North American Single Player Scenerio Part 1

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felinis
Lt. Colonel
Posts: 229
Joined: Jan 10 2006
Location: Baltimore

North American Single Player Scenerio Part 1

Post by felinis »

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
felinis
Lt. Colonel
Posts: 229
Joined: Jan 10 2006
Location: Baltimore

North American Single Player Scenerio Part 2

Post by felinis »

WARNING: This is a LONG post.

So opens the Caribbean campagne. I have conquored Mexico and pissed off Central America (CAs) in the process. I check my Treasury balance and discover to my delight that it has climbed to over 360 Billion dollars. This is due partially to my capture of the Mexican Treasury and partially to my prospering North Slope oil revenues, which are starting to pour in.

I pay off my first 360 Billion bond, lowering my daily interest payments considerably. I put my entire armed forces into reserve to save even more money.

The Central American conflict is on hold pending my dealing with a new Caribbean crisis - 100 Cuban small ships menacing Flordia. I am at war with both the CAs and the Caribs.

Upon close examination, the Cuban fleet is not so imprressive - it consists of about half Frigates and the other half Patrol boats. I remember at the time noting that except for a few Frog launchers, Cuba HAD NO MISSILES. I did not even detect any airplanes, just some helicopters.

The bad part is that the island was just PACKED with Soviet made weaponry - tanks, anti-tanks, hand-held AA, infantry, artillery, M-2 helicopters - almost every hex held five or six units. I thought - "How am I ever going to invade an island that is so heavily defended?"

When I pulled up a saved game just now, I see that most of the Cuban fleet are Missile platforms, but HAVE NO MISSILES. This fits in with Balthagor's contention that they were given the weapons over the span of five years. Now they bearly have room to park them all, but also do not have the technology to equip them with missiles.

ASWACS confirms that the other Carib islands are simularly heavily armed.

As to their Cuban fleet, it is anchored around their only sea port just South of my island of Key West. I decide to take out this fleet, which is the only real threat to me, then attend to the CAs.

On my first try, I moved all of my MLRS and other rocket units into Key West and Southern Flordia. To protect against Cuban airbourne assult, I position Patriot missile systems in Southern Flordia, and around the Gulf of Mexico. I supplement my AA protection with some mounted infantry units, in case the Cuban Helos manage to land troops.

I have to pull all of these units out of reserves. The protective measures turn out to be un-necessary. The enemy AI is too stupid to launch an air-bourne asssult.

I do not have any really effective anti-ship missiles for my rocket units, so I have to settle for ATACMS and NTACMS missiles that have an anti-ship effectiveness of just 60. I station the rocket launchers and wait for Missile command to fill them up. I have started to leave all of my airbases active to maximize my missile storage space. By this time there are a LOT of airbases.

This attack is less than successful. When I Authorize Launch, my 30 some rocket platforms all opened fire. As usual, about 80% are knocked down by ship and supporting shore AA fire. Those that hit mostly just cause the ships to go into repair at the nearby seaport. There are a few announements of enemy ships destroyed, but by the time that I run out of missiles, there is still a considerable fleet of Cuban ships.

I sit back and think - is this expenditure of missiles worth the damage that they cause.

So I re-wind the scenerio. This time I just wait for the Cuban attack, without posting defending units. As I suspect, there are no airbourne assaults. The little Cuban boats just come out of their harbor and search for my unit around the Gulf to kill. There are no units, so they just wonder around. The do not even stop to attack my military bases at Key West or Miami - they just sail right past, since they are not preceived as a threat. Of course, these bases are stuffed with hundreds of aircraft in reserve.

OK, I could live with that for a while, but why hide in my own country? Eventually, I am going to have to destroy these little warships in order to conquor the Caribs.

