North American Single Player Scenerio Part 1
Posted: Mar 12 2006
WARNING - This is a LONG post.
I just finished and won the NAS as North East US. I thought that the game was going to last for three game years, but when I came up to the third year it continued indefinitely.
The campagne ran from 2017 until February of 2031. In realtime it took from December 20th, 2005 until today, March 11th, 2006 - about 51 days, playing six hours per day and ten hours on weekends - about 280 hours of game-play.
Other settings were:
Turn-based
Fog of War
No WDM
Normal resources
Victory Complete
Diffeculty Normal
Agressive WM
Allow Government change
I did not learn until about mid-game that you need to give money to other regions on a regular basis to keep them friendly. By that time it was too late - they all hated me, and would not negociate.
I tried to start off on the proper Diplomatic footing by establishing embassies and trade agreements with my neighbors. But eveything that these guys agreed to had a one billlion dollar price tag associated with it.
And nobody would move past the the first two basic Diplomatic agreements - establishing an Embassy and Free Trade.
I balanced my budget by selling off some high-maintenance military units - a move I regreted once I discovered how vast the navies of the other regions were.
I learned that South-Eastern and Western US were territory oriented - which means that all they care about is gaining territory. Both attacked me without provication and were severly beaten back each time.
I gained some of their border territory on each occasion, but no resources worth much. West's uranium and South's oil were both still beyond my reach.
I had NO uranium and constantly had to buy the whole WM supply to keep up. Canada, however has VAST uranium resources - and one u-mine that was tantalizingly close.
I made a bad mistake when fighting Western and Southern US - I did not allow my damaged units to retreat and repair enough. I would continually scoop up large regions of my armies with the cursor and direct them into the enemy's heart. This included many units that were trying to return to base for repair. DON'T DO THIS.
I was left in an un-comfortable position, occupying captured territories on both my South and West borders. Their loyalties were still with their former owners, and the owners were right nearby, ready to take back the territories without notice. I developed a habit of garrisoning each captured city with National Guard or Garrison soldiers, just in case of partisam up-risings.
The last thing that I expected was for Canada to attack me. They are not territory oriented. And they have a mighty military! This put me in a real bind - my own military was depleated from the defensive wars with the West and South.
So here I am being ambushed by Canada. They were really over-welming. I had about four fronts to cover. I could hold them or beat them back on two fronts, but they would break thru on the other ones.
I re-played this again and again and lost large streches of territory each time. It occured to me that I could make a concentrated strike at their capital, capturing their capital and making them come to terms. This didn't work either. When I called upon them to surrender or agree to a cease-fire, they just refused. I don' t remember getting much of their treasury or even any technology.
Next I tried destroying their infra-structure, most of which is located near the border. I would strike just across the border, occupy the Canadian facility long enough to scrap it, then retreat. I have since learned that there are better ways to destroy an enemy facility (after all, once you capture it, it is really your facility).
This was a complete waste of time. In the real world, this is exactly the most correct and effective way to win a war. On a large-scale SR scenerio like the NA scenerio, it DOES NOT WORK. Despite how many dire E-mails that you receive that an enemy is suffering shortages of this and that, on Normal diffeculty, they will always be able to fight you tooth and nail. They will not run out of gas or bullets.
What finally worked was to keep giving them large sums of money, to postpone their declaring war, until I had rebuilt enough units to beat them. This took almost a year, and about two or three billion dollars per month. So, in this case, to beat them, you must first pump up their treasury, not destroy their infra-structure. Go figure.
I learned that the Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence Seaway acts as a natural defensive barrier from Canadian attack (damn that sounds stupid - like Bahamian attack). So- for defense you destroy the bridges immediately when Canada attacks, or you capture the ones where you intend to invade them.
Canada is a modern power but does not have high-priced weapons like missile systems and multi-million dollar aircraft. What they do have is a killer Navy, helicopters and anti-aircraft defense in depth. They also have a LOT of anti-tank units.
So I had build a lot of aircraft that I could not use. Armor and anti-armor is the key. Those armored AMS 120MM Morters are very good too, especially in groups.
By this time I had started to appreciate and build Airbourne troops of all types. Airbourne assault was mostly worthless in Canadian urban areas, again due to the heavy AA.
To turn the SL Seaway from a barrier into an asset, Canada has a large fleet of frigates patroling the Seaway. Fortunitly, Abrams tanks can take on Canadian frigates.
Months after I took the SL Seaway I had constructed some of my first ships at my newly captured shipyard in Toronto. As I proudly sailed several of them Eastward down the SL Seaway towards the Atlantic, they were attacked and sunk. I was stunned. My focus was elsewhere so I did not witness the attack. I just heard a new sound like someone flushing a toilet - my new patrol boats sinking.
I replayed the incedent and I still could not see what sunk them. Then I recalled a post on the forum about other disappearing ships - submarines.
