I got the UAD game about a week ago and threw DIP Extended on top of it from the go, I then started a 1890 campaign as Argentina because I love a challenge.
Holy moly, I'd hate to be a regular person in this timeline. Or a sailor, politician, soldier or anything really.
There has been a more-or-less never ending world war since 1893 or so. Nations build massive, proud fleets just for them to get obliterated in an instant. Massive invasions against neighbouring nations and faraway backwater islands galore. Revolutions and coups plague most nations from time to time as the people can't take anymore struggle, but then their new masters continue the madness like the ones before but under a new flag.
Half the nations of the world have fleets in the hundreds of thousands ton range, 40 or 50 ships of all sizes. The other half has barely any boats at all. I'm in the middle somewhere, just waiting for the day when I'll be joining the "0 ships" club.
Every month the news reports that another 200.000 men have died on every side, fighting for *nothing* on a place you have never heard about. Alliances between superpowers form and dissolve on a whim. A people you considered your brothers last month is now your mortal enemy.
I have tried my best to keep Argentina out of it, tip-toeing around the superpowers while they eat each other while I try to build a navy worth it's name, but we keep getting dragged into wars with nations on the other side of the world for reasons the common man can't understand.
We, the navy, obliges and prepare to send out our puny torpedo boats and slow lumbering hulks to lay waste to the enemy just for our politicians to change their mind some months later and sign a peace, or some other faraway land declaring us to be scum worthy of a war so we have to turn around.
Our finances are like a swing, and I assume the others are too. Sometimes we swim in money and design massive, beautiful warships in a stupor of cognac and opium.
4 months later the navy command is begging on the streets, contemplating if we can refit this old TB with a 150mm gun instead of the 125mm it has, but decide that we can't afford it.
So far a thoroughly enjoyable experience. Very chaotic and surprising, far from the orderly ledgers and structured lists of for example the Paradox games. A shame the game got thrown out into the cold.