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Playing the "Shattered World" scenario as Michigan and playing against AI I have thus far, by 2025, laid claim to California, Arizona, Texas, Arkansas, New Mexico, Okalahoma, Louisiana, Geogia, Illiniois, Ontario, half of Quebec and half of South Carolina.

I began by quickly making staunch allies of all the english speaking overseas places I could find: England, Wales, Scottland, Ireland, Northern Ireland, Austrailia and New Zealand. Then I branched out and made hard Alliances with Mexico and Cuba. Yes I had to pay out some bribe money, but I got it. Why Mexico and Cuba? Because from previous games I noticed that no matter what I did, within a year or two both California & Texas would declare war on me, so I wanted to give them pause before doing so. When locked into these alliances, no one in the British Isles would dare delare war on anyone else, allowing them to prosper in total peace. This would prove useful because later down the road England became a very valuable and absurdly wealthy trading partner. The same for Mexico, believe it or not. I made decent trade & transit agreements with all my immediate neighbors (except Illiniois, which was a lost cause) and the entire northeast side of the continent (New York, Maine, etc).

Early on I aimed for import independance, so my build priorities were, in order: Ore mines, Coal mines, Oil wells, and then Hydroelectric plants. On the side I built a few military bases that really only served as factories (Fortress + 4 x Land Fabrication and a Barracks, or Fortress + 4 x Aircraft Fabrication and an airstrip). My first target was Ontario, because their capacity for Hydroelectric power down the line was off the chart and by juggling between Industrial Goods factory building and Hydroelectric plant building, I would, over time, become the defacto biggest Industrial goods powerhouse in the world.

Inevitably doing so led Illinois to declare war on me, and fighting through the streets of Chicago was no fun, but eventually their casualties got so high (they were just garrison units, after all) that they ended up surrendering before we even got near their capitol. I spent the next several months just trying to stay at peace with the world long enough to finish my goal of achieving a zero-import trade level.

I almost succeded, too. Now I was building units far in excess of what I actually needed. California and Texas, to no great surpise, got into a war with my buddies in Mexico. Not wanting to get directly involved I instead began selling them mass quantities of my military surplus - and at a good profit, too. I used those funds to buy freshed military designs from around the world, most notably ChallengerIII tanks from England, Smersch rocket trucks from Russia, and a few others. Then I began to crank those things out for export to Mexico, who in turn went from losing on both fronts to holding Californa at bay and actually gaining ground on Texas.

Eventually this upset them enough to just decalre war on me as well, but being that there was still several states seperating us, I wasn't too concerned except for the fact that being stuck at Defcon 3 was a drain on my budget. Eventually, however, I stopped selling stuff to Mexico and sent my own forces to get into the fray. I had transit treaties - they didn't. Doh!

One of the great things about Engineering units is that they're not only excellent Close Combat fighters but they help you build things faster, too. So as soon as I managed to get a toehold into the northern part of Texas (which wasn't hard, since all their troops were tied up fighting Mexico in the south) I quickly crammed a military base in there, complete with barracks so that I could repair my units right there and avoid the long drive back to Detroit. Supply depots and airfields followed some time later. Eventually this anvil attack drove them into surrender, and California suddenly decided that peace with Michigan was a good idea after all.

Well, for a little while, at least. Eventually they declared war on me again, but this time I was ready for it. On the economic front, I use what I call the "plague of locosts" strategy. Basically when I take over a territory I strip it bear, giving Scrap orders on every production facility they have, along with all their military bases, leaving behind nothing. This nets me surpluses of Industrial goods often going into the million unit ranges. Then I build new production facilities closer to home and establish one, singular military stronghold in a good spot in the conquered area. Military Fortress + Barracks, Supply Depot, Airfield, Radar Station, Air Defense, and a Missile Fabrication. About this time I shifted my aircraft production to Russian transports that could haul 3000 tons in their cargo bays, which is enough for entire legion of infantry and even an entire ChallengerIII tank unit. This allowed me to keep my troops close to home (in case my neighbors got any funny ideas) but also allowed me to quickly deploy a huge force to any of these strongholds very quickly in case of war. The other advantage of the locust strategy is that when the enemy launches a surprise attack they will find that there really isn't anything worth capturing except that one giant military base in the middle from which all my forces are pouring out of. Thus they always get a few days of rapid (and pointless) land gains followed by a massive counter attack that decimates their forces. This, in turn, leads to rapid surrender with hardly any pushing by me into their territory because by the time I've even got there their Military Approval rating has already sunk below 20% or worse. What happens next is what I'm assuming to be a coup by their own forces wanting to surrender rather than get another avalnce of cruise missiles launched at them by my Tu-22 Backfires.

Oh and did war ever come. California did not go down easy, and Georgia nearly kicked me back from Louisanna all the was to what was once Texas. Florida was edging for a fight but a strangely well stocked Cuban military kept them from actually doing anyting about it. One by one they fell and yet by now all wanted some lasting peace so that I could focus on building up my infrastructure. Eventually, however, I did manage to get some lasting peace by 2025. How? Well, with the exception of my initial invasion of Ontario, I never declared war on anyone. They all declared war on me. Thus my Treaty Integrity Rating was still well over 90% by then.

So right now I've got five research centers running at acceptable levels (but not max, because that gets absurdly expensive) and am no longer importing anything except electric power. Electric power, however, is taking a serious chunk out of my budget. In fact it would be crippling if I wasn't offsetting it with massive oil exports (taking Texas has it's advantages). Now I have all my non-garrison troops back home again (yay!) and am working on a massive hydroelectric power push (12+ stations going up at a time) and am pinpointing my research to shoot for Advnaced Solar Power (I've got a little less than one year left on the research). Consumer goods production is still inadaquate (nothing is ever perfect), but there isn't anything left that I import except Electriciy and Uranium (and Uranium is pretty cheap in comparison).

