Post by bremen on Jul 21, 2015 22:02:48 GMT 3
So far we've been doing things day to day, but now that the game is turning more serious I think we need to start thinking long term.
The obvious first concern is the disease. Georgia has it, though apparently not enough to show up as an infection on the main map, and Kazakhstan has it but has been burned back to the equivalent of a new infection (Level 3 I guess?) If we assume Level 1 = undetectable infection, level 3 = announced infection, and level 10 = gone silent, we can calculate that Spain went from infection 3-4 to Infection 10 in 4 turns; to be safe we probably want to assume an infected nation gains 2 levels every turn.
This means that, if nothing is done, we should be worried about both Kazakhstan and Georgia going silent in the narration for Day 11. Obviously we'll want to do something before then. It also means that we could expect Turkey to go silent on Day 9, however we would have expected Turkmenistan and Pakistan to go silent Day 8 but they did on turn 7. My guess is that their proximity to Iran caused them to sicken faster, either through border spreads or Virus creatures entering their nation (the narration implies those creatures can spread the disease). So I wouldn't be surprised if Turkey goes silent tomorrow.
We have countermeasures, though. I think on Day 9 at the latest we should do something for Georgia and Kazakhstan; either slash and burn, provide antivirals, or possibly something new that we may get from science.
The European front looks bad, but not really our problem. The disease would have to spread through Poland or Romania before it's any danger to us; while I'm not exactly happy with the US taking over Romania, they inherited a lot of problems to go with it. And if Germany goes dark I'll have very mixed feelings; I'm not going to sabotage them, but by the time the European infection becomes a danger to us we should have large numbers of firestarters and hopefully a bunch of nice science toys. Meanwhile that would leave our expansion into Europe mostly unchecked.
Second concern is virus monsters. I'm concerned about Georgia; it's bordering Iran, so as vulnerable to attack as anywhere, but there's a limit to how many forces we can get there this turn without disrupting plans for an offensive. I even considered mobilizing the bombers to help defend them, but I think this costs too much; for $4 we could practically build another unit of firestarters. I think our best plan is to move what we can in, ask Georgia for additional support, and if virus creatures attack hope we roll well. By next turn we should be able to move in more units and fortify the borders. We'll begin moving tanks into Kazakhstan, and the borders there are already fortified, so I'm fairly confident that any attack there will be fought off.
Then we have our newly christened Operation Charizard. Since the US is protecting Romania we can relocate nearly our entire force to the southern front, and with Chinese help I'm confident that if it's at all possible to conquer a silent region, we will do so. Hopefully this will give us some nice rewards, and if we do it once we should be able to do it again.
As with above, I'm not too concerned about Europe. Germany, the UK, and the US expeditionary force are all between us and danger. Right now we have a fairly large amount of funding available, so I will probably continue producing units and as they become available we will deploy them to guard our borders while keeping Charizard free for offensive operations.
Third concern is our objective; expand Russian territory as much as possible. This is why I was reluctant to give up Romania, but it seems to have worked out.
There are three ways to look at territory; allied, occupied, and annexed. As far as I'm aware annexation wasn't mentioned in the rules, and I'm going to assume we weren't given an objective requiring a hidden mechanic, so I'm going with the idea that we don't need to annex anything. I'm resuming allying with countries of opportunity; right now Greece would be a white elephant, so I'm going for Mongolia instead. They look relatively safe from the virus, unless China is really lying about its state of infection. If we get Mongolia, I might try allying Ukraine next. There's not a lot of other possibilities, and it would be nice to not have them rebelling/have a defense bonus in that territory.
If Operation Charizard is successful, we'll hopefully be left with Turkmenistan under our control (and China's, but I'm sure we could work something out). Admittedly it will probably be mostly a pile of ash, but it's still some gains. If we continue that advance we could take Iran and maybe Turkey as well. Even if Iran is a single flat sheet of glass once we're through it has massive oil reserves, so I'm going to count that as a win towards the Russian objective.
This leads us to our next possibility; annexing. Apparently the UK tried it and then China followed suit. We might try asking China for more details, if they're willing to share; if it's a good sized funding increase it might be worth doing with Finland and Belarus, which are both fairly isolated from the virus, but I worry about their terror level. It'd be a shame if we annexed them and our terror suddenly spiked. I'm particularly curious for opinions here.
Fourth concern is terror. Despite the attempts of the rest of the game with their pesky sanctions, we're doing well here. Russian terror is currently at 3, and penalties start at 4. I've talked to Gumpy and we can do a one time terror reduction for $4; I'll keep that in reserve for now. If Charizard succeeds I'm hoping we'll get a terror reduction out of that too; unfortunately, if it fails I suspect we'll get a considerable terror increase. So let's hope it doesn't fail.
