In the spirit of the Cold War.

[comrade.seawolf]

Hopefully not as I would hate to have the USSR run by the AI in a game I took the time to advertize and host

Good point. Don't worry, your USSR didn't go anywhere today.

[GIJoe597]

Yay

[tkobo]

?

[comrade.seawolf]

I now have GC fully updated and ready to go. I take it we are still a go for tomorrow?

[tkobo]

Being that yesterdays tommorrow is now today,i guess i have to ask again ...

?

[comrade.seawolf]

Hopefully not as I would hate to have the USSR run by the AI in a game I took the time to advertize and host

Good point. Don't worry, your USSR didn't go anywhere today.

You can disregard this post, it was about last Wednesday.
However, today is a new Wednesday. Are we not having one today?

[GIJoe597]

More info later.

[tkobo]

As GIJoe597 mentioned, i played the us as a provider of support and units.

I supplied a few regions,saudi,israel,poland,norway,england,germany,etc... with units,goods and resources to either fight back or prepare for the coming russian invasion.

Russia was dowed by finland,norway poland,south korea,and possibly others.finland stood pretty much on its own,and fell very fast.
----

Norway recieved all of the above, but in relatively small numbers.I didnt have much faith they would hold out,even if i flooded them with units, and with inherit on,i didnt want that flood of units to go to russia when norway fell.
--
South Korea defeated north,and entered war with china.Dont remember who dowed who.They received a small amount of units (30 or so ground, and about the same in air ) and both resources and goods from me.They held china back and even made a small inroad,but posed no threat to russia .They were simply too busy with china,and again i didnt want to risk them drawing russia's attention and having them end up giving russia a bunch of units when russia kicked their backside.
---
Poland.This was wher i had decided to make the first play for an allied victory.I really thought the flood of units i was able to send their way would allow them to pressure russia and hold them long enough for me to make germany equally as ready for the war as id made poland.

Which would give the us time to power thru the techs and get those units i knew the ai becames dangerous with.And all those nice little damage ,defense and spotting bonus techs would help also.
---

In this play session seawolf joined us, and took over germany.Which freed me up from having to devote as many units and as much resources and goods as id orignally planned on.

Poland though extremely well equiped and supported,held back from advancing much longer than i thought they would have.My experience with this, as i do this alot in my normal games, was that once prepared theyed advance in force against russia.

But something i couldnt figure out was holding them back this game.they everything they needed,and were at war,but were not advancing.Id hoped they'ed prolong norways life a bit.But they really didnt.Norway fell.

Finally,they advanced.In force.And i do mean in force.I had given them hundreds of fres and hundreds of cvf-35s.The fres came on in a tidal wave.the aircraft,nowhere to be seen.

Due to numbers and qaulity advantage poland pushed to , and after some great battles took moscow.Russia simply appeared too spread out and thin in forces .In addition russia met the advance head on.often forming a front battleline right on top of the advancing polish forces.

GIJoe597 did an excellent job of organizing and engaging.

Soon after capturing moscow,the polish forces spread out to cover the area.russia took this advantage and launched a counter attack that was rolling back the polish forces quite well.Again organized very well, stacks multiple flanks and facings.

The battle to retake moscow was very painful for both sides,but clearly going to be won by russia.And all that airpower id given poland, was still nowhere in sight.

Moscow was liberated by russian forces,and russia moved to finish securing the surrounding area.It looked pretty grim for polish forces in russia.GIJoe597 was continually outmanuevering them and ripping them up.

Ahead lay what was likely to be yet another high cost battle as a city with a barracks was in line for russian assualt. But agian ,i had little doubt russia would win it and poland would be pushed out of russia, and likely face a russian invasion.Which i had little doubt,russia would win.

And all that damn airpower was STILL nowhere i sight.

Then it happened.about 5 polish aircraft sortied out in support of their ground troops.They were countered by russian air units and soon withdrew.They had little effect,but had at least reassured me the airpower was there,somewhere.