The wily Canucks had a submarine lurking at under the pier at Kingston in the St. Lawrence Seaway! It took me a while to figure out how to deal with this, since I did now have any anti-submarine assets in the SLS, and my submarine force was shut out of the mouth of the SLS by a huge Canadian fleet.
Finally I remembered that I had a SH-60 SeaHawk ASW helo. That worked real well.
I made a major un-successful assault on this Canadian fleet using dozens of MLRS systems - HIMARS and M-270s. The concentrated anti-air power of the sixty Canadian ships shed hundreds of my Harpoon missiles like so much rain. I destroyed fewer than twenty of their ships and lost the same number of launchers.
I was in the middle of beating the b-Jesus out of Canada when the Southern US attacked me again. This turned out to be OK, since I had budgeted protective forces to watch my Southern border. I actually built an armed force and divided it in half - one half to do Canada and another in reserve to deal with the South. I had Canada on the run and could clean them out of their refuges at my lesure.
In my previous clash with the South, there were two sticking points - Arlington/Reston/Alexandria, VA and their huge fleet at Norfolk. I could not dislodge them from their cities South of Washington (my capital is New York City), and their fleet was un-touchable, since my Navy consisted of a small fleet of submarines.
I had come to appreciate the defensabiliy of cities. One would think that military bases have a high protective value - not so. Your forces are much less assailable hunkered down in a large city than in a large military base.
So I bypassed the Arlington, VA area and gave their huge fleet at Norfolk a wide berth. Stupid enemy AI never used its fleets against me unless I attacked them first.
I moved massive numbers of forces down from what used to be Canada.
I had turned over the main thrust of this second Southern offense to my Minister of Operations. I brought the armies down from their Canadian triumph and carefully positioned them along my Southern border.
I gave control to my minister and sat back to watch the war. He did OK, but was unable to take much ground. I started to take control here and there with the cursor. I would select certain units and direct them to targets that I thought were being neglected.
Again, I started striking at Southern power facilities and mines. During the previous campagnes, I had destroyed all enemy facilities. This time I only destroyed them if I thought that I would not be able to hold them.
As I said before, destroying enemy facilities really doesn't help you much anyway.
All through the game the E-mails had proclaimed that the South was short of electrical power. So I targeted their power plants, especally the nuclear ones.
My forces surrounded a huge defending Southern force around their Capital of Atlanta. I did not realize the importance of the city until I had almost captured it. Again, it made little difference - they did not have any money in their Treasury and they did not surrender.
Eventually my forces broke thru to the Gulf of Mexico, dividing the South into Eastern and Western halves. I just had enough units to mop up the Western half, up to the Western US border. I burned up literally all of my units doing this. This left me dangerously vernerable to a Western US attack. I had only spotty National Guard defense of my Western border. But this attack did not come until much later.
I had to leave the South with the State of Flordia - I just did not have the units to finish them. So here I was with two un-vanquished enemies - Canada and Flordia.
What really saved me was the discovery of un-used units that I did not know that I had - units that the minister had directed to defend cities and bridges far behind the battle-lines. There were literally dozens of these, from which I re-formed a basic replacement army. The larger your territory, the harder is to keep track of your units.
Western Canada was still un-defeated, but there are no strong forces there as there were around their Eastern major cities. I started to slowly build out-posts and supply depots along my new Western Canadian border. I started bringing supply trucks along as a regular procedure.
Before the second Southern conflict, I had just waited until units revived after running out of supplies in enemy territory.
I spotted a lot of rivers in Western Canada and few roads, so I reviewed the type of infantry units that I was building. Many good infantry units are also amphibious and are light enough to be successfully air-lifted.
Very few can be parachuted. I found that a good combination for air-drop are Airbourne/Special Forces, F.A.R.P. Supply vehicles, Avenger anti-air units and M119 Light Gun.
My biggest problem was hand-holding the Abrams M1A2 Tanks. They constantly run out of supply in enemy territory and need to be escorted by full supply truck all of the way. There was a great deal of shuttling supply trucks between the front and supply depots.
It all went very quickly and my forces were outside of Vancouver before I realized it. I dispatched the small Canadian forces there quickly - they had been weakened by previous battles with the West down in Washington State.
I build up and repaired the defenses around the Puget Sound and inherited several cool shipyards as well as a small navy.
The big payoff for beating Western Canada was plundering their uranium and their as yet un-developed North Slope oil in Alaska - they had just ONE oil derrick there. I was not sure that it was possible to build an under-sea oil field in such a remote, under-supplied region, but I really wanted that Alaskan oil.
I started building an infra-structure around the rich uranium field that I had conquored. I brought in Engineers and prospected the first few mines on the richest spots. I sent out National Guard to push back my Northern border of NE US control. I took control of all of the bypassed remote Northern Canadian outposts and started building new roads and supply depots as I went.
