Episode 35: History is Written by the Observers – S1

*krhm* Hello class. Sorry about the mess with scheduling, it appears they’ve put us in a different lecture theater again… Right, uh, let’s pull up these slides here. As always, I am Professor Hillbert U. Spawnov, but you can call me /u/HillSpawn. Been with the Sub since the previous round of simulations. Picking up where we left off last week, today’s lecture is “Civilization Battle Royale, X: Part 35 - Cylinder Warfare 4900-4958”. Pretty self-explanatory, I considered coming up with a joke for the title, which I used to do, however a couple years ago I realized that nobody was laughing at them. So, let’s begin.

Before we get to the hard-cold historical drama of the Cylinder, I thought we’d look at some art. By /u/SeroSedSerio, this posthumous depiction (or “ghost ball”) of Alp Arslan, “The Holiday Maker” is a cheery reminder to all of us that we need not be miserable in perishing, and that the afterlife of a civilization can be full of relaxation. Not much else to do, to be fair.

As per usual from our resident cartographer /u/vihreaa’s hand-drawn map from last week’s lecture is stunning, accurate, and a highly useful teaching tool. Golf claps for /u/vihreaa.

I know there are usually more maps but I thought I’d switch things up and look at a graph. Graphs are an important historical source after all, especially when they’re accurate. And we on the submarine make very accurate graphs with the best data there is. /u/gragg9 from the Statistics Department has compiled this here graph comparing the military might of Uruguay, Maratha, Zimbabwe, Métis, and Australia to the Cylinder’s average military might. I’ll let you draw the conclusions but don’t dwell on it too long.

The Power-Ranking evaluations of the Cylinder, in their ultimately scientific and highly accurate methodology have found that for the period covered in the previous lecture (4825-4900) the Iroquois were still the top-dog of the civilizations of the Cylinder.

We begin in the war-torn islands of the South Atlantic. The following quote comes from a Selk’nam high priest’s journal written in Korkomen. This is the entry for the year 4900: “In this year terrible portents appeared over the Islas Malvinas, and miserably frightened the inhabitants: these were exceptional flashes of lightning, and fiery dragons were seen flying in the air. The reports of fiery dragons turned out to be Nazca paratroopers and airborne forces dropping in and capturing the city. A little after that in the same year a great heathen host arrived and waited off the coast of Yewux, but there was no serious engagement.”

As this is a brief overview of the sequence of events rather than a focused lecture series, we’ll be jumping around the Cylinder a lot. On this slide as you can see, the conflict between the Khamugs and Qin continued, with cities reduced to rubble and millions of civilians killed. Mukden continued to change hands as the Inner Mongolian frontlines shifted back and forth. However, further south the war was about to be momentarily upended.

For those of you interested in Qin society in the 5th millennium, I would recommend looking into the scandalous biography “Ying Zheng - Man, not God”, by Ying Zheng’s former bodyguard who later defected to the Khamug Khanate. Appropriate to this slide, he recounts the events following the capture of Xianyang by a force of Khamug hovertanks. While Qin Power Armour infantry prepared a counteroffensive to retake the city, Ying Zheng was lying in a dumbfounded stupor somewhere in the cellars of the Porcelain Tower, where he had been “surveying” the wine caves. According to the bodyguard’s account, Ying Zheng refused for weeks on end to believe his capital could have slipped through his fingers. To the Qin military command this had been an obvious risk for centuries, seeing as the capital bordered Khamug lands due to the latter’s aggressive land-claims in the area.

Fascinatingly, the Selk’nam faith only seemed to intensify  in the face of annihilation at the hand of a multitude of foe. We have recordings of broadcasts from Xo’on Uhan-Té to his remaining loyal subjects trapped on the frigid South Georgia Island as well as those still in resistance to Nazca and ANZAC-rule, in which he encouraged his subjects to praise Temaukel and continue visiting the Hain Huts. However, we have evidence that the overall attendance at services was low, and it did not inspire any sort of significant activity, cultural or otherwise. Elsewhere in the world, as you can tell by the notifications, Xianyang was recaptured by the Qin.

In another of the Cylinder’s frozen conflicts, the Venetian airforce ruled the skies over Central Europe and both Venetian and Prussian artillery shelled the other’s cities relentlessly. However,  the presence of peacekeeper units stalled significant progress from being made, despite Olivolo, Brno, and Lido all being ripe for capture.

