AMW Big Discussion Thread

[Dra-pol]

Applications thread!

[Gurguvungunit]

I'm interested, obviously. I think I'll stick with the nation that I made post-reboot, since it has the delightful advantage of actually making sense. But it can fit anywhere, since it's pretty flexible in terms of history and international relations. I even have a few ideas bouncing around, although I admit that my interest sort of waxes and wanes in relation to how dedicated the people around me are. If, for example, we can get a good war on, I'll check every day. If we're just puttering along like we are right now, I'll probably leave. Not personal, I just find this boring.

Now, have to go hack blackberries out of a yard.

[Somewhereistonia]

Well I'd really like AMW to continue, but the lack of anyone posting for long periods is something that needs resolving and I'm not sure how. I think that most of the time I would be able to remain active, but exam periods (such as the one I've just been through) will understandably limit my activity.

I'd have to say my sentiments echo those of Gurg (perhaps slightly more enthusiastic), if replies are slow in coming and people show no signs of dedication, then it is hard to bring yourself to put the extra effort in to do something. Organising NATO by itself (with nothing else happening) seems fairly boring. I kind of just want to get the NATO thing done with so I can do something more fun. Ideas for this include invading Kaliningrad Olblast (and potentially Pskov) as well as potentially setting up a Baltic colony in Africa, both really need the backing of NATO. All of this will help blur the lines of good and bad, and brake down this global stalemate. This all relies on other people being active (Cass, Q, Gurg, KR and Vecron ideally)

I really don't mind restarting, reverting to 1.0 or keeping it as it is, just so long as their is activity. If AMW was restarted or reverted to 1.0, I might decide on a different claim, it just depends on who remains (I'm thinking maybe some capitalist Buddhists somewhere in/around China as a possibility). If activity is low, then the Baltic Federation is kind of limited (I can't exactly fight a war on my own).

If few people remain interested, maybe we could keep AMW running but limit the map to one continent or something to ensure that there can always be interaction, even if only 2 nations are really active for a period (obviously just 4 nations wouldn't be great in the long term). Of course this would need those who are still interested to agree on a continent (Asia and Europe are probably the most obvious candidates).

With no intent to cause offense, from what I can see; many nations have done little to nothing post restart (and literally nothing of note whilst I've been on board). Another related problem is the new nations who grab a space and promptly leave (e.g. Christstan). Both of these problems need sorting if AMW is to survive.

So solutions: the first one could be to eject all the nations from AMW leaving those still interested to re-join, this may only be a partial solution. The second, make it more difficult to join? This is difficult without being off-putting but the recruitment thread may need to be more clear than the last one in asking for genuine long-term interest.

[Spizania]

Wohoo, first post on the new Forums

I was originally planning on kicking off a rather bloody and collosal Civil war in India, with a combination of a blood and stalemated war in the jungle with Burma/over Bangladesh that saps off enough of the strength of the B.I Armed Forces to allow the Princely States to rise in rebellion, along with the cowed Tigers launching there gambit to claim Tamil Nadu from the forces of the Viceroy.
I was originally planning on doing this sometime soon after the 10th June, upon completion of the exam session, which by the way is not going well But with the RP considering other options, I shall have to delay it

[The Macabees]

If there is a restart I'm interested in joining as Portugal & Spain in some sort of quasi-libertarian state.

[The United Taifas]

At the moment I am '50/50' on whether to stay on. I like my little empire of Al'Gharb Al'Andalus, but admit that I haven't done much with it as yet. To be honest I was never thrilled with the Roman Empire thing due to how often it has been done before and how much of Europe it dominated, and I felt somehow restricted in what I could do.

I think maybe we ought to be tougher on superpowers. Sometimes it seemed that Q. just kept getting more and more demanding and more and more powerful, everyone who's played in Russian territory has played as a big bad Russian power despite hopes for more originality, Vecron had Europe all tied up, and before that France never ran out of firepower, and I don't think any of that was conducive to... fun.

At the moment, yes, Spyr's big and wealthy, but less so in both regards than the real USA for example, and militarily quite restrained, and Gurg's empire is vast but I suppose it's far-flung and perhaps the African part of it not too productive (I don't know about that, though), and nearly everyone else is relatively small, poor, or both, and I think that's much better.