Now, how did I manage to claim all this dirt? Well, besides gratuitous use of air strikes, it all comes down to one simple battle formation in all it's multi-national glory:



The infantry units in front are for their high Close Combat against whatever they have in their cities. The two tank formations on the side act as a rapid response force to any motorized untis that tries to flank us. With fourteen units of rocket trucks backing me up I can crush an entire city's worth of garrison units in just a few savlos. Being especially long ranged they also tend to demoralize those flank-runner that come my war before my tanks even get into range, which leads to the tanks usually beating them off in the first salvo. With a seven (six in the picture) unit group of Heavy Supply Trucks in the center of this mass nobody ever wants for fuel or ammunition no matter what the actual supply lines look like. Not shown (except by a green transit line) is the final seven-unit group of AA trucks bringing up the rear in case of enemy air attacks placed in the sixth (empty) slot.

So long as they remain in formation, I have yet to encounter anything they AI throws at them that they cannot blunt & scare off with ease. Against defenders in cities or military bases it's just obnoxious: Often the enemy garrisons will be fleeing town before any of my units actually try to move into it. The caveat to this is that I never even try to move the APCs into the target town itself while the enemy is still in it. I order them to park one hex outside of it. For some reason I always seem to take less damage that way.

That's an aweful lot success for such a simple idea in unit placement, so I thought I'd share. Naturally I'm sure a human player could find a way to break it (suicide air strike to the center mass of trucks would probably work), but against AI I dare say it's pretty much unbeatable. The only weak spot that I've found is that it tends to move rather slow (the Soviet rocket trucks are snails), but then so is a steamroller, and that's what you'll feel like you're using.

Since there is no question in here, this is an After-Action report and belongs in that section of the Forum instead.

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"War is merely the continuation of politics [diplomacy] by other means"
General Carl von Clausewitz - 1832

"Defense: De ting dat keeps de cows off de road."
Catatonic - 2012

It is very entertaining and well done AAR and I wish there will be continuation

_________________
Projects: V1.4.495 is out! -> End of an Era - Moddb
Links: List of Mods

Been a long time since I did this, and in that time I actually started over with a new game. All standard default settings (normal difficulty) with only "Allied Victories" turned off. No cheats of any kind, in case anyone is wondering, otherwise what's the point?

Similar game strategy, the basic setup as follows: As Michigan with the Shattered World scenario. Moderate leader. My first step is to completely lock out all ministers from doing anything. A know this means micromanagement, but I'm prepared for that. Even military initiative is set to nothing across the board (and I've never had a use for hot-spots of any kind).

Starting as Michigan is not easy, but it does have great potential. Within it's own borders lays the capability, at least, of producing everything the state needs. Plenty of timber, excellent farming potential (at least four hexes that can each support a full six farm node), three hexes with hydro power potential, good ore spots in the Upper Peninsula and more fresh water than we know what to do with (useful leverage in trade agreements). Also we're in the the top five for technological development, which is an edge in itself.

What Michigan lacks is oil & coal production, but there are spots within our borders where these facilities can be built and in numbers enough to cover our own needs. Like ore, we start off having to import it but the potential for self-sufficiency is already there - we just have to get it up and running. So that is the first step.

Yet before even unpausing the game I go to the diplomacy menu and begin a massive campaign of handshaking. For reasons clear only to me the first thing I do is form alliances with Mexico & Cuba. This is actually really easy since both are more than willing to sign every available treaty right off the bat. From there I branch out to England, whom I also form a formal alliance with after a spot of bribery. Australia & New Zealand hold out. However I did learn an interesting diplomatic trick along the way: You still can offer alliances, non-aggression & mutual defense even if the other country isn't interested. That is to say you can always get them to agree to a one-sided arrangement where you are granting your commitment to alliance, non-aggression and/or mutual defense to them without them actually signing such a commitment to you (offer treaty, delete their end of the bargain, leaving yours up there, and click "none" on their side). The downside of this is that, once done, you will never actually be able to get them to commit to these things themselves (the game won't let them; the deal will always fail) but you will get a massive public opinion boost from that country that is nearly impossible to wreck. In other words, the likelihood of them ever declaring war on you drops to nearly nothing. So this is what I did with Australia, New Zealand and Vietnam. Don't ask.

The next step was selling off my "junk" units to Mexico. Why Mexico? Because they're my ally and they pay top dollar for American hardware. This included all my M113 infantry, my M60 tanks and all my useless transport planes (their cargo capacity is laughable). The size of my military thus reduced allows me to then quickly get Free Trade, Free Flow of Labor and (most importantly) Full Transit treaties with every country in the world outside of what I call the Neo-CSA states (Texas, Florida, Georgia, California, et al the states aligned against Michigan from the get-go). This includes the entirety of Europe, Asia, Central & South America, Africa, Asia, etc.

The long term benefit of all these treaties should be obvious, but the immediate benefit was in weapons manufacture. I've noticed that most nations/factions have one or two things that they are better at than the competition. For instance, the USA makes really great airplanes (the F14 remains a force to be reckoned with even out to 2050 and beyond) and infantry units while the Soviet Bloc does awesome SAMs, anti-shipping missiles and cargo planes. The British, naturally, have amazing warships. So starting off as everybody's neutral trade partner can allow you to cherry pick through everyone else's gear list until you end up with the best of everything. Which is exactly what I do, slowly over time: British Challenger3 tanks are an excellent early purchase (they outclass even the low-end Abrams tanks) and the Russian AN-225 Cossack transport plane. For those who've never used this, let me point out it's fine qualities: 3000 ton cargo capacity & enough fuel to go from California to Hawaii to China in one day. Three thousand tons means you can fit an entire battalion (one unit) of those Challenger3 tanks into one transport plane, no splitting required, and deliver to any airport in the world in a single day. Who needs transport ships?

