Federated Parishes of Sicameon



The Parishes of Sicameon are a long standing unique anomaly within Griffonia, a proto-Syndicalist, federal republic that has never truly been subjugated by the Griffonian Empire nor its splinter kingdoms. Sicameon sits nestled snugly on the Makomo Peninsula and guarded by the Arahno and Snowtop Mountains, a geography that has lent itself to the individualistic minded nation’s defense.

The country itself is named for the Griffonian sea goddess Sycaecia, and thusly Sicameon boasts a great seafaring culture, greatly valuing sea bound commerce and maintaining a strong navy, but as a consequence of its relatively laissez-faire economic policy, pirates such as the homegrown Freeholders’ Syndicate have managed to take root in the cracks.

While Sicameon is comparatively very stable, prosperous, and educated as compared to its neighbors, not suffering from economic crisis, famine, brain drain, or a high degree of illiteracy, the Doge and the federal legislature is at a tumultuous crossroads.

With the rest of the continent falling into chaos and wars already beginning to ignite, the rather politically weak government of the peasant republic must reach for new power it has never handled before, while managing the legislature’s two main factions: the peaceful, defensive, and harmonic traditionalists; and the more radical elements demanding revenge on their monarchist neighbors, moving into the future.

Formation Of The Federated Parishes
Before it was unified as federated parishes, Sicameon was a region filled with squabbling, independent parishes, which each had surprisingly democratic traditions. This all changed when the aging Emperor of the Griffonian Empire, Grover I, led a small task force into the parishes. The decentralized parishes united under the common banner of the Federated Parishes of Sicameon, and adopted guerrilla, defensive tactics to continue to drive back Grover's scouting forces.

Grover's War
26 years after Grover I first attacked Sicameon, the Griffonian Empire once again attacked the Federated Parishes, but this time, instead of small scouting forces, they brought a vast army under command of the new, warlike emperor, Grover II. Grover II, desiring eastern supply routes to Cyanolisia and Minotauria, crushed the parishes and established a new Grand Duchy in its place. The democratic traditions of the parishes were crushed by Griffonian might, and the first republic created on the Griffonian continent was ended. Did this mean the end of the democratic dream for the Sicameonese people?

Revolutionary Guerrilla Warfare
The people of Sicameon were not welcoming to their Griffonian invaders. For decades, they launched revolutions in cities, destroyed Griffonian armories, and assassinated powerful knights and administrators. Even the Grand Dukes themselves were not safe, and when a particularly violent revolution began in Sicameon, Grover III, who had just been crowned months earlier, knew his father's mistake had to be corrected. Just as the Sicameonese were about to take the capital and proclaim the Federated Parishes once more, Grover III announced that the Grand Duchy was officially abolished, and the parishes would be restored. Democracy had come again to Sicameon, but the democracy Grover III had in mind for Sicameon was much more militant. The commander in chief had striking executive powers, and the country was much less decentralized.

Threats and Situation
Sicameon faces threats from the north, with the eventual expansion of Griffon Liberation Army, and from the west, with Supremacy  Falcor Principality or Supremacy / Neutral  Kingdom of Wingbardy, and eventually of course the inheritor of the  Griffonian Empire's claims. However, in the immediate early game, there are no major threats, and if Sicameon stays out of the Cyanolisia-Asterion conflict, they will have an easy time to develop peacefully.

If they are Supremacy, the Blackrock Bandits may also make occasional raids and may demand tribute.

Leve/Midoria Plan
The Sicameonese focus tree starts with you choosing either the Midoria Plan or the Leve Plan, which will choose if you become a more centralized republic, or a traditional, decentralized federation of parishes. While these do not directly choose your ideology, the communist and harmonic bonuses you get from each plan will determine who wins the elections.

The Midoria Plan is a plan dedicated to centralization, and will bring the Federated Parishes closer to the PIS-R, the radical faction of the Sicameonese Independence Party, which supports socialist economics and a more centralized government. In general, The Midoria Plan will focus on centralization, giving the player bonuses to communist support and strengthening the executive.

The Leve Plan is a traditional and harmonic plan. It asserts that the Sicamonese political system is fine as it is, and it does not need major changes to the balance of power. This plan is closely aligned with the values of the moderate faction of the Sicameonese Independence Party, the PIS-M, which is also the current ruling party of Sicameon.

