Playthrough: Heavy Tank Spam

Here are some shots of the battle for Arizona's last city. I didn't get the total HP of my stack before the attack but you can see that their units didn't stand a chance.

Before:

During:

After:

Day 10

Got em. My milsab spies got me a reveal on Oregon and it's as good as I hoped it was. Unprotected battleships, tons of infantry, only 4 level 1 Ints plus an assortment of level 1 Tacs and ABs. I'm still first with 390, Colombia with 140, Oregon with 110, Cuba with 90. Despite being 3rd in points, the economic rankings have Oregon in 15th place (!) so they clearly haven't been investing in Industry. They should be an easy conquer, right?

Oregon's units:

Economies:

Diplomacy: Somehow Cuba has not gone inactive despite not doing anything at all since Day 6. Meanwhile, despite me at their doorstep, Oregon decided to surprise attack Washington to the north AND got war declared by AI Wyoming to the east. For whatever reason, Oregon joins Colombia and Cuba's coalition. They won't be able to help, but with share map they'll be getting some intel on my units. I expect Oregon to quit shortly after I attack.

Research: At some point in the day I complete naval bomber L4 research and upgrade my stack of 5, ready to wipe out Oregon's naked battleships.

Construction: I continue building RCs as fast as my Food supply will allow. I'm still a bit worried about my manpower--I'm only generating a bit over 1k/hr. I build a few airfields as needed to support my planes, both to the north near Oregon and to the south as I prepare for Colombia.

Production: My priority is nonstop production of HTs. I also produce some Tacs and Ints and an occasional AA.

Moves: I advance into Oregon. My patrolling Navs wipe out his battleships in 2 or 3 ticks--his forced march isn't fast enough to get away. He starts retreating land units as well. I'm able to catch quite a few stacks and wipe them out, using my ACs to rush forward and capture provinces to slow his retreat. As I capture Oregon's cities I'm able to cancel production on an AB, mot inf, and upgraded inf--thanks for the manpower and the Food!

East:

West:

By day end I think I've got Oregon pretty well figured out so I move my spies back to Colombia hoping for an update. Three milsabs + a counter in my territory.

End of Day 10: 271/5 k/d, 178/0 provinces

Panzerace: 170

Phew

gotta try that

Day 11

No luck with spies, so I'm blind to Colombia's latest movements. They finished off Central America shortly before day change and are now on the other side of South Mexico from me. I still plan to make them fight through S Mexico if possible. I'm still comfortably in first with 420 to Colombia's 180, AI North Carolina's 100, and Cuba's 90. I'm also 13th in research; Colombia is 3rd, Oregon is 16th, and Cuba isn't on the list (what are they doing??).

Start of day:

Two of my provinces revolt to Wyoming despite not sharing a border, which means the AI might inadvertently start a war. Hopefully not. I'm really nervous about my long borders with AI and they're about to get worse as I finish off Oregon.

Diplomacy: Cuba still hasn't gone inactive. We're down to 6 active players, but two of them (Alabama and Alaska) are non-factors. It's basically me vs the 3-player coalition of Colombia, Cuba, and Oregon. Somehow I'm still doing well in global popularity, which sits at 41%. I've only been embargoed by five AIs, and only two of them are nearby (Washington and Wyoming).

Research: None

Construction: My Goods supply is now the limiting factor in my construction of RCs, competing with my production of planes and AA. By day end I've got RCs in every non-resource rural province, most upgraded to L3 or in progress.

Production: HTs, planes, AA

Moves: I continue rolling through Oregon with my heavies. They've pulled back and consolidated their units, and shortly after day change I come across one of these consolidated stacks: 9 upgraded inf and a TD sitting in one of their core cities, getting a terrain boost on top of the core bonus, good enough for 54 defense against heavy armor.

Who cares, let's roll. I pull my AA out to avoid taking unarmored damage, choosing to leave my ints nearby for air defense instead.

My tanks run through them like they're not even there. I essentially finish Oregon off by the end of the day, keeping my tanks going overnight while I sleep. They decided to run away into Washington, sadly capturing Washington's capital so that I can't get the boost, but it doesn't matter.