Now I could turn to the real prize - North Slope OIL. There were three obsticles:
1. No Supply
2. Oil is off-shore
3. Canadian sea control
Establishing supplied territory is fairly simple on the land - you build transport and bases and then wait. Supply improves with time and development.
Off-shore is harder. You need to somehow extend your control of the supplied land onto the adjacent sea.
I eventully accomplished this by constructing a sea-side highway along the North Slope, dotted with military outposts and supply depots. But large streches of the Northern polar sea was still under Canadian control. I could not find any Canadian ships there, so I concluded that the only way to take control was to finish the Canadians in North-East Canada - on the nearly inaccessable island of Newfoundland, which has just one sea pier.
This would be my first amphibous assault and I had been preparing for it for several years. The first hurtle was to sneak my amphib task force by the Canadian fleet anchored at Nova Scotia. I sent out AWACS planes to spot enemy positions.
I had several nuclear submarines path-find for the force and followed them with war-ships. The supply ships came next. The amphibs, loaded with armor, troops, infantry, engineers and artillery came next, while a rear guard of warships brought up the rear.
Everything went fine - the anchored Canadian fleet did not detect us. Then as I was manuvering the force to approach the target pier, my subs discovered another Canadian submarine. It got in the first shots, damaging one of my subs with a torpedo. But then I had its location and target it with my three subs. Bye-bye Canuck sub.
Then I had the warships open fire on the Canadian pier defenders and the units in the adjacent town. This battle went back and forth with the Canadians bringing up additional troops and armor. My submarines did their part with missile attacks. Finally we beat back the defenders, leaving an un-defended, clear pier to land at. I brought up the amphibs and directed them to unload at the pier. The Canadians continued to defend furiously, but my newly landed forces beat them back and established a firm beach-head.
Meanwhile my air forces were pounding towns and bases elsewhere on the island in preperation for the air-bourne assault. Airbourne troops and light artillery were parachuted or landed at the enemy's own air strips at four or five seperate locations. Attack helicopters also helped soften up the island for the airborne assault.
Sometime about half-way into this assault, the Canadian ships in Nova Scotia began to surrender. Unfortunitly, they were in the middle of dozens of loyal Canadian ships and were immediately destroyed. Before long though, the Canadians reached their Military Confidence threshold and they all surrendered. I got a huge fleet and a huge relief.
About this time Flordia got frisky again, so I wiped it out. Bye-bye Southern US. Hello brand new fleet - about 100 of their carriers, DDs, frigates, subs and supply ships at Norfolk.
I concentrated on growing my economy and infra-structure. The uranium and North Slope oil projects flowered and paid off big-time. I developed the shores of the Yukon river with timber plants and rail-roads. I connected every rail-road in the Eastern US together into a solid network.
My entire military was put into reserve and all un-used bases were scrapped or deactivated.
I paid off all of the minor bonds that my Treasurer had been selling, and I stopped him from selling any more. The core of our 4 Trillion bond debt however remaind intact. Each of THOSE bonds are 360, BILLION dollars EACH.
I began to master the management of my industries and how to balance domestic demand against lucrative forign trading. To maximize my trade, I allowed trading even with enemies, I embargoed only commoities that were critical to them - electricty to the South and metal ore to the West.
I built massively to gain self-suffeciency in all commodities.
I culled my industries of ineffecient plants - most of which were captured from enemy regions. I scrapped all petrolium power plants.
I squeezed the public for every dollar by limiting social programs to 30% of budget - about half that recommended. I increased domestic prices until public approval fell well below 25% - but relented and treated everyone to cheap goodies around election time.
I over-rode my Tresury Minister and capped taxes at about 55%. He tended to push them into the 80% bracket.
Sometimes the domestic price for a commodity can be three times what it sells for on the WM, so you must often consider halting exports altogether.
When production capacity far out-strips demand, you must deactivate or scrap the less effecient plants. This is the best time to improve existing plants too. Paying for plant effeciency is a waste of money if you cull your industries in this manner.
Research is also very pricy and of questionable value. There simply is not enough time for you to advance from 2010 level technology into ultra-high tech space weaponry. I way over-build research institutes and then under-utilize them, thinking that putting 100 research sites to work on just five problems would fast-track solving the problem. Not so.
I blew off my interior minister every time he suggested that we research a new ship or tank. I only scheduled research that would have economic or social consequences. Now I don't know if I would do any research at all. Remember, to win this game with the chosen parameters, having a high research score does not help - I have to defeat all of the other regions to win.
After a thorough review of my finances, it suddenly occured to me that my nation was still at Defcon 3. I quickly switched it back to Defcon 1, and saved on Preparedness.
I am now an oil magnate with a huge number of North Slope and Gulf oil derricks. But something is wrong - Mexico is beating my score. Somehow, this nation to my South has a higher over-all score than I do, and I have conquored two huge regions - both of which attacked me first.
