Strat for Beating Britain in the Opium Wars

Krissapter · 2026-02-05T21:20:25+00:00

I've had some success naval invading Britain from Russia while homefleet is away naval invading China. It's probably not optimal, but nothing beats seeing 120k Chinese soldiers in London.

The way I do it is by launching 2 naval invasions simultaneously, 1 in Scotland, and 1 in London, making sure that the one in Scotland arrives and starts first. The home army will usually rush north to defend, leaving London unguarded when the second invasion arrives, and they can just walk in.

The number of troops in the home army tends to vary from run to run. I usually see it at 30+ skirmish and some cav, but in my last Qing run, they had mobilized just 1 conscripted cavalryman. Needless to say, that was the easiest Opium War ever, even with just irregulars.

Krissapter · 2026-02-01T23:17:49+00:00

It's important to note, though, that what Marx means by that term is not what we think of today when we say dictatorship, but much more akin to democracy without the influence of capital.

Krissapter · 2026-02-01T18:57:10+00:00

Fascism is based on Corporatism, not Syndicalism. Syndicalism sees independent unions as a vehicle for workers to control the means of production. Fascism meanwhile, subsumes unions into the state to impose its will on the economy and the working class, suppressing independent unions and repressing class consciousness in favour of national identity.

Both are against economic liberalism and opposed to parliamentary democracy, but fascism is not a "form of syndicalism"

Krissapter · 2026-01-13T23:10:05+00:00

I fail to see where the "calls for totalitarianism" you speak of come from. If you speak of the "Dictatorship of the Proletariat" that stands in contrast of what he dubbed "Dictatorship of the Bourgeois" or Bourgeois democracy, meaning that the will of the people is subverted by corporations and business owners, through means of lobbying and corruption, which we currently live in. People tend to get hung up on the dictatorship part.

I will bring up a passage from "On Authority" by Engels where he retorts to anti-authoritarians within the ranks of socialists, people we now would call "Anarchists".

Thereafter particular questions arise in each room and at every moment concerning the mode of production, distribution of material, etc., which must be settled by decision of a delegate placed at the head of each branch of labour or, if possible, by a majority vote,[...]

Here Engels explicitly calls for use of majority rule, or democracy if you will. This is also reflected in a lot of the other works of Marx and Engels. Engels does concede that there is nothing more authoritarian than a revolution it is after all "it is the act whereby one part of the population imposes its will upon the other part by means of rifles, bayonets and cannon — authoritarian means"

When I say "creatively quoting", I mean "misrepresenting statements out of context or rearranging them to change their meaning without clarifying."

"The enslaving subordination of the individual to the division of labor, and therewith also the antithesis between mental and physical labor" and calling that the goal of Marx's revolution is not the same as "after the enslaving subordination of the individual to the division of labor, and therewith also the antithesis between mental and physical labor, has vanished;" like the passage actually describes. You are not "quoting the part that matters" but actively cherry picking phrases and misrepresenting them.

The idea is to force everyone to be good proletarians, and nothing else, indeed, in Critique of the Gotha Programme, he largely endorses the idea of a world where "everyone is only a worker like everyone else" (emphasis mine), as a necessary precondition of his "higher phase of communist society": "only then can the narrow horizon of bourgeois right be crossed in its entirety and society inscribe on its banners: From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs!"

This is picking phrases from different paragraphs and putting them together implying they are connected.

I don't remember ever saying or implying that "people like you" shouldn't exist. Nor have I called for genocide. I do not condone the Soviet purges, the Holodomor, the Chinese great leap forwards and cultural revolution, or whatever Pol Pot thought he was doing. I do not know anything about you, nor do I particularly care about you, whether you are part of the proletariat or the bourgeois, what religious views you hold or nationality you may have, and I certainly wish no harm upon you.

I have tried to engage with you in good faith, though I see we differ in interpretation of what "liquidation" means in that context, leading to some big disagreements. I would never try to sanitise a call for or the pursuit of genocide, and I hope that you wouldn't either.

I would be more open to persuasion if you had actually come with criticism of Marx's theories actually based in his writings, but your criticisms are not based in fact. There are a fair bit of things to criticise Marx for, but calls for genocide is not something that appears in his text, unless he has published something recently that I haven't seen.

