I solved the Strait of Hormuz crisis with videogames, simply by creating an even bigger Strait of Hormuz crisis

We live in complex geopolitical times. I think. I’ll be honest, I’ve not been paying attention. But it’s recently become known to me that a little strip of water called the Strait of Hormuz has—like a wavepool they had to shut down due to a urine crisis—shut up shop.

This has caused a great deal of consternation.

In news that was presumably impossible to know in advance of all this, loads of everyone’s favourite stuff came through that Strait: crude oil, natural gas, fertilizers, and more.

America has done its best to calm the situation—first by creating it from whole cloth and then, when the Strait was unforeseeably closed in response, by threatening to do even more bombing, while doing more bombing.

Somehow, the crisis remains ongoing. But I am prepared. I was born for this. The good Lord and a Swedish man named Johan have given me the tools to solve this problem just as they gave me the tools to solve last year’s tariff situation. It’s my patriotic duty to strap in, fire up Paradox’s Europa Universalis 5, and wargame my way to a solution to this crisis. This will be easy.

(Image credit: Paradox)

This is not easy

A thing not many people notice about Europa Universalis 5 is that it starts in the 14th century, which is not the century we currently inhabit. This meant my first task when I launched the game was to engineer a scenario that roughly approximated the conditions surrounding the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, just without drones, nuclear weapons, the mass use of gunpowder, industrial capitalism, Iran, Israel, oil, or the United States of America.

Apart from that, though, it would be basically the same.

My first inclination was to recreate the relative balance of power of our current crisis. Iran vs the USA is not an especially balanced fight in the 21st century, and I felt it was important to recreate that dynamic in EU5. Subbing in for modern-day Iran would be Ormuz, the scrappy little nation whose borders span either side of the now-iconic Strait. It was close enough, though it was technically part of the Ilkhanate—the gaggle of lands under some form of post-Genghis Mongol dominion. We’ll say that’s a stand-in for… the Comintern? Is modern Iran in the Comintern? Let’s assume yes.

For the USA? I needed the closest thing 1337 AD had to a globe-striding colossus—an entity that could project power anywhere in the world and whose economic and diplomatic might was unignorable. Amusingly, this turned out to be Yuan-dynasty China.

(Image credit: Paradox)

The stage was set: China vs Ormuz in the battle of the (14th) century. I fired up a new game and hopped into the Emperor’s embroidered shoes.

Problem one: This is the point at which I make you, the reader, aware that I do not have a great deal of time in EU5. In EU4? I’ve got hundreds of hours, and it’s one of my favourite strategy games ever made, but a lot of EU5’s systems are still opaque and unfamiliar to me.

Problem two: China and Ormuz are, like, really far apart.

(Image credit: Paradox)

These two problems merged into a single polycrisis. On day one in power, I fulfilled my campaign promise and declared war on Ormuz. The effect of this was nothing. I’m not even sure the letter arrived. All that changed was that, on the world map, Ormuz was now bordered by an angry shade of red, but the simple fact that our countries were so distant meant it was all a drôle de guerre: a paper war, a war in theory rather than practise.

It did also occur to me at this point that, China being so far away from Ormuz, the latter wouldn’t really have cause to blockade the Strait. That’s its own Strait. It lives there.

The long paddle

These were all secondary issues compared to the vast barrage of domestic notifications that began to crowd the imperial iPhone lock screen. My heir was unmarried. The estates were unhappy. The peasants were dying in droves but still had the capacity to be angry about it. A lot of stuff about the imperial bureaucracy and the Mandate of Heaven that really flew over my head. Where’s the food? Who’s growing the food? Why is no one growing the food? Humans need the food to live, your majesty. The markets will be upset about this situation concerning the food.

The run was already a wash but I thought I could treat it as a practice session. I dispatched the entire Chinese army—which at this time consisted of 500 men, for reasons I was too distracted to investigate—onto the entire Chinese navy, which was five boats. Off I sent them to Ormuz.

(Image credit: Paradox)

After what felt like several actual, real-life months of travel (it takes a really long time to get around India; why aren’t we making a strait to sort that out?) my men arrived at party central. Or, well, what remained of them did. No food, you see. Several of them died on the trip over.

Why dilly-dally, I thought? I debarked them right at the enemy’s doorstep: Hormuz itself—the province and capital—and set them to sieging.

Nothing happened. Despite the immense might of the Chinese military, my 342 remaining men were, it turns out, inadequate to the task of besieging my enemy’s capital. In addition, for reasons I still don’t really understand, the ships that brought them over all began sinking, seemingly of their own will. Probably a Mandate of Heaven issue.