I decide that I must defeat Mexico. The problem is that it is out of reach, except by sea.
This problem is soon placed on the back burner when Western US feels froggy and attacks me again. The fools. I have been building every unit that my little heart desires, including a huge airforce.
It took me days just to pull all of my forces out of reserve and marshall them for my attack on Texas, Colorado and Utah.
By this time, I have learned the importance of supply trucks and ships. Each hex of conquored territory is hostile to the invader, until he has owned it for a while. Press that 'S' key and you can see right away if you are going to flourish or perish without discreet supply vehicles. I built a hundred of them this time.
There were so many units staged for this attack that they were unmanageable. I notice that armor was un-evenly distributed as were other assets. I had to globally select each of the major categories of units and rally them at a central location, then re-distribute them.
By this time my rocket forces are a terror. I have dozens of MLRS and they tear the heart out of any opposition. If my armor gets stuck at an enemy strong-hold like Denver or Houston, I bring up my rocket forces to the rear and and Authorize Launch.
I rolled up all of the enemy cities East of the rockies, as well as Texas and Arizona in no time. This time I targeted military bases and hopped from one to the next. Salt Lake City was easy. Denver put up a hell of a fight, but I quickly surrounded and subdued them. This opened the door to Texas - Houston, then their capital at Auston.
Soon I had the entire West Coast surrounded from the East. Forces from Vancouver simply rolled it up from Washington down to LA. I then attacked Southern California from the North and from the East. Game over. The prize - the entire United States, and for a bonus - a bitchin' fleet of new ships and carriers.
And look what is sitting there to my immediate South - Mexico.
By this time I take time between campagnes to fine-tune my economy.
Surprisingly, up to this time I had to struggle to keep my Tresurery from dipping into the red. If I got up to 30 Billion dollors, I thought that I was doing great. But sometimes for a month or more, all of my development would simply halt, awaiting T-funds.
This time I connected EVERY ONE of my industrial facilities with a single rail-road. I took pains to delete roads and rail lines that did not go anywhere. I build roads to connect EVERY town to a roadway.
I checked for industries that were not meeting current demand and built more. By this time I had maybe half of my metal mines and coal mines deactivated due to poor prices or lack of demand.
The huge road and RR buildng project caused my industrial goods demand to sky-rocket so I had to increase the output of those commodities that feed Industrial Goods. This stressed the system for a while, but I had become very good at fine tuning the system.
Demands for fresh water and timber continued to increase, so I had to go prospecting for new facilities. With all of the new territories, there were some very rich pockets of commodities ripe for development.
Despite my going hog-wild on road building projects, I had been rather conservative in building new facilities. During each new round of development, I would commission about three new facilities of each type needed, assign engineers and wait until they were complete.
I maintained a pool of Engineers at the tip of Lake Michigan - where they were easy to find. Even when I had moth-balled all of my military, I kept this force of 70-100 engineers active for domestic construction.
After building the enhanced infra-structure, I turned my attention to the Mexico campagne. Along the Mexico border I commissioned an offensive line of supply depots, radar stations, small military bases (outposts aren't worth building) and airstrips. I also built a dedicated highway to connect them all. This streched from San Diego, CA to Brownsville, Texas. I assigned Engineers to each facility, but not to each section of road (Engineers can Construct roads too).
During this time I was also building (wait for it) new WEAPONS! Again, marshalling all of the hundreds of units, air, sea and ground took days.
Supply trucks are not a problem this time - I have plenty. The biggest problem of this campagne turned out to be rivers. Northern Mexico is blocked by many rivers.
I had learned about Engineer bridging from the Canada campagne, and it turned out to be vital to this campagne. It was very tricky to place the proper number of bridging engineers at the right location to allow my army to flow onto the enemy - all units are not amphibious.
I also staged my first naval attack - my new West coast fleet against Mexico's Navy. The Mexican Navy kicked my ass. I had to stage a humiliating withdrawal.
The Mexico campagne ended quite un-expectedly with the beginning of the Central American campagne. For some reason, when I hit central Mexico, Central America declared war on me! I guess they did not like what I was doing to their compadres to the North.
Anyway, when I reached Southern Mexico, it got messy, because I could not complete occupying all of Southern Mexico without fighting the Central Americans (CAs).
I finally managed to get Mexico to surrender and to stablize the situation in Southern Mexico. I got two real surprises this time - first the Mexicans had a sizeable Treasury which I won. Secondly, they had a big fleet with 25 Converted aircraft carriers, dozens of frigates, a dozen or more patrol boats and dozens of LCPLs and LCTs.
I wasn't ready to take on the CAs, because the Caribbean also had declared war against me! I sent an AWACS plane down there to take a look and they had a fleet of about 100 small ships off Northern Cuba waiting to attack Flordia. This is no way to treat a super-power!
So, I put the CAs on hold and organized a strike against the fleet in Cuba.
