10-day Solo Speedrun | Ukraine in Clash of Nations

I am starting my first 10-day speedrun attempt, an idea inspired by @_Pyth0n_ in this thread: Solo Victory in 10 Days: Is It Possible?

The idea conceived by @_Pyth0n_ could be for any map - I have chosen Clash of Nations for a few reasons. Firstly, it has the fewest Victory Points requirements. Secondly, it’s full of new players, making it much easier to win with! Also, I hope that this thread and Python’s idea will inspire more people to attempt similar speedruns - and posting my results and reports on the 22 player map would be easiest for everyone to streamline the best strategy for that map, as it is probably the simplest and easiest permanent map.

Okay, so I chose Ukraine. Python thought Sweden might be a good choice due to its relatively abundant resources - we have yet to see how it compares to Ukraine. Personally, I chose Ukraine because of its proximity to so many Comintern nations. It has the Axis doctrine, so deals 25% more damage than Comintern. This is a huge advantage in the early game especially - I can choose to easily blitzkrieg two of Caucasus, Romania, Communist Russia, or Poland. Also, Ukraine is relatively central, giving it massive potential for a speedy expansion in every direction. However, this could also be a disadvantage - if three players surrounding me team up, I’ll have a hard time fighting them off whilst maintaining my momentum for the speedrun.

Note: I won’t be using any boosters or gold during this game. Perhaps I’ll regret it, but I want it to be fair if others try this!

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Okay, so onto the actual game I joined. In this original post I won’t make any screenshots, mostly because I’m on my phone and it’s just worse! I will report on everything though, and in future I hope to make reports using my laptop.

The game I joined seemed to have an average number of newbies in it, and pretty much zero players with my experience. The complete newbie accounts are: Algeria; Canada; Caucasus; Communist Russia; France; Germany; Finland; Romania; Libya; Morocco; Northern USA, Poland, Spain; Sweden; Yugoslavia. The highest account level is the Southern USA, level 89. He also has the only player k/d of over 1 - it’s 1.21. This is useful for me, as he is far away and so I can focus on all the newbie accounts to give me a boost earlygame. All in all, a good starting map for a speedrun for me!

To try to keep my popularity up in the early stages of the game, I have shared map to every AI country except Crimea and the Cossack Republic, and right of way to every human country except Poland, the Russian Empire, Communist Russia, Turkey, Romania, and Caucasus.

I start with the same units as everyone else - 18 infantry; 2 armoured cars; 3 anti-air; 1 interceptor. These are all level 1. My interceptor is very near to Caucasus, so I used it to scout out cities near me - Rostov has 1 anti-air and 1 infantry; Krasnodar has 1 armoured car and 1 infantry. All the rural provinces I scouted (Anapa; Yeysk; Belaya Glina; Salsk) have 1 infantry, and Yeysk also has an interceptor and airstrip.

I decided to invade Caucasus and Romania first. I could’ve gone for Crimea, but I decided it wasn’t worth the effort just for one city and a slight morale boost from the capital, especially when I’m trying to Blitzkrieg as fast as possible for as many resources as possible.

The Caucasian city Rostov produces rare materials, and is the closest piece of Caucasian land to Ukraine. Being the only land route to Caucasus, it provides a bottleneck - this means Caucasus can’t sneak attack me from any other side except the sea.

The Romanian city of Iasi is separated from Ukraine by just one forested rural province. It produces goods.

For both countries, I plan to move south once I’ve taken the city specified. In Romania, I’ll move from Iasi to Constanta (metal) via a goods province. In Caucasus, I’ll move from Rostov to Krasnodar (oil) via a goods province. For both countries, I allocated 9 infantry and 1 armoured car. My interceptor I am using to continue scouting Caucasus, and my 3 anti-air I have retreated to my capital of Kiev - they would just slow me down. I forced marched all of these armies (except the anti-air) for around 45 minutes to an hour. I have now (2.5 hours into the game) cancelled the first 7-8 forced marches to save on health - the back 2-3 units need to catch up faster.

I built one local industry in an oil-producing province: Dnepropetrovsk. Upon discussion with Python, I decided I wouldn’t build any industry in my cities for now - I’ll have to rely on expansion to do that for me. I anticipate early having little food, as of the 4 cities I plan to take before I go to sleep, none of them produce food, and I’m not going through any rural food provinces. Furthermore, I don’t have any core food-producing rural provinces.

As for the units I want to focus on? I want to keep it as narrow as possible, so I don’t have to spend extortionate amounts, especially considering I’m Axis. For speed, I’m researching light tanks, armoured cars, and motorised infantry. I will also research higher levels of infantry, and use the upgrade trick (if you know you know) to skip to level 3 infantry for the cost of level 2, hopefully for the majority of my starting 18 infantry. I will also build interceptors for air defence of my ground stacks - anti-air, even SP AA, would just slow me down. I won’t build any ordnance or secret - secret takes too long to research and build, and ordnance is incredibly slow. I’m betting on the hope that my light tanks and motorised infantry will be able to engage artillery in combat before they deal me too much damage! I was also thinking of building a few submarines. I am still undecided on this, as it would require building a naval base, which I think may just be a waste of my time. For now, I’ll ignore the naval tab and hope Turkey doesn’t go by sea to invade me.

I have build two tank plants, in Poltava and Kiev. I also built two barracks, in Voroshilovgrad and Odessa, and one aircraft factory in Kharkov. I build my barracks in the two cities closest to Caucasus and Romania, so I could research level 1 infantry immediately, and start producing it in these two cities. I build the tank plants more central because at first I will be producing armoured cars and light tanks, which are faster to reach the front line. The decision to make the aircraft factory in Kharkov was to save myself time and resources on an airstrip - level 1 interceptors in Kharkov are already in range of my only airstrip (which the game generated) in Mariupol. I will build further airstrips so my interceptors can reach every corner of my empire, but for now it’s easier to have them all concentrated near one country, especially when the Mariupol airstrip cost me nothing.

As I type this I am 2 hours and 40 minutes into the game. I have researched level 1 armoured car and infantry, and am producing them in my tank/barracks cities. I have also started building level 2 barracks in Voroshilovgrad and level 2 tank plant in Poltava - this is because it will give a very slight boost to the speed of the production (due to my morale being at 70%). Time will tell whether this was worth it or whether I should’ve saved it for something else! My two armoured cars have 1hr15 and 1hr30 left, and my two infantry have 1hr and 1hr15 left. I am researching motorised infantry (6 hours left) and light tanks (45 minutes left). Once light tanks are researched, I will first start producing them in my tank plant cities, then I will research interceptors. After that, there’ll be nothing left to research on day 1, and I can focus all my energy on planning my routes and logistics.

Research tab:

Planned invasion of Caucasus:

Planned invasion of Romania:

Overview of Ukraine: