The Kront general staff's suspicions were correct. In fact, Victoria II had made up her mind long ago.
The Empire had to fight this war! And sooner was better than later-the earlier it entered the fray, the better!
The reason was simple: to train its troops!
The nations of the continent were all in a period of transition. With the development of the Steam Industrial Revolution, every country had begun researching and manufacturing all sorts of new weapons.
It was like playing a strategy game: different factions, different units, different tactical approaches.
I've got a minelayer. How should I use it?
I've churned out a ton of units in the early game. Should I sneak into their base, or just F2-A?
Are there any other tactics I can use with transport aircraft?
There was no point merely discussing these things on paper. Anyone who played RTS games would understand that. Every race had its own strategies. You picked the insect race, hoping to annoy your opponent to death, and it sounded great in your head. Then you went over and discovered that they had built a whole forest of towers in their base and shut your bugs down completely. Suddenly, it did not sound so great.
That was how war worked, after all. What you wanted to do was not enough; you also had to consider what your opponent had in mind, whether either side's units countered the other's, and how to use those counters. If you planned to settle things with an attack-move while the enemy dropped troops into your base, you had only yourself to blame when all those units you had built left you with nothing to do but seethe.
And now, the generals of the continent's nations were essentially all facing the same problem.
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