Secret Diary of the Romanian King, 1936 AAR

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Cutlass
Major
Posts: 187
Joined: Sep 09 2008

Secret Diary of the Romanian King, 1936 AAR

Post by Cutlass »

I will first provide a "proto" AAR. I got Supreme Ruler Ultimate yesterday. I have already had a few short "break in" runs with the game. I think I've got enough of a handle on what's going on to try a major campaign with it. But there were some problems that I had to sort out, and some which could not be sorted out (the more obnoxious problems which persist are not problems with the game itself per se and are completely beyond the scope of anything Battlegoat could be expected to provide fixes for).

The first thing that should be noted is that my system is one that I built myself using a mix of brand new (at the time) components and other stuff I had salvaged from earlier computers that I had. As a result of that and the fact that the new motherboard had some issues (which I was not able to isolate to the motherboard itself until after the warranty expired) I can't always take software and hardware compatibility for granted. Worse, due to personal economic problems that arose my desktop system had not been connected to the internet for over a year. To save money (as well as for other considerations nobody is going to want to be bored with) I had punted my land line internet connection in favor of just using my smartphone. However, my cell phone provider recently gave me a freebie upgrade in the amount of data I could access per month. As I looked at my new data allowance I said to myself that I now had enough to play with that I could get away with taking my desktop online to the internet through the smartphone for limited purposes.

So, I went ahead and got myself a Steam account and bought Supreme Ruler Ultimate. I also ended up biting the bullet and renewing an expired antivirus program. Then I also downloaded a new video card driver. By the time I finished I had burned through about 35% of my new monthly data allowance and decided that was going to have to be all except for some very minor exceptions (like writing a chatty AAR). But that is also part of the reason why my report isn't going to be anywhere near as pretty as everybody else's with lots of graphics. For one thing I would probably have to download more software to handle some of that. For another it would make my uploads to various different boards a lot bigger and I don't want to burn through any more of my data allowance than I absolutely have to.

It turns out that my cobble together desktop system easily has the horsepower in terms of the computer chip, the motherboard, the installed RAM, the hard drive space, and the graphics card to run the game at full capacity. That's not the most serious and occasionally shutdown requiring problem. No, the most serious issue limiting my enjoyment of the game in terms of being able to run it at full speed with high resolution graphics is ... the amount of heat that the system ends up generating as a result.

One of the interesting features that I have is the ability to monitor the temperature of the CPU, the motherboard, and various other system components. Motherboard manufacturer provided system software will generate a warning display when the CPU temperature reaches 65 degrees Centigrade/149 degrees Fahrenheit. One problem though is that depending on what one is doing with the windows environment the warning display will not always be visible on the monitor. Indeed, one time when I was running the game I exited it and found that CPU temperature had reached 75 degrees Centigrade/167 degrees Fahrenheit.

As a result I am now running the game with a screen resolution of 1024x768. This leaves enough area outside the game visible on my monitor that I can see the temperature information the system is giving me so I can determine when I need to either switch the game to a slower speed setting or shut it down entirely. I also have the graphics resolution set at low and leave the "Use 3D Terrain" box unchecked to limit the amount of heat that the graphics card is generating. Usually this isn't a truly horrible problem as long as the temperature in the room I have my system in is less than 21.1 degrees Centigrade/70 degrees Fahrenheit. But my apartment has no air conditioning and winter is coming to an end.

Once I got Supreme Ruler Ultimate installed on my system I did some trial runs to try to figure things out. The first major problem that I had was that nothing I could do would get my units to move under my command. The AI was moving them around just fine but they totally ignored my input when I tried to move them. So I sent an email to Balthagor asking for his help and enclosing a zipped save game file. He got back to me and explained that the problem was that they had changed the user interface from previous versions. I was used to left clicking my trackball on a unit to select it, moving the pointer to the desired destination and left clicking again. With Supreme Ruler Ultimate you left click on the unit to select it, then right click on the destination hex. I did that and found that things worked fine. I also thanked Balthagor for his help. While I was tempted not to mention this somewhat embarrassing problem I decided that there might be other people who might benefit from having this pointed out. So now you all get to laugh at me, except for a small number of people who are saying to themselves that they're glad I mentioned it so they didn't have to make idiots out of themselves asking.

