1913. Looking at the situation, it seems like I need to establish Naval Supremacy ASAP. The Mediterranean Fleet can likely take on the Austro-Hungarians without needing Italy’s help, and the North Sea Fleets can likely cripple any attacks on them by the Germans, and the Atlantic Fleet can reinforce it, that’ll be one of my first moves. Getting Italy on our side should be of the utmost importance given its power, getting the Balkans to help would be great, the US will be harder to convince but also takes a priority. I plan to call a meeting ASAP to talk strategy before we make any moves. Serbia should be abandoned unless we get most of the Balkans on our side, while France should be reinforced and reinforcing Russia will have to wait, France is far more important. Naval superiority, if established, will allow us free movement around Europe and the ability to possibly take the Ottoman Empire. I am extremely concerned about Great Britain’s Navy size after this, however, given that it appears I can’t build a new fleet and what’s left won’t be enough for a Gallipoli 2.0. I also heavily worry about North Africa falling to the Ottomans given our weak troop strength. Update: Italy seems to be more than happy to consider my offers of much of Austria-Hungary in exchange for assistance, Greece is very receptive to offers to Ally with my very generous offers of a larger than OTL Treaty of Sevres, Portugal actually approached us about guaranteeing our Alliance, though they might not join for a year or two. Belgium understands France will likely be attacked by Germany through Belgium, and wants us to help defend Belgium along with France. I said yes, but the French agreed with me afterwards that France’s territories, mainly F1, are far more important than Belgium and troops shouldn’t be thrown away defending Belgium when it greatly weakens France. The Russians were not very happy when I told them that taking the Dardanelles(O1) would have to wait several turns. I seriously hope America joins ASAP. My team has created a program to share our intelligence with each other. Our best guesses at enemy troop ratings based on battles will be recorded, and we are sharing our troop ratings to further coordinate our strategies, so we understand each other’s reasoning and can plan better using forces other than our own countries’ forces. At the request of the other leaders in my Alliance, I created a revolutionary formula designed to give us a rough idea of whether we can win battles. We believe this will greatly improve our decision making, allowing us to better decide where to attack and defend. 

1914. We need to take the Ottoman Empire to help Russia, we’re moving troops and ships to make that happen. The Germans won’t attack France, so we’re drawing their troops and we can’t send our British troops or they could take the British Isles. Things look bad, we are worried that Italy’s prior commitment to our alliance isn’t legitimate. We’re building up for an attack on O1 to save Russia, but that means everyone has to hold out until then. Our Alliance is going through growing pains, no one really knows what to do. I’ve been somewhat forced into the position of being the leader of my Alliance. Russia is being taken over, with my blessing they have pulled back to R1 to try to survive the CP onslaught. I’m extremely worried about Russia’s ability to survive, our main priority is helping them. Nothing much else happened this turn.

1915. This turn, our plan is to take the Dardanelles to relieve Russia, allowing their troop ratings to go up to a (still paltry) 3. We’re going to use our troops in southern France, convoyed by our navies in the Mediterranean, to take O1. The Italians, despite the doubts of my foreign minister and I, held up their end of the agreement and have declared war on the Central Powers. Their foreign minister has proved to be very valuable, coming up with more ideas than a lot of the rest of my alliance. We will have to move some troops to help them, but they will still be a net gain to have on our side. I’ll update this after the turn. We took the Dardanelles! The Ottomans foolishly moved most of their forces to O2 to fight the Russians, but with an admittedly costly attack, the Russians kept them from being able to help. After that, our masterstroke of a move took the Dardanelles despite being down 50% due to having to reinforce I1 with much of our expeditionary force. The always bright Serbians, still fighting despite barely beating back a massive Austrian attack, made a last second move to take over Bulgaria, which had sacrificed its army in a failed attempt to take the Dardanelles! I feel super relieved, in 1916 we will try to exploit our new gains!

1916.  This year was great. Ottoman stupidity led to us taking them out, while we cautiously maneuvered our way into advantageous positions. Russia will survive this year and likely the war. I’m particularly happy with the condition of the British Empire at the moment. Our colonies are safe, we haven’t lost millions of men, and we haven’t bankrupted ourselves trying to prop up the Alliance. We have kept a large standing force and suffered some casualties, but not to the extent that an entire generation of men is crippled and all of our money is used up. Not much happened beyond the Ottomans succumbing to us and us beating off some minor attacks. The biggest event was the German leadership agreeing to a peace treaty with us. However, somehow, despite their universal popularity, they were deposed in a coup. I was infuriated by this, so much bloodshed and destruction could have been avoided by this treaty.

1917. This year was a lot of maneuvering. The biggest events were several neutrals joining us in the war and Russia regaining R2 to put some space between the Germans and R1. My nations are maneuvering their troops. Realizing that the Germans will never attack France, our armies stationed there are beginning the journey south to the Austrian Front. We have a very solid position, with all of the Balkans under our control, Russia firmly not about to lose, France and Britain not even threatened, and Italy pretty safe. We are moving Armies to hit Austria-Hungary and hopefully win the war. The United States has finally given us armies with decent ratings so we can go on the offensive without needing thousands more troops than the Central Powers.

1918. This year was very frustrating. Using our freeze move against us, the Central Powers captured Romania and Serbia. We briefly had success by taking A2, but they recaptured it. The Italians and Serbians bungled their attempt to retake Serbia by attacking Serbia without freezing the nearby enemy troops. The Central Powers got one extra turn compared to us, however. If we’d had that turn, A2 would likely have held for good by us, and Serbia may have been regained. If I had to redo the game, I would have been way more aggressive and moved more troops to Italy sooner. I feel like our strategy with Russia was sound, they lost some land but survived. I also feel that compared to our World War One, Great Britain is in way better shape. We lost some troops, but weren’t gutted like in World War One, most of that generation is alive and we didn’t have to re-equip our Army after it got crippled multiple times like in our World War One. We won the war because Russia survived, and we eliminated a major Central Powers country and one minor one, while only losing some Russian territory and two minor countries ourselves, and being on the verge of finally overpowering them at the end.