Vilageidiotx

Precipice of War - We Write Under The Sign Of The Goat

On the Colombia/Panama thing, if the US still had control of the Panama Canal back during the 60's I think they would have definitely gotten involved, the stuff with Canada be damned. That's always been the crown jewel of US hegemony in the Americas. Even those damn dirty socialists would want to keep it.

@Byrd Man

"Screw Europe, but nobody touches America's pond!"

Precipice of War - We Write Under The Sign Of The Goat

I don't have no damn disease. Cut the patronizing shit, you're better than that. I am completely aware that drawn borders are not universally agreed to and that claims overlap in people's minds for a variety of reasons. That still doesn't change how unlikely this whole thing is to me. I don't care how weak the Ottomans are, there is no way the average Turk would let this happen as easily as it has happened. It's like every Turk in the country agreed to roll the fuck over at the exact same time. The government may be done for, but there are still people. Pissed off people, even. You said it yourself. Don't underestimate how hard someone will fight for their land, or something they believe in. But you make no mention of how the Turks are not fighting hard. Some people are going to say the land is Greek, or Armenian, but just as many will believe it is Turkish. Yet they are just sitting there doing jack shit. EDIT: And I am not entirely convinced the fall of the goddam Roman Empire has any weight in this discussion. A lot of what happened to them still applies, sure, but the gap between a Roman Legion and an army of barbarians was significantly smaller than the gap between an industrialized nation with aircraft, tanks, ect, and one that lacks that. Polish arms may have closed the gap a bit but how much is arguable.

@Pepperm1nts

EDIT: And I am not entirely convinced the fall of the goddam Roman Empire has any weight in this discussion. A lot of what happened to them still applies, sure, but the gap between a Roman Legion and an army of barbarians was significantly smaller than the gap between an industrialized nation with aircraft, tanks, ect, and one that lacks that. Polish arms may have closed the gap a bit but how much is arguable.

Eh, I don't think the arms gap is that important in this case. That tends to be more important in the cases where it is states fighting states because it is easier to demolish governments than it is to demolish concepts. And I'm mostly bringing up the Romans because they are just a really good model on how social cohesion falls apart in multi-national Empires.

Precipice of War - We Write Under The Sign Of The Goat

Oh come on now. Can't write that much shit and not be a little patronizing. If the land has an Armenian majority, than it is Armenian in reality and only Turkish in the abstract. The Armenians are fighting for more than just an idea, they are also fighting for their farms and their neighborhoods. And the Turks did fight. But i'm not sure what you expected them to do. The Turks are a nationalistic people, but if they had no faith in their government and their government was just no longer capable of holding together, how would they react? It takes faith in the system to make the war work, and a system you can have faith in. It's not like all the Turks could just buy rifles and walk over to Armenia. They might be angry, they might be ashamed, but what is your average guy gonna do about it? If you cannot actually rise to a position of prominence, and those positions of prominence are held by a small nobility of people who think they deserve what they have by right rather than doing anything to earn it, then you are stuck in a broken system. And that is extremely disheartening. A system this broken, where all the wealth is pooled at the top, also creates a situation where you aren't actually rewarded for service to your country. Not really. Work hard and it just gets you a bad back. Fight hard and you just end up shot. And then nobody has faith. Really, it comes back to the Ataturk thing. Post-Ottoman Turkey has a lot of potential, but somebody has to join as them for that potential to become something.

Precipice of War - We Write Under The Sign Of The Goat

@vilageidiotx <Snipped quote> Hold up just a goddamn second. In every single one of those examples, the loser in the strong invader. That is not what happened in PoW. In PoW, the loser was the strong defender, and the winner, somehow, was the weak invader. The defender in this case is also educated and at least well-armed, where the defender is under-armed, under-manned and with a population that is not as well educated. Not to mention the defender has the automatic advantage of being home, where most people will support the defense Literally the only thing the invader has going for it in this case is the made-up disadvantage of the defender's leadership being incompetent. But holy hell, how incompetent do you have to be to let this happen? And, like.. really, where the hell are the country's educated people? They're just sitting somewhere while all these weak states pick away at their nation? They're like "well our sultan was stupid so there's nothing we can do now that he's FUCKING GONE." In your examples, it was weak, highly uneducated guerrilla fighters successfully fighting off major powers. So why can't a, let's say 'decent', moderately educated nation that is at least partially industrialized, well-armed and at the very goddamn least more organized than just any guerrilla group having trouble stopping all these weak nations from picking it apart? Sorry dude, but I don't buy it. I am not saying we should fix anything though, I'm just saying I don't see it being 'believable'.