So, I re-wind again. This time I replace the AA and the rocket forces in Southern Flordia, but I bring out the big guns too - F-15Cs for air-protection, F-14s, Falcons, Hornets, Crusiers, DDs, Frigates, submarines - anything that will shoot a Harpoon missile. The Missile command drives me nuts as I try to auto-build just Harpoons, ATACMS and NTACMS.

Units are constantly jumping the gun and shooting missiles at the Cubans without my permission. They are impossible to control, since some of the missiles are released with auto-load and Launch Authority already authorized. And when it comes time for the attack, I have to bring up and press literally hundreds of checkboxes to Authorize Launch of each small group of missiles.

At first I keep the aircraft and ships back out of Cuban waters, out of reach of Cuban defenses. The attack works - the green message list starts to roll out announcements of enemy ship loses. Un-expectedly, Cuban jet aircraft begin to appear over the sea port. I send in my F-15C to deal with them.

These green enemy destroyed messages begin to taper off though. I respond by bringing the naval task forces in closer to the Cuban shore, to kill the last of their ships. "Mission accomplished" - I thought, "But how am I going to kill all of those Carib land units?".

I put my Cuban campagne forces back into reserve, and turned to finishing my war with the Central Americans. They had screwed up my attempt at taking the last part of Mexico - the Yukatan pennesula.

I pulled my huge Mexican army out of reserve - I had captured a lot of Mexican Soviet-Made armed helicopters and a lot of un-mechanized anti-tank guns. I had about 70 Abrams tanks, tons of AMS morters, M198 artillery, M119 artillery, light tanks, heavy infantry, all of my Garrisons, airbourne, National Guard, light infantry, special forces, supply vehicles of every description, and tonnes of anti-tank units both mounted and un-mounted.

The hard part was marshalling it all into managable groups.

Once I got rolling, the CAs did not have a chance. At first I held back the heavy armor, but got stalled against their heavy resistance. As I moved my front South, South Amereica began to narrow and a traffic jam developed with my hundreds of units blocking each other, and the arrival of the heavy armor.

Whenever I met some tough resistance, I called in air strikes. Most of my air-support in the South was from attack helicopters. The attack jets were still stationed back in Mexico, where I had built a row of air-strips just for this campagne. But that was growing farther and farther away. I did bring in a wing of B-52 bombers to my Southern most captured airstrip. They were a big help.

The CAs surrendered before I could roll into Panama. When I rolled into Costa Rica, they surrendered with a 27% Military Confidence rating. I won their huge fleet at the Panama canal - more than 400 ships, mostly AOs, AOEs and LCPL, with a dozen or so F-41 Frigates - a staggering collection of mostly non-combattent ships.

That was Fun! Now all I had to do was defeat the Caribs.
That was not going to be fun.

END OF PART TWO
Last edited by felinis on Mar 13 2006, edited 1 time in total.
felinis
Lt. Colonel
Posts: 229
Joined: Jan 10 2006
Location: Baltimore

North American Single Player Scenerio Part 3

Post by felinis »

WARNING: This is a LONG post.

After the CA victory I once again set my financial house in order. This time I only had about 90 Billion in the Treasury and that amount was decreasing. I went in and started fine tuning again. I re-opened all of metal and coal mines. I stopped exports of petrolium and just restricted petrol sales to the public - who was paying dearly for it. I put all of my military into reserve again and scrapped dozens of active and deactivated bases and landing strips.

My Treasury began to increase again.

I turned my attention to the invasion of the Caribbean. I checked Cuba and the ships were back again - not as many this time. I suspect that they had gone into Repair during the battle and had just come back onto active duty.

This time I got smart - I scrambled my submarines into two packs and sneaked up on the ships with the sub's roles set to Ship attack. When the subs got close they released a massive spread of torpedos and decimated the Cuban ships. I took out every one.

I could not destroy the sea port where they sheltered, since it was the closest of the two piers where an amphibious attack could land on the island.

