A challenge: capturing an entire map

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    • A challenge: capturing an entire map

      I like to treat HWW games as playgrounds, testing out new strategies and game mechanics. When my most recent one went fully inactive I decided to try to answer a simple question: if all countries have been eliminated, can provinces still revolt? Of course, eliminating all countries would mean owning every single last province on the entire map.

      Ultimately I had to abandon my effort due to a combination of blunders, in-game revolts, and IRL demands, but I am convinced it's possible and would like to pose it as a challenge to anyone who finds solos too easy on most maps, or just ends up bored in a map and not wanting to end the game just yet.

      Here's where I ended, with what I think is a new personal record for surpassing the victory threshold (1674 on this map):


      I assume it's nearly impossible to pull off on the WaW map, trivially easy on the 22p map, and somewhere in between for the 30p/50p maps.

    • I accept when I have some free time on my hands.
      The trick is, of course, that at least 55% must be captured within 24 hours. Short of massive use of paratroopers and carefully timed amphibious assaults, how would this work?
      It would be possible to park armies "off the node" but there would be difficulty getting there.
      Aeroplanes are interesting toys but of no military value.
      — Marshal Foch

      A pretty mechanical toy [...] the war will never be won by such machines.
      — Lord Kitchener, on tanks

    • That's what makes it a challenge :)

      I had some success capturing all rurals and leaving armies next to cities but it took more planning than I expected.

      Morale Management is a huge deal too and was probably the hardest part, because you want to capture capitals occasionally but can't pass the threshold.

    • You could use the strategy of farming capital from countries. I.e you leave their country mostly intact but take the capital. AI and or low-activity players will rebuild their capital on another city and then you can capture it. Thus you can theoretically capture 5 capitals from one country. However, the maximum I have achieved is three from this strategy.

    • Ouch. Awful. Just, awful.

      Yet intriguing...
      When the fake daddies are curtailed, we have failed. When their roller coaster tolerance is obliterated, their education funds are taken by Kazakhstani phishers, and their candy bars distributed between the Botswana youth gangs, we have succeeded.
      - BIG DADDY.

    • jubjub bird wrote:

      It's for those who love pain and/or fighting AIs for weeks at a time
      I actually like doing this.
      I much prefer playing with or against human players, I like the community. But when they go inactive, fighting large AI can be fun too.
      Aeroplanes are interesting toys but of no military value.
      — Marshal Foch

      A pretty mechanical toy [...] the war will never be won by such machines.
      — Lord Kitchener, on tanks

    • It takes a plan to do this. Something like:
      - Build a power base of 30-40% of the map and build a huge army with some key forces
      - Killing all your opponents and win the map (WITHOUT taking all their cities - just destroy their armies)
      - Have a bunch of arty, battleships and strats to raze and subdue their cities, and make sure they can't build anything if they choose to stay active
      - Take out all rurals, and manoeuvre land units into place to take all those cities at once
      - That last punch day, when you must take out all those empty, razed cities

      Yeah I think it can be done on a 100p map, it isn't even very hard (apart from winning the map - but that's just what we do), just a tedious job because the map is so big and there's so much preparing to do to be adjacent to all those cities on the last day.

      It's kind of a challenge to put a time limit on it; maybe like 30-35 days?
      When the fake daddies are curtailed, we have failed. When their roller coaster tolerance is obliterated, their education funds are taken by Kazakhstani phishers, and their candy bars distributed between the Botswana youth gangs, we have succeeded.
      - BIG DADDY.

    • Yea your strategy is the same I used. I swept most of the map with RRG stacks and would wipe out the buildings in every city I passed. I then had stacks of one artillery (to keep the city building-less) and one militia (to capture and hold the city) dispatched to each city to bombard continuously.

      I didn't set out to do this from the beginning so I didn't plan it out very well, but I am confident it's doable. Solo win in ~15 days or so, so another 20 to finish the map off seems reasonable. You want to move fast enough so that your AI opponents don't build up stacks that can challenge yours.

