Playthrough - Manchukuo

Let’s see if you can get Crayfish in the first week…

What 3 levels specifically…?

crayfish must die

Crayfish is also a better player than I am, so that could get interesting. I'd forgotten he was playing Australia.

DAY FORTY-TWO

Still somehow in the game. A few of my spies left because I can't pay them, so my daily Spite-Robbing Argentina doesn't have the same kick as yesterday and tomorrow will have dwindled to almost nothing, but all the same it's one outlet of satisfaction against an enemy I can no longer cope with.

Fig. 143 And this is why my economy collapsed between yesterday's checkin and now.

Another one got captured:

Fig. 144 But probably this one would have left thanks to lack of funding anyway. (YOU CAN'T CUT BACK ON FUNDING! YOU WILL REGRET THIS!)

Persia has gone inactive, has trade-embargoed me, and thus is likely to declare war on me pretty soon anyway, so I'm making a dash across the Caspian through Persian territory to get my last half-decent stack to safety. I've offered the contested province east of Ashkhabad to Germany in exchange for Valetta, an insignificant island they're unlikely to care about losing, in a last-ditch effort to save my capital (not that that's likely to work anymore as Persia's at war with me again now).

Fig. 145 They're going to have to accept that offer quite quickly.

I managed to recapture Seishin and am building a battleship there, rather optimistically named 'Return of the Qing'. Unfortunately I don't have a garrison, as it must have died in the act of capture and the city then revolted to me or something, so that sweet battleship is probably going over to the Argentinians. Worth a shot, though.

My submarine activity on the North American coast is also going well. I seem to have killed a number of battleships already, as there are only two left and both are not going to last out the night. There are no destroyers anywhere near the place for some reason.

Finally, I'd like to present:

The ultimate bordergore.

Fig. 146 This game's done a truly excellent job at producing the stuff, but it's outdone itself this time.

This is, by far, the messiest, most horrific bit of cartography I have ever encountered in a CoW game. I am seriously impressed with you all. Well done.

I considered moving my capitol again, this time to Hiroshima, but ultimately decided against it not for any sensible reasons, like it being surrounded by enemy territory, but because I can't afford it.

I guess this will be one of those things where the true dynasty goes into hiding for generations, until the chosen one returns to being down Argentina and restore the true emperor to the throne…

I'm getting LOTR vibes from that.

Honestly I was going for generic fantasy story but that works too!

Most generic fantasy stories these days seem to be based off LOTR anyway, so that's not surprising.

I’ll have you know that (generic name) is a groundbreaking new story that will shift the paradigm!

I did a manchukuo recently and all this looks way too familiar xD

Including the sad collapse at the end?

Always good to see people who insist on playing Manchukuo to the end. This is the only HWW I've been in where it didn't go inactive straight away.

Nice playthrough! I just read through most of it and it's really exciting. Great job on surviving so long!

Thanks!

Frankly the mere fact of the game lasting as long as it has (we're approaching Day 50) says something about the people in it.

Those Germans screwed you over for sure. I don’t blame you for losing a two front war with no support, especially when you should be able to fall back on the strongest starting country in the game (which you have now lost) to help you out here! It would have been very easy as well. Overall, unnoble Germans, if they don’t carry you to a victory for the rest of the game they better lose, and I am disappointed.

They aren't showing any signs of kicking me out of the coalition and they're probably going to beat Argentina, so all I have to do is survive and Germany will have served their purpose. I'm reluctant to bug them for help in case they suddenly realise how useless I am to them.

"Well, I'll tell ya what, I'll find that dern German feller, track him down, and make him git off his plumb lazy rear end to lend you a hand if it takes me a coon's age! Then, we'll have ourselves a hootenanny of a time sortin' things out, by golly!"

DAY FORTY-THREE

Germany didn't accept the offer in time. This means I'm down a capital with nothing to show for it, but that doesn't matter, because Argentina usefully declared war on Persia themselves and dropped a nuke on Tehran. Which is conveniently close to the stack I evacuated from Ashkhabad.

Fig. 147 Thanks, Argentina!

This means a capital offensive on my end is in order.

My battleship did indeed finish with Seishin still in my possession, so it is currently bombarding an artillery unit on the coast.

APTO seems to be stuck in a rut, having run out of people other than Persia and Germany to attack, and Persia doesn't have enough cities for Argentina to win the game through its latest invasion. This means I'm going to have to fight back for quite some time if I still want to finish in second place.

My spy network got in one last hurrah before leaving en masse thanks to the lack of funding.

Fig. 148 Totally worth every dollar I spent on it. They're not to know this is the last batch, and is probably consumed by paranoia thanks to the last three days and wondering how I can possibly be funding all this.

Come to think of it... I can probably sell off some stuff and plant a few more.

I'm losing everything now except money and rare materials, but have enough rare, oil and metal to sell off and make another 40k. Four more spies in provinces that don't have counterespionage should do the trick nicely.

Well, that's determined then. For as long as I survive I sell off as much rare as I'm allowed to at daychange and plant a few more spies. Eventually I'll start needing that money for topping up my other resources, but that won't be for a while as I have decent stockpiles of them all and I don't have many units to use them up.

Lady Aragosta wrote:

I feel bad for all the good players, who are probably all in South America where I never pay much attention, who got stuck in a game where nearly everyone went AI early on and I somehow ended up as the most competent player in Asia.

When Argentina and Brazil have competent players and ally they almost always win…

Brazil's inactive now, so if Argentina had done this a week later things could have turned out very differently.