Speak of the Tiger UCS Map
ситуация 2004. Situation 2004.
Basically a prototype of a timeline + map.
Very nice! Ephraim Ben Raphael may have you beat in terms of Soviet overstretch, though his Reds at least have the advantage of a couple of decades of ISOT-enhanced tech.
There's really no other alternative short of total sea domination. It's much easier logistic-wise to cross the Bering Strait than the Pacific Ocean to both Hawaii and/or the continental US.
The Soviets are putting the least they can afford into Alaska, meant to suck up US forces from Europe and elsewhere, with no real plans to take Alaska for themselves.
One could always follow the OTL Japanese, invade the Aleutians and then bypass Alaska and just make landings in Washington - though taking Alaska makes sense logistically (discounting the heavily armed locals) as a long-term measure.
Hokay: here's another old Soc.History.What-if inspired map, from an old Nicoll scenario.
Wonderful as always - what happened to Cameroon? Did it swap sides like Tanganyika or did Germany end up with Gabon instead?
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Thought I'd better post this in the flurry of new-style vanilla UCS maps, as I wasn't going anywhere fast on adding borders and a new colour scheme. It's not really a fleshed-out scenario, though I was considering the title 'Speak of the Tiger'. My rough idea working on this was an American Civil War breaking out earlier, preventing Commodore Perry from forcing Japan open. *CSA dreams of a tropical empire are cut short when they realise they've effectively turned themselves into a British client state, and Texas breaks free shortly afterwards. It's a bit of a Britwank despite the Empire controlling less territory than OTL - they're retained industrial dominance, control most of the world's shipping via Panama and Suez, and the self-governing white Dominions don't look likely to break away any time soon.
Russia did better than OTL in the Great Game and managed to make northern India feel a lot chillier by chewing up chunks of Chinese Turkestan and making them into its own puppets whilst promoting the formation of Tajik and Turkman polities in northern Afghanistan. The British got their own back after Russia's brief revolution - though a counter-revolution put out the fires of democracy in the Motherland proper, the Rabots managed to cement their control over the colonists in America. Britain promptly guaranteed Alaskan independence and resolved some long-standing border disputes in their favour to twist the knife.
In Asia, British ally Korea has proved invaluable in keeping Russia out of Manchuria as the Qing Empire continues its slow collapse into irrelevance (the Emperor is still absolute ruler in the Forbidden City, which is turning into an Eastern Vatican) but no-one really pays much attention to him anymore, even the government in Beijing which has long since cut its losses and stopped pretending to control China proper.
Beaten to Central Africa by the American Congo Company (practically a state in its own right these days), the Belgians went for their OTL Plan B - Hawaii. The Belgian Empire ITTL is even more unlikely than our own, but with less jungle to hide in they've had to keep things a lot more above-board. The American Pacific Company's bubble burst with a pop, ruining thousands back home - the lease on North Borneo had to be offloaded in a hurry, and the Italians were ready to buy. Madasgascar proved a harder nut to crack for France than OTL, with the result that only the north is under direct French rule - the rest is divided into a consular government in the north, a coastline under French military governance, and a rather sullen puppet-king at Antananarivo.
I spent a lot of time on butterflied internal borders for this one - one of the disadvantages of the new map is that it looks empty in comparison to the excellent basemaps now being produced unless you add inernal borders - I'm most pleased with the Russian Empire, which hopefully looks like a half-hearted attempt to shift the old imperial borders around to accomodate ethnic groups.