Russia started to move in the direction of, if not directly on the barracked city.There was still some battles going on around moscow as the last polish holdouts had not been fully crushed yet.The polish holdouts appeared to be dead men walking though.they simply had no even remotely reasonable chance of surviving.

Then it happened agian.About 30 or so cvf-35s surged into the battle.Russian air engaged them, and more cv f35s surged to the location.The f-35s overpowered the russian air and started to rip into the russian ground forces again.Their (f-35s) number still growing.

From the barracks surged out another force of polish fres,which also moved to engage the russian ground forces in and around moscow.It was a very large and busy battle,but the russian forces simply could not deal with the huge at this time polish airforce presence.

With the polish ground forces being directly supported by that polish air presence,they soon re-captured moscow and the surrounding area.

There were airfields right at and around moscow, and the f-35s set up shop in them.the area was now very secure for poland.And major russian ground push, was going to run right into those polish aircraft again and again.

i was still pumping units into poland, both ground and air.My build cap broke down to something like 190 aircraft,100+ ground units, and about 10 naval.My economy was on the egde and the treasury dipped below 300bil more than a few times.But i was able to keep it in the black most of the time.

My tech was at about 118 and about to get a big bump as 6 or so techs with completion bonuses were due to finish in 40 or less days.I have about 56 research labs at this point.

With poland firmly secure in the russian theatre,things were only going to get worse,as much more powerful aircraft were not that far off tech wise.terras and coyotes are real nasty, and floods of them turn things incredibly ugly for those they are targeted on.

russia still managed one good sized tank push,a line of tank stacks moved directly on polish forces, and some tanks stacks cam in on the flanks.Again very well organized.But the polish ground forces were very large in number, and the polish airforce came out to play as expected.
---
Suadi after it took out syria,dowed israel,and i pretty much stopped giving either of them supplies or units.

---
germany being run by seawolf,was no longer a priority on my feeding list,and ill let him give you his gameplay.

----
Russia,hopefully GIJoe597 will fill you in on his play also,as ive only scratched it ,giving only a very small picture based on what i saw happening.

----
india was also supplied with units,resources and goods,and at war with multiple regions,but they didnt play any real part in the gamepley that i know of, so nothing much to add on them.

[GIJoe597]

Turkey, Estonia and Georgia Republic were also war mongering on the peaceful soviet union.

Some things I learned about settings before another game with the same goals.

1. We need to start with a lower volatility setting.

Russia was in a war essentially from month one. This defeated the purpose of a cold war, but more importantly, game wise, it crippled the Russian economy. In a single player game this would not have been an issue, but the U.S.A. feeding all my enemy's with tech, resources and units was too much. I constantly walked the line between being in the red and having a positive treasury. Many times I was completely out of money, no new units, buildings or repairs. The units Russia starts with are utterly crap for ground war. It took a couple of months to get forces from the west to the east to even consider countering the Polish onslaught when it came.

By Oct 2020 the United States had this build capability 109/247/10/25 while Russia was struggling to maintain its starting builds of 27/22/10/20. Often times nothing was rolling of the assembly lines due to lack of finances. As you can see the industrial capability of the U.S.A. is just staggering. When you add in the fact he had 56 (FIFTY SIX!) research labs you can see the disconnect. It was like Ronaldus Magnus all over. I was expecting a news item about "Star Wars" at any moment.

2. We need to have a clearer house rule set in order to stick with the game premise.

In order to keep to the spirit of minors not attacking either super power all aspects of attacks must be forbidden to include sabotage. Russia struggled on an hourly basis to maintain its forces and facilities. Once Germany was involved via a human player we discussed letting them use spies against me. I agreed. In hindsight I see this was a very bad idea. Now, in addition to the multiple wars, the U.S.A. pumping assets into my enemies, my facilities were being damaged and the cost of repairs was soaring. (Note: if BG can get the AI to use spies it could really change the dynamics of a lot of play styles). I realized very early after Germany became human controlled that I was very much screwed. 2 humans against one embattled player was too much for the way this game had evolved.