Also at some point Yuan-dynasty Peter Mandelson got upset and started executing his coworkers. (Image credit: Paradox)

Take two

Enough monkeying around. I’d learnt my lesson. I needed to pick a USA stand-in that was nearer the action, less riven by major internal crises, and that would give Ormuz reason to actually, ah, blockade the Strait of Hormuz.

You might question the extent to which a country matching this description really functions as a substitute for the 21st-century USA, but I am not taking questions.

I settled on Injuids, one of Ormuz’s neighbours that actually sits a little further into the Persian Gulf than Ormuz itself does. Its small size made it less difficult to manage and its location meant Ormuz might actually have some cause to blockade the Strait.

I also knew I needed to exercise a stronger hand in setting the scene. Ormuz’s navy at the beginning of a true EU5 game consists of two fishing boats and some sort of pleasure barge. If these were the means by which modern Iran were blockading the Strait of Hormuz then I—literally me, videogame man Joshua Wolens—could probably get over there and sort it out.

(Image credit: Paradox)

So I cheated them in a honking great navy: 50 heavy frigates and 50,000 sailors (this many sailors in one place is known colloquially as a Shenmue) to staff them. I declared war and, just to make sure the skittles were set up just the way I intended them, I quickly swapped into Ormuz’s shoes and gave their new navy the task of blockading my ports.

Everything was in place. How would the war play out? We were now in the realm of simulation: the solution to my situation that I found here would be the one I sent to the White House. I needed to be operating at peak efficiency, poised to counter whatever dastardly move Ormuz sent my way.

Ormuz sent three men my way.

I’m not entirely sure what occurred here. Admittedly, my attack on Ormuz came entirely out of the blue (I considered this appropriate). I suppose its land forces, which I had not cheated up, were not quite prepared for it. So the response they mustered to my assault was three men, who just, sort of, hung out in the mountains, getting hungry.

(Image credit: Paradox)

Meanwhile, my own land armies—around 2,500 men summoned from my national levies—were merrily trampling through Ormuz’s capital. These were not 342 hungry Chinese soldiers conveyed by death-seeking yachts. These were strong, fit and ready soldiers, punishing Ormuz for having the temerity to do whatever it did.

But I wasn’t solving the problem. It didn’t matter what I did to Ormuz’s towns and cities, the fact remained that it had 50 heavy frigates floating happily in the Strait, forbidding me from passage.

I considered, briefly, that perhaps the solution was to never have begun this war at all. Maybe this conflict was the height of foolishness. Maybe I should sue for peace.

(Image credit: Paradox)

I then rightly disregarded this part of my brain as a communist.

I didn’t want to cheat myself a solution. You can’t pull up the cheat menu in real life. I had to make do with the resources I had at hand.

There once was a country who swallowed a fly

It came to me.

Right next to Ormuz is Makran, another minor state whose chief export is vibes and whose main business is hanging out. I couldn’t cheat myself a solution, but what if I were to somehow get another power—one with a mighty navy—to intervene in my conflict? Real-life diplomats accomplish this by posting at their allies on social media websites they own, but I was limited to 14th-century technology: the debug console.

I quickly swapped over to Makran and cheated it a navy. Ormuz has 50 heavy frigates? Meet the beautiful Makran 100. If I could woo Makran to my side and get it to intervene in the conflict, I could have the Strait cleared in a single business day.

(Image credit: Paradox)

I tried everything. Which is to say, I waited for my diplomacy points to recharge several times before sending Makran nice compliments, but the country remained inexplicably unwilling to pull me out of my hole. No matter what I did, no matter how much I grovelled, wheedled or cajoled, Makran had no interest in helping me.

I gave into temptation. I switched over to Ormuz and declared war on Makran. Then I switched back to Injuids and did it again.

The plot was perfect: using a single, tiny Injuid boat, I lured Makran’s great hulking fleet deeper into the gulf. There was no chance the nation would pick a fight with Ormuz’s navy—the one currently blockading my port—by itself. It’d win, sure, but it was ultimately pointless. A poor source of war score and strategically unnecessary. I had to bait them into it myself.

(Image credit: Paradox)

It worked. My fishing boat was translated to glory, but the Ormuzi and Makrani fleets collided head-on. The view from my ports must have been spectacular: a great conflagration on the water as the two greatest navies the world had ever known smashed into each other. I was a hero, I was a legend, I was a military genius. My enemy was defeating my enemy, the Ormuzi navy would soon be a thing of the past, and so too would their hateful blockade of the Strait.

When day broke, the Ormuzi were in ruins. Their blockade was broken. In their place stood north of 60 Makrani heavy frigates.

Ah. Yes. I’m beginning to see the problem here.