Colombia doesn't advance at all during the day. Are they planning something? Or are they quitting after seeing me roll over their coalition mate in about 24 hours?

Status at end of Day 11:

Stats at end of Day 11: 347/5 k/d, 240/0 provinces

Panzerace: 214

Now it’s a rush to see if you’ll get to heavy’s lv4 or win first…

Even if I get to the point where I can research blueprint heavies (Day 20) I think it's very very unlikely that I get to use many of them. These stats for Axis are nasty though, with 178 HP per tank!

If I were in your position maybe I would delay the game for a few days to get a chance to play with my toys

Brando Dilla wrote:

If I were in your position maybe I would delay the game for a few days to get a chance to play with my toys

Day 12

I'm first with 530, Colombia with 190, and Cuba with 90 still (and still active). I'm crushing the list of biggest armies, with 14% to Colombia's 6% and Cuba's 3%.

My spies get Colombia at day change. (My counterespionage spies also captured a spy, but it was in territory I just took from Oregon so I assume it was left over from one of their enemies.) Turns out they were just staging to attack S Mexico. Colombia has seemingly built at least one of every single unit, an impressive feat. It takes four rows in the army bar to show all of the unit types within their army. There are some artillery and anti-tanks that I'll need to keep an eye on. Not much for planes, but I move interceptors down anyways. Plenty of unarmored and light armor, plus a handful of L1 mediums.

More units...

Even more units...

Diplomacy: My embargoes are starting to add up--by the end of the day I'm up to 8 AIs embargoing me in addition to new wars with Wyoming and Washington. I'll be continuing to take advantage of any good prices in the market over the next few days, knowing that full embargo will be coming soon.

Research: Colombia has zero destroyers and has been sending naked convoys to bolster their army in Central America, so I consider subs, but decide my manpower is better spent just focusing on HTs. No research today.

Construction: I build a little more infrastructure to speed up reinforcements towards Colombia. I also continue building RCs. By day end I've got L3 RCs in all my core provinces except rural resource province, so I start building in those core rural resource provinces next. It won't be much benefit but I'll take any boost I can get. I've got a surplus of Steel, Oil, and Rares, and my Food and Goods are limiting me in RC construction, so I do what's normally a no-no and build up Industry in two non-core cities, one Food and one Goods. Manpower is going to be my constraint going forward and I need as many RCs as I can get. I can also easily replace Steel and Oil in the market, with prices routinely under 10, while Food and Goods are much more expensive. I capture some high-level production buildings in Washington, a partial L4 AF and a partial L4 TP. I top up the TP and build a prop center in both so I can turn them into front-line production facilities. My reveal of Colombia showed some strat bombers, so I upgrade my front-line airfields to L2 (and later to L3).

Production: Still spamming L2 HTs + Tacs, Ints, and AA. These all move towards my southern border to prepare for Colombia. A few hours into the day I hit my first manpower shortage of the game, being unable to start a new heavy tank immediately after the previous one finished. My current generation rate is 1400mp/hr, and it won't get that much higher, so it's worth doing a quick calculation on the level of production my economy can support. L2 HTs are basically identical to L1 HTs in resources per hour to produce. Simultaneous production of four L2 HTs + 1 AC + 1 AA + 1 Tac will require ~1600mp/hr, but that also assumes I'm perfectly efficient in my production. In reality, I lose potential production hours while I sleep, so a more relevant calc might be on a per-day basis. Let's say 1500mp/hr, or 36,000 mp per day. Each L2 HT is 2170, each Tac is 1500, each AC is 1400, each AA is 940. I can comfortably produce 12 HTs/day + 6 support units, so I make sure I've got 6 L4 TPs churning out HTs and fit the support units in where I can.

Moves: Oregon still has a few units around, which I clean up pretty quickly. I continue into Washington to clean them up too (sad that I won't get a capital boost). AI Wyoming declares war shortly after day change. I don't have enough land units to fully defend so I move my Tacs over to pick off single runners, sadly not in time to prevent a lone light tank from snatching a province, ruining my perfect province capture record. I make some small progress into Wyoming by end of day, not wanting to overextend.

