Okay, so the Strat Pac arrives a few days ago and I have been fiddling around with it a bit. As expected, there is a *lot* to learn, and the lack of a printed manual is somewhat of a handicap. Yes, there is a pdf manual, but it is both long and casually written, so that it is hard to actually find what I am looking for.
But those whines aside, I believe I am liking this version much better than the previous one of three or four years ago. After doing the tutorials, I started off with the USA in the 1936 scenario as I mostly want to get a grip on production and diplomacy at this stage. These are complex enough to form a game in their own right.
A few more gripes: the sliders on the production page are a total PITA to use. It's impossible to control the sliders at all precisely by moving them with the cursor, so one is reduced to interminable clicking on the left and right arrows. This is made worse because for the most part, I find that I cannot simply click rapidly on them. Trying to do so makes them unresponsive for some reason. I have to move the cursor off the button and then back on before I can click effectively again. Since each click only moves it one percentage point when I might need to move it several hundred, you can see how my dissatisfaction might arise. This part at least is not a user-friendly interface.
There are also a lot of things going on that I do not understand, but I will not bother you with that in hopes that it will be explained further down in the manual, or I will figure it out. But perhaps someone can tell me this: associated with various figures in the government are bonuses either plus (+) or minus (-). I began by assuming that a plus was good and a minus was...well negative. But I am not quite convinced that this is uniformly the case. Could a minus be something to be desired in some cases? Or a plus to be dreaded? Not knowing the answer to this leaves me a bit bewildered.
Well, enough for now. I will return to the game and try to absorb as much as I can and hopefully will have something more interesting to post before too long.
Michael Emrys 4 November 2008 01:50:27 [ permanent link ]
On 2008-11-02 19:10:10 -0800, Michael Emrys <emrys@olypen.com> said:
I...hopefully will have something more interesting to post before too long.
Basically what I am doing in this game is trying to jump start the American economy in preparation for the demands which are shortly to be made on it. Thus, I have been building factories in select provinces and improving infrastructure. I have also been pursuing R&D, including in industrial management, improved destroyers and carriers, improved strategic bombers, interceptors, and escort fighters. I have also researched radar and am beginning to improve tanks.
Trying to get things moving out of a Depression economy without the impetus of war at hand yet is of course slow going.
Things I don't understand yet include preexisting convoys. These seem to cycle back and forth on their own without actually carrying anything. I haven't figured out yet how to control them and get any useful work from them. Apparently all my international trade is carried by other means. Baffling.
Joseph Nebus 5 November 2008 17:32:45 [ permanent link ]
Michael Emrys <emrys@olypen.com> writes:
Okay, so the Strat Pac arrives a few days ago and I have been fiddling
around with it a bit. As expected, there is a *lot* to learn, and the
lack of a printed manual is somewhat of a handicap. Yes, there is a pdf
manual, but it is both long and casually written, so that it is hard to
actually find what I am looking for.
Oh, yes, alas, the manual is almost as useful as the manuals for all Europa Universalis-line games are. Have you tried the Wiki, which at least has a search engine?
But those whines aside, I believe I am liking this version much better
than the previous one of three or four years ago. After doing the
tutorials, I started off with the USA in the 1936 scenario as I mostly
want to get a grip on production and diplomacy at this stage. These are
complex enough to form a game in their own right.
Also a good policy. Playing as the United States is almost as easy as the game can get: you'll be in the war (eventually), but no matter how badly you do you're not going to have to face problems like an invasion of your national territory.
A few more gripes: the sliders on the production page are a total PITA
to use. It's impossible to control the sliders at all precisely by
moving them with the cursor, so one is reduced to interminable clicking
on the left and right arrows. This is made worse because for the most
part, I find that I cannot simply click rapidly on them. Trying to do
so makes them unresponsive for some reason. I have to move the cursor
off the button and then back on before I can click effectively again.
Since each click only moves it one percentage point when I might need
to move it several hundred, you can see how my dissatisfaction might
arise. This part at least is not a user-friendly interface.
The game really doesn't like rapid double-clicks on the same spot, which is a touch of a problem when you do need the rapid clicks. On the production sliders, since I have a laptop when I have the slider in approximately the position I want I'll move my fingers far away from the pad and double-click the button that way. With some practice it comes through, at least.
Leaving the sliders on automatic works pretty well, at least if you're going all-out on production and don't mean to stockpile supplies. It lets you pick a focus on upgrades or reinforcements, and what's left over goes into consumer goods/cash or into supplies.
There are also a lot of things going on that I do not understand, but I
will not bother you with that in hopes that it will be explained
further down in the manual, or I will figure it out. But perhaps
someone can tell me this: associated with various figures in the
government are bonuses either plus (+) or minus (-). I began by
assuming that a plus was good and a minus was...well negative. But I am
not quite convinced that this is uniformly the case. Could a minus be
something to be desired in some cases? Or a plus to be dreaded? Not
knowing the answer to this leaves me a bit bewildered.