As the Qin counteroffensive picked up speed, the front shifted further into the Khamug borderlands. The taskforce of Gothic Inner-Mongolian Peacekeepers formed a nigh-impenetrable perimeter between the warring nations. Meanwhile, as those of you sitting in the front row, or those further back with particularly sharp eyes can observe in the side-bar, Richard Seddon’s Palmerston-North government in exile received some respite, making peace with two of the Cylinder’s leading empires, Zimbabwe and the Métis.

4904 A.D. marked another period of brief lull in the Qin-Khamug conflict, as international peacekeeping forces stationed in the Badain Jaran desert between bombarded cities limited the possibility of territory being captured. It was also the year in which Bob Hawke, having instructed his military command to study the extensive plans for South American invasion captured during the conquest of Wellington, issued a joint declaration of war with his Métis allies against Cahuachi’s Nazca, seeking to expand their Pacific dominion.

It has been suggested that in the face of the apocalyptic portents observed in the rapidly decaying Selk’nam empire, significant portions of the population began to eagerly await the end. A colleague of mine has done some truly fascinating research into late Selk’nam eschatological music, and how the failing war-effort was interpreted in pop culture. Here we see the last remaining Selk’nam city of Korkomen surrounded by foreign fleets, especially threatened by a Zimbabwean Advanced Destroyer.

We return to the Asian theater with no significant developments on screen, and very significant developments off screen. The infrastructure of the countryside between the recently recaptured Xianyang and Khamug-held Telengut lay in smouldering ruins, and international peacekeepers held the line. Here we see the impact of protracted war on both militaries, as Qin forces outnumber Khamug troops 2:1, however in numbers this comes out to 6 vs 3.

Please make note of the declarations of war from Maratha and Shikoku against the Nepalese rump-state. Shikoku’s rapid expansion against the Evenks had proved their capacity for land-war in Asia, but Maratha’s involvement in the war meant the very real potential of Prithvi Narayan’s death on the line.

The Australian warmachine leapt into action in the South Pacific, using recently-captured Porirua as a staging grounds for the invasions of Mu’a and Neiafu. Powerful Nazca units, such as a Giant Death Robot and Mech Artillery were like sitting ducks in the water, responding too slowly to the Australian invasion. The Australian Navy could hardly believe their luck, the cockeyed optimists.

The Antarctic waters of Timaru, one of the remaining New Zealand cities closest to the lost Home Islands, were heavily guarded by both the remains of the New Zealand navy as well as significant contingents of international volunteers. The stories told by refugees arriving day-by-day on all manners of civilian boats made the otherwise grim atmosphere of the frigid city even colder. What had once been Seddon’s Antarctic trading hub saw Custom’s Houses become temporary housing units for countless displaced Kiwis.

Following the declaration of war by Maratha and Shikoku against Nepal, more civilizations promptly joined in the fight against the plucky Himalayan state. Nepal’s naturally defensible geography served to supplement its otherwise lackluster military, which however found itself lacking enemies to fight, apart from a handful of skirmishes with the Shikoku vanguard, Maratha units shone in their absence.

Departing from war for a second to observe the tedious affairs of diplomacy, at the United Nations summit in Taungoo the warring nations were mostly interested in the Taungoo proposal of banning the use and sale of marble worldwide in retaliation for the banning of the ivory trade, and the Iroquois proposal for  establishing cultural heritage sites. In a lukewarm speech, Hiawatha emphasized the importance of preserving what remained of fallen civilizations as memorials to the failure of the conquered and successes of the victors, to scattered applause.

The Qin-Khamug front lurched forward again in 4906 with the recapture of Mukden. Reduced to a shell of its former glory, the re-established Qin administration set to work straight-away, utilizing the conquered populace to mine precious Khamug salt.

Here we examine a more fantastical report of the Australian-Nazcan war. In the best-selling childrens’ book, “The Voyage of Sailor Bansabira”, the Minoan sailor Bansabira, serving on one of the last remaining Galéas, tells of his visit to what once was a tropical paradise, now engulfed in the flames of war, choking smoke and burning sheets of oil floating upon the ocean waves. He tells of how a fleet of burly green men in boats of steel came and conquered a pair of small islands, one with a city, one with a farm. The farm belonged to a metal titan, who watched the passing ships. Bansabira describes his terror in detail. The book is often interpreted as a work of fiction, however Australian naval records recognize the appearance of a strange wooden ship, which seemed straight out of a faraway past near Neiafu, shortly after the fall of Tofoa.

