Marseilles : Prepared

[3iff]

Single player, Demo, France scenario

Having just played 'Paris Attacks' mission, I thought I'd have a go at playing Marseilles in the scenario. I had a plan. To have an army ready and waiting to withstand the inevitable Paris attack.

So, I tidied up the economy, adding a few industries where suitable (in the south) and began to build an army. Critical was an airforce. I began building Mirage 2000 and Alpha jets in my only airbase, built an airstrip in central France and upgraded another airstrip to airbase.

An army in reserve isn't an army, so I began moving reserves to the border, entrenching them in factories and city hexes and blocking roads. In the west corner I built a reasonable line of units to protect my airstrip and base in that area. A large quantity of units surrounded the Bordeaux enclave as I intended to grab that as soon as Paris attacked. I also built a small defence force in case Barcelona attacked. I positioned a few mobile radar units on high ground to see any foreign units and flew a few patrol sorties on occasion to check on buildups.

My southern fleet massed near the Barcelona border while my tiny western fleet stayed put and quivered nervously. I know that Paris have a sizeable fleet in the atlantic.

Unit building was manually controlled and I concentrated on infantry and artillery. Most of these were deployed to the border when ready. I later added AA and supply trucks to the mix and later added tanks and AT guns.

Due to activating all these units, the strain on cashflow was quite hard but I managed to keep in credit. More on that later. The only alarm was a reduction in reserves, down to 10,000 at one point. In tems of personnel, I was way down. Even Portugal had more men that I did.

Research concentrated on missiles and artillery. I also developed some helicopter transport (Sea Stallion) which I used to advantage in an earlier game. Once my second research base was built I just researched fairly aimlessly (as I don't have access to the tech tree in the demo).

To hopefully damage the Paris economy, I set export boycotts of all productsto Paris. I also limited exports of industry and military goods to the WM. I continued upgrading existing industries without straining my economy too badly (usually one upgrade per industry at a time, being careful not to overload industy goods demand). I also limited electricity output to 105% of demand to save on petroleum demand.

So, although my army in personnel was 4th, my military was nearly as strong as Paris. Early December saw the attack begin. Other than the Bordeaux region, I made sure I stood my ground and didn't push forward.

Paris pushed towards the Bordeaux block and my forces engaged. I also probed towards Bordeaux from south and west france and met little resistance. I was able to use aircraft to help in that attack and I soom wiped out the Paris forces, capturing the airstrip. Paris naval forces tried to move into that area but somehow my 2 or 3 frigates sank everything that approached.

Probes south all along the border were mostly contained. Some recon units broke though but were cut off and killed. The two bridges SW of Paris had beed destroyed by me before war began and that tended to channel Paris forces to the west, just north of that river towards his western military base. A more tense battle waged in the east but strong infantry/tank stacks backed with long range artillery ensured success for me. I needed to extend the defensive line a little but held firm.

His attacks slowed and I had a chance to push on. Two subs near Bordeaux were successfully engaged by a helicopter with ASW (that was fun!). I engaged his western military base with artillery and aircraft loaded with bulpups, aiming for a careful destruction by attrition. This time his airfoce came out to engage me and I added more interceptors to the mix. This engagement was indecisive. Another air battle far south of Paris was also indecisive.

The western base fell and I swept into the western peninsula mopping up everything but the sea port. I then pushed towards Paris itself, bombarding the base there with artillery. His few units tried to defend but were easily beaten back. His airforce was fairly quiet now but still existed. In the south east, I had pushed towards his southern base and that was being shelled. I attacked it with air missiles and his airforce came out again. I summoned all fit aircraft and engaged in a battle which destroyed most of his planes.

Now was the time to attack Paris and I forced my way to his airfield and swept through the city. Unfortunately he didn't surrender immediately, but taking his bases due east of Paris forced him to give in.

Total kills 199, Total losses 11 and I gained around $600m from city captures and around 75-100 units from the surrender! Many badly damaged but that's not a problem. A good portion of my airforce had taken damage but many planes were only lightly hurt.

I was surprised that my treasury had held up so well during all this...thanks to my minister busying himself selling bonds worth around $75b on my behalf! Having an operational army is extremely expensive and I could be in serious financial trouble if I'm not careful. I've currently stopped building land units and naval units. I have around 125 land units currently in reserve at a nearby base. Air units are being cranked out at maximum capacity though and I've just started research on a strategic bomber...it's only a year away from appearing...

I'm now massed on the Barcelona border but the belli bar is only around 5% so I'm probably going to take a WM hit when I attack him.