My first taste of World Supremacy
I got the game this morning. After installing it, I played one battle and just didn't have any idea of what I was doing, and promptly was invaded by 3 different countries in short order and was defeated. So...I decided to read the user manual! Ahah...some good dope in there! After educating myself by reading through the manual I went back to command some troops in battle. The second game lasted 9 hours and was the most fun I've had on the PC since the days of Modem Play with Empire Deluxe!
Here is how it played out:
I played as the USA (green), and against 4 other nations, USSR (red), China (yellow), Korea (blue), and Iran (brown). I started out in the middle of the world, the red and yellow teams to my west, and blue and brown to my east, with neutrals north and south of me.
There were a couple of neutral cities adjacent to me that were not defended. It is critical to take these immediately so that I could increase my cash flow. There were two cities that were heavily defended, one to my west, one to my east...which acted as barriers early on to defend me against the AI teams.
By turn 4 I had snagged up the undefended cities, and had enough income that I could buy some air power, and a couple of infantry and tank units to start whittling away at the neutrals that were defended, but not those two cities I mentioned. I wanted to leave them alone until I was ready to go against the AI. Well, I guess I wasn't being aggressive enough because within an hour, the AI had also gobbled up most of the neutrals and were gathering countries at an alarming rate. Each enemy seemed to have a different playing style. The Soviets were expansionists, and gobbled up the most real estate early on. The Chinese took a a ton of cities, then heavily defended them. The Iranians did a little of both, expanding more than defending, and the Koreans didn't really do anything, I think they just started in a bad position, as they only had a few countries under their control when I came knocking.
The two neutral cities that I was leaving as defense were bordered by oceans. By the time I had an army large enough to take out the one to the east, I realized that the AI wasn't going to be building an amphibious assault force...so I could take those coastal cities and still not worry too much about an invasion. I concentrated on the eastern neutral city, mostly because there was only Iran to the east of me. Korea was down to the south east and hadn't progressed very well. So my logic was it was better to go east and face the unpredictable actions of only one enemy, rather than going west and facing two, who at the time looked stronger.
I built up a force that was about 25% stronger than what the eastern neutral city had. Their force consisted of fighters, bombers, armor, infantry, MLRS launchers, and fortifications. So I went with just a little bit more, not using the old 3-to-1 assault guide. I simply didn't have the money, nor the time to wait to get more money. This is about expansion or starvation. You have to pay for the units you have, and if you aren't taking more countries, you can't really expect to make progress. So I saved the game at this point. Figuring if the assault failed, I would try something different.
The fight is on! I moved all of my available forces into that eastern neutral country and clicked on START BATTLE not knowing what to expect. Well, he came straight at me, I play passive when I am unsure, so I skipped half-a-turn, and let the AI make another move to see what his game was. His fighter unit came within range of my bomber unit, and I must have had more initiative than he because I got to fire the first volley at his fighters. WHAM! The missiles flew and he lost all of his fighters without getting a shot off at me. "I see" I said to myself. That's how that works. So next, he moves his bomber group toward my armor. I put my mouse over his bomber icon and was reading the range info, then compared that to my armor's range. Not good. The bomber can attack from 5 squares away, compared to 3 for the tanks anti-air. So I backed my tanks up, toward the west, and moved my fighters up to put them between my tanks and his bombers, but just one hex out of range of the bombers. Sure enough, his bombers advanced to attack my armor, but used their initiative up when they made the maneuver. My fighters, in range, got the first shot off and duked it out with the bad guys. I shot down half his bombers but then I was horrified when his MLRS unit engaged my fighters from SIX hexes away! I didn't know MLRS was anti-air, but they sure shot some of my guys down. I maneuvered my fighters west, out of range of the MLRS, but within range of his bombers and finished them off with the second volley of AMRAAMS. I duked it out with the rest of his units using the same tactics...get in range, then get out of range. Once I figured out the ranges and hit/damage of each of the units, it became pretty easy to finish him off without losing any more units. He didn't fight with much heart, but that was just a neutral country. So in my first big fight, I lost a handful of fighters, and nothing else. I was relieved, because to my east, Iran was running out of room to grow and we would be meeting pretty soon.
I built a group of 10 Air Transports. Thinking I would use these to get my armor and Airborne units over the pond to invade the closest country that Iran had recently invaded. It was only defended by a single rocket unit, but like any invasion, I knew once I got there, follow up support would be slow and hard to come by so I wanted to go in 10-to-1 so I could defend long enough against the ensuing counter-attacks that were sure to come. I saved the game prior to the invasion and I was happy I did. The airborne can't land in an unfriendly country. The planes wouldn't disgorge their cargo! So I backed up and went with 3 naval transports to get ashore, kill the enemy rocket launcher, and then landed my air transports with the 5 divisions of armor and 5 airborne divisions of infantry. Now I had a foothold! Iran countered with multiple air strikes. I made the mistake of not having air cover and lost all of my infantry before finally shooting down the bombers using the armored divisions anti-air capability. In the next turn I produced 10 fighters, and 5 more each of infantry and armor. Due to the way the air transport and maritime cargo-handling goes, it took 4 more turns to get the reinforcements into Iran and I lost control of the country during that time to a strong counter-attack by the mad Iranians. I launched a new amphibious assault but this time with air cover and was able to hold what I had with no problems.