It depends on the context, really. If the minister promises, say, War Exhaustion -5%, that's a good thing; a higher war exhaustion makes it harder to keep the struggle going. Similarly a production of battleships being -20 (days) is at least a marginal improvement; you get your ships almost a month sooner than otherwise.
I remember encountering a few cases in which the property was ambiguous enough I couldn't tell whether plus or minus was desireable.
It's definitely a game that rewards having read a couple _Why The Allies Won_ type books and looking for the names that were key. This may be gaming the game a bit, but, heck, Roosevelt hired the guy from Sears for a reason.
-- Joseph Nebus ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Joseph Nebus 5 November 2008 17:56:09 [ permanent link ]
Michael Emrys <emrys@olypen.com> writes:
On 2008-11-02 19:10:10 -0800, Michael Emrys <emrys@olypen.com> said:
I...hopefully will have something more interesting to post before too long.
Basically what I am doing in this game is trying to jump start the
American economy in preparation for the demands which are shortly to be
made on it. Thus, I have been building factories in select provinces
and improving infrastructure. I have also been pursuing R&D, including
in industrial management, improved destroyers and carriers, improved
strategic bombers, interceptors, and escort fighters. I have also
researched radar and am beginning to improve tanks.
That seems to be the strongest way to spend the prewar years, with the note that navies are long-lead items so you should start ramping up production of them about two years ahead of when you expect the war to start. Armies you can start building up about a half-year ahead of when you expect to need them. The Air Force comes in about a year to a half-year ahead of whe you need it. But airplanes and army units are upgradeable; in the navy, only the Carrier Air Groups upgrade.
If you want to do any nuclear or rocket research, you'll want to build a nuclear plant or a rocket base --- these cut research time in half. More, if you want to build atom bombs you need a nuclear plant of level at least six, and preferably higher to speed up the production.
Also your research speed is slower if you're researching a technology too far ahead of the current date. The research won't fail or anything like that, just, in 1936 you're better off trying to get basic radar working than information theory. I believe this is an attempt to avoid absurdities like having intercontinental ballistic thermonuclear bombs and Great War-era infantry together.
Trying to get things moving out of a Depression economy without the
impetus of war at hand yet is of course slow going.
It could be worse --- at least production really is a pretty linear function of time spent on something and manpower growth. (There are a couple of agricultural technologies which improve manpower growth, too.) There aren't the sorts of detailed economic complications of Victoria, where you can easily screw up and accidentally end up having to buy all your coal from overseas at catastrophic effect to your balance of payments.
Things I don't understand yet include preexisting convoys. These seem
to cycle back and forth on their own without actually carrying
anything. I haven't figured out yet how to control them and get any
useful work from them. Apparently all my international trade is carried
by other means. Baffling.
Mercifully they seem to work largely automatically. It seems to me that they will work primarily to make sure that resources get to where they're needed, so that having units in locations will cause convoys to run until an adequate supply depot is established. Trading on the world market ... I'm not sure just who does carry that, but I've always run so much surplus in convoys and escorts that it hasn't needed me to figure it out.
One thing that *has* hit me badly is Transport Capacity. This is some measure of how much your infrastructure can send around, and if you need more capacity than you have then supplying the forces gets screwed up. Undeployed naval bases, air fields, and radar stations eat up the transport capacity. It's nice to have one or two of these in reserve so that you can turn your beachhead into a base for your air and sea operations, you really don't want too many waiting to be put down.
-- Joseph Nebus ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Michael Emrys 7 November 2008 07:35:17 [ permanent link ]
On 2008-11-05 06:32:45 -0800, nebusj-@-rpi-.edu (Joseph Nebus) said:
Oh, yes, alas, the manual is almost as useful as the manuals for
all Europa Universalis-line games are. Have you tried the Wiki, which
at least has a search engine?
No, I haven't. Is that located on Paradox' site? Or does it have another address?
Leaving the sliders on automatic works pretty well, at least if
you're going all-out on production and don't mean to stockpile supplies.
It lets you pick a focus on upgrades or reinforcements, and what's left
over goes into consumer goods/cash or into supplies.
At the moment (early 1938) I am still concentrating on Production (to build factories, make infrastructure improvements, and build a few ships and air wings), Consumer Goods (to collect taxes, natch), and Supplies (might as well stockpile some; once those armed forces get built, they are going to be hungry).
It's definitely a game that rewards having read a couple _Why
The Allies Won_ type books and looking for the names that were key.
This may be gaming the game a bit, but, heck, Roosevelt hired the guy
from Sears for a reason.