      Morale management sucks, recapturing rurals sucks, and the constant risk of a city revolting to you and thus ending the game added some stress (I think it's rare to receive a revolted province when the whole map hates you, though).

      I was USA in the HWW map, which is why the solo is basically guaranteed. I think there are tiers of difficulty, with many scenarios being much harder than mine.

    • jubjub bird wrote:

      Morale management sucks, recapturing rurals sucks, and the constant risk of a city revolting to you and thus ending the game added some stress (I think it's rare to receive a revolted province when the whole map hates you, though).
      Well if you know you are doing this, it isn't too hard to schedule taking 1-2 capitals each day, in which case morale becomes a non-issue. There's 99 humans and maybe 70-ish minors, so you can even do more than that; you just gotta make sure that your original power base isn't too big so it pushes you over the threshold to eat those capitals.
      When the fake daddies are curtailed, we have failed. When their roller coaster tolerance is obliterated, their education funds are taken by Kazakhstani phishers, and their candy bars distributed between the Botswana youth gangs, we have succeeded.
      - BIG DADDY.

    • Lord Crayfish wrote:

      jubjub bird wrote:

      It's for those who love pain and/or fighting AIs for weeks at a time
      I actually like doing this.I much prefer playing with or against human players, I like the community. But when they go inactive, fighting large AI can be fun too.
      Yeah, especially when I underestimate an AI. When they declare war because of poor relations (lol), I get caught off guard by the scale of the AI's army. (Now, I'm more prepared for sneak attacks from AIs)

      Also, it's kind of funny when AI's overstack. I see 13 infantry/armoured cars (or whatever) stationed in a city, and I think of ways to besiege it. Quite fun.

      I think in some of my early games (played a year or two ago), I once had to fight 4 AI countries at once. Didn't understand the importance of global popularity back then. Anyway, I think I gave up and lost lol.
      "An army is a team. Lives, sleeps, eats, fights as a team. This individual heroic stuff is a lot of crap." George S. Patton

    • Credit where it's due. My friend 'Zach P.' has already captured the map twice, (one in hww and one Swift strike)

      Pictured is his round in HWW (I can't find his Swift strike round pic it is OLD)
      Images

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      "In my humble opinion, on the subject matter, topic and content discussed beforehand; I would like to humbly propose, convey my idea on the subject and remark; this, with the help of the afforementioned post" - Karl von Krass

      "The Golden Spire is looking for members, Anyone with good sense of game mechanics and a discord account can apply"

      Secretary of Nova0213

    • Karl von Krass wrote:

      Credit where it's due. My friend 'Zach P.' has already captured the map twice, (one in hww and one Swift strike)

      Pictured is his round in HWW (I can't find his Swift strike round pic it is OLD)
      I think I saw this on Reddit's CoW sub recently:
      reddit.com/r/CallOfWar/comment…or_german_empire_edition/
      Aeroplanes are interesting toys but of no military value.
      — Marshal Foch

      A pretty mechanical toy [...] the war will never be won by such machines.
      — Lord Kitchener, on tanks

    • Lord Crayfish wrote:

      Karl von Krass wrote:

      Credit where it's due. My friend 'Zach P.' has already captured the map twice, (one in hww and one Swift strike)

      Pictured is his round in HWW (I can't find his Swift strike round pic it is OLD)
      I think I saw this on Reddit's CoW sub recently:reddit.com/r/CallOfWar/comment…or_german_empire_edition/
      yep. The point stands, he has a lot of patience for the whole map.
      "In my humble opinion, on the subject matter, topic and content discussed beforehand; I would like to humbly propose, convey my idea on the subject and remark; this, with the help of the afforementioned post" - Karl von Krass

      "The Golden Spire is looking for members, Anyone with good sense of game mechanics and a discord account can apply"

      Secretary of Nova0213