So... maybe. Depends who else is on board, and what shape the world takes. For example, I'd probably be interested to see what Mac would do with a 'quasi-libertarian' Spain adjacent to my fractious union of Moorish Taifas, and I'd be outnumbered almost four to one by my neighbour instead of seventeen to one or whatever it has been previously. Bit selfish, maybe, but I'm still 'interested' if not absolutely committed as yet.

[Strathdonia]

Did I hear my name being mentioned? Speaketh not of the devil lest he appear!

Anyway I would love to whole heartly say woohoo yeah hah! however I know myself that my psoting recently as Crookfur has been piss poor and despite now havign the time I don't have much motivation for anythign really.

Part fo the problem when i've dropped things has been a lack of much for a smallish (on a world scale , somewhat big on an african level) nation to get involved in. I loved the small limited engagements and proxy stuff that was goign on between strathdonia and lusaka and the constant knowledge that we pretty much could wipe each other out. relationships between natiosna t thats tage were just developing with plenty going on outside of the mainline european battle feilds i.e. the unalinged movement. persoanlly for me the real start of the down turn was the lavagrian (sp) war. Proabably i shouldn't have even bothered putting my nose into it with my half arsed "guess what I played out in OFP last night" mercenary ops, the was to be honest beyond me.

Part of me really wants to get back in and restart the Derek Morgan story...

I short I am willign to give it a try again but I really would need active, not nessicarily anatagonistic or freindly neighbours in southern africa.

Oh and this time i promise no stupid 75mm super magnum tank guns mounted on sherridans...

[Beth Gellert]

Ah, Mr.Strathleupagus!

Well, due to just-feeling-like-it and being sick of how crap my prior continental maps looked, I knocked this up earlier. I think it's fair to say that you could, if you wanted, stick Strathdonia -or another nation- pretty much anywhere you liked, now, as we're not exactly pushed for space.



To explain, obviously this map carries no authority, and isn't even complete. Basically it's just people who've posted in this thread so far (less Strath, 'cause he only just beat me here) plus KR because I believed him still active (and to be honest I shaded Russia without thinking after changing its border for Spyr) and Spyr because... I found myself reshaping Russia's border to fit... well, I don't know, but it seems like he might still be out there.

This isn't me saying X/Y/Z ought to be kicked out or anything, just based on this thread and relatively recent activity in my telegram inbox. I recognise also that Dra-pol may or may not change his position, most of Europe may still be Vecron or Spain may become Mac, Strath may or may not rejoin, TCB may have a claim in or around Iran or perhaps elsewhere, Rus and/or Spyr may not be with us despite my assumptions, blahblahblah.

[Strathdonia]

To be honest southern africa is the only place i've looked at enough maps of for lognnenough to really be comfortable RPing from. But I suppose a bunch of paranoid scotts could be slotted in just about anywhere. Possibly soemthing along the lines of a Darius expedition that worked (good god man! you're mad!)

[The Macabees]

Who is Portugal?

[The Macabees]

This used to be on International Incidents, on the Jolt forums. I guess that they decided to move to the NationStates forums. It is basically a fantasy Earth, where the history of the world is changed. That is, the players who occupy a certain territory can change that country's (or group of country's) history. For example, let's say I take Portugal & Spain. I could re-write the history of the Iberian Peninsula to make this possible, as well as any other things I wanted (set it up for a certain regime to be existent at the time that I take it over... in my case, a more libertarian government).

[Skeelzania]

So do you guys play with any sort of "rules" where you have to show proof-of-purchase for every military unit down to the outhouse, or have threads which are basically little more than embassy-request spam? I was part of an offline site which had a simliar premise, but eventually drifted away due to lack of activity and also requiring more "paperwork" than I enjoy. I don't really like having to make a four-book excell worksheet to keep track of where all my divisions are stationed, in podunk little towns which may or may not feasibly be able to support such a deployment. I'd like to be able to play things like I do with Skeelzania: have a vague idea of my own force in my own head, and try not to overstep myself when it comes to deploying it.

On that other forum, I had a nation that was a large, central Asian Khanate originally founded by Tamerlane. Forum never got going before I could get them involved in a war over Afghanistan with the Ahriman-worshiping Persians, unfortunately.