Situation in the north a few hours into the day:

As for Colombia, I'm just going to stack units at my southern border and let them fight through S Mexico. I have a stronger economy and am being more efficient in my resource usage, so the longer they wait the more advantage I'll have. One advantage they have is lack of borders with AI--I've got a lot of provinces needing units to prevent AI from running over me, while Colombia can dedicate their entire army to the front with me. They also have Premium, so they'll likely be using fire control with their artillery. Can ~half of my army, consisting of mostly slow-moving heavy tanks, beat their entire army, which includes anti-tanks and Fire Control artillery? They'll also have terrain advantage, with plenty of hills for artillery and forests for ATs.

My southern armies and movement towards the end of the day:

Mid-day they start advancing slowly into S Mexico. After they progress a bit, I'm able to reach their units with my Ints and conduct a little recon. I confirm that they're using Fire Control--hopefully it's Offensive and not Aggressive and maybe I'll still be able to surprise attack.

I leave three milsab spies in Colombia. I also really want to know what Cuba's up to, so I add three milsab spies in their territory. I add another counterespionage spy to my own territory.

Here's status at the end of Day 12:

Stats at end of Day 12: 390/5 k/d, 283/1 provinces ( )

Panzerace: 220

Day 13

Scores: 600/200/90

I got reveal on Colombia again, but still no luck with Cuba. I assume they're using counterespionage or something. They also still haven't gone inactive. They're only second on the list of wealthiest nations so they're clearly doing something, but what the hell is it? It's now been 7 days since they were last mentioned in the newspaper.

Colombia's army hasn't changed much. They may have added another AB and some mediums.

Diplomacy: More embargoes, including my neighbor Louisiana. That's a bummer, I don't have many units in my northeast. I'm also very nervous about West Texas--I have 10 provinces that border them, including some core provinces, which is way more than I can staff right now while I'm focusing on the south. West Texas hasn't fought at all in 10 days since going inactive, so they've just been building up units. Thankfully they haven't embargoed me... yet.

Research: No research today. I decide (with help from the forum) that it's worth pursuing L3 HTs for the sake of science, so I'll be researching L3 immediately after Day 14 begins. This changes my plans for Colombia.

L3 HT stats:

Construction: My infrastructures complete, which will save me several hours per trip. I'm at the point in the game where my captured provinces that don't revolt remain below the 30% revolt threshold, so I need to continue expanding and capturing capitals to prevent revolts from spiraling downward. My core provinces are also starting to dip below 100% morale, so I'm starting to leak a bit of economic productivity. I'll be building prop centers there soon.

Production: Same old story.

Moves: I decide to start the day by snagging a nearby capital, Kamloops, even though it will start a new war with East British Columbia. It's fine, I've got a small border with them that'll be easy to defend.

My northern front, after day change but before snagging Kamloops. Look at all those revoltable provinces:

Looking further north, Alaska is still active somehow, so I'm just going to continue north and take them out later. I normally avoid fighting through the huge provinces at the top of the map but it'll simplify my border a bit and allow me to advance in a line eastward to win the game. I also continue into Wyoming, leaving my usual buffer provinces while saving their capital for last. Two capitals in one day does wonders for my economy. Thanks to my Wyoming buffers, I'm able to pull a bunch of units out and move them down to my northeast, near Louisiana and West Texas.

No action with Colombia; now that my plan is to research L3 heavies, I might as well wait to attack until I can upgrade my front-line tanks. That's still a ways off, with research taking 1d 14hr and an upgrade time of 6hrs. Tomorrow will probably be quiet. For science!

As good prices in the market dry up (and with manpower now my limiting resource), I'm starting to build up more cash to use towards spies. I add another counterespionage spy to my territory and add a fourth milsab spy to Colombia's, hoping I can continue to monitor their movements.

Status at the end of Day 13:

End of Day 13 stats: 431/5 k/d, 309/1 provinces

Panzerace: 220

great playthrough keep going

jubjub bird wrote:

Day 12

I'm first with 530, Colombia with 190, and Cuba with 90 still (and still active). I'm crushing the list of biggest armies, with 14% to Colombia's 6% and Cuba's 3%.