Heh. A few weeks ago I began reading _The Big L: American Logistics in World War II_. The first half of the book is devoted to various aspects of mobilizing the American economy before and during the war. Very interesting.
It's not always clear which points refer to the basic game, to Doomsday, or to Armageddon, but for the most part those aren't huge differences.
Leaving the sliders on automatic works pretty well, at least if
you're going all-out on production and don't mean to stockpile supplies.
It lets you pick a focus on upgrades or reinforcements, and what's left
over goes into consumer goods/cash or into supplies.
At the moment (early 1938) I am still concentrating on Production (to
build factories, make infrastructure improvements, and build a few
ships and air wings), Consumer Goods (to collect taxes, natch), and
Supplies (might as well stockpile some; once those armed forces get
built, they are going to be hungry).
In my experience as the United States the best thing to do in the prewar years is build factories --- those provide production all through the game, and they pay for themselves after a couple of years of game life --- and stockipiling supplies. Other countries have to deal with issues like budgeting and having priorities, of course.
Consumer Goods never particularly worried me as long as they stay above the minimum level demanded. Cash, at least for the United States, is never really short, and can be bought with oil anyway. They are useful, if you have dissent in your population, as the higher this level is the faster dissent decreases, but otherwise it's easy to just leave alone.
It's definitely a game that rewards having read a couple _Why
The Allies Won_ type books and looking for the names that were key.
This may be gaming the game a bit, but, heck, Roosevelt hired the guy
from Sears for a reason.
Heh. A few weeks ago I began reading _The Big L: American Logistics in
World War II_. The first half of the book is devoted to various aspects
of mobilizing the American economy before and during the war. Very
interesting.
It should be, yes. I suppose it's the dryness of the subject compared to the excitements of battles and the weirdness of the many impractical weapons concepts that accounts for the relative shortage of popular books about the economics of fighting World War II --- most of what does get mentioned is the introduction of income tax withholding and various bond rallies, with maybe a page about Bretton Woods near the end --- but there's a lot of interesting material there.
-- Joseph Nebus ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Joseph Nebus 12 November 2008 19:14:20 [ permanent link ]
Michael Emrys <emrys@olypen.com> writes:
On 2008-11-05 06:56:09 -0800, nebusj-@-rpi-.edu (Joseph Nebus) said:
That seems to be the strongest way to spend the prewar years,
with the note that navies are long-lead items so you should start
ramping up production of them about two years ahead of when you expect
the war to start. Armies you can start building up about a half-year
ahead of when you expect to need them. The Air Force comes in about
a year to a half-year ahead of whe you need it. But airplanes and
army units are upgradeable; in the navy, only the Carrier Air Groups
upgrade.
I am building some improved carriers (already built two Yorktown class)
and a few basic CLs. I am conducting research on improved naval models
and figured it was best to hold off on major production until that
research is done. Pretty much the same for the air forces. And again,
doing research on tanks and ATGs, and waiting for that to achieve a
satisfactory level before I begin turning them out.
Air forces I'm really coming to love. In my current game in which the invasion of Europe went really weird my navy ended up being of almost no use once the Mediterranean was cleared out. The Pacific War --- weirdly, completely disjoint in time from the European one --- has kind of shocked me back to responsibility as Japan's stuck to a Fleet In Being approach. Their navies only rarely come out from Taiwan or the south of Indochina, but when they do, criminy, fourteen capital ships at once is a terrifying thing to face.
The game warns in fleets about how many capital ships to screens there are. It seems to me that it's useful to have a couple of submarines attached to an otherwise balanced naval group; those seem to act as spotters so an enemy fleet can be found and the rest get into position for effective combat. But since I come from the logistic side of things I've usually assigned them to anti-convoy operations. It's easier than real combat and satisfying to keep getting notices about enemy convoys and escorts sunk.
One further note on research, I noticed that as 1937 moved into the
autumn, the number of research teams I could have going simultaneously
dwindled from five to three. I recall that somewhere the manual
mentions that such team numbers were restricted, but no reason was
given for this change and it has left me puzzled. I have plenty of
money to fund them.
Ah, that is weird. Catastrophic, even. The number of tech teams is determined by your Industrial Capacity, with one team for each 20 units of Industrial Capacity, up to five, rounded up. Are you running out of the rare-earths? Those are the scarcest, and the easiest to accidentally run short on.
If you want to do any nuclear or rocket research, you'll want
to build a nuclear plant or a rocket base --- these cut research time
in half. More, if you want to build atom bombs you need a nuclear
plant of level at least six, and preferably higher to speed up the
production.
Thanks, I will keep that in mind when I start to go into those areas.
At the moment, I am contemplating a pretty conventional war at the
beginning and trying to get ready for that. I do have Boeing doing
research on improved strategic bombers, but I think that is only going
to get me B-24s.