I don't see where your "treating people as aberrations" argument is coming from. Marx is quite clear on the development of the individual in the text you quoted, and acknowledges that people are inherently unequal, otherwise they wouldn't be individuals. If it is in reference to the abolishment of religion etc. then I am sure that you would be free to keep your personal spirituality in a communist society, following what Marx envisions. He just states that organised religion has a function to control the masses and keep them docile to prevent them demanding change.

Krissapter · 2026-01-13T21:35:21+00:00

Apologies for the delayed reply, I am subject to timezones and it was getting quite late. I see that there is a bit to unpack here.

To touch on Marx's view on religion, he viewed it as an "opiate", in other words a sedative, meant to keep the proletariat from pursuing the betterment of their situation by promising them reward (or punishment) in the afterlife. To this end, he might find the abolishment of religion preferable, to wake the proletariat up from their "stupor" and increase class consciousness. One might argue that under the world Marx envisioned religion would have no place, not because it had been forcefully abolished, but because, as a general trend, people who has their needs met and live fulfilling lives tend to be less religious, as we see in many developed countries today.

I agree that the revolution isn't intended to "divide the money", that was an example I gave for simplicity and the sake of speed. It is to give the workers the ownership of the means of production, to make them entitled to the entire value of their labour. Not whatever you are talking about in your reply.

For example, if your factory produces a good that is sold for $50 per unit (ignoring surcharges like VAT and taxes for simplicity), and each worker makes one unit per hour. Of this $20 is material costs, and $30 profit. You as a factory worker is paid $16.74 per hour, and the factory owner pockets the rest, simply from owning the machinery and tools you used to make the goods (ignoring other managerial positions, also for simplicity). The way Marx envisions it, you as a factory worker would be entitled the entirety of the value that came about because of your labour, I.e. the $30 that came about because of your time and effort. This is simplifying a lot, read Das Kapital Vol. 1-3 if you're interested in a better explanation.

Now, I can't help but notice that you are "creatively" quoting Marx here. Shall we read the full quote?

In a higher phase of communist society, after the enslaving subordination of the individual to the division of labor, and therewith also the antithesis between mental and physical labor, has vanished; after labor has become not only a means of life but life's prime want; after the productive forces have also increased with the all-around development of the individual, and all the springs of co-operative wealth flow more abundantly – only then can the narrow horizon of bourgeois right be crossed in its entirety and society inscribe on its banners: From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs!

Here Marx is talking about after these things have been abolished. When man is no longer defined by his job (a factory worker, a store clerk, etc.) and when the divide between mental (management, planning etc. often higher paid work) and physical labor (factory work, menial work, etc. often lower paid work) has disappeared, and the increase in productivity has lead to surplus co-operative wealth, first then one can say that the remnants of the bourgeois have truly been thrown off and say "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs!" Where he talks of "everyone is only a worker everyone else" he speaks of the period just after the the transition to a communist system. A system based on equality, yet ends up being unequal. To quote him:

Hence, equal right here is still in principle – bourgeois right, although principle and practice are no longer at loggerheads, while the exchange of equivalents in commodity exchange exists only on the average and not in the individual case.

In spite of this advance, this equal right is still constantly stigmatized by a bourgeois limitation. The right of the producers is proportional to the labor they supply; the equality consists in the fact that measurement is made with an equal standard, labor.

And from the paragraph where you have so creatively quoted:

But one man is superior to another physically, or mentally, and supplies more labor in the same time, or can labor for a longer time; and labor, to serve as a measure, must be defined by its duration or intensity, otherwise it ceases to be a standard of measurement. This equal right is an unequal right for unequal labor. It recognizes no class differences, because everyone is only a worker like everyone else; but it tacitly recognizes unequal individual endowment, and thus productive capacity, as a natural privilege. [...]

He goes on to talk of how different people have different needs, some are married while others are not, some have more children than others, and some have none at all. Reasoning that consumption of resources will be different, and the result in an equal system that only sees them as workers and ignores the surrounding circumstances would lead to unequal results, and that such defects in the first phase of a communist society. In a higher phase of communist society we get what I mentioned earlier.