So after getting treaties with everyone by showing them my peaceful intent by selling off half my military I then began planning for war & rebuilding it with better stuff. Now this also means making what I call my "Castle" zones. My first wave of production was nothing more than numerous engineering units. A full stack of seven engineers can actually triple facility construction speed in their own hex as well as doubling it in all adjacent hexes at the same time. So fourteen of those because the first order of the day whilst I was tearing down my old military facilities & rebuilding them into a pair of Castles.

Now what is a Castle? Begin with a Military Fortress. Sure it takes longer to build but you get the effects of Fortification & Supply Depot for free. The AI does not use them, which is their mistake because the typical Military Facility does not offer diddly for protection to the units defending it, making them some of the easiest places to take over. Not so with the Military Fortress. Put a full eight row of basic Garrison units in there and it will take a miracle to wedge them out. Next comes a Barracks, an Airfield, a Radar Station, an Air Defense Site (England can you this tech for cheap, since Michigan doesn't start with it) and two military fabrications. Which kind? Depends on where it is. At home in Michigan I build Land Fabrications, which after three Castles gives me six facilities to work with and all of them within the same general area. Outside of Michigan (which comes later) I build two more Castles with Aircraft Fabrications instead (for four total aircraft production). Any landlocked Castles after that get Missile Fabrication, just to keep it simple. If I'm on the coast then the two military fabrication centers become a Dock and a Navy Fabrication, respectively.

Now here is the important part: As stated earlier, due to those An-225 Cossacks my entire military is air transport capable. Every Castle includes an Airfield. This means that, in the long run, I am able to defend a lot of ground with a relatively small number of units. Since Military Fortresses give garrisons a huge defense bonus, I am always able to fly in reinforcements from any other Castle long before the garrisons get overrun. If you've ever played the Hivers in "Sword of the Stars" you know exactly what I mean, here. Having a smaller military keeps my Cassus Belli with the world lower. It's also less of a management headache since my minsters aren't allowed to to tie their shoelaces without my permission.

Some may ask: Why have an Air Defense Site and Radar Station together? Because you will notice the attack range of an ADS is actually longer than it's own detection range. In order to unlock that full potential something else is going to have to spot the enemy plane from even farther out than the ADS can on it's own. Thus the radar station, which has that extra detection range & will help you ADS reach out and touch someone easier.

Slowly but surely I manage to build up enough coal, ore & oil fields to become entirely independent from any imports. For reasons unclear to me Illinois is high on my enemies list, aligning itself with the Neo-CSA powers. Rather than sit around and wait for them to attack I decide to get the jump on them first. My UN rating will take a hit, to be sure, but it's not quite enough to get me booted.

Taking down Illinois was actually a breeze. First off, I didn't spend any effort into trying to go after Chicago. Because that's pointless and a waste of men. A hundred kilometers of endless garrisons & city fighting means that Chicago would turn into America's own version of Stalingrad. And what's to be gained from it? A single airbase? No, the answer laid elsewhere. I've analyzed, over time, what makes the AI fight on and what makes it give up. Logically it mostly revolves around military production. That is whether a captured capitol means the end or not tends to revolve around the issue of not just how many units they have left but also how many fabrication plants they have left, as well. And let's be honest: If your enemy has run out of fabrication plants and you have not then their demise is only a matter of time.

Illinois has only one land fabrication center, it's right on their western border and I have full transit treaties with all their neighbors. So I send the Army of Detroit up through the Upper Peninsula, down through Wisconsin, and park it literally next door to Illinois' Achilles Heel all before declaring war on them. Their unfortified military base falls in just a few hours. Then we dig in, tank entrenching in the open just outside of town while the infantry, artillery & supply trucks dig into the town hexes themselves. Now we just have to hold them off until our own supply lines can build up through the other states & into our new holdings in Illinois. Since I use a use a seven-stack of Heavy Supply Trucks as the centerpiece of my battle formations, this goes smoothly & no one runs out of ammo before regular supply begins to come in.

From there I sweep straight east and simply cut Chicago off from their own capitol. Doing a constant bait & switch with my units quickly attritions what is left of their army: Place infantry in a city hex, dug in, with armor stacked just a few hexes away. When the enemy attacks the city my armor sweeps in behind them, cutting off their supply, and then fishhooks into their rear flank. Caught between the hammer & anvil the enemy units never stand a chance. Nor do they ever learn, but hey, it's AI so what do you expect?

Springfield falls within a week of my war declaration. The Neo-CSA are not very happy, to say the least, but only California has the will (or ignorance) to outright declare war on me. A note on AI & war declaration: The AI will factor in whether or not you actually share a common border with them in deciding to declare war or not, and they're much more likely to do so if you don't share a common border. Less risk makes them bolder than those who realize that you're right over there and looking at them with tank. Of course, this is when all those transit treaties come in useful - especially if the enemy lacks them.

Now taking on California is no easy feat. It's big and it's military is no joke. However it can be done, with a lot of patience. The first step was getting all my crap over there next to their northernmost border. Why north? Sparsely populated, easy access to two of their own military bases, only two major roads that I know the AI is going to funnel everything down (which makes them easier to ambush). Yet even then I am cautious: I am far from home, supply will take forever to arrive, and repairs & reinforcements will likewise take forever should they be needed (and they will, oh how they will). So my first step is to entrench my tanks along the highway and drag over those engineers off their domestic projects to help out here. I barely penetrated less than a hundred kilometers into their area when I had my entire force form a semi-circle and entrench themselves into the budding Castle hex I blueprinted into the newly acquired land.