[Third Spanish States]

four-book excell worksheet to keep track of where all my divisions are stationed

That is a time intensive, dull and harder to interpret method for that. Besides, no enemy should have an exact knowledge of the positioning and numbers of every division in a front. I use images instead for such purpose, followed by a 15-lines long at most post about the execution of tactics and all the rest of the tl;dr in the form of character development and PoV description, which in case means action and drama packed, character-centered descriptions of a war(including psychological factors) rather than the more common "Bird Eye's View" as most people describe their conflicts in II.

Images like the following 52k Modem-unfriendly one I'm currently using in one of my ongoing RPs.

http://img196.imageshack.us/img196/2154/warmap.png

I use fonts with military drawings or symbols and stock maps to do it.

[Skeelzania]

Having a map is a nifty way to go about it. Skeelzania is a future-tech country, so I'm mostly dropping fleets into planetary systems, but for a modern-tech or just terrestial roleplay, a map would certainly be very nice to have. Having an idea of the topography is also nice.

I don't think its unreasonable for a player to know where the bulk of your military is stationed at any given time. At least in peace-time, its a reasonable assumption that military forces will be deployed closed to existing infrastructure (e.g. bases), and things like that are rather difficult to hide.

Mostly what I was objecting to what just having to get involved in all the minutae, not only of placement but also of equipment. I was playing a reasonably backwards country, which would normally be stocked with Soviet arms, but there was no real Soviet equivilent in that particular timeline. Rampant inactivity made it difficult to coordinate with players when it came to determing just who got what tech, as well. I like being able to just come up with things on the fly as I can in normal NationStates roleplay.

[Beth Gellert]

I may be cut short in the middle of this post, as I've to be in Leicester in about three hours and presently I'm in West Lancashire, but ooh, outside interest!

Mac, Portugal is The United Taifas. He hasn't been terribly active, but was a handy player in the pre-restart days under another account. It's a whole Moorish hold-out in the Al'Gharb Al'Andalus thang.

Nathicana, erm, hum. It's not quite just another Earth-(#X), we're fairly adamant about that, and it's not really an alternate history thing. Originally it was just an early rejection of the NS stats. I know that sounds pretty standard these days, but this started a really long time ago... nations that now have 12bln people were then counting their populations in the hundreds of millions. Originally most of us moved our main NS countries to AMW and just picked RL geography for them to cover.

Some examples: before the restart I had Sri Lanka and southern India up the east coast to the Bangladeshi border, but 40% of my population was Celtic, which was explained in a massive alteration of RL history; a guy called Nova Gaul had France but restored the Bourbon monarchy in the C20th in a slightly less dramatic alteration of history; and Armandian Cheese's Armandian Combine had absolutely nothing to do with RL history what so ever.

Now some of us, myself included, play both in and out of AMW, with two different versions of our nation that exist in different universes. In my case that's just because a few players whom I think a lot of have never joined AMW, and I still wanted to have the opportunity to interact, while some of us are dedicated exclusively to AMW RP.

Crap, that was more rambly than I planned. No time for a re-write.

Skeelzania, I think we're trying to reestablish some of our rules in this discussion, to be honest. I don't think we've ever had an embassy request thread, storefront, or whatever. To some degree it's taken as a given in our finite world that relations have established relationships (except the hermit Dra-pol, which talks to Spyr once in a blue moon and pretends that the rest of the world is on fire). On armaments and such, some nations such as Beddgelert are basically self-sufficient (we're a bit of a pariah state and haven't much choice), while with the rest it just has to make some sense that User-X would have been allowed or otherwise able to obtain hardware from Source-Y.

The main rules are that it's MT, though original designs are allowed so long as they have not more than technological/capability parity with the leading in-service systems in reality; we use a real-world map including climate and geology; and population sizes are based on the territory covered by a claim. I have 51 million people in a claim covering Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary, Serbia (incl.Kosovo), Macedonia, and Albania, for example. Beyond that it's just... try not to be an ass, detail in your national character and realism in your nation's behaviour will be welcome, and there's space for a bit of quirkiness, too (though I hope we've seen the last of the A-Team! ).

