United We Stand - Political WIP

Hosted Games Works In Progress
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Yep, I think the fact that in the game is it is written the Germans, French and Italians in that order seen to be the big giants in Moravia’s playground really do point to the first location as the more likely one and we’re thus more likely, like my cousin suggested, to have some peripheral influence from Switzerland, rather than Hungary or Romania.

Yes, that would be a good explanation and like I said, different places can occasionally share a name.

Moravia does have the heavily Catholic Anhaltians as their restive minority, but they could lean more towards either Austria or Italy then the rest of the country does and they too seem to lack Magyar, Romanian or Bulgarian influences, like you’d expect if Moravia were in the second location.

Well it would probably be the furthest South of the German minors at the time the German unification happened, it would also have been near France, Italy and Austria-Hungary and it if it was wealthy and strategically important back then it might well be that none of those powers would have wanted the other to get the advantage of incorporating it into their territory and it would likely also have helped if whoever was King at the time has a strong network of personal alliances, perhaps including the Brits, that would have given the Prussians sufficient pause to (temporarily) abandon their designs on the place.

Speaking of the aristocracy and Britain the presence of “Lady” Lydia Howe might indicate a significant amount of intermarrying between the British aristocracy and our Moravian one and the fact that even the working class mc has learned to speak a degree of English and understand it even better might be indicative of a non-negligible amount of British meddling influence in Moravia long before the time period of the game.

Can’t believe I overlooked that, though Alex said the mc would get the interior ministry, so that is more of an issue for whoever gets saddled with foreign affairs (the lucky bastard, foreign affairs or justice would the ministries the politician in me would be angling for in real-life).

Yes, again why the first location would work better for Moravia, particularly in giving the left a chance, albeit a slim one to come on top democratically as something straddling the lines between social democracy and democratic socialism.

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I can assure you of one thing: I will never be specific about where Moravia is! Vagueness serves my purposes well

And as for how Moravia sidestepped Bismarck’s wars of unification… ¯_(ツ)_/¯

As fascinating as all the ww2 scenarios are, the game will only go up to 1937 at the latest. Talk of sequels is, at this stage, obviously premature.

However, I can tell what I always thought. And that would be that Moravia is occupied by the Germans in the war. If I was to think about a sequel, the options would be a game set during the occupation where you are either collaborating or resisting, or, and this is an idea I’m personally quite taken with, a Cold War game set in the late 70s with whatever regime is imposed in UWS coming to an end and you trying to forge a new one with both USA and USSR taking an active interest. A sort of Spanish transition vibe but with flavours of east Germany

But that is all a very VERY long way away right now

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If the game is only going up to 1937 does that mean that no election will be held during the game?.

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There will be. The government will fall and elections will be held.

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Hmm…well if my mc does come in into control of the interior ministry and the civil guard prior to the German invasion and subsequent occupation he can at the very least try to make sure that the greatest evil our government and civil servants did (leaving nearly all of our government records intact for the Germans to find) isn’t going to happen in Moravia on his watch.
So he’d probably need to make a contingency plan to destroy as many government records as possible in the event of an invasion, that way the Germans will just have to find out for themselves, who is racially “impure”, who’s a Jew and who is gay and even who the soldiers and junior officers of Moravia’s pre-war army were.
As the fact that in the Netherlands most of those records were left intact and many civil servants collaborated led to the Germans having one of their most frighteningly efficient operations when it came to catching Jews, undesirables, gay people and even former junior officers over here.

If he could do even more I guess it would be to lead loyal elements of the civil guard and their new paramilitary accessories to fight a delaying action through urban combat. If the Germans want Freistadt and the other major towns and cities, they’re going to have to fight to get the rubble.

As a bonus an unusually destructive invasion, resistance and occupation, with a “lost generation” (or two) could help to explain future Moravia’s significantly poorer East-German Czech (economically that is, not culturally) vibe, compared to the fairly prosperous Kingdom it seems to have been in this game.

Well like this one it would essentially be two games to write because a somewhat impoverished dictatorship propped up by the British, French (and likely the Americans too) would still look and feel quite a bit different from a Soviet puppet, even if the levels of poverty are comparable. For one thing one being propped up by the Western European powers would likely hide the effective dictatorship behind a sham democracy and packed courts.

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In my opinion, a sequel set in the Cold War would be better, because we all know the fate of Nazi Germany in WW2, and you would either be forced to be a stalinist puppet and exiled or being a british/french puppet and be exiled, so a Cold War sequel would be more “malleable” in the sense that you could be a lot more free in decisions, but that’s only my opinion. :sweat_smile:

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I also think that being located between Austria and Germany is more likely. We know that Moravia predates the Napoleonic wars which means in your 2nd option it would have been entirely surrounded by the Hapsburg Empire, this makes their continued independence highly unlikely. However if Moravia is between Austria and Germany this would make it analogous in my eyes to modern-day Liechtenstein and Luxembourg (albeit larger) both of which are Germanic nations that survived on the border between great powers.