The next thing to point out is that working with 1936 Sandbox campaigns the economies are very fragile compared to the norms one finds in Supreme Ruler 2020. The first few times I started out doing things just as I would have for 2020, and totally crashed the economies of the regions I was running as a result. My advice is that until you can prove to yourself beyond the shadow of a doubt that your region can actually handle it, you are only going to want to have one facility under construction at a time. Somewhat perversely, there are several regions which have a lot of coal power plants, relatively large amounts of coal available within their borders, and NO coal mines!? So the first thing you arguably want to do is build coal mines. But now we get back to the observation that the vast majority of economies in the game can't walk and chew gum at the same time. So if you are trying to build more than one coal mine at a time, or a coal mine and other facilities, you could end up crashing your economy.

On a somewhat related note, if you decide that you want to run South Africa in a 1936 Sandbox campaign, be aware that the region starts with a land fabrication facility under construction. And South Africa does not have any military goods production facilities at start. Also, for any of the regions, when you go to produce military units they automatically get entered into the queue with "Continuous Build" selected on. While it is possible that there might be an interface option somewhere to turn that off globally, I would say that one's best bet if they want to make sure that they end up with only a set number of units is to make sure that "Continuous Build" is turned off for each unit in the queue and under construction.

And with those observations my "proto" AAR has run its course. The next posts will be from the point of view of the brand new King of Romania in an alternate timeline. Seems there was a truly unfortunate gas explosion at the palace and now a relatively young man who was widely considered to be something of a scape grace has ascended to the throne. But at least part of the reason for that is he was 10th in line in order of succession. It wasn't like he'd ever have to really worry about that sort of thing was it? Oops. (expletives deleted)
Proud member of the Spherical World Association. An organization dedicated to encouraging game designers to create state of the art strategy games in which the actual shape of the world is used.
Cutlass
Major
Posts: 187
Joined: Sep 09 2008

Re: Secret Diary of the Romanian King, 1936 AAR

Post by Cutlass »

Before we get to the fluff I'll go ahead and get the crunchy game speak stuff out of the way. This is a 1936 sandbox campaign. The political leanings of the region were set to "conservative". The scenario settings, military settings, and game settings were left at their default values. The victory condition is "complete" and world volatility is set to medium.

The minister of State was instructed to focus on trade relations. The finance minister was locked from social spending and given the custom priorities of balanced budget and inflation control. The various social spending categories were set to roughly the following percentages of recommended values: Healthcare - 15%, Education - 20%, Infrastructure - 50%, Environment - 5%, Family subsidy - 5%, Law enforcement - 50%, Cultural - 5%, Social Assistance - 5%. If this were an SR2020 scenario I would set the percentages a lot higher, but I want to make sure I don't crash my economy.

Production of a coal mine was started at hex 960,176 and a motorized engineer was deployed from reserve to go to that location.

Three elite guard units, 1 AT gun, 1 artillery unit, 1 recon cavalry unit and an AA gun were deployed from reserves and directed to take up positions in Bucuresti. The 4 remaining additional recon cavalry units were sent to the following hexes: 944,173; 947,179; 951,166; Tighina (989,171). 14 motorcycle recon units were placed in the production queue.

Research was directed to be done on the following units: Pontoon Bridging, Amphibious Barge, Motor Torpedo Boat, Paratroopers, Armed Merchant Ship, Cannone da 47/32 M35 47mm towed (AT), Oa vz.30 (recon), PL vz.12/20 90mm towed AA gun, Mobile AA halftrack 20mm gun, Panzer 35(t), P.7 (interceptor), K.39 210mm towed (arty). All technologies available to be researched were placed in the queue as well. Given that I can only research one thing at a time that is an ambitious program, But as time goes on all of that stuff is going to be needed, and hopefully I will be able to build/acquire more research facilities later.

The biggest problem that I have had trying to do this AAR is that I simply get wrapped up in the game and don’t end up taking anywhere near as many notes as I should. The date in the game is now October 31, 1943, and quite a bit has happened. Romania is Axis aligned, but except for an air transit treaty with Germany is not formally allied with anybody. Romania is at war with New Zealand, Nicaragua, the USSR, the UK and the US. The only one of those wars that really counts for anything is the war between Romania and the USSR. Romania had also been at war with Australia and Canada but ended up buying them off when they offered peace treaties for a price.

