Ferocious Soldiers Roaring: MP Megacampaign

[Sid Meier]

Snooze fest for Russia, the Croatian AI put up a bit of a challenge but like with a good woman once you got your hand underneath its all over

After Croatia went belly up I sent troops to China, they just arrived and had a brief skirmish with the Japanese that ended up in a pocket, Falador has a lot less troops then I expected. Beijing is holding steady, Japanese recon vehicals made it to the outskirts.

 

[DanomitePrime]

Yup we have total world war going right now.
Ger/Rus invade Croatia. Africa bloc invades Croatia 5mins into the session. Komogols joins Ger. Africa attacks Ger bloc.
3 hours later Americans Join on the loosing side, that of the Ger/Komgols.

 

[Gollevainen]

well atleast peace offer was send in european side, Its naturally up to falador to give his demands. I firmly believe we are all adults and can negotiate reasonable peacedeals and make arragments in good faith where no one gets screwed...
...or not
But in europe, our aims are not to destroy Germany, we actually need american help for that. Our demands were from Croatian land, not from German native provinces, so that the division of Croatia is bit more equal.

 

[Fivoin]

And thus ends the peaceful era of the 1930's. The Baghdad dictate against Russia is avenged by the collapse and annexation of the Croat-Roman Empire and now war engulfs the world.
The state of the world in July 1940:

IC levels (correct this time since I rememeberd to grab them before we ended):
Axis(1041/688):
-Germany: 701/467
-Russia: 196/119
-The Roman Khanate: 144/102
-Norway: 0/0
Allies: (871/582)
-Catalan Commonwealth: 560/369
-New Californian Republic: 311/213
Comintern: (1313/943)
Ethiopia: 404/259
Kongo: 443/328
Japan: 342/261
Punjab: 124/95
Portugal: 0/0

Some statistics:

 

[King of Men]

Falador has a lot less troops then I expected

Yeah sure, he doesn't have a lot of troops over in the west where your strat-redeployments landed! In that area we've been skirmishing with single mobile divisions. Try getting your ass over to the coast where there's serious fighting.

Fivoin, I think you forgot to remove that one Persian province in Punjab; didn't they get annexed a while back? Before the world war started.

3 hours later Americans join on the loosing side, that of the Ger/Komgols.

3 hours? 3 months! Or did you mean RL hours?

Anyway, I don't know why you think we're the losing side. Sure, Japan is burning its TC by occupying a lot of worthless Chinese land. Meanwhile Germany and Russia have taken European Croatia.

 

[Fivoin]

Ack! I'll have it fixed.

 

[DanomitePrime]

3 hours? 3 months! Or did you mean rl hours?

rl

 

[oddman]

Like 12 and not like 4.

Yoshi, vR, Foels, Fivoin, Golle, Frosty, and me - looks like 7, not 4.

Besides, we started out with only 12. It's the max for CK. You want everyone to survive. Well, that's no fun, if there's no risk.

Then we could avoid ridiculous silliness of people giving up France to focus on the New World.

Served me well enough, it did.

 

[Matnjord]

At last, war!
When did the war actually start (in game)?

 

[oddman]

April, 1940.

And it looks like it will last for quite a while: the sides are pretty evenly matched.

 

[oddman]

Do I blame Oddman for singlehandedly ruining the New World and long term play balance? Sure I do! , but it wouldn't have happened if we had more smartly designed the scenario, and if we had a disincentive to try to annex Inca and Huron in one go.

It was not a failing of the scenario. It was a success of European diplomacy and a failure of New World diplomacy.
Don't hate the game; hate the player .

 

[unmerged(362573)]

kongolese india is punjabi that little piece is now punjabi.

 

[Sid Meier]

The scenario wasn't made with the blobified European powers in mind, but more towards a vanilla average. The power of the average RotWer did not match the average European; the key point anyways would be the lack of explored territory linking Inca, Huron, and Mexico together so that they could've coordinated a defense, as it was they (Huron and Inca) died alone even though they were with a little aid perfectly able to hold off the early advances.