END OF PART ONE
I just finished and won the NAS as North East US. I thought that the game was going to last for three game years, but when I came up to the third year it continued indefinitely.
The campagne ran from 2017 until February of 2031. In realtime it took from December 20th, 2005 until today, March 11th, 2006 - about 51 days, playing six hours per day and ten hours on weekends - about 280 hours of game-play.
Other settings were:
Turn-based
Fog of War
No WDM
Normal resources
Victory Complete
Diffeculty Normal
Agressive WM
Allow Government change
I did not learn until about mid-game that you need to give money to other regions on a regular basis to keep them friendly. By that time it was too late - they all hated me, and would not negociate.
I tried to start off on the proper Diplomatic footing by establishing embassies and trade agreements with my neighbors. But eveything that these guys agreed to had a one billlion dollar price tag associated with it.
And nobody would move past the the first two basic Diplomatic agreements - establishing an Embassy and Free Trade.
I balanced my budget by selling off some high-maintenance military units - a move I regreted once I discovered how vast the navies of the other regions were.
I learned that South-Eastern and Western US were territory oriented - which means that all they care about is gaining territory. Both attacked me without provication and were severly beaten back each time.
I gained some of their border territory on each occasion, but no resources worth much. West's uranium and South's oil were both still beyond my reach.
I had NO uranium and constantly had to buy the whole WM supply to keep up. Canada, however has VAST uranium resources - and one u-mine that was tantalizingly close.
I made a bad mistake when fighting Western and Southern US - I did not allow my damaged units to retreat and repair enough. I would continually scoop up large regions of my armies with the cursor and direct them into the enemy's heart. This included many units that were trying to return to base for repair. DON'T DO THIS.
I was left in an un-comfortable position, occupying captured territories on both my South and West borders. Their loyalties were still with their former owners, and the owners were right nearby, ready to take back the territories without notice. I developed a habit of garrisoning each captured city with National Guard or Garrison soldiers, just in case of partisam up-risings.
The last thing that I expected was for Canada to attack me. They are not territory oriented. And they have a mighty military! This put me in a real bind - my own military was depleated from the defensive wars with the West and South.
So here I am being ambushed by Canada. They were really over-welming. I had about four fronts to cover. I could hold them or beat them back on two fronts, but they would break thru on the other ones.
I re-played this again and again and lost large streches of territory each time. It occured to me that I could make a concentrated strike at their capital, capturing their capital and making them come to terms. This didn't work either. When I called upon them to surrender or agree to a cease-fire, they just refused. I don' t remember getting much of their treasury or even any technology.
Next I tried destroying their infra-structure, most of which is located near the border. I would strike just across the border, occupy the Canadian facility long enough to scrap it, then retreat. I have since learned that there are better ways to destroy an enemy facility (after all, once you capture it, it is really your facility).
This was a complete waste of time. In the real world, this is exactly the most correct and effective way to win a war. On a large-scale SR scenerio like the NA scenerio, it DOES NOT WORK. Despite how many dire E-mails that you receive that an enemy is suffering shortages of this and that, on Normal diffeculty, they will always be able to fight you tooth and nail. They will not run out of gas or bullets.
What finally worked was to keep giving them large sums of money, to postpone their declaring war, until I had rebuilt enough units to beat them. This took almost a year, and about two or three billion dollars per month. So, in this case, to beat them, you must first pump up their treasury, not destroy their infra-structure. Go figure.
I learned that the Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence Seaway acts as a natural defensive barrier from Canadian attack (damn that sounds stupid - like Bahamian attack). So- for defense you destroy the bridges immediately when Canada attacks, or you capture the ones where you intend to invade them.
Canada is a modern power but does not have high-priced weapons like missile systems and multi-million dollar aircraft. What they do have is a killer Navy, helicopters and anti-aircraft defense in depth. They also have a LOT of anti-tank units.
So I had build a lot of aircraft that I could not use. Armor and anti-armor is the key. Those armored AMS 120MM Morters are very good too, especially in groups.
By this time I had started to appreciate and build Airbourne troops of all types. Airbourne assault was mostly worthless in Canadian urban areas, again due to the heavy AA.
To turn the SL Seaway from a barrier into an asset, Canada has a large fleet of frigates patroling the Seaway. Fortunitly, Abrams tanks can take on Canadian frigates.
Months after I took the SL Seaway I had constructed some of my first ships at my newly captured shipyard in Toronto. As I proudly sailed several of them Eastward down the SL Seaway towards the Atlantic, they were attacked and sunk. I was stunned. My focus was elsewhere so I did not witness the attack. I just heard a new sound like someone flushing a toilet - my new patrol boats sinking.
I replayed the incedent and I still could not see what sunk them. Then I recalled a post on the forum about other disappearing ships - submarines.
