Playthrough - Manchukuo

Yeah this is pretty much my overall plan, always assuming I don't get a golden opportunity to backstab the Soviets first.

Weird - I've heard that Turkey is one of the hardest to play as because of its central location. I suppose it depends on one's playing style whether that's an advantage or disadvantage.

DAY THREE

Four important things have happened since the previous day:

Firstly, our great ally Japan's glorious leader, Emperor Hirohito, has passed away. Manchukuo offered its condolences, and wishes the new emperor a long and illustrious rule. [No this is not a very roundabout way of saying they went inactive; that wouldn't have happened before Day 4 anyway. This was directly lifted from the newspapers.]

Second, Japan has begun an attack on Nationalist China, with which we might have assisted were it not for other developments, to which we shall come momentarily.

Third, Germany has unexpectedly offered the hand of friendship, proposing a mutual shared map. Why someone as strong as they are, in central Europe, should want to befriend Manchukuo of all places escapes me.

Fourth, although we have gained ground in Mongolia, he has a massive stack sitting right next to one of the invading armies that's already made my k/d even shitter than it was already. Laat ons zien: 1 anti-air level 1 (susceptible to unarmoured, but rules out any air attack on the stack unless I send a huge fleet of aircraft), aaand damnit. The wretched thing has just left my fog-of-war vision field entirely, meaning I can't check the rest of it. There's medium tanks in there somewhere, I recall. There is also a plane patrolling nearby, probably an interceptor but I was unable to check what type for the same reason. That's fine; Manchukuo has interceptors too, and the emperor insisted on expending a research slot on better ones, what with the Pan-Asian interceptors getting some decent buffs.

Usually tacs are my aircraft 'hammer'; I'm trying to explore alternate aircraft strategies.

Manchukuo's various foundries are also going to stop wasting money on anti-air, as regular artillery is a better use of those resources.


Fig. 2 What would be my usual operational nightmare if I had more troops.

I've also splashed some more gold (hah, the goldless game resolution didn't last long) to spend my other research slot on Level 3 artillery. The country already has Level 3 armoured cars; it was a toss-up between arty and light tanks, and I use arty as my all-purpose hammer for everything except naval engagements.

This puts an end to everything the government can usefully do without a trip to the overpriced stock market; developing Level 4 goods industry in Yingkow may have been a good move long-term, but in the short term it means sinking resources.

Just as she was starting to settle down again, the empress received a number of fresh reports from the front line. Her military advisory body thinks this must be every last one of Mongolia's forces, so if we manage to mow them all down we've basically won, but holy hell.






Fig. 3-5 Panic ensues. At least they're all level 1.

I'm literally at the point where I ran out of gold to splash out on, so I'd better last to Day 7, when my 6,000 payout for Desktop General Elite will arrive.

Orders went out to every city to start producing artillery, and then anti-tank when they started running out of goods; manufacturers say they need faster ordnance foundries that the government can't afford to build. I'm not even trying to build appropriate units to counter each enemy stack; said stacks are a sufficiently mixed bag that I can just throw artillery at it all as I do by default anyway and expect reasonable results.

Selling rare materials on the stock market is the only thing that's keeping the state solvent at present. The empress decides to wait a few tactful hours before bothering Germany and Russia for some goods, until the newspaper comes in with a new economic analysis revealing that Russia tops the list. In that case they can probably afford to fund the next wave of artillery, and if they're going to throw small nations into unequal alliances in their favour it's the least they can offer in return. Requests are made for money or goods; the government doesn't care which. Having more food than they know what to do with, they've offered to pay in that. The alternative is taking a major gamble that Manchukuo will survive for long enough to pay them in something else at a later date (when their industry will have taken off and they don't need it particularly anymore, meaning Manchukuo gets the best of that deal, but our diplomats saw no reason to point that out).

OK, that's everything I can usefully do; I've left an anti-air sitting on my capital, and everything else is either on its way to the front lines or still being built. Pains me to say it, but I need to go get some sleep now.

Can I just say that I hate how I have to lower the resolution on the images showing proper maps so much in order to put them into these posts?

Fair enough.

I wish. (Both that I knew Chinese and that I'd thought to actually put in random Chinese phrases, as that would have been more appropriate given the country.) It's Dutch for 'let's see'.

