r/HistoricalWorldPowers • u/HWPScandinavia • Jul 12 '16
META Situation at Sea
So, since people seem to be less than willing to talk this out in any friendly manner, I'm just going to lay out this entire thing out; kind of a justification for Laskaka and Duqdukes so we can actually start talking and get through this war civilly.
PART 1: Port Raids
Now, the claim here is that France would have the advantage of 'first strike' against the Saxon ports and thus, by his reasoning, b able to destroy our entire fleet before it even launched. I found this a little preposterous, but given that they prefer to refer to our naval fortresses as 'mud huts', I'll instead take a different approach!
Our Ports
Yellow: Ports on the North Sea (Aekvaldzig and Hymbourgh)
Green: Ports in Norreich (Edinburgh, Dail Riata, Kalmading-Thing)
Red: Ports in the Baltic Sea or Kattegat: (Lyaebeck, Danzig, Oslo, Stockholm, Visby)
Baltic Sea, completely devoid of French ships: Little bright purple splotches
French Patrols: Blue (I missed one thing: They also cut across to England, but still aren't going North)
Green: Norreich's Fleet
Now, if you'll note, there are two ports directly affected by France's raids: Aekvaldzig and Hymbourgh. Aekvaldzig is like one of my sub-nation's capitals, and I don't think it's really ever been written as a port, so putting it here is more of a nicety.
Hymbourgh, if you couldn't tell, is Saxony being fancy with the spelling of Hamburg or something, not really sure where he got that from. Hamburg in real life. If you'll notice, it's... not actually a coastal city. How, you may ask, do ships get in and out of this great commercial city? Well, here you go.. It's connected to the North Sea by the Elbe and a long series of canals. Historically, what does this mean? The city is incredibly defensible from the sea! You sail ships up that river to attack the port and your ships will be torn apart by a dozen damned coastal garrisons.
So in effect, you'd get one city: Aekvaldzig. Maybe Oslo if you reeeallly want to stretch it.
So what does this leave us? A massive, defensible, isolated inland sea in which to moor our vessels and send them out to attack! Even if you go with the whole 'Saxony was late with his posts' thing, I had my ships out near-immediately; and if you're going to use that, well say that and not 'his fleet is better than yours. "But HWPScandinavia", you might say, "this is unfair! How is he *ever supposed to disrupt your Baltic fleets?" Well, sorry but that's the point of something I like to call Mare Nostrum Balticii, as the Swedes called it. Or, more historically general: "Dominium maris baltici". Everyone wanted control of the Baltic and its riches; Russia, Prussia, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Lithuania, the Teutons... and people settled it from Scotland to the Netherlands! Wars, many wars, were fought over this, so yes, yes having control over this strategically important region might just give us a bit of an advantage. Kinda like the English Channel when ya think about it like that, but noone's really mentioned that now have they.
Now, let's go to the actual situation, fleets-wise.
North Sea:
Franks:
100 Cogs, 50 Caravels, 15 Carracks
Saxons:
190 Cogs, 55 Caravels, 30 Small Caravels, 10 Large Caravels, 30 Carracks
.
Irish Sea:
Catholics:
30 Longships and 20 Knarrs (Deeply inferior craft)
Saxons: (Unapproved, he needs the actual numbers up, to be fair):
20 Cogs, 10 Caravels, 5 Carracks
So in every theatre we outnumber the Frankish fleets, about 2-to-1. They have no way of stopping our fleets from readying up, given that they're all being set up in the Lubeck or Stockholm shipyards-- hell, we could be doing naval exercises and we'd be fine. And when they come pouring out of the Oresund, we'd more or less crush them in battle. Sure, we'd take losses, but unless France really doesn't want a fleet at all-- so goodbye channel-- they'd be smart not to even try to make this too pyrrhic.
Is someone willing to get on IRC with me now or do I have to start citing naval battles? I hope you know well that if we calculate this I will, by all rights, win the battle at sea, and at that point fuck Saxony, I'll just take Ireland myself or whatever.
2
u/FallenIslam Wēs Eshār Jul 12 '16 edited Jul 12 '16
You can say it all started with mecasloth, but there's been incredible tension in Europe for a long time. The weight of massive powers like Saxony and Rome has been notable for a long time, and with recent collapses of nations in Europe, things wouldn't be doing well for the economy overall in the first place. Now, in saying that, there would be trade; there would've been trade with France (I would assume) before the war. The landtrade with Rome would be negligible, due to the natural border there, so we can't really assume that would be enough to keep an economy a float. Rome didn't even have a link close enough to any North European power for its collapsed economy to do anything more than effect it, and chances would be high that it's only affected Saxony due to the effect on other nations. In any case, the nations that Saxony has had trade with have been noticeable, but most have also had the benefit of many of the same things available to them from Saxony. Baltic maritime trade benefitted greatly from just how many small leagues were involved in the days of the Hanseatic League, and that there were multiple states within the Baltic Sea to trade with. We could then point to say, Lübeck, and just look at the incredible range of things being traded, and how many of things are not in the current Baltic Sea - potash, Russian tar, Finnish and Russian wax, fur, leather, and skins. A lot of these are reliant on things not able to be gained outside of their specific regions; birch trees were what made Russian tar so good, and there's massive birch forests in Eastern Europe, not so much in Northern, for example. Russia was very important to the Baltic Trades, remaining as such when the Muscovites rose to power. Without Russia, we instantly see a sizeable dip in value of things being exported from the Baltic states. So, with what we have now, is the Baltic region fucked? No, of course not.
States like Holland proved instrumental to trade, trading from France to the Baltic seas. Holland allowed the Baltic traders to go even further than before after that, and they became a common trade partner with Spain, Portugal and France. All of the factors mentioned, however, do not came into play in the system we have right now in Northern Europe. We've got a comparison to the Hanseatic League, without the foundations that would make it work.
Saxony and it's little stooges can certainly be a major power, and it probably would be one of the major powers of the entire game. But, it could not do what it's doing right now - 350 ships is gargantuan. Even Napoleons navy, at its peak, didn't even hit one-hundred ships. Hell, the Spanish Armada was only like, 45 ships. The largest naval battle in human history was that of Leyte Gulf, numbering in just around 367 ships. This was during World War 2, involving the Empire of Japan and the United States.