Playthrough - Manchukuo

No post today, sorry; I've got a lot of homework and barely have time to check in. I'll post a double tomorrow.

Double post, as promised:

DAY TWENTY-EIGHT

British India has joined the club in attacking me. That is what one gets for insisting on topping the Dreaded list. If you're not on the Dreaded list you're doing something wrong, particularly on inactive HWW maps. Scrappy AI nations that can be overthrown in twelve hours, and underdog noob players who everyone is getting ganged up on, get to top the Popularity list. It doesn't mean anything.

Various Sunday activities interfered with my ability to do much more than reroute some of my Tibet invasion force to deal with it. Not too much, though, as Tibet's going to be the next to declare war on me.

Yes, this 'double post' is something of a ripoff, given the length of this one. I'm sorry. Spoiler alert: we're skipping Day Thirty entirely because that was the day after I moved my COW playthrough onto a USB, and then forgot where the USB was, so I wasn't able to write anything, so we've gone down to a one-day delay now.

DAY TWENTY-NINE

Bhutan, Tibet and British India have all wreaked havoc on my borders.


Fig. 102 Profanity Ensues.

The good news being that I have four nukes in commission and I've finally got a plethora of worthy targets for them.


Fig. 103 Worthy Target No.1

There's already a nuke en route. That stack of my own is on a two-hour delay, which is easily enough.
I'm also, for the first time since I founded it, calling in all non-naval troops from my Japanese colony.


Fig. 104 Regrettably I can't guarantee that any of them will make it across the ocean in one piece. Hopefully my four shiny new battleships will keep the Stack occupied for long enough.

And here we have a situation that is incredibly significant:


Fig. 105 Unprecedented moment

First, I ran out of manpower before anything else. Well, no, I tell a lie, I had to buy more goods, but I had the resources to do this easily. Second, I was building something in every city in alphabetical order and this is the last one. I could build something in every city but one. Now that is truly impressive for me. Furthermore this included two expensive nukes.

Admittedly this is all because I built nothing yesterday; if I had, I wouldn't have been able to afford half of this, but I would also be better equipped to deal with a four-way war.

Also I apparently have the sixth-mightiest army, which I expect is a rare achievement for Manchukuo. This is little comfort to me at present. Although I don't seem to have lost anything crucial; about four cities, which given that I have fifty or so left is a Nuisance rather than a Problem.

Looking at the map as it currently stands, I think I'm going to have to betray Australia. Out of all the people in the other coalition they're the one I'm in the best position to attack, and once I have all of Asia in tandem with Germany Brazil will have all of Africa, so our coalitions will have to start attacking each other whether we like it or not.

...holy hell:


Fig. 106 That's the most freaked out I've ever been during this game.

I'm glad I happened to have that tab open just now, because I nearly walked right into that anti-air. I'm going to find another way around. I'll move to Wusu - I'm almost certain there's no anti-air between it and Jiuquan, which is where I was just operating from and where I'm moving back - and bomb the stack I was going for from there instead. Meanwhile some artillery I had on its way to that province anyway is now on attack mode and will hopefully bombard that stack out of existence.
I later checked with someone I know irl and apparently this particular anti-air wouldn't have done anything as I wasn't attacking anywhere near it. So before anyone rushes to reply, I now know this, but I didn't then.

More lightheartedly,


Fig. 107 I have a new province name.

'Daliyaboyixiang' (an ex-Xinjiang province, although I can't remember if I captured it from them or Russia) has the honour of being my new favourite province name on the entire map, ousting the previous holder of the title, 'Zhengxiangbai' (one of my own core provinces in the south).

I caught a spy in Beijing; apparently he was able to do whatever it was, but big whoop unless he got the full audit like I did of Argentina somehow. Annoyingly my Brazilian agent was caught; the next one's going in an adjacent province, when I can afford it. (My counterespionage left as I ran out of money; time to sell some food so I can rectify the situation.)


Fig. 108 The full name was 'Nukey II: Electric Boogaloo'. I'm annoyed at the newspaper for cutting off the last bit.

My other strike is due soon-ish. Oh yes, did I mention the other strike? British India is close to my second nuclear city, and I don't want it any closer, so I decided to do something about that.

And will you look at that? The nuclear-dedicated news articles are back. I've missed them.


Fig. 109 Super Happy Fun Thing of Death

Perhaps they only show up if there's been no proper engagement between the countries involved that day up until then? I don't know. I've given up trying to understand how the newspaper articles work.

LATER:

Here's my second worthy target. Of all the things I've planned to throw nukes at so far this game, this is by far the most urgent.


Fig. 110 I'll also lose a perfectly good 6-stack of my own but let's be realistic: that nuke is a 1 hour 30 minute flight from here. I'm going to be all but dead by the time it arrives anyway.