To the southeast lay a small cluster of neutrals, and further south the few Koreans. I saw how I could invade the neutrals with my 3 maritime transports, reinforce with more airborne and have the Iranians by the head and the tail. Korea had so few countries they weren't making enough money to go on the offensive so I figured I could spare a few units to harass them and keep them on the defensive while I ate away at the Iranians from the top and the bottom. The strategy worked beautifully, it took about three hours but when all was said and done, I owned the center of the map and everything east of me. The Iranians and Koreans were no more. Now, I could concentrate all of my forces west. I suppose it would be a different story if the map were wrap-around (is that the right word?) like in Empire Deluxe where there really was no security in defeating everything on one side because the map wrapped around the world and units could go either way. But no wrap-around, so I left the east nearly undefended and moved west.
To the northwest was a small cluster of neutrals. One of them totally undefended! Why the AI didn't capitalize on this is a mystery to me. He had a lot of units sitting right there next to that undefended country, and this is like 4 hours into the game. He never took it, so I planned on taking it as a stepping stone to take out the Soviets to my northwest. At this time, the Soviets and Chinese had been pretty content with just bombing each other using short sorties to go out and kill a lone unit. Not for expansion, just harassing strikes. I figured I'd let them do that while I took out the neutrals. I had a long journey to get my maritime units to that undefended coastal country so I built 2 cruisers, 2 destroyers, and 2 subs to defend my cargo boats. Once the flotilla was armed and organized I started on my journey thinking I would get bombed the whole way as I passed along the coast of the enemy. Either they didn't see me, or they didn't want to mess with the cruisers AAA, either case the journey was uneventful. I got there, thinking I'd use the same tactics as before, first an amphibious assault followed by airborne landings. To my horror, that country was out of range of my air transports! JEEEZE! Well, the Soviets saw what was going on and suddenly got real interested in that previously undefended country and launched a large scale assault and I lost it the next turn with no way to get reinforcements there. I ended up giving up on that plan of action. It was just too costly and too far away to support.
I decided to go for the more heavily defended neutral country in that clutter that was furthest from the enemy AI and closest to me, and using heavy sorties of bombers I killed enough of them that I was able to launch a successful amphibious assault, and follow up with an airborne reinforcement. I built a facility there that would allow me to create units in that country and not long after I controlled all of that region. The Soviets counter-attacked continuously but since i controlled so many countries, I was making a lot of money and able to outproduce them and keep ahead of my losses. I was able to take their unit-producing territories and with them losing so much money, and not having any where to build any new units, they fell to the march of my tanks.
Now there was only the Chinese left. I hadn't realized how much money they were making...tons of it! They were about on par with me, even though I had killed three other nations. The fight with them was LONG AND BLOODY. I got a toe-hold in the north-western part of their continent and would take a country, lose that country, back and forth for what seemed like hours. It was so back and forth, I thought it was futile. But then he made a mistake. He moved a large percentage of his forces north and east for a final assault to push me into the sea. Fortunately, I still had those three maritime assault ships full of tanks. I went west and landed on the other end of the continent which was lightly defended. Now he had to attack in two directions and that made all the difference. It bought me time to build up a strong defense, and eventually I got another of his countries, then another, all the while he was fighting me viciously, but I prevailed. He still had about 18 countries when I noticed he was building a large navy! I still had the same simple navy I had used to escort the amphibious force. He parked his navy into two different flotillas, both on the opposite side of the continent from which my line of supply was coming from, and he had one group east, the other west consisting of cruisers, destroyers, carriers with planes, and subs. He wasn't using them to influence the battle with me so I left them be for now.
I had about a trillion dollars in the bank and decided to do some investing in technology. As I got him whittled down to only 4 countries left, I got ballistic missiles, stealth, and level 3 navy. I had 150 tanks, 70 bombers, 50 fighters, 25 infantry and 20 rockets surrounding his pitiful force of less than a mix of about 20 units. I elected to nuke him just because I could. It was gratifying. I left him one country with 0 points, no production, no radar, no nothing. Just a nuclear wasteland. I built a force of 10 each of level 3 subs, destroyers and cruisers and duked it out with his navies. That was a lot of fun. The navy battle is quite different in some aspects than the land battles. The ranges and movements for ships are much longer so it is more challenging to make good tactical maneuvers. I wanted to nuke his navy but that wasn't an option. I lost a lot of my ships mostly because I out-forced him by such a margin I could afford it. He fought as fiercely on the ocean as he did on the land and in the air. He maneuvered his ships expertly and got me caught in a situation where three of his could fire and only one of mine could return fire. That was a hard lesson and it was my fortune I had gone with such an overwhelming superiority.
The battle was over, and I took a lone tank unit and moved it into that single country I had left him, hit the END TURN button and the game was over.
In my final thoughts, at first this game seemed like it was gonna have a steep learning curve. Its really simple, and I think that is what made it seem hard at first. LOL!
I had a great time and wanted to share my experience.
Semper Fi,
ATGM
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Linear Mode