With my seven stack of engineers on it I am able to get my Barracks build in only one week, which is the most critically important part because that allows me to repair my invading units right there in the same territory that we're invading. It also boosts supply for fending off enemy attacks. Now one of Michigan's weak spots are having diddly for an air force (don't let the presence of Selfridge AFB fool you - we ain't got squat), which is why I invested in those SAM trucks early on. Sure, having my own air force built up would be more effective, but SAMs are cheaper, faster to build and can do the job until I feel like getting around to it. SAMs are much needed here because California does have an airforce. Egads to they ever! This discrepancy in air support would become my number one obstacle in all my battles to come over the next three years, but I managed to persevere nonetheless.

Lucky for me that mutual defense pact with Mexico paid off, which meant that California was now embroidered in a two-front war. Austrians never learn, I guess. The Army of Detroit was entrenched like a cyberdyne systems tick in their north and the Mexicans were hitting them from the south. In the end I made more gains than Mexico did, but that's mostly because they were attacking major metropoli whilst I was hitting mostly empty space. Although it took over a month of constant fighting, Michigan & Mexico eventually linked-up somewhere around Los Angeles and California surrendered not long thereafter. As a note, it was impossible to completely avoid urban city fighting in California, but it was always possible to encircle the major population areas (such as San Fransisco) and cut them off from reinforcement & supply, which means that I was constantly leaving behind pockets of enemy territory left unconquered, but when all they had was static garrison units & no way to get help, what was the problem? The pockets all closed in the end when their government raised the white flag, which was far easier on my troops than grinding my way through them.

Next chapter: Taking over Florida and China. You read that right - China.

Chapter Two: Swampland of Desire

My recent success in annexing Illinois & California came with it's own set of problems. While California allowed me to build my first Uranium mines (the one resource that Michigan is totally lacking in any amount) I now found that my ability to keep up on timber, water and consumer goods was no longer up to par. While I laid blueprints to get those issues fixed, I began to assimilate California properly. I mean that in the Borg sense, too.

First I began to scrap every last one of their military bases (except for their research centers - those I could use) and then rebuild them into a second Castle hex (port type) off the coast of Los Angeles. And I mean that literally, too - I began building a bridge out to an unoccupied island nearby and put the port out there. As a rule I try to keep Castles far from population areas. That way any enemy attacking is going to have to come across lots of wide, open terrain which makes them easy to spot and even easier to engage with rapid-response Challenger tank teams. An average of two per state is well within my budget and, compared to the amount of stuff states normally have in them, once I scrap their native military entirely & replace them with Castles I've simultaneously made my own military presence both small and more effective.

By capturing California & avoiding major city battles I managed to acquire most of their navy perfectly intact, including a Nimitz class aircraft carrier and half a dozen Improved Los Angeles submarines. These would come in handy so I kept them. Most of their other stuff I ended up selling off to Mexico (at a huge profit, naturally). Why do I keep feeding Mexico so much? Because my second biggest threat is Texas, which obviously borders Mexico. By selling my stuff to Mexico I can, at the same time, lower my own global cassus belli while still forcing Texas to back off from their threatening posture. Sure, they could declare war any time - and in doing so get a bonus war with Mexico via mutual defense pact. A Mexico that is strangely a lot more heavily armed than they first appeared to be. Ditto for Cuba, though to a far lesser extend. This is a lesson that Florida learned the hard way when they declared war on me.

I managed to pick up a few transport ships along when I inherited California's navy, and this was one of those rare times I would actually have a need for them (read: amphibious assault). Since I shared no borders with Florida I had time on my side, which was good because getting those slugs from LA down through the Panama Canal and back up a port in east Mexico took quite a long time. The rest of my army just drove across Mexico itself to meet them on the other side. My airforce, what little of it there was even after California's donations, flew over to friendly airbases in Cuba. And those half dozen submarines? They led the way, sinking 90% of Florida's navy within a week of arriving at Havana.

With that out of the way I picked up my troops & sailed them right into the Florida Keys. Again I faced a long wait for supply but not as bad as I did in Texas because you can't throw a dead cat in Florida without hitting an airfield, and airfields bring supply in much faster than normal. Defending until I got my latest port-type Castle started was remarkably easy, as I built it pretty much where I landed in the end of the Florida Keys (Island bases appeal to my inner evil genius) and there is only one highway on & off the keys. This meant that every unit they threw my direction was basically coming right down a narrow tunnel where my own tanks were waiting to ambush them. Have you ever noticed that units entrenching in bridge hexes become invisible to the enemy? By the time my barracks was up & my army ready to move out pretty much everything Florida had left that wasn't aircraft or artillery had already been pulverized (either dead or deep in repair). Once again it was time for the SAMs to earn their pay, as Florida has a bajillion airfields for a reason. Plus it was a long way from the keys to their capitol in Tallahassee. Luckily they only had one major military center up in their northeast end. Although it was a royal headache to take (insane amounts of stacked artillery) once it finally did fall then the capitol itself was simple.

A note of AI & artillery: Egads the AI is in love with artillery & AA guns! Get to their capitol and you'll find every hex around it is filled with artillery overflow because it can't any more in the capitol hex itself. When thirty or more of those guns open up on you at once your units will panic & flee so fast that it's embarrassing. There is, however, a way to deal with it. It's probably not the best way, but it works. Simply put, side-swipe them with tanks. Get a good sized stack of tanks, at least four battalions worth, and instead of attacking the city itself have them sweep through a ring two hexes beyond that, close enough to engage the enemy's artillery stacks directly (you'll slaughter them, and tanks have the best resistance to artillery morale breaking) and far enough away that the city hex itself can't hit your tank stack with a Close Quarters attack (which would end badly). Don't stick around! Blow them up and fall back before you run out of fuel & ammo (which happens faster than you'd think). Resupply and repeat until you've weeded out all their floating artillery run-off and your infantry attacking that city at long last will have a much better go of it.

