Being one of the most modest countries in the world, I was pleasantly surprised by my starting army: 2 AT, 2AA, a whopping fleet of 3 destroyers and a submarine, and, best of all... FOUR whole militia! I started researching level 2 immediately, and built some more. My city produces iron and two rurals are doing goods and food, so they should keep those guys fed. It means I won't have much room for anything more sexy soon though, so militia will have to do for my conquests.

Since the Dominicans were marching an army into me when I first signed in, I decided to make them my first conquest. The incoming are being blocked by a mixed militia and AT force in the forest, which he cannot detect until he stumbles into me. Along other road, my troops are marching into his lands and the fleet is used for scouting his positions.

When I got to the first enemy province center, I realized the guy had given me RoW... ah well. Will just make it easier to take his lands.

Why you should never give RoW to strangers, and then go offline... this is before:




and this is a minute later:

Time for the next target: Cuba!

A tough battle for Santiago, but I'm swarming him with 10x L2 militia. They will also be needed to take the capital, there's probably more stealth in there.

Cuba done, Venezuela next:

Yeah, but I'm quite used to all bordering AI attacking me from day 8 onwards or so. The real problem in these games is that your core is so small.

Well, the game is 4x speed so it helps. As the screen shots show, it was mostly done by militia. I just started a few battleship for a bit of extra firepower, otherwise all I built was militia and upgrade them, they will be L3 soon.

There's some active players around: ministates Ecuador and Nicaragua both ate some neighbors, and Bolivia is growing as well. Even USA is expanding timidly, instead of falling inactive like they usually do.

Woke up to a war with Ecuador, he took a lot of Venezuela lands with mostly motorized infantry, but my battleships inflicted some damage on him as well and my main militia stack arrived from Cuba. Worse news is that he owns a strategic bomber though, it reaches to my core, and even though he is currently patrolling a useless province, my build capacity is at his mercy. I'm trying to get an AA off the ground for my capital at least, but manpower is indeed awful even for that. If he knows what he is doing, this is game over... then again, so many don't.

Looks like this may actually be working... managed to get the AA and move him under the strat, and he isn't moving his patrol circle. He was already damaged a bit, so if he doesn't move soon, he's dead meat.

Got the strat! One less immediate worry, though more will come up eventually. They will find my islands AA'ed. The mot.inf is also standing still at the former venezuela capital, so they're easy prey for the battleships at well. On the right flank, the militia is splitting up to take some land and make progress to his capital.
The bleak numbers so far:

Casualties since the beginning of this war:
HAITI - 4,142
ECUADOR - 6,252

Woops... he's also using L3 militia, and I have not a single unit who can spot them, even though I'm researching L3 AC right now. Still careful treading for a bit.