So every now and then I get this event saying that an Island I owned has been invaded, and it basically costs me a bunch of votes and there is nothing I can do about it. The first time I got this event I immediately thought of the Falklands war en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falklands_War and how Thatcher responded to this.
What I’m getting at here is that I would like to see this straight up “nothing you can do about it” negative event replaced with a decision event where you have the choice to either:
a. Do nothing and take a hit to your popularity (basically the event as it currently stands)
b. Send the troops, for a risky decision that will either end in increased popularity if you win, or devastate your popularity if you lose. Probabilities would based on military spending for the last few years leading up to the event, and spending for the duration of the event.
Interesting. The way the game works is that decent military spending basically deters the foreign power from invading. This is of course accurate, but also bad politics, for as the thatcher experience showed, having a crap military, being invaded, then fighting against the odds and winning is far better than just having a decent military in the first place
HOWEVER!
Is that just a UK response? Us brits love to be underdogs fighting against insurmountable odds, but I don’t think that’s true of the US. If Falklands had happened to the US, wouldn’t people give their leaders a harder time about allowing the military to weaken and let the invasion happen in the first place?
Well, maybe times have changed, but when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor it was seen by the public as treachery by Japan, rather than incompetence by the Roosevelt administration–it could have just as easily been spun as the latter.
Nah, that’s not just a UK thing. I’m Canadian, and I’ll say that Canadians can be a bit bi-polar. We’ll be full swing anti-violence hippy, with any effort to spend money on our badly underfunded military meeting heavy resistance, until something pisses us off. Then a switch is clicked over and we’re in hockey fight mode.
I also like the idea of a well funded intelligence service giving you notice, this could give you a chance to deploy your military a turn early for a much better chance of success.
That dilemma wouldn’t need to be pegged to any specific nation. There are plenty of democracies that war for the hell of it. It should be an option for any nation with a military that isn’t at ceremonial spending levels.