Strategic bombers, it turns out, can be matched up with escort fighter brigades, included for some reason under the Land Brigade production window. I'm not positive just how much difference this makes, but that's because I've had such aerial superiority over the Axis and over the Co-Prosperity Sphere that they haven't been tested all that seriously. Those brigades have to be attached to the bombers from a base in your core countries, so, that's probably best done at construction.
Mercifully they seem to work largely automatically. It
seems to me that they will work primarily to make sure that resources
get to where they're needed, so that having units in locations will
cause convoys to run until an adequate supply depot is established.
Trading on the world market ... I'm not sure just who does carry that,
but I've always run so much surplus in convoys and escorts that it
hasn't needed me to figure it out.
Here's another odd one. I moved a patrol air wing to Pearl Harbor and
noticed that it couldn't carry out any missions because it had no oil.
I tried running an oil convoy from L.A. but it wouldn't go and the
message was that the existing stockpile was large enough. So just as an
experiment, I moved a bunch of submarines over to Pearl from San Diego.
When I checked them, they had plenty of oil but the aircraft still did
not. My next step was to assign the Patrol Wing to rebase to San D.,
which it happily did! I wonder what is going on with that.
I think the convoying scheme pays more attention to where things are based from as opposed to where they are. You'll see that in a unit that's been moved somewhere --- that it was 'Supplied from San Diego' or the equivalent. There's not an obvious way I've noticed to tell it to stockpile stuff at a point without a unit of the right kind based there, though.
It may be affected by whatever made your Industrial Capacity drop, though, either directly or because a drop in Industrial Capacity causes a proportional drop in Transport Capacity. On the bright side, come midnight (Greenwich Time) every day some supplies should move in, until the transport capacity is overwhelmed, but you can't set everything to start a 1 am.
-- Joseph Nebus ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Michael Emrys 13 November 2008 12:45:10 [ permanent link ]
On 2008-11-12 08:14:20 -0800, nebusj-@-rpi-.edu (Joseph Nebus) said:
One further note on research, I noticed that as 1937 moved into the
autumn, the number of research teams I could have going simultaneously
dwindled from five to three. I recall that somewhere the manual
mentions that such team numbers were restricted, but no reason was
given for this change and it has left me puzzled. I have plenty of
money to fund them.
Ah, that is weird. Catastrophic, even.
Actually, I screwed the pooch on that one. I misunderstood some information on the Research page. It turned out that I *could* have done research after all, but lost a year or more. I could have gone back to a saved game before that mistake, but this one is for learning anyway. But as a result, I'm about a year to a year and a half behind where I would have been on modernizing my forces.
Fortunately, I am about at April, 1942 and no one has declared war on me yet. That's probably because I chose not to embargo oil against Japan and they still have a positive relation towards me. I am not accepting any new trades with any of the Axis countries though, and Germany in particular is mightily pissed off at me because (I assume) I am providing Lend-Lease to its enemies. So I am more or less expecting the shoe to drop on that side at least any day now.
Strategic bombers, it turns out, can be matched up with escort
fighter brigades, included for some reason under the Land Brigade
production window.
I noticed that CAGs are listed there instead of in Flotillas or Air Wings also, which at first looks odd. I guess the game sees any kind of attachment as a brigade.
It sort of annoys me that you can't research CAGs in the aircraft section. Instead, weird things happen there. I researched interceptors and what I got was the F6F, which USAAF(!) is now using, but not the Navy. Apparently (maybe) you get improved CAGs when you finish researching more advanced carriers. I am up to Essex class now but am still stuck with F4Fs/SBDs/TBDs. Do these just improve on the historical time scale or what? I would love to start the war with F6Fs and TBFs.
I am still not really happy with the interface. It's not what I would call truly horrible by a long shot, but there are so many ways it could have been better. I guess it was just an inevitable victim of limited development time.
For instance, trying to organize fleets, especially when there are a lot of ships at the same base is nightmare material. That could have been just so much more intuitive and easier to use.
More later, if/when I actually find myself at war.
Joseph Nebus 14 November 2008 19:56:47 [ permanent link ]
Michael Emrys <emrys@olypen.com> writes:
Actually, I screwed the pooch on that one. I misunderstood some
information on the Research page. It turned out that I *could* have
done research after all, but lost a year or more. I could have gone
back to a saved game before that mistake, but this one is for learning
anyway. But as a result, I'm about a year to a year and a half behind
where I would have been on modernizing my forces.
Oh, that's frustrating but understandable. A couple times I've missed out on filling tech slots due to not getting around to assigning a new project after the expiration of the old, but that's normally gone on only a month or two (I think).
I forget which game it was let you pick a research target far down in the tech tree and would work to that unless specifically given other directions; was it Alpha Centauri? That was nice enough ... the grand strategy games are fun but sometimes it's hard not to wish the SimPopulations showed some initiative.
