Kalin
Unwanted
I just finished another game of Victoria 2: A House Divided, this time as Portugal. My goal was to restore (and expand) the good old Portuguese Empire, so naturally, I had to play quite aggressively.
In the early years, I focused mainly on conquering parts of Morocco and Oman, fighting one as I waited for the truce to expire with the other. In terms of research I rushed for technology that would increase research rate, prestige generation and colonial life rating. Prestige-rushing is perhaps a bit cheap, but it was the only way in which I could attain a high enough status to safeguard my colonial ambitions. In the race for Africa I got quite a head start, and I also managed to grab all of Borneo. Still, with only three available national focuses, it was inevitable that some territory would fall to other powers. After annexing some uncivilised nations such as Dai Viet, Brunei, Yemen and Zulu, I felt it was time to get down to business and reclaim Brazil. At first I had merely planned to include it in my sphere of influence, but as my industry was in a poor shape due to the small Portuguese working population, I came to the conclusion that the industrialised states of Brazil were essential for the future well being of the motherland.
The restoration process went quite well at first. I had managed to keep Brazil out of competing spheres of interest, so no power intervened on its behalf. Eventually, however, the United Kingdom allied with Brazil, for no other apparent reason than to discourage further Portuguese expansion. Outraged at this preposterous meddling, I secured military alliances with France and the United States (which, for some reason, kept its alliance with Mexico throughout the game and never properly branched out across its continent). With two Great Powers on my side, I went on to attack Brazil again. The United Kingdom intervened and proved to be a very tough opponent. Despite some spectacular victories in Africa and South America, the three of us simply could not force the demand. After a long, bloody and extremely costly war, I grudgingly settled for a white peace and started to rebuild my forces.
A few years later, however, the Brazilian government fell in an anarcho-liberal coup, negating all its foreign treaties. I took advantage of the situation and claimed yet another state, and also managed to get involved in a messy conflict in Colombia, after Gran Colombian communists had seized my railroads and factories in their part of the country. At the same time, I also established a protectorate over Cambodia. Due to my rapid expansion and some messy war justification fabrications, I unfortunately managed to rack up quite a bit of infamy, well past the limit of what is acceptable. This in turn brought on the wrath of mighty Germany and her allies. My reckless expansionism proved to be a serious mistake for which I would pay dearly.
After a disastrous war which led to the destruction of the Portuguese military, navy and economy, I was forced to disarm and pay reparations. To make matters worse, the United Kingdom then declared a war of containment of its own, in which I had no choice but surrender. My old ally France also saw its opportunity and likewise enforced demands for containment. As a result of all this, militancy was truly skyrocketing. Socialism spread like a wildfire throughout the colonies, and an angry woman suffrage movement caused plenty of trouble at home due to years of government neglect. Most of Africa was torn apart in a massive civil war against communist insurgents, and due to the containment treaties, I had next to no troops with which to fight them, nor any means to raise new ones.
Fortunately, the Portuguese fascists, who had ruled by appointment during the last couple of years (still unable to push for social reforms, however, what with a predominantly conservative upper house), finally took things in their own hands and started a military coup. I had the remains of the European army stand aside and let the fascists take the capital, and in a year, the country was transformed into a lovely dictatorship. The new regime did away with all old political liberties and set out to rebuild the Empire once more. At this point I had lost around a third of my prestige and my entire sphere of influence. Portugal had in fact fallen in status from second to seventh among the Great Powers, so I definitely had my work cut out for me.
Rebuilding proved to be quite challenging, particularly due to the fact that several of the great powers fell upon my struggling empire like a pack of vultures, trying to tear away my precious colonial possessions. I had to fight off the Netherlands and the United Kingdom, Germany and Italy and France and Spain in three separate wars. Luckily, the United States came to the rescue at more than one occasion, and despite the foreign aggression, I managed to keep taking parts of Brazil. Argentina, formerly in my sphere, also started to capitalise upon the weakened state of Brazil, conquering two southern states. This was actually quite a blessing in disguise, as it allowed me to declare war on Argentina and take their Brazilian states while honouring truces with Brazil, thus restoring Portuguese rule to Brazil at twice the normal speed. At the end of the game I had quite a large and literate population thanks to full education and health care reforms, and was doing pretty well in a brand new war against Germany.
All in all it was a very enjoyable game, even quite exciting at times. I do have some regrets, of course. First, I wanted to join my two African territories by conquering Sokoto and some nearby Dutch provinces, as it would have allowed for some useful strategic mobility. Second, I very much wanted to grab the western coast of Mauritania from Spain for the sake of proper map-painting. Third, I never managed to properly re-unite all of Brazil with Portugal. Finally, I was also planning to restore Egypt to its former glory by taking on the insidious Turk, mostly due to the fact that the Egyptians had also embraced fascism and actively sought my friendship. Had I not carelessly accumulated so much infamy (and if I had properly made use of the release nation feature to combat it from the very beginning) I might have stood a better chance at realising at least some of these goals.
In the end, of course, I must ask what The Brazilian Slaughter thinks of all this?