My spies get Colombia at day change. (My counterespionage spies also captured a spy, but it was in territory I just took from Oregon so I assume it was left over from one of their enemies.) Turns out they were just staging to attack S Mexico. Colombia has seemingly built at least one of every single unit, an impressive feat. It takes four rows in the army bar to show all of the unit types within their army. There are some artillery and anti-tanks that I'll need to keep an eye on. Not much for planes, but I move interceptors down anyways. Plenty of unarmored and light armor, plus a handful of L1 mediums.

More units...

Even more units...

Diplomacy: My embargoes are starting to add up--by the end of the day I'm up to 8 AIs embargoing me in addition to new wars with Wyoming and Washington. I'll be continuing to take advantage of any good prices in the market over the next few days, knowing that full embargo will be coming soon.

Research: Colombia has zero destroyers and has been sending naked convoys to bolster their army in Central America, so I consider subs, but decide my manpower is better spent just focusing on HTs. No research today.

Construction: I build a little more infrastructure to speed up reinforcements towards Colombia. I also continue building RCs. By day end I've got L3 RCs in all my core provinces except rural resource province, so I start building in those core rural resource provinces next. It won't be much benefit but I'll take any boost I can get. I've got a surplus of Steel, Oil, and Rares, and my Food and Goods are limiting me in RC construction, so I do what's normally a no-no and build up Industry in two non-core cities, one Food and one Goods. Manpower is going to be my constraint going forward and I need as many RCs as I can get. I can also easily replace Steel and Oil in the market, with prices routinely under 10, while Food and Goods are much more expensive. I capture some high-level production buildings in Washington, a partial L4 AF and a partial L4 TP. I top up the TP and build a prop center in both so I can turn them into front-line production facilities. My reveal of Colombia showed some strat bombers, so I upgrade my front-line airfields to L2 (and later to L3).

Production: Still spamming L2 HTs + Tacs, Ints, and AA. These all move towards my southern border to prepare for Colombia. A few hours into the day I hit my first manpower shortage of the game, being unable to start a new heavy tank immediately after the previous one finished. My current generation rate is 1400mp/hr, and it won't get that much higher, so it's worth doing a quick calculation on the level of production my economy can support. L2 HTs are basically identical to L1 HTs in resources per hour to produce. Simultaneous production of four L2 HTs + 1 AC + 1 AA + 1 Tac will require ~1600mp/hr, but that also assumes I'm perfectly efficient in my production. In reality, I lose potential production hours while I sleep, so a more relevant calc might be on a per-day basis. Let's say 1500mp/hr, or 36,000 mp per day. Each L2 HT is 2170, each Tac is 1500, each AC is 1400, each AA is 940. I can comfortably produce 12 HTs/day + 6 support units, so I make sure I've got 6 L4 TPs churning out HTs and fit the support units in where I can.

Moves: Oregon still has a few units around, which I clean up pretty quickly. I continue into Washington to clean them up too (sad that I won't get a capital boost). AI Wyoming declares war shortly after day change. I don't have enough land units to fully defend so I move my Tacs over to pick off single runners, sadly not in time to prevent a lone light tank from snatching a province, ruining my perfect province capture record. I make some small progress into Wyoming by end of day, not wanting to overextend.

Situation in the north a few hours into the day:

As for Colombia, I'm just going to stack units at my southern border and let them fight through S Mexico. I have a stronger economy and am being more efficient in my resource usage, so the longer they wait the more advantage I'll have. One advantage they have is lack of borders with AI--I've got a lot of provinces needing units to prevent AI from running over me, while Colombia can dedicate their entire army to the front with me. They also have Premium, so they'll likely be using fire control with their artillery. Can ~half of my army, consisting of mostly slow-moving heavy tanks, beat their entire army, which includes anti-tanks and Fire Control artillery? They'll also have terrain advantage, with plenty of hills for artillery and forests for ATs.