The wily Canucks had a submarine lurking at under the pier at Kingston in the St. Lawrence Seaway! It took me a while to figure out how to deal with this, since I did now have any anti-submarine assets in the SLS, and my submarine force was shut out of the mouth of the SLS by a huge Canadian fleet.
Finally I remembered that I had a SH-60 SeaHawk ASW helo. That worked real well.
I made a major un-successful assault on this Canadian fleet using dozens of MLRS systems - HIMARS and M-270s. The concentrated anti-air power of the sixty Canadian ships shed hundreds of my Harpoon missiles like so much rain. I destroyed fewer than twenty of their ships and lost the same number of launchers.
I was in the middle of beating the b-Jesus out of Canada when the Southern US attacked me again. This turned out to be OK, since I had budgeted protective forces to watch my Southern border. I actually built an armed force and divided it in half - one half to do Canada and another in reserve to deal with the South. I had Canada on the run and could clean them out of their refuges at my lesure.
In my previous clash with the South, there were two sticking points - Arlington/Reston/Alexandria, VA and their huge fleet at Norfolk. I could not dislodge them from their cities South of Washington (my capital is New York City), and their fleet was un-touchable, since my Navy consisted of a small fleet of submarines.
I had come to appreciate the defensabiliy of cities. One would think that military bases have a high protective value - not so. Your forces are much less assailable hunkered down in a large city than in a large military base.
So I bypassed the Arlington, VA area and gave their huge fleet at Norfolk a wide berth. Stupid enemy AI never used its fleets against me unless I attacked them first.
I moved massive numbers of forces down from what used to be Canada.
I had turned over the main thrust of this second Southern offense to my Minister of Operations. I brought the armies down from their Canadian triumph and carefully positioned them along my Southern border.
I gave control to my minister and sat back to watch the war. He did OK, but was unable to take much ground. I started to take control here and there with the cursor. I would select certain units and direct them to targets that I thought were being neglected.
Again, I started striking at Southern power facilities and mines. During the previous campagnes, I had destroyed all enemy facilities. This time I only destroyed them if I thought that I would not be able to hold them.
As I said before, destroying enemy facilities really doesn't help you much anyway.
All through the game the E-mails had proclaimed that the South was short of electrical power. So I targeted their power plants, especally the nuclear ones.
My forces surrounded a huge defending Southern force around their Capital of Atlanta. I did not realize the importance of the city until I had almost captured it. Again, it made little difference - they did not have any money in their Treasury and they did not surrender.
Eventually my forces broke thru to the Gulf of Mexico, dividing the South into Eastern and Western halves. I just had enough units to mop up the Western half, up to the Western US border. I burned up literally all of my units doing this. This left me dangerously vernerable to a Western US attack. I had only spotty National Guard defense of my Western border. But this attack did not come until much later.
I had to leave the South with the State of Flordia - I just did not have the units to finish them. So here I was with two un-vanquished enemies - Canada and Flordia.
What really saved me was the discovery of un-used units that I did not know that I had - units that the minister had directed to defend cities and bridges far behind the battle-lines. There were literally dozens of these, from which I re-formed a basic replacement army. The larger your territory, the harder is to keep track of your units.
Western Canada was still un-defeated, but there are no strong forces there as there were around their Eastern major cities. I started to slowly build out-posts and supply depots along my new Western Canadian border. I started bringing supply trucks along as a regular procedure.
Before the second Southern conflict, I had just waited until units revived after running out of supplies in enemy territory.
I spotted a lot of rivers in Western Canada and few roads, so I reviewed the type of infantry units that I was building. Many good infantry units are also amphibious and are light enough to be successfully air-lifted.
Very few can be parachuted. I found that a good combination for air-drop are Airbourne/Special Forces, F.A.R.P. Supply vehicles, Avenger anti-air units and M119 Light Gun.
My biggest problem was hand-holding the Abrams M1A2 Tanks. They constantly run out of supply in enemy territory and need to be escorted by full supply truck all of the way. There was a great deal of shuttling supply trucks between the front and supply depots.
It all went very quickly and my forces were outside of Vancouver before I realized it. I dispatched the small Canadian forces there quickly - they had been weakened by previous battles with the West down in Washington State.
I build up and repaired the defenses around the Puget Sound and inherited several cool shipyards as well as a small navy.
The big payoff for beating Western Canada was plundering their uranium and their as yet un-developed North Slope oil in Alaska - they had just ONE oil derrick there. I was not sure that it was possible to build an under-sea oil field in such a remote, under-supplied region, but I really wanted that Alaskan oil.
I started building an infra-structure around the rich uranium field that I had conquored. I brought in Engineers and prospected the first few mines on the richest spots. I sent out National Guard to push back my Northern border of NE US control. I took control of all of the bypassed remote Northern Canadian outposts and started building new roads and supply depots as I went.