One thing I would have done differently as the U.S.A. is not use other countries units. I never do, as historically we did not. Russia could have looked around the globe and acquired better units but I was bound by my personal game limits to work with what I had or could research.

I am still amazed at what crap units Russia has at the start of the game, really surprising. I have played Russia before but never really noticed it. As I pointed out in an earlier post it only starts the game with 1 undersized AN-225. The country that designed and produced this aircraft only has one?

There are many more things I could add, but the bottom line was, it was the most enjoyable game of SR I have ever played. I was on the edge of my seat for most of the game.

We plan on starting another game next Wednesday, this time I will be the U.S.A. and tkobo will be the Soviet Union. (which is a good thing since he views everything from a game/beta tester mentality and I view it as a paying customer). This allows him to see/experience both sides of the issue which should help him provide feedback to BG about the new game.

I believe the falsely named comrade.seawolf will be joining also. Game play starts at 3pm EST on Gameranger. Questions?

[tkobo]

and the human by-play was as usual,fairly funny and interesting.The "peacekeeper" lines had me rolling.

[Hundane]

Good AAR guys and great job on both sides.

Ill make a suggestion to try for your next attempt.....

To get a Cold War feel, you might try a lower Volitility with 3rd party diplomacy and easy or very easy diplomatic options. This should get your needed allies quick and also form a sort of "alliance" mentality on the AI (meaning your allies may actually ally with other of allies) as well as generate those wars in the 3rd world area you wanted to fight over. Ive managed to get this done a few times in SP (not always, its random it seems) but it may work alot better in MP with both superpowers grabbing allies.


Now for a question or two.

Tkobo didnt mention anything about his wars if any, hard to believe Cuba or Mexico didnt DoW at Very High Volitility. Or did I just miss the info ?

Did you attempt to capture German spies and if so were you successful ?

[tkobo]

i managed to keep both of them passive with diplo

[GIJoe597]

I assume the 2nd question from Hundane is for me. No, I did not ever see any message about spies, except when they sabotaged my facilities. As I do not use spies at all, I am not sure what a message would look like if I did capture one. Cannot ever recall seeing any message in any games I have played. Maybe you need to set something in the spy panel. I only ever go to that tab to build sats.

I believe those suggestions are valid and closer to what we will set the game to this time. I am thinking 2 steps down on volitility, i.e. Medium, with 3rd party on.

[comrade.seawolf]

Sorry for the late post, I have been preoccupied over the past day.

It was a very fun, exciting, and yes, funny game in my opinion. Playing as Germany, I was safe on almost all sides. With the massive allied Poland army on my one side, and various smaller allies on my sides, The only weak side was my border was the North Sea. With the U.S. on my side, I was able to get my favorite sea transports quickly (as Germany starts with too many cheap transports for its own good). My original plan was to transport units to South Korea, who of course had defeated NK, and move into China to secure a small outpost from which to monitor Russian activity in Siberia.

However, once Poland made it's move, I realized there would probably be nothing going on over there. So just for some flavor, I decided to invade Iran. It was going fairly well, but I wasn't able to accomplish much.

My most effective tactic I think was using large numbers of supply and recon aircraft to support Poland. Being an AI, they extended many of their ground units too far out of their supply zones, so I was kept pretty busy with that. Joe's Russian combined bombing runs and well organized ground attacks quickly pushed the Polish back, but at that point, they just had so many units that approaching forces were met with severe retaliation. I attempted to use spies to damage Russia's production facilities and bridges, but they mainly caused economic damage before I pulled them out.

Overall, It was an excellent game, well played by both sides. I also agree that this was one of the most exciting and fun MP games I've had.

I'm thinking, just to make it a little more balanced, (and to live up to my name), I will probably be playing as a Soviet ally next time around. I have a feeling it will be difficult, as I am mostly used to playing Germany when I'm not playing as U.S., or some other Major world power.

[Balthagor]

FYI, if you find one of your facilities is being sabotaged, put a Special Forces or ASW Helo on the location.