I surveyed the Caribbean - two big islands - Cuba and Hispanola - both armed to the teeth. Two smaller islands - Jamaica and Puerto Rico and several tiny islands. I chose Jamaica as my first target - it was close to Cuba, had landing piers and was just takable. If I took Jamaica, I would have Cuba bracketed to the North-West and South-East.

Jamaica would become like a huge aircraft carrier, far from Flordia and Yukatan, but right off the far side of Cuba. It is a lovely island with two sea piers, a military outpost, a three-car garage and two landing strips.

I assembled and loaded 47 LCPLs with Marines, light artillery, supply vehicles and AA. I marshalled dozens of Airbourne troops to land at the Western airstrip. I had a task force of DDs and Frigates to drive the opposition away from the two sea peirs.

When I launched the attack, the Western landing strip was un-defended, as was the Southern sea pier. The Northern sea pier was lightly defended by two units.

I used my warships to attack the Northern pier and drive the opposition away. Then I landed at all three points at the same time. The major amphibious force landed at the Southern sea pier while a smaller amphib force landed at the Northern one. Cargo aircraft and troop-carrying helicopters began landing at the Western landing strip.

It was all over very quickly - the island's defenders were all medicated and responded very slowly to the attack. The only hitch - and I should have noticed this by now - was that the two sea piers were not connected to the island with roads! So when I landed units from my amphibs, they were stranded on the pier unless they were amphibious. When the landing started to stall, I noticed this immediately. Fortunitly, there were engineers with each landing force. I ordered them to perform "Bridging" and everything ran as planned.

I had my first foot-hold in the Caribbean.

On my way home to Mexico, I noticed a small island neseled in the crotch of Southern Cuba. It had an air-strip and a sea pier. "Wouldn't it be nice to own that air-strip?" I said to myself. I WAY over-prepared an air-bourne attack there, only to discover that the island was un-defended.

I immediately set out to fortify the four hex-sized patches of real estate with a small military base and a sea pier. I landed too many units there, only to discover that the NW hex was within range of Cuban shore-fire. I brought in engineers and told everyone to either Entrench or Construct.

This was a good move, since the small island is directly South of Key West - I had bracketed the skinny part of Cuba with air-power and sea-power on the North and South of its weak point.

I used Jamaica as a staging point for my attack on Puerto Rico. PR is the island farthest East of my territory. Control of it would bracket Hispanola on the East and the West.

I began to fortify Jamaica as my new "aircraft-carrier", building a new real airbase and upgrading a sea pier to a sea port .

I again surveyed Cuba for a possible invasion and decided that even if I was not yet prepared for an invasion, I could still "soften up" the island.
When I finally started my main attack, I did not want its units to run for shelter at a repair facility. I also did not want to have to face their jet fighters and interceptors.

I assembled a fleet of Seawolf submarines and armed them with Tomahawk 109C or Tomahawk Tactical missiles - all custom-made for destroying facilities. I set the submarines' roles to "Fortification" attack only. I had plenty of appropriate missiles ready for deployment.

I then systematically went around Cuba destroying its military bases and air-fields. This worked perfectly - I parked the Seawolf "wolf-pack" off-short of the target base or air-strip. I selected "All" submarines and moved the cursor to the target. I then right clicked to display the short pop-up menu in green letters. I selected "Fire Missile" and a second pop-up menu apppeared. I selected "Target Facility" and the Seawolfs began to disgorge Tomahawk misslies at the unfortunate base or aiirstrip.

I LOVE DOING THIS!

Withing seconds, a green info message appeared at the right to announce that the enemy base has been destroyed!

I moved from West to East, removing Cuban bases with absolutely no damage to my submarines. I had to return to port to reload missiles a couple of times.

Another fun part was watching the enemy aircraft flee their destroyed airbases. They all flew off Cuba and landed on Hispanola - where I eventually caught up with them in the same manner.

