Quote:
Originally Posted by johndallman
The easy way to solve this is to have the British solidly allied to the Bavarians. The obvious way to do it would by a union of the crowns, but the Electors and later Kings of Bavaria were Roman Catholic, which makes that rather unlikely. Any better ideas?
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The simplest would be to have Bavaria convert to some form of Protestantism, which I hear was a common thing in the HRE. Or perhaps unify the crowns earlier in history, but that would change other stuff and probably wouldn't last long enough, barring some kind of national identity developing across Britainnia and her European empire. Which would be another world entirely...probably starting from England winning the Hundred Years' War...
Meh, I'm sure it's in this thread somewhere.
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King Charles XII of Sweden (who you may know from the Sabaton song "Carolus Rex" or the Extra History series on the Great Northern War) was a good military leader with skilled generals and experienced troops, which let him win victories against seemingly overwhelming numbers of poorly-lead Polish/Lithuanian troops and poorly-trained Russian troops...for a while, at least. I've heard the army he had before his winning streak ended described as invincible, and for a while its win/loss stats seemed to back this up. But Charles did earn Pyrrhic victories, face fortresses he couldn't take, and ultimately faced a series of defeats. But what if he wasn't? What if we give his army a godmode cheat? (I dunno, maybe he found Odin's spear or something.) What then?
Well, he'd finish setting up Stanisław I Leszczyński as his Polish-Lithuanian puppet more quickly, and would (by definition) take the Fortress of Peter and Paul (the seed of St. Petersburg) without much hassle. But as it turns out, someone screwed up when programming godmode, and he's still vulnerable to strategic attrition from weather and logistical effects. So he still suffers losses on his march to Moscow, which reduces his army to the point that his only available tactical option is to rely on godmode—ie, one small force going in with some clever plan exploiting a weakness in the enemy's defenses that lets Charles route them with no meaningful casualties.
Charles wins the war, and makes territorial gains and whatnot. Through his life, he continues to fight his neighbors, win, and take land. But he begins to suffer internal issues. Swedish logistics are shot, his army is tied up dealing with rebels, and eventually even godmodding can't save Charles; he's just drained Swedish resources too much. Eventually, Charles loses godmode and is forced to flee to Stanisław as his enemies, followed by the rest of northern Europe, attack. Sweden is reduced greatly in size, and the Russians and Danes become much bigger players on the international stage in the 18th and 19th centuries. Given that OTL's Great Northern War established Russia as a major player...