The Diary of Francesco Mussolini

Share your stories of conquests and leadership successes.

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IrishMUFFIN
Corporal
Posts: 7
Joined: Jan 10 2015
Human: Yes

The Diary of Francesco Mussolini

Post by IrishMUFFIN »

Hello, BG forumers! I have up to this AAR been a only a reader on this forum. No need for a personal introduction now, so I'll get right to it. This will be my first ever AAR for any game, so please forgive any mistakes I make. I will be playing as Italy, simulating the life of a fictional Francesco Mussolini. A younger, more intelligent brother to Benito Mussolini. I will try to role play through the majority of the AAR, but I will stop and make side notes at times to explain the status of the game. Now let's get started:


Dear diary,
Today is March 7th, 1936. My wife has convinced me to begin a personal log of my experiences. I care little for a diary, but she believes I am destined for greatness. My brother has recently become dictator of our beloved Italy and he needs an intelligent mind that he can trust to assist him in leading our country. I am positive that he will promote me to authority soon. For now, we wait.

March 30th, 1936
Italy is at war with Ethiopia. I do not understand what our goal is, but I trust Benito has good reasoning. Reports show over 2,000 Italians are already dead. Writing this brings much sorrow to my heart, but I know that their sacrifice was for the greater good of Italy.
IrishMUFFIN
Corporal
Posts: 7
Joined: Jan 10 2015
Human: Yes

Re: The Diary of Francesco Mussolini

Post by IrishMUFFIN »

May 9th, 1936
Benito Mussolini, dissatisfied with the speed of the invasion of Ethiopia, has appointed me to leader of the ground forces in Africa. I wasted no time in taking over command. I thanked my brother for this opportunity, then immediately boarded an SM. 79 to Africa.

May 10th, 1936
I arrived in Africa late at night. The current situation is bad, very bad. The previous commander launched a two pronged attack from the North and South, but had no real goal for conquering the country. Battalions were spread out all over the place headed in every possible direction. I immediately order them to reform and surround the capital of Ethiopia. Enough writing for tonight; I've a war to win!
IrishMUFFIN
Corporal
Posts: 7
Joined: Jan 10 2015
Human: Yes

Re: The Diary of Francesco Mussolini

Post by IrishMUFFIN »

July 4th, 1936
We have captured Addis Abeba, the Ethiopian capital. The rest of the country fell the next day. My brother was impressed and decided to promote me once more to supreme commander of the Italian military. I immediately made several changes as Benito created an East African puppet state. We have suffered 43,858 casualties in this petty war. Those men will be honored greatly and the survivors will return home to a hero's welcome. I am bringing every soldier home before Christmas to show my gratitude for their service.

Side note: up until this point, I have been playing with everything done by ai. All I have done is control the military forces in East Africa. I didn't even control the reinforcements that the ai were shipping in. Now I will control ALL military forces and military production. I am doing this to role play and experiment with how competent the ai can be.
Ricent1
Captain
Posts: 110
Joined: Jan 15 2014
Human: Yes
Location: Sebastian, Florida

Re: The Diary of Francesco Mussolini

Post by Ricent1 »

I will watch your posts closely. Sounds like a great experiment. Once this new update happens, will you try to pick a fight with anyone or just let the natural events and AI play out?
IrishMUFFIN
Corporal
Posts: 7
Joined: Jan 10 2015
Human: Yes

Re: The Diary of Francesco Mussolini

Post by IrishMUFFIN »

Going to play semi historically. Francesco only has control of the military, so he takes orders from Benito Mussolini. I will simulate that by letting the ai control everything else. I will only take control over the ai to make historical declarations of war, if it fails to do so. I will add images and more details when the AAR gets more interesting. For now I am just laying the foundation for the story.
IrishMUFFIN
Corporal
Posts: 7
Joined: Jan 10 2015
Human: Yes

Re: The Diary of Francesco Mussolini

Post by IrishMUFFIN »

September 10th, 1936
Germany has just declared war on Finland and Lithuania. I am unsure of how the world will react, but I pray Italy is not dragged into yet another European conflict. The last few battalions from Ethiopia are now entering Italian waters.

