Playing as Scotland is hard at the best of times. You've got to go through England to really get anywhere and England are always going to have at least a 3-5x bigger army than you and their navy simply can't be beaten.

As Scotland you really have to make sensible allies and take advantage of English weaknesses. And, during my game, pretty much everything went wrong. Firstly Leinster allied with me and together we annexed the independent Irish provinces. This went well and was a good situation for both of us - we could work together to repel the dirty English.

Inexplicably though, when the wars ended Leinster (who controlled the southern half of Ireland) dissolved our alliance. Which is pretty bad, you don't want an unpredictable nation with a land border when you're far more concerned with a bigger neighbour. So I had to fabricate a claim and annex them which was frustrating but fine, I got more land, raising the size of the army I could support a bit.

Ok, so, as Scotland, as I say, you rely on powerful overseas allies and English weakness. Those allies are usually France and the Scandinavian countries, those are the ones that make sense. And English weakness means poaching territories off them while they're engaged in stupid wars with France and/or Spain or, even better, if the War of the Roses happens (conditions have to be right for it to occur) just marching in and taking a nice big chunk of England while they're fighting with themselves.

Colonialism isn't really viable as Scotland (though I'd really like to play an all-out colonial Scotland one day).

I'd allied with France but they won the 100 years war and took back all English territory in France ridiculously early and were embroiled in useless (for me) wars with Holy Roman Empire member states making them pretty worthless as a military ally. They just weren't interested enough in helping me invade England and were too constantly war weary from fighting with the HRE.

So I took as much of North Sea trade as I could without pissing off the Scandinavians or leaving myself exposed and looked to Norway and Sweden - they are usually very good allies for Scotland as the relationship tends to work extremely well for both sides.

Unfortunately both Norway and Sweden had somehow got into a personal union with Denmark (with Denmark as the senior partner) so all diplomatic interactions had to go through the Danes whom, at the start of the game, I had chosen as my rivals in order to get a stronger position in North Sea trade. The whole of Scandinavia was useless to me.

Denmark eventually got both Norway and Sweden when their monarchs died and became a new political entity, which I quickly allied with, but they're so fucking huge now that they're not really interested in looking west, they've got Lithuania and Muscovy to worry about.

So I'm sitting here as Scotland building up my economy and tech, supporting any English rebels that pop up and hoping that the War of the Roses kicks off sometime soon.

That sounds like a game I might enjoy.

It is kinda amazing. Every time I play I come up with new ideas as to how I want to play it next (like my current one is playing as a Chinese faction and seeing if it's possibly to colonise America via the Pacific before the Europeans get there. Also I want to have a successful game as a Native American tribe, which is hard). I've got a huge backlog of ideas for games I want to do.

It has a bit of a learning curve but I've talked friends through the UI and they're up and running in 5-10 minutes, it's really about learning which buttons do what, there's little to no real micromanagement despite the complexity of the simulation.

It's a hell of a timesink though.

I'd avoid setting up a colony in Panama.

Also: shut up shut up shut up shut up.

But 'no' is negative! LOLZ

BUY IT BENJI THE YES CAMPAIGN DEPENDS ON IT!

(I assume you're a 'Yes'. Though obviously there's a valid, anti-nationalist lefty reason for supporting 'No').

The way the Tories are stacking the system in favour of big business there's really no valid lefty reason to vote No.

Unfortunately I'm about to out my flat on the market and I need a tory economy to get the best price. So a quandary. Where ever did I leave my morales and convictions?

In the poll or the referendum?

I saw some "Vote No for social justice" campaigners on Sauchiehall street the other day. Turned out they were the communist party or something similar. I felt bad, because pretty much everyone up here who is voting for social justice, rather than voting out of fear, is voting Yes.

Meh - property prices in Edinburgh will always do OK. Bear in mind that if the economy crashes, it'll suddenly become cheaper to do all the stuff which got outsourced to India, and you could find yourself back out at the Gyle, clearing laundered money for Mexican cartels or whatever it is that the banks do these days. Also - vote Yes so that you can look your son in the eye and tell him that you didn't succumb to Project Fear.

Aye, I think if your goal is to do the most potential good for the most people 'Yes' makes far more sense. Though I do appreciate the ideological point of the hard left.

I think it's indicative of a certain kind of hard-left thinking that they haven't actually considered that they are in a position where they have the possibility that their actions could really make a change.

I started off as a No-leaning "don't know" - I have an English girlfriend who works a lot in Scotland, and my work means I spend large chunks of time in the offices of financial institutions in England. Chances are that that will all change in the event of independence. In theory, it should be in my best interests to vote No, but the more I see and hear, the more I realise that I am a Yes voter.

Also, Chuck D says Yes.

Haha. I'm sure that's part of it. I do sympathise though, I don't like the idea of further dividing us up, creating more borders and artificial distinctions between the people over here and the people over there. The more we think of ourselves as similar and as belonging to the same community the better, I think.

But yeah, the border already exists, independence just recognises that, it doesn't create extra division it just recognises that one exists and tries to handle it better. The best rational Yes argument is that Scotland votes differently to England and independence would give you the government you want (and one which would actually put your interests and requirements first).

(Personally I'm more swayed by the emotional stuff. It's about the dignity and self-respect that comes with self-determination).

edit: Oh and the Chuck D thing is great, will be sharing that.

Which led me to this!

I'm really hoping Scotland votes Yes and does a really good job of running a more just society and fair government. Then more people in England see that and think "I want our government to be that good" and we actually do something about it and vote a good government in. Or at least force better policies.

Amen brother.

I've lived most of my life under a government I've either not voted for myself or that my family hasn't voted for. Scotland buggering off to be independent makes that more likely to happen. So that, for me, is a crap argument to use in favour of independence. It would be interesting to see how many Scottish yes voters were in favour of changing the voting system in the uk.

It's a good argument *for Scotland*. We don't get a vote, like.

It's not just about Scotland though is it. This decision will affect the rest of us too. And while the no campaign has been fucktardidly negative, the yes campaign has reeked of "we don't vote for the Tories, we're going to fuck off and take what we want from the rest of you and to hell with it all because we don't like it. And if you don't give us what we want, well fuck you all in the ear". The whole process has been as far from edifying and positive as anything I can think of in recently. At least when devolution was discussed and voted in the positives were argued for effectively. This just stinks.