The Upcoming Elections
The Sicameonese elections are on the horizon, and there are three paths available for these elections: the PIS-M, PIS-R, or the elections can be rigged by the nefarious Freeholder corsairs...

Communist Path (The Red Cascades)
The communist path is focused on reforming the nation into a syndicalist and socialist society. The first four focuses are choices, allowing the player to choose how they will guide Sicameonese syndicalism into the future. How to Handle the Harmonists allows you to choose between striking the harmonists or allying with them. The Divine Issue allows you to pick how you want to organize religion - will the head of state have the power, or the pontiffs? Codify Sicameonese Syndicalism and Officialize The Syndicates allow you to either separate syndicates from parishes, or replace the parishes with a syndical legislature, to cast away the system of the Federated Parishes. Flushing Out the Wharf Rats allows you to root out Supremacism, destroying both internal and external enemies.

Once you have done all that, you can then industrialize and expand the nation. A Resurgent Republic focuses on building up a socialist army and industry, and Beyond The Snowtops deals with expansion. You can fight County of Cyanolisia,  Falcor Principality, and even  Kingdom of Griffonstone in your quest to rule the South.

Harmonic Path (Tradition Triumphs)
The harmonic path is focused on maintaining the traditional structure of the federated parishes and embracing democratic government. There are two main branches in the focus tree:

More Than A Peasant's Republic focuses on building a new, better, Sicameon. You can gain political power and stability by discrediting and attacking Communists and Supremacists, or you can ally with them for a beneficial national spirit at the cost of said political power and stability.

Looking Outward is about diplomacy, though unlike the communist tree, there is much more peaceful cooperation with allies. If Republic of Asterion forms their democratic faction, you can help them by developing their country and yours at the same time. Jojo's Bizzare Situation deals with the  Falcor Principality's claim on the Sicameonese state of Jojo. You can reconcile with Falcor by giving the province to them and gain an alliance, but this focus does not give you a war goal under any circumstance, so don't be mean to Falcor! You can also defeat Supremacist nations such as Blackrock and Cyanolisia, and forge trade and military pacts with the Griffonian Republic and Skyfall. However, you cannot create a faction by yourself.

Supremacist Path (Like Winning a Rigged Lottery)
The supremacist path has two options: The Suit and The Scoundrel that change the temporary bonuses, permanent bonuses, diplomacy and factions you can receive. Both receive a puppet war goal against Asterion, both start with a national spirit debuffs to political power gain, stability and war support, and both can take the same focuses regarding slavery (which will be covered later in this article)

The Suit
This path focuses on entrenching the illegals businesses of the Don deep into the state, giving temporary debuffs to stability in exchange for temporary buffs in supremacy support, daily supremacy support, subversive activities efficiency and ideology drift defense while giving a permanent buff to your economy by boosting resource gain, production efficiency growth, production efficiency base and lowering your resources to market. Eventually you will get rid all buffs and debuffs (except the ones to your economy) gathered by the previous focuses while unlocking the slavery and foreign policy focuses (including the war goal on Asterion)

The foreign policy focuses include free political power, an annex war goal on Kasa, a chance to get a free general and a guarantee on Blackrock, free stability, a faction (which Blackrock will join should the Don marry Blackrock's supremacist leader) and unlocking Criminal Ambitions decisions

The Scoundrel
This path focuses on appeasing the people and gives you greater buffs to stability and daily supremacy support along with a buff to your economy in the form of Production efficiency retention, production efficiency cap, conversion speed bonus and trade deal opinion factor. Eventually you will get rid of the stability and daily supremacy support buffs along with the starting debuffs to stability, war support and political power gain. After that, you unlock foreign policy which gives you the chance to puppet Blackrock, a puppet war goal on Kasa, free political power, free stability, a faction which your puppets will join and unlocks Naval Raid decisions

Slavery
Slavery has 3 different options: No Guarantees being the most radical with the largest buffs to Factory Output, Dockyard Output, Factory Repair Speed and Free Repair while having the largest amount of consumer factories and the worst debuffs to daily political power gain and stability. Citizen Immunity is the least radical with the smallest buffs and debuffs to the previously mentioned affects. Indentured Servitude sits as a  nice middle ground to both, Which ones you can choose depend on your choice for the stance on slavery, with No Guarantees and Indentured Servitude requiring you choose to have no restrictions and take a stability hit while Citizen Immunity  requires you restrict it to non citizens only, giving you free political power and stability

After this initial choice is made, there is a second option between Homegrown 'Stock'  and Foreign 'Stock'   with homegrown stock only being available if you take No Guarantees or Indentured Servitude and Foreign 'Stock'  requiring Citizen Immunity.