DAY FOUR

Manchukuo applied to Germany's and Japan's Axis coalition; we can always drop out later if there is disagreement.

Although reporters were eventually able to directly interview Emperor Aragosta on the latest news from the Mongolian front, the direct quotes she provided were all unprintable.

A few hours later, fresh reports come in; either a severely weakened anti-tank brigade has split off from the rest of its massive army, or said massive army has somehow been slaughtered in the intervening period despite having hitpoints running into the hundreds (if this was a stack unfortunate enough to be unequipped with artillery, the latter is entirely possible, given that we've been throwing everything we have at those stacks for more than 24 hours). It no longer has anti-air backing so Manchukuo's new interceptor is going to kill it.
Looking back through older reports, it would appear to have been from the 7th Tank Destroyer Division, which yesterday had 75 hitpoints, was backed by infantry and a medium tank, and was a three-unit stack all up, thus making it entirely plausible that what the front troops are seeing is the strongest remnants of it; this is also the only one that didn't have anti-air and... the high command has just realised that there's still more of it in the area, so they'd better watch it. We've still only killed the weakest stack, assuming it did get killed.

An anti-air and anti-tank stack from Hsinking is sneaking through Japan to take a Mongolian front-line city. All Mongolia's armies seem to be on the front line, probably because they don't know about the Manchu-Japanese alliance, so they're probably wholly unprepared for this. Or so the high command hopes. The high command hopes we've captured one of those awesome 40-hitpoint tank destroyers.

Celebration ensues upon the capture of Matad. The wretched tank destroyer is dead. We sent a crappy unit through the breach to take advantage of it and take Bor-Undur along with Operation Sneak Through Japan, or alternately discover the AWOL rogue last Mongolian stack and at least take a few hitpoint off it before it smashes into the rest of our army; the artillery is being promoted before being sent to deal with the other 7-stack. Said stack is visible, being slowly degraded (my anti-air died straight away and took .4 hitpoints with it), with Manchukuan artillery (level 1 and 2 respectively) just out of range and slowly killing it while taking no damage itself. Useful.


Fig. 6 Annoyingly, the supply drop will have expired by the time I capture the province if reinforcements don't arrive quickly.

Mongolia has lots of anti-tank and tank destroyers; all three stacks had one or the other. Moral: stop wasting time on light tanks, unless bypassing the front line through Japan, and focus on artillery for now.
The financial department has also decided to focus on unit production rather than industry for now. (Long-term I'd normally regret that, my typical Day Four finances being what they are, but if I can hold Mongolia back for another three days I'm due for a massive gold boost, so short-term thinking really is the right way to approach it. I love it when the techniques I always use anyway turn out to be the most sensible.)

Some frantic last-minute orders lead to the following operations: A light tank is heading in towards Ulunbataar through Russia, meaning that tomorrow Mongolia will be dealing with an invasion on three fronts at once: our actual border, the Japan incursion and the Russia incursion. Psychologically this makes it clear that we have big pals he was previously unaware of, and may prompt him to go inactive. (I hope it doesn't. Inactive players are far less fun to fight.)


Fig. 7 A three-pronged attack through allied territory, also known as 'Persykological Warfare'. Also, my logistics are horrifying.

Unfortunately, the last visible big stack is not staying where it is. The artillery fighting it is nearly dead and it'll be a while before reinforcements of any type arrive, so Manchukuo may have a lost city in the offing. ...but ah, that means they're leaving a supply-drop province empty, doesn't it? The infantry on its way to Bor-undur will, once it's done city-capturing, move on to said province.

Of course it's probably going to turn out that the major assumption the I've making here, i.e. this is the vast majority of Mongolia's forces and everything else is still being manufactured, is wrong and there's still more lying in wait. After all, they could be a gold user.

