Andnjord
Arcane
Have you ever dreamed of being the Admiral of a mighty navy? Of planning its unsinkable battleships, designing its all-mighty carriers and constructing its deadly destroyers and cruisers? Have you ever wondered what it would have been like to be in Spruance shoes as he sent off wave after wave of aircraft at the Japanese carriers at Midway? If none of the above applies to you then you are a perfectly normal person, but if it did you are a very deranged person and I want you to join us in a succession game of Rule the Waves 2!
For anyone who has read my successfully completed SAI LP (the predecessor of RTW) or Dayallu's shamelessly abandoned RTW LP, you should know what you're getting into. If you haven't then go ahead and read them, especially Dayallu's as RTW2 is basically the same game as RTW with the addition of a bunch of QOL feature and most importantly extends the tech tree to 1950 (although you can keep on playing for longer, I think 1975?). This means we get to play with fast Battleships, Aircrafts and Aircraft Carriers, radar and bigger and more expensive lumps of useless floating steel waiting to be sunk be a cheap submarine.
Standard rules of succession games will apply, one player plays for 5 or more years (we'll decide that depending on how many people sign up), passes the save to the next person, said person pulls his hair out marveling at the foolishness of his predecessor's designs, desperately tries to fix things making everything worse in the process then sends the save to next person so the cycle continues.
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Decisions:
You get two choices of starting dates, 1900 and 1920. Now obviously we will do the 1900 start, we need to give ourselves distinguished codexers enough time to muck things up thoroughly.
We do have a critical decision to make though before getting started. Who do we play as? Because I'm a lazy bastard I'll just paste Dayallu's excellent summary of the nations available (minus Spain ) with screens from RTW2 nation selection screen as some stuff has changed there as well as some more period appropriate sexy ladies.
Britain
The leading superpower of the age, Britain is rich, advanced and powerful. With a worldwide empire and a stable government, it can manage to rule the Seas quite effectively. It's a safe choice, and its national advantages are many and well-rounded, with the Hidden flaws giving us however the chance of some random negative quirks (like ships exploding after a single hit or inefficient turrets). Our Global Naval power requirement forces us to have 10% of our tonnage on foreign station to keep the colonies happy and we can't use the Cramped Quarters build option. All in all, a solid if boring choice.
France
(Fun fact, my great grandfather served aboard the Richelieu)
France is another solid choice, with a big colonial empire, an adequate budget, and some asshole politicians trying to make your life impossible with random requests ( the Inconsistent Naval Policy Quirk). France was the birthplace of one of the most influential naval schools of thought of the age, the Jeune école ("Young School") that theorized the use of small, heavily armed units to engage quickly the enemy battleships and the massive use of commerce raiders to wreck their economy. If you want to test such theories in the rightful place, choose France.
Germany
Germany is rich, powerful, with good tech (muh Krupp Steel) and it has a Bombastic head of state (extra chance of stupid) and a Cautious policy (meaning their AI-controlled ships will avoid aggressive engagements). Historically, Germany went for a dick-waving contest with Britain by building newer, bigger ships in the foolish attempt to gain parity with the Royal Navy: a huge expense of resources that ended with the only "serious" battle that in our timeline tested the mettle of Dreadnoughts and Battlecruisers: Jutland, that had a rather unsatisfactory result for both sides. Can we do better than the historical Germans, expand our colonial empire and avoid a dire fate?
Italy
Nothing like home. Italy is poor, corrupted, with retarded politicians and bad tech. It has a ton of possible enemies in the Mediterranean (France, Britain, Austria) and it lacks the resources or the focus to fight properly. Historically, Italy failed pretty much every attempt to gain naval prominence and in both World Wars the only good results were obtained by the borderline suicidal frogmen. We can't use them here, so if we're going Ita Ita we'll have to employ better theories and better strategies than the historical Regia Marina.
Austria-Hungary
(Obviously there is no image of the 'glorious' K.U.K fleet after 1918 )
The K.u.K. fleet was always an afterthought. Poorly funded and rather small, it was a mess of eleven nationalities (Italians, Balkanites, Germans, Hungarians and whatever). However, despite the limited resources, here we have a solid budget in Game Mode, only the Cautious drawback and the tactical advantage to work only in the Adriatic, so with the more lenient Mediterranean conditions. Plus, our main objective will be to fuck with Italy. God is on our side, and He loves multi-ethnic empires!
Russia
Russia is big, poorly industrialized and poorly educated. It's not that poor, and it has some nice positions thanks to his size. Historically, everyone knows the Russian Navy in this age for their little debacles during the Russo-Japanese war: despite their strategical and tactical failures however the courage of the Russkie sailor was never put into question. With a broad range of bases and options, we can do better this time.
Japan
(BAD Dayu, BAD)
Japan is poor, backward and lacks building power. However, like the historical Japan, an aggressive policy, alliances and surprise attacks can balance the situation, and let you make gains in the Pacific area against more unfocused powers. Historically, the Japanese won their big naval confrontation with the Russkies in this age: this convinced them of the possibility of another Decisive Battle against more powerful foes like the US in WW2, and created monsters like the Yamato Class. We all know how it went.
USA
The US gets a good budget, good tech, good traits and will become a superpower in the lategame. Its position is also quite flexible, but until Panama is built the travel between the East Coast and the West Coast will be a bit difficult, so planning is essential. I don't know a thing about the historical US Navy in this age, but as a gameplay choice is fun and rather easy. You can easily crush the weaker powers, and if you are insane enough engage Britain to decide who is the most hardcore Anglo around.
ALTERNATE HISTORY CORNER
CSA
Yeh, Alt-history mod with a CSA surviving into the 20th century. Nice position and adequate budget, despite poor industrial capabilities. It will be difficult to challenge the proper US and the other powers, but we will fight for the Right of the States and for the Right to own slaves happy productive black people.