@Pepperm1nts

We gotta get you set up with some "Fall of the Roman Empire" literature. The fall of civilizations is a fascinating subject. I'm afraid you have the common disease of looking at the world through its national borders. It took me a while to figure out what you meant because you seem to ascribe all of the Ottoman Empire to a Turkish majority because the Turks drew their lines over the thing. I don't know the exact balance of Turks to non-Turks in these territories in Precipice because there were several layers of genocides and the later layer takes place after the Rp's history changes. But the Ottoman Empire was, much like the Austrian Empire, stressed to the breaking point by our RP. The fact it survived this long at all is sort of impressive. How this would effect populations is unclear, so we'll have to use RP based clues. So lets assume that Armenia has an Armenian majority. This means that the bureaucracy of Armenia is all that is Turkic. Historically, the Ottomans just went with being a multi-national Empire. This was in part because nationalism as we think of it was a 19th century invention so most of the ethnicities within their Empire didn't think about becoming independent until the Empire was already descendant. So if Armenia is mostly Armenians with a thin-layer of middle class Turks, and the Armenians got them some nationalism, an Armenian revolution would turn the Turks into occupiers overnight. As for the incompetence of the Ottoman Empire... this isn't that crazy either. Think the Habsburgs, 18th century France, or 13th century China, or 5th century Rome. Or, if you really want to get controversial, 21st century America. In a state that has existed as a fact for hundreds of years and has managed to grow relatively successful, an insular nobility will arise where competence becomes less important than connections. The states energy becomes less about preserving the state and more about the leaders of your nation trying to preserve their own wealth. Think about the story of how, after Alaric sacked Rome, the Emperor Honorius is told that Rome is slain He thinks it is his pet Chicken named Rome, and when the servant says that it is the city that fell and not the chicken, the Emperor replied "Thank god for that." Or the more well known "Let them eat cake" episode of the French Revolution. Or the existence of Libertarianism in the modern US. There is something about decedent Empires that breeds incompetence. This doesn't mean that now that Turkey is freed from the old Ottoman power structure there cannot be an Ataturk. That's just the problem with Precipice. To have an Ataturk, we kinda have to have a Turkish player. With a nobility insulated from society governing a multi-ethnic Empire where only the Turkish ethnicity really has any interest in participating, where economic recession is almost guaranteed and the military is most likely staffed by draftee's and the poor who have little hope of advancement, the Ottoman Empire is doomed. Which makes sense. The Ottoman Empire should have fell during the Great War. Then look at Armenia. Here you have a population where you can assume 33% or so are die-hard patriots, who are supported economically and logistically by several foreign states who know the Empire is going to fall and wants to make sure it falls in a way that benefits them, and who are the majority in all of the territories (or at least most of them) that they are claiming. They are just one of several similar rebelling states. The land they are fighting in is land they know, and it is difficult terrain. Armenia, after all, isn't an urban place. They have more than a chance. Realistically, the biggest problem for Armenia would be the fact that it's a tiny place with crap land. They aren't in a position to compete economically with the rest of the world. Maybe pushing over the corpse of a dead Empire was easy, but now Armenia is up against the world and surrounded by chaotic failed states things are going to be tougher.

Precipice of War - We Write Under The Sign Of The Goat

<Snipped quote by Vilageidiotx> Personally, I believe it may have required a man like him. He managed to win a war on several fronts. Against Britian, Italy, and France's colonial armies. As well as the Greek and Armenian armies. He was a very capable leader. However, that is not to say there isn't a few men on par with him in Turkey during this period of PoW. This would be the period to show themselves.

@Wilted Rose

Yeh. The Armenian storyline might be simplified because... well, all of our stories are simplified. But It isn't necessarily unbelievable. France and Algeria. Russia and Afghanistan. The US and France in Vietnam. The US in Iraq. It's a bad idea to underestimate what happens when a group of people are willing to sacrifice everything. Not to say that people should start using that as an excuse to start doing stupid shit. As a rule of thumb, people only fight when they have a personnel connection to something. You can get people to fight for their homelands much easier than you can to get them to fight far away.

Precipice of War - We Write Under The Sign Of The Goat

<Snipped quote by Wilted Rose> That would honestly be a realistic scenario, but this is PoW.

@Pepperm1nts

Eh, it's hard to tell actually. I don't know if Ataturk's success was a given, or if it was something that required an Ataturk. If the remaining Turkish power structure is full of incompetents... Remember that Rome was sacked by hungry tribesman.

Uh, hey guys, I might've bitten off a bit more than I could chew. I'm not sure if I'm going to be able to keep up with multiple characters and drive a decent plot. So, I'm going to have to drop out, really sorry guys.

@Hella Cute

Don't let is scare you. You can just do one character if you prefer.

Precipice of War - We Write Under The Sign Of The Goat

<Snipped quote by Vilageidiotx> I think we could probably sue him for causing psychological trauma. On that note, though -- Are the Prussian, Turkish, and Serbian flags the same as their real-world counterparts?

@Jeddaven

Germany is using the Prussian flag. Since the flag of the Ottoman Empire and the flag of modern day Turkey is basically the same, I would say yeh. I don't know about Serbia though... Remember though that the Ottoman Empire is newly collapsed. With Greece occupying the Ionian coast, Istanbul independent, and most of the ethnicities of the old Empire governing themselves now, Turkey is reduced to central Anatolia. It has only been a couple of months since this collapse happened, so the region would be best classified as chaotic. Armenia and Greece would be the only stabilizing forces in the region.

Precipice of War - We Write Under The Sign Of The Goat

<Snipped quote by Vilageidiotx> <Snipped quote> We're all expecting something massive and explosive from Hugs return post and all we'll get is a post about Freddy combing his beard and deciding whether he should have Coco Pops or Cornflakes for breakfast.

@Chapatrap

What he should do is just make a post where Freddy has a fever and his dreams are all just snippets of uncompleted posts that Hugs started but never finished.

Precipice of War - We Write Under The Sign Of The Goat

Here's what I got from wikipedia: <Snipped quote> There are currently 100 Armenians there thinking they are living in the fatherland. EDIT: In other news, another night goes by with me staring at a text box without being able to muster up a post. Wooo.

@Pepperm1nts

We need to start a kickstarter to buy you a bunch of self-help books on tape to listen to while trying to post. Maybe those'll work.

Precipice of War - We Write Under The Sign Of The Goat

Mad Men

@Dinh AaronMk

If he can do a "Carousel" scene with jets, I would almost be willing to change my opinion. Almost.