Bor-undur contains an unidentified stack of unidentified magnitude, so we've sent an interceptor to scout it out. My luck being what it is in this game, there's going to turn out to be anti-air in there somewhere, so I'm going to stay online until it arrives so I can withdraw immediately if need be. If there isn't, we're bombing it. Yes, interceptors are crud for that, but every particle of damage we can inflict without any damage to our own side is well worth it.
...plane's refuelling; the field of vision for the approaching army now encompasses Bor-undur. It still can't identify what's in the city itself, but now also knows that more units are headed its way just beyond there. Good and bad. Bad because it's a level 1 militia unit that's ill-equipped to deal with this; good because that's units moving away from the bits where the later border ambushes will happen.
The city garrison turned out to be three medium tanks. The good news being that tanks have terrible anti-air. Meaning, of course, that the approaching unidentified unit is going to turn out to be precisely that. Regrettably the tanks are just out of range of the interceptor and there isn't time to build a new airstrip. Or goods, for that matter. The high command resigns itself to the death of a perfectly good militia unit.
The approaching units are now in view: a stack of two artillery and one infantry. No anti-air to speak of, then. The interceptor attack will go ahead.

Alarming news reaches the emperor: the Mongolian artillery reinforcements are circumventing the main battlefield and heading towards what will eventually be the Japanese back entry point. Now why would Mongolia possibly be sending troops there if they can't see my own unit distribution - in specific the anti-tank/anti-air stack currently in Japanese territory? Emperor Aragosta decides it's time to invest in some counterespionage. We can scarcely afford it, but that's what the stock market is for.
Planting counterespionage in every province is absolutely too expensive, so the government made a start with Hsinking. Not that I seriously think that will stop anything; I strongly suspect he uses gold-based intelligence, and gold in general, but even long-term this is a good move. I just hope the cash loss doesn't kill me before Mongolia does.


This game is really hitting home to me that my 'Zerg Rush' technique is very inefficient. It's kind of stupid to throw random troops (paid for by hastily selling off vast quantities of food) at no doubt well-planned-out stacks. Then and again, I've won wars by doing this. If it's stupid but it works, it ain't stupid.

DAY FIVE

Latest front reports: the visible seven-stack is down to four units and only has fourteen hitpoints; it's dead. The Bor-undur offensive has failed. One of the units entering Mongolia through allies' territory (the Ulanbaatar-bound army) is down and the other two are still on their way.

Manchukuo can no longer afford to build much, nor can it fund research. It's time for Germany to show that their alliance was more than just a token display. Requests are sent for goods. In other international news, Japan is losing a war against China (which has recently gone AI). A new alliance may be in order.
Japan is wasting a perfectly good country. Since Russia's gone inactive I'm going to leave it alone for a while and backstab Japan first, then China. I'll have to talk to Germany about that, what with them being in a coalition with Japan, but all I need to do is: a) draw attention to Japan's incompetence and I should be OK, or b) forget that and pursue forgiveness rather than permission, secure in the knowledge that Germany can't do a thing about it if I do invade.

Another new report: the stack is dead.


Fig. 8 It has passed on. This stack is no more. It has ceased to be. It's expired and gone to meet its maker. It has passed on. Bereft of life, it rests in peace. It has kicked the bucket, shuffled off its mortal coil, run down the curtain and gone to join the choir invisible. It is an ex-stack.
Sweet. Let's move into Ulanbaatar.

Meanwhile a patrolling interceptor has found the three tanks from last night. They still don't have anti-air backing and this time are within range of an airstrip, so orders are going out to bomb them.

Mandal-oovoo has a lot of unspecified buildings in it and, more importantly, no units (that I can see). There could be stealth units, but everything I've seen of his is Level 1 and my militia is Level 2, pending research to Level 3.

Invading forces from the north have revealed that there's something between them and Ulanbaatar; it's too far awar to identify, but it's probably going to turn out to be powerful enough to destroy the invaders who just spotted it. Probably one of those tank destroyers with tonnes of hitpoints.
(Nope. It turned out to be infantry. Easily dealt with.)

There's a fighter squadron hovering outside Ulanbaatar, which itself contains two grounded attack bombers and an artillery unit. Fortunately I have a squadron of my own in the vicinity, and it's a better one, so those can easily be taken care of.


Fig. 9 The last of Mongolia's army revealed at last. I hope.

Will Manchukuo at last gain the upper hand and storm its enemy's capital? Or will it be unceremoniously flattened? Only time will tell.

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.

And honestly I'm amazed Mongolia hasn't curb-stomped me already.

I was expecting this playthrough to be anticlimactic. The fact that I have a Day Eight in my post lineup, despite not seriously thinking I'd be up to playing such a weak country, is in itself somewhat impressive.