Fortunately, I am about at April, 1942 and no one has declared war on
me yet. That's probably because I chose not to embargo oil against
Japan and they still have a positive relation towards me. I am not
accepting any new trades with any of the Axis countries though, and
Germany in particular is mightily pissed off at me because (I assume) I
am providing Lend-Lease to its enemies. So I am more or less expecting
the shoe to drop on that side at least any day now.
Yes, likely enough. I think June 1942 is the longest that my United States has ever avoided war entirely. In the game where I was in the Allies by 1939, I avoided war with Japan until the end of the European campaign (early 1943) by not embargoing Japan. I haven't played enough variations of this to guess what might have happened had I been in the Allies and imposed the embargo.
Strategic bombers, it turns out, can be matched up with escort
fighter brigades, included for some reason under the Land Brigade
production window.
I noticed that CAGs are listed there instead of in Flotillas or Air
Wings also, which at first looks odd. I guess the game sees any kind of
attachment as a brigade.
It's an odd choice, although maybe they were stuck for ways to organize the Carrier Air Groups and the Escort Fighters. You wouldn't want people to think they were aircraft the way, oh, strategic bombers are --- people would naturally expect to see the independent planes --- but you also can't have too many menus in the production window at one time. Maybe they could swing it by combining the 'infrastructure' things like naval and air bases, radar installations, and nuclear and rocket research facilities into one panel instead of a line of them.
It sort of annoys me that you can't research CAGs in the aircraft
section. Instead, weird things happen there. I researched interceptors
and what I got was the F6F, which USAAF(!) is now using, but not the
Navy. Apparently (maybe) you get improved CAGs when you finish
researching more advanced carriers. I am up to Essex class now but am
still stuck with F4Fs/SBDs/TBDs. Do these just improve on the
historical time scale or what? I would love to start the war with F6Fs
and TBFs.
Oh, yes, the research in advanced carriers gives you improved Carrier Air Groups. Even if you decide to level off development of the navy in other regards (like, you see the war's ending and there's no point in developing new destroyers rather than churning out what you already have) it's still worth advancing the carrier technology.
I don't believe a Carrier Air Group can be upgraded until it's deployed, so if those are waiting in the Deployment window they do stay frozen there. Part of the risks of building ahead of the immediate need, I suppose, but I like having those ready early anyway.
I am still not really happy with the interface. It's not what I would
call truly horrible by a long shot, but there are so many ways it could
have been better. I guess it was just an inevitable victim of limited
development time.
Probably I've gotten acclimated to it. There are things that could be improved particularly easily, though --- for example, in the production window, they need to have the names of things possible for construction spread out to two lines when needed, particularly when you have several levels of the same sort of thing available to build (for example, several kinds of submarine) and have no recollection whether a Barracuda is more technologically advanced than a Perch or vice-versa. (I can't keep any of the names straight.)
For instance, trying to organize fleets, especially when there are a
lot of ships at the same base is nightmare material. That could have
been just so much more intuitive and easier to use.
What drives me crazy is attempting to assign the same mission to several fleets at once, particularly when it's several groups of transport ships all going to the same spot. I can't do this because they have different compositions? That's not even true.
More later, if/when I actually find myself at war.
Good luck, providing you do find yourself at war. It'd be a curious game in which the United States sat things out entirely, or had only a supporting role, but I can't say it's quite impossible exactly.
-- Joseph Nebus ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Simon Slavin 17 November 2008 02:12:09 [ permanent link ]
On 14/11/2008, Joseph Nebus wrote in message <nebusj.1226680504@vcmr- 86.server.rpi.edu>:
I forget which game it was let you pick a research target far
down in the tech tree and would work to that unless specifically given
other directions; was it Alpha Centauri? That was nice enough ... the
grand strategy games are fun but sometimes it's hard not to wish the
SimPopulations showed some initiative.
That's an interesting idea. I wonder if it could be extended to units. For example, suppose you'd need two kinds of building and one upgrade to be able to make a Master Killer Robot, you could pick the Robot and watch the game use your money to do what needed to be done. It would be a good way to explain the tech tree to new users.
Michael Emrys 3 December 2008 01:31:32 [ permanent link ]
On 2008-11-05 06:32:45 -0800, nebusj-@-rpi-.edu (Joseph Nebus) said:
A few more gripes: the sliders on the production page are a total PITA
to use. It's impossible to control the sliders at all precisely by
moving them with the cursor, so one is reduced to interminable clicking
on the left and right arrows. This is made worse because for the most
part, I find that I cannot simply click rapidly on them. Trying to do
so makes them unresponsive for some reason. I have to move the cursor
off the button and then back on before I can click effectively again.