About halfway through this invasion Alabama declared war on me, too, but within hours of Florida surrendering & them quickly realizing that they now shared a border with me and oh crap their army is right there they quickly offered a peace treaty without a shot being fired. I accepted, because frankly I was tired of the DEFCON drain on my already stressed economy and I needed time to both tear down & rebuild Florida into the model I was accustomed to. One thing I left alone, though: Kennedy Space Center. I know had to ability to launch all those satellites that I had been building up to now, and without having to spend a dime on researching Orbital Launch Pads and all the other associated technologies need to start my own space program from scratch. Thanks, Florida!

Most of the second half of 2022 and the first half of 2023 would be spent just getting everything rebuilt & up to par again. For those wonder what I was researching up to now the answer is mostly transportation. Anything with an infrastructure rating boost was my main focus. Infrastructure boosts increase production values across the board, which is especially important when trying to offset the loyalty penalty for captured areas. Plus in wartime it helps me get more supply delivered to my units faster. Advanced Sterling Engines fell into this area as well, which was the first step to getting Advanced Solar Plants ASAP at tech level 116. Over time I would spread those things everywhere, jamming them into any empty slots left over when building any other type of industrial facility. Got a four slot timber facility? Two ASP centers, then. Four slots of oil production? Two more ASP centers. Four water works? Two more ASPs. Most of them were on pause - I didn't have even a third of industrial capacity I need to do them all at once, but I always laid blueprints as soon as I made my plans and then just left them on pause until the chance to actually build them came up the queue.

Eventually, though, I got everything running well enough to begin planning a new conquest. I checked my cassus belli list to see whom I could declare war on without honking off the UN (whom were only just now starting to forgive my attack on Illinois year earlier). It did not look promising: Northern China, Southern China and Japan were my only options for 100% Cassus Belli. I opted for Southern China. I noticed a large island on it's south end that would prove very useful to me. With the remainder of Florida's navy finally repaired & added to my own I now had seven SSNs and a six stack of destroyers, along with half a dozen small carriers & transports. I drove my army back to The Region Formerly Known as California and loaded them up into ships & planes at the port Castle that I build on that little island out there. Then I sent them all to Japan to chill at their bases until my combat navy was in position.

I waited until they actually arrived before declaring war, of course. I also checked South China's diplomatic standpoint and it did not look good for them: They were already at war with Northern China, Manchuria, Myanmar, Tibet, Inner Mongolia, Vietnam, Taiwan and the Philippines. In other words they were at war with everyone they shared a border with and even a few country's they didn't share a border with as well. Soon there would be one more added to that list. So while invading China may seem to be a stupid idea at first, upon closer inspection I realized that I actually had a lot of help in this and would just be another small player trying to take a chunk out of them before North China finished them off. Or so I thought.

First my submarine fleet swept the waters around the island, which was easy but time consuming. South China had dozens, if not hundreds, of these little useless patrol boats scattered about everywhere. They made good target practice but every time I sunk one I'd spot three more in the next hex over. So it took a while, but eventually I managed to clear them out enough for my surface combatants to arrive. My plan was to use the destroyers to soften up their defenses on the island before my transports arrived. Things did not go according to plan, however, and I soon learned to passionately hate the ubiquitous Chinese rocket trucks that seemed to be everywhere and also seemed to have an effective range of infinity.

My destroyers survived but were sorely out ranged and outgunned by those infernal rocket trucks. This meant doing it the hard way, but lucky for me that giant island had no bridges to the mainland, two ports and zero worthwhile military facilities other than that. Which meant whatever they had to defend with when I arrived was all the were ever going to get. The Challengers made short work of the cheap Chinese tanks and gleefully made scrap out of their rocket trucks rightward. The island thus secured I then began to (you guessed it) build a navy port Castle on it for supply and much needed repairs for my destroyer fleet. It also made a good place to ferry in troops on my carriers (which, not being amphibious assault ships, required ports to do their business). Building the Castle was a long process, as was getting more troops sailed & flown in from North America. Along the way I missed a lone Chinese destroyer that just happened to sail into my path and sunk my Nimitz class carrier with two battalions of infantry on board. This was my biggest & most humiliating losses thus far in any conflict, and while my submarines quickly too revenge on the Chinese ship it wasn't going to bring back my prize nuclear carrier (and the only one that could actually launch the F-14A Tomcats that were the start-up of my own newly budding air force at long last).

After all this was done, however, a couple of months had passed in which I mostly had stayed out of the conflict (except for my submarines, which now made a point of sinking as much of the Chinese navy as possible on general principle). During that time South China has managed to wipe out Inner Mongolia but was, at the same time, starting to lose a lot of steam due to trying to take on everyone at once. Vietnam in particular, my one-sided ally, started to make a push up from the south just west of my own island position that actually took a bit of bite out the Chinese, much to my surprise. Soon after my own troops landed on the mainland as well. While resistance was still there, as I estimated it was significantly reduced from the military monolith they represented back in 2020. I worked my way both north and east, with my desire being to follow the coast line & seizing all their ports but I also kept diverting to push north whenever Vietnam would launch a new offensive, if only to keep pace with their own northern drive. Ally with them, sure, but trust them? Sorry, but many times I sat & watched Chinese defenders beat back a Vietnamese attack without bothering to help simply because I wanted the town for myself - so I wait until the Vietnamese gave up & then rush in to finish off the already damaged Chinese defenders and take the town for myself. It was a mutually parasitic relationship.