What happened is that I tried to build up as much as I could waiting for Germany to declare war on the USSR. When that happened I jumped on the bandwagon and also declared war on the USSR. The other countries declared war on me later. However, I was able to score a minor diplomatic coup in that I bought the M3 half track unit design from the US before they declared war on me. The way things have developed in this game I have been able to get away with just using mounted infantry and half tracks of various models. I have not been producing any tanks. At least part of the reason for that is with no research facilities the technology that I have access to is falling behind what everybody else has. I ended up putting my entire air force in reserve and just focusing on making sure that I had good AA units because I can’t keep up with what the USSR has available for aircraft in either quantity or quality. Fortunately at least for now it’s working more or less ok. However, building one or more research centers is now on my to do list after I get my economy where I want it.

So, how does a relatively small country like Romania take on the USSR? The same way a pygmy eats an elephant, one bite at a time. Of course it helps that Germany, Hungary, and various other assorted countries are also butting heads with the USSR so that it can’t devote all its attention to poor little old me. In my invasion of the USSR I have focused on a southern strategy and have overrun a significant chunk of the Ukraine and totally control the Crimean peninsula. However, what ended up happening was that I built my military so large that my economy couldn’t support it. So now I am in a defensive phase that will likely last for a couple of years or so while I try to get my economy up to speed.

Various annoying things that I found out include:

I can’t seem to build either roads or railroads. The buttons that would let me do that are grayed out. It may be that I need to get some technology to do that, but it seems strange to me that it would be necessary. Such technologies have been available in one form or another since the 1860’s and before. Most annoying was that I didn’t notice that was a problem until after I had destroyed a bunch of bridges across various rivers to help form defensive lines. While I have the ability to make pontoon bridges I had intended them to be a temporary, not a permanent solution to that problem.

One of the rules of thumb that I had developed while playing SR2020 really doesn’t apply to the 1936 scenarios. In SR2020 I had reasonable success in building industrial goods, military goods and consumer goods facilities such that I had one industrial goods facility for each consumer and military goods facility that I built in the ratio: 3 IG, 2 CG, 1 MG. That seemed to work out fine for the first 4 or 5 dozen total facilities that you built. In SR Ultimate (1936) I’m still working it all out, but it seems that you are going to need twice as many industrial goods facilities as my previous formula called for, and the industrial (and especially the military) goods facilities are extremely resource intensive to build.

I had been running Romania without either a Security Bureau or an Intelligence Academy. I simply had too many other calls on limited production resources and considered them to be something of a luxury. Unfortunately several years into the scenario I started having occasional weird problems with my military goods production, sometimes generating 0 tonnes of military goods on a given day for no obvious reason. So I broke down and built a Security Bureau. That seemed to forestall whoever was up to skullduggery and that specific problem has not recurred.

As far as social spending goes, through time I stair stepped up my social spending such that infrastructure is at 125% of recommended values; health care, education and law enforcement are at 100% of recommended values, and everything else is at 50%.

That will be all for now. Once I can get my economy into shape and can sustain a real military build up I plan on disemboweling the USSR by overrunning the regions where they have lots of coal mines and their oil wells.
Proud member of the Spherical World Association. An organization dedicated to encouraging game designers to create state of the art strategy games in which the actual shape of the world is used.
Cutlass
Major
Posts: 187
Joined: Sep 09 2008

Re: Secret Diary of the Romanian King, 1936 AAR

Post by Cutlass »

As of my last post of game date October 31, 1943 I had pretty much put my war against the USSR on hold while I concentrated on trying to get my economy in order. It is now game date March 1, 1947 and while some improvement has been made, the situation seems to be that of a dog chasing his own tail. By the time I get one aspect of the economy close to ok, two other things are screaming for attention and I can only focus on one of them.

One thing that has worked well was locking my minister out of product controls for military goods and being careful with how much I was using. I have built up a surplus of 37,337 metric tons of military goods. I also had to put quite a few regions on my diplomatic ignore list because I was getting deluged with offers to buy my goods.

I'll persevere for a while yet. Fortunately the USSR hasn't been doing anything but an occasional light border probe. However, I have been considering simply starting another sandbox running a bigger region.
Proud member of the Spherical World Association. An organization dedicated to encouraging game designers to create state of the art strategy games in which the actual shape of the world is used.
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