Now I could turn to the real prize - North Slope OIL. There were three obsticles:
1. No Supply
2. Oil is off-shore
3. Canadian sea control
Establishing supplied territory is fairly simple on the land - you build transport and bases and then wait. Supply improves with time and development.
Off-shore is harder. You need to somehow extend your control of the supplied land onto the adjacent sea.
I eventully accomplished this by constructing a sea-side highway along the North Slope, dotted with military outposts and supply depots. But large streches of the Northern polar sea was still under Canadian control. I could not find any Canadian ships there, so I concluded that the only way to take control was to finish the Canadians in North-East Canada - on the nearly inaccessable island of Newfoundland, which has just one sea pier.
This would be my first amphibous assault and I had been preparing for it for several years. The first hurtle was to sneak my amphib task force by the Canadian fleet anchored at Nova Scotia. I sent out AWACS planes to spot enemy positions.
I had several nuclear submarines path-find for the force and followed them with war-ships. The supply ships came next. The amphibs, loaded with armor, troops, infantry, engineers and artillery came next, while a rear guard of warships brought up the rear.
Everything went fine - the anchored Canadian fleet did not detect us. Then as I was manuvering the force to approach the target pier, my subs discovered another Canadian submarine. It got in the first shots, damaging one of my subs with a torpedo. But then I had its location and target it with my three subs. Bye-bye Canuck sub.
Then I had the warships open fire on the Canadian pier defenders and the units in the adjacent town. This battle went back and forth with the Canadians bringing up additional troops and armor. My submarines did their part with missile attacks. Finally we beat back the defenders, leaving an un-defended, clear pier to land at. I brought up the amphibs and directed them to unload at the pier. The Canadians continued to defend furiously, but my newly landed forces beat them back and established a firm beach-head.
Meanwhile my air forces were pounding towns and bases elsewhere on the island in preperation for the air-bourne assault. Airbourne troops and light artillery were parachuted or landed at the enemy's own air strips at four or five seperate locations. Attack helicopters also helped soften up the island for the airborne assault.
Sometime about half-way into this assault, the Canadian ships in Nova Scotia began to surrender. Unfortunitly, they were in the middle of dozens of loyal Canadian ships and were immediately destroyed. Before long though, the Canadians reached their Military Confidence threshold and they all surrendered. I got a huge fleet and a huge relief.
About this time Flordia got frisky again, so I wiped it out. Bye-bye Southern US. Hello brand new fleet - about 100 of their carriers, DDs, frigates, subs and supply ships at Norfolk.
I concentrated on growing my economy and infra-structure. The uranium and North Slope oil projects flowered and paid off big-time. I developed the shores of the Yukon river with timber plants and rail-roads. I connected every rail-road in the Eastern US together into a solid network.
My entire military was put into reserve and all un-used bases were scrapped or deactivated.
I paid off all of the minor bonds that my Treasurer had been selling, and I stopped him from selling any more. The core of our 4 Trillion bond debt however remaind intact. Each of THOSE bonds are 360, BILLION dollars EACH.
I began to master the management of my industries and how to balance domestic demand against lucrative forign trading. To maximize my trade, I allowed trading even with enemies, I embargoed only commoities that were critical to them - electricty to the South and metal ore to the West.
I built massively to gain self-suffeciency in all commodities.
I culled my industries of ineffecient plants - most of which were captured from enemy regions. I scrapped all petrolium power plants.
I squeezed the public for every dollar by limiting social programs to 30% of budget - about half that recommended. I increased domestic prices until public approval fell well below 25% - but relented and treated everyone to cheap goodies around election time.
I over-rode my Tresury Minister and capped taxes at about 55%. He tended to push them into the 80% bracket.
Sometimes the domestic price for a commodity can be three times what it sells for on the WM, so you must often consider halting exports altogether.
When production capacity far out-strips demand, you must deactivate or scrap the less effecient plants. This is the best time to improve existing plants too. Paying for plant effeciency is a waste of money if you cull your industries in this manner.
Research is also very pricy and of questionable value. There simply is not enough time for you to advance from 2010 level technology into ultra-high tech space weaponry. I way over-build research institutes and then under-utilize them, thinking that putting 100 research sites to work on just five problems would fast-track solving the problem. Not so.
I blew off my interior minister every time he suggested that we research a new ship or tank. I only scheduled research that would have economic or social consequences. Now I don't know if I would do any research at all. Remember, to win this game with the chosen parameters, having a high research score does not help - I have to defeat all of the other regions to win.
After a thorough review of my finances, it suddenly occured to me that my nation was still at Defcon 3. I quickly switched it back to Defcon 1, and saved on Preparedness.
I am now an oil magnate with a huge number of North Slope and Gulf oil derricks. But something is wrong - Mexico is beating my score. Somehow, this nation to my South has a higher over-all score than I do, and I have conquored two huge regions - both of which attacked me first.
