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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That is a fact. Manchuko is really easy to storm on literally day one. If you don’t attack that fast then you are wasting your Japan. The best Strategy is to use your starting advantages and Pan-Asian doctrine to take over China before their resource advantage over takes you! If a player is failing to invade Manchuko and ally or attack China then they are making a big mistake. This player in particular is losing to an AI China!
DAY SIX
In which a lot of the commentary goes meta, because such things happen when the actual in-game events are much the same as yesterday's
Although most of what we captured yesterday has revolted, we did manage to storm and capture Ulanbaatar overnight, so the map now looks like this:
Fig. 10 Now all we have to do is wait for that wretched artillery to bugger off.
In honour of the occasion of having captured our first enemy capital, the emperor has changed the flag to the beautiful Qing Dynasty one.
Fig. 11 I refused to crop it, and am still mentally debating if the alternative is better or worse
We also hijacked a half-finished motorised infantry unit being made in a damaged factory, which makes up for the armoured car division lost when Mandal-ovoo revolted.
Research for flying bombs has come through; once the one in Hsinking is finished, it will be sent to the front lines to deal with what's left of the big stacks. This, of course, is all going towards a nuclear research project; it may actually be quicker and cheaper for me to skip atom bombs and bombers of all levels and go straight to rockets, at the cost of adding even more days to the wait period (on top of the availability penalty Pan-Asian already gets). By 'cheaper' I mean 'quite possibly actually more expensive, but spread out over more time since I can start straight away instead of waiting until Day 20'.*
Fig. 12 Oooh, look! Flag changes retain their original aspect ratio on the capital tag! It took a while to take effect, so I didn't notice earlier, but this alone confirms that leaving it uncropped was a good idea.
And this is why we pay attention to the game itself and not either the flag or financial optimisation:
Fig. 12 My daily profanity usage has risen considerably during this game.
Good grief! How many armies do they have back there? The emperor is tempted to take the 'screw that' route now and ask to surrender, but thought better of it. Surrender is for wusses. Manchukuo is going to keep on fighting without gold and wait for them to decide this isn't worth it.
A flying bomb is travelling to Hulunbuir. Hmm. Those tank stacks, are they within range of it?
The good news is that there's no anti-air anywhere in those stacks. The bad news is that our interceptors are operating out of Hulunbuir at present and Ulaanbaatar is just out of their range, so there's not a lot I can do to lower their hitpoints for a few hours. Also, this game being what it is, he's probably building anti-air in there right now.
Damnit! Why wasn't I paying attention to the buildings in Ulunbaatar while I was briefly occupying it? I now can't remember if there was an ordnance foundry or not.
On the bright side, they can do nothing to force me to give back that sweet capital offensive loot and morale boost, and they're stuck without a capital until the capitol gets rebuilt. Mind you, I'm 99% certain this is a gold user because no Mongolian player could make this large an army in six days otherwise (unless he has very generous allies), so they're probably going to have a new capitol up this time tomorrow. If they're smart it'll also be in a city considerably further west than I stand a reasonable chance of getting to.
Since the country is still making obscene amounts of money, the government hired another spy to operate in Altai and sabotage its military operations. We chose Altai because it's the most developed of the cities we haven't recently bombarded, occupied or just flown over, it's the one our conquering forces are going to get to last so any damage done to it will have to be done remotely, and the reinforcements are coming from its general direction. And, of course, it will turn out that they're also paying gold to have spies in all of his cities (I find it hard to believe there'd be counterespionage in Altai but not all the other ones). The suspected gold use is the sole reason why I'm not also paying for economic sabotage.
Worth noting: this player is only on his third game. They're fighting back pretty damn well for a newbie. So can anyone with a wallet, mind you.
I have to say at this point I'm actively waiting for Mongolia to message me and acknowledge that I'm a) very determined, b) very stubborn or c) a very pigheaded idiot n00b for continuing my attack (and net winning to boot) in the face of their Massive ArmyTM (funded by GoldTM). I know I'm not going to get any message of the sort, but still.
