Playthrough - Manchukuo

The prime reason why I have a low opinion of this game's Japan player is because they haven't done that yet. No sane Japan player agrees to an alliance with Manchukuo unless they're just doing it to get safely into all its cities before declaring war.

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 Army^TM (funded by Gold^TM). 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).

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'.

Yeah these things happen when one only has a five-unit army...

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.

I know, right? I'm ashamed to call him my ally.

I wouldn't even bother with the 'backstabbing' part when I can just sail in without pretending to ally.

Nah, then they get all the victory points. They can clean up around the edges, and like it.

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.)