Pardon the lack of clarity in this screen, however, the important detail is in the text. The Goths joined in on the wars against Nepal, and suddenly their large contingent of peacekeepers in Asia became a more conventional invasion force, capturing both Nuwakat and Bangalore in rapid succession in 4908. There is some scholarly debate as to whether this seemingly unprovoked Asian war was declared to distract the Gothic population from the amount of land lost to Parthian claims pushing towards Sarai Batu.

In this slide, we see a long-awaited development. The anticipation of doom came to the Selk’nam hold-out of Korkomen, the tension resolved in the resounding boom of an Advanced Destroyer’s cannons as it ploughed into the city harbour and released its deadly payload of Zimbabwean sailors.

The Selk’nam had existed as a regional power for over 8000 years, however being limited to the Southern cone of South America restricted their potential for expansion, as their Northern neighbours claimed the land. It is known that the Selk’nam were among the first civilizations to have access to seagoing vessels, and many historians have proposed alternative suggestions as to why Xo’on Uhan-Té failed to push this early advantage. Some suggest this was a result of their cultural predisposition for hunting and trapping due to their early association to the cult of Temaukel, leading the Selk’nam maritime expansion to come too late. Either way, they were a fascinating civilization, meeting their end. Or were they?

Elsewhere on the cylinder, the Australian navy continued its tour of the South Pacific with the capture of ‘Uiha from the Nazca. The Australian sailors faced next to no opposition in their conquest. As an Australian sea-shanty from the period goes, the sailors had sunlight on the sand, moonlight on the sea, mangoes and bananas to pick right off the trees, volleyball and “dandy-games”, but they ain’t got enemies.

The formerly Czech and Imperial cities of central Europe have a remarkable history of being on the receiving end of enemy bombardments, and in the Prusso-Venetian War things were no different. Here we have a glance at the extent of damage sustained by Venetian cities, their venerable architecture throwing up clouds of dust as they crumbled. However, a distinct lack of invading armies simply meant that the populations of those cities were living in miserable conditions in the company of their own forces, rather than the enemy.

A troop of Shikoku bio-troopers stationed in the Kiwi city of Kásen kept the city safe from Malagasy invasion, though the sizable force sent by Ranavalona I did hold the city firmly under siege. Logistically severed from the Palmerston-North government and with no allied forces to defend it, the situation was dire.

Also on this slide, the recapture of Korkomen by the last of the Selk’nam mechanized infantry. We know the Zimbabwean naval contingent was not large enough to stage an immediate recapture. The Selk’nam populace who had moments before welcomed the end experienced degrees of cognitive dissonance with the return of Xo’on Uhan-Té.

In this slide we see the results of the Iroquois conquest of Strassburg. A good source for this era is Hiawatha’s “Letter to the Vikings of 4914”, though it is suspected that the letter was actually penned by Televangelist Úlfsten of Strassburg who became one of Hiawatha’s central powerbrokers in Greenland:

“Lord Protector Hiawatha cordially greets his televangelists and his people’s missionaries and the Commander of Västerås and all his staff, and all his nation, whether jarls or retainers, ecclesiastical and lay, in Greenland.

And I reveal to you that I wish to be a loyal lord and loyal to Nestorian rights and just worldly laws.”Greenland’s division between both North American and European colonies as well as followers of both Orenda and Nestorianism posed a challenge to any prospective unifier of the territory. Here Hiawatha’s attempt to guarantee the conquered Vikings that he would rule them in accordance with their faith reveals the sort of propaganda used to cross cultural boundaries.

The Qin counteroffensive racked up more successes in 4914, advancing across the steppe and seizing the city of Jaruul. This development created an uneasy parallel in the Khamug and Qin positions, both within striking distance of the other’s capital. However, the density of peacekeepers between the two was guaranteed to bog down the offensive.

Returning again to “The Voyage of Sailor Bansabira”, we read of an episode when the Galéas Bansabira sailed with had made landfall at a strange tropical ring-shaped archipelago in the middle of the deep ocean. The crew was foraging for food in the forest of the island, when they saw tan-colored ships headed West, sailing past them in great fleets. Upon their flags flew a huge bird, and the thunderous noise of their ships frightened the sailors, who hid among the foliage. Bansabira speculated if the Green and Tan were in conflict, as his King Minos had once been with the Ottoman Turks, but could not say.In Nazca naval logs, it is reported that they spotted signs of primitive inhabitants on the atolls North-North-East from Tongoleka. The navy chose not to investigate, as they were desperately needed in stalling the Australian advance.

