I thought I'd try writing a HWW playthrough, as I write myself private ones anyway during most games. Recently I decided I wanted to challenge myself a bit more, having joined games as Nationalist China, Japan and UK, so here we have it: the weakest playable country in Asia. I had three reasons for picking it:
1. It allowed me to return to my favourite doctrine;
2. No matter how full a HWW is, one can be 99% certain that nobody's bagged it yet, so I didn't need to camp out the games page for hours; and
3. I did everyone a favour by taking one of the least popular countries and allowing that game to be replaced by a new HWW with the powerful countries untaken slightly faster than it would have been otherwise.
A disclaimer: I only play occasionally, so I'll probably do a terrible job of running the country and this will end in ignominious defeat.
DAY ONE
Fig. 1 And here we have it: one of the wimpiest armies to grace playable east Asia.
Surrounded as they are by two of the three most seriously powerful countries by far in this theatre (and, in my opinion, the scariest in the entire game), and having a weak army, the new government's first priority was to establish friendly relations on as many borders as possible. Japan being the most desirous ally, a particularly grovelling request was sent.
The Soviet Union instantly accepted, but as her ladyship had not thought to send a trade offer as part of the request, she was obliged to accept an unequal alliance (Right of Way vs Shared Map) rather than risk the wrath of a much more powerful state. Japan was much more reasonable, with the states agreeing to share maps with each other.
International peace and security being secured, Emperor Aragosta's thoughts turned to war. Manchukuo launched its first research project: light tanks and artillery, both level 2. Across the country production of artillery and militia began. Rule no. 1 in the east Asian theatre is always 'invade Manchukuo first', so I'm going to get in there pre-emptively; I've ruled out Japan and the Soviets, which leaves just one easily accessible country: Mongolia.*
An artillery division is staying right there in Hsinking (leaving one's capital undefended is asking for an ally with shared map to backstab you - I should know because I've done it) and Nanching (a port city) is remaining under militia guard, but everything else is going up to the Mongolian border. Having Japan as an ally - meaning there is no pressing urge to leave garrison forces in every city - is a huge relief, but the emperor barely trusts the Soviet Union and it's high on her list of future backstab victims.
I notice that neither of them are particularly strong players. Japan's player in particular fails its country's particular litmus test (i.e. if they don't invade Manchukuo on Day One, they're doing something wrong). Good - makes them all the easier to backstab. The Soviets are locked into a coalition with Britain and France, neither of whom bother me in the slightest as they're a fair way away from me.
As usual for me Manchukuo is already running short on goods - a combination of my habit of having every city on near-constant production (which I feel fully justified in doing here, what with Manchukuo's army being wimpy) and the fact that I focus heavily on ordnance in Comintern and Pan-Asian (ordnance foundries and artillery both chew through goods quite alarmingly). Furtunately the state has powerful - and, more to the point, rich - allies to provide aid, although begging for goods so close to first sealing the alliance is pushing it. Somehow the country is making money, so there's going to be a bit of a buffer before the emperor's chronic financial short-sightedness catches up to her.
Her financial advisors would like to know why she is not developing their industries? That won't take up goods. Most of the cities are already occupied by unit production projects that involve upgrading ordnance foundries, but the rural provinces have no such restrictions... and Yingkow, one of the only two major cities without expensive projects taking place at present, is the country's top goods producer. The other, Harbin, produces food; Manchukuo's agricultural wealth leads to the emperor dismissing industry development there as a waste of money. Metal is her next priority.
The die being cast for Manchukuo's first real war, the emperor loses interest until the first front reports start arriving.
*With the benefit of hindsight, I know what I should have done: declared war on Nationalist China and sent all my forces through Japan. With a neutral country in the way they'd be in no position to retaliate, or at least not without triggering a war with the most OP country in Asia. I did the reverse version of this, and won in a walk, the first time I played HWW, so I really should have thought of this earlier.
Feedback would be appreciated! However I should add that I'm posting on a three-day delay, so it may be too late to take very specific advice into account.
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My bad for trusting a skim-read of Wikipedia.
Have you ever done Order 66 on an 'ally'?Lady Aragosta wrote:
My bad for trusting a skim-read of Wikipedia.
I myself just did, and actually did that in one of my very first games!CMDR. Wolf wrote:
Have you ever done Order 66 on an 'ally'?Lady Aragosta wrote:
My bad for trusting a skim-read of Wikipedia.