I decide that I must defeat Mexico. The problem is that it is out of reach, except by sea.
This problem is soon placed on the back burner when Western US feels froggy and attacks me again. The fools. I have been building every unit that my little heart desires, including a huge airforce.
It took me days just to pull all of my forces out of reserve and marshall them for my attack on Texas, Colorado and Utah.
By this time, I have learned the importance of supply trucks and ships. Each hex of conquored territory is hostile to the invader, until he has owned it for a while. Press that 'S' key and you can see right away if you are going to flourish or perish without discreet supply vehicles. I built a hundred of them this time.
There were so many units staged for this attack that they were unmanageable. I notice that armor was un-evenly distributed as were other assets. I had to globally select each of the major categories of units and rally them at a central location, then re-distribute them.
By this time my rocket forces are a terror. I have dozens of MLRS and they tear the heart out of any opposition. If my armor gets stuck at an enemy strong-hold like Denver or Houston, I bring up my rocket forces to the rear and and Authorize Launch.
I rolled up all of the enemy cities East of the rockies, as well as Texas and Arizona in no time. This time I targeted military bases and hopped from one to the next. Salt Lake City was easy. Denver put up a hell of a fight, but I quickly surrounded and subdued them. This opened the door to Texas - Houston, then their capital at Auston.
Soon I had the entire West Coast surrounded from the East. Forces from Vancouver simply rolled it up from Washington down to LA. I then attacked Southern California from the North and from the East. Game over. The prize - the entire United States, and for a bonus - a bitchin' fleet of new ships and carriers.
And look what is sitting there to my immediate South - Mexico.
By this time I take time between campagnes to fine-tune my economy.
Surprisingly, up to this time I had to struggle to keep my Tresurery from dipping into the red. If I got up to 30 Billion dollors, I thought that I was doing great. But sometimes for a month or more, all of my development would simply halt, awaiting T-funds.
This time I connected EVERY ONE of my industrial facilities with a single rail-road. I took pains to delete roads and rail lines that did not go anywhere. I build roads to connect EVERY town to a roadway.
I checked for industries that were not meeting current demand and built more. By this time I had maybe half of my metal mines and coal mines deactivated due to poor prices or lack of demand.
The huge road and RR buildng project caused my industrial goods demand to sky-rocket so I had to increase the output of those commodities that feed Industrial Goods. This stressed the system for a while, but I had become very good at fine tuning the system.
Demands for fresh water and timber continued to increase, so I had to go prospecting for new facilities. With all of the new territories, there were some very rich pockets of commodities ripe for development.
Despite my going hog-wild on road building projects, I had been rather conservative in building new facilities. During each new round of development, I would commission about three new facilities of each type needed, assign engineers and wait until they were complete.
I maintained a pool of Engineers at the tip of Lake Michigan - where they were easy to find. Even when I had moth-balled all of my military, I kept this force of 70-100 engineers active for domestic construction.
After building the enhanced infra-structure, I turned my attention to the Mexico campagne. Along the Mexico border I commissioned an offensive line of supply depots, radar stations, small military bases (outposts aren't worth building) and airstrips. I also built a dedicated highway to connect them all. This streched from San Diego, CA to Brownsville, Texas. I assigned Engineers to each facility, but not to each section of road (Engineers can Construct roads too).
During this time I was also building (wait for it) new WEAPONS! Again, marshalling all of the hundreds of units, air, sea and ground took days.
Supply trucks are not a problem this time - I have plenty. The biggest problem of this campagne turned out to be rivers. Northern Mexico is blocked by many rivers.
I had learned about Engineer bridging from the Canada campagne, and it turned out to be vital to this campagne. It was very tricky to place the proper number of bridging engineers at the right location to allow my army to flow onto the enemy - all units are not amphibious.
I also staged my first naval attack - my new West coast fleet against Mexico's Navy. The Mexican Navy kicked my ass. I had to stage a humiliating withdrawal.
The Mexico campagne ended quite un-expectedly with the beginning of the Central American campagne. For some reason, when I hit central Mexico, Central America declared war on me! I guess they did not like what I was doing to their compadres to the North.
Anyway, when I reached Southern Mexico, it got messy, because I could not complete occupying all of Southern Mexico without fighting the Central Americans (CAs).
I finally managed to get Mexico to surrender and to stablize the situation in Southern Mexico. I got two real surprises this time - first the Mexicans had a sizeable Treasury which I won. Secondly, they had a big fleet with 25 Converted aircraft carriers, dozens of frigates, a dozen or more patrol boats and dozens of LCPLs and LCTs.
I wasn't ready to take on the CAs, because the Caribbean also had declared war against me! I sent an AWACS plane down there to take a look and they had a fleet of about 100 small ships off Northern Cuba waiting to attack Flordia. This is no way to treat a super-power!
So, I put the CAs on hold and organized a strike against the fleet in Cuba.
END OF PART ONE