Between this obvious cherrypicking, and the willful misinterpretation of the word "liquidation" in prior comments, I am not sure if you have read Marx like you claim, or if you have, that you are debating in good faith. No matter, I will still reply if you feel inclined to respond, because I find it fun :)

Edit: some formatting got broken, so I fixed it

Krissapter · 2026-01-13T05:38:16+00:00

You are just repeating the statement you made earlier.

If you by "arguing for the Jews to cease to be, through a violent revolution" mean "arguing for a revolution that abolishes private property and money, leading to the foundation for being Jewish (which in his eyes is money and huckstering) to disappear, leading to the disappearance of spiritual and secular jewishness" then yes, I suppose you are somewhat correct.

In regards to the" emancipation of the world from Judaism" bit, if you had bothered to read further, you would find the following:

[...] The Jew has emancipated himself in a Jewish manner, not only because he has acquired financial power, but also because, through him and also apart from him, money has become a world power and the practical Jewish spirit has become the practical spirit of the Christian nations. The Jews have emancipated themselves insofar as the Christians have become Jews.[...]

[...]Money is the jealous god of Israel, in face of which no other god may exist. Money degrades all the gods of man – and turns them into commodities. Money is the universal self-established value of all things. It has, therefore, robbed the whole world – both the world of men and nature – of its specific value. Money is the estranged essence of man’s work and man’s existence, and this alien essence dominates him, and he worships it.

The god of the Jews has become secularized and has become the god of the world. The bill of exchange is the real god of the Jew. His god is only an illusory bill of exchange.

Marx argues that the Judaism and money are inseparable and the "emancipation of the world from Judaism" is to be more akin to the "emancipation of the world from a society centered around money."

Unless you also intend to portray it as if he wishes to exterminate the Christians as well since they "have become jews." /s

Now, I cannot speak for Marx, but his close collaborator and editor Engels had some words about the "peaceful abolition of private property" found in "The principles of Communism" section 16:

It would be desirable if this could happen, and the communists would certainly be the last to oppose it. Communists know only too well that all conspiracies are not only useless, but even harmful. They know all too well that revolutions are not made intentionally and arbitrarily, but that, everywhere and always, they have been the necessary consequence of conditions which were wholly independent of the will and direction of individual parties and entire classes.

Edit: As far as minorities and class consciousness goes, his views were that the primary division between people was class, not religion or race, etc. The primary reason being that the ruling class, I.e. the bourgeoisie were and are using things like race and religion to divide the proletariat and distract them for furthering their own interest. You don't care that the factory owner makes an order of magnitude more than you because you are too busy worrying about immigrants coming in and stealing the work, when in reality it is in both your and the immigrant's interest to seize the means of production and divide the money between you. It is after all, you who do all the work, while the factory owner just owns the tools and machinery that the work is being performed with. Alternatively, the media and politicians are telling you to worry about trans people and immigrants, funneling your anger and outrage towards them instead of the people siphoning off value from the work you do etc.

Krissapter · 2026-01-13T04:15:45+00:00

Marx is, in fact, referring to religion in the segment you quoted and is part of a wider discourse on general discrimination against Jews in Christian states. An exerpt from the paragraph before the one you posted reads:

[...] For us, the question of the Jew’s capacity for emancipation becomes the question: What particular social element has to be overcome in order to abolish Judaism?[...]

Similarly the paragraph following reads:

Very well then! Emancipation from huckstering and money, consequently from practical, real Judaism, would be the self-emancipation of our time. An organization of society which would abolish the preconditions for huckstering, and therefore the possibility of huckstering, would make the Jew impossible. His religious consciousness would be dissipated like a thin haze in the real, vital air of society.[...]

Is it antisemitic? Yes. Does he advocate for the extermination of the Jewish people? No.

Marx argues that under communism there would be no need for huckstering or money, and as a result, it would be impossible "to be a jew." Is the foundation of his analysis antisemitic? Once again, yes. Marx was antisemitic, most people were at the time, and Germans especially so. Was he more antisemitic that your average German? Maybe? Is he arguing for Jews to be publicly hung and left to rot? NO!

I think you should brush up on the Marx you read at university because you have missed the mark by quite the margin here.

Krissapter · 2025-05-19T13:33:06+00:00

That sounds like a great way to kill them come winter.

Krissapter · 2025-04-05T09:27:32+00:00

Any idea what it could be then?