In fact it was hard choosing a single worthy target out of all the ones that have suddenly sprung up, but I want to keep my last nuke in reserve.


Fig. 111 It's like an Unwinnable Training Scenario but it's real.

I haven't felt this close to losing since the Xinjiang war's opening. Mind you I'm winning that one, so presumably I'll be alright if I can survive the next few days. Not that there's any sort of guarantee of that.

...OK, I've found another even worse stack I need to nuke.

[Attached in next post as I exceeded the limit]
Fig. 112 At least it doesn't have flanking stacks like the last one.

Is Tibet normally this powerful? Last time I fought them it was in tandem with the United Kingdom.

It being past three in the morning, I decided that if I got overrun too bad; updates on the outcome of that will follow.

The missing image:

Yep, sounds exactly like the unreasonable thing a nation like them would do just because the nearby expansionist empire happens to share a border with them. I call that petty.

DAY THIRTY
DAY THIRTY-ONE
DAY THIRTY-TWO
DAY THIRTY-THREE
DAY THIRTY-FOUR
DAY THIRTY-FIVE
DAY THIRTY-SIX

Sorry about the huge delay in posts; for a week the game was relatively unexciting, being repeats of much the same activities, and real life was quite hectic. Then on Day Thirty-Seven things got hectic again and I suddenly remembered I had this playthrough that hadn't updated for ages, so here you have this mostly-images update standing in for all that.

In summary: over this time every AI nation who touched my border declared war on me and, after a tussle that inevitably led to pulling out nuclear weapons, I started winning. The nations fought during this time were Bhutan, British India, Nepal, Persia, the Soviet Union, Tibet, and Xinjiang (as of today Xinjiang is no more, but thanks to the bordergore it took a while for me to notice).




Figs. 113-5 A series of nuclear bombs dropped on Day Thirty.


Fig. 116 Another good place to drop a nuke.


Fig. 117 Overall situation: positive


Fig. 118 Another annoying cutoff. The full name is 'Come back here and I'll bite your legs off'.



Figs. 119-20 Yet more nukes.


Fig. 121 So it has come to this: the bordergore is sufficiently bad that I have to permanently switch to nation colours mode to tell who I'm attacking. Normally this isn't a problem, as I don't particularly care who I'm fighting as long as I'm actually at war with them, but there are three different doctrines in that mix and my playing style is just reaching the point where this actually counts for something, so I swapped over.


Fig. 122 There were a darn sight more units in that area when I launched the nuke.

I also had a bomber named 'Captain Napalm' but I didn't think to take a screenshot.

Apologies again for the delay. It gets good again tomorrow, so I can go back to updating daily without a repeat of the interminable first Qing-Mongol War.

Final image that wouldn't fit into the first post:


Fig. 123 I'm pretty sure this one got some enemy units as well. I honestly can't remember and am too lazy to go back through the newspaper to check.

DAY THIRTY-SEVEN

I've been mindlessly attacking AIs for days and, basically, nothing has happened. Persia's player returned, un-declared war on me and decided to make friends with me, a wise decision (I have right of way, and until they accept my map-sharing they got nothing but a ceasefire in return; Germany is at war with them, so if they do accept a shared map I will take a Xinjiang Audit). Meanwhile random troops from Argentina have been cropping up in the oceans and I've been getting steadily more alarmed and now, when I had more money than I knew what to do with I splashed out on a huge sabotage spy network and managed to reveal all of Argentina's armies and SHITSHITSHIT IT IS SO OBVIOUS THEY'RE PLANNING AN INVASION IT ISN'T EVEN FUNNY. There's a bunch of nuclear bombers parked in Taiwan, a huge trail of convoys headed for the Sea of Japan, masses of units in Australia's territory, and there is no way my three-day-old navy, where only the battleships and submarines are above level one, are going to be able to cope with this. My existing coastal defenses are laughable and it will take me twelve hours to move everything east.


Fig. 124 Oh, great.

The obvious solution? The best defense is a good offense, so I'm going to dispatch those very dangerous nuclear weapons before they use them on me. I have no long-range bombers available apart from my own nukes, and my nuclear rockets are still under construction, so nuclear bombers it is. Unfortunately their being parked on Australian soil means I'm going to be declaring war on both of them at once, so it's just as well I've been spending all this time preparing to invade Australia anyway.

I am very much out of my depth here; this is where the Axis coalition loses, big time, but if I win it's going to be awesome. Germany had better be ready to take on Brazil, because if not we're swamped.

The Japanese theatre, where I'm assembling a navy, isn't looking much better. At most I'll be able to slow him down. Although being able to see the destination of all those convoys is useful; I've seeded submarines all along the path they're taking.