Some of us have listed force compositions, equipment lists, and so on, but few have gone so far as to describe the exact deployment, organisation, and disposition of every unit. I've divided my field forces into a few Fronts and given an on-paper strength plus a Front Commander to each one, but have not broken them down into armies, divisions, et cetera. Some have just left us with a general idea of the size and nature of their military as a whole... a bit more detail may be needed if they get into a serious war, but otherwise, meh, whatever!

Ah, right, sorry guys, I have to dash. I'm sure someone else will be along to give rather more concise answers to remaining questions...

[Crookfur]

BG has covered msot of the main points.

Some of us who were in AMW did use alt "puppet" antions i.e. I created Strathdonia which was a slightly not so crappy and heavily militant malawi that ended up invading mozambique.

paper work can be very mimal if thats what you want but you would be dealign with RL nations resources (or lack there of) which does bring its own fun and creativity. You don't have to even focus much on the military the political and character sides of things have always been more important.



TSS: I have to ask but is that map supposed to represent anything close to RL britian? If so your scottish deployments are alittle bit messed up, I woudl ahve assumed that pretty much all of your foces would ahve been deployed in the glasgow area ready to surge across the cnetral belt to stirling, perth, dundee and edinburgh. The only west coast airports capable of turely supporting military aircraft are prestwick (ayr) and glasgow, oban has a airport but bugger all support facilities. You coudl also control the entire outer hebrides witha single divsion. Of course if the maps represents a totally different britian then just ignore me.

[Spyr]

AMW's use of real geography and populations, and its rules on things like using in-production technologies, provide a framework for roleplay that eliminates a lot of the disputes which can bog down more freeform RP... every player involved has an objective reference for where the mountains are, how far one has to sail to reach another's coast, how much petroleum exists in a prefecture's natural reserves. Not that such a framework means we don't have our out-of-character disagreements, but it certainly helps us tell our shared stories without worrying that someone else might suddenly declare the province we'd assumed was a land-locked desert with T-55s is in fact an arctic island with laser-hover-tanks.

On the subject of paperwork, having a shared world that attempts some degree of realism means one needs to keep track of at least some details, if only so we can make sure everyone is on the same page, so to speak. I must admit that I bask in minutae... more cultural and bureaucratic than military... but that is certainly not the case with everyone in AMW. If you end up fighting a border conflict, its important to know what units are deployed where and with what orders, but those sort of details aren't necessary most of the time.

[Gurguvungunit]

Beej: I've also done a map, which is massively out of date but does have many of the post-restart nations on it. If you'd like to look, I'll link the most updated version. Mine is prettier, but is also that much more complicated to deal with, so I'm inclined to suggest that you all look at Beth Gellert's maps rather than mine.

[Skeelzania]

Thank you for answering our questions, all.

If its alright with you folks (and isn't going to be stepping on any toes geography wise), I'll throw my hat into the ring as an alt. I like Skeelzania as it is, and think simply playing a clone of them as MT would get boring. So I put another little nation together:

Kirishitan Nippon

Not sure who would wind up converting them, since there doesn't seem to be any direct Portugese parallel, but a Catholic evangelist Japan sounded like an interesting thing to try. The territory I have in mind for them would include the Home Islands (minus Sakhalin which seems to have gone to Manchuria), as well as some amount of their WW2 colonial holdings. I'd like to know whose running the 2/3rds of Korea and what their thoughts are, but I was thinking maybe a colony/protectorate centered on Pusan. I believe that Japan, Christian or otherwise, would still have felt a natural resources crunch and embarked on a campaign of expansion at one point or another. Obviously I don't want to Kirishitan Nippon too big right off the bat, so I would like to hear your thoughts on whether they could get Taiwan, Phillipines, maybe parts of Indonesia.

[The Crooked Beat]

I'm certainly still interested in AMW. We've had a good run so far, and I think there's at least a bit of life left in this organization! I'm not exactly sure what I'll do in terms of territory, whether I'll go for my Iran idea or something else entirely. It will probably depend in large part on what we have in terms of Russia. I'd agree with Taifas on his point about superpowers, and it might make sense for us to be a bit more assertive in discouraging applicants from simply mashing-together advanced industrial countries. At the same time, it might be worth considering some kind of enforced, or at least recommended, geographic closeness, so that smaller states can interact with one another more easily, and so we don't have a community made-up of tiny holdings with no really plausible motive for interaction. That could also help to break the superpower appeal, since states wouldn't necessarily have to be the most powerful in order to meaningfully participate in RP. Then again, I'm not exactly the one to be talking!