Also Napoleons forces occupied Bavaria and parts of Austria itself as you can see in this map the rest of the Danube remained in Austrian or Ottoman hands. (Red line is the possible locations of Moravia)

2284×1503 1.45 MB

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You always find the best maps.

I love maps myself.[quote=“AlexClifford1994, post:465, topic:19177”]
However, I can tell what I always thought. And that would be that Moravia is occupied by the Germans in the war. If I was to think about a sequel, the options would be a game set during the occupation where you are either collaborating or resisting, or, and this is an idea I’m personally quite taken with, a Cold War game set in the late 70s with whatever regime is imposed in UWS coming to an end and you trying to forge a new one with both USA and USSR taking an active interest. A sort of Spanish transition vibe but with flavours of east Germany

But that is all a very VERY long way away right now
[/quote]

I am looking forward to all your installments and feel they all would be great to explore.

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I envisioned more of a tail extending along the Swiss border and down to Italy a bit, but in the end I don’t think we differ that much.
At least we seem to agree it is relatively close to France.

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Never mind I found a map of Moravia

(This map was not approved by the author and is no way associated with United We Stand :tm:)

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@Ser_Twenty @ruhenri is right, the government will fall, the deal between new order and national bloc collapses, necessitating an election. This will take place in a few chapters time in mid 1935.

My response to the very interesting maps produced by @tom is “no comment”

In terms of this potential successor (and I do realise I’m getting way ahead of myself here) it would be late 70s and Moravia is affected by the economic downturn of the period but also by the death of Riga/wulf/someone else which marks the end of that regime. The player could be the son/daughter of your UWS character, or maybe niece/nephew if they didn’t have one. Then you would play the role of a Moravian aldofo Suarez, a part of the regime who must reshape it for a new world. In what direction would be up to you. The dream of some of those in the Spanish regime was ‘francoism without Franco’ so you could try and keep things going or you could go for regime change, to democracy or maybe something else?

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Well since my character is gay and doesn’t really seem to have any close family outside of maybe his parents, I like him perhaps perishing with the loyal Civil Guard units defending Freistadt and destroying government records till the last and also buying time for some of the others to either go into hiding to form the resistance or make it across the Swiss border.
Like I said if it is Moravia’s sad fate to be invaded and occupied by the Nazi’s so be it, though I do hope my mc then gets to help prevent the most evil thing our own government did, leaving almost all of their records and the entire detailed census intact for the Nazi’s to find.
After all inadvertently expunging the criminal records of some dangerous criminals and destroying the census and tax-base is the lesser evil compared to letting that stuff fall into Nazi hands and I wish my country’s government at the time had listened to the people who said that, because they were warned. I consider that fact, since it resulted in so many other atrocities the single greatest war-crime my country has ever committed in the modern era. If my character has to sacrifice himself to prevent Moravia from following the Netherlands down that particular very dark path, well then that is ultimately a small price to pay.

So Rosa Wulf as the Moravian Tito post war, and just like in that case her death possibly throws the entire system into chaos.

As for the new MC would a son of Franz (who is bisexual after all) be a possibility in that case?

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Franquism without Franco was a very popular meme here. Same as see Suarez as an error Error Suarez they called him. However, Real franco followers were two and the other anti democracy where to shattered. The problem was the military that was totally fanatic and oppressive.
The only reason why Spanish hadn’t another civil war was the king and the communist leader defense of new democracy and the reach of a new dialogue.

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An apt analogy if the regime were to be led by Riga, as third-way fascists Riga and your Franco would probably be natural allies too.
I still think TIto-esque third way-ism is the most likely for Wulf to resort to in practice should the post-war regime be a socialist one, it would also help explain (along with its geographical location) why future Moravia wouldn’t be totally in either the US or Soviet led camps throughout the early Cold-War era and why both would take an intense interest in trying to influence its direction in the (late) 70’s after the death of the new regime’s founder.

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Yeah since my character is gay (and part of Solidarity) I like the idea he went out having stopped the Nazi’s from persecuting people and taking a few down with him before he went.

Of course it begs the question whether Germany would annex or puppet, considering Riga does not like Nazi Germany they could just fully annex.

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Exactly if my character as the pre-war (and occupation) minister of the interior gets the chance to make and execute contingency plans the Nazi’s are going to be left with a nearly ungovernable bit of territory because most useful records will have been destroyed and if enough of the Civil Guard remain loyal he wouldn’t sell his skin cheaply either, maybe Freistadt can give them a much earlier nasty urban-combat surprise then Stalingrad did in OTL. If Freistadt gets largely reduced to rubble that would severely limit Moravia’s economic use to the Nazi war machine as well. The only downside would be if their generals apply “lessons learned” in Freistadt to Stalingrad (should Hitler let them) which if that goes better might well cancel out the negatives defeating and occupying Moravia would have had on their war efforts, still making the war follow the same general pattern as it did in our timeline.

Still destroying as many government records as possible to prevent them from being abused by the Nazi’s as well as emptying the prisons prior to the occupation would be key here and would probably save a lot of Moravia’s Jews and LGBT people from Nazi deathcamps.