Since each click only moves it one percentage point when I might need
to move it several hundred, you can see how my dissatisfaction might
arise. This part at least is not a user-friendly interface.
The game really doesn't like rapid double-clicks on the same
spot, which is a touch of a problem when you do need the rapid clicks.
On the production sliders, since I have a laptop when I have the slider
in approximately the position I want I'll move my fingers far away
from the pad and double-click the button that way. With some practice
it comes through, at least.
I raised this question on the Virtual Programming forum the other day and got told the way around this. What you have to do is click and hold on the slider to move it into the approximate position you want it. Then click and hold on either the plus or minus at the ends of of the scale and the numbers reel off pretty quickly. If need by, you can finish up by making discrete single clicks on the plus or minus to get precise positioning. Works a charm.
Learned this just in time as I am having to constantly juggle between upgrades and reinforcements, with an occasional tweek to production. Still laborious, but without that little trick I would have done something drastic...like give up the game.
Joseph Nebus 4 December 2008 22:32:40 [ permanent link ]
Michael Emrys <emrys@olypen.com> writes:
On 2008-11-05 06:32:45 -0800, nebusj-@-rpi-.edu (Joseph Nebus) said:
The game really doesn't like rapid double-clicks on the same
spot, which is a touch of a problem when you do need the rapid clicks.
On the production sliders, since I have a laptop when I have the slider
in approximately the position I want I'll move my fingers far away
from the pad and double-click the button that way. With some practice
it comes through, at least.
I raised this question on the Virtual Programming forum the other day
and got told the way around this. What you have to do is click and hold
on the slider to move it into the approximate position you want it.
Then click and hold on either the plus or minus at the ends of of the
scale and the numbers reel off pretty quickly. If need by, you can
finish up by making discrete single clicks on the plus or minus to get
precise positioning. Works a charm.
Uhm ... hm. I'm not sure that I'm visualizing this correctly, but I will give it a try when I dive back into my game, whenever that turns out to be. (It's a busy week.)
Learned this just in time as I am having to constantly juggle between
upgrades and reinforcements, with an occasional tweek to production.
Still laborious, but without that little trick I would have done
something drastic...like give up the game.
That'd be a terrible thing, although sometimes it can be hard to figure out where the game is going. In my current game, having given war with Japan a pass so I could concentrate on an early (for the United States) war in Europe, I've got absolutely no idea whether there is going to be a second part to the war, and if there is, whether it'll be against Japan or the Soviet Union.
Right now the Soviets and Japanese have been at war for three or four years, and they're stuck in a classic elephant-and-whale struggle. While the Soviets delivered enough forces to take Korea and what had been Nationalist China territories away from Japan, they can't get off the shore and advance on any island territories: the Soviet navy is too far away, and the Japanese have committed big-time to the Fleet In Being notion and have a large enough main fleet (12 capital ships!) and auxiliary fleets to smash any attempt to invade without an equally overwhelming navy.
Meanwhile Japan isn't able to make much headway back again as, well, there's no beating back Soviet manpower without comparable manpower. Japan has taken and lost Kamchatka more times than I've been able to find interesting.
The war is a remarkable stalemate and if it weren't for the ongoing futile battles in Kamchatka I'd think they might give it up for a white peace. The only winner has been Nationalist China, which may have lost most of its coastal territory to the Soviet Union, but isn't at war with them, and now isn't losing any more land to Japan. The various Chinese factions have established just enough of a salient near Hong Kong to separate Japanese-occupied Indochina from the Soviet armies, but seem to just be biding their time before moving on the bit of Chinese territory that Japan still occupies.
It feels weird. I've kept my forces up in Europe, and I've got some positioned in Guam, the Philippines, and Singapore to seize key islands and take Siam, but I'm not sure what to anticipate.
Just in case I've got a few units watching the borders of Franco's Spain and Mussolini's North Italy. (South Italy is a British puppet state.)
Also by a weird quirk of fate Hungary is in Comintern, but the United States has occupied all Hungary's territories, and since the government (in exile, I assume) exists I can't create it as my own puppet territory. (Germany had occupied Hungary's territories but not annexed it by the time the United States liberated it.) There needs to be some accomodation for rival powers forming rival puppet states particularly in circumstances like that. Since I've got half of Poland and all of Yugoslavia except for a couple of the provinces needed to Liberate those nations I'm stumped.
(I'd rather create Yugoslavia than the mesh of minor nations still open to me there.)
-- Joseph Nebus ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Michael Emrys 5 December 2008 04:32:09 [ permanent link ]
On 2008-12-04 11:32:40 -0800, nebusj-@-rpi-.edu (Joseph Nebus) said:
...sometimes it can be hard to figure out where the game is going.
Odd things can surely happen. In my first game, which I aborted sometime in late '43 in order to start a new one, the Nationalist Chinese annexed Communist China and the Republicans won the Spanish Civil War.