I'd also like to register my strong support for Spizania's Indian civil war idea. I think that would be an excellent jumping-off point for our new AMW, something we could all get involved in and an exciting crisis to help attract new members. That, of course, as long as Spizania still wants to do it.

[Dra-pol]

Skeelzania, I tentatively suggest that your proposed nation may be an extremely useful addition to AMW at the moment.

In AMW, the Korean peninsula is sometimes refered to as such, but in a way that is more a geographic than in any way cultural reference, and it is also known as Dra-pol... the shaded area being my Choson People's Republic of Dra-pol. One of the major problems we've had recently is that one of the other founders, the United States of Quinntonia, desired a retcon of history and a clean sheet, while I felt that my nation's very character was tied-up in a long history of Quinntonian involvement on the peninsula.

In short, the Drapoel 'hermit kingdom' (an almost Pol Pot-ish Communist state) was prised open by US firepower and a Christianising mission. The peninsula had been divided similarly to Korea in reality after the Second World War (which we had in AMW, in a somewhat modified form), and the Korean War happened similarly, except that the People's Republic of Spyr (seen on the map in Manchuria etc) took over China's role. The CPRD went even more isolationist than the RL DPRK, except that it never gave up trying to reuinify the peninsula. In the 1980s, the USQ sent personnel ashore in the north, the Three Day War was fought, and the USQ ended up establishing a colony around Hamhung and Hungnam. A second bloody war was fought probably in the '90s as the Drapoel attempted to recover 'Quinntonian Dra-pol' and invaded the south, reaching Seoul and beyond in a massive surprise offensive, hence the greater extent of the CPRD compared to the DPRK. But Quinntonian Dra-pol was maintained.

The upshot was a Dra-pol shaped by a series of horrific wars and a perception of Christianity as indistinguishable from capitalism as part of foreign imperialism. We crucified thousands of missionaries and POWs, and Christian assassins killed our Director Kurosian and wounded his protégé, Secretary Hotan who, once recovered, became Director and lead the recapture of Seoul etc.

So, Q wanting to step out of that history entirely created an impassable rift for us. I have felt that I need the hated Christian (probably capitalist) imperialist conspiring to carve-up the peninsula, depriving us of farmland in the south and industry in Hamhung, and so on. A Christian Japan just might be an ideal replacement if we could work you into a new history for a reinvigorated AMW.

To be honest, I'd rather do away with the NPC Republic of Korea we've had awkwardly sitting around in the past. This is getting untidy, so maybe I'll start a new post full of ponderings about a possible fleshed-out history. I'm feeling a flicker of hope, though...

[Cassanos]

I'm still in and used to check every thread I was active in every day, though university and work got in the way recently. Anyway, I am a little like Gurg in how often to post, I suppose: If there is a lot going on, I'm more inclined to post a lot myself (in "The Soil of Africa" or "Tamil Tango", for instance). I'm not much in favour of a huge retcon AGAIN, though it might make sense. Weh. Be that as it may, I would still like to continue playing Germany and Cassanos (i.e. Poland) as close allies, but would settle for Germany as well. For the future, I might take Germany on a slightly less reasonable way, at least if there is still an evil oppressive feudal power nearby which good Greens and Social Democrats can hate with a passion.

Meh, to sum it up: Count me in, and maybe someone would like to react to the shocking imagery from the USAR which has been broadcast weeks ago?

[Kievskaya Rus]

I'll just quietly raise my hand to say "I still want to play in this little game".

[Dra-pol]

I think there will be partial retcons involved in this, but largely because this will be an attempt to make right the untidy prior reboot. I've decided, for example, that I'm not going to bother with WoS, there are rumblings of an end to Talost's involvement and possibly ex-Lusaka's, and we may be acquiring a Christian Japan, which would potentially solve so many problems for me personally (and so I'm about to make a massive eye-hurting post on Asian history ).

This may mean that Tamil Tango didn't happen, but the middle of that thread was when things were starting to fall apart anyway. Perhaps Spiz's new unrest in India will more than compensate.

Anyway, good to see you both, Cass and Kyiv.

[Dra-pol]

This post, then, would be for Skeelzania and all existing members with even the slightest interest in AMW's far east and its history.