I've managed to spell Mongolia's capital in the following ways during this commentary: Ulunbataar, Ulunbaataar, Ulunbaatar, Ulanbaatar, Ulanbaataar, and (the correct one) Ulaanbaatar.
*Let's see, is it more expensive? Getting rockets to level 4 costs me 33600 money, 4350 metal, 5750 oil, and 14,400 rare. There are several nuclear paths meanwhile, the most sensible for the budget-pressed who still want bombers to fill the gap being level 1 atom bombs, atomic bombers up to level 3, and then to the nuclear rockets, which costs 97,000 money, 24,500 goods, 2500 metal, 23,000 oil, and 39,000 rare; not only do the wait times mean that this is still a timesaver as I'd have to spend ages taking the nuclear path but this way can build rockets the minute they come up, it's clear that regardless of which nuclear path I take they're all going to cost considerably more than just developing regular rockets. I may still build level 1 nuclear bombers, but only if I can be sure I'll still have a slot open for the rockets.
Ah, but now I'm curious. What is the most efficient nuclear path? If you decide you can survive without nuclear weapons for a few extra days (which for the record I don't recommend if you've managed to attract powerful enemies, particularly if you're Pan-Asian and thus already at a disadvantage in this regard) probably developing atomic bombs to level 3, skipping right to level 3 nuclear bombers, and then moving onto nuclear rockets. That would be 72,500 money, 16,000 goods, 11,000 metal, 9,500 oil, and 36,000 rare. Not the best path for a chronically goods-challenged (not to mention impatient for nuclear action) individual like myself, but still cheaper than the one outlined above thanks to atom bombs still being cheaper than the bombers, and meaning that when you finally do have the means to land a nuclear strike you're doing it with full level 3 weapons, making it extremely effective, while your nuclear rocket is underway.
Annoyingly, wasting time on that nitpickish bit of financial analysis and optimisation didn't take up enough time for something more noteworthy to happen the minute I finally closed the research tab.
I can assure you all that actually interesting things start happening after Day Seven. If you're getting sick of my failure to capture Mongolia, tune in on Thursday (7-8am UTC).
Wait an armored car revolting away? What kind of luck is that? The king of all cars is saddened.
Not so much 'revolted away' as 'was still under construction when the ungrateful rebellion seized the city, and the factory, in which it was being produced'.
I see… still sucks to lose two cities! This kind of grinding combat makes me want to gather the forces of the Union and storm a whole continent again…
Yeah these things happen when one only has a five-unit army...
What happened to the other 6…
They died? To Mongolia? Makes sense.
Yep. I've been on an average of five units since Day 3. I have five cities, all of which finish around one unit a day, and each unit lasts for an average of 24 hours. Without either more cities or the resources to jack up my production, I'm stuck in this rut, and neither Japan nor Germany will sell them to me.
5 units and Japan doesn’t even send one stack to grab some land? What a disappointment to his nation.
I know, right? I'm ashamed to call him my ally.
Yeah because you’d probably backstab on day one… understandably!
I wouldn't even bother with the 'backstabbing' part when I can just sail in without pretending to ally.
Gotta let the Mongols grind them down so you can kill both with ease!
Nah, then they get all the victory points. They can clean up around the edges, and like it.
As long as the Sun burns Asia (and isn’t put out by the Union!) it’ll all be fine I guess.
Maybe so, but I for one would rather have a Japan-dominated Asia than a second Golden Horde. (Although the latter would still be cool.)
Either way Asia is not having a good time. Nanjing and Baghdad will be sweating….
I don't think nukes are a good choice strategy-wise, but if it's for fun walk-through or role play purposes then that's different.
Why let sanity get in the way of a good nuke?jubjub bird wrote:
I don't think nukes are a good choice strategy-wise, but if it's for fun walk-through or role play purposes then that's different.
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