MiketheWookiee vs NukeLord Ladder Match

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MikeTheWookiee
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MiketheWookiee vs NukeLord Ladder Match

Postby MikeTheWookiee » Wed Jun 27, 2007 12:19 am

Let's get the first part over with. I won. 8)
NukeLord, by his own admission, didn't play to his best, and so I ran out a fairly comfortable winner. Apologies for not getting any mid-game screenies, but there was a war on, you know! Right, screenshot first so you can see what I'm talking about:

Image

We get going, deciding upon a nice game of default defcon. Only deviation from the standard is good ol' random territories. I'm dealt Russia, he Asia. Crap, I say, since I've never won in these circumstances (the games were against PnL and Bonsai, though). I see Russia's weakness being a difficulty in defending the cities while keeping the silos safe, so contrary to everything I'd tried before I just stick all the silos up above Moscow with nice intermingled radar coverage (after prolonged measuring of radar zones with a screwdriver).

At defcon 4, a lucky break. I see 4 silos northwest of Seoul / Beijing, together with 2 airbases to their east and 2 to the west (near the meeting of the territories between Mongolia and Kazhakstan(sp?). I myself put 2 airbases near Moscow,and another 2 in the frozen wastes near Alaska. As for fleet, 3 carriers with a 2-battleship escort are sent the loooooooong way around, doubling as a sub-hunter / late game surprise. The rest is arrayed nicely out in the north pacific in fairly standard formation, subs in front, battleships behind in 2's, finished off with 3 carrier groups, all ready to attack west.

Defcon 3. The clash of the fleets. I could see a good deal of his fleet thanks to my subs, and bagged a good number of battleships combined with some bomber runs. I then spot around 6 or 8 subs coming in for the battleships; carriers are sent up in antisub mode to push them back towards my waiting active mode subs. Then in what must have been an act of desperation, I see all my opponent's carriers charging my lines, launching everything right at me. This does for my own battleships, but I manage to beat a retreat with my carriers to safety. My subs don't fare too well, with just one fom my central line of 6 surviving. Eventually his carriers run off back home, and I take up a nice line off the Asian coast, running from east of Tokyo down to New Guinea(sp?)-ish.

The fleet action spilled over into defcon 2, and a little into defcon 1, but it made a nice self-contained story.

Defcon 1. First things first, I made sure to give that Indian / Arabian bay a good seeing to. With nukes. About 5 or 6 of them. At least it should make the subs run away for a while even if they're not destroyed. A few to the region's cities wouldn't hurt either, so I obliged them. I managed to destroy all the forward radar in the western battlegrounds, handing that advantage to me for a short while. I don't know whether NukeLord was a little slow off the mark there or if my pot-shots into the sea actually did anything, but the whole area remained remarkably quiet for the whole game.

Of course, all my Siberian cities were pretty quicky bombed out in retaliation (I'd expect nothing less), and then it seemed to go a bit quiet. My round-the-back carriers seemed to have picked up a sonar contact off Kinshasa-way, but I didn't know whether it had been destroyed or just passed over. All I saw was three depth charges fading away about 500 miles behind the ships. Naturally I went to investigate, right the way back to Oslo. It's a damn long way there and back, you know!

In the east, I seemed to be gaining the upper hand. Bombers from my two eastern bases were running very successful sorties against the radar around the silos, and then ultimately the silos themselves. This was easy at first, but as the nukes ran out I had to do some serious shuttling betwen carriers and airbases (the former were in a blockade ring around east Asiabut nuke-full, the latter in perfect launch positions to launch up over the top). I think this is when NukeLord started to get fed up, and started some abortive scouting attempts on my western half. sending a nuke or two and following up with a couple of fighters.

Now, to my surprise, a sub launch from Arabia. Was a pretty good one, finally doing for my radar on the Black Sea but failing to make that much of an impression on my cities. I had been expecting one in the arctic, but not another from there! One bomber was dispatched from my approaching fleet near Madagascar with orders to nuke even before sighting the enemy. I assume it was successful, since my Arctic -> Indian fleet was not molested by anthing more threatening than a couple of battleships for the rest of the game (and 2 battleships v 2 battleships plus three fully loaded carriers is really not a fair fight).

By this time the tentative scouting of my territory had petered out, leaving me assuming that he was nuke-light. Coupled with my destruction of what I think was NukeLord's third silo (of the 4 I could see) and my destruction of his other assets and cities almost on a whim, this must have left him desperate. Desperate for some luck, for the loo, or just to get it over with, I don't know.

This desperation lead to an all-silo launch across Asia. The remaining two now falling into my sights, right next to the other one Icould see already. This prompted quick action on my part, launching bombers and brace of subs at them to try and achieve total domination. 3 silos spotted, 3 silos destroyed. The whole of Asia was not at my mercy. All I had to do was wait out the coming storm and pray to any lord that would listen (except maybe NukeLord) that he wouldn't get lucky, or I get stupid.

Fortunately, missile arcs being how they are, to hit Moscow his would have to pass almost directly over pretty much all of my AA batteries. Some of the cities in the south of Russia were hit pretty badly, but the biggies were untouched along with the silos themselves. I think he never had firm intel on their positions at all until my launch.

What happened next is relatively obvious. I cleaned out all my carriers and my latent subs before the timer, and all the silos afterwards. During this time I was still concerned about that ghost of a sonar contact earlier in the game, and whether that was going to bite me in the ass as I did my own all-silo launch. Fortunately it didn't and I won rather easily if you judge from the scores.

Thanks NukeLord for the game, I'm sure you'll get your revenge soon enough! Better to play and lose than lose by default I suppose.

If you think this debrief is too long, then I leave you this message: Eat My Shorts. :P
torig
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Postby torig » Thu Jun 28, 2007 7:20 am

I remember reading this a while back, but for some reason I didn't comment.
Sorry!

Anyways, very nice debrief, and sounds like you had the upperhand all match long indeed ;)

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