I think full annexation is the most likely, besides Moravia’s likely eventual post-war regime implies either Wulf or Riga are likely to become the new leader of the anti Nazi resistance, which they would then use to set themselves up as the central pillar and authority of the post war regime, which seems to be either a Franco or Tito-esque flavoured “third way” approach during the post-war era.

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Of course that implies Moravia will be “liberated” and not simply pulled into the Warsaw Pact, this is another one of those things where the Danube is to big to wonder, as if they are next to France then I imagine the allies would liberate the nation and set it up with a Democratic government whereas if it on the East of Germany then the Soviet Union would have no qualms in setting up a puppet regime with someone sympathetic to the Union in charge.

The problem with a Yugoslavian 3rd way is that Moravia would be completely separate from the world with only an allied Yugoslavia. The Union would see Moravia as betrayers and cowards and NATO would not associate with Moravia on the basis of it being a Communist regime and not a true Democracy.

If I had any ambitions for my character it would simply be these:

  1. A post in government that can actually do something like Armament Minister so you can store warehouses in secret buildings ready for the day when Germany took over, or as you said Interior so we can destroy all records and so forth. Rosa needs to be the one to lead in my story as she is not only popular but unifying in the party, for the MC to try and take over at such a pivotal moment would look like a personally motivated coup and would weaken the party and thus the country immensely.

  2. A legacy of fighting for Moravia no matter what, I don’t care about being some Socialist revolutionary who broke free of Capitalism etc. I just want him to be remembered as being there when it mattered most and forgetting partisan bickering in favour of helping the nation. Hey that would also be a bonus to gay rights so yay!.

  3. Of course I want a semi-happy ending having had a relationship and affected some change in the nation.

Now as for economics of Moravia I would think it almost certain that the country would fall in a week or two at best so therefore I think the only help you would be able to get as a rebel would be from the people who hold sympathy’s for their former nation, with this they can keep going and disrupting the Germans and maybe just maybe eventually getting agents from the Soviet Union or Britain to help train just like they did with France.

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The author was leaning towards giving the mc the post of Interior minister if their party manages to come into power. So having a contingency plan to destroy the records and empty the prisons in case of invasion and then fighting to the death with the loyal Civil Guard units in urban combat seems like the best plan to me.

Well she is the most personally popular and the most likely to become the great hero of the resistance, which she can parlay into becoming the leader of the post-war regime and that regime could be more authoritarian and violent then it could be with my since my mc is a relative moderate within Solidarity. So, ironically, having him be a dead hero might suit Rosa just fine.

Well managing to destroy most of the government records and emptying the prisons prior to the occupation would count as a bittersweet ending since it will make things much harder on the Nazi’s and save a lot of lives from their persecution.

Sure, but some sort of “third way” regime would seem most likely given the sequel description since in the late 70’s the Soviet Union would not just let a Warsaw Pact state go.

Sure but democratic governments are always in danger of becoming “democratic” government, Poland and Hungary are currently on the verge of providing frightening examples of that and they’re in the modern EU. Erdogan’s Turkey is already (nearly) there.
So as long as Allied liberated Moravia clings to the pretense of “democracy” nobody may be all that inclined to intervene.

Sure, except for possible urban combat, our general staff did have a proposal and plan to make Amsterdam a “symbol of defiance” (which would have likely led to the city being practically razed, but it was estimated it would have sucked the Germans into 2-3 months of very nasty urban combat. This was yet another thing our government failed to do in practice, partly because they got scared by the firebombing of Rotterdam).
It might be something we can do with Freistadt however, which might provide yet another reason for the very different vibe the place will have in the possible Cold War sequel since it will largely be a new (and possibly much more depressing city if Soviet-style) due to having been rebuilt practically from the ground up.

Also India and Egypt and a bunch of more minor countries, but I did say before it would provide a decent reason as to why the country is relatively impoverished, compared to the fairly prosperous kingdom it seems to have been prior to the Great Depression in this game.

A relatively isolated “neutral” fascist dictatorship in the mold of Spain’s Franco under Riga may alos be a possible outcome.
In either case for that hypothetical sequel the author seems to want a regime that is open to possible transition in favour of either the SU, the US (or remaining non-aligned) in the late 1970’s. So it having been a neutral “non-aligned” country before the death of Wulf/Riga seems to be the most likely.

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I realize that Wulf would still probably be unhappy, but I think it might be worth including the option to support the amendment while opposing the amended budget. If Kant wants to pass the amended budget, she would likely need National Bloc members who opposed the amendment to support the amended budget. “Oppose the budget” and “Support the amendment” is presented as a binary choice, but I want to do both.

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@Estel_Edain The amended budget, if it passes, has the support of the SDP (43), centre (11), regionalists (8), independants (3) as well as national bloc and solidarity rebels (~a dozen each). That’s how you get the parliamentry majority even without the support of most of national bloc. The vote is on an amended version of the budget and it either passes or falls. After the vote on the amendment there would eventually be a vote on the governments budget that is assumed to pass should the amended version fail. National bloc will cow their rebels into either supporting or abstaining. Adding a third option would be too much of a copout for the player, an easy way out in my opinion.

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