In the Gothic exclave of Nuwakot, the preparations for the relocation of the headquarters of G.I.M.P. were well underway despite the civil unrest and resistance created by the occupation. Cradled by the mountains, the Gothic paratroopers engaged in altitude training and securing routes for Gothic trade-convoys sent to the war-torn region from Europe.

I think there’s been a slight mix-up in slides and captions here, sorry about that. 4922 is significant for being the apex of the Iroquois attempts to unite Greenland, culminating in the capture of Västerås. However, Ulm remained in Venetian hands. This Shikoku fleet you can see in the satellite photo does hold something of note, as you will observe that nearly everything here is a land unit. Shikoku seems to have been preparing for a land war in the Americas.

Peace, but at what cost? Selk’nam was securing peace-treaties with some of the most powerful civilizations on the Cylinder and clung onto its final city. But Korkomen was a hollow home for Xo’on Uhan-Té, sitting at 6 population. Truly reduced to an Antarctic rump-state, the Selk’nam obsession with the end times and apocalyptic visions only intensified with time.

With the capture of ‘Ohonua, the Australian successes in the South Pacific continued. Bridging the scattered islands of the Pacific under direct rule from Canberra was not a bloodless affair, but the invasion plans acquired from New Zealand were proving effective.In Palmerston-North, Richard Seddon scribbled a poem which these days is quite well known:

One ocean for my dream,

One nation in paradise

This promise of paradise,

This nearly was mine

Though not nearly as prevalent in their involvement compared to mainland Asia or Europe, peacekeepers managed to play a role even in the South Pacific. Here we see a Malagasy unit preventing the capture of Tongoleka despite the overwhelming forces brought by the Australians.As for Sailor Banabira, the Minoan crew had spent twelve years going around the strange chain of tropical islands, finding the food plentiful and the big ships going past uninterested in them. The rising smoke from the south concerned them, and they were determined to sail only North if they must leave.

This slide illustrates the uneasy division of Britain and Ireland, where the Southern Manx controlled more territory but were at a technological disadvantage, whereas the Northern Vikings could at any moment pour across from their side of Robert’s Wall. The two forces stared across uneasily, and the Manx remembered their long-gone neighbours almost fondly.

Ragnar Loðbrok’s task force sent to Greenland succeeded in recapturing Västerås and claiming the city’s territory from the majority of peacekeeper forces in 4926, returning the island to its threefold division between the Iroquois, the Venetians and themselves. The presence of peacekeeper units made chances of recapture by Hiawatha unlikely, not to mention that the lack of troops in the area would pose a challenge for holding the gains he had already made.

Both Koresken and Yewux, formerly Selk’nam cities, were being consolidated under new management. While the Nazca were able to man their swathes of ocean quite effectively, the Kiwis found their waters mostly sailed by foreign fleets - though fortunately not hostile ones.

As an excellent indicator of the fluidness of the Khamug-Qin frontline, even as Ying Zheng was receiving reports of successes closer and ever closer to the Khamug Khanate’s capital, he was handed a notice detailing the fall of Lanzhou, again to a hovertank. “Ying Zheng - Man, Not God” tells us that any mention of hovertanks would put the immortal ruler in quite a state, staring blankly into the middle distance for hours on end.

Possibly left out of the victorious reports sent to Ying Zheng were the distinct lack of forces on the frontline between the Qin and Jamukha’s forces. Moorish, Malagasy and Gothic forces wandered the desert between Barlas and Jaruud, hardly coming into contact with the owners of the lands they were patrolling.

The Khamug cities closest to the frontline were not spared in the conflict, with Jadaran, Naqu and Khadagin sustaining heavy damage. However Jamukha felt secure in his position, as his lands were well-manned by his forces, whereas all intelligence reports told him that the forces his men were coming into contact and definitely not taking pot-shots at, were Gothic. Still, there was no knowing when paratroopers, Airborne forces or a hovertank could come crashing through his palace windows.

The Australian tide was stalling. The Malagasy rocket artillery stationed in Tongoleka refused to budge despite orders to evacuate broadcast by the Australian forces, and Haveluloto, briefly in the hands of the Australians, was retaken by the titanic might of a Giant Death Robot. The Nazca forces patted themselves on the back as fires burned all across the island - they had saved the city.