At this point I began to seriously divest myself of excess military units.
Once you destroy all of your enemies' naval capabilities, it becomes pretty clear that you are not going to need any more Harpoon missiles, or other purely anti-naval platforms. Once you destroy all of their air-strips, you do not need expensive Patriot missiles unints. You are not going to airlift non-airdroppable units if there are no enemy airstrips that you can capture. You are not going to need Abrams M1A2 tanks in an amphibious or air-bourne invasion.

Being in the end-game simplifies a lot of things.

Once I sold hundreds of units, my Treasury started doing very well - I watched as my balance reached 100, 200 , 300 and then over 360 Billion dollars. I immediately paid off my second 360 Billion bond. I did not have to - I just hate being in debt.

For my invasion of Puerto Rico, I decided to leave the units from my amphib invasion of Jamaica in place for the eventual invasion of Cuba. All of the amphib uints that I introduced onto Puerto Rico would come from Mexico and Central America.

I fortified the Yukatan pennisula with a row air-strips and an air-base.
I built a small military base, and attempted to construct a sea port. The sea port was a problem, since I could not establish any supply in the Gulf waters off Yukatan. I constructed roads and supply depots and finally I was able to establish a sea port there.

One problem was to funnel my strike aircraft from Mexico, Central America, the US and Florida to Jamaica and onto aircraft carriers off the coast of Puerto Rico. The other problem was to load light amphib-transportable units onto amphibious ships, also for transport to Puerto Rico. Warships needed to be standing by to support the landing, and supply ships need to be deployed to support the whole operation.

There were still air-strips all over the contenental US that had attack aircraft either in reserve or on the run-way. As I said earlier, the larger your empire, the harder it is to keep track of your military units. I was mostly interested in F-14s and Hornets that can be carrier-based. I had been producing these automatically at dozens of airbases all over my dominion. I also had three types of long-range bombers - B-52s, F-111s and three B-1 bombers. I wanted them all in on the party.

With infantry units, I had Airbourne and Special Forces units, over a hundred Marines, tonnes of light-weight artillery, AA, supply vehicles, light tanks and anti-tank units and light rocket units. The airbourne and amphib-transportable units had to be marshalled and transported to their jumping-off points.

At some point I had to decide how to transport my heavy armor to the islands or to just sell it.

Immediate transport requires available air-transport of both the light and heavy units. Other units can take their time getting to their jumping-off points via sea transport.

ASWACS and air-tanker support is also required.

To attack Puerto Rico, there were two points of principal air debarkation - Yukatan and Flordia. When it was fully fortified and garrisoned, Jamaica becomes the third point. But since it only has three landing strips, it is also the choke-point. Off loading of attack aircraft onto carriers was necessary.

For amphibious attack, there were three primary points of naval departure: Miami, the Yukatan penninsula and the Panama canal.
Unfortunitly, there were no military units in Panama to load onto the hundreds of amphib ships there - so I had to dispatch amphibs up and down the Gulf coast to collect Marines and their support gear from multiple locations.

I also had to dispatch carriers form the Mexico West coast to the canal, and then on to Jamaica.

I also had to establish several rally points around the Gulf for airbourne troops and their gear to assemble and board air-transports at the proper moment.

I assembled my carriers at Yukatan and assigned each one eight aircraft.
The planes did not stick to the carrier very well - they seemed to perfer to go back to the land air-strips in Yukatan to refuel. But eventually I sent the carriers on their way to their jumping-off points in the supplied waters surrounding Jamaica.

As for other air-support, I moved F-111s to Miami and B-52s to Jamcaica.

Most of my warship support came from Flordia in the form of submarines, Crusiers, DDs and Frigates. Several nuclear carriers and their air-groups came from there too. These were stationed to the North of Puerto Rico, with the amphib force and a huge supply force stationed to the South.

I deployed way too many carriers to Jamaica - I did not need nearly that number at Puerto Rico. The ones that I did send stationed themselves SW of the island. When you finally saw the size of the fleet assembled off Puerto Rico, you could immediatly tell that it was way too big, by a factor of three.