In my current game, the Nationalists once again annexed Com. China, but this time the Fascists won in Spain as per history. But then, Germany declined to annex Austria, which remains neutral.
Yugoslavia is still unoccupied and may be neutral (I'd have to check) and Greece is an Ally but unoccupied too.
Japan finally got round to declaring war in November, 1943, but didn't attack Guam or Hong Kong. Guam especially has been a useful base in the enemy's back yard as has been Wake. They did take the Philippines, mostly due to my neglect. I figured the Philippines were probably indefensible per history, which in hindsight was probably a mistake. They also got part of the NEI, but are slowly being pushed out by the Australians with British naval help.
My first Pacific offensive was against Kwajalein. Initially I made a couple of tentative carrier strikes and on the second or third of those had my first naval battle. My fleet had about five type IV and V carriers and mucho type V CLs plus destroyers, so was loaded for bear. The upshot was that I sank 2 CVs, 1 BB, 1 BC, a whole lot of CAs and a couple of troopships, all without loss to myself. This felt super good.
Since then besides Kwajalein I took Eniwetok, Saipan, Palau, and Truk. I have begun driving the Nips out of the Philippines, beginning with Manilla.
The fighting in North Africa has been strange. The Brit/Commonwealth forces have driven the Italians out completely. In the process, they captured pretty much all of French West, Equatorial, and North Africa, only to hand it back to Vichy in the peace settlement. I wish I had followed that more closely as it looked interesting, but only noticed what was going on when various stages were fait accompli.
The Germans took Norway, but somehow the British took it back while I wasn't watching. The USSR took all of Finland in the Winter War, which made things a little easier when Barbarossa came in '42.
Basically overall, the war is going more slowly than the historical war, although the war against Japan is about to catch up to the timeline, mostly because Japan played very much more conservatively at the beginning, so there is much less to recapture.
BTW, in Asia Yunnan somehow got all of French Indo-China and Britain has annexed Siam. Apparently the Japanese never set foot in Burma.
Joseph Nebus 10 December 2008 18:45:32 [ permanent link ]
Michael Emrys <emrys@olypen.com> writes:
On 2008-12-04 11:32:40 -0800, nebusj-@-rpi-.edu (Joseph Nebus) said:
...sometimes it can be hard to figure out where the game is going.
Odd things can surely happen. In my first game, which I aborted
sometime in late '43 in order to start a new one, the Nationalist
Chinese annexed Communist China and the Republicans won the Spanish
Civil War.
I've seen the Republicans win now and then, which is refreshing since there've been games where it looked like the system was preprogrammed to make Franco come out on top. I'm thinking of the games where the Fascists are down to two provinces on opposite sides of the country and come back to annex Republican Spain ... it is possible, certainly, but it really cries out for a replay with full logging of events to see just what happened.
In my current game, the Nationalists once again annexed Com. China, but
this time the Fascists won in Spain as per history. But then, Germany
declined to annex Austria, which remains neutral.
I've seen Nationalist China annex Communist China, although the variation where Germany doesn't annex Austria I haven't. It does seem odd given the real-historical considerations but I don't think I could call it unimaginable for that.
Yugoslavia is still unoccupied and may be neutral (I'd have to check)
and Greece is an Ally but unoccupied too.
I haven't seen Yugoslavia entirely out of the war; most of the time what I see is the one where they join one alliance and then two days later swap to the other, sometimes with the country being annexed or shattered. But with a neutral Yugoslavia it'd be a pain for the Axis to invade Greece.
Japan finally got round to declaring war in November, 1943, but didn't
attack Guam or Hong Kong. Guam especially has been a useful base in the
enemy's back yard as has been Wake.
November 1943 was previously the latest I'd seen Japan avoid attacking the United States (and United Kingdom and United Provinces). I've found that surprisingly light garrisons seem to keep them away from Guam and Wake; I suspect the system figures that it's more important to take what they can get easily than what would be strategically useful in the long term. This has a certain historical plausibility to it.
They did take the Philippines,
mostly due to my neglect. I figured the Philippines were probably
indefensible per history, which in hindsight was probably a mistake.
They also got part of the NEI, but are slowly being pushed out by the
Australians with British naval help.
Oh, yes. The Philippines are a lot more defensible than they look; it's a pain invading jungles, mostly. Also Japan isn't really interested in the Philippines except as a way of securing supply lines, and the game allows them to do that by securing the Chinese coast, the South China Sea, and the Malay peninsula. The flip side is this means they fight hard for Taiwan.
My first Pacific offensive was against Kwajalein. Initially I made a
couple of tentative carrier strikes and on the second or third of those
had my first naval battle. My fleet had about five type IV and V
carriers and mucho type V CLs plus destroyers, so was loaded for bear.