Did you read the Ethiopian Wikipedia again??Carking the 6th wrote:
I myself just did, and actually did that in one of my very first games!CMDR. Wolf wrote:
Have you ever done Order 66 on an 'ally'?Lady Aragosta wrote:
My bad for trusting a skim-read of Wikipedia.
No, the English one. Let's just say I'm a fast reader, but sufficiently fast that I generally have to read things twice to get details like dates right.That polish guy wrote:
Did you read the Ethiopian Wikipedia again??
I did something similar to Mongolia once.CMDR. Wolf wrote:
Have you ever done Order 66 on an 'ally'?
I'm not actually sure if either of these questions were even addressed to me
They were quoting you so I assume so.
If someone else's discussion happened to be coming off one of my posts and they were participating in a conversation I'm not part of, quite possibly not.
Mind you, with only three new posts since I last checked in, you have a point.
Still does not explain why they would quote you though and not someone else they were addressing…
guhCarking the 6th wrote:
Still does not explain why they would quote you though and not someone else they were addressing…
DAY TWENTY-SIX
Holy hell, what has happened to my borders?
Fig. 91 Not the worst bordergore I've had by a long shot, but nonetheless bad.
Germany's insisted that I stick to the east of Afghanistan and its longitudes, wanting the bit of Russia with all the cities to themselves. Despite agreeing to that I have no intentions of sticking to it, and I can easily come up with an excuse to drift west of the agreed line.
Urumchi is a little too heavily defended and I haven't the time to move more stuff up there. The only stack I have in the area is nearly dead so really, the obvious solution is just staring me in the face.
Fig. 92 Desperate times, etc. Except they're not that desperate, I just want to drop another nuke.
Also, after doing some light force redistribution, I have decided:
For the first time all game, I have too many units.
I had to actually split up a few inefficient doomstacks. I don't even remember the last game I played where I could construct doomstacks. Russia is doomed. And this is why I have no intention of sticking to my side of the Great Divide.
My nuclear bomb arrived as planned.
Fig. 93 I was having trouble coming up with a witty name, and I wanted to just build another nuke already. Feel free to speculate on the nature of the colloquialism in question.
Come daychange, I've lost a lot of money and also caught a spy. I'm going to plant another counterespionage agent in Hsinking, because just one doesn't seem to be enough. Whoever's spying on me seems to realise that Hsinking is still my de facto capital and between it and Beijing, I'm more concerned about it. I'm going to have to sell a bunch of stuff before I can afford it, but I'm also going to plant espionage in Argentina and Brazil, but not Australia because they seem to be trustworthy and anyway I can't afford to pay that many spies.
I also received a strange intelligence report of Germany, and it took a while for me to work out that this was thanks to Germany having captured the province adjacent to Moscow that my spy was in. It also seems I have a bunch of counterespionage dotted through my captured territory that's remnants of all the military sabotage and intelligence I planted in China and then forgot to dismiss, explaining why I haven't as much money as I usually do despite being the third largest economy on the map.
I'm fairly sure it's Argentina who's sending spies at me, but... come to think of it, why do I trust Australia? It's often the person you least expect, after all. I'm going to plant a spy in Canberra after all.
Apparently Xinjiang and Russia are at war too, which is the first I've heard of that. It makes no difference, as long as I get Urumchi, seeing as that's the last capital I can expect to capture for a while.
I've been in a melee on the border of Xinjiang and gave in to using nukes as the answer to everything.
Fig. 94 Sometimes the nuclear option really is the answer. Was it this time? Probably not.
The anti-tank is being slaughtered, but that was only bait anyway, to make sure they're all diverging on the same point and will get stricken by the bomber.
Fig. 96 The anti-tank died well before I arrived anyway
I was targeting the interceptor, which since disappeared (where to I'm not sure), but that's fine, it's a nuclear weapon, all that matters is that it's in the vicinity of all those tanks and armoured cars and tank destroyers I want to get rid of before my tank and armoured car arrive.
Fig. 96 The name of my third bomb.
I cleaned out the interceptor, too. Nice. I also lost a province, but that's easily fixed.
The armoured car miraculously survived the strike with full hitpoints, but that's fine; it's outnumbered, even if it gets the defense bonus.
In light of my earlier speculations that I have too many units, I've decided to open up yet another front and declare war on Tibet (making the Indochinese and Bhutanese borders the only ones I'll have that I'm not at war with). This will get me the last of the Qing territory I need, a nice shiny pile of victory points, and open up a few new people to attack.
