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badger_ken

badger_ken

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Jul 21, 2009
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Hello again everyone,
Fresh off the intense excitement of playing Switzerland ;), I thought I'd like to play an AAR where I finally try to win the game! Seems like there are 4 candidates - UK (no thanks), France (could never hope to match the awe-inspiring "Vive Le France" AAR), Russia (too cold :)) and China. We have a winner!

My goal, to put it plainly, is to win. That means that the UK can't. This will be a primary consideration throughout. My (very rough) plan is to try and shake India loose, and see how that goes.

Some structural notes, before we start:
(1) Re mods - as before, I am using Alexspeed's Map Improvement package, Shauf's rebel fix, and The 'Age of Colonialism' mod. Many thanks again to those authors.

(2) Re style - as always, I welcome input - want more screen grabs? Fewer? Less discussion of game mechanics? More? I aim to please :).

(3) While I'll try to win, I try to do so in a non-gamey fashion. It's just more fun this way.

Without further ado, away we go!
 
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Chapter 1 - opening moves

We load up the game, take a look at the ol' top strip, and what do we see? Not your typical power, by any means - China is at the extremes in many ways:

18361top.jpg


(1) China starts in 67th place. I hope we can improve that significantly :). Military is #1 in the world, but that's deceiving, due to its low quality.

(2) China starts extremely profitable - wow.

(3) Here's the achilles heel - technology and research. Abysmally low literacy rate, extremely low research rate. Man, whoever's been playing this country for the last 300 years was quite the noob :). The existing-technologies cupboard is pretty bare, too - roughly 1/3 of the first row is discovered. Ouch, ouch, ouch.

(4) I get a nice break right off the bat, as on day 1 Japan offers an alliance with me. As my strategy is to not worry about the Luang Prabangs and Japans of the world but try to focus on the UK, I accept the offer.

(5) Absolute monarchy, with state capitalism.

(6) That's right, you start with over 100 million people.

(7) and an enormous military, and even more enormous potential military.

My plan is in 3 parts - Westernize, Westernize, and Westernize. I'd say I have the MIL score part of that under control ;), the delay will be the technology and the prestige. For the technology, I start cranking through the necessaries, and put all my NF into clergy. For the prestige....

Korea, come on down!

I'm surrounded by much weaker neighbors. While conquering has a huge infamy hit, and I want to focus more on SOI-ing, I think I can afford one conquest. Korea is the obvious target, as it's got a very nice set of natural resources (Iron and Coal), it's got a decent literacy, and as Japan just allied with me they'll stay out of the way.

Accordingly, on 2 January 1836 I launch an annexation of Korea. Things go very smoothly, and by the end of the year I have almost all of Korea occupied. The problem is the 'almost' part:

183612island.jpg


There's one little island off the coast, and until I get it I won't get 100 warscore. No 100 warscore, no annex - I am stuck at 94. I had hoped war exhaustion would do the trick here, but I wind up sitting around for 2 years until I finally grit my teeth, build a navy, and invade the thing. Annoying, but at least it let my infamy recede a little :), and in August 1840 Korea is finally mine.

Westernization and Humiliation

That gave me 10 of the 40 prestige I need. For the other 30 prestige, I turn to 'humiliation', by far the most cost-effective (in terms of prestige for the infamy cost) way to go.

I spin around, humiliating my neighbors, humiliating Burma (1840), Tibet (1841), Luang Prabang (1842), Brunei (1844), and Dai Nam (1845). I also make Dain Nam release Cambodia, an easy way to get a little more prestige.

Oh, and throughout this period, I'm gradually disbanding irregulars and replacing them with regular infantry - by the end of this session, I'm irregular-free, and have some artillery to boot:

1849army.jpg


UK early moves

I catch a couple lucky breaks here (I think), as the UK often jumps on China early and often. My first lucky break is that they attack Burma right away, but without annexing it - they grab the southern province, giving me a breather before our inevitable land border.

My second lucky break is that for their second land grab, they attack the Zulus. Not great, as it will give the UK oodles of soldier POPs, but better there than Panjab, or Siam, or Dai Nam.

I then twiddle my fingers, and let my infamy ever-so-slowly go down, all the way from 1845 to 1848, as I chew through the remaining technologies.

The fateful day arrives, and on September 30, 1848 (beat that!), I westernize - here we see the top strips the day before westernization, and the day afterwards:

18489westernize.jpg


From #66 to #3 in a day - not bad :). In 6 more months, I should be a GP.

Research also went up 50%. Aaahhhh.

This seems like a good place to end the first chapter - the Chinese dragon has awoken and westernized, hampered only by a very high infamy (I think it's still around 20).

Until next time!
 
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Count me in!
 
Westernising in the first update?! I have a good feeling about this AAR...
 