My southern armies and movement towards the end of the day:

Mid-day they start advancing slowly into S Mexico. After they progress a bit, I'm able to reach their units with my Ints and conduct a little recon. I confirm that they're using Fire Control--hopefully it's Offensive and not Aggressive and maybe I'll still be able to surprise attack.

I leave three milsab spies in Colombia. I also really want to know what Cuba's up to, so I add three milsab spies in their territory. I add another counterespionage spy to my own territory.

Here's status at the end of Day 12:

Stats at end of Day 12: 390/5 k/d, 283/1 provinces ( )

Panzerace: 220

Wyoming got me

jubjub bird wrote:

AI Wyoming declares war shortly after day change. I don't have enough land units to fully defend so I move my Tacs over to pick off single runners, sadly not in time to prevent a lone light tank from snatching a province, ruining my perfect province capture record.

jubjub bird wrote:

now that my plan is to research L3 heavies, I might as well wait to attack until I can upgrade my front-line tanks. That's still a ways off, with research taking 1d 14hr and an upgrade time of 6hrs.

In my case it's mostly for science, wanting to have fun with the highest level tanks I can.

That said, I think it's still worthwhile to upgrade. This upcoming battle with Colombia will essentially determine the game and I want to go in as strong as I can. With 30 heavy tanks on my front line with Colombia, upgrading them will cost the same amount of resources as producing 15, which would take me several days. My upgrades will complete in 6 hours. I think it's manpower well spent--I'll do more damage to Colombia faster, meaning my units take less damage in return, and they'll have higher HP so it'll be an even smaller percentage of their total health. Maybe it'd be a different decision if I was expecting many smaller battles vs one big battle, but idk--I'd still probably want the added resilience to accumulated damage.

I haven't done the math on it and might run some numbers later.

Day 14

Scores: 680 / 250 / some AI at 100 / 90

I'm crushing economically, with 244k vs Colombia's 123k and Cuba's 69k

My milsab spies did their jobs and I got a spy reveal on Colombia, again... and Cuba! Unfortunately, my counterespionage spies did not do their jobs and I got hit with three econ spies in my capital, stealing all my available cash. I assume these were Colombia's and I'm taking it as confirmation that we're going to war.

Colombia's army still hasn't changed much, just a collection of lots of random units. They've even added a single level 1 heavy tank--how cute. They've also moved a few stacks away from the front lines to clean up S Mexico. They had a stack of planes sitting in an airfield, and apparently one of S Mexico's units got behind the front lines and did a ton of damage. Woops.

Cuba's reveal is amazing. I now understand why they've remained active this entire time despite not expanding at all--they're going for achievement gold. SEVENTY aircraft carriers! Now I know I don't have to worry about Cuba backing up Colombia. If they want to keep farming achievements that's fine with me--I'll gladly pass on invading all their islands.

(Ignore the total HP, which is clearly incorrect--there's a bug when viewing the total HP of armies when combining land and sea and air units. Their carriers alone have over 3000 HP.)

Research: immediately start L3 HT research. I'm going to upgrade my front-line units before attacking Colombia.

Construction: I upgrade several TPs to L5 to prepare for L3 HT research completing.

Production: I slow production, especially of L2 HTs, to prepare for tomorrow's upgrades. I'm up to 60 heavy tanks produced so far.

Moves: I continue working my way up the Pacific coast, preparing to finish off WBC and take out Alaska, who remains active. I finish building up my front with Colombia, completing three stacks with 10 heavies + support units, along with some militia and infantry to eat damage from Colombia's artillery. In the air I've got 8 L4 Ints for cover, 7 L4 Navs for the battleships and cruisers, and 10 L3 Tacs to help clean up runners. Tomorrow, we fight.

I increase my spies yet again, up to 6 counter, 4 milsab Colombia, 3 milsab Cuba.

End of Day 14 stats: 447/5 k/d, 318/2 provinces

Panzerace: 220

Wowwwww

Keep going bro

That is absolute murder

Day 15, Part 1: Revenge of the AIs

Scores: 700 / 250 / whatever

Amusingly, I'm nowhere on the list of top 25 most advanced nations.

My spies got Colombia again. No Cuba. The counterespionage spies seem to have done their job--no economic damage and they even converted an enemy spy.