Fig. 97 I also have all these forces on my coast I'm not going to need if Australia's joining the coalition.
Interestingly, Germany doesn't seem to have gotten his head around the idea of churning out nuclear weapons. He's building his second right now and I've gotten three strikes in already, have a fourth underway, and am developing another lab so I can build nukes in tandem. This can't be blamed on Axis doctrine making this harder, because he has an unholy number of units of other types.
*cough*quote stacks*cough*Carking the 6th wrote:
Still does not explain why they would quote you though and not someone else they were addressing…
Why are you nuking two units? Is this really cost effective, Mi’Lady?!
Also check out this Gnarly Doom stack (don’t worry I’m expanding it!)
There are 57 light armor units if you wanted to know and can’t make it out.
Oh good grief. I'm curious to know exactly how that would be more effective than splitting it in half, even, and sending it in from two directions.
What sort of anti-air does it have? Yes, I can see that (equally ridiculous) plane stack, but that can presumably be dispatched separately.
It’s on the province center so any attack on one goes to both, therefore the defense combined. Those fighters also include naval bombers. Land has 100 AA defense, Planes add a further 150 (but if I split them they would do much more) I’ll show you the composition right now (remember, it is growing)
I didn’t do this for any good reason, the game is about to end so I decided to gather a huge horde at my capital and see what it could do.
Fair enough. I admit to having done this with every tactical bomber I possessed once, but I didn't stack them, because I wanted to have a huge cloud of them blotting out Chengdu.
Fat Albert will absorb The Earth Sun and Stars up above.
DAY TWENTY-SEVEN
I have four battleships in the game and none are doing anything particularly important, so I'm going to try dealing with that naval doomstack Japan has that's been annoying me all game.
Fig. 98 Only four of the things in that stack are capable of bombarding me in return, and one's coming from an entirely different direction, so I might actually be able to kill it this time.
My map as a whole now looks like this:
Fig. 99 Has Manchukuo ever gotten to this stage in a HWW? I hardly think I'm the first to do this, but all the same.
I now have a nice buffer around my core provinces, making them truly safe from surprise attacks for the first time all game. I've also captured Urumchi and the stack there is sufficiently powerful that I'm not unlikely to hold it.
The only thing still in the east would appear to be this.
Fig. 100 Holy hell, I've actually taken 100 screenshots for this playthrough and we're still not close to winning.
It's not moving, but waiting, so presumably it's not a convoy at all but a ship. That's not a problem. Kiamusze is nearby and I can quickly produce a naval bomber to dispatch it (only to discover it's an OP stack with all four ship types in it that needs desperate attention from every naval unit I own). A true convoy would be more worrying, as an actual threat to my holding the provinces I'm capturing here or (even worse) moving onto the mainland just as all my eastern troops are going west where they'll be needed, but would also presumably be embarking or disembarking, not sitting there doing nothing where my subs can nab it.
I seem to have military sabotage happening now in Hsinking, with whoever's sending the spies now knowing I have a secret lab there. I'm catching spies, yes, but not until after they've done the damage. Not that this is a problem, what with Kweichang and its lab up and running. There is anti-air, but no espionage, no infrastructure to the closest airstrip, nothing. It's also pretty out of the way and one more city out of more than fifty in my possession, so the chances of anyone thinking to look here for a secret lab are remote. I've taken obscurity and turned it into a weapon.
Still waiting on reports back from Argentina, Australia and Brazil. If it's Australia spying on me I ought to be worried, as Kweichang is quite close to Indochina.
In other news, I just dropped my fourth nuke.
Fig. 101 I'm not even close to running out of random pop-cultural references to name things after.
I have finally gotten to the stage where random AIs are declaring war on me. I'm at war with Bhutan and I definitely wasn't responsible for that. I've heard they have a pretty fierce army for a tiny country, so I'm going to have to watch it.
Who is lord Gribeau? I always sucked at this kind of stuff…
On the bright side the population of the Thunder Dragon Empire is under 200k at this time, so you can probably easily take them with like a single Chinese city worth of manpower!
Lord Gribeau is a character from Maskerade (Discworld book 1
. He is in fact Greebo, a cat belonging to one of the main characters who got turned into a human in a previous book and can now change back and forth at will, and at one point they need him to pass as a posh friend of one of the other main characters.
Cats would make for horrible lords that would turn their fiefs into this:
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