The obvious first concern is the disease. Georgia has it, though apparently not enough to show up as an infection on the main map, and Kazakhstan has it but has been burned back to the equivalent of a new infection (Level 3 I guess?) If we assume Level 1 = undetectable infection, level 3 = announced infection, and level 10 = gone silent, we can calculate that Spain went from infection 3-4 to Infection 10 in 4 turns; to be safe we probably want to assume an infected nation gains 2 levels every turn.
This means that, if nothing is done, we should be worried about both Kazakhstan and Georgia going silent in the narration for Day 11. Obviously we'll want to do something before then. It also means that we could expect Turkey to go silent on Day 9, however we would have expected Turkmenistan and Pakistan to go silent Day 8 but they did on turn 7. My guess is that their proximity to Iran caused them to sicken faster, either through border spreads or Virus creatures entering their nation (the narration implies those creatures can spread the disease). So I wouldn't be surprised if Turkey goes silent tomorrow.
We have countermeasures, though. I think on Day 9 at the latest we should do something for Georgia and Kazakhstan; either slash and burn, provide antivirals, or possibly something new that we may get from science.
The European front looks bad, but not really our problem. The disease would have to spread through Poland or Romania before it's any danger to us; while I'm not exactly happy with the US taking over Romania, they inherited a lot of problems to go with it. And if Germany goes dark I'll have very mixed feelings; I'm not going to sabotage them, but by the time the European infection becomes a danger to us we should have large numbers of firestarters and hopefully a bunch of nice science toys. Meanwhile that would leave our expansion into Europe mostly unchecked.
Second concern is virus monsters. I'm concerned about Georgia; it's bordering Iran, so as vulnerable to attack as anywhere, but there's a limit to how many forces we can get there this turn without disrupting plans for an offensive. I even considered mobilizing the bombers to help defend them, but I think this costs too much; for $4 we could practically build another unit of firestarters. I think our best plan is to move what we can in, ask Georgia for additional support, and if virus creatures attack hope we roll well. By next turn we should be able to move in more units and fortify the borders. We'll begin moving tanks into Kazakhstan, and the borders there are already fortified, so I'm fairly confident that any attack there will be fought off.
Then we have our newly christened Operation Charizard. Since the US is protecting Romania we can relocate nearly our entire force to the southern front, and with Chinese help I'm confident that if it's at all possible to conquer a silent region, we will do so. Hopefully this will give us some nice rewards, and if we do it once we should be able to do it again.
As with above, I'm not too concerned about Europe. Germany, the UK, and the US expeditionary force are all between us and danger. Right now we have a fairly large amount of funding available, so I will probably continue producing units and as they become available we will deploy them to guard our borders while keeping Charizard free for offensive operations.
Third concern is our objective; expand Russian territory as much as possible. This is why I was reluctant to give up Romania, but it seems to have worked out.
There are three ways to look at territory; allied, occupied, and annexed. As far as I'm aware annexation wasn't mentioned in the rules, and I'm going to assume we weren't given an objective requiring a hidden mechanic, so I'm going with the idea that we don't need to annex anything. I'm resuming allying with countries of opportunity; right now Greece would be a white elephant, so I'm going for Mongolia instead. They look relatively safe from the virus, unless China is really lying about its state of infection. If we get Mongolia, I might try allying Ukraine next. There's not a lot of other possibilities, and it would be nice to not have them rebelling/have a defense bonus in that territory.
If Operation Charizard is successful, we'll hopefully be left with Turkmenistan under our control (and China's, but I'm sure we could work something out). Admittedly it will probably be mostly a pile of ash, but it's still some gains. If we continue that advance we could take Iran and maybe Turkey as well. Even if Iran is a single flat sheet of glass once we're through it has massive oil reserves, so I'm going to count that as a win towards the Russian objective.
This leads us to our next possibility; annexing. Apparently the UK tried it and then China followed suit. We might try asking China for more details, if they're willing to share; if it's a good sized funding increase it might be worth doing with Finland and Belarus, which are both fairly isolated from the virus, but I worry about their terror level. It'd be a shame if we annexed them and our terror suddenly spiked. I'm particularly curious for opinions here.
Fourth concern is terror. Despite the attempts of the rest of the game with their pesky sanctions, we're doing well here. Russian terror is currently at 3, and penalties start at 4. I've talked to Gumpy and we can do a one time terror reduction for $4; I'll keep that in reserve for now. If Charizard succeeds I'm hoping we'll get a terror reduction out of that too; unfortunately, if it fails I suspect we'll get a considerable terror increase. So let's hope it doesn't fail.