Closer to the capital, the Qin forces were faring much better than further North. The capture of Telenguut from the Khamugs gave the Qin some much needed security, as their capital was no longer immediately bordered by hostile territory. The Xianyang Massacre had proven to be a crucial propaganda victory for Qin, providing a motif around which the population could unify in resisting the Khanate menace.

The measuring of literacy rates in the 5th millenium may seem to us like a pointless statistic. With so many civilizations at full literacy and boasting technological marvels like the Nexus or Biotroopers, the rates seem almost a given. Uruguay’s earlier technological edge was lost when the boundaries of technological advancement seemed to stop giving way to new discoveries and other civilizations caught up. Really, the only interesting part of these graphs is the bottom end, which I have conveniently forgotten to include on the slide. I’ll email you links to the relevant databases after the lecture.

Illiam Dhone fought the house and the house won. The house being Enrico’s House Dandolo, Illiam had bet on regaining a foothold in Greenland or claiming more territory in Europe in addition to Malaqah, but by the river they knew they had nothing but junk in their hand. When the time came to pay up, Illiam coughed up Kirk Michael to Enrico, a fine prize for Venice, a bitter loss for the Manx. The foothold in Britain improved Venice’s odds against the Vikings in vying for European dominance, though the region remained very much a five-way competition.

Declaring war after a bitter loss is a political ploy as old as time, and Richard Seddon was desperate to maintain his control of the scattered holdings of New Zealand. Declaring war on Tonga, another civilization in decline, could potentially greatly improve the longevity of the Kiwis. Here we see the immediate damage suffered by Pangai, though the Tongan submarine fleet would prove a challenge for any would-be invaders.

Ying Zheng’s fear of hovertanks gradually became an obsession. In the fighting over Khongkhotan entire hovertank battalions were deployed, which strategically was not a bad move, being well-suited for the rough terrain of Inner-Mongolia. The Qin counteroffensive had been shockingly successful in pushing into Khamug lands, squeezing the steppe empire’s holdings in the east.

In one of the more peaceful corners of the Cylinder, Ranavalona’s heartlands on Madagascar were both pretty well-developed and manned by relatively advanced armies. The Malagasy and Kiwis, never involved in a fierce conflict, established a truce mostly necessitated by geography.

The “relatively advanced armies” of Madagascar would be little match against the weapons wielded on the other side of the Mozambique Channel. ZImbabwe’s Nexus, hovering over the East African mountains was a menacing sight, though the hodge-podge of units from various eras on the continent would have to be wholly modernized to not be a liability in war. In addition to the aforementioned Nexus, we can see some Zimbabwean Cavalry, though Nyatsimba Mutota’s priorities seemed to have long been in the prestige competition with Uruguay rather than in maximizing the efficacy of their military.

In the contested lands of Sweden, another Nexus, this of Sámi design hovered just outside Soadegilli. Following the several inconclusive wars against the Vikings, perhaps this military innovation would prove to be the key to Sámi hegemony in Scandinavia. In this slide we also see the notification for the Treaty of Mukden of 4946 between the Qin Empire and the Khamug Khanate, bringing the protracted war between the two Asian juggernauts to an end with significant gains made by the Qin.

We return to Bago, where Hiawatha again proposed the establishment of cultural heritage sites and Bayinnaung proposed to repeal the cruel limitations on the ivory trade, referring to  the flourishing elephant populations across the cylinder and threatening to repeal the legislation protecting elephants within the Taungoo lands regardless of international legislation, citing the role of elephant-poaching in Taungoo folkl medicine and national dishes.

I invite you to consider Hiawatha’s particular dedication to the arts of oration and diplomacy in the harsh, warlike environment of the Cylinder. While among the other civilizations and in mainstream analyses of what determines a good leader, these skills are not highly valued, Hiawatha as a federation builder and forger of alliances deserves scholarly attention.

Along the tripartite border between the Apache, Venezuela and the Yup’ik in Central America, Australian units surveyed the American lands. 50 years from the end of the 5th millennium, Bob Hawke had made peace with Cahuachi, but to the Old Aussie SASR-paratroopers it didn’t feel that way. They were stationed in the Americas in preparation for the day when the war plans stolen from the Kiwis would be put into action again, and they’d be ready to manifest Australia’s destiny as an intercontinental empire in the South Pacific.