I built another Castle on the mainland not far in, with Land Fabrications since this was the focal point of my presence in Asia and, to be honest, I was already sick of shipping crap all over the world. Build local, right? Another navy Castle ended up just south of the wicked evil pie sliced of doom that formed the area around Shanghai. That whole area was a nightmare. Attack any of the three wedges and artillery on the other side of the river would open up on you. Any wedge you committed to would become an overstretched supply line in no time and I simply didn't have the force size to try to run down all three at once. Plus they stacked more artillery than I would have believed possible, most of it those infernal rocket trucks, and all of it inside the near endless city hexes that made up the area - so there was no easy way to get to them. Every one had garrisons backing it up & taking the hits for them while they kept pounding at my troops. I'd have to send units back in for repairs at less than 20% health remaining over & over again. Of the approximately 150,000 casualties I had taken since starting the game I'd say at least 100,000 of them were all in the Shanghai zone.

But it did fall. And that did me exactly no good because they just moved their capitol rather than surrender. It relocated far west, into their heartland. After much time spend in repairs I came back & took this new capitol. They moved it a third time, now as far west as they could, past the Vietnamese line & right next to their last major military production center.

Aha! Production center. That was the problem, then. That was what I would have to capture if I was to ever truly break them. I ended up crossing all the way through the Vietnamese held area (they had just gone straight north until they reached North China and only then really started to try to expand any), coming out right on top of one of their airfields (which really boosted supply fast) and then I drove for their last remaining fabrication center while the Vietnamese army pounded their third (and hopefully final) capitol. They bought me the distraction I needed, as China had thrown everything they had left into defending the capitol and relatively little to defending the factory itself - which was still a lot, but not too much to overcome. It still wasn't easy, though. Once I got it, though, I didn't even try to repair anything. Scrap orders all around. I didn't want to leave anything for them to come back to should they break out of the capitol, which looked like it may just happen because the Vietnamese were starting to fall back after fierce fighting. Which played right into my hands, naturally. Though temporarily victorious, the South Chinese defenders were also heavily damaged & almost completely out of supply. While I wasn't in peak shape, either, my supply lines were strong. We both traded heavy damage for the first few hours but their quickly burned out what was left of their ammo faster than they could get it back with their measly town supply trickle. I, on the other, had a seven stack of Heavy Cargo Trucks behind my guys and had been spending most of my research on infrastructure perks (my rating was well over 107% already). By the second quarter they were on the ropes and their third and yes, thankfully, final capitol fell once and for all. South China surrendered.

What was left got split mostly between Michigan & Vietnam, leaving a map that looked like this:



Now the bad news: Compared to the problems that came next, taking China looked easy. I now had a population of 668 million people, which made Michigan the 2nd most populus region in the world (behind India). And every one of them wanted cars, TVs and personal computers. What they got was a completely overloaded economy. Everything fell short. I wasn't even making 20% of my quota for food and water. Less than 5% of consumer goods and timber. Less than 50% for oil & electricity. My GDP had dropped from around $36,000 to under $17,000 overnight. Inflation suddenly shot to -47% (in real life that would probably be a good thing, but...) and unemployment shot up to over 80%! - all within a day of South China surrendering and over six hundred million peasants being added to my roster of Citizens Demanding All Kinds of Stuff.

The only light in this pit of despair was that my tax income also shot up to well over six billion dollars a day net profit, due to sheer numbers if nothing else. It didn't stay profit for long, though, as I ended up spending every penny of that on imports just to keep the emigration from going over the ten million a year mark (seriously, over two million people fled in the first month). This included absurd amounts of imports of industrial materials just to build the new factories to make more industrial materials so that we could begin making the facilities to produce all the other stuff we needed. For the next year this was all I did, shifting all research into social programs to reduce costs & waste and increase efficiency (with six captured research centers total I was now spending an absurd amount on research, but I felt it was justified as just shaving 5% off health care, for instance, would amount to saving over $75 million per day at my new population level.)

So it is now 2024 and I've finally gotten things under control. I only stayed out of bankruptcy do to numerous donations from England, Mexico and yes even Cuba. But in the end I have finally managed, over a year later, to get enough farms to feed everyone (South China is the biggest breadbasket in the world. Seriously, take a look at it's agriculture potential some time). I finally managed to get enough water for everyone shortly after that, along with electricity. By now I had the Advanced Solar Plant technology (finished right before South China surrendered, in fact), which was expensive & slow to build but hey, free energy! This lowered my costs a lot once they finally started getting finished. Oil also took a long time to get under control, as did electricity - in the end I was forced to raise domestic prices a drastic amount to reduce consumption. While citizens in stand-alone Michigan were paying only a 30% markup on everything but consumer goods (50%), the new norm was 30% markup on food & water, 50% on consumer goods and around 80% on oil & electricity. This hasn't made people happy, or so I thought, but while the GDP has dropped to barely $15,000 per year my Domestic Rating, which has dropped to less than 5% the day after South China fell, is now up into the 30% range again. We're still completely borked on Consumer goods, barely producing 30,000 of the over 180,000 units demanded per day, so there is still heavy reliance on imports there. And while all other social programs are 100% funded, social assistance is still only around 20% funding (Then again, fully funding it would be over eight billion dollars a day just in itself. We just don't have that kind of money, sadly.) Now you can see why I made a point to get Free Trade agreements with the entire world in the first week - so I can do all this stuff without using ministers or having to personally handle every offer than lands on my desk. If it's for sale anywhere then we can get it. That simple.

Still, it's only been one year, and we're already building the new chain of consumer goods factories now & the power plants to run then. Once those get done and we cut out the middle men in that area we should be able to make enough profit to get our social assistance back in line with the rest at 100% (which should do wonders for the overall GDP). Within another year we should again be completely self reliant and ready to annex on some other unfortunate country into our growing empire.

I'm thinking Japan.