Excellent start! I don't believe I've seen an unciv westernize so quickly before. I recommend a focus on philosophy, education and land techs, before anything else (maybe a couple of industrial techs to get medicine), since the UK is bound to come a-knocking, especially now that it can't place you in its SOI.
 
That's about when I westernized in one of my China games. You need to shake India loose before Britain gets Machine Guns.
 
Excellent work on westernizing so quickly, let's hope you can take India before it turns into a massive soldier pool! I'd advis you blitz land techs to get beat Britain, you're not going to grab India with prestige, are you?
 
Thanks for the inputs, and happy new year everyone!

Melrick said:
Excellent start! I'm going to enjoy following this.
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PrawnStar said:
Count me in!
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Tanzhang (譚張) said:
Westernising in the first update?! I have a good feeling about this AAR...
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aldriq said:
Quick start, no messing about :D
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welcome!

Vidboy10 said:
Enjoy getting contained really fast...
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I'm going to try and stay out of bad-boy for a long while - infamy got up to 23.9 and has been (ever-so-slowly) receding since then.

Selzro said:
Excellent start! I don't believe I've seen an unciv westernize so quickly before. I recommend a focus on philosophy, education and land techs, before anything else (maybe a couple of industrial techs to get medicine), since the UK is bound to come a-knocking, especially now that it can't place you in its SOI.
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agreed 100%, I've been using a rule of thumb (aldriq, did I get it from you?) of alternating army with non-army. Other than the philosphy/education techs, and medicine, I'm also sorely tempted by experimental railroad, it's level 1, and so nice to have.

naggy said:
That's about when I westernized in one of my China games. You need to shake India loose before Britain gets Machine Guns.
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aldriq said:
Quick start, no messing about :D Good luck against the beast!
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WelshDude said:
Excellent work on westernizing so quickly, let's hope you can take India before it turns into a massive soldier pool! I'd advis you blitz land techs to get beat Britain, you're not going to grab India with prestige, are you?
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Re the UK and how to actually "shake loose" India. Good question :). If I wait until I'm a technological match for the UK, I'll be waiting the entire game - I'm just too far in the whole, with too few RP, even spending 50% of them on Army tech. It's probably moot in the short term, as I'll doubt they'll leave me alone (as Selzro says), I just hope I can withstand them, they do tend to slap China silly.

So my plan is indeed to fight diplomatically (WelshDude, is this what you mean by using 'prestige'?), putting the countries in the region in my SOI, or at least out of the UKs, to whatever extent I can. My hope is that the odd rebellion will help here, too.

Xesan said:
Go Communist!
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Tanzhang (譚張) said:
Please don't.
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I think we're 75 years away from that being an issue :)
 
The trick to beating Britain as China is to stack 3-4 provinces deep at max force limits at a narrow border, and suckering their armies in. After about 4-5 battles where you kill off 20,000 men, you can start thinking about advancing.
 
naggy said:
The trick to beating Britain as China is to stack 3-4 provinces deep at max force limits at a narrow border, and suckering their armies in. After about 4-5 battles where you kill off 20,000 men, you can start thinking about advancing.
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you mean use your armies as "speed bumps" in the first few rows of depth, or do you mean a fabian strategy, where you retreat, retreat, retreat, and then surround?

winsingtonIII said:
Does the FTW in the title refer to a world conquest attempt? Because I think it should ;)
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One step at a time :)
 
:)
badger_ken said:
Re the UK and how to actually "shake loose" India. Good question :). If I wait until I'm a technological match for the UK, I'll be waiting the entire game - I'm just too far in the whole, with too few RP, even spending 50% of them on Army tech. It's probably moot in the short term, as I'll doubt they'll leave me alone (as Selzro says), I just hope I can withstand them, they do tend to slap China silly.

So my plan is indeed to fight diplomatically (WelshDude, is this what you mean by using 'prestige'?), putting the countries in the region in my SOI, or at least out of the UKs, to whatever extent I can. My hope is that the odd rebellion will help here, too.
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I heartily agree with the strategy of de-SOIing British India, but what I meant by prestige was philosiphy techs, which won't be enough to beat the UK due to high Mill and IND scores. As for the 'rule of thumb' could I reccomend doing two mil trechs for every one not? If not, I won't.
 
badger_ken said:
you mean use your armies as "speed bumps" in the first few rows of depth, or do you mean a fabian strategy, where you retreat, retreat, retreat, and then surround?
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Put your best defensive general in the first province, and once they engage, bring your bordering armies in (speed generals help). Rotate armies in and out to keep fresh units in front. It takes some work to minimize attrition (you don't take attrition when entering a province and starting a battle, and you can avoid attrition by having two armies switch provinces on exactly the same day)
 
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