I invested heavily in military sabotage - sank 40,000 dollars in total into making it as difficult as possible for them to add to what they already have (and being Axis they're already at disadvantage there). Meanwhile I shall draft my explanatory newspaper article. (Both nukes I have are earmarked for an opening offensive; they have three in Indochina as well as five in Taiwan, and I'm thankful that they were silly enough to stack them rather than force me to pick only two out of eight to destroy. As it is I'm worried there's a third stack lurking around that I haven't noticed and can do nothing about).

...50 minutes until it hits. In 20 minutes my other one will have relocated and then I'm sending it off. I want them to arrive at around the same time, because otherwise if Argentina is active that gives them a window to retaliate with the other stack before I have time to kill it, too.

The apologatory news article:

QING EMPIRE ATTACKS ARGENTINIAN FORCES IN TAIWAN AND INDOCHINA
Recently two nuclear bombers were dropped on Australian soil in Taipei, Taiwan, and Pnom Pehn, Indochina. The bombs destroyed eight nuclear bombers stationed in these cities belonging to Argentina, as well as a number of other armies. Until these strikes, the Qing Empire was at peace with both countries and had friendly relations with Australia; the attack has now triggered a war with the APTO coalition.
In a statement today the minister for defense said that "clearly Argentina has long been preparing for an attack on our glorious empire" and was prepared to go to drastic measures to protect the state by making a pre-emptive strike. "Convoys, carriers and battleships have been repeatedly sighted off our coast, particularly in the Sea of Japan. Generals near the Indochina border have noted an increase of Argentinian troops within Australian territory. It was clear to me that an invasion was planned. When we received communications suggesting that Taipei and Pnom Pehn now were armed with nuclear weapons, it was clear to us that if we didn't begin the attack, they would. It is to be hoped that our Australian comrades harboured these forces in good faith and had no designs against the empire itself."
Emperor Aragosta has issued a formal apology to Australia's Prime Minister User35771202 for this unprovoked attack. "We are deeply regretful that your nation had to become embroiled in this conflict. We had no quarrel with you, and still do not." Offers for restorations and returning of land have been given, but on the condition that Argentina is made to withdraw all troops from Australian territories in Asia.
No communication has taken place between Emperor Aragosta and Prime Minister IWin123.

I'm actually serious about the reparations and land restorations; if Australia agrees to the conditions I'm happy to stay at peace with them. (Yes, I know, earlier I was talking about backstabbing them. That was before the Argentinian Menace.) Not that I seriously expect they will, of course, as they has no reason to be loyal to me above their coalition members - especially if I've just nuked them, probably destroying some of their own units in the process, and have captured two of their cities.
Notice how I didn't say how I got the information about the nuclear bombers; I was deliberately vague. It's all first-hand spy network info that I haven't even passed on to Germany, but they don't need to know that; they can worry that Germany's spying on them, or I'm secretly allied with someone who can see their map or has spies of their own planted, or something. Argentina will have their work cut out eliminating my entire spy network, so even if they come to the obvious conclusion there's not a lot they can do about it (and the fact that I mentioned being informed ought, if they're the sort to pay attention, to make them second-guess that conclusion).

They have ten minutes' reaction time window; the Taipei bombers (the ones I'm worried about, being within reach of both of my nuclear labs and Beijing) will die in 29 minutes, and the Pnom Pehn ones (within reach of Kweiyang, but I highly doubt they'll think to bomb there and anyway losing one lab is better than both) in 39. I hope this does it.
I've also found a third bomber of mine floating around that I'd forgotten I had. I have yet to decide what to kill with it. I think I'll hoard it.

Meanwhile in Jiuquan and Hainan, I'm developing third and fourth existing nuclear labs and hoping dearly that this will be enough, as I simply don't have the manpower to build more than four of any nuclear weapon in tandem. Not that I intend to bother with bombers anymore now I have rockets, anyway; rockets are superior in that they can't be shot down, they do more damage, they have similar range, and they only take an extra hour to produce assuming one is using Level 5 labs.


Fig. 125 Critical hit!

There. One strike and I'm at war with two countries at once.


Fig. 126 There's going to be hell to pay for this, particularly if Australia denies my offer of peace. And frankly, I won't blame them if they do.

By the looks of it, Argentina isn't currently online, as he's missed the window for retaliation with the three remaining bombers.


Fig. 127 Or not.
I switched back to colouring the map by relations, because I nearly attacked Persia after they gave me right of way because I didn't notice until almost the last minute, and don't care for a repeat of that, especially with Australia's delicate situation at present.

OK, this is where my memory of the game mechanics come in. When my bomber strikes - and I'm sure it will, interceptors or no interceptors - will the airborne ones still die? I bloody hope so, because one's on the way to Taiwan right now. I'm going to move my capital. Beijing is too vulnerable and I have just the city to be really damn hard to bomb from any territory anyone but Germany holds:


Fig. 128 Pragmatism.