Getting a foothold on Japan was not easy. Okinawa was simple enough, but the wasted no time piling up dozens of squadrons of F-15 Recce fighters and hordes of Storm Hunter tanks to defend their coast line. Still, I had planned ahead and had finally finished construction of my Iowa Class Battleship & a pair of Akula submarines to add to my naval assets by the time I had launched my surprise attack on Japan right after the stroke of midnight on December 7th, 2024.

The first few weeks consisted of little more than patrolling around with my submarine fleet (five Improved Los Angeles class that I had captured & the two new Akulas), clearing out the numerous patrol ships and light destroyers scattered around the Okinawa islands. For the attacks themselves, however, I did not use transport ships right away. Instead I used my F14A and new F14D interceptors as bait to lure their F15s into an air battle while a lone AN-255 Cossak slipped in behind them and dumped seven battalions of Green Beret IIs on their shore line. Since they had nothing on the island but basic garrisons and the airfield itself, I simply marched my troops across and into their airbase, which fell within hours. There was a bit of island hopping involving multiple trips with a pair of CV-22 Ospreys (I wanted to try them out), but once their air base was captured I began to ferry everything over to it.

Getting onto the mainland was far more problematic and took well over a month to prepare for. First, just getting those aircraft to the area with my Nimitz sunk was no simple matter. I took my A10s and F14s and flew them up through Canada, to Greenland, then Iceland, then England, then mainland Europe and the across the world east to my bases in Southern China. But they got there... eventually. The IJAF was still no laughing matter, their F15 Recce fighters were more than capable of dealing with my F15s, and my new batch of Soviet SAM trucks were still too small in number to take on the vast air armada Japan flew. What was worse was that all of those planes seemed to be carrying a hundred anti-ship missiles each, so my surface combat fleet (five destroyers and my battleship) spend half it's time parked right next to my SAM units and the other half getting repaired in drydock. I began building a naval Castle in Okinawa, but those things take three months to complete without Engineers to help out. Currently all my engineers (21 in all) were still back in America building Advanced Solar & Consumer Goods plants as fast as possible, along with a new facility packed with R&D centers (which would eventually bring my total for laboratories up to 10).

For weeks my submarines would sit and fend off waves of incoming Japanese destroyers as they tried to rush my transports and combat ships anchored farther south. By the time their zerg fest began to subside the lowest kill count for my submarines was over 25. Their navy wasn't completely wiped out, not by far, but the stopped attacking at least. Now it was my turn. I snuck my submarines up and began picking off their own defense ships & submarines from a safe distance. Next I used them for spying, and found that there was well over fifty battalions of Storm Chasers huddled all along their coast, just waiting for me to land. It looked hopeless but then I noticed that they only had half a dozen or so mobile artillery units in there. So I sent out my A10s, using the F14s as escorts (which, being outclassed, made them more or less bait & distraction), picked out their artillery units for attack and quickly knocked them all out in just a couple of sorties. Sending my now mauled airforce into repair was acceptable, as their main job was done. With the enemy artillery removed from the coastline I was now free to bring my own floating artillery up. Destroyers can make quick work of any tank that isn't under the cover of a city, and what that Iowa Battleship did to exposed tanks was truly inspiring (Now I wish that I had made more than one, but at over two years to complete... oh well). After several days of bombardment the coastline was finally cleared enough to make my move. I loaded all my airborne troops up and timed them to land right on top of their cities right as my troop ships hit the beach, with my war ships holding the line. We quickly secured the city hexes in question, and I ordered my infantry (M1A4 Bradleys, Alligators and some new M111s) to quickly entrench while I sent my transports back for reinforcements. We had managed to form a bit of semi-circle, which was perfect because that gave me a safe place to unload my stack of Heavy Transport Trucks with them to make sure they didn't run out of ammo too soon when the inevitable counter attack arrived.

I did not have to wait for long. Another giant horde of Storm Hunter tanks came barreling down the highways at me in a mad rush. The fighting went on for days, and our supplies did indeed finally begin to run out, but we managed to outlast their resolve to attack and their units ended up falling back & retreating to their military center northwest of our landing point just in time (one more day and we would have lost everything due to lack of ammo). Once the fresh troops arrived we dashed straight for their nearest airport & seized it and the surrounding area while their main force was still under repairs.

Once the airport was secured their fate was sealed. I began building another Castle on the mainland and flew in an Engineering team from America (Seriously, get yourself some AN-255s from Moscow. You won't regret it.) to help speed up the process & get that all-important Barracks up in just under a week. By now my units were getting supply in (the airport helped a lot, too) but they were still pretty battered. Half of them had less than 25% health left and none had more 75% left to work with. All set entrenched in cities to get the most out of their defensive abilities. Luckily by this point fresh artillery had arrived. I had learned a painful lesson in dealing with those Chinese rocket trucks before, and I intended to teach it to others in return. These new Russian models had, with the technology I bought with them, an effective range of well over 100km. This meant that I no longer had to rely on my own navy to repel theirs, as a stack of rocket trucks could sink nearly any ship within two salvos and at obnoxious ranges as well. This was good because the months of fighting had left all my ships in need of some repair time in Okinawa, where we had only just now finished our docks. Two months just flies by when you're sandbagging.

Once we got that barracks on the mainland built then I began circulating all my units back through it to get them operational again. The JDF made a few token attacks along the way, but it was clear that they had spent their bolt, so to speak - none of these attacks involved more than one or two tank units and some cheap scouts. Once my units get repaired I aimed to keep them that way and didn't hesitate to send them back to the shop even after minimal damage. By now I had half a dozen tanks and artillery, plus support trucks, and over thirty mechanized infantry all piled into Japan. By rotating the infantry into two stacks of seven I always had fresh units able to to hit any city hex from two sides at once, which made short work of their garrisons, and still always have plenty of freshly repaired units ready to step up after every new city fell. Eventually I took their military complex with so relatively little trouble that it was almost disappointing - there was nothing left but unsupported artillery & garrisons. There were also over two dozen Storm Hunters that were in for repairs that all popped out in a last ditch effort, but none of them had more than 10% health left to begin with, thus they merely collapsed like so many dominoes.