July 28th, 1937
Life has been calm on the Italian countryside so far. China and Japan are now at war. I am in no position to intervene, but I will do everything I can to support Japan. They are one of our closest friends and we can not afford to lose them. France appears to be our largest threat, so I am positioned nearly 20,000 active troops on the border and more in reserves ready to act if a war breaks out.

November 17th, 1937
China has overrun Manchuko, but Japan still holds Korea. I have been practically begging my brother to allow me to help the Japanese. Benito is a stubborn man and refuses to help anyone but himself. I will send Japan our oldest, outdated artillery pieces for free. We have little use for them anyways.
Ricent1
Captain
Posts: 110
Joined: Jan 15 2014
Human: Yes
Location: Sebastian, Florida

Re: The Diary of Francesco Mussolini

Post by Ricent1 »

Are you still conquering, Francesco?

How's it going?
IrishMUFFIN
Corporal
Posts: 7
Joined: Jan 10 2015
Human: Yes

Re: The Diary of Francesco Mussolini

Post by IrishMUFFIN »

January 18th, 1938
War! The United Kingdom has formally declared war on Italy. I took this news as blasphemous. Why would the UK declare war on us? We have done nothing to them. That question is unimportant right now. It is my duty to defend our country against this monster. My brother has now given me full control over the research teams and industry of Italy. Benito still controls the raw resources and political part of the country though. I immediately switched the economy over to a military economy. I can not afford to waste resources on things like consumer goods and physics research. The infantry army is almost entirely bordering France minus a few regiments in Africa. I can't risk moving these, so I will mobilize the reserve mechanized division. May god be with us all in the upcoming months!

January 30th, 1938
Malta has been annexed. The Mediterranean has become a playground of tug o' war. Italian and British ships have been clashing for days now with lots of bloodshed. We are winning, but we've already lost a half dozen ships. We have begun the siege of Alexandria. A small British fleet is trapped near shore under the cover of the heavy artillery. Over a dozen destroyers and submarines are pushing forward though with the battleships on the way. I expect to be landing motorized engineers on this shore before April.

March 2nd, 1938
Cyprus and Alexandria have fallen. The Italian navy has established supremacy and is now securing the entire sea. Germany has invaded Yugoslavia and the UK has declared war on the Soviet Union. A rather odd turn of events.

March 15th, 1938
The UK and Germany go to war as an Italian task force lands in Palestine. A small French volunteer regiment is strongly defending the best first Palestinian front. British reinforcements are pouring in through Gibraltar. I am trying to cut that point off, but first I must secure the region closer to home.
IrishMUFFIN
Corporal
Posts: 7
Joined: Jan 10 2015
Human: Yes

Re: The Diary of Francesco Mussolini

Post by IrishMUFFIN »

Sorry for lack of posts lately. I've been really busy with school and baseball practice. This format of AAR has a lot of potential, but needs time to be written and revised to resemble a real diary. I can't find enough time to make it as well as I would like. The journal entries I just posted were made last week, but I forgot to post them. Haven't played since. Do you guys mind if I drop the diary style AAR and continue this campaign normally? By that I mean just describing my goals and what is happening in the game. I also have some pictures from the campaign, but haven't uploaded them due to lack of time on my computer. Last thing, what is the easiest way to put images in my AARs?
Ricent1
Captain
Posts: 110
Joined: Jan 15 2014
Human: Yes
Location: Sebastian, Florida

Re: The Diary of Francesco Mussolini

Post by Ricent1 »

I understand the busyness thing. The diary was entertaining, but it's cool if you want to just hit the highlights.

There are threads about how to take and upload screenshots on this forum. Just do a search with those keywords if you want different options from guys on this forum that are far more knowledgeable than me.

I use "Open Broadcaster" for images. It's free on File Hippo. Once it is installed, just hit F12 on your keyboard while you are playing and it saves a screenshot to your Steam account. You can access the screenshots on the "view" tab on Steam in the top left corner. With my Windows 8, every time I "quit game", the file with all my recent screenshots is displayed from Steam. I hit "show on disk" at the bottom, then I click and drag the jpeg images onto my desktop. Sometimes they are too large of a file to upload onto the forum, so you will have to crop or alter the pixel rate, depending on your OS.

Hope that helps.
Doug (Ricent1)
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