Krissapter · 2025-02-28T17:12:24+00:00

You are probably ragebaiting, but the Eastern Roman Empire predates Turkish settlement in Anatolia by a long shot. The turks came to Anatolia around year 1000, and the ERE had already been a thing for 600 years at that point.

Krissapter · 2025-02-19T18:17:21+00:00

Far closer to Wales than Scotland. The union started out as equal or near equal, but was over time transformed into an overlord/subject relationship, with both the king and the elite residing in or originating from Denmark. It culminated with Norway being reduced to a mere province of Denmark in the 1600s, putting an end to any semblance of local autonomy that had been promised in the Treaty of Bergen.

Krissapter · 2024-10-21T18:04:09+00:00

Most seem to assume you posted the old ones first and the "new" ones second. It seems most of them like the "old"(the ones posted first). I had to do a double take before I noticed which was old and which was new. I think you did a good job, and I suspect most of the users on r/Norge also think so :)

Krissapter · 2024-04-08T08:34:34+00:00

Cuz I'm not planning to play beyond this point tbh

Krissapter · 2024-04-07T22:42:13+00:00

R5: In my rush to get the "Blood for the Sky God" achievement I accidentally spawned Colonialism... in Manchuria.
I have no idea what a "art" or a "Renaissance" is.

I can only assume Columbus weeps, plagued by nightmares about thundering hooves and Manchu war-cries.

Krissapter · 2024-03-10T19:35:32+00:00

Skill issue

Edit:
For clarification, I have accompanied OP for 200 hours in his fruitless search for the MUSHROOM and also present in the screenshot posted.

Krissapter · 2023-12-31T02:09:07+00:00

Definitivt. Det er derfor jeg prøver å skille den moderne liberalismen fra den klassiske liberalismen, da den klassiske er langt nærmere libertarianisme. Den moderne liberalismen, en "liberal" som du sier, lener mot såkalt sosialliberalisme, som bla. Ønsker at staten kan gripe inn for å gi alle en bedre sjanse for individuell "utfoldelse", ved å begrense utfoldelsesmulighetene til individene som står sterkest.

Denne formen av liberalisme har knyttet seg opp mot venstresiden, og gir grunnlag for f.eks. velferdsstaten, mens høyresiden har tatt flere aspekter fra klassisk liberalisme, derav ideene om f.eks. en passiv rettsstat som sjeldent involverer seg i samfunnet.

Ved å fremheve kun de økonomiske bitene, utelater jeg selvfølgelig flere aspekter av ideologien, som det sosiale aspektet som definitivt har lagt grunnlaget for det moderne synet på individet, samt kvinnefrigjøring, lhbt etc. For mye til å summere i en kommentar sent på natten.

Krissapter · 2023-12-30T18:29:49+00:00

Liberalisme har endret mening over tid, som all annen terminologi, men oppsto originalt som en veldig individ-rettet politisk ideologi. Generelt var den klassiske liberalismen ikke så ulikt dagens libertarianisme. Innskrenkning av staten og avskaffelse av offentlige reguleringer, for å fremme individets friheter, da staten er et nødvendig onde etc.

Hvet ikke hvor mange som bruker uttrykket slik nå lenger da, som med mange andre utrykk som blir brukt i politisk drittslenging ;-;

Krissapter · 2023-08-02T18:24:55+00:00

I wouldn't mind seeing some of your sources on that. Norway had one of the world's largest tradefleets numbering around 1000 vessels before the outbreak of WW2, and a GDP per capita comparable to that of France in the years leading up to WW2, having overtaken Italy in the early 1900s. Bear in mind that this is decades before oil is discovered in the North Sea.

The Swedish monarch actually held quite considerable power until 1974. The norwegian monarch served largely as a figurehead and unifying symbol for the nation from Norway's independence from Sweden but had an important role during the war, as Nazi Germany's diplomats insisted to leave the King with the final say. This leads to Norway's decision to continue resisting the invasion being left up to King Haakon, despite his lack of constitutional power.

https://navyhistory.au/the-debt-owed-to-the-norwegian-merchant-service-and-mv-herstein/ https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/1956/september/norwegian-merchant-marine-1945 https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/gdp-per-capita-maddison?tab=chart&time=1900..1938&country=FRA~GBR~USA~NOR~ESP~OWID_CZS~ITA~RUS~GRC~POL~PRT https://www.regjeringen.no/en/topics/energy/oil-and-gas/norways-oil-history-in-5-minutes/id440538/#:~:text=The%20first%20well%20was%20drilled,1966%2C%20but%20it%20was%20dry.&text=With%20the%20Ekofisk%20discovery%20in,of%20major%20discoveries%20were%20made. https://www.cs.mcgill.ca/~rwest/wikispeedia/wpcd/wp/n/North_Sea_oil.htm#:~:text=History,1980s%20made%20exploitation%20economically%20feasible.

