Tigranes said:
sinimusta is brilliant at war
Thanks
!
I guess I could put up some of my post game thoughts here as well.
Btw, don't we have kind of an example of the philosophical dilemma of Theseus' ship paradox? At the end of the game, all the leaders of the alive nations are replacements so is it still the original "Ials pbem"?
When I took over, it was supposed to be a temporary thing for Luthor, but then he said he wasn't too invested in this game anyway and let me keep it. I saw the nation as backwards in tech which made me want to experiment espionage economy as it had been so much praised in S&T. I thought that with lacking science multipliers (no Oxf. this was almost an optimal case for it).
Another thing going for Japan was that it was close to getting steel and to me it means cannons. Cannons, samurai and agg/pro muskets for clean-up-> fun
. And also, neighbouring nations that don't have too much military tech. Getting NAP with the most dangerous one, Ruff was my policy. I tried it aswell with Byzantium but wouldn't manage, they were too friendly with Greece.
One could ask why not try to stop Ruff in this point and ally with Greece and Byzantium. I'm not sure it would have improved my position enough to justify it. If Ruff was the sole runaway, the yes, but there was always Portugal looming in the other continent, claiming to be backwards in tech and not so much of a threat. I'm not sure the dogpile would have been successful, the alliance would have required a lot of coordination and would I have gotten enough benefit? In case of winning, I would have gained land hard to defend, and would have been left between two states which would have been more friendly to each other than me. Trying to increase my land then would have lead to two-front-war.
So I decided to go for my first Greek war. I though that Byzantiums threat was mostly bluff, they would maybe DoW but wouldn't do anything significant and I underestimated Greeks/overestimated the power of cannons. It was a rushed war, but I feared Greece getting more mil tech/continuing building up his power + the earlier the better so I rushed it.
One mistake might be rushing for Thebes, which was a hill city and did have defenders/was reinforced heavily. Part of it was that I wanted to kill them with my collateral and overestimating cannons and also Thebes was on the road towards the Greek core. Going for southern cities might have made me some gains but they wouldn't have been so important. Still, I was trading hammers at a rate better than 1:1, thanks to cr-promos and cannons. If I could have directed all my reinforcements south, I would have won. But I had to respond to the potential threat of Byzantium and he sent a force I beat (but made me send those troops north).
2nd Greek war was easier one, I had numerical and tech superiority and only Greek front to worry about. My main concern was Ruff breaking his nap after finishing Byzantium, I feel that I'd have lost at that point.
The thing all the game for me was that I didn't want to kingmake and there were two runaways, not just one. My unrealistic dream scenario was Ruff sailing and invading Portugal and somehow getting a winning position out of that.
Ruff_Hi said:
War with Japan
Portugal was providing some assistance to Japan but I don't really think it had much of an impact. I think I saw a Japanese ship sailing to Portugal and I expect that Japan picked up some techs via EP. The city gift to Portugal obviously made the EP missions much easier (and less costly).
This war was bloody. Japan's protective trait didn't help. But the threat of large numbers of cannons (and then artillery) backed up by infantry and anti-tank units was certainly a major concern. Splitting my first tank stack was a mistake. I think I learnt that lesson with my second stack ... including throwing in a moderate number of machine guns (no collateral, hard to kill).
Losing the second stack of tanks was fine ... no other way to beat Japan here ... it was always going to be a war of production and I think I was able to generate superior production to lead to an (eventual) victory over Japan.
I personally liked more my aggressive trait. The benefit of pro is shown during enemy turn and it's harder to see than when the defender can counter attack. Maybe pro got more lifetime to my border cities/coast? Defending coast cleverly is another good question, I did prioritize the capital and other than that just some units or none if the city was just a filler. Keep troops in position to counter attack, but safe from bombarding.
I felt portuguese help was important even before nukes. My problem with the 2nd stack was the mgs, and Tigranes gave me the means to deal with them with some efficiency: air force and tanks + a lot of other stuff.
I guess one of my weak points was how to use effectivily air force in defense. Is interception good if you have less production? But how do you control your skies then? Maybe I shouldn't have used interception, at least not as much, it lead to losing my gift fighters too fast.