The amphibs had to be moved from South of the island to the North where the only sea pier was located.

Needless to say, I took the island quickly. There were enough strike aircraft, submarines and warships to destroy the island's defenders, even if I had not landed troops.

END OF PART THREE
Last edited by felinis on Mar 13 2006, edited 1 time in total.
felinis
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North American Single Player Scenerio Part 4

Post by felinis »

WARNING: This is a LONG post.

So, now I am in possession of Jamaica and Puerto Rico - about one-quarter of the Caribbean.

My next job is one that I have dreaded - invading Cuba.

I decided to start out by wearing down (attriting) all of the units in Cuba. I had already destroyed all of their repair bases, so every unit that I wounded, stayed wounded. Even at this point, there were more red chevrons on the island than gold ones.

I started by un-leashing my rocket forces from Flordia and from Mexico. I had BGM-109 Gryphon units, HIMARS, LACM/SRBM (SCUD) and captured BAZ 135 Frog launchers in Mexico, in addition to my HIMARS, M-270 MLRS, Gryphon and LACM/SRBM in Flordia. I brought them out of reserve and let them accumulate missiles.

Just for Ss-and-Gs, I also took all of my Hornet aircraft out of reserve and told them to air patrol Western Cuba. I also did a "Select All" on my 60 captured Mil-2 and 20 HR-A helicopters. I directed them to "Air Patrol" in what I though was a suicide mission, directed at enemy concentrations in Western Cuba.

With all of the captured units, I had forces to "burn".

I gathered all of my surface warships and deployed them as task forces to the North and South of Western Cuba, and directed them to "Open Fire". I called on all of my remaning submarine forces to do the same. I had sold all but my "Wolf-Pack".

Between October 3rd and October 14th, I had severly depleated the number of Cuban units in Western Cuba - so many that I staged an airbourne, air-dropped assult on the Western tip of Cuba, just West of my target seaport on its Northern shore, near Key West.

I (belatedly) scrambled all 25 of my converted aircraft Carriers out of reserve at the Panama Canal. I dispatched them to sail up the shore of the Gulf to take onboard the hundreds of F-14 aircraft squadrons waiting there.

At the same time, I flushed all of the remaining hundreds of transport and supply ships from out of Panama and elsewhere, to transport the hundreds of Marines and the supporting units that were waiting at bases all around the Gulf.

I had previously loaded a large amphib unit to land at this North-Western Cuban seaport, but they mysteriously ended up unloading in Miami (R+R?). What a FUBAR.

Anyway, here it is, Ooctober 14th, I have the Cubans in Western Cuba almost wiped out and I don't have any amphib troops ready to land, and I have just started loading my aircraft carriers (as if I NEEDED any CVAs at this point).

I scooped up all of the light and medium infantry from the Panama Canal outpost and loaded them onto transports. By this time my airbourne invasion forces had broken out of Western Cuba into Central Cuba and between them and my warships in Southern Cuban waters, I managed to secure a second sea-pier in Southern Central Cuba.

The amphibious force sailed North from Panama and staged a successful landing there on October 20th, against the now weak and weary Cuban defenders.

I also retrieved and dispached the amphibious forces that had accidentally landed for R+R in Flordia, to Unload in my now controlled seaport in North-Western Cuba. Between the three landed units - the airbourne, the medium infantry and the Florida amphibious force, we easily rolled East into Central Cuba and ultimately (with the help of sea-based fire-power), took all of Central and Eastern Cuba - I mean ALL of Cuba.

I think that the lession here is that you CAN have too many resources. But in this game there is no alternative to micro-management on this scale. You Operations Minister is incapable (I am speculating here) of mounting such complicated military operations as an amphibious invasion.

Now I need to invade Hespanola to finally win the game. I almost don't
want the game to end. Will there be a big finish - with fanfare and applause - or will anything happen at all?

