[raketenjagdpanzer]

First, thanks for the welcome, all!

Originally Posted by helbent4

RakJPz,

Welcome aboard! T2K isn't dead (few games truly are) and the recent licence of T2K raised it's profile a little, regardless what one thinks about T2013.

Oh rest assured I know about games not being "dead": I'm a 1e AD&D enthusiast, too

Some personal opinions:

I like most of the changes; I especially think it's much more likely that Italy would remain neutral rather than actively go to war in support of the Soviet Union. Although the Italians have a strong leftist political element that sort of radical shift seems too fantastic, more likely to lead to open civil war or a coup by rightists. Neutrality fits the bill much better.

Yeah, I think the Italians would have too much of a problem being aligned with the Bulgarians. Plus I think the Pope would probably intervene in the name of neutrality once the small-scale nukes started to fly.

But they're strongly neutral (and the alps help keep them so). They have able armor divisions in Northern Italy ready to deal with any shenanigans from NATO or WarPac.

Brasil: definitely a non-nuclear power, but as an ally of the USA it's likely they would get some nuclear strikes, as this was part of the USSR's nuclear warfighting doctrine.

Hm, I forgot about how strongly allied with the US they are. That would really make life hard on the Brazilians. A few nukes would pretty much finish them, just looking at the map.

Australia: I agree these smug bastards would be in awesome shape. However, I see them as being heavily involved with the war in Korea, maybe even the premier western allied force if the Americans are withdrawn to support operations in the Gulf and Iran. While many Aussies seem to have... issues... with the Brits, can't see there being more than token support for deportation or internment for allied nationals. While not completely out of past character, this seems like something that would be adopted to deal with a massive flood of refugees from the other direction, like Asia, Africa and the Middle East. Probably you should emphasise how the possibly hundreds of thousands of refugees from those areas would be dealt with. Also, the Aussies would likely see themselves (with considerable justification) as being the leading Commonwealth nation, if not the equal to the UK's leadership in historical terms than at least surpassing them in a current practical sense. (Not that I have a problem with this, like I said, the Australians would be in a great position overall.)

I forgot all about the Indonesian war; I think the regional stabilizer might be Thailand (remember, they have a carrier, too!), and if they could come to some co-defense agreement with Australia they'd have the Indian Ocean and SE asia more or less secured.

As for Japan supporting a unified government, it's my opinion that as more and more nations make the transition to civilian governments I see political support switching to the US federal government from the US military. Not out of some deeper understanding of Constitutional law or moral judgment on who's right or wrong, but simply on the principle that as civilian governments they don't want to give their own military forces the idea that their loyalty is optional, and they gotta stick together.

All-in-all, great work!

Tony

Depending on what elements were active in Japan I could see them swinging towards attempting regional hegemony, but not for a couple decades. Right now they've got 30 million starving and half that many virtually homeless after being smacked around by Soviet nukes.

So in the long run you foresee the low-intensity Civil War just kind of petering out?