Here we see one of the less-discussed side-effects of warfare on the Cylinder. For those of you who remember last week’s lecture, you will notice that Palmerston North has gained about 40 population since then. In the 4950’s over half of the population of Palmerston North consisted of internal refugees and their descendants. While we applaud the Australians for consolidating their rule over the continent and its surrounding territories, we ignore the countless displaced peoples of the Cylinder. Just think on that.

Here we see how well the United Nations’ negotiations of 4950 went; neither proposal passed. Hiawatha and Bayinnaung were understandably upset, though failures in diplomacy were of considerably little importance in the broader scheme of things. Both nations remained dominant in their respective corner’s of the Cylinder, and the most significant damage was to the pride of the two civilizations in charge of the proposals. Here in the lands held by long-gone Poverty Point, we see the change in diplomatic relations on the Cylinder, as Apache units move freely in Iroquois territory. The war between Nepal and Shikoku ends, with little of note beyond a handful of casualties having occurred.

Following the Treaty of Mukden (4946) the border between the Qin and Khamug shifted much further north and away from Xianyang. Besut and Uriankhai had suffered a decrease in population due to the disruption of the war, but were swiftly recovering in their newfound position as frontier-towns. Squeezed between the Qin and the Kazakhs, the security of the Southernmost reaches of the Khamug Khanate was increasingly in jeopardy.

Returning to “The Voyage of Sailor Bansabira”, we have the unique opportunity to read descriptions of Nazca’s Pacific islands following the peace treaty with Australia. Bansabira writes of how despite wishing to journey North a fierce wind guided their ships further south, to a pair of island cities which clearly had once housed much larger populations than they did at the time. Smoke still billowed from towering buildings, and workers swearing allegiance to the “Bird People” headed to the cities to perform maintenance tasks. To the Minoans this was a vision of despair, a Pyrrhic victory of monumental scale. Of course, we see that the Pacific theater was a relatively minor war, a war not fought over resources but simply over territory, which as the previous wars fought in the area reveal, were as easily lost as they were won.

High above Uluru, in the center of the Australian continent, a newly-built Nexus hovered in the desert. The ever-industrious Australians were experimenting with anti-grav technology, considering the plausibility of building vast city-complexes below the cities of the outback as unconquerable bunkers. The military command responded by assuring that the outback was too well manned to ever be conquered, and such bunkers would be unnecessary.

The possibility of North Americans crossing the Atlantic into Europe had been considered in military scenarios across the continent since the Uruguay advances into Africa. It was the fall of Colby to the Iroquois which changed this from a theoretical scenario in plans and maps to a very real, tangible development. Following the lack of success in forcing the Vikings out of Greenland, Hiawatha had focused further south. Though holding onto Colby would prove highly challenging for the Iroquois, it was impressive nonetheless. As we discussed at the beginning of the lecture, the Iroquois were doing their best to prove themselves to be the Cylinder’s leading civilization.

These slides really need some revising, as it does not show the Shikoku declaration of war against the Haida, however I want to emphasize that in 4956 this is precisely what took place. The sight of a Shikoku Nexus hovering over the Pacific Ocean drew a rapid response from the Haida navy, and while they responded with some strikes against Chongjin the threat posed against Kayung and Atewaas in the Aleutian Islands was undeniable, and the possibility of Sakamoto Ryoma’s domain stretching across the Pacific seemed more than likely.

Skedans, the Haida’s forward base in Asia was immediately threatened from all directions as Shikoku armies advanced towards the encircled city. Again, peacekeeping forces managed in many locations to keep the combatants separated from one another, however Shikoku maintained some possible inroads towards the city.

In a much-needed victory against Tonga, Richard Seddon’s airborne forces managed to seize Pangai. Just North-West of Palmerston North, if he could hold the city it would prove an important element of reconstructing a new core for the remains of his empire. However, the Tongan forces in the area still had a fair chance at reclaiming the lost island.

On the west coast of North America the Haida city of Sirenik, which had remained safe since the wars against the Métis was taking a battering. The source of this damage is as of now a mystery to me, as at least on this slide we cannot see a single Shikoku troop, indicating the extreme long-rage capabilities of the Sakamoto Ryoma’s forces. The ocean claimed by the Haida from the Salish sea to the border with the Apache was teeming with units, well-prepared to mount a defence against their intercontinental enemies.