  

Foreign 'Stock'  gives buffs to non-core ponypower and division training time while giving debuffs to daily political power gain, damage to garrisons and foreign subversive activities efficiency while Homegrown 'Stock' gives buffs to monthly population and minimum training level while decreasing recruitable population and giving steep debuffs to daily political power game and stability

Economic / Modernization Focuses
Sicameon's Economic section largely focuses on building up your industry and resource base. You can decide to spread your new industry or around your lands or centralize it within your capitol. You will receive free civilian factories and building slots, tech bonuses to extraction and industry, buffs to Construction Speed, economy laws cost, trade laws cost, factory repair and free factory repair along with extra steel and chromium

The Modernization path is focused around the choice to maintain religious temple schools or modernize to more modern, secular teachings with buffs to research speed and electronics out of the gate along with bonuses to production efficiency growth, production efficiency base, electronics research, magical research and tech research buffs for electronics, computing and magic tech if the starting industry and modernization paths are taken and middle tree is focused on. Secular and Religious both end with a second extra research slot

Secular Schooling
This option gets ride of the research debuff from the temple schools while giving a minor buff to war support and a -0.03 daily support for non-aligned.

Religious Schooling
This option gives negative consumer goods factories, a slight buff to war support, slightly increases non-aligned support and keeps a minus 5% research debuff.

Once both the economic and the modernization paths are complete, the focus Public Research Grants will move you to Developed Science Base while The Modern Peasant will give you Modern Society.

Militia Dependency
The biggest issue facing your military is your militia dependency which greatly lowers your division org and effective ponypower while greatly increasing cost for military high command. It has 5 levels, with the debuffs waning with each progression. Examining the Parish Militias will unlock a decision akin to reforming the Chinese army to reduce the debuff. Enact Defense Reforms cost 50 army XP and will get rid one of level of the debuff each time. Going The Midoria Plan will give two focuses (Pursuing Aggressive Foreign Policy, Integrate the Parish Militias) which will eliminate a level each while Standardizing the Militias and Expanding the National Guard will also get rid of one level each. So 50 army XP will be required to get rid of the debuff entirely.

Army
The tree is split into equipment acquirement and doctrine/ specialized divisions. The equipment acquirement will provide 3 military factories, a material manufacturer, research buffs to motorized, armor, artillery and infantry weapons along with a national spirit giving war support, a decrease to training time and buffs to factory conversion speed.

The doctrine/ specialized division branch will give either a bonus to Superior Firepower or Grand Batteplan Doctrines, give a research bonus to army doctrine, give research bonuses to mountaineers, engineer support companies, marines, radio and signal companies and knights (Retiarii) technologies. It will also either give a small minus to attrition taken, a buff to max entrenchment and to entrenchment speed or a greater minus to attrition taken and a buff to infantry movement speed.

 

Navy
Focuses on modernizing and increasing the relatively large fleet that Sicameon starts with with the New Naval Infrastructure path giving temporary buff to dockyard build speed, a total of 10 dockyards and either a permanent minus to dockyard construction cost, submarine, destroyer, light cruiser and heavy cruiser (at the cost of increased battle cruiser, carrier and battleship build cost) or a small minus to all ship build cost. The New Millennium Naval Review branch gives research bonuses to all ships types, torpedoes, mines, naval training, minuses to trade convoy production cost, a buff to escort efficiency and unlocks a Naval Designer. The Modernize the Command Structure branch  gives research bonuses to either fleet in being or base strike doctrine, research bonuses to naval doctrine and a buff to naval experience gain while lowering military leader cost.

Airforce
Gives air experience, builds air fields and gives research bonuses to fighters, bombers, air doctrine, naval doctrine, CAS doctrine, CAS, Radar technology, technology, and carrier models along with a buff to ace generation chance and a decrease to bad weather penalty

Staff and Designers
Political Advisors

Tank Designer

Ship Designer

Aircraft Designer

Materiel Designer

Industrial Concern

Theorist

Chief of Army

Chief of Navy

Chief of Airforce

Military High Command