Colombia hasn't moved their units much, presumably continuing to reinforce ahead of the war. I'm not doing much either, still preparing for my front line upgrades. This is the upgrade cost for one heavy tank, so multiple it by thirty... that's a lot of manpower.

I don't have many pictures from today because I expected it to be pretty quiet. I planned out my production so that I'd have just enough resources to upgrade my 30 front-line heavy tanks right when L3 research ended, which was going to be at 3:45am local time. I'd wake up, upgrade my tanks, go back to bed, and I'd have them ready to go around 10am the next morning.

As for AIs, I was most concerned about West Texas, since we've got a huge border. Thankfully as of the start of the day they hadn't embargoed me yet. Most of my southern units had been moved down towards Colombia but I tried to reinforce this border as best I could, knowing that they hadn't fought anyone since going AI on Day 4 and had probably built up a decent-sized army. I don't have an image from Day 15, but here's what that border looked like at the end of Day 13:

That's ten provinces I need to reinforce.

Of course I'm discussing West Texas for a reason; lo and behold, they get all the way from peace to war in just a few hours and declare war shortly before I head to bed. This is basically a worst-case scenario for me--if they'd waited just another day I'd have plenty more reinforcements in place. I position myself for defense as best I can. They immediately send a 14-unit stack at one of my better defenses, which contained a few heavies and armored cars. My heavies and ACs hold them off. I've now got a decision to make--whether to go on the offensive in hopes that I can consolidate my units into fewer provinces, or allow West Texas to continue to attack my spread-thin defenses while I sleep. I choose offensive, and send a couple stacks back at the provinces their attacks had come from. I'm blind to their units but I'm assuming they'll be pretty empty after sending that many units at me in attack. I've already stayed up a couple hours later than I'd prefer, so I give the order and go to bed. That was a bad decision.

I wake up to my 3:45am alarm, start the upgrade at the Colombian front line, and check in on West Texas. It's a bloodbath. Somehow they still had a 9-unit and 14-unit stack waiting in those provinces I had chosen to attack and they're killing my units left and right. Since it's melee combat, I can't retreat, so I decide my best option is to pull my Tacs up from my Colombian front to try to prevent even more losses. Oopsies.

Making matters worse, West Montana also declared war on me in the middle of the night. Thankfully I've left enough buffer provinces that I can funnel their attacks to a few provinces, but these provinces are still much less reinforced than I'd prefer. I shuffle a few units around to line up with their incoming attacks and go back to bed.

Here's the situation I wake up to in the morning:

My West Texas nightmare includes NINE new unit losses, a horrendous result against an AI opponent. My heavies held strong but my support units were wiped out.

One bright spot is my approach to WBC's island capital--it was heavily fortified, so I couldn't rush into it with melee units unless I wanted to draw a ton away from the mainland. I decided to leave it alone and hope WBC's units would cross the water to attack me, giving me an opportunity to take them out while they were still convoys. It worked, and they sent the last of their units off as convoys shortly after waking up. At least I'd have a capital to take before day change today.

Day 15, Part Two: The Colombian Front

My heavies finish upgrading around 10am local time. Even without my Tacs for support it's still an amazing front line:

Here are the stats for the rightmost stack, which gets a plains boost:

I'm more than frustrated at the way my night has gone and it's time to take my frustration out on Colombia. There are several stacks near my front lines. Colombia hasn't seemed to be the most active player, so I decide to gamble and simultaneously surprise attack three stacks at once. This puts me at risk of being seen before I can engage in melee, giving Colombia the opportunity to fire on me with artillery and pull their units back, but if they don't see me it means all three of my stacks will engage before any of them can be fired upon.

It works. He chose the wrong couple hours to be offline, and all three of my stacks attack simultaneously just before day change. My Navs wipe out his battleships before they can fire a shot. The war has begun, and I've struck a huge blow to start.

Elsewhere, my heavies finish plowing through WBC and move into Alaska. Status at the end of Day 15:

Stats at the end of Day 15: 597/14 k/d, 357/2 provinces

Panzerace: 259

Damn this is going well