This is going to do terrible things to my expansion penalty system, but at least it's going to be a pain to attack.

Crisis averted:


Fig. 129 All of them are dead. ALL OF THEM! *Maniacal laughter like the worst kind of evil Brit*

I don't trust them not to build more, though, or to not have nuclear rockets researched, so that capital move is going ahead, and at least I now know I have the twelve-hour wait period safe and not in danger of nuclear damage.

Bombing attacks (regular bombs) have begun on my cities; Argentina clearly had air superiority. I'm already focused on trying to achieve naval equality if not superiority, so air superiority is right out; instead, I will spam anti-air and park one in every vulnerable city I possess. (Their planes are operating off carriers, and most of Australia's land-based airstrips are in range of either coastal bombardment or my artillery, so naval superiority will take care of both problems at once.)

There you have it: the most stressful few hours of CoW I have ever experienced. Are you not entertained? And now to deal with the fallout of this 'good offence'-style defense; tune in tomorrow for updates on that, while British India, Tibet, Nepal, Xinjiang and Russia fade quietly out of focus and are eventually defeated offstage.

...

I'm aware that somewhere in this situation I probably stuffed up horribly and made an amateur mistake; if there exist superior methods of dealing with obvious invasions by someone stronger than you, I'd quite like the hear them for next time I join as a weak nation.

That was both encouraging and hilarious. Particularly the bit about the Fr*nch.
Spoiler alert: the Germans were unhelpful.

For now... my information is only going to stay accurate for around 24 hours. I hope my sabotage will be enough to prevent the changes they have in mind from being too devastating.

Even if my version of the Qing Empire wasn't a lot more gender-equal than the actual one ever was, I don't have a lot of choice. For a while the limiting factor in my productions has not been resources (which are easy to buy up when you have nearly a million dollars in stock) but manpower. My recruiting stations are helping with that, fortunately.


I don't want to spoil anything (and it's too early to say for sure what the outcome will be anyway), but it's going to be a long, hard and expensive fight, and even with the obvious superiority of the Empire, I have my doubts as to whether it or its leadership are capable of taking on Argentina. But I thought the same about Mongolia, Xinjiang and Russia, so we shall see.

I really don't anymore...

Ah, funny story: I no longer have nukes. I used all of them up. Nor do I have the facilities to build them anytime soon. Details coming in the new post that's going up in a few minutes.

DAY THIRTY-EIGHT

It's very obvious at this stage that there's no way in hell I'm winning this fight (aside from the preference for Clash of Nations, Argentina's service record is analogous to that of Lord Crayfish's) so I'm hoping to go down with a good fight at least, and finish with a decent number of cities. If we buddy up with Persia we might still salvage a coalition victory, but if not we're dead. Ah well.

In any case I refuse to ragequit. I despise ragequitters. Argentina is going to get the best fight I can give them and hopefully my k/d will somehow go up in the process (which if I manage to win it will by default, as they've seemingly packed more units into Australian Indochina than I have on the entirety of my map).


Fig. 131 My map. At its peak the Qing had 710 victory points. I'm on 500 now.

I have a distressing lack of force near my capital, but all the same.

Kweijang has been captured, and my rocket along with it most likely.

On the other hand, here's some good news!


Fig. 132 Very mysterious. Hmmm. I wonder what could be causing this?[/i]

It seems that Argentina isn't investing very heavily in proper counterespionage, preferring to focus on spy missions in my territory (presumably) and Germany's.


Fig. 133 I think they need to ramp up counterespionage in Berlin.

I'm hesitant to slap the 'golder' label on anyone, as Argentina does seem to be a genuinely good player, but having enough money to do that level of damage to someone through spies rings certain alarm bells (the huge amounts of Axis forces not so much, as that's entirely credible for someone who controls most of the Americas and has had over thirty days to prepare for this).

Persia went inactive, dashing our hopes of boosting our vic points easily.

Having the Qing flag flying here just feels wrong.


Fig. 134 Weird.

More good news: those eight nuclear bombers from yesterday that I destroyed earned me the Rookie Ubersoldier achievement (in combination with a railway gun from my Nationalist China game and half a dozen of them from this game).

I do have to say it feels very good, fighting an actual, active, good, human player, even though I'm also losing. For the first time in several days this game is feeling fun again. And I managed to reunify China, so I'm not heartbroken over this development; my initial objectives were achieved, and although a victory would be a nice bonus I was never seriously expecting one.

Interestingly, with so many shiny new units to fight, although my c/l is dropping, my k/d is actually going up! The PVP one at that. Not by a lot, but every little helps.