That area seized I am now pushing my way up the mainland. I've been scrapping pretty much every facility that I've encountered so far, since I've actually got enough domestic production to keep up (so far) without any new additions needed, and all those materials are helping me get my military facilities built faster. I can already see that it is only a matter of time before all of Japan has fallen - the worst is over, the rest is just going to be one very long, drawn out mop-up operation from here.

This was not the end, oh no. They only ended up moving their capitol to Yokohama and then even farther north. True to their reputation, they were tenacious in their refusal to surrender. Hex by hex I had to grind my way through an endless wall of garrison units. Even after I had taken every last one of their production facilities they still fought on. By the time they had finally surrendered there was little more to their country than some Aleutan islands. Their military approval rating had literally his zero by that point. I had ended up having to buy over half a million tons of military goods from Moscow to keep going on (rocket trucks are ammo hogs like nothing else) and I burned through nearly all of them in the process of pushing through every last urban hex in all of mainland Japan. Which is exactly what I had to do before their will finally broke after the longest & most difficult battle yet.

While my casualties were relatively light, I did end up losing one destroyer and a couple of infantry battalions along the way. Of course the amount of time spent in repairs meant that my actual number of soldiers lost was significantly higher. By the end of it I had lost close to 50,000 troops... and Japan had lost over 750,000 (most of them garrisons). Civilian casualties were in the millions, as the rocket trucks had no qualms about shredding a city and it's population in half just to take out a single garrison unit. And still they fought on. It took eight months to defeat Japan from start to finish.

But it was worth it. The top three positions for technology were Michigan (us), Texas and Japan. Now there are only two, and we're currently in the lead (tech level 119 versus 116). Now the long trip home begins - fighters flying literally across the world, ships going back to America and transport planes doing non-stop flights from Detroit to Tokyo for weeks on end. Oil production is no longer anywhere near enough to keep up, so that war with Texas might just have yet another reason to come sooner rather than later. Still, I am growing a bit war weary. We have numerous new higher tech unit designs in the research queue, now, and I'd like to actually bring them into play before making my move on the Neo-CSA's oil fields. Texas will not be an easy foe and I need to bring every card I can into play before taking them on.

This was actually easier than you'd think. By now the real problem I faced was the UN. As much as I'd like to consolidate the rest of the USA under my thumb, the problem is that they've never actually done anything to me so I have no cassus belli with any of the other states. The only countries that I did have any cassus belli with were South China, North China, and Manchuria. Upon closer inspection I noticed that all three of these factions were already at war with at least five other countries apiece. That means that their military would already be diminished & spread out over a large area (How large an area? Oh, about China size). This meant that it was doable. So I packed up my troops & began shipping them over to my naval fortresses in Place Formerly Known as Japan.

Now if you look at the map you will notice a nice chunk of island on the south end of Southern China. No, that's Hong Kong. I mean the larger one, farther south. That's where I made landfall. Why there? Because there was nothing they could do about it. There is no bridge to the mainland, so once I dumped my troops out there was no way for the Chinese to get reinforcements past my submarine blockade. That island fell quickly - just garrisons defending after my navy bombarded all their other forces into dust, and my troops were fresh. Still, after taking it there was now a month long lull in the action. Southern China couldn't afford to send anything else my way (too busy fighting Northern China, Vietnam, Tibet, Mongolia, etc) and I was stuck on the island myself... for now. Naturally I began building a new naval base for supply & repairs, so the delay on my end was waiting for my Engineers to get it operational.

Along the way I allied myself with Vietnam, since they we're just west of me and trying to push northwards themselves. Figuring they'd be my new neighbors once all this was over I figured I'd take advantage of their current crappy situation to get them to sign right up easily. While they we're busy trading shells with Southern China for a month I was fortifying my little island. By the time I was finished, the Vietnamese forces we're too battered to press forward & the Southern Chinese forces were too battered to resist the hordes of infantry & tanks pouring out of my landing ships. So fast was our conquest, in fact, that the next few weeks mostly consisted of friendly competition between ourselves & Vietnam to see who could grab the most land. They mostly drove straight north, going for a cut-off, while I aimed to grab the entire coastline (and population centers) first. This wasn't too difficult until I got into the super dense urban areas that they had packed with artillery. It took me nearly a month to clean all that out and get it under control, as well as get more bases started.

The Vietnamese effort began to poop out once they achieved splitting South China in half, so I began "Operation Landgrab" which was aimed soley at occupying the vast tracks of mostly empty space that was the Chinese countryside within. Again, not a lot of resistance per town, but sooooo many towns! Every day I was adding another two or three million people to my population.

Eventually they collapsed & surrendered right as the third wave of new M5 Infantry vehicles we're arriving via our Russian transport planes, which were a nice step up from the Crow fighting vehicles we were using up to now. After that was nearly a year of consolidation & reconstruction. Adding a billion peasants to our population knocked our average per capita income down to under $15,000. Demand for even the most basic things like food & water was off the chart, now, and it getting enough facilities built to accommodate so many new citizens cost our entire treasury surplus (years in the making, weeks in the wrecking) spent almost entirely on industrial goods. Months of wildly fluctuating prices & balances due to dependency on imports to make up the slack while we tried to get everything working again.

And once I got it all working again, got Southern China fully assimilated into my growing empire, I naturally celebrated our newfound peace & prosperity by invading Northern China.

Wash, rinse, repeat.

Oh, and Texas turned out to be a complete pushover. I simply came in west from Mexico, seized all their oil wells and waited for them to quickly go bankrupt on oil imports. Then their army ground to a halt & they surrendered with barely a fight.