So, I gather that Skeelzania has been around in NS for a long time... I don't think that I've had much interaction with this player, but if he (?) should prove interested in a long-term commitment to AMW, I see some potential for a triumphant community salvage mission here on the new forums.

At the moment I don't know who would Christianise Japan or when. If Q. sticks around, perhaps it was one of his nation's earliest missions, if not we'll have to look to Europe and Vecron if he is still interested in AMW, or perhaps even Mac if he is not. The Roman Question may be one that AMW must answer in either case. I suppose any number of countries could have been the source of missionaries, anyway, government-sanctioned or not.

Even if Skeelzania's Kirishitan Nippon had to start out with its origins still to be written, C20th history could be established in some detail.

By the way, I'd like to consider dropping all reference to Korea and the Koreans, replacing these entirely with Dra-pol and the Drapoel. That ought to have been done a long time ago, but threads were full of references, and it seems that the new forums would be a good place to clean things up.

Possible history of Dra-pol (Korea) with Skeelzanian involvement

A lot of the history that I'm about to propose fits with what we had before, which is nice. It also has some similarities with real-world history up to a point, I suppose.

Perhaps in the first decade of the C20th, Christian Japan could invade the then Kingdom of Dra-pol, which incorporated the whole Drapoel peninsula under the rule of the extremely young Emperor Wiman and was in a state of near total autarky, refusing any contact with the outside world. As Skeelzania suggests, Busan might have been the hub of Japanese -and by extension Christian- settlement, and from there Japanese troops armed with rifles and supported by naval gunnery could quickly reduce Wiman's medieval fortresses along the coast, compelling the Emperor to sue for peace and create himself a vassal to Kirishitan Nippon. This may happen in perhaps 1910?

A consequence of this treaty would be the outbreak of popular rebellion against Wiman. With Japanese help he would attempt to put-down the rebels with on and off success for several years until a republican army is established under a dashing young commander, believed to have been a minor prince or major noble in the Kingdom before Japanese involvement, using the nom de guerre Sulo. Sulo's guerrillas prove impossible to root-out of the peninsula's extensive uplands, especially in the mountainous north where they establish a capital at Da'Khiem, mid way between Pyongyang and Hamhung, and a probably unrecognised Free Republic fights a savage insurgency against the Japanese puppet authority of an increasingly unpopular Wiman.

Spyr's history will become significant once again, here, but I imagine that some contact with early revolutionaries there may have taken place. Would the Japanese still have major influence in Spyr as well now that there's no more Lyong peninsula? How would the Pacific War unfold? Knowing whether or not we still have Q would help, of course, but Gurg's British Empire, with its enduring interest in Singapore, Australia, and New Zealand, might conceivably have fought the Japanese more strongly if Europe's history is a little different. If Llewellyn's Geletians switch sides more quickly than Germany's RL allies and storm into Austria or something, the British may perhaps have been less desperately stretched and more able to fight in Asia. Also, if we end up Q-less, or if his desire to withdraw from Asian affairs extends to Japan, having to fight the distant British instead of the US might explain why Japan gets to hold on to some colonies, perhaps having got away with some sort of armistice at the conclusion of WWII?

Anyway, after 1945, the Japanese are perhaps compelled by treaty to leave the Drapoel peninsula, but little enough international attention is directed at Dra-pol that Japan is able to prop-up the Kingdom of Dra-pol in the south, while in the north Sulo's Free Drapoel Republic endures, clinging to the mountains. Maybe some countries recognise one as the peninsula's legitimate authority, some the other, and some perhaps a partitioned land.

In 1950, perceiving a weakened Kingdom and imagining that the world will not tolerate renewed Japanese aggression, Sulo attacks the Kingdom, his hardened ex-guerrillas over-running imperial forces on the border and advancing south. The apparently weak Emperor succumbs to a coup amongst his officers, whose moral is at rock bottom as Seoul falls to the new Free Army, and a National Republic is hurridly arranged around a military junta. Contrary to Sulo's belief, however, the Japanese are not dissuaded from intervention, correctly calculating that the British are happy so long as Singapore and Australia aren't threatened and that the Russians are war weary, westward looking, and somewhat cut-off after the Strainist Revolution in Spyr. At Busan a perimeter is held by the junta with Japanese naval gunfire support until troops from Japan can return to Dra-pol, using their mastery of the seas to put an amphibious force into the Suloist rear and providing air support for a counter-attack.

