizenry is already dangerously low due to the reasons expounded above, and a capture of Rochefurt will cement the feeling that the war has become untenable.
These are the reasons why I believe the following scenarios may play out. Feel free to comment on either my reasoning above or my scenarios below.
1) Following the capture of Rochefurt, there are mass mutinies throughout the Royalist armies demanding peace. Entire divisions arrest their officers and either defect to the enemy or simply march home. The war effort completely collapses. Riots demanding peace also break out in Royalist cities, and the government is powerless to physically repress them. Klaus, seeing his predicament, sacks Knott and replaces the pro-war government with a pro-peace government, which quickly sues for peace with the Reich. A formal peace treaty is postponed until all fighting ends. Until then, Royalist remnants collaborate with the Reich to quash the Communist and French holdouts.
2) Alternatively, following the capture of Rochefurt, Klaus refuses to see reason and so there is a coup by prominent military officers who are in favor of ending the war by suing for peace with the Reich. The Royalist war effort collapse amid this power play and the Royalists are pushed back on all fronts (again, mass desertions and riots) until a new government emerges from the chaos and seeks terms with the Reich. It then plays out similar to scenario 1, except Royalist armies will be virtually subsumed into the Stoßwehr rather than merely collaborating due to the whims of their intact officer corps.
Of course, these are merely two ideas. Details within them could change, or we could decide on an entirely different course.
New Decius wrote:cutting off most of the Reich’s maritime commerce.
I already addressed your other points, I think, but I wanted to point out, what maritime commerce? The Reich is an unrecognized state in most of the world (besides Akordania, really). They're probably hurting for some resources right now but it's not like they could realistically trade for them even if their sea lanes were unblocked.