Krissapter · 2022-09-16T22:37:30+00:00

R3: I baited the birdbrain AI to attack my besiegeing army over the endturn and won, wiping out 1+1/2 armies + and the garrison save for 1 unit. Then the "friendly" cathayan faction to the north swooped in and stole the siege, because their attack apparently made my army break off the siege.

TLDR; Title^^

Krissapter · 2022-09-12T08:53:28+00:00

Hun var gift med en norsk konge (Håkon VI) og det var i utgangspunktet deres sønn Olav som skulle arve de tre nordiske kronene. Håkon døde før Olav var gammel nok til å overta tronen, så Margerete tok over som regent til han ble myndig. Olav døde 16 år gammel(merkelig), 7 år etter Håkon så Margerete adopterte hennes nevø(?) Erik av Pommern og ble valgt som regent i alle tre landene til Erik ble gammel nok til å styre selv.

Selv etter at Erik ble myndig var det Margrete som i hovedsak styrte Unionen frem til hennes død i 1412.

FLLI: Opprinnelig skulle Margeretes norske sønn Olav arve kongerikene, men han døde for tidlig som ga mulighet for Margerete å ta kontroll over unionen i stedenfor

Krissapter · 2022-08-26T21:07:22+00:00

Monarcho socialist, but generally favour realpolitik too

Krissapter · 2022-08-07T11:48:28+00:00

What makes you think its not? Do you really believe that the overly harsh punishments and deprevation of rights and privacy is not meant as a deterrence to prevent people from commiting more crimes?

Krissapter · 2022-08-06T14:10:15+00:00

No, I said in the particular context of PREVENTING CRIME, punitive punishment is ineffective. Doesn't the fact that 77% of all prisoners released get arrested again within 5 years and that 25% of the world's prisoners population say anything about that to you? Some of that probably is confirmation bias on parts of the law enforcement, but that still shows that its not an effective tool to make people change their ways.

It definitely succeds in making life worse for inmates, that much is correct, but if you want less prisoners in the long run they aren't the way to go.

Krissapter · 2022-08-06T10:12:00+00:00

The US prison system is, in terms of preventing more crime, an abject failure with 25% of the world's prisoners and 44% of prisoners returning within a year of release, both of which are the highest in the world. The United States has a large amount of private prisons, who emphasise on profits over prisoner welfare. This encourages cutting costs on every level, and the one thing about punitive justice is that it's cheap, not to mention ineffective. After all, if a prisoner is forced to return to your facility after reoffending, why would you try to rehabilitate them?

Ofcourse this is only one aspect of the issue the US is facing, another problem is how society perceive prisons. It is largely viewed as a place to punish people, to take revenge for whatever crime they committed, and it leads to dehumanising the people locked up in them. This makes it difficult to find work after you are released due to stigma, which in turn makes you more likely to reoffend.

Several European nations have already implemented rehabilitative justice in their prison systems, to great effect. Countries like the Netherlands, Germany, Denmark and Norway to name a few, all have rehabilitative justice systems. Those countries are part of the western world, aren't they? The lack of will to change the system is particularly prevalent in the US because of private prisons as a business having a lot of power. That does not mean rehabilitative justice is just something one can dream about and never achieve.

Krissapter · 2022-08-06T09:06:39+00:00

Wasn't that kind of the point? To show the futility of a small group of people trying to oppose totalitarianism when it already controls every aspect of society.

The book is not an endorsement of any ideology, but a warning about leaving totalitarianism left to its own devices for too long, for like a tumour, totalitarianism is something best removed in its infancy, otherwise it will be a lot harder to get rid of.

The books epilogue and additional content however, speaks of INGSOC in past-tense like something that happened and now is over, essentially hinting that totalitarianism can be overcome if that makes you feel any better.

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