In this slide we see the efficiency with which Shikoku bombarded the defenses of Kayung and Atewaas to pulver, however it does not require a very sharp eye to notice the overwhelming naval presence of the Haida. While a single melee-unit sent by Sakamoto Ryoma could capture either of the cities, it would have to make its way through the Haida units making their way towards Japan. Any victory in this region would be hard-fought, though anything but impossible.

While conquest was lacking from the war in the Arctic, Shikoku quickly overwhelmed the defences of the Haida holdings in Hawai’i, conquering the city of Cha’atl. As you can see, the island chain served as the staging grounds for the most important naval confrontations between the Haida and the Shikoku, two rather evenly matched combatants vying for the control of the Pacific Islands not gobbled up by Australia. Recruits in the Shikoku navy jokingly referred to the conflict as a “holiday in Hawai’i”, and the conduct of the occupying forces in Cha’atl is well documented. From forced labour at gunpoint, extreme food-rationing to a mere bowl of rice a day to soldiers using the civilian population as slaves and the macabre display of the severed heads of dead civilians on stakes, the occupation is widely known as one of the most gruesome and inhumane episodes of Cylinder military history.

And for the final slide of our lecture today, we return to the insular world, where in 4958 Ragnar Loðbrok’s forces mounted a series of successful counter attacks against the Iroquois invaders to push them out of the captured cities in the Hebrides. Hiawatha maintained the hope that his message in 4914, spread throughout the Viking holdings by televangelists friendly to Úlfsten would help him gain the loyalty of the populations he conquered in Northern Europe, but the efficacy of the message has at best been deemed debatable.

Oh, you had questions? Really? I mean they already rang the bell and I’ve got a twenty minute lunch-break but alright alright… What was your question? The bigger picture of some of these conflicts? Well sure let’s see what I’ve got.For the Shikoku-Haida war, this map illustrates pretty well how the conflict in Kamchatka began, with Shikoku bombarding Haida colonies and suffering fairly little damage to themselves, but you can see how strong the Haida fleets are. It would not be a steamroll to Haida Gwaii, that’s for sure.

Here we see the Iroquois forces arriving from the West, as well as the Viking reliance on Hybrid Drones. Lots of peacekeeping forces, but definitely room for a comeback from Hiawatha. You’ll have to wait until the next lecture or read ahead in your textbooks to see how the unification went.

The Margadai enclave would be a pain in the rear for Jamukha for centuries, and here we really see how critical the gains made by Ying Zheng against the Khamugs were. Look at how squeezed this easternmost extremity of the Khanate is, and how vulnerable it is to attack from both the Shikoku to the North and Qin from the south.

Here the one thing that’s obvious is the lack of a naval presence from the Iroquois; Onchan and Colby would not fall again until they managed to land more troops in the area or wrap up their conflict in Greenland, whichever came first.

Seizing steppes and deserts gave Ying Zheng a critical edge for any future conflict with Jamukha, though the area was still this soon after the war distinctly lacking in a Qin carpet. Also if you look into the top-left corner you can spot the elusive Evenks, who following their disastrous war with Shikoku were basically just trying to sit very still and cling on for dear life.

Here we see lots of bombed-out low-population cities ripe for the taking if only there were land forces to march in. Berlin was an absolutely enormous city on a European scale, just imagine if Enrico Dandolo could have sent a force there with the intent to capture - it would have been a massacre.

And on this map we can see the value of the gains Qin made in the West, pushing the Khamugs out of Telenguut and Manghut to gain a secure and easily-defensible position and to protect Xianyang from anymore surprise attacks.

Shikoku had almost the entire island chain in their possession at this point, though total control would require a war with the Taungoo, still a highly risky move but on the horizon. Cha’atl remained threatened by Haidan forces, but not for long I can assure you just look at that Shikoku fleet.

I really do have to get going, I’ve got the leftovers of the  vegan spaghetti my girlfriend made last night waiting in my office mini-fridge and I’ve only got ten minutes to eat it. Just as a final note, here we see the ever-spreading Australian dominion in the South Pacific, compared with the exiled government of Richard Seddon in Palmerston North. Also compare the massive populations in the Kiwi cities to the depopulated Australian Pacific Islands: the impact of Kiwi internal refugees on the one hand, and Nazca civilians fleeing back to South America on the other.

Thank you for listening, I am Professor Hillbert U. Spawnov, if you have any questions you can find me in my office in room B5 next to the supply closet.