Another thing was a lack of minors to allow for an equivalence between NA nations and European nations, forcing the natives to be colonizers and explorers when by rights the whole thing should already be explored and known to them also contributed to their weakness. If you had say, 4 player spots and 5-9 AI's of similar size to allow for expansion it would be a fairly different game.

Obviously this would still leave the coast "open" for Europeans; either the natives can rush to try to claim it or they can let Europeans land and try to play politics with them, which was what was intended originally.

 

[Gollevainen]

At last, war!
When did the war actually start (in game)?

Im not at that convinced that Germany was planning a full worldwar as per se by his invasion of Croatia, things just escaleted pretty soon into such... I also foresee that this is going to be a long one (don't mind really, since the game is crappy game if you are at peace). Lot depends where americans choose to bring their forces, though apart invading Japanese mainland, I see really little opportunities for them to make the war anyway less shorter. In long run, Catalunian+German IC is too ridiciolous for anyone else to match, so it remains to be seen are fivoin and oddman good enough players to put it on use.

 

[oddman]

it remains to be seen are fivoin and oddman good enough players to put it on use.

You're in luck.

 

[Gollevainen]

...or atleast that you want us to believe

 

[oddman]

...or atleast that you want us to believe

No, seriously, I couldn't tell CAS from STR if they danced naked on the table in front of me, yelling "I am short-ranged, with decent hard attack, very useful in blitzkrieg, and excellent at destroying retreating units!" or "I am basically a way to destroy others' IC by destroying your own, being expensive as fsck!" (File systems checks aren't expensive. I lie.)

That said, I'm focusing on TAC and FTR anyway, so it's OK for me to not know :happy:.

 

[Gollevainen]

well Air has been changed lot from vanilla hoi2arma I can atleast tell that, so Im not even sure what to build regarding them. In this map and setup with airport like every 1000 mile or so, CAS aren't that perfect as their biggest handicap is always the range

 

[Sid Meier]

Honestly Oddman's right, they have no idea how to use their IC. I saw Germany produce what? Over 100 infantry divisions when Mountainers would've been vastly superior for Balkan and Mid-East operations?

Nothing makes you focus on efficient use of IC then not having any that's for sure, I've produced entirely militia divisions, I struck gold when the last Kongo player, the one who joined us after Fasq just went up and sold me 41 or so Infantry divisions! Thus giving me the "core" in which to make my militia army effective.

Militia are terrible for the offense, I've discovered proof of that easily enough trying to fight Croatia. But with mostly modernized infantry divisions it works out fairly well.

 

[King of Men]

So there was some discussion during the game of who DOWed whom; this is in the very best tradition of megacampaigns and I heartily approve. Nonetheless there is a factual sequence of events which actually did occur, so let me outline it.

• Germany (and its ally Russia) DOWed Croatia.
• The Comintern DOWed Croatia.
• The Khanate, believing that there would be a peaceful (in the sense of "not involving warfare between the major blocs"; obviously it wasn't very peaceful for Croatia) partition, and wanting to get some of Croatian Indochina, left the Allies and joined the Axis.
• The Comintern, annoyed at the German tanks occupying Constantinople before they could get there, DOWed the Axis.
• The Khanate muttered a soft "oops" to itself, but launched its preplanned (in the sense of "Ok, if shit with Japan goes down I'm pretty screwed, but maybe if I do this I can delay the inevitable by inflicting maximum damage) attack on the Japanese coastal enclave anyway. It didn't go well. Additionally, the Comintern seemed to be a bit annoyed that I had actually attacked the people who had just DOWed me. Nu, if it was a fake war they meant to declare, I missed the memo.
• Japan occupied much of southern China, which is no great loss.
• Japan tried a naval invasion at Tianjin. I chortled in glee.
• Japan broke through my defensive line in Korea. I muttered another "oops" to myself.
• The Allies, after much procrastinating, finally DOWed the Comintern. The Californian troops in the Shandong peninsula immediately began to retreat, opening up the international border on which my left flank had been anchored.

As you can see, the Khanate DOWed nobody of any importance and is certainly not at fault for anything whatsoever, while many other people have behaved either aggressively, procrastinatingly, or suboptimally in ways that appear intended to maximise my inconvenience and hardship. Of course I mean that in the nicest possible way.