Japan and the RoD are able to push the forces of the DFR north across the former border until Sulo's back is against the Yalu. This, of course, causes alarm in Spyr, which, fresh out of its revolution, fears a return of Japanese influence, and sends a large force across the river to aid Sulo in repulsing his enemies, the two sides eventually fighting one another to a bloody stalemate along the 38th parallel.

After three years of war, Sulo has gained nothing, and is replaced -perhaps at Spyian behest- by a Professor Chao Shih-an, Secretary of the fledgling Drapoel Communist Party, who takes on the party-name Kurosian and establishes the Choson People's Republic of Dra-pol with himself as Director. Eventually Spyr may be disappointed if there had been hopes for Kurosian's Dra-pol as a client state, as he quickly returns the nation to its former condition of isolation.

The CPRD faces the new Christian Republic of Dra-pol under cease-fire for over quarter of a century until, in the 1980s, a civilian ship from the south is lost off the northern coast, apparently destroyed by the People's Coast Guard. Japan responds by sending a small force ashore to search for survivors -and perhaps, as Da'Khiem maintains, to conduct espionage and gauge the Communists' strength- and the ensuing firefight expands to become the Three Day War, during which large Japanese forces capture Hamhung and Hungnam, pushing aside People's Army forces armed with 1940s and '50s vintage weaponry, and creating Japanese Dra-pol. Later, an attempt is made to drive-out the Japanese, Da'Khiem feeling partly surrounded by the enclave of JDp and the pro-Japanese RoD, but once again massive static defences and naval and aerial firepower hold firm. 'Kurosian's Rage' costs hundreds of thousands of lives, including those of every Christian missionary in the CPRD (many crucified opposite enemy defences), but fails to dislodge the Japanese as waves of Drapoel infantry are cut-down while charging the colony's earthen ramparts.

Kurosian is assassinated by Japanese agents or Christian fanatics (or both), and a concurrent attempt is made on his protégé, Secretary of the DCP, Wang Kuo-fang, who is badly wounded in the course of slaying his three assailants. Wang is treated in Spyr and is proclaimed Director while still on his recovery bed, taking the party-name Hotan. On his return, Hotan sets about industrialising the CPRD and marginally increases relations with Spyr and Geletia.

One of few successful commanders during the last conflict -in which he lead the ambush and defeat of a Japanese airborne force sent to Da'Khiem in an attempt to capture then-Director Kurosian- Hotan proves a popular leader. At the turn of the century he proclaims the Reunification War, and launches one of the largest armed forces in the world across the 38th Parallel in a gigantic offensive that incorporates human waves, mechanised formations, hundreds of aircraft and hovercraft carrying paras and marines into the enemy rear, and a series of tunnels beneath the demilitarised zone that allow several complete divisions of his Hong Juk (Red Bamboo) crack troops to bypass minefields supposed to delay any assault long enough for a mobilisation to be enacted.

An assault on JDp proves to be little more than a diversion, though artillery and rocketry causes havoc in the heavily-populated enclave and an ill-fated revolt is attempted by Communists and Banat agents in the city. Meanwhile Seoul falls amidst a murderous bombardment that causes roads south of the city to be blocked by refugees as the RoDA attempts to bring up reinforcements, and several whole provinces are quickly swallowed up by what Hotan is now calling the Unified People's Army. The UPA is brutal as ever, but finally has thoughtful leadership and has replaced its WWII-vintage equipment with at least marginally superior technology acquired through Sithin and Akink. As General Hozaro's 100th Assault Division thunders into Andong, where the last resistance north of Busan is dug-in, a desperate Republic pleads for rescue by Japan.

At this point, to mould prior and potential history, it would be ideal for the Japanese to use a tactical nuclear strike on the 100th Assault Division, and for this to represent perhaps the first use of a nuclear weapon in AMW. Perhaps, though, the RoD's junta, having lost its capital, could at this stage surrender its sovereignty to Japan, enabling Skeelzania's new nation to have the southern third or so of the peninsula as an imperial province.

Well, that's about the sum of my thoughts so far.