I hadn't moved any units from Jamaica or Puerto Rico, except for aircraft to support the Cuban invasion. And I still had about 25% of my forces still in North and Central America - including a BUNCH of air-power and ALL of my heavy armor.

Between December 18th and January 9th, I surround Hispanola with 20 aircraft carriers with F-14 and Hornet air-squadrons and AO/AOE supply vessels.

A big problem arose after the carriers arrived off Hespanola. I was still loading Marines and their support units in Mexico. When I selected too many Marines - more than could fit on the waiting transport ships, other transport-capable ships from all over the region were dispatched by the AI to come and pick up the Marines.

This included my carriers, who were now off Hespanola, along with AOs and AOE supply escorts. It seems that carriers are designated to be transports as well as aircraft and supply carriers. I had to sort this out and I later reported it as a bug in the game to Balthazor.

I got out my Seawolf "Wolf-Pack" again and roled and loaded them for Facility destruction. Then I sent them to attack the remaining Carib air-strips in Hespanola. From West to East they wiped out the last refuges of Carib's attack airforces.

Once the last air-strip had been destroyed, the planes just circled aimlessly around, then began to crash, one by one.

I LOVE doing that!

Then I sold the Wolf-Pack. And all of my expensive-to-maintain nuclear carrriers.

I naviagated my carriers back on station - I had the entire island surrounded with carriers and carrier-based aircraft.

Needless to say, my attack on Hespanola was devastating - air-strikes, shore bombardment and the inevitable amphibious invasion.

I did not get to complete the invasion before the Caribbean surrendered.
It was un-espectedly announced by a pop-up announcement that I had
WON THE GAME. But I only thought - "But-but-but - I am not finished! I have millions of citizans that depend on me. I have not yet freed Haiti and the Dominican Republic from Communism! My amphibious forces have not yet conquored their opponets!"

Yea - it was really over. But I can still write a bitchin' AAR, and for my next performance, I can conquor the entire world!

Live Long and Prosper.
India 51A
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Post by India 51A »

Nice write-up, I enjoyed reading it immensly. :-)
"It is well that war is so terrible.
We should grow too fond of it."

Robert E. Lee
Battle of Fredericksburg,
13 December 1862
tonystowe
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Post by tonystowe »

Great post and I too enjoyed the read! Not to mention I have made note of some of your issues!

Tony :D
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bergsjaeger
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Post by bergsjaeger »

:lol: I did something with this scenario. I got a double region. The only way this is possible is if ur a master of airborne assaults. Anyways lets just say if i lose all my land in US SE i still have a region to fight from. :lol: the rise of the rogues.
In war destroy everything even the livestock.
tonystowe
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Post by tonystowe »

bergsjaeger wrote::lol: I did something with this scenario. I got a double region. The only way this is possible is if ur a master of airborne assaults. Anyways lets just say if i lose all my land in US SE i still have a region to fight from. :lol: the rise of the rogues.
Berg,

I have been experimenting alot lately with the airborne/air assault tactic and am finding it extremely useful. My recent experiment was:

Inserting 9x Marines who deployed in a triangle formation with 3x Marines at each point and then inserting arty and AD units in the center of the triangle. Once the initial insertion was complete I opened the triangle to form a square (I brought in three more Marines) thus allowing for more combat support units to be airdropped/air landed into the area.

I also pushed a insertion of SOF/Ranger into the smaller cities and dug them in to further complicate the AI's response.

I do enjoy this game.

Tony
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bergsjaeger
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Post by bergsjaeger »

I think some ppl do not use air assaults. But to me its very useful tool. All i used for me to gain a double region was 14 rangers, 10 m113s, and 10 strykers with 4 Ch-53x stationed on a carrier and 5 C-5's. i might post an AAR on it.
In war destroy everything even the livestock.
tonystowe
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Post by tonystowe »

Interesting OOB. I would like very much to see an AAR on that action.
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