The upshot was that I sank 2 CVs, 1 BB, 1 BC, a whole lot of CAs and a
couple of troopships, all without loss to myself. This felt super good.
Oh, yes, those kinds of battles are mighty satisfying to read about when they work out. I tend to aim more at attacking supply convoys under the starve-them-out school, which means a long list of reports of sinking troop ships and convoys and escorts, but not so many of the grand naval battles. It also means I'm usually heavy on destroyers and skimpy on capital ships, which presents its problems when the enemy goes for a real Fleet In Being approach.
Since then besides Kwajalein I took Eniwetok, Saipan, Palau, and Truk.
I have begun driving the Nips out of the Philippines, beginning with
Manilla.
I'm not sure just how much all the various atolls are, except that in invading them you do build up experience in amphibious assaults, and the game actually does reward you with experienced units and leaders including ones that develop particular talents in those ranges. It's the ``let's build experience'' idea that lead to my soft-underbelly conquest of Germany, though, so sometimes this works out.
The fighting in North Africa has been strange. The Brit/Commonwealth
forces have driven the Italians out completely. In the process, they
captured pretty much all of French West, Equatorial, and North Africa,
only to hand it back to Vichy in the peace settlement. I wish I had
followed that more closely as it looked interesting, but only noticed
what was going on when various stages were fait accompli.
I get the feeling the British use North Africa as the way to give their officers some experience with combat before they go on to the important battles; I often see a bit of seesaw action --- once that even got the Italians to Port Said, briefly --- before pushing Italy out altogether again. That they turn over things to Vichy France is bizarre, but I suppose there were elements in the British government who hoped good working terms with Vichy France could be worked out. In a system where Vichy France is really and inarguably neutral that's not so bizarre.
The Germans took Norway, but somehow the British took it back while I
wasn't watching. The USSR took all of Finland in the Winter War, which
made things a little easier when Barbarossa came in '42.
In my game the Germans were never quite able to take all of Norway, and the British took it back while I was taking North Africa. The Soviets took Finland and created a puppet government, and it's stayed quite stably there ever since.
Basically overall, the war is going more slowly than the historical
war, although the war against Japan is about to catch up to the
timeline, mostly because Japan played very much more conservatively at
the beginning, so there is much less to recapture.
That was my experience starting out with Hearts of Iron and then Hearts Of Iron II: I'd rarely see the war end before well into 1946. With some practice and, well, anticipating based on knowing how the computer likes to play I could finish some in 1944, though.
The current game threw off all my post-1939 expectations since I hadn't figured I could get the United States into the war on day one. As you might figure the Lend-Lease Events were right out the window. Since the European War ended in 1943, I actually managed to end the war without Frankling Delano Roosevelt dying --- so it's not automatically triggered by coming near the end of Germany --- but the game didn't know what to put up for the Election Of 1944, which wasn't an event this time around.
And as I'd declined the sanctions against Japan, frankly selling out China in order to concentrate on Germany, that whole war was made avoidable apparently. I did try the game again from the point just after the end of the war in Europe and *did* get a Japanese surprise attack, so it's not as if my choice aborted the entire Pacific War. It just happens they went to war with the Soviets instead, and I'm not sure whether that was Japan's or the Soviet Union's choice.
BTW, in Asia Yunnan somehow got all of French Indo-China and Britain
has annexed Siam. Apparently the Japanese never set foot in Burma.
That is weird; I don't know what Yunnan would see in Indochina except keeping it out of Japanese hands. I have fairly often seen Pacific Wars work out with Japan getting into Burma, though. It's at near the limits of what they can invade effectively, and a little bit of luck breaking the other way shuts that theater down.
-- Joseph Nebus ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Simon Slavin 12 December 2008 01:13:04 [ permanent link ]
On 10/12/2008, Joseph Nebus wrote in message <nebusj.1228922300@vcmr- 86.server.rpi.edu>:
I've seen the Republicans win now and then, which is
refreshing since there've been games where it looked like the system
was preprogrammed to make Franco come out on top. I'm thinking of
the games where the Fascists are down to two provinces on opposite
sides of the country and come back to annex Republican Spain ... it
is possible, certainly, but it really cries out for a replay with
full logging of events to see just what happened.
In another game with similar operating principles, I noticed something similarly unlikely. I was totally dominating an area of about 50 regions apart from two regions held by the enemy. I could attack either of the two enemy regions and take it. But each time, the enemy would either take one of the neighbouring regions, regaining its total of two, or move all its troops into a single region, then in its own turn attack the original region with all its troops, and take back the region I'd just won. I did this about twelve times with one of those two results.
In real life, of course, I'd just set up a siege and the enemy would run out of fuel and ammo, but this game having a tank still operational implied that the tank had fuel and ammo.
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