The leading superpower of the age, Britain is rich, advanced and powerful. With a worldwide empire and a stable government, it can manage to rule the Seas quite effectively. It's a safe choice, and its national advantages are many and well-rounded, with the Hidden flaws giving us however the chance of some random negative quirks (like ships exploding after a single hit or inefficient turrets). Our Global Naval power requirement forces us to have 10% of our tonnage on foreign station to keep the colonies happy and we can't use the Cramped Quarters build option. All in all, a solid if boring choice.
France
(Fun fact, my great grandfather served aboard the Richelieu)
France is another solid choice, with a big colonial empire, an adequate budget, and some asshole politicians trying to make your life impossible with random requests ( the Inconsistent Naval Policy Quirk). France was the birthplace of one of the most influential naval schools of thought of the age, the Jeune école ("Young School") that theorized the use of small, heavily armed units to engage quickly the enemy battleships and the massive use of commerce raiders to wreck their economy. If you want to test such theories in the rightful place, choose France.
Germany
Germany is rich, powerful, with good tech (muh Krupp Steel) and it has a Bombastic head of state (extra chance of stupid) and a Cautious policy (meaning their AI-controlled ships will avoid aggressive engagements). Historically, Germany went for a dick-waving contest with Britain by building newer, bigger ships in the foolish attempt to gain parity with the Royal Navy: a huge expense of resources that ended with the only "serious" battle that in our timeline tested the mettle of Dreadnoughts and Battlecruisers: Jutland, that had a rather unsatisfactory result for both sides. Can we do better than the historical Germans, expand our colonial empire and avoid a dire fate?
Italy
Nothing like home. Italy is poor, corrupted, with retarded politicians and bad tech. It has a ton of possible enemies in the Mediterranean (France, Britain, Austria) and it lacks the resources or the focus to fight properly. Historically, Italy failed pretty much every attempt to gain naval prominence and in both World Wars the only good results were obtained by the borderline suicidal frogmen. We can't use them here, so if we're going Ita Ita we'll have to employ better theories and better strategies than the historical Regia Marina.
Austria-Hungary
(Obviously there is no image of the 'glorious' K.U.K fleet after 1918 )
The K.u.K. fleet was always an afterthought. Poorly funded and rather small, it was a mess of eleven nationalities (Italians, Balkanites, Germans, Hungarians and whatever). However, despite the limited resources, here we have a solid budget in Game Mode, only the Cautious drawback and the tactical advantage to work only in the Adriatic, so with the more lenient Mediterranean conditions. Plus, our main objective will be to fuck with Italy. God is on our side, and He loves multi-ethnic empires!
Russia
Russia is big, poorly industrialized and poorly educated. It's not that poor, and it has some nice positions thanks to his size. Historically, everyone knows the Russian Navy in this age for their little debacles during the Russo-Japanese war: despite their strategical and tactical failures however the courage of the Russkie sailor was never put into question. With a broad range of bases and options, we can do better this time.
Japan
(BAD Dayu, BAD)
Japan is poor, backward and lacks building power. However, like the historical Japan, an aggressive policy, alliances and surprise attacks can balance the situation, and let you make gains in the Pacific area against more unfocused powers. Historically, the Japanese won their big naval confrontation with the Russkies in this age: this convinced them of the possibility of another Decisive Battle against more powerful foes like the US in WW2, and created monsters like the Yamato Class. We all know how it went.
USA
The US gets a good budget, good tech, good traits and will become a superpower in the lategame. Its position is also quite flexible, but until Panama is built the travel between the East Coast and the West Coast will be a bit difficult, so planning is essential. I don't know a thing about the historical US Navy in this age, but as a gameplay choice is fun and rather easy. You can easily crush the weaker powers, and if you are insane enough engage Britain to decide who is the most hardcore Anglo around.
ALTERNATE HISTORY CORNER
CSA
Yeh, Alt-history mod with a CSA surviving into the 20th century. Nice position and adequate budget, despite poor industrial capabilities. It will be difficult to challenge the proper US and the other powers, but we will fight for the Right of the States and for the Right to own slaves happy productive black people.
Other decision is whether or not we will build our legacy fleet at game start or use a automatically generated and less optimized one. I'm partial to the automatic one as part of the fun of this game is making do with sub-optimal designs and antiquated ships. Manual designing your fleet gives you a big advantage in the first 5 years as you're using a perfect fleet vs the ramshackles the AI is saddled with.
So join in mah boyz and trannies, first come first served in the navy list and get voting on what nation we will lead to the brink of oblivion and ruin! Even if you're not joining in in you can still vote and make us suffer for your viewing pleasure! You get one FULL vote for your favourite nation and one HALF vote for your second favourite.
Other options to consider:
Budget: We can either do Game budget or Historical budget. Historical budget is smaller, Game is bigger. Most affected is Great Britain as its budget (the largest one by a big margin) is the only one to not change if playing on Game mode, thus narrowing the gap between it and other nations.
Fleet size: Small, Medium, Large or Very Large. Should be self explanatory, I prefer at least large if not very large because otherwise fleets tend to be unhistorically small. And I like big fleets.
Splice the mainbrace!
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Reference links:
Dayallu's RTW LP to give you an idea of what we're getting into:
https://rpgcodex.net/forums/index.php?threads/lets-play-rule-the-waves.108492/
My own SAI LP for tacticool mastery
https://rpgcodex.net/forums/index.php?threads/gott-strafe-england-lets-play-steam-and-iron.125672/
Where to buy RTW2 you cheapskate
http://nws-